Having a female visitor from home those two weeks in April was a pleasant diversion from my (anything but boring) daily life in Baska Voda. We were friends united from another part of the world, a knock on the wall apart, voices easily heard from balcony to window, two women eager and willing to be on the move. For that brief moment in time I shared with her the magic of Croatia’s historic old towns; for me it was a page revisited, for her a whole new chapter. Together we walked the coast, cooked up some “hot damn” tasty meals on our two-burner stoves, and played our share of gin rummy over a glass of red wine and whatever else our limited pantries would yield. So, when my friend and Croatian travel companion, Deb, asked me if I’d like to join her for a two-day adventure to the medieval town of Dubrovnik, I could not pass up a repeat visit to that beautiful walled city at the southernmost end of Croatia that attracts travelers from all over the world.
~
I tossed and turned that eve of our departure, wide awake at 5AM, an uneasy feeling dominating my consciousness. I laid in the darkness for the longest time listening to the rain tapping softly on the roof then washing down the gutters onto the street, wondering if we were in for another day of inclement weather.
At 8:30 I heard that familiar knock on the wall. I went to my balcony and tapped back on Deb’s window. She said from the other side, “Are you ready?” The exhaustion from a sleepless night combined with the voice that was telling me, like a disapproving parent, you shouldn’t go, should have been enough for me to tell her that I wasn't ready and the reason why, but I didn’t want to disappoint her or renege on a commitment so I told her I was ready and agreed to meet her downstairs in five minutes.
The gray clouds hovered over Mount Biokovo, a gentle but steady rain flowing in a stream down the road soaking, Deb’s, sandaled feet, our small travel umbrellas hardly adequate to keep the backpacks, protruding from our backs like large humps, free from the rain. We were not getting off to a very pleasant start, and by the time we made the uphill, quarter mile walk to the bus stand, we were wet and cold, I fighting the nagging voice that kept saying, you shouldn’t have done this. Under the shelter of the bus stand I freed myself of the weight of my backpack, pocketbook and umbrella, setting them down on the concrete bench and keeping a watchful eye on the road for the bus, trying hard to put on a happy face.
It was shortly after 9AM when the bus arrived. Hurriedly, I grabbed my items from the bench and boarded. The bus was crowded making it difficult to find a seat. When we spotted a double vacancy, Deb, slid into the window seat and I followed. I set my backpack on the floor with my umbrella and reached for the purse that had once rested uncomfortable on my shoulder, shocked at the discovery that it wasn’t there. My breath caught in my throat as I said to, Deb, in a near shout, “Where’s my purse?” I checked the aisle, the seats around me and the floor. No purse! Panic set in. The bus attendant was making his way down the aisle to collect our fare and stopped dead in his tracks at my emotional outburst. “Stop the bus! I left my purse at the bus stand!” A woman in the adjacent seat understood and repeated what I had said to the attendant. Two minutes later the bus pulled off the side of the road and I got off. The driver closed the doorr behind me leaving Deb looking at me through the window with dismay. Then the door opened and we were both standing on the side of the road in the rain, me shouting, “Everything is in my purse, my money, source of getting more money, camera, passport, keys, cell phone, credit card…gone!”
I started running down the road, my backpack banging on my back, the rain soaking me from head to foot. “Got to get a ride,” I said, waving frantically at the passing vehicles and shouting, “stop, stop!” A small pickup truck stopped. The man struggled to figure out what I was saying, but the urgency in my voice was enough for him to push open the door and let me into the truck which was crowded with tools and had room only for one passenger, leaving Deb standing in the rain alongside the road. I couldn’t even be sure that the man understood why he was offering his assistance, all I know is that he turned his truck around in the middle of the road and sped away, me shouting at him like a wild parrot, “Bus, bus, pocketbook, pocketbook, Baska Voda, Baska Voda,” and stabbing my index finger toward the empty bus stand that was fast approaching on the opposite side of the road. He barely had time to apply his brakes before I jumped out of the truck and stood in front of that cold and lonely concrete bench, stunned by the realization that in that brief span of time someone had made off with my purse.
What happened thereafter was nothing short of a nightmare, and much of it is a blur. I do remember walking in a near sprint in the pouring rain back to Baska Voda, and urging, Deb, who could do nothing but spoil her day as a witness to my faux pas, to continue on to Dubrovnik. I then went to my next door neighbors who alerted the police of the theft and gave me another key so that I could get into my apartment. I will never forget standing in the middle of the living room, soaking wet, cold, and overcome by that feeling of helplessness, the likes of which I had never experienced in my life and hope I never experience again. I was totally alone in another part of the world, a woman without an identity, asking myself, what am I going to do? Furthermore, I was consumed by anger, chastising myself for not listening to the voice, realizing that all that had just happened could have been avoided.
It took a while, but once I got over the shock, I shifted into gear and set the wheels in motion, realizing that I really wasn’t alone after all. I had my laptop, “Buddy,” and my ability to use the internet and make Skype calls, John, my daughter, Lisa, and my friends, Veli and Iva, all of them doing what they could from there end to help.
That afternoon I stopped to share my story with my friend, Antonia, who was working at the bakery and offered to take me to the police station in Makarska to file a police report: which was just one of many of the hoops I would have to jump through in order to replace my passport. In Makarska, the police were pleasant, sympathetic, and aware of my plight, advising me to come back the next morning as there was always a possibility that the purse would be turned in…minus the money, camera, passport, and cell phone, of course.
