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Up At Tito's Villa By Janine di Giovanni May, 2005 (The New York Times Magazine) Herceg Novi, Montengro I caught the last flight from Zagreb to Dubrovnik, flying low over the Dalmatian coast as the sun set over the Adriatic. I arrived before dusk and drove a little further south down a pine-scented road. About forty minutes later, a man with a moustache in a funny, old fashioned uniform took my passport, smiled and waved me over the Montenegrin border. I had crossed the line between Roman Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy, the West and the East. This is Crna Gora, Black Mountain, the little sister of Serbia in the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. I had come for a visit to see my old friend and mentor, Dessa Trevisan. This, along with Serbia, is all that is left of Tito's kingdom, which once swept from the Adriatic Sea in the west to the borders of Romania and Bulgaria in the east, to deep Slovene forests, full of wild mushrooms and wolves, in the north. Now Croatia, Bosnia, Macedonia and Slovenia are separate entities. All that is left of Yugoslavia are Serbia and Montenegro. Once, during the war in Kosovo in 1999, I sat in a cafe in Podgorica, the Soviet-style Montenegrin capital, with an old general who had fought with Tito's partisans as a teenager, hiding in mountain caves and ambushing German and Italian soldiers. He told me the history of Montenegro. That it was the only Balkan state never to be subjugated by the Turks. That it had been incorporated into the Serbian Empire in the late 12th century. That it retained its independence following the Turkish defeat of the Serbs at Kosovo Polje in 1389. That it was recognized as a state following the Congress of Berlin in 1878. That it was ruled by the Petrovic family for 222 years until it was absorbed into Serbia in 1918, when King Nikola I was dethroned and fled into exile. All of this faded history, this pride, this fierce independence gives Montenegro a mythic lure. There are urban tales, some of them true: Montenegrins are the tallest people in Europe; the black market economy thrives on duty-free cigarettes; all of Europe's stolen cars end up here; rich Russians are buying up the coast, turning it into a gaudy Porto Ercole. But still, it is beautiful. Heartbreakingly beautiful: jagged Adriatic coastlines; empty beaches; fierce canyons carved out of mountains; tiny fishing communities where families have not altered the pace of their lives for hundreds of years, despite wars, dictators and sanctions. There are former Venetian cities and sacred monasteries teetering on mountain-tops where the monks invite you to eat lunch. There is shellfish risotto, and broiled lobster and good Montenegrin cabernet. And there is a lethargy here that is deeply Mediterranean. And the weather is a capsule of sunlight in an otherwise darkened Europe. I have come back to Montenegro this early spring, while the rest of the Continent lies under blankets of snow, to see Dessa simply because I miss her. She lives in Igalo, a suburb of Herceg Novi, an old Venetian port that was founded by a Bosnian King in 1382. Dessa has lived quietly here since she disappeared from London one winter a few years back. "I needed the sun," she said simply. Born into a grand Serb family in Croatia in 1924, Dessa Trevisian was the Eastern Europe correspondent for The Times of London for nearly 50 years. She witnessed the bombing of Belgrade in 1941, the revolution in Hungary in 1956, Soviet invasion of Czechoslavakia in 1968, the Polish Solidarity movement, the death of Tito and the beginning of the brutal wars that destroyed her beloved homeland in the early 1990's. In her heyday, Dessa was probably the most knowledgeable reporter on Eastern Europe, but she was so formidable she was terrifying. But she also had that wondrous thing, sex appeal and great charm. Once, at a meeting with Prince Charles, Tito sought out Dessa in a crowd of male correspondents. "Everyone was furious!" she says happily, recalling how Tito ignored the others, but came to take her hand. She was friends with Peggy Guggenheim, Milovan Djilas, Arthur Koestler and Hartley Shawcross, the chief prosecutor at the Nuremburg trials. Picasso sketched cats for her on a napkin and inscribed them: "For Dessa." She was friends and lovers with Romanian artists, Polish filmmakers, American heiresses, British diplomats and Italian royalty. She told Slobodan Milosevic, in so many words, to stuff it. She