Do Supernatural Elements Exist in Borislav Pekić`s How to Kill a

Do Supernatural Elements Exist in Borislav Pekić’s
How to Kill a Vampire: The Poetics of a Magical Umbrella
Olga Nedeljković
University of Illinois at Chicago
On the basis of my reading and interpretation of the novel How to Kill a
Vampire by Borislav Pekiç, I have concluded that Pekiç’s novel represents a
further transformation of the genre in the period of Postmodernism. The chief
characteristic of this transformational process is the further reduction of the
narration of external events and full concentration on the protagonist’s consciousness. How to Kill a Vampire is written in a language that resembles
philosophical dialogue with its strict method of theoretical precision. Each
chapter is written in the form of a letter dedicated to a well-known West
European philosopher. Pekiç’s novel seems to be an attempt to criticize dogmatic, totalitarian aspects of modern philosophy by using the form of the
special literary genre sotie. Sotie has been used by various authors in various
times. In Modernism and Postmodernism sotie is a satirical work whose foolish or mad characters are treated farcically within an unconventional narrative
structure. Pekiç defines How to Kill a Vampire as a sotie, introducing this
designation into the title of the novel. Thus, Pekiç asks the reader to read the
novel from the point of view of the sotie genre as it allows him to criticize the
“absoluteness” and dogmatism of modern philosophy, and to show that an absolute truth, based on reason, is no longer acceptable. My analysis of How to
Kill a Vampire will point out that 1) Pekiç’s novel is grounded on the loss of
confidence in the power of authoritative reason and its variant of free will
subjected to reason; and 2) that in the novel, supernatural elements do not
represent “the fantastic,” in spite of the presence of the miraculous umbrella.
At first glance, one believes that in reading this book one is dealing with
an historical, realistic novel. The novel describes two chronologically different events in the destiny and consciousness of the major protagonist, Konrad
Rutkowski, a former SS Obersturmfuhrer in the German Army in the Balkans
in September of 1943, and later a professor of medieval history at the
University of Heidelberg (the action takes place in September of 1965). On
the one hand, through the descriptions of the protagonist’s consciousness and
reminiscences Pekiç follows the historical and political circumstances in
which Professor Konrad Rutkowski finds himself, as a former SS lieutenant
Serbian Studies: Journal of the North American Society for Serbian Studies 15(1): 35–49, 2001.
36
OLGA N EDELJKOVIĆ
in the German army in the Balkans during the Second World War; and on the
other hand, Pekiç investigates the moral attitude and state of his protagonist’s
mind in retrospect, recalling his actions as an officer during the war.
A brief account of the story goes as follows. After twenty-two years of
being a diligent researcher of medieval German-Polish relationships, Professor Rutkowski returns to the small town of D., on the Adriatic coast, where in
1943 he served as an officer. However, in 1965, as a tourist, Rutkowski wants
to spend his vacation there with his wife. By chance, Professor Rutkowski
finds himself in the apartment, remodeled as part of the hotel “Miramare,”
where as an SS lieutenant he investigated war prisoners in 1943. This ironic
circumstance stirs in his memory his unforgettable but clandestine experiences that had taken place twenty-two years before. Thus, Rutkowski’ s decision to go to the town of D. on the Adriatic coast for his vacation recalls “the
well-known psychological trap according to which the criminal must return
back to the place of his crime.”1 His return to the town of D. activates his
subconscious to recall the crime he had committed there in 1943, stirring
feelings of guilt. Rutkowski tries to find therapeutic healing in writing letters
to Hilmar Wagner, his wife’s brother. The latter never reads them and never
responds to Rutkowski’s communications. Writing these letters represents a
therapy for Rutkowski. By putting his thoughts about his war activities on paper, Rutkowski expects to get rid of his guilt. He believes that by releasing his
past, he will be able to find explanations for his past crime. At the same time,
the letters become the means of his own self-torture, which reaches the level
of serious trauma. The reader is reinserted into a subtle philosophical dialogue
between Lieutenant Rutkowski and his military superior officer, Steinbrecher.
At the same time, the reader is introduced into a fictional textual universe,
which introduces a magical umbrella; this device, together with the author’s
interventions, is intended to confuse the reader, creating the contradictions
and tensions inherent to the novel written in the genre of sotie.
Following the basic characteristics of the genre, the protagonist
Rutkowski is presented by Pekiç as an oppressed, neurotic man, even allegedly insane. Pekiç treats him with sarcasm, sometimes satirically, often
ironically, within an unconventional narrative structure. In his footnotes,
Pekiç analyzes the exact state of Rutkowski’s consciousness. It is obsessed by
the idea that the unfortunate application of Aristotle’s logic has led humanity
to its own complete degradation and annihilation. The characteristics of the
sotie genre allow Pekiç to achieve a perfectly organized structure in the form
of a discovered manuscript, consisting of twenty-six letters and two
postscripts. Each of these twenty six letters is devoted to the works of well1
Petar Pijanoviç, Poetika romana Borislava Pekiça (Belgrade: Prosveta, 1991), 74.
