by Nick Thorpe
On the car radio, the Serbian singer Djordje Balašević is singing a ballad about the break-up of Yugoslavia. ‘We don't look each other in the eyes any more,’ he croons, ‘we just look at one another's car registration-plates.’32 The letters displayed used to indicate exactly where the car was registered, and as republic after republic slipped into war in the 1990s, this information could be a matter of life and death, letting you know if those coming at speed towards you were likely to be friend or foe. The post-war number plates in Bosnia were carefully designed to be neutral so that it was impossible to guess where the vehicle came from.
In Mosna, a tiny hamlet on the creek where the Porečka flows into the Danube, Vitomir Marković tells the story of how one famous local veteran of the partisan struggle in the Second World War refused to leave his home as the waters rose after the building of the dam. He climbed on to his roof with his twelve children and raised the Yugoslav flag. The problem was all the more delicate for the authorities as Marshal Tito himself had been his kum, the best man at his wedding. ‘After two days, they persuaded them all to come down, into a boat,’ Vitomir remembers. ‘They were given a big new house in Donji Milanovac. Nothing was too much for them.’ Vitomir came to the area in 1962 as town clerk, and has stayed ever since. He has an album of black-and-white photographs, including one of himself in the early 1960s, with six other men and four children, posing with a huge beluga sturgeon, as long as a man, on the grass in front of them.
The Danube is silver green here, almost velvet in texture, and the wooded slopes reach right down to the water. Early the next morning as I swim in the Porečka a fairy mist hovers just over the surface. Smoke rises from the woods – the sign of charcoal burners at work. A German yacht, nine metres long with a family on board, is moored in the creek, its mast stepped. They are long-distance travellers like myself, and there's a bicycle secured in the bow. We drive up a road of zig-zag bends to Miroč, high on the hill overlooking the Danube. On the far bank there are glimpses of the two surviving towers of Cetații Tricole standing out of the water. Pink dog -roses and bright yellow rattle decorate the roadsides. The road plunges deeper into dense forests, and it is hard to believe that it will ever reach the village. But at last it does, and we sit down to drink coffee in the main square. It's Saturday morning, and what looks like a wedding tent is being put up behind the village restaurant. It is no wedding, however, but the rare visit of one of the sons of the village who has made good in the wide world and is now staging a gathering of all his friends and family from far and wide.
I wanted to come to Miroč to hear the story of the legendary Serbian hero Marko Kraljević. Casual questioning of the people milling around the square leads me to Momir Plavi, a forest worker. He knows the story best. We stand in the shade of the ‘wedding tent’ and he begins his tale. ‘Marko Kraljević and Miloš Obilić were good friends, and were drinking together one night here in the village inn. Now Miloš liked to drink a lot of wine, and when he began to drink he always began to sing. “Don't sing so loud,” Marko said to Miloš, “because the fairies will hear you and they will get angry.” But Miloš wouldn't listen, and, soon enough, the furious fairies arrived and struck Miloš dead. Marko saw what happened, and jumped on his legendary horse, Sarac – meaning dappled – to chase after the fairy who had killed his friend. At long last he caught her, and forced her to gather mountain herbs and make a concoction to heal his friend's wounds. And that is how Marko Kraljević brought Miloš back to life.’ According to another version of the same story, Marko talks Miloš into singing as they ride their horses over Miroč mountain, against his better judgement – he well knows the Vila (fairy) Ravijojla will be jealous of his beautiful voice. But Marko persuades him, Miloš starts singing, then Marko falls asleep in the saddle and the fairy starts singing along with him – and kills him out of jealousy. Both versions end in the same way with Miloš restored to life.33 ‘Do you know what herbs she used?’ I ask Momir. He lists four or five, but the only name I recognise and can find later in my Dictionary of Weeds of Eastern Europe, is kantarion, common St John's wort.34 The others names include words which sound like itricaz and podubica.
‘Are there still fairies in these hills?’ I ask Momir.
‘No! The real fairies have all gone, only fake ones remain.’
‘Why did they leave?’
