In direct contravention of my wife's explicit instructions, herewith I inaugurate my first blog. Long may it prosper.

For some reason, I think I have something to say to you. You think you have something to say to me? Email me at: gideonsblogger -at- yahoo -dot- com

 
BTW, I followed one of the links in the Parapundit piece linked below, the one for Richard Perle et al's "Clean Break" document prepared for Netanyahu before he won the 1996 Israeli elections. It makes for interesting reading now, after so much water under the bridge.

A reminder of the context: the Oslo War had not yet begun in earnest, but it was already clear that Arafat was a disaster and that Israel needed to find some way out of the mess she'd blundered into. Peres wanted to keep on keeping on: get a deal by hook or by crook and move on to the glorious uplands of Israeli membership in the EU. Netanyahu, meanwhile, was convincing his American admirers that he was going to be the first Reaganite Prime Minister of Israel, someone who could change the terms of debate as they had existed on right and left both in that country and in other countries with respect to the region. And here in the U.S., Republicans had their blood up, having wrested Congress from the Democrats and determined to dethrone Clinton and establish something like a Reagan restoration. So the bottom line is: much of what's in the piece is fantasizing by people who are on the one hand filled with fury at their political enemies who have, as they see it, disgracing the offices they occupied and, on the other, filled with hope and expectation about an imminent restoration of the true and the right.

Well, Bibi won the election, but he didn't change the terms of Israeli politics; he destroyed the Likud, with a record of mendacity, intrigue and betrayal that would outdo the combined efforts of a Nixon and a Clinton. Thankfuly, he didn't try to start a regional war, as apparently some of his American admirers were egging him on to do. And Clinton got reelected. And Clinton and Barak between them brought Oslo to its inevitable conclusion: open war and terror on a scale never before seen in Israel.

So: is Sharon reading from this script? Can anyone seriously believe he is? We're talking about the legendary bulldozer here, and what is he proposing to bulldoze - Jenin? The Bekaa Valley? No - he's proposing to bulldoze Netzarim. Whatever operations Sharon's Mossad is running to deal with the Iranian nuclear threat - and I sure hope he's running something - I cannot believe he thinks the better part of valor is creating more regional unrest. So I take the reports about Kurdistan with several grains of salt.

Other parts of the script I wish he was reading from. I wish he cared more about liberalizing the Israeli economy. I wish he did seek to end American economic aid. I wish, for that matter, that he - and every Israeli government - had taken the domestic Arab problem seriously for the past generation. It may be too late now, frankly. But bottom line: Sharon, for all his faults (and they are legion) is not a fantasist.

So: do I think folks like Perle and Wolfowitz, etc. have been reading from this script for the past 3 years in the Bush Adminsitration? Sadly, I do.

I am a big advocate of peace through strength. I think Sharon has done a huge amount to shore up Israel's deterrent - Operation Defensive Shield, the ongoing campaign against the terrorist infrastructure in Gaza, the building of the security fence, etc. I am nervous about the pullout from Gaza not because I think Israel should keep Gaza - Israel should be desperate to get rid of the place - but because I remember the pullout from South Lebanon and what followed. But Israel has learned - Sharon has learned - that it cannot achieve political objectives by force, only military ones. And its problem with the Palestinians, no less than the American problem with the jihadi ideology and the general political disfunction of the Middle East, is not a military problem solvable with military force. Folks like "Anonymous" who think a scorched earth strategy is the only way to win our war are as wrong as the neo-cons who thought that if someone simply toppled Saddam or Assad or whoever that peaceful, pro-Israel Arab democracies would sprout.

The best reason for war with Saddam was what Tom Friedman called the "real reason" - that we needed to take care of business, take out our avowed enemies in the Arab world, and show that world that we were not to be trifled with. Knowing what we had to do, we should have planned our war with meticulous attention to what would follow and how to minimize the negative consequences - terrorist blowback, Iranian mischief-making, etc. We didn't do that, and we didn't do that because of happy-talk from guys like Perle. That's what I fault them for, primarily.
posted by Noah at 6:09 PM

 
So, Iraq gets a new government on the same day that Canada does. Coincidence - or conspiracy, eh?

After all, Iraq and Canada are intriguingly similar. Each has a complex and strained relationship with the United States. Each is a somewhat arbitrary construct of British imperialism that has never really jelled as a nation. Each is divided into mutually-hostile regions (Kurdistan/Sunni Triangle/Shiite South vs. Quebec/Ontario/Albera/British Columbia). Canada even has an Islamist terrorism problem - albeit, not one directed at Canadians.

And this proves that Iraq will soon be as tractable and innocuous as Canada. Or that Canada is going to become a seething cauldron like Iraq. Or something.

Seriously, though, I was feeling more optimistic about the situation in Iraq until I realized the Iranians are kind of daring us to do make something of it when they infilatrate the country and foment terror and civil war and capture British subjects and so forth. And that struck me as a very bad thing. Because if they were worried we'd make something of it, they probably wouldn't be doing it. And if they actually *want* us to make something of it, that's even worse, isn't it?

And meanwhile, Sy Hersh reports that the Israelis have given up on the American intervention and are doing their own thing with the Kurds. Of course, the info comes from the Turkish Foreign Ministry, who would have their own reasons for spreading such a story - they are (a) shifting their own allegiances towards greater balance between Europe and America, and between Israel and the Arab states, as against an earlier tilt in the U.S. and Israel's direction, and (b) extremely touchy on the subject of Kurds and any prospect for their independence. If the Israelis were *not* running such an operation, the Turks might leak that they *were* in order to dissuade them from doing so. But be that as it may, Hersh gets plenty of Israelis to tell him that they think the Iraq intervention has been a thorough failure.

I really want to be optimistic today. I had kind of been leaning in the direction of thinking that the situation in Iraq was going to head in an Algerian direction - that the jihadis were getting so violent, and turning so much violence against other Arabs and Iraqis, that they would alienate those they were trying to seduce and anger those they were trying to intimidate. In which case "iron-fist" Allawi and his American mercenaries will be able to crush them without bringing the whole population into revolt. But I can't get myself to believe this. Lebanon still looks terribly likely to me. And with Iran playing North Vietnam to Iraq's jihadi Viet Cong, we could be in this for a long while. Vietnamization, remember, only looked like it might work *after* the VC were devastated by their Tet Offensive and *after* Nixon had dropped more ordnance on the North than was used in WWII.

Still, there's one good sign: they're still using the old flag.
posted by Noah at 10:53 AM

 
"Teach us to number our days, that we may obtain a heart of wisdom."

I've been planning to write something on this theme for about a month. That I am so late in producing it is an irony that, I hope, will be appreciated.

The quote is from Psalm 90, a psalm recited on Sabbath and Festival mornings as part of the sequence of introductory psalms and songs that precede and introduce the main morning prayer service.

It's a peculiar exhortation, isn't it? What on earth does it mean to "number our days" - literally to count them, as a prisoner marks his time in scratches on a wall, or as Silas Marner alone with his golden hoard? The context suggests a rebuke to vanity - we should be wise if we number our days because that number is finite and, in comparison to God's infinitude, unworthy of notice, so we should be humble before Him, and not incur His wrath. But this still leaves open the question: what does it literally mean?

Well, once a year we Jews quite literally number our days - the days between Pesach and Shavuot (Passover and Pentecost). Part of the commemoration of this period is a literal counting, of a period known as the omer - which just means "portion;" you can have an omer of flour or of any number of other agricultural commodities. Every day during the omer, right after the evening prayer service, a Jew is supposed to say a short blessing and then count: this is the thirteenth day, comprised of one week and six days, of the omer! This is the twenty-fourth day, comprised of three weeks and three days, of the omer! This is the thirty-ninth day, comprised of five weeks and four days, of the omer!
And so forth.

It is a bit more edifying than it sounds. This year, I counted each night with my son when I put him to bed. Integrating it into a nighttime routine made it more likely I would actually do it, since I do not regularly attend daily evening services, and Moses didn't seem to mind, and over the course of time figured out that there was a new bit to the routine, and began to parrot the word omer and say, "amen!" when the brief prayer was done.

But, while a bit more edifying than it sounds, it is still quite a mechanical sort of mitzvah, the kind of thing that would appeal to an introverted, borderline autistic personality rather than to the large-souled. And what's more, there's an aspect of the mitzvah that reinforces this sense of the mechanical: it's one of the few mitzvot for which you do not receive part credit. That is to say: you have successfully performed the mizvah only if you have counted every day of the 49-day period, without fail. I've never done so, myself. This year, I got halfway - to day 25 - before a full 24-hour lapse. And after a lapse, it's hard to go through the motions, given that they don't count. Which only raises the question: why are you going through them before the lapse? In what sense does this counting ever "count?"

As I noted, this whole business of "numbering our days" is tied up with recognition of our mortality, and the enormous gulf that our mortality opens up between ourselves and the Almighty. But what, apart from our relative insignificance, are we to learn from that gulf? What is the nature of the wisdom we are supposed to acquire?

The question recalls to me what is probably my least-favorite midrash of all. It's a little long, but bear with me. Here it is:

It is told that when the son of Rabban Yochanan ben Zakkai died his students came to comfort him. Rabbi Eliezer came in and sat before him and said, "Master, would you allow me to say something before you?"

"Speak," said the master.

Rabbi Eliezer said, "Adam had a son who died but he allowed himself to be comforted. We know this because the Torah says, 'Adam knew his wife again.' (Genesis 4:25) You must also now allow yourself to be comforted."

"Is it not enough," said the master, "that I have my own trouble? Must you also remind me of Adam's grief?"

Rabbi Yehoshua then came in and said, "Would you like me to say something to you?"

"Speak."

"Job had sons and daughters and they all died on one day. He allowed himself to be comforted. You must also allow yourself to be comforted. We know that Job allowed himself to be consoled, as it is written, 'God has given, God has taken. May God's Name be blessed.' (Job 1:21)"

"Is it not enough that I have my own troubles? Must you also remind me of Job's troubles?"

Rabbi Yosi then entered and sat down before the master. "Master," he said, "Would you like me to say something before you?"

"Speak."

"Aaron had two great sons and they both died on one day. He allowed himself to be comforted as it is written, Aaron remained silent.'"

"Is it not enough that I have my own troubles? Must you remind me of Aaron's grief?"

Rabbi Eliezer entered and said to him, "Master, would you like me to say a word before you?"

"Speak."

"David had a son who died and he allowed himself to be comforted. You must also allow yourself to be consoled."

"Is it not enough that I have my own grief? Must you remind me of King David's mourning?"

Rabbi Eleazar Ben Azariah then entered. When Rabban Yochanan ben Zakkai saw him he said to his servants, "Take the vessel from in front of me and follow me to the bath house. This person is a great man and I cannot tolerate him." [NOTE: the significance of the bath is that one is not permitted to bathe while in the earliest stages of mourning. R. Yochanan ben Zakkai is saying that R. Eleazar ben Azariah is such a great debater that he will not be able to resist his arguments, and so he knows he will be emerging from his deepest mourning soon, hence the bath.]

When Rabban Yochanan ben Zakkai returned, Rabbi Eleazar ben Azariah said to him, "Let me give you an example. A king once gave one of his subjects a precious object to watch. Every day the man would weep and say, 'Woe is me; when will I be rid of this article and give it back in peace?' The same is true of you, Master. You had a son who knew Torah, Prophets, Writings, Mishnah, and Laws and Aggadah. He died without sin. You must be reconciled that you have returned this precious object whole."

