Under a Croatian Sun (29 page)

Tanya’s father, taking the opportunity of speaking without Draga’s interruption, launched into a eulogy about the heavens. ‘The twinkling lights we see above are something that happened thousands of years ago, but it’s only now that the light of it has reached us and is blessing our young couple. What wonders they are privileged to be part of! Standing here on Darko’s terrace, they are simultaneously being whirled through the universe at a hundred thousand kilometres an hour by the forces of gravity at work…’

‘Maybe,’ came the laconic voice of Zoran from the back of the terrace. ‘But what about all the other forces at work in the universe? The forces that attract women to clothes shops, men to televisions when the football’s on and other people’s mooring ropes to Anthony’s propeller?’

Damn! He must have seen me docking yesterday. I thought no one had seen me.

By the end of the evening, aided by the wine, Tanya’s family appeared to be adjusting to the idea of Bosnians as in-laws, and the bitterness of the war temporarily forgotten, wine-fuelled embraces and promises of eternal friendship were being bandied
around. Emotions were running high. And, when Tanya’s aunties started hugging Ivana and thanking her for her role in getting the couple back together, even I felt a bit teary.

Marin and Tanya made touching speeches and then stood at the end of the terrace, silhouetted against the star-lit sky, waving to us as we got into our cars and drove off into the night. We wove our way down the track in an unsteady convoy with the beams of our headlights playing like drunken searchlights over the hillside.

‘Wasn’t it good luck that brought us here and made all this possible,’ said Ivana, as I tried to keep my eyes focused on the road ahead. ‘Look what happiness!’

‘And look at how much we’ve been able to do in spite of not being fully accepted. We’ve eaten more delicious food, drunk more wine and made more new friends than we ever would have at home.’

‘And the children will love it. They might even marry someone Croatian – just like you did!’

I laughed. ‘Well, there certainly isn’t a shortage of dishy-looking young people in this part of the world.’

‘It would be nice to have a Croatian daughter-in-law,’ said Ivana, with that look on her face that meant a plot was already being formed.

‘Don’t plan ahead like that. It’s tempting fate!’

We puttered down the hill road past the slumbering farmhouses and darkened terraces, and far below us I could see the lights of the village twinkling on the water like Christmas decorations. There it was – my village; sleeping in the moonlight beside the shimmering bay. How long had I been thinking of it as
my
village? Maybe it didn’t reciprocate, but its streets, its squares, its bars, its routines were now a part of me.

Ivana had fallen asleep, and looking at her profile I thought
how much it resembled Milena’s, and my thoughts then turned to the minor triumphs and failures that had coloured our lives. Had there been some rationale behind all our ups and downs or had we just been bouncing from one thing to the next like in a pinball machine. Had it been purely chance that we ended up here, or was it all part of a pattern that I couldn’t see, a hidden seam that had been running beneath the turmoil?

Ivana stirred. Looking down at the lights of the harbour, she sat up, rubbing her eyes and blinking. ‘See what a good time we can have here, even with standoffish neighbours. And can you imagine the fun it’ll be once we’ve got the vineyard and the sailing school going?’

‘Hmm. Maybe you’re right. And don’t forget about the English restaurant!’

Ivana pulled a face.

T
he next morning, a staccato rap on the courtyard door announced the visit we had been waiting for. We looked down and saw the director of the nightclub at the bottom of the steps, an athletic-looking young man with close-cropped hair in an immaculate blue suit.

‘Quick, put the coffee on,’ I said.

‘There’s no time now, and, anyway, he doesn’t look like the warm-drink-and-biscuit type to me.’

He came into the drawing room with the latent menace of a character in a Pinter play. Emanating the sleek self-assurance of the successful, he introduced himself in perfect English. With a dark, suave, intelligent-looking face and unblinking eyes, he looked at me coldly when I asked him to sit down, and started on what sounded like a well-prepared speech. Disco bars made their money between 11 p.m. and 4 a.m., he said. This was when young people would hang around listening to booming music and
eyeing up the opposite sex – and this was when they spent money on drinks. But, if the music was not booming, they didn’t come, he added with a smile that conveyed a minimum of humour.

‘Loud music draws young people to it like moths to a light,’ he continued. ‘They are happy and they dance, but for most of the time they sit around and spend money on drinks. To start with, we did good business, but, after you and your Swedish friend started complaining, the police made us lower the sound and stop the music entirely at 2 a.m. This made our revenue drop by 25 per cent.’ He looked at us coldly. ‘And we don’t like people who damage our business.’

