Minut, except that the editor wasn't his usual sympathetic self; he lectured me on the obligation of columnists to respect the rules, adding that if this were to happen again, he'd have no choice. Though I would have much preferred to go back to my pursuit of the sign and the woman, I wrote a piece on the upsurge of anti-Semitism in Serbia. Hatred of other ethnic groups is in effect hatred of oneself, was how I started. It is not the other we fear, we fear ourselves, we fear the changes the presence of others may impose. When I say that I dislike Jews, or Roma, or Croats — the list is endless — I am expressing the fear that under their influence, or under the influence of what they genuinely or symbolically represent, I will be forced to give up some of the convictions that matter to me. Their uprooting of my convictions, no matter how irrational, represents uprooting of my personality. And so, I went on, if I am not to change, they must be branded, isolated, expelled, and, if necessary, utterly destroyed. But a person who dislikes members of other ethnic groups, dislikes, I declared, his or her own people, hence, if I announce that I dislike foreigners, I am admitting that I live in a void, stripped of anyone's love. And a person who has no love, given or offered, is no longer human, for love is what defines us in the system of nature we inhabit. The rising number of anti-Semitic incidents, I continued, is still small in comparison to the number of such incidents in the so-called democratic countries, but these statistics, no matter how attractive and dear to the state and politicians, are no comfort whatever to the victims of anti-Semitism. It is high time, I concluded, for the authorities to realize that this is a fire which, if not extinguished in time, may easily become a blazing conflagration that will no longer be possible to put out. Then, of course, I wrote, it will be too late, so speed is of the essence, and while there is time, we must stomp on the viper. Not just the viper of anti-Semitism, but the viper of every form of hatred, whether rooted in ethnic, sexual, or ideological differences. I titled the piece "In the Snake's Nest." The editor read the text twice before he looked at me. Many people will not like this, he said. It is mine to write, I said, and the rest is up to them. Yes, said the editor, but who are they? We shall see, I answered, not knowing that I would not have long to wait. He published the piece several days later, and on that day, or more precisely, that evening, I went to the theater. I don't remember the title of the play, I think it was an adaptation of a novel by one of our young writers, something about voluntary exile and escaping war, but I know that it was performed at the National Theater to a half-empty house. Three or four seats to my right an elderly man smacked his lips in his sleep; in the row in front a young man with a crewcut and a red-haired young woman never stopped kissing; to my left, in the first seat in the row, sat a middle-aged woman: whenever I looked over, she was looking at me. Once she smiled, brushed a lock of hair from her cheek, pursed her lips, and blew me a kiss. As hard as I tried to focus on the chaotic scene changes and the constant dips into the past, in the end it was a mystery to me why the mother was dying and the protagonist, apparently her son, took his clothes off and ran naked around the stage. When the son finally stood still and his penis stopped swinging, the curtain dropped. There was a scattering of reluctant applause as the mother and son appeared in front of the curtain. The son was no longer naked; a colorful patch of cloth covered his loins. The applause died down, they bowed, then retreated behind the curtain. The elderly man to my right was still asleep; the woman to my left had departed before the applause; the young man and woman stood up and stretched; my foot had fallen asleep, so I moved slowly toward the exit, waddling like a duck. Outside it was drizzling, yet the square in front of the theater was thronged with people. I looked to the left and to the right but saw no one familiar. Many years ago, you could find people selling hash on this square, but now, even if they were there, I couldn't spot them. I found a table in one of the nearby cafés, and to blaring music, mostly classic rock, I had a cappuccino. That's thunder, said the man at the counter in the break between two songs by Cream. I couldn't imagine how he could have heard it, but I took this as a sign that it was time for me to head home. And sure enough, as I was walking downhill to the Zeleni Venac bus stop, there was another rumble of thunder, then it started to rain, and while I was on the bus to Zemun, the rain turned into a real downpour. When I got off the bus at my stop, I ducked and dashed to my building, and there, after I had hopped over the last puddle, I bumped into a man at the entranceway. In fact I spotted him at the last moment, which allowed me to slow down a little and diminish the impact of the collision, and he seemed to have seen me, because he greeted me with arms wide open. My face ended up on his chest for an instant, while my arms encircled his back, and anyone seeing us would have thought we were embracing after a long separation. I pulled myself up, ready to apologize, but the person gripped my arm tightly and, through clenched teeth, ordered me to keep quiet. Then over my shoulder, as if speaking into a void, he said everything was fine. I turned and saw three other young men. In the wan light of the street lamp, weakened by the gloom of the storm, they looked a lot like the man standing before me, gripping my arm ever more tightly. Let's go, he said, and shoved me toward them. I thought I would fall, but the men grabbed me with a practiced ease: the one in the middle went for my neck, while the other two each reached for an arm. I should, of course, have guessed what was coming, but the only thing I could think of was that I would burst out laughing if they took me to a car and tied a blindfold over my eyes. We turned into Teslina Street, where it was darker still because of the trees full of spring leaves. I tried to say something two or three times, but each time I was silenced by a squeeze to the neck or a jab in the side. At the end of the street, where a long time ago the railway tracks used to cross, we clambered through a twisted metal fence into a nursery school yard and through the bushes and came round to the back of the building, where it was pitch-dark. The men holding me stood so close I could hear them breathing. If I had leaned over an inch I would have been leaning against one of them; had I straightened my fingers I would have touched their faces. I didn't lean over, I didn't move a finger: I listened to the rain fall and