Then, in the seventies, there was a rumor that she had political ambitions. Madame insisted on having a seat in the Central Committee. The only grounds for such a decision was the fact that she was the Marshal’s wife. But apparently, as Yugoslavia was not Romania, where Elena Ceausescu even formally shared power with her husband (as a member of the highest party and state institutions), Madame was flatly refused. After that the gossip was that Madame, with a few officers, had even contemplated a coup d’état! If this were true, it would have made Koki wonder if this kind of hunger for power was maybe contagious. But was it true? Koki can only tell you that after 1975 Madame was no longer seen here or in the Marshal’s vicinity. Not that Koki was sorry! You see, when Koki met her for the first time, he was just a little birdie, and everybody was nice to him, held him, patted him on his little yellow crest, and played with him. But not her, no sir! She was indifferent to him. Probably in her village in Lika they shot at birds. For Madame, Koki was just that, a bird to shoot at. Oh poor, poor Koki, he could have lost his little head… When he inquired among the personnel—Koki always had his trustworthy sources—he heard that she had been removed. Koki swears to you that this was the word they used, removed from the palace.
But the conspiracy theory is not likely. Knowing the person, Koki is convinced that in her case the matter was more banal. She was simply jealous of people who managed to get too close to her husband, be they men or women. Sometimes her behavior became farcicaclass="underline" She would brandish her pistol, threatening to kill the masseuse sisters! Even to kill him! “There will be blood!” she allegedly shouted. Now, to threaten to kill a masseuse or two perhaps wouldn’t be much of a scandal. But to threaten the Marshal, even if he was her husband—and such fights can happen in a family—that was an entirely different thing. Her threats were taken seriously by his security people, by his doctors, by almost everyone around him. Or perhaps the threats were only used as an excuse to move her away from him—in such cases, one should always consider this possibility.
Ah, you are laughing at this story! Yeah, it sounds kind of funny, the Marshal was already over eighty when the “masseuse incident” happened. However, nothing is funny when it comes to a man in his position. As the result of putting his life in jeopardy—this is how it was formulated—Madame was removed indeed. Not because she threatened him (or perhaps even plotted to overthrow him); that is legitimate, people do it in every court in the world. But because her behavior was the symptom of a betrayal. Trust is a very precious commodity for a man in power, perhaps the most precious of all. That is why such a man doesn’t have friends; he knows that people are motivated by personal interest to befriend him. As a rule, he could never be sure if his best friend wasn’t perhaps plotting to take his place. If loyalty is the most appreciated and rewarded quality, then disloyalty is the most severely punished. Even today, after all this time, Koki is convinced that the real problem between them was that the Marshal had trusted Madame and she had let him down. He must have been very sad when he realized that his own wife had betrayed him. That was the main reason she had to go. But he did not send her to a real prison, oh no! Just to a house prison, where she still lives. You did not know that she is still alive? Of course, being so much younger than the Marshal, she has survived him by almost twenty years now. But she never speaks, and when she does, she only complains about how she was treated after his death! You can’t hear a word from her about her life with him—or anything else of interest, for that matter. Koki is convinced that she is not allowed to speak; she simply knows too much.
Afterward, people here said that Madame was very lucky. Because, you know, he was not exactly a softie. He could be cruel. He did not hesitate to send a friend to prison for much less. Some of his comrades-in-arms even disappeared without a trace. Not far away from the famous Brioni archipelago, where we are now, was the infamous Bare Island, to name but one such hideous place. It was no more than a piece of stone tossed into the middle of the Adriatic Sea—no trees, no grass, nothing. In 1948, by decree of the Marshal, the most terrible prison one could imagine was established there. Political prisoners were forced to work in a stone quarry and carry heavy stones from one side of the island to the other—and then back again. I know somebody who had a brother, an army officer, who ended up there. By chance, that morning in 1948, he did not listen to the news because he had drunk too much the night before. The price he paid for being uninformed was high: He came to the meeting in his garrison not knowing that during the night the Marshal had split with Stalin. As yesterday’s policy had been to align with the Soviets, he expressed his disbelief at the news. Sure enough, he was sentenced as a “Stalinist” and served several years on that wretched island. He was only one of some fifteen thousand who passed through the Bare Island “labor camp,” as it was called.
“Our revolution does not eat its children!” the Marshal used to claim at the time. But that simply was not true. The Marshal never appreciated, to put it mildly, opinions different from his. His fear of a so-called counterrevolution was great, although nobody ever defined exactly what that meant. Generally speaking counterrevolution covered just about everything he thought was directed against him, since he personified the Communist Party and the government. Freedom of information was certainly not his kind of thing! Yet in the last ten years of the regime, the party’s control mellowed: As long as editors in the media stuck to the general party ideology, they were quite free to publish the news, information, and even critical comments.
The Marshal was a ladies’ man, yes he was. He flirted with every woman in sight. Even with such a distinguished person as Britain’s Queen Elizabeth. Okay, he didn’t exactly flirt, but he did do his best to charm her and many other glamorous and famous ladies. He spoke fluent Russian and German and basic English—not bad for a locksmith. Koki already told you that he was a Communist with style, which made him an exotic bird himself! But in Koki’s long life he saw that what attracts people the most is power. Regardless of his looks, charm, or other abilities—of which he apparently had enough—his power itself was magnetic. It pulled people in; it drew them near.
From those exciting times and important visitors to the summer residence at Brioni, Koki remembers the food most of all. It was usually prepared by his cook, a pleasant local woman who understood his fascination, not so much with the food itself, but with its purpose, a feast. A feast meant entertainment, music, meeting interesting people, animated conversations, new faces, new ideas. Such a feast, to be sure, was at the same time a demonstration of his benevolence and his might. An autocrat but a hedonist, a benevolent one compared to Stalin, some say. Koki heard that Stalin’s lifestyle was that of an ascetic monk.