from my email: Johannes Goransson's "My Cold War Childhood"

 

My Cold War Childhood

Johannes Göransson Oct 7

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Recently I was contacted by a young Croatian historian doing research on my dad’s work as a journalist in Eastern Europe – and more specifically Yugoslavia – back in the 1970s. He is researching my dad’s activities and has a lot of questions for me dad but tells me my dad is not responding to his inquiries. He also wants to get a copy of a documentary my dad made about the Croatian Underground: “Croatians: Terrorists or Freedom Fighters.” Could I please tell him to respond? I explain to him that my dad is old, and therefore seldom responds to queries. In fact, I tell him, he probably won’t remember the answer to most if any of the questions you ask him. Thus begins the tale of my summer. The tale of trying to remember what happened to my dad, and to me, in the 1970s, in my cold war childhood.

*

The young historian expresses sadness about my dad then asks if I have a copy of my dad’s controversial documentary “Croatians: Terrorists or Freedom Fighters?” He says Swedish Television is not granting him the rights to the film and he wants to make it widely available as it’s a key part of the history of Croatian during the cold war. I ask my dad if he has a copy but he doesn’t. I ask the Swedish Television for a copy but they refer me to the bureaucratic web page.

*

Meanwhile, my son is sinking into a kind of madness of violence and screaming. I don’t have time. The historian asks me questions about the film, my dad’s time in Croatia and my experiences back home in Sweden. I explain that I was only 5 years old when the film came out, and know very little about this time in my dad’s life. It’s strange to write that since I was there. And unfortunately, my dad’s memory was never good and has become even shakier in old age. The sensation of discussing this film with a stranger is made extra strange by the sneaking sensation that here’s a person trying to figure out memories that my dad himself has lost to old age, but also, that he is figuring out my own cold-war childhood.

*

Of course there are things I remember. Our little row house in Bjärred occasionally being under police surveillance due to threats of violence, my dad being gone for several months, a group of Croatian exiles holding clandestine meetings in our little living room. There are also related memories: for example getting free pizzas at pizzerias owned by Croatian emigrants because of the documentary.

*
My dad covered all of Eastern Europe for Swedish Television, and sometimes he brought his kids along with him. I was there when he met with Lech Walesa in Gdansk, my brother played on the floor when my dad met with Czech dissident Jan Kavan, who later became president of the UN (I remember this specific person among many others because we called him “Jan Banan”).

*

In these years, some of my happiest memories are from “the beach.” Despite being pretty poor, my family managed to buy a beautiful cottage on Österlen, close to the beach on the Baltic Sea. We would bike to the beach in the morning, me sitting on the back of my dad’s bike as we sang “The International” fullthroatedly. At the beach, we would look across the Baltic and claim we “could see Russia” (though looking on google maps right now, it seems if we saw anything it would be Lithuania). The beach was littered with old bunkers from World War II which we would climb around on. Once I fell on a bumblebee which stung me - it felt like a burn.

*

We spent almost every day with the family of another journalist who worked for Swedish Television - on the beach, in the woods. Like my dad, the dad of that family was a cinephile. In the evenings, we would watch Hitchcock or John Ford movies, which were inexplicably showing all the time on Swedish TV (or at least in my memory). Those two were also my dad’s favorite directors. My dad was not an intellectual; he loved a quick montage, a lurid plot, an incredible hero. As a young man, he had wanted to be a film director and his hope was that I would become one. He would sit next to me and narrate Hitchock’s cutting technique (“cut!” he would half-shout). To this day I can still hear his voice telling me “cut” when I watch Hitchcock.

*

We watched The Birds, Psycho, 39 Steps, The Rope. I think maybe we watched all of them. I’m still scared of taking showers (I’m only half joking) but the show that had the deepest effect on me was one episode of his TV show, where a man thinks there’s a snake in his pajamas. Turns our there isn’t. But when he and his friend celebrate the fact that there was no snake in his pajamas, the snake peers out from beneath the pillow and bites the friend. The main character says somethine like: “I’m not calling the doctor, you knew there was a snake in here and you did nothing to help me.” To this day, I check beneath my pillow before I go to bed. I think maybe this was also part of the cold war of my childhood.

*

The Young Historian asks me, Was your father aware of the danger he was in? Did he ever tell me that he was under surveillance by the Yugoslavian secret police? Did my father ever receive coded threats? Is it true that your family had to move because of the threats to your lives? I tell him I don’t know. I was often scared, but that was because of Hitchcock, no the Yugoslavian government. But my dad was paranoid as hell. He was for a long time after he left Eastern Europe, even after we left Europe and moved to the US. To this day, he keeps a framed newspaper cover with his photograph and the headline “These Three are on Kill List.”

*

The Young Historian asks: What was the reception to your dad’s film.

Weirdly, I knew a bit about this.

When my mom died - my parents divorced in the 1990s - and my brother and I went through all the junk that had gathered in his garage over the decades, we found a newspaper clipping concerning the postponement of the broadcast of the documentary. My dad admits that he’s made some mistakes that he will need to correct. There is a sense that the articles doesn’t touch on the real story, that there’s political pressure being applied. “It’s the worst documentary I have ever made,” I seem to remember my dad being quoted as saying. It didn’t sound like him, it sounded like something was beign covered up. Why was the broadcast delayed? Why did the newspapers know about the postponement?

