The Walnut Mansion

by Miljenko Jergovic

  He was mad as hell and convinced that all three of them would die of hunger. And he prayed to God that a fourth wouldn’t be arriving soon.

  At first the name Samuel F. Klein meant nothing to Ivo, although he’d read it in 1933 and 1934 at the head of the dining table of the Leonica, certainly the nicest and most comfortable ship on which he’d sailed. And not only did he remember that name, written in Gothic script with red ink, but he’d also seen a photograph of the ship’s owner above it at breakfast, lunch, and dinner. He’d wondered countless times what type of man he must be if he exposed his name and picture so that sailors could spit on it, swear at his mother, and curse the day that they’d set foot on the ship. And they would swear at him and curse him because they had to do it to someone, and if they feared God, the captain, and the first deck officer, they would let the first person whose picture they saw have it—the Austrian emperor, the Yugoslav king, or a naked beauty whose picture was pasted on the inside of a toolbox. They would swear at a face in old newsprint, and if not even that was there because on ships pictures were few and far between, they would swear at themselves because they weren’t at home catching fish on a trawl line but sailing around the Tierra del Fuego and praying to God that the Pacific was as peaceful as its name suggested and not as it was according to its nature. It’s always the same, on every ship and on every voyage, and everyone who has ever sailed, even as a passenger, knows it. He couldn’t believe that the owner of the Leonica wasn’t aware of that or that he was so proud of his name and personage that he would subject his name and picture to the impulses of anguished sailors. There were those who spat on him for luck and for a calm sea. Every evening, instead of prayers for calm, they would clear their throats and spit at the face of the man with the bow tie and the high top hat. Ivo didn’t swear at him or spit at him but amused himself by trying to figure out what made him tick. That man might differ from other men in some way, in something that made him interesting. But hardly any of that could be learned from a single photograph. None of the crew had met the owner of the Leonica, nor did they know any more about him. The mystery of the photograph remained unsolved, if it even existed and if anyone besides Ivo Delavale saw anything more in it than a target for spittle and an icon for oaths and curses.

  When the Leonica sailed out of his life and Ivo boarded uglier, rustier, and more hazardous ships that had no dining halls or portraits of emperors, kings, or Jesus Christ, Samuel F. Klein would often cross his thoughts. But there wasn’t anything at all in the appearance of the dusty little man in the attic of the Banja Luka prep school, who sincerely rejoiced at his arrival because he would no longer be alone for days on end, that might remind one of the spit-covered portrait on the wall of the dining hall and the name written in Gothic script. He fit right in with the broken globes, portraits of deposed rulers. and maps with outdated borders. It was as if he himself had been taken out of use in some educational reform and had been taken up to the attic instead of to the municipal dump. He was nice and amusing when he spoke about his numerous ailments or about recipes for cakes for holidays, holy days, and saints’ days.

  “Well, if somebody asked me now what I miss most and what I’ll pine for if I say good-bye to this life, I’d say to him—cake, nothing but cake! I’ve survived everything, but I can’t survive without Sacher torte!” Klein said on their first night together, and Ivo couldn’t figure out whether he was complaining or making a joke at his own expense. The same doubt would linger on until the end of their time together. Even after they knew more about one another than the best of friends do, Ivo wouldn’t be sure when Klein was making fun of himself or wanted to share his despair and sorrow with him. He would stay up till dawn counting the cakes that he’d ever eaten and recalling pastry shops and cities, and there were many of them all over the world. In an instant he would jump from the baklava of Bitolj and Istanbul to the Kaiserschmarrn of Vienna and then to the apple pie that he’d tried the one time he’d traveled to America in 1921 or 1922. He told of jelly rolls he’d eaten in a Hungarian shop in Subotica and about the difference between apricot jam and rose-hip jam—the former was perfect for jelly rolls, but the latter tasted better in crispier cakes. He told how there was no better drink than boza, at least to go with cakes, and then about the Turkish delight in Prilep, the pauper’s halva in Bosnian towns, and the floating island desserts that you like only as long as you are someone’s grandchild—when your grandmas and grandpas died, your craving for floating dessert disappeared.

