Quiet Flows the Una

by Faruk Sehic

  No Resurrection, no Death

  Contempt wasn’t strong enough a word. The boy had done nothing to me, but I couldn’t stand him. His appearance was irritating – perhaps he was good at heart, but you couldn’t see it from the outside. That freak with the ungainly head too big for his body was one of the male scions of the Hodžić dynasty, which lived in the suburb of Žitarnica in a pedantically whitewashed house that radiated orderliness and a smell of modesty. Balloon-head Dino had a misshapen noggin like one of those plastic footballs you could buy for just a few coins at the Yugoplastika shop. That head was welded to a skinny torso with stalky little legs, and his arms were like insects’ feelers. Flawed as he was, he didn’t elicit any sympathy because of the malevolence you sometimes saw on his face. He didn’t partake of any children’s games and was quiet and withdrawn, probably because of the puritanical discipline instituted in their house by old Asim, the redeemer of pigeons, which he loved more than all other beings.

  Grandfather Asim was the silver-haired head of the family who went out into the glazed-cement courtyard every morning with handfuls of breadcrumbs for the pigeons. He always called out Vitiviti, vitiviti to attract them, and the pigeons flew down devotedly like celestial dogs from the clean roofs to land on his head, shoulders and the arms he held out horizontally as if he was their Jesus. Soon he would be completely covered in them and the sun’s light would refract on their neck feathers in a purple haze. When he walked, the pigeons didn’t flee before him but balanced with their wings outspread to accord him their esteem. Their elated cooing filled the air of Žitarnica beneath the rocky slope of Hum Hill, that sacred mount of our childhood topography. A public toilet was built into the rock wall. It was a concrete bunker overgrown with ivy, a green-brown living thing with ivy veins and capillaries, where bubbles of ammonia welled from the earth and piles of faeces grew between the luscious green leaves. All this could mean only one thing: that drunks and lovers met here – those oblivious to the divine smells of human waste. Rows of prefab garages for the residents of nearby flats stood in front of the toilet, and next to them there rose an angular substation tower.

  The old man’s everyday bird-feeding helped him gather currency for the interstellar fuel he would need to reach heaven and be among the houris – the celestial beauties. He was so old that his skin resembled pure, fine cotton, in places transparent and pink. And his body, which looked like it was about to overcome gravity at any moment, was evocative of a time when people mixed with the cherubim, and it was as light as a feather from an angel’s wing.

  One morning I came out of Grandma Delva’s house, sat on the steps and looked at the Mediterranean plants in flowerpots that she visited with ice-cold water at six o’clock every morning before the sun established its rule. The lemongrass gave off a strong scent, and beyond the concrete of the courtyard there grew long stalks similar to bamboo, which were hollow on the inside, but their green skin was strong and wouldn’t break when you pressed it.

  Through the wall of bamboo I saw Balloon-head moseying around the substation where there was a rusty barrel full to the brim with pondweed.

  Drawn by curiosity, I ran up to him. The creep had thrown in several kittens, which were slowly drowning in the murky green water. I felt a pressure in my head like a black rod, and I punched him in his weedy stomach and drove him away. I pulled the kittens out and laid them on the grass. They looked so skinny with their fur plastered, wet and gleaming, having been licked by tongues of death. I moved them closer to the dense grass at the wall of the substation, hoping their mother would find them and revive them with her warm breath. But there was only earth beneath my feet as I stood dumbfounded above their little bodies, which lay there half-dead, with their eyes wide open.

  I half-closed my eyes in despair and wanted to see old Asim, the redeemer of pigeons, revive the kittens, levitate to the top of Hum in rage and hurl bolts of lightning. He would howl old-Slavic prayers in a terrible voice and summon black crows from the clouds to punish all human evil. But that wouldn’t be enough to return the kittens from the dead. Here, whoever dies is dead forever. Kittens go to heaven too, with their fur a-bristle.

