Belladonna

by Daša Drndic

  The surgeon Toffetti looks for a free date on which to perform the operation, operations are done on Thursdays, because Thursdays are our sentinel day, says Dr. Toffetti. What kind of sentinel, sentinel — guard, French sentinelle, Italian sentinella, probably from the Old Italian sentina, vigilance, from sentire, to feel, Indo-European root, what is that sentinel, how big is it, whom is it guarding, what is it guarding, is it guarding him, Andreas Ban? During that operation what will they do to his sentinel, will they remove it? Because, soldiers, sentinel-guards threaten arrivals (malignant tumors?), they prevent their potential attacks on, on what? On a town? On fortifications? On a body.

  When he arrives in this town from hostile Belgrade, look, he feels, he touches the walls of the fortification he is entering quietly, almost submissively, with the permission of the town’s authorities, but sentinels nevertheless follow his footsteps, for a long time, suspicious. Because he spoke differently, he laughed differently (loudly), he dressed differently (sloppily), he had forty-five years of a past which those inside the walls knew nothing about (and still don’t), in other words, for those inside the walls he had a mysterious past, a potentially dangerous past, which would need first to be investigated, then eradicated, space made for a new past resembling this one here, a small, cramped, shared past, virtually a family past.

  He was supposed to become Otto the rabbit, then it would be all right. Otto the white rabbit lived in a henhouse and sat on the eggs with the hens. Otto the rabbit jumped onto the perch, clumsily to start with, falling a lot, but then he became adept and was able to stay up there for a long time. Today, Otto the rabbit does not sit on his owner’s lap nibbling carrots. Otto the rabbit eats everything the hens eat and scampers around the run with the hens. For the hens, Otto the rabbit is a hen. When he sits on the perch with the hens, Otto the rabbit sometimes tucks himself under their wings and huddled up breathes quietly, protected and invisible.

  But Andreas Ban — a superfluous man in his new homeland, neither a local nor a nomad, an exception — hovers in emptiness, catapulted into Never Never Land, into Narrenschiffen, into non-lieu, and becomes human debris. In order to be included, in order for them to include him, he first passes through a fine, quiet, several-year-long purgatory of radical exclusion, through a ritual of cleansing, a ritual of undressing, so as to “buy” his rite of passage. sto eliminating potential chaos in the threesome dance, in that amorous spasm, in that ménage à trois of territory, state and nation. Therefore, in order to subsist, to survive, he tries not to remember. Lacan. He is not a patient with symptoms that have to be illuminated, with puzzling symptoms whose cause is unknown, so he asks, Who am I? And Lacan tells him, You are your past. Joke. He, Andreas Ban, is nailed to his own being, to his body; his organs, his blood, his pain languish in a mildly aseptic society, anesthetized and mechanized, an ironed society with no creases.

  Andreas Ban thus ekes out his existence in the prisons of that town with the homeless and the indigent (on benefits), with his son and his increasingly porous memories, until the sentence of isolation that was never recorded is finally revoked, after enough years have left him with damaged organs, lungs whose bronchi contract wildly, whose bronchi clench crazily, suffocating in their own mucus, suffocating him too, at times leaving him with a pipette for inhaling air.

  It’s then he decides not to remember. It’s over, the sentence has been served, he says, though so far he has not been able to understand what that sentence was and why it had been imposed. Life had somehow gone on, had dripped rather than flowed, but he had been able to work, he had been able to write, to publish, after many trials and tribulations and overruling he had been taken on, at a pitiful salary, in some kind of state institution, an employee had retired and he leaped in, he did bits and pieces at the university, did honorary teaching, he even got a doctorate, because that was required of him, he was fifty-five when, between writing “his own” articles he succeeded in scraping together a dissertation on “Aspects of Aggression in Different Social Strata and Self-control as a Potential Intermediary,” which did not interest him in the slightest, that dissertation, that quasi-research, but they tell him, If you are thinking of teaching, if you want to fit in, if you want us to accept you, you cannot do only what you like, writing is not a job, they tell him, writing is relaxation, a little entertainment carried out on weekends, because on various faculties individuals do that, they have little creative hobbies — they do amateur sketching, they write literary balderdash, writing is not an art, they say, because in Croatia there is no school that teaches writing, therefore here, in this country, at this school, the School of Social Sciences, you cannot have a position as a writer-artist, but exclusively as a psychologist-scholar, because you are not a painter, nor a sculptor, nor an architect, not even a landscape architect, you are not a dramaturge, or a musician, or a pantomime artist, they tell him, nor a designer of lights or visual communication, you are nothing, your interests are disparate, undefined, you are not focused on one field, you don’t research one area in depth, they say, that’s not good, take it or leave it, they say, because they write humanistic “original scholarly” works, presentations, all so decent, washed, harmless and soothing.