BORISLAV PEKIĆ’S HOW TO KILL A VAMPIRE
37
known thinkers and philosophers such as Aurelius, Bergson, Nietzsche,
Leibnitz, Descartes, Freud, Schopenhauer, Berdjajev, Hegel, Locke, Spengler,
Plato, Husserl, Erasmus, Hume, Abelard, Jaspers, Heidegger, Sartre,
Augustine, Camus, Marx, Kant, and Wittgenstein.
In offering this extremely condensed account of philosophical concerns,
interwoven with literary-philosophical evocations, associations, introspection,
and reminiscences of the protagonist, Pekiç invites the reader to a literary-intellectual game. The first person narration has eliminated interventions by the
author and favors the protagonist-narrator. The state of Rutkowski’s lucid
madness allows him to tell truths usually not told by the first person narrator.
Rutkowski is represented as the first “I,” a communicator and witness to the
reality to which he refers. But the situation becomes more complex, because
we are dealing not only with the protagonist Rutkowski as the first “I,” but
also with his alter ego, Rutkowski’s superior, SS Standartenfuhrer Heinrich
Steibrecher, who appears in the novel as the second “I.” Likewise, space and
time are doubled in the novel. As already explained, Pekiç simultaneously depicts the events of 1943 and 1965. 2
Although the novel is written in the first person, it is not autobiographical
in character. Pekiç is not writing about himself. The genre of the sotie allows
the author to passionately criticize aspects of modern philosophy.3 Pekiç artfully achieves his goal by introducing a first person narrator with a hallucinatory state of mind. As a fictive and insane narrator, Rutkowski freely attacks
dogmatic principles applied in a totalitarian regime like the German Reich in
1930s and 1940s. As a German lieutenant together with his alter ego,
Steinbrecher, Rutkowski displays an admirable knowledge in the field of philosophy. Another question is that of the protagonist figure’s identity in those
portions of the novel when Pekiç uses the third person narration instead of the
expected first person. The latter is replaced by the author’s narration in the
third person, which allows the protagonist Rutkowski to distance himself and
judge his own actions and behavior in the Second World War. Pekiç indicates
2
In his monograph Romani Borislava Pekiça (Nik‰iç: Univerzitetska rijeã, 1989), Radomir
Baturan explains it more precisely: “U Pekiçevom romanu Kako upokojiti vampira antinomna
su i vremena zbivanja, kako ono iz 1943. onome iz 1965, tako i pojedinaãna zbivanja unutar
ratnog i poratnog vremena. Nemoguçnosti da ih kompromisno pomiri ili razre‰i Rutkovski je
platio pomraãenjem svesti i sopstvenim Ïivotom. Samo je prostor bukvalno jedan: germanskoslovenski. Susret Istoka i Zapada u svojoj jugoistoãnoj varijanti, neminovno ratni. Znaãi,
su‰tinska dihotomnost vlada i zbivanjima, i vremenom, i prostorom u kojima se kreçe lik
naratora, ujedno i autor te dihotomije,” 61–62.
3
An analysis of Pekiç’s criticism of modern philosophy requires a comparison of the basic
ideas expressed in the individual letters of the novel with the ideas of the philosophers to whom
the letters are dedicated. This task is beyond the intention of this article.
38
OLGA N EDELJKOVIĆ
Rutkowski’s inner state of mind, the mental derangement compelling
Rutkowski to resort to writing the twenty-six letter-fragments, becoming the
chapters in the novel. In spite of the unconventional form of the letters, Pekiç
is playing with the reader’s need to recuperate the text into the familiar world
of novelistic representation. It is true that the novelist of How to Kill a
Vampire at first appears to draw the reader out of the world of fiction into the
“real,” extra-textual world of the flesh-and-blood author. Skillfully using historical facts and locations, the narrator playfully suggests that his characters
and story are real.
The fact that German philosophers are dominant among the thinkers
quoted above, and that they represent the heart of the modern European intellectual tradition, prompted Pekiç to choose German Nazism instead of any
other twentieth-century totalitarian regime as his major topic. In addition,
Pekiç himself was best acquainted with Hitler’s Nazism during the Second
Word War, the period that he survived not as a participant but as a witness
when the Germans occupied the Balkans.4 Following the gradual transformation of his protagonist, Rutkowski, from a humanist scholar into a Nazi policeman, Pekiç describes the creation of the totalitarian consciousness through
Rutkowski’s intellectual resistance to the clear manifestations of his dogmatic
mind. It seems crucial to understand that Rutkowski does not simply narrate
his war story; he institutes legal action against history as the accomplice of his
moral and spiritual disintegration. This explains why Rutkowski, as an intellectual, is depicted and defined in terms of “logic,” “law,” “philosophy,” and
“speculation.” As an heir to the entire history of modern European philosophy, especially the German heritage, the Lieutenant symbolizes totalitarian
ideology.5 He is a man who commits an unmotivated crime, killing an inno4
On several occasions, Pekiç gives a detailed explanation why he has chosen the example of
German Nazism as the basis for his representation of totalitarian consciousness. See, for
example, his explanation in Vreme reãi, ed. BoÏo Koprivica (Belgrade: BIGZ/SKZ, 1993): ”Da
Rutkovski nije sluãajno—a koliko sluãajno i to je pod sumnjom—oti‰ao da letuje na grob svog
vampira, ovaj bi jednom do‰ao kod njega u Heidelberg (‰to bi, naravno, za mene predstavljalo
dodatan napor prouãavanja i opisivanja Univerziteta u kome nikad nisam bio), kao ‰to stari i
iskusni vampiri, u potrazi za krvlju, umeju prevaljivati neizmerne daljine…,” 51. Also, see his
Skinuto sa trake, ed. Predrag Palavestra (Belgrade: Narodna knjiga/Alfa, 1996), 130–34.
