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own special way, that her wayward ways would be
punished, and she ended up losing her rented apartment
very quickly. While Dusha was still a theoretically
diligent student in Ljubljana, her offended father had
silently accepted the gall of her decision to leave home,
putting up a good façade when the neighbours inquired,
claiming that he was proud of her, supported her. ‘A
student needs complete peace and must be close to the
faculty,’ Chief Podlogar would say, projecting confidence
in his deliberation on the immutable laws of student life,
which were utterly unknown to him. Those he spoke
with, however, knew even less than he did. In order to
avoid admitting that Dusha had escaped his parental
control, Dushan Podlogar convinced himself and the
neighbours that her departure was all part of his master
plan.
But Chief Podlogar’s house of cards began to collapse the
night that Lieutenant Borojević summoned up his courage,
after a whole evening of preparation, and requested the
band on the hotel terrace to sing
‘Hey Hey Hey We’re Not
Going Home Yet,’
(the only Slovenian song in their
repertoire) so that he could grab a dance with the
beautiful Slovenian tourist. It was not long after this that
Chief Podlogar lost faith in his own lie. As a last grasp, he
tried to reel his head over heels daughter home as soon as
possible, and set her up with a ‘dream’ job at the local
leather plant, which was certainly a form of punishment
as far as she was concerned.