Chapter 16

The next morning we drove back to Gradsko, where the turn was to go west across southern Yugoslavia. We’d driven down that road just a couple of days earlier, so we were confident it was a straightforward drive. We kept up a good pace – the fifty kilometres an hour that was the maximum the Bandvagn seemed able to do.

For the first few kilometres the road to Bitola, our next destination, was in fair condition, running through fairly level countryside, young forest that Granny didn’t need to tell me had grown on former farmland. I could even spot where the field boundaries had been in some places. Sometimes there were gaps in the trees through which we could see wooded hills.

Gradually the hills got bigger and closer, and then suddenly we were climbing. The road was narrower, and the surface was in worse condition. Granny clicked on the intercom, and told Uncle Sid, in the truck just behind us, to stop and wait until we’d checked that the road was passable.

‘It looks as though it’d be pretty hard to turn on the next stretch, if we have to.’

Nikolai came on the intercom. He had Carol and Nina with him.

‘Carol says why doesn’t he go on the motorbike to check the road ahead? It’s a pity he doesn’t have intercom, but he can go and find the next turning point, and come back in the time it would take the tanker to get there. And then once we’re on the move, he can go and find the next one as well. We should be able to keep moving continuously like that. The motorbike will end up doing between two and three times the distance, but that doesn’t matter.’

‘Good idea!’

So we all stopped, and Nikolai helped Carol get the motorbike off the trailer. Carol set off, and was back in just a few minutes.

‘There’s a long stretch where you’ll be able to turn easily after just a couple of kilometres like this. Stop again when you reach the next narrow bit. I’ll go on and check the next section, and come back and find you there.’

Laima translated for us. I could see Granny really wanted to go on the motorbike, but she wasn’t saying anything. So I did.

Granny shushed me. ‘He’ll be quicker on his own. And use less petrol.’

Laima laughed. ‘You and Mikey weigh nearly nothing, Persie. You wouldn’t make any difference at all.’

So we went with Carol. It’s true that he must have weighed a good deal more than Granny and me put together, but I don’t believe we really made no difference at all.

The ‘long stretch’ where the trucks would have been able to turn if they’d needed to was only a few kilometres, and then the road got pretty rough and narrow again amongst steep, rocky hills, with narrow bridges over little gorges. In a couple of places we stopped for Granny to check a bridge, but once she’d looked at them she was confident that they were good enough for the trucks.

We went a long, long way without finding anywhere where the trucks would be able to turn. We were getting pretty high in the mountains. Eventually we reached the summit of the pass. Right at the highest point there was a wide area of gravel that Granny said was a parking place, for people to stop and admire the view. It was big enough to turn the trucks, and that’s what we cared about.

We stopped to stretch our legs – and admire the view. The way we’d come up, the valley was narrow and steep and winding, and we couldn’t see very far that way, but the other way the valley was broad and the slope was relatively gentle. There were the remains of a village just below the summit, but Granny reckoned that most, maybe all, of the houses must have been abandoned for a lot more than thirty odd years.

Carol was trying to tell Granny something. Granny tried a few words of Russian, trying to get him to say what he was trying to say in different words, and slowly, and maybe she’d understand. Eventually he managed to get his point across, more in mime than in words.

Would Granny like to drive the motorbike? She’d be able to see better if Carol rode behind her.

Granny wasn’t sure about that, but Carol showed her the controls, and she had a go on her own around the car park. But she didn’t want to ride back to the trucks. She didn’t feel confident at all.

By the time we got back to the trucks, they were beginning to be a bit worried about us. Laima and Grandad were just beginning to think about setting off in the tanker to look for us, hoping we’d not had an accident. They thought maybe we’d broken down. They couldn’t believe it was really so far to the next place the trucks would be able to turn.

‘I wish there was some way you could rig up an intercom on the bike, Persie.’

‘I very much doubt the intercoms would have worked between here and where we’ve been. Not more than the first two or three kilometres, anyway. Too many hills in the way.’

The three of us set off again, to investigate the next stretch of road while the main convoy headed for the car park at the top of the pass. It wasn’t very far beyond the summit of the pass before we could see a town in the middle distance, and it seemed no time at all before we were in it. There were plenty of places to turn, and plenty of places to raid – in particular, a petrol station.

