With my lungs filled with the fresh morning air and my pipe going at full steam, I happily swung through the gate into our quarters, carrying a cooking pot full of steaming grain coffee—and came to a sudden halt!
In front of me—like a fantasy creature from an unreal world, like a vision from a nightmare—stood a small man.
He stood squinting at the sun with his expressionless eyes, and when he lowered them toward the ground, the eyelids became two narrow slits, as if the strong morning light disturbed him—the man was blind!
He kept muttering to himself in a weak, piping, and mournful voice, like a small bird fussing over its chicks.
From his wildly overgrown hair and his shaggy, tangled beard—where week-old remnants of food had formed crusts—hung a veil of hay and straw, hiding the contours of his face.
With his trembling, groping old hands he tried to remove the worst traces of his night’s lodging, but the straw remained firmly entangled in his hair, and he soon gave up the hopeless task.
On his body he wore a shirt-like garment made of a fabric that in old days was used for coarse bed sheets. It had undoubtedly once been white, but that could only just be discerned. Now it had taken on a greyish tone tending towards black—tattered and covered with differently coloured patches.
A pair of trousers of the same kind, ending above the knees and dissolving into a rain of fluttering fringes, made up his entire clothing. In addition came a pair of clumsy shoes of untanned leather; insofar as this footwear could even be called shoes. They were in fact without soles and with a perforated upper, where the nail of the right big toe, black and crooked, had broken through and was now making its way forward over the wide shoe tip like a wild-growing creeper.
A pair of shoes that had not been taken off the feet for an immeasurable time.
I rubbed my eyes and closed them for a moment, but he was still standing there. He grasped a knotted stick leaning against the wall and began to move forward—endlessly cautiously and gropingly, using the stick to probe the ground with every step.
I had neither peace nor rest, for I needed to uncover what fate lay behind this wretched figure. With the help of a German-speaking neighbour, I succeeded in learning the essential parts of his life’s tragedy.
He had once, about ten years earlier, been a wealthy and respected farmer in one of the villages further south. When he grew older, he had—as was the custom—handed over his farm to his son-in-law, his only daughter’s husband, but then misfortune struck him.
During a drinking bout he had consumed poisoned spirits—wood alcohol or something similar—and had gone blind. His relationship with his son-in-law, which was already not particularly warm, became—now that he was disabled and useless—greatly worsened, and one day the brutal man mercilessly cast his old helpless father-in-law out onto the road.
The daughter’s pleas and protests were of no use, for in Croatia the man is so unquestionably the master of the household that his word is law within the four walls of the home, and he still holds the precious privilege of being able to beat his wife whenever it suits him.
Now the old wretch wandered along the country roads—from town to town and from place to place—step by step, with his searching and groping stick before him, thrust out into eternal darkness, without a single point of support or any lasting place in this life.
Never did he receive a comforting word from an understanding soul, and never even a bit of care from helpful hands. Left to live on the crumbs that were only reluctantly thrown to him.
“In my country, society takes care of people who can no longer work—whether they have become old or are otherwise unable to support themselves.”
My informant, our neighbour, shook his head. “We don’t know that. Here everyone must manage as best he can!”