Slavenka Drakulić - A Guided Tour Through the Museum of Communism

But to whom is Koki telling all this? I see Koki is selling his time too cheaply. Look at you! Do you have a mirror at your hotel? No, perhaps you don’t. Koki knows your kind. You came with a tourist excursion from the mainland and you are staying in a small B&B where they don’t have even mirrors. See, Koki has a mirror in his cage and therefore he can see that he is a beautiful white parrot, with a yellow crest, in the middle of his life (he could live more than one hundred years, yes). But you, how do you look with your big stomach, dressed in an old T-shirt and shorts? You look silly. And in those sandals, you look like—well, a catastrophe. Yes. And he’ll tell you why. He will if you give him more peanuts, that is! Thanks!

Surely you know that “Brioni” is a sleek fashion brand named after this very island that you are visiting now? It somehow makes sense; Koki knows that the Marshal did not object to fashion. On the contrary, he loved it! He was elegant looking, really debonair. Although he was a Communist, he was a gentleman, too. A comrade with style, that is how Koki remembers him—and he is not alone. One of his former friends used to comment that “style and substance eventually became one.” Yes, he cared about how he looked; he sometimes changed his suit four times a day. Unlike many of his badly dressed visitors, who would come in gray shiny suits in the middle of the summer. Imagine! When they took off their jackets their shirts would show big sweat stains under their armpits. It revealed their fear. That is, their respect, because in this part of the world fear and respect are one and the same.

Like every autocrat, the Marshal ruled by fear. But could you, please, tell Koki how else one could rule people around here? Tribes need a leader, an authority that has the power to punish them. The big boss in uniform with rows of decorations, that’s what they wanted to see. Symbols are important to them. The Marshal knew the mentality of his tribes; he was a pro. His love of fashion was matched only by his love of uniforms. See, he had a great weakness for uniforms. But in his favor, Koki must say that he carried his uniforms with such natural ease and elegance that it amazed people. He also knew that they impressed the populace. On one occasion Koki heard him talking to his biographer, a certain Mister Vladimír. “I remember how much, as a child, I loved looking at the Kaiser,” he said. “At that time there were postcards with his picture, in uniform, and he would wear lots of decorations, and we boys in Kumrovec would see them in schoolbooks. Already then I understood that you have to show that you are important, otherwise people won’t believe you. You must show that you are above them; otherwise, why should they listen to an ordinary person like themselves? Looks are very important if you want to impress people.” And in order to impress them even more, he lived in the former king’s palace in Belgrade. A Communist revolutionary living in a palace; that is what I call not only stylish but smart. After all, his people were used to being ruled in monarchic tradition, no? But don’t think that the palace or even this residence in Brioni, or any other residence he used, was in his private possession! Oh, no! These official castles and residences (all thirty-two of them) were only at his disposal, that is all. Because it was well known that the Marshal did not need any private property; he lived off of the love of his people, didn’t he?

Dressed in his Marshal’s gold-ribbed uniform and ordained with many medals—he was one of the largest collectors of medals in history—he emanated authority. The only problem was his belt buckle. It, too, was made of pure gold and, therefore, so heavy that it kept slipping down! That posed a danger to his image—as it would be very unfitting for such a person to lose his pants in public, especially because authority was the main reason for wearing the uniform. But not the only reason! The Marshal was aware that he looked handsome in it: “You know Koki,” he used to say, because we often discussed fashion (as well as women!), “when you wear a uniform, you look not only powerful and elegant, but you also feel taller.” He was a bit on the short side and sometimes it bothered him a little. He was an accomplished man, but at times he would say such things because he could not do much about his height. “The Marshal walks differently, has a different bearing. Everybody can see that he is an important man,” Koki would say. The old man would be pleased with this comment and would give Koki a bite of a tangerine. He himself had grown the fruit and, good person that he was, would donate the whole harvest to orphaned children.

If you ask Koki, the Marshal looked equally elegant in plain clothes, exuding charisma even when wearing shorts. Unlike yours, his shorts were cut to fit—not too tight, not too loose—and made of the finest cotton. Somehow, even his bare legs (in off-white soft leather moccasins, not sandals) did not look as horrible as your bare legs. Or is it that his legs looked good because they belonged to—him? Mmmm, this is something to think about, Koki-birdie!

Koki remembers his stylish white summer suits, tailor-made, of the finest cotton or linen. And his real Panama hat, not like the cheap fake ones I see around nowadays. By the way, speaking of fashion, Koki has noticed that democratization in this particular field means bad quality, don’t you think? If democracy in fashion means bad quality and cheap stuff, Koki is not for it. Speaking of democracy, the Marshal was not a democrat, either in fashion or in politics. In both cases, it is better to compare him with real aristocrats in Europe at the time. This all makes one wonder where he got it from—his expensive tastes and political talent. Surely not from his family. He was, as you have already heard, of very humble origin. Koki is not in the mood for deep thoughts, but perhaps his style and talents were innate? Just as some are born with beauty or intelligence, so he was born with good taste and great political talent.

The Marshal was passionate about his looks, women, food, whiskey, and real Havana cigars, straight from Castro. That was the side of him Koki knew best. There were many other sides, too, but Koki-birdie tells what he knows. Maybe he adds a little here and there, but only a little! He doesn’t want to appear like a chatterbox or gossip, oh, no!

His sandals? Well, Koki swears to you that the Marshal never wore sandals; he hated them. Maybe because sandals reminded him of his barefoot childhood? Everybody who comes here should know that. You should know it, too. Looking as you do, you would not have made it one thousand meters from here in his time. Soldiers would have shot at you, yes. Not because of the sandals, but because these few islands were offlimits to tourists and proletarians in general. Tell Koki, please, are you wearing sandals so that everyone can see your dirty nails, ha-ha?! No way could you have visited him dressed like that, even if you were president of the universe itself. No sandals, that was an important dress code here.

But it did not apply to the ladies. On the contrary, the Marshal enjoyed a view of their pretty little toes, especially if they were painted red, like those of Elizabeth Taylor. Oh, what a beauty she was! She, with her famous “violet-blue eyes”—Koki heard that expression from the Marshal himself, you know. “I could drown in your violet-blue eyes, my pretty lady!” he told Elizabeth, gallantly kissing her hand the old-fashioned way. She merely laughed in her thin voice. Such a great film star, but her voice was so girlish. “Please, Mister President, call me Liz,” she said to him. And then he replied, in his most charming voice: “Only if you call me Joža!” And then Elizabeth tried to pronounce his name in her American way, Y -o-o-u-z-a . Ah, it sounded so sweet. Unlike when Koki would call him… All the while they were sitting in his 1953 Cadillac Eldorado. Great car, great! I drove with him a few times around here—it was sensational. He loved that car and polished it himself, whistling a tune, like any ordinary man would, only not many had such a car back then. He then offered to show her the island, and while they drove away into the sunset, I thought, Well, this is just like a Hollywood movie. Maybe this was his thought, too, because he loved the movies, spent a lot of time watching such films, especially westerns.