Free Stillness of the Sea by Nicol Ljubic Page B

development follow a different path? Would life change for any of the people around him? Or wouldn’t both that person and the others feel less encumbered, less inhibited in their life together? I often think so.”
    He refrained from contradicting her, from arguing that human history is all about cause and effect. One thing follows from another. It is impossible to simply excise a chapter from history. No war comes out of a void; there is always a prehistory. When tension mounts, it can somehow create an atmosphere conducive to making certain ways of thinking and behaving acceptable to the majority. Historians have observed that wars start during such periods, that the origins of war can be understood only in terms of historical processes.But he didn’t want to start this kind of talk with Ana. To him, the idea that the Balkan war could come between them seemed absurd, although he was aware that German bombs, too, had been dropped on Belgrade. He was unsure about the justice of bombing the Serbs. After all, the NATO attack on Serbia was driven by Germany’s guilty conscience, its historic culpability. The German Minister for Foreign Affairs said he had learnt a lesson: no more Auschwitzes. And so bombs rained down on the city where Ana lived with her family and friends. What was their connection to Auschwitz?
    He could find no peace after that conversation with Ana. He felt her behaviour had been emotional and unfair, and he agonised over this for days. He had once lunched at the university canteen with one of his professors, who knew a great deal about Balkan history, and asked him if he thought that the Serbs, like the Germans, carried a burden of guilt. The professor looked up at him quickly, put down his fork which had already speared a piece of meat, and wanted to know if his questioner had ever heard of the SANU Memorandum.
    “You see,” he said, “it was the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts that provided the ideological framework for the idea of Greater Serbia.”
    This was the first time he’d heard of the memorandum.
    “Well, what would your view of it be?” the professor went on. “Given that it was a paper published by a group of scientists and academics, which demanded an end to discrimination against the Serbian people, discussed whether Serbs should commit genocide against the Albanian population in Kosovo and argued in propagandistic terms for the national and cultural unity of all Serbs, regardless of which region or federal republic theylived in. This paper was debated in public for five years before the outbreak of the war and was incorporated into the government’s political program. What do you think – is this a case of unshakeable resolve? Or of emotional imbalance? I tell you, the murder of Muslims was planned. In my opinion, people were, in general, willing perpetrators. Haven’t you seen the images showing the first tanks rolling towards Croatia? The citizens were lining the streets, waving and throwing flowers at the soldiers.”
    He didn’t know what to say. Why did he ask about the Serbs’ guilt? He didn’t tell the professor anything about Ana. Following that conversation, it became clear to him just how subjective the matter of guilt can be. Had the professor’s explanations turned out differently, he would have told him that he was in love with a Serb woman, who questioned her share of the guilt. He treated Ana as someone defined by her nationality. It made him feel ashamed. Is it not true that ultimately guilt is a sick feeling and a psychogenic delusion, and that to burden oneself with the past is the symptom of an illness, whereas healthy people look towards the future?
     
    “Why bother with the sea if you can’t go for a swim in it?” Ana asked.
    The question returns to him unbidden as he stands on the beach at Scheveningen. He left the guesthouse after breakfast, with a desire to be by the sea, to feel the wind and to hear the surf. Above all, he wanted to be out of