andrija adamić and the apple tree
This is an excerpt from a longform fiction project about four generations and types of cyclists in Slovenia and Yugoslavia. While this work relies on references to historical events and organizations (such as the Tour of Yugoslavia or the Rog cycling club) any resemblances to real people living or dead are coincidental.
Sava Jovanović moved to the front where his body, big elegant thing, punched a distinct hole in the air. Two teammates filled the precious space he’d made for them. Single file. Saint Sava, everyone called him, because he was gentle. His was a deep, quiet voice and he liked to garden, cultivating two apple trees in an allotment on the outskirts of Ljubljana. Sava didn’t mind living in the city, though he found it quaint compared to Belgrade, where he was from. Ljubljana, he tried to explain once, seemed to him more sculpture than structure, a wiry sculpture of some sort, the outline of something rather than the thing itself. He wasn’t very good with words and filled his sentences with sorries. Sorry, he said, when he cut off a rider in a red jersey in order to punch that hole, but he punched it anyway.
Andrija Adamić slid into place behind him. The two had an unspoken way of communicating. Rouleur and lead out man, each their own stage of a rocket, tethered and connected in a play of explosive physics acted and reenacted through the medium of their bodies. Andrija, the product of the rural Croatian interior wanted nothing to do with any city, which, in a way, suited him. Towards everyone else, his disposition could be graciously described as acerbic. Stiff and severe, the kind of man better suited to life in a monastery. But not with Sava. He only had kindness for Sava.
Andrija knew every movement Sava made or was going to make, trusted him so much he’d wedge his wheel nary a millimeter away, borrowing every inch of slipstream. Andrija could measure on sensation alone how much Sava had left in him. Felt it through the tension in Sava’s hulking shoulders, the spin of his cadence, which gear he was in, even the heaviness of his breath, if Andrija got close enough, and he often did. And if Andrija needed Sava beyond what Sava was capable of giving, only then would Andrija speak to him.
Come on, big man. Just another four hundred meters.
This time, Sava really had nothing left. He glanced back at Andrija in a way known only to them, and Andrija, the crotchety old marshall, yelled and shoved and carved out some space, allowing Sava to drop. Some numbers on big orange signs read 700, a piece of information perceived in a blink. Now in the wind, Andrija curved his back more aggressively, formed an aerofoil for the cargo behind, lifted himself slightly out of the saddle. He shifted down into a harder gear.
Jan, he shouted, a formality. He knew where Jan was.
Here, shouted Jan, who was with him.
Sava, the rouleur, moved like a train, only forward and with unparalleled momentum. But Andrija, he moved in ways that defied movement. The more clever journalists of his day described him as a sidewinder, a bulldozer, a thread passing through the eye of a needle. He maneuvered his position in space and time as though existing in some fourth dimension where he saw and perceived his surroundings not just with his eyes but with his entire body, of which the bike was a natural extension.
An unfunny joke goes that a lead-out man is just a sprinter who can’t sprint. But a true lead-out man is a cross between a heat-seeking missile and a mystic — a machine-being who can feel the presence of others and predict, if only by a few milliseconds, their actions. Just as Andrija sensed and interpreted every centimeter of Sava in front of him, so he did also with Jan behind, even though he couldn’t see Jan. Jan, currently fifth in general classification, wasn’t a sprinter, hence Jan days were rare for Andrija, but the stage in Crikvenica was concluding under unusual circumstances, hence it became a Jan day.
Most often, Andrija had Jure, the Rog pure sprinter, on his wheel, a man rivaling even Sava in size. Leading Jure out was like keeping a big salivating dog on a leash. (And Andrija was the leash.) In the longer one day races, he worked for Cvetko, whose style was more surgical, clever, adroit. A real Machiavelli type. Brains over brawn. At the present moment, however, Andrija Adamić rode not for Rog but for the Yugoslav A team. The man he’d been put in charge of was black haired, dark-eyed Milo Fumić from Novi Sad, who, while just as strong, didn’t see as many race days as Jure and thus often found himself in unfortunate situations. Like the one in Crikvenica.
