A friend of ours, a professor from Sarajevo who just arrived from Yugoslavia a few days ago, told us about an incident reported recently in the Yugoslav newspapers. Earlier this year in Bor, a mining town in Eastern Serbia, not too far from the Bulgarian border, a boy of eleven or twelve and a girl of five—a brother and sister—committed suicide by jumping from the fourth floor of an apartment building—together. Their parents were at work at the time. The boy left a note of explanation: they had spilt something on the new carpet in the livingroom—together again—and all their attempts to clean up the mess only made things worse. The story was intended as an illustration of the extent to which the people in some parts of the country remained fierce and primitive. Our friend added that his wife had become practically ill upon hearing about this incident, and that it was perhaps a mistake to even mention it to her. We just stared at him in silence. Both of us eventually thought about our son, who was fast asleep in his room. Sad, too sad.

The next day, in the early afternoon, I was sitting at my desk and preparing a lecture, while our friend was lounging in an armchair nearby and reading newspapers. My desk faces a large window and the yellow maple leaves of late fall. I saw our son coming up from the street with what seemed to be a bundle of twigs. He came to the livingroom to show his treasure to me. I turned around, still preoccupied by my work, saw the bundle, and then realized that the “twigs” were actually long stalks to which pairs of leaves used to be attached opposite each other, except for one at the tip, and that a tree somewhere in our neighborhood was now shedding these after it had shed its leaves. An unusual arrangement, I thought. “Do you know what this is?” I asked my son abruptly and pointed at the bundle. He looked at me with a puzzled expression: “This is … garbage.” Our friend put down his newspapers. “What do you mean—garbage?” I said, “I asked you where do these belong, or what is their function?” I was getting angry… “I found them on the ground,” the boy said matter-of-factly. Now he watched me attentively and waited. “I am not asking you about that!” I said. I insisted that my question had nothing whatsoever to do with the place where he had found those things: “Who cares where you found this!” I growled. In short, I implied that he did not understand me because he was either slow-witted or careless. He just stared at me, paralyzed. And then I finally understood our exchange. I dropped my pen and hugged him. Dry tears returned to my eyes. I patiently explained what I had in mind. All I really wanted was to show him that his bundle was quite interesting, as the tree from which the stalks came had a special kind of leaves, etc., etc.

When my boy left the room, apparently reassured, I turned to our friend. I tried to explain what our son’s answers actually meant. At first he had interpreted my sour professorial expression as an accusation. Something of great interest to him had no doubt been treated as garbage before. So he proceeded to his conclusions ahead of me. But he realized this was not the case on this occasion, and he had to search for another explanation. Then he thought that I was angry because he had done something to a living plant. Another experience intervened. Again, he anticipated my reaction by claiming that he had not picked the stalks himself, but that he had found them on the ground. He was so much quicker than I was, and yet I suggested that it was he who was saying meaningless things. “Sad!” I said to our friend, who simply nodded and then shook his head in awe. He has a boy, too.

Footnote

1. Cf. M. Horkheimer and T.W. Adorno, Dialectics of the Enlightenment, New York: The Seabury Press, 1972 (first published in 1944), p. 256.