The Fourth Estate (14 page)

With Mari’s
constant attention, Lubji recovered quickly, and was soon able to join his
rescuers round the fire in the evening. As the days turned into weeks, he not
only began to fill his suit again, but started letting out the notches on his
belt.

One evening,
after he had returned from hunting with Rudi, Lubji told his host that it would
not be long before he had to leave. I must find a port, and get as far away
from the Germans as possible,” he explained.

Rudi nodded as
they sat round the fire, sharing a rabbit. Neither of them saw the look of
sadness that came into Mari’s eyes.

When Lubji
returned to the caravan that night, he found Mari waiting for him. He climbed
up to join her and tried to explain that as his wound had nearly healed, he no
longer required her help to undress. She smiled and began to remove his shirt
gently from his shoulder, taking off the bandages and cleaning the wound. She
looked in her canvas bag, frowned, hesitated for a moment, and started to tear
her dress, using the material to rebandage his shoulder.

Lubji just
stared at Mari’s long brown legs as she slowly ran her fingers down his chest
to the top of his trousers. She smiled at him and began to undo the buttons. He
placed a cold hand on her thigh, and turned scarlet as she lifted up her dress
to reveal that she was wearing nothing underneath.

Mari waited
expectantly for him to move his hand, but he continued to stare. She leaned
forward and pulled off his pants, then climbed across him and lowered herself
gently onto him. He remained as still as he had when felled by the bullet,
until she began to move slowly up and down, her head tossed back. She took his
other hand and placed it inside the top of her dress, shuddering when he first
touched her warm breast. He just left it there, still not moving, even though
her rhythm became faster and faster.

Just when he
wanted to shout out, he quickly pulled her down, kissing her roughly on the
lips. A few seconds later he lay back exhausted, wondering if he had hurt her,
until he opened his eyes and saw the expression on her face. She sank on his
shoulder, rolled onto one side and fell into a deep sleep.

He lay awake,
thinking that he might have died without ever having experienced such pleasure.
A few hours passed before he woke her. This time he didn’t remain motionless,
his hands continually discovering different parts of her body, and he found
that he enjoyed the experience even more the second time. Then they both slept.

When the
caravans moved on the next day, Rudi told Lubji that during the night they had
crossed yet another border, and were now in Yugoslavia.

“And what is the
name of those hills covered in snow?” asked Lubji.

“From this
distance they may look like hills,” said Rudi, “but they are the treacherous
Dinaric Mountains. My caravans cannot hope to make it across them to the
coast.” For some time he didn’t speak, then he added, “But a determined man
just might.”

They traveled on
for three more days, resting only for a few hours each night, avoiding towns
and villages, until they finally came to the foot of the mountains.

That night,
Lubji lay awake as Mari slept on his shoulder. He began to think about his new
life and the happiness he had experienced during the past few weeks, wondering
if he really wanted to leave the little band and be on his own again. But he
decided that if he were ever to escape the wrath of the Germans, he must
somehow reach the other side of those mountains and find a boat to take him as
far away as possible. The next morning he dressed long before Mari woke. After
breakfast he walked around the camp, shaking hands and bidding farewell to
every one of his compatriots, ending with Rudi.

Mari waited
until he returned to her caravan. He leaned forward, took her in his arms and
kissed her for the last time. She clung to him long after his arms had fallen
to his side. After she had finally released him, she passed over a large bundle
of food. He smiled and then walked quickly away from the camp toward the foot
of the mountains. Although he could hear her following for the first few paces,
he never once looked back.

Lubji traveled
on and on up into the mountains until it was too dark to see even a pace in
front of him. He selected a large rock to shelter him from the worst of the
bitter wind, but even huddled up he still nearly froze.

He spent a
sleepless night eating Mari’s food and thinking about the warmth of her body.

As soon as the
sun came up he was on the move again, rarely stopping for more than a few
moments. At nightfall he wondered if the harsh, cold wind would freeze him to
death while he was asleep. But he woke each morning with the sun shining in his
eyes.

By the end of
the third day he had no food left, and could see nothing but mountains in every
direction he looked. He began to wonder why he had ever left Rudi and his
little gypsy band.

On the fourth
morning he could barely put one foot in front of the other: perhaps starvation
would achieve what the Germans had failed to do. By the evening of the fifth
day he was just wandering aimlessly forward, almost indifferent to his fate,
when he thought he saw smoke rising in the distance. But he had to freeze for
another night before flickering lights confirmed the testimony of his eyes. For
there in front of him lay a village and, beyond that, his first sight of the
sea.

Coming down the
mountains might have been quicker than climbing them, but it was no less
treacherous. He fell several times, and failed to reach the flat, green plains
before sunset, by which time the moon was darting in and out between the
clouds, fitfully lighting his slow progress, Most of the lamps in the little
houses had already been blown out by the time he reached the edge of the
village, but he hobbled on, hoping he would find someone who was still awake.
When he reached the first house, which looked as if it was part of a small
farm, he considered knocking on the door, but as there were no lights to be
seen he decided against it. He was waiting for the moon to reappear from behind
a cloud when his eyes made out a barn on the far side of the yard. He slowly
made his way toward the ramshackle building. Stray chickens squawked as they
jumped out of his path, and he nearly walked into a black cow which had no
intention of moving for the stranger. The door of the barn was half open.

He crept inside,
collapsed onto the straw and fell into a deep sleep.

When Lubji woke
the next morning he found he couldn’t move his neck it was pinned firmly to the
ground. He thought for a moment that he must be back in jail, until he opened
his eyes and stared up at a massive figure towering above him. The man was
attached to a long pitchfork, which turned out to be the reason why he couldn’t
move.

