An Evening With Dragi

Dragi  D.Todorowicz was an enigma.  We met him in Zagreb in Croatia, although exactly why and how we met him is lost to memory.  What he did for a living, I have no idea.  He was tall and slim, athletic, suave, aristocratic-looking and strangely dangerous.  He had about him an air of mystery.  He was one of the eastern Europeans we met on the trip who spoke several languages, including almost accent-less English.

Dragi D. Todorovich with tractor route map in background

He was certainly well-read, obvious from his easy participation and general knowledge on every topic that surfaced during a conversation, and he seemed to have acquaintance with a wide variety of people. Walking besides Dragi, on the way to buy a pair of leather shoes from a side-walk cobbler of his acquaintance,  I saw the flicker of recognition in his eyes as he met the gaze of a uniformed policeman. Some message I know , passed, without words, between the two men. It was like Dragi was saying,“It’s O.K. Nothing to report ..these foreigners are with me”

On the same walk, he stopped and gave a couple of cigarettes to a street cleaner who straightened up and took them from him with what looked like undue deference.  As they exchanged a word or two, the street cleaner turned his head, looking both ways along the street, as if keeping a weather eye out for trouble .   I think they knew each other.  When he rejoined us on the walk Dragi explained,.  “Those poor fellows pick up the butt ends out of the gutters to smoke…he’ll know me now. Could be useful”

Was he in favor of Tito or opposed to him?  It was impossible to tell. When Rod once asked him what he thought of the man, Dragi replied, quietly “Tito?  We won’t speak of him”  and was that approval, condemnation or was Dragi –  like the rest of the inhabitants of Yugoslavia in the 1950’s – simply superbly guarded. ?

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He took us home to meet Smila, his wife.  She was Hungarian…blond and still beautiful at age forty – as she matter-of-factly informed us all.  Smila Todorowicz  spoke a halting English,  her sentences interrupted often with the words “How you say it?…Dragi, say for me this thing”    She taught me to play the only piece of piano music I ever learned.  I still plink it out on any piano that crosses my path, so to speak,…the first few bars of a haunting Magyar love song.

Their apartment was cavernous, high ceilinged, grandly proportioned and practically without furniture.  It was curious.  Were they minimalists, the Todorowicz’s ,  just not wanting possessions, or had they fallen on hard times and had to sell their furniture?  It even crossed my mind that they may have burned it during a bitterly cold winter and fleeting visions of horrendous privation and heart-rending decisions flashed through my mind.  Yet straight away I dismissed that vision as ridiculous.

In their spacious, wood paneled living room there was a baby grand piano and two chairs, one on each side of a carved marble fireplace. Nothing else. The place was full of echoes.  There were no carpets on the floor and, I remember, not enough chairs in the whole of the apartment for the six of us to sit down together.    The late afternoon sun slanted through very tall, elegant and curtain-less windows that overlooked the city.

“Come on” Dragi said suddenly “:Let’s get the hell out of here…we’re going to see a film..it’s Japanese…first we walk through Kalepegden  and then we get a drink somewhere..” He turned to Smila. “Duso…bring your purse, darling.”

We strolled together , the three couples, leisurely, slowly and strung out along a leafy path through a park overlooking the jumbled roof-tops of old Zagreb. Gnarled  trunks of ancient trees below the sloping stone walls of a castle remain in my memory. The tree branches formed a cool and shadowy green tunnel.   Once, and suddenly, Dragi stopped beneath one of the trees and, lifting his right leg straight up, kicked the leafy branch above his head.   He stood in the path, turned to us all and, hands on his hips like a kid proud of his accomplishment, shouted   “How’s that ?   Not bad for a fifty year old…would you say?” .

Strolling along narrow, cobble-stoned streets between old houses, we came at last to a small, low-ceilinged, back-alley bar overlooking the town.   As the sun was setting,  we stopped for a drink.  Dragi and Smila were obviously known to the proprietor, evidenced  by the welcome we all received.  We were the only customers.

“Jusef”  Dragi called “We will have our drinks outside…to look at the sunset…we will carry the chairs and a couple of tables…the boys will help.   We’ll all have Retsina”

“Have you tried it – the Retsina?” he asked us, looking from one to the other. “If not, you must try it now. And yes..it IS an acquired taste…so they say”  He lifted a chair from beside one of the cafes tables and carried it outside.  He turned and laughed.  “Naturally, we’ve all acquired the taste  here.”

