The Unlikely Voyage of Jack de Crow

by A. J. Mackinnon

  c) Question: Do I have a visa for Croatia?

  d) No.

  e) Even if I am allowed into Croatia, my visa for Serbia is a single-entry one, and it is unlikely that I will be allowed back in after having set foot on foreign territory.

  f) Assuming I am allowed into Croatia, I will have to withdraw deutschmarks, of course, or US dollars, as the Croatian krona is even less likely to be accepted in Serbia than the much-sneered-at Hungarian forint.

  g) If they let me back into Serbia, that is. (See point e.)

  h) Which I very much doubt.

  i) This is assuming they let me into Croatia in the first place, of course.

  j) Which I very much doubt. (See points c. and d.)

  In short, I must somehow persuade someone official in the next town coming up on the Croatian side (called Vukovar) to let me enter Croatia illegally, withdraw large slabs of German currency from a local bank, tip-toe out of Croatia once more without being officially stamped, and then merrily go and spend my money in an enemy country. What is more, I have to explain all this using only the five words I know that might be understood by a Croatian (pasa-porte, visa, problema, banca and nema meaning not) and possibly a good deal of vivid mime.

  It will, of course, be impossible, so I decide to give it a go.

  To the great credit of the Croatian police in Vukovar, who must play an awful lot of charades in their spare time, the white-haired Kapitan to whose office I was marched as soon as I set foot on Croatian soil seemed to understand the whole thing perfectly. He didn’t speak a word of English, but sat patiently while I conducted my carefully thought-out little mime. I mimed a river running down the middle of his office with many a gurgle-gurgle noise. I mimed a little boat sailing down the middle of the carpet river, and leapt jauntily from the desk (Serbia) to the window (Croatia) and back again. I mimed being penniless with much rubbing of my stomach and turning out of pockets, and then did several masterful impersonations of strict, unsmiling Serbian immigration officers and their reaction on finding no second-entry visa in my passport. So carried away did I become at one point that I think I found myself miming being stood up against a wall and shot. Never has being a drama teacher, that most dilettante of all trades, been so useful. All this was of course accompanied by an improvised script of problemas and nema visas interspersed at crucial points: hardly Shakespeare, but the best I could manage. Finally, after a bow, I stood awaiting his verdict.

  Which was for the Kapitan to call a guard and rap out some instructions. Five minutes later I was being driven around Vukovar in a decrepit police jeep looking for a bank. We found one, but it could not help me. It seemed that a bank fifty miles inland might have been able to, but no one in Vukovar itself was able to process my card. Despite the anti-climax I was thrilled by the kindness and understanding of the Croatian police who, as I had requested, omitted to sign me either in or out of the country so that the Serbs would not know I had ever left. I gathered that my uncomplimentary portrayal of the Serbian officials I had encountered so far was the main factor in winning over their Croatian counterparts.

  Some years ago Vukovar had been the focus of Serbian bombardment, and many buildings were still shell-shattered and blitzed. Children played noisy games in rubble-filled lots and I saw one block where half of the apartments sported bright curtains and washing hung out to dry from high windows, and the other half gaping holes and twisted iron reinforcement rods sticking from demolished walls. The physical damage was still there, and, as I was to learn over the next few weeks, so too was a hatred between these neighbouring countries as intense and scalding as it had ever been.

  After sailing away from Vukovar and my failed international money-laundering scheme, I found myself almost by accident floating down a little side-channel on the Croatian bank. Trees covered in vines shaded the water and gave to the river an almost Amazonian feel. After several hours I passed an island where a single white shack stood, and some fishermen cooking. Excitedly they beckoned me over, and when I rowed over to moor up, I recognised two of the men. One was the young guard who had driven me around looking for a bank, and the other had been witness to my vivid mime in the Kapitan’s office. They were now off duty and had come down to join their friends in an evening of schnapps and grilled fish. I spent the next hour sitting in the late afternoon sunshine enjoying their hospitality while the two policemen reduced their friends to stitches of laughter. I could not, of course, follow what they were saying, but I suspect I was the main topic of conversation.