The farmer
shouted some words in yet another language. Lubji was only relieved that it
wasn’t German. He raised his eyes to heaven and thanked his tutors for the
breadth of his education. Lubji told the man on the end of the pitchfork that
he had come over the mountains after escaping from the Germans. The farmer
looked incredulous, until he had examined the bullet scar on Lubji’s shoulder.
His father had owned the farm before him, and he had never told him of anyone
crossing those mountains.

He led Lubji
back to the farmhouse, keeping the pitchfork firmly in his hand. Over a
breakfast of bacon and eggs, and thick slabs of bread supplied by the farmer’s
wife, Lubji told them, more with hand gestures than words, what he had been
through during the past few months. The farmer’s wife looked sympathetic and
kept filling his empty plate. The farmer said little, and still looked doubtful.

When Lubji came
to the end of his tale, the farmer warned him that despite the brave words of
Tito, the partisan leader, he didn’t think it would be long before the Germans
would invade Yugoslavia. Lubji began to wonder if any country on earth was safe
from the ambitions of the Fuhrer. Perhaps he would have to spend the rest of
his life just running away from him.

1 must get to
the coast,” he said. ‘Then if I could get on a boat and cross the ocean...”

“it doesn’t
matter where you go,” said the farmer, “as long as it’s as far away-from this
war as possible.” He dug his teeth into an apple. “if they ever catch up with
you again, they won’t let you escape a second time. Find yourself a ship – any
ship. Go to America, Mexico, the West Indies, even Africa,” said the farmer.

“How do I reach
the nearest port?”

“Dubrovnik is
two hundred kilometers south-east of us,” said the farmer, lighting up a pipe.
“Mere you will find many ships only too happy to sail away from this war.”

“I must leave at
once,” said Lubji, jumping up.

“Don’t be in
such a hurry, young man,” said the farmer, puffing away. “The Germans won’t be
crossing those mountains for some time yet.” Lubji sat back down, and the
farmer’s wife cut the crust off a second loaf and covered it in dripping, placing
it on the table in front of him.

There was only a
pile of crumbs left on his plate when Lubji eventually rose from the table and
followed the farmer out of the kitchen. When he reached the door, the farmer’s
wife loaded him down with apples, cheese and more bread, before he jumped onto
the back of her husband’s tractor and was taken to the edge of the village. The
fanner eventually left him by the side of a road that he assured him led to the
coast.

Lubji walked
along the road, sticking his thumb in the air whenever he saw a vehicle
approaching. But for the first two hours every one of them, however fast or
slow, simply ignored him. It was quite late in the afternoon when a battered
old Tatra came to a halt a few yards ahead of him.

He ran up to the
driver’s side as the window was being wound down.

“Where are you
going?” asked the driver.

“Dubrovnik,”
said Lubji, with a smile. The driver shrugged, wound up the window and drove
off without another word.

Several
tractors, two cars and a lorry passed him before another car stopped, and to
the same question Lubji gave the same answer.

“I’m not going
that far,” came back the reply, “but I could take you part of the way.”

One car, two
lorries, three horse-drawn carts and the pillion of a motorcycle completed the
three-day journey to Dubrovnik. By that time Lubji had devoured all the food
the farmer’s wife had supplied, and had gathered what knowledge he could on how
to go about finding a ship in Dubrovnik that might help him to escape from the
Germans.

Once he had been
dropped on the outskirts of the busy port, it only took a few minutes to
discover that the farmer’s worst fears had been accurate: everywhere he turned
he could see citizens preparing for a German invasion. Lubji had no intention
of waiting around to greet them a second time as they goose-stepped their way
down the streets of yet another foreign town. This was one city he didn’t
intend to be caught asleep in.

Acting on the
farmer’s advice, he made his way to the docks. Once he had reached the quayside
he spent the next couple of hours walking up and down, trying to work out which
ships had come from which ports and where they were bound. He shortlisted three
likely vessels, but had no way of knowing when they might be sailing or where
they were destined for. He continued to hang around on the quayside. Whenever
he spotted anyone in uniform he would quickly disappear into the shadows of one
of the many alleys that ran alongside the dock, and once even into a packed
bar, despite the fact he had no money.

He slipped into
a seat in the farthest corner of the dingy tavern, hoping that no one would
notice him, and began to eavesdrop on conversations taking place in different
languages at the tables around him. He picked up information on where you could
buy a woman, who was paying the best rate for stokers, even where you could get
yourself a tattoo of Neptune at a cut price; but among the noisy banter, he
also discovered that the next boat due to weigh anchor was the Arridin, which
would cast off the moment it had finished loading a cargo of wheat. But he
couldn’t find out where it was bound for.

One of the
deckhands kept repeating the word “Egypt.” Lubji’s first thought was of Moses
and the Promised Land.

He slipped out
of the bar and back onto the quayside. This time he checked each ship carefully
until he came to a group of men loading sacks into the hold of a small cargo
steamer that bore the name Arridin on its bow. Lubji studied the flag hanging
limply from the ship’s mast. There was no wind, so he couldn’t be sure where
she was registered. But he was certain of one thing: the flag wasn’t a
swastika.

Lubji stood to
one side and watched as the men humped sacks onto their shoulders, carried them
up the gangplank and then dropped them into a hole in the middle of the deck. A
foreman stood at the top of the gangplank, making a tick on a clipboard as each
load passed him. Every few moments a gap in the line would appear as one of the
men returned down the gangplank at a different pace. Lubji waited patiently for
the exact moment when he could join the line without being noticed. He ambled
forward, pretending to be passing by, then suddenly bent down, threw one of the
sacks over his left shoulder and walked toward the ship, hiding his face behind
the sack from the man at the top of the gangplank.