A sea without boats

On Sunday, April 15, 1979, at seven hours, nineteen minutes and fifty seconds, a devastating earthquake of magnitude nine on the Mercalli scale struck. Montenegro shook. One hundred and one people died; a thousand injured. Over thirty thousand buildings were completely destroyed or significantly damaged. Minarets from mosques and bell towers from churches fell. Valuable cultural monuments have disappeared. The Montenegrin economy suffered great damage.

Tito, who happened to be in Montenegro after spending twenty-eight days in Igalo, was supposed to leave that very morning. He immediately visited the affected settlements along the Herzegovina Riviera; the damaged Port of Zelenika. Then he came across an even more dramatic picture in the Bijela Shipyard, where seventy meters of coastline with complete workshops and halls ended up in the sea. He wanted to visit other places, he came to Kamenar, but he couldn't go any further because two hundred meters of the main road was under the sea, from which a cypress tree gaped like a ghost.

Tito returned to Villa "Galeb" and made a famous statement in which, among other things, he pointed out: "...Montenegro has been hit by a great disaster... I appeal to all our working people to approach the performance of their duties in providing assistance to the Montenegrin people without hesitation. I am convinced that our people will sacrifice as much as they can so that the Montenegrin people would overcome the consequences of the accident that befell them as soon as possible".

He spent the night in Igala, under a tent, and flew to Belgrade the next day on a special plane.

And - aid to Montenegro poured in from all sides.

Herceg Novi, the city of artists, greenery and flowers, as its mayor Petar Stijepčić liked to say, is drowning in pitch darkness. A kind of peace crept in. It lacks the usual Mediterranean liveliness. Taverns closed. The city seemed to be asleep; cannot recover from earthquake shock.

Down on the shore, even quieter. There are no living souls. I did not find the painter Voj Stanić in the old house. He moved to a new one, still unfinished, about a hundred meters away. I found him in front of a small television. The house still smells like plaster.

"I went up to the city to buy a newspaper," says Stanić. “Suddenly there was thunder! And I can say that I saw an earthquake. I was in the clearing and calmly observed everything. On one house, the facade curled in several waves. That's incredible. It seemed, simply, surreal.

I thought that house was going to collapse, but it stayed intact. Then there was a general flapping of trees and chimneys. But people put up with it. I am happy that I was able to move into the new house, although it is not completely finished, so I do not feel threatened. I saved the pictures. I have a whole truckload of them. I didn't even know I had so many pictures. While I was sitting in 'Škver', several young men took all those pictures to my new house".

And about further work?

"It is important that you have a roof over your head. And the studio... Every room is a studio. I never had one; it is a bit of a luxury. It is important that I saved these two hundred and fifty pictures", says Vojo Stanić. "The earthquake destroyed many cultural monuments. Too bad, too bad. Because what was built before can hardly be built again. Let's say, Kotor. He has his own atmosphere. Many houses, palaces have disappeared..."

He is a sad painter. Right before the earthquake, he started fixing the boat, to push it into the sea, but now he doesn't think about it.

"Life has changed," says Stanić. "Everyone is running somewhere, doing something. And the old, as if petrified, stare aimlessly. Here, on the coast, there are only three families left; the houses are abandoned”.

I am asking about Bat Pravilović. His studio is almost destroyed and the painter is not allowed to enter to look at the paintings.

"Bato is upstairs, under a tent, with ten women! At least they are young, each of them is sixty years old," joked Stanić.

I have been looking for Pravilović for a long time. Under the big tent, near his cracked house, he was gone. His son, Milan, an archaeologist, is going with me to look for him. He was not with Mitko Bulajić. We headed down, to the coast, towards 'Škver'. That's where we found him. Repentant.

"I understand this as if everything is over," says Bato Pravilović in a somber voice. "About twenty paintings remained in my house. I pulled out some canvases to continue working on them. But where will I work? Under a tent?! Indeed, it is as if everything is over. I was caught in a storm. It seems to me that there is no way out if a solution is not found immediately. As if everything has failed, as if there is no purpose behind this. It's a stupid color, it's a stupid bunch. Everything turns out to be funny, like some kind of deception. I have unfinished work left at home for the Portrait Gallery in Tuzla..."

On the wall of the room in Pravilović's house hangs a picture on which broken glass and a bird are painted.

"I imitated the broken glass that the bird broke in order to place itself in the landscape," says Bato Pravilović. "When it thundered, my son Milan, who was so restless, saw that picture and wanted to fly through the window like that bird... Some pictures look like I painted them after the earthquake! Here, one has a painted cracked earth and a doll whose flower-patterned dress has been attacked by butterflies! Well, you know what killed me?! Deserted sea! No boats! It was never like that. We know all the boats, we know whose is which, even where who is going. And now everything is calm..."

Night. It's eerie in the almost dead city of Herceg Novi. I am looking for Ac Prijić. His studio was destroyed. They said that he is on Savina in the unfinished house of his cousin from Sarajevo.

Around twenty-two o'clock I headed through the old town. There is no light. You can't see the finger in front of the eye. Movement is prohibited. The city looks ghostly. I cling to the edges of cracked houses. Some cat slips by. From somewhere, near the "Josip Bepo Benković" Gallery, an old man came out with a flashlight.

When he comes by me, turn off the lamp! Soon I found myself in front of a freshly covered, unfinished house, without windows. In the middle of the dirt floor of the only room, a fireplace! Partition walls have not been installed yet. A few beds around. A TV, a fridge and a pile of blankets.

“Welcome! Here, you see, we live as if in a war", Aco Prijić spreads his hands. "My pictures were damaged. I didn't even look at them. If only we stayed alive…”

"It was terrible," says Prijić's wife Ljubica. "When it thundered, I asked myself what is that rumbling!? Aco said it was probably spring 'boing'. What a 'boing', you see that the house is collapsing, I shouted! And the house twisted just like an accordion. The small pool in the yard was swaying so much that the water was spilling out.

Aco Prijić tells me that he did not take anything out of the studio, so as not to create panic.

"And maybe there would be no panic. Everyone was composed," says Prijić. "When I was leaving the studio, I thought I was going to step on corpses. The house played like a matchbox. We painters experienced it emotionally. I'm sorry if that old town has to be demolished, so that they hit some concrete... Still, there will be exhibitions. We will work, even in the courtyard. Pictures are a part of me. I can't live without them. And I can't even calm down. To go somewhere, I won't, so they don't say I ran away. I really liked the idea of ​​the painters Josip and Ivan Generalić that all the painters contribute one of their works for the victims. I will gladly do it…”