Under a Croatian Sun (20 page)

Boyana sucked in her cheeks. ‘That stupid Domigoy! He’d mix weed killer up with fertiliser if he got the chance. Wait ’till I see him!’

We continued to heap the blame on poor Domigoy as we edged towards the door.

‘Yes, one really has to concentrate,’ said Marin.

‘It’s so easy to get it wrong if you don’t concentrate,’ I added toadily.

I backed out into the street, consoling myself with the thought that sometime soon she would be dead.

Because of problems with my boat’s engine, I was spending a lot of time with Marin. Marin went about everything he did with a purposefulness and discipline not often seen in this part of the world, and, as I’m the type who tries to fix things with string and Kirby grips, it was a learning experience. But the more I worked with Marin, the more I learned to appreciate his patient and methodical way of going about things.

We also saw a lot more of Tanya. Most evenings, they came and sat outside our wall to watch the sun go down on, and, although we’d pretend we didn’t know they were there, we could hear their whispers and laughter trickling up over the wall. Afterwards, they’d often come up and sit in the garden to talk about their plans and ask for our advice. Dispensing my Victor Meldrew-style wisdom to members of the younger generation is something that comes easily to me, but, with Tanya beside me in a figure-hugging top and skin-tight jeans, I found it quite difficult to concentrate – and, whenever she laughed her tinkling laugh, I would lose complete track of what I was saying.

Towards the end of the month, I noticed that Marin wasn’t his usual self. He had started fiddling around aimlessly and sitting on the harbour benches, staring listlessly out to sea. After three days of this, I took him off to Marko’s for a beer.

‘What’s up?’ I asked.

‘I don’t know what to do. I’m sure Tanya prefers me to the others. At least she says she does. But I can never get her alone. That’s the problem with places like this; you can never get any privacy. It was the same in my family’s village.’

‘If I were you, I’d take her off on your boat for a day or two.’

‘I can’t do that! I’d lose my job if my boss found out!’

‘Well, why don’t you borrow our boat for the weekend? It’ll get you to Hvar and you could find a room to stay in.’

‘That’s very kind of you, but her mother would never allow it. Have you met her mother?’

‘Is that the one with the moustache who lives over the bakery?’

He laughed. ‘No, that’s the aunt. The mother’s the one who looks like a prison guard.’

‘Oh, yes, I’m with you now. The Rosa Klebb look-alike who lives above Filip.’

‘Yes, that’s her.’

‘I’d just take her on the boat and go.’

‘No, a boat is out of the question, but perhaps a car would do it. If I could take her to a beach with a car and get her back home by nighttime. That might work. All I need is to get her alone for a day.’

‘Well, the car is yours whenever you want it, but you’d better take your tool kit with you. It breaks down quite a lot, and breakdowns are real passion killers. I know from bitter experience!’

That Saturday, Marin picked up the car and the picnic that Ivana had made for them. (Knowing that Marin’s usual lunch was a cold pizza washed down with a beer, she had thought something more appetising might improve his chances.)

We stood on the balcony watching the charabanc of passion winding its way up the hill and blowing out smoke from the exhaust as if steamed up at the thought of what lay ahead.

Marin and Tanya’s love affair had certainly caught the imagination of the village. Even at the house of cynicism (Zoran’s), it had touched a nerve. The interest was probably triggered by Tanya’s gazelle-like beauty, and, while the talk was less about the couple than the bar-proppers’ own less than successful involvements with the fairer sex, the romance had certainly caught their attention.

We were talking about it one evening when a grim look came over Zvonko’s knotty features. ‘Just because Tanya looks so sweet and saintly, that doesn’t mean she’s any different from the rest,’ he said. ‘Once they’ve got the husband, out comes the cloven hoof. They’re all the same.’

‘That’s not fair,’ I said and Domigoy voiced a mumbled agreement.

‘Zvonko’s right,’ growled Zoran. ‘We hadn’t been in Texas for three months before mine ran off with her chiropodist.’

Murmurs of condolence round the bar.

‘The guy was on thirty thousand and I was on twenty,’ he grunted. ‘That’s the way it is with women.’

