Return

I returned to the north on the Magistrala. The Adriatic with its white islands was to my left, the Velebit Mountains reared up on my right. When I saw the island of Pag, I felt a twinge of nostalgia for my trips there, for my walk in the heat in the spring of 1996 when I’d trudged alone down this highway heading south. I was tempted to take the exit and cross the bridge to the island. But I continued north.

As I approached the turn up into the Velebits, knowing I was leaving the Adriatic, and soon would enter northern Croatia, I thought of all the people, the thousands who had left their islands behind and had followed this road or a similar one, if they didn’t leave by sea. Every departure by land meant crossing these mountains. This moment, when they crested the last peak, when they looked back one last time, if they were able to do so, must have stung them with feelings of sadness and worry, but also filled them with hope. Memories of their leaving, myriad and fresh, just a few hours back there, must have haunted these emigrants now that they were separated from their families, now that they knew, if they ever came back, that neither they nor their islands would ever be the same.

I didn’t have these feelings, obviously, when I got to Senj and began the ascent. Instead, I was ready to leave the austere terrain of the islands behind for the green, lush summer countryside of Prigorje. It was a familiar world. I had family and friends there, a history. I felt like I was going home.

I drove up switchbacks as the temperature began to drop. The computer on my rented car showed snowflakes, seemingly a crazy malfunction, until I hit the peak and real flakes began to fall from a leaden sky. They whipped across the windshield for a few minutes until the temperature climbed again and they disappeared. A cool, grey day greeted me on the other side of the mountains. I left behind the last crags and stones poking from dry grassy fields, and I entered a region of cornfields and wheat, of villages clustered in the valleys below rising hills, of vineyards aligned in long straight rows.

I turned in at Jastrebarsko. The main drag passed between rows of buildings on either side, where storks roosted in big nests on chimneys. Soon after, the road led me down through a forest of beach and oak until a gostionica showed up on the right. It had become a tradition of mine to stop here after a trip to the coast before heading home.

I see myself here with my father and son. It is early evening when we get out of the car, and the big iron barbecue is cooling down. On the terrace under a roof supported by heavy wooden beams, we sit at a large wooden table. Grapes grow along the sides and a few stray chickens wander about. Crickets chirp all around us. They aren’t the same loud clacking cicadas of the south. The air smells richly of grass and flowers. We look over our menus, check the price of beer. I tell my son, Lucas, that he should drink juice or milk, rather than pop. “It’s what your mother would want,” I add. “Mom’s not here, dad,” he answers, and orders a Coke. Joe snaps his menu shut and says, “Well I know what I’m having. And you know what else?” he asks. “What’s that?” I wonder. “I’m the pensioner and you’re the rich man, a professor, so you’re paying, ha-ha,” and he lets go that cackle of his. “We’ll see,” I say. So we eat our platter of roast pork and roasted potatoes and mixed salad, and Joe and I drink our Ožujsko, fifteen kuna a bottle, and we talk about this and that, Joe giving Lucas advice about his future, his future work life, “You don’t want to work with a shovel all your life, do you?” And Lucas answering, as he reaches for his Coke, which he is nursing as he eats, “No, yes, sure, whatever.” Then our meal is over. Once we are done, I go inside, take out my credit card and pay. We get into the car and drive the last few kilometrers through winding villages and fields of corn, which seem taller since our trip south, and finally we drive into the valley of Srebrnjak.