Fly-Fishing the 41st (15 page)

 

It rained all the next morning as we broke camp and all the way into Montenegro. We were descending to the Mediterranean and Johannes conserved gas by keeping his foot off the accelerator as we coasted down hills. We stopped on the banks of the Morača River to eat some canned meats and a dried sausage that Ida had brought from Austria. It was a dramatic river valley with mountains on both banks, the river forming deep pools in narrow canyons. We joked there, eating and staring into the water, about how we had camped covertly in the field. For some reason it seemed to amuse us.

That afternoon Johannes drove us all the way to the coast to the town of Kotor, built on a well-protected harbor nestled in a bowl-shaped valley. It was a beautiful town and the kind of place you'd want to spend a week or two, but Johannes was determined to get out of Serbia and Montenegro. We were near a border crossing into Croatia but people in town told us it was blocked. Everything had changed, they said, since the war, they hadn't bothered to travel out of the country for several years.

We tried the crossing; it was near the town of Igalo. But the police there denied our entry into Croatia. So we drove on, to a small road that led to a crossing at the border with Bosnia. The border guards there were more amiable. They spoke English, so when they asked for money I was the one who negotiated how much we would give them in American dollars.

“Prosek,” the man said, looking at my passport. He smiled; the name seemed to please him, and he repeated it. He took an interest in it. “Where is your name from?” he said.

“My family is Czech,” I said.

“I was thinking you were Czech,” he said, “though you know Prosek is an old Serbian word. It means ‘cutting through,' like a river through a gorge. There are several river gorges I know called Prosek. Be careful on the road ahead,” he said, stamping our passports. “Don't stray from the road too far, there are many mines.”

Across the border there was a noticeable difference in the health of the roads and villages. Ahead of us an entire section of asphalt had been blown out and a charred tank sat there covered in graffiti. Had we not been in the Land Rover it would have been difficult to cross. In fields beside the road were numerous small signs with the word “mine” written on them in capital letters. “The threat of mines is serious,” Johannes said, pointing out the signs to me. He and Ida looked as nervous as I felt.

Villages ahead of us were completely destroyed and where homes were not leveled their roofs had been blown off, making them uninhabitable. The land in places looked like it had been torched, the vestiges of tall trees were black and rows of bushes a sienna brown. Portions of stone walls had been blown out, holes blown clear through stone churches, power lines lay on the ground, house chimneys stood like monuments to the events that exposed them. Most likely these abandoned villages had been occupied by Muslims or other non-Serbs and were destroyed by the Serbian military, the inhabitants either killed, put in camps, or forced to go elsewhere.

Johannes looked ahead only and did not turn to see any of the devastation for a second time. I could not help occasionally turning my head.

As twilight grew closer our, gas supply emptied. Johannes seemed shaken, and was more eager than ever to find a border crossing into Croatia. I stared at him and tried to find comfort in his
determined face and the unshaven reddish hair that had grown up around his mustache.

We planned to cross in the town of Metkovi ´ c, but getting there proved difficult. We came to blown-out bridges, and were forced to take small side roads that were not on our map, where grass grew through the asphalt. We passed a charred vineyard, the burned lattice standing like a field of crosses.

There were certain precautions Johannes had taken that I had taken for granted. I realized this when the sun set, and Johannes said, “I prefer not to drive at night.” It was the first time on the trip that we were driving in the dark. A car passed us without headlights. “Idiot,” Johannes yelled.

We had very little gas left but Johannes was optimistic that we would make the border. He told me that we were nearing territory that was familiar to him, a good trout river called the Buna, but he had not been there since the wars had begun in Yugoslavia eight years before. He stopped at a campground where he and Ida had once stayed, but the entrance was chained off, marked by a sign with a skull and crossbones and the word “mine.”

Farther down the road and close to the Neretva River we saw lights flashing and heard loud music playing. Young people were drinking and dancing at an outdoor bar. They were the first people we saw enjoying themselves since we'd entered former Yugoslavia. Shortly after passing the bar we crossed the border into Croatia.

