A Different Lifetime: Stepping Back in Time in the Former Yugoslavia (2 page)

I turned around, and
looked out towards the river, the beautiful wide River Tisa with its dark
blue-green flowing waters shrouded by the colours of autumn; nothing I had seen
in my approach to its banks could remove one iota of its beauty. It stretched
as far as the eye could see in either direction, its more distant reaches,
bordered by lines of trees; but here where it passed through Novaginja, there
were small boats tied to the near-side bank. We began to walk along the
esplanade in the direction of the school; Lenna directed my attention to the
large white building on our left. This was the local theatre, still managing to
survive, and staging productions several times a year. But the main focus of
the building was its large covered terrace that overlooked the river; the home
of the theatre café and bar, and a popular place for the elite of the community
to sit and drink on such a beautiful afternoon. While walking here, I was
introduced to the community’s other eminent doctor, the father of the one that
had just driven me from the airport, who was out for an afternoon walk.

Up ahead, my attention was
directed to some kind of stone monument that resembled several stone cogs
turning together on a single stone shaft; this I was told was a monument to the
Republic of Yugoslavia, with each cog representing a different province. Next
to this was some kind of small open-air amphitheatre, which like the cinema,
had now been reduced to dereliction. Below it on the lower esplanade was a
strip of man-made beach along with a wooden construction that housed a bar and
restaurant with a barbeque pit adjacent, but apparently this establishment did
not open at this time of year. Hereon, the walkway became a single path that
followed what appeared to be some kind of flood wall. Either side of the wall were
swings and other apparatus belonging to a children’s playground. But here, we
left the wall by a flight of steps that brought us to the ground in front of
the school.

The school was a small
converted house that occupied the corner of the street with its front door and
window facing toward the river. Inside the front door was a small reception
area; a door to the left led into the larger classroom where I would be
working. Up ahead and to the right was a small office and to the left was the
small classroom and bathroom. Out in the backyard, there were three large stray
dogs that Lenna had adopted. We stayed for a short period of time, mostly in
the office, so that Lenna could show me where to find the various text books
and Arkom could show me the computer: where I could find files I might need and
where I could save any files that I needed.

We left the school and
walked back toward the shops; this time along the road. By now it was evening;
we walked past the front of the theatre and through a small square that brought
us back to the park. We went into the grocer’s shop so that I could get some
basic supplies, and left with a somewhat persistent reminder from Lenna that
this would be where I would be buying my food. It was, however, necessary to
introduce me to the rival grocer’s which lay an equal distance in the opposite
direction from my apartment: Lenna’s cousin did not stock breakfast cereal;
however, I would later discover that it had become a regular addition to his
greengrocer’s. On arrival back at the apartment building, Arkom gave me my keys
to the apartment and the school, and I climbed up the many stairs, opened the
door, unpacked my bags, and went to sleep.

In the morning I awoke
startled, with a sense that I was being watched. I looked up from the bed to
find that several pigeons had lined themselves up on my windowsill and were now
peering through my window, observing me with some great measure of curiosity.
The bed/sofa was not too uncomfortable and I was able to sleep fairly well, but
the lack of curtains, as in no curtains whatsoever, at the window does allow
daylight to stream into the room at some very early hour; this disturbance of
sleep by the imposing light is then accentuated by the ringing of the nearby church
bells at some time that I imagine to be around five am – who on earth is being
summoned to church at this ungodly hour I cannot imagine. After getting out of
bed I made my way over to the window and peered out over masses of shabby
little red roofed houses that make up the town that is to be my home for the
next four months.

Looking out at my
surroundings, the reality of my situation now suddenly occurs to me!

“Why exactly am I here in
some obscure town in an obscure province of Yugoslavia?”

“Am I not totally alone?”

“What do I know about this
part of the world?”

“Nothing,” was the thought
that rushed to my mind!

“Oh well I am very close
to Romania (I wonder if I can see it from here?), and not ever so far from the
Hungarian border,” I reassured myself.

“Well I’m here for four
months as a temporary teacher,” I remembered. I came here to stand-in for one
of the owners of the local language school, Lenna, who is taking maternity
leave.

I am at the back of the
apartment building and consequently I am facing in the opposite direction from
the river. But I have a clear view for miles, to the edge of town and beyond.
Directly below me is a school playground full of children, not small children
but teenagers. To my right is the church tower housing the offending set of
bells, and the farthest landmark I can see is a large silo right on the
periphery of the town.

“On the positive side,
this is a whole new adventure,” I reminded myself.

“And this is the beginning
of a whole new lifetime.” One of the things that attracted me to Eastern Europe
was the possibility of travelling back in time – seeing how the European
continent had once looked – the east still preserving much of the ways of life
that existed prior to its sixty years of isolation from the west. The absence
of cars and the lack of pedestrians were all a part of this era.