  It struck me that this was the second time I had been on Croatian soil, both times illegally, and both times with the connivance of the police. These were my sort of officials. I was not to meet many more like them as I sailed onwards into the heart of the still-vex’d Balkans.

  As I journeyed on, the sun shone warm and bright with September gold, flaming in the poplars and willows that lined the banks and silvering the threads of gossamer that now filled the air each morning, drifting in airy swathes across the river to festoon my rigging with fairy-pennants. The low, level light made the river always a molten shimmer of silver haze, and at times it felt as though I was rowing into Paradise, or the album cover for a Handel Oratorio. Still the endless trees marched on either side, at times thick and tangled where I was delighted to see wild pigs rooting at the river’s edge, unaware of my gliding presence yards away. At times the air would turn even hazier and yellower than the autumn sun could account for, and stink of sulphur – a distant factory chimney above the trees would provide the unromantic explanation.

  As I neared Belgrade, the forest ended and sandy cliffs reared high on the southern bank, the home of thousands of sand martins and swifts. Cormorants were common too – they kept surfacing near the boat in a casual manner, glancing around to see Jack a few yards away and diving in pop-eyed panic. Near lunch-time I was hailed by two fishermen in a grassy meadow at the foot of the cliffs: Jan and Estovich. Jan was fifty-ish, Estovich was a hundred-and-two. They plied me with beer and peanuts, and though their English was as non-existent as my Yugoslavian, we seemed to communicate with ease. Later they lit a fire and made a pot of coffee, the same river-silt which I found hard to like but drank gamely. Then I showed them a magic trick as thanks. Jan was so overcome with excitement that he did three somersaults in the long meadow grass like a gleeful child. I was tickled pink. When I finally indicated that I must sail on, they solemnly presented me with a large glass bottle of something they called ‘Paradijo.’ It was a gorgeous, rich orange-red, opaque, with countless golden-yellow seeds suspended in it, and made, I think, from tomatoes and paprika. Over the next four days I savoured every mouthful; the taste was a little like tomato-juice but with a rich, burning afterglow that went right to the belly. I could not work out whether it was alcoholic or not – I think on balance not – but it had the same warming effect as did my memory of the middle-aged Jan tumbling for glee in the green grass whenever I swigged that precious stuff .

  Belgrade had a huge number of bookshops, but most of the books were on the occult. It had a marina called the Dorcol, meaning ‘four corners’ – it was where they used to quarter people using four horses all going in different directions. The marina was shabby but exceptionally friendly – I kept being given plum brandy by different people on old boats, poured out of coloured glass bottles shaped like St Nicolai, the patron saint of sailors. The Hyatt Hotel, though hugely luxurious, would not give me cash but allowed me to use my Visa card for services. I had a hugely luxurious afternoon tea and sat and wrote letters while Handel’s Trio Sonata tinkled in the background. I made long, expensive calls to England. I had a large dinner. I made it my personal mission to trudge around every bank in Belgrade, telling them to bloody well take down their Visa signs if they were not going to cough up. I climbed the great park-like hill of Kale-megdan and watched the junction of the River Sava and the Dunav glow under a post-thunderstorm sky of orange and rose and purple. While I was spending a penny behind a bush near the marina, a
large brown snake glided away through my legs, and I was not in a position to do anything about it. The subsequent instinctive clenching did something to my bladder that made it difficult to pee for several days afterwards. Now that I was back in a country where the language had some tenuous connection with Latin and Anglo-Saxon, the alphabet had capriciously changed to the Cyrillic one. For example, the perfectly guessable word RESTORAN for restaurant was now transcribed as PECTOPAN, which sounds like something you boil jam in. I remained as baffled as I had been in Hungary.

  Over the next three days, as I travelled on, things began to get desperate. I had run out of food, and the supply of people to dole out provisions when needed was suddenly thin. So was I. The landscape slowly changed from pretty vineyards and orchards on gentle slopes (where I was sorely tempted to steal some grapes and apples) to a harsher, drier landscape as I neared the Carpathian Mountains and the Iron Gates. This was where the Dunav carved its way through the last great obstacle before the final run to the sea. It did so in a great gorge, sheer-sided and tortuous, the grim gateway into old Transylvania. But whether I would make it there before starving to death, I was not sure.

