Fare Well, Illyria

Chapter 13: Crna Gora

Chapter 13 Crna Gora a cartoon published in Borba* on July 19, 1964, was my introduction to Montenegro. The legend above it read: “Titograd—Hotel Crna Gora** — Coffee 120 Dinars.” The drawing, signed D. Savić, was of four adult males with handlebar mustaches—three with suits and neckties—and the fourth gesturing to a waiter, also mustachioed, who stands with a towel over his left shoulder and a pencil perched on his ear. The caption below has the legend: “—Waiter, one coffee and four cups!” To readers familiar with the subject, it illustrated a basic Montenegrin character or at least a caricature thereof: a male-dominated society where the women are expected to stay at home and toil while the men sit around being important—and sipping what was commonly called “Turkish” coffee—thick, black, sweet, and served in tiny cups. In this instance the well-known Borba cartoonist, Dragan Savić (1923–2009), captured the moment when yugoslavia raised consumer prices by more than twenty percent. In the case of Montenegrin men, their coffee had been priced out of reach, but they had to have it, even if only a tiny sip—and in the most prominent site in Titograd, the capital (since 1992 called by its pre-Communist name, Podgorica). The cartoon, which I retained, was a humorous take on a grave matter for most yugoslavs and I took it as a tip to write an article on the significance of the huge price increases. * Borba (Struggle), the daily newspaper published by the Socialist league of Working People of yugoslavia (a.k.a. Communist Party). ** Crna Gora (Black Mountain), Montenegro, in Serbo-Croatian. 146 FARE WELL, ILLYRIA Considering the size of the republic—5,019 square miles (a little larger than Connecticut)—and a population today of 660,000, Montenegro played larger roles than might have been expected, and it boasts: a major poet, Petar II Petrović-Njegoš (1813–1851); a rare legacy of striving for independence which began in the eleventh century and continued with interruptions to the present day; and, already in the eighteenth century, an alliance with russia. I did not travel to Montenegro during my stint as a “Balkan correspondent .” But I did journey to the small republic in the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s. I also came to know the leading Montenegrin of his day, Milovan Djilas (Ðilas) (1911–1995). Immensely proud of his origins, he was unequivocal on the issue that still divides people of the Black Mountains. Montenegrins, he said “are basically Serbs.” (In support of that thesis, in 1918, the last year in which Montenegro was a royal domain, the Kingdom’s passports carried the entry: “Nationality—Serb; Citizenship—Montenegrin.”) My acquaintance with Djilas began by way of The New York Times, whose foreign editor informed me early on that the newspaper had a sort of institutional relationship with the man who at that time was the most famous dissident in the entire Communist world, stretching from Beijing to Moscow and on to Cuba. He was serving the third of his three prison terms (first under the royal yugoslav government and then under the yugoslav Communist regime he had helped to create). His connection with the paper began on Christmas Day 1954, when an interview he gave was published in The Times at great length. In his talk with Jack raymond, one of my “Balkan correspondent” predecessors, Djilas accused the party-state headed by Tito of preserving “totalitarianism.” I dutifully proceeded five blocks south to No. 8 Palmotićeva Street to the Djilas apartment where his wife Stefica resided with their son, aleksa, then ten years old. I followed—unwritten—rules by not engaging in political discussions with Stefica—on the likely assumption the walls had microphones. I brought small presents—including toys for aleksa. In February 1966, Stefica spoke at length about her husband’s incarceration, which had just entered its ninth year—that he had just completed a translation of Milton ’s Paradise Lost and was contemplating other writing projects; that he was now supplied with regular writing paper instead of having to use toilet paper; that he wore gloves in winter because his cell was so cold that water froze. Urged on by Stefica Djilas (herself a Partizan prvoborac, mobilized “from the first day” in 1941 and decorated for bravery!), I wrote an article describing the conditions of Milovan’s incarceration in the very prison, Sremska Mitrovica, where he had been locked up before the war. a day after...