Tony Fabijancic

Dalmatia (3)

The southern stretch of highway on the Croatian island of Pag cuts through a wide valley bordered by white limestone hills where broken stone churches and farmhouses sit like forgotten miracles of handicraft and sheer will. I'm heading to the village of Povljana after leaving Pag town behind - that chan-ning grid of flagstoned streets and multi-colored buildings, lime and yellow and white.

It's another hot morning on a baking slab of concrete, a few cars streaking past, my canvas backpack, shut with a safety pin, sweating up my back. This won't be the first time, I think, that I'll regret my ambitions to walk down the Dalmatian coast, a sort of grand expedition modelled after the great Patrick Leigh Fen-nor's journey from the hook of Holland to Constantinople in the 30s.

But so far so good, the road flat and straight, long puffy clouds majestically sailing under the sun like aircraft carriers, and a light north wind for extra coolness. I hide inside then walk through the other end of shadows which slide across the earth in steady battalions. Soft bleatings of sheep arrive on the wind from the fields.

On my right are squares of water like rice paddies divided by kneehigh wood fences - the salt pans of Pag, which produce the salt in every backwater store in Croatia. Further along, a shadowy monstrosity looms beside the road like a white metallic triceratops - a plated and hinged reniinder of archaic Yugo industry like some vestige of 19th century industrial England shipped here and assembled. The salt factory looks abandoned, not a worker moving behind the shut gates, just a structure that's 'there' like a phenomenon of nature which can't explain its own existence.

Soon after, a yellow sign points me to the right. The slender road descends sharply and brings me into a different world. The stone-pocked land is flat here, fields of sparse grass stretching all the way to the sea, marked off by the same hip-high rock walls that hold down the whole island. A coterie of cadaverous sheep are huddled near the road in a wall's narrow shade, waiting out the sun's passage across the sky. A hut, roofed with the same rough white blocks as the walls and with small rectangular windows like gunsights, stands in the empty field as a monument, a sign of that effort to found a human presence in this ungiving place, reminding me of abandoned prairie farmhouses and their rusted machinery lodged in the earth, overgrown with grass.

I have the empty feeling of going nowhere. No birds have taken to wing and no sounds are travelling on the wind now; even the clouds have escaped to the south, baring the naked sky. But I'm at peace, and in the middle of this sparse world I find small things to interest me: geckos scurry off their sunning spots; black and grey stippled snakes whip their tails at me to escape my thundering steps; the fields are sprinkled with basil and barbed eieak, blushing blue at the tips as it does in the summer.

In a small field enclosed by a thicket of acacia and olive trees a coaxed and threatened white Clydesdale is dragging a plow through dry earth. When I take a picture one of the two farmers waves a fist and shouts at me, "Boy, I'm coming over there to take your film. You never got my permissions Son of a bitch, I mumble to myself, stuck in my tracks like a scared animal. I wait for him to come at me, but the men laugh and continue working. The guy waves again so I wave back and leave them to carve and saw the earth, their shouts fading behind me.

Alone once more, in flat terrain pried apart from a sky so high and thinly blue it seems to be dissipating altogether, soon to show the starsprinkled night behind it, the black universe. No sounds again for a while.

A rumble comes from the direction of the highway, something long and glinting in the sun, wavering in the pavement heat. The chrome pipes are long and polished bright, tear drop tanks pearl white, and spokes a bright silvery whir. Three Harley-style Yamahas with Croatian plates cruise past driven by two men and a woman sheathed in crackled black leather like Hell's Angels from some B movie.

As they roll slowly past, one of the men wearing spurs on his scarred black boots flicks his head at the seat behind him. As if we were supposed to meet here all along I hop on without breaking stride, grabbing hold of the seat. A smell of sweat, cigarettes and liquor wafts from under his tight jacket, the back bearing Croatia's red and white checkered Šahovnica emblem.

He points to his left saddle bag and shouts in English, the words whipping away in the wind: "have some Jack." I pull out a micky of Jack Daniel's and shakily use both hands to twist off the cap. I take a slug of some pristine fiery liquid that's as far removed from whiskey as Croatia is from Tennessee. "Viljamovka," he shouts again, motioning for the bottle. While he slugs back a couple shots, I grab the seat again and hold on tight. He tucks the bottle between his legs, drinking from it now and again all the way to Povljana.