‘Long ago they lived here and ruled this part of the land. No one knows why one day they went away.’ Afterwards he adds in hushed tones – as the square is filling up, ready for the afternoon's festivities – that they ‘may still be here somewhere, but they don't show themselves any more’.
‘Did you ever see them yourself?’
‘Just once,’ he affirms, ‘in a dream. They were dancing round and round in an opening in the forest. And do you know what?’ He pauses for effect. ‘They were all wearing beautiful blue dresses – just like Gypsy girls!’
On our way down the labyrinthine slope we visit the brick hives of the charcoal-burners. I've seen them before, in Greece and in Hungary, where the beechwood pile is designed to burn right through. Here they have permanent structures of brick, in the same, beehive shape. The charcoal-burners themselves are absent, but an enormous ferocious dog appears from nowhere and starts bounding towards us, as if in slow motion. At the last moment the rope tied to his collar pulls him back.
Fifteen kilometres from the mouth of the Porečka, the Lepenski Vir site has been recreated above the water level, under a huge steel and glass hangar. The dome overhead gives it a slightly Disneyland feeling, but the walk there is pleasant, across a meadow ringed by beautifully restored whitewashed houses and through a wood. The houses were moved here from their original site on Poreč Island, which, like Ada Kaleh, was lost under the waters of the dam. ‘What was special about Lepenski Vir was that people lived here without interruption for two thousand years,’ says Dragan Provolović, the man in charge. Their view across the Danube must have been similar to the one today, of the remarkable outcrop of stone opposite, known as the Big Rock. While the people in most prehistoric societies lived in houses of the same size, with no apparent social difference, here some houses stand out from the others. Young men work barefoot and shirtless on the site in the heat, carefully placing each stone exactly as it was found. As an attempt to make archaeology accessible to mass tourism, it is bold. But I would rather look at the photographs in the books, gaze on the faces of the fish-gods in the museum, and walk along the shore to get back into the mind of those who once lived here. ‘Danubius’ himself, his yellow sandstone head contrasting with the reddish-grey stone of the earth where he now rests, looks out over the whole site. Even his mouth seems to be drooping more than usual.
Far below on the river, the Osijek barge from Croatia pushes its rusting brown load downstream. One stone not on display here, the most interesting find of all, is wrapped in tissue in the vaults of the Serbian National Bank in Belgrade, pending the completion of more than a decade of renovation. A brownish, spherical stone, with holes drilled at either end, it is inscribed with letters resembling Ks, Xs, Vs and Ys. According to the Italian archaeologist Marco Merlini, ‘the possible usage of this object includes use in divination or for keeping records relating to important cyclical events. If the signs inscribed on the stone from Lepenski Vir were used for divination, they are perhaps the oldest example of writing used for this purpose.’35 Merlini's database for the Danube script contains over four thousand signs, taken from more than eight hundred objects – figurines, clay pots, utensils and stones. The area where they were found covers parts of eleven modern countries, from Hungary to Greece. All appear to have been produced between six and eight thousand years ago. Whether or not they constitute a writing system is bitterly disputed by experts, and no one has yet advanced an attempt at translation. This leaves everyone who comes into contact with them the space to dream. And Marija Gimbutas's dream is the boldest so far – the mythical city of Atlantis, an advanced civilisation that slipped away without t
race into the ocean, might instead refer to the civilisation of the Lower Danube. If so the remarkable Minoan culture found on the island of Crete was actually an outpost of Danubian civilisation.36
CHAPTER 8
River of Fire
The Ottomans were reputedly astonished at the appearance of a Russian fleet in the Dardanelles in 1770, and made a formal protest to the Venetians for allowing the Russians to sail from the Baltic to the Adriatic Sea, alluding to a channel connecting the two, sometimes represented on medieval maps but, of course, non-existent.