The master said, "Rabbi Eleazar, my son, you have comforted me as people must be comforted."

I said this was probably my least-favorite midrash ever. I appreciate the positive side of this midrash, that the righteous should not take comfort in their suffering from the misfortunes of others. But Rabbi Eleazar's speech I do not like at all. It gives me the willies to think of life this way - as a trial merely to be got through without harm to one's soul. Surely the trial itself has a purpose; surely what matters is not merely avoidance of evil but the doing of good. Surely we are in a world of experience to have experience. Conceiving of the entirety of creation as a temptation strikes me as a very bad way to view the world. Perhaps it is only because I am an American, but this way of looking at the world does not comfort me; it fills me with claustrophobia.

But it's a funny thing about experience: it exists only in the present. Before that it is fantasy; after, nostalgia. It only is for a fleeting instant. So how does it "count."

I believe I've mentioned that Anna Karenina is my favorite novel and, I'd argue, the greatest novel ever. I could muster many arguments for that opinion, but let me present one here: its terrible realism about spiritual experience.

Recall the mainspring of the plot: Anna's affair with Vronsky. Her husband, Aleksey, has by this point in the novel found the affair out, and Anna is, so she thinks, dying, while in childbirth, and calls for him. He comes.

All of a sudden she shrank back, was silent; and in terror, as though expecting a blow, as though to defend herself, she raised her hands to her face. She had seen her husband.

"No, no!" she began. "I am not afraid of him; I am afraid of death. Aleksey, come here. I am in a hurry because I've no time; I've not long left to live; the fever will begin soon and I shall understand nothing more. Now I understand, I understand it all, I see it all!"

He comes. She asks for what she knows she has no right to expect, but knows now she will receive: complete forgiveness. She is not disappointed.

The nervous agitation of Aleksey Aleksandrovich kept increasing, and had by now reached such a point that he ceased to struggle with it. He suddenly felt that what he had regarded as a nervous agitation was on the contrary a blissful spiritual condition that gave him all at once a new happiness he had never known. He did not think that the Christian law that he had been all his life trying to follow enjoined him to forgive and love his enemies; but a happy feeling of love and forgiveness for his enemies filled his heart. He knelt down, and laying his head in the curve of her arm, which burned him as with fire through the sleeve, he sobbed like a little child. She put her arm around his head, moved toward him, and, with defiant pride, raised her eye.

"That is he. I knew him! Now, forgive me, everyone, forgive me!"

Her lover, Vronsky, comes in, and hides his face in his hands. Anna demands he uncover it and, when he does not do so, instructs her husband to uncover it for him.

Aleksey Alksandrovich took Vronsky's hands and drew them away from his face, which was awful with the expression of agony and shame upon it.

"Give him your hand. Forgive him."

Aleksey Aleksandrovich gave him his hand, not attempting to restrain the tears that streamed from his eyes.

"Thank God, thank God!" she said. "Now everything is ready."

She passes into delirium, and the assembled expect her imminent death. But it does not come, not then.

Her husband makes this sense of his epiphany: that he must never leave her, never divorce her, never stand upon his rights or his dignity lest this undermine the truth of his forgiveness of her, his emptying out of self. Vronsky, awed and shamed by this saintly behavior, attempts suicide; his attempt begins the process of rekindling Anna's love for him, embers that are fanned further by the increasingly curdled quality of Aleksey's saintly forgiveness; and in the end, Anna leaves her husband yet again, this time for good. Aleksey takes refuge in a spiritualist sycophant and worships at the altar of his own saintliness. Anna loses contact with her son, the only being who might have comforted her when Vronsky begins to tire of revolving around her star, and so, when she begins to fear that she will have lost everything, she turns impulsively to suicide, and is successful.

What are we to make of all this? The death-bed scene, for me, loses none of its power with the knowledge that its truths are fleeting. This knowledge, rather, makes the scene all the more terrible, terrible in its realism. For the present is gone almost before it has been, and that is truer than the present truths. These three scaled spiritual heights in a moment: Aleksey is suffused with a true, selfless Christian spirit of forgiveness; Anna does recognize his saintliness; Vronsky is brought face to face with the un-Godly nature of his values, and is shamed nearly to death. This is all true, absolutely true. But it is a fleeting truth - "like grass which groweth up./In the morning it flourisheth, and groweth up; in the evening it is cut down, and withereth." The moment cannot be grasped and held and, if worshipped in Aleksey's manner, it is as much as to make it a false god, an idol. Anna is not so different from my Princip from the lengthy piece I posted some weeks ago - she has lived beyond her own tale's end, beyond the moment that, had she died in it, she might have thought she had redeemed her life. But she lived on, and she did not know how to turn this redemptive moment of deathbed repentance into a redemptive life.

The domestication of truth, levelling spiritual mountains and turning the soil for humble cultivation: this is what many "spiritual" people hate about religion. But it is religion's primary function. It is what turns mere experience into life, into something that may be counted, something that "counts." The omer counts the period between the two peak spiritual experiences of the Jewish people: the exodus from Egypt and the theophany at Sinai - two experiences that are, according to tradition, unique in the history of the universe, and two epiphanies that every Jew is to regard him or herself as having personally experienced. And how do we connect these peak moments? By means of the most mechanical counting - today is the eighteenth day, comprised of two weeks and four days, of the omer!

So I'll go on counting. Maybe next year, I'll make it to the end, and my numbered days will finally "count."
posted by Noah at 3:17 PM

 
Book-launch week for our 42nd President, and everyone wants to know how the history books are going to remember him. So?

Bill Clinton accomplished three significant domestic policy goals: he signed welfare reform; he signed the treaty that expanded NAFTA to include Mexico; and he turned a structural budget deficit into a cyclical budget surplus. Welfare reform will, I have no doubt, become established as part of a "consensus" of intelligent social policy reforms of the 1990s, along with the Bratton-era policing reforms in NYC. But I think these will be part of the story of the 1990s as a whole, rather than a story about Bill Clinton. Ditto for NAFTA and the budget, though I have more doubts as to whether these achievements will become part of the "consensus" of the future.

In foreign policy, Clinton achieved nothing of note. He managed the disintegration of Russia and the rise of China without sparking war, but also with the result of significantly higher anti-Americanism in both countries that may have big consequences down the road. He terminated a humanitarian intervention in Somalia, refused to stage humanitarian interventions in Bosnia or Rwanda, but did stage a humanitarian intervention in Kossovo. He made no robust response to the rise of al Qaeda, but engaged in small skirmishing in Iraq to keep Saddam Hussein in his box. And he invested enormous Presidential prestige on diplomatic initiatives between Israel and the Palestinian Authority (and a lesser amount of prestige in parallel initiatives in Ireland) that bore no fruit whatsoever (and, I would argue, were counterproductive). But these are all small-potatoes; I'm sure Johnson, Grant, Hayes, Garfield, Arthur, Cleveland and Harrison had foreign policies, but I couldn't tell you what they were. From 20,000 feet, the period between Lincoln and McKinley is a picture of America expanding relentlessly to fill its continental space, with no grand foreign policy to speak of. I think the Clinton years will look similarly vague from a similar distance.

Clinton's most significant accomplishment was to rehabilitate the Democratic Party, which had been deemed largely unfit for the Presidency for the previous generation. He achieved this with a bit of luck (in the haplessness of his 1992 opponent, the over-reaching of Congressional Republicans, and the end of the Cold War, which took foreign policy largely off the table), enormous political skill, and a series of policy choices that were both responsible in and of themselves and responsive to the changing demographic and financial base of his party (basically, making the Democratic Party safe for big business and its employees).

(There are those who argue that he, in fact, destroyed the Democrats, because on his watch they lost both houses of Congress, most governorships, and, after eight years, the Presidency. This is silly. Almost all of what was lost was lost in 1994; under the next six years of Clinton the Democrats clawed back to parity in the Senate, retook a number of key governorships, and, though they lost the Presidency, lost it with a plurality of the popular vote and a larger absolute number of votes than ever. Clinton won in 1992 in a fluke, and that fact has a lot to do with the fury of the backlash against him, but over the course of his Presidency he most certainly built up his party's fortunes, he did not tear them down.)

If I had to compare him to a President of an earlier generation, it would have to be Grover Cleveland, another President dogged by sexual scandal ("Ma, Ma, where's my Pa? Gone to the White House - ha, ha, ha!"), associated with relatively conservative economic policies (the gold standard and free trade in Cleveland's case; debt reduction and free trade in Clinton's), and responsible for the rehabilitation of his political party (Cleveland was the first Democrat to be elected after the Civil War, though - like Woodrow Wilson and Bill Clinton - he never won a majority of the popular vote). And there was actually a mini-Cleveland vogue at the end of the Clinton Presidency, funnily enough. Where would that put Clinton in the historical sweepstakes? Somewhere in the middle of the pack, above those who came close to wrecking the country (Buchanan, Hoover, Carter) and above those who came to exemplify mediocrity or worse (Harding, Ford), but below those who truly left their stamp on the history of their time. Do Democrats really need to think better of him than that, or do Republicans really need to think worse?
posted by Noah at 4:38 PM

 
100 years is long enough to pass to gain perspective on a single day, even if that day never happened. Isn't it? Well, today is the 100th anniversary of Bloomsday, June 16th, 1904, the day that Leopold Bloom stepped out of his (fictional) Dublin home and into the history of Western literature. And for what? For . . . well, not much of anything.

He picks up a pork kidney for breakfast. Goes to the can. Pays his respects at a funeral. Visits the offices of the newspaper for whom he solicits advertisements. Has lunch. Stops by the library (where Stephen Daedalus, Joyce's surrogate as a young man, is holding forth on Shakespeare - but Bloom does not join the conversation). Takes a walk. Overhears a bit of a concert from a bar. Has an argument with an aging Sinn Fein thug in a tavern, which ends in comic violence. Watches young girls playing on the beach, and gets so aroused he winds up abusing himself. Goes to a hospital where the wife of a friend is in labor, but never actually gets around to seeing her or saying a word to her, sitting instead in a nearby pub drinking with Stephen Daedalus and his pals. Heads off with Stephen to a brothel. Heads home with Stephen from the brothel, discussing this and that as they go. Goes to bed. And then, while he sleeps, his wife has her famous interior monologue. Yes.

And while he goes through this rather unremarkable day he . . . thinks. And this walking, thinking and drinking book where nothing much happens but it's hard to tell that nothing is happening what with so much language rushing by so confusingly, this is the acknowledged pinnacle of the novel as an artform.

Don't quibble with that judgement. To my own mind, the greatest novel ever written is Anna Karenina, but a case can be made for Don Quixote, or Pride and Prejudice, or Middlemarch, or Moby Dick, or Huckleberry Finn, or The Remembrance of Things Past, or the collected Dickens (how would you pick just one book?), and probably for other books that I'm not thinking of just now. That's not the point. Modernism understood itself to be the terminus in a stylistic and, really, epistemological progression in the arts, and Ulysses is the high-modernist novel par excellence. The novel as a form either builds to Ulysses or it doesn't build to anything at all (which, indeed, it does not). In that sense, Ulysses is the pinnacle of the form.

When I graduated from college, my ambition was to become a novelist (an ambition not yet entirely squelched) and by that I meant not an accomplished spinner of popular yarns, nor the mirror of the zeitgeist, nor even a Harold Bloomian demi-urge breathing life into men and women of ink and paper, but a worthy pupil of Joyce, follower in the footsteps of such "postmodern" and yet still plain old modern heirs as Thomas Pynchon and Vladimir Nabokov. I wanted to be a High Modernist, or as close to a high modernist as one could be in a post-modern world.