got shot at on a Belgrade street for that. But this is why I love Dessa: she was married twice; but she was always utterly independent, working in a man's world. She became a reporter for Reuters in Belgrade in 1951 a few years after the Communists threw her in prison. As a roving reporter behind the Iron Curtain, Dessa dressed in haute couture. Once, seeing me preparing to leave for Kosovo, she said sternly, "Darling, you look as though you are climbing a mountain. No man wants a woman in hiking boots." When I was introduced to her in the early 1990's, Dessa lived grandly in the Albany, an exclusive apartment building next to the Royal Academy in London, She had been made, in 1993, an Officer of the Order of the British Empire by Queen Elizabeth at Buckingham Palace. When she went out --even to Fortnums across the street to buy her bread – she wore a mink-lined raincoat like Garbo, Hermès scarves, Chanel sandals. She served caviar and Champagne at her salons where everyone spoke at once but God help anyone who got their facts wrong. Once she once did not speak to me for three months because of a story I wrote. I never knew why. I was flattered when, as a young reporter covering the Balkans, Dessa took me under her wing and introduced me as "my protégée." I watched her work, tapping her pencil – she refused to use computers and dictated her copy by phone – and pinning down her subjects with hard, unflinching questions. Still, if you are lucky enough to be Dessa's friend, if you are lucky enough to take a road trip with her, you never stop laughing. You see things that you would never see, meet people who would otherwise remain inaccessible. You eat good food and drink good wine. You get into trouble. In 2000, while reporting the Serbian elections from Montenegro because both of us were banned from entering Serbia by the government authories, Dessa got us thrown out of a polling station at Herceg Novi. She insulted someone. The man frog-marched her out and called her "an enemy of the people." She screamed back. It was a terrible scene. I had to lead her to a restaurant overlooking the sea, an attempt to calm her down. It took a while, but finally, the view of the endless Adriatic, glittering and stretching out toward Italy soothed her. It was then that she predicted Montenegro would become the next big travel destination. "It's like Cote d'Azur was in the 1950's," she said. "But God help us it doesn't turn into mass tourism.' *** So I am now taking a road trip with Dessa again, in early spring. On my first morning back in Montenegro, I throw open the curtains to a sea so blue and a cloudless sky so bright that it momentarily hurts my eyes. I am in a guesthouse owned by Dragan Mracevic, a former champion sailor, and his wife, Uba. Their garden has eucalyptus and mandarin trees, avocados and flowering plums. They serve homemade bread and fat croissants for breakfast, and the eggs come from the local hen. It was warm spring in Herceg Novi, but in Cetinje, the ancient capital of the Kingdom of Montenegro, there was heavy snow and the road was blocked. So Dessa and I decide to spend the next few days in the Boka region – which stretches along the Bay of Kotor – visiting small Venetian cities, Baroque palaces, monasteries and beeswax-scented Orthodox churches shaded by cypress trees. Here, the people do not call themselves Montenegrins but Bokaljac. They are sea people, proud people. We drive slowly and aimlessly, winding through small towns with pink villas and red-tiled roofs, like a less crowded Amalfi coast. The pine trees grow right up to the shore. Bigo, Dessa's driver, shows us the best coves to swim, the best place for gathering shellfish. There are a few modern villas going up: enormous, garish structures. "Rich Russians," Dessa snorts. We stop in Perast, an old Venetian port surrounded by mountains Dessa says Perast is a medieval town of sailors, sea captains, explorers and the man who was invited by Peter the Great to help create the Russian fleet. A 17th-century house that once belonged to the Balovics, an old naval family, is now a museum. At the entrance is a lion, the symbol of the Venetian Republic, which collapsed in 1797. "Perast is called a dead town, but it's really a town that has fallen asleep," says the dark-haired girl who sells me tickets to the museum. Inside, it is cool and dark. Dessa does not want to climb the stairs so I go alone, roaming rooms full of ancestral portraits, framed letters from King Victor Emanuel, shelves of 17th-century