Gadfly in Russia by Alan Sillitoe
I wondered how to know when they wanted to alight. Perhaps I wouldn’t notice the imperative tap on my shoulder till we were beyond the Channel, and the grim immigration minions of officialdom ushered them to the pen for sending back – and me to prison for trying to smuggle them in.
Much I cared, but after fifty kilometres the old man’s tone told me we had come to the drop-off point, an isolated spot almost identical to the wooded area where I had taken them on board. I opened the door to let them out on the safe side. There was little traffic, but the occasional passing car always seemed in a blinding hurry to get to Sarajevo.
The old man shook my hand, and asked by putting a finger to his mouth, and pointing to an upgoing track towards a clump of houses, whether I wouldn’t like to go with them for food and drink, of which there would be plenty.
When in similar sign language I indicated that the ship must go on, he shook my hand again, and spoke his appreciation of the lift in what I supposed to be Serbo–Croat, though I couldn’t be sure, for I may already have been in Bosnia-Herzogovina. The woman also thanked me, while the pretty girl, who had so far not cared to be noticed, gave a smile which might have become a kiss had she not been so firmly chaperoned.
Time was spent, and much fine scenery went by, in regretting that I had not taken the invitation and gone to the feast. I heard the plink of sonorous zithers, and saw dancing in which I would, sooner or later, inevitably have taken part. There would have been unlimited slivovitz, with salted fish and soured cream, platters of saffroned rice, and tender gobbets of skewered lamb. I would have passed a couple of nights wrapped in my sleeping bag on a veranda, smelling the mountain air from one direction, and the smouldering embers of cookfires from another. Who knew what romantic adventures would have come my way, and taught a few poetic words of the language?
Such bucolic revels were not for me, but having let the imagination live them, what more could I want? As Consolation it was as good as the real thing which too often fades more quickly. Thus my sense of deprivation was erased.
The car dragged me on, and close to Tuzla but not in it I followed the diverted road directly south. Tuzla was a salt-mining centre (how much did they use in the Balkans?) the word tuz being Turkish for that commodity, as I read in Grandma Blue Guide on stopping for a call of nature.
The valley curved through wooded country, then the road went up and over a watershed, to rejoin river and railway. At midday I stopped at a primitive coffee shop among the minarets of Sarajevo. For the price of a few dinars I ordered minute but pungent cups, with a plate of teeth-achingly sweet baklava, familiar from living in Morocco. The combination raised my senses to a higher state of awareness for driving.
I was out of Europe, for a while, a not disagreeable change as I relaxed with a cigar, and watched people going about their lives. The town seemed far more easygoing than many other places of equal size.
It hadn’t always been because, as every schoolboy knows, or did at one time, the Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife were murdered here by a Serbian patriot on 28 June 1914, an action that dominoed most nations of Europe into the First World War. The Austrian repression after the assassinations was cruel, and many people were executed, some totally innocent.
Which bridge should I cross in Sarajevo for the road to Mostar and the Adriatic? One I tried was obviously wrong, so I followed George’s commonsense method, got out of the car and showed the map to a man in shirtsleeves carrying a briefcase. He demonstrated that I ought not to bother with the river at all, but follow signposts for Illidze. ‘The main road goes through it,’ I took him to say, ‘and when you get there you should have no more trouble.’
During the explanation he put two fingers to his temple, and gave the smile of a frog about to make a fatal leap into hot water, as if thinking me mad for not knowing what was so plain to him. Or he was trying to tell me that as an inhabitant of Sarajevo he intended blowing his brains out before nightfall. His continually moving lips, pulling another smile into shape, seemed to wish that I also might benefit the world by doing the same.
In such mountainous terrain the transport network was sparse, so it was easy to find the way south. The paved road, with many awkward bends, and at times perilous, took a westerly sweep so as to stay with the river and avoid the less inhabited areas.
