Under a Croatian Sun (21 page)

Still, there was always Saturday nights round the bar with Zoran and the boys.

I
vana had an important birthday at the beginning of July, and Marko and I organised a party at Fort George, the fort that the British built around 1811 and named after King George III, and which still commanded the entrance from the headland with a foreboding presence. We assembled the thirty guests by the portcullis at sundown and, after carrying the food and drink up to the parapet, Ivana laid out the food on the trestles Marko had brought, while and Zoran and I mixed up cocktails beside one of the deserted gun ports of the massive thirty-two pounders that could hurl their cannon balls three miles out to sea. The view from the ramparts gave an uninterrupted panorama of the bay and the surrounding islands. The gunners could have blown anything out of the water that came within range.

Fort George was a top-of-the-range fort of its day. Built to house five hundred men, it was an impressive piece of late-eighteenth-century fortification, and, perched on its rocky
headland, it stood there starkly forbidding. I looked over the battlements as we mixed up the drinks. By now, the burning sun was darkening from orange to red and turning the bay into a pool of liquid gold. The roofs of the village were suffused with the glow and the stone of the ramparts around us were washed with fiery pink. We toasted Ivana, passed round the eats and laughed and joked, but I couldn’t stop wondering what the Midshipman Hornblowers would have been thinking of as they stood here all those years ago, waiting for the French fleet to appear and feeling very far from home.

Horatio Nelson was a man who knew how to read a map. He saw that whoever held Vis would control the Adriatic, so, in 1806, Captain William Hoste, one of his protégés, was dispatched with a fleet of frigates to take the island and hold it for England and St George. Once they had secured the island, the engineers from England followed and began the construction of a massive fort. Hundreds of people were employed, thousands of tons of stone were cut, and within three years the fort was completed. It had been a huge bonanza for the island, said Filip, as we looked down at the village now in shadow. It had brought wealth to the island and the Battle of Vis was something they were very proud of.

When the French fleet had been sighted, he told me, Hoste had sailed out to meet them, and, from the reports he’d received, he was fairly confident that their fleet was about the same strength as his. But, as they neared, he saw that not only did they have more ships, but they were also bigger and more heavily armed – in all, 276 guns to his 174. It must have been an uncertain moment for a captain still in his twenties, but reckoning that with the superior seamanship of his officers and men he could still win the day, he signalled for his drummer to
beat to quarters, and, hoisting the flags that spelled out ‘Remember Nelson’ to the rest of his ships, he went into the attack. Out-numbered and out-gunned, the fighting was murderous, but by midday the superior seamanship began to tell and by mid-afternoon the French fleet was routed. Hoste returned in triumph to the bay with prize ships in tow to set about repairing his battle-damaged ships and to build a cemetery for his dead.

The light began to weaken as we leaned over the battlements, looking across the water. No one spoke, but the past felt very close as we stood there with our drinks, watching the last flickering vestige of the flaming orb sinking into the stretch of water where Hoste and his men had fought so bravely that day.

Marko broke the silence. ‘You gave us our golden years, you know. There are only two clothes shops in the village today, but in 1815 there were seventeen. We were rich in those days!’

‘But most of the clothes shops must have been for the soldiers’ and sailors’ uniforms,’ I said.

‘But no. They were all women’s clothes shops,’ he laughed. ‘When does it ever change, my friend? Whenever we make any money, what happens to it? Our women spend it on clothes.’

The talk then turned to the British occupations. The occupations had made us the ‘least worst’ of all outsiders, Filip volunteered, and World War II had been a particular PR success, he added. His grandmother had never eaten chocolate before, but, after the troops had spent two years giving her their chocolate rations in return for washing their smalls, not only did she become a chocoholic but she also rooted for England whenever we were in the World Cup.

The following week, Luka returned from Germany and we got on famously. He had already planned to start a cricket team. His
family had gone to Australia when the war started, and, although he hadn’t played a lot, he’d become a great fan. When the war was over and they came back, he had been reading in a book about Napoleon’s campaigns and read that the British Navy had played cricket here. Ever since then, he had also been thinking of starting it up again.