‘There’s no over-estimating the shallowness of the human heart,’ said Filip, shaking his long head sagely. ‘I learned that from reading your P.G. Wodehouse.’

‘I’d have thought that ten years of collecting taxes on this island might have taught you that, too,’ said Zoran snidely.

Filip ignored the dig. ‘But perhaps you were lucky, Zoran. I should have left my wife long before she left me.’

‘Yeah. Ditch ’em before they do you in is what I say,’ sneered Zoran. ‘Ever hear of Captain Bligh? They had the right idea there.’ He cocked an eye at me. ‘One of yours I think.’

‘Captain who?’ said Domigoy.

‘Never mind. Long story,’ said Zoran.

‘The best ones always get away,’ said Zvonko’s brother.

‘Yes, I should have gone with that Ana-Maria,’ said Zoran reflectively. ‘You remember the one? The daughter of that Split harbourmaster.’

The company nodded.

‘I really went for her, but I was only twenty and, when she got that job in Dubrovnik, I didn’t want to drop everything.’ He scratched his stubble. ‘But she was a fire-cracker she was. I
should have gone with her. I wonder where she is now. Probably cooking three meals a day for some fat ex-party chief who’s got a side line in imported perfumes.’ He put his chin in his hands and turned to me again. ‘Good things don’t come along often in this goddamn life of ours,’ he said in English. ‘You gotta grab ’em when they do.’

‘Gather ye rosebuds while ye may, old time is still a-flying,’ I replied.

‘Damn right!’

‘Maybe I should have stayed with my mother like she told me to,’ said Filip glumly. ‘Now I don’t even have a house of my own.’

‘You should have stayed with your mother until you knew a bit more about women, that’s what,’ said Zvonko, putting a brotherly hand on Filip’s shoulder. ‘There’s no shame in staying with your mother until you’re a bit older. I lived with my mother until I was forty.’ A slow grin came over his weather-beaten face. ‘D’you remember how hot you used to get for that Morena? You’d quiver with passion every time you saw her!’ Zvonko’s stocky frame started to shake with laughter, and the others snickered.

‘Yes, I remember that,’ gurgled Bozo, his stomach wobbling. ‘You used to get so steamed up, I’d see you shaking with passion every time you saw her behind her dad’s butcher counter in that apron!’

The bar rocked with laughter.

‘When will man come up with a solution to marital strife?’ sighed Zvonko wiping his eyes as the laughter subsided. ‘We should learn from our animals, we should. None of them get married for life and they seem to get on all right. They even get all the sex they want!’

‘And look at the ones that do marry for life,’ said Filip. ‘Those swans always look so bad tempered to me.’

‘But Tanya’s heart is pure,’ said Domigoy with a dreamy look in his eyes. ‘She’s not like the others.’

‘And what makes you think that?’ said Zoran acerbically.

‘Oh, I just have these thoughts. You know how it is.’

‘You’re a deep thinker, Domigoy,’ said Zoran with undisguised sarcasm.

‘Yes, I’ve always been a thinker, even when I was a boy.’

Zoran raised his eyes to the nicotine-stained ceiling and sighed.

Another evening, I was standing outside with Domigoy and Zoran at promenade time when Marin and Tanya passed by arm in arm. Domigoy gazed at them with the expression of a love-struck calf and the beer in his glass started to dribble down his shirt.

‘Didn’t your mother tell you not to stare at girls, Domigoy?’ said Zoran. ‘And, if you leave your mouth open like that, something’ll fly into it.’

Debate not being one of Domigoy’s strongest social skills, he mooched back inside. Filip had heard the exchange and came to put an arm round his shoulder. ‘Cheer up, Domigoy. Starry-eyed young men have always been falling in love with girls they can’t have. Some of our poets have spent their entire lives writing about it.’

‘Er…’ replied Domigoy, missing yet another opportunity for a deep and meaningful debate.

‘Never mind, Domigoy,’ said Zoran. ‘In life, happiness isn’t for everyone.’

