The Dance in Luža Square

The Dalmatian limestone promenade glistened underneath the sun setting sky. Niko watched three dogs cavorting by Big Onofrio, a fifteenth century fountain in the Old City. They playfully weaved between the legs of tourists who were washing their hands in the sixteen-sided cistern. Niko’s eyes welled up. It was all so innocent – magical, even. Hearing the sound of his native tongue spoken in Dubrovnik was not what moved him. It was the simple, everyday activities that carried on as if a war never happened.

“Eze motek,” his Israeli wife, Aliza, said in Hebrew, crouching down to get the dogs’ attention. “How sweet.” She always spoke Hebrew when she returned to a child-like state.

The dogs were too busy chasing a weathered ball to notice Aliza’s affectionate call. She stood up and smiled at her husband. Niko and Aliza had been married for forty years and always joked that the reason their marriage lasted was because they could not decide who won the war: Israel or Yugoslavia.

Niko was half Serbian and half Croatian. Even two decades after the war ripped the country into six separate nations, the sixty-five-year-old, who looked no older than fifty, refused to refer to himself as anything other than Yugoslavian.

“Stand straight,” he lovingly said to his wife with his hand at the small of her back. The retired athlete-cum-dancer with salt-and-pepper hair and amiable brown eyes was always conscious of posture.

“I am standing straight!” she replied in tender defiance, running her self-manicured pink-champagne nails through her dyed auburn hair. She still had the heart of a diva even years after her singing career ended.

They’d met in Germany in the late sixties when he was a prominent ballet dancer and she was a famous Schlager singer. They decided to move to New York in the early eighties and have since lived there. New York was now home and Dubrovnik was the holiday destination. Although Niko was from this part of the world, he hadn’t spent much time on the Adriatic coast as a child.

Earlier that day, Niko and Aliza had walked the walls of the Old City that overlooked the sea. The fortified stones appeared to cry black tears, haunting pedestrians with insight into its rich history. The stones’ allure came from their storytelling nature. One could smell, feel and taste the history the walls had seen. It once surrounded the city to protect citizens. Centuries later, the stones became bastions of endurance that intoxicated historians and sightseers alike. The steep and narrow passages inside the walls, where locals lived alongside gift shops and restaurants, reminded Aliza of Jerusalem. There was something about the antiquated design that stirred up a primal sensation. It was familiar.

As night fell and the moonlight and overarching café lights shone, the promenade looked like glass underfoot and became a reminder of how many feet had trodden upon it. Niko took his wife’s hand and they walked from the western gate towards a live jazz band playing in Luža Square. They didn’t need to discuss it. Music was as much a part of their nature as chasing a ball was to the dogs. It was early evening and the Stradun was buzzing with good spirits for the night ahead.

“My frock is too short!” a young British tourist said out loud to her group of friends, looking for approval. She tugged at the hem of her mid-thigh emerald-green dress.

“You look gorge, Ems. Let’s get some drinks in ya.”

“You look beautiful, darling,” Aliza interjected. “If I still had a pair of legs like yours, I would show them off too!”

“You still do,” Niko said to his wife with a wink.

“Aw, bless!” the girls all seemed to say at once.

The group of British women were in town for a wedding. Both the bride and groom were British, but the bride had Croatian roots and the couple had decided to get married in the same church where her grandparents wed. Besides the bride and her mother, it was everyone’s first time in Dubrovnik. They had only arrived the day before and were already in love with the ancient architecture, the delicious food and the idyllic small islands that adorned the sea. Of course, the gorgeous Balkan men only added to the pleasure.

The band was nestled in the middle of two outdoor cafés, the prime seating of which created a ninety-degree angle lining two sides of the Square. The brunette singer had a long, blunt fringe that framed her apple cherub face. Her voice was sweet yet husky – confident yet not dominating. Her band consisted of a drummer, a guitarist, bass player and keyboardist – all men in their thirties and forties. They smiled at each other and at their audience. There was nothing put-on about it. It was organic and people could feel it.

Niko and Aliza sat down at the café adjacent to the Church of St. Blaise, an eighteenth-century church dedicated to the patron saint and protector of Dubrovnik. Swallows flew around the bell of the steeple, daring it to ring.

At the other café parallel to the Church, the British women sat at a reserved table in front of the band. The waiters were ready when the girls arrived to toast the bride-to-be. A few people standing nearby cheered and put up their glasses in celebration. The mood was vibrant.

“Two glasses of red wine, please,” Niko said to their stunning waitress. His eyes followed her as she walked away.

Aliza’s lips coolly curled upward, knowing that her husband’s watchful eye was nothing to worry about.

