Island of Lightning (16 page)

In my Heritage Coast year, Poetry Wales Press was based at Green Hollows Cottage, the home of Dannie and Joan Abse in Ogmore by Sea, half a mile away. For this reader at least, the books the press was then issuing remain central to my experience of those times. (Mass unemployment, the Miners' Strike, the core years of Mrs Thatcher). It was a wet summer in 1985. The schemies played cards in their hutch under the evergreen oaks. Heritage hung sodden around them.

I was thinking about that period on June 13th this year when Dannie and Joan Abse visited the Grand Pavilion in Porthcawl. They had planned a joint reading. Dannie had resigned from the Seren editorial board, a quarter century being enough committee work for anyone. For the event he chose poems of Ogmore and the Heritage Coast, fruitful and inexhaustible subjects.

As he and Joan read, I looked at the sea, visible through the Pavilion windows. It was the bluest it had been all year, the affirmative blue of a sea that is rarely blue. The tide was receding. And although it was concealed from view, something was thrusting from the waves.

Dannie Abse knew what it was. He read:

…here, this mellow evening,

on these high cliffs I look down

to read the unrolling

holy scrolls of the sea.

He read:

Has the past always a future?

He read:

The tide is out.

And from the reeled-

in sea – not from

the human mind's vexed fathoms –

the eternal, murderous,

fanged Tusker Rock is revealed.

And there lay that stark atoll. Which I observe now and to which I pledged particular regard when I worked on this beach for Mrs Thatcher's shilling. It will always be with us. Because in every summer sea as on every summer evening the reef must reveal itself.

Quotations from ‘New Selected Poems' (Hutchinson, 2009) by Dannie Abse.

The Way They See It At Buba's

My brother, you know, is one of the conductors at the Viennese opera.

Wonderful, I say.

Yes. For many years. We should toast him.

The barman pours us all a glass. One for himself, one for me, and one for my new friend, the Slovene.

It is made of grass, says my friend.

I expect he means it's flavoured with herbs. A kind of liquorice. Maybe aniseed. Because everywhere I go in this country, the bottles are produced and the spirits, aromatic and corrosive, are poured. Such rituals are vital. Local pride is at stake. Usually, if you are drinking together it means you are not fighting. So toasts are important.

Yes, says my friend, his dog curled at his feet. I can speak English. And I can understand Croatian. But Croats have no chance with Slovenian. No-one else here will understand us. Now, what is it you are looking for?

The best way to arrive in Zagreb is by train. From the west the railway follows the gorge of the Sava, the river running green between limestone walls. But emerging from the railway station I found that martial law prevailed. There were police and soldiers everywhere. Roads were blocked, entrance forbidden to state buildings, flights delayed. Of course, a European Union delegation had arrived. This is what always happens when such a delegation arrives in a European capital. The city freezes like a computer. Our leaders were in Zagreb to negotiate Croatian membership, now a distinct possibility.

Obstacles to this are being overcome. Ante Gotovina's arrest late in 2005 at a Malaga restaurant and his speedy transportation to The Hague, where he will answer War Crimes Commission charges of ethnic cleansing and mass murder, has done a great deal to smooth the way for speedy admission. Many Western politicians view Croatian membership as crucial. Usually, the reasons given for this are bland, such as welcoming Croatia to the European family. Heard less frequently is the fear that fascism remains a latent political force in Croatia and that only EU membership will keep it reined in.

The Slovene stared at me hard. I could see he had decided to talk. And yes, he was correct. Of course I was looking for something. No-one visits Bistro Buba by mistake. Hidden away in its courtyard, Buba's is deliberately unprepossessing. I had come across the bar two years previously. Now, whenever I visit Zagreb, I find myself duty-bound to discover whether it's still there. But nothing seems to alter. The sink of unwashed crocks and the overflowing ashtrays are permanent fixtures. And in the gloom of the bistro, above the red and white check plastic tablecloths, the television will be on with a subtitled film.

British war films are popular in Croatia. I've seen Jack Hawkins ride
The Cruel Sea
in Buba's, the desert survivors wipe the froth from their lips in
Ice Cold in Alex
. Once there was a girl behind the counter, fineboned and palefaced, fragile in that proletarian twilight. She had opened my bottle of Karlovacko and smiled. But although I have looked, I have never glimpsed her again.