The final kilometers before a bunch sprint require superhuman resolve, which Andrija Adamić possessed in excess. Here, as ever, a cosmos of discrete and simultaneous actions took place mere inches from him and every other cyclist: lead-outs dive-bombing in and out of the ever-changing slipstreams; a rival team’s careful yet risky creep along the side of the road; the various spent riders dropping back through the ranks, almost coming to a complete stand still. The pace, infernal, a real unholy punishment. Andrija kept his eye on the more desperate or arrogant among them, those likely to be gamblers — men who know the only way they’ll win is by peeling off on a suicidal flyer. These were often futile — one can perhaps escape a group of five or six cyclists, not so much a barreling pack of thirty. Andrija viewed such acts as analogous to throwing a stone into a still pond — the water is, for a brief turbulent moment, displaced, but then ultimately it re-congeals and the pond becomes still once more.
Yet on that day in Crikvenica, on the ninth stage of the 1979 Tour of Yugoslavia, something unusual then transpired. With six kilometers left in the race, two riders from the Polish national team tried to escape together, taking advantage of a tricky corner into town. These men (how unclever they were!) found themselves effortlessly stalked down by three others in red from the USSR, who, in turn were latched on to by two stragglers from Czechoslovakia and an ever-diligent Sava with Andrija and Jan in his wheel. Not a single man involved expected much to come of it.
In the moment after the attack, Jan felt the presence, the heat and noise, of Milo and the rest of the peloton and he did not slow, did not look back over his shoulder due to the impending corner. But after he rounded it, a vacuum of air opened behind him, the rush of the unmitigated wind, interrupted by familiar, horrible sounds: wailing rim brakes. The soft thud of dozens of bodies and the mechanical gnashing of metal bicycles, all ensnared with one another. A spew of shouting.
The Polish riders did not lose focus, nor did they sit up. Their team was weak and this was a profound gift to them. The USSR men, a trio of lackeys without a leader, slowed but only barely, just to get their bearings. Sava and Andrija exchanged something covert between them. Jan glanced over his shoulder, saw only the empty road and, as team leader, yelled for Sava to keep going. That’s when Sava Jovanović punched his big, Sava-shaped hole in the air, carried his teammates to the 700 meter mark, and expired. Then Andrija shouted for Jan, who was there.
The possibility of winning formed a metallic taste in each of these men’s mouths, mingling with the sweat from their upper lips. Jan Kotnik knew the men around him. None were sprinters. On paper he was the strongest, but only on paper. It had been a while since he’d won in a flat sprint, hence his best chances rested with a solo attack which, after Sava’s pacing, he didn’t have the stamina for. To be a good cyclist requires knowing oneself, and Jan Kotnik, even while basking in the favorable light of possibility, knew himself. He would not be able to overpower any of the USSR men, nor the Pole Nowak, a mediocre one-day racer, in a toss-up. The time to strategize evaporated with each passing second, which slowed and collided with the neighboring fragment of time.
In utter contrast to all this dire chaos, the day around them. How unfortunate that these men, in such a state, couldn’t smell the sweet, salty air, couldn’t enjoy the gentle caress of the coastal breeze or catch the glimpses of turquoise sea filling the gaps the streets made between sand-colored buildings. The throngs of people with their flags passed by mutely and anonymously. What a cruel irony, Jan often thought, that cycling takes place among some of the loveliest landscapes the world can offer, and yet, to the men on their bicycles, there is only suffering.
Andrija Adamić now entered his holy, shamanic state. He weaved Jan in and out of the slipstream of the Soviets who’d since assembled themselves into a small but organized phalanx. Andrija could see, with his third eye, Nowak in Jan’s shadow and cut across to the wheel of one of the Czechs in an attempt to throw off this enemy. The sign-number read five hundred. Here, as though a spell had been cast, the octet’s pace slowed to one of mutual wariness, taunting, each rider trying to goad someone else into making a move.