“Why didn’t you speak to her in Serbo-Croatian?” Aliza asked.

Niko shrugged his shoulders like a boy.

Sitting at the next table were three local fishermen, chain smoking unfiltered cigarettes and drinking Slivovitz, a popular plum brandy in the region. Their skin was leathered from decades of sun reflected from the sea waters. One of the fishermen had a grey, curly mullet, a hairstyle he had not changed since 1982. His middle position at the table and the way the other two laughed emphatically at his jokes made it clear that he was the captain. His jokes and their validating laughter were for the benefit of a table of older women sitting next to the British girls. It was the ladies’ monthly night out without their husbands. They each wore their best jewellery and favourite perfume. As the fishermen peacocked for the well-dressed ladies, who seemed oblivious to their casting nets, the waitress brought Niko and Aliza their wine.

“Hvala,” Aliza thanked the waitress, using the little bit of the language she knew.

“L’chaim, my love,” Niko said, returning the linguistic acknowledgment to his wife, clinking their glasses.

To the left of the fishermen, positioned slightly behind the band, was a long rectangular table of young Frenchmen on a stag weekend. They were already drunk and rambunctious. They too had their eyes on a table of ladies across the way: the British women. Drinking, laughing, watching, drinking more, they were lapping it up. One didn’t have to speak French to understand the commentary: Look at that one in the green dress . . .

“Niko,” Aliza pointed out like a gossiping teenager, “the Frenchmen are watching the British girls . . .” she spoke more softly “. . . and the table of three men next to us are watching the well-dressed women.” She chuckled warm-heartedly, took a sip of red wine and tapped her feet to the music of the band.

Niko had noticed as well, but it stirred up a different feeling in him. He suddenly felt overtaken by a familiar, yet uninvited, guest.

“For years I couldn’t wait to leave this country,” Niko became serious and spoke rhetorically. “I couldn’t wait to make my mark in the world, go to America and become a success. I look at these men next to us . . .”

Aliza gave him a look to lower his voice.

“. . . and I can smell the desperation, the need to feel important.” Niko continued to speak at the same volume.

“They look happy to me,” Aliza said, wanting to remain in a jovial spirit. She took another sip of wine and looked at her husband. He didn’t respond. She knew what was happening. The chip on his shoulder, pressing from the dogmatic-artist cross he sometimes carried on his back, was beginning to hurt and he was projecting his feelings again. She understood this because she had done it as well. Niko and Aliza had both been children of war. Their dreams meant everything. Art was their salvation, and pride their protective armour. Luckily, they never bore their cross at the same time.

“You don’t need to prove anything to anyone, Niko,” she said empathetically.

“I know,” he said with an unconvinced exhale. He drank more wine.

The last time Niko was in Croatia was in 1999. Niko had visited his family in Osijek, a city in the north-east, close to the Serbian border. It was a different world to the ancient seaside charm of Dubrovnik. Located on the right bank of the Drava River, Osijek’s urban baroque towers and its central square were dominated by military and sacral architecture. Bullet holes remained in the stones like scar tissue. Life was harder in Osijek and that struggle became synonymous with the heavy, punishing hand of Niko’s father. He was raised in a traditional house where his father’s belt was the law.

Niko’s alpha pride, passed down by his father, was perhaps his darkest shadow. He’d felt it in Osijek and he sensed it again in his fellow landsmen, the fishermen. Maybe coming to Dubrovnik on holiday was a mistake. Niko was well aware that he was standing at the precipice of what could either be a downward spiral or, with a bit of fight, the grounds of a personal victory. He had stood at this precipice many times before. Sometimes he didn’t care what the outcome was. Today, however, he was determined for victory. Aliza focused on the band and gave her husband the space to battle.

While Niko silently tussled with his shadows, a man in a yellow jacket, holding a trumpet, causally walked up to the band and sat on a stool near them. The sight of the trumpet was sign to the drummer to change the tempo – a bit faster, a bit sexier. Ba-boom-boom-ka. Ba-boom-boom-ka. The bass player followed suit and, together, the notes grooved into every crevice of the ancient stones. The castle walls became a pulsating womb. When the brass touched the trumpeter’s lips and his chest exhaled the first blow, the notes were so clear, and the rhythm so beguiling, every inch of Niko’s body that had been asleep since his dancing days awakened. It was an adrenaline shot to his soul. Even the smoke from the fishermen’s cigarettes appeared to dance up to the sky. The olden walls that held the secrets to Niko’s heart shook the shadows off like a bad case of fleas. It was time to live. The victory trumpet had been played.