  As in Zagreb, when he participates in a conference on the intellectual and war, a conference entitled “Intellectuals and War, 1939– 1947,” and a woman participant gives a paper on intellectual women in the Independent State of Croatia, mentioning two with a university education, the others were all knitters and childbearers who exclaim “Our duties to the nation are great,” which is the title of the paper by the participant glued to the academic charade, “Our duties to the nation are great,” but she said nothing, condemned no one, concluded nothing, so when Andreas Ban asked whether after the war, in Argentina, some of those rural “intellectuals,” or perhaps some of their descendants, had opened their eyes, when he asked whether any of their descendants, sons, daughters, grandchildren had apologized to the victims of their Ustasha fathers and grandfathers, because this woman scholar had talked with those bigoted ninety-year-old women, she, the scholar, shook her head in denial and everyone in the audience immediately shrieked at him, Andreas Ban, That’s not the subject now, and he asked, What is the subject then and what’s all this about? At that “scholarly” conference about intellectuals in the war, at which there was no audience, at which the audience consisted of those who had come with their little papers and little stories to convince one another that everything was now clear, that the past had no connection with the present, instead of Social Sciences students attending the conference about intellectuals in the war, another participant rambled on for twenty minutes about the tragic destiny of Milivoj Magdić who, as editor of the Ustasha journal Spremnost (“Readiness”), smuggled in subversive articles about the writing of Thomas Mann, Edgar Allan Poe and the surrealists, so shattering the poetics of the native soil and the hearth, and in fact opening “free space,” that is what he said, free space (in the monstrous NDH), cracks through which to glimpse different kinds of “landscape,” because in that Ustasha Spremnost they published also humorous writings, novellas and articles by Mayakovsky, Zoshchenko and Babel, Russian avant-garde writers in other words, this historical researcher maintained under the aegis of dispassionate analysis of the Ustasha Movement, which in Andreas Ban’s eyes does not bear relativizing, just as Nazism does not, there are no minor Ustashas, there are no minor Nazis, and that new kulturträger of the new Croatia, in defense of Ustasha kulturträgers, did not remotely relativize the prison sentences and executions of the new Communist authorities which, he said, had mercilessly and unjustifiably condemned the elite of Croatian Ustasha journalism for cultural cooperation with the enemy. The researcher of the Croatian wartime journalistic past did after all admit that those, to him subversive, editors and journalists, for the most part supporters of the NDH, to keep their positions, did not dare touch the Leader, it never occurred to them to criticize the Ustasha struggle and the
Ustasha order of things, nor was it important, he said, because those who were concerned with the essential aspects of literature, aesthetics, narrative technique and so on, did not stick their heads in the sand, he maintained, they were preoccupied with their profession, because literary criticism was not a free space for the expression of opinions of all kinds; it was for opinions about literature.

  Sickened by this tepid and amoral paper, this evasive theater planted on the worn-out columns of clichés, Andreas Ban leaves the conference. Hearing about that little rotten “free space,” propagated by that right-winger, reminds him of the confession of the protagonist of Littell’s book, Dr. Max Aue, who, just like these little Ustasha journalists, had before him a great space for freedom (of choice). Because, while Milivoj Magdić and company had published what had been for the Ustasha regime allegedly subversive pieces by Surrealists, Jasenovac was filling up and Auschwitz was smoking.

