by Predrag LUCIC
But, life wouldn't be life, if it would behave the way it had been told, if it could be pushed into trains and busses by which people from distant areas of this small, but sprawling country headed towards the capital, to show their spontaneous grief to wet lenses of the national TV cameras and unsympathetic stares of the indifferent world. Life was turning pages of newspapers in coffee shops on that day of mourning, throwing stones in the sea, biting stale bread, and watching video tapes that it managed to find in the thoroughly ransacked video stores the day before yesterday.
Life was also finishing some borrowed books on that morning, closing the last pages smeared with the library seal. You know, that November 23 1999, next to which inevitably stands manacing December 13 1999...
Ivan Pehar, the head of the Zadar Town library, aware, or subconsciously aware, of what kind of clientele come to his library, left to these strange people that still read in Croatia, an opportunity to return books on that day of mourning, so that they wouldn't have to pay library fines, but... What fines!
It's a sabotage of the national grief, nothing else! After all, who cares about library fines! - the Zadar politocracy croaked. To tell the truth, these fines are small, but the people going to libraries usually don't have that kind of money in their pockets anyway. Because, if they did, they could buy some ruined Croatian factory (of the sort that were offered in the post-privatisation despair for less money than the price of a piece of plastic in a China-shop), but then they would probably stop reading. The library fine, says Pehar... That fine is not only small, but ridiculously small, especially for those Croats who buy companies with change in kunas [Croatian currency], and expensive cars with bundles of German Marks.
For those undertakers who don't regret streching the national budget for free busses and trains, that library fine is probably insulting. So insulting that it sounds to them as a stupid excuse for a subversive act of disobeying the Government's decision taht all work be stopped on that day of mourning. And this Pehar was so stubborn: fines, fines, library, library, readers, readers... To hell with that! Look around you, Pehar, and imagine what would be left of this country if everybody read. Luckily, there are real Croat men who don't go to libraries or bookshops, although some of them even write and publish thick volumes (mostly published by "Narodne Novine [government owned publisher]). There are Croatian men who practice bulwark Croatiandom of low forehead and deep pocket, and who are insulted at the mere thought of existence of a library, especially such as yours.
Because too many people use the Town library, headed unfortunately by you, so that changing that space into a car showroom or a money laundering business would definitelly be a scandal. And they don't need scandals, but spaces, square meters, understand, Pehar... Why didn't you do something more useful with it, if you're so competent, Pehar... And after all, Pehar, it's your own fault...
So, what happened afterwards? Respect that Ivan Pehar showed to the users of his library - by leaving one librarian on duty to accept returned books on that Monday, while the other twenty two workers spent the day of mourning day out of work - has outraged the leading politicians of Zadar so much that they urgently started the procedure to dismiss the head of the library. The pink-grey coalition in the Town council, consisting of faded communists and colourless fascists, indicated by this act what sort of cohabitation we are facing in our future. Ivan Pehar fell as the first victim of the multi-party centralism, and his case will hardly remain isolated.
It is not my intention to kill the little optimism you have, but I'm afraid that we will soon find out that vulgarity and arrogance are not safguarded in the safe of only one political party. I'm afraid that his case is going to be infectious. Of course, it would be much better if Pehar's behaviour became infectious, the behaviour of a man who, instead of rousing patriotic feelings over a thousand years old culture, created a library that respects books, as well as the people who read books. Therefore, read books in time, and return them in time. That already would be a life independent enough, and contrary enough to those whose only encounter with a book happens when someone opens a book of mourning.