5
Speaking about his book How to Kill a Vampire, Pekiç explains the major goal of writing it:
“Pi‰uçi o fenomenu totalitarne svesti koja ideologije ra∂a i o procesu njihove uzajamne
reprodukcije, ja nisam u vidu imao nacionalsocijalizam. Kada je roman pisan, 1970-tih,
nacionalsocijalizam kao ideologija i praksa be‰e istorijski mrtav, a Ïiv, osim u pamçenju
preÏivelih, jo‰ samo u propagandi reÏima ãija je ideologija nosila u sebi totalan pogled na
totalno re‰enje ljudskog pitanja. Ja sam, me∂utim, pisao o nacionalsocijalizmu…. Kritika
ideologije u naãelu je nauãna disciplina. Obave‰tenost, racionalnost, logiãnost, njene su
pretpostavke. U knjiÏevnom delu, ako je pravo, ako je prvo knjiÏevnost, pa onda kritika, mogu
BORISLAV PEKIĆ’S HOW TO KILL A VAMPIRE
39
cent man, and at the same time cannot raise his conduct to the level of his
own theoretical and philosophical ideas. Although he argues ideas of “reason”
and “free will,” and man’s total superiority over his own destiny, Rutkowski
is incapable of recognizing his own crime. As a member of the political police
in an aggressive, occupying army in the Balkans, Rutkowski expresses his
resistance to the actions of the German police institution, but does not know
how to apply his intellectual knowledge to an actual situation. However, his
chief, Steinbrecher, fully understands both Rutkowski’s mind and the modern
European cult of Reason.
Given the central role that the first person narration plays in the novel, it
is worthwhile to analyze at some length the problems imposed by RutkowskiSteinbrecher’s dialogue. Pekiç skillfully constructs their dialogue, highlighting the theory and methodology of police craft.6 Thus, when Steinbrecher insists that Rutkowski has a soul and Rutkowski replies that in that situation he
should have become a priest, Steinbrecher reprimands him, by saying:
“Absurd! Only policemen can correctly treat a man’s soul. In the
Church, the soul is merely Communion decoration. What is the soul
to a priest? A priest does not need a soul. He has his saintly dogma. A
policeman does not have his saintly dogma. He has nothing. The soul
is indispensable to him. A policeman without a soul is a machine
without a purpose. Perpetuum mobile! A producer of wind. A blower
of clouds! And you, I bet, believe that the basic quality of a successful policeman is heartlessness, don’t you?”
“Heartlessness, to put it correctly, is written about in some highly
respected handbooks,” said Rutkowski.
“So? What is, in your opinion, the police task?” asked
Steinbrecher.
“To discover the truth,” answered Rutkowski.
sve ove vrline delovati, ali samo u simbiozi s neãim ‰to je u nauci mana a u umetnosti vrlina—
subjektivno‰çu, iracionalno‰çu [my emphasis], ma‰tom koja i te kako ume biti kritiãna….” See
his “Zamka ideologije” in Novija srpska knjiÏevnost i kritika ideologije, Nauãni skupovi, knj.
XLVI, Odeljenje jezika i knjiÏevnosti, knj. 10, ed. Predrag Palavestra (Belgrade/Ni‰: SANU,
1989), 61–63.
6
The masterful presentation of the Nazis’ police apparatus in the novel is corroborated by
Pekiç’s own words: “Policija je podruãje, u kome se, s promenljivim uspehom, dodu‰e, priliãno
dobro snalazim. Poznavanjem njene istorije i metodologije, kao i onoga ‰to bi mogli uslovno
nazvati ‘policijskom filozofijom,’ uvi∂a se da tu vaÏe izvesne konstante, koje nije moguçe
uoãiti, a zatim izdvojiti, kao ‰to se iz ugljeniãkih jedinjenja separira ugljenik,” Skinuto sa trake,
132–33.
40
OLGA N EDELJKOVIĆ
“The truth? You do not mean it! Are we, perhaps, damned
philosophers, what do you think? We, ourselves, make the truth,
Lieutenant Rutkowski! We do not find truths out, but we make them!
