Kin

by Miljenko Jergovic

  In these exchanges, they all pretended to know everything already, so they didn’t find out the main thing. Opinion was divided in the neighborhood: some said Silvije, the poor man, could not urinate, which was why he was hurting like Jesus Christ; others said he was pissing himself out completely.

  When he went to Vienna, and this he did two or three times to visit the Vienna kidney clinic, where he once had an operation, they were concerned he would not make it back alive. Silvije Strahimir Kranjčević would die in a foreign land, as many already had, going off to Vienna because of their health, and he would be buried in Vienna or in his native land, near the sea. This was what people thought then, and people were gripped by a certain wistfulness, a sense of pity, a feeling that would not have been the same or so powerful had someone been able to tell them that the poet would be buried in Sarajevo.

  The question of where a person would be buried was much more important than the question of getting well. While getting better from an illness was just a postponement of something inevitable, and in such a postponement the neighborhood didn’t really experience much feeling – unless one’s own death was in question – the question of burial was a question of eternity. Not just for the person who was going to be buried, or even for those who would be in mourning, this was important for all those who would attend the funeral. It made people feel more secure, and the idea of their own mortality would be somehow easier to bear. People died and were buried in an orderly, beautiful manner in Sarajevo’s various city cemeteries, one after another, in the company of an Orthodox priest or a Catholic friar, a Muslim cleric or a rabbi, the order being the same as with us, the rites and presentation slightly different, but with the same work and the same end, dying and burying so that one’s own death would become easier for the living. Sarajevo is a city of the dead, and everything here is assembled around death and the need for burial.

  The dying here easily get used to dying, for everyone supports them in it, taking part in their dying, and themselves dying a bit along with them.

  During his last trip to Vienna, the doctors let Silvije know that he could not be saved. They did not say this to him directly, but he understood it.

  And he had understood well, for around Sarajevo, too, people noticed the poet looked to be close to the end.

  Don Serafim Urlić did not go to the marketplaces, and he didn’t know much about all this – about Kranjčević’s illness or Sarajevo’s character or its customs. He walked around Mount Romanija, visited Novak’s Cave, heard what the local people had to say about that wondrous cavern, but did not learn anything about Sarajevo’s character either from these conversations or from the confessions of the small number of Catholics in Pale and the surrounding area. The light was different up here than the one burning down below in the market town, and though it was barely twenty kilometers to town, the actual distance between Pale and Sarajevo was greater than anyone might have thought. Each person deceived himself who thought he understood something about the people in the valley, about their nature and motivation.

  He walked up the wooden steps to the second floor and rang the bell.

  An old woman in black pantaloons, the Kranjčević’s servant, opened the door. The moment he had stepped inside, she clasped his hand, kissed it, and murmured, Bless me, father!

  Never mind, never mind, he said, waving her away as if he was shooing a fly, but to her this probably seemed as if he was making the sign of the cross in the air.

  The apartment stank of medicine, disinfectant, and something Don Serafim could not place. It was a heavy, chemical odor that he would smell whenever he turned his head. That stench would not leave his head for days afterward, he would remember it clearly, and would only ever smell it one other time in his life. But that is for the end…

  Silvije was seated in an armchair just beside the window. When he turned, he could see the street, people passing, making their way toward the markets, carrying baskets with goods inside. He could see the horse- and ox-drawn wagons, the first trams – that wondrous invention for frightening people and animals…

  I saw you coming this way from Vijećnica and wondered whether this was the person coming to see me, he said joyfully.

  His voice was like a healthy man’s. This encouraged Don Serafim in his intention to ask about his poems at the first opportunity.

  I heard you have been ailing, as they say in Bosnia, and thought I would come around.

  You don’t have to make things up. She asked you to come. I know that, he said, with a melancholy laugh.

  His mustache was no longer as in his pictures and as it was the one time when they had met before. It had got thinner and less shiny, droopy like the sort that those strange beasts in northern seas had. Or like the one Fra Grgo Martić had in olden times.

  And if she asked you, she did it to help me. She would do anything to make things easier for me. She was like that from the start. At first she eased my disposition without intending to, and now she eases the pains of my affliction.

  That is why God created woman…Don Serafim blurted out, and immediately thought he had said something inappropriate, something that would lower him in Kranjčević’s eyes. Someone who wrote poems would not dare say anything so obvious and ordinary.

  Perhaps for the first time since being ordained he was thinking of himself not as a priest, not as someone who wanted to be seen in the eyes of this man and the good Lord as worthy of his pastoral and comforter’s calling. What was important to him was being perceived by Kranjčević as a poet. Nothing else.

  Yes, yes, he said, looking again toward the street. You’re right, completely right. That is why God created woman. He created man to suffer and endure in his wretchedness and humiliation, and her he created to be a constant vision before him so that he might not notice how wretched he was and how low he had fallen. Is that what you had in mind? he asked, casting a glance on Don Serafim that was somehow caustic and almost wicked.

  In sickness people became mean, and should be forgiven.

  I wasn’t thinking of that, the priest responded.

