Trekking (Refugees)

Musta told you I met a number of cyclists on the Montenegrin Riviera on the last trip down from Italy and Switzerland. But in this regard the meeting that took the cake was with the young Frenchman Louis-Pierre or something coming up around a bend. It was easy to tell the fellow was a foreigner: light skin tone, pointy features, unkempt bushy-hair. Almost a soft Genet-rogue footing along. No way he was a local. A stranger could walk 10-15 kms a day through a two month stay, but everyone could tell I somehow fitted. Odd but not foreign. This kid? No way. Hey, fella. Hallo. Ya, Hallo. Hallo.... He'd walked from France. You what?!.. (Check the map for the full force.) Why?! The question stumped the kid. ....Ah.... Ah.... Well Monsieur, I was trying to give up smoking. And, well... I thought this might help... You think I'm bullshitting don't you? Hope he didn't get run over by a lorry. Told the fellas today at the breakfast table how the Syrians were going to walk to Germany. They hadn't been following the news last few days (One of the chaps a visitor, Cambodian-Chinese, well-acquainted with flight from disaster)....1,000's of them along the highway heading north outta Hungry lands. Course they were going to walk. After the Mediterranean crossing what was a walk in the park like that? It brought back Maria Popov from our neighbourhood in Spotty. Maria and her pisshead hubbie Stefan. (Son was Pavel born in the camps; daughter Lydia on Australian soil.) Maria looked like Boris Yeltsin in drag—like a lotta Russian Marias and Borises interchangeably look. Without ever raising her voice like our mob did she managed to somehow project strong force and spirit. Maria was a giant. We Montenegrins and Herzegovinians were tall, brick shit-house size, Dalmatians too; and then in our circle, in Bab's circle, we had Maria Popov as a bonus add-on. It was a feature of our little colony among the early settlers. (Sorry to labour the point to a Malteser.) Bigger than Boris Maria. (Reckon Boris was an average to middling short-arse blown up by the cameras, jumping on top of tanks &etc.) A Holden or Datsun wasn't gunna fit Maria and Stefan when she had to pile him fallin over himself into the back seat in order to get him home. Maria P. had a Chevrolet； pink Chevy with pointy fins. At that time, still pre-pubescent, pre-Beatles & pre-TeeV (at least in our house) there was no kinda word received of Americano fantasy wheels. There were few cars of any sort in our street and what there was matchbox scale. The JP Mr. Sheema had an Austin that rarely left his driveway. Mr. Broadway a Morris something. Cars were uncommon; many of the men rode bicycles with the front handle-bars turned up and the Gladstone bag nestled between. When Maria visited and parked her chariot in front of the house it stretched the width of the block and almost down to the bottom of the street. Truly, pink inserts on white, fins behind mounted with a round dot indicator if I recall. At least on one occasion I rode with Maria and Bab must have been there. The heavy door and the saloon-like roominess stick, and more still the wheel-turning going around a corner. Having to swing out wide for the long tail, Maria's thick forearms lapped over each other rapido like in an exercise workout. Turning a battleship like that would have been beyond many less well-equipped. Spotty, Yarraville, Williamstown, even the people on the other side of the river in the mid 60's could not have seen the like. God knows where she got the beast; maybe a Ruskie contact somewhere in Detroit. Maria was halfway through a course at Moscow University when the war broke out. Then the German retreat presented a chance to escape the Commies. Large numbers saw their chance following in the wake of the departing Nazis. Footslogging of course like the soldiers. Moskva to Berlin and the Free World in 4-5-6 months walking, Bab reported to our visitors. (She was proud of her new friend's feat.) AustRA-lia, Spotswood, Kernot Street near Blackshaws corner. Like ours, the Popov place had a bungalow in back where boozy weekends Stefan & Maria entertained. Bab got by in the Slavic stream somehow; pretty amazing how the pair managed. With the Ruskies the local Poles mourned their fate too; they were welcome at Kernot Street. Think I only attended one boring/retrospectively fascinating gala supper: laden table, vodka, there might have been an accordion or record player. Old Pan Stefan sang a song. The Poles sang and cried in their cups, if not that night certainly on other occasions in our neighbourhood. The heaviness of spirit of Pan Stefan and some of the others sitting around the table was clearly projected like Maria's inner strength. She herself had not succumbed. Maybe the women saw less horror than their husbands. Don't think Stefan lived long after they moved to the Gold Coast. Don't think he was ever completely sober. Maria might have been the wage earner. In the Chevvy Maria and Babi went see Ruskie movies in the kino, Bab reported back. 1965-6-7 our Babi in darkened picture-theatres watching the big screen. At the time it was a bit hard to actually comprehend a kino—some kind of foreign arrangement for émigrés one assumed. There was one cinema on the Western side of town, but that opened later. Maybe, maybe the pair watched the films of Andrei Tarkovsky and Eisenstein. (There is a vague memory of Babi once mentioning Ivan Grozny. Ten years later seeing the film with Veki at Valhalla in Victoria Street Richmond there was some odd sense of replay or continuance; and more of the same twenty years later again when I took Georgi and his Babushka to see Andrei Rublev at Cinematheque. When Georgi's Babushka said after the screening that she knew in advance Rublev was mochni—powerful — the vibration echoed. Back in St. Petersburg Georgi's Bab had seen other first-release Tarkovsky, but not Rublev.) The Moscow Circus—lions, trapeze artists, Cossack dancing, Bab reported back other stupid/retrospectively brilliant outings with Maria. From memory it was six months walking to Berlin. The Frenchie met five or six years ago on the hillside back in the ancestral lands resembled the young ragamuffin Rublev who was given the responsibility of casting the great bell for the cathedral in the film. 

NB. A friend's bike-riding down in Melbourne — among other news — the prompt here.