CHAPTER FOURTEEN – Dobrin’s last days

CHAPTER FOURTEEN – Dobrin’s last days

That night great weight and silence reigned in the apartment. Before eating his food Dobrin put his hands together as if praying. He then spread his arms and placed his hands in a position to receive mercy. His jaw was clamped and the skin on his face was dry.

“I am already dead; there is nothing more I can say... it is not worth living in the ashes of extinction. A person needs to gather his strength and completely break with his past...” said Dobrin to himself while staring at his books with indifference.

Delian cleaned off the crumbs from Dobrin’s bed and, with special care, covered Dobrin’s feet with a spare blanket. Dobrin thanked him with a slight smile on his lopsided mouth. Dobrin could still talk but with much difficulty. He closed his eyes and drowned into a state of melancholy.

The night seemed to be close to his face. Snow was falling outside and clinging to the window. Sometimes he opened his eyes. His body was experiencing moments of brief, periodic but disturbing trembling.

“Perhaps it was fear of death?” he thought to himself. After receiving the injection to reduce his pain he closed his eyes in hopes of falling asleep. Thinking about it sometimes he amazed himself about his own past: “Where did I find the strength to go through life with such pride… with such courage... Oh, Dobrin, Dobrin… We were revolutionaries… we were called revolutionaries… and for that reason we needed to be people from a ‘special school’ or from a special breed?” he would say to himself.

Dobrin was very sensitive and would not accept even a hint of false guilt to fall on him. From infancy he had been unhappy and his life was a tragedy, but life forced him to endure, not to break the thread of living, to strengthen his resolve and to be normal.

He quietly turned his head but did not look at the picture of Rumena resting on the window sill of the main window in the room. He looked past the picture, far away, perhaps somewhere where death

was not looming. He now lay there sick with darkened eyes and arms relaxed. He felt himself slipping away and his sense of reality evaporating like the mist in a summer morning. His eyes looked like they were asking for forgiveness, but when the door suddenly creaked open and Rumena walked in his eyes filled with joy.

“I have news… wonderful news! I can’t be any happier!” said Rumena looking radiant and happy.

“What a shocker! A shocker Dobrin!” she added.

“What?” asked Dobrin with some difficulty, opening his dry mouth and the eyelids of his bloodshot eyes.

“They recognized it. I will read it to you!” she said and began to read:

“Subject: Notice concerning application number 13 5935, October 5, 1989, SKOPJE

Based on the positive opinion under the Law (“Official Gazette of the CPM”, No.23/80)…

Please note that with respect to the application submitted by Dobrin Suvogorski on behalf of the Commission, the Special Commission of the National Board of SZB from NOB of Macedonia, according to the Law, has given a positive opinion to the ELAS and NODEM participants. According to this opinion and statements made by members of the Commission, regarding the responsibility of high ranking officials in the military and political authorities during the Liberation War in Greece - Aegean Macedonia from 1941-1945, the Commission has recognized their capacity as positive.

(Referring to ELAS and the organs in the Democratic Army of Greece as well as organs of the Macedonian political organizations in Aegean Macedonia 1946-1949 (NODEM).)

Chief of staff”

All excited Rumena kissed Dobrin and then triumphantly yelled out:

“Dobrin, Dobrin! Finally, after thirty years, they recognized your contribution!! This is Justice! And not revenge by your comrades.”

Dobrin sat up. He had a menacing look on his face. This was a man with a super-ego who was now trying to regain control of his body, to move it away from death. He looked like he was afraid of what he had learned over the years and how his sickness had put him in bed, a bed which smelled of camphor and sweat. The two of them sat motionless in silence. They did not want to talk any more; they had had enough pain and agony.

Rumena used to encourage him by saying:

“You look much better today Dobrin… Sit up a little. You know me, I don’t like men who babble too much about the past...” and by saying:

“Can I get you some milk?” while adjusting his bed.

Dobrin again sunk into his thoughts… remembering his past. He was remembering about the time he was in the Siberian prisons, a fate which was violently broken and at one time had the colour of absence. The only thing he could do in the cell was think; he could not speak, not even utter a single word, not when he was in pain, angry, afraid, ashamed… not even when he wanted to laugh. He had only himself… to go to bed was like lying in a grave, but death refused to touch him, even though it was always there with him, near him, there in the damp walls. He passed the Siberian nights in silence with his eyes and mouth closed… lying on top of that terrible ice, under the pale moon, under those distant stars...

