The Unlikely Voyage of Jack de Crow

by A. J. Mackinnon

  An hour later the dogs had moved on to terrify some other poor traveller and I was free to go. Despite the dogs, despite the decay, I found myself suddenly liking Esztergom and its people.

  Now that I had left western lands behind, the river was rather wild in appearance. Towns and villages were far and few between. Instead there were watery forest groves, lonely islands in midstream, swampy backwaters and the odd ramshackle hut swathed in fishing nets on poles. Strange splashes and gurgles from the banks caused me to wonder, not entirely idly, about the possibility of ’gators. The river was wide and empty enough to set the sails in the faintest of breezes, tie the tiller and doze on the foredeck for an hour at a time. I wrote letters while drifting, I read, I dozed off again, and so came slowly down the great river to Budapest.

  If you had taken Christopher Wren, injected just a little Turkish blood into him, gave him some warm siennas and umbers to work with rather than the blue-greys and sooty hues of the Thames, and then let him get on with it, he would have come up with something like Budapest instead of London. From the river the similarity was striking. It was like a condensed version of London with all the best bits left in, St Paul’s, the Houses of Parliament, Big Ben, the Tower, but all the long grimy concrete-and-glass stretches left out. On the morning that I left it, four days after I arrived, that was what I was thinking, along with how much I admired the place. As for the four days of being there, well, that was another story.

  Firstly, it rained torrentially for the entire four days. The weather sent me scuttling to a Youth Hostel where the first night was spent fighting for possession of the bunk that I had paid for with a drunk Irishman who was so blotto on vodka that he kept forgetting that he had checked out the night before and was meant to be on a train to Warsaw by now. For the next few days I managed to get a single room in a hotel, but was alarmed to find myself woken three or four times a night by a mysterious flash seeming to come from somewhere in the room itself. It was as though a spontaneous crackle of lightning was filling the room with a brief but highly charged flash. It was of the same intensity that you see on overhead lines as a tram passes, but it had nothing to do with the light-switch or the bulb as far as I could make out. It didn’t do any harm, nor make more than the tiniest of fizzling pops, but it left the whole room feeling charged and potent each time, and me wide awake and staring. I never did find out what it was. Static? St Elmo’s fire? Whatever it was, it was better than the Irishman.

  Secondly, I found myself all at sea with the language. Hungarian belongs to a class of languages entirely unconnected with anything Indo-European, and the only people likely to make a stab at understanding the Hungarians are the Finns. Was it purely coincidental, then, that when I went to a bar and tried to strike up a conversation with the lively group on the next table, they turned out to be a party from Finland? Having not the faintest idea about the language gave me a small insight into what it must be like to be illiterate. How do I find a bookshop? Look in all the windows as I pass. How do I order food in a restaurant? Point to an item and pray that it’s not pig’s liver. What’s the sign for Metro Station in the city underground system? Not a clue, so follow the people.

  This brings me to my third reason for disliking Budapest. On the way back from a bar one night I found myself on a tube-train that at every stop filled up with more and more football fans. At each station they would swirl off and on the train in high spirits, chanting and pushing and shoving. Finally, at one Underground station below Deak Square, the central plaza of the city, the commotion became riotous and among the milling fans I could see the green uniforms of the police. There was an almighty bang. The fans who had swirled off the train so eagerly suddenly turned and attempted to scramble back on again, jamming the doors and preventing the train from pulling out. There was a lot of shouting and a good deal of pushing and shoving, and springing unbidden to my eyes were great stinging tears as though I had just cut a dozen onions.

  I found that the whole cabin-load of passengers was crying along in sympathy and realised what was happening. The police had thrown a tear-gas canister. The cabin was filled with choking, acrid fumes, as though someone had splashed a vat of ammonia or bleach down the stairwell. By now my eyes were watering copiously and every gasp I took seared my nostrils and throat, and for a moment I could not think of anything else but getting out of there. But how?

  To step out onto the platform was impossible – the hooligans were still scrabbling in the doorways, and besides, I didn’t fancy running through the incomprehensibly signposted tunnels of the Metro like an illiterate rabbit in a gassed warren. Another bang exploded and I saw through the crowd someone collapse on the platform. There was another more panicky surge of people determined to clamber aboard and finally the doors were clear enough for the fume-filled carriage to pull away from the platform.

  When the gas had cleared a little, I turned to the animated group of fellow travellers next to me and asked in croaky pidgin English what had happened. To my surprise they ignored me but continued to chatter in fume-strangled voices among themselves. Again I asked, and a second time I was ignored, even though they had lapsed into teary silence by this time. Perhaps they were Finns. A third time I spoke, loudly and directly, and then saw what the problem was. They were a small party of deaf-mutes and hadn’t heard a word I’d been saying. Once they realised, they signed and mimed their apologies and what I assume was their shared wonder and bewilderment at the adventure we had been through. I understood little of this, but one gesture was universal enough for anyone to understand. The leader of the group raised a fist, pointed his forefin-ger at me, cocked it and pulled an imaginary trigger. The bang I had heard had been one of the rioters being shot dead before my eyes. After that I didn’t need to know the Hungarian word for Metro: I rather preferred to walk.

  I dined one afternoon on roast goose, something I had always wanted to do; it came roasted in plums and apples, which was much nicer than it sounds, and dripping with hot fat which I greedily licked up on the excuse that I would need a layer of blubber to keep off the winter chills over the next few months. I then dutifully climbed up the endless steps to the top of the Citadel high above the river. Here there were huge statues with that blend of muscularity and monolithic drabness that only Soviet sculptors seemed able to achieve, and fine views of a bunch of paratroopers leaping out of a plane and parachuting down to a pontoon in mid-river that was letting off a plume of scarlet smoke. I have no idea why. It was all part of the incomprehensibility that dogged my stay in Budapest. Finns. Deaf-mutes. Hungarian street signs. Sharing my room with lightning. Tear-gas and random death. It was time to move on to somewhere that made more sense. Instead I went to the former Yugoslavia.

  Proud Hearts and Empty Pockets

  Alas, poor country!

  Almost afraid to know itself. It cannot

  Be call’d our mother, but our grave; where nothing,

  But who knows nothing, is once seen to smile;

  Where sighs and groans, and shrieks that rend the air,

  Are made, not mark’d; where violent sorrow seems

  A modern ecstasy …

  —SHAKESPEARE, Macbeth

  My first stop in Yugoslavia was at nightfall where I came to the border-control of Bedpans. I don’t think it was actually called that but it may as well have been, as it was both clinical and foul at the same time. There, in a dismal and monumental building, I spent an hour doing the passport shuffle between ill-lit offices where lounged dangerous criminals armed with rubber stamps. The cracked floors seeped with water, the light-bulbs, where there were any, were of a peculiar Yugoslavian five-watt kind, and in the main office the strip-light flickered on and off like an irregular strobe for the entire hour I was there, until I felt my brain seeping out through my maniacally blinking eyes.

  There was no pontoon to moor Jack to, so I hitched up to a midstream buoy, and, too dispirited even to put up my awning, slept under the night sky. The stars were brilliant that night, but wi
th the beauty came the cold, and I lay in an aching shiver of wakefulness, too cold to sleep, too cold to get up and do anything about it. When dawn came and the sun poured warmth and life into my bloodless limbs, I felt as a dragonfly must, when first emerging from the cocoon he feels his wings shiver and spread as the life-fluid pumps through cell and fibre and gauze. I didn’t even wait to perform my daily routine. I simply unhitched and floated away from Bedpans on the current in my pyjamas and sleeping bag, feeling more like Huck Finn than ever.

  By lunchtime I had reached Apatin, where I intended to replenish my scanty funds and stock up on bread and tomatoes and salami and perhaps a bottle of plum wine. The only place to moor up along the steep rocky bank was next to a huge glistening pile of cow’s intestines, silver-black with buzzing flies. A professional soothsayer may have been able to read the augury. I did not wait to try. Besides I would know soon enough. A visit to a large gloomy bank elicited the following interesting facts.

  1. The handful of Hungarian forint I had brought with me out of Hungary were not exchangeable for Yugoslavian dinar. Indeed, the very thought caused a ripple of mirth around the otherwise joyless staff . Forints? Pah.

  2. Yugoslavia was, it seemed, the one place in the galaxy that did not accept Visa, Mastercard, American Express, or indeed any credit card at all. This was despite the fact that the banks and shops uniformly displayed large signs in several languages saying ‘VISA WELCOME HERE.’

  It took me a little while to establish with the lady behind the counter that these two facts were indubitably true. Having done so, I stepped out into the street, stopped dead beneath the plane trees and contemplated with horror my present situation. I had about twelve dollars’ worth of useless Hungarian forint, my credit cards were invalid, and I had about three hundred miles of slow river travel across Yugoslavia to accomplish without starving to death.

  I walked back to the dinghy, half wondering if cow’s intestines could in any way be rendered edible. On the way I passed a large and glossy building, the only glossy thing besides the intestines that I had seen in the country so far. I thought at first that it might be a smart hotel, and I had an inkling that the very smartest of hotels might be able to do things with a Visa Card that couldn’t be done by common banks. I asked the clerk behind the counter if I could see the manager, and soon a smartly dressed businessman came and without any questions ushered me along a corridor and into a beautifully furnished office. It could have been the heart of Paris or Frankfurt. He spoke excellent English and courteously asked how he could assist me. A little abashed, I blurted out my story and then asked whether his hotel could allow me to use Visa to withdraw some much-needed cash for the weeks ahead. He spoke into an intercom and then beamed at me. ‘I am sorry to tell you, my friend, that this is not a hotel. In any case you would not find a hotel in all of Yugoslavia to help you, alas. Perhaps one in Belgrade, I don’t know. You see, for the last few months, we have been under an embargo laid down by NATO and much of the Western world, to which, alas, it appears we no longer belong.’ He smiled sadly and shrugged his shoulders. ‘Your country and America feel it necessary to interfere with the way we are running our country and have seen fit to punish our people for the follies of our President. We are all but cut off from the rest of Europe now, and I fear there are dark days ahead.’

  He was putting into words facts of which I had been only vaguely aware on my media-free trip down the river. It was late September 1998, and over the next few weeks NATO was to begin its threats of air-bombardment in response to the Kosovo crisis. When a year on I saw the news coverage of shattered bridges and bombed towns along the Danube, I recognised every one of them, and saw in my mind’s eye the ghost of a little yellow dinghy threading between the twisted girders.

  ‘But meanwhile,’ my host was continuing, ‘not all is bad. This is not a hotel, but it is something better! It is a brewery. And, my friend,’ he whispered, ‘it is the best brewery in Eastern Europe!’ A clerk entered bearing six bottles of Apatin beer. ‘I have a little job for you,’ said the manager, beaming. ‘I need an impartial taster to try out our latest brew,’ and with that bottles were opened, glasses produced and the rich dark foaming beer was poured out. A good while later, after we had compared and sipped and commented on colour and taste and texture, it was time for me to go. But before I did, my host said, ‘You mentioned something about forint? It is true that one cannot exchange forint here for dinar, but I? I go across the border to Hungary three times a week. Let me exchange your money for you.’ He pulled out his wallet and counted out a wad of Yugoslavian dinar. I now had at least twelve dollars and need not scavenge those cow’s intestines after all. What is more, just as I was leaving, he said, ‘But wait! I have not paid you for your tasting advice,’ and put three large bottles of Apatin beer into my hand and led me to the foyer. ‘Good luck!’ he called and waved, and I walked off down the dusty road.

