The questions didn't stop, but their power did. When someone would approach him at the market and start with "Pitaju me svi...", Marko would simply hand them an orange or a piece of bread and smile.
"You all keep saying the same thing," Marko said, his voice low but steady. "'' You ask where I went, what I did, and why I’m back. You want to know if I’m a hero or a failure." pitaju_me_svi
Finally, Marko stood up. The tavern went quiet. The clinking of glasses stopped. The questions didn't stop, but their power did
He walked to the center of the room. "The truth is, I didn't go away to become something. I went away because I didn't know how to stay. I spent twenty years looking for a place where no one knew my name, where no one would ask me anything. I worked on ships, I built houses in the mountains, I sat in squares in cities where I didn't speak the language." "'' You ask where I went, what I did, and why I’m back
He realized that the "everyone" they spoke of wasn't a judge or a jury. It was just a community trying to make sense of a gap in their own history. He wasn't a mystery to be solved anymore; he was just Marko, the man who came home.
Marko didn't leave the next day. He stayed. He fixed the shutters on his mother’s house. He painted the old wooden boat that had been rotting in the harbor.