I
n Croatia, men of temperament abound and there’s no such thing as a stiff upper lip. By and large, we English are brought up to be private people, but, in Croatia, no one misses an opportunity to give a decent emotion its full due. One morning, I was passing Ranko’s and saw him in the state that psychiatrists, for want of a better term, call ‘Having a Wobbly’. He was in his forecourt ranting to the sky. I could only make out occasional words like ‘beasts’ and ‘scum’, but, as an angry Ranko wasn’t someone you wanted to engage in conversation, I continued on to Zoran’s.

‘Oh, he’s just voicing his discontent,’ said Zvonko, when I told him what I had seen. ‘He’s had a letter from the Town Hall saying he can’t get planning permission for his chicken coops.’

‘Should we go and commiserate?’

‘No, I wouldn’t bother,’ said Zoran. ‘We all need to shout at authority sometimes. We’ve been so beaten down for so long
that we don’t know how to handle it rationally, and it makes us feel better if we can howl our grievances to the sky instead of writing a letter to
The Times
like you do.’

(The breadth of Zoran’s knowledge never ceased to amaze me.)

‘Here we’ve always treated our authorities as the enemy. Having a new lot of overlords every few decades doesn’t exactly endear you to authority. What’s the point in respecting them when next year Selim the Sot, Vlad the Impaler or Hannibal and his elephants are going to turn up from over the horizon with a new book of rules, and, instead of getting a year’s supply of turnips or a free elephant for every Centurion’s head you deliver to the Town Hall, you get the noose.’

Thinking about the authorities, judging by the language of those I saw coming out of the municipal offices, it looked as if it wouldn’t be long before someone in the Town Hall was going to be throttled by an exasperated petitioner – that is if Grandma Klakic hadn’t got there first.

Seeing me trying hard not to be over-emotional about the lack of progress with the vineyard grant and the horrendous overspend on the drains, Ivana tried to think of something else.

‘What we need is a project that benefits the community. That might get the village behind us. Why don’t you think of something the island needs and make that your project while we’re waiting for the grant?’

The idea came to me as we sat at Marko’s watching a gang of boys on the waterfront jumping boisterously in and out of the sea. ‘Pity there aren’t any dinghies around,’ I said. ‘Boys of that age should be messing about in boats, not making an infernal noise and annoying their elders.’ I paused. ‘Of course. What
about a sailing school? Why didn’t we think of that before? That’s just what the island needs.’

The bay was a perfect place for a school. It was a well-protected anchorage and there was always some wind. It should be a Godsend for the island. The tourist season only lasts two months, but the young don’t mind cold water like we do, and, with wet suits, a sailing school could function from May until November. It would bring employment and a steady stream of money into the island for half of the year. The perfect project.

‘And, if the islanders don’t bloody accept us when this gets off the ground, it’s back to the Home Counties!’

That afternoon, I walked round the bay looking for suitable sites. The old naval dock by the headland was ideal. It had a concrete landing wide enough for about thirty dinghies and an old barracks behind it that looked like it could sleep about forty. The next day, I rang the British Sailing Association, and a man who sounded like a West Country version of Ragnar Hairybreeks advised me how to write the prospectus and told me that they themselves could help to fund the dinghies and lend us instructors to train local staff if the school was open to boys and girls from EU countries.

This was terrific news. That would look after half of the cost. But, to raise the other 50 per cent, I emailed my proposal to everyone I’d ever known who had as much as set foot on a boat. One of them was Carlo, an Italian gallery owner I worked with who was now on the board of the Italian Sailing Association, and he emailed me back that his association had funds for sailing schools, and, as long as I could send him a lease for a suitable spot, he could recommend the school for a grant at their next committee meeting.

I did a quick hornpipe round the kitchen table and rushed off to ask the island’s architect to do some proper drawings from
the sketches I’d made. Excitement! If the British Sailing Association gave us the dinghies and instructors and the Italians gave us the money, we’d have three-quarters of what we needed. A project that could see the light of day at last. All we required was the Town Hall to agree on the site and we were away.

I told Ivana the news when she arrived back and we danced a jig round the sofa.

