The third day passes, and I start who knows what time:
Jevrem Brković, one of the greatest Montenegrin writers and bravest fighters for the independence of Montenegro, died...
I should proceed according to the protocol, and some rules apply to the words of farewell:
He wrote...
He published...
He edited...
He started...
He founded...
He led...
But neither I know how to follow protocol, nor can a Jew adapt to badian rules.
... We beat someone else's word too hard / we beat it with a small thread / we used the same stick to make a mistake / we beat it like a machine gun...
As a rule, even his lyrics could not be accompanied by music, but his friend managed to do just that.
As I listen to Arsen Dedić, who translated "Farewell to the old typewriter" into a chanson, the images from Obale Ribnica 8 come back to me... From the time when my friend "Olympia" was still barking with full force...
***
It was the spring of 1982, I remember without reminders because that's when a friendship began that was only a year short of turning 40.
The dedication on "Wills" had to remind me of the date...
That March 16, the deputy editor-in-chief Milorad Bošković invited me to his office. As usual, I went to get a notebook and a pen, but he said with a smile that I don't need to, it's not about work:
- Jevrem has come, he wants to meet you.
- Jevrem Brković? To meet me!? - I wandered down the hall, until we entered...
- Yes, just you! I want to see that little girl who makes the Montenegrin Academy shake - I heard that deep voice for the first time and Jevrem got up from his chair.
He exaggerated, of course, he did it often both when he fell in love and when he was disappointed. It was not easy for CAN to be shaken then, and by God not even now, it escapes into collective silence whenever Montenegro is busy. And it started to happen more and more often, immediately after the death of the lifelong president of the SFRY, Josip Broz.
Well, I did have interesting articles about the way some academics tried to solve the Montenegrin national question, but I only now understand their value.
Some CANU members were so infatuated with the Belgrade school of history and politics - something like the recent "Serbian world" - that Radovan Zogović demonstratively left the Academy, asking that his name not be mentioned there anymore.
Jevrem discussed the same topics before and later, but more than the facts he presented, I was attracted by the way he did it in those years.
And the manner was just somehow gentlemanly, completely in line with the Montenegrin tradition and history about which they are arguing. Without petty-bourgeoisness and a narrow Palanic consciousness, although it regularly attacked Jevrem from both sides. And from that part of Serbia that did not recognize Montenegrins, and from Montenegrin that recognized them half-heartedly, only up to the limit allowed by the Central Committee.
***
Uh, I was carried away by the associations with the effects of the party's Montenegrinism that Jevrem tried to chase down for decades, I almost forgot to finish the story about the will from "The Will".
On March 16, 1982, I stayed with Jevrem for three hours in "Pobjeda", both he and she were institutions of Montenegrin culture at that time. Due to the defeat of Montenegro and its only newspaper in 1989, both Montenegrin culture and the Montenegrin poet will end up in - illegal...
Despite my efforts to refuse the invitation - at that time, journalists were not allowed to be close to the heroes of their articles - I ended up on Obali Ribnica 8.
In the meantime, Jevrem established that we are related, through my grandmother from Seoc Piperski.
- Kaćaaa, hurry, I brought my granddaughter for you to meet her - his entrance was always noisy, although the door was never locked, until Montenegro unlocked the gates to the dirty war...
I stayed until late at night, in the meantime, Momir M. Marković, walking Montenegrin history and my editor for almost a year, also came. Together with Jevrem, every now and then he was taken aback by my ignorance of details from the past of Montenegro. Which they both described as thoroughly as if they had participated in them.
- Why did you attack me - I tried to defend myself with insolence - how did I know about those Swiss women and Peter's mother who watched her daughter-in-law and grandchildren burn. At school, I never even heard about the death of volunteers in Medova... Kaća calms them down, persistently explaining that it's not about me, but about the school system. Momir also felt sorry, but Jevrem does not give up:
- They don't teach you about Medova, but they teach you about the "Blue Tomb"...
- Well, I know that... Stand still, imperial galleys / Restrain the powerful sterns / Tread with a quiet gait... - I started by heart, to touch myself...