That is not my ambition now, nor is it anyone's, I think, apart from undergraduates. The formal experimentation that marks so much of Ulysses is no longer thrilling; is no longer, even, really possible. But neither is some kind of naive traditionalism, much less some kind of formalist classicism. We are left, really, with different levels of self-consciousness: a self-consciousness that is solopsistic, interested primarily in its own cleverness; and a self-consciousness that remembers its fundamental objective, aesthetic and humanist. Call the latter "eclectic traditionalism" - an approach that treats style as a *tool* rather than the object (modernism) or the subject (postmodernism).

If Ulysses isn't thrilling because of its innovation - if, indeed, many of its novel forms have proven sterile - does that mean Joyce was right when, on his deathbed, he declared that his art was a dead end, and that what best exemplified literature as it should be was Tolstoy's fable, How Much Land Does a Man Need?

No. I re-read Ulysses in preparation for today, and even as I concluded that many of his choices were dead-ends, the work as a whole is still a marvel, and still beautiful. And poor Poldy is still one of the great characters of all literature, and that rarest of beasts in fiction if not in life, a simple and basically good man who is nonetheless fascinating. And the formal experimentation, while it does not always work, is always in the service of the novel *as a novel* - it is not there for the sake of itself. Joyce was a horrible solopsist, in love with his own cleverness, but he was not *only* that. He was, as well, the only High Modernist who was not in love with an Idea, as Poldy is the only man in Joyce's Dublin who is not possessed of a Celt's "fanatic heart." For all this, Joyce, and Poldy, are not only still wonderful; they are still *useful.*

Joyce set out to write a kind of secular scripture, a book about goodness without God or theology or even an Idea, and Poldy is a kind of humdrum saint of the everyday, no better than you or I, but with no bad in him to speak of, the soul of gentleness. If that was Joyce's intention, he achieved more than he aimed; Bloomsday has become a kind of sacred secular festival, if a waning one in these illiterate days, a saint's day for those who have no religion. Eleven years ago, three years before we married, my now-wife and I travelled to Ireland, in part to participate in the Bloomsday festivities in Dublin on June 16th. It was enormously enjoyable, a trip we considered repeating this year, though we decided against to spare our young son. You tramp around Dublin in the steps of Poldy's via trivialis, eating what he ate in the pubs he stopped in (no, we did not end the night in a whorehouse) and strangely, the trivial is transcended precisely by not being transcended. A gorgonzola and mustard sandwich is just a gorgonzola and mustard sandwich; it doesn't *mean* anything, doesn't point to anything outside the universe or in the heroic past but only to the fact that one fictional man was endlessly fascinating to himself and to us as he ate a similar sandwich in a "moral pub" in a difficult book many decades ago, and we would like to be as interesting to ourselves and as blameless to others as he was. It's a good book that can achieve so much, and it deserves a pint. Slainthe!
posted by Noah at 2:27 PM

 
I think Mickey Kaus is pretty much 100% right in this post about why politics have gotten so nasty. I note that most of his reasons echo the GOP line - his overarching argument that the socially liberal elite is more confident and united that it had been before; his point #4 that pursuit of social change through the courts enrages the losers; his point #5 that Democratic interest groups are fighting constant rear-guard actions to protect old privileges; his point #7 - and those that don't echo the GOP line don't echo the Democrat line either - his point #1 that consensus on core issues creates a narcissism of small differences; his points #2 and #3 about gerrymandering and new communications technologies (you could extend this; it's not just gerrymandering but a whole host of technologies that make it more possible than before to find the combination of policies and messages that get to 50.1%, turning politics into trench-warfare over tiny strips of battleground); and his point #6 about the loss of privacy.

I'd add one more key point: that the political realignment that sent Southern conservative white Democrats into the arms of the GOP and Northern liberal white Republicans into the arms of the Dems has made for much greater national polarization between the parties than had been the case before. FDR's and LBJ's Democrats included culturally conservative and hawkish Southern bulls as well as Northern ethnics who favored left-wing economics and a slice of the WASP aristocracy; the GOP of the time had both Taft and Dewey wings, included New England and Mid-Atlantic WASP liberals along with midwestern and California burghers with markedly more conservative views. That's not really the case anymore, and the result is less ability to identify with the people on the other side of the aisle.

But there's another argument missing: who says politics are much more polarized and nasty now? Compared to when? Compared to Lee Atwater's Bush campaign of 1988? Compared to the Robert Bork/Jim Wright/John Tower/Etc. fights of the late 1980s? Compared to Nixon with his enemies list (and the Nixon haters with their bloodlust)? Compared to "hey, hey, LBK, how many kids did you kill today?" Compared to Truman calling Dewey's GOP proto-fascist, or McCarthy waving his list of Reds in the State Department? Personally, I thought the 1992 campaign was remarkably substantive on all sides (if utterly inept on the GOP's end) and the 1994 GOP campaign for Congress equally so. I thought the 1996 campaign was, if anything, too civil (and not very substantive at all). I thought Bush did an admirable job in 2000 of not slinging mud (at least in the general election campaign) the way his father's campaign did. That served his interest, sure, but it's also true. I also thought he ran an extremely substantive campaign. So what are we talking about here? The holdup of Bush's judicial appointments? The Cleland/Chambliss race in 2002?

And even if we're talking about cultural conflict rather than political conflict - home-schooling evangelicals vs. gay-rights advocates - are things really more polarized than they were, say, in 1969? Are people really more riled up about today's culture war than they were about, say, the enormous rise in crime from 1965 through 1990 or so? I'm skeptical.

Anyhow, we're better off than those Europeans who avoid nasty ideological conflict by forbidding anyone to talk about anything that might generate disagreement.
posted by Noah at 10:58 AM

 
There's been all this debate apparently about how to appropriately honor Ronald Reagan's memory. I admit, I'm a bit perplexed by some of it.

Would Reagan really have wanted to eclipse Alexander Hamilton, Andrew Jackson or Franklin Delano Roosevelt on our currency? Reagan was a big fan of FDR, so I can't imagine he'd want to shove him off the dime. And Reagan represented a synthesis of Hamilton and Jackson, though in quite the opposite of the way that FDR did. (There was a line - I forget who said it - that FDR's Democratic Party sought to achieve Jeffersonian ends by Hamiltonian means. That is to say: the party stood for equality, the great Jeffersonian ideal, and sought to achieve it by the Hamiltonian means of centralizing power in the national government. David Frum, I believe, quipped a number of years ago that Reaganite conservatism sought to achieve the opposite: Hamiltonian ends by Jeffersonian means. That is to say: the modern Republican Party aims for economic growth and dynamism through free markets, and seeks to achieve this by devolving power to the states and to the people.) I can't imagine Reagan would want to erase the faces of the founder of American capitalism, nor Old Hickory, the first President to come up as a real man of the people, and the symbol of American stiff-necked defiance of Old World authority. If we've got to put Reagan on a piece of paper, let it be some high denomination that expresses the aspirational side of Reaganism. How about replacing Cleveland on the $1000? If the denomination grew popular enough, maybe we could even get gangsters to talk about how "it's all about the Ronnies" instead of the Benjamins.

Would Reagan really want a big public edifice named after him? It's not like there haven't been Republican Presidents devoted to public works and internal improvements; Abraham Lincoln and Dwight Eisenhower spring immediately to mind, for instance. But Reagan was not a builder. So there's a big Reagan office building and a Reagan National Airport in Washington. Is that really what best expresses the man, his ideals, or his achievement? An aircraft carrier is good, and he's got that (though who knows how long they'll be in service; war is changing). But these sorts of memorials don't really get at what the man was about.

Would Reagan really want his face hewn into the rock of Mount Rushmore or, perish the thought, Half-Dome in Yosemite? I can't imagine it. He was not so vain; moreover, he stood, all his life, for the antithesis of the cult of personality that epitomized the totalitarian regimes he saw rise and fall. One of the reasons he was such a popular President is that it was never about him. Should we, then, commemorate him by erecting a huge bust to dominate the landscape? Besides, there is something embalming about such memorials, and I don't think Reagan would want to become part of history in that way. He would want to be memorialized by something living.

So what?

Ronald Reagan stood for free enterprise and the pioneering spirit, for a collective devotion to the cause of individual freedom, and, above all, for aspiration, individual and collective. What would best express this spirit, this set of ideals?

One day, human beings - hopefully Americans - will establish sites of permanent residence outside of Earth's atmosphere. (The International Space Station does not count.) I cannot think of a more fitting monument to the President who denied any limit to our proper aspirations than to name the first such site after him. My own suspicion is that this first location will be a space station in Earth orbit. (You might get easily up and down from Earth by means of space elevators, but we'll need someone up there to service the things, and to serve as a base from which to construct star-faring ships, or engines to mine the asteroids, or, conceivably though I doubt it, colonies for the Moon or Mars.) So let us name *that* first station Reagan One. *This* memorial, I cannot doubt, would please him. And the fact that we cannot dedicate it today should only spur those who revere Reagan's memory to greater efforts to achieve that goal.

Hey: if we don't start this bandwagon now, they'll name it Kennedy One.
posted by Noah at 11:16 AM

 
There's a lot of truth to this piece by Fred Kaplan about how the Cold War came to an end. And it cannot be stressed sufficiently that Reagan was right about nuclear weapons: they are immoral.

Well, actually, that's not 100% right. Weapons are just weapons. Guns don't kill people; people kill people. So let's rephrase that: it's not that nuclear weapons are immoral. Strategic nuclear weapons are immoral. Mutually-Assured Destruction is immoral.

This is just true. Think about what MAD means. MAD means: if you take action X - invade West Germany, say - I will kill, to a first approximation, everyone on earth. There is no plausible just-war theory that would bless such a threat. It cannot possibly be construed as a proportionate response - to any provocation. It is therefore immoral on its face. But it is also immoral because, precisely because it is an absurd threat to make, it is not credible. And therefore it will not deter effectively. And, if the threat *is* meant seriously, then it makes such an ultimate cataclysm truly possible.

Nuclear warfighting strategies - which terrified people at the time who worried MAD was all that prevented nuclear war - were actually far more moral than MAD. And remember: the same Reagan who came up with SDI, offered to share it with the Soviets, signed the INF treaty eliminating theater nuclear weapons, and proposed eliminating *all* nuclear weapons - that same President Reagan built the MX, deployed the Pershing II, deployed the neutron bomb, etc. Policy in the Reagan Administration was consistent, not divided into hawkish and dovish phases. The policy was: make nuclear war less likely by making it impossible for the other guy to *win.*

That's the key to deterrence: not the ability to inflict damage in return but the ability to deny victory. If the Soviets had invaded West Germany, America could *credibly* have eliminated the second wave at a minimum and possibly the advance wave as well. We could do so credibly because our new weapons were more accurate, highly lethal but (the neutron bomb, at least) with much smaller blast radius than previous generationgs. The lower the collateral damage, the more plausible it is that we would use the weapons; the more accurate and lethal the weapons, the more likely they would be successful; the more likely we would use the weapons successfully, the more likely the Soviets would have lost their army within hours of launching an attack. With its armor eliminated, the Soviet Union would have faced an utter debacle, and losing such a war would certainly have meant the demise of their political system. To deter strategic nuclear attack, we had not only a robust nuclear triad providing a second-strike capability but an increasingly accurate nuclear force that could eliminate the enemy's strategic weapons while still in the silo. That meant, once again, that we could plausibly refuse to submit to nuclear blackmail during a crisis, because the other side would not know, if push came to shove, whether they would be able to achieve a massive nuclear strike, or whether those weapons would be dead before they left the ground. MAD is a game of chicken, and in a game of chicken the craziest guy wins. And if both guys know this, and try to behave as crazily as possible to assure victory, the odds of total disaster go up. Successful nuclear warfighting strategies - including both offensive measures like the neutron bomb and defensive measures like the proposed SDI - far from eroding deterrance were the key to restoring it, because, if America could fight a nuclear war and win, we could be assured the Soviets would not start one.