  They could hardly wait to get rid of him. On that little faculty, at that little university, there are some fine people, and clever ones, it’s just that they are few. There are many meek, frightened souls who use every opportunity to practice a porous severity and comic stiffness. There are many self-effacing people, many cowards, and many who are silent. Meek souls talk about Andreas Ban having communication problems because he does not communicate the way they think one should, indirectly, but that is no communication, just half-heartedness, nodding and formal correspondence full of clichés which travel with incredible frequency from the first floor to all the other floors and back to base (the Dean’s office). They do not want direct communication because communication on an equal basis means responsibility. They do not want responsibility. So, they sprinkle and iron, starch, sprinkle and iron, starch and embroider to the point of exhaustion.

  There is a woman, a psychologist unfortunately, who, when she gets upset, and she gets upset whenever anyone opposes her, opens her mouth wide and roars. They say that this psychologist, presumably for educational, if not for sadistic purposes, used to tie up her daughter’s hands so she could not scratch. Why the daughter of the psychologist scratched herself compulsively the psychologist had presumably not researched, because had she done so she would not have tied up her daughter’s hands but disentangled the issues that made her daughter scratch. That tying up of people, tying up the weak, is becoming popular in academic circles, if not everywhere then at least at some universities. There is a woman who is supposed to teach literature, who fancies herself a writer, and when she produced her tiny “original” works, in which she was to analyze texts already analyzed and assessed in the literary canon, she fails in her interpretation. People say that she used to tie her son to the radiator, and that he wriggled while she observed him with the eye of a jailer. At the university there are also insufferable boasters squeezed into dark-blue suits who look horrific, especially in summer when there is color and life everywhere. Departments, like the School of Social Sciences, are meant to produce an intellectual elite, instead they create meek people who hide in mouseholes. Who talk but say little. Who are not heard outside their classrooms, and speak softly, muttering to themselves.

  All shuffle there; all cough in ink;

  All wear the carpet with their shoes;

  All think what other people think;

  All know the man their neighbor knows.

  Lord, what would they say

  Did their Catullus walk that way?

  Yours, Yeats

  The apex of Kafkaesque academic correspondence, which is the last straw for Andreas Ban, is a half-literate letter addressed to him, Andreas Ban (CLASS: 602-04/11-01/182, Our Ref: 2170-24-01-11-01), a letter of absurd content and demands, in other words a senseless letter in the first person plural (we) signed by one Dean:

  Dear Hon. Prof. Dr. Ban

  We write to inform you that, in keeping with art. 102 of Statute 6 of the Law on academic activity and tertiary education your contract comes to an end on 30.09.2011.

  A contract of work for an employee in the scholarly teaching profession comes to an end with the end of the year in which he has reached the age of sixty-five in order for him to retire.

  We request that you resign and propose a suitable replacement in your field to ensure continuity in the teaching profession.

  Respectfully,

  Dean

  Given that some kind of law does exist and in it an art. 102, Statute 6, what is Andreas Ban supposed to say in his resignation, what is he supposed to report and to whom? What kind of replacement should he propose, now he’s on the way out? So Andreas Ban does not respond, although the Dean’s office impatiently awaits his resignation, they send reminders, notes that begin “you are obliged” (are they threatening him?), so they can zealously, in time, according to the law, (de)classify and file away (where?) his reply, that is him, Andreas Ban.

  Andreas Ban wrote about the death of the intellectual, but since the majority of his then colleagues hardly read anything outside their own fields, they selectively read articles in their field, they had no clue, or rather they didn’t give a damn about what was happening in the world, nor did it cross their minds to go beyond their own turf. For that reason, when he leaves, he sends everyone on the faculty in which he spent thirteen barren years an abridged version, a compilation of his articles on the theme of academics whose claws cling to the walls of their dark, moldy cocoons. He sends his resignation, his statement, his adieu.

