Stubborn as a mule, as grandma used to say.

A friend of my neighbor’s, came to do some business, I invited them over for some Montenegrin rakija, and so it all started, and so it all ended…

He was staring at them conspicuously and lasciviously, the same way like a fool gawks at a beautiful woman as though she were a piece of meat, prey, a trophy…

He knows what the gusle are, he had seen them somewhere before, he head also heard tales about them before and figured that the tales must have a price, that a Serb talks about the gusle as if they are a chunk of wood that could find a home in any house, that could hang on any nail like those cheap worthless reproductions of paintings in perversely ugly frames…

At first I laughed at his offers and grimaces that followed each shot of the grape rakija, then I got properly annoyed, not because he was drunk and annoying, but because he thought that the sacred maple wood had a price tag!

That a Serb had a price tag!

I tried to explain to him that they would merely be hung on a wall in his house, whereas in mine they keep the walls upright…

“That is just an old, wonderful instrument, and you could buy another with this money, and still have plenty left over…”

As he went through the bottle, he got more generous and more poor. A beggar with a full wallet…

Those gusle got a century and a half in then, at least. That is how long my family remembers, my great grandfather played them, and I have no idea how much older than him they are, but the age of the gusle is not measured from when they were first played…

That sacred piece of maple wood was singing even before someone, having been to confession and received communion, crossed himself and chopped a branch off with an ax.

Is it getting more clear what the gusle are? He who made them had to first go to confession and receive communion, cross himself before he swung the ax, and that ax was not used for anything else, unless it should get to go on another adventure in its lifetime…

Long before bows and strings, that sacred maple tree sang, cried, crowed and cheered…

And there’s you offering money…

For what?! To sell you something that is not my property, but my estate!

Don’t you understand anything?!

An estate is not the place where you pitch a stake and build a fence, or the thing you get with a deed, what you prove you own with a piece of paper — these gusle are an estate that proves that it is mine, Serbian, everything that accumulated on these strings and bow…

Everything that has been and will be clings to those strings like a child clings to its mother.

The gusle are not an instrument for him who knows how to play them, but for him who knows how to hear them…

You want to buy what?!

When a guslar crosses his legs and swaddles the gusle as if in a crib; when he drags his bow and from his soul gush charges, excapes, suffering, glory, tears, dismemberment and crucifixion, pits and mangers, burned houses and homes that wouldn’t burn, wounds, baptisms, godparents, liturgies, funerals, old women digging shallow graves with their nails and collecting bones in their headscarves, shepherds running after herds, those fallen only to be resurrected to charge again…

What, then, is the price of the gusle?

If there is one, the Serb has paid it off long ago.

The maple is not a tree that you plant for its crown and shade — but for its glory and misery.

Have you ever seen maple seeds? Those seeds are the remains of the Serbs…

You want me to sell you the gusle? This beautiful, old instrument, you say…?

The gusle are the keys to the doors of Dečani, Ostrog, Studenica, Žiča, Manasija, Ljeviš, Morača, Devič…

On Mojkovac, they were great-grandfather’s vigil lamp and prayer candle, and all the children that he had left behind, and the death that charged, and the resurrection that was faster than the death, and all the land that he rushed to defend, and the eucharist, and the Yule log, and the only father’s grave that he knew about, and the home that he knelt on waiting for the gusle to support him, and the root that followed him, and the sky that unfolded above him…

Do you really think that you have enough money to buy the wood that delivers eternity?

Whatever price you offer, the Serb has long ago paid more!

If they were an instrument, I would give them to you as a gift, I don’t need a penny, but then where do I save my voice for my great-grandfathers and great-grandchildren to know me when I call on them, when they call on me…?

You can buy everything — but I don’t have anything to sell, do you understand?

You are wealthy — I am blessed. You want to pay what you see, and you think you can have everything, but I see what cannot be bought — over there you wouldn’t even have enough for a bribe to know yourself…

No! They are not for sale, and that’s the end of it!

You live to want what you cannot have, and I, a Serb, to have what cannot be wished for, that with which you are blessed before you are even born…

There, do you understand what is the fundamental difference between you and me, your people and mine?

You have all the money you want, and yet, you can’t even buy the most “ordinary” gusle with it…

Mihailo Medenica

(Iskra, July 2, 2022)