# 31 SAVSKI MOST (Night Bus)

31 SAVSKI MOST (Night Bus)

Zagreb, 2012

A note for readers unfamiliar with Zagreb: Line 31 is a night bus that runs from the city centre across the Sava river to the southern suburbs. This is, unfortunately, an autobiographical personal essay from a period when I worked at a hostel in the city centre, in 2012. A year later, Croatia joined the EU. I haven’t taken the night bus since, but I suspect not much has changed.

I’m walking towards the tram stop and I’m freezing. Sunday at midnight and Ilica is completely empty. Zagreb is a ghost town and I’m all alone in the world. The street lights look feeble through the fog and damp air.

I hide in the covered entrance of an apartment building next to the stop to avoid any unwanted glances or contact with the rare passerby. I study the names on the intercom and wonder who lives here, right in the centre of the city.

I wait for the garbage truck to pass. They’re always here at the same time and I always feel awkward making eye contact with the workers. How stupid is that. As if they should feel weird about it — people earning an honest living. The truth is, I feel uncomfortable because I know I wouldn’t want to be in their place, and I know they know it too.

Spring officially started a week ago, but it’s a fucking five degrees outside and it smells like snow. I don’t remember it ever snowing as much as it did this winter. I hate winter and the ice age and global cooling.

On ZET’s modern digital sign I read the same sentence as always: “Lines 31, 32, 33 and 34 are serviced by bus.” Coming off the afternoon shift, I always catch the same night bus at half past midnight on the corner of Ilica and Frankopanska. I stare at the same shop windows, stub out my cigarette on the same bin.

The display in the shoe shop hasn’t changed in days. Some American starlet’s brand. I remember from a reality show years ago that the woman couldn’t tell the difference between chicken and tuna. The shoes in the window look exactly like she designed them.

Next door is a perfume shop. For the past month they’ve been pushing some fragrance campaign with Brad Pitt. Although I normally enjoy the sight of him on a billboard, in this photo he looks pretty rough. But it’s not the photo that bothers me — it’s the sound. Yes, sound. During the day, a speaker in the corner of the window plays his voice saying something in a quiet, sensual, supposedly sexy tone. I haven’t been able to figure out what he’s saying, let alone the point of adding it to the ad. It’s creepy. Every time I hear it I speed up to get out of range.

The bus arrives. I look everywhere except at the driver. That’s the first rule of fare-dodging. Don’t let the driver see in your eyes that you feel even slightly bad about not buying a ticket, or he’ll only open the front doors.

I don’t buy a ticket during the day either, on principle — we have more expensive public transport than Paris, and our salaries are at least three times lower than the French. And at night, I’ve never bought one in my life. For that we must thank the football hooligans, I think. If it weren’t for their drunken rampages on night buses and fistfights with the transit workers, they’d probably expect to fine you at night too — a fine worth a third of your monthly salary. I don’t approve of the drunken antics of wasted teenagers and I avoid them like the plague, but credit where credit is due. Because of their existence, the transit workers become obedient drivers at night, while during the day they’re busy fining an already impoverished people.

I hate ZET and this fucking stinking night bus.

I get on through the back doors and sit in my usual spot behind the doors by the window, which is mostly free because the bus hasn’t crossed the main square yet. Behind me, three rather poorly dressed girls in their early twenties sit down. I didn’t get a good look at them, but they seem like wannabe starlets. I say wannabe because if they were the real deal, you wouldn’t catch them on public transport — but they’re still young and there’s time yet to figure out that buses aren’t acceptable in their wannabe world.

The moment they sit down, they start singing cajke (trashy Balkan folk music).

For fuck’s sake. Don’t tell me they’re going to sing this shit the whole way, and they don’t even seem drunk, so they can’t use that as an excuse.

You’re a real tough guy, you’ll see when I screw you over, night club, something something... I can’t really make out what they’re singing, but it’s always the same vengeful who’s-the-bigger-player, who’ll-screw-who-harder story in these songs. And they’re all supposedly about grand fatal love affairs.

God, the agony.

We stop at the main square and the bus starts filling up. I watch the people boarding with scepticism and wonder how lucky I’ll be tonight.

