Sins Come Back Even in Sleep

Aleksandar Tisma is from Novi Sad and in the old way of looking at things, that means European since it includes multi-lingualism, European culture, the charm of civic order and frowning at stupidity. His books show that he has the will to understand people and their not always pretty passion.

The Germans saw his Book Of Blam (playword - in his book, Blam is a person, but the name in Serbo-Croatian means embarrassment-ed. note) as the publishing discovery of 1995 and Tisma is back in Novi Sad after a tour reading his writing in Germany. The Leipzig award for European understanding came recently.

If the Germans are still "in conflict with themselves" is something similar coming for us?

"It is. You can't lose what you live through. You can't go through a trauma or sin without it reappearing at least in your sleep. It has to come. The Germans had the misfortune, or fortune, of being beaten. The Americans then imposed de-nazification and it is still ongoing. When I was in Berlin they told me I would read in a synagogue. I went there that evening. We went and in and were searched. The police searched everyone, even me. I was not prepared for something like that. We went in and the hall was full of young people. Half way through the reading and discussion I realized that people had come there under orders. The audience was made up mainly of students who had been given the choice of going to Ravensvbruck concentration camp and be told what Germans did there or come to a literary evening. That shows two things: de-nazification is ongoing but it causes reactions - they were afraid someone would bring in a bomb or shoot at people. It's naive to think that events like those are easily gotten over.

We were drawn into a war which was not necessary which we could have avoided and achieved the same results in which we committed many crimes just as others did. When that will be settled is a big question. Since no one won it will be hard to impose a cleansing. Borka Pavicevic is trying through her Center for Decontamination. But that is voluntary. The people there have already been decontaminated, the ones who were never advocates of war. It's hard to imagine that things will get going on their own. The cleansing process will probably start from the results of the Dayton agreement, the ones that are considered negative. People will start asking themselves what we did, what was done to us? The masses won't like the de facto foreign authorities in Bosnia and perhaps there will be an accounting with themselves though the questions; why did we allow this, who allowed, it who signed, who's to blame. And after that; what were we doing there."

Will we ever see our Ravensbrucks or pictures of the mass executions and graves that the world is increasingly discussing?

"Unfortunately, the only ones to see that are the ones who were against everything. The Germans were forced, after the war, to see death camps. Man alone won't face up to that. I'm afraid that all this will never come to light, that it will all be forgotten and then a hundred years later someone will write a book and people will be surprised. Still, nothing can be done without leaving a trace. Even ordinary people feel something bad has happened; no one has a real feeling of relief. That exists but I'm afraid there will be no mass catharsis."

You book is a story of crime but neither your hero nor you se it as unnecessary. In a way, that is the collective feeling in Vojvodina?

"I don't know. It's a mentality thing, personal. When I look back I never took revenge. There something from Vojvodina in that. It's a kind of civic maturity."

How do you cure hatred, you Vojvodinians?

"That isn't unknown: it's very hard. There's always a number of people who are prepared to do evil. This current seeming calm is not just the result of loss of hope but also the result of blood letting. People are fed of blood letting and now they want to rest. What kind of new haters will this breed..."

Has Vojvodina learned something in this conflict?

"It has. But, remember the edge we were on when they started abusing people, Hungarians, Croats... It could have flared up if there had been a few more warmongers."

Does Vojvodina exist?

"It exists. It still exists. Thanks to the fact that this war has ended the people who wanted to impose their national justice here won't succeed because the international community will be watching and if we create incidents we'll easily find ourselves under sanctions again. For now, by peace or by force, we will have to live in peace."

In Budapest you spoke recently in Hungarian and Serbian recalling that as the good tradition of Vojvodina politicians. When was that multi-lingualism lost?

"It was lost with the creation of Yugoslavia because the Serb element prevailed which did not have an understanding for it. Between wars, something was kept by inertia. After World War II it disappeared completely and became a pure formality. Some time ago, as the final result, the multi-lingual sign was taken down from the Vojvodina Writers' Association building and replaced with one in Cyrillic. Even the SPS, a party, has a sign with five languages on it. Vojvodina's writers don't. Why should a Hungarian writer who writes in Hungarian and lives in Vojvodina not see the name of his association in his language? Or a Slovak? Or a Romanian? At the same time, the association organizes symposia and round tables where they speak English or French because of their guests."

Could this ugly, dirty Balkan war have been predicted?

"I always mistrusted human nature, oaths and bragging. Once it happened I saw that things were much worse than I imagined. When everyone, almost everyone, turned from being reasonable people to warmongers I saw how much it went beyond my own mistrust. Few people stayed sober. I have a friend in Croatia, he's not a writer, he's a Croat nationalist but he's not a chauvinist and he's not bloodthirsty. I got a letter from him saying that all this will pass and inviting me to his house in Hvar. That overjoyed me. The more so since he's a nationalist. He hasn't lost his reason.

Perhaps the greatest loss of this war campaign are the people who left. I know a mass of families who lost their offspring because they left for Australia, New Zealand or Canada. This is a country that always loses although it always claims to have won. We don't pay only for our negative behavior but also for negative thinking. And we're constantly thinking in the wrong way. Following methods that lead to a cliff costs us. We're paying now. We said we can't live with others and now we have to wait for decades to fall back in step."