Under a Croatian Sun (13 page)

For the next two hours, we ate, talked, laughed and drank deliciously cool white wine as a light breeze stirred the apple trees above us and dappled us with golden speckles of sunlight. Sitting round the table with this extended family, surrounded by the flower-speckled meadows and stone houses, and with the sound of the animals in the background, I felt as if we were taking part in a biblical scene of an early Rossellini film.

Two hours later, when the children had long since left the table, the others stretched out under the trees for a snooze and Ivana and I walked up the hill to look at the other side of the island. It had rained lightly that morning and the rain had made the heather-covered ground give off that hot, mustily intoxicating Mediterranean post-shower smell – damp earth, wet grass, lavender, pine needles. Reaching the top, we had a 180-degree view of the middle Adriatic. We couldn’t see Italy because of the heat haze, but on a clear day you could. The surrounding small islands hovered in the heat haze as if suspended above the water, and behind them the larger islands on the horizon extended their headlands into the silvery sea like
sleeping crocodiles. We were turning to go back when we saw an old lady with a large bundle of faggots on her back coming up the hill and went to help her. Despite her protests, I took the bundle and carried it down to her croft at the edge of the hamlet, and, while I stacked it, she went to fetch a jug of lemonade.

Sitting with her on the porch sipping the cool drink and looking down over the valley, I said, ‘How I envy you your view. It’s the most beautiful setting in the whole valley.’

‘Do your children come to see you often, or are they far away?’ asked Ivana.

‘Sadly, I have no children now. The war carried them all away.’

We started to apologise.

‘No, no. Please do not apologise. We must all bear what our lives have to bring to us.’

She then told us that she had been forced to leave her home in Bosnia, but some distant cousins who owned this croft had offered it to her. She said she missed her homeland, but the people in the hamlet were kind and made her feel at home.

In World War II, her first husband and his brothers had been taken from their farm by the Germans and shot in reprisal for something the partisans had done. She had worked the smallholding on her own and tried to feed her son and daughter as best she could, but life had been hard. Her daughter had fallen ill and, because she didn’t have enough money for a doctor, she died. A few years afterwards, she married a good man, a widower from the next village, and had another daughter, and things had looked up. They worked hard on their holdings, built a two-storey house for her son, and all seemed to be going well until the recent war with the Serbs started and once again the soldiers came. This time they killed her husband and her son along with all the other men in the village, and they put her and
her teenaged daughter on to a truck and abused them all the way to the concentration camp. At the camp, being old, she was spared, but the young women, including her daughter, were abused by the guards for months, and, by the time the UN forces arrived, her daughter was pregnant. They were sent to a refugee camp near Split, but, shortly before the baby was due, the shame and the fear of the future drove her daughter to kill herself. Now alone and unable to return to her land, which was now in Serbian hands, her distant relations had given her a home in their hamlet.

‘Oh,
Gospoda
,’ said Ivana, almost in tears. ‘How could life have treated you so unfairly?’

The old lady looked ahead and said, ‘Some days, I sit here looking out over the valley wondering why it all came about, but I know I will never find the answer. Our lives are neither fair nor unfair. They are simply our lives.’

O
wning a boat had been a fantasy of mine ever since I was a boy with a plastic battleship in my bath, and from the moment we arrived I had been looking out for something suitable. As with the car, I realised I needed something like my neighbours had – and I also thought that, once I had one, I would have something in common with my neighbours and be able to join in on the conversations about high seas, weather fronts, barnacles and splicing main-braces. With a boat I wouldn’t be just another stringy, white-limbed foreigner; I’d be one of the island’s sea captains!

As soon as I told the cabal that I was looking for one, I was swamped with offers, and by the end of the week Zoran had brokered a deal for a sturdy twenty-foot day-boat that belonged to Zvonko’s brother. He had fished in it for twenty years, but had lost his hand in a hay-maker the previous year and had given up fishing. It needed a lot of work, but Zoran told me it
was sound and could handle almost any kind of sea. So I now was spending a lot of my day down the hatch fixing things, and, as I had hoped, it gave me an instant bond with a lot of other islanders. The sea was still omnipresent for everyone, no matter what their occupation or stage in life, and with a boat, whoever you were, you spent a lot of time fiddling about with and cursing your engines.

