Kin

by Miljenko Jergovic

  On the occasion in honor of the liberation of Dubrovnik and the return of the City to the Empire of Dušan and the Kingdom of Tomislav, Maximilian Seghers-Stein played the mournful song of the Serbian soldiers who escaped to the island of Corfu, “Tamo daleko.” At the sound of his instrument, the hardest and most unenlightened hearts stopped, and the musically knowledgeable (of which there were not many at the time) were mesmerized and stunned by the musical talent and the meticulous musical training of this unusual postal official.

  The name of Gertrude Seghers-Stein can be found to this day in musical encyclopedias and historical surveys and chronicles of Viennese high society at the time of the fin de siècle. In addition to being the first woman to study music under the Habsburg monarchy, and the fact that many important contemporaries, including the young Gustav Mahler, spoke highly of her sinfonietta and her collection of songs for voice based on young Viennese poets, Gertrude Seghers-Stein (formerly Gertrude Morgenstern) was an important figure in the social and cultural life of the capital at the turn of the century.

  But then Maximilian, for reasons that will remain to the end a mystery, received a transfer to Dubrovnik – perhaps as a reprimand – and thus did Gertrude’s role in the cultural and musical history of Vienna come to an end.

  In Dubrovnik, Gertrude Seghers-Stein gave birth to children, kept the household, and walked through the woods in search of medicinal plants, but she did not engage in music, at least not publicly. Perhaps it was not suitable for the wife of a postal director to present herself as a musician, or perhaps she was not able to carry on such activity far from Vienna, in that divinely beautiful part of the world which, as she would say, could bring the dead back to life.

  Why would people, who saw such lovely hued parrots every day, paint? What was Mozart to those who heard the sounds of birds beneath their windows every morning, or the sound of church bells amid the perfect acoustical shell of the city?

  That was how Gertrude Seghers-Stein explained the absence of musical and artistic interest among the inhabitants of Dubrovnik.

  For reasons of their own, the inhabitants of Dubrovnik called her Mrs. Danica.

  In addition to being the wife of the postal director, which was in itself worthy of respect, she was known and appreciated in the city for her interest in medicinal and edible plants. From her Viennese books Mrs. Danica had derived an understanding of any plant life that might be found in Dubrovnik and in its environs, on the islands of Lokrum, Koločep, and Lopud, in Župa and in Konavle, or right there beneath the city walls among the rocks. And every plant, as had been proved long before, healed something. There was no plant that just grew there, nor weeds that were just weeds, and also no poisonous plant derivative that, if properly dosed, did not cure some disease or other.

  Another passion and another important body of knowledge concerned beekeeping. Probably through plants she had naturally come to bees. And thus to Karlo Stubler, Maximilian’s friend, who knew all there was to know about bees. He kept his three hives on a hill a little above Saint Mihajlo’s Cemetery. It was more that he fed his bees than that they gave him honey, for there was no pasture, and the poor things had to fly far away for their pollen but brought back more sea salt on their little legs than flower dust. Karlo’s honey in those years was thick and bitter, from the salt, heather, and bee sweat, and it boded ill. But instead of the bees teaching him caution, instead of his learning something from that Saint Mihajlo honey, Stubler was enthralled by the poverty of the workers and fell in love with it in exactly the same way that a young man falls in love with a beautiful but ill-fated girl.

  When they drove him from Dubrovnik, he left his three hives at Saint Mihajlo to Mrs. Danica. This was how Gertrude Seghers-Stein, the first woman to study music in Vienna, also became the first woman in Dubrovnik to keep bees. There were not many beekeepers in the region then, the honey came to the markets in the old town and on Gruža from Trebinje and eastern Herzegovina, but there were some, especially among the railway workers who after arriving from Austria had placed hives above Zvekovica and on the upper slopes of Konavle, along the tracks leading to Herceg Novi and Zelenika. But all this yielded little, and not much would change in the future either, so that after Mrs. Danica it is not clear whether any other woman in Dubrovnik engaged in beekeeping.

  But there was something else that would link the Stublers and the Seghers-Steins.