  Only old Asim refused to die, lying in his astronautically white room. In the hour of his death he became white as if covered by the first hoar frosts of winter. His pupils were snow-white heads of tailor’s pins. He changed into a cotton jellyfish beneath the sheet and whisked out the window, loosening and tightening his cape-like body several times as jellyfish do. Only briefly did he hang in the air above the tumult of the streets before disappearing, escorted by a flock of white doves – far away from clay and worms, far away from cats and people.

  Catching a Fish

  ‘The Bulgie!’

  That shout had an almost shamanic weight to it. ‘The Bulgie’ was an old woman who lived in a run-down Austro-Hungarian villa on the very bank of the Unadžik, where the river had made a particularly deep greenhole, and then flowed frothing through a narrow, stony channel beneath a wooden bridge and the old abattoir. The Bulgie lived alone in that big house, whose façade was crumbling due to the damp. There were orchards with long, swaying grass around her house, and we used to run through them, tearing bedewed cobwebs in our search for ripe apples. The old woman’s nickname came from her late husband, who was allegedly Bulgarian, and the opaque greenhole just a few metres from her house was also known by that nickname.

  ‘Bulgie’s greenhole’ was home to pike, chub, grayling, barbel, troutlet and adult trout. Willow branches on the opposite bank leaned over the water and lightly caressed the surface. Very large trout lurked there and would launch out at floating flies. The pikes were to be found closer to our bank, where they waited for the swarms of young fish. The bottom was sandy and silty from decayed leaves and wood. If you waded out into the silt, columns of air bubbles and the black ink of fossilized wood rose towards the surface. And everywhere there were calf’s skulls, shoulder blades and other bones that the butchers dumped into the river from the wooden bridge. Inside the skulls that had almost become part of the tufa we used to find fat yellow maggots. They hid in cases made of sand and fragments of wood. First you take the maggot by the feelers on its brown head and pull it out of its case. When you take it out, it writhes like a new-born baby, and tries to wriggle out of your hand. We would put them in yoghurt containers or jars filled with water so they would stay fresh and alive. Then they were hooked, usually through the head, because if the maggot’s body was punctured it oozed an ichor and puffed up like balloon. The yellow maggots were worth their weight in gold to anglers, and only passionate connoisseurs of the river knew where to find them. That maggot was the larva in the life cycle of an insect from the order of caddisflies (Lat. Trichoptera). We also called them ‘water blossoms’ or ephemeral mayflies because when they turned into winged adults after a year or two as larvae underwater, struggled free and made their hazardous way to the surface, they only lived for one more day.

  Once my friend Sead and I caught an enormous pike near the Bulgie’s. We cast and cast for hours, skilfully drawing metal lures through the water. It took Sead’s spoon lure, and after a short fight he pulled a two-kilogram pike up onto the sandy bank, where I was hopping about with joy. How exciting is it when you see a fish open its white jaws and take the bait. The creature flashes in the water and turns its silver belly towards the surface. Afterwards it tries to get the lure out of its mouth by vigorously shaking its head from side to side, beautiful in its bewilderment. The rod bends from its weight like the letter omega. As I was trying to remove the three-headed hook from the pike’s lower jaw, it bit me and bloodied the back of my hand. The pike’s head was twice the size of my fist. Frightened and in pain, I hit it several times on the head, which was stupid because a pike’s gill covers are sharp too. We returned home at dusk with the big fish, happy despite the fact that I was bloody, wet and hungry. The moon shone through the branches above the river, blessing the richness and crystal clarity of the water. The whir
r of ducks’ wings furrowed the air full of the river’s aromas. I had to go to sleep and wait for daybreak, and in the morning I would immediately spread the story of my amazing catch in the greenhole near the Bulgie’s.