It is a creative and not an investigative job. We are artists, sir! And, if
I were lucky enough to see in your dead eyes at least the smallest
sparkle of comprehension, I would say: poets. Yes, they who walk
per aspera ad astra.”7
Here Steinbrecher bluntly defines the nature of the police profession. He
openly speaks about the clandestine character of police work, of their real
policing, and the organizing of various people’s insurrections, the deceiving
and misleading of the people in order to control, arrest, and imprison them.
Thus, for example, Steinbrecher explains to Rutkowski what the basic duty is
of an excellent police force:
“Only weak police organizations are bound to crush revolts. On the
contrary, good police organizations are their catalysts, fermenters, instigators. The police, my dear Rutkowski, must be the yeast, and not
the means of breaking down people’s rebellions. And those are the
best ones? They organize riots and conduct them.”
“Don’t we already have enough insurrections, sir?” asked
Rutkowski.
“As long as there are potential rebellions, there are not enough
revolts. For us they are indispensable! To keep a revolt under control
and then turn it into an open insurrection by using a powerful ferment, and by spreading a gross injustice: Our entire art is grounded
7
— Glupost! Sa du‰om se jedino u policiji mogu ãiniti prave stvari. U Crkvi, ona je—priãesni
dekor. ·ta çe sve‰teniku du‰a? Sve‰teniku ne treba du‰a. On ima svoju svetu dogmu. Policajac
nema svoju svetu dogmu. On nema ni‰ta. Njemu je du‰a neophodna. Policajac bez du‰e je
ma‰ina bez svrhe. Perpetuum mobile! Proizvodjaã vetra! Duvaã oblaka! A vi ste, kladim se,
verovali da je osnovno svojstvo uspe‰nog policajca bezdu‰nost, niste li?
— Bezoseçajnost, ako çemo pravo, kako pi‰e u nekim cenjenim udÏbenicima.
— Tako? ·ta je po vama zadatak policije?
— Da sazna istinu.
— Istinu? Nije nego! Jesmo li mi moÏda prokleti filozofi, ‰ta? Mi pravimo istine,
poruãniãe Rutkowski! Ne saznajemo ih, nego pravimo! To je stvaralaãki, a ne istraÏivaãki
posao. Mi smo umetnici gospodine moj. I kad bih imao sreçu da u va‰im mrtvim oãima vidim
ma i najmanju iskru shvatanja, ja bih rekao: pesnici. Da, oni koji hode per aspera ad astra.
(Borislav Pekiç, Kako upokojiti vampira, Sotija (Belgrade: Rad/Narodna knjiga/BIGZ, 1977),
41–42.
BORISLAV PEKIĆ’S HOW TO KILL A VAMPIRE
41
on this. Its highest form is, of course, a revolt whose leaders are our
people.”8
According to Steinbrecher, the police is the only institution invested in
training man’s soul. Since most of the time the police deal with arrested people in prisons, they train prisoners’ souls. Thus, in the thirteenth letter, dedicated to Plato, Steinbrecher declares:
For a good investigation … man’s soul is indispensable. Like a
physician, a policeman should treat a prisoner. Although he cannot
rescue him from death, he can irreproachably justify his death—like a
priest who cannot pardon your sins, but who likes you like himself,
and who by the power of his attachment to you is able to make you
feel reconciled to your death. 9
Clearly, Pekiç is maintaining that the difference between a fascist and a
humanist consists only in the type of their training. All Steinbrecher’s arguments, as well as his dispute with Rutkowski, reveal that the notion of the
soul or spirit is overwhelmed by the concept of reason or logic in modern
European philosophy. Therefore, in the wasteland of empirical reality, permeated with utilitarian manifestations of reason, it turns out that only the police are involved with the soul’s phenomenology (the prisoner’s soul, that is).
Reason and free will are two interrelated concepts in Pekiç’s novel. In fact,
Pekiç treats them almost as interchangeable. For example, this aspect becomes obvious in the fragment, which appears in the fourth letter, dedicated
to Leibnitz, in which Steinbrecher says the following:
8
… Samo se slabe policije ograniãavaju na gu‰enje pobuna. Dobre su njihov katalizator,
ferment, podstrekivaã.
— A one najbolje?
— One ih organizuju i vode.
— Zar nama nije dosta pobuna, gospodine?
— Sve dok ima potencijalnih pobunjenika, pobuna nikad nije dosta. One su nam ãak i
neophodne. DrÏati revolt pod kontrolom, pa ga onda snaÏnim fermentom, nekom masovnom
nepravdom, pretvoriti u otvorenu pobunu, u tome je, poruãniãe, sva na‰a umetnost. Njen najvi‰i
oblik je, naravno, pobuna ãiji su lideri na‰i ljudi. (Pekiç, Kako upokojiti vampira, 39)
9
“… za dobru istragu … du‰a je nuÏna. Sa zatvorenikom se treba ophoditi kao lekar, koji,
istina, nije kadar od smrti da spase, ali ume da je besprekorno obrazloÏi. Kao sve‰tenik koji ne
moÏe da vam podeli opro‰tenje od grehova, ali moÏe da vas ljubi kao samog sebe i da vas
snagom te privrÏenosti pomiri sa smrçu.” (Pekiç, Kako upokojiti vampira, 166)
42
OLGA N EDELJKOVIĆ
“The problem is that such a prisoner has most often his own view on
things, his own version of the truth. A poor policeman would limit
himself to finding out only the truth and keeping a record of it.
