Her father, a sign maker in Mostar and later the owner of the Orion Cinema, had been condemned to death before a partisan court because for four years of war he’d received into his house Italian and German officers and had gone on outings with them on summer nights to the banks of the Neretva. Just as he’d received communist fugitives and given them what they asked for. Despite the horror of his wife Gudrun, Klara’s mother, he’d also hidden a wounded partisan, Paloma Levi, in his cellar, and when she recovered somewhat, he drove her secretly in his Mercedes past all manner of patrols and sentries, all the way to Jablanica. Old šeremet was against Hitler, but he couldn’t be against decent people, regardless of their uniforms and insignias, and such people were the only ones he socialized with. Nazis were hateful as long as he saw them from afar, but whenever they came closer, before he even got to know them, he could understand that they were elegant and polite people who, if it weren’t for the war, would be collecting oddly shaped stones on the banks of the Neretva or would be in the vicinity of Glavatičeva hunting for strange plants that one could not find in Germany and recording their finds.
Impetuous and gallant, he spent the war living it up, paying no heed to what was said in the town and openly scorning the Ustashas because he found no decent and cultured people among them, nor did he have any wish to get to know them. And so he managed to earn the enmity of everyone who had spent the war hungry or in fear or lost someone of their own. In actuality, he was hated by everyone he hadn’t helped, and there were those to be found who would forget what he had done for them.
A few months before the liberation of Mostar, Franko Rebac, a communist since the Vukovar congress, had come and warned him to leave the town for a few days: his wife was German, he’d earned money off the Italians and Germans and had been a friend to so many of them . . .
Gajo šeremet laughed: “My brother, who would lay a hand on me? Those are fine people.”
Franko wasn’t sure who šeremet thought was fine—the fascists or the communists. He only told him, “With the fine ones comes the dross.” When he left, Gudrun asked him what the word dross meant.
He answered, “You wouldn’t believe it, but I don’t know. I’ve been hearing about the dross since I was born, and I’ll be damned if I haven’t said it a thousand times myself, but to this day I haven’t asked anyone what dross is. And you see why it’s good that you’re a German. You ask about things I think I know but really don’t. So the first chance I get I’ll ask someone with a brain to tell me what the dross really is.”
But before he had managed to ask anyone, the partisans entered the town; he was arrested and brought before a court. And more witnesses came forward against Gajo šeremet than against the worst murderers. Some lied, others told a truth that was no prettier than the lies, and he sat with his hands in chains, listening to the audience behind him shout out wartime slogans, and couldn’t believe at all that the prosecution and the judge would not in the end see that this was a mistake. He even thought that the purpose of the trial was to frighten him because they obviously didn’t like the fact that for four full years he hadn’t let the war get to him or turn him into the dross that would carry out its own justice at the expense of others. He was seriously afraid for the first time when his defense attorney requested that his client be simply shot instead of hung, as the prosecution had suggested. But he kept believing that someone would come and ask, “Do you know who this man is?” And then he would go off laughing and joking to that bar under the Old Bridge and drink himself silly. Not only he but the judge, the prosecutor, and the defense attorney, and everyone else too, and he would pay the bill like a real gentleman.
His optimism seemed like a serious mental disorder, the kind that makes people become mass murderers, but in bad times an optimist only gets his own head put on the block. When they led him out against the wall and blindfolded him with a black kerchief, Gajo šeremet soiled his pants in an instant.
“Whoa, get a whiff of this traitor’s perfume!” was the last thing that Klara’s father heard, but fortunately he didn’t feel a thing when he collapsed in the mud and filth from which he had tried so hard to set himself apart.
Klara’s mother was taken off to a camp for ethnic Germans somewhere in Slavonia, but at the last moment she managed to foist her three-year-old daughter on Aunt Tereza, Gajo’s older sister and the wife of Pero Domanović, a partisan commander who died in the fight for Mostar. Tereza raised Klara, trying unsuccessfully for years to return the child to her mother, who would see her again only twelve years later. But by that time everything had already been decided; fate had assigned each of them their place under the stars, and Klara wasn’t about to move to Germany. Every winter she would go to Hamburg, feel that her brothers, sisters, and relatives were her own flesh and blood, but nothing more. After her Aunt Tereza died at the end of her studies, she continued on her own, without love and marriage, happy in fact.
“I’d like to see Mirna,” said the teacher, the first to speak.
“Well, I really don’t know,” Regina said and moved aside so that Klara could pass, although she hadn’t invited her in and didn’t intend to do so.
“Is she sick?”
“I don’t know.”
“Fine, then take me to her.”
“Why?” the old woman asked, squinting warily at her opponent. She tried to get her to go away, even if her grandchildren would be the worse for it, but without openly turning her away and slamming the door in her face because that wasn’t done in good houses. No one knew why it wasn’t done, but there you go; that was the custom, and one might as well follow it.
“I’ll see her because I’m her teacher,” Klara responded, used to all the local customs. And then she started for the wooden staircase that led upstairs.
“Wait, the girl isn’t well,” Regina said, coming after her.
“Which door is it?”
