To my surprise, at today’s court hearing in Pazin I learned that the mayor of Motovun had charged me with yet another crime, this time for using these insulting words in describing him last March at a conference in Zagreb (“Hopelessly Naïve,” March 25, 2009). Someone had recorded the meeting with a tiny camera, which I failed to spot at the time, and posted the proceedings on the World Wide Web a few days later. Bits and pieces of this recording ended up being used against me during the municipal election campaign last May, but the mayor’s third court case against me was still a big surprise earlier today (“Outright Bewitching,” May 11, 2009). Anyhow, now I face two cases for libel and one for insult. Or shall we call it poetic license? But the amount of money the mayor wants is growing at a clip. At today’s exchange rates, the first two are for a bit less than three-thousand euros apiece, while the third one is for a little more than four-thousand euros. But who has ever said the mayor of Motovun is not savvy about money? Cut out his lying tongue!

In memory of Mikhail Bulgakov

Addendum (November 4, 2019)

As I learned a week or two after this piece was penned, my talk was captured by Tomislav Tomašević, one of the then leading people in Zelena Akcija (Green Action), the organization that put the conference together. He apparently filmed everything on his mobile phone, which was resting in front of him on his desk. It was nigh invisible from my own desk, and this is why I had no idea that my talk was being recorded. He put it on the web immediately after the conference, and it eventually led to my court case for insult by Slobodan Vugrinec. I know Tomašević well, and I see him in Zagreb every now and then, but it has never crossed my mind to complain about the whole thing. It was my own, as it were, mistake to be so blunt at that conference in the Croatian capital. Back then, I was hopelessly naïve, to be sure. I had no idea I was living in a country in which a straightforward metaphor for undemocratic behavior could be construed as a punishable insult. Three cheers for the Middle East, where today’s Croatia actually belongs!