*

The Young Historian asks me if I can help him locate the article. Which newspaper was it in? Do I remember the date? Anything would be helpful.

But even though it was just a year ago, I can’t tell him any details. I just don’t remember.

*

I tell a couple of my friends about my exchanges with the Young Historian. They freak out. They say it’s some AI entity trying to infiltrate my email, steal my identity. Don’t answer him, it’s not real.

*

The Young Historian sends me all kinds of information - mostly in Croatian, so I cannot read them - as well as clips from the film. He says he read about the documentary in a scholarly book about the Cold War. He want to know if I can help him identify certain people, if I know anyone my dad worked with, people who might help him understand the film. He sends me link to am Austrian political journalist and says my dad worked with him. I had never heard of him. For some reason, he sends me the court proceedings of a trial against Franjo Tudman, who was put in jail in the 70s because of what he said (“lies about Yugoslavia” according to the proceedings) in my dad’s documentary.

*

I google Tudjman. Turns out Tudjman was an anti-fascist partisan during WWII who later became the first president of Croatia. I know nothing about Croatia.

*

When I tell my friends about my discoveries, they ask why are you still communicating with that person? He’s clearly AI. Just don’t whatever you do, download any files.

*
I google my dad and Croatia. Mostly I get hits for Ludwig Göransson’s many film scores. But after a while I start to get photographs of soldiers. One story concerns a genocidal general who was sentenced for his crimes in the 1990s. But mostly they are people who appears to have died in the civil war. It’s unclear what they have to do with my dad’s documentary and why Google would lead me to them. I send the images to my friends; they say, it’s fake, it’s Ai, you have to stop communicating with this person.

*

When I tell my friends they ask what will you do if you find out he was in league with dubious people?

*

About 15 or 20 years ago I went back to the cottage by the coast. It was now owned by an older German gentleman. He had been sent to Sweden in the aftermath of World War II during summers, to get away from the abject conditions in Germany, and now he had moved back to spend his last decades in the site of his - and mine - idyllic cold war childhood. He also told me my dad had been by a few weeks before. The house was the same, and the woods in the backyard just as beautiful, but the German had installed a swimming pool. Apparently he thought it was inconvenient to have to drive to the beach, and to be around other people. His was a European cold war story too.

*

Once ten or so years ago, I did actually ask my dad about the film. I asked him, what happened to the people you were so close to in Croatia? What about those expats who would meet in our living room? Are you in touch with any of them? He said he didn’t know. But his wife says the strangest people show up now and then.

*

The Young Historian writes that he has clips from the film if I wanted to see them. Footage of people shooting at targets in the woods. The voice over tells us that there are thousands of members of the Croatian underground and that if war broke out they could be mobilized within a day. I wonder why this is the particular part of movie he has a copy of.

*

I start to think that I could use AI to write a story about the childhood neither I nor my dad remember any longer, the childhood the young Croatian historian is researching but cannot gain access to. Could I ask AI to make a movie about the Croatian underground in the style of Alfred Hitchcock? Could I ask AI to make a movie about my childhood in the style of Alfred Hitchcock? Could I ask AI to make a movie about a young historian researching the activities of a Swedish journalist in Yugoslavia in the 1970s. In the style of Bolano.

*

The Young Historian asks me if I remember any of these names. He lists them. He tells me my dad’s documentary is mentioned 9 times on a certain website about Yugoslavia in the 70s. There’s a peculiar Russian-German journalist and activist - did I remember this person? I don’t. He mentions your dad. He worked with your dad. Do you know if your dad worked with any Russian-born German journalists? I’m starting to think my friends are right. Is this some kind of strange scam? Is this Ai producing a strange movie based on my life. A Hitchcock movie where a young croatian contacts the child of a dubious journalist from the 1970s. Uncovers war crimes. No, just a scam created by Ai to get money from an American with a dad who was a journalist in the 1970s.

*

Then one day the young croatian sends me a message. He has found a copy of the film. He send me a link to shared google document. I don’t feel comfortable signing into some random file, so I ask if he can make it public. He says it’s on Telegram, an app European use, and sends me a link. Soon thereafter, he says, we’re in luck, they’ve put it on Youtube.

*

The movie is a somewhat random mix of history lesson, news report, documentary and interviews with dissidents. It starts out with a kind of homemade montage of headlines about Croatian terrorist attacks in Sweden. There’s footage from right after the Yugoslavian ambassador has been assassinated in Stockholm. An American scholar speaks confidently about Tito’s secret police crushing dissent. At one point my dad asks the socialist dissident: “Don’t you have democracy in Yugoslavia?” The dissident says: “I don’t want to answer this question… You must know I can’t speak.” Other dissidents appear in masks (see photo above) and with various deformed voices. They look like characters from horror movies, they sound like characters from sci-fi b-movies. Tudjman does indeed speak but the pirate copy does not have subtitles. I don’t know what he was imprisoned for. The film ends with the report from the woods. Young people getting ready for a war that would not come for another 15 years.

*
The lack of subtitles, the deformed voices, the deformed voices, the man who cannot speak, the movie that cannot be watched. I tell AI make me a parable about communication and miscommunication, memory and misremembering, make me a parable about masks and guns, cold war and summer. AI, tell me about Tudjman. AI, tell me about the dangers my family was in. AI, tell me about snakes and summer.

*

Answer: The Cold war never ends.

Answer: Summer never ends.