by Daša Drndic
Then in that town of Fiume (after I had lived there for five years) people suggested that I should secretly replace someone who was working part-time because she was dying of cancer, adding that in the course of carrying out that work I could not possibly write, because in that Local Council, in that Cultural Department, in that town which has interesting misunderstandings with culture, the work was such that it demanded twenty-four seven commitment, and when I said that such secrecy was out of the question, because I did not like secret services, they raised their eyebrows in genuine surprise. Today, when I think back, perhaps that authentic astonishment meant precisely what the teacher with her fashionable foreign name had wanted to say, up there on the hill, there, we offer you a chance, and you reject it.
I no longer remember, nor does it matter, whether that and the other miserable incidents happened before I left Rijeka, before I immigrated to Canada in fact, or after I returned from Canada. When I went away, I left my apartment to a newcomer who became the director of the local theater and who was, of course, received considerably better by the town than I had been, the newcomer had a pedigree in stasis, with the exception of some short-term, high-speed business trips outside the borders of the newly created statelet, unlike me, with my forty-five-year absence from the motherland, my little homeland. When I came back, I found broken windowpanes, a burnt carpet, displaced furniture and greasy marks on the walls, but that, surprisingly, did not bother me. I replaced the windowpanes with new ones, I threw the carpet (four meters square) into the trash and cleaned off the greasy marks with detergent. To this day, all that remains a mystery is how and why my black Bakelite telephone disappeared. But the temporary occupant of my repository moved back to the small town of his permanent residence (the Town could breathe again) and died suddenly, relatively young.
There were issues with the faculty as well. At the beginning, the vice chancellor was a woman who had written a doctorate on the American Beatniks (I leafed through that illiterate little work) and along the way had become fairly active politically in what was at the time the caricature District Council of the Croatian National Parliament, and exchanged the little book of the Communist Party of Yugoslavia for a crucifix around her neck, and Party meetings and constructive criticism for Rules of the Mass with the people, mumbling in rapture: mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa. Today that former, as they like to say, first female vice chancellor of the university in that little town (which had “given me everything”) hangs in a hall there, known as the Rectors’ Gallery, while the Lower House of Parliament no longer exists.
For five years I visited potential employers with my neatly typed and pruned life under my arm, but there was no sign of any permanent work. When I got to this vice chancellor I had not even opened my mouth when she asked me, in all seriousness, Are you Croatian? I turned and walked out. Multiculti Fiume-Rijeka had barricaded itself and remained padlocked.
To go back for a moment to that chief puppet in the puppet District Council of Parliament, which the nationalist HDZ Party renamed the Croatian State Parliament, so as not to lose continuity with the Independent State of Croatia (NDH). In the Evening News of October 29, 2004, Darko Đuretek wrote that he had discovered that the parliamentary president’s portrait of Zlatko Tomčić had been finished, but that it would not hang on the wall until Šeks gave the go-ahead, and he also wrote that the only portrait to have been painted twice was that of Nedjelko Mihanović, because Nedjelko Mihanović had objected when he saw how small he had turned out, and was now waiting for the painter to make him bigger, and he also wrote that Katica Ivanišević was not altogether happy because of the brooch on her dress, which she, Katica, said was far more beautiful in the original. Katica Ivanišević was famous for her statement that after renewed elections in the Coastal-Mountain District of 1997 it was not the HDZ that had failed, but the voters. Then they shunted her off to some kind of international society for human rights.
And finally, my scandalous treatment when I was eventually accepted into the faculty, and with time became imprudently courageous and began to say things that were disagreeable for “dirty ears” (in the words of T. S. Eliot), and they kicked me out.
And as for the problems with enrolling Leo in Year Three of elementary school when we arrived in 1992. Some ministry or other required that Leo should first take a test in the Croatian language, Croatian geography and Croatian history (although geography and history do not appear in the curriculum for Year Three, instead there is something called “nature and society”), Only then will we enroll him, they said, so I had to ask that ministry whether Leo also had to take tests in Croatian nature and Croatian society which were taught in Year Three. And I asked what we were to do about Croatian math and Croatian gymnastics, whether he would have to pass tests in those, or at least demonstrate them. Fortunately, the head teacher of the nearest school to us was a reasonable man, Professor Merle, a Czech by nationality, and perhaps that was why, as a member of a minority, he was sensitive to our problem, and he immediately enrolled Leo and presumably sent the ministry a favorable report.
Not to mention all the fuss over Leo’s enrollment in the first year of secondary school after we came back from Canada. That was a comedy, a black one. We were supposed to move from Rijeka to Zagreb. Some kind of more or less permanent work had turned up in Zagreb.
Mrs. Vokić, the then Minister of Education and Sport, was in Norway.
Mrs. Sabljak was with her.
Mrs. Galović had remained in Zagreb.
In Zagreb there was also Mr. Luburić (Deputy Director of the Office for the Advancement of Education) together with Mrs. Grdinić. They were all then responsible for secondary education or the nostrification of school documents.
