Under a Croatian Sun Read Online Free PDF Page A

wasn’t crowded and there was a pleasant murmur of voices in the warm night air as the locals and the fewholidaymakers milled around the square or strolled along the waterfront. Groups of teenagers mooched moodily around the church steps, and one or two food shops were still open where some were doing their last-minute shopping, picking up loaves of bread for the morning’s breakfast or stopping to talk and laugh with those they knew. With the Venetian church behind it, the square resembled a scene from an Italian opera, and, as I watched this timeless evening pageant taking place in front of us, I was overwhelmed by a sense of wellbeing – like James Stewart at the end of
It’s a Wonderful Life
when he looks out of the window at life going on in the street and sees that all is well.
    Why was it that we always felt so comfortable in places like this? I said to Ivana. Was it simply the lack of neon lights and signs of consumerism, was it the comforting sense of life’s continuity, or was it simply that we always felt at home in places like this?
    ‘It’s what happens when you stop rushing around the world like a madman and stay still for a moment,’ Ivana replied.
    We sat in silence as if we were in a world with its own sense of contentment.
    The strollers thinned out, waiters folded up chairs and turned off lights, and soon only the soft glow of the moon lit the sleeping harbour. Sitting on the deck in the balmy night air, listening to the soft lapping of the water and the muffled creaking of mooring ropes, I felt in complete harmony with everything around me. We looked at each other. We really had fallen in love with it and this was where we were going to find the life I’d been dreaming about. In the morning, we would look for a house we decided, and with a certain sense of finality we went down to our bunks.
     
    Knowing that estate agents hadn’t really existed under communism, we went into the nearest café for breakfast and asked the owner where we could find out about houses for sale.
    ‘Houses?’ he responded. ‘But no one wants to buy a house here!’
    When we assured him that we really did, he scratched his head. ‘Well, I suppose there might be some Serbian houses for sale.
They
won’t be coming back here in a hurry. Maybe you should ask Tonko. He insures most houses, so maybe he might know.’
    It didn’t sound too promising, but off we went. As direction-giving is an imprecise art in a small village where no one needs directions, it took us some time to find the place, but, eventually, above the old fire station, we found the office and opened the door. A prematurely grey-haired man sitting at a heavy forties desk jumped as if startled. He can’t have had many visitors. After we told him what we were looking for, he fished around in a drawer for some keys and told us that there were three houses belonging to Serbians who had left when the war started. They were referred to as ‘absentee owners’ as the word ‘Serbian’ now stuck in people’s throats, he said.
    He was surprised by our visit. ‘You’re the first people wanting to live here since World War II. After Tito made the island a military zone in 1945, no one, not even our own people, could come to the island without permission. ‘But at least it saved us from all the development that happened along our coast. That’s why we’re the most beautiful island in the Adriatic.’ He smiled. ‘I knew that one day the world would find us again.’
    The first house he took us to was tiny, but, at a price of £15,000, it had an immediate attraction.
    ‘Look!’ I enthused to Ivana. ‘Three bedrooms and a kitchen big enough to be a living room.’
    ‘All you’d get into these bedrooms is a bed. No room for any cupboards or chests of drawers. No space for clothes at all!’
    ‘But we won’t be needing much in the way of clothes out here, will we?’
    I got a look which said: ‘If you think you’re going to keep me holed up on a