The Time of the Goats

20

132 20 Fol­ low­ ing ­ Changa’s dis­ ap­ pear­ ance with the goats, my ­ father was tor­ mented by dark ­ thoughts. He was dis­ turbed on both a per­ sonal and a gen­ eral level. He had lost one of the best ­ friends of his life. In this per­ son he had dis­ cov­ ered the im­ por­ tance of sin­ cer­ ity and how sim­ plic­ ity in a per­ son could be sa­ cred. ­ What’s more, ­ through ­ Changa’s ­ real-life ex­ pe­ ri­ ence, my ­ father had ­ tested fun­ da­ men­ tal hypoth­ e­ ses re­ lat­ ing to the de­ vel­ op­ ment and ev­ o­ lu­ tion of the knowl­ edge he had drawn from his vast array of books. He who shows re­ straint after vic­ tory is per­ haps the true vic­ tor,­ thought my ­ father, in­ spired by the ex­ am­ ple of ­ Changa and the goats. After the loss of the goats, my ­ father was sure that once again, for the nth time—who knows how many times—the vic­ tors them­ selves would be de­ feated. In fact, he re­ gret­ ted that this beau­ ti­ fully ­ thought-out­ system was des­ tined for in­ ev­ i­ ta­ ble col­ lapse in the near fu­ ture, ­ though he did not know when. The show­ down with ­ Changa had ­ merely an­ nounced its im­ mi­ nent col­ lapse. My ­ father ­ deeply la­ mented that some fu­ ture gen­ er­ a­ tion of his de­ scen­ dants might suf­ fer. His com­ mit­ ment to nat­ u­ ral ev­ o­ lu­ tion, the 133 dis­ cov­ ery and study of its laws, here re­ sem­ bled one of the count­ less il­ lu­ sions prev­ a­ lent among the many ­ self-taught in­ tel­ lec­ tu­ als in the Bal­ kans. He had many books about Dar­ win and ev­ o­ lu­ tion. ­ Through his study of nat­ u­ ral se­ lec­ tion he ­ wanted to com­ pre­ hend all that had been lost in the Bal­ kans due to its ac­ cursed back­ ward­ ness, far be­ hind other Eu­ ro­ pean na­ tions. He was pro­ foundly ­ struck that in the Bal­ kans, each fam­ ily, each com­ mu­ nity, had to rise again, start again at the be­ gin­ ning, build on the ruins of the pre­ ced­ ing ­ generations’ de­ feats, un­ able to build on a nat­ u­ ral con­ ti­ nu­ ity of val­ ues. From the les­ sons he drew from his books about the fall of the great em­ pires in the Bal­ kans and the fall of the Ot­ to­ man Em­ pire, which he him­ self had ex­ pe­ ri­ enced in Con­ stan­ tin­ o­ ple, he ­ deeply la­ mented that his life, and the life of his fam­ ily, had been over­ pow­ ered first by Fas­ cism, now by Com­ mu­ nism.­ Father was ­ afraid that if Sta­ lin, Ja­ nis­ sary that he was, ­ should also prove him­ self in­ ca­ pable of show­ ing re­ straint after vic­ tory, there would be an end­ less dis­ play of ­ self-aggrandizement and a re­ shap­ ing of the world. ­ Father’s study of Bal­ kan em­ pires had led him to con­ clude that when­ ever Ja­ nis­ sary ­ turned em­ per­ ors ­ reached the ­ height of their pow­ ers, to prove the im­ men­ sity of their ­ fickle souls, they would be in­ clined to main­ tain the il­ lu­ sion of vic­ tory at the ex­ pense of ­ others’ de­ feats as well as their own. This was their Ja­ nis­ sary par­ a­ dox, which had led to the most ex­ treme ­ cruelty in the Bal­ kans. A ­ deeply ­ rooted ter­ ror ruled their souls, and that ter­ ror was trans­ mit­ ted to their em­ pires with yet ­ greater ruth­ less­ ness. My ­ father would then slip into his chi­ mer­ i­ cal re­ flec­ tions about em­ pires. All he ­ needed was some small pre­ text. But this was no small pre­ text. It re­ lated to ­ Changa, who was, in ­ Father’s view, a ver­ i­ ta­ ble Bal­ kan ­ anti-emperor. My ­ father did not think of ­ Changa ­ solely from the per­ spec­ tive of dream, il­ lu­ sions, and myth. All our fates were bound to ­ Changa’s fate. He was our des­ tiny. Both old and young...