In May 1997 (precisely when the two of us came back), the Ministry of Education and Sport announced the Competition for the enrollment of pupils in secondary schools, sending it to the press and school head teachers. This announcement served as a joint notice. Among other things, this joint notice included the following: On the basis of an unnostrified testimonial, judgment or confirmation of completed elementary school signed by a witness and endorsed by a public notary, a school may enroll pupils conditionally . . .
And further: Without a points system for success in elementary school, the following may be enrolled DIRECTLY in a secondary school:
— pupils returning from immigration
— pupils who have been educated abroad for at least two years because their parents were working in diplomatic capacities or in other Croatian agencies
— other pupils — returnees
and so on and so forth.
Mrs. Galović (after I had told my story at length and in detail, over my private telephone in Rijeka) put me onto Mr. Luburić. Mr. Luburić was busy. An unknown voice then directed me to Mrs. Grdinić. After I had told the (same) story at length and in detail over my private line in Rijeka (the fifth call), Mrs. Grdinić directed me to Mrs. Galović, who sent me back to Mrs. Grdinić, and Mrs. Grdinić sent me back to Mrs. Galović, who told me that in connection with the direct enrollment of my son in secondary school (that conditional route, without marks), there should not be a problem.
Off I go to the head teacher of the XVI Grammar School in Zagreb, Kata Bolf. The head teacher of the XVI Grammar School in Zagreb Kata Bolf tells me that she will not enroll my son before she receives confirmation from the Ministry that he (my son) is eligible for the first year of secondary school. I submit to Kata Bolf the Competition published by the Ministry and circulated to all secondary school head teachers. Kata Bolf said, That doesn’t concern me.
I call Mrs. Galović again. (Every conversation involves telling the same story.) I arrange a meeting with Mrs. Galović in Zagreb (my second journey there in a week), so that, on the basis of a request from the head teacher Kata Bolf, Mrs. Galović should give in writing the green light to enroll my son conditionally in the first year of secondary s
chool. Because, as Kata Bolf says, she does not acknowledge telephone calls; she acknowledges only what is written down.
I arrive in time for the arranged meeting.
Mrs. Galović is angry that I am asking for something. Mrs. Galović tells me that I am wasting her time. I say that my time too is worth something, it is worth no less than her own time, Mrs. Galović’s time. From the conversation with Mrs. Galović, I discover that the name of Kata Bolf is well known to people in the Ministry of Education and Sport. Whether that’s a good thing or not, I don’t have time to consider. The name of Kata Bolf, spoken out loud, thudded on the floor of the Ministry room loudly and threateningly.
They walk me through the floors of the Ministry, up and down, no longer on the telephone but on stairs. No one wants to write the confirmation for Kata Bolf. I lose patience and raise my voice. Mrs. Galović suddenly turns from a deputy minister into a human being. Two hours later, the confirmation for Kata Bolf is in my hands, tidily recorded in a protocol, with a seal at the bottom.
I make it to Kata Bolf. For a second time. This is the second time that Kata Bolf does not wish to listen to my story. I take out the confirmation she had asked for. Kata Bolf says, Come back in two hours, although we have nothing to discuss. Then she adds, I shall not enroll your son, and slams the door in my face. That Kata Bolf.
I go to the nearby II Grammar School. I recite the whole tale from the beginning. The head teacher says, I have nothing to discuss with you. There is the Chairman of the Enrollment Board, talk to him. He too slams the door in my face. I tell the Chairman of the Enrollment Board my whole story from the start. The Chairman of the Enrollment Board does not have (or does not wish to have) a clue about anything. He has never seen the instruction from the Ministry, he says. I take out the instruction from the Ministry, which I had got hold of while I was still in Canada and studied in Canada. I present it to the Chairman of the Enrollment Board. The Chairman of the Enrollment Board says: We have to define what an émigré is. Because an émigré is someone born outside the homeland.
I say, This is about returnees, not about émigrés.
He says, I must ask the Ministry.
After that the Chairman of the Enrollment Board calls the Ministry about every paragraph of the Instruction. That takes two hours.
There’s no points system, I tell the Chairman of the Enrollment Board.
There is a points system, says the Chairman of the Enrollment Board.
I show him the Instruction again. The Chairman says, I must check with the Ministry.
I conclude that the Chairman of the Enrollment Board’s problem is a low coefficient of intelligence.
What do we do now? I say.
It all points to the fact that your child does not have the right to be enrolled in secondary school, says the Chairman of the Enrollment Board.
Since two hours have passed, I go back to Kata Bolf. Kata Bolf says, There are other schools. I shall not enroll your son.
He has all the required qualifications, I say.
I am not concerned with qualifications, says Kata Bolf. By the time you collect and nostrify all the necessary documents, all the places in this school will be filled.
Schools are obliged to keep one place in each class for returnees, I throw down my last card.
I am not obliged to do anything, Kata Bolf says. Now leave my room.
Really, who is Kata Bolf? A metaphor?
In Rijeka Leo was enrolled without any difficulty, because in Rijeka we did not come across a Kata Bolf. And so, partly because of Kata Bolf (at the time), we remained in that, in this town.