  The need to get to Bulgaria and to a bank pressed me on, past the leaning fortress towers of Smederevo, past the fortress of Ram, through unfriendly Jugovo where in the dark streets men sat and played dominoes and chess with the grunting and jeering and raucous noise more associated with wrestling matches; through a smart little riverside resort where a hugely fat man bathing with his family shouted out things in a purple rage at the sight of my two Union Jacks. It had not occurred to me that my little dinghy flying the British ensign could enrage or offend the people whom Britain was on the point of bombarding. The point was driven home when I slept aboard in the town of Veliko Gradiste and woke the next morning to find that someone had slashed both my Union Jacks to shreds. I was furious. What did they think I was? A scouting party for some imminent invasion by the Royal Navy? But then a thought sobered me. Sleeping just three feet lower, I was lucky not to have been slashed to shreds myself.

  One day a doleful-looking Serb called Branko came along, introduced himself and invited me back to his mother’s house for lunch. He looked as lugubrious as a bloodhound that had been in a philosophical conversation with Eeyore, but his English was good – good enough to enquire tactfully whether I might like a hot bath first. The grubby ring around the bath when I had finished would have grown root-vegetables. Roast pork, potatoes, paprika (I really was a little tired of the paprika), vodka, damson-cake and wine, and then a cycle-ride out to a local beauty-spot. On the way we ran over two snakes and saw three more. I told Branko of my experience in Belgrade, and he replied that yes, there appeared to be a plague of them this summer. There were two possible explanations, he said. One was that it was a plot by the CIA, an experiment in biological warfare before the main bombardment began. The second and more likely one, he said with a perfectly straight face, was that God was punishing the Serbs for their wickedness. That opened the way for a long talk about Serbia and its problems, which were legion. Chief of these was corruption. Every town, every village had its local Mafia boss. Extortion on even the smallest, most local scale was rife. No one owned a business, not an apple-cart, not a newspaper stand, without paying a large cut to the thugs of the resident Mr Big. Those who resisted met with violence and terror tactics. Much of this stemmed from Milosevic and his ministers; the Kosovo problem was just one symptom of the sickness in the land. The poverty I was seeing everywhere – and I was, often worse than I had seen in Africa or Laos – was a recent phenomenon. Yugoslavia had been a rich and prosperous country until ten years ago, when the first blockades were imposed. Oh, it had never been as rich as Germany or Austria, but its farms had been productive, its orchards tended, its vines fruitful. Now everywhere there was filth and waste, and the people were confused and angry. That was the problem with the embargoes and blockades, Branko said. They drew the people’s anger outwards to the United States and Britain, muddying the issue. It was so easy for the politicians to blame the country’s woes on the evil superpowers and deny responsibility for their own policies.

  ‘Why do the people not rise up against Milosevic if it is clear that it is his actions bringing about the embargoes?’ I asked.

  ‘Because,’ he said with a sigh, ‘Serbs watch only Serbian television. You don’t think Milosevic allows any truth to creep into the news-coverage, do you? No! NATO is blockading us because they are jealous of us, or because they are afraid of us, or because they want to steal all our fruit. Not because of anything our glorious leader has done – dear me, never! Hence the CIA and the snakes,’ he added, looking more doleful than ever. ‘It is all very sad.’

  When I continued on my way that afternoon, I did so with a huge bag of apples, a clove of garlic and a great jar of home-made honey, a present from Branko’s mother. I also took with me a new insight, a new thoughtfulness – I understood a little, just a little, about my slashed flags now.