‘It’ll be ages before the trucks get to the top of the pass. We should take a look around.’

It was all very well telling me that, but she couldn’t get it across to Carol. We set off back to the top of the pass. When we got there, Carol turned the engine off and we could hear the trucks labouring up a hill in the distance. The sound varied as they progressed. Sometimes we could hear the engines working hard, other times they were obviously running fairly level or even downhill. Sometimes the sound was very clear, other times it faded away almost to nothing. Granny said it was the shape of the valley, sometimes funnelling the sound towards us, other times reflecting most of it off somewhere else entirely.

‘If we knew that road better, we’d probably be able to work out exactly where they were.’

I felt as though I did know that road pretty well. There weren’t many stretches of road I’d been along three times! But I didn’t have any idea how to work out where the trucks were.

Then suddenly we could see them moving in the distance. We couldn’t really see the road, just the trucks. If they’d been stationary I don’t think we’d have been able to spot them – and even though they were in direct line of sight, the sound was only reaching us very thinly.

They disappeared around a shoulder of the hill. Strangely, the sound got much louder at the same moment.

I mentioned that to Granny that evening, and she explained about the difference between the speeds of sound and light. She also showed me how to take my own pulse, and use it to time the interval between a lightning flash and the beginning, and the end, of the thunder, and so get a rough estimate of the distance to the nearest and furthest parts of the thunderbolt – or how far away a moving vehicle was.

By the time the trucks arrived at the summit it was getting late, and we stopped there for the night. Radiation levels were slightly up. Granny and Laima wondered why, but couldn’t figure it out. As usual, it was stronger the closer to the ground you took the readings, so Granny said a large proportion of it was probably alpha.

‘So it could just be natural for this area, or maybe there was a uranium mine somewhere around here. Ivan wouldn’t necessarily have known about it. It’s nothing to worry about at this level, but we’d better keep an eye on it in case we’re heading into a contaminated area.’

We always kept an eye on it anyway.

There wasn’t much vegetation, but the chickens seemed happy scrabbling in the dirt, and Nikolai tied extra rope onto the goats’ tethers so they could each reach a few stunted shrubs. Little Liz and I went on a long expotition to find some weeds for the chickens, and saw several little lizards. We’d never seen lizards before, but I knew what they were from Grandad’s stories and the pictures he’d drawn for us.

I don’t think any of the grown-ups believed we’d really seen them – until Aunty Dot saw one herself. Even then I’m not sure. I’m never quite sure whether Aunty Dot, or Aunty Belle for that matter, say things like that just to be nice to me or little Liz, and I suspect that some of the other grown ups might wonder about that, too.

Granny and Laima studied the Yugoslavian road map and the atlas. The town we’d visited was Prilep, and we were on the road Granny had intended us to be on.

The next morning we did a bit of raiding in Prilep, and found a truck depot. There were two trucks full of cardboard boxes of food. There were jars of various sorts of pickles, some of which I’d never seen before – such as pickled carrots and pickled aubergines. There were cartons and cartons of crispbread, and something else I’d never seen before – rusks. Some of the cartons had got damp, but most were fine and there was more stuff there than we’d got room to take anyway.

The petrol station had plenty of diesel, and we topped the tanker up although we weren’t low at all – but the petrol tanks were both completely dry. Granny wondered whether perhaps the tanks had a leak, but Laima thought it was quite likely they’d simply sold out during the cull, or even before it.

‘There’ll be more as soon as we get back into Greece.’

From Prilep to Bitola the road wasn’t bad at all, although it had obviously been flooded pretty badly a few times, and in places it was hidden under dry mud. Granny was a bit worried that the mud might only be dry on the surface, and the trucks might drop a wheel into a hole, but it didn’t happen – not deeply enough to be a problem, anyway.

What did happen was that a wheel bearing failed in one of the big trailers. Unfortunately it was the last vehicle in the convoy, so there was no-one behind to notice that something was wrong, and the first Uncle Sid knew was that his truck suddenly stopped with a bang and a loud graunching sound. The trailer wheel had come off completely, and the end of the axle casing had dug itself into the road.