I rather like doing things myself so I had brought out my state-of-the-art set of tools, and, ever since Karmela had broadcast their existence to the village, neighbours with car or boat engine problems had been asking me to help out. I liked helping out. I’ve always wanted to do things like heaving up my neighbour’s roof like the Amish or giving my fellowmen a hand with their tyre changing, door hanging, weather proofing, piston grinding, tree felling and ditch digging. I’d never had much opportunity for this sort of thing in Fulham, but, whenever I had, it never failed to give me a kind of gritty masculine feeling, as if I was something in between a navvy and a carpenter – an attractively virile concept, I always thought.

Mechanical problems feature heavily in an islander’s life, and scarcely a day went by at Zoran’s without someone coming in swearing about something mechanical or asking for help. One afternoon, Zvonko came into Zoran’s bar with his battered face a map of misery, and slumped on to a stool, his stubbly jowl drooping like a despondent hippo.

‘What’s that stuff on your shirt, Zvonko?’ said Zoran. ‘Has that wife of yours been throwing the frying pan at you again?’

‘I’ve spent the whole day under that damned truck with my boy Icho,’ said Zvonko, ignoring the loaded remark and taking off his cap. ‘It’s my Vesna’s birthday this weekend and I was going to take her and the grandchildren out for a picnic. With no
truck I can’t get my boat into the water.’ He rubbed his ears and scowled into his beer. ‘F… all the gods of four-wheel vehicles!’

The bar-proppers made commiseratory noises.

‘There isn’t anyone who’s got a van with a tow bar on, is there?’ he asked, but didn’t look anyone in the eye.

No one answered. Odd, I thought. Almost every vehicle on the island had a tow bar on it. But then, realising that this was an ideal opportunity to show what a neighbourly kind of fellow I was, I chirped up, ‘I don’t have a van, but my Renault’s got a decent-looking tow bar on it. I could tow it if it isn’t too heavy?’

‘A Renault could do it. No problem.’ Zvonko’s grizzled features brightened and he called Zoran’s assistant over. ‘Another drink for both of us, Dragimir!’

Dragimir raised an eyebrow as if he knew something.

The next morning, I set out under a salvo of entreaties from Ivana – not to drive dangerously, not to put my back out by lifting heavy weights and not to get axle grease on my trousers again. Zvonko was waiting for me with his son Icho, a nice hefty-looking, open-faced thirty-year-old with arms like oak branches, a Cold Comfort Farm haircut and matching Cold Comfort Farm dungarees. I got out and saw the boat. Christ! Sitting on a rusty old trailer in the middle of the yard was four metres of heavy, waterlogged, worm-eaten timber. It looked like one of those Viking boats you see in magazines that have been lying in the mud at the bottom of some fjord since the twelfth century and have just been dredged up. Would it even float – and, more to the point, how was I going to get it up the slope from Zvonko’s to the road with my poor little Renault? It must weigh over a ton.

Knowing better than to cast aspersions on another man’s boat, I said, ‘She does look a bit heavy, Zvonko. Are you sure a Renault can get her up to the road?’

‘No problem! Renault pull her good,’ he said in English, I think wanting to practise it without embarrassing himself in front of the other bar-proppers.

‘Well, if you say so. As long as we can get her up this slope, we’ll have her in the water in five minutes.’

Zvonko’s flat nose did its best to wrinkle. ‘We not put her in bay here. We put her in sea at Zaglav bay. That best bay. He waved his arm grandiloquently to the south.

‘But that’s on the other side of the island! We can’t possibly get it over there. What about the hills! The engine’s only 850 cc, you know. It’d have to be in first gear all the way. Anyway, I’ve never seen anything that looks like a launching jetty in Zaglav.’

‘Zaglav have good place. Ten metre over sea, but we put rope on car and boat go down easy.’

