When the boat returned to Panchevo, Protoyeray Zhivkovich, the poet-priest, who had first suggested my transference from Panchevo to Prague, was watching for my arrival, and received me with tears of joy in his eyes. He was a protecting friend and adviser of my boyhood days, and he always considered himself indirectly responsible for my wandering away to the distant shores of America. When I thanked him for the choice feast which he had prepared for me, he assured me that his feast was only a feast of food, whereas the feast which I spread out before him when I answered his questions about America was a feast for his soul. I certainly did it, if I interpreted correctly the luminous flashes of his intelligent eyes. He was a man of about sixty, but his vigorous eye was still just as eloquent as the stirring verses of his younger days. “Tell your mother,” he said, “that I am happy to bear the whole responsibility for your wandering away to distant America. It is no longer distant; it is now in my heart; you have brought America to us. It was a new world in my terrestrial geography; it is now a new world in my spiritual geography.” His generous enthusiasm threatened to undo some of the sobering effects of Niven’s conference at Cambridge. During my several visits at his house that summer I had to repeat again and again my description of Beecher and of his sermons. He called him the brother of Joan of Arc of the new spiritual world; her flaming sword, he said, was “Uncle Tom’s Cabin.”
My older sister and her husband drove to Panchevo and escorted me to Idvor. When Idvor’s territory was reached I begged them to make a detour which would take me through the pasturelands and vineyards of Idvor, where I had seen my happiest boyhood days. There, as if in a dream, I saw the boys of Idvor watching herds of oxen just as I used to do, and playing the same games which I used to play. The vineyards, the summer sky above them, and the river Tamish in the distance, where I had learned to swim and dive, looked the same as ever. Presently the familiar church-spire of Idvor hove in sight, and gradually the sweet sound of the church-bells, announcing vespers, awakened countless memories in my mind and I found it difficult to control my emotions. As we drove slowly through little Idvor everything looked exactly as it had looked eleven years before. There were no new houses, and the old ones looked as old as ever. The people were doing the same work which they always did during that season of the year, and they were doing it in the same way. When we reached the village green I saw the gate of my mother’s yard wide open, a sign that she expected a welcome guest. She sat alone on the bench under a tree in front of her house, and waited, looking in the direction from which she expected me to come. When she saw my sister’s team, I observed that suddenly she raised her white handkerchief to her eyes, and my sister whispered to me: “Mayka plache!” (“Mother is weeping!”) I jumped out of the wagon and hastened to embrace her. Oh, how wonderful is the power of tears, and how clear is our spiritual vision when a shower of tears has purified the turbulent atmosphere of our emotions! Mother’s love and love for mother are the sweetest messages of God to the living earth.
Everything in Idvor looked the same, but my mother had changed; she looked much older, and much more beautiful. There was a saintly light in her eyes which disclosed to me the serene firmament of the spiritual world in which she lived. Raphael and Titian, I thought, never painted a more beautiful saint. I gazed and worshipped and felt most humble. “Come,” she said, “and walk with me; we shall be alone; I want to hear your voice and see the light of your face, undisturbed.” We walked slowly, and my mother recalled many things, reminding me of the familiar objects of my boyhood days, as: “Here is the path on which you walked to school; there is the church where you read the epistles on Sundays and holidays; there is the mill with the funnel-shaped thatched roof from the top of which you once removed the shining new tin star, imagining that it was a star from heaven; there is the house where Baba Batikin, of blessed memory, lived and taught you so many ancient tales; there is the house where old Aunt Tina cured your whooping-cough with charms and with herbs steeped in honey; here lived old Lyubomir, of blessed memory, who was so fond of you, and made your sheepskin coats and caps; here is the field where every evening you brought our horses to the chikosh (the village herdsman) to take them to the pasturelands.”
By that time we had reached the end of the little village, but my mother prolonged our leisurely walk and presently we stood at the gate of the village cemetery. Pointing to a cross of red marble my mother said that it marked the grave of my father. When we reached it I kissed the cross, and, kneeling upon the grave, I prayed. My mother, loyal to Serb traditions, addressed the grave, saying: “Kosta, my faithful husband, here is your boy whom you loved more dearly than your own life, and whose name was on your lips when you breathed your last. Accept his prayer and his tears as his affectionate tribute to your blessed memory, which he will cherish forever.”
