From the roof of a ten-story building in Berane, you can see the city, the Lim Valley with the white peaks of Komovo. For a long time, I have been enjoying that scene, on which the morning April sun generously pours light. Mihailo Lalić's Lelejska gora is actually there. Admittedly, the great writer never named Komov, but on some pages he was more than clear: "In the distance in front of me stands the high Lelejska gora: before there were only two peaks, like two petrified mountains, now a third has grown from somewhere."
I look at those three petrified trees and remember that I saw this kind of beauty only in the alpine belt. Today I will travel there, to that gorge. I will visit the town of Andrijevica, and I will be accompanied by journalist and writer Darko Jovović, a man from those parts.
The coffee in Beran's cafe "Studio" is called Podgorica's "deutsch". It is actually a make-up called "German" only in Montenegro. No one can explain to me why.
Let's register "Deutsch" with Tufko Softić and we are already driving towards the exit from Beran in Darko's car. He is already telling me about his homeland. The Vasojević region has three eternal themes - the beauty of the hills, the glorious history and fewer and fewer people in the midst of that beauty and history.
In the car, a conversation started about Mihail Lalić. It turns out that I read it almost half a century ago in the Tuzla high school as a contemporary classic, which fascinated me in a similar way as Meša Selimović and Vladimir Desnica, and that Darko perceived him as a great native writer, because the geography of his novels is all around us. I immediately agreed with the suggestion that we visit the nearby village of Lalić, Trepča.
I will go on expeditions
We turn onto a country road, along a rapid that Darko told me is called Trebačka river, and in Lalić's prose - Međa. Darko explains that Mihailo Lalić's birthplace was on the left, across the river. Not renewed. Instead, they designated one cottage to be a kind of memorial house. We stop in front of her. Locked gate. Not a word about the fact that one of our greatest storytellers of the last century was born here. I think that Lalić is more needed by his homeland than his homeland.
We did not meet a living person in Trepča. The roar of the river can be heard, its waterfalls were able to remind the boy who will grow up to be a writer of human voices. He listened to the murmur, he wanted the flow of his sentences to have the same naturalness and sonorous flow.
I know that the local authorities have already put some streams and rivers into pipes. How would they have spent a century or two ago, when the people here knew how to defend themselves.
I ask Darko where Lelejska gora is actually. "Everything here is Lelejska gora", he answered me and pointed around to the hills.
The night before, I fell asleep reading, after a long time, Lelejska Gora. The lexicon of this region sparkles like golden nuggets in Lalić's clear sentence. In Lelejska gora, there are not guards, but guards. War comrades don't argue, but like rams - gobble. Burdock attacks neglected pens - and that plant is probably called burdock, hat, turnip, burdock, podbel, goat's beard, horse's hoof - burdock elsewhere.
We return to Lalić's talkative Međa, the cemetery and the church and turn right, towards Andrijevica.
Further along Lim
I look forward to meeting my father's homeland again. I have loved mountains since I was a child. Although I was born in Sremac, there is nothing plain in my understanding of nature. My parents took me to Bosnia at an early age, and there the horizon line often rises and falls following the contours of the hills and mountains.
Approaching this remote area evokes in me a feeling that rarely overcomes me - admiration. We stop to take a photo of Lim snaking under the hills above which the snow is white on Komovi.
There should be a bench here. And a tree that makes shade. So that travelers could stop longer to rest their eyes and soul. But there is no bench. Shot and bushes. We're leaving. From here it is not far to Andrijevica.
Darko warned me that even this small town is becoming more and more empty. Since the last census, the municipality lacks a thousand souls, and the core of the town itself has reduced to a few hundred inhabitants.
Knjaževac or Radunovac
We stop at the entrance to Andrijevica near the park where the Church of St. Michael the Archangel is located. Prince Nikola visited Andrijevica in 1887 and contributed to the construction of the church. All Vasojevic churches were burned ten years earlier during Mehmed Ali Pasha's attack. On the board near the entrance to Knjaževac, as the area of Radunovac was named in honor of Prince Nikola, there is also a record of how the church was created: "The construction of the church lasted one summer, and the material was brought from nearby villages on the other side of Lim. Every rifleman from the region undertook to bring one stone each".
I think of the fact that Dedović lived in those villages on the other side of Lim. Some stones of my ancestors must have been built into this church. Icons, iconostasis, books were brought from Russia.
But Knjaževac offers more history. In front of the church are busts representing Abbot Mojsi Zečević and Miljan Vukov, Vasojevic champions from the 19th century.
