Dancing Bears

by Witold Szablowski

  Peja to Gjakova: there are no payments, but there are generators

  Kosovo only has one power station. It’s located just beyond Priština, and it breaks all possible environmental standards. Apparently, 500 million euros has already been invested in its modernization. Without effect.

  Stefan, who works for one of the nongovernmental organizations, gives me a ride toward Gjakova. “The power station has no chance, because nobody’s in the habit of paying for electricity here. In the days of Yugoslavia they didn’t have to pay, and now it’s very hard to teach them to do it. The owner of the apartment I rent is a lawyer. When I show him the electricity bills, he just laughs and says: ‘Mir, mir—all right, all right.’

  “At the same time, everyone buys a small generator. Every little store, every barbershop or café, has one. When they switch off the electricity, all over town you can hear a constant trrrr. It costs far more than the electricity bills. But you can’t persuade anyone otherwise.

  “The power station can’t cut off the people who don’t pay—it would have to cut off the entire block. When there turned out to be entire blocks where no one pays, the power station employees came by. They took a real beating.

  “The power station only survives by selling electricity to Macedonia. For several hours the supply to the whole of Kosovo is switched off, and they send it all across the border.”

  Prizren to Dragaš: there’s no parsley

  The Kosovars rather disparagingly refer to their Albanian brothers as “the elite in shoes full of holes.”

  The Albanians refer to the Kosovars as grasping swindlers.

  The Kosovars regard themselves as richer. The Albanians regard themselves as wiser.

  Asked whether Kosovo will unite with Albania, both the former and the latter will sidestep an unambiguous answer.

  “We’ve lived apart for too long. We’re too different to unite,” says a minibus driver outside Prizren.

  But there’s a small flag with a black Albanian eagle hanging in his car. He doesn’t regard the flag of Kosovo, blue with six little stars, as his own.

  Lars, a Dane with whom I’m traveling about the Gora region, has his own theory on the subject. “It’d be hard for them to unite. They’re extremely different. I was in Albania recently. As soon as they have a bit of lake, a hundred people immediately start dealing in fish. If there’s a stream flowing down from the mountains, a hundred boys will be standing by the road to wash your car. But in Kosovo they just sit on their butts, waiting for help to come to them of its own accord. And it does. These people don’t have to do anything for themselves—they live on aid from humanitarian organizations and from their cousins in Germany. The Serbs here are maintained by the government in Belgrade. It gives them money as long as they don’t leave the place. Have you been to Štrpce? Several thousand Serbs live there. The hospital in a town like that should employ at most thirty people. It employs over three hundred. Half of them don’t even go to work, and their salaries are three times higher than for the hospital workers in Belgrade. But even so, the UN is the worst of all.”

  “Why?”

  “They overpay for everything. A relative employed at the UN can calmly support a family of ten. If they can do that, why bother to farm the land? Take a look, it’s all lying fallow. Nobody feels like doing it.”

  “You’re exaggerating. They have 70 percent unemployment here. Most people live on one euro a day.”

  “Those are statistics. But they don’t even bother to grow parsley for themselves.”

  Gjakova to Baljak: there’s peace; there will be chickens

  The Honda four-by-four picks me up outside Gjakova. This is where I meet Florent and Dušan, the two old friends from Mitrovica.

  “So what’s Serbian-Albanian friendship like?” I ask, because I find it hard to believe them. “I thought you guys were only capable of beating each other up.”

  “Not true. As kids we had fights between neighboring yards, but not Albanians against Serbs. Whenever my parents went away somewhere, I stayed the night at a Serbian pal’s house. I know both languages extremely well,” says Florent.

  “But you speak Albanian with a hick accent,” says Dušan, and both jokers burst out laughing again.

  “It was only in the 1980s, when Milošević took autonomy away from Kosovo, that things started to heat up. After that, they just got hotter. Dušan’s parents swapped houses with some Albanians living on the Serbian side. Everyone went to ground in their own ghettoes.”

