Belladonna

by Daša Drndic

  Movements, and the slow feet,

  The trouble in the pace and the uncertain

  Wavering!

  See, they return, one, and by one,

  With fear, as half-awakened;

  As if the snow should hesitate

  And murmur in the wind,

  and half turn back;

  These were the “Wing’d-with-Awe,”

  Inviolable.

  Gods of the wingèd shoe!

  With them the silver hounds,

  sniffing the trace of air!

  Haie! Haie!

  These were the swift to harry;

  These the keen-scented;

  These were the souls of blood.

  Slow on the leash,

  pallid the leash-men!

  * * *

  * “Po šumama i gorama,” a partisan war song.

  † Ivo Bogdan (Šipan, 1907–killed in Buenos Aires, 1971). In 1944 appointed director-in-chief of the Main Directorate of Propaganda of the NDH On May 6, 1945, with the other members of the Educational Battalion, flees to Austria from where, like many NDH functionaries and even hangmen, via Italy, that is via the Catholic rat-run of the Holy Roman Church, and with the help of the priest Krunoslav Draganović, he reaches Argentina. There, together with a whole team of Ustasha émigrés, he edits the journal Studia Croatica.

  ‡ Führer!

  § Vjekoslav Blaškov (Donje Selo on the island of Šolta, 1911–Zagreb, 1948). Accompanied Ante Pavelić on the occasion of his visit to Hitler in September 1944. In May 1945, he escaped to Austria, then to Italy, and in 1948 entered Croatia illegally. He was captured in the same year and sentenced to death by the Supreme Court of the National Republic of Croatia.

  ‖ Vjekoslav “Maks” Luburić (Ljubuški, 1914–Cargagente, Spain, 1969). Commander of the III Division of the UNS (intelligence, counterintelligence and political police). After completing the first year of secondary school, he takes a job in the Croatian Employment Agency. Sentenced in 1931 to five months in prison for embezzlement of funds. Having served his sentence, emigrates to Hungary, where he becomes the camp treasurer in the Ustasha military camp in Janka Puszta. At the beginning of April 1941, he enters the Kingdom of Yugoslavia illegally, and in mid-April joins the newly established government of the Independent State of Croatia (NDH). He works in the management office of the military command of the Ustasha headquarters, and after Mija Babić is killed, is appointed Commander of the III Division of Ustasha defense, that is, commander of all the Ustasha camps in the NDH He founds Jasenovac concentration camp, which he visits often to oversee its work and to personally execute prisoners. At the beginning of 1942, on Pavelić's orders, he goes to Herzegovina. The Germans complain that he is interfering in their units’ activities in Herzegovina, and ask Pavelić to recall him. At his own request, in the summer of 1943, Luburić places himself in internment in Šumci near Lepoglava, where he lives under the false name of Matija Ban. He reappears in public toward the end of August 1944, when he participates in putting an end to the Vokić-Lorković putsch and works on the “defense” of Sarajevo.

  During the reorganization of the NDH's armed forces in the autumn of 1944, Luburić acquires the rank of General of the Croatian Armed Forces. Just one day before the entry of Partisan units into Zagreb, May 7, 1945, he is appointed Commander of the Armed Forces of the NDH and so oversees their withdrawal toward the Austrian border. He does not surrender to the Allies, but returns to Croatia and with groups of “crusaders” (Ustasha terrorists) is active in the districts of Bilogora and Slavonia until November 1945, when he retreats to Hungary, from where, under the pseudonym Maximilian Soldo, he goes to Spain. In the struggle for supremacy, Luburić falls out with Pavelić in 1955 and is expelled from the Ustasha movement. With a group of like-minded people, he founds a printing company where he publishes propaganda pamphlets and his speeches. In 1967, Ivan Stanić takes a job at the printer's and two years later kills Luburić.

  ¶ Jure Francetić (Prozor, near Otočac, 1912–Slunj, 1942). In Feral Tribune of May 20, 2004, Boris Rašeta writes: “There are numerous eyewitness reports of the crimes of Jure Francetić and his Black Legion. Among the most moving is that of Milovan Đilas, which was quoted in the second volume of his ‘Diary’ by Vladimir Dedijer, describing in detail the massacre of civilians, for the most part women and children, in Serbian villages near Kupres. Nevertheless, the myth of Jure Francetić lives on to this day, and to criticism of his person and acts or to the idea that his statue should be removed from the center of Slunj, his apologists reply that he has not been condemned of anything and never committed any crimes.” (The monuments to Francetić in Slunj and in Sveti Rok to Mile Budak, writer and Minister of Culture in the NDH, a convicted war criminal, are removed in August 2004.)