Maize, tobacco, olives, grapes and figs grew around Jablanica, not always visible because of a gorge most of the way to Mostar, with peaks of 7,000 feet on both sides. Following the River Neretva, the road shadowed in places by darkening walls of cliff, it was easy to understand why such country had been used for guerrilla operations in the war, when Tito harried the Germans, and his partisans were harried in their turn.
Powerful cars, with an A for Austria sign plain at their rear ends, recklessly overtook. When one came up on the port bow, too close for my liking, indicators blinking to get around at any cost, I moved in as far as possible to give him leeway. He shot out on seeing an empty few hundred yards, but in the space a little motorised Yugo-box came from the other way frantically flashing headlights. Both vehicles seemed about to clash and disintegrate against the hillside, but the lucky Austrian got in by inches. I kept a good lookout from then on, for others pulling the same nightmarish stunt.
The minarets of Mostar appeared gracefully above the skyline, but after that place, as was plain from the map, the mountains fell away, and the road straightened at the delta of the Neretva. Near Buna two young men and a girl gave the hitchhiking signal, so I stopped, thinking I would be safer with passengers on board. An accident with only me in the car would mean one casualty, but I’d never risk injuring others, so from there on I would drive like a half-cut parson on his way to a parishioners’ tea party. If the Austrians had unnerved me it was for the hitchhikers’ benefit.
I learned from their fair English that they were students, wanting to go as far as Makarska some way up the coast. I asked how long they had been waiting. ‘Almost an hour,’ the girl said.
‘What about all those Austrian cars? Wouldn’t they have given you a lift?’
‘We don’t like such people.’
‘They don’t like us, either,’ the girl laughed, as if well knowing reasons why not. ‘In any case they’re always in too much of a hurry to stop for anyone.’
They thought I was on holiday, and were amazed and amused on learning I had come from Russia. We stopped for coffee and snacks at a place they recommended on the coast. I had something to celebrate.
‘Thalassa!’ was the word that shot to mind and then the mouth, as one of Xenophon’s vanguard turned to shout to his comrades after their long march, seeing the Ponte Euxine at Trebizon, on their way home from campaigning among the Persians in 401 BCE.
I had driven from the Baltic to the Adriatic and now, nearly 4,000 kilometres later, from the veranda of a café, I heard not the pebble grind of Dover Beach, or the grave lap of idle water on the Gulf of Finland, but the welcoming soft brush of an offshoot of the Mediterranean.
Childish to exult, while still mildly drunk as the different landscapes of the journey went through my mind. I stayed silent, my guests talking among themselves. The sight and sounds of the benign coastland told me that life was set fair to continue, that I had nothing to fear, but would remain the eternal outsider no matter how far I was tempted to appear compatible in the company of other people.
The rest of the afternoon took us to Makarska, where my agreeable passengers wanted to show me the town, and buy me a drink at one of the hotels. The place had been much bombed in the war, so was mostly modern. They told me that it had once been the dreaded hideout of pirates. It had also been the centre of the ancient heretical sect of the Bogomils, which denied – as I always had – the divine birth of Jesus, for which its members were persecuted as viciously in the East as were the Cathars in the West.
I intended reaching Split before dusk, so parted from my friends who seemed to have been with me much longer than a couple of hours. I would never see
Mountains sloped close to the road, but any attention that could be spared from the wheel was given to islands extending laterally from the mainland as if their shores were the walls of fjords, a panorama followed nearly the whole way to Italy.
In Split I arranged to stay two nights at a comfortable hotel. Fatigue, and the Palace of Diocletian detained me, a walled area laid out in the shape of a Roman castrum enclosing the Old Town (Stari Grad) and its population of several thousand. The ramparts, with towers at three of the corners, had been Diocletian’s residence after his abdication in 305 BCE.
A stroll along the harbour front primed me for walking at dusk into its agglomeration of late antique architecture, the perfect time of the day to see it. I stood before the Temple of Jupiter and the mausoleum of the ex-Emperor. As far as I knew Piranesi had never used his pencil in those lugubrious streets without sun or light, but the heaviest of buildings reared massively up as if still waiting for him.
