When I learned of Mladen’s death, I didn’t have any emotional reactions. It was a December evening when I opened Facebook without giving it too much thought. Often when I’m supposed to be productive, I open a few apps on my phone only to realize that I don’t get anything apart from trivial updates that keep me entertained for a few seconds. And usually, I can then put myself together and get back to work, but sometimes I am stubborn, so I need this confirmation a second time on my computer. I thus opened Facebook and the first thing that jumped at me was a monochrome photograph of him, posted by his partner. Because of the timeless style, it could have been older, but his features quickly gave away that it must have been shot recently. He looks to the side, almost a bit melancholically. Through his open linen shirt his chest hair is visible, and out of his mouth, white cigarette smoke rises to the top of the frame. The bright shirt contrasts with his dark hair. A few white strands in his hair point to his age.

Immediately I realized something was wrong. This wasn’t a picture you would publish without any caption, if there was not reason behind it. This picture had a meaning. I didn’t dare forming that first impulse to a thought. It couldn’t be, I thought. What reason could there be? The longer I tried to restrain my intuition, the clearer the conviction formed that it had to be. At the time, I lived with my parents once again, so I opened the door to the living room where my father usually worked. He was focused and looked into his computer screen.

“I think Mladen is dead.”

I was afraid he would take my words as a tasteless joke. By now, I was convinced of it, but because I had learned of it so abruptly, I still felt nothing. Instead, the mismatch between the expected emotions and my indifference made me feel guilty. And because I focused on my estrangement instead of Mladen, I hoped I didn’t need to laugh out loud due to the wholly absurd situation

“What?” My father looked at me, dumbfounded.

“Look.” I saw this on Facebook. I’m not sure what it means, but I think Mladen is dead.”

I grasped his mouse and opened the post. My father remained quiet, thinking for a moment, then nodded affirmatively.

“That’s really sad.”

He immediately turned back to his work. I was relieved. No bad joke. I went back to my room to take another look, the photograph now an unmistakable symbol for his death. Secretly, I always wanted to be a bit like him.

Never before had I met somebody who better fit the definition of a philosopher. Philosophy in its basic sense; the love for wisdom or knowledge. The few conversations we had were etched deeply into my mind. Even though we neither spoke the same language, nor were we confronted with similar problems, I found in him an intimacy in which I could completely lose myself. Yes, we lived completely different lives. Me, a spoiled student in a country full of opportunities, he around forty without fixed employment in Europe’s underdeveloped South. Still, how cliché-laden that may sound, we met in the big questions of philosophy

It would be naïve to think we were conversation partners on equal grounds. Instead, I soaked up everything he said and gave my best not to miss the smallest inkling. Of course, I also brought up my own opinions, because I was convinced that I had them and that they were based on a firm intellectual footing. However, the very moment they left my lips, I could no longer identify with them. Like foreign matter they lay in the air, as if a stranger had introduced them to our conversation. Consequently, I joined sides with Mladen, and together we picked apart what had just been said. My contributions to our conversations were therefore limited to luring things out of him. I just needed to give him a reference point, an idea, an epoch, or a philosopher’s name, and he could immediately latch on to it, explain its relevance, and most often, he even had some personal anecdote. No matter how much of a niche it was, the words just flowed from him, as if he had impatiently been waiting until I would finally bring it up. He had an archive in his head, it seemed, that encompassed the entirety of human thought. But Mladen was no archivist. He did not only know where the book was located. Instead, it seemed as if he had read every single book and grasped its content not only intellectually but had a very organic relationship to it, as if he was in exchange with its author and helped him formulate his ideas.

