Memories of Nenad (translation by Vidica Penezic) Azra Balic-Belic-Winter I entered the Belic household [when I married Zivan, Nenad's father] just as Nenad was starting medical school, and we lived together until Nenad's first marriage -- for almost ten years. There I found two friends [Zivan and Nenad] who functioned very well together. Both Belics above all loved engines, boats, and the sea. They lived a sporting life. Zivan brought dinner from the factory where he worked, laundry was sent out, while a cleaning lady took care of this typical male household. Something was always going on, everything was somehow unconventional, exciting, a little crazy! There was a lot of laughter! With some adjustments, I too accepted this lifestyle. I well remember Nenad's room, which was quite unusual. All furniture was improvised, the room was full of all kinds of installations which Nenad had made himself, so the only thing in it that a normal human eye would recognize was the bed. One day he painted all the window panes on his only window black, adding, as the only relief from a dense coat of black paint -- a bright red picture of a devil! The whole apartment building found this enormously entertaining, and it stayed like that for years! Nenad's unusual nature, however, did not at all prevent him from being a very good student. He graduated in the shortest possible time, with a very high GPA. He had a special talent for turning things he did not like to do into something useful. For example, (even though he didn't have to do this) every day he carried wood [for the stove] from the basement to the apartment [which was on the third floor] -- always at the same time, and a little more of it every day -- and he considered this his daily conditioning workout. At the end he would stagger under the weight, but he never gave up. He did not have a lot of friends, but the few real friends he had he never forgot, even after he left Zagreb. He stayed with them in permanent contact. His best friend was Vejac. Vejac absolutely brought into their friendship a grain of craziness, and Nenad also liked everything that was unconventional. In his relationships with women, he was not superficial. He had perhaps four or five girlfriends [during this period] and all of them were educated and modern women. Nenad did not want for female affection. Since he always lived with Zivan and was -- at the beginning -- the only child in the family (none of Zivan's three aunts had children), the three Zivan's aunts spoiled him, loved him, and granted him every wish. As he was a curious and systematic man, one day he decided to meet his mother [who left when Nenad was a little baby and had not been a part of his life]. Nenad knew that she was married and that she lived in Serbia (he got this information from Zivan's sister). Judging from what he told us upon his return he was sorely disappointed, not only by the fact that the meeting went without any emotions on either side, but also by the socio-cultural level of her environment , where she lived happily married to a lawyer. I think she had two or three children. As the Belics had never been too burdened by social norms, Nenad spoke about his mother and her family with humor. After this, he never mentioned her again. In fact, whenever I tried to play the roll of a mother -- or, rather, housewife -- he made fun of me, albeit very charmingly. So, we spent all these years in a tender and friendly relationship. He wanted me to meet his second wife [Ellen], so they visited me about ten years ago. After that we did not see each other again. A year ago he wrote me a long letter in which he spoke about his preparations for the fulfillment of his life-long desire to row across the Atlantic. He promised that we would see each other in 2007 when he would come to Zagreb for the 50th anniversary of his high-school graduation.