A Night in Negotin

Towards the end of April of this year, an invitation was sent to me by the Days of Mokranjac Committee to, on September 12, as was the practice during the thirty years of the existence of this manifestation, make a speech in front of the house where Mokranjac was born and in such a manner open this year's festival. I accepted such an invitation with pleasure and I made that speech on September 12 by which, for the thirty first time, this festival was opened.

The manner in which the people from Negotin reacted to that speech, interrupting it with applause a couple of times, didn't stop the representatives of the local authorities to, at the end, express their displeasure with the things I had said in that speech. They had a right to that displeasure, and everything would have been all right if the way they expressed that displeasure, even when it was primitive at moments, had remained only verbal. However, when quite late in the evening of the same day all programs which were planned for that day were finished, the main surprise awaited us at the Ineks Krajina hotel where all participants of the festival were staying.

MESSAGE OF THE HOTEL DIRECTOR: Namely, around an hour and a half after midnight when we returned to the hotel, the receptionist, in the presence of a few participants amongst whom was academic Dejan Despic, president of the Days of Mokranjac Program Committee and a member of many years of the Organization Committee of this festival, informed me of the message of the hotel director that, despite the fact that I had planned to remain in Negotin a few more days, I was to leave the hotel in the morning. And at the end of it all, probably wishing to console me, he said that I could have suffered a much worse fate: "Until fifteen minutes ago I had orders not to give you the room key!"

Besides me, Dejan Despic immediately reacted, saying that he would, together with me and my wife, leave the hotel and Negotin in protest and that he would resign from his functions in the Organization Committee and Program Committee. In the morning, leaving the hotel with us, Despic handed in his resignation to the authorities. In the resignation, amongst other things, he precisely stated what the occurrence of that night in that hotel in Negotin meant and what it foresaw: "in the primitive consciousness and in a totalitarian arrogance which have spoken out of this deed-non-deed I also see ominous signs which show that the darkness of a totalitarian system is once again ascending on our heads".

I comprehended that unpleasant incident in the same way as Despic had comprehended it and, anyway, as is the only possible way to comprehend it. I am not writing this article in order to speak of what had happened to me that night but rather as a warning of what could, if we keep quiet about everything, happen to all of us.

Those local power-wielders were dissatisfied with my speech, supposedly, because I had turned that speech into a "political speech" and which had bothered them who only like to listen to conversations about music to a great degree. They strengthened that qualification later with another epithet: my speech wasn't only classified as "political" but also as a "pre-election speech". Since they and not I are standing on the elections, it isn't difficult to figure who tried to use that speech for political and pre-election purposes.

It is interesting to note that people who deal with politics professionally and who live off politics, at moments when they wish to belittle and disqualify something, say with disdain: "That's politics!" To live off politics, and at the same time to look upon politics as a dirty business is hypocritical, to say the least. That hypocrisy goes even further: if I had, in my speech, praised them and their policies, it wouldn't have bothered them, as politics, and they would have applauded. But those people would have booed me off.

Another point of interest is that the city authorities of Negotin don't mind the fact that the director of their elite hotel doesn't fix the elevator which is out of order, nor room telephones, which are also out of order, nor taps in the bathrooms, which leak even when they are turned off. It seems as though they don't expect him to keep up the maintenance of the hotel, but rather to, in the middle of the night, kick out guests into the rain and the fog whose opinions they don't like. And apparently he also finds it easier to hold on to his director's seat by staying on good terms with the authorities than to fix elevators, telephones and taps, which will only need fixing again tomorrow.

The atmosphere that night in the hotel, following that scene, was so heavy and morbid that I felt as though I wasn't in Negotin, in the Ineks Krajina hotel, but rather in Moscow, in the Luks hotel. I wouldn't have been surprised if they had taken me that night to one of their Lubanka prisons. Maybe they still don't have it. But I do not doubt that they, if only they have a little bit more time, will most certainly construct it. For all of us.