  Woman is like the cinematograph for man. Have you heard of the cinematograph?

  I must admit I have not.

  Go have a look if you get the chance. There will be a new tour in the spring, on Circus Square. Moving pictures. It’s interesting. Look at them and remember me. In heaven.

  Would you like to lighten your soul?

  So fast? the poet asked in surprise.

  Whenever you like.

  If I lighten it too soon, I’ll race up to heaven like a hot air balloon! he said, laughing.

  Laughter heals the soul, Don Serafim acknowledged.

  Would you like Mara to make you some chamomile tea? Mara, Mara dear, please make the reverend some chamomile tea!

  The smell of chamomile quickly covered over all the other smells, including the heavy, inhuman chemical stench whose source he could not determine. But it seemed to him the stench would put an end to his life.

  He sat down on a shaky dining-room chair across from the sick man’s armchair, his elbow on the table. For a moment the two were silent, and he had a chance to examine him better. Although it was warm in the room, perhaps even too warm, for Mara kept putting coal into the large stove, certain in her Bosnian manner that every illness could be cured provided that the sick person was just kept warm enough, Silvije was covered to his neck with a gray military blanket. His small, bony fists were poking out from the pockets of a sweater of thin, peasant wool. It was not easy to look at him, suddenly so small beneath all those wool layers.

  A small, pale woman came into the room. Her face was pretty, but her body resembled that of an old woman. Two Chinese porcelain cups were on the silver platter, along with the same type of teapot and sugar bowl.

  He knew much more about Ella Kranjčević than he did about the poet. He had known her father Franjo and had
prepared her grandmother Madam Slava for eternal repose. The quiet, humble family of a customs officer, bestowed with an abundance of piety, but also with a thirst for some distant world, for escape from Bosnia and from Sarajevo. Franjo Kašaj spoke perfect French, taught the language to Ella and her younger sister from their earliest years, and secretely dreamed of moving to France.

  Don Serafim had not had such dreams, but he had a heart for the unfortunate border guard Franjo, and for all those similar to him, whom he met during his work, most often on their deathbeds, who had one desire all their lives, frequently something ordinary and banal, around which, like a climbing plant, they twisted and bent their earthly lives, often allowing that desire to shape their destiny. Such people, he believed, were dear to God.

  She put the platter down on the little table he was leaning against.

  They were both uncomfortable. She didn’t know whether Don Serafim had admitted to Silvije that she had asked him to come. Don Serafim was troubled about how to greet her, with what words, as people who know each other well, or recalling her only as Slava’s little granddaughter?

  A beautiful teapot, he said.

  Yes, Silvije said, laughing, Chinese porcelain, made in the Czech Lands. Isn’t it strange that Chinese porcelain should be made in the Czech Lands?

  It does seem strange, Don Serafim agreed, slurping his tea loudly.

  What do you think, my sweet?

  Ella did not answer him. She laughed and waved Silvije away. As if he was teasing her, and she was defending herself.

  Don Serafim was on the verge of asking, but he was bothered by the fact that Kranjčević had not shown in any way that he remembered him.

  Serafim Urlić was not an ordinary name, not one he would have easily forgotten after reading the letter and poems. If he had read them. If the esteemed Mr. Hörmann had not been so offended by the contents of the letter and the invective expressed in it that he had thrown it immediately into the trash.

  He considered mentioning that he too was from the coast, from Drašnice, an old Turkish village near Makarska, using the opportunity to repeat his surname, but immediately gave it up. It was embarrassing and unbecoming of someone who thought of himself as a poet. And of course unbecoming for a priest who had been invited to give confession to a sick man too.

  You know, reverend, the archbishop himself also came for a visit. He delivered some sort of a prize, a recognition, or what not. They could hardly fit in this little room, there were so many of them.

  You deserve it.

  Do you really think so? Tell me why you think I deserve it. It was not long ago that the very same archbishop, during the fast days before Easter, was sermonizing on my poetry. And he wasn’t finding good things to say. What changed in the meantime? Were His Eminence and His Eminence’s escort awarding my poems, my work as a teacher, my contributions to Nada, as they said, or were they perhaps awarding my death? If that’s it, I have to tell you, I don’t deserve any of the credit for it.

  Whatever anyone might say, Silvije, you are a great poet. Making a mistake can happen to everyone, even to the archbishop.

  You’re right about that. But I don’t think he made a mistake. At least not when he was making sermons against my poems. He made a mistake by changing his mind. Do you think he was showing magnanimity? No, dear sir, the archbishop was afraid of death. Whose death? Kranjčević’s!

  Don Serafim Urlić looked at him in fear. He didn’t know what to say and just wanted to escape and not appear again before this man. This is my punishment, he thought, for coming with the intention of asking him about my poems and not that of confessing him. The confessor is protected from anything a dying person might say to him, from every sorrow, but also from spite, meanness, and eccentricity, from every crime he might pour into his words, like fiery molten lava into a sharp knife, for he is on the other side, and the words cannot touch him while it is God keeping the accounts. But this was something different: a conversation between two poets, one of whom was genuine while the other was concealed.