An enormous bald guy sits down next to me. By some miracle he doesn’t smell and doesn’t try to make conversation — he doesn’t even accidentally touch me with his thigh. I’m satisfied. Could have been much worse.

It’s hard to judge who’s in what kind of state and who’s going to harass you or stink up your space for half an hour if they sit next to you. I usually hope a woman will sit down because there’s much less chance she’ll smell or be annoying — although I do remember a time when some old lady bombarded me with questions for several stops, and each time I had to pause my music and take off my headphones, and she had to repeat the question.

The old lady had been, understandably, upset. She’d seen police on the main square beating up some drunk who apparently hadn’t done a thing wrong, and it had really shaken her.

It would have shaken me too. Thank God I didn’t see it, because then that would also be eating at me — the fact that I can’t help him and that my impulse to fight windmills isn’t quite as strong as it used to be.

I miss music. I miss Cohen on a winter night with my melancholy and nostalgia. That’s why this winter is so fucking long. There’s nothing worse than riding public transport without your chosen music on headphones, and mine broke back in autumn and I’ve been lazily waiting for a new pair to fall from the sky ever since.

In the meantime, the bus has refreshed that stale stench that will probably never air out. It’s a mixture of sweat, homeless people, alcoholics, creeps and bad cologne. My stomach turns at the mere memory of the ride a few days ago when the smell was worse than ever. That night, some bald guy in a leather jacket sitting next to me and I spent the entire journey breathing shallowly — he into his scarf, me into my own.

That scene flashes through my mind and I think about how the atmosphere on the bus gets worse every day.

“Can you believe this?” he’d asked me that night, unable to resist commenting on the unbearable stench.

I studied him for a few seconds first to see if he was normal enough to even respond to.

“No, I can’t. It’s a tragedy,” I replied, since he’d met some minimum criteria for normalcy on a night bus.

“I mean, I can tolerate pretty much anything, but this is beyond all limits,” he went on.

“I know, but unfortunately a lot of people have nowhere to live. There are more and more homeless people and this is the consequence,” I concluded, compassionately and cleverly.

“I know, I get all that, that’s exactly why I said it the way I did,” he replied, slightly offended that I apparently thought he didn’t get it.

“God, I just can’t wait to get back on my bike. Just let it warm up a little — that’ll save me,” I said, already nostalgic and slightly amazed at how much I was talking to a stranger on a bus.

“I’ve got a motorbike and a car, but here I am taking the bus sometimes. Don’t even know why myself.”

He immediately realised he’d overplayed it with the car-and-motorbike comment, so we both went quiet. He got off in Zapruđe, wished me strength to hang in there, and said he hoped I didn’t have much further to go on this bus.

A sharp turn and loud braking snap me back to the present moment.

Here we are at the main bus station. I can already see it’s going to be a crush. At the station I always think of the kid who broke my heart, and the guilt washes over me.

I’d met the boy when the first big snow hit that winter — I think it was December. He’d shuffled up to the seat, pale with bloodshot eyes, and asked me if this bus goes to Folka. I was completely convinced he was a juvenile delinquent, wasted out of his mind, so I answered with a curt, angry yes, rolling my eyes as I said it.

Then he asked me what I thought of all this snow.

I shook my head and shrugged. He briefly gave up on trying to communicate and I breathed a sigh of relief. But as luck would have it, the bus stood at the station for about fifteen minutes that night for some reason, and he couldn’t bear the silence any longer.

“You really remind me of my old primary school teacher,” he announced suddenly.

That was the first time I actually turned towards him and looked him in the eye.

He was still a child. Maybe he wasn’t even wasted like I’d thought. I smiled at him and he turned red.

“Yeah, she looked a lot like you, actually” — he paused for a moment — “Back home in Koprivnica, so much snow fell you wouldn’t believe it. I think almost a metre and a half.”

“You’re from Koprivnica?” I asked, now genuinely interested in this child and why it was so important to him to talk to me.

“Yeah, I’m just coming back from home. I’m just worried because I’m really late.”

“Late for what?”