The Muslim Discovery of Europe, BERNARD LEWIS1
THE MUSCULAR fortress of Golubac squats on the Danube shore, the pride of kings and sultans, its ten towers crumbling into oblivion. The castles at Golubac, Ram and Smederevo are like studs on the soldier's belt of the Danube below Belgrade. In wealthier, better organised countries, these would be jewels to which domestic and foreign tourists would flock for a taste of worlds gone by. Instead, the Danube shore in Serbia is neglected, the glory of ageing anglers, kids swimming in their underpants, and locals who either cannot afford to follow the caravan to the Adriatic coast each summer – or who have fallen so deeply in love with the secret folds and fronds of this inland river that they cannot imagine a day or night away from her. There are exceptions: the annual catfish competition in Tekija, the sailing regatta each August on the Danube at Golubac, and the handsome site of Viminacium above the river, where the Roman forces massed to march through the Danube gorge to defeat Decebal in the year AD 101, all draw the crowds.
Golubac gets its name from the Serbian word golub or the Hungarian galamb, meaning ‘dove’. ‘Dove-house’ is an unexpectedly peaceful name for a town with such a martial history. The association with doves goes back to the very beginnings, in the sixth century AD when the Byzantine emperors rebuilt a Roman stronghold to protect themselves from the raids of the Huns and Goths.2 Most of the ten towers of the main fortress are square, built before the age of firearms made rounded towers necessary. The lower, octagonal tower, the most recent, was built by the Turks in 1480, against the Hungarian armies, which developed a habit of re-taking their own castles. The tower appears low because most of it is underwater – the river level here is raised by the Iron Gates dam. The Babakaj rock protrudes from the mid-stream of the river. Medieval garrisons used to tie a heavy chain from the ramparts to Babakaj both to prevent hostile ships passing and to extract customs duties from friendly ones.
The main road beside the Danube passes through a tunnel drilled in the sheer rock, in at the southern end and out again at the north. A family with lots of children is shepherded through, girls in hot pants pose for photographs on the rough walls, and Zawisza Czarny – the Black Knight – oversees the fountain dedicated to his memory at the far end. A Polish soldier and diplomat, he first served King Władysław II, then King Sigismund of Hungary, and his name became a byword for bravery and reliability. The ‘Black’ in his name comes from his long black hair and black armour, neither of which is done justice by his bronze plaque, which shows him in profile, instead emphasising the fine jut of his beard and the ornate plumes sprouting from his helmet.3 After a glorious career winning tournaments against the most renowned knights of Europe, he was killed in battle against the Turks at Golubac, protecting the retreat of Sigismund's forces by boat across the Danube when he ignored the king's order to save himself. ‘In Golubac, his life was taken by the Turks in 1428, the famous Polish knight,’ reads the inscription, in Polish and Serbian, ‘the symbol of courage and honour, Zawisza the Black. Glory to the hero!’ In her own humorous way, Nature pays tribute to him, raining a constant supply of juicy black mulberries onto the monument. The water from the spring is cool and metallic on the tongue. We fill our bottles and carry them down for a picnic on the shore. The Black Knight's armour is still preserved at the Jasna Góra monastery in Poland, where the Black Madonna of Częstochowa, her face scarred, bestows blessings on her pilgrims.
We sleep in a rudimentary campsite on the Danube shore near Brnjica. Sitting under a willow in the early morning, the wind suddenly picks up; sending dark cat's-paws spinning across the water. At seven in the morning the Mercur 306 barge heads downstream, bound for Galați. A boy comes down to fish in the river while his girlfriend washes her hair with shampoo in the shallows. He speaks slowly, patiently to her, as though he is explaining the ancient art of fishing. I shut my eyes to hear the wind in the willows, the fizz of his line snaking through the air, the spin of his spool and the splash of the weight hitting the water, far out in the river. He opens a can of beer. She ties up her hair. Birds call to each other across the water. Even the patches on the Danube here look like a script.
I have two interpreters on this leg of the journey. Lola, a Bosnian Serb from Sarajevo, in whose battered, Bosnian registered car we are travelling, and Lacka, a Hungarian from Subotica, a maker and mender of violins, guitars and flutes. Silhouetted against the water, smoking his pipe, Lacka looks very much like Zawisza the Black – without the helmet.