Uncle Sid called everyone on the intercom, and we all stopped. Granny took one look at the mess and realized that that was the end of that trailer.

‘If we’d spotted that as soon as the wheel started to wobble, we might have been able to find a bearing that fitted. Even that’s a long shot, really, though. There’s no chance at all now. There won’t be any trailers like that one anywhere around here, and no parts to fit.’

We loaded all the stuff out of the trailer into one of the sleeping trucks, and detached the trailer. It was the first time any of those trailers had been detached since Norway.

‘Let’s hope we can find an ordinary farm trailer somewhere. Obviously there’s no hope of finding a trailer with a driven axle, but with luck we won’t really need that again. We can always winch, and we’ve not had to do even that for ages. But if we all have to sleep in one truck for a night or two, we know we can manage if we have to.’

‘There were big trailers in that truck depot in Prilep. It’s not that far to go back to fetch one.’

‘I didn’t look at their hitches. I wonder if they’d fit? I dare say we could cobble something together, if necessary by nicking the necessary fittings off the back of one of their lorries. I wonder what the tyres are like though?’

‘That’s going to be a problem with any trailer anywhere. There’s a better chance of finding some decent tyres at that depot than in most places.’

It was decided. Granny and Nikolai and Uncle Sid set off back to Prilep in the trailer-less truck, with all the tools and the little petrol generator. The rest of us waited. We put the chickens and goats out for an unscheduled feast. We were in the middle of new-growth forest, and it was very lush.

“It’s a pity we don’t have a duplicate set of tools. We can’t even get the wheels off the dead trailer until they get back. There might be other bits we should salvage, too.”

Carol set off on the motorbike to go and investigate the road at least as far as Bitola, and maybe a bit further. He knew it would take them a long time to fix up a trailer.

He arrived back long before them. He looked tired and drawn. Laima got some rags and a bowl of water, and Nina helped Carol wash his hands and face. She gradually got the story out of him. Laima relayed it to the rest of us.

Granny and Laima had forewarned Carol and Nina about skeletons in abandoned houses, and they’d taken it in their stride when they found them. What Carol had not been ready for was piles of skeletons, in the tattered remains of their clothes, in the street. There had been a military vehicle resting on the top of one of the piles. We’d seen things like that a few times, but we’d sort of worked up to it gradually, and we’d not been alone.

‘There’s probably a lot of raiding could be done in Bitola, but I haven’t got the stomach for it. I’d rather get through there as quick as we can.’

That was Laima’s translation of what he said, anyway. Nobody was going to argue with him.

It took Granny and Nikolai and Uncle Sid all day, but late that evening they turned up with a huge box trailer behind the truck. To hitch it up, they’d had to grind off part of the back end of the chassis of a lorry, and bolt it onto our truck. It hadn’t been possible to connect the new trailer’s brakes, so Uncle Sid was under strict orders to be very careful, especially going down steep hills.

They’d half filled the trailer with food, but there was still room for us to empty the sleeping truck into it.

‘A pity we ever transferred everything out of the old trailer in the first place. Unnecessary double handling. Never mind. Such is life.’

Laima told them about Carol’s experience in Bitola.

‘There’s no need for us to do any raiding there. We’re very well supplied now anyway. I’d like to try to find a road map of Greece, but we wouldn’t find one of those in Bitola anyway. Oh, and petrol. We’ve probably got enough to get down to the west coast of Greece anyway, but I always prefer to be well topped up.’

Carol had been right through Bitola and a good way beyond. He hadn’t reached any obstructions and there were plenty of places to turn round, so they put the motorbike back on the front of the animal trailer. Carol could ride in the truck with Nikolai and Nina again.

Carol and Nina decided they were ready to start learning English in earnest. Granny wanted Grandad to teach them, but it ended up being a big co-operative effort between all the grown-ups. Lieđđi and Suonjar and Nikolai weren’t sure whether they were teachers or pupils, and the truth is they were a bit of both. There was much hilarity all round, and we ended the evening with a big sing-song, singing all the family songs Grandad had taught Mum and Dad and all the aunts and uncles when they were children, and everybody else joining in on the choruses by the time each song was finished. Gealbu kept time thumping the side of a truck with his stick.