Unfortunately, in most cases, that truth is useless. It contradicts our
own. Why in the hell would we need such a truth that persuades us
that we are wrong? One can easily assume that we cannot change the
entire system upon which the German Reich is grounded because of
that one truth which contradicts it. The only way out of this situation
is to alter the prisoner’s truth so that it suits our needs. Our mission
consists just of that.”
“And what if in that way the truth stops being the truth? What
then?” asked Rutkowski.
“It has never been the truth. The truth which conforms to change
is an out-and-out lie.”10
Our constant compromises in all spheres of our current culture have gone
too far and undermined political and social life. In our culture, every truth
agrees with something, depends upon certain conditions, introducing in that
way ambiguities of illusion liable to quick changes. The double face of the
paradox would consternate us if we wanted to believe that we possessed the
truth: for if only the police are involved with man’s soul, then the reverse is
also true and the soul is equally involved with the police. The mind and the
soul of a helpless victim are mutually and interchangeably brainwashed by
both reason and free will, two vampires of our modern epoch, which are often
disguised as one another.
To illustrate this point, I will quote one more example, from the scene in
which Steinbrecher teaches Rutkowski that in its extreme and authentic form
a good police system, which operates with its powerful reasoning and speculation and organizes a revolt, can be interpreted and understood like the free
will of people. Steinbrecher relies constantly upon reason to rationalize the
10
— Problem je u tome ‰to takav uhap‰enik najãe‰çe ima svoj pogled na stvari, svoju istinu.
R∂av policajac bi se ograniãio na to da je sazna i protokoli‰e. Na Ïalost, u najveçem broju
sluãajeva, ta istina je neupotrebljiva. Ona je u opreci sa na‰om. A kojeg çe nam ∂avola istina
koja nas ube∂uje da nismo u pravu? Vi, valjda, uvidjate da ne moÏemo menjati ãitav sistem na
kome poãiva Nemaãki Reich, zbog jedne istine koja mu protivreãi. Ostaje nam, dakle, jedino da
uhap‰enikovu istinu preudesimo tako da se podudari sa na‰im potrebama. U tome je sva na‰a
misija.
— A ako ona time prestane da bude istina?
— Ona to, Rutkowski, nikad nije ni bila. Istina koja pristaje da se menja, puka je laÏ.
(Pekiç, Kako upokojiti vampira, 50)
BORISLAV PEKIĆ’S HOW TO KILL A VAMPIRE
Borislav Pekiç in London in 1983 (photo I. Simoviç)
43
44
OLGA N EDELJKOVIĆ
absurdity of general killings, wars, taking prisoners, and various types of revolts. Thus, in Rutkowski’s words, “theoretically speaking, a strictly isolated
prisoner, subject to a special regime, immersed into Steinbrecher’s solution of
logic and system of torture, can contract X times the consciousness within a
week of investigation which results in Y times the confessions under the only
condition that the refuse of his soul’s metabolism, a quantity of Z, is removed
in time.” 11
Armed with the entire treasury of Western European philosophy, based
on the vampirism of reason and free will, Lieutenant Rutkowski becomes one
of Steinbrecher’s perpetrators in 1943. Developing the story on two simultaneously different temporal levels, as already pointed out, Pekiç convincingly
and skillfully describes Rutkowski’s gradual process of ‘Steinbrechersation.’
His behavior is more and more influenced by his alter ego’s demonic logic,
which Rutkowski contrives to resist by coming up with constant compromises. The best illustration of this is Rutkowski’s treatment of Adam
Trpkoviç, a local clerk who has fallen behind after the evacuation of the
Italian army and, through an obvious mistake, becomes a German prisoner of
war in 1943. Rutkowski finds Adam in the basement of the building that the
SS had transformed into its headquarters. The strangest and most conspicuous
thing that characterizes Adam is his “innocent” umbrella from which he never
separates. In spite of being aware of Adam’s innocence, Rutkowski comes to
the conclusion that the rescue of Adam Trpkoviç would be a potential tactical
mistake. Such an outcome could allegedly impair him to act properly when
“the basements are filled with real criminals.”12
In Rutkowski’s inner struggle to save his own soul and fulfill his duty as
an SS officer, his alter ego Steinbrecher finally prevails over him and dominates all his thoughts and actions during his invisible struggle “to save
Adam’s neck.”13 Pekiç expresses this struggle by saying that, at some point,
Rutkowski becomes unconscious when he hits his protégé in the face with his
hand.14 Then Pekiç continues by depicting how Rutkowski feels hatred and an
icy intolerance toward the representative of mediocrity, Adam Trpkoviç, who
11
“Dakle, teorijski uzev, strogo izolovani zatvorenik, podvrgnut specijalnom reÏimu,
potopljen u Steinbrecherov rastvor logike i torture, moÏe u toku jednonedeljnog terma istrage
da kontrahira savest X puta, ‰to iznosi Y priznanja, pod jednim uslovom da se otpaci du‰evnog
metabolizma, koliãina Z, iz zatvorenika pravovremeno odstranjuje” (Pekiç, Kako upokojiti
vampira, 159)
12
Pekiç, Kako upokojiti vampira, 163.