And once you've reached that new equilibrium, it becomes rational for the enemy to start thinking about how to diffuse a situation where he's at a disadvantage. Yes, the personalities of Reagan and Gorbachev were crucial to the end of the Cold War. But Reagan was also engaging in perfectly good strategy, given American war aims (which did *not* include annihilating the Soviet Union). And so was Gorbachev. Precisely because America was thinking about the unthinkable - nuclear war - and so focused on *how to win* rather than merely on a robust strategic second-strike capability (the focus of Krushchev-Kennedy-era nuclear maneuvering), the Soviets had to think in the same terms. And once they thought in those terms, they saw they had a problem.

They turned to diplomacy because the military option was foreclosed. The military option was foreclosed because America was planning to win a nuclear war. America was planning to win a nuclear war in part because reliance on the threat of global annihilation - effectively, nuclear blackmail, rather akin to terrorism - was, in President Reagan's view, immoral.
posted by Noah at 3:57 PM

 
This meditation, on Reagan's and the author's own father's respective passings, is lovely.
posted by Noah at 3:25 PM

 
So the President is dead.

That is who he will always be for me. I remember the Carter Presidency - my first vivid political memory is of Sadat's visit to Jerusalem - and vaguely President Ford, but neither of them will ever be The President in my mind.

This isn't a matter of affinity. During his Presidency, it would never have occurred to me to be a Reagan supporter - and not because I was an apolitical kid; I was obsessed with politics. But I was raised by a mother who was and is a Democrat, and the universe of conceivable political identities was for me exclusively Democratic. I liked Gary Hart in 1984, Al Gore in 1988, and Bob Kerrey in 1992. My father used to say every four years that he was still voting for Scoop Jackson, and I guess I was, too. I didn't start to think, "maybe I'm a Republican" until I'd experienced the early years of the Clinton Presidency, the early years of the Giuliani mayoralty, got married, tried to make it in the working world, etc.

Late in the day, I suppose I'm something of a Reagan Republican (all Republicans are, now), but not wholly so. I am, and will always be, an Eastern-style Republican, even if I am a conservative one. I will always be more inclined toward a Disraeli-style "one nation" conservatism than a hard-core Reaganaut would. I will always admire those who forged the girders that bind our nation - whether Madison's Constitution, or Hamilton's Treasury, or Clay's "American system" of internal improvements - more than a small-government Coolidge Republican would. While in retrospect I admire many aspects of Reagan's domestic program that I did not appreciate as a teenager, those that are most significant had many fathers. Reagan made welfare reform possible, but Governors like Tommy Thompson actually made it happen, and Newt Gingrinch made it national. The 1986 tax reform is one of the great, largely unsung triumphs of economic legislation, and was crucial to the boom of the 1990s, but Senators like Bob Packwood and Bill Bradley were instrumental in crafting that law. What I remember most fondly about Reagan at the time was his staunch support for the friends of liberty in the belly of the beast - for the captive nations of Eastern Europe and for the free peoples of Western Europe. And it's what I still cherish most about his Presidency.

Did Reagan win the Cold War? I'd give him second or third prize. First prize must go to Harry Truman. Had Roosevelt stuck with Henry Wallace in 1944 - as much of the Democratic Party and his wife wanted him to - the post-war world would have looked very different. Communists came close to taking power in liberated France and Italy as it was; with a blithe spirit like Wallace in the White House, I would guess their odds of triumph would have been far greater. It's inconceivable to me that Wallace would have moved to counter the Soviets as Truman did. And if the red star had risen over Paris, I have no doubt that many Americans would have asked, was it for this that our boys died on the beaches of Normandy - to make the world safe for Soviet Communism? The Republican reaction, when it came, would not have marched under the banner of the internationalist Thomas Dewey but the isolationist Taft, who would have withdrawn from hopeless Europe and focused on defending the Americas. Had Truman not been selected as Roosevelt's VP, it's entirely conceivable that America would not have fought the Cold War. And if we had not fought it, it goes without saying we would not have won it.

Second prize must go to Reagan or to Gorbachev, and the only question is how much Reagan's election influenced the Politburo to take a wild chance on a guy like Gorbachev. But regardless of the answer to that question, no one should doubt that the reason the Soviet Union fell was not some kind of historical inevitability nor even the inevitable consequence of Gorbachev's reforms. People who remember Berlin in 1989, or Vilnius in 1991, when tyranny fell with little or no bloodshed, should remember as well Beijing in 1989, Budapest in 1956, Prague in 1968, and Grozny in 1995. Gorbachev lacked the will to preserve Communist rule through mass murder, but had he mustered the will (as Andropov might have, for instance), we do not know that the Soviet Union might have lasted another generation, whatever the West had done. The only reason to deny Gorbachev the silver medal for ending the Cold War, then, would be the argument that Reagan's election, and particularly his Strategic Defense Initiative, convinced the Politburo that they needed to try something desperate. They tried Gorbachev, and the rest is history.

How will the man be remembered? I think that today, his place in history is roughly comparable to Woodrow Wilson's. I know that the comparison will infuriate most conservatives, but to liberals Wilson was one of the great Presidents of American history, both in terms of his domestic program (Progressive labor legislation, establishment of the income tax, anti-trust, centralization of power in the national government) and his foreign policy (anti-imperialist and emphasizing not only internationational law but the development of a kind of proto-world government: 14 points, League of Nations, etc). He certainly shaped both the domestic and international order in a profound way. If he is not worshipped the way FDR and JFK are, well, that has more to do with his personal qualities than with his policies. Reagan was a great personality as well as an important President; had Goldwater been elected President in 1980, he would be a similar lodestar for conservative Republicans, but he would not be remembered as fondly by the nation. And Democratic Presidents and would-be Presidents - Carter, Clinton, Bill Bradley - have looked to Wilson as an inspiration. That's my point about comparing Wilson and Reagan: to a largely similar degree but in largely opposite directions, they changed the country, and the world. I would put each in the high second rank of Presidential significance, below Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, FDR, in the same league as Jackson, Polk, Theodore Roosevelt, Harry Truman.

Will he ever become a "consensus" President, a symbol of the nation, beloved (mostly) by all? If you set the bar high enough, no American clears it. Only Washington has virtually no detractors; Jefferson, Jackson, Lincoln, FDR - all of these were not only hated by many in their day but are still reviled by some. But if we set the bar a little lower, I think the answer will be yes: Reagan will, one day, be a "consensus" President. As with FDR, many of the causes that he championed are already part of the consensus, and he will increasingly be identified with these. The mistakes, scandals and failures of his tenure will properly be forgotten as the decades pass.

I admit, he has seemed gone for a long time now. That is the way with Alzheimers. We have not heard from him in a decade; we have not tended him, as his devoted wife Nancy has. He has been gone from us long enough that these memorials have the feel of an anniversary commemoration of his death, rather than a funeral. But that is fitting not only because of his long goodbye to us, so much time dying, but because we have travelled so far since he ceased to head our host. It is so long since the days when the Soviet threat loomed large abroad and stagflation ravaged at home, so long since America was told that we should reconcile ourselves to inevitable decline, that we do not really remember what it was like. Even after the atrocities and setbacks of the past few years, we are still grown so wealthy and so confident that our wisest warn of hubris, justly or no. President Reagan lived through a great arc of his country's history, and led it to the uplands where we dwelt for many years. Another arc, through territory yet unknown, stretches before us. May we pass through future valleys as safely and triumphantly as those we traversed on his watch.
posted by Noah at 10:19 AM

 
Heading out for the weekend, so just one last note: kudos to John Podhoretz for taking the contrarian view on Tenet's resignation. I have absolutely no idea if he's right and, frankly, I don't care. I've never really understood the depth of the animus directed at Tenet from some folks. I hope the Pod's guessed right.
posted by Noah at 1:27 PM

 
When you don't have time to write new things, recycle the old. This is a piece I wrote (first draft, anyhow) about 10 years ago. I'd really love to figure out what to do with it, whether there's any way I could spruce it up for publication, and where. I'm open to suggestions from my ever-patient readers. (Don't worry, the blog isn't going to become a clearinghouse for this sort of thing.)

Scene: Terezienstadt Prison, June 28, 1944. Gavrilo Princip lies on a small wooden bench with a metal dinner plate on his lap. He is lacking a right arm. Sigmund Freud is seated some distance away, in a plush armchair, a small pad in one hand, a pencil in the other. Periodically, over the course of Princip's monologue, Freud will make notes on the pad. He may also cough, or shift position. He does not speak.

“Illusory world, thou beautiful flower!
To me also wert thou beautiful
Yet fleeting, too fleeting!”

I have been discussing certain matters with my brother, Jovo. I felt, earlier this morning, that the time had come once more for action, and that is a song I have always heeded. Jovo, however, sought to dissuade me. It is the same as always: when I first joined him in Sarajevo, you know, I spoke of action. He threatened to enroll me in the military school. I could not believe that my brother would have trained me to kill our countrymen, our brothers in blood and tongue!

“Oh” – here he goes – “you philosopher, you scrawny bones, you talk. Didn’t the old man carry a gun for the Sultan years ago? Look, I make my living bringing mail to the villages and wine to the city. That’s the same as father did, the same as Grand-Uncle Todor you’re so fond of hearing stories about. Only I do a better day’s trade than they ever did. Would I insult them and say that I am a better merchant? No: there are fewer bandits now, and better roads. And that is thanks to our Emperor, Franz Josef. His gun you’ll carry – that’s to protect my horse, my house, and your dinner table where you eat what I put before you.”

Done, my brother? So answer me this: what mesmerist swung his watch before your eyes and turned you into a merchant? I remember the day he left us, Herr Doctor. He wore the red cap of the mountaineer, new boots and a white shirt; mounted on our good horse I saw him with our mother’s eyes. That day, Jovo, I would have thrown myself from the heights into the gorge on your command. Can you imagine what I felt that first visit to Sarajevo, seeing you pace that little flat, a caged wolf in high boots?

After the war, my war, when he found his safety in his countrymen’s arms for the first time in his life, did he thank me for my gift of freedom to his children? No. Then, when the Czechs ran this place, and I could correspond again with the larger world, I sent to him with the warmest introductions – my dear and good Jovo, your skinny, degenerate terrorist younger brother aches to see you even if only through these bars – but no reply. My father I knew to have died when the Austrians destroyed the old village, but Jovo, well, the cleft between brothers is deeper than that cut by Crni Potoci, the Black Brook, between the stones.