The Slovene shrugged. Bistro Buba, he said, is the last bar of its kind in central Zagreb. Everything around us changes. Everything costs more. Except here. Only Buba stays the same. I hope it always will.

For those who might wish to explore modern Croatian culture via the dangerous door marked
pivo
, this is a good place to start. Around the corner, The Old Pharmacy has opened, with its international lagers and perplexing English memorabilia. The Old Pharmacy is the new Europe, Buba and its Bubarians the unreconstructed continent. But my friend wanted to apologise.

Slovenia is already in the EU, he laughed. These Croats can't understand it. Maybe I can't. But the EU will want this country in sooner than later. Considering the past.

Then he told me what had occurred a few weeks previously. A crowd of thousands had gathered in Knin to mark the anniversary of the destruction of the breakaway Serb republic of Krajina in 1995. This had been set up in June 1991, the same time that Croatia and Slovenia formally declared independence from the Yugoslavian federation.

Croatia's ‘Operation Storm', led by amongst others, General Ante Gotavina, had ‘cleansed' Krajina, resulting in 300,000 refugees leaving the area. The tenth anniversary was marked by the Croatian Prime Minister, Ivo Sanadar, who described it as ‘magnificent' and liberating. Many in the crowd had chanted anti-Roma slogans, for the gypsy situation in the new republics remains precarious. Then they had changed the cry to one of ‘Ante, Ante', not only to mark General Gotavina's contribution, but as a tribute to the Second World War dictator, Ante Pavelic.

It is impossible to discuss Croatian fascism without reference to Ante Pavelic, premier of the ‘independent state of Croatia' set up by the Nazis, 1941-45. Pavelic's territory consisted of two constituent parts – Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina, with a total population of 6.3 million. Of these, 3.3 million were Croats, almost all Catholic. There were 1.9 million Serbs, about 700,000 Muslims, 40,000 Jews and 30,000 Roma.

Although one of the great mass murderers of the Second World War, Ante Pavelic's name is hardly known in the UK. Yet he and his ‘Ustasa' (Croatian Nazis) were responsible for the deaths of half a million Serbs and over one hundred thousand Jews and Gypsies. After the war, Pavelic was sheltered by the Vatican and employed by the Perons in Argentina. Indeed, Juan Peron issued over thirty thousand Argentine visas to Croats, not discriminating between profascists and anti-communists, all of whom were fleeing Tito's post-1945 dictatorship. Eventually, Pavelic found a home in Franco's Spain, where he died in 1959.

Pavelic's plan was to exterminate a third of the Serbian population in Croatia, expel another third, and convert the remainder to Catholicism. Modern Croatian fascists, who feel their country's newly independent status is directly inspired by that wartime ‘Independent State of Croatia' (Nazi puppet regime that it was) make a mystical relic of Pavelic's remains. His body is thought to rest at a secret location in Madrid. The return of the corpse of the ‘Poglavnik' (supreme leader or Fuhrer) to Zagreb, with the possibility that Pavelic might lie there in state, is one of the great fascist dreams of Croatia.

Such mythification is in keeping with its powerfully dogmatic Catholicism that sets great stock on shrines and the bones of native saints. Indeed, the Croatian church, and especially the Franciscans, is inextricably linked with Croatian Nazidom. During the Ustasa reign of terror under Pavelic, many Serbs were forced to convert to Catholicism. These are deemed the lucky ones. If you know where to look, there are signs all over the country that Pavelik is still venerated by some Croats.

Of course, not all Croats were Fascists. Thousands joined Tito's partisans, while others were persecuted by Serbian Chetniks. It seemed that to oppose fascism, all non-fascists had to ally themselves with the communists, or in the south of Croatia, with the Serbian resistance.