13
Pekiç, Kako upokojiti vampira, 189.
14
Pekiç, Kako upokojiti vampira, 194.
BORISLAV PEKIĆ’S HOW TO KILL A VAMPIRE
45
survives all historical and biological catastrophes.15 To clarify his last idea
Rutkowski says: “Adam is the tangible proof of Darwin’s and Nietzsche’s
inaccurate statement that skillful and strong individuals survive.”16 On the
other hand, in order to support Adam Trpkoviç as a prisoner, Rutkowski
keeps a list of suspicious individuals. All these details reveal how Rutkowski
strives to find excuses for his own actions and to reach a compromise
“between his consciousness and his fear, between his ideals and reason,
between his will and intellect, between the sky and underground, between the
paradise and hell.”17 Finally, in order to give vent to his own disappointment
caused by his failure in his metaphoric chess game with Steinbrecher about
Adam’s destiny, Rutkowski commits a crime, condemning Adam Trpkoviç to
death. In this light, his will should be viewed only as a new, disguised trap of
reason. The process of “Steinbrechersation,” with its tyrannizing logic,
rationalizing speculations, and futile practices, has grown inside Rutkowski to
such dimensions that it has led him to a state of insanity and mental distortion
on one side, and on the other, it has compelled him to abandon his humanistic
principles. Pekiç convincingly shows how Rutkowski’s process of personal
development has transformed into an accusation against himself by himself;
consequently, it has led him to a suicidal state of mind.
This farcical play reaches its culmination with the scene of the tragic-supernatural “ascension” of Adam Trpkoviç. Rutkowski had brutally murdered
him long ago by means of public hanging in the main square of the little town
of D. in 1943. Adam’s ghost persecutes Rutkowski during his visit to the
town of D. in 1965. However, the members of the advisory council translate
Rutkowski’s hallucinatory vision of Adam’s ascension into a symbolic language, deciphering it as the signs of a psychoanalytic alphabet. They consider
Adam’s ascension, with the help of his umbrella, as “a paranoid hallucination
of the visual type.”18 Thus, twenty-two years after his death, Adam Trpkoviç
is degraded to the level of a traditional, almost folkloric vampire, whose ghost
has destroyed not only the purpose of Professor Rutkowski’s repentance, but
also Rutkowski’s belief that victims can be in any way redeemed. The event
15
Pekiç, Kako upokojiti vampira, 195.
Pijanoviç correctly stresses that Rutkowski’s feelings and his treatment of Adam reveal a
crack in Rutkowski’s humanistic appeals: “Ma koliko Rutkowski poku‰avao naçi izgovor za
ove postupke, izvesno je da su oni zapravo simptomatske radnje ‰to otkrivaju pukotinu u
njegovim humanistiãkim apelacijama. Ovde jo‰ nije na delu psihiãka snaga mrÏnje, ali jesu
njeni simptomi, koji çe, s vremenom, pojaãani znacima abnormalnosti, konaãno odvesti
Rutkovskog s onu stranu humanizma” (Pijanoviç , 83).
17
Pekiç, Kako upokojiti vampira, 211.
18
Pekiç, Kako upokojiti vampira, 385.
16
46
OLGA N EDELJKOVIĆ
of Adam’s ascension could have been the end of Lieutenant Rutkowski story.
In the twenty-second letter Rutkowski expresses his conviction that this
episode about Adam’s ‘ascension’ represents the end of his story. Likewise,
in his eighteenth footnote Pekiç emphasizes that “undergoing the catharsis of
his confession” has allowed “Professor Rutkowski to level all the uneven
spots of his past and to destroy the monstrous imprint which his crime left on
it.”19 However, exactly the opposite has happened. Rutkowski has revived a
critical point of his past through his story and this resurgence of his past has
brought about his mental sufferings and emotional pains. The action of the
novel is again slowed down, due to the appearance of the devilish umbrella,
which represents the allegorical key to the novel.