  To the majority who imagine they are intellectual, Andreas Ban writes that Edward Said too states that there are virtually no genuine intellectuals any more. He sends extracts from his favorite Julien Benda who, as early as 1927, and again in 1946, writes that intellectuals committed treason by joining movements such as Nationalism and Fascism, movements founded on false premises, on practical activism and violence, which is the case with a number of university lecturers in Croatia during Tudjman’s 1990s of extermination, liquidation and purges. Benda maintains that the intellectual is a person who nurtures, preserves and propagates independent judgment, a person loyal exclusively to truth, a courageous and wrathful individual for whom no force of this world is too great or too frightening not to be subjected to scrutiny and called to account, which those lecturers, the so-called former colleagues of Andreas Ban, are not and never will be. Andreas Ban lays Said and Benda and Chomsky out in front of them because otherwise they would never read what he is writing (this way they might at least glance at his article), because they are so blind and stupefied that they need prominent, mighty names to believe in something, the matter at hand is not enough, especially if the writer is, to them, unknown. So Andreas Ban announces to the faculty that Said considers today’s intellectuals to have had their teeth pulled out, reduced to producers of assent. (Generally speaking Croats do not do well with their teeth; gap-toothed as they are, they roll their easily digested porridge around their mouths, or bite cautiously with their dentures, and with denture glue in their pockets, repeat the mantra, The hard walnut is a peculiar fruit. You’ll not break it, but it will break your teeth. Stone deaf to that saying, Strong teeth can crack even the hardest nut.) A true intellectual, a genuine one, is always an outsider, Andreas Ban attempts to explain, he is a person who lives in self-imposed exile on the margins of society. He speaks to the public, in the name of the public; he is on the side of the powerless, of those whom no one represents, of those who are forgotten.

  Then, Andreas Ban reminds them of Umberto Eco, in the hope that the mention of the late maestro of sharp tongue and mind will enlighten their spirit, not because of Eco’s books and essays, but rather because of the film The Name of the Rose, for them, who splash around blissfully in the Kafkaesque waters of pointless bureaucracy, in not-at-all-benign threats and obtuse conventions, and he tells them that Eco sees the intellectual as an extremely hazy category. If such a hazy, befogged intellectual chooses the space of tactical silence, writes Eco, then reflection about war demands that this s
ilence be expressed aloud, which few university professors did then or do now. It’s true that at the end of his Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus Wittgenstein states that with things one cannot talk about one should remain silent, but that implies that we remain silent about something when we know exactly why we do not speak, why we remain silent. That is why Andreas now, while he has the opportunity, a rare occurrence, says no, it is precisely about things which it is impossible to speak of that one must speak, although this revolt of his is ever quieter, a shot in the dark. Andreas Ban had wanted to serve up to these people, these cowed conformists of mediocre ability who shun directness, because they are so pathetically and emptily refined, to serve them a portion of Karl Jaspers about individual responsibility, but he changed his mind. He gave them crumbs of Debray, Gramsci, Wright Mills, Fanon, Adorno, Hamilton, Chomsky, y Gasset, Sontag and some others, just enough to season his accusation. In truth, Andreas Ban could not resist quoting Kołakowski who says the priest is the guardian of the absolute; he sustains the cult of truths accepted by tradition as ultimate and unquestionable. The jester is the impertinent upstart who questions everything we accept as self-evident . . . In order to point out the unobviousness of its obviousnesses and the nonultimacy of its ultimacies, he must be outside it, observing from a distance; but if he is to be impertinent, and find out what it holds sacred, he must also frequent it.

  Then, supporting himself on Hofstadter, Posner and Jacoby (because otherwise they would have skipped this part), Andreas Ban writes to them, to those who thank goodness Ban will no longer encounter even in this small town, because they don’t move around, are not interested in anything outside, he writes about the castrating influence of the university, the university codex and constitution, on the independence of the intellectual, because that structure, so reminiscent of the ecclesiastical structure of the fanatically rigid General Ignatius Loyola, anesthetizes (and punishes) the public activity of free intellectuals who as a species are dying out, shut up within the walls of the university, writing monographs and articles for a select minority (who may or may not read them), who look neither back nor to the side, whose gaze is locked onto professional journals and conferences, which drives them deeper into conformism and mediocrity, and kills the independent spirit which owes obedience to no one. The intellectuals got lost in the universities, from independent critics they have turned into academic careerists, Andreas Ban then quotes Chomsky.