‘But, Jesus, Zvonko!’ I said, looking at the haulage truck for the first time; a large battered green affair with a big winch on the front. ‘The Renault’s a dinky toy compared to that!’ I protested. ‘And how the hell can we lower the boat without a winch?’

‘No problem! Rope on car. Car go back. Boat go down.’ His face crinkled with pleasure at the thought.

I heard a voice telling me to get myself out of this, but then what about the other bar-proppers. It might make them think I was the sort of fellow you couldn’t count on – and that wasn’t a good label to have in an island community.

‘Well… I suppose… Maybe if we had a few more people to help…’

‘No, No. We no need more people. Three do job OK. Me, you, Icho. No problem!’

‘But you can’t lift at your age, for heaven’s sake!’

(Zvonko couldn’t have been a day under sixty-five.)

Zvonko bared his arm. ‘I strong like bull!’ he said indignantly.
‘I pull like young man – Look!’ He flexed a meaty but softening bicep.

‘OK,’ I sighed. ‘We’ll give it a try.’

Icho caught my eye over his father’s shoulder. He had one of those endearingly wide faces that showed what it was thinking and it looked concerned. Moving to my side of the trailer, he whispered, ‘The old man still thinks he’s Superman, but he can’t lift much anymore. I told him we needed more hands, but he just won’t listen. I’m worried he’ll have a heart attack.’

I made a mental note to stop off at the chemist for an emergency medical kit.

A young woman came into the courtyard and Zvonko introduced her. ‘This is Vesna, the mother of my grandchildren,’ he said.

I’d seen her before at the market; a mousey girl with the kind of straggly hair and vacant expression you see on followers of those oddball American religious sects – it must be the way you get to look after cold-water baptisms and serial polygamy with bearded, goaty-looking blokes. The girl smiled wanly at me and went over to her brother. As they talked, they were darting surreptitious looks at their father. No doubt the subject of heart attacks was under discussion. I mustn’t forget to pick up the medical kit.

Once the trailer was coupled up, Zvonko went inside and reappeared in something looking like a variant of a 1920s flying helmet. With his grizzled square face and his greying box moustache, he looked like a cross between Alf Garnett and the Red Baron.

‘What on earth have you got that on for?’ I asked.

‘I wear when put boat in water. Maybe I hit head.’

Hitting your head when launching a boat…? What had I got myself into? But I said nothing and we got into the car (getting
into a car here didn’t seem to entail buckling up or ceasing to smoke), and, with the smell of burning clutch plate added to the cigarette fumes, I managed to get up the slope to the road and we ground slowly up the hill, the engine groaning disconcertingly and the heat gauge flickering alarmingly upwards. Arriving at the top, I breathed a big sigh of relief, but things got even worse when we started on the first downhill slope. The heavy trailer pushed down on the tow bar lifting the weight off the front wheels and making the steering terrifyingly difficult to control. Zvonko, quite impervious to what was happening, was telling stories of how he and his brothers used to pull their boat along goat tracks, sail to the farthest islands, brave the storms and snaffle all the prettiest girls, but, being somewhat preoccupied with the steering, the heat gauge and the groaning noises coming from the radiator, I didn’t take much of it in.

Finally, we crested the last hill and below us was a landscape that resembled my idea of paradise. Green vine-terraced slopes plunged down to a cobalt-blue sea dotted by an occasional white sail, and a lone steamer chugged its way across the straits. In the distance, the surrounding islands floated in the haze. It was a scene from a Disney movie. All it needed to win the Cutest Landscape of the Year Award was a tweety bird or two flitting around the edges.

‘Isn’t that the most beautiful view you’ve ever seen?’ I said.

‘Pah!’ grunted Zvonko. ‘Too much beauty view in our country. We like big development; not beauty view.’

What to say to that? But heaven help us if they ever discover something like oil down here.

Ten minutes later, Zvonko called out, ‘Here! Here!’ and I stopped. I looked down from the window at a twenty-foot drop to the sea.

We got out.

‘Jesus, Zvonko! How the hell are we going to get the boat down that?’

‘No problem! In war with Serb, we do like this every day!’ He looked elated at the prospect.