In this hesitance, Jan, a man of scintillating instinct, saw a win condition. He acted on it. He shouted, slid out from behind Andrija and took the place in front of him, almost dropping Andrija in the process. This maneuver changed things. Andrija’s great chessboard shifted before his eyes. The unexpected jolt deposed all but Nowak, who kept the advantage of staying in Andrija’s slipstream. Jan’s hands gripped the drops. He got out of the saddle, his voice yelling something unintelligible, and, peeling off, he opened the world to Andrija who, for the first time in years, had no one in front of him.
Time slowed, perhaps only to Andrija, who had a brain capable of slowing time. But Nowak, in those last four hundred meters, did not have Andrija’s gift of prophecy. He was visibly scared, and Andrija knew it, looked back only once to give him a real good, mean stare under which the poor man crumpled. Pinioned by Adamić and paralyzed by the immense pressure of a once unthinkable triumph Nowak made a cardinal error: he launched his sprint early. Andrija clawed onto him. Over the old stone bridge they went, millimeters from one another.
Not yet.
Not yet.
Two hundred fifty meters. Two hundred.
Andrija shifted hard. He sprang from the saddle like a great beast, slid out into the open wind. He relied no longer on sight, for his eyes strained from such great exertion. His whole body rippled with the torrential force disseminated through every fiber of muscle, the bike a toy beneath him. Nowak, still there, twenty centimeters to the right, then thirty, mouth open, forcing the last of his breath out. O terminus. Andrija curled into a missile, head down, arms extended. He threw his body forward in one last monumental surge, and watched, frame by frame, as his wheel passed over the white line approximately forty centimeters ahead of the one belonging to the man beside him. All of this transpired within two seconds.
Then Andrija Adamić slowed down. He raised his arms, fingertips brushing the sky which, in that moment, belonged to him. Behind, Jan watched the whole pageant unfold. Once he arrived, the two shook hands, the mumbled thanks coming from Andrija’s lips genuine and, for him, vulnerable. They waited for Sava, which took a few minutes. By the time Sava rolled in all slow, spent and silly, he’d already caught wind of the news. He looked fondly at his companions, his soft brown eyes brimming with emotion. Sava, quietly and more than anyone else, understood what this day meant for his most trusted comrade, who for so long toiled in the periphery working in the service of others. He threw his big arms around Andrija, picked him right up off the ground, swearing at him, you son of a bitch, you son of a bitch.
Winning something as substantial as a stage of the Tour of Yugoslavia is always, to an athlete of Adamić’s caliber, a self-aware, bittersweet moment. Of course, Andrija was happy. Blissful, even. But it also occurred to him, visibly communicated through his gaunt, furrowed face, that this was and would be the greatest victory he’d ever achieve, not only as a bike rider, but perhaps even in life. That the future lay before him suddenly barren. More shifts in the lead-out train, his glory forever sublimated through the glory of others. Retirement. The factory. He pushed these thoughts away. Slowed down his time again. Let himself smile, allowed, just once, a pinch of joy. You son of a bitch, you son of a bitch.
The team van was abuzz during the short transfer to Rijeka. So you’re a sprinter now! Just fucking excellent. You really pulled one over on those guys. What are you gonna do with the money? (A not insignificant sum in those days.) All inquiries at which Andrija, neither one for praise nor attention, frowned and shook his head cryptically. Two days later, on stage 11, he abandoned the race on the crushing slopes of Vršič. And that was that.
Around a week after the Tour of Yugoslavia came to an end, Jan found himself leaning against the wall of the clubhouse, restlessly waiting for the morning training to start. Half the guys were always late, which annoyed him, but gradually, one by one they trickled in on their bikes until the only man still missing was, rather uncharacteristically, Andrija Adamić.
Right as Tine threatened to start the training anyway (mere walls couldn’t contain that voice of his), Andrija’s beat up Zastava pickup truck rolled into the driveway. In its bed, secured by ropes, was a large potted sapling. As the truck got closer, Jan noticed the small fledgling apples beginning to form in clusters on its scraggly adolescent branches.
Sava! He shouted, throwing open the front door. Sava!