Tuesday, 24 July
I was drawn to the Old Town again, walking streets in the hot dry air, the buildings seeming somewhat less awesome in daylight. After lunch, pulled irresistibly back to the car, I drove sixty kilometres on unpaved roads to look at the town of Drnis, then wended a different route back on gravel surface to the coast at Trogir, a medieval town without the walls it had when an important port under Venetian rule. The place of narrow streets was packed on an island joined to the mainland by a stone bridge. I walked to the cathedral where a sacristan claimed with glowing eyes that it was the most beautiful church in Dalmatia, and though I had as yet seen few others in that province I agreed that he must be right.
I drank half a bottle of wine on the outside terrace of the restaurant near the bridge, so had to keep a clear head going back to Split after supper. Nevertheless I couldn’t turn down the offered slivovitz with my cigar. A gypsy woman and her daughter of about fourteen stood by the table, and on impulse I held out a hand for my fortune to be told.
The darkly costumed daughter, golden earrings dangling, stayed silent during the session, though her fixed Esmeralda smile more than made do for speech. But her eyes had no humour, showed a desperate sadness that had been there too long to cure or fathom, and I could only look at her now and again.
The mother – though they may not have been related – had lips and eyes that were far from gloomy, with the wit to understand immediately what was wanted. She took a pack of cards from her bag and laid several on the table I partially cleared. Perhaps by design she placed them at the farthest point so that I couldn’t see clearly what they were, though I had no wish to know. The waiter looked disapprovingly but, seeing my interest, did not interfere.
She considered the display of gaudy pictures, which reminded me of those in childhood comic papers, and moved them about as if to fix the position of regiments before a battle. Taking one or two out of place, she thoughtfully shifted another, then glanced at the girl, and shook her head as if whatever had been divined was something I might not like to know.
I had always believed that ‘the worst has already happened’, not out of optimism that from then on all would be right, but because I didn’t care one way or the other, an attitude good for work and therefore peace of mind. Such lackadaisical reasoning could have been a puerile attempt to divert the gods, yet might make whatever did come more interesting and therefore more possible to survive.
The girl nodded, as if giving her mother permission to speak, at which she stared into my eyes and said something I of course couldn’t understand, a repeat of the words making no difference.
A burly Croat with a big moustache called from the next table: ‘What she say, Englishman, is what is in your heart only God can know.’ Then he laughed long and hard, perhaps thinking that I couldn’t say what was there either.
I thanked him for an enlightenment which little surprised me, for it was true that I preferred to let whatever was there take care of itself. I gave the woman money to match the weight of her pronouncement, and watched the two of them crossing the causeway arm in arm back to the mainland, laughter reaching me till they were almost out of sight.
Wednesday, 5 July
Driving had become so much part of my existence as to seem there was no other, certainly none that I wanted. Filling sheets of paper at my desk was hardly thought about. I had left a book of stories half complete, and ideas for a couple of novels were somewhere in my head, but my body, confirmed by its position on the map, was that of the eternal motorised tramp going through land and seascapes only imaginable now that I was seeing them.
What did I think of while at the wheel? Did I think at all would be more realistic to ask. Not being a philosopher I did nothing except gather transitory impressions. Steering, changing gear and braking was instinctive and automatic.
I glanced as often as was safe at the scenery, also to muse, reflect, even recollect, knowing it was always possible that the next minute could be my last – a good way to live. Disordered thoughts came in tickertape fashion, and I could hardly remember what had gone through my consciousness the moment before. When the journey was over it would be no use wondering what I had been thinking at any one time, and however galling the lack turned out to be, the realisation that I might never be able to rewind that stream of rolling macadamised impressions was a fair price for such untroubled travelling.
At times I thought of George left behind in the Soviet Union, and his dream of one day visiting London. I regretted that, supposing he could find the money, he wasn’t able to board a train for the Hook of Holland and take a ferry to Harwich. Or get on the first airliner out. Everything was wrong with a system that stopped him or anyone else going where they liked, which I’d always known. Why hadn’t I said more than I had about it while in Moscow? Perhaps I should go back to Russia soon, and make my views even plainer, though what difference it would make who could say?