So that shall be the sign for you, my brother: Crni Potoci – now let me write it, before it slips my mind. Yes, yes, you, too are a part of my work; could you think otherwise? I scratch you in among the wooden sheds, shrouded in mist and mistletoe, clinging like moss to the floor at the height of the gorge. The bald peaks stand lonely guard around your sleep, for the men are gone away to hunt for Turks and game; and from their heights, such a vision: from here to the horizon, the mountains of free Bosnia!

“Krajina is a blood-soaked rag;
Blood is our fare at noon, blood still at evening.
On every lip is the taste of blood,
With never a peaceful day or any rest.”

Another song I hear. This one from 1875. Tell me, Jovo, your grandfather whose name you carry, for whom did he carry his gun on that day? Have you forgotten? It was Vidovdan: The Day on Which We Shall See. Do you remember what you saw?

These songs we heard together in the mountains. We learned them from Radoje, an old shepherd and lame, who played an ancient gusl when we were only boys. Do you remember? As a young man, one afternoon the shepherd boy proposed to love the daughter of a captain of the frontier guards, a girl who refused to wear shoes, I remember they said; she longed to be a shepherdess and lay among the flowers. Radoje’s own mother delivered him that night for his lashing at the captain’s hands, as punishment for his effrontery. She handed him over with the evening star and retrieved him at dawn – it was late June; his sentence was short. When she came in the morning, she apologized to the soldier for the loss of his night’s rest. The beating left the boy lamed, but he was never heard to cry out, and for this the village forgave him his crime, that he put them all under threat of the captain’s wrath. He grew into a slow and measured man, who longed for nothing more than to lay on his back in the field and stare down at his toes, and with them crush the distant houses, oak trees, mountains, blot out the red sun and the horizon before he fell asleep.

* * *

Herr Doctor, my friend, you are too late. The dark day was yesterday, was it not? Well, better day-old bread than dreams for breakfast, as they say, ha? I hear no laughter; you are no longer amused by my colorful folk expressions? Ah, you were always the quiet one. I remember your first visit: you sat cross-legged on a footstool by the door, hunched over yourself so, like a troll. I don’t believe you glanced up from your note pad during the entire session, nor breathed a sigh, much less a word. Once, you coughed, a girlish little exhalation which you smothered in your notes. So many notes – and you never published me! The most famous assassin since Brutus; I surely would have made a creditable monograph. I fault you still for that.

Has it been so many years since that interview? Another Vidovdan, it was, twenty-five years yesterday. My first Vidovdan in the light. Then I was hopeful for an early release, my sentence cut to a fifth. Now my sentence is increased by a fifth – and not yet over. I ask you, did the Germans invade in ‘38 only to spite me? The Czechs would have honored the end of my time; they did all but release me already. Why, after Versailles, there was no need even to write. We were under a free regime! We could meet publicly, in the prison square, and rejoin voices and faces to the words we read in secret. We could promenade along the canal, the warm summer rain on our hair; we could meet in the garden and sip tea like old gentlemen friends at a cafe. Oh, how bitter is the aftertaste on my tongue now! How many years I spent sipping tea, waiting for my release, dreaming of my undiscovered kingdom, my Serbia, now free, now united! Sitting in cafes of our own minds’ design, did my pontifications enlighten my countrymen to the danger they faced, so near at hand? Why did I wait for twenty-five years – my entire original sentence! – to begin my work?

It is for this that I have called you back, Herr Doctor. This is my greatest regret, that I never showed you my work. Well, back then it was not so extensive – but today you shall see. Here: there is room enough in this cell for me to hold the dinner plate and show you. I apologize for making you sit on the floor while I take the sleeping palate; these are not the manners to which I was raised. But since the gangrene took my arm I must balance the plate between my knees, and this is difficult to do from the floor, or standing. There. Flat, scuffed, gray, discolored yellow to one side of the center: a dinner plate, the standard prison issue of the Empire – or of the Reich; they know no better, and far worse. Now: see when I show its other face! Don’t strain; the writing is far too tiny for you to read, and you have not the key to understand it. But this would be the envy of any Egyptian chiseler, no?

Five years I hold here. Not the whole of it; there are other utensils scattered about this place; every circulating surface is nearly covered by now. Radoje’s story is somewhere, but it has not visited this cell in weeks; I would relate the tale completely were it here. But I must read you some portion of my handiwork. Ah, this is a good beginning. If know you at all, you were always fond of a jest, Herr Doctor. I wonder if you will recognize this one:

* * *

It was related to me by a priest of some familiarity to my brother. When I was fourteen and dear, traitorous Jovo first brought me to Sarajevo, he introduced me to his partner, a Croat, whose son, Franjo, studied in a Jesuit school. I tutored the boy in arithmetic, and often accompanied him on his way to school. One day his teacher engaged me in a dialogue.

“Your eyes reveal a depth to your soul,” said the priest. Tell me, young man with the deep eyes: how do you fill them?”

“I fill them with study,” said I.

“Study,” the Jesuit echoed with mock sagacity – I understood it to be mocking for he then went on: “Much study is good for the mind, but very bad for the eyes. Tell me: when you study, do you study catechism, the lives of the saints, and the works of the holy fathers of the church?”

The question put so boldly, I could not turn it aside. “I am an atheist, a believer in the scientific principles which govern the universe and man’s history. After doing my part for my brother’s family, I spend what time I have for myself in study which will advance progress and lift my people up to their rightful place at the table of nations. I hope I have not offended you by such a forthright declaration, but if I have, I beg your pardon.”

The priest waved his had in dismissal. “I should beg it of you, for my prying question. Yet, would you grant your foolish elder one further indulgence? I would like to relate to you a story which even a well-educated young man such as yourself might not have heard.”

As I made no objection, the priest went on to tell the following tale:

“You must know that the Jews, wretched and scattered though they are today, were once the favored of God – and while still favored, were entrusted with great knowledge, which they have hidden in the books which they call sacred. But you may not know that it was a shepherd from Dubrovnik who ended their monopoly.

“Saint Peter himself sent the shepherd to Jerusalem, to preach to the sinful Jews. Now, when the shepherd arrived, he was brought before their council of rabbis. The Jews laughed that a man who could neither read nor write would presume to preach to the most learned doctors of their faith. Seeing the shepherd agitated by their mirth, their chief proposed a debate. ‘If you vanquish me,’ he said, ‘we shall convert and reveal all the ancient science of our holy books. But if you are defeated, you must convert, and announce to all the world that your Jesus was no Christ, but a magician, and that there is no true power in his church.’ To this the shepherd agreed.

“Now the shepherd knew only his native Slavic tongue, and could not converse with these doctors in their own language. It was therefore agreed that the debate should be conducted silently, with gestures. The chief rabbi began, pointing at the door behind the shepherd. The shepherd responded, pointing at the floor. Then the rabbi, frowning, pointed at the shepherd with his finger. The shepherd responded by pointing three fingers at the rabbi. At this the rabbi, incensed, raised his hand to the ceiling, and the shepherd, responding, waved his hand right and left, thus and so.

“The rabbi turned to his fellows and, with a look of ashen wonder on his face, informed them that he had lost. The others immediately began their wailing, and tore at their beards in grief. ‘How is it possible’ they asked, ‘that our wisest and most knowledgeable should be defeated by an illiterate shepherd?’ Their own rabbi explained his defeat. He had opened with the declaration, ‘The Messiah is yet to come;’ the shepherd had answered, ‘He has already been here, in Jerusalem.’ The rabbi retorted, ‘But God is One;’ the shepherd’s quick rejoinder: ‘I show you one hand, but three fingers.’ Finally, the rabbi concluded, ‘The decision lies with God, who rules in heaven;’ but the shepherd replied, ‘His church rules for Him here on earth.’ With a sigh, the rabbi told his followers that if they were honorable men, they would have to convert. But not all were honorable.

“The Christians of Jerusalem rejoiced to hear the news of the rabbis’ defeat, and they flocked to the shepherd from Dubrovnik, all eager to know how the contest had been won. The man explained that it was very simple. ‘He told me to get out, and I said that I wasn’t budging an inch until we settled this. He threatened to poke me in the eye, and I said, I can give as good as I get, three times: I’ll poke out both your eyes and knock out your teeth with my thumb for good measure. So he raised his hand to strike me, and I warned him that if he tried, I’d slap him silly. Then he gave up.’”

You like the joke, Herr Doctor? Well, so did the teller. The Jesuit laughed so heartily at his own jest that his beard flapped as if in a strong breeze. Noticing my own silence, he pointed at me with his finger.

“Next time you come, tell me what you thought of my joke.” He then passed in to the school, with such a slow, solemn step that you would never have thought him such a jester as he was.

The following week I brought little Franjo to school, and I saw the father standing by the doorway, examining a dogwood tree. He poked a branch very nearly into his nose; his nostrils flared, his brow furrowed, and for an instant he became a falcon in my sight. The priest was very pleasant when he spoke, however, and asked after the health of my brother, and of his wife, and of his partner before coming around to the matter.

“I know that I am no jester by trade,” the Jesuit began, modestly, “but one is judged according to one’s enterprises. I am sure that you have formed an opinion of my humor. I hope it is not too harsh.”

“Not harsh at all,” I replied. “Your jest was clever in playing on my antipathy to gain my sympathy. The shepherd is a man of the people. Knowing that I live in solidarity with our peasants and mountaineers, you used this to gain my sympathy, knowing that the shepherd would serve as your tool later on.

“The simpleton vanquishes the wise, and is therefore the wiser man. Your purpose is to put me off from studying the great thinkers of this age. I should live as my father’s father did, close to the ground and to the flocks, and in this way, and not by stirring up trouble, achieve salvation at the hands of the Saints.

“But I have seen how shepherds live, as you have not, so I am not moved by your tale. And if salvation is at hand, it shall come not from the martyrs of old, but from those now yet alive. And our shepherds stand with our martyrs of the soil before those of your church, or even of theirs.”

I was finished, and had regained in some degree my pride, and the dignity of my ancestry. But the priest still had the nerve to whistle at me through the openings of his great nose!

“My son, I have visited a village or two myself over the years, and have had to dissuade your simple shepherds from sacrificing their babes’ daily bread that the Infant might have a new crown. But about my jest – answer me this: without their having wisdom, would ever the Jews convert? Let the shepherd be; I know you are no shepherd. We still seek the conversion of the Jews. Even now, after all their treacheries. What say your modern martyrs to this question? Consult them, and when you know, return and tell me.”

Herr Doctor, so I did. It amazes me still, for as you know I have never had any use for the priests of my own people; on fast days I would go with like-minded friends to the steps of the church and gorge on cakes and sausage. And yet, though it encouraged my brother and led me to fear my own comrades – the annexation had come only months before, and all the students were afire to go against the Emperor and his ally, the Pope – I set out to live this double life, visiting with the priest whenever I accompanied my young pupil. Even Franjo lost his fear of that great falcon face.

We would discuss my thinkers: Bakunin and Marx, Chernishevsky and Mazzini, Njegos, Gacinovic and Popovic. In every case, my priest would find passages of the gospels or of the church fathers that refuted them and yet embraced them, in a fuller, greater shape. But most feelingly we would dispute Kossovo, the Field of Blackbirds. If Saint Peter devours Bakunin and Mazzini, then surely Saint Peter is himself devoured by the martyrs of Kossovo, by Milos and Tsar Lazar – Milos especially. He was my favorite, Herr Doctor. Accused a traitor by Tsar Lazar at supper on Kossovo field – the night before Vidovdan, the great battle with the Sultan’s forces – did he abandon his Tsar in his pride and indignation? No. He played at traitor, but only to gain entrance the Sultan’s tent before the day dawned on the morning of battle, to step bowingly up to his blue-cushioned throne, to whisper in a jeweled ear the secret of the Tsar’s positions – and, at the moment of revelation, to strike through the Sultan’s belly with his straight knife. Milos was martyred by the Sultan’s guards, but the Sultan died of his wound, and never saw the sun over Kossovopolje. Of course he could not turn the fated tide of battle; yet Milos was the hero to all our youth.