You don’t want to measure time. Why would you even want daylight in such a desolate place? Siberia was like that for centuries and Dobrin was there stuck in the frost, dragging wooden beams through the impassable tundra. The snow was frosted and squeaked under his bare feet as he made his way to his destination, pointed to by frozen bayonets. Here and there he hugged a big tree trunk like it was his sister and just for one moment he wanted to tell her the whole truth. The darkness in the tundra was warmer and gave

Dobrin moments of absence and instinctively warmed his soul much more than did the milky Siberian sun. A sip of hot tea was always welcome…

“Dobrin, take your milk…” said Rumena in a kind and pleading tone of voice.

Dobrin suddenly opened his eyes… They were full of fear.

“What happened?” whispered Rumena.

“Nothing…” replied Dobrin. “I thought I heard something…”

“Did someone come in?” asked Rumena and got up to look.

“No, it’s not that…” replied Dobrin.

“So what is it, then?” asked Rumena.

“It seemed like it was far away… It sounded like cannon shells falling,” replied Dobrin and perked up his ears.

“I must have imagined it all…” he then concluded.

“Lord I want this night to end quickly…” he said to himself.

Cannon blasts were echoing in his head, stirring up bad memories. His memories always began in the present and quickly ended up in the past.

His memories kept racing through the dark February night. Dark figures wandered around in the snowy fields inside his head. People, seeming like they were bracing for the frosty wind, were moving quickly. He again heard terrible thunderstorms… the thunder of war. Tanks, cannons, rifles, machine guns… all kinds of guns… all firing... Wounded people bleeding… The sky was clear and the moon was shining bright. The column was marching towards Kaimakchalan. Smoke, tongues of flame and the smell of burnt blood were in the air.

The villages, lined up one behind another, were burning in his mind. Only their charred walls remained standing black above the snowdrifts. Three days and nights passed and the battle kept raging. The years 1940 to 1949 raced through his mind. He looked ahead with a rigid gaze. Then suddenly he asked himself: “Are we fighting for victory?” He looked down at the black blood… the blood of our soldiers… People were crying for our dead people... “Is this how death comes to us?” he asked himself.

There was silence, as if in this mortal hour he wanted to make mention of them again.

“Look at the mortally wounded soldier… he feels the urge… with burnt lips he mumbles… Why? Why? The emptiness, which undoubtedly follows death… which finally extinguishes fire and time… and then erases all traces of existence... Yes, your hatred destroys your spirit just like war does your body. Will our pride ever lift our bitter fate to the truth? They finally admitted this after thirty years? They recognized my contribution! They finally did!!?” whispered Dobrin to himself.

He looked out the window at the snow. It was like a movie screen… air, fire, water, soldiers… and a play of destiny.

One might be afraid of what they have learned over the years. Where does a man find the strength to go through life with pride and with such courage?

He remembered what Socrates once said to his disciples: “Fearing death is stupid. For as long as I am here, death is not here. But when death comes I will not be here. In other words, death and I will never meet.”

Many thoughts came to his mind for which he tried to find answers… he knew that every creature tried to resist death. Dobrin’s eyes seemed like they were looking for something… searching… perhaps for a prayer… or perhaps for a curse… he wanted another hour, another minute… he had many thing to say about his devotion to his homeland… for which one time he was prepared to give his

young life. Perhaps then his fatherland would have received him differently… not slandered, not detested… in his own grave.

He closed his eyes and no longer looked out of the window.

The morning light flooded the window and the sun’s rays illuminated the walls of the room. Dobrin Suvogorski lay there dead, covered with a white sheet.

It was cold, very cold at the cemetery. The mourners were many. Strogov appeared in the courtyard and at the chapel. He was very discreet and no one noticed him. Maybe he was writing his last notes for Dobrin Suvogorski’s file.

The procession went up the slope. It passed the parcel of cemetery reserved for the fighters and arrived at the parcel of cemetery reserved for the common people. They all walked in silence, up to the fresh hole dug in the ground… Dobrin’s final resting place... Near the freshly dug soil lay an old cross and a bundle of old bones.

The speeches were held here. One of the mourners said: “Dobrin Suvogorski did not die now; he died thirty years ago...”

Perhaps the man wanted to say more but a strong wind blew and made his cold lips tremble. The man fell silent as he looked at Dobrin’s dead body.

Then, along with the others, he threw a handful of soil on the lowered coffin.