  Ivo listened to him and drifted off to sleep. Klein would talk for a long time yet, even when he realized that no one was listening to him. He’d gotten a craving for tales of cakes because he couldn’t talk about them with Franjo.

  In the morning the janitor took away the chamber pot, which was twice as full as it ordinarily was.

  “It can’t go on like this,” he said. But he himself didn’t know how things could continue and what to do with the people whose care was entrusted to him. When he’d taken on this task, Franjo believed that he was doing a good deed and that he wouldn’t come out behind on it but would also feed himself and supplement his diet on Panther’s money. However, since there was no longer any money and Panther wasn’t around, his good deed began to make less sense. Everyone was working for himself, only he was working to his own detriment; he was carrying other people’s shit around the prep school and awaiting the day when the Ustashas would find him out.

  Outside it was spring, the kind that had come only seldom during the years of peace. The hills surrounding the city sprouted, bloomed, and blossomed; buzzing and chirping drowned out the noise of German trucks. Armies prepared to move on each other. Prep school graduates prepared to leave for Stalingrad. Pavelić’s speeches and songs celebrating the beauty of the homeland resounded from loudspeakers on the square . . . The world was in a season of perfect harmony; it was only Franjo’s life that was topsy-turvy. In early evening one could hear the sounds of a tambouritza and a song about the sad story of two friends, Latif and Sulejman, who—for one hundred and fifty years already—had been leaving Banja Luka in the spring and asking one another the same question: “Are you sorry?” Well, how could a man not be sorry to leave such beauty behind only because he knew it couldn’t last? Shouldn’t you live for no other reason than you know that from the perspective of the oak trees above šehitluci Hill you’re already long dead? It’s better to be born like an animal, enjoy every spring day, and have no idea that there will be something else tomorrow, something that isn’t nice and might make you regret that you’re alive.

  “You have to get out of here, tonight! Any way you can! I can’t help you any more,” Franjo said, shuddering. “Here, I’ve brought you what I have,” he said and pulled out a loaf of bread, a slab of bacon, and three onions from a shopping bag. “But you have to move on; you’ve got to get out before midnight!”

  They each sat on their ottomans and couldn’t understand what the janitor really wanted.

  “Did the contact arrive?” Klein asked.

  “There isn’t any contact. You have to take care of yourselves. Now just go!” He said that the director had announced that the attic was to be cleaned, that he’d waved his hand and when he did, each of his fingers had caught a spider’s web. Ivo wondered whether they were from one spider or whether there were more.

  “But what will we do; where will we go?” Klein shilly-shallied.

  “How should I know what you’ll do?! You’ll do just great! You’ll put one foot in front of the other until you get somewhere!” the janitor insisted.

  Ivo looked at him, smiled, and didn’t believe anything he said. Cleaning the attic, right! No one did that in wartime. And what director would tell a janitor what was to be done the next day? Rather, the man simply wanted to be rid of the both of them and was telling lies. And in the end it didn’t matter what the truth was because if the host says he’s had enough of his guests, then they really have to leave.

  “But they’ll kill us
,” Klein said almost with the voice of a child.

  “C’mon, dammit, didn’t you yourself want to jump off the roof?! I barely held you back, and now you’re blubbering that they’ll kill you. They won’t kill you if you watch out for yourself!” Franjo said, laying out the things he’d prepared for their trip. When that was done, he clapped his hands as if to show that their conversation was over. “I’ll be here half an hour before midnight, and you’d better be ready!” he said and disappeared.