  “The lean commander of the Black Legion, Jure Francetić, the Ustasha colonel, posthumously promoted to the rank of flank commander, honored as the Leader's ‘knight’ and Commander of the Ustasha army,” writes Boris Rašeta, “has in recent years become the greatest star of right-wing websites in Croatia. The website of the Black Legion alone has had over half a million hits!”

  ** Rafael Boban (Sovići near Grude, 1907–?). Ustasha colonel and general of the Croatian Armed Forces.

  †† The NDH was founded on April 10, 1941.

  ‡‡ Ivan Oršanić (Županja, 1904–Buenos Aires, 1968). One of the leading Ustasha functionaries in the Independent State of Croatia. Administrative commander of the Ustasha Youth organization, member of the Croatian State Parliament. One of Pavelić's most trusted colleagues.

  §§ Lovro Sušić (Mrkopalj, 1891–Caracas, 1972). Attorney. In the NDH, Commissioner in Ogulin, Economics Minister (signed the first kuna banknotes).

  ‖‖ Božidar Kavran (Zagreb, 1913–Zagreb, ?). Senior Ustasha functionary; from 1943 managing commander of all Ustashas and deputy director of all Ustasha organizations. He goes abroad on May 7, 1945, but returns to Croatia in 1948 as the key organizer of the Ustasha-terrorist-spy group of 96 in the “April 10” action. Arrested by the Secret Service (UDBA) in the autumn of 1948 and sentenced to the loss of all citizen's rights, confiscation of his property and death by hanging. The exact date of his execution is unknown. Apparently, in May 1995, at the Pharmaceutics and Biochemistry Faculty of Zagreb University, he is rehabilitated as a Croatian intellectual and Master of Pharmacy.

  ¶¶ Troplet, Early Croatian three-strand design. Translator's note.

  *** Andrija Artuković (Klobuk near Ljubuški, 1899–Zagreb, 1988). Minister for Internal Affairs in the NDH government and one of those most responsible for carrying out the policy of genocide. Twelve days after the NDH is founded, he announces that the government will soon solve the Jewish question in the same way that the German government had done. With all severity, Artuković announces, “the government will oversee the strict application of the racial law in the immediate future.”

  So, Andreas Ban returns to Belgrade from Paris, his military service report lies in the Ministry of Defense, in the Belgrade military department, and he realizes that he is in their sights, that they will summon him, if for no other reason than for a little conversation, so that the Belgrade Ministry of Defense can mobilize him, so that they can tell him, Go to Croatia and liberate Yugoslavia. They could tell him, Feel free to kill. At that time, one of his two best friends, oh, how many shared games of preferans, how many swimming contests, how many confessions, love affairs, chats in cafés, how many journeys, exchanged intimacies and secrets, that friend for whom he had been best man, from a well-known Belgrade family of medics, himself a successful psychiatrist, told him, There’s nothing to be done, one may as well die for the homeland, if necessary.

  That is when he starts corresponding with Clara.

  Until then, Clara had existed largely as an abstra
ction. There had been some distant summers when he was sent from Belgrade to his uncle’s to go with Clara to the town beach, when he used to listen at night to Clara’s parents quarreling in the dark apartment of a building that once belonged to Italy. The apartment is near his present one, he has not set foot in that apartment for fifty years, and when he did, it was for Clara’s mother’s wake. Clara’s father, his uncle, died long ago, in another town, in another family with which Andreas Ban also has lukewarm, rare contact. Clara’s mother remarried and Clara was brought up by her maternal grandmother whom he never met. Clara was very pretty and very devout (her granny’s doing). Clara was a devout doctor who played the piano brilliantly, who smoked as much as Andreas Ban did, who could even drink when required, living by straddling the chasms of the sacred and the everyday secular.

  When he reaches Croatia at the beginning of the 1990s, when he deserts, in fact, numerous problems arise. Existential, political, linguistic, he would prefer not to go into it. Before that, Andreas Ban sends his nine-year-old son Leo through Ljubljana (by bus) to friends in Rovinj, and he pays for a two-day tourist excursion to Budapest, from which excursion he never returns to Belgrade.