On the way back we stopped at the church and kissed the icons of our patron saint and of St. Sava, and lighted two wax candles which mother had brought with her. I confessed to her that I felt as if a sacred communion had reunited me with the spirit of Idvor. That was her wish, she said, because she did not want Idvor to think that I was like a proud stranger from a proud, strange land. “I did not recognize you,” she said, “when I first saw you in your sister’s wagon until you smiled with the smile of your boyhood days, and then I shed the sweetest tears of my life. You looked so learned and so far above us plain folks of Idvor that nobody will recognize the Misha they used to know, and whom they long to see, unless you show them the boy that they used to know.” My promise to return to Idvor “rich in learning and academic honors” was evidently made good, according to my mother’s opinion. But did not this learning and these academic honors carry with them an air which did not harmonize with the old-fashioned notions of Idvor? This, I believed, was in my mother’s mind, and I made a careful note of it.
Idvor came to see me, and it assured me that there was no youngster in all the great plains of Voyvodina who was nearer to the heart of his native village than Misha. This affectionate regard was won by my strict observance of all the old customs of Idvor, as, for instance, kissing the hand of the old people of Idvor, and in return being kissed by them on the forehead. On the other hand, young peasant boys and girls of Idvor kissed my hand, and I kissed them on the cheek and petted them. My cousin, much older than I, was an ex-soldier and a stern Knez (chief) of the village. He was the oldest male member and, therefore, the head of the Pupins. I was expected to keep this in mind constantly, and I did it whenever I stood in his mighty presence. American citizenship eliminated my allegiance to the Emperor of Austria-Hungary but not to the autocratic Knez of Idvor. There was another great person in Idvor whose presence inspired awe. He was my koum (godfather). My mother had lost all her children that were born in her earlier years, and was left childless for many years. She then bore two daughters when she was over thirty. I was born when she was over forty, in answer to her fervent prayer, she firmly believed, that God grant her a son. A boy born late in life, if he is to live, must, according to a popular belief in Idvor, be handed out through the front window to the first person who comes along, and that person has to carry the baby to church quickly and have it baptized. In this manner a very poor and humble peasant of Idvor became my koum. A koum’s authority over his godchild is, theoretically at least, unlimited, according to Serbian custom. In practice, a godchild must eat humble pie when the koum is present. Between my cousin, who, as Knez, was at the head of the village, and my koum, who was somewhere near the bottom of the village, I had some difficulty to steer the correct course of conduct. I succeeded, thanks to my efforts to please my mother; and the peasants of Idvor most cheerfully admitted that America must be a fine Christian country, since it had given me a training which harmonized so well with the Christian traditions of Idvor. My presidency in the junior year at Columbia College, my undisputed authority among some of the young aristocrats of New York, and the many scholastic successes in my academic career had sown some seeds of vanity and false pride in my heart. But these seeds were smothered by the inexorable rigors of Idvor’s traditions. Humility is the cardinal virtue in a youth among the peasants of Idvor.
Needless to say, the story of my life since I had left Idvor was retold many a time, until my mother and my sisters knew it by heart. It was sweet music to their ears. I enjoyed it, too, because summer evenings in a Serbian garden are most conducive to the spinning out of reminiscent tales. The village worthies spent many Sunday afternoons in my mother’s garden asking many, many a question about America. Tales about things like the Brooklyn Bridge, the elevated railroad, the tall buildings in New York, and the agricultural operations of the West were received with many expressions of wonder, but at times also, I thought, with some reserve. A simple peasant mind could not accept without considerable reserve the statement that a machine can cut, bind, and load the seasoned wheat, all at the same time, with nothing but a few stupid horses to drag it along. After a while my store of information became exhausted, and I had much less to say, but the wise men of Idvor urged me to go on. They met my apologies with the statement that peasant Ghiga had never left Idvor in all his life until one day he went to a neighboring village, about ten miles away, and saw the county fair. He returned to Idvor on the same day, and for six weeks he never ceased talking about the great things which he had seen at that county fair. “Just imagine,” said the priest, “how much he would have had to say if he had been nine years in great America!”