But the crimes of the Ustasa tainted the nation. Thus during the Yugoslavian warfare of the early 1990s, it was normal for many Serbs to deem Croatia as ‘fascist'. The Croatian leader and then President, Franjo Tudjman, was routinely blamed for rehabilitating the reputations and honouring the names of Ustasa members. He was also accused of trying to conceal evidence of the existence of the concentration camp at Jasenovac, set up by the Ustasa. This was in fact, a linkage of five individual camps located on the River Sava, sixty-five miles south of Zagreb. Estimates of numbers of Serbs, Jews, Roma, Muslims and non-Catholics murdered at Jasenovac range from 50,000 to nearly 100,000. Tudjman was also blamed by the Americans for airbrushing Croatia's World War Two record. For example, he changed the name of the ‘Victims of Fascism Square' to ‘the Square of the Great Croatian People'.

Franjo Tudjman, of the Croatian Democratic Union, was elected Croatian leader in the country's first ever free elections in April 1990. It took only eight months for a new Croatian constitution to be drafted, relegating the status of the 600,000 Serbs within Croatia to that of ‘national minority' but without specified ‘minority' rights. Thus the Serb state of ‘Krajina' had been proclaimed. As I have noted, five years after the death of Tudjman, the current Croatian prime minister publicly gloated at its downfall.

When in Zagreb my first call is always the Dolac market. To make sure it is still there. This has almost become a duty. I knew I was late but some stalls were open. The familiar headscarved women were selling whey and cheese for frying; tables were spread with the yellow beans that I grow myself at home. But what was more important, the old woman was there in her usual position.

The last time I had seen her she was offering an apronful of chestnuts for sale. Today, it was rose hips. On her table were three branches of rose hips fatter than cherries. I drew closer. At least they looked like hips. But perhaps they were haws. Weren't haws a darker red? Maybe she had torn hawthorn twigs from a bush. No, they were hips, and I remembered at school splitting hips with my thumbnail to find the hairy seeds. Hips made itching powder to put down friends' backs. How we wriggled, the itchy eggs under our collars.

To the dog! ordered the Slovene.

Once again the barman filled our glasses with liquid from an unmarked bottle.

Never wake the dog, I suggested.

Oh no, he said. No, no. Unless you want it to bark. You see, the Croats have to be seen to be renouncing old ways. But it is hard. And it is very complicated. So it's best not to ask questions. Best never to ask.

I knew that soon after my departure, there would be an ‘Anti-Fascism Day' proclaimed on November 9, the anniversary of ‘Cristalnacht'. A great show would be made of erasing the graffiti endorsing Gotovina and Pavelic that disfigured public places. There would be many gatherings, including an anti-fascist rally at a mass grave in Kucibreg.

Before the Balkan war, Croatia's population was 12% Serb. Today that figure is less than 5%. Although there are new laws that stipulate refugee Serbs must be allowed to return to their original Croatian homes, they face major bureaucratic barriers. As do other minorities. For instance, Muslims today make up only slightly more than 1% of the population.

I never thought of Muslims until the war, says my friend at Buba's. I never met them in Slovenia.

What the Slovene means is the first Iraq War, and Operation Desert Storm. This televised conflict was dripfed into the bistro like everywhere else in the world.

But if anything changes this country it will be tourism. Croatia is now one of the world's most aggressively marketed tourist destinations. This is especially noticeable in the US, where the Adriatic regions are heavily promoted, and has the effect of confirming the region of Istria – long counter claimed as part of Italy – as integral to the Croatian state. At the same time, the sudden invasion of Italian, German and British second home owners is unwelcome to many Croats, as it pushes property values to heights considered absurd by locals. These days, tourism is responsible for over 15% of Croatia's GDP, and the figure will grow.

I was relieved to see again the old woman of the Dolac. In reality, she is a peasant from the fields, bent and weather-beaten. But for me she is a Croatian symbol, and has stood in the market throughout her life, enduring dictatorship and war and the desperate jubilations of the Balkan crack-up. She knows the name of Pavelic, might have glimpsed him when a girl, and understands that some of her contemporaries still honour him. Tito she learned to love or loathe under her chestnut tree. Tudjman, Croatian leader after 1990, probably appealed. He possessed a sinisterly luminous political gift for conjuring national atavism.

Yes, there she stood in her corner of the square, and perhaps she will stand there to see Croatia become part of the European Union. I looked round the Dolac. All seemed well. They had packed up in the fish market next door and the sinks were being emptied. The Adriatic shoals with their Venetian names had vanished until tomorrow. A man was tipping ice out of a barrel and its smoke was rising, wraith-like, out of the drains.