One evening in a fish restaurant, Lola takes two sticks down from the wall and demonstrates how they are used to catch catfish. ‘You beat on the surface of the water like this …’ he says, drumming on the table and making the wine glasses and plates jump. The Hungarians have a special word for this stick, the putyagató, while the Serbs call it a buchka. The sound it makes in the water is an imitation of what large catfish do with their tails, to call to others to come and eat.
Both men were caught up in the Yugoslav wars of the 1990s, in rather different roles. By candlelight, sipping white wine, Lacka tells his story. ‘My grandfather taught me to repair fishing nets as a child, with a big needle. He lived in a little thatched house with an earth floor, with no electricity, just petroleum lamps. I remember going up into the attic of that house in July, in the heat. The dust rose slowly, through the shafts of sunlight. You had to tread carefully, as if you were on the bottom of the sea. I can still smell that attic, the dust, the dry wood, the wooden basins to wash clothes in, or mix bread. And the boxes with bars that we used to put into the river, like cages, to catch the fish. I can remember the creak of each of the wooden stairs … My grandfather married a girl from Zenta, on the Tisza [a tributary of the Danube that joins the river north of Belgrade] … My master, Lajos Dudás, was very strict, well -educated, very aware of his Hungarian national culture, and he taught me to make musical instruments. On his deathbed I sat beside him. He opened his eyes, held my hand, and said, “Son, in you my thoughts will live on.” Those were his last words to me … I remember my first visits to the Danube as a child, at Bezdan, near Apatin. It was so huge, so wide, for me it was more impressive than the sea.’
In May 1991 when the troubles began in Croatia, Lacka, married by then, with a four-year-old daughter, was teaching at a school in Subotica. His call-up papers to report for duty as a reservist in the Yugoslav army arrived, but he just ignored them. ‘The thought of war was so remote, so impossible. But then the brother of a friend came back from Croatia, badly wounded. He said Hungarians were fighting other Hungarians – on the Croatian side. Only then did I start to get frightened. Then I heard other stories, that our own army killed those of its own soldiers who didn't want to fight … I was happy when I watched the big demonstrations in Bosnia, against war. The people of Bosnia were the most peaceful in the whole of Yugoslavia. Then another letter came, a reminder. I was just coming down the stairs at the school where I taught one day, when I saw two military police in uniforms with white bands round them. I heard voices and my name mentioned, and the secretary of the school saying I had gone. I climbed out of a ground floor window and got away. I didn't tell anyone, not even my wife and daughter. I packed my tools and a few clothes, and started cycling towards the Hungarian border. The green border seemed a bad idea, and so did the nearest crossing, Tompa, because it was too quiet. So I cycled to Röszke, about thirty kilometres away. That was good because I knew there was not a big distance between the Yugoslav and
Hungarian border posts, unlike at Tompa – in case they tried to shoot me. Then I got lucky. I handed my passport to the border guard, through a little window. He started searching to see if my name was on the list of those called up who were banned from leaving the country. Just at that moment another policeman came into the office, and they got into a big argument with each other. So they didn't see me put my hand through the window, take back my passport, and start cycling for dear life towards Hungary, until it was too late [to stop me].’ Apart from his tools, he carried two books, the Bible and Lord of the Rings. He cycled all the way to Budapest and bought himself a map with the last of his money in Tobacco Street, behind the big synagogue. Within a few days he found work with a violin maker.
That evening we sleep on the balcony of a guest-house in Vinci, opposite the island of Moldova Veche. The Danube flows directly from north to south here. The house is in a pine-wood at the end of a sandy road. The smell of the pines, their scent melting in the summer night, is the smell of the south, but the sight of the trees is of the north, a foretaste of the pines of the Black Forest at the end of my journey.
Before Veliko Gradište the Danube bends again, to flow from west to east. The road runs along an embankment, built for flood protection. I stop to talk to an old woman, sitting on a stool in a little shelter built of branches, keeping a watchful eye on a herd of black-and-white cows grazing on the floodplain. She has a blue and grey headscarf, a face so brown and wrinkled I'm not sure if her eyes are open or not, and wears an old green jumper despite the July heat. The man who owned the cows has died, she says, in a matter-of-fact way. His funeral is taking place that very day. She volunteered to look after his cows until the family decides what to do with them.