  Mr. Maksim and Mrs. Danica would be Karlo’s children’s first music teachers.

  She would teach them how to read music, and before long all four children would be able to decipher any form of written notes. Thus they would learn to hear music without instruments, and Karla, Regina, Olga, and Rudi would learn to play Mendelssohn, Brahms, Chopin, Mozart, Bach, and Schumann. Olga and Rudi had such a keen sense of imagination that they could discern every instrument in the orchestrations, imagining even what was not in the notation: surprise, coughing, the heavy breathing of old conductors, street noises near the concert hall, the sounds of the epoch that poured across the paper notations like a sudden summer rain, melting the colors. But then the electricity would go out, the bora would blow out the kerosene lamp, bringing on the darkness.

  Mr. Maksim taught them violin and guitar on Sunday afternoons, and sometimes during the week, after which he would return home for a little nap. Mrs. Danica tried to teach them the basics of piano, but she had neither the time nor the nerves for this.

  As soon as I come close to the piano I feel like crying.

  Why do you feel like crying? asked Omama Johanna, surprised.

  My wife is quite sensitive, said Mr. Maksim preemptively.

  And so they did not learn to play the piano. Anyway, the children of railway officials did not play the piano. Railway workers settled along the tracks, moving from one station to another, from one town to another, and could not carry pianos around. Jews and railway workers played the violin, Opapa would say. The piano was for the children of well-to-do folk, who still didn’t have an ear for it.

  Maximilian Seghers-Stein liked very much the idea that Jews and railway workers played the violin:

  Would you allow me to write down this thought? May I say that it was Mr. Stubler who said it?

  Why wouldn’t you when it’s the truth? Opapa said. The cold truth like cold gold. Though I’m an exception in that regard. What I mean is that in our Bosowicz home we had no violin, given that in the Banat at the time it was generally considered that only Gypsy music was performed on the violin, and our parents were not inclined to allow us to play Gypsy music. They thought that would put us on the road to becoming coffeehouse layabouts and, in the end, drunkards and good-for-nothings. This left me with a hunger for the violin, Gypsy music, and coffeehouses. All my life I haven’t been able to get my fill of sitting in pubs or listening to czardas, but I’ve never picked up a violin. No, Mr. Stein, I won’t touch your instrument. I refuse! As your good wife expressed it, it makes me feel like crying. I played the piano quite solidly, but after going off to the railroad, I could not have one of those, and so of course it was the flute. I’ve played the flute for almost my whole life, from the age of seven, and not a week has gone by, except for my few months of military service, that I did not practice the instrument. Or rather that I haven’t played for myself or, more rarely, for others. The flute has been my path to music. I improvise, play a variation on some random fragment, something that has crept into my ear, and then I hear the whole universe. While I play a simple phrase from a Christmas song on the terrace on Christmas Eve, in the distance, from the Elafiti Islands, I hear Johann Sebastian Bach coming toward me.

  From a yacht? asked Mr. Maksim in jest.

  This is called composition, Mr. Karlo. You are a composer of sorts.

  No, Madam Gertrude, I am just a railway worker.

  The week Karlo Stubler was to leave Dubrovnik with his family, Maximilian Seghers-Stein went all around the city, seeking out t
he mayor, the city council president, the town’s military commander, asking them to intercede, calling Belgrade, sending telegrams and begging to have the decision reversed and Stubler pardoned because of his impeccable service, in which there was not a single blemish or error, asking that he be absolved for having supported the workers on strike.

  Perhaps he could be forgiven, said one of those from whom he sought intervention for his friend. Maybe they could even pardon Karlo Stubler, if only he had been less diligent in his service. You surely know which government he served. Given this fact, why do you bring it up?

  The two of them never met again.

  Rudi would travel to Dubrovnik, since Karla was of age and had not wanted to leave the city. He would visit her, especially after her marriage to Andrija Ćurlin. By then her real name had been forgotten, and everyone called her by the childhood name given to her out of love by her parents: Lola. This was what her father Karlo had called her because of her character, her unique feminine stubbornness and self-confidence, never dreaming that the name would stick with her for the rest of her life. He had wanted to ridicule her, punish her in his Swabian manner, by calling her after Lola Montez, the dancer and lover of King Ludwig of Bavaria, a synonym for a courtesan in those days. Any other girl, and either of her two sisters, would have been insulted to be called Lola. But she accepted the insult and remained forever Lola.