The old woman pointed at Mirna’s and Darijan’s room.
“Thank you very much. You’re no longer needed.”
The girl would have sooner expected to see the wicked witch from Hansel and Gretel in her room than her teacher. She pulled the bedsheet over her head and quickly curled up, like a hedgehog. She was going to stay that way no matter what the teacher tried because she would have to give up sooner or later and go away. Klara sat down on the bed, put her hand on the heaving white mound, and said nothing for a little while, as if she were unsure what to say or how to begin.
“Whatever happened, I don’t think it could have been that bad,” she said and fell silent again. “You haven’t missed anything important, and no one is unhappy with you. Do you hear me? Okay, you don’t have to say anything. I came because I was worried about you. Nothing else is important. Are you maybe sick? If you were, you wouldn’t be hiding. But that’s all right; we all feel like hiding once in a while. You can’t always do what everyone wants you to. I can’t do that either, and then I hide, and other people either notice or don’t notice. Those who love you and happen to be near notice. Mirna, are you listening to me? Of course you are; I’m really stupid, how wouldn’t you be? Does something hurt? If the answer is yes, just move your leg. Are you having a problem in school? Has someone hurt you? Did something else happen?”
Mirna straightened her right leg just a little.
“Is it something awful?”
She straightened it all the way out, so that it stuck out from beneath the sheet.
“Did someone say something to you?”
“No,” Mirna spoke.
Her teacher gave a deep sigh and patted the body under the sheet.
“I can’t show you,” the girl said.
“What?” Klara asked, beginning to sense what awful kinds of things a ten-year-old girl wouldn’t be able to show anyone.
“Fine; you don’t need to tell me. And you don’t need to show me now. But I’ll tell you something: nothing that you could show me will seem as awful to me as it does to you. I already told you that, right? Yes,
I’m repeating myself. You know, when I was younger, and not much younger than I am now, I hid from people. Not from my pupils, but from my friends, people who liked me. I always did that when I was out of sorts and didn’t know why, and I was afraid that I would lose them if I let them see me like that. Today it seems funny to me, how I was, but the fear that I experienced still isn’t funny to me. If you don’t want to tell me what’s wrong, I’ll respect that and leave. You don’t have to come to school tomorrow, or the day after, but you can’t stay here forever. You’ll have to come out sooner or later. No one will force you to; you just won’t be able to go on like this. Now think about what will be easier for you: to get it over with now or to leave it for another day. Either is okay. But I think you think it’s better to get it over with now. Listen—I think that, but I’m not saying you have to think so too. Do you want me to leave now?”
Mirna didn’t answer. If she told her teacher to leave, she would spare herself more shame and would be left alone. The latter didn’t seem like such a good idea any more.
“Move your leg if you want me to stay!”
“Stay,” she whispered.
Then they both sank into a silence that lasted for a long while. Mirna knew that her teacher would stay as long as she wanted her to, and Klara was no longer in a hurry to go anywhere. She listened to that child’s breathing and felt unusually useful. This was what she most often expected of herself and was the reason why she couldn’t imagine living in Germany or taking retirement—she felt useful! This feeling had been accompanying her all her life, without there being any real reason for it—just as there wasn’t for many other things. Klara šeremet had simply been born that way, and it was only her eccentricity that made people make up causes and hidden and shameful reasons, although when she was alone with herself and under the heavens, which in the end determine all miracles, she was a very ordinary woman.
“You won’t hate me?” It was already very late when Klara heard a voice from under the sheet, and the room was already sinking into darkness.
“For God’s sake, Mirna, I won’t.”
At first her head came out from under the sheet.
“It’s dark,” said Klara.
“Don’t turn on the light,” the girl said and pulled the sheet off herself.
“Do you see anything?”
“Well, it’s dark . . .”
“Here, something has grown on me . . .”
“Where?” Klara asked, biting her tongue. “Oh, so that’s the problem! Your mother didn’t tell you anything about that? Fine; of course she didn’t because she hasn’t had time. Nobody ever knows when it’ll happen. Women’s breasts start growing at different times, when we’re between ten and fourteen years old; it depends, but this is normal . . .”
“But only one is growing on me. It’s enormous . . .”
“What do you mean, only one? Of course, they don’t grow equally fast.”
“No, the other one isn’t there at all.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes, it’s not there . . .”
“Do you know what, Mirna, that’s probably normal too . . .”
“What do you mean—normal?”
“It’s nothing to get upset about. The other one will grow too.”
“Just like it’s supposed to?”
“Of course. You must have seen women on the beach . . .”
“I have, but . . . ,” Mirna said and stopped.
She wasn’t sure what to believe. It seemed impossible that there was something that happened to every girl that she knew nothing about.
“Soon other things will start happening to you, things that aren’t abnormal or anything to get upset about, but your mother will tell you about them when she gets back. You won’t have to ask her anything. She’ll tell you herself as soon as she sees you.”
Klara was starting to feel a little uncomfortable. In the darkness of the room, in which the only light came from the starry sky, she was sitting with a girl and was unable to tell her something that was so simple to say but for some reason wasn’t said just like that, especially to a child to whom one had not given birth.
