Then the thought flashed abruptly through his mind, like an electric shock extending deep into his core, that he had not paid off his debts. Not the spiritual but the earthly ones. (As for the spiritual debts, not a single person has ever paid them back to anyone: not to God nor one’s own mother, neither to one’s language nor one’s homeland.) No, he wasn’t thinking of those debts; he’d be taking them along with him into that other world. (And if that world truly exists, if there really is a reason for it to exist, then it is precisely this: for a person to pay back his creditors.) He was simply thinking of the kind of debts that one can settle with money, even if only in a symbolic way, like a word of greeting, a handshake, now that he could no longer postpone this any further, now that the time had come to settle up with this world. Even the modest subvention — of two hundred crowns — that was provided to him by the Croatian “Progress” society and that reached him every month without fail (something that was a genuine miracle in these turbulent times and was a real credit to those Habsburg institutions, whatever else people thought of them) had to be parsed sensibly, distributed wisely: so that everybody benefited from it and no one was wronged.
He watched as the drops bulged in the bottle fastened over his head, and he counted them, one by one, the way one counts the beads of a rosary, or gold coins.
To Ivan Matkovšek, the Wachtmeister, who opened my eyes to landscapes, the way a soldier learns to read terrain from a map: two crowns.
To Ajkuna Hreljić, the first person to take my hand and lead me across the bridge: two crowns.
To Ana Matkovšek, who taught me the language of flowers and herbs: two crowns.
To Draginja Trifković, the schoolteacher, who taught me my first letters of the alphabet: two crowns.
To Idriz Azizović, nicknamed “the Arab,” who taught me how to listen to the human voice, which can be a musical instrument: two crowns.
To Ljubomir Popović, who taught me kindness, because it isn’t enough simply to have a kind heart, and goodness has to be learned like the alphabet: two crowns.
To Milan Gavrilović, who taught me friendship, because friendship also has to be learned like a foreign language: two crowns.
To Ratko Bogdanović, who taught me that friendship is not sufficient, since even it can be selfish: two crowns.
To Jovan Vasić, schoolteacher, who encouraged me when I needed bravery to take the path of literature: two crowns.
To Tugomir Alaupović, who watched over my soul and my body as he did his very own: two crowns.
To Mijo Poljak, professor, who enabled me to read German, which was most useful throughout my life and furnished me with intellectual diversion: two crowns.
To Dimitrije Mitrinović, who revealed to me the existence of other worlds, better and happier, beyond these hapless provincial backwaters: two crowns.
To Vladimir Gaćinović, who uncovered for me that region of the world and the soul that is like unto the dark side of the moon: two crowns.
To Bogdan Žerajić, who poisoned me with doubt about the worth of words, leading me to regard them with distrust and weigh them out one by one, as if they were gold pieces: two crowns.
To Fanika and Evgenija Gojmerac, who poisoned me with music and love; but music and love — they are like twin sisters holding hands. one of them playing a polonaise by Chopin and the other kindling the holy fire of love in me with her poems and letters. for in the beginning was love: four crowns.
A drop had separated from the bottle, and another now started to well up in its place. That’s fitting, he thought. That one was about two people, so each deserves a bead of the rosary; each deserves a memory.
To Milan Rešetar, Jozef Jireček, Vilhelm Jeruzalem, Oskar Evald, Jozef Klem, my professors, who taught me that knowledge is everything, while ignorance begets fanaticism and spiritual darkness: ten crowns.
To Doctor Oskar Aleksander, laryngologist from Ilica Street, who operated on my throat after explaining to me in advance the point of the surgical procedure and who treated me like a human being, not a sheep: two crowns.
To the waiter in the “Green Salon” in Krakow, who served me herbal tea the way I like it, and the way the state of my health requires, and who did so gladly and with a smile: two crowns.
To Helena Iržikovski, who instructed me in the deciphering of the “divine hieroglyphics”—musical notes — so that I wouldn’t stand there, dumb as an ox, before this Gothic architecture in lyrical form: two crowns.
To Jan Loc Nepomucen, who disclosed to me the fact that upon the magnificent tree of languages every bird sings in its own way, and that our preferences for certain languages are every bit as individual, arbitrary, and mysterious as our choices in love: two crowns.
To Marjan Zdjehovski, who laid bare for me the deep roots of that Slavic linguistic tree from which branched off the languages of Pushkin, Słowacki, Murn, and my “Bosnian,” too: two crowns.
To Maja Nižetić and Jerko Čulić, to whom I became indebted for gifts, words, and favors during my prison term: four crowns.
To the unfortunate Vladimir Čerini, who gave me a thousand dinars when I needed it the most, and who gave it “anonymously,” so to speak, so that the recipient, who was in trouble, did not perceive it as charity or a humiliation: two crowns.
To the unknown guard at the prison in Maribor, who pushed a scrap of paper and a tiny pencil under my door when writing meant survival for me: two crowns.
To the judge from Split, Jerko Moskovito, who assisted me in regaining my freedom at my trial, and who thereby demonstrated the degree to which one’s personal attitude and courage in hard times are capable of changing that fate which cowards believe to be inevitable and pronounce to be fate or historical necessity: two crowns.
To Fr. Alojzije Perčinlić, who revealed to me the strict, penurious, and industrious life of Franciscan monks; had I not become a “poet,” I would have become a priest: two crowns.
To Stipica Lukić, a Franciscan novice, who brought me bread, belief, and hope in the prison at Zenica: two crowns.
To the honorable sisters Hermina and Eparhija, who showed me by their example how one can subordinate the body to spiritual concerns, something that I tried to apply to my own life, within the limits of my own modest powers: four crowns.
To Count Ivo Vojnović, my benefactor and Maecenas, who saw in me that which I myself had hoped to possess: talent, that divinely bestowed blessing and curse: two crowns.
To Mr. Dinko Lukšić from Sutivan, whose hospitality made my days more pleasant and improved my health so that I could complete my volume of poetry: two crowns.
To the young investigating magistrate, a Viennese, who, on the occasion of my arrest in Split, allowed me to send for my personal effects, which had remained behind in my pension; he brought me Kierkegaard’s Either/Or, and that book would end up having a decisive impact on my intellect: two crowns.
To the sentry who allowed me to retrieve this book from the prison warehouse, where they kept the items they confiscated from us: two crowns.
To Jaromir Studnjički, the bookseller and bibliophile from Sarajevo, who exposed me to the “cosmic light” of books: two crowns.