“The man’s face can’t be seen. People’s faces show their real mood for nine-tenths of a second and tell a lie for one-tenth of a second. A good artist knows when he’s caught the subject in the wrong tenth of a second,” he told them.
Aris’s first months in Belgrade were like the discovery of a new world. He spent days and nights in the bars, spending the riches he’d earned answering questions about what was just and what wasn’t. By Christmas he already had the reputation of the biggest spendthrift in the long drunken history of Skadarlija because his daily tab was as a rule greater than what everyone else spent together. He treated anyone who came to his table, and at moments of particular inspiration, or if there happened to be a pretty young lady nearby, he smashed crystal glasses one after another. The waiter would bring him ten at a time on a silver platter. In the end Aris would grab the broken glass with his hands and explain the difference between glass and crystal. You cut up your hands on glass, but crystal was like diamonds, tender and fine if handled by a gentleman’s hands. The girls whom he was trying to impress with this ran away as fast as their legs could carry them. They saw in Aris either a haughty thