Lake Bled, Slovenia, August 2009
In the morning, Jani waved off us on what he insisted on
calling our ‘boating adventure’. At the lakeside, a man who looked as if he’d
completed a triathlon before breakfast took our money and pointed at a
mahogany-brown dinghy. We had an hour. I slotted the oars into the rowlocks and
dipped them into the water. My first attempt at a hefty pull moved us an inch.
The triathlete put our money in his pocket. Out on the lake, other families
deftly steered his boats through the lanes marked out for the Slovenian rowing
team’s training sessions for the 2012 London Olympics. Another hefty pull got
us away from the pontoon at least. A few more and we began to pick up speed,
heading for open water where the only danger came from the gondoliers punting
groups of tourists across the lake. Someone shouted from the ramparts of the
fairy-tale castle, but I couldn’t make out what they said. Others called out
from the rowing boats, the gondolas, the lido. Disjointed phrases skimmed
across the surface of the water like dragonflies or pebbles. The mountains rose
up against the sky like opera scenery. For a moment, it felt as if we were
crossing Europe’s duck pond, cradled by alps, surrounded by tracts of territory
which, as they stretched out in every direction, became Italy and Austria,
Hungary, Serbia and Croatia. Further on again, those same tracts turned into
France and Germany, Poland, Romania, Bosnia and Albania. Elsewhere, ferries
crossed from Spain to Morocco, boats sailed across the Black Sea to Georgia and
the Crimea, and, from Moscow, the Trans-Siberian Express left for Beijing and
Vladivostok. When I inadvertently steered us into the boating equivalent of a snarl-up,
and bows and oars clunked against each other, embarrassed apologies were
exchanged in four different languages.
At the
island church, I shipped oars and we drifted beneath overhanging branches, pale
green leaves reflected in the almost still water. Sam dropped his hat and I
manoeuvred the boat so that we could rescue it. Sam thought this was so
extraordinary that he rang his sister on his mobile phone. Lydia’s voice
intermitted as the signal came and went. She asked to be handed over to her
mum. Sarra talked her through how to wash a load of woollens. The signal died
before I got a chance to speak.
On the
opposite side of the lake, I recognised what looked like a pair of insect eyes
or concrete goggles: Tito’s villa amongst the trees. It had been one of the
communist Yugoslav leader’s favourite haunts, and in 1946 he’d twice
entertained his momentary ally, Enver Hoxha, in what the Albanian leader
regarded as a grotesquely decadent lakeside palace. The second visit had proved
particularly awkward. Calling in on his way to the Paris Peace Conference,
where decisions about the division of post-war Europe taken at Potsdam and
Yalta would be ratified, Hoxha had only brought one decent suit with him.
According to his memoirs, he feared that Tito’s villa would be swarming with
raven-haired Yugoslav beauties dressed in sexually alluring satin dresses.
Hoxha’s worst fear, in fact, was that Tito would force him to take part in a
photo shoot in which he would have to pose, draped with voluptuous young women,
just like a bourgeois movie star. Not only would this be a propaganda disaster
for the ascetic Stalinist, it might also leave his carefully chosen lounge suit
smeared with lipstick and smelling of hairspray.
As it turned out, he was right
to be anxious. His suit was in danger, but not from Tito’s ‘assistants’. Having
lost his favourite hunting dog during the Patriotic War against the Nazis, the
Yugoslav had acquired a replacement, and the shaggy-haired mutt enjoyed free
rein at the presidential residence in Bled. It also suffered from appalling
flatulence and let out ‘a great fart’ with such regularity that Tito had to
instruct General Todorović, an ex-partisan who would eventually fall foul of
the dictator’s mood-swings, to ‘kick the damn thing out’. Hoxha heaved a sigh
of relief and thought that he might now get his chance to discuss the future of
communist Europe. Tito wasn’t interested, however. Just as Jani had done with
us, he insisted that the Albanian take a boat trip on the lake. To Hoxha’s
horror, the dog came too, plunging into the water and swimming behind Tito’s
launch with all its might. While the Yugoslav ignored the Albanian’s ever more
specific questions about his policy towards the USSR, the dog paddled through
the lake, leaving an explosive trail of bubbles. Eventually, it tired and
dangled pathetically in the wake of the boat. Tito took pity on his pet,
ordered the captain to slam the launch into reverse and whistled. The dog leapt
up over the gunwale and vigorously shook itself. The Yugoslav bellowed with
laughter, but the Albanian was appalled: his only suit was ruined.
‘Because in fact we did not
discuss any weighty problems,’ Hoxha later wrote, ‘I remember almost nothing.’
Copyright Tom Phillips 2013
No comments:
Post a Comment