The Blue Monkey Review

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The trip to Podgorica had been planned on Sunday. I needed to go to Podgorica, the judicial capital of Serbia-Montenegro, to pick up four boxes of books that had arrived for me at the U.S. consulate. Janko called the university driver to arrange to take me. "On the authorization of the dean, I can drive to the states," he told Janko. As it turned out the dean was already planning to go into Podgorica on Tuesday for a meeting at the main campus. Tuesday morning, though, I woke up to snow. Heavy snow. I waded through snow and slush, walking part of the way behind the World War-vintage that is one of the city's snowplows, its bed still filled with firewood. The university driveway, when I reached it, was a carpet of snow with two deep ruts cut by tires. I assumed that prudent people like the dean would call off the trip.

I had not yet met the dean, Bojka Djukanovic, do I didn't know who I was waiting for in her as I stood in the outer office with bustling. Soon enough, though, a small, energetic woman walked in. We briefly introduced ourselves to one another, she took my arm, and we were off. She tells me in Slavic-accented English, so everything she said sounded like a line from the remake of The Third Man that my life has become. "I think we will have quite an adventure going to Podgorica today."

We walked out the front door of the faculty building and I looked around for the all-terrain vehicle we needed. Two vehicles sat in the snowy field that had taken the place of the parking area. One was a jeep-like car, a four-wheel drive wagon. The other was a Renault, one of the little ones that get 50 miles to the gallon. It was new when Yugoslavia still existed. Bojka tells me, "This is not the university car, but the driver thinks it will be better for driving in the snow." I think, "That jeep will be at least be able to get out of the driveway, but god knows what the roads down the mountain are like." Then we walk down the steps. Bojka gets into the Renault.

The driver, at least, whose name is Tomo, inspires confidence. He clearly is descended from the race of heroes that Rebecca West's Serbian informant described: "No child here says, 'I want to be a builder, or a doctor, or a carpenter,' though some want to be chauffeurs because to them it is still a daring and romantic occupation." Tomo has worked for the university for 28 of his 50 years. He's a big man who fills up his fourth of the Renault. Dark hair, leather jacket--he could be a KGB agent. Somehow, he maneuvers the Renault out of the driveway and onto the snowy roads of Montenegro.

The trip to Podgorica went smoothly enough. We sailed into the flooded roads behind the main university campus about an hour after leaving Niksic to drop the dean and another administrator at their meeting. Then Tomo and I set off on our errands. I managed to retrieve my books from the heavily secured consulate, and Tomo took care of other university business that involved picking up an Italian professor and then dropping her somewhere.

We talked, of course, or at least we communicated. Tomo spoke no English at all, so my Serbian was stretched to its limit. We gave each other our ages and our children's ages, determined that he had traveled to Romania and Hungary and that I was divorced. "Well," he said, waving his hand in as airy a motion as the Renault allowed, "there are plenty of women here."

"I have a girlfriend," I said. Actually, I told him both that I have a female friend and a girlfriend, trying to make sure that he understood that my girlfriend isn't a girl.

He considered this new information, then said,"You can have one in America and one in Montenegro." We both laughed at the absurdity of that proposition.

And then it was time to pick up the dean. We enjoyed coffee in the rector's meeting room. The coffee here is potent--jak, as they say. It is as close to drinking raw coffee as you can imagine. In fact, it's closer. The dean and I had our only chance to talk about our teaching and scholarly interests. And then we were off.

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For what seemed like seconds but perhaps less than a second, everything turned to smoky dark gray. And then, even though we could still not see the road, we could see the outline of the other end of the tunnel. We exited the tunnel and though conditions seemed about as bad, they became no worse and slowly became only horrible. Tomo turned to the dean and with a laugh and a motion of his hand said something that I imagined was, "We just keep going."