In the morning, Carol didn’t ride with Nina and Nikolai, he came in the tanker with Laima and Granny and me instead. He’d explored Bitola enough to be able to guide us along a route that avoided the piles of skeletons. He didn’t want to see them again, and even more, he didn’t want Nina to see them. He knew there was a risk she’d come across things like that in some other town, but Laima reassured him that it wasn’t very common.

‘Next time, I want someone who’s used to these things to come with me, though.’

‘That’ll usually be Persie. She likes to be in the forefront of everything!’

Granny laughed. She’d understood that much Russian.

When we reached the place Carol had turned back, he got Laima to stop, and he and Nikolai got the motorbike down again. Nina moved into the tanker with Laima. She said she wanted to be able to see Carol as much as possible, but I think she was actually finding Nikolai a bit too intense. I think everybody knew Lieđđi had felt that after a while.

Another advantage was that Laima would teach her some English, while being able to talk in Russian as well.

Carol hadn’t quite reached the Greek border the previous day. We arrived there very soon after we set off on the motorbike. Carol was quite surprised, but Granny had been expecting it. It wasn’t nearly as forbidding as the border between Russia and Finland had been, but it was a lot more impressive than any of the others. There was plenty of room for the trucks to turn round on the Yugoslav side of the border, so we went back to tell Laima to follow us.

There would have been plenty of room for the trucks to turn around on the Greek side, too, if it hadn’t been completely clogged up with trucks. They were all facing towards the border. They’d presumably been waiting to cross into Yugoslavia at the time of the cull.

We still hadn’t talked with Carol and Nina about the difference between a war and a cull.

We left the rest of the convoy on the Yugoslav side, and headed into Greece. The road wasn’t very wide, but there were lots of minor side roads the trucks could have turned in, and the road didn’t look as though it was going to be blocked. However, Granny thought it would be better to move the trucks a reasonable distance at a time, so we pressed on to Flórina, which didn’t take long at all. The road was fine all the way – potholed and growing small trees amongst the weeds as usual, but no problem at all. We went back to call everybody to join us.

Granny and I got back into the tanker, because Granny wanted to study the atlas carefully. She was almost sure the Thessaloníki people’s stamping ground wouldn’t extend as far as Kozáni, but she said she didn’t see the point in taking even a tiny chance of bumping into them.

‘There’s a minor road big enough to show on the atlas that we can take westwards from Flórina, and join the main road twenty-five kilometres west of Kozáni. I think I’d rather do that.’

Laima wasn’t so sure.

‘That road goes right through the mountains, really high, look. I bet that’s a hell of a road. I think there’s a fair chance it’s blocked somewhere or other. Landslip, bridge washed away, something. I know you’ve coped with such things before, when you had to, but do we really need to take the chance?’

‘Okay, you win. We’ll just make sure we always spy out the land on the motorbike first, and be ready to make a quick retreat if we see any sign of civilization.’

‘Kozáni’s a lot further from Thessaloníki than we were when Mikey first saw the city lights. You’re worrying about nothing, Persie.’

‘You’re probably right. But now we’ve got Carol and the motorbike, it’s always worth spying out the land anyway.’

We didn’t actually take the convoy into Flórina, because the road to Kozáni turned off a few kilometres before it. The first day, Carol and Granny and I went back and forth, back and forth, spying out the land, but the road was passable everywhere, and there was no sign of human life at Kozáni. We got a road atlas of Greece there, and petrol. And engine oil. We’d brought plenty all the way from Norway, but Granny was happy to top up our supply and we’d got so much more room now we’d got that huge trailer.

We stopped that night just west of Kozáni, and had another long evening of laughter and song. Carol and Nina were managing to join in on the choruses almost straight away. Well, so were Laima and Nikolai and Lieđđi and Suonjar, and they’d only started to learn the songs the previous evening – but at least they had a big head start in the language.

The next day, Granny decided that we really didn’t need to go ahead on the motorbike any longer: the road seemed good, and we were heading away from Thessaloníki. The motorbike went back onto the front of the animal trailer.