The road to Rijeka went between sheer hillsides and a nearby shoreline. Every risky moment on a curving rise showed rocky islands to the left, with bare rugged coasts. The bunched-up houses of a tiny medieval port or village usually had a ferry steaming outwards like a toy.
So absorbed, you might say contented, it wasn’t till stopping to take a break for fuel and coffee that I saw I’d done 380 kilometres since Split. Beyond Rijeka I would pass no more islands, though having seen so many already there was little reason for regret. I had thought to put up at Rijeka, but it was early, and the vision of Italy, a mere fifty kilometres ahead, made it too tempting not to reach Venice before nightfall.
The road along the quayside at Rijeka was almost empty, a quiet place with few cars and people. Perhaps they were taking their siestas, as I should have been. The Austrian architecture was still there from the old days, though again like most ports in that region it had been much bombed in the war.
Before 1918 Fiume (as Rijeka was then called) was part of the Austro–Hungarian Empire, and a ‘hotel’ was put up opposite the rice mill, at the western end of the port, large enough to accommodate 3,000 people on their way to a better life in the United States. The ‘huddled masses yearning to be free’ came from all parts of central and southeastern Europe, and at the ‘hotel’ their health and papers were checked before being allowed on to the ships.
Fiume was held by the Croats in 1919, till the Italian novelist and poet, Gabriele d’Annunzio, led squads of freebooting ex-soldiers from Trieste and claimed the town for Italy. On his own responsibility he set up a fiefdom – the Regency of Carnaro – and as a poet and self-proclaimed governor entranced (or bored) the inhabitants with frequent dithyrambic speeches from the balcony of his town hall. He drew up a constitution, with a law for easy divorce, so that many Italians resolved their marital difficulties.
D’Annunzio had no support for his enterprise from the Italian government, which only wanted to get him out. The battleship Andrea Doria was ordered to bombard the place in 1920, and he came close
At the Italian frontier I swapped traveller’s cheques for lire, and queued for my allowance of cheaper petrol coupons issued to tourists. A meal of meat and pasta, and a litre of water, set me up for more miles.
Bypassing Trieste, I thought of James Joyce and Italo Svevo, and also gave a nod to Duino where Rilke wrote his elegies. Locked on to the motorway, the local drivers hurled like rockets in their Fiats, Lamborghinis and Ferraris. My impulse was to put on speed but, still wary of the failed signalling system, I went at the usual rate, recalling the names of battles fought in that region against the Austrians in the First World War. Military history, from the time of Joshua, had always interested me, and now I crossed each sluggish river in its turn: the Isonzo, Tagliamento and Piave, on whose banks the Austrians were prevented from going on to Venice.
I left the motorway for the cul-de-sac of Lido di Iesolo, and after a while on the dead straight road I spotted a ramshackle hut on wasteland with a notice hanging from its side saying Tutti Reparazione, which I took to mean ‘anything fixed’.
The area was littered with disembowelled vehicles, spare parts of every sort hooked on the outside walls, so I pulled in, to find out if anything could be done to repair the unserviceable blinkers which had bothered me all the way from Sweden.
A man by the door, wearing only shorts, was sprawled along the gravel, spannering bits into a motorbike. On my explaining by signs what was wrong, he said I was not to worry, came to the car, and put the bonnet up. He motioned me to sit on a stone for a few minutes, and went into his treasure store to search for the necessary spares.
I was halfway through a Partagas cigar by the time he had finished installing what I hoped were the correct fuses and bulbs. He asked me to test them, while he wiped dead midges from my windscreen with a damp rag. Switching them on, they worked. I had grown used to the anxiety, and now my worries were over. I felt too optimistic to imagine they might still, through the actions of a malign gremlin, fail to function in the next fifty miles.