On our way back to Baska Voda, Antonia, and I decided to play detective. We stopped at the dumpster directly beside the bus stand and rummaged through the trash to see if the perpetrator had dumped my purse there; when that proved futile, we walked around the area calling my cell phone from hers hoping to hear it ring from the tall grasses along the roadway. “Using your cell phone as a means of locating mine is pretty clever,” I said , praising Antonia's idea.
She laughed, “It's not original, I watch America’s CSI.”
I decided to take it a step further by having Antonia write a message on my phone so that in the event someone found my purse they might have the presence of mind to check the message center. She did so leaving her name and phone number as a main point of contact.
After all attempts with the cell phone failed, Antonia dropped me off in the village. I walked to my apartment, a sense of calm washing over me. I couldn’t be sure why, but accepted it without question. I had done all I could, now I had to wait and see what fate had in store and begin looking for the gifts.
That evening I was curled up on the couch watching a movie when a knock came at my door. Who would be ringing my doorbell at 9:30 at night? I popped on the porch light and saw the outline of two figures through the frosted glass. “Who is it?”
“It’s, Antonia and Josip, (her husband) the excited voice on the other side replied.
I unlocked the door and was met by two smiling faces, Antonia, giddy with excitement as she broke the good news. “The police have your purse!”
My mouth flew open, eyes wide with disbelief. I started babbling on with the what, where, when and how questions.
“No time. We have to go. The police are waiting for us in town with your purse.”
I had to ask, “Do they have my passport?”
“Don’t know, just have your purse.”
The little white car with the blue stripe painted across the center was parked beneath the street light next to the harbor, two uniformed policeman seated inside. The town was quiet, a few stragglers out for a walk, stopping across the street to look on with curiosity at the police car parked in their crime free village. I approached and leaned into the open window grateful at the sight of the black purse resting on the console. “Thank you, thank you,” I said. The polite, young policeman behind the wheel spoke excellent English and asked my name, where I was living, a description of the purse’s contents, and the amount of money I had in my wallet. “Six-hundred to seven-hundred kunas,” (about $140.00) I replied.
“Six-hundred-and-ninety kunas to be exact,” he said, handing me the bills and loose coins.
One by one I described the items in the purse. One by one they were recorded on a log then returned to their rightful owner. Not a single item was missing, not even my plastic toothpick. Then came my passport and with it the reality that I was once again a woman with an identity. I would have happily kissed the ground they walked on for giving it back to me.
More onlookers had gathered across the street watching the two policemen, Antonia, Josip, and I standing beside the police car, laughing, revisiting the event, listening to the story of my dumpster angel unfold.
And this is how the story went:
A local businessman had come to dump his trash in the ugly green receptacle next to the bus stand at the exact same time the bus was pulling onto the roadway. He saw the purse sitting alone on the bench, the local bus moving away, his concern for the residents of his village dictating he rescue it. Later that evening, he made the twenty-kilometer round trip to Makarska and gave it over to the police.
The policeman on duty removed the cell phone and began to search the message center where he saw the numerous calls placed by, Antonia, and her message. He recognized her last name as the same name belonging to a friend and fellow officers (Josip was a guard at a bank in Makarska.) and called her cell phone. Antonia answered her phone and added that when the call came from the policeman, she was standing behind her stove making Croatian pancakes for the family’s dinner. She was so excited by the news that she told her mother-in-law, “You finish making the pancakes, we have to go to, Nanine, and tell her that her purse has been found.”
There was no villain in this story after all, only the kind and decent people who gave it a happy ending. As my friend, Iva, said when I e-mailed her with the good news, “You had an army of angels at your side that day." I couldn’t have put it any better myself.
I have yet to thank my “dumpster angel” for whenever I go to his place of business and residence, which just happens to be next door to the bakery where, Antonia, works, no one is ever there. Nor has, Antonia, ever been able to make contact. If only he knew how his act of kindness had touched my life, and how desperately I wanted to thank him.
~
After writing about that event today, I hit the save button, closed the Word document, and head for the bakery, feeling the immediate need to dictate a letter to my dumpster angel to be written in Croatian by Antonia.
I walked the short distance to the bakery and was met by my darling friend’s smiling face. I handed her a blank piece of paper and a pen, dictated the letter, went next door to the man’s restaurant and slipped the envelope into a crack in the door, immediately returning to the bakery. I was barely inside the door when a look of surprise came over Antonia’s face and she pointed toward the sidewalk at a giant of a man with gray curly hair walking by. “That’s him,” she said. I rushed out the door and caught him just as he was entering the gate to his house convincing him to follow me back to the bakery. Antonia introduced me, imparting my words of gratitude and how his act had spared me so much grief. His smile was warm, his outstretched hand accompanied by a look of pride. He even found room for empathy with a story about how his wife’s purse had been stolen in Germany, leaving her, like me, without an identity in a strange country, and how he understood my loss. He repeated the story of finding my purse, but added that he had heard my cell phone ringing but did not feel comfortable answering it. I thanked him again, but it was apparent that he expected nothing for his deed, no thanks, not even praise; in fact, he repeatedly shrugged off any recognition.
All I can say is that it was my good fortune that this kind man happened to be at the dumpster that day in April. Just as it was my good luck that this humble man happened to walk by the bakery that afternoon. Did it all happen by chance?
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