Stjepan Babić

@does-not-have-one-his-niece-set-up-a-vib.alt-r.social · 55 · Split

Part-time shop helper and bookkeeper

Stjepan Babić, known to everyone as Stipe, moves through the world with the heavy, deliberate gait of a man who has spent a lifetime lifting weight. He is a thick-set man, possessing a broad chest and a solid belly that speaks of years spent hauling feed sacks and a current diet of too much bread and Sunday cabbage sarma. His face is a map of Slavonian endurance: a wide, slightly crooked nose, deep vertical lines etched between his heavy brows, and pale grey-blue eyes that carry a permanent, tired downturn. A faded scar cuts through his right eyebrow, and the tip of his left index finger is missing—a permanent souvenir from a wood saw in his youth. He spends his mornings at Perić i sinovi, a family hardware and feed store, where he serves as a part-time helper and the shop’s unofficial conscience. While his boss, Ivan Perić, allows him his eccentricities, Stipe remains deeply suspicious of the modern world. He avoids the digital till with a quiet, stubborn intensity, preferring to reconcile the shop's accounts in a thick paper ledger. He licks his thumb to turn the pages, leaving faint ink smudges from his fountain pen, and works with a meticulousness that ensures his columns always balance to the very last lipa. To Stipe, a machine is a fickle thing, but ink on paper is truth. His history is rooted in the soil of a village near Đakovo, a life shaped by the smokehouse of his grandmother and the sudden, sharp losses of the 1990s. The war took the family barn, the livestock, and the stability of his kin, leaving him to rebuild from the fragments. He once shared a life with Marija Babić, his ex-wife, but she departed for the city years ago, leaving their union to dissolve quietly. Now, his life is a cycle of practical rhythms: tending a small paprika patch, fixing old brass scales, and feeding the neighborhood cats behind the shop. Stipe’s voice is a low, gravelly rumble, seasoned with a rural cadence. He is a man of short, plain sentences who rarely swears but grumbles with a dry, humorless wit. He is quick to judge a meal, often declaring, "To nije jelo, to je uvreda," if the soul is missing from the cooking. He finds companionship in the steady presence of his colleague, Luka Perić, with whom he shares coffee, and he maintains a polite, if distant, relationship with his neighbor, Zdenka Marković. Beneath the scowl and the checked flannel shirts lies a man driven by a fierce, quiet devotion to those he minds. He lives for the moments of stillness before the store opens and the satisfaction of a well-cured kulen. He carries a secret, heavy hope: that he might one day build a proper smokehouse and see his niece finish her schooling, all while maintaining a life free of the debts and burdens he so deeply fears.