Key

The media story about a single key, with all its unusual echoes, unlocks an entire layer of Montenegrin reality, or, better said, parareality.

This is another bizarre story that illustrates the woes of our institutions, moreover, a Nušić-esque story in the domestic judicial labyrinths. The key has disappeared, a spare one, I guess, and the smart heads of the Montenegrin judiciary are discussing how (and why?) the key disappeared. A mystery worthy of Poirot. (Has anyone seen the janitor George?) The key, it turns out, opens the magical (official) door of the office where the “detention cases” are kept.

It is not easy to figure out, if at all possible, what kind of game is behind it all: some personnel esotericism or a classic power game? Mere negligence? And that would be so Montenegrin.

Then all the judges spoke up, to roughly say that the key wasn't that important. (That's at least known, in any serious court, the judges rank the keys to the offices every day, and the janitor turns over the court cases, you know what George is like.)

Does the key even exist, or is this actually Hitchcockian? mcguffinIf so, what is the main story, what is the distraction?

But, regardless of the ontological status of said key - what a lost world it is: where "lost" keys (which may not be) decide anything... It would be interesting to know who decides - whether the key is important or not.

You believe that the issue of security of important documents in today's Montenegro has gone at least a little further than keys, seals and treasurers. But, that's Montenegro: no matter what, it always returns to medieval, feudal manners and worldview in the end. In the end, isn't that the most rational: the key must have been thrown into the bosom of a beautiful fairy by some fairy, and rode away on her flying chariot...

But that key - whether it was at the mansion or not - is also a powerful micro-symbol of the pervasive institutional despair that is the reality of today's Montenegrin society. And, as things stand, it certainly won't get better. At least not anytime soon. So wave Europe around to your heart's content...

Besides, I'm afraid that much more important keys have been lost here. And their whereabouts have been unknown for a long time.

An episode from the late seventies. Infected by my parents' all-encompassing collecting, I decided, as a twelve-year-old, to find myself in that world. I chose to collect - old keys. There were beautiful, unusual, visually naive but elegant ones... All of them much more massive than today's keys. I visited the houses in the old town, asked my grandmother's neighbors if they had any old keys that they no longer needed. And I was amazed - how many of these old, unnecessary keys people kept. And they didn't part with them easily.

I also remember how I stopped that collecting passion.

At one point I began to think that each of these keys was a ghost of some former home, the last remnant of someone's house or shop... Each key was still the guardian of some long-vanished world. A rusty key from two hundred years ago - suddenly it seemed like an anonymous monument of someone's home, a being that hides other beings...

He had this feeling of something sad inside him, and I didn't like that.

I remain in a similar time: the Sarajevo sock factory "Ključ" is an obligatory item in the lexicon of Yugoslav mythology, and in Montenegro that was also the name of a not-so-successful electoral coalition.

If we are to believe the standard Romantic rhetoric, it is possible to possess the key to someone's heart, and that is not naive, for sure. As enchanting as it may seem, I am not sure that this metaphor does not also carry something terrifying. For Christians, the most important keys are in the hands of St. Peter.

The question is whether the keys to today's Montenegro exist or whether someone stole them, took them away, threw them into the abyss...

In the end, it's always that crucially The question is - who has the key?