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- 136 pages
- English
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Batlava Lake
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About This Book
Pristina, Kosovo, 1999. Barry Ashton, recently divorced, has been deployed as a civil engineer attached to the Royal Engineers corps in the British Army. In an extraordinary feat of ventriloquism, Adam Mars-Jones constructs a literary story with a thoroughly unliterary narrator, and a narrative that is anything but comic through the medium of a character who, essentially, is. Exploring masculinity, class and identity, Batlava Lake is a brilliant story of men and war by one of Britain's most accomplished writers.
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Lake Batlava is beautiful. Deep, not exactly welcoming. I donât expect the locals think itâs much like Loch Ness, but we did. I did. No legends about monsters, none that I heard of. But how would I get to hear about them anyway? Iâd have to speak the language, and the Barry brain doesnât do languages. Just doesnât want to know. âGut und Morgenâ is about as much as I can manage in foreign parts, doesnât get you far in Kosovo. Plus we werenât there as sightseers, though we saw some sights. We saw some sights.
Batlava Lake isnât just a beauty spot, civic resource into the bargain. Natural lake but improved. Enhanced. Serves as the main reservoir for a capital city, for Pristina. More than Loch Ness can say for itself, monster or not!
When I first heard the name, like everyone else did, I thought it was the same as the cakey thing. The sticky layers â Greek, is it? Likely Greek. Bit sweet for me, wherever it comes from. Baklava. When I learned the proper name I used it, Batlava, though not everybody did. They stuck with what they knew, came in handy making silly jokes. Jokes about the Baklava Lake being fed by the River Ouzo. And so on â nearly funny. Not quite.
Even if I bust a gut laughing at their jokes wouldnât make me one of the lads. They were signed-up military and I was only âattachedâ. But still. I had the rank of full colonel, and they were required to salute me. Even if there were no witnesses about, the hand had to go smartly up, recognition of rank. The only snag â my hand had to stay by my side. Couldnât salute back. Wasnât allowed to.
Really knocked me off my stride first time it happened. My hand wobbled upwards of its own accord. Thatâs how it works in films. Never a saluter who doesnât get saluted. Like when someone throws a ball at you, your hand goes up to catch it even if you werenât expecting
the bloody thing to come your way, isnât that right? Your body decides and your hand goes up all by itself. How are you supposed to acknowledge a salute when youâre not allowed to return it? You canât say âMuch obliged, Iâm sure.â You canât say âThanks very much mate, appreciate it.â All you can do is behave as if nothing has happened, grow a shell. Gradually turn into the sort of plonker who expects to be acknowledged without giving anything back.That first time I called on all my reserves, all my resistance, and went all Barry-be-strong. I sent my hand back down again, though it didnât feel right to be dropping the ball. As if I was breaking the rules, though in fact, being technical about it, I was obeying them. I noticed something, though, funny thing. There was a look in the rankerâs eyes when I was starting to salute back, by that instinct Iâm talking about, not being able to stop myself. Youâd have to call it a smirk â at how stupid I was being. If I took the bait and showed respect for him, I was a wally plain and simple. If I played by the rules and behaved as if he wasnât there then, obviously, I was treating him like shit and I was a shit myself.
So when I managed to stop myself saluting before I was committed to the wally option, there was another look in his eyes. Different, but still pissed off. Pissed off in a new way, giving me a sort of dull glare, resentful glare. I didnât much like either of the looks that could come my way, to be honest, but there wasnât a lot I could do about it. I was trapped in the not-saluting side of things, and the lads were trapped in the saluting. None of us happy about it. After a while it seemed to me that when the ranks saluted me, their lips moved, and they mouthed a word, always the same word. I couldnât say for sure what the word was, but squit would be a strong candidate.
Royal Engineers donât really like being called Sappers. Fine by me. I called them Saps. If they didnât like it they still had to salute me, and I still had to not-salute back. âSapsâ are trenches. They used to have another nickname, the Mudlarks â nobody uses that one any more.