That night we stopped near Kalabáka. Granny and Carol went on the motorbike to have a look at the town, but I didn’t go with them because I wasn’t feeling very well. The rest of us never saw the town, because we turned right at a junction before we got there, to keep on heading towards the coast.

The next day we were on an exceptionally wiggly winding road that climbed up and down, up and down, and went through lots of old villages in the mountains. I remember especially the fantastic rocks that looked as though they were carvings done by a mad giant.

Remembering what the road was like where the other Bandvagn caught fire, everybody was a bit worried about Suonjar, but there was no trouble.

We camped that night by a huge lake near Ioánnina. The grown-ups discussed possibly staying there. It wasn’t the coast, but it did have that big lake, and Ioánnina itself seemed like a good place for raiding – a much bigger town, according to the atlas, than anywhere actually on the coast in that area. Some of the land looked as though we’d be able to farm it all right, once we’d removed a few trees.

That was one regret our grown-ups had. They’d never let trees get a hold on our fields in Norway and Latvia, but they knew they’d have to clear trees before they could make any fields anywhere else. But with the winches on the trucks nobody anticipated any problems pulling small trees out.

We spent two days having a good look around Ioánnina, and eventually decided that we’d carry on down to the coast. Ioánnina was – just – within raiding distance of the coast, and the grown ups thought being right on the coast was worth it.

Granny and Laima reckoned that it probably got pretty cold in winter at Ioánnina, although it was nice and warm there that September. I think the real attraction was the sea itself – seaweed, shellfish, and probably better fishing than the lake.

We’ve got a really nice farm right on the coast now, not far from Igoumenítsa. Radiation levels are low – Granny thinks they’re probably just natural background. We don’t often go to Ioánnina, because there’s almost everything we need in Igoumenítsa. We found several houses in reasonably good condition, and plenty of materials to fix them up and make them just how we want them.

Nina’s baby, Tatiana, was born just a couple of weeks after we arrived. She was adorable. She still is – or maybe I should say she is again. We fell out a bit when she was in her early teens.

Liz and I have a half-brother, Oaván, and a half-sister, Erica. Dad and Lieđđi say they’re going to get married. They’ve been saying it for years. Nikolai and Dot, Jake and Suonjar, and Belle and Gealbu think the whole idea is funny. ‘What does it mean?’

Carol and Granny found several motorbikes in a showroom, and got a couple of them working in no time. ‘Much easier than fixing cars and trucks that have been standing idle for thirty-odd years!’

Carol said he really liked his original bike best, but couldn’t get spares for it, whereas there were spares for the ones they found in Igoumenítsa. Granny quickly got pretty good at riding her bike, but she could never persuade Grandad to ride with her. ‘Give me four wheels,’ he says.

Nikolai says Grandad’s got sense. He won’t ride the bikes, either. I know that Laima’s secretly pleased about that – she was worried that he might go a bit mad on one.

I often rode in front of Granny when I was little, but now I’ve got my own bike, and Tatiana usually rides behind me. I love the feeling of her arms wrapped around my tummy and the rest of her snuggled against my back. She can ride the bike on her own, but doesn’t like to have a pillion passenger. I’m a lot heavier than she is, and she says it’s hard to control with me on the back. She sometimes takes Zuza – Nikolai and Dot’s youngest – on the petrol tank between her arms. Zuza loves it, but it makes her Dad very nervous!

Carol and Uncle Sid fixed up some little sailing dinghies. Carol said – in English! – that he and Nina used to go sailing on the new Danube reservoir. ‘Fishing from a boat is better than fishing from the shore.’

At first Granny thought Carol was just saying that because he wanted an excuse to go out in the boat, but she said she didn’t blame him. ‘I’d quite like to learn to sail myself. I wouldn’t mind going over and having a look around Corfu, for one thing.’

Grandad was doubtful. ‘We could go over in the Bandvagn.’

‘I don’t think I fancy taking the Bandvagn out to sea. I don’t trust it that much. I’d do it in an emergency – to rescue someone who got into trouble sailing, for example!’

Most of us go sailing now. Gealbu and Belle are the undisputed champions.

There have had to be a couple of rescues, but nothing serious. We’ve always managed it with the dinghies. Some of them have outboard motors, and we make sure they’re always working in case we need them, but we very rarely use them.