 

After a good sleep on a firm bed at a hotel in Metkovi ´ c, our currency and credit cards valid again, I felt refreshed.

Over an egg-and-ham breakfast we discussed our options for the next several days. Johannes had to return to work but we had at least two full days to fish. It was Friday, after all, and he might as well return to work at the beginning of the week, on a Monday.

We decided to return to Bosnia that morning. Johannes said I must see and fish a beautiful stream called the Buna that tumbled
full force out of a cave. He and Ida knew the owner of a café near the source of the stream, but alas, when we arrived, the café had been destroyed. The trout, however, were abundant, more so, Johannes said, than the last time he had been there, before the war began.

The trout I caught there with my fly rod on small caddis larvae imitations were a peculiar species unique to the Balkans that Johannes called the softmouth trout,
Salmothymus obtusirostris.
Their mouths were smaller than the typical trout and the upper jaw extended over the lower, suggesting an evolutionary preference for feeding on the bottom. They were beautiful fish, slightly golden with red and black spots.

The most destruction we witnessed was on the next stretch of road, as we returned through the city of Mostar to the Croatian coast. Mostar was an old Yugoslav city on the Neretva River, downstream of where the Buna flowed into it. Not a building I could see had been left unmarked by artillery fire. Empty shells from all manner of fire littered the gutters in the streets. It was in complete ruin. Ancient and delicately arching stone bridges over the river had been smashed at their peaks. But here, more than in any village I had seen, the people were active, rebuilding, planting flowers, laughing and smiling as if they had not noticed what happened to their town. “It is remarkable,” Ida observed, after days of relative silence.

 

Eight years previous, before the war had begun, Johannes and Ida made regular trips in the summer to a small inn on the Adriatic coast run by an elderly couple who spoke German. Johannes and Ida were happy when we arrived in the old fishing village of Seline to find the couple alive and still running the inn. Only the wife remembered them and her German. She explained that her husband had forgotten his German and most other things after years of hiding in the basement during the war.

Through a sense of duty, the old man sat Johannes, Ida, and me down at a table on a small terrace. I took deep breaths of the air, fra
grant with sea smells. The wife brought us each a beer and a salad of fresh lettuce and tomatoes, she said, from her garden.

The old woman served us a whole grilled mackerel on a platter and some grilled calamari. Then she brought out several clear unlabeled bottles filled with grappa. Time passed, different bottles were drunk from and toasts made. We drank out of a common sense of relief; to be near home, to be in a place where we felt safe. I hadn't realized how much I'd drank until I stood up to use the head and dizzily tumbled back into my chair. Ida was drunk too and suddenly lashed out at Johannes.

“Bah, Hannes. You don't care about anyone! How many years of begging did it take before you bought Mariela a horse? And do you buy me anything? We don't even see each other. When you get home from work I leave for work. You don't even sleep at the same time I do.” She lit a cigarette and waved it at him. “You are here with me now, but you're not here.” She waved her cigarette again to get his attention. “Where are you?”

Life was not only trout for Johannes, I knew, though I consoled Ida, for she was very unhappy with him.

He did not attempt to disagree with what she said; it was partly true. He only grinned, shook his head, and took a sip of grappa. Then he lit a cigarette and offered me one.

“
Truchas son la locura de el,
” Ida cried.

“What?” Johannes said finally. “You did not enjoy the trip?”

“I understand what you're saying,” she said. “It's a joke.”

 

I woke the next morning with a severe headache. It was our last day of fishing before we returned to Austria and I somewhat regretted having drunk so much, yet I enjoyed the occasional hangover as it made me deeply introspective.

While Ida stayed behind to walk on the beach, Johannes led me through more devastated villages to a beautiful river called the
Krka. I wanted to fly-fish but decided to dive with Johannes instead, as the cold clear water looked inviting and Johannes encouraged it. “It is my favorite river for diving,” he said.

I dressed in all the cumbersome gear, wet suit, weight belt, fins, snorkel, mask, and lowered myself into the river. My wet suit immediately filled with cold water and my body began to warm it. Johannes had already been in the river for ten minutes before I made my first pass down the long clear pool.