pretended this was happening to someone else. Tell me one thing, said the fellow who had been standing by the door to my building, how can you bear to fraternize with those slimy creatures who obsess about one thing and one thing only? I wasn't certain whom he had in mind though I had an idea, but for the life of me I couldn't guess what it was these people were obsessed with. What thing? I asked. So we're playing a game, said the man, are we? Before I had the chance to say another word, his fist shot into my gut. I gasped for air, my mouth yawning, then my knees buckled and I dropped to the ground. The men behind me lifted me right up. Now you know what I am talking about, don't you? said the man. Sure, I said, though I had no clue. A rat is a rat is a rat, he said, and they go on living in the dark, all in the hope that one day they will rule the world. Sure, I said, just in case. However, said the man, there's one thing I will never understand: how an honest, true Serb can choose to side with them and then get on the case of other Serbs who criticize them and expose them for who they really are. When I had finally regained my breath, I understood whom he had in mind, but I said nothing, fearful I might be punched in the gut again. Say something, said the man, don't make me wait. I was silent. This time the blow came from behind, in the area of my kidneys. Did you hear the man's question? said a voice, or should we give those ears a twist? Instead of unmasking them, said the man, you defend them; instead of publishing the truth, you obscure it; instead of being true to who you are, you are being something else. Tell me, he went on, is this normal? I didn't have much choice: No, I said. So why do you call Serbia a snake's nest, said the man, and Serbs vipers to be stomped on? He didn't wait for my answer but slammed his fist into my belly. My knees betrayed me again. If it hadn't been for the men who were at the ready, and I must admit, practiced at putting me back on my feet, I would have lain there on the ground, gasping like a beached fish. If you've got to write, he said, at least write the truth; there have been enough lies. He dipped his hand into his pocket and for a moment I thought he was pulling a knife, but instead he produced several folded sheets of papers and pressed them into my hand. We're out of here, he said. The other men released me and followed him. I watched them walk away. My knees were knocking, pain was rising in my gut, my eyes were tearing. I tried to take a step, but every step ached. I had to stop by a plastic penguin with a spring for feet and a seat fastened to its head. I sat down and the penguin bounced. It was still raining. I finally made it home, stripped off my wet clothes, filled a hot-water bottle, got into bed, and spread the sheets of paper I had been given before me. I didn't have to read every word because after the first few lines I got the gist. The opening page dealt with the Aryan origins of the Serbian people and the need to preserve their racial purity, all those of mixed heritage, as well as members of the tainted peoples who lived in Serbia, and they included Jews, Gypsies, Muslims, and Albanians, would be sent back to their homelands, or else be relocated to special fenced-in areas. On the following pages, however, the Jews were the only group to receive attention. Here and there overt mention was made of the need for the world to rid itself of the Jews, who always found ways to control the governments of major countries, the flow of capital, and the mass media. We are living, it went on to say, in the claws of an international Zionist conspiracy, a conspiracy Hitler unmasked and brought to the verge of collapse. He did not succeed, it said near the end, in finishing the job, but he did show the direction all true Aryans must follow. Then a sketch of a skull encircled by a slogan: "Death to Zionism, freedom to the people." There are moments in life when one doesn't know whether to cry or laugh, I told Marko later, and that was one such moment. I clutched the hot-water bottle as if it were a life belt. What I had read could easily have been dismissed as the voice of a crackpot, but it was not a lone voice, it was one voice from a large chorus in which many, like the three who had looked after me in the nursery school yard, had no vocal talent and made up for their lack with skills of a different kind. I tried to summon their faces, which in the feeble light by the entrance to my building had seemed alike; their identical closely cropped haircuts, like those of soldiers, no doubt helped. The fellow who had addressed me, and who punched me in the gut several times, had a slanted scar on his forehead, that was all I remembered. The rain, the trees on Teslina Street, the smashed street lamps, made me remember what I had felt rather than seen. And I felt, as I told Marko later, something like grief, an emptiness that left me as limp as a straw doll. Did it ever occur to you, asked Marko, that they could have killed you? It did, I said, especially when they took me into the bushes behind the nursery school, I really was dead for a few minutes. So how is it, chuckled Marko, on the other side? I chuckled too, but Isak Levi and Jakov Švarc didn't. They read every line carefully, studied the sheets of paper on both sides, lifted the paper to the light, compared certain sections with other texts cut out of newspapers or photocopied from books. We sat around the kitchen table in Jaša Alkalaj's studio; Jaša wasn't in Belgrade then. The table was sprayed with an array of colors, mostly blue, though that color was rarely seen in his paintings, at least in the ones that hung on the walls. I don't like this, Jakov Švarc said, finally, it does not bode well. This is one big pile of nonsense, I said, and there is no point in paying attention to it. We paid no attention to another pile of nonsense, said Jakov Švarc, and look where it got us. The same thing would have happened, Isak Levi spoke up, even if we had paid all the attention in the world, and it is pointless to dupe ourselves with conditional sentences. Spare me the linguistic analyses, Jakov Švarc snapped back, the only thing a person can get from them is heartburn. History is not a novel that unfolds according to established rules. But it is also not a book, rejoined Isak Levi, that can be leafed through now from the beginning, then from the end. Experience tells us, continued Jakov Švarc as he waved the sheets of paper, that something like this always starts innocently and ends up in the most tragic way imaginable. So what now? asked Isak Levi, should we kill ourselves? No, said Jakov Švarc, we should keep ourselves alive. There was silence in the studio. Low tapping sounds could be heard, as if an alarm clock shut in a sock dra