Summertime and the livin’ is easy . . .

The wine soared through Niko’s body like a divine IV. He lifted his head up to the indigo sky and then soared down the contours of the church until his gaze rested on his wife’s smiling face. He adored her. How lucky a man he was! He stood up with majestic poise and took his Queen’s hand.

“Dance with me,” he said, kissing her champagne fingertips. Aliza knew the battle was won and they both hopped upon the shiny stones towards the band.

Aliza’s hips guided her feet to the music. She kicked her heels up in celebration and rapture. Niko twirled her around. All eyes were on them. Niko smiled broadly as he extended his left arm outwards and whirled Aliza out with his right. She looped back to him and beamed casual charm. Not bad for a couple in their sixties.

Ba-boom-boom-ka. Ba-boom-boom-ka.

The local priest, who was taking photos of the moonlit St. Blaise, turned around and took photos of them instead. The tourists instantly brought out their phones and, like paparazzi, started flashing and filming. The Frenchmen cheered out in support and the British girls started dancing in their seats.

Niko and Aliza separated hands. They danced backing away from each other and then danced back towards each other with silly grins. Ba-boom-boom-ka. Niko raised his arms up like a fearless matador. The Frenchmen cheered louder, clapped along with the beat and looked at each other as if to say, Yes, this is the life. This is what is all means.

Aliza moved in deeper rhythm as if it had now fully possessed her. Niko grabbed her close and they danced cheek to cheek. Their affection was seductive. Niko pulled back and looked deeply into his wife’s eyes. Their hands moved upwards like a bridge and they continued dancing in place. They extended flirty glances and got cheers from the table of British women this time. Eyes became misty at the table of well-dressed women who reminisced about dancing with their husbands when they first wed.

The dance in Luža Square was one of those evanescent moments in life where the heavens conspire to show the secret behind the curtain; those precious minutes where gratitude and bliss are the only emotions standing; the shimmering flash when class, success and fortune mean nothing. Pride doesn’t exist and only Love rules. A feeling so innate it becomes infectious.

“Would you like to dance?” One of the young French men extended his hand to the girl in the emerald green dress.

“Go on, Emma!” her friends cheered. “Go on!”

“I’m Anton,” he said as she stood up in acceptance.

“Emma,” she said with a flushed face.

“I know. I heard,” he teased.

“Oh, right. Course you did.” She didn’t bother tugging at her skirt. Let it ride up.

Inspired, the well-dressed ladies dabbed their eyes with a tissue and got up to dance as well. The night was enchanting and they too were going to conjure up their youth. Each of the Frenchmen followed Anton’s lead and approached the table of British women until they were all swept away in the dance, including the mother of the bride. The bride-to-be, stirred by the influx of affection, asked the captain if would dance with her. He offered her a shot of Slilovitz and the two took to the floor. He danced with her like a proud uncle at a wedding. The other two fishermen writhed in their chairs with delight.

Ba-boom-BOOM-KA. BA-BOOM-BOOM-KA. The place erupted. Tourists began dancing with each other. Even the waiters and waitresses who had heard this song one too many times were moved and starting dancing with their patrons. Shops owners danced in their stores. The dogs stopped to watch. Aliza’s head was now fully submerged in her husband’s chest. With their eyes closed, they continued to sway in rhythm, unaware of anything happening around them.

The band couldn’t allow the song to end. They knew better than to break the moment with a new rhythm. The singer repeated verses and the delight carried on.

One of these mornings, you’re gonna rise up singing . . .

Dancing partners switched and within minutes strangers became family. This little Square, not even a speck on a spinning blue planet, roared with life. Still smiling, with her head firmly on her husband’s chest, Aliza slowly opened her eyes. The split second after her pupils told her brain what it was seeing, all five of her senses disappeared. There was nothing but elation. This must be what heaven feels like, she thought.

Coming back into her body, she tapped Niko’s chest with her fingertips. He was still lost in the moment, eyes closed. She tapped his chest again.

“Look around you,” she said, her head still on his chest. “Niko. Look.”

Niko opened his eyes and witnessed the bubble that he had created with his wife now included many others. He saw the freedom of dance he’d inspired, the masque without the mask. His eyes feasted on their ecstatic faces, their uninhibited spins, the shameless sways of seduction . . . and he smiled. Oh, did he smile! He was so euphoric, he glowed.

Aliza lifted up her chin and cradled Niko’s head in the palms of her hands. She watched his eyes glisten like the Dalmatian stones. She stroked his hair and whispered in his ear, “A successful man can get others to do things simply by asking. But only a rich man can inspire others without saying a word.”