  “What was that?” Klein asked, breaking the silence after about ten minutes. The ruddy light of dusk penetrated through the vents in the roof, and the muezzin’s call could be heard. “I’ve never seen him like that,” he continued when Ivo didn’t answer. “He’ll probably be over it by tomorrow.” He wanted to see what the communist thought. He was convinced that Ivo was a communist because he looked like one of those figures on Soviet placards for spring harvests. Klein didn’t want to leave the attic, and if there really was going to be a cleaning, he thought about asking Franjo to hide them in the cellar or in some other place while that was going on, anything but throwing them out into the world. Coincidentally, he’d just started to get used to the idea of living the rest of his life in the prep school’s attic.

  “I don’t know whether he’ll be over it by tomorrow, but we’re going tonight. At least I’m going—you can do what you like!” Ivo said, and Klein broke out in a cold sweat. Faced with the thought that he would have to go out that night, he was overcome with fear like he hadn’t felt in all of his panic-stricken life. His fear was all the greater because it had nothing to do with the reasons why he was there. He forgot about the Ustashas and their knives, about gallows and medieval methods of torture, about which he’d read as a prep school student in a French monograph with pictures that had aroused feelings of erotic excitement in him. He was no longer concerned that he was a Jew in a world that had decided that Jews could no longer be. Nor was he worried that he didn’t have strength in his legs and that he would croak from fatigue if the guns and knives didn’t get him. Klein was simply afraid of going into the outside world! It didn’t matter what was happening or who was out there. He couldn’t bear the thought of the wide sky being over his head instead of a low, slanted roof. He grew short of breath at the thought of that wide expanse and didn’t know what was wrong with him.

  “I can’t do it,” he whispered, on the verge of tears. “Don’t leave me, for the love of God,” he squealed. Ivo didn’t know what the man wanted from him. He stared dully at him and tried to figure out if the little man was joking. He wondered whether the spiders were sorry about their demolished webs or whether they didn’t care.

  “Listen to me good,” he said; “I don’t feel like dying here, and I’m going for sure. I have no idea whether this fool is lying about the cleaning, but I don’t want to find out. And as far as you’re concerned, you’re your own man, and you can decide for yourself. It’s better for you to come with me—we’ll both share the same fate. It’s easier if there’s two of us. Don’t interrupt me, and don’t fucking lose it like a bride at a wedding feast. You won’t get anywhere like that with me because I don’t understand it. I’m a sailor, you understand?! I’m not a city boy, and life hasn’t treated me with kid gloves. I’ve always taken care to keep my head on my shoulders, and I’ve been in worse situations than this. I’m not saying this to put you at ease—it’s just true. You don’t know what ships are, what the sea is!” he said angrily as tears streamed down Klein’s face.

  “I know what ships are; I’ve had ships,” he stammered. Ivo felt the urge to slap him like a little child because the ugly little man was also a little child, unreasonable and spoiled. Maybe he’d had a little boat and had called it a ship.

  “I’ll tell you a story,” Ivo tried to speak as if telling a fairy tale since a slap would have been indecent. “I sailed for two years on a ship called the Leonica . . .”

  The little man’s face lit up and he stopped crying, just like a child at the beginning of Snow White.

  “That was the most beautiful ship in my career—clean, powerful, and secure. The majority of merchant ships are old junk and wrecks, in worse condition than the worst fishing boats and two-masters because the owners are only trying to make a profit. They couldn’t care less if the ship takes on water everywhere and the engines are falling apart . . .”

  Klein nodded and folded his hands in his lap, as if he’d completely forgotten his fear.

  “But the Leonica was something else, a ship like in the movies. Only the crew wasn’t like in the movies. Sailors are a filthy lot. I haven’t been in prison, but prisoners are like that. Just like sailors. They gnaw at one another and hate one another. They sail, but the only thing they care about is when they’re going to moor. Instead of enjoying being on a ship from a fairy tale, the likes of which they would never sail on again, they hated the Leonica. They were insulted that they weren’t on a rusted wreck where they could give vent to their vices. Of course, such a ship had a real dining hall, like on a rich man’s passenger ship. Everything was in its place, and the furniture was in the style of Louis XIV . . .”