  Or was it maybe that Kranjčević had not realized he was addressing him that way? This thought frightened him, and he suddenly wanted to hide what just before he’d been about to reveal, that he had once written poems and delivered them to the Nada office.

  Don’t take what I’m saying a…

  I’m not taking anything you’re saying amiss.

  The bitterness has built up inside me.

  It would build up in anyone.

  When I’m not in pain, I’m bitter. And when I’m in pain, the bitterness gets aired out. Then it just hurts. I don’t know which of the two is worse: when I’m in pain or when I’m not.

  I understand.

  I did not want to stay here. From the time I came to Livno, all I’ve done is look for a way to leave Bosnia. They drove me here as punishment, and from God’s mercy this was where I met Ella. I wanted to learn French, and she taught me. Me and one of my friends. We got married on my thirty-first birthday. It was snowing heavily, the first snowfall of ’17, in February. We could barely get through to the cathedral. Reverend Josip said it was a good sign, that big snow. And I was happy, though I don’t know how a priest can believe in such superstitions, let alone pronounce them from the altar.

  He wanted to put you in a good mood.

  Well, he didn’t need to do that, he laughed. My mood was already good enough as it was.

  Now it is again.

  Yes, for the moment. When I’m talking with someone, I forget, or when I close myself away in this old armchair, which Mr. Studnicka, the bookstore owner, let us have. Do you know him? Or when I look at the people crawling by on the street. I think it’s easier for me as the one looking at them than for them going by with their cares, and right away I feel better. I look at the people, the horses, the trams, the dogs making their way down the street. But rarely does anyone I know pass. When you look like this, you almost don’t see anyone you know. And then, for a moment, I’m happy we stayed and Sarajevo is the place where I’ll die. It goes easier here. Nobody gets all worked up about death like in Senj, my hometown, or in Zagreb, where they die in high style. One can fall from on high into a burial tomb too. And then I turn in the other direction, toward that wall there, I don’t see the street, and again my old torment takes hold, or my pain returns, and I think, God, why did you leave me in Bosnia, on my Bosnian cross? Why didn’t you let me go home when everyone else has already done so?

  That’s why it’s best if you don’t stop looking at the street, Don Serafim said, trying to be witty. The poet laughed enough to be polite or so their talk would not turn back to its morose thread.

  Last year in May, when I was visiting Vienna for the last time and was at the hospital, I dreamed I was going back to Zagreb. Doctor Jelovšek had mentioned to me that somewhere on Pantovčak a splendid villa with an orchard was for sale for six thousand florins. It had been on the market for a long time, he said, the price was suitable, but there were no buyers. Far from Gornji Grad, far from the square and the city throng, and on a hillside. If it were in the center, it would sell immediately for three times the price. And from the moment he mentioned it, from one night to the next I started thinking how nice it would be to collect the money, take out a loan, and buy that house. I’d get better immediately, it seemed to me. And the more I thought about it, the more it all seemed not so much an empty dream but something to accomplish. And the longer my sleeplessness and fantasies continued, the more attractive Zagreb became. I see now that after my death there might be debts worth more than the cost of the villa on Pantovčak. Illness is expensive – it shames a person in every manner, morally and physically.

  The soul is eternal, Don Serafim whispered.

  What?

  I said the soul is eternal, the body we leave to time’s passage.

  Silvije drew his hand from under the blanket and offered it. It was hot. He h
ad a fever. A man could not stay that hot for long, Don Serafim thought. He stopped asking him if he wanted to confess. Nor did Kranjčević bring it up.

  Ella accompanied him to the door, teary eyed. Her face was calm. He wanted to console her. He offered his hand as he was leaving. She had long fingers, but her hand was unusually small.

  As he went out onto the street, the air rushed with all its force into his lungs. Pure, cold, late-autumn air. The thick, chemical smell that had covered all the other odors in the Kranjčević home disappeared.

  He did not see him alive again.

  He saw her from a distance, at the funeral, which was thronged by thousands of people. Kranjčević was disliked in life but in death was beloved.

  He had turned ninety-five and was no longer making plans. He was nearly deaf, could not hear confessions. Many would confess only to him, it was hard for them to accept the younger clerics. He continued to walk every day from one end of the area to the other.

  He would go out to the newly built hotel, sit on a terrace at a table from which the view opened onto the entire region. This was what he had done that morning. It was a Monday in the summer of 1932. He was sitting, watching the broken line of the horizon where the tops of the hills separated from the sky. The dark green, almost black forests, and the light blue August sky with its rare gossamer traces of fog, which, perhaps, was not fog but scattered, destroyed clouds, angels that had sung their last and suddenly puffed into Nothing. When his glance had passed over the entire route, from one end of the horizon to the other, he would go back to the start, like the drum of a printer, covering the same route again, trying to see differences and changes, something he had skipped over or something that appeared in the interim, a cloudlet, an eagle flying above the valley, breaking the line of the horizon, its invisible integrity, constantly crossing the border between sky and land.