  In Budapest, Andreas meets his cousin Printz, known as “Pupi,” who is staying in the same hotel. I’d like to get into Croatia, says Printz, but Rikard won’t hear of it, mother Ernestina is dying. I got out secretly, he says, I know someone who can help me. Andreas says nothing. They go to the island of Margitsziget, where on the eastern side, near the ruins of the Dominican monastery, they wait for Pupi’s contact, for seven hours, until it gets dark, they pee, kill mosquitoes and wander up and down. For four hours it rains in sheets, forming transparent curtains that fall from the sky like woven wet cobwebs and through which the greenery of Margitsziget is reflected. I’d like to enter that greenery, says Printz, enter it and lose myself, that green is like the green of Safet Zec’s paintings.

  Printz’s contact does not come.

  In the hotel, a man, not very tall, in cracked black patent-leather shimmy shoes, is waiting for Printz .

  The short man says, It’s pouring and Budapest is deep green.

  Printz asks, Are you a poet?

  The secret agent smiles mysteriously.

  Your contact is dead. Your contact has been killed, or he may have killed himself. That is what the short man in the dark-brown leather jacket says.

  What do I do now? asks Printz.

  Nothing. You’ll do nothing. You won’t cross over. You’ll go back. Tourist style, the way you came. That’s how it is. There’s a war on. We’re being attacked and we’re defending ourselves. People are being killed, buildings destroyed. That is what the man from the neighboring country says. Then he leaves.

  What do I do now? Printz asks Andreas.

  You’ll go back. I’m going solo, I don’t have a contact, I’m a deserter, says Andreas Ban.

  Printz asks the porter, the hotel porter in a blue-and-gold uniform, he asks him, Where is the grave of Ignác Semmelweis? Printz wants to visit the grave of Ignác Semmelweis at once, that’s why he asks the porter Where is the grave of Ignác Semmelweis. The porter is polite, porters do not ask superfluous questions, guests usually ask questions, porters answer. This yellow-blue porter is not in the least interested in why someone would want to visit the grave of Ignác Semmelweis, that is quite clear to Printz. It is also clear to Printz that porters do not need to know anything about Ignác Semmelweis, even if they are Hungarian porters, Budapest porters.

  What would porters want with Ignác Semmelweis?

  Take a taxi, says the porter. The cemetery is called Kerepesi.

  Printz wants to see the monument to Ignác Semmelweis, because with the departure of the short secret agent, Printz is suddenly plunged into sadness because of Ignác Semmelweis.

  A terrible injustice has been done to Ignác Semmelweis, Printz tells Andreas Ban. Come with me to Kerepesi cemetery. When one comes to Budapest as a tourist, it makes sense to visit Kerepesi cemetery, doesn’t it? There are many famous people at Kerepesi, says Printz, and you aren’t leaving till tomorrow. Besides, says Printz known as Pupi, when you’re a tourist you have to see as much as possible because you never know whether you’ll be able to repeat that trip, whether that trip can be repeated. You don’t know.

  There is no Ignác Semmelweis at Kerepesi cemetery. Just a monument, and beneath it — nothing. The monument to Ignác Semmelweis rests on the ground like an ornament, a large ornament of yellowed stone, with soft sods of moss, because Ignác Semmelweis died long ago, and Kerepesi cemetery is damp, that is why there is moss. Ignác Semmelweis was burned and poured into an urn, and the urn is kept in a glass case at the Museum of Medical History.

  Well, after all it’s stupid to go to foreign cemeteries, says Printz to Andreas Ban, there’s no one close in foreign cemeteries. We don’t need that. We’d do better to eat cake. Come, Andreas, let’s go for some cake.

  In the cemetery brochure, Andreas Ban reads the story of Ignác Semmelweis, evidently important to Printz, although Andreas does not know why. And he does not ask. He learns that Semmelweis dies aged forty-seven on August 13, 1865 in Vienna, in fact at the National Institute for the Mentally Ill in Döbling, he was a doctor and — mad, they say. Mad! Vienna would not have him. Vienna tells him, Go away, go back to where you came from, go to your Budapest. Ignác Semmelweis goes back to his Budapest and in his Budapest he helps women give birth, they don’t die of pyemia but stay alive, they don’t die of puerperal fever like all those women giving birth in Vienna, because Ignác Semmelweis washes his hands in chlorinated water and in Budapest it is no longer permitted to dissect bodies and then attend births with unwashed hands. Why the sick Ignác Semmelweis returns to Vienna, or rather to Döbling, is not known, perhaps he is taken by force to the National Institute for the Mentally Ill. Is there no hospital for the mind in Budapest at that time? Or perhaps they no longer want him in Budapest either. Printz cannot go back to the country where he was born, the people in whose country he lives are killing people in the country where Printz was born, and who knows what is in store for Andreas, will he too be moved back and forth, will he too be told, Go back to where you came from, that Belgrade of yours. He will be. Only Andreas Ban does not know that then, in Budapest.