  “We didn’t see each other from 1996 to 2000. We were both working for NGOs, when one day we were both at the same meeting in Belgrade. Florent asked if I wanted to come work with him. So we’ve been working together for an organization called Partners Kosova. I’m the only Serb here.”

  “We’re driving to work together. There’s no other way to do it, because Dušan’s car has Serbian plates.”

  “Meaning?”

  “His registration number has the initials KM. That stands for Kosovska Mitrovica, and those plates are issued by Belgrade.”

  “Where I live, everyone has those plates.”

  “But in Priština they might smash your windows or beat you up if you have number plates like those. My plates have KS, meaning Kosovo. We drive to work with them. But if I go to visit with Dušan, I leave my KS car by the New Bridge in Mitrovica and switch into Dušan’s car.” The New Bridge separates the Serbian and Albanian districts.

  “In the Serbian part of town you can get a punch on the nose for KS plates.”

  The Honda with KS plates turns off the highway and stops in the village of Baljak. There are a dozen half-built houses made of red brick. On the edge of the village there’s a small mosque and an even smaller Orthodox church. The local community leader has requested chickens for the Serbs. Why? He can tell us himself. We pick up the community leader from his house and drive to the administration office, which the UN has built for the village.

  “As community leader I’m very pleased we’ve won our independence. The authorities in our village are doing everything they can for coexistence to . . . ,” the community leader starts to say.

  “Osman, we don’t have the time. Cut the oration,” says Florent, laughing.

  “You’re right. I’m prattling like a politician.” The community leader laughs too.

  “So why is it that the Serbs need chickens?” I ask.

  “Until 2004 there wasn’t a single Serb left in our village. They’d all run off with the army. They were afraid we’d take revenge on them. But now time has passed and not all of them have made a life for themselves in Serbia. Now Belgrade is protesting against our independence, but they don’t treat the Serbs from Kosovo well there. So they’re starting to come back. In the past four years twelve families have returned—almost fifty people. The UN gives us money. We’re building houses for them. We’re helping them to get set up. But it’s not enough, because they don’t have jobs. So we had the idea of giving them chickens. They’ll be starting up miniature farms, selling eggs and meat. They’ll have something to eat. We’ve bought a small hut for one of them, and he’ll have a greengrocer’s store there. Tomorrow we’re going to fetch the first hundred chickens. Maybe this will allow us to attract a few more Serbs.”

  “Why would you want to do that?”

  “So the government in Belgrade won’t go saying they’re badly treated here. Besides, there’s money provided for it. Why not take advantage of that?”

  “Aren’t the Albanians protesting?”

  “I have a neighbor. A great Albanian patriot. Ask him about the Serbs, he’d say he’d shoot the lot. But when they started to come back, it reminded him that he used to have a good friend called Goran, who was a Serb. And now he runs after me to ask if I can get his pal Goran to come back. Because he’d like to see him again before he dies.”

  VIII. Castration

  But any
bear that’s been a captive for most of its life has no chance of coping with freedom. . . . That’s why we decided that we have to sterilize all our bears.

  Georgia: Stalin’s Vestal Virgins

  “He comes to me at night. He gazes at me, puffs on his pipe, and twirls his mustache. He smiles, and then heads for the door. Then I weep and cry for him to stay. But what guy would be bothered by a woman crying? Georgian men are like that: they have a drink, enter you, come quickly, and fall asleep. I hate men who drink. But here in Gori there’s no other kind. The other kind only exists in American movies.

  “Stalin was a different matter. Highly civilized. He knew how to take care of a woman, how to pay her a compliment, how to smell nice. He lived modestly, but he wore smart clothes. And he didn’t drink too much. And if he did, it was only good, foreign alcohol. I hardly need mention the fact that he conquered fascism and Hitler. So I said to myself many years ago, ‘Tanya, why the hell should you have to squabble with drunks? Why the hell, when you can live with Stalin?’”