The one thing the lads couldnât deny was that, civilian or no, I was qualified. This was a fact. It was why I was there in the first place, being an âapproved personâ five times over. Qualified under the Safety Rules Procedures to inspect premises and equipment and to give the go-ahead for service personnel to undertake their duties. Five tickets to my name: High Voltage/Low Voltage. Boilers & Pressure Vessels. Masts & Towers. Petrol Oil & Lubricants. Confined Spaces. They donât hand them out like sweets, those certificates. You have to study to get them, and after that you canât take your foot off the pedal, you have to refresh your knowledge every three years. Separately from your technical expertise, you have to show you can perform consistently and reliably when youâre high up on a mast, or deep underground, or inside a fuel tank the size of St Paulâs, whispering gallery and all â capacity of six million litres. Six million! No fuel in it when you inspect it, naturally, but no-one wants you inhaling those fumes, so youâll have breathing gear.
To show you can still do Confined Spaces you crawl into narrower and narrower pipes. Theyâre real bastards with Confined Spaces. You get to do a run-through with a bit of light, without full equipment. Then itâs darkness and full gear, mask, breathing apparatus, the lot. Off you go! Off you crawl. First thing you do is bump into a wall that didnât use to be there. Theyâve changed the layout â of course they have. Breathing speeds up inside the mask. Little bit of panic. Forehead wants to sweat. Then you make yourself think, they wouldnât put me in this if there
was no way out. Wouldnât be allowed to! Slow down. Take your time. You donât stop being afraid but it goes away a bit and you can think round the problem. Come out of it with a bit of a grin as if you had fun.For Masts & Towers you step off a higher gantry each time, attached to a rail with a harness â meaning your mind knows youâre safe but your body never quite believes it. Your balls never quite believe it. Message doesnât reach them. No shortage of masts and towers in the Rugby area, so thatâs where they do it. Itâs not like a bungee jump. You hardly move â the harness holds you at the level you started. You have to step off into the air, thatâs all, but itâs not everyone who can do that. It was the five tickets that had earned those salutes, not me. Not Barry as such.
The lads called me Uncle Barry, which I didnât mind. It wasnât a compliment, no, but it wasnât much of an insult either. I was comfortable with it. They all knew my track record. âLittle Uncle Barryâ â not so keen on that, though Iâd never claim to be the tallest. Donât often bang my head on ceilings. Little bit of an advantage in the confined spaces category. And maybe a factor in the saluting and not saluting business. More comfortable to be outranked by someone taller.
Iâm not the sort to push my luck, though â always said Iâd move on before anyone had the chance to call me Grandad. Not retire. Iâve got too much energy to retire, not now and maybe not ever. When I see people doing nothing â I donât mean workmen skiving, I mean people doing nothing in particular â I donât think, âGet off your arses you lazy buggers,â I think, âWhere did you learn the knack of sitting still?â How did that happen? Itâs beyond me. If Iâve done the washing-up Iâd rather do it again than put the things away and then find my hands are empty, no task coming up on the horizon. I like a list.
Iâve always had lots of energy, which came in handy as a person, five-times-approved person, with plenty on his plate. I was also married in those days, not that energy got me the approval you might be thinking in that area. Not talking about the bedroom! Carol â Mrs Barry as was, Mrs Barry Ashton â got annoyed because I would sing in the mornings. Didnât even know I was doing it. âHow can anyone wake up so bloody happy?â That was the meat of the complaint. I tried to explain that actually I donât. I donât wake up happy, I wake up cheerful. Thereâs a difference, big difference. She couldnât seem to see it.