leather-bound books in French and Italian. I think of the family that lived here, the history of Montenegro and the weight of it. There is a sense of time fleeing, fading; of the Venetian republic crashing down; the Hapsburgs; the shot fired down the road in Sarajevo that killed Archduke Francis Ferdinand in 1914 and launched World War I; the occupiers: the Spaniards, the French, the Germans, the Italians and everyone else who overran this beautiful coastline. A Montenegrin historian once told me, "We do not have a romantic history. We have a tragic one. We have no freedom to chose our own destiny." Dessa and I leave the museum and drive to Kotor. Along the way, Dessa announces we are late for lunch with Dragan Antic, the former editor of Politika, the Belgrade newspaper that was the mouthpiece of the Milosevic regime. "In the old days, I wouldn't have spoken a word to him," Dessa says. "But times have changed." Dragan and his fiancée, Marinika, an economist, walk us through Kotor's old town which is protected by UNESCO, through the narrow streets, pointing out the clock tower and the Church of St Luka. The Byzantines, the Greeks, the Romans all occupied this town. "Even Napoleon was here in 1814," says Marinika. There are Venetian arches and ancient palazzos, stone buildings faded ocher by the sun; cafes where local writers sit thumbing through newspapers. Lunch is at Bastion, where Ivor, the chef, shows us his diplomas and drinks gorki list – bitter leaf aperitif – with us before retreating to the kitchen. He cooks on a two-burner stove, like something out of a refugee camp. But from this miniscule appliance comes an extraordinary meal: black ink risotto, red shrimp risotto, cheese soaked in fruity olive oil, langoustines in a spicy sauce. When Ivor brings a large speckled silver fish to inspect on a tray, Dessa lights up. "Wonderful! It's my Ugly Fish!" Her face breaks into a huge smile. "Ugly Fish! Isn't she beautiful!" Ivor calls it grdoba, frog fish. He boils it with wild spinach, a local delicacy. It is delicious. The local wine goes down easily, and Dessa talks about her troubled meetings with Slobodan Milosevic. Dragan Antic is still a good friend of the former dictator. He says he goes to see Slobo in the Hague often. "He misses his wife so much he cries," Dragan says dramatically. "Theirs is a true love story" Dessa, mutters: "That ghastly woman." After lunch, we stop off at Sveti Stefan, an island resort built on the site of a medieval fishing village where the elite Yugoslavs once spent summers. It was founded by the Pastrovic family, who built it with money plundered from Turkish ships. The resort is now largely composed of a fading but lovely hotel and it's own private beaches. Across is another beach is called Queen's Beach because of a visit in 1939 by Queen Marja, the wife of King Alexander, who was assassinated in 1934 in Marseille. Dessa went there as a child. She points to the construction work on the opposite shore. "They will ruin it!" she screams. *** The next day Dessa takes me to the Dr. Simo Milosevic center in Igalo, a spa and rehabilitation complex. She is sure it will be the next big thing. We have facials together, and she complains to the technician that she will not use Slovene products, she wants Lancome. The place is in the process of getting renamed, losing its old Socialist- style identity. It is now called the Mediterranean Health Center "So more foreigners come here instead of some expensive Swiss fat farm" she claims, from underneath the cotton veil on her face. She tells me she saw a rich, fat Italian in a fur coat coming to lose weight a few weeks back. In fact, the place is full of Norwegians and Dutch in terry cloth robes. We get a tour of the center, filled with white-coated women – there are 250 doctors working here – fitness instructors and lots of treatments involving salt water, massage and mud. But Dessa is impatient. She has arranged for me to see Tito's private seaside villa, which is now rented by rich Russians who come to the spa. She taps her cane angrily on the floor. "Hurry up, because I'm hungry," she calls out. "Be sure to be nosy and poke around." I do. Tito's bedroom is blue, with a huge bed and stark white sheets. He had his own barbershop, complete with a retro 1950's-style chair and a massage table. I imagine his girth on the table. His "official" wife had an adjoining bedroom in pink with an entire room in which to have her makeup done. I sit at Tito's desk, near a window that overlooks a wide