Dje–si–brate –—MOOOJ?!
Where you be / Wherefore brother—MIIINE?!
Spaced and heavily accented...
The man had risen to his feet in order to receive the chap in finest form, the middle-aged priest or monk entering, with his fine black beard that was likely undyed.
A café on the narrow, lower road at Novi, indoors screened somewhat from the passing traffic.
Within a couple minutes of being seated, the other, the tall chap who had awaited the Divine, began in the time honoured way.
Jebem ti… Jebem mu majku…
No joke here. The words were bitten off with venom. Reporting a grievance, an outrage perpetrated against himself by some fellow.
Fuck it… Fuck his mother…
Oh yeah. It was not good. Some ugly something had very badly angered the man.
On the other side there was no discernible batting of eyelid from the Cassock; none at all. Not in the slightest. Although peering too closely from 3.0m away was not possible.
But the remainder of the greeting.
Briskly up the steps and across the narrow balcony, in the beard had bounded.
The tall man had not been kept waiting long, under five minutes.
The greeting of the cherished one took place inside the entryway, two paces from their table.
The clasp here was of the contemporary, masculine form, where the hands meet vertically and at shoulder level. A brief shake ensuing. Following which the Tall here draws up their hands to his chin, where a short, smacking kiss was given.
In a church and ordinarily, there was no shake of hand of any kind with a priest; rather the hand of the said was clasped low and a bow made toward the latter’s waist, where the honour was completed.
Quiet strange to witness only forty short years later.
Even sixteen years before on the last visit the priests were much less prominent in Novi and Boka generally.
The main road and the square at Herceg Novi still bore the name of the local head of the Communist Party during the war. There was a bust, and possibly a head too, somewhere along the promenade.
Executed by the Italians from memory, Nikola Djurković. During the first visit to the ancestral home in the early ‘80s the man had been spoken about as a familiar.
A lawyer from Pode, which at the time had been a little settlement outside Novi itself, although immediately above on the hill. Our villagers higher up needed to pass by Pode on the way to the market.
Narodi hero four odd decades, and even in the present day not straightforward to remove.
Herceg Novi, Montenegro