  Anna Sreseli: he’s like family

  “We’re standing outside the house where Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin was born. His parents lived in poverty. His mother did laundry for the local priests. His father was a cobbler. As you can see, his house has had a structure in the classical style built around it, and the neighboring ones have been demolished. Yes, the entire district. No, I don’t think there’s anything odd about that. Would you be happier if there were hens crapping here, and children playing ball?

  “My grandmother lived in one of the houses that was demolished. She was given an apartment in a block. To the end of her life she kept saying, ‘How happy I am to have been born next to Stalin’s house. And that I can still see it from my windows.’

  “Grandmother could remember Stalin’s mother. He lived here for more than a decade. She lived here almost to the end of her life. For us, it was a big source of pride. The biggest. Because in our town there’s nothing else going on. If it weren’t for the museum, the town would have ceased to exist long ago.

  “A few years ago we had a war. The Ossetia border isn’t far away. A hundred Russian tanks drove into Gori. We fled to Tbilisi. I wasn’t afraid they’d blow up my housing block and my apartment, only that they’d blow up the museum. But they didn’t damage anything. They’re still afraid of Stalin. They didn’t touch the smallest patch of grass. They just took photos of each other by his statue. And that’s how Stalin saved us from beyond the grave.

  “When I was at school, some of the girls dreamed of working in a store, others longed to fly into outer space, but I wanted to tell people about our great compatriot. I steered my entire life toward making it come true. I chose to study history. And after college I ran straight to the museum to ask for a job.

  “But by then the Soviet Union had collapsed. The museum was closed and had barely survived. They had only recently begun to employ people again. I was the first person to be accepted in the new intake. Meanwhile I’d started to teach history at the high school—so I work part time at the museum.

  “When I was at college, we were still taught that Stalin was an outstanding statesman. But the system changed, the curriculum changed, and now I have to teach that he was a tyrant and a criminal. I don’t think that’s true. The resettlements? They were necessary for people to live in peace. The killings? He wasn’t responsible for them—it was Beria. The famine in Ukraine? That was a natural disaster. The Katyn massacre? I knew you’d ask. All the Poles ask about it. But there was a war on—in wartime that sort of action is a normal thing. And before you start ranting, please let me finish. Are you feeling calmer now? All right, I’ll tell you my personal opinion.

  “I regard Stalin as a great man, but I can’t say that, either to my students or to the tourists, so I say, ‘Some regard him as a dictator, others as a tyrant, and others see him as a genius. What he really was, you can decide for yourselves.’”

  Tatiana Mardzhanishvili: O Christ, take me to dear Stalin

  “When I see what they’ve done to our beloved Stalin, my heart bleeds! How could they? How could they make such a good man into a monster, a cannibal, an ogre?

  “Once upon a time, bus after bus came to our museum. People stood in lines several hundred yards long. I used to look at those people’s faces, and I could see the goodness emanating from them. But nowadays? One would bite the other. That’s capitalism for you.

  “Now I don’t go there anymore. First, because of regret—for my youth, my job, and my friends. And second, because my legs are weak. I can’t even get down the stairs on my own. In March I’ll be eighty-two, and you can’t expect a person to be healthy all their life. In the morning I get up, cut a slice of bread, make the tea, sit down, and say to myself, ‘O Christ, why did you let me live to see times like these? Why do they badmouth our darling Stalin?’

  “But later I think, ‘Just remember, Tanya, how much Stalin suffered for the people. It was for you too that he went without enough food and sleep. He fought against fascism so you could finish your education.’ And then I fetch the medal with Stalin’s face on it, which I was given when I retired. I stroke the darling man’s mustache, and somehow I feel better.

  “I worked at the museum from 1975. As a nabliudatel, a person responsible for the order and safety of the exhibits. If anyone tried to touch them, we had to go and shout at them.