These days Iâm always saying Iâll build myself a house and find a woman whoâll live in it with me, or else go at it the other way round, find a woman who wants to live with me and then build a house for the two of us â I fancy France. A woman who could handle the language side of things. Buy a dog, why not? Buy a bloody dog. Having said all that, my record with women isnât that great. Mixed, youâd have to say. Iâm better with houses, though after the end of my marriage there was a woman who walked away from me with a nice house tucked under her arm. I hadnât built it but Iâd certainly bought it and fixed it up, only my name wasnât on the papers. Iâd trusted her, and either she saw me coming from the first or else somewhere along the line she decided to skip marriage and go straight for alimony. Her shyster was sharper than my shyster, thatâs what it came down to. I went with the first lawyer I found â itâs not my world. How are you supposed to choose? I trusted him. Mistake. âFault on both sides?â I wasnât going to say that!
Mains water pressure in France is six bars. Six bars! Thatâs enough to blow English shower fitments half way across the room â or half way across the garden if weâre talking about English garden hose nozzles. Iâd love to
work with six bars, love to play around with that.They called me Uncle because I was older. Also because I was there first, in the first wave of civilians. Soldiers need a place to kip, they need lights that work, toilets that flush, filters so the waterâs drinkable, staff for the canteen and someone to take care of payroll. People are spoiled â they think infrastructure collapse means not getting a seat on the train to work. They have no idea what the real thing is like, and neither did I, really. Not until I arrived in Pristina. So I suppose I was spoiled too. Iâd done my little bit of preparation, gone out in search of a Kosovan dictionary â except there isnât one, reason being itâs Albanian they speak there. Fell at the first fence! Iâll take an Albanian dictionary, then, thanks. I donât do languages, never have, but give me a technical drawing or a bit of spec and I can make myself understand it, whatever language it thinks itâs in. Always. Havenât tried Japanese just yet but I guarantee you I could get there in the end.
Still, a dictionary comes in handy. Keep a dictionary in your pocket and you can point at a page and hope for the best.
Everyone visiting a country for the first time will have questions to ask the military driver sent to pick them up, but maybe my questions were a bit more basic than most.
Which side of the road do they drive here? Shouldnât you choose one or the other? No law here. Drive where you want. Thereâs no-one to stop us. Do you see much traffic anyway?
Whereâs the city? Just coming into it. If there was electricity youâd see lights. Maybe youâre here to sort that out.
Do I smell smoke? Affirmative. The Serbs set the sports stadium alight. Itâs not out yet.
How long has it been burning? Didnât the war end last summer? Raiding parties sneak back now and then, do a bit
of damage. Itâll burn for weeks yet â no-one to put it out, unless thatâs one of your jobs.Bloody hell â what was that? Why did you swerve just now? Serbs removed all the manholes before they left. Bingo! Instant potholes. Just add boiling water â sorry, no, thatâs Pot Noodles. Want me to steer into the next one?
(Little bit of a stroppy bastard. Civilian dealing with military gets used to that.)
No, youâre fine. Donât listen to me. Why are we stopping? Weâve arrived.
Whereâs the hotel? Just over there.
Thatâs the Grand Hotel? (Dark space no different from what was either side.) Didnât I just say so? If youâre in luck theyâll have a generator inside.
They did have a generator, dinky little generator â would give you a lovely old laugh if you saw it in Argos. Whoâs that drinking in the bar? Kate Adie. Having a tipple while the light came and went. Nice lady, and we had a friendly little chat. Quite a soft face â apple cheeks, you might say. Not what youâd expect in such a tough lady, but maybe itâs a good thing, seeing sheâs telling people things (letâs be honest) they donât really want to hear. She didnât ask me anything I wasnât allowed to answer. Official Secrets Act, sheâll have caught on. When a famously fearless telly journalist, and she was hardly ever off the screen in those days, is drinking in the bar of your hotel, you donât expect too much from room service. Youâre lucky to have walls! A lift would have been nice but there wasnât one â well, there was a lift but it wasnât working. Tote your kit up the stairs. I was hoping for curtains, but I would have preferred windows without curtains to what I got. Curtains without windows. Curtains donât do the same job as windows, itâs a fact. I slept wrapped up in everything Iâd brought with me bar the passport.