  * * *

  —

  In spring 1926, the eldest Seghers-Stein child, Emil, had completed his medical training and was living in Vienna where he worked in a psychiatric clinic. The next in order, Rozalija, had married the Ljubljana architect Bogdan Lipovšek and moved with him to Slovenia. At the end of March, the youngest child, ten-year-old Adrian, was lying ill in bed with a high fever. He was hardly breathing while they watched over him day and night and Maximilian had gone for the doctor Karel Karel, an old Dubrovnik pediatrician who had come to town at the same time they had. Karel Karel told them he could not help Adrian and they should pray to God, if they still believed in God, for the next five days would be critical. If the child was still alive on the sixth day, he would live. They should not hope, just pray. It was only by a miracle that one survived this kind of diphtheria. This was what Doctor Karel Karel said to them, but neither of them believed in God. Maximilian Seghers-Stein never spoke about God, but a secret world grew from his concealed beliefs.

  And yet, Mrs. Danica went to the Jesuits to order a mass for Adrian’s recovery.

  Don Emanuel Prpić, Father Manojlo, a Roman doctor of theology, a handsome young Bosnian with slightly odd, feminine gestures, accepted both her money and the prayers of the parents without comment. His eyes were filled with tears, he knew the boy well from the church choir.

  You believe in God? asked the mother when she saw the tears.

  He nodded.

  The days of Adrian’s illness, which Doctor Karel Karel had called critical, rolled onward from that Sunday, March 28. Whenever she dozed off, overcome by horror and fatigue, falling into a deep sleep, Gertrude would clearly see the moment of her child’s death. He would cough once or twice, then stop breathing. She would wake up, not having slept even two minutes, and check whether Adrian was still breathing. For six days Don Emanuel Prpić prayed continuously for the boy’s health. People said that not once in those six days did he close his eyes or take a rest. He prayed until around five in the afternoon on the sixth day, which was a Friday, when he finally passed out. When the sisters roused him, Don Emanuel Prpić was blind, and tears of blood were running down his face.

  He would see again on Monday morning, the day of the child’s funeral.

  Adrian Seghers-Stein died on the seventh day of his illness, after a sudden and brief reprieve where it seemed to his parents he might actually recover.

  It is impossible to bring this story to an end, without talking about Don Emanuel Prpić, Father Manojlo of Dubrovnik. In this way we shall postpone and somewhat dilute the destinies of Maximilian Seghers-Stein and Mrs. Gertrude, rendering them more bearable to those who hear about them for the first time.

  Don Emanuel was born in Otes near Sarajevo in 1898, to the family of Ilija Prpić, a school custodian, and Mara, whose maiden name was Pamuk, a washerwoman in the city hospital. His baptismal name was Marko. He grew up in poverty, in Banjski Brijeg, where the family rented an old house across from the monastery. The sun never made it to their lower level; the windows were sheltered by a tall building that Archbishop Stadler had been allowed to construct, in the hope of strengthening the Catholic faith and Croatianness in Bosnia. His father would leave the house early for work at the Main Gymnasium, and his mother worked at the hospital, so the boy remained at home alone from an early age. They watched over him as much as they could. They could not live on Ilija’s custodian’s salary alone and still make their rent, and if they went back to Otes, where they had a nice, proper little house, he would not be able to keep his job since the suburban train was irregular and there wasn’t any other way for him to get to the school every morning. Just one absence on his part could throw the instruction into disarray: there would be no one to ignite the charcoal in the classrooms, light the stove in the common room, and take care of all the things that needed to be taken care of before anyone else arrived. And if he lost his job, what would they live on? They had no land in Otes and in Ilidža it was impossible to find work, so to live in Banjski Brijeg and work from morning till night six days of the week was their only solution. And on the seventh day, Sunday, they went back to their home in Otes.

  As one is telling the story, it appears that their poverty was terrible. The damp walls of the bedroom in which the little boy slept, the windows up close to the ceiling, the stale Sarajevo air that seeps into a person’s nostrils, brain, and soul, and the long aimless seclusion. It is hard to imagine how long those ten hours felt for the five-year-old boy, from six in the morning until four in the afternoon, when his mother came home from the laundry. That time cannot be measured by any adult concept of time, for it is much longer than the longest period we can imagine in our own lives. In the course of ten hours a child can transform, change, and become someone else several times over. The Marko they left would never again be the same Marko.

  Only one thing did not change: every day, the boy gazed out the window at the gray monastery wall, and up at the church spire. Very early the child understood the most important physical reality of his entire life: but for the wall and the tower, the sun would enter into his house.

  Who told you that? his father asked in surprise.

  I told myself that, and it’s true.

  Yes, it is, he said, you are right.

  His father was a gentle, quiet man. And very shy. He sang well but only when he thought no one could hear. He had a good sense of humor. When his mother felt sad, his father would always say something that made her laugh. Don Emanuel did not remember the jokes – how could he since they were adult jokes? – but he remembered his mother’s laugh. He remembered all 743 moments of laughter, and the 743 times his mother had returned home sad from the hospital.

  I’ve seen enough of death, she would say.

  What death, dear, you wash bed linen all day long?

  It’s the bed linen of the dead. The living don’t soil them like that. When they bring me a sheet to wash, I know whether the person who had lain on it was dead or alive.

  Why do you look at them so much, dear? One could go mad from looking too closely at bed linen. Wash, dear, but don’t look too hard!

  I would if I could.

  Listen to yourself! Professor Mitrinović told me the same thing. I tell him, let the suffering of the world go. Live while God has given you life; be happy you’re healthy. Suffering will always be there, you don’t need to hold a candle to it. And he gives me the same answer: I would if I could. And then he tells me a story about a German, a famous wise man and philosopher who lost his wits, because like yo
u and Mitrinović, he looked too hard at sheets…

  By this point Mara was laughing.

  You just caught me when I was tired…

  Wait to hear the rest, dear. When he saw he was going to lose his wits if he didn’t get a hold of himself, the wise man goes to Italy to have a good rest there. Italy, the sea, the sun, laughter – he thinks it will help. When he gets there, it’s foggy and ice cold, a gloomy city, big like our Vienna. Nobody on the street but a coachman beating a tired horse. He’s beating it with all his strength, brutally. And what can the beast do? It doesn’t know how to cry or talk; it is the way it is. At this point the wise man loses his mind, if he ever had one, runs over, wraps his arms around the beaten horse’s head, and starts shouting: I won’t give it up, I won’t give it up…He yells until they put him in shackles. From then on he is in the madhouse until he dies. He never recovered. He just shouts, I won’t give it up, I won’t give it up. Mitrinović told me the story, and to tell you the truth I was a little frightened by it. I don’t know which one I felt sorrier for, the horse or the man. And he asks me, so what do you say to that, Ilija? Was it from too much looking at books or from something else? I tell him, my dear Mitrinović, that was a gentleman’s misfortune. What do you mean? he asks me. Well, sir, only fine gentlemen can take a long trip to Italy. You can see all sorts of things on the way. I too would go crazy if the same thing happened to me. But where am I going to find the money to go to Italy? When I’m on edge, Mitrinović, I stare at the wall. There’s nothing frightening in the wall.

  This story made Mara feel better.

  She didn’t laugh as she had those other 743 times, but he did frighten her. Maybe that fear gave her a frisson of pleasure.

  When Don Emanuel wrote his autobiography for the Church, which would eventually be read by Archbishop Šarić himself, he doubted the devotion of his parents. They went to church as often as they could, prayed as much as was needed, did not blaspheme God, and were kind toward other people, but when things were hard for them, they did not call upon Jesus Christ or the Virgin Mary or the good Lord. It simply was not their way. He was surprised the first time he heard someone at school invoke the Son of God when the man struck his finger with a hammer. It was a carpenter who was repairing a window in the classroom while the teacher conducted class.