Yesterday evening at Marko’s I learned a curious thing about Yugoslavia of my youth. When I mentioned that I left the country in 1970 to study in the States, a woman who had long worked for the Croatian television as a journalist told me point blank that all people who went to study abroad around that time were spies. “This I know for sure,” she said firmly. State television is presumably a place where one can learn such things. “However,” I replied, “no police of any kind has ever contacted me either in Yugoslavia or in the States.” She was adamant, though. “All people who went to study abroad in the late Sixties or early Seventies were spies,” she repeated sternly. “That means I was also a spy,” I protested. “All people like that were spies,” she said with absolute conviction. There was no arguing with her, either. This is where we changed the subject, of course, but I am still curious about the whole story. Could it be that there is something to it? That is, could it be that many people who went to study abroad around the time I did were actually spies of some kind? If not, where is the story coming from and why?

Addendum (August 11, 2016)

For the record, the woman in the story was Lovorka Žeravica, Danilo Dučak’s girlfriend at the time. He has a house in Motovun, but we are hardly friends any longer, and so I do not know whether or not they are still together. One way or another, I will never forget what I learned that evening from Lovorka. Although everyone around the table had quite a bit to drink at the time, the accusation was point blank. There was no kidding about it, either. I was a spy, and that was that.