HI don't know where Iohan found out about the bullfights, but we went. I don't remember if I had anything else set for that day, or if I recovered part of the plan, but this is the great advantage of our expedition (although an expedition seems to involve even more people and a more difficult route): we rarely have to we must be on a certain day, in a certain place. It is also the reason why we take our accommodation either in the evening for the next day or on the way to the targeted objective.
We discussed bullfighting. I, at least, was convinced and not really. My scripts were closely related to the only images of such fights I knew: the Iberian bullfight and violent confrontations in wildlife documentaries. In both cases they leave with blood, death, with trampling crowds chased down narrow streets by nervous cattle, with bullfighters taking them by the horns or thrusting spears or swords into the tired animal.
Don't get me wrong. I participated in many sacrifices, held pigs to the slaughter and felt their last breath under their knees pressed against their bellies. Sometimes the echo of that gurgle plays ping-pong between the inner ears, even in the summer when it's still a long way to Ignat. I clipped fliers, broke the neck of a pigeon whose wing I accidentally fractured. I was a kid, and he stood between the target and the hard-thrown boulder. On Maundy Thursday I attended lamb and kid slaughters, although when I could avoid them I did. Otherwise, I refused each time to indicate the animal to be slaughtered. I didn't want to decide who gets away and who gets stewed. In an episode of Bizzare Foods, AAndrew Zimmern is taken to the back of the Peruvian restaurant, where a lot of guinea pigs are piled into a roomy crate. You can choose your fluffiness alive and it will be served to you hot in a short time. It's a bit like the aquariums with fish in the hypermarket, only I don't feel sorry for the fish. And I've seen cattle being slaughtered in the slaughterhouse before, even recently, when I was doing research for my beef belly project. It's not hypocritical, but I don't have the liver or gall for gratuitous violence anymore, and the show had plenty of promise.
Either I raised an eyebrow, or I frowned slightly, but without making faces and I certainly gained some time by asking Iohan: where, what, how... Then I drank another rakija and the hesitation disappeared. If we are here we do it all. At least once in a lifetime is as seductive as the promise of abstinence made on a hangover. Also once in a lifetime was the portion of fig mussels from Neum, but which I will tell another time despite the guilt I still remember from time to time.
That morning, in Mrkonjić Grad, there was a great Feast. The recently renovated church was being consecrated, it was full of cassocks including level 33. I think Porfirie Perić, the patriarch of the Serbian Church, was also present, but I don't even put my hand in the candle fire.
We drank our coffee in an inn where even the smokers couldn't stand the thick smoke, we wandered around the small town, and then we left the place of action, past the village of Šehovci. I even found the road, even though it was packed dirt and intersected with identical ones. From time to time we came across an SUV with an animal trailer. Or a tractor with a trailer and the bull walking behind it.
The landscaped area was fenced off, you paid a fee at the entrance, you were branded as temporary club customers, not cattle. The cattle were on the other side, in a clearing. The place was perfect for demonstrating the supremacy of communal bulls. A small natural amphitheater or perhaps the wide depression had been shaped for hundreds of years by the hooves of nervous animals. Two sides opened into the field that had become a parking lot, one into a hedge, and the other into a clearing. We had arrived very early, not even the fire for the table had been lit. A large tent housed tables, benches, and vendors selling beer, soda, and brandy.
Slowly, slowly it started to crowd. The job was probably over too, although we didn't seem to share the same audience. In the city people had dressed festively, here the tracksuit was in power. Only the local police are dressed the same. Many mouths, but also many professional spectators. You could tell them apart by the folding fishing chair that hung under their arms. If you didn't come with him from home, you could take him out of the bargain. Among them, hundreds of children do their work, run, laugh and chatter like snakes.
In the clearing, the owners took their animals out of their cages and tied them to the trees. Hundreds of pounds of muscle quivering with anticipation. Full of testosterone, high-decibel roars, menacing hooves. Already, the animals could no longer be guided by a single human, no matter that the masters were also the size of the mountain. Then, after registering on the lists, they would take their bulls to the valley, to the stage, where they would mark their place by rubbing their horns and sweaty trunks on the ground, urinating and digging with their hooves.
Between them the master of ceremonies, wearing a Texan hat, gave short orders and supervised the whole process. He has been organizing the work for many years and knows how to go about it. Iohan talked to him and maybe he can tell us what they talked about. He told me sure then, but I don't remember anything from the conversation.
In the meantime, he wandered around the world: with a dog, with a calf. In this part the piglet does not have much passage. Grilled lamb is also ready, and if you don't feel like it, you can have cevapcici from Banja Luka, but made on the stove, not on the embers. I think these are also the first in this style that I see. In Bosnia and Herzegovina there are several large, different schools of Balkan mitites (I will elaborate in another text). The ones from Banja Luka (the capital of Republika Srpska) differ in particular in their shape: they are placed on the grill in 4 or 5 sticks.
It's raining, but we don't really care. Here in the first stand, the area from which you can best see the fight, most of us are already wanted. The drink is near, and has already untied the tongues; it's a background noise so you can no longer hear bull with bull. On the lawn, the spectators imitate the roar of the bulls in a kind of ritual that is difficult to understand. Maybe it's just fun in the group, practiced year after year that it seems to have an improbable purpose for an ad hoc action. We also have speakers and MC. You start.
The noise subsides as the presenter greets, thanks and explains the rules or urges us to consume. I don't know a thing, but I do what everyone else does. We wait quietly.
It seems the draw was made before. The first bull goes down. The slope is steep enough for the flexibility of the swing so he kind of trots it, almost tumbling into the ring. The second comes, just as stormy. The kibitzu whisper things to each other or make bets. The owners release the animals. They are huge and nervous. I'm almost certainly biting the inside of my lip. He attacks. A dry crack of bone on bone and then just the rubbing of horns. The bulls stand on their hind legs and the fight is head-to-head, by pushing. From time to time the position of the head changes and the dry crackling again. The game is repeated for several minutes, until a bull gives in and runs away from the confrontation. That's it. The masters intervene to prevent the fight from continuing. The winner is not really satisfied with the success, he seems to want more, but he is pushed away with sticks and shouts. The animals are tied up and directed to the clearing.
The first battle is over. The second is identical, only in the third does a change appear. The bulls position themselves as if to fight, but they don't pay attention, they don't look at each other, they don't move. And I sit. None dare attack, none yield nervously. Even the attempts at arousal fail, so the fight ends in a draw that displeases everyone. The ferocity announced by the moans and strains fades in the face of an opponent of the same caliber. The meadow is full of dandelions and some common white flowers. I imagine Ferdinand, from the classic Disney cartoons.
Iohan takes a few more shots and at the break we set off on a road straight through the forest to trample a rabbit. We go to some tombstones in an archaic cemetery that we never find. We leave blood and death for another time. Maybe at the illegal cockfights in Banja Luca that I didn't get to.
You can read more about this project here: https://cosmindragomir.ro/ro/2023/02/14/balcanii-gastronomici-si-numai/
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