A boy will always look up to his father, because the father is almighty. He can explain the world to him seemingly down to the smallest detail. By naming things, he teaches the boy a language through which he can understand and hence control the world around him. At first, the boy has no alternative than to accept this frame of reference, and the world of the father becomes the world of the boy. His word is law. But the boy grows older and makes his own experiences. He sees, hears or feels things he doesn’t know from home. Then, he starts school, and his hitherto uncontested reality meets other uncontested realities. He has to learn how to negotiate, because fixating on his learned worldview leads to conflicts. First shortcomings in his language become distinct. For many things that he observes and feels, there seems to be no appropriate word. They seem untranslatable. Initially, he disregards these single deficiencies as anomalies. As they say, the exception proves the rule. However, if they pile up, the construct loses its stability bit by bit, and his doubts point to the imperfection of the father. When at last he leaves the protecting parental home and embarks on his hero’s journey, the father loses the power over his narrative. His commandments turn into empty words. They are subject to the same sober considerations with whom the now grown-up man strolls through life. Father and son are on eye level. They can still communicate, but the language they speak is no longer the same.

When I started talking to Mladen, I again felt like that boy. He taught me a new language and let me perceive a world which had been hidden from me. I could of course have declined, since I already spoke a language and had no issues navigating within my own world. But the moment I opened up, the thirst for knowledge became too pressing, I wanted more, wanted to understand what he was talking about. Under no circumstances could I doubt him.

Resembling a child pointing at a moving locomotive, I introduced abstract terms that I must have picked up somewhere, and whose mere enunciation triggered a fascination in me. The child doesn’t see a complex system in which electric energy is converted into mechanic work, but it sees a staggeringly large object that moves seemingly by itself! And because it cannot grasp the phenomenon conceptually, it remains in the realm of the inexplicable, the unknown, the magic. To understand the ideas I introduced, I also needed an understanding of other ideas and concepts which again depend on a succession of other ideas and concepts. When I asked him about this or that, I was the child pointing with its frail index finger on a mighty train, by no means able to grasp what is happening below the surface

What I admired most about Mladen weren’t his mental feats, but the relationship between his body and mind. A scholar has the vocation to push forward the boundaries of human knowledge. Mladen was a bricklayer. Thanks to small jobs here and there he got by. The little money he made he used on tobacco and weed. Or he bought food for the roaming cats, to each of which he gave a name. I’m convinced that his philosophical contemplations weren’t a passion that that he followed for its own sake. Instead, he approached them as a necessary part of what it meant to follow his human nature.

I only got to really know Mladen when my parents hired him to fix the leaking roof on our vacation home, and they asked me to help out. Because we wanted to avoid the gleaming sun, Mladen and me started our work already in the early hours, at five or six in the morning. First, we tried to remove the slabs of the roof with hammer and chisel, and after little success we switched to a jackhammer. We had a tiny radio running in the background, and with the little Bosnian I knew, I understood that a small earthquake must have hit Zagreb. Shortly after, Mladen asked me whether I am right or left. We worked with our hands for hours, so I intuitively held up my right hand and carefully pronounced “desno.” He smiled at me. “No. No. Politically.”

We started exchanging our political views, in the beginning still very careful to assess the counterpart. Though we had spoken before, the reason for our encounters was always my parents. When we met him, I could occasionally have a say, but there was a tacit understanding that I played a subordinate role in their conversations. He remained my parents’ friend, not mine. But on the roof, my parents weren’t around. From politics, we quickly landed on political theory, navigated our way to ethics and ended up deep in philosophical territory. Through our constantly more active and eager conversations, I did not get to know the same Mladen that my parents knew, and with whom I exchanged a few words, but always held my distance. No, I came to know another Mladen whom my parents did not even know existed. I was no longer the son of friends, rather it felt as if we could be friends ourselves. I looked especially forward to our smoking breaks, where we sat together on the balcony and focused on our conversation. He used to ask me for tobacco or rolling paper.

When the roof was sealed up after several mornings, our interactions became again very sporadic. There was no reason. Our outlooks were too different. If I ran into him again, down in the narrow alleyways of the village or in the café, I met again the friend of my parents. On the roof, it was just the two of us, elevated from all external circumstances that defined our relationship. Below, there was again an implicit distance that could not be bridged. Still, the book was half open. How could he die? All felt so unfinished.

This text was orginally published in Riss 01 /2021