  That night I met the local Mr Big, I think. Just ten miles downstream I moored up in a tiny inlet overlooked by a large, isolated restaurant. It was spanking new, with the bulldozers still lurking in the shrubbery, freshly laid gravel and plastic white umbrellas at each beer-garden table. The place seemed deserted, but when I sat and munched on my last bread roll at one of these tables, a man looking exactly like Danny de Vito came out and, after some sharp questioning in broken English, invited me into the front bar for a drink. Two young and sexy barmaids were sent off with a cheeky pat on the bottom each to fetch us food and more beers while the manager smirked at me, asking me what I thought of them, eh? Eh? Over the next hour he too discussed politics. Kosovo? Too right there was a problem. The Muslims ought to be shot, every one of them, sneaking into Serbia with their dirty ways. The only problem was that Milosevic wasn’t being allowed to get on with the job quicker. Sure, he was no saint, but to run this country you need to take a firm hand. Now look at me, people whinge and moan about the economy, but with a bit of initiative, a bit of push, you could make ends meet. More than. Two Mercs. A town-house up in Belgrade. The wife doesn’t know about these little crackers, of course – Sofi, another beer here, darling! – but what can a man do, eh? It’d only make her miserable.

  Outside the evening was turning colder and damper, the expanse of river lonely and wild – but infinitely preferable to the warm geniality and leering confidentiality of my host. Come, friendly bombs, I thought

  And get that man with double chin

  Who’ll always cheat and always win,

  Who washes his repulsive skin

  In women’s tears.

  And smash his desk of polished oak

  And smash his hands so used to stroke

  And stop his boring dirty joke

  And make him yell.

  On an irrational impulse I took out my last ten dinar that I had been saving and insisted on paying for the drinks and the meal. It probably wasn’t enough, and my host waved it aside with a laugh, but I left it on the bar before I departed. Hard cash for the one Serb I had met so far who clearly had no need of it. I had not rowed very far that day, but felt the need for a bath all over again.

  At last the Carpathian Mountains came in sight. They lay across a great grey expanse of water where the Dunav spread out into a lake. On the further shore were the high, bare hills of Romania, dusty grey and scored with ravines and gullies, a hostile and forbidding terrain. On the nearer shore, the right-hand or southern bank, the hills of Serbia seemed greener and gentler. But today there was nothing gentle about the expanse of water that lay between the two. It had been whipped into a savage frenzy by a wind blowing straight out of the jaws of the Iron Gates Gorge, a mere notch in the hills seen dimly through veils of blowing spray and squalling rain five miles away across the lake. For hours I had been battling into this headwind, tacking to and fro, and I was exhausted. The dinghy was three-quarters full of water and seemed to be taking on more than when she was out at sea
. After two more hours I realised that I was not going to make it to the Gorge, and so ran into shore where sat the little town of Golubac. There I changed into dry clothes, retired to a hotel, and penniless though I was, begged for a corner to sit and write. Three days later I was still there.

  For three days the fierce north-easter blew straight out of the Gorge. Three times I fooled myself into thinking that the wind had eased off, and three times got a hundred yards out before having to turn back, soaked to the skin once more. Normally I would have been no more than mildly frustrated by the delay, but with no money, no food and the nearest Visa outlet in Bulgaria beyond the mountains, the weather seemed to me infused with spite.

  The weather was so foul that it was impossible to see the other side of the lake, and it felt as if I was on the shores of a great sea. Grey waves crested with yellow foam pounded the rocky shore, tossing the flotsam of plastic detergent bottles and polystyrene lumps to and fro onto the shingle. The marine eff ect was heightened by the sight of fishermen casting nets into the shallows. Each net was small and circular, no bigger than a round tablecloth that you might spread for afternoon tea. Around its perimeter were hundreds of little lead weights and strings like the strings of a parachute, but instead of the strings being attached together below, where the paratrooper would be, they ran back up through a hole in the centre of the net to a drawstring.

  The fisherman stood on the shore and with a pretty twirling twist, halfway between a bull-fighter and a discus-thrower, cast the net into the water. Barely had it settled than the fisherman pulled the drawstring, the net furled itself up like a shrinking jellyfish, and out the whole thing came again. The astonishing thing was that each and every time the net was thrown in and pulled out, an operation that took about ten seconds, it would come up with fifteen fish at least. These were only small things, about the size of playing cards, which would be dumped onto the bank and quickly picked over by hand, some being thrown back, some going into the fisherman’s bucket, indiscriminately it seemed to me. But I was amazed that every six cubic feet of water could yield so much life. It was as strange as if every random sweep of a butterfly net through the air should catch fifteen butterflies.