So long, and have a nice holiday in Paris!
II. A COMMUNIST WITH STYLE
And who the fuck are you? Why are you staring at Koki? Have you never seen a talking parrot before? A singing parrot? A swearing parrot? Well, then you should visit a Web site called YouTube — there are lots of parrots there. One of Koki’s favorites is Menino, singing the “Queen of the Night” aria from Mozart’s Magic Flute. Menino’s performance is absolutely outstanding, Koki feels very proud as he watches him on the computer in the lobby of the hotel. But Koki also enjoys watching people watching Menino and their astonishment at seeing the green bird sing Mozart. You think that monkeys are your closest relatives. But can they sing? The hell they can! They merely shriek; that’s the closest they come to it. No, we parrots are the closest to you people for at least several reasons: First, we can sing and we can talk. Besides, you people often behave like parrots yourselves, especially here, in the presence of bigwigs. You imitate us, repeating whatever any of the dignitaries say as if it were sacrosanct. It is funny to see how some people from the president’s various summer entourages here in the Croation president’s summer residence listen to and repeat every word, as if they believe they can benefit from it. But I guess this is how every royal household functions, with its parrots and hawks, cats and dogs, cows and sheep — the entire menagerie. Sometimes Koki entertains himself by guessing who is what in that coterie — in the “court camarilla” as the Marshal, the former president of the former Yugoslavia, used to say with contempt. Although, where would the Marshal himself have been without his camarilla?
Oh, Koki can see that you are a tourist and he can guess that you are here because of the Marshal. And you expect Koki to tell you stories about him, yes? Yes. Koki used to be part of the Marshal’s zoo here on one of the fourteen islands in the Brioni archipelago that he used as his summer residence during his reign. At that time, of course, Koki did not need to entertain people like you. Oh, no! You bloody tourists could not get anywhere near this place. Koki must say that he performed for a very different kind of public then — for heads of state, aristocrats, and movie stars, no less. To give you an idea, suffice it to say that the Marshal received here Eleanor Roosevelt and Queen Elizabeth, as well as Jacqueline Kennedy, Che Guevara and Fidel Castro, Haile Selassie and Indira Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru and Nikita Khrushchev, Josephine Baker and Princess Margaret — not to mention Hollywood film stars! And in the times before Tito, the archipelago was visited by Archduke Franz Ferdinand and Kaiser Wilhelm II, along with aristocrats from Vienna and Budapest, Munich and Berlin. Those were the days.
But now, although the presidential residence is still here, and every new president comes regularly to enjoy it (that has not changed), the country has somehow shrunk, and there are not many such distinguished visitors coming here anymore. Either the last two presidents were not as fascinating as the old one, or the shrunken country is no longer very important, Koki can’t tell. He only knows that, because the new shrunken country has a democracy instead of a dictatorship now, tourists can visit and stare at Koki, expecting to be entertained. Nowadays, Koki is just a tourist worker, and he makes his living by chatting in five languages. But he is not stupid! In the last twenty years Koki, too, has changed: It is one thing to be a spoiled clown — another to be a tourist attraction. Koki politely greets visitors and Koki politely swears, yes, that’s true. But if they want more, Koki wants more food in return! It is called bribery, but corruption is a very popular, recognized, and even rewarded way of making your living in this new state. Ah, I see that I have to explain this: We also had corruption in the former Yugoslavia, but it was indirect; it had to do with who knew whom, while now the new, additional element is money.
So, if you feed Koki some nuts (which you are not supposed to do) he might decide to tell you a story or two. Agreed? Well, then we are all set.
You must have read a few things about the Marshal, at least in your guidebooks. There are over a thousand books written about him — too many, and not too good, I hear. And what can you read in them? That he was one of the greatest historical persons? Or perhaps a dictator in Yugoslavia, a country ruled by the Communist Party, which collapsed some twenty years ago in a spate of bloody wars? Why, you ask? Because every little nation wanted to have its own little nation-state! Imagine, if there had been more than one parrot on this island — Perhaps we, too, could have asked for independence? Terrible that these wars in the nineties took so many lives, some two hundred thousand, they say — but that is another story. As is the Marshal’s historical role in all of it. About which Koki, naturally, knows too little, because he is just a little birdie.
Let Koki save you the trouble and simplify what is usually written about the Marshal in guidebooks, textbooks, history books, and the like: It is said that he was a locksmith by profession; he was born into a poor peasant family; and he ended up as a prisoner in Russia during World War I. He became a member of the Communist Party in Yugoslavia in the thirties and fought his way up — fought against fascism as commander of the partisan army, when Yugoslavia was occupied by the Germans and Italians during World War II. Afterward, he finally became president — once he had carried out a Communist revolution, of course — and, in the best tradition of such states, at the same time held the highest position in the army as well. The Marshal also founded the so-called nonaligned movement in the sixties. All these African and Arab countries, offended by their colonizers, they loved him, yes they did. At the time one could take for granted that his own people loved him too, even though he was an autocratic ruler. But that is not so certain any longer; many dispute that belief. Mind you, all this you can see at the museum building nearby; there is an exhibition of photos in his glory! But Koki doesn’t like this museum; it is a bit morbid. The whole ground floor is filled with stuffed animals! Poor souls were given to him and died soon after arrival. Ah, life is a whore and then you die.
But to all this, Koki says that facts are very boring! They tell you nothing about his character, his habits and passions, his five (or more?) wives. How shrewd he was, how very intelligent, and also how very cruel. How terribly vain and deluded, too. Yes, there are so many more things to know about such a person.
Koki could tell you more about the Marshal because he knew him well. For many years they used to spend hours and hours together over the summer, talking or just contemplating in silence the beauty of the place. And Koki could tell him everything; Koki was a fearless little birdie. After all, why should such a big, historical persona be afraid of Koki’s words? Of anybody’s words, for that matter? Later Koki understood that being a bird was to his advantage. Had he been a man, his words might have landed him in prison! Yes, that had happened, even with his good friends. You don’t agree with him? Off to prison with you! It was that simple.
But though Koki lived in a cage then (and now), and therefore was a kind of prisoner himself, he was free to say whatever he wanted! It is a contradiction to even think about any kind freedom if you are living in a cage, yes. But at least the Marshal would let you think that living in that cage was your own choice. Indeed, he spent his life doing just that, making some twenty million Yugoslavs believe they were free. Well, their cage was more colorful than others of their kind, but it was still a cage. Yet people believed him, as did Koki-birdie, too.