My window has perhaps not
been cleaned for some time as the outer side of the glass is coated with what
looks like a combination of several years of rain and dust. There are some
cables hanging from the roof that are part of some kind of hoist that is
employed to raise furniture up to the various floors, and there are various
wires hanging indiscriminately outside across my line of vision. But looking
beyond these things and to my left, there is a large crumbling apartment block,
out of which, a man has just climbed and is balancing on the railings of a
patio three floors up, painting the wall.

“Rather him than me,” I
thought in amazement, thinking of the deathly consequences and preferring to
look away and straight ahead.

“An unrestricted way of
life, not complicated by modern laws and regulations, this is exactly how life
in the west must have been at the turn of the twentieth century.”

Beyond the school I could
see some more apartments; these are a brownish orange colour. It is now quiet
as the children have departed from the playground; their presence would often
be the only sign of life in the silence of the everyday verve of the town. Now,
starting to feel hungry, I stepped away from the window and made my way to the
kitchen; I ate my cereal, which I found to be immensely sweet, and so concluded
that it had probably been made with the community’s children in mind. But at
least it was cereal; and I always have cereal for breakfast.

“So just what am I doing
here?”

Well, I had just completed
college for the second time, this time with a Master’s degree, and now I had
four months to wait for the graduation and my entitlement to use the said
degree to enhance my fortunes. I had spent a year living on campus, large
amounts of the time had been spent in my room studying and writing, and the day
when I finally had to leave what had become home had been fast approaching. So
the question on my mind was:

“What shall I do now?”

I’d been too busy of late
to appreciate the finality of my impending situation. All I knew was that
suddenly virtually everyone that I knew was packing up and preparing to leave
to head off in various directions to different parts of the country or even
different parts of the world. Having absolutely no idea what lay ahead for me,
I had a talk with the university’s careers counsellor.

“Well as I’m sure you
know, teaching is the main career that you will be able to pursue,” he informed
me, “and a good way to get some experience is through teaching English as a
second language.”

This immediately seemed to
provide the solution to all of my impending problems: there would be a job,
somewhere to live, and it would provide the option to travel. I could travel to
anywhere in the world I wanted to really, and this would be a bonus, something
I would really enjoy.

So I registered with
several websites that cater for finding teaching jobs abroad and proceeded to
mail off some applications to faraway places where I thought I might like to
go. First of all, I got a reply from Italy to say that they had just filled the
position, but would like to keep my name on file for some possible opportunity
in the future. My next reply came with the offer of a job in the Czech Republic
with a contract for six or twelve months. Perhaps a little too long, and the
obvious downside to this offer was no accommodation; I would have to find my
own apartment in Prague as accommodation would only be provided at times when I
would be sent away to work in the east of the country. Then the reply came from
Novaginja: the whole prospect sounded remarkably pleasant, from the location to
the people themselves, and it would include my own apartment! So that is why I
am now sitting at my dining table in my tiny kitchen, eating my first
breakfast.

Arkom had given me a
mobile phone before leaving yesterday evening. He purchased some minutes at one
of the kiosks in the town and informed me that I would have to pay for further
minutes that I used, and to:

“Remember to charge it
often as the battery is not very good.”

Well, that phone has just
started to ring. It’s Arkom calling me:

 “Lenna has just had the
baby, and can you manage on your own at the school today?”

“Yes, everything will be
fine,” I reply, “I have everything organized and ready for tonight.” Well,
perhaps a little exaggerated, but I was just about to make my way over to the
school to get everything prepared, and I felt sure that I would be able to
handle the situation.

It was now a little after
ten and I started out for the school; it was the first time for what was to
become my regular morning walk. Once inside the school, I prepared for the
coming evening’s three classes as I would do every weekday morning throughout
my stay.

Stepping into the office,
I am confronted with my first task: how to plug in the computer. There are
multiple cables trailing around the floor and walls of the office, and I traced
the ones leading from the computer to a point where they met up in a huge
tangle behind the electric fire. I picked up the plug and connected the
multiple outlets to the one electrical socket mounted on the wall. Voila! The
computer fired up at the first pressing of the ‘on’ button. But how to connect
the printer, well that was another matter; I tried in vain to follow the
cables, looking for one that was yet to be connected to that single outlet.
After a few minutes I noticed an unplugged cable hanging from the wall close to
another electrical socket on the far side of the room: could this be it? I
plugged in this lonely cable and returned to the computer, I pressed the
printer’s on button, and sure enough, I had power. I printed some warm-up
activities that I thought would be useful, grabbed the various books and tapes
that I would need, and proceeded to lay out some plans for what I thought I
might do that evening. When I had finished, I made my way to the classroom,
opened the blinds to let in some light and deposited everything on my desk. I
checked the time and wound the pocket watch that lay on the desk expressly for
the purpose of timing the lessons.