  The little man shook his head, wanted to object—that wasn’t anything like Louis XIV . . .

  “Listen; let me finish my story, and then you have your say,” Ivo said, unwilling to let himself be interrupted. “And on the wall of the dining hall was the ship owner’s portrait, and everyone swore at that picture and spat on it. You see, I’ve been thinking about that man my whole life, and I can’t decide whether he was the biggest fool in the world or a saint who wanted to show that people aren’t content when they have it good. I wasn’t content either, but I felt good on the Leonica. It took years before I realized that I felt good on that ship. Whenever something isn’t around any longer, you realize that it made you feel good. But you see, I learned something from that man. You never know how you really feel at the time. Not when you think things are good, not when you think they’re bad. Maybe it’s good fortune that we’re leaving tonight. Do you even understand what I’ve been saying, or has it all been for nothing?”

  The little man grinned as if he’d lost his mind, and it seemed that nothing would come of their journey.

  “Do you know what the name of the owner of the Leonica was?” Klein asked. “Samuel F. Klein,” Ivo said, still failing to catch on.

  “Yes,” said the little man, scratching himself behind the ear. “And he wasn’t a saint but a fool. A silly fool of a Kike. And you know that and have said it several times yourself.”

  He looked at his sailor, who didn’t understand. Ivo frowned, and who knew what was going through his head? Certainly something about Jews. He no longer had any idea who he was dealing with. He thought that he was one of them, but now it turned out that he wasn’t because if he were, how could he have said that someone was a silly fool of a Kike?

  “His name was Samuel F. Klein,” the little man mumbled, absorbed in thought, “and did you remember what my name is?”

  Ivo Delavale didn’t know whether what was happening to him was a dream or not. From that December day in 1941, when he had sailed from Florida on the tuna boat Olaf in the belief that he was going on a military mission to uncover German submarines in the Caribbean, he’d experienced nothing but marvels. At first the Olaf began to sink in front of Havana. For no reason at all, in the middle of a calm sea; it filled with water to the top in two hours, and he and three other Americans barely saved their skins. The owner of the Olaf, a white-bearded journalist, evidently a rich and a somewhat crazy man, said swearing that some Puerto Ricans had tricked him and that Puerto Rico should be flooded or at least burned because that was just one more sign that they supported Hitler, just as they supported Franco. That man didn’t know anything about the sea or about ships either because no one with any brains would think of going to pursue German submarines in a tuna boat—but Ivo realized that too late. In Havana they parted, and each went his own way. The man with the white beard went to b
uy a new ship, the two sailors went in search of whores, and Ivo, without a dollar in his pocket, sought a way to get back to Florida from Cuba. And so after two days of waiting he boarded the cruiser Zamzam, which was sailing under a Syrian flag and transporting Jewish refugees from Spain to the United States. After having waited for two months for the people to receive American visas and after having eaten their last reserves of food (which were meager to begin with) and spent their last money, captain Sergey Prokopiev decided to sail for Miami in the hope that the coast guard would let the Zamzam through because there were almost a thousand people on board—Lithuanian, Polish, Ukrainian, Romanian, and German Jews who faced the threat of death in one way or another. Namely, the Americans didn’t believe the tales of concentration camps or that the Germans were liquidating those people en masse in their drive eastward. Fine; it was obvious that Hitler didn’t like Jews and that he’d made their elimination one of his most important political objectives. But political aims are one thing and reality is another, or so the Americans thought, convinced that Nazi ideology worked like advertisements for soft drinks. Who would really believe that sugared soda water made people happier and more potent, and who would really believe that Hitler had serious thoughts about the Jews? And if he did, that only meant he was crazy. His project would come to ruin, his state would collapse, and until then it was smarter to keep one’s distance from him and not get too mixed up with those who were fleeing in all directions for real reasons or out of fear.