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| Danilo Kiš |
"And his journey to Trieste ended as ingloriously as his trip to Rovinj.
It was, in his sixty-sixth year, his first border crossing, and it, too, took a great deal of pushing and pulling. Nor were his arguments any easier to counter: an intelligent person did not go to a country whose language he did not know; he had no intention of making a fortune on the black market; he had no craving for macaroni or Chianti and would much prefer an everyday Mostar Zhilavka or a Prokuplje white, at home.
Nevertheless, we persuaded him to apply for a passport.
He came back ill-humored, ill-tempered, crushed: He had a falling out with Mother (the shoes she had bought him leaked and pinched) and the police had searched them and ransacked their luggage on the return trip to Belgrade.
Need I mention that the visit to Trieste- the downpour, with Father under the awning of the Hotel Adriatico without an umbrella, lost, like a bedraggled old dog, while Mother rummaged through shoes by the Ponte Rosso- recieves in the Encyclopedia the coverage an episode of the sort deserves? His only consolation during the whole wretched excursion came from buying some flower seeds outside a shop there. (Fortuntaley, the packets had pictures of the flowers on there and clearly marked prices, so he did not need to haggle with the saleswoman. By then D.M. had been an inventory of the flowers in pots and window boxes on the front and rear balconies)."
(Danilo Kiš, The Encyclopedia of the Dead)
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