***
That's when my voluntary remedial history classes began. In Brković's house until Jevrem went into exile, and at Marković's house until Momir, last year, left forever...
On March 16, I received the book of Hebrews for the first time.
Of the twenty published ones, Kaća, despite a careful search, found only two older ones - "Features of Night" and "Will". Because Jevrem never paid attention to whether what he shared was the last thing he had...
- Ratki, to finally find out something about the diseases that tormented me and made me human - I remembered today how much the first dedication was shorter than the later ones. Those from Zagreb were, in fact, real letters...
I found out and continued to find out for decades. He remained honest to the end, not only to me but also to others.
Jevrem's honesty knew how to hurt some of those others. Because he also knew how to exaggerate, it is no stranger to fierce polemicists.
Fortunately, he had enough will and time to make it all right with the right friends.
With those who only pretended to be his friends, even after betraying him, there was no need.
***
- My misfortune lies in my naive and excessive trust in the people who surrounded me for decades. I am a cruelly frivolous and irresponsibly naive man - he admitted only in his diaries from exile.
He didn't even have to for the few who stayed with him even then. Some of them warned him even before the nineties that he should scale with confidence. Especially some younger "friends" of whom - if Jevrem had not supported them - most of them would be known today only by their immediate family.
He found some justification for such... Give Momo, give Shakespeare - we are talking about Raj Vulikić, let me remind the few who do not remember that nickname - let's do something for this and that guy, he is poor but not without talent, it is a sin. ..
Until the mountain-speed treachery of the old Montenegrins and the mountain people taught a lesson to all three. In the magazine Doklea, which Momir started and managed, and Rajo paid for the first issue and found a donor for the second, the names of that literary youth have been preserved.
Most, just a few years later, joined the regime's assault squad, and the oldest among them even shot his deceased benefactor, Momir M. Marković...
Jevre also did good for some people, both in Zagreb and from Zagreb. Only at the end of the exile, when the telecommunication and media connections with Montenegro were working properly, did he realize how he was being reciprocated here.
That he finally learned his lessons about "friends", I thought at the end of 1998, on the eve of his return to his homeland. When asked by a journalist who he expected as friends on Debela Brije, he answered briefly - Momir, Raja and Ratko...
***
I didn't manage to leave, he hardly forgave me, even though Momir pinned my modest medal - a small Montenegrin coat of arms - to his lapel at the very border...
And Rajo was on my side on that occasion. By the way, he was always by Jevrem's side, it seems to me for half a century, and he died only a day after him.
In fact, our Shakespeare was one of those few who were ready to sacrifice themselves at critical moments. For a true friend or for the true side of history, it doesn't matter.
He did this many times, we often remembered his trips to Sarajevo, for the printing of the Monitor. The head was in the bag since the AB revolution turned his former service into a monster. They spread about it in the featurette that Monitor publishes even today, from the pen of the initiator Miško Perović...
Let's go back to Jevrem's return in 1999. I went to see him a day later and almost had a fight. How can he reconcile with those who drove him into exile...
I quoted to him all the words of Milo Đukanović that I could remember, including the one that "every smart Montenegrin and every honest man in this country mentions with contempt the name of the traitor Jevrem Brković who betrayed his people out of personal vanity"...
He explained to me that there is no independent Montenegro without those who are with Đukanović, that we have to reconcile with them...
I continued this argument many more times and gave up only when the government reciprocated Jevrem Brković for all his support for Montenegro and its independence. His beating and murder of his young driver and friend Srdjan...
But about that another time...
PS Jevrem also knew how to exchange harsh words with Novak Kilibard. He was in conflict with him even before the war, after advocating for the demolition of Njegoš's mausoleum. That's why he scheduled a duel for him at Ivan's Korits, chose his second-in-command, left the choice of weapons to him... And completed everything in typical Jewish fashion, sending him a small package containing a woman's rasha.
Almost a decade later, it occurred to Kilibard to meet the sender. He was also part of the regime back then, but that didn't stop him from addressing his angry opponent as Mr. Professor:
- Two hundred begs on 'Ercegovina / two hundred begs three hundred alajbegs / but when the begs came to Ljubović / there were no begs...
Bonus video:
