422 The Later Years
pushed her to attempt suicide, she came to the Supreme Staff, which was located
in a wood near Sarajevo, accompanied by Djilas. It was a rainy day when Herta
entered the cabin where Tito and his “secretary” lived. Tito was shaving, since
he wanted to appear neat even in the most difficult moments.^160 “What is this
woman doing here?” Herta asked. “What you are doing here?” replied Zdenka.
“Her or me,” said Herta. “No, I will go,” replied Tito.^161 Herta, obliged to con-
front the sad reality of having been abandoned, began to cry in Djilas’s arms,
though she accepted the separation with dignity. She courageously survived
Operation Schwarz and returned to Slovenia in the summer of 1943, where she
fought with the local Partisans, without a bad word to say against Tito. Zdenka,
on the contrary, had continuous hysterical breakdowns during the offensive,
provoking ironic comments among the members of the Supreme Staff. “She
behaved,” observed Djilas sarcastically, “as if the main aim of the Germans was
to kill her personally.”^162 When, during one of her usual outbursts, Tito asked
the commander of his bodyguard, more in jest than earnest, what he should do,
he replied drily: “If I were you, comrade, I would shoot her.”^163
At the end of the war, Zdenka fell ill with tuberculosis, which she had
probably nursed for a time and which might partially explain her tantrums,
her fears, and her strange behavior. In July 1944 she was sent to a hospital in the
Soviet Union but without result as she was not ready to follow medical advice.
When Tito came to Moscow in autumn, Zdenka obliged him to take her home
even though she was gravely ill. Her life was in danger and much depended on
her discipline, but the patient, as Gustav Vlahov wrote, was far from under-
standing the seriousness of her condition.^164 After her return, she was rarely
seen. She appeared with a painful smile on her face, Djilas said, as if she wanted
to excuse herself. Meanwhile, she was preoccupied in a maniacal way with
Tito’s well-being, and nearly pathologically jealous. She never forgave his aide,
Moma Djurić, for having permitted Herta Hass to visit her son Miša, who at
the time lived with his father.^165
Zdenka died on 1 May 1946, in the Golnik Sanatorium in Slovenia, where
Tito had sent her in hopes of saving her from tuberculosis. She was only twenty-
seven years old. According to her wishes, she was buried in the garden of the
White Palace in order to always be near Tito, who was intensely struck by
her loss. He shut himself away and did not inform anybody of what had hap-
pened, not even inviting his comrades to the funeral. Nobody apart from him-
self mourned her.^166 In this sorrowful situation he wrote a long letter to Herta,
asking her to return. The reply was laconic: “My dear, Herta Haas kneels down
before a man only once.”^167 After that, he also considered Cana Babović, a Serb
communist with whom he had had a short affair ten years earlier in Moscow,
but abandoned the idea quickly, following Ranković’s advice, as he had disliked