The next morning, we made an appointment with the Mayor’s office and, clutching copies of the proposal and the drawings, we set off in high spirits. In a dark, high-ceilinged room of the Town Hall, we found the planning committee already sitting round a long table and, with barely enough light seeping through the slats of the half-closed shutters, it looked like the scene in
The Godfather
when the heads of the families get together to plan the carve-up. The Mayor, with his thin helping of black hair slicked sideways over his forehead, rose to his feet as we entered and sidled over. Not my favourite hair-style and not a man I trusted, but I’d always found him affable enough. We sat down, handed round the copies of the drawings, and I stood to make my proposal.

I spoke slowly and very ungrammatically, but with words that I thought were full of feeling and persuasion. My pitch focused mainly on the employment benefits, the financial benefits and the high profile it would bring to the island, and ten minutes later I sat down feeling fairly confident of an enthusiastic response.

A row of stony faces looked at me over the table.

‘Where’s the money?’ asked one of them.

‘I told you, it’s being pledged by the Italian Sailing Association.’

‘Ha! Italians!’ said another.

‘So you haven’t actually got the money.’

‘No, of course not. We can only get approval and the first payment once you have agreed on the plans and the site.’

‘We should know the money is there before we give any promises about a site,’ said the one with a square-shaped head and no neck.

I stood up again. ‘These people have offered a large charitable donation and you are questioning whether they will send it?’ I asked icily. ‘Do you seriously expect me to ring them up and say, “Send us the money and we’ll let you know if we’ve managed to get a decent site later”? Don’t be ridiculous! They need to see a guarantee of a lease and the approved drawings before they send us a cent.’

‘We’ve heard these kinds of promises before,’ said a man in a purple shirt. ‘Sometimes the money never appears. We’re talking about Italians, you know.’

Laughter round the table.

‘And they might have other motives,’ said a man with a thin moustache. ‘We’ve got to watch for people wanting to set up businesses these days; particularly those “Pan-European” organisations we’re hearing about.’

A general nodding went on.

‘But they don’t want to start a business!’ I spluttered. ‘They’re a charity. They just want to give you some ruddy money so kids can learn how to sail, for Christ’s sake!’

Ivana kicked me under the table.

‘Ah! That’s what you say,’ said the man with the moustache, ‘but they might just be trying to get their foot in the door. They still think our islands belong to them, those Italians.’

‘And how do we know they’re not trying to hide some commercial interest?’ chimed in another.

‘I beg your pardon! The British Sailing Association and the Italian Sailing Association are both state-registered charities of
considerable standing. This discussion is getting ridiculous.’ I could hear my voice rising and Ivana’s grip on my leg was starting to drain the blood from it.

The Mayor muttered with the two men sitting beside him.

‘If I’m going to get this reaction,’ I interrupted, ‘perhaps I should advise the Italian association to put their money to some better use. If you don’t want it, I’m sure there are other Town Halls with forward-thinking members who are queuing up for donations like this…’

Ivana kicked me under the table again.

As we walked back along the front, I was seething with frustration and almost unable to utter a word.

‘Don’t be so upset,’ said Ivana, taking my arm. ‘It’s hardly surprising they try to stop anything from happening. They’re all ex-party members and they’ve spent their lives being suspicious of anything coming from the outside. In the old days, they’d lose their jobs if they backed a foreign venture and something went wrong.’

This reminded me that I’d forgotten to ask the Mayor about the progress of our Vis Winegrowers application. ‘Damn!’ I shouted. ‘We forgot to ask the bloody Mayor about our bloody application!’

‘Now why don’t you go and fiddle about on the boat for a bit. That’ll make you feel better,’ said Ivana, showing a touchingly deep understanding of the complex emotional make-up of her husband.

One hour later, I was feeling a lot better. I never thought I’d associate the whiff of diesel with the feeling of happiness, but, oh, the smell of a familiar engine, the feel of a familiar tool, the satisfaction of a well-tightened nut. Poets never seem to write odes to this most masculine of seafaring occupations. They go
on enough about all that
tall ship and a star to steer her by
kind of thing, but there’s never anything about the bloke down the hatch with his spanner who’s keeping the whole thing together. Mind you, from the pictures I’ve seen of Wordsworth, Keats, Shelley and the like, you could tell they weren’t the DIY sort.