We’ve explored Corfu thoroughly – and one by one we’re raiding all the fancy millionaires’ houses. We’ve found shelters in several of them, but they’d never been used. Well stocked with all kinds of goodies! Granny jokes about moving into one of the posh houses, but really we all like the farm on the mainland better.

Grandad’s not very keen on sailing, and Nikolai won’t go sailing at all – although his mother loves it, partnering with Granny. Grandad’s been over to Corfu a couple of times, but really doesn’t like being in little boats – and no-one’s fixed up a big one yet. Carol and Granny had a go at getting the engine working on one, but couldn’t manage. ‘Motorbikes and outboards are much easier!’

We did eventually hear about Carol and Nina’s family histories. Both their mothers had been working in factories before the cull, and had been shepherded into shelters without any forewarning. When they came out, most of the survivors were Romanian women factory workers, with a much smaller number of men, more than half of them Russian and Ukrainian soldiers. Very few of the women’s husbands had survived, and the military were very much in charge.

Carol’s and Nina’s mothers had each had several successive liaisons with soldiers, who had deserted them as soon as they got pregnant. Their babies were forcibly taken away to be fostered as soon as they were weaned. Not until the two women were in their mid-thirties were they finally allowed to keep their last child.

Apparently during the first decade or so after the cull this pattern was not at all unusual in Craiova and Bucharest. Not universal, but very common.

Carol and Nina were raised by their single mothers, but orphaned in their late teens. They knew they’d each had several half-siblings, but had never met them. Not knowingly, anyway – they knew lots of people who’d been fostered, but which if any of the people they knew were their half-siblings they’d no idea.

Most of the foster mothers were military officers’ wives, fostering huge families. Nina and Carol were especially angry about the way any child who was the least bit ‘difficult’ then somehow ended up in an institution. They’d known several people who’d been through that – and heard about more who’d ended up completely deranged.

Carol said his mother had told dark stories of similar institutions before the cull. She’d always said it wasn’t human to do such things, and that she was disgusted that the authorities organized things that way. Carol and Nina were especially angry that the authorities had continued the policy after the cull.

Grandad had known people who’d grown up ‘in care’ in England. ‘We used to hear about terrible conditions in orphanages in Romania, but some of the people I knew had had a pretty bad time in England, too. Maybe not as bad as in Romania, but it’s hard to know without seeing both at first hand. You couldn’t really go by the reports. Comparing the worst of one country with a random selection of another doesn’t give a clear picture of the norm in either. It sounds as though the sheer number in institutions in Craiova after the cull was rather large, but who knows what’s happened in England since the cull?’

Everybody knows English very well now, and most of the talk is in English most of the time, but sometimes I hear Carol and Nina talking Romanian, and Tatiana knows Romanian too. Lieđđi and Suonjar talk together in Sami from time to time, and of course Gealbu joins in in his mute fashion – but I’ve noticed how much English creeps in, even when they’re talking Sami. Laima and Nikolai talk Russian if there’s just the two of them, or just them and Carol and Nina.

Granny and all us young ones know Russian too. Laima has taught us, so we can read our fabulous Russian library. We’ve discussed trying to teach ourselves Greek, because there’s an even bigger selection of Greek books to be had in Igoumenítsa – and more still in Ioánnina – but no-one’s taken the plunge yet. (There’s another of Grandad’s expressions!)

There’s probably nothing as good on the science and technology front as Laima’s collection anyway, and Tatiana and I adore the pictures in the Russian children’s books, and haven’t seen anything in the Greek books to compare with them. But we’re sure there must be some very interesting stuff to read, if only we could read it.

Grandad and Granny often say how pleased they are that we’ve all grown up ‘thoroughly literate’. They tell tales of televisions and the ‘telly generation’, and how they don’t regret the loss of television ‘one little bit’. I’ve seen tellies, gathering dust, but of course I’ve never seen one working.

Granny still makes the most gorgeous seaweed stew. It’s always got bits of all sorts of things in it, but it’s mainly seaweed.

And Grandad says I have to mention that he STILL owes Mike seventy quid. And now he’s gone all nostalgic and sad again.

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