Strictly speaking, to pick hairs, Kate Adie isnât fearless. Scared of motorbikes â wonât get on one. Someone in the bar heard her saying so. Those things are dangerous.
The whole of Kosovo is some sort of funnel, sits in a ring of mountains, pulls cold air down in winter and stops it from getting out. Then come summer, the funnel fills up with unbearable heat. Kosovo is hell. Hell two ways â hellish hot, hellish cold. They used to bring jugs of water on bitter winter mornings at the âGrand Hotelâ, and thatâs the way they were too, one day scalding hot, another freezing cold. There was never one of each! Which would have let you mix something to a human temperature so you could wash and shave to a civilized standard. By the time the scalding jug had begun to cool down I would have to get off to work. And the freezing jug, of course ⌠never warmed up.
There was no water in the taps. If there was, if the city had the infrastructure basics, it would be coming from Lake Batlava, of course. Thereâs a dam and a funnel in the middle of the lake, so the overflow gets led off to supply Pristina (and Podujevo, if youâre interested). Including the Grand Hotel. Where there werenât even any plugs for the basins. For a moment I thought â what, they took the manholes and the plugs too? How did they have time? Normally Iâm bright in the mornings, I catch on fast, everyone says so, but Iâd had a rough night. Why no plugs? Turns out it wasnât sabotage, wasnât even supply failure by the hotel. Turns out it was more of a matter of principle, Muslims being supposed to wash in running water. If you want to be impure, bring your own bloody plug! Weâd had no end of briefings but nothing about a plug shortage â I might even have stayed awake for that.
We were guests in this country. That was something that was said to us, early on, more than once, and I tried
to believe it. Bit of a struggle. You donât invite guests in when the house is on fire! We were something different, emergency services or clean-up crew. Or pre-clean-up crew, cleaning up before the cleaning up could start, setting up some sort of basic support system for the Royal Engineers. It was really Sappers who would be doing the dirty work, and some of it was very dirty, but they needed something in place before they could start. Which comes first, the chicken or the egg? An old riddle, but Barry hereâs worked out the answer. Which comes first, the chicken or the egg? What comes first is the nest. Bit of wisdom there.Second night in the Grand Hotel I took the curtains down and wrapped myself up in them, but it was like the optician banging on at you with fiddly changes of lenses, wanting to know is this better or is that better. Canât decide. Is this colder or is that colder? Couldnât decide. They were both colder.
Our first nest was in VJ headquarters â the barracks of an army base before the Americans bombed it. We built a little camp inside the wire. Some things had been thought about and some things hadnât. Approved Persons? Present and correct, in decent numbers. There were a few of us. Competent contractors? No such luck. Hardly a one. Electricians were a special headache. Theyâd arrive in batches of twenty or so from Britain, flew âem in to Skopje, bussed âem down to us, but no screening in advance so most of them had no idea. Hopeless!
You wouldnât believe how crap they were. Get a better bunch putting cards in the Post Office saying SPARKS WANTED FOR BOOZING AND BRAWLING. SOME LIGHT DUTIES. Hopeless, just hopeless. Sort of assignment attracts piss artists. Anyone who wants to chance their arm and likes the idea of being far away from
home. Away from the wife and kids. Theyâd bring booze into the mess hall, drink themselves silly, start fights. âMess hallâ is a bit posh for a modular prefab attached to other modular prefabs, but that was what we called it. Army lingo. Standard terms for things. You get used to it. Living conditions werenât luxurious for anybody. It wasnât the Ritz! But maybe a cut above the Grand Hotel Pristina. Windows and all sorts. Sometimes after the drinking and the fighting theyâd just pass out on the floor, wake up groaning the next morning. Drag themselves off to work. Do a job pissed or hungover just as craply as the work they did ...Table of contents
- PRAISE
- TITLE PAGE
- CONTENTS
- BATLAVA LAKE
- ABOUT THE AUTHOR
- COPYRIGHT