The journey had proved uninspiring. On either side of the road the cultivated fields looked parched and dusty. The summer had been unusually hot, and droughts were affecting many of the villages. Crops had failed, and livestock had been prematurely slaughtered to prevent them dying of malnutrition. There was a defeated look about the few faces they glimpsed at the roadside. Even the children had dour expressions; brows as heavy as the stale heat that hung over the valley.
Now, with the cards on the table after a row at Belgrade, they drove in silence most of the time; but the straight road, like most straight roads, invited dispute. When the driving was easy, the mind rooted for something to keep it engaged. What better than a fight?
‘Why the hell do you want to see this damn monastery?’ Judd demanded.
It was an unmistakable invitation.
‘We’ve come all this way ...‘ Mick tried to keep the tone conversational. He wasn’t in the mood for an argument.
‘More fucking Virgins, is it?’ Keeping his voice as even as he could, Mick picked up the Guide and read aloud from it… ‘there, some of the greatest works of Serbian painting can still be seen and enjoyed, including what many commentators agree to be the enduring masterpiece of the Raska schooclass="underline" “The Dormition of the Virgin.”’
Silence.
Then Judd: ‘I’m up to here with churches.’
‘It’s a masterpiece.’
‘They’re all masterpieces according to that bloody book.’
Mick felt his control slipping.
‘Two and a half hours at most —, ‘I told you, I don’t want to see another church; the smell of the places makes me sick. Stale incense, old sweat and lies...’
‘It’s a short detour; then we can get back on to the road and you can give me another lecture on farming subsidies in the Sandzak.’
‘I’m just trying to get some decent conversation going instead of this endless tripe about Serbian fucking mas-terpieces —,
‘Stop the car!’
‘What?’
‘Stop the car!’
Judd pulled the Volkswagen into the side of the road. Mick got out.
The road was hot, but there was a slight breeze. He took a deep breath, and wandered into the middle of the road. Empty of traffic and of pedestrians in both directions. In every direction, empty. The hills shimmered in the heat off the fields. There were wild poppies growing in the ditches. Mick crossed the road, squatted on his haunches and picked one.
Behind him he heard the VW’s door slam. ‘What did you stop us for?’ Judd said. His voice was edgy, still hoping for that argument, begging for it.
Mick stood up, playing with the poppy. It was close to seeding, late in the season. The petals fell from the receptacle as soon as he touched them, little splashes of red fluttering down on to the grey tarmac.
‘I asked you a question,’ Judd said again.
Mick looked round. Judd was standing the far side of the car, his brows a knitted line of burgeoning anger. But handsome; oh yes; a face that made women weep with frustration that he was gay. A heavy black moustache (perfectly trimmed) and eyes you could watch forever, and never see the same light in them twice. Why in God’s name, thought Mick, does a man as fine as that have to be such an insensitive little shit?
Judd returned the look of contemptuous appraisal, staring at the pouting pretty boy across the road. It made him want to puke, seeing the little act Mick was performing for his benefit. It might just have been plausible in a sixteen-year-old virgin. In a twenty-five-year-old, it lacked credibility.
Mick dropped the flower, and untucked his T-shirt from his jeans. A tight stomach, then a slim, smooth chest were revealed as he pulled it off. His hair was ruffled when his head re-appeared, and his face wore a broad grin. Judd looked at the torso. Neat, not too muscular. An appendix scar peering over his faded jeans. A gold chain, small but catching the sun, dipped in the hollow of his throat. Without meaning to, he returned Mick’s grin, and a kind of peace was made between them.
Mick was unbuckling his belt.
‘Want to fuck?’ he said, the grin not faltering.
‘It’s no use,’ came an answer, though not to that question.
‘What isn’t?’ ‘We’re not compatible.’
‘Want a bet?’
Now he was unzipped, and turning away towards the wheat-field that bordered the road.
Judd watched as Mick cut a swathe through the swaying sea, his back the colour of the grain, so that he was almost camouflaged by it. It was a dangerous game, screwing in the open air — this wasn’t San Francisco, or even Hampstead Heath. Nervously, Judd glanced along the road. Still empty in both directions. And Mick was turning, deep in the field, turning and smiling and waving like a swimmer buoyed up in a golden surf. What the hell there was nobody to see, nobody to know. Just the hills, liquid in the heat-haze, their forested backs bent to the business of the earth, and a lost dog, sitting at the edge of the road, waiting for some lost master.
Judd followed Mick’s path through the wheat, unbut-toning his shirt as he walked. Field-mice ran ahead of him, scurrying through the stalks as the giant came their way, his feet like thunder. Judd saw their panic, and smiled. He meant no harm to them, but then how were they to know that? Maybe he’d put out a hundred lives, mice, beetles, worms, before he reached the spot where Mick was lying, stark bollock naked, on a bed of trampled grain, still grinning.
It was good love they made, good, strong love, equal in pleasure for both; there was a precision to their passion, sensing the moment when effortless delight became urgent, when desire became necessity. They locked together, limb around limb, tongue around tongue, in a knot only orgasm could untie, their backs alternately scorched and scratched as they rolled around exchanging blows and kisses. In the thick of it, creaming together, they heard the phut-phut-phut of a tractor passing by; but they were past caring. They made their way back to the Volkswagen with body-threshed wheat in their hair and their ears, in their socks and between their toes. Their grins had been replaced with easy smiles: the truce, if not permanent, would last a few hours at least.
The car was baking hot, and they had to open all the windows and doors to let the breeze cool it before they started towards Novi Pazar. It was four o’clock, and there was still an hour’s driving ahead.
As they got into the car Mick said, ‘We’ll forget the monastery, eh?’ Judd gaped. ‘I thought —, ‘I couldn’t bear another fucking Virgin —‘
They laughed lightly together, then kissed, tasting each other and themselves, a mingling of saliva, and the aftertaste of salt semen.
The following day was bright, but not particularly warm. No blue skies: just an even layer of white cloud. The morning air was sharp in the lining of the nostrils, like ether, or peppermint.
Vaslav Jelovsek watched the pigeons in the main square of Popolac courting death as they skipped and fluttered ahead of the vehicles that were buzzing around. Some about military business, some civilian. An air of sober intention barely suppressed the excitement he felt on this day, an excitement he knew was shared by every man, woman and child in Popolac. Shared by the pigeons too for all he knew. Maybe that was why they played under the wheels with such dexterity, knowing that on this day of days no harm could come to them.
He scanned the sky again, that same white sky he’d been peering at since dawn. The cloud-layer was low; not ideal for the celebrations. A phrase passed through his mind, an English phrase he’d heard from a friend, ‘to have your head in the clouds’. It meant, he gathered, to be lost in a reverie, in a white, sightless dream. That, he thought wryly, was all the West knew about clouds, that they stood for dreams. It took a vision they lacked to make a truth out of that casual turn of phrase. Here, in these secret hills, wouldn’t they create a spectacular reality from those idle words? A living proverb.