Mrs. De Mohrenschildt. I think it was a few weeks or so. Then he had time for a vacation, and we moved a little north, to Milicher. That was an old king's palace converted into a hotel. Did he tell you they had been shooting at us in Yugoslavia?
Mr. Jenner. When you were at the shore? Yes; he said something about that. But I would like to have you tell me about it.
Mrs. De Mohrenschildt. Well, we don't like public beaches. We like to be by ourselves, and we like real wild nature—nothing that already will be prepared for us. So we took—in the morning we took a walk in the mountains. We climbed the mountains.
In the afternoon we took a canoe and just rowed along the coast. And it was beautiful, an absolutely beautiful coast—the most beautiful spot in the world. And the mountains—we saw something that looked like a fortification. I noticed a ladder standing there. So we were rowing and pointing to it. And all of a sudden we hear shots. We thought it was old fortifications from Italian time, or whatever they were. But they were actually their fortifications and they thought we were interested in it. They were pointing a rifle at us and shooting, and just doing this, go away further. And we had to really go very far out in the sea.
He didn't want to. He said, "At least if they shoot at us, I want to do something to them—this way we are just lost at sea. Nobody would know a single thing happened to us." He didn't want to row out.
Mr. Jenner. Who is obnoxious?
Mrs. De Mohrenschildt. My husband. I said that is silly, I don't want to be shot like a chicken. Go out to the sea and we will go back to the shore. I want to make a complaint. And we rowed out. He rowed out—his bottom was raw beefsteak, on the slippery boards of the boat. The current was very strong, against us, and all the way out in the sea it was very difficult.
So when we came back he talked to some people over there. They said, "They shoot at us, too. If accidentally you wander too close to Brioni, the villa where Tito lives—they shoot at us, too." That wasn't enough. We went another day again, and we started rowing around, and we saw a little island. We left the canoe.
Mr. Jenner. Canoe or rowboat?
Mrs. De Mohrenschildt. This was a canoe. The first time was a rowboat. So we were swimming and all of a sudden he took my photograph in front of a beautiful cave, and I was taking his photograph standing in the water in front of another cave. It was beautiful—just like a curtain drape. And all of a sudden, boom, the cannon shot, about a yard from me in the water. So, of course, we went right under the water in the cave and we were sitting there—what are we going to do? We are quite far, an hour or so from our hotel in a canoe. We thought, well, they shot at us, they probably think something, they are going to come and talk with us. So we are sitting there waiting for them to come to talk to us, but nobody came.