  Prince of the Una, Dragons and Reconstruction

  ‘The leaves have fallen and now float dead and heavy down the Unadžik,’ I wrote with the terseness of a chronicler. I reread my words, observed the natural world and recorded the changing micro-structures of the river bank, the water and trees, when the roaring rainy backdrop of autumn gave way to the tranquillity of winter. Sometimes I headed off downstream from Grandmother Emina’s house for no particular reason, just to check how things were. First, I would stop at our greenhole and look till I found the grayling; further down, in the shallow water, trout would be waiting; then there came a cascade, below which was another greenhole, where there were troutlet; then there came a stretch with a sand-and-tufa bed, where chub kept watch at Mita’s house; further downstream the fish community was mixed; and just before the bridge young barbel with their golden bellies were in the majority, always clinging to the pebbles at the bottom. I was able to recognize and distinguish different fish by their traits. The appearance of a new fish in the aquatic realm of the Unadžik would heighten my passion of observation or, if you prefer, my obsession with fish, which required no logical explanation.

  Wet and sodden leaves eventually sink to the bottom of the water like decomposed fish and become part of the river. The water loses its green-blue colour and turns icily transparent, heralding the long, cold winter. The whitefish withdraw from the Unadžik into deeper arms of the river, while trout, troutlet and grayling remain. Flies no longer fall on the surface, and the grayling now take only bread and the small crayfish from the bullrushes. The trout and troutlet patrol the water in search of small fry and become hungry and savage. Fishing for troutlet is prohibited during the winter and through until May. ‘Troutlet’ is our name for juvenile marble trout and they’re protected up to a length of 80 cm, although hardly anyone abides by the regulation. The troutlet is a long, fast silver-white fish with occasional black spots along its back and sides. Its belly is as white as snow and its tough head is somewhat darker. It’s one of the most voracious fish and attacks anything that moves in the water. Only the pike is more ravenous and has been known to snatch a full-grown duck, as well as feeding on frogs and goosanders – river birds that dive for small fish. Troutlet have a large white gullet, and in the late autumn and winter it’s easy to catch them with a nickel spoon lure or a female butterfly with a fluorescent sticker that shimmers enticingly when pulled through the water. True anglers consider it a sin to go after troutlet at that time because they’re blinded with hunger and attack every lure indiscriminately, but also particularly because troutlet are only a transitional stage in the development of the queen of the deep cascades, the Una marble trout, which can reach a weight of twenty-five kilograms. Several times I saw one of about ten kilograms, and I didn’t want to meet a really big one in the summer, eye to eye, when swimming in the deepest greenholes made by powerful, foaming cascades.

  The troutlet is the prince of the Una and its hunting activity marks the beginning of winter, which sheathes the river banks in ice and snow. Then the river is more beautiful than ever because it’s decorated like a Christmas tree. The banks are coated with ice crystals of different shapes that cover the willow branches and bend them to the surface of the water. The water melts the ice during the day and the branches, whose bark has taken on a reddish, wintery colour, briefly come alive, but only till dusk, when the cold claps them in chains again. Once so much snow fell on the trees on the bank opposite my grandmother’s house that the bank looked like one long dune of snow. They say the Unadžik only completely froze over once, sometime in the 1930s, and that it then resembled a Siberian river – a team of horses was able to go along it with a sledge full of children. People also talked about the river dragons that lived long ago in the hidden caves that the rushing water had carved out of the tufa in the dark depths. The dragons disappeared many centuries ago when people gained mastery of the water. Or perhaps they’re still hiding in their caves and only rarely, at full moon and under cover of the Una’s unreal mists, do they fly out over the water and shower the river with gleaming scales. But enough of those empty stories.

  The roof of my grandmother’s house was like a thick, white layer of snow and ice. In the attic, the smell of dust and dry cobwebs covered the discarded objects. The floorboards of the upper storey gave a homely creak. The stairs in the short hallway were steep and you had to mind your head going down. There were narrow strips of space at the side, where rows of my grandmother’s shoes from the time of the belle époque lay on old newspapers together with a box of Radion washing powder. When night fell, I would suspend my breathing so as not to wake the others in the house and would sit down by the radio. If I turned the dial to the left, the panel with the names of cities lit up. I got a special kick when a city with a curious name came up: Delft (I bet it’s the home of elves with green caps, or dwarves that delve). I’m convinced I could sketch the house and the town with words down to the finest detail, but I have to be deliberate and taciturn, for I am the chronicler of a lost, sunken, incinerated age.