So now there were two of us.

Luka was a delightfully laid-back young man in his thirties with an athletic, rangy build, a mop of curly hair and twinkly grey eyes that slanted mischievously upwards when he smiled. He had a quiet confidence and wasn’t at all fazed when I listed all the things we needed to do to start a club. He patted me affectionately on the shoulder when I’d finished and said, ‘All we really need are some stumps, somewhere to play and enough kit for three or four players. We can sort out everything else as we go along.’

We agreed that my job would be to get the equipment and his to persuade his friends to learn how to play. We were stumped by the question of the pitch, as the only flat piece of land without a vineyard on it was the Navy’s original pitch beside the monastery, but Luka was even philosophical about that. ‘What about your English expression “Fortune favours the bold”. It will all sort itself out. Wait and see. The only real problem we’ll have is persuading enough men to play.’

‘But I’ve spotted at least a dozen athletic-looking types.’

‘Ah, you don’t know our people. Suspicious of anything new, we are – even our younger ones. They’ll be worried that their friends will think them weird, and their wives and mothers will think they’ll catch some life-threatening disease from playing a strange foreign sport. It’s going to be a struggle.’

Cricket was now all I could think about. My own team! And what a relief to have a project at last (and one that didn’t have to
involve a Town Hall, a Ministry or grumpy neighbours). If we succeeded, it might even put paid to a lot of the grump-factor, I thought. All we needed now was eleven like-minded men.

Luka rang me four days later to say he’d been canvassing hard but had only found six who were interested. Could I come and meet them?

We met at Luka’s konoba that evening. The men had all been at school with Luka before he went to Australia, and I sensed they all looked up to him. Then, he was the type that others always follow. However, I did pick up an atmosphere in the room when I arrived; the sort of embarrassed atmosphere you get when a group of men who have known each other since childhood discover that all along they’ve been secret fans of ballroom dancing or the Carpenters – and it was only after they’d downed a glass or two of Luka’s heavy red
Plavac
wine that the tension eased.

Luka had explained the game to them, but they were still pretty sketchy on what it was all about. I’d experienced this with many of Ivana’s friends, and remembered that what had worked best were stories about the great players and the great matches. So I started by telling the group about the nimbleness of Don Bradman, the true eye of Jack Hobbs, the phlegm of Tom Graveney, and followed that with stories about the wrist mastery of Jim Laker, the ferocity of Freddie Flintoff and the devastating spin of Shane Warne. What got them really listening, though, were the stories of the teams that fought back when it looked like certain defeat and went on to win the day. I also told them how the game threw up unlikely heroes; the overweight number nine batsman who scores 50 and saves the day; the over-aged fielder who catches the crucial catch; the dull player who opens slowly but lasts the whole innings and ends up 100 not out. This impressed and, feeling like Brown Owl addressing a circle of
cubs round a camp fire, I got slightly carried away with myself and started on the psychology of team play – how a captain like Mike Brearley could instinctively create a team that was more than the sum of its members, how Len Hutton had such an understanding of his men that he knew just what they were capable of. But I realised I was losing my audience. Luka realised it, too, and quickly put another bottle on the table. He didn’t want to lose any recruits either. (I’d have to watch my stories. Ivana tells me they’re getting longer and longer every year – and it’s not only the cricket ones, she says.)

But by the end of the evening they all wanted to learn, and around midnight we rolled out into the darkened streets, laughing and joking, our voices echoing down the empty alleys and up over the silhouettes of the rooftops. The others left me in our square and I sat on the bench by the water listening to the clink of their footsteps on the stone fading into the distance and looking at the stars above me sparkling in the great wheel of the heavens. Orion’s Belt was twinkling cheerfully away in the east and Cassiopeia was flashing her messages across the ink-black sky. A good omen. Maybe we were going to succeed with the cricket.

The greeny lights of the fireflies pulsed in the dark between the palms beside me, and, feathered by a soft breeze, the water lapped in a light staccato at my feet. Bliss. The peace of midnight after an evening with my new teammates.