I saw many trout, but was distracted by the shiny brass artillery shells that littered the bottom, and an old refrigerator. I came up to Johannes under the bridge, where he was sticking his head inside the body of a sunken automobile. He led me by hand signal to the fish that he had chased there and indicated with his hands that it was a very big trout.

When I peered into the passenger-side window the biggest trout I'd ever seen, more like a salmon, was looking back at me, its eye gleaming like a quarter. There was no way to catch it so we took turns sticking our heads in the car body to look and then coming up for air.

“It's a meter long,” Johannes said when we surfaced. “A softmouth trout too. Too bad she is so far inside, otherwise I could catch her.”

This was not only a trout but a veteran of war.

 

We arrived in Sankt Veit, Austria, that evening at the small apartment over the bakery where their children, Benedikt and Mariela, watched television.

T
HE
S
ECRET
D
EN

D
uring the day I was the prisoner of Johannes's son, Benedikt, who was two years younger than me. He had recruited me as his opponent in playing murderous blood-spilling computer games that I thought were a waste of time. I escaped to my room, which was Mariela's room, to take a nap.

The second evening we were home, Ida had a friend to the house to do her hair, a handsome blond woman named Rika. The woman dyed the gray roots from Ida's hair and brushed it straight, complementing Ida on its fullness.

Johannes had been out all day and returned while Ida and Rika were having coffee in the kitchen. His month's worth of reddish beard had been shaved, what hair was left on his head trimmed, and he was visibly drunk. Ida yelled at him for not telling her where he was going, and for not spending time with me. I felt, I believe, as Johannes did, that more than anything I wanted time to myself.

Beyond the door to Mariela's room was another small room in Johannes's apartment that was always closed. The next morning the door to this room was ajar and, as no one was home, I saw that as my invitation to enter and snoop. As I slowly pushed open the door I saw an entire wall of stuffed trout hanging with labels beneath each, describing what they were and where they were from. There were perhaps thirty of them, taxidermied skin mounts, well executed and museum quality, collected from all the places Johannes had been. At a glance I saw fish from Morocco, Spain, Greece, Turkey, Bulgaria, Hungary, and Yugoslavia.

There was also a whole wall of books, a library of information about trout in Italian, Russian, German, and French. On a desk in
the corner was an inkwell and a pen and some paper. He was writing a letter to a biologist at the university in Barcelona, Spain, and beside the letter were large detailed topographic maps of Turkey that I had never seen.

During our trip I had thought Johannes was following a simple road map, while the reality was that for months he had been studying detailed maps and memorizing the locations he wanted to visit. When I saw the maps I immediately realized why he had not brought them; they were Turkish military maps, and if we had been caught with them they may have raised suspicion with the soldiers about our purpose. I had underestimated Johannes's preparedness, the care he had taken, and I had greater respect for him.

I don't know how long I was in Johannes's secret trout den, but while I was there he returned from work and found me. He did not seem surprised, he just stood in the doorway, holding a leather pouch like a purse. He let me speak first.

“These fish are amazing,” I said, pointing at the trout on the wall.

“Yes,” he replied, “but I wished I had the trout from the Tigris.” He paused. “Do you want to go with me to the bank?” he asked.

He had collected the monies from the three family-run Schöffmann bakeries in town and was on his way to deposit them.

I joined him and on our way back we stopped at a bar for a beer, then another bar for another beer. When we returned to his apartment Ida was cooking dinner, a goulash with meat, local forest mushrooms (
Eierschwamm
), and fresh
Knödel.
Johannes sat me down with another beer in the living room and then went to fetch a few things to show me.

He brought me his first passport. I saw from the date beside his portrait as a young man that it was issued when he was twenty. Its pages showed, like a map of his itinerary, his trips to Colombia, where he had apprenticed as a master pastry chef in Bogotá, and other travels, mostly to Africa. There were frequent visits made to
Croatia and Slovenia, each border crossing marked by a colorful stamp. The young man in the photo had more hair and his face was leaner and longer, but it was unmistakably the face of the man I knew with the mustache, the sly smirk, and the monomania for trout.