‘But half of the village can’t sleep properly because of the music,’ I responded.

‘As the other half still can, that’s not such a bad result,’ he replied. ‘Nightclubs mean progress, and some will always have to suffer because of progress.’

I could see Ivana bristling on the sofa, so trying to keep the meeting on an even keel, I pointed out that the charm of Vis was its peace and lack of progress. He didn’t seem that interested and started off on a different tack. Intimidation is a common ploy in Croatia. Here, people shove their opponents or curse them and walk away, swearing to return later and punch them – and the tactic usually works. Turning up the menace knob to level eleven, he now looked pointedly at Ivana and said, ‘My partners and I know how to deal with people like you.’

Ivana jumped to her feet. ‘And what exactly do you mean by that? To have us murdered?’

‘Now, now! Calm down, dear,’ I said, sounding like Michael Winner. ‘Why don’t we ask the nice man what suggestions he has?’

Ivana continued to give him the oxyacetylene blowtorch look usually reserved for me, but I continued in my honeyed tone:
‘Seeing that we seem to be at something of an impasse, what would be the most acceptable compromise? We do know that you are operating without a licence, you know.’

He had his answer ready. ‘If you pay us, we will go. Pay us for our setting-up costs and buy our lease from us, and we will leave.’

There was an uncomfortable silence while I repeated the words in my head. The effect was no better the second time round. ‘We’ll certainly consider it,’ I said, wanting to keep the offer open and give us time to plan.

‘That is our offer, and, if you do not pay, we will continue.’

‘Well, I’m sure we’ll be able to come up with something,’ I replied shakily.

‘I believe we have understood each other. Let me know your decision,’ he said icily, moving towards the door. He left without shaking hands, leaving a hint of expensive aftershave lingering in the air.

Somewhat shaken, we sat down on the sofa. What had we got ourselves into? I might be able to find some people to come in on the lease with us, but who wanted to cough up for their costs? And, if we didn’t go along with his offer, would the Split Mafia turn up with violin cases to catch us on the church steps after a christening, or hang around Marko’s spiking our coffees with Polonium 210? Apart from that, what would we do with a bar? We knew nothing about the business.

I got on the phone to see if I could drum up some investors. By lunchtime, I’d got the owner of the hotel to agree to run it, and by teatime I’d got Richard and a cousin of Marko’s in Zagreb to come in on the lease, but, as I had feared, no one wanted to pay for whatever their costs would be.

‘What are we going to do?’ I said, looking gloomily out of the window. ‘We can’t pay them on our own.’

‘This is all wrong!’ said Ivana. ‘It’s intimidation! They’re telling us that, if we don’t pay them off, they’ll continue to make everyone’s life a misery.’

We stood at the window looking out over the peaceful sunlit water and an idea occurred. Maybe the islanders’ dislike of outsiders might work in our favour this time? As they seemed to dislike people from their own big cities almost as much as they did foreigners, perhaps, if we told them about the threats we’d just had, they might consider that the village itself was being threatened. Could it make them feel insulted enough to put some pressure on the Town Hall for the first time? It was worth a try.

So, for the next two days, we went around telling everyone about the man’s threats, and I was right. It was taken as an insult to them.

‘They think they can just come over with their money and do what they want.’

‘How dare they try to intimidate us!’

‘We’ll show those Split boys that they can’t bully us!’

‘We’re not the sort to be pushed around!’

Karmela blamed the Mayor. ‘A fat buttock always looks for a comfy bench to sit on. That man goes along with anything that benefits him.’

Grandma Klakic marched into the Town Hall and told them they were a bunch of wimps, and for the rest of the week we saw several others coming out of the building flushed with the satisfaction of telling their elected representatives what they thought of them.

On Friday morning, the Mayor told the nightclub to close down.

We had finally done it!

During the promenade that evening, we were feted as if we
were Captain Hoste coming back into the harbour with the French fleet in tow. We were patted on the back, offered drinks and thanked profusely – even by some of the usual scowlers.

I took the opportunity to point out tactfully that they might have lent their support to our protest in the first place, but the answer was always the same: ‘You can protest but we just can’t.’