A
t the end of June, we were getting into the car (nicely heated to oven temperature, courtesy of Grandma Klakic) when we saw Karmela scurrying across the square. Breathlessly, she told us that the expensive-looking café we had seen being constructed was going to be a disco.

We went over to find the villagers milling around some enormous speakers, a bewildering array of wires and a half-finished dance dais. One of the gathering filled us in on the background. Selling overpriced drinks to holidaymakers was a lucrative business, and some entrepreneurs in Split, hearing about the number of yachts now coming to Vis, thought there were rich pickings to be had. They had set about getting themselves a site with Byzantine diplomacy, he said, and, after weeks of clandestine coffees with the right people, they had persuaded a local to pretend he was setting up a café, and under this guise they had built themselves a disco bar.

The double-edged sword of progress had appeared in our midst.

The crowd hung around for a while then drifted off, and we did the same, telling ourselves that things might not be as bad as they looked.

They were worse. The next night, the boom of disco-rap vibrated every wall within a half-mile radius, and it didn’t stop till 4 a.m.

In the morning, we went over to Marko’s and found a crowd already inside. Marko was standing at the bar and people were calling out to him.

‘How could the Mayor have allowed it? It’s right in the middle of town!’

‘Why didn’t he make them put it on the outskirts? It wouldn’t have bothered anyone there.’

‘The authorities should have stopped it!’

‘Something should be done!’

Not wanting to look pushy, we sat at the back assuming that, once the shouting stopped, they’d form a protest committee and we could offer to help then. But half an hour later it was quite apparent that the object of the meeting was to complain rather than decide on any action. No one had even mentioned a committee (and I’d always thought that communist countries were big on committees).

Eventually, I stood up. ‘What about forming a protest committee?’ I called out.

Silence fell like a brick, everyone twisted round, and the woman with a pudding bowl hair-do in front of us was glaring at me as if I was a carpet stain. Highly embarrassed, I quickly outlined the three or four target areas the committee could cover, but even as I talked I could hear the rumble of disapproval. I sat down as quickly as I could, and a very brief
discussion took place before the talk reverted to the complaints again. I couldn’t understand it. Why didn’t anyone want to take any action?

We got up to slink out of the back and saw another couple following us – the only other foreigners in the village – Erik, an earnest Scandinavian doctor, and his pretty Bosnian wife Latia, who was expecting their first child. They had met in Sarajevo while working for the UN and had just bought the derelict house behind Zoran’s.

I suggested that rather than conducting a foreigners-only meeting in public we went home, and on the way there Erik explained why no one had wanted to form a protest committee.

‘We had the same problem in Kosovo. They were always afraid that the Secret Police were still somewhere in the background writing down their names. No one would come out and say anything in public, not even to support the self-help groups we were setting up. They were all frightened of being marked down as trouble-makers.’

‘You could see why,’ said Latia. ‘In the old days, if we said anything in public, there’d be a knock on the door in the middle of the night. At best you’d lose your job, and at worst you wouldn’t be seen again!’

Once home, we sat round the kitchen table with our chins in our hands.

‘I know what,’ said Ivana. ‘You and Erik go round the bars and chat up the men. I’m sure you can charm them into setting up some kind of a pressure group.’

Latia wrinkled her pretty forehead. ‘Well, I’m not so sure about that,’ she said, putting an affectionate hand on Erik’s arm. ‘My Erik is the nicest man in the world, but Swedish charm is something like a Presbyterian Minister married to a pine tree!’ She giggled.

‘I have to admit that this is true,’ said Erik and grinned bashfully.

In the end, we decided that a visit to the local police station would be our first action, and with a great sense of civic responsibility we struck off down to the Bill.

‘What I am asking myself,’ said Erik in his slow Swedish voice as we walked, ‘is what level of policing is needed on a small island like this? Surely there cannot be much crime?’

‘And what would be the most common crime?’ I asked flippantly. ‘Grape scrumping? Chicken rustling? Lobster poaching? Wife stealing?’