It is damaging to tie yourself. To a country and a home. Sooner or later both will fuck you up.
But what would have happened, how would it have been, had I been a woman?
Nevertheless, I did manage to acquire something here: my by now loyal companion/suffocatress: asthma; that is something that this country gave me. I collected a few other little ailments in this town as well, except that on the whole they are hereditary deviations or disorders that come with aging, like that carcinoma, or that glaucoma, or that degenerating spine, then the arteriosclerosis of the knees or the ossified neck, perhaps even the blocked carotid arteries, smokers’ COPD, and some small kidney stone and little cysts on the liver, that’s all baggage, the germs of which are in my DNA, baggage I am destined to drag around through this thing called life. But asthma is not.
There is something else that Rijeka has not (yet) succeeded in taking from me: my teeth.
Today my position in this town is relatively sorted. From time to time Rijeka even lays claim to me and says our writer. Which somehow fits in the same basket as the announcement by that Zagreb elite teacher who spends her summers on Rovinj hill.
This digression, as my editor would say, is not essential for our story. But this is not about me, Andreas Ban, but about those fine Verdurin types as opposed to the multitude of the homeless, displaced and silenced. Because during this new war, those people changed nothing in their lives, not their beds, not their work, nor their friends, nor their country, nor their town, nor food, nor air. Possibly face cream, a dishwasher or a swimming costume. That’s why it would be better if those fine Verdurins said nothing, just as they mostly held their tongues during the time of the former state, the way many — in wartime — become dumb, or, if they do speak, they do so, I presume, in a whisper. The displaced who survived this war horror are wrecks, internally destroyed. People who work with their hands did rather better than those who fiddle about with words. People with money did best.
Don’t upset yourself. In the case of philistinism or triviality, which also lacks possibility, the situation is somewhat different. Philistinism lacks every determinant of spirit and terminates in probability, within which the possible finds its insignificant place. . . . Devoid of imagination, as the philistine always is, he lives in a certain trivial province of experience as to how things go, what is possible, what usually occurs.
Kierkegaard
When I finally got work at the university, when they had hung that vice chancelloress in the gallery, I believed that I was doing that work, psychological work, because I knew something about that field, and that I was not then eating Croatian bread, as some frustrated anonymous individual maintained on some portal or other, but my bread, however nondescript, moldy and meager. I have already written one book about this town, or rather not about the town, because the town alone is not so crucial as to merit even a relatively slender volume about it; I wrote generally about towns, about small towns that become bewildered, and then revolt when people they do not know, people from somewhere else, from over there, burst onto the scene, neither smiling nor ecstatic. I shall write again and I shall write more, for as long as I can, because twenty-five years have gone by, and still, on some little rocky, hilly lane, out of the blue, there may suddenly come relentless, threatening barking.
It was then, standing face to face with the lecturer, that a situation from some ten years earlier emerged from what I had thought was a sealed chamber of my brain: when I had traveled (by bus) from “my” town Rijeka to the capital city, Zagreb, which people love to call a metropolis, for the opening night of a play. Catching sight of me in the foyer, a half-educated provincial woman, who had wound up in the so-called metropolis by who knows what channels, asked me, What are you doing here? Oh, fuck you!
I had (like many others) existed before I came to Rijeka, I had existed for thirty-eight years outside this new country to which I had recently moved and I had existed for forty-five years outside the town in which I had settled (in which I had up to then never spent longer than two days), and now I had been decaying there for twenty-five years.
Perhaps a year had passed since Leo’s and my arrival in the country, when, after my six-month supply post in an elementary school, oh, thank you, Croatia, where a job had just been given to Boško, up to then a
scientist and “character” in a Novi Sad biological institute, so I was able to sift through our recent past with him and practice the Serbian language, otherwise barricaded in a little mental compartment, labeled “forbidden,” when the Society of Croatian-American Friendship opened a kindergarten for the spoiled children of the nouveau riche from around the Kvarner Bay. The Society was run (from its Zagreb center) by Vera Dumančić, presumably to pass the time. Later Vera Dumančić came to her senses and hotfooted it to the United States. Little Dolores came to the kindergarten, she painted everything blue and kept saying, Blue is elegant, a very elegant color, and she was afraid of her father, who was excessively agreeable when he came for her at the end of the day. You’re my little Tinkerbell, he kept repeating, Dolores stiffened and pursed her lips and I, perhaps professionally deformed, immediately imagined that father sexually abusing his little Tinkerbell, You’re my Tinkerbell, he pants into her neck while he beds her. Little Ameriko came as well, not Amerigo, but Ameriko, whose mother, a talkative worldly lady, had flown off to that country over there, to give birth — for the sake of her son’s bright future. There were other children, of all kinds. So, for five days a week, I stood for forty minutes in an overcrowded bus to Ičići, because the same bus was used by students, there is a tourism faculty in Lovran because Croatia nurtures tourism. Then I returned in an equally crammed bus, again standing, by now with swollen legs. During that time, Leo roamed by himself through the deserted neighborhoods near the refinery (where the polluted air means that even dogs don’t pee) and wrote poems. He was nine years old.