The priest argued that this noble tale was merely a refraction of the gospels: the final supper, the treason of one, the choice of holy death above the kingdom of this world. Yet it seems more true by far that the gospels were but a shadowing of Kossovo. What apostle could have struck so quick and sure as Milos? What choice did Jesus make to rival Lazar’s, who chose death not for himself alone but for the generations? And so our debates continued. I attended the societies all through this time, but my Jesuit behaved as if the walls of our classroom held out the world entirely, and we existed only when together. Thus we persisted until the martyrdom of our sainted Zerajic.

Our leader’s death shocked us all, and moved us to action, the only commemoration of which he could have approved. The Thursday after he died, I received my first sensitive assignment from one of my friends in a society. I was to carry a package from the apothecary’s shop to my brother’s home, where I would carefully pour the contents of each bottle into the bottoms of old milk bottles. The police, if they followed me, would see that I had returned to the home of a citizen above reproach – and if they followed the one who came to retrieve the bottles, there would be nothing suspicious in nearly empty bottles for milk. This I was to do on Tuesday. That Sunday I approached the schoolhouse with trepidation. My sister-in-law’s imminent wrath at discovering four missing milk bottles had been much on my mind, and I feared my plans would show through the skin of my forehead, and render me helpless. I feared as much for the foolishness of my choice of fear – my sister-in-law over the police – as I did for the consequences of my actions.

As was usual in our encounters, I brought the priest a question.

“Tell me, Father, if Jesus made his first mission today, what would he say of the Emperor?”

The priest smiled. “He would say, ‘Render unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s and unto God that which is God’s.’”

“And what,” I asked, “would he say of the Pope?”

“He would say, ‘On this rock I build my Church.’”

“And what,” I concluded, “would they say of Him?”

The priest laughed his nostrilled laugh. “Aha, you have been reading Dostoevski again.” At this he pointed his finger. “Tell me, since you speak his speeches, what is Ivan’s fate?”

I struggled to recall the story of the middle Karamazov – I wished he would ask me of Raskolnikov instead, who was more dear to all our generation’s hearts. “He confesses. He confesses at the prodding of a petty-noble Devil and he is not believed by the jury.”

“No. That is not his fate; that is stage-business. Before. No? He is afflicted with a fever of the brain in punishment for the abuse of that organ,” the priest replied, more pointedly than a jest demanded. “The Devil does not need to tempt Ivan; he has damned himself first in rejecting God and again in parricide. But he cannot ask for absolution because of his pride. He demands the Church produce the Kingdom at once, on Earth – the foundations cannot satisfy him, because he has already rejected the Church in his heart. Where then can he see the Kingdom? He deludes himself: he sees it in his own designs, in his own mind alone, which has the power from God to discern and understand. And so that is where he is struck.”

I was struck myself. I held on to the frame of the school and said, “Father, this is no answer. Who but the saints have eyes to see such things? Give me your eyes only, and I will make such vows as you demand – but I see only lame shepherds and sick lambs.”

The priest snorted. “And what sort of medicine do you prescribe for them – old milk from old milk bottles?”

As he did not look at me, I made the priest no answer.

“One can spend only so much of one’s life in converse with a wall. I thought you deserved one warning as a final kindness. It is not right that you should bring this on your brother and his family.”

“I at least have not taken up arms against my own people. Even among the Croats the common folk thirst for freedom. Yet how many good Catholic Slavs serve in Franz Josef’s legions? Are they the godly of this earth?”

“I do not judge their godliness; they do their duty only. God will judge if it is right; He will judge Franz Josef.”

“As He will me. I do not fear death.”

The Jesuit tapped at the corner of his table. Sitting thus below me, he lost the aspect of a falcon. He had curled into a heavy, squat bird, and his enormous beak bespoke no longer a terrible bite but an obscenity of growth without function. He was a dodo.

“That, my son, is the great pity,” he said, and then looked up. “But tell me before you leave: you never gave me a final account of my jest. I am curious. What did you take it to mean, after all our conversation?”

I considered long before I spoke. “Father, the Emperor shall not be defeated with fairy tales. I suppose I have not changed at all.”

The Jesuit shrugged. “You have grown taller, a bit. But I am saddened that you are still looking for the Emperor in my little story when he is nowhere to be found. Shall I tell you what it truly means?”

I made no reply, and so he continued.

“Know that I am the rabbi of the tale. And the rabbi was honorable. You are another Jew of Jerusalem, though you choose to forget it; and the chosen are defeated.”

* * *

That was the last I heard from my Jesuit, the first who tried to stop me in earnest. Have you ever met such a jester of a Roman priest? His interpretation I did not understand myself at the time. Now, with martyred Serbia ploughed under yet again, and myself still in chains, I laugh more knowingly.

But are you not amazed that so much can fit on the back of a plate? Well, I have had years to develop my technique, don’t forget. If you want to see what my work used to look like, here, I’ll show you. Along the rim of the inner circle, on the plate’s underside: that is one of my earliest messages. You can barely make out the largest words, they are so encrusted by now; shall I read them for you?

“Bricked up is she within these holy walls,
A victim of her husband’s witless love.
But hold! The mason leaves a hole unwalled:
One breast may taste the air that breathes above;
One child may reach and suck – may reach, and bawl.
Her milk yet flows within the dungeon halls.”

How wasteful I was! If the words were reduced to a tenth their size, it would not atone for the waste of the words themselves. Look how large I wrote it, as if it were a banner headline. Well, I suppose it was – did not Serbia yet live, on Corfu? But did the news require six lines to tell it? What ten-year-old does not know the story of the raising of Skadar, how the eldest brother tricked the youngest into sacrificing his wife to propitiate the witch? And who has not heard of the miracle that followed, that her milk flowed through the monastery walls – and does so still? It would have been enough merely to write “Skadar”; all would be understood.

Ah, but who cared for conservation then? In those days, when my war still raged and the guards were Austrian, I could spin out a few such lines in an afternoon, and still have time to exercise my arms by lifting and lowering my chain. I had no real mastery of the tools. The fork would shoot across the base of the plate whenever I applied pressure, and I would have to spend as much time again in buffing the plate against the edge of my sleeping palate. Then carefully I would trace over my letters to reinforce the lines that were true, and not in error. I could not get very far with a technique like that now. And I was born right-handed! But the lines I cut then, so deep and jagged, they look now like riverbeds, with tiny letters growing along each side like towns along the banks. And they huddle close together, leaving clear spaces for farms, for forests. These other areas were mapped out long since in even squares. Now each one is filled with words in its turn, and still so many lines to lay down.

Do you know how my work was begun? During the war, we had a newspaper of sorts. Any one of us could write, on the bottoms of mugs and of plates, and even along the underside of spoons. Oh, that was a challenge, working with a fork upon a spoon! We kept each other informed of important events out in the other world. When the government moved to Corfu, and Serbia was overrun, we heard it first from the guards; information which might wound us they did not hesitate to reveal. But when the tide turned, we would never have known were it not for our communications with the newest entering prisoners. And we kept each other appraised of theoretical developments as well. Why, Popovich designed his immortal system for Federalized National Syndicalism in the pages of our own journal! The discussion on his points was so intense that, in time, his original theory was completely obscured beneath the scratched and chiseled commentary. But he was released; the world knows his genius well.

All were released, led out either by the Czechs or by Charon; only I remain. Even Mehmet – can you believe it Doctor – Mehmet Mehmetbasic, the Turk they released. Tell me, Doctor, is this justice, that Mehmet, who did nothing, should be free, while I, the true assassin, remain in prison? Mehmet, are you still in this room with me, or have you moved on? Ah, look, Herr Doctor, here he is: sneaking around the bottom edge of the plate. To think that of all people we let you convince us that Cabrinovic was suspect. Who were you? You came to meetings. To meetings! Twice we sent you against Potoriek. Shall we tell the good doctor what happened? The first time, before you even arrived in town you dropped your poisoned blade down the toilet in a moment of panic. Now is that the behavior of a professional?

We forgave you that time, because you were young and you felt it reasonable to show a bit of caution with the police on board the train. Then you went to Sarajevo. You stalked about the city for over a week, testing stances, views, timing walks and noting traffic patterns. You told the curious you worked for the American cinema. We gave you a revolver, and you hid it within the old fountain and practiced jumping in and grasping it, and aiming at the bats and pigeons at two in the morning – that one with the white circle around his eye, he makes a good target: call him Potoriek. Then another, a screeching bat: the imam. Then finally yourself. But by the time the day had come the birds had grown so used to you by the fountain that they settled themselves on your arms, and in the bowl around your weapon, and would not scatter at your touch. In the time it would have taken to clear them away, you said, the target would have moved and you would have been shot by the police. Bird droppings clogged the gun’s mechanism, you said; you were not certain it would fire. Six members of a society were arrested that week, but the mosque was dedicated without incident. The press said, “an unexpected attack of calm.” You said, “give me another assignment.” But by then it was too late. The Archduke was coming to Sarajevo.

Had we listened to you then, we might never have fired a shot. Oh, you landlords’ sons are the very soul of cunning. Do you remember how we discovered he was coming? It was the first spring after the war with Turkey, and all we patriotic boys had traveled to Belgrade– for exams we said, and we were not lying, for we were all due for a graduation, and grenades the diplomas we would receive. Too poor to buy our own coffee, we would sit at the cafe tables and sing martial songs, hoping a patron or two would take pity on us, thinking us newly minted veterans. Ah, the pain that lanced me for counterfeiting so! Every coin was laid up in store against my future deeds. But late in the season a letter came for our friend Nedeljko Cabrinovic. None of us saw it, but he told us its contents; only one thing mattered. There were men in the societies who had traveled all around Europe to end this man’s life, and now he was coming to us!

Your slanders, Mehmet, began the day of our plotting. Oh, you had rich soil for planting your suspicions, I cannot deny it; Cabrinovic behaved as no hero. He went about in a blind frenzy, dazzled by his own future glory. We would pass in the street, and right away he would begin his chatter: he has been practicing with stones so he will know how to throw a bomb; he has a friend at the university who looks just like him, so he can travel under false papers; and on and on like this. And in broad daylight as well! I asked him, do you think there are no gendarmes in Serbia? But this would shut him up only for a moment, and then he would begin anew. I found him once in a cafe, writing a postcard to his sister. He quoted an old song I knew well:

“When death overtaketh a man
He taketh naught with him,
Nothing but his white, crossed hands
And his righteous deeds.”

I removed it from his hands – “No time for poems,” I said – and tore it up before his face.

But I did not grow truly cautious until the week we were to return to Sarajevo. We would have died to linger longer, our toes grasping the free soil of Serbia, but our deaths were wanted elsewhere. We knew the Archduke would arrive in June; more than that, nothing; and so we made ready to depart. We made our last visit to Apis’ agents, and with grenades hidden in our trousers we made our serpentine way back to our scattered barracks in the basements and closets of friends’ homes. On our way through the park, Mehmet, when you saw none were watching, you grabbed my elbow. Do you remember what you said to me then?

