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\u2014and came to a sudden halt!<\/p>\n
In front of me\u2014like a fantasy creature from an unreal world, like a vision from a nightmare\u2014stood a small man.<\/p>\n
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\u2014the 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\u2014where week-old remnants of food had formed crusts\u2014hung 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\u2019s lodging, but the straw remained firmly entangled in his hair, and he soon gave up the hopeless task. <\/p>\n
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\u2014tattered 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. <\/p>\n
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\u2014endlessly cautiously and gropingly, using the stick to probe the ground with every step.<\/p>\n
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\u2019s 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\u2014as was the custom\u2014handed over his farm to his son-in-law, his only daughter\u2019s husband, but then misfortune struck him.
During a drinking bout he had consumed poisoned spirits\u2014wood alcohol or something similar\u2014and had gone blind. His relationship with his son-in-law, which was already not particularly warm, became\u2014now that he was disabled and useless\u2014greatly worsened, and one day the brutal man mercilessly cast his old helpless father-in-law out onto the road.
The daughter\u2019s 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. <\/p>\n
Now the old wretch wandered along the country roads\u2014from town to town and from place to place\u2014step 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. <\/p>\n
\u201cIn my country, society takes care of people who can no longer work\u2014whether they have become old or are otherwise unable to support themselves.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n My informant, our neighbour, shook his head. \u201cWe don\u2019t know that. Here everyone must manage as best he can!\u201d <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":2792,"template":"","personer":[115],"class_list":["post-2800","litteratur_og_kilder","type-litteratur_og_kilder","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","personer-marius-soerensen"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/fkdanmark.simsoft.dk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/litteratur_og_kilder\/2800","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/fkdanmark.simsoft.dk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/litteratur_og_kilder"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/fkdanmark.simsoft.dk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/litteratur_og_kilder"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fkdanmark.simsoft.dk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2792"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/fkdanmark.simsoft.dk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2800"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"personer","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fkdanmark.simsoft.dk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/personer?post=2800"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}