In order to break the vicious circle in which reason and free will battle
each other, Pekiç must introduce something in opposition to Steinbrecher’s
demonic logic and Rutkowski’s over-rational reasoning. Thus, Pekiç introduces an element which supersedes our reality, outside the reach of our rational minds. Thus, in the novel, Pekiç uses Adam’s umbrella as an allegorical
key in order to redefine the goal of modern philosophy founded exclusively
on rationality. At this point it seems proper to underline some key moments
which have led me to this kind of interpretation. Namely, in order to satisfy
the demands of free will, Rutkowski has to define his own resistance toward
power and terror which could only be done by releasing an obviously innocent man, Adam Trpkoviç. However, at the same time it means that
Rutkowski would violate the propositions of reason, incarnated in the irreproachable demonstrations of his alter ego’s police logic. Rutkowski’s inability to offer resistance, and to adjust his resistance to the point of view located
outside the rational, creates the above-mentioned vicious circle in the novel
based on reason and free will subject to reason, which are two sides of the
same coin. To illustrate the problem of this vicious circle in the ninth letter
dedicated to Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit, Pekiç describes how
Rutkowski, in his hallucinatory state, encounters Adam Trpkoviç’s ghost and
has a long conversation with him. When Rutkowski declares that he does not
believe in the supernatural phenomena, Adam’s ghost says:
“And who believes? The supernatural does not exist. The supernatural is only a notion for that, which you do not understand. Even here
where I live there are things which seem to us supernatural in a given
circumstance. However, we differ from you insofar that we are aware
that they are only illusions. This point of view, Lieutenant, moves
19
Pekiç, Kako upokojiti vampira, 386.
BORISLAV PEKIĆ’S HOW TO KILL A VAMPIRE
47
even mountains. The difficulty consists only in changing our standpoint.”
“I am satisfied with my viewpoint,” responds Rutkowski.
“I know this viewpoint very well. Every standpoint is acceptable
as long as it feeds us and keeps us warm. On the other hand, you are
an intellectual. You rely on healthy reasoning. How can you deny the
existence of someone with whom you agree to speak? I am afraid,
Lieutenant, that this time you won’t get by with one of your famous
compromises,” says Adam’s ghost.
“I won’t count on compromise. I will close my eyes and when I
open them again, you will be no longer here.” 20
This change of view is not the one that is expected from Rutkowski. His
elaborate dialogues with his alter ego, Steinbrecher, reveal that his standpoint
remains unchangeable. Adam’s umbrella is a silent witness of this mutual attack between Rutkowski and his vampiric shadow, revealing a new degree of
allegory in the police domain, the sphere of absolute reason, reminding us of
well-known totalitarian ideologies in the twentieth century. Pekiç strives to
find a spiritual equivalent to these ideologies, based on West European philosophical thought, and represents them in fictional form. Since I have already
given examples for Pekiç’s fictional representation of reason and free will, in
conclusion I would like to say a few words about Adam’s supernatural and
diabolical umbrella.
To illustrate the diabolical power of Adam’s umbrella, Pekiç skillfully
depicts its vampiric character, devoting three chapters to its evil actions and
describing Lieutenant Rutkowski’s attempts to destroy as many umbrellas as
possible. In spite of all his efforts to get rid of the vampiric umbrella,
Rutkowski could not escape it. In a footnote, Pekiç informs the reader that
Rutkowski was killed in an automobile accident on his way back to Germany.
Near Vienna, his Mercedes hit an oak tree on 6 October 1965. His belly was
20
—A ko veruje? Natprirodno ne postoji. Natprirodno je samo pojam za ono ‰to ne razumete.
âak i tamo gde ja Ïivim postoje stvari, koje se, za aktuelne uslove, ãoveku ãine natprirodnim.
Ali mi smo, za razliku od vas, svesni da je to iluzija. Ugao gledanja, poruãniãe, i brda pomera.
Te‰koça je jedino u tome da se pomeri ugao gledanja.
— Ja sam svojim uglom gledanja zadovoljan.
— Poznato mi je to stanovi‰te. Svaki ugao gledanja je dobar sve dok nas hrani i drÏi u
toplom. S druge strane, vi ste intelektualac. PolaÏete na zdravo rasu∂ivanje. Kako moÏete
poricati ne‰to sa ãime pristajete da razgovarate? Bojim se, poruãniãe, da se ovog puta neçete
provuçi sa nekim od va‰ih ãuvenih kompromisa.
— Ja i ne raãunam na kompromis. Zatvoriçu oãi i kad ih ponovo otvorim, vas neçe biti.
(Pekiç, Kako upokojiti vampira, 108–09).
48
OLGA N EDELJKOVIĆ
pierced by Adam’s umbrella, which he was holding in his hands instead of the
steering wheel. Clearly, Pekiç is emphasizing that death is something irrational.21 Adam’s umbrella stands out from the numerous combinations of
thought processes that shackle Rutkowski, whose thinking is grounded
equally on both reason and free will. Adam’s umbrella is symbolic of the incarnation of an unattainable space of the irrational, an illusory possibility of
redemption from which Rutkowski has been deprived in his struggle with his
past. During the last twenty-two years, Professor Rutkowski has not tried to
be pardoned for his sins and has not expressed feelings of repentance. His
way of thinking and reasoning has resulted in his exchange of unattainable irrationality with total will. Some literary critics explain the scenes with
Adam’s umbrella and its demonic actions as fantastic sequences in the
novel.22 In order to clarify whether Adam’s umbrella represents a supernatural
element or an irrational one the best solution is to quote Pekiç’s own opinion:
In spite of the unusual and supernatural quality of certain scenes in
the novel there is no real ‘fantastic’ element. The fantastic is absent
here, not because these scenes could not enter the sphere of the fantastic. On the contrary, they are profoundly part of it. Nor for the rea21
Pekiç chooses this kind of death in the novel itself. However, in an interview he gives a
rather rational explanation for Rutkowski’s death: “Rekonstrui‰uçi te odnose iz jedne
vi‰egodi‰nje perspektive, [Konrad Rutkowski] do‰ao je do uverenja da je ta njegova pro‰lost
neupokojiva, jer je vreme za to isteklo, jer se on sa njom nije obraãunao dok je trajala, dok se sa
njom ne‰to jo‰ i moglo uãiniti, nego se toga poduhvatio kad je ona veç sasvim bila izvan
dohvata svake izmene. Spasenje je do‰lo iznenada, ali ne iz nekog nepoznatog pravca. Ono je
veç bilo prisutno u njegovoj svesti, primenjeno na drugu temu i na izgled daleko od njegovog
sluãaja. Pro‰lost koja nas muãi moÏe se uni‰titi jedino ili samoubistvom ili totalnim
prihvatanjem,” see Vreme reãi, 52.