  Walking to the exit from Kerepesi cemetery, Printz stops at plot 28, where there is an enormous statue, completely white, frightening.

  The four horsemen of the apocalypse, all four of them in stone, petrified, says Printz to Andreas, look.

  In plot 28, beneath the white horsemen of the apocalypse, lies József Attila.

  Sad life, says Printz and embarks on the story of József Attila, son of a washerwoman and secret member of the secret Communist Party, telling him József Attila was an impoverished child, an impoverished student, an impoverished poet, terribly impoverished, his father left, abandoning him and his mother, while József Attila was moved from one family to another, and none were kind to him, and while he was still small, only nine, he tried to kill himself. Then his mother died although he, József Attila, was not quite grown, he was only fourteen, indeed he was completely unprotected, his mother, the washerwoman, died, exhausted, worn out, withered and done for, and József Attila was left alone. He spent some twenty years figuring out how to kill himself and in the end, of course, he killed himself. This time successfully, forever. He threw himself under a freight train, József Attila, a brilliant student, József Attila, a poet whose poems no one read at the time. Later, much later, some people decide to remember József Attila and make him famous, only that is of no use to him because he has already been dead for a long time, as indeed has Ignác Semmelweis. Ignác Semmelweis is often mentioned today, people write novels and plays about him. Unhappy people, unlucky, both of them, says Printz to Andreas and bends toward the gravestone: József Attila, 1905–37. You see, Here inside is suffering/outside is the explanation, he wrote that, say
s Printz.

  Listen, Pupi, says Andreas Ban, when Dezső Kosztolányi’s town of Subotica ended up in Yugoslavia, he wailed, Where is my face? Where is my past? Where is my resting place? Where is my grave? You see, situations recur. It is possible to live without a face and without a past, without a resting place and without a grave, fuck the pathos, Pupi, go back to Belgrade.

  Printz is having a hard time, Printz is not well, Andreas is afraid that Printz will come to grief. So he says,

  I read in Oto Tolnai that every evening he passes a butcher’s shop in which people stuff hot sausages in their mouths, wolf down smoked ham and crackling and where soft bacon from pork belly hangs on hooks, whole wreaths of frankfurters, garlands of liver sausages and black puddings in luxurious variety. In that illuminated shop window, Oto Tolnai caught sight of a statue representing Sándor Petöfi reciting poems with his arms outstretched, while his defiant, shaggy hair rose to the heavenly heights of freedom and ecstasy. He was as white as snow, writes Tolnai, and at the beginning he thought that he had been sculpted from Carrara marble. But he soon realized that Sándor Petöfi was carved out of fat, of top-quality pig fat. There, Pupi, maybe our realities are unreal, but with time we learn to sidestep them. Pascal often felt an abyss was gaping on his left side, and he put a chair there to calm himself.

  The patisserie is elegant, it’s called Gerbeaud. Oh, that Gerbeaud, what a gourmet! No one knows why he left his native Switzerland, but he did, people leave their home countries, it happens all the time. There are people who never leave the country in which they were born, they refuse to. They think it is not OK, it’s like leaving your mother.

  I don’t agree, Andreas, says Printz. You have to leave your mother, especially if your mother is called Ernestina. When he left Switzerland, Gerbeaud invented a magical sweet filled with cognac, with a firm, dark-red morello cherry floating in it, drunk with pleasure. That was how Gerbeaud compensated for the loss of his homeland and his mother. And the loss of his large Swiss chocolate factory. Sweets compensate for various losses, that’s a well-known fact. After Germany, France and England, Gerbeaud settles in Hungary, and in Budapest creates his Gerbeaud dessert. As yet another compensation. That compensation brings him fame. And fortune. That contact did not need to fail me right now, says Printz, he could have failed later, when he had gotten me across. Now it’s finished, and Ernestina refuses to die.