  “It wasn’t easy. Old women used to come from the villages and throw themselves at our Stalin. They had to kiss each picture in the display, like icons in a church. And there are over a thousand of those pictures! If a whole busload of those old crones drove in, and they all wanted to kiss them, what was I to do? If the director was looking, I’d go up and shout. But if he wasn’t, I’d say, ‘Kiss away, ladies. May God grant you good health! But don’t touch the mask! Under no circumstances.’ The mask is the most sacred object in the entire museum, because it’s his death mask.

  “Before, I worked at the National Museum in Tbilisi, but my second husband was from Gori, and I managed to arrange a transfer. It wasn’t easy. The Stalin museum wasn’t a place you could just walk into off the street and ask, ‘You don’t have a job opening, do you?’ Public opinion counted. I was a divorcée. My first husband drank and beat me—the less said about him the better. At the time, I was afraid the divorce would be a problem. Luckily, I had a very good reference from the museum in Tbilisi.

  “The smartest people from all over the world used to come and admire Stalin’s house. From all over Russia, Asia, and America. Journalists, ambassadors, and artists. And I stood among the exhibits with a small card showing my name, as proud as could be. That job meant everything to me. The museum was like a home to me.

  “My husband didn’t understand. I had nothing to talk to him about. Although I only guarded the exhibits, I used to read books and got to know new people. But he drank too. He tried to beat me, but this time I wasn’t having it. Later on, he fell sick and went on welfare. He’d spend all day long sitting in the apartment, or at his mother’s. He used to say nasty things about Stalin, just to spite me.

  “When the USSR collapsed, he stuck out his tongue at me. It gave him great satisfaction. And then he died.

  “It’s a shame he didn’t live to the present times. Now I’d be sticking out my tongue at him. What do we need all this capitalism for, all these American cheeses, juices, and chocolate? You can’t even buy normal milk anymore—it has to be in a carton, because that’s how it is in America. I think, ‘O Christ, take me off to my dear Stalin. Take me away from this world, because I can’t bear it here any longer.’”

  Nana Magavariani: whenever I see him, a shiver goes down my spine

  “My job title used to be ‘head of personnel.’ Nowadays it’s ‘manager.’

  “The museum has a total of sixty-three employees. I am responsible for their recruitment and employment. There are ten tour guides, eleven custodians, and two cashiers. S
ince last year, we also have a pioneer—a girl in a uniform and a red scarf who sells postcards and poses for pictures. That was my idea, for which I received a personal commendation from the director. ‘A tourist has to have something to be photographed with, sir. Otherwise he won’t praise our museum, and as a result we’ll have bad PR.’ I know, because we’ve had special training on tourist activity within capitalism.

  “In the past, people used to come mainly from the Soviet Union. Russian was enough for us, but we also had two ladies who knew English and French. Nowadays a Russian tourist is a rare occasion for celebration. If one turns up, half the personnel comes to look at him. And we give him the best possible tour. Let them see that politics is politics, but the Georgians are their friends.

  “These days most of the tourists are from America and Poland. And that’s a problem, because not all the ladies know English well enough to provide for that sort of tourist—here each tourist has a personal guide. What can we do? It’s not as if I’m going to fire the ladies before their retirement, or teach them English. They can see that in the new times they’re not needed, and that they’re a sort of burden for the museum. But we never talk to one another about it. I know what it means to lose your job in your prime.

  “I used to work at a clothing factory. In the personnel department too. When the Soviet Union collapsed, the factory collapsed with it. And everything was looted—even the glass was stolen out of the window frames. In Stalin’s day something like that wouldn’t have been possible. The culprits would have been punished. So these days when I hear the stories they tell about him, I say, ‘People, you’ve lost your minds. Remember the Soviet Union. Everyone had work. The children had a free education. From Tbilisi to Vladivostok.’ If it weren’t for Communism, I, for example, would still be living in the countryside. I would never have thought of occupying a managerial position, because only men had those jobs before then. No system has ever given women as much.