The Blue Monkey Review

Since Ruth’s arrival we have fallen into a routine for the morning that takes us into Balkan culture, at least as spectators. About mid-morning we set aside our respective projects. Ruth is working on a fantasy trilogy, and she’s taking advantage of her time here to make some important changes. My workload, of course, would require a whole other essay to describe, so we will pass on without worrying about it. As I was saying, Ruth and I head out the apartment door for our morning excursion and errands.

We greet a couple of the neighbors, usually older guys walking around in the courtyard: “Dobar dan!” “Kako je’? Jeste dobro?” “Dobro sam. Kako ste?” “Dobro.” Even though I have talked at any length to only one of my neighbors (although I have talked to him several times), they pretty much all know who I am, what I do. Just after Ruth arrived I was entering the building at the same time as a young mother with her children. We had some difficulty with the door and key, and after sorting all that out, she turned and asked me, Kako je tvoja čerka?” “How’s your daughter?” I was more than normally inarticulate because I had no memory of ever seeing this woman before, and here she was asking about Ruth. “Dobro,” I said, not very creatively.

As I think I’ve made clear, everywhere I go here requires a bit of a walk. We head to the center of town, about a mile away even though we take shortcuts through apartment bloc parking lots and behind shops and through university property. I buy a paper on the way. I have to check on the weather, even though meteorology here seems to have remained fairly primitive. Also, I need to keep up on developments in world culture. My current favorite paper, Republika has a section called “Life” that follows such urgent issues as the Brad Pitt/Jennifer Aniston divorce. A few weeks ago they reported on the Internet revelation that Jennifer was a lesbian. Make sense. Why else would she be leaving Brad Pitt? But lately they ran a short article on her depression, on the childhood trauma of her parents’ divorce.

And then we are on the korzo. Writing in the mid-1930s, Rebecca West described the corso in Dubrovnik this way: “Ahead runs the main street of the town, a paved fairway, forbidden to wheeled traffic, lined with comely seventeenth-century houses that have shops on their ground floors. At this time it is the scene of the Corso, an institution which is the heart of social life in every Yugoslavian town, and indeed of nearly all towns and villages in the Balkans. All of the population who have clothing up the general standard...join in a procession which walks up and down the main street for an our or so about sunset.”[Black Lamb and Grey Falcon p. 232] That pretty much describes the korzo in Nikšić, except that you need to subtract the seventeenth-century buildings and sunset. Nikšić has few buildings older than the administration building at Seton Hill (and few in as good a shape), and in Nikšić the korzo goes on all day and into the night. And you can also subtract almost all of the other towns in the Balkans. Nikšić remains peculiarly traditional in continuing the corso when most places, even in Montenegro, have abandoned it.

What do you do on the corso? You walk up and down, greeting friends, pairing or tripling up to talk. Women walk are in arm, as usual. Men don’t generally go that far, but they don’t seem to have many personal space issues. The groups are always homoscial, and men predominate. Ruth and I, like many people on the corso, find a cafe to sit at and watch the walkers. When the weather is really fine we have our choice of outdoor venues, including Cafe Hemingway, Cafe Korzo, or, my favorite, Che Guevara. But if it is cold or rainy we usually head to Caffe Dodge, which has an enclosed patio. Jedan cappuccino, molim vas, I tell the waiter, blithely ignoring the changes that Serbian numbers undergo next to nouns. Ruth has hot chocolate. And then we relax and enjoy the corso. We have already identified some favorites. There is the walking man, who seems to join the procession for exercise. The poet has a colorful jacket and a tawny complexion, so he looks like a Roma, but he’s very tall like a Serbian Montenegrin and unlike a Roma. And he always looks a bit hung over and disheveled, as though he’d spent the night outside.

Roma appear on the corso, too, though not to socialize. Usually they are busy trying to separate walkers or cafe loungers from spare change. The specialists are a couple of little boys dressed in colorful but ragged clothes who carry small accordions (and as far as I can tell don’t know how to play them) and walk in stride with adults repeatedly explaining their need for deset centi. Even though Montenegrins seem to have a consistent aversion to the Roma, the walkers tend to treat these boys with indulgence, patting them on the head and sometimes joking with them. I’ve never seen anyone give them any money.

After half an hour or so of this, Ruth and I are calm enough to take care of our business in town. Although this might be anything from changing money to negotiating with travel agents, it’s a safe generalization to say that sometime between 11 and 12 we will be shopping. Only a few days since my arrival have gone by when I did not shop (I went shopping my first day in town), and since Ruth arrived I’m not sure we have spent a day in town when we didn’t have to buy something.

Of course, this requires some careful planning. We have to be sure we have the right money. This is a cash economy here. Generally, VISA and Master Charge are not welcome. [That includes for airfares. That’s right, I have to pay cash for a paper ticket filled-in by hand.] Most of the economy runs on small currency, so if you buy a pair of 10 euro pants, as I did a while back, with a 50 euro note, you will have to stand around and wait while one of the shop girls runs out to find change. Serbian has a separate verb for “making change,” distinct from the words used for “changing currency.” But, if I have some coins, or some 5 or at most 10 euro notes on me, we can shop.

If we want fresh fruit or potatoes we need to arrange to pass through the green market. This is a street with a gate at either end. Before 6 A.M. it opens up to vendors who take over the stalls that extend down the block on both sides of the street. And until 6 P.M. (except on Sundays) the street provides a stunning array of fresh produce. I have my favorite vendors, of course. One woman knows as soon as she sees me to start weighing a kilo of bananas. The vendors are scrupulous about showing you the scales, that it is a kilo or, if more, to ask, Može? and of course you agree to buy a little more and say, Može. [The prices compare favorably to Giant Eagle. Today I bought one kilo each of bananas, oranges, and kiwi fruit for 3.70 Euros.]

For the other shopping it isn’t always clear where to go first. They really don’t have the “A&P” concept here. Imagine a town the size of Greensburg with no supermarkets, only stores the size of large convenience stores. But lots of them. A whole heck of a lot of them. One store carries the cereal we favor, and none of the others have it. Another store, fairly close to the apartment, has most of the usual stuff we need (pasta, chips but does not carry our favorite juice, which is cherry (we have three different fruit juices every day). There is only one store where I have ever bought eggs—they come in plastic bags, bundled in groups of ten. The only regular necessity that all the stores carry is beer.

And of course we only buy bread at the bakery near the apartment. This is as much a ritual as an economic exchange. The young women who work there take some kind of pleasure in conducting the business with a foreigner. Yet they never depart from the script that could have come out of the “Teach Yourself Serbian” book.

And that’s our morning. We return to the apartment, unload the groceries, and then get right back to work.