“Because of the snow. We waited three hours for the train to move and we froze.”

“Didn’t the heating work?”

“No,” he said sadly, and only from the grimace on his face did I realise how badly he’d actually frozen.

“And now I’m mostly worried because of the train delay I’m late getting back to the dorm.”

“You live in a dorm?” I asked sceptically, thinking again that he was a delinquent.

“Yeah, I go to secondary school here. I was supposed to be back by ten at the latest and I won’t get there until one. I don’t know if they’ll let me in. And I get up at six in the morning to make it to class.”

My chest tightened. How sweet this boy is. How simple. This city is going to eat him alive. He thinks he can just talk to anyone on public transport. How is he going to survive here? What if they don’t let him into the dorm and he’s left outside in the snow again, already frozen? I built the entire tragedy in my head.

When he got off at Folka, he said goodbye with such a cheerful smile that he brightened up my entire dreary winter night.

I still feel terrible when I remember how I ignored him at the start and wrote him off as a delinquent and a junkie just because he was in the wrong place at the wrong time with bloodshot eyes from the cold and sleeplessness.

From somewhere the cajke blast again, but this time from someone’s phone, and that horrible sound drags my thoughts back to the present. The starlets have thankfully shut up since the bus filled. But this is worse. I wait for it to stop. I can’t think when cajke are playing. I can’t even just be.

Will someone please answer that phone or I will throw it out the window, I scream inside.

The girls are dying of laughter and I start to realise that somebody is actually playing cajke on purpose and that unfortunately it’s not going to stop. I turn around to see which clever kid it is, and the cajke are coming from a fat middle-aged guy in a leather jacket. The man is about fifty, with a thick black beard, darker skin and an enormous belly.

What a fucking idiot. I can’t believe this.

I stare at him for a few seconds, neck twisted backwards, hoping I’ll freeze him with my gaze or telepathically transmit a message that screams: Turn off that brain-fucking music, you moron. But the starlets are giggling in their miniskirts and cleavage and he’s the centre of attention, entertaining them. What a crew. I’d crawl out of my own skin if I could, or through the window. Lucky for me you can’t open bus windows.

I scan the crowd around me to see if anyone might react. In the middle of the bus, leaning against the concertina rubber section, two long-haired alternative types stand in cargo trousers — but they’re so passive and in their own world that I don’t think they even register the cajke. Probably stoned.

I look further and only now notice two seemingly normal neighbourhood guys standing by the doors in front of me, each holding a large plastic bottle of beer. They might snap. I catch myself half-hoping they start something, because I can see them watching the fat guy with dark looks and thinning patience.

Jesus, am I actually wishing for a fight to break out? Clearly my nerves are shot too. Fat guy, turn off the music, there’s going to be trouble — how do you not see it? I imagine myself saying it out loud.

Oh, he sees it. He just doesn’t give a shit. This is such a typical situation nowadays — someone’s torturing us and we just stand there watching. We might as well bend over while we’re at it. Where does he get the right to terrorise fifty of us crammed into the stench at one in the morning? Even if you were playing Dylan, man, it’s not okay. Why doesn’t anyone dare tell him to fuck off? Why are we such a fucking passive people?

I press myself deeper into my corner and push my head against the window. I try not to feel like part of this bus, but the revolting stench and that desperate sound penetrate me, and I’m turning into these people and into their energy. I feel my own matter changing. The smell enters through my pores and I can already taste it.

At Branimirova, another older guy in a leather jacket joins the merry crew in the back and starts begging for money. He sits down next to the fat guy and nudges him to spare some change since he’s clearly such a big shot. The fat guy gives him twenty kuna — probably to impress the three starlets.

“Thanks bro, you’re a king!”

“Don’t worry about it, bro. I always give when I’ve got it.”

They look at each other and grin stupidly while the girls study them, dying of laughter. Everyone’s a joke to someone.

“Alright bro, I gotta bounce ’cause I farted,” the beggar announces, stands up and walks away.

I watch their reflection in the glass. The girls are giggling, the fat guy looks confused as the man walks away with great importance. We all stopped breathing for a moment at the mention of the fart, and when we inhaled, a battle for survival began. The man had seasoned the bus stench so thoroughly that I thought I was actually going to throw up this time. I probably would have, if I hadn’t had a scarf to bury my face in.