The bar owner, lifting one of the small tables and hefting it out of the bar, shouted at Dragi.  It seemed to be admonishment for one of his customers carrying a chair and assurance that he was perfectly capable of moving them himself..   Dragi laughed and translated his words..”This grumpy devil says, in effect..leave the hell alone with the chairs and tables and stop mucking about because he’ll do it..and his wife has made fresh dolmades and will bring them out to us…Sit, Sit,  Ladies” he waved a hand at Joan and I.  “When you get a chair, that is”.

We sat at the two small metal tables, sipping resin-flavoured Retsina wine, eating the delicious dolmades, grape leaves stuffed with tasty, herb-sprinkled  rice, and watched the sun go down. Dragi playing  “mine genial host” role to the hilt, called for more wine and more food and, passing from chair to chair, kept our glasses from being empty.  He obviously loved his wife.

Once, filling her glass, he bent and kissed the top of her head.  She looked up at him and smiled. She turned to me then,  with a look in her eyes that said  “See, what a man I’ve got…don’t you agree?”

The sun was below the horizon and the lights had come on in the bar and in the  many windows of the  town spread out below us.  A few customers had drifted into the bar to take a drink during their evening walk.  Dragi stood and said.  “Off we go…or we’ll be late for the  film…we must see it.  I’ve promised Smila and it’s supposed to be very good…so I hear…Let’s go”  he pushed back his chair.  “Tonight, you are all my guests…and Jusef says the dolmades are his wife’s  gift to the friends of a friend..isn’t she lovely?”  We all rose to leave, loudly calling our thanks to the proprietor of the establishment and the generosity of his wife.  Dragi  went into the bar and we saw him laughing, again, with the bar-owner in the back room.

“Jusef says he was pleased to give you pleasure” he was still laughing when he re-joined us. “And that he is flattered that you call him a Prince and his wife a Queen but he wants you to know that he has also read the story of Oedipus Rex and thinks that your similes are dubious…that’s all the translation I had better give you…He’s quite a naughty man.  Now, we get a taxi.  Or we’ll be late for the start of the film…one taxi only…we’ll squeeze in… Let’s go.”

The movie was “Rashomon” with, naturally, Japanese dialogue but with Croatian subtitles for the  local audience.    Through the entire film Dragi translated the sub-titles into English for us- soto voce.   At first, there were complaints and what sounded very much like rude remarks and even curses from the row of seats behind us,  telling him to shut up.   Dragi turned and said something to them in a quiet voice.  That, curiously, put a stop to their complaining – although they must have been furious.

The movie house had been packed with people and there was a crush at the entrance as the audience crowded out.  Half way through the corridor to the road outside , I heard Joan squeak and say “That man behind me just pinched my bum.. Ouch…He just did it again..Ow.. he’s hurting me” Although hemmed in and moved along by the throng of bodies,  Dragi, whirled around, whipped out a cigarette  lighter, lit it and held it under the nose of the man who had pinched Joan.  Lightening fast…without words.   It was just a threat.  It was amazingly effective.

After the movie Dragi and Smila, arm in arm,  led the way as we walked back to our caravan parked on the edge of a small town park.

“What did you think?’ Dragi called over his shoulder, “About Rashoman…which story did you believe?…Wasn’t it so interesting…all those different versions…I loved it.”

“Frankly” Joan said “I got a bit fed up with the woman.  I mean, who was she?”

“Me, too”I agreed “I got a bit embarrassed by her,,she seemed to spend all her time scuttling around in the long grass…panting”

“It was O.K.” Smila added quietly “ Good story, yes, but he’s not knowing women…I think so?”  She talked rapidly and almost passionately in Croatian and Dragi translated, first kissing her hand that he was holding.

“Smila says that woman was not well understood by the director…that the man does not have a  good opinion of women…she felt he did not like women…and, a man cannot know what a woman feels when she is raped…she was sick, Smila…what could that director know, she says…in his heart?”

Once again in Europe, here and there.  now and again, we came smack up against the sad, traumatic, even horrific memories of the survivors.  We were there only eight years after the war ended and the survivors had rallied and were getting on with their lives. Wounds had healed over. Only occasionally, suddenly and like a foul-smelling fart forced into the open air, did a memory of the terror so many had lived through escape suppression.  Who knew the wartime memories of beautiful Smila.

We said goodbye to the Todorowicz’s under the meager light of the only lamp-post in that little Zagreb park, thanking them both profoundly for their friendly generosity,  kissing Smila and shaking hands with Dragi.   We didn’t part company, however, but sat – in a row on a low stone wall – smoking the strong Turkish cigarettes that Dragi handed round.   We talked together, laughing and chatting for a long time.  We were reluctant, I believe, to go out of their lives forever, knowing that we would never see them again.

We promised to try and see them the following day.  But we never did.   We travelled on.

Judith G. Kane

November 2013