What Do You Want
The river Sava, Belgrade, Serbia
Story On A Paddle
Infinite energy on my side
Rivers are wonderful things that can cheer us up, make us joyful,
and some people, engaged in science, say they are healthy beyond
what we think about or see on them.
They are good because of some negative ions.
When inhaled or close to us, they have a positive effect on our entire body.
This in turn has a positive effect on our mood which sometimes is not perfect,
or sometimes we are tired, or there is something wrong happening to us.
When I was a child, I loved lake the most, well, several lakes.
I was born in Bela Crkva, in Banat.
The lakes were for swimming and sailing and had walking paths around.
Those were my places for socializing, relaxation and everything.
And when I grew up a little, I preferred the sea.
It seemed like an infinite energy that is all on my side.
Then somehow, as years went by, the river became definitely the most important to me.
Not a particular river, but all the rivers and that flow and calmness
and inevitability that is not bad, because some other inevitability can make you sad.
Among all the rivers there is a river I love the most. It is called Nera.
It runs along the border of Serbia and Romania, it looks like a paradise on earth.
In some more fortunate circumstances, such as for example in Romania today,
you wouldn't believe, it was declared a national park.
Here it was not declared a national park.
Not only that, but there appear various cases of stealing wood, gravel or fish,
various inconveniences.
This year the Nera got a little angry, as all other waters did,
and became a fast, opaque and deep.
This year, even I, as her lover, could not enjoy it.
But it defended itself of those who hurt her by cutting down the poplars, willows,
the so-called low-quality wood yet high quality for our eyes and our soul,
for beauty, for aesthetics, but not for heating,
nor for any use in wood industry or similar.
The river Nera runs into Danube, 12 km from Bela Crkva, near Stara Palanka,
at the same place where DTD channel flows into the Danube.
And that is the Swamp Djurica, a paradise for fishermen and treasure for men
who always have a reason to do something.
They don't go to the nature to gape, as some women do, but rather to fish.
They know what they are doing.
Now, us, women which don't do fishing, or have dabbled in it for a while,
we're going to look at things.
At the place where the Nera flows into the Danube,
where all this wonderful nature is happening,
there is a natural reserve of aquatic birds and all kinds of other animals, plants,
water lilies, air...
there lives a man, as in the story, once upon a time there was a man...
His name is Milos Krucican, we call him Papa since early childhood.
No one knows now how he got that nickname.
He is a sort of a role model, who I point out to my daughter when talking to her
about what one can do in life.
In the early 1990s, when many of my friends emigrated to the outside,
my friend Papa had emigrated to the inside.
He bought a house in Stara Palanka, on the Danube,
he bought a boat with an engine, and became a professional fisherman.
Then, when he just became a professional fisherman,
I often went with him purely to be present, to catch durdubak baits,
to step in the water and catch minnows, to watch fishing.
In the meantime Papa bought the nets, passed some professional exams,
got some certificates, he even keeps some books now.
He became a professional fisherman who catches catfish taller than him, 95 kg +.
That man lives among all of us who, when alone,
somehow don't know exactly who we are, even though we pretend we are much more.
We have to, we've got to pretend and convince ourselves.
Papa does not convince himself in anything, he really is, somehow completely whole,
tanned by the sun, in harmony with nature, a man by his measure and by measure of man.
I think that if more of us had strength and courage to do something like that,
this world right here and right now would look a lot better.
At the place where Papa has a home, where his boats and his nets lay,
and where he sometimes pulls an interesting tree from the Danube to give to me,
and where he engages in fishing, and in winter just in free thinking,
maybe dealing with philosophy,
this last winter I saw a very interesting scene.
It is not something I've ever seen before, even though I often go to nature
and my favorite scene is one where nothing is made by human hands.
It was dusk.
I was on the coast and I heard a strange sound.
Some splashing, rustling, gibberish of water.
You often can hear these wonderful sounds on the river,
but this was something very specific.
It was a situation where wild ducks, at the time when the water begins to freeze,
and before they form those wedges in the sky and go south to find places
where they can feed, where the water is not frozen,
those torturous ducks attempted what?
First, the whole flock landed on the water which started catching the first icy crust.
Floating in a circle, they mixed the water with their feet, not letting it freeze,
to be able to catch fish and other food.
This biological enthusiasm is a metaphor of what we all have to do,
because until the ice gets thick our duty is to stir a little swim in a circle
so we can survive.
It seemed like a track on which a friend of mine is,
the one who emigrated to the inside not outside,
a track which provides all of us that live here and now with a direction what to do.
We just need to get out of our chairs and all these everyday situations, monitors,
to see the sky and to stir that water a little
and breathe deeply a little, with full lungs.
Vladislav Vojnovic, born in 1965 in Bela Crkva, writer, poet and playwright.
She has published three books of poetry and four novels.
Winner of the "Stevan Sremac" Award in 2013.
She made two movies and one TV series.
Can't keep silent, ever.
Translation: Mateja Miljacki
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