“But I don’t think I want to go to school now,” the girl said when her teacher had already gotten up. “There’s simply no way I’m going to do that.”
“Why don’t you want to go? What’s happening to you now will soon happen to other girls. What would happen if all girls stopped leaving the house as soon as they start turning into women?”
“But there’s only one and it’s huge. Everyone can see it.”
“So what if everyone can see it? Get some sleep and we’ll see you tomorrow. Be happy that everything is okay.”
“What were you doing so long in her room?” asked Regina, who’d been waiting for her outside the door. Klara thought it would be good to tell that old hag everything she had coming and a lot more, but she didn’t say anything except good-bye when she was at the door. And even that was too much in a way.
“God forbid I ever set eyes on you again, you fucking cunt,” mumbled Regina after she slammed the door behind the teacher.
She was furious; a spider would have died from poisoning if it bit her. It was as if someone had defiled her house and poisoned the air that she breathed. She sat down by the hot stove, popped her knuckles, and cursed everyone to herself in order: her daughter, who was whoring around who knew where and with whom—and it wouldn’t be a surprise if it were some black man, and her children, who hadn’t even really hatched yet but were already adding to the family shame, picking up where their parents had left off. She cursed herself because she’d been tricked again, which always happened, and someone again expected her to feel guilty. But as far as she was concerned, Regina Delavale wasn’t guilty of anything. Others would have known that she wasn’t guilty if they had lived her life, day in, day out, year in, year out, or at least heard her story from someone. They wouldn’t hear it from her. She would stay as silent as a tomb and put up with everything as long as she could, and when she couldn’t go on any more, then her dead mouth would swallow it.
“Get the hell out of here, you whore’s bastard!” she yelled at Darijan when he came into the kitchen for bread and Eurocream. He tiptoed out as if fleeing a cage of lions in a nightmare.
Mirna obeyed her teacher and went to school the next morning. She put on the biggest shirt that Darijan had and Dijana’s raincoat over that, but out on the street there wasn’t a pair of eyes that didn’t stare at her. Women dressed in black whispered to one another and pointed at the girl; men in the City Café put their newspapers down on their tables and watched her pass by; groups of children laughed. She was sure that it wasn’t because her breast was noticeable now—they couldn’t even see it; rather, grandma’s lady friends had spread the story, and the story would grow until everyone stared at her. The more people there were that looked at her like that, the fewer there were that didn’t see her. That was good in a way. Darijan walked a few steps behind her and didn’t raise his eyes from the street. They looked like city paupers who would only be pitied by the author of all those fairy tales, but he was far, far to the north and had been dead for a long time.
Strangely, it was her schoolmates who were least interested in her breast. After she took off the raincoat, they all took a good look at the bulge under her shirt, as if on command, and were immediately disappointed because after listening to the stories of the adults, they’d believed it to be much bigger. Afterward they were ready to forget that tit. When you’re little and you measure life in days and not years, you often see a miracle happen, but more often you’re disappointed and convinced that there wasn’t any miracle.
Boris Werber, the son of a couple of painters who’d moved from Zagreb the year before, reacted more excitedly but only because the story of the little Amazon hadn’t reached his parents. “Look at her titty!” he exclaimed and grabbed Mirna, whereupon Darijan lunged at him and a fight ensued that left the little Werber with a cut over his eye.
When the teacher came into the room, there was blood all over the place, and Boris was howling as if someone were skinning him alive.
The principal showed up too: “Who was fighting?” he asked. He grabbed Darijan by the ear and hauled him off to his office. The teacher ran after them but stopped and turned on a dime like a basketball player starting back down the court and ran back to the bloodied Boris. Then all hell broke loose, but it didn’t have any lasting consequences or, as was the custom, create new problems in the staff room and lead to enmity among the families of pupils that were still somehow on good terms. They took little Werber to the health clinic, where he received stitches on the cut over his eye; Klara ran back and forth between his frenzied parents and the principal, who had to have the background of the episode explained to him as well as the reason why Darijan’s parents couldn’t come to the school the next day so that everything could be resolved according to some pedagogical ideal.
The next day Tobias Werber, Boris’s father, came to the classroom. “It’s good that you protect your sister, but don’t kill a friend,” he said to Darijan. “And you, now you know what will happen to you if you don’t act like a gentleman with the ladies,” he said, turning to his son. And everyone was proud: Mirna was proud of her brother because he had defended her; the principal was proud of the teacher because she knew things about her pupils that their parents didn’t; Boris Werber was proud of his father because the general consensus was that he was a big man, unlike most fathers. Darijan alone didn’t have anyone to be proud of. After the bloody duel Mirna’s breast was no longer the talk of the classroom, but it would be the talk of the town up until Dijana returned from Africa, which was when the war began. While she was unpacking her bags, explosions began to reverberate. Since she hadn’t heard a word about the news at home for four full months, she had no idea what was going on and ran in a panic into the kitchen, where Regina was putting the plates into the cupboard.
The Walnut Mansion Page 8