The fat guy slowly realises what happened. He turns off the music on his phone and, red as a bull, goes on the attack.

“Get back here, you piece of shit! Give me my money back! How could you stink up the bus like that, you motherfucker, get back here!” he yells, but the beggar is faster and already at the front doors.

We stop at the bus station. Finally, silence. Both of them are gone. The crowd has calmed down slightly. Everyone seems different, almost civilised, in the quiet.

Two suspicious skinny guys sit down where the other two had been. One wears a baseball cap, the other a hoodie. They look like the type who spit on the pavement when they walk through the neighbourhood, as proof of toughness. By their image and posture, they strike me as petty dealers. I didn’t like the way the one with the cap sized me up when they got on, and I’m already getting slightly paranoid that they’ll get off the bus at my stop.

We cross the bridge.

I look through the window at the Sava river and the moon above it, and I want to cry. Where do I live? Where am I going? Am I part of this world and this misery? I have no compassion left for anyone anymore.

Except maybe for the old man who sits across from me, always in the same seat. Everyone claims he’s the one who stinks and that he sleeps on the bus, but he seems so dignified and he always has his hat and his suitcase, and for some reason he’s the only one who still stirs any compassion in me. I feel for him because it seems like he tries so hard with his appearance not to lose his dignity. And yet they still attack him.

The bus stinks. Not the old man.

The other day, two older guys tried to throw him off and were yelling at him that they know he stinks and how isn’t he ashamed. And those two guys were drunks who reeked of alcohol, of course. The old man just pressed himself under his hat and clutched his suitcase. He didn’t say a word.

And me — I sat a little further away, silent, watching them bully him. And I cursed my own passivity, and the fact that I’m a woman, and that I couldn’t do a damn thing.

I can’t look at this misery and wretchedness anymore. We’re all slowly losing our dignity. Since last year, the number of homeless people sleeping on trams and buses has tripled before my eyes. The number of beggars, hustlers and drunks has tripled. I can’t help them. I don’t know who can, but I’m running.

Tomorrow I’m cycling to work. I don’t care about the temperature or the weather. I can’t do this anymore.

In Zapruđe most people get off, but the two who triggered my paranoia are still behind me. Now there’s nobody in the back of the bus except them and me. They’re talking and laughing, and I can feel them looking at the back of my head. I don’t turn around. I just pray they don’t get off at my stop.

My legs are shaking.

My stop.

I stand up and walk towards the middle doors. I don’t turn around. I step off the bus and sprint across a six-lane avenue — three lanes in each direction with tram tracks running down the middle. The underpass is not an option at this hour.

Only now do I find the courage to look back.

They’re not there. They stayed on the bus.

I light a cigarette as I walk and inhale as deeply as I can. With a cigarette, I always feel safer.

I bought headphones this morning.

I’m crossing the bridge. I look at the Sava and the moon above it. I feel the damp in the air. The river is murky and fast. The wind rushes through my entire body. It’s cool, but bearable. I come down from the bridge and as my bicycle picks up speed without me touching the pedals, I begin to breathe with full lungs. The smile won’t leave my face and my body trembles with excitement.

Bowie sings in my ear.

“The stars are out tonight...”

Glossary

Ilica — Zagreb’s longest street, running through the heart of the city centre. Frankopanska — A side street off Ilica; the night bus stop. ZET — Zagrebački električni tramvaj, Zagreb’s public transit authority. Cajke — Trashy Balkan folk-pop rooted in Serbian turbo-folk, widely popular across the region. Zapruđe — A residential neighbourhood on the south bank of the Sava, built in the socialist era. Folka (Folnegovićevo) — A working-class neighbourhood in eastern Zagreb, home to several student dormitories. Savski Most — Literally “Sava Bridge”; the bridge the bus crosses between the city centre and the southern suburbs — and the name of the narrator’s stop. Kuna — Croatian currency at the time of writing (replaced by the euro in 2023). Twenty kuna was roughly €2.50.