For a second, I thought the Renault looked slightly nervous.

We unhitched the trailer and Zvonko tied the rope to the tow bar. He had to bend down to do it and was wheezing like a consumptive donkey when he got up. Damn. I’d forgotten to pick up the medical kit.

‘All OK now!’ he said, grinning widely with his gappy teeth. In a flying helmet, he now looked like Terry Thomas in
Those Magnificent Men in their Flying Machines.

Zvonko and Icho slid halfway down the slope with the other end of the rope and I sat tensely in the car. The smell of the pines and burned clutch-plate was cloying and the cicadas rasped irritatingly. Perhaps they were trying to warn me of something – that the future held only two possible scenarios. One: that the car with me in it would be pulled backwards over the precipice squashing Zvonko and Icho, and that, after escaping from a submerging car, I’d have to support their widows for the rest of my life. Two: that, trapped inside the car, I’d sink like a stone and turn another scenic spot of the Med into a foreign field that would be forever England. Feeling like Lot’s wife (who as you may well know got into all that unpleasantness with a pillar of salt when she turned round at the wrong moment), I looked in the mirror with dread. Be still, my pounding heart, I told myself and opened both windows to make for a quicker escape. Why had I got myself involved in this?

Hearing a shout from Zvonko, I gingerly engaged reverse and heel-and-toed the pedals to keep the engine revving (it was prone to dying at low revs). In the mirror, I saw the boat
gradually disappearing over the edge, and I could hear Zvonko shouting hoarse instructions, but it’s remarkable how difficult it is to understand someone shouting in a language you don’t understand too well when you’re revving a car engine. Hoping it was the right thing to do, I continued backing slowly, but the car suddenly began to slide. I stamped on the brake. It kept on sliding. I shoved it into gear but the wheels spun in the sand. Oh my God! Panic! I was nearing the edge! I was going to die!

Then there was a loud crack, a big splash and the car stopped.

Scenario One. They’d been squashed by the boat!

I jumped out and rushed to the edge. Relief! The boat was in the water but the boom had come off it. Zvonko, still in his flying helmet, was climbing astride the boom, hanging on with one arm and gesticulating to Icho with the other like a cowboy on a bronco. But booms in water are like fairground greasy poles and it rolled round, pitching him back into the water. He surfaced spouting waterlogged expletives – or were they gargled instructions? It was difficult to say which and Icho seemed to be having as much trouble understanding them as I was. I climbed down to help.

By the time I got there, Zvonko was hauling his barrel-like frame up on to the rocks like a prehistoric sea creature that had decided to evolve on land. With a great deal of grunting, he got upright, took off his helmet and shook himself like a wet Labrador. Rubbing a large lump on his head, he looked up angrily at me. ‘Jesus and Maria! What you do? You go too quick! Boom it break! Why you go so fast? You want kill me? I lucky I not dead man!’

‘I had the brakes full on, damn it!’ I spluttered. ‘The bloody car was skidding backwards. I told you your damned boat was too heavy. I nearly went over the edge after it. You nearly got us both killed!’

Zvonko rubbed the lump on his head sheepishly. ‘Maybe you right. Maybe car too small.’

Icho looked up from where he was untying the rope. ‘And maybe father too old.’

That evening, I found out why none of the bar-proppers had offered to help. Zvonko was famous for accidents. But, as he was also famous for his story-telling, the village got to hear about my selfless gesture and how I almost got to meet my Maker in a flying Renault 4, and according to Zoran it won me a few brownie points.

But, as near-death experiences weren’t really my thing, I was going to steer well clear of that kind of venture in future, brownie points or not – besides, the operation had burned out most of my clutch plate.

With the boat came a change in our daily routine. Now we had a boat, as soon as the morning chores were over, I’d go off to tinker around on it like a man with a shed at the bottom of his garden, and Ivana would follow later with the towels and the picnic. There was always a sense of adventure in the air as we set out. I stood at the helm with the confidence of an experienced hunter-gather and steered her out of the harbour with what I thought was an impressive display of dexterity.