It’s a Russian pocket
watch,” Arkom had made a point of saying when he had shown me the classroom
yesterday evening. “A Russian military pocket watch.”

I believe these
revelations were intended more to introduce an object to me that I would
certainly have never seen before rather than to suggest that being of Russian
manufacture the watch was perhaps something special. Anyway, with the watch
prepared and books laid out ready, I picked up my jacket and headed for the
door.

Once outside, I headed for
the river, began walking along the esplanade and sat looking at the water, as
would become my customary daily activity after leaving the school. Although it
is now the second week of October, the weather is still beautiful: bright
sunshine and a temperature that make it pleasurable to sit outside. After some
time I decided I should make my way back to the apartment for dinner; I
considered that it would be a good idea to eat dinner during the afternoon as I
would be leaving again at four o’ clock and would remain out for the entire
evening.

While climbing the many
flights of stairs leading to my door, I began to observe the shoddy standards
of the local electrical and telephone wiring. Electrical cables appeared to be
suspended untidily for the walls on every landing, and there were sometimes
open junction boxes where multi-coloured phone cables were draped. And the
stair lighting was something to experience: there were switches on every floor,
but all controlled by a push-button timer; if you switched on the stair lights
when entering the building they would remain on until just after you reached
your door. However, if when arriving back at the building you discovered that
the stair lights had already been illuminated, it would be highly unlikely that
they would remain on for the duration of your climb. I have many times found
myself in total darkness, negotiating an unspecified number of stairs to reach
the next landing in order to grope around for the light switch. But I cheerily
began to tell myself that things were functional, and though primitive in
design to their western counterparts, they served their purpose.

Primitive but functional
is the philosophy I have also applied to the appliances in my apartment, after
several times scolding my hands with the water emanating from the cold tap;
both the kitchen taps and the bathroom taps often find themselves in this
confused state. The bathroom fittings are general fairly primitive. The toilet
is not securely bolted to the floor, though keeping this problem in mind has so
far prevented it from being tipped over. The wash-basin is fitted with a large
mixer tap, obviously designed for a larger kitchen sink, whose spout is so
long, that it is only just able to deliver a supply of water to the inside of
the basin. The walls are covered from floor to ceiling with white tiles that
would look at home in a hospital or boiler room, and there are stop taps
positioned at various point around the room; while hanging above the toilet is
a taped-up electrical cable whose purpose for being there seems long forgotten.
The bath is old and large and white and is filled by a mixer tap mounted
mid-way along the side; attached to it is some primitive form of shower – a
flexible pipe with a something that resembles a small shower head at the end.
The water itself has some measure of difficulty in finding its way to the top
floor of the building; so consequently, the shower like contraption delivers
some moderate trickle of water provided that you don’t hold it higher than your
knees. The water itself emanates from the taps in the form of a dark brown
liquid, and not something that I would care to drink. I remember on the journey
here, the doctor telling me not to drink the water:

“There is something in the
soil here that gets into the water and will make you ill if you drink it too
much,” he had said.

Though looking at the
water now, I’m wondering if they have mistakenly connected me to the sewer
system rather than the water supply.

The living room is
adequate, though I have great difficulty in raising and lowering the bed /sofa
because the mechanism is broken. The central heating is permanently turned off
because again, the water has a measure of difficulty in making its way to the
top of the building, and thus into my radiators. Also, Arkom has told me that
previously their teachers have run up too big a bill on heating and they have
been left with large bills unpaid. I do, however, have an electric fire, should
I ever find it cold here. On the wall behind the fire and television is a floor
to ceiling mural of a lake with its trees draped in the colours of autumn.
Unfortunately, it is painfully obvious that the colour printing used in the
various panels of the giant photograph does not match, as the colours of the
leaves and the lake in the centre panel are drab compared with those in the
panels on the left and right of the mural. As I have mentioned, there are two
parallel cables passing the outside of my window, the purpose of which I know
not; and the aerial cable for the television passes through a hole that has been
drilled through the centre of the window frame, and then hangs loosely across
the outside before disappearing in the direction of the roof. But everything in
the apartment is, dare I say, functional even though its appearance is perhaps
not desirable to those used to the conveniences of the twenty-first century.
There is generally much clutter around the apartment, the shelves and cupboards
being full of who knows what, and whatever flat surfaces there are to be found
have been invaded by a great number of bowls and ornaments. But I have set to
work clearing the unsightly tablecloths from the coffee table and kitchen
table, cleared the top of the fridge and stowed many bowls and ashtrays away in
the various cupboards.