I remember now, the orchards in the hills south of Zagreb, bottles twinkling in the sun, hanging from pear trees. They are hung each spring so the mature pears, eventually imprisoned by glass, flavour the sljivovica poured inside. Viljamovka.

We stop at a tiny posh cafe on what looks like a main street of this quiet village. Some good-looking young men nicely coiffed, wearing tshirts, black jeans and cowboy boots are smoking and drinking beer. Looking narrowly at us without interest, they go on talking like they'd seen our kind a dozen times over.

When I say goodbye my driver tosses me the Viljamovka, tells me it's "something for company." I lift it in thanks and make my way down the street towards the wedge of blue sky and sea blocked partly from view by villas and houses. There are doors open, and fruits and vegetables and weigh scales on the cement walls, but not a person in sight, not a soul moving.

I've wandered into a Dalmatian Sleepy Hollow where everything's in slow motion, a thick wind sluggishly swaying the trees, swallows tilting overhead like lethargic seagulls, humming birds inelegantly fluttering above the roses like butterflies. A fishing boat sits frozen near the horizon and the flags on the skiffs and ships at dock furl and unfurl like arthritic hands opening, closing. An aroma of sea and land floats around here - a faint fish smell around the docks and the everpresent curry-like sweet basil.

From the docks I see the little bay and peninsula in the distance a long rocky finger dusted by grass and thatched with pines. The ubiquitous rock walls zig-zag over the top and down the other side, and just above the main beach stands a tiny 10th century stone chapel with a cemetery grown over with tall grass, wooden crosses leaning left and right.

The boats bobbing slowly up and down gurgle sleepily and I drop my pack and lie down. I'm tired, hungry too. The booze is singing nicely in my head. Eyes shut against the sun's glare and the sharp sky, I listen to the mantra of sea sounds around me.

She's ten yards away when I open my eyes again, walking cat-like towards me, wild blonde curls framing a tanned face withjade eyes that see coldly past me. She walks to the tip of the dock, strips to her white bikini and dives neatly into the water. After climbing the little steps back onto the dock, she dives in again. Emerging, she dries her hair with her hands, looking up and arching her back in that feline way she has.

I address her in English, figuring that this will somehow intrigue her, mysterious foreigner come from far away. "Nice day, eh," I begin, sounding to myself like an American parody of a Canadian. Lying on her back now, she turns her head languidly in my direction, looks at me or through me, the drying nets seeming to catch her interest. "How's the water," I try again. She looks away, brushes water drops off her brown belly, closes her eyes.

Must be me, so I pick up my pack and walk back up the road. The pine forest sighs coded messages to the sea gulls whirling around the treetops. And motionless, the boat on the horizon seems forever delayed on its way home.

The world accelerates around me, swallows darting at the speed of sound, leaves flickering brightly like tossed coins, fountain spray. A fat woman in a white kerchief and apron sits on her cement veranda peeling potatos and watches me as I go by, hoping I'll buy her stuff. I notice a naked foot poking out an open balcony door. Povljana in the afternoon is very quiet, only disturbed by an occasional rumble from my stomach.

Out of the Cafe Rumora's dark mouth a balding young waiter neatly dressed in pressed white shirt and navy slacks brings me a menu. My table on the granite terrace is one of those appropriately placed at this time of day under a latticed ceiling of grape vines.

Like most of the people I've met, he's pleased I've come all this way to see his country, but incredulous that I want to walk all the way down. "This is a new country, yes," he says in English, "but modem also. We have big buses, ferries too," he smiles, partly condescending to such foreign ignorance, partly agitated by it. His feelings belong to a complex nationalistic pride that takes different forms, sometimes chauvinistic and militaristic, sometimes social and cultural, often a combination of the two. For him, Croatia is a young Switzerland which only needs proper planning or care, like a garden that has to be tended for its full potential to be realized.

I tell him I understand, but that I see more this way, meet more people. "I'm a writer, see," pulling out my ratty notebook. "Not everything bullets and death, I hope," he says. "That's what these foreign journalists like to write." Not me, I assure him, only half lying. Unconvinced but friendly about it, he takes my order and goes back inside.