I was overwhelmed with invitations to attend concerts and festivals in many places of my native Banat, and when I attended I was often called upon to say something about America, and, of course, I spoke about my favorite subject: “The American Doctrine of Freedom.” People talked and papers wrote about it. One day the Fehispan, the governor of Torontal, where Idvor belonged under the new division of Hungary, sent for me, and appointed the hour for a conference. I went, carrying my American citizenship papers and my Columbia diploma in my pocket. When I entered his office I saw a handsome young man of about thirty, quite athletic in appearance, and looking like an English aristocrat in dress and in manner. I was told beforehand that he was a young Hungarian nobleman who prided himself upon his English university training. I wondered how he would act when he saw before him a Serb youth from the peasant village of Idvor who prided himself upon his American college training. He looked puzzled when I entered and saluted him with a Serbian “Dobroytro gospodine!” (“Good morning, sir”), accompanying my salute with an Anglo-Saxon bow, that is a jerky motion of the head from the shoulders up. The bow of continental Europe is much more elaborate. After some hesitation he asked me to sit down, and then, as if by an afterthought, he brought a chair himself and offered it to me. We spoke in English, since I did not understand Hungarian, and he did not care to speak Serb. By way of introduction I showed him my American citizenship papers and my diploma, and he remarked that these documents agreed with my appearance and manner, adding quickly that he meant a compliment. He asked me how I liked Idvor and Hungary. Then I told him that I never had known much about Hungary, but that Budapest and even its famous bridge looked to me small and shrivelled up, probably because I compared things there with things in New York. “It is big enough, is it not, to be the metropolis of the southern Slavs in Hungary?” he asked. “It undoubtedly is,” said I, “but somewhat inconvenient and unnatural.” I volunteered this opinion, seeing from his somewhat inquisitorial manner that he knew much about my doings, and that he had heard of my salute to Belgrade when my boat from Budapest approached it a month earlier.
“This, I suppose, is the doctrine which you preached at Karlovci, at the national gathering there?” asked the handsome and genial inquisitor, and I answered: “No; I had no time; I was too busy carrying the body of the great poet to Strazhilovo. Besides, the Karlovci ceremony itself was really a grand sermon which glorified that doctrine, and some day it may prevail, when the slow mind of the southern Slav wakes up and does the natural thing.” “The quick mind of the Hungarian crown may wake up sooner and do the natural thing,” said the young Fehispan, and added: “What you say now confirms my information that in your public utterances you deny the divine right of the crown and proclaim the divine right of the people.” “That is one of the messages of our American Declaration of Independence,” said I, “and I delivered that message to people here who were anxious to hear something about America.” Then I added that Kossuth, while in America, was glorifying the divine right of the Hungarian people and denying the divine right of the Hapsburg crown in Hungary. I had heard this and many other Hungarian democratic doctrines from Henry Ward Beecher, who was a great friend and admirer of Kossuth, and I told him that. He saw that my trigger was ready if he attempted any further moves in this direction. “You are certainly frank and honest, like all real Americans that I know; that makes them most attractive. But why don’t you naturalized Americans mind your own business when you visit us?” He was much less stern and serious when he said this, and I was only too glad to play a more cheerful tune, and said: “Our most important business here is our mission to make you, our poor relations here, happy and prosperous by having you adopt the American point of view.”
He was a wealthy Hungarian magnate who owned several villages, each of them bigger than Idvor, and this answer coming from a son of poor Idvor amused him much. From that moment on our conference was much less formal, and became even cordial when he offered me coffee and cigarettes. I jokingly told him that Magyarism and Teutonism had driven me away from Panchevo and Prague, and now that I was back for a visit I wished to pay them back with a little present of a few American ideas. “Your American ideas,” he retorted jokingly, “will make you even less popular here than your Serb nationalism did eleven years ago. Drop them while you are here. You’ll have more fun shooting wild ducks in the lowlands of the Tamish River near Idvor than clearing up to dullards the American point of view. The duck season is on, and it is a pity to miss a single day. I’ll lend you an American gun which is just right for that sort of business.” He did, and that gun kept me busy and saved him the trouble of watching my movements. The village notary accompanied me on my shooting tramps; he was an expert fisherman and shot, and spared no pains to please me and—the Fehispan. A two weeks’ tramp in the marshes of the Tamish River, chasing the elusive duck, diminished my haste to harmonize the political point of view of the Serbs in the Voyvodina with American ideas.