Darko tells me that earlier the May Day and the Thirteenth of July councils were held here, a lot of people, a fair-party crowd. Before World War II, these were councils on church holidays. Silence fell on Knjaževac today. I remember a sentence about Andrijevica that captures the essence of this place: Neither a smaller place, nor more history.
On the black obelisk engraved with the names of those who died in the liberation wars, I find the names Đukan, Bogdan, Dmitar and Tomica. And on the white monument dedicated to fallen fighters from the Second World War and hundreds of civilians, I find the names Vlado and Petar. Behind these names is engraved my last name. I don't care. All the dead are mine. But these are taxa.
Hotel Komovi
We leave this place with a heavy step, reluctantly. What is the relationship between the excess of history and the lack of people in the Lim basin among the mountains? The town was gathered around one street. There are travel writers who have left a record of the beauty of the wooden houses in a row. They are gone. But there are ordinary houses and buildings. It is as if the last decades of the last century were frozen. Time here flows much more slowly than the waters of Lim.
We will sit in the garden of the Komovi hotel. This is the local agora. Once, in the eighties, I waited here for my father, who promised to come down from Grudice. He didn't come down. We never saw each other again.
I don't dare to order "deutsche", I drink bitter homemade. Darko tells me: "When you write, please leave some room for hope". I feel the beauty of this place, the difficult and glorious history. I feel the set of a deep province, neglected, depopulated, and cruelly beautiful in its own way. There is no human hope in that surrounding beauty, it is indifferent to the human world. Do today's kids even know who Mihailo Lalić or Radovan Zogović were, the language wizards born in this region?
Last night I found a sentence from Lelejska gora that says a lot about the struggle for survival in these parts: "Just look at the names of the places: Prokletije, then Vragobija, then Lelejska gora, on one side Black happiness, on the other Zlorečica and Poblenik and Džakovica - bloody meadow".
On Lim's knee
Darko says that it would be good for me to see my father's father, at least from below, with Lim. Drives from Andrijevica along Lim. The mountains are closing in on us. Soon we arrive at the extension near Lim, where the village of Ulotina is located, and in it there is a large gate above which is written "Ethno Village Koljeno".
Bungalows on a meadow, actually on a spacious terrace above Lim. We are sitting at the table. The boss is Darko's friend Bratislav Baćko Vlahović. He joins us with brandy. Darko introduces me to this unusual man who has a degree in mechanical engineering, but has never worked in it. Composer of several famous local songs, farmer, owner of a famous restaurant with rooms and finally - owner of a tourist camp.
His hit "Ivana se kroz Berane šeta" is sung by Dula Rajković: "The sun warmed from Jasikovac, Vasojevo's heart trembled, after many springs and summers, Ivana se kroz Berane šeta".
I ask Baćko if any of the Vlahović family remembers whom Poleksija Vlahović aka Leka married. For my grandfather, I answer my own question, to soften his quizzical look. He immediately grabs the phone and calls someone. That someone tells him that Leka was Radovan Vlahović's sister. It turns out that Baćko and I are cousins. Let's toast to that. Baćko gives me a genealogical book of Vlahović, he writes my grandmother next to her brother on the family tree. I look up, high above Lim, where my grandmother rests in the village cemetery. I strain my eyes to make out the place. The houses are too high, like sugar cubes. There is no one there anymore either.
That is the hope
We say goodbye to Baćko. We drive back, towards Andrijevica. I looked at the father's house, which rose like a lodge above Lim. There is one more thing left to do in Andrijevica. Let's stop by the "Most" restaurant. We didn't overeat all day. A sunny day took us through Trepča, Andrijevica, Ulotina. "Hunger in the sun is not as painful as in the fog," says Mihailo Lalić. His Lelejska gora is bathed in sunlight.
We enter the restaurant and sit under the silent speaker. Darko tells me that a long time ago, in the tavern, he recited Jesenin. Now the people are cheered up in the evening by carolers. The food was good, the conversation even better. And here everyone knows Darko. And when he mentions my father's name, then everyone gets happy as if they know me too.
I don't know why, but I don't want to leave here. The sun has already set on the hills, it's time to go. I tell Darko that the rest on Koljen, under the father's house, is perhaps the most beautiful time during this visit to Montenegro.
I also tell him that maybe this is the hope - if there is hope for us - that each of those great academics, doctors, writers and successful people who come from here recognize the healing properties of this region.
Darko drives me back to Berane. I will spend the evening there with Dedović, as it should be. The sheet metal on my right is losing its green color, blending in with the shores. It's getting dark. Soon the night will cover Polimlje. Or - as Lalić would say: "Soon there won't be a seer".
Bonus video:
