By nine the main bodies of Popolac and Podujevo were substantially assembled. In their allotted districts the limbs of both cities were ready and waiting to join their expectant torsos.
Vaslav Jelovsek capped his gloved hands over his eyes and surveyed the sky. The cloud-base had risen in the last hour, no doubt of it, and there were breaks in the clouds to the west; even, on occasion, a few glimpses of the sun. It wouldn’t be a perfect day for the contest perhaps, but certainly adequate.
Mick and Judd breakfasted late on hemendeks — roughly translated as ham and eggs — and several cups of good black coffee. It was brightening up, even in Novi Pazar, and their ambitions were set high. Kosovska Mitrovica by lunchtime, and maybe a visit to the hill-castle of Zvecan in the afternoon.
About nine-thirty they motored out of Novi Pazar and took the Srbovac road south to the Ibar valley. Not a good road, but the bumps and pot-holes couldn’t spoil the new day.
The road was empty, except for the occasional pedestrian; and in place of the maize and corn fields they’d passed on the previous day the road was flanked by undulating hills, whose sides were thickly and darkly forested. Apart from a few birds, they saw no wildlife. Even their infrequent travelling companions petered out altogether after a few miles, and the occasional farmhouse they drove by appeared locked and shuttered up. Black pigs ran unattended in the yard, with no child to feed
them. Washing snapped and billowed on a sagging line, with no washerwoman in sight.
At first this solitary journey through the hills was refreshing in its lack of human contact, but as the morning drew on, an uneasiness grew on them.
‘Shouldn’t we have seen a signpost to Mitrovica, Mick?’
He peered at the map.
‘Maybe. . .‘
‘— we’ve taken the wrong road.’
‘If there’d been a sign, I’d have seen it. I think we should try and get off this road, bear south a bit more — meet the valley closer to Mitrovica than we’d planned.’
‘How do we get off this bloody road?’ ‘There’ve been a couple of turnings. . .‘ ‘Dirt-tracks.’
‘Well it’s either that or going on the way we are.’ Judd pursed his lips.
‘Cigarette?’ he asked.
‘Finished them miles back.’
In front of them, the hills formed an impenetrable line. There was no sign of life ahead; no frail wisp of chimney smoke, no sound of voice or vehicle.
‘All right,’ said Judd, ‘we take the next turning. Anything’s better than this.’
They drove on. The road was deteriorating rapidly, the pot-holes becoming craters, the hummocks feeling like bodies beneath the wheels.
Then:
‘There!’
A turning: a palpable turning. Not a major road, certainly. In fact barely the dirt-track Judd had described the other roads as being, but it was an escape from the endless perspective of the road they were trapped on.
‘This is becoming a bloody safari,’ said Judd as the VW began to bump and grind its way along the doleful little track.
‘Where’s your sense of adventure?’
‘I forgot to pack it.’
They were beginning to climb now, as the track wound its way up into the hills. The forest closed over them, blotting out the sky, so a shifting patchwork of light and shadow scooted over the bonnet as they drove. There was birdsong suddenly, vacuous and optimistic, and a smell of new pine and undug earth. A fox crossed the track, up ahead, and watched a long moment as the car grumbled up towards it. Then, with the leisurely stride of a fearless prince, it sauntered away into the trees.
Wherever they were going, Mick thought, this was better than the road they’d left. Soon maybe they’d stop, and walk a while, to find a promontory from which they could see the valley, even Novi Pazar, nestled behind them.
The two men were still an hour’s drive from Popolac when the head of the contingent at last marched out of the Town Square and took up its position with the main body.
This last exit left the city completely deserted. Not even the sick or the old were neglected on this day; no-one was to be denied the spectacle and the triumph of the contest. Every single citizen, however young or infirm, the blind, the crippled, babes in arms, pregnant women — all made their way up from their proud city to the stamping ground. It was the law that they should attend: but it needed no enforcing. No citizen of either city would have missed the chance to see that sight — to experience the thrill of that contest.