  The Gods of the River

  When the water is angry, it rises up and turns the colour of milk chocolate. Thick and dark, it churns its way down the channel, producing huge whirlpools, and one glance at them creates a dread of the water’s relentless flood, a fear of drowning and returning to inanimate matter. No one likes that colour because everyone from the Una tends to look down on sluggish flat-country rivers with their turbid water.

  ‘What kind of river is it when you can’t see the bottom?’ we would say disparagingly of lowland rivers.

  ‘There must be a terrible, murky secret hidden in those depths,’ we continued, as we tried to fathom those thick and languid flows.

  The floods usually come in the spring when the abundant snow on the surrounding hills begins to melt and the water comes rushing down, bringing a mass of mud, twigs, branches, and leaves and dead animals.

  ‘Is the river up?’ one angler would ask another.

  ‘Yeah – and so muddy you could plough it,’ the one who saw it first would reply.

  River up, in fact, was an established local term for the great, wild flood that the Una becomes once a year, when all eyes are riveted on the water level with only one desire: that it return to its previous level and take on its Renaissance colour again, which is so hard to describe. When the water drops, its colour changes, becoming a brownish-yellow, then yellow with shades of green, until finally it goes as verdant as the winter wheat that peeks from beneath the snow thawing in the March sun.

  The river has its gods too: the gods of depth, force, speed and colour. Dearest to me is the god of colour, so elusive to the human eye that adores and worships him with every blink – a merry and cunning god who constantly changes garb to match the riverbed and the sky above. The small fish enjoy him most because they dive through him and often take him as their protector when hiding from predators. This god is a lofty and benevolent demiurge, who in the Illyrian Age was called Bynt, a variant of the Roman god Neptune. There is no one who hails from near the Una who isn’t able to stare into the river for hours. When I look into the water I forget my own existence and feel incorporeal, light and bewitched. Legend says that Roman legionnaires gave the river its present name when they arrived at its banks and stopped to marvel at the unknown water: they called it Una – the one and only. But I like to think it has always been called that, since the very genesis of the world, when it first began to flow. In the time when fish and birds talked with the grasses and listened to Bynt’s calm, somniferous babbling.

  Aquatic Catharsis

  How I loved the rain when it started to lash the water. A raindrop crashes into the surface, which then sends it upwards in a back-jet like a fountain. Thousands of raindrops bounce on the river, each c
reating a little circle that for a moment looks almost like a water lily. If the rain is heavy and fast, the back-jets seem to join with the river or to spout out of it and shoot off into the sky above the heaped-up clouds.

  ‘Pouring from above and below,’ Grandmother Emina used to say as she cleared out the ash pan of the stove with her tongs.

  Rain can beat down with such rhythm and force, if only for a short time, that the opposite bank completely disappears before your eyes. And the river is covered by a watery curtain from which it emerges a few minutes after the shower like a milky white mist. The willow’s leaves cannot be seen through the river’s cumuli, but I know that when the mist disperses the greenery will begin to splash in all directions.

  In my Grandmother’s kitchen the piece of elecampane root on the stove smells of warmth and innocence. The Una takes on a pale-­yellow hue that rolls down the river along the bank rich in yellow clay. A calm reigns briefly after the downpour, perhaps of the kind there will be in paradise, until the nightingale proves with its song that it is truly the heart of the tree.

  The river is born again after the rain, and within half an hour the clay colour has gone and the Una returns to its old appearance. Plants that the shower bent to the ground straighten up and continue their eternal watch. When the sun, a god even stronger than Bynt, begins to beat down, the last traces of the rain will vanish and the droplets on the leaves will be spheres where rainbow children live. The first anglers’ caps have already passed along the street that faithfully follows the river. Wooden windows creak and people lean out to breathe the town’s loveliest smell – the aroma of the Una after a summer shower.

  ‘She’s clear!’ they call out the old river greeting, and the extension rods protruding from the anglers’ rucksacks look like antennas.