At Sunday Mass, the theme of Don Romolo’s sermon was David and Goliath – the victory of God’s Little Village over the Disco of the Devil – and we sat in our pew glowing with self-righteousness. It was even better on our way home. By the convent, we were beckoned over by some nuns engaged in an argument with an old man. Their neighbour was complaining about their early-morning prayers, they said. Could we make him see reason?

Morning prayers used to be at eight, but now they started at six and he couldn’t get back to sleep again, the old man protested to us in turn. Could we make the nuns see reason?

‘What’s all this got to do with us?’ whispered Ivana.

‘I think we’re now seen as “fixers”,’ I whispered back.

So, with Ivana acting as referee, the discussion continued, and, after ten minutes of head shaking, hand waving and a lot of nun-tutting, the matter was settled. Morning prayers would start at seven.

Further along the Riva, we passed a house that a nephew of Karmela’s was turning into a restaurant and he called out to us: ‘You kick those Split guys in arse real good!’

‘You make all Vis people so happy!’ echoed his wife. ‘You proper Vis people now. Yes?’

Ivana turned to me ‘Proper Vis people! Good heavens! Have they accepted us at last?’

‘Good God. Maybe they have!’

‘Maybe we can stay here forever then?’ said Ivana, hugging me and beaming.

‘
Zdravi Bili!
’ (‘Feel well!’) the man called out as we moved on.

Yes, we did feel well. How could we not feel well? We felt as if we’d just won the General Election.

We ambled on arm in arm past boats bobbing contentedly in the water, while the fishermen laid out their nets, and at the end of the Riva was our boat glinting in the water as it rocked beside our perfectly proportioned Venetian façade. The autumn sun warmed us through our light clothes and sparkles of light bounced off the water, dappling us with flecks of gold.

That evening, sitting on the terrace with my gin and tonic and watching the hills turning from green to purple, how far away I felt from my old life – the rollercoasters with the Japanese art market, the legal battles with New York lawyers, the artists with artistic temperaments, the uncomfortable meetings with bank managers. And how far away from the trials of raising a family in a metropolis – the bills, the orange hair, the hormonal strops, the anxiety that I wouldn’t be able to keep it all going. It seemed light years away now. But the same questions I had asked myself before we left were still unanswered. What was it that drew us to places like this despite all the attractions of a city life? Were obscure backwaters such as Vis really the Holy Grail that had eluded us all our lives? Was this what we had worked for – to turn our backs on the very world we had spent our lives building? But, despite our human sophistication, maybe we are more primitive than we think, and once we hit fifty we instinctively seek out a more harmonious life, like an old dog trying to find a patch of sun to lie in?

Of course, it was all very well for me. I had sold my business
and could sit here contentedly with my gin and tonic, watching the world go by, but for most islanders life was as full of financial worries, troubled marriages and obnoxious teenagers as it is in suburban London.

As I sat there musing, I suddenly realised that I couldn’t remember being scowled at for some time. And not only that. For several days, I’d been vaguely conscious of a general congeniality. Small insignificant things – a wave from a car, a smile from a schoolgirl, an acknowledging nod from a fisherman. It wouldn’t have seemed much to an outside observer, but it did to me.

I was sitting outside Marko’s the next day, when Boyana walked by and gave me a frightening grimace. I shivered. What had I done? Five minutes later, she came back from the market and did it again. And this time the penny dropped. The rictus on her face was her version of a smile. I sat there in disbelief. Did this mean that even Boyana had softened? It would certainly be a relief if she had, as being greeted by her scowl face every morning had been a pretty grim start to the day. I nearly ran over and kissed her.

That evening on the promenade, Boyana came to ask if I could give her a hand with her early-morning jam-jar loading. It came as such a shock that I missed my step – and I think she noticed, as she quickly added, ‘The strain on my back is getting too much and I can’t lift like I used to.’ Recovering my composure, I answered that I’d love to, but it might be better to do it a bit later. And, to my amazement, she agreed. Then, never one for wasting time in social chit-chat, Boyana stumped off, and Ivana and I were left goggling at each other.

‘I never thought I’d live to see the day,’ said Ivana.

‘I dare say it’s old age rather than my charm that’s worn her down, but who cares if it means there won’t be a dark, brooding
presence on the other side of the garden wall and we won’t get woken up at six. That’s real progress!’

I went to tell Zoran the news.

‘God can come up with some funny tricks,’ said Zoran, ‘particularly after he’s had a good bottle of wine.’