expanse of the Bay of Kotor, the mountains beyond slicing into the blue water. In the middle of the water is an island which my guide, Sasa, tells me is called Momula. It was an Austrian prison in World War I. This is the view Tito had while he was pondering his future. I wonder who he spoke to when he was here. What was he thinking? I snoop around his drawers when Sasa turns his back, but they are empty. When I come back, Dessa tells her Prince Charles story again. She is starving and irritable. Every day Dessa has lunch in the same restaurant in Igalo, called Nautilus which has a wonderous view of the sea. Today she eats "a good Wiener schnitzel and green salad" but orders me grilled calamari. I notice the waiters are terrified of her. She drinks local red wine and suddenly spots her doctor, a handsome man in his early 40's called Delic. He specialises in Chinese medicine, and Dessa says he is a magician. She waves him over and insists he drink an aperitif. "Janine wants to have another baby, can you make her pregnant?" she demands then bursts into loud laughter. "It would be a beautiful child! Half Montenegrin, half Italo-American! She can go home to her husband already pregnant!" The doctor and I are both mortified. He blushes, then finishes his drink and quickly flees. "Well, I scared him away!" Dessa guffaws, pleased with herself. "His wife is very jealous." Our sunny days are spent like this: eating fish from the Adriatic, driving through small coastal towns, up mountain roads, into villages. Sitting in cafes and talking about Dessa's past, her life. We go to the Buvljak market in Igalo run by Bosnian refugees, and she makes me buy orthopedic clogs because they are good for the feet. Another afternoon, in Herceg Novi, she takes me to see her friend, the great Yugoslav artist Voyo Stanic and chides him for being an egomaniac. We drink visnja, homemade sour cherry brandy, and Vojo's wife, Nada, a beautiful sculptor, offers us cake she made from blackberries. Their only son, Tomo, who is visiting from New York, plays Chopin on the piano. One day we go to the 17th-century Savina Monastery where, in 1934, King Alexander sat and prayed and lighted a candle before he sailed to Marseille and his death. The candle he lighted is wrapped in a black ribbon and mounted in a glass box on the wall. The chair where he sat has a rope over it. A young boy, a novice monk, sweeps the floors and sings beautiful Orthodox hymns. Another monk invites us to lunch and talks with us. He has a shy, peaceful manner. I ask why the Orthodox altar is hidden behind a curtain. "Because we feel God, not see him," he tells me, "that is the meaning of true faith." Dessa nudges me. "So beautiful," she says, "and isn't he handsome?" Our last day, we drive farther on, to Budva, the central part of the coast. It takes us the entire day because we stop for a long lunch at a beautiful old 17th-century mill, Stari Mlini. It is run by the Djurica family, and the young son, Pedja, who has lived in San Francisco, tells us he is building small apartments and a dock for private yachts. He feels the wave of tourism coming, but hopes it will not change his country, will not kill its character. On the way home, Dessa tells more stories. About life. About her country. About the difference between then and now. I am leaving early the next morning. She points out the jagged landscape. "Look at the mountains, darling, look." I know I will be back in June with my baby son. But when Dessa gets out of the car at the end of the long day to go home, I am overcome by emotion. "But Dessa, I'll miss you!" I cry. "Don't miss me now, darling, I am still here," she says gently. "You can miss me when I am dead." But I do miss her. In Zagreb, I have to wait for an early morning flight home to Paris, I take out the notes that Dessa had written for me, to guide me through our trip on the Bay of Kotor. And it is almost like she is there, lecturing and shouting. It makes me feel better, somehow. One note describes a Russian "colleague" who is running a secretive "no entry" private hotel for Russian gangsters near Budva. "Another describes Sveti Stefan: "There is a hotel there called Milocer. I stayed in the residence (it was once the summer residence of Queen Marija) in 1940 with King Peter – a sweet girl of 15 – was being "broken in." I laugh. It is so very Dessa. Broken in. I fold the paper and put it in my bag. I fly home, laughing at all the stories she has told me. |
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