  When I got back to the dinghy, I encountered another side of the country. There was a small crowd gathered around the boat and two policemen in generalissimo outfits of slate blue. Before I could stow my belongings, I was ushered into a battered car and driven off to the police station. There a balding officer with hooded eyes like a vulture questioned me about my presence. I showed him my visa duly stamped, and the papers that I had had signed in triplicate the night before in Bedpans, and he reluctantly accepted that I was legal. I should, however, have reported to him instantly on arrival. On the wall behind his desk was a large and detailed wall map showing the next forty miles of river. My own map being too small-scale to be useful, I tried making out what lay ahead: towns, splits in the river, the Croatian border on the right-hand bank. He saw me looking at it and angrily tore it off the wall. ‘No! This is my map,’ he said, ‘not yours.’ Then I was turned out and had to walk the mile back to the river.

  There I was met by quite a different character: a tall man in black peasant dress with snowy white hair, a hooked nose and bristling eyebrows, looking for all the world like Gandalf the Wizard, who begged me in a mixture of German and very sketchy English to join him and his family for a midday meal in a nearby cottage. His name was Slobodan, ‘like the President, ja!’ and his daughter was Violetta. In their tiny front room, gay with brightly knitted peasant shawls and bead curtains, she brought lentil stew with pork, hot and salty, and black coffee as rich and gritty as river-silt. Slobodan the Serb talked fiercely and continuously in German, being under the impression that I was fluent in it, and I understood about one word in a hundred. It was mostly about politics, I think. The only two names I recognised were Milosevic and NATO; each time either was mentioned, he turned and spat resoundingly out the door. He put me right on one thing: I was not in Yugoslavia at all; I was in Serbia. Yugoslavia no longer existed. Finally I took my leave with many thank yous and smiles, and headed for a third time to the dinghy, where I was at last able to leave. As I set off down the wide and sunlit river, I was unsure what lay ahead, but I was pretty sure it wouldn’t be boredom.

  One night I pull in under the overhanging boughs to a tiny fisher-men’s camp: a timber hut under the dank trees, and a small cluster of long wooden canoes tied to poles. Each one seems to have something resembling a seven-pronged Jewish candelabra attached to the stern. Some men are cooking a rich and scaly fish stew in a cauldron over an outside fire of red-hot coals. An old man with a face like a long walnut, the keeper of the hut, lets me eat my supper of bread rolls and tomato at his rough wooden table by the light of a smoky kerosene lantern. As I eat, he keeps silently bringing tidbits from his own cupboard to supplement my meal: a boiled egg, some mustard, some smelly cheese, and then the inevitable schnapps. A large black Polish hound called Nox begs for scraps. Around the walls is jar upon jar of pickling paprika, buckets and tubs and basins of the stuff , glowing as scarlet in the lamplight as the embers outside. Afterwards the three fishermen come inside smelling wonderfully of woodsmoke and take out a much-thumbed deck of cards. These are not the usual suits: diamonds, c
lubs, hearts and spades, but antique symbols: acorns, staffs, leaves and baubles, all in curly greens, scarlets and golds. They look to my unfamiliar eyes as ancient and enchanted as the first set of Tarot cards out of old Romany. The men keep filling up my glass with more schnapps, but otherwise ignore me, as though I am a daft old grandfather with whom they are completely familiar. That night I fall asleep in a rough bunk under coarse grey blankets that the old man has set up for me. I explain as best as I can that I have no money, but he waves that aside with a grunt. The only toilet is a hole off in the woods with a single sign over it saying TELEFON.

  As I row on the next day, a daring and ridiculous plan forms in my mind to procure much-needed funds. Soon I am to come to a point where the right-hand bank will be not Serbia but Croatia. It is just possible that:

  a) Croatia will not be under the same embargo as Serbia.

  b) That I might be able to withdraw some money from a bank there using my Visa card.