My limited experience with Croatia's intelligentsia, to which my waiterhardlybelongs, suggests acontemptforanythingremotely'American' with all of that word's imperialistic connotations. Forty-six years of Yugoslav socialism won't be erased overnight, though why should they be? It's a relief to hear some alternative perspective on a political situation like Cuba's, after all. However, these educated Croats betray a decidedly bourgeois attitude when it comes to the power of their money, hungering for the standard of living they've seen first hand in Germany, Austria and Italy. They'll condemn the salesman but buy his products.

Such thoughts only flash momentarily through my mind because my stomach's taken over. The raznici are donejust right, pork shish-kebobs on wooden skewers served with fries, diced onions with a sharp bite, and a dab of ajvar, a spicy sauce made of tomatoes, onions and eggplants. I eat everything first then drink a small carafe of ice water.

After finishing, I jot a few observations in my notebook, breaking away now and then to gaze through the gap between the fig trees at the villas and the bay. A footpath winds through little parcels of fanner's fields and gardens to a paved road that turns towards the beach. Only the gentle hot whispering wind and a rare donkey's bray disturbs this siesta silence.

When I walk down to the sea, bees are humming in the little fields, finches swooping in flocks from fig tree to fig tree. A radiant sun hangs over the pine-thatched peninsula, warming me just right. Lined with silent villas the road becomes a short stretch of gravel curving beside a newly mowed field and the Sveti Nikola chapel. What comfort knowing you'll end up here, poppies in the cemetery dancing in the wind, a turquoise sea behind.

The water is colder than in Pag, but even more refreshing and pristinely clear. Beyond the sand and in the shadowy green depths dark fish are swimming casually and on the rocky floor hundreds of sea cucumbers sleep. I front-crawl towards the cement mooring in the harbour half a kilometre away. Like everywhere else on the coast at this time of year there are no waves to speak of and I arrive in no time, hauling myself up by one of the rusted rings.

The girl's gone. An old woman in a pink bathing cap has taken her place, so for a second I feel like Rip Van Winkle who slept his life away. I do a few cannon balls off the block then doze for a while on top. On the way back I fancy that the villas I remembered here and there have disappeared, the electrical lines that I swear were connected to the last house under the peninsula are gone. For a minute I'm convinced that Povlj ana has returned to some moment in its past before it existed in my consciousness, or that my very eyes and gaze now belong to someone else who came before me.

These doppleganger moments must be expressions of a solitary brain wandering in a foreign place. It's not the first time on this trip that I've felt another set of eyes behind mine, not in that touristy way of sensing others before me, but more tangibly, literally - my double inside my skin peering out. When I return to the beach, the feeling goes away because my clothes are where I left them, that stone stuck in the sand the way I remember it. The only visible difference is a pair of wine barrels propped on an outcropping of grey rocks, set there in my absence to air out.

Before taking the road back I check out the chapel. The walkway is made of stone slabs run together, tilting with the earth, a few of which are sarcophagi carved with unreadable inscriptions. The front door with its steel lock looks like it was put there 10 or 15 years ago. A tiny slit of a window on the western side through which the sun now shines offers a view onto a round interior: a small altar and a wooden crucifix, a rickety dais with a half-melted candle, three wooden benches. A swallow's nest is stuck in a comer on the altar's side, and cobwebs hang everywhere else. The chapel is cosy and spooky at the same time, makes me wonder what people felt then when they crowded inside - angry neighbours forced side by side in this little house of God.

On the road back towards the Cafe Rumora, I realize that Povljana has no real centre but is configured like the aimless cracks in a wall, meandering among the houses then striking inevitably for the sea or country. A herd of sheep presses me to the side. One or two are wearing bells, and in the middle of the herd is a single black back. A tired shepherd wearing a Chicago Bulls cap is swearing steadily, whacking the stragglers with a branch.

Below the big main church, hanging from a fig tree, are two bloody sheep-skins turned inside-out. Someone might have a feast today, a roast on a wooden spit or a steel motored one, the easier and cooler way. I remember the roasts in the brick and steel barbecues outside all the roadhouses between Zagreb and the coast. While the pigs always looked happy, smiling and gradually tanning, the sheep seemed tortured like they were still alive or had suffered a prolonged death. In those days gypsies with copper pots and dancing muzzled bears would occupy a spot nearby the roadhouses and tourists would gather around the poor mangy animals, sometimes tossing coins into wicker baskets as payment for the show.