That night, as I lay in bed listening to the sea that never sleeps talking to itself on the other side of the courtyard, I thought that perhaps there was something I was doing or saying that brought out such a negative attitude from the Town Hall. Maybe if I found out what it was, I might have more success.

The very next morning, a lesson in Croatian psychology, given to me for free by Grandma Klakic, gave me the answer. I was watching the six-year-old daughter of one of Ivana’s Croatian cousins trying to play with the kittens in the square, and saw that, even though they were only a few weeks old, they were already streetwise. They were hissing at her and edging back into the oleander bushes. Not receiving the usual cuddly-kitten response, little Julia started to cry, and I went down to console her, but, when I opened the courtyard door, I found Grandma Klakic already there. ‘Our kittens have to grow up fierce and strong,’ she was saying. ‘They must learn how to kill rats and fight off dogs. If they were just sweet and cuddly, they would never survive, and you wouldn’t want that, would you?’ Seeing me arrive, she gave me one of her flinty looks. ‘And that’s the way it is with our people. We’ve been trodden down for so long that this is how we’ve become. Hard and difficult to deal with, some might say, but, if we weren’t like this, we would never have survived.’

Suddenly, it all fitted into place. It was as if the whole panoply of Croatian psychological infrastructure had been unfurled in front of me. The problem I had with the Town Hall wasn’t me.
It was genetically ingrained. I felt as if a great weight had slid off my shoulders. Blessed be thou amongst women, Grandma K.

When I mentioned Grandma K’s take on the Croatian psyche to Zoran, he was quick to turn it in another direction. ‘I know the British only looked on Vis as another Gibraltar to keep your battleships in, but at least you were better than all the other invaders – those thievin’ Italians, those Hungarian butchers and those goddamn Turks. And Turks weren’t Turks if they weren’t linin’ our streets with our heads on spikes or makin’ our skins into their war drums. They took a lot of us as slaves, too – those who weren’t already part of someone’s drum kit, that is.’

One could always rely on Zoran for an upbeat take on history.

I was on my way home from the bar when my mobile rang. It rang so seldom these days that it made me jump. I fished it out and was assaulted by a salvo of hacking coughs, the unmistakable sound of my nicotine-ridden Dutch ex-agent Kaes. Wheezing away like a retired Bulgarian asbestos miner who’d just won the pools, he told me that he’d found an artist in Africa whose work was what we’d been always been looking for. Would I come back into the business and help him launch a worldwide promotion?

I was all ears. Ever since working in Africa as a young man, I’d been hoping to spot a new expression of art and be the first to champion it, but for the last decade I’d been feeling like a fielder waiting in the slips for a ball that never comes. I told Kaes I’d ring him back and sat on a bench to think about it. If the promotion worked, it would be the greatest achievement of my life – and it would make me some serious money. We’d be able to fund the vineyard without a grant. But then did I really want to go back to all that again – the endless travelling, the legal
fighting, the financial worrying, the ever-ringing mobile? I sat there watching the fishermen pottering about on the quay, the boats drifting slowly into the harbour and the villagers going unhurriedly about their daily business or stopping to chat with their neighbours. Wasn’t this beyond any price? But, considering how badly we were being treated by the village as a whole, perhaps it might not be such a bad idea to take up Kaes’ offer and come back here in five years’ time and try again. The feeling towards outsiders might have mellowed by then. I rang Kaes back to tell him I needed more time to think about it.

But did I really need any new challenges in my life? I asked myself as I walked home, and I remembered the list I had made aged eighteen of all the things I wanted to achieve before I was fifty – scaling the Eiger, crossing chasms on rope bridges, sailing single-handed round the Horn, winning a Nobel Peace Prize, wrestling busty blondes on film sets like James Bond and having knickers thrown at me like Tom Jones. I certainly hadn’t ticked off many, but there were still a few possibles left – skinny-dipping in a waterfall or dancing at moonlight beach parties painted in psychedelic colours? That sort of thing should be easy enough out here. But, on second thoughts, most of them needed the willing participation of at least one member of the opposite sex – and I could imagine what Ivana’s response would be.