‘I think it is the lobster poaching,’ said Erik, sounding serious.

Latia winked at me and raised an eyebrow, but said nothing.

We walked on in silence until Erik voiced his thoughts again. ‘Do you think the police will have arrest quotas and crime-solving targets like we do in Sweden?’

‘I think that maybe they will not,’ answered his wife with a touch of exasperation in her voice.

The policeman on duty (one-quarter of the entire force) was Dalibor, a square-headed, sad-looking fellow in his forties who had only come to the island a few years earlier. Marko had told me that he had been a policeman in his home town, but he had been on duty at a checkpoint when a car had failed to stop, and, having drawn his gun to try to shoot a warning shot, he had shot his brother-in-law, who was standing beside him, in the leg. The family had not pressed charges, but the police department were so angry with him that he was posted to the farthest station in the land – Vis.

Dalibor was agitated. He was not accustomed to four people in the station at one time, and was flummoxed by our complaint.
The complaints he usually had to deal with were garden boundary disputes, barking dogs, drunken seamen and complaints from Grandma Klakic.

‘We can’t do anything about the noise,’ he said. ‘After all, it’s only music, and anyone can make as much music as they want until midnight.’

‘But that’s just what we’re complaining about! The music went on to 4 a.m.!’

‘Oh… Well, I suppose we could measure the sound. I think Health and Environment gave us a sound-measuring device some time ago. I don’t know if it works. We’ve never used it.’

‘Why not try it out tonight?’

He chewed his tongue and scratched his ear. ‘Well, we can’t just try it out like that. There has to be an official complaint.’

‘What do you think we’re doing now?’

‘But the noise is not happening now. You must ring to report it when it happens. That will be an official complaint.’

‘But you can hear it in this office!’ said Erik.

‘Yes. I know. But we have to follow the correct procedure.’

‘So what do you do after you measure it?’

‘If it’s too loud, we will ask them to turn it down.’

‘And what do you do if they don’t?’

‘We tell them again if there is another complaint.’

‘And what then?’

‘I think that after several incidences we’re supposed to send a report to the Department of Environment.’

‘And what do they do?’

He shrugged. ‘I don’t know.’

We sighed.

‘OK. So, if we ring you up tomorrow night, you’ll go on recording until you’ve got enough readings to send to the Department?’

‘Oh, no! You must ring every time the incident happens. We can’t go running around every night because of one complaint. We’ve got important work to do.’

‘Yes, I know,’ said Erik. ‘Lobster stealing.’

Dalibor looked perplexed.

‘Can’t we ring you up in the morning and say there was noise in the night?’

‘No, you can’t,’ he said firmly. ‘As I said, if you want to make an official complaint, you must report it when the incident occurs.’

‘You mean stay up until midnight just to phone you. I don’t believe it!’ exclaimed Erik, his temples pulsing.

‘Don’t lose your temper,’ Ivana whispered. ‘Go along with him or he’ll be even less cooperative.’

Erik gave a great sigh like Peer Gynt in that gloomy Scandinavian opera when the poor chap gets told he’s got to wander the seas for eternity.

We left the police station with the sinking feeling that the disco was not going to disappear as quickly as it had appeared.

For the next week, we took it in turns to stay up and ring the police. The village was complaining bitterly about the noise and were moving their children and their elderly to the edge of the village so they could sleep, but still no one would join us in protesting. Despite what Erik had told us about the fear of the Secret Police, I still didn’t understand it. The Secret Police had disappeared nearly five or six years earlier.

The only person who offered to help was Marin, but, being an outsider, that didn’t really count. Anyway, at least Marin was back on his old form. The Renault had done the trick and he and Tanya were now seldom apart. What’s more, scarcely a day went by without an update from Karmela on their chances
of a future together. Given her previous reservations about Marin and Bosnians, this was a surprise, but I think the combination of his good looks and his courteous manner had won her over. As for the rest of the village, Tanya was the darling of all the grannies, and for them the young lovers were the island’s Romeo and Juliet.