“How long have you been with our party?” you asked.

“For six years, I should think,” I replied, “or less, depending on how you choose to count.”

“No longer? And whose party were you with before that?”

“Before that I was a child.”

“You are a child still. Whose party were you with?”

I swallowed the insult silently, and paused before replying. You were older; perhaps you thought you could take such liberties. But there was something to your manner, aside from the impudence, made me wish to hear you out, and exact retribution later. “With none. I am from Krajina. I was for Serbia and freedom before I could breathe my own breaths.”

You nodded then, as though I had passed an examination only you could administer. “I know. That is where you and our friend differ. You don’t know whom I mean? So think; how does Nedeljko obtain such a letter? Who permits it?”

“Oh, go, you; it is in every paper now.”

“Now, yes; now there is no time to prepare. And do the papers inform us of the date? Let me tell you something else: our friend’s father is a well-known police informant.” And then you held me in your slit-eyed serpent’s gaze, until I had sounded the depths of this well of treachery. But one last barb you slipped in before parting.

“It is your duty to know before I tell you.”

I was left then among the flowering trees to contemplate my stillborn mission. Even if the son were true, a loose jaw like that could not be trusted with such a father around to hear. But this was not the worst. Perhaps all our planning was to lay snares for our own heels to catch? How could I know? I could only wait, and see; I said nothing to our other companions of my conversation, lest they reveal our suspicions by accident. And so we traveled; and as we did Cabrinovic acted his usual turn of ill-considered gesture, but now with an aspect of treason. In his very protestations of friendship he revealed his enmity. In one village, he declaimed against the Emperor, intimating darkly that something terrible would surely happen as retribution for the annexation. In another, he wrote another of his postcards, this one about Kossovo. It was Milos’ martyrdom he wrote of – the lines that circumcised my heart – and this buffoon did not even quote the verses correctly! A turncoat assassin and illiterate as well, I thought. But this was all what we had seen before from him.

Finally, we could stand his prattling no longer. We had to enter Sarajevo by rail, in a legitimate manner; Cabrinovic we exiled to an empty compartment, taking for ourselves the one across. How foolish a decision I saw almost at once, when, just as we left the station, a tall, mustachioed man in uniform entered our friend’s compartment and sat down beside him. They began to chat familiarly. I could not hear, but I could see them smiling and felt my eyes grow hot while my hands grew cold. When Cabrinovic pointed my way, I leaned back so that my face would not be visible.

When we left the train in Sarajevo, Nedeljko ran up to us, bursting to speak.

“On Vidovdan. That’s when he’s coming, Ivan told me.”

“Ivan?” I enquired.

“The detective who sat down with me – you saw.”

“Indeed I did,” I said. “You know him?”

Cabrinovic rolled his eyes in that way he did. “An old acquaintance of my father’s; hardly a friend, really. But say, did you hear what I’m telling you? The Archduke is coming on Vidovdan. Can you believe it?”

I nodded and mumbled something about the coincidence, hoping my reticence would quash his enthusiasm. A detective had told him the date! I could feel the heat from your gloat behind me, Mehmet, even as we stood; why did I not think then: how odd, that you should be pleased with your cleverness when all it exposed was our doom? We knew for certain now: the Emperor knew of our plans. Perhaps our doomed attempt on his son would be his excuse to invade Serbia? For long I had felt his boot upon my back, but now I felt for the first time the chill of his aged wrist upon my shoulder.

That night I removed Cabrinovic’s grenades and his revolver, and left him sleeping with our companions. In their place, I left a note:

“Until the day on which we shall see to whom the Empire will belong.”

I heard from you yourself, Mehmet that he woke in an offended rage; you brought this news as a teacher’s pet might inform on a less-favored pupil. Well, the world knows the injustice of your accusations; if their force is laid on my head, it is a weight I can bear, having the spine that you lack. And yet, Mehmet twice-flinching, I would still not think so ill of you were it not for your behavior on that Vidovdan. We all took our positions early on, well before the start of the parade. The crowd grew around us until it was thick enough for you to enter and perform your duty without notice. And so you emerged. You looked both ways suspiciously before stepping out of the apothecary shop – right under the nose of an officer – and fingered some bundle you held under your coat. Naturally, the officer followed you, and by your nervousness it could be seen that you knew he was doing so. So what did you do? Did you throw your grenade in the canal and run, as you did before on the train? Did you walk away from the entire scene, and beg for another assignment, as you did before at the mosque. No; this time you were brave. This time you stayed on the quay, and as the parade approached, you wandered from your spot, looking behind you with an epileptic twitch. You managed to pass by all of your fellow assassins but one, trailing the police behind you like a tail – in each case foiling any plan our brothers might have had for carrying out their duties successfully! Only Cabrinovic – I saw his face, glowing with the promise of redemption – was quick enough to launch his bomb, but he threw too soon, as he saw you and your entourage approaching, and missed, and the Archduke survived.

I was as surprised as anyone when I heard you had been arrested in Montenegro for your part in the assassination. You certainly didn’t volunteer to stand trial with the rest of us in an Austrian court! And to think, our Montenegrin brothers released you secretly from custody (I have no intention to believe that you “escaped”) because you were a hero of Sarajevo! Well, I should not be surprised. What happened to Mrnjavcevic, after all? That family lived rich under the barbarian Turks; they were well paid for their treason at Kossovo. Who knows, Mehmet; perhaps they are your true ancestors? You think that because you are from an unlanded family that you are different from the rest of your kind, the landlords who ground us mercilessly underfoot for centuries? Your people were always crying for some emperor or other to protect the rents you had not force enough on your own to wrest from the common folk. Any emperor, but not your own Slavic king, yes? You knew where justice could be found, and have fled rapidly the other way.

You I am finished with. I finished with you years ago. You are captured here, in the plates, in the book; and may I tell you something, Mehmet? You do not fill six lines.

* * *

Nedeljko’s bomb was not even a part of our plans, you know, Herr Doctor. He got the bomb from Ilic. Amusing, isn’t it, since Ilic tried to take mine away from me, with his articles and his philosophy. I had had enough. It was time for action then, and Cabrinovic truly knew it. I have had thirty years since to study my philosophy.

There, now: I saw that strangled little smile; you do not think it is philosophy I have achieved? Answer me this then: how was I to know whether Cabrinovic was faithful or false? I look back now and say, Kossovo. He was Milos. If I had not suspected him, how could he be? With that little note I took Tsar Lazar’s words for my own; did I not know what that would mean for our endeavor? His words, my words, are here before me; I need only to read of Kossovopolje to tell you all my life. These plates and spoons make circuits of this prison, but at their every return I return, to the same questions, the same clouds on my vision. I need to borrow other eyes, and so put on the spectacles of your Jewish science. For the work is too important to enter the world without an advance reading in some private realm. And if not to complete the work, Herr Doctor, I wonder – and the wonder has plagued me these last years of darkness – why am I still alive? For you know, it was only when the darkness descended that I began my work in earnest.

* * *

It has occurred to me that my continued life is punishment for the Duchess. The deed that was to be done merited no punishment. This much is certain. Of course, I expected to die. That was part of my mission, and I accepted the responsibility willingly. But the murder of a tyrant is a sacred charge, an ennobling charge; it is a deed by which kings are made, not disposed of. That deed merited no punishment. It was simply to happen. Why, the very engines that drove them to their deaths obeyed the laws of history before those of combustion. Why did the carriage stop? Stop just as I approached the window, just as I had raised my gun, just long enough for me to spit the words, “Young Bosnia is Free!” into their faces, that they should know the meaning of their deaths?

Should I have hesitated then? When I saw them through the window of the carriage, I had only an instant to decide: now is the time. But once decided, the moment is everlasting. My arm is like a long weighty pendulum, swinging up; it moves with a terrible, unstoppable slowness. When it reaches apex, it fires, between the drawn curtains of the open window. Now I can see them. He is dressed in the finest attire of the Empire. They said – and though I did not believe it, I repeated it nonetheless – that he was sewn into his very clothes for the occasion. His pants were drawn up over his thin, white thighs, and strips of cloth were sliced with a razor from the sides, the whole molded to hug his empty calves. His shirt was laid upon him in two pieces, front and back, and his jacket in sections like a suit of armor: the pectoral plate joined at the shoulders, the arms in pairs of interlocking tubes. All this so that the anointed one’s form should not be marred by any crease in his attire.

At the first shot, the points of his mustache quiver like the tips of dueling foils, and spots of dandruff come fluttering down to his skin-snug epaulettes like insects struck by gassing from the trees. His wife reaches across to the far side of the car, to shield him or to be shielded from me, I do not know. She is pulling at the buttons of his jacket, to expose his wounds, but the buttons are all for show, twinkling golden miniatures of the Empire.

The second shot goes through his neck, stiffening him with paralysis. His eyes do not catch mine; they are fixed forward, and his mouth opens to let out a trickle of blood, and the words, “it is nothing. It is nothing.” I try to move the gun, to complete my assignment, but it is too heavy to rest firmly against my own temple, and then, all vanishes – and when the world returns the gun is gone, and I am brought down.

I shot her so, with the first bullet. This I discovered at the trial. They asked me, “Did you know she was a mother?” Did I know? I asked them, “What do you think I am, a beast?” But this is what they think, and shall they hear a beast’s denials as speech? I knew she was a mother. A mother of children who would be no heirs – they would not let a half-Slav creature inherit the Empire – a pure mother of people. But is a man’s existence to be reckoned valueless because he is a bad shot? I did not fire the shot; my arm did. So: the arm they have had of me – there, that is punishment. It has slowed my work; it is punishment enough.

I should have put the gun to my head, as I was commanded. There were others at stake beside myself, and anyhow, the deed was done! There was no undoing! And yet I live. To what purpose? The Empire would not execute a minor, so I live. Am I still a minor, Herr Doctor? It has been thirty years; will they not kill me now? Here, out there, I have repented nothing, do you hear out there! No recantation, no change: I am still standing, a day after The Day, so kill me for you will not make me kneel!

Twenty-five years passed over like water; they have left no imprint of their passing, only that I was smoothed and softened. Five years have I sat at the lip of the deep, but they will not push me in. They hang me over it every year, for one day, but they will not let me drop. I have done my life’s deed. Why could I not die?

Your silence rebukes me, Herr Doctor; you know that I know why. I confess. Perhaps my inaction was deliberate. But not selfish, no, not selfish! You must remember, I had only the day previously been to see the grave of Zerajic. Oh, Zerajic, our poor father Zerajic, poor as we all are and father to us all! Everything I did was in your name, everything to your glory, you who should have borne the crown before me. Well, I swore as much long before, the first time I visited you on this earth; the world knows, and there is no need to repeat the words.

I had heard of your torment from Grdjic, the editor. He told me of your meeting in the new church, only days after your failure against the Emperor. Kneeling in the back, seeming to mouth the rosary, you waited only to breathe the words, “He was so near me – I could almost have touched him.” But Franz Josef was an old man, who leaned on others’ arms; he seemed so little an Emperor. With a feather you could push him over into the grave; would you be so crass and use a bullet?

“I could almost have touched him” – you do not know the courage of such words, that you could say them! If you had known Mehmet Mehmetbasic the whole world could seem heroic! But no, you would not have compared yourself to him. You knew that there was only one comparison: Kossovo, the eternal Field of Blackbirds. Our nation dies there ever, and ever there is born, the proving ground of all our heroes.