22
Du‰an Marinkoviç, “Fantastiãki elementi u Pekiçevu romanu Kako upokojiti vampira,” in
Srpska fantastika: Natprirodno i nestvarno u srpskoj knjiÏevnosti, Nauãni skupovi, knj. XLIV,
Odeljenje jezika i knjiÏevnosti, knj. 9, ed. Predrag Palavestra (Belgrade: SANU, 1989), 603–
09. Mihajlo Pantiç takes into consideration Pekiç’s opinion that there is no real fantastic
elements in the novel and concludes: “Pripovedanje romana grana se u dva toka—jedan stremi
literarnom ‘otklonu’ od realnosti i zapuçuje se u iskustveno nedokuãive/neobj‰njive prostore,
‰to je, ako ne diferencijalna, a ono bar deskriptivna osobina fantastike. Tim tokom dominira
fantastiãka ravan ‘obrnute perspektive’—vaskrsavanje mrtvih, halucinacija, snohvatost, tok
raspoluçene, haotiãne svesti, poboãna, ali za znaãenje dela izuzetno vaÏna priãa o crnom
ki‰obranu, demonskom znaku. Druga ravan ãitanju pripada podrãju knjiÏevne mimeze i saÏima
bitne karakteristike pripovedaãkog (delom i autorskog) odnosa prema stvarnosti. Taj tok u biti
je osobita rekonstrukcija istorije, u ãijem se kontekstu razmatraju priroda i nesklad odnosa
izmedju pojedinca i sveta.” See his “Pekiçeva sotija: Roman Kako upokojiti vampira u svetlu
autorske oznake i upotrebe Ïanra,” in Srpska fantastika: Natprirodno i nestvarno u srpskoj
knjiÏevnosti, 611–16, esp. 615.
BORISLAV PEKIĆ’S HOW TO KILL A VAMPIRE
49
son that these scenes can be rationally explained as the hallucinations
of a twisted consciousness (the editor’s comments intrude on this interpretation, and without his comments this interpretation does exist
as an exclusively potential possibility). Above all else, these scenes of
the supernatural in the novel are used to support a rational thesis,
which means that the illogical is harnessed in the game of the logical,
serving to prove a higher, historical logic, with the help of irony and
sarcasm, the two deadly enemies of the fantastic, which is based on
absolute confidence in the full reality of supernatural phenomena. 23
In conclusion, one can say that Pekiç’s How to Kill a Vampire is at once
historical and metafictional, contextual and self-reflexive. Pekiç is always
aware of the status of his writing, of his major tool—his language and its possibilities of creating fictional worlds. Above all, Pekiç’s novel represents the
postmodern contempt for a dogmatic mind that produces a totalitarian regime.
This novel should be viewed as a vehement postmodern criticism not only of
Hitler’s and Stalin’s type of totalitarianism, but of any other type of totalitarian regime that includes, for example, such stark, unqualified images of destruction as Hiroshima in the age of nuclear deterrence, the ultimate totalitarian experience, based on “a balance of terror and power.” We are highly
aware that the dogmatic mind did not end with Hitler’s defeat. It was carried
over into the postwar world. Today, in the twenty-first century, we witness
the ideologies of extremist political movements with an articulate totalitarian
mentality, accompanied by discourses of nuclear deterrence, and other political and economical threats. Besides that, Pekiç’s dialogue with the wellknown representatives of philosophical tradition hits the target on a deeper
stylistic level. Pekiç powerfully parodies the modern West European philosophy that is grounded on the two basic concepts of reason and free will and
their dogmatic striving for perfection, which he skillfully discredits. The
novel is not written within the framework of fantastic or supernatural poetics,
although it does contain fantastic elements. Thus, the miraculous umbrella,
with its unusual supernatural powers is only used to prove Pekiç’s rational
thesis against reason and free will. The miraculous umbrella, in its essence,
represents the irrational. Thus, at the heart of Pekiç’s postmodern consciousness we find an acceptance of the irrational, a large element of uncertainty
and ambiguity in life.
23
Vreme reãi, 68.