I pass the little cafe where I was dropped off earlier. Fifty metres down, a gravel alley turns left and leads to some houses nestled together, divided by stone walls and steel gates. Like everywhere else on the Dalmatian coast, the owners here have apartments and rooms to rent, though there are no signs outside reading "zimmer" or "camere" as there are in resorts like Rab or Dubrovnik. I choose a place with a big cement veranda and outside shower, paying 50 Kuna or 12 dollars for the night.

Rather than bathe inside I strip to my bathing suit and wash the salt off under the black tank. A day's summer sunshine provides around five minutes warm water, though I hardly need it on an evening as warm as this one. I'm alone so I dry off and change into a relatively clean pair of shorts, but when I turn around I see a very old woman dressed in black from kerchief to shoes like the women'ln Pag, leaning her elbows on the wall and watching me peacefully the way she might watch something familiar like chickens feeding, but yet with more interest than that. Her face looks like a dark brown saddle and her witch's nose hooks sharply towards her thin mouth. When she notices me noticing her she pretends to find something interesting to her right, then sighs and hobbles back into her yard. It's only when I gather my stuff that I see my bottle of Viljamovka, in the middle of the table like Wallace Stevens' jar in Tennessee.

Ten on a Saturday night at the Cafe Rumora, my supper of Cevapcici or paprika-spiced sausages finished and a half-litre Ozujsko beer pearling a tall glass, I sit back and stretch out my tired sunburned legs. A fat German couple and their toy poodle are the other guests. From the bar, Croatian singer Oliver's song about a seagull pours out into the crisp star-filled night. Sleep is starting to sedate me.

Two of the guys from the cafe this afternoon arrive, wearing sharply ironed white and black shirts but the old jeans and boots. Maybe 18 or 19, they have style and a taste for the outside world. They give me the impression of wanting to belong anywhere except Povljana, but while they can pretend on nights like this, they already have the look of playboys who'll be around in ten years doing the exact same thing.

The blonde girl arrives and sits between them. In a white sleeveless summer dress and a little makeup that makes her beautiful not cheap, she's really the one who doesn't belong in Povljana. Maybe her blonde curls in a world of dark-haired people, or the musical way she moves gives me that impression. But her giggling banter after a few sips of their Heinekens and the way one of them touches her familiarly on her side, his thumb trailing near her breast, is ordinary and depressing. For a second I feel that she's at some fork in the road I could pull her back from, if I wanted to or if she would let me.

The night envelops me as I walk down the street to the docks. A light wind is breathing through the pine trees and sending songs from a drinking party across the dark. I sit down on a stone bench and listen to the water clapping against the walls.

Out at sea a flickering light pinpoints a muttering engine on its way back. Whitish-green halos of parting rippling water float across the blackness. The engine slows and then stops and the boat whispers towards the dock.

No one seems to be at the helm of this ghostly vessel, the one frozen on the horizon earlier, but then the lights flooding the dark sea are extinguished and others above the hold are turned on and reveal two men in rubber boots standing over a small mountain of still wiggling and crawling fish and crabs. One of the men jumps onto the dock to secure the boat while the other pulls out some crates and starts sorting the catch. They work quickly and fearlessly, sticking their hands into the pile of pincers, throwing the inedible or too-small creatures over their shoulders into the water, where they land with quiet smacks. Sorted in no time the pile reveals surprises right to the floor - slithery eels, strangely armoured shell fish, and a little turtle the guys examine and then toss back. They load the crates in a parked truck and drive into the night.

Alone again I look across the bay, up at the million stars. The rocks at my feet must have been gathered here by some kids and I heave one out to hear the sound. Suddenly, the black water pulses gloriously with little lights as if the stars had fallen. For five minutes they continue until finally even the last persistent ones fade away. An appropriate sight on my last evening here, these plankton beautifully express the character of Povljana for me - a quiet place with humble secrets which flash at instants if you look closely enough. Tonight, Povljana will settle into memory and when I look again tomorrow I'll see a long hot string of road where more secrets await.

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