You knew from the first who you were – if you were not Milos, who was? – and you had failed to grasp the mantle of heroism. Ah, it is a greater torture than I have ever faced; I am ashamed of my own fretting weakness in the face of such turmoil. And what were our editor’s words to you? “Such men are not to be found among us. They do not exist.” Oh, such comfort! To know your nation gives you company in your meanness. When Grdjic told me, I could have boxed his aged ears; many such ears needed boxing in those days. You repaired to a cafe, of all places, to hear your friend make speeches and watch the world and sorrow for your nation. To this a hero is reduced! To cafe society, the world of journals and the aged men! Where were these aged in their youth, in 1875? Where was the great city Sarajevo itself? I know where my people were, where Slavic blood does not dissipate: flowing through the cloven rocks of Crni Potoci in the Bosna mountains!

Bogdan Zerajic, whom all the world remembers with reverence, the greatest hero of our age! Who needs to hear my speeches less? In my youth, I listened to you in your absence; I did not speak to you, except in oaths. I was your most eager student. Oh, but dear Zerajic, our philosopher our king, could you forgive me this: that I learned the wrong lesson?

You knew too well, your soul would never be released from torment until your gun released its bullet. So you went against Governor Varesanin – no old man, he, and no gentleness in his face; your compassion would not betray you. It did not. One is no hero who strikes true with every blow; he is a magician, rather. Let us have our heroes mortal: five bullets miss, the sixth strikes true. You could not feel the Governor’s blows when he ran uninjured from his five-scarred carriage to kick your bleeding corpse.

“Our hope it was all buried long ago
In one great grave on Kossovo’s broad field.
Except by way of death was never resurrection. . .”

Five bullets miss, the sixth strikes true. I was no coward to leave for myself the spot of sixth assassin, the last shot; I knew it meant success. But what of the shot after the last? Oh, I could say I did not have the time, that the gun was struck from my hand before I put it to my head. But can I not be honest with you, dear Bogdan, as you were with Grdjic? Bogdan Zerajic, your sixth shot ignited a generation waiting to explode. The first five did not need to hit their target. But could you know that, hold that in close to you as you could not hold your life that spilled out onto the Emperor’s bridge?

I could not die not knowing. “It is nothing,” he said: he could speak, he lived. Would he survive the night? When the Austrians came for their vengeance on our people, would he ride at the head of the armies? I tell you with a clear faith, I had no wish to live. But could I die not knowing if I had failed? “Except by way of death was never resurrection.” So who is resurrected now? I am here on earth, so where must my martyred country be? Is this my punishment for living on, to see my Serbia choose the Kingdom of Heaven yet again? Is this my witness, only death?

* * *

Doctor, may I confess a terrible fear? Let me ask, first, if you have heard of a man called Potemkin, a lackey to the Tsarina, Catherine of Russia? It is said that when Catherine would tour the cities of Russia, her Court would not have her eyes affronted by the poverty of her country. And so, orders would go out from Potemkin for workmen to enter each town in advance of her carriage and, tracing the route which she was to follow, they would sweep the streets, place flowers in the windows of shops and houses and apply new paint to the lampposts up to the highest point visible from the carriage – but no higher. The remainder of the town was left untouched. In the country, Potemkin built entire villages of buildings with one wall only, facing the road that Catherine was to travel, that the land would appear more populous. In only a short time, the Tsarina knew not which villages were real and which Potemkin’s, and then was she at peace with her rule.

These Germans have learned something from Potemkin, I think. The other day, some months ago, perhaps, a group of us were led into a long room furnished in white tile; a row of sinks lined the longest wall, and a row of mirrors above them. We stood for nearly an hour before a hose was brought, and water was splashed in the basins; then we were returned to our cells. None of us touched water or basin. From our cells, we heard another group pass through the “washroom,” rumble their approval in German, and then pass on, unseen. It was the last we saw or heard of that place. At the time, I paid scant attention to these events; I spent the hour searching the thirty or forty faces nearest, and none was known to me. But when I looked in the mirror, an aged man stared back. So who can say if anyone was there; I would no longer know him, though he were my own brother, Jovo.

Herr Doctor, is it possible that they are playing Potemkin’s game with me? What was I to see in the water, in the basins? If I am in a simple prison, let me see it for the prison that it is, and not be lost to fantasy. Oh, I know, Herr Doctor, I know that these spirits within me are acting only for my own protection, telling me that I will live, that I must plot how to survive, but you see, they are interfering with my work. And that must not be. My work is the only clear thing, the only cipher for the memory that swirls around me. It is all that tells me what is to be done! I have always been a man of action, even in captivity.

I can hear the skepticism in your frown, my friend. You have diagnosed me completely. I am a paranoid. I have been driven mad by the darkness that creeps out of that day, The Day – my day – and around the walls of the standing cell, into my own chamber. It has made chains darker and heavier than the iron that binds my feet. I can hear the tapping of your pencil in the rain that strikes the edges of the canal. I am not mad; I remember what it was to walk by the canal, and I recall the feel and taste, the aluminum smell of rain, yet still I hear your pencil. I know what paranoia is, Herr Doctor; that is not the name for my disease. My I tell you one last story as my proof?

In June of 1939 – five years ago yesterday, before the fall of Poland – I attempted to restart my journal with a verse, of my own composition, on the subject of the darkness. This was my first Vidovdan in darkness since Versailles; the Germans remembered, and marched me to the standing cell, where I stood for twenty-four hours in a chamber two meters high and a quarter square. To be honest, I found it easier without the arm: less weight, and one less elbow to scrape against one wall or the other, and the dullness of the stump nerves made it easier to lean a portion of my weight. But I did not mention these details in the poem. I had hoped to re-ignite the old passions, the old arguments that once raged within our cups and saucers. But the only response was an astonishing essay signed with the name of Hohenberg. At first, I thought this was surely a pseudonym, and his essay some elaborate jest – news of the death of Bogicevic had just reached us, so you can imagine that a jest was not impossible – but my inquiries determined that in fact the name was genuine. The Archduke’s son was in here with us!

His essay was an extended argument to the effect that my comrades and I had received material assistance and intelligence from the government of the Kaiser in plotting our assassination of his father. The Archduke, he claimed, had a plan for a final solution to the South Slav problem: Federated Trialism. Three Parliaments, German, Hungarian and Slav, would meet over several local legislatures, all of whom would be united in the iron trinity of Emperor, Army and Roman Church. Protestant Junkers bent on the annexation of Austria wanted Franz Ferdinand and his utopian schemes out of the way. His death would mean war between Russia and Austria; knowing Austria to be unable to face Russia and her satellites alone, the Kaiser would, by aiding her, gain decisive influence over the Empire even as it crumbled, leading ultimately to annexation. Hohenberg was writing to inform us that he knew his father’s killer was in this prison, and that, much as he might desire vengeance, what he wanted more earnestly was confirmation. Would I admit that the Kaiser was involved?

I thought at great length about how to respond to the man. Clearly he was paranoid, a madman; clearly also, he was insulting me with the insinuation that I was a common mercenary assassin, and that my comrades and I would have acted out of anything but the purest national feeling. To say that Apis worked with Bogicevic, that is one thing. Did Bogicevic intrigue with the Germans for a separate peace? Undoubtedly – but do not forget, at that time our own ally, France, wanted Serbia to cede holy Macedonia to the Bulgarians, while half of Dalmatia was promised to Italy! Well, this is politics.

I composed an essay in my mind to respond. I used your methods, Herr Doctor, to demonstrate to Hohenberg how he was made a psychological prisoner by my having killed his father before he had a chance to do so himself – I fulfilled his Oedipal dream but, having done the deed for him, I took away his manhood. Now that Germany had finally swallowed his own Fatherland, I reasoned, he associated my usurpation with that of his current jailers. Therefore, he became convinced of the plot with Germany. But this was too long to put on a plate; by this time, even my one arm had begun to shiver, and writing more than a line or two per day was more struggle than I could bear. The solution came in an instant, and I transcribed two lines of a poem that had inspired me during the Czech years:

“The river is moving
The blackbird must be flying.”

The poet was an American, but surely of Serbian extraction; how else could he know the words of our secret soul? The blackbird, of course, refers to Kossovo, the Field of Blackbirds, and therefore to all of history. Hohenberg looks for diplomatic intrigue and double-cross; he should look for Kossovo, for all the world is there. There our people were offered a choice: to be part of history, and win the day in battle; or to be defeated, and for history to be a part of our people. Tsar Lazar was offered the choice: the Kingdom of the Earth or the Kingdom of Heaven. He did not hesitate. And so we lost our lives, our freedom, our king and our kingdom. And daily we lose them still. But there is a gain in all this loss, and that is the knowledge: we know that the key is Kossovo, and one day the world above will be reconciled with the world below. And until that day, every day is the day of battle, when all is lost.

Who is Lazar in our day? Not I. Oh, I fancied myself the heir to Milos, once, the suspected traitor who proves true, who kills the Sultan single-handed, in the Sultan’s own tent, and is then slaughtered by the guards. What a part to play! But I am still alive. I have seen too far beyond my own tale’s end. What is left me? Shall I make lists of murders: this one shot, this one starved? It is no mission for life to be the counting house of the dead. No, I am alive to see and understand; only I must be correct. I do not even know if Serbia is free! So: I must be the tale, I and I alone, for there is no other here with me that I might speak to. Not even you, Herr Doctor, for all my conjurations.

The work must not be frivolous, do you see? You may say, “Well, continue; there is no harm, and besides, what else is there to do?” What else? Why there is hanging to be done! Have I not twice seen the death of my country? Am I not allowed a reprieve for that? In the old days I would have tried to do it; I did, a pair of times, before I lost the arm. But now it is too difficult. And as I now know that I shall never be released, I know too that there must be a reason for my confinement, or all the world is a mockery. Other men, rather than rot, have spent their prison days in writing. Will you mock them, too? Did Cervantes merely pass the time? Did Oscar Wilde? Did Hitler? If so, then why do free men read their solitary ravings? Listen to the words of the song:

“From Jerusalem, the Holy City,
Lo! there flew a grey falcon bird,
and he bore a little swallow.
No! It was not a grey falcon bird;
‘Twas Elijah, ‘twas the holy prophet;
And he beareth not a little swallow,
But a book from God’s Holy Mother,
To the Emperor, from Kossovo field;
He dropped it on the Tsar’s knees,
The book itself began to speak to him.”

That is the bird I have drawn here. You see? And it is made of letters, too, and the letters are the names of men. Cabrinovic and Zerajic are riding on the wings; those talons, dark and light, are Apis and Grdjic; even Mehmet is a tail-feather; and Jovo, my brother, and my dear Jesuit are there, in the cleft of Crni Potoci where the wings meet. Do you see? Who else can be the prophet bird? Cabrinovic, true to the end, was our true and sainted Milos, as Zerajic was before him. Mehmet, who was once our ally, we now know was in the pay of ancient Mrnjavcevic, who cries treachery when he is treasonous himself. I am bound now in Skadar, built of treachery, but the book is written on plates of steel – if I am broken, it shall not be, and if I cannot fly myself, then it shall fly, for swallows too can fly, and into the hands of Lazar. Whoever he may be. I will not know the savior of my people.

* * *

Do you know that Hitler has been calling me a Jew? The man is an ignoramus. Oh, my enemy, it is the insults I shall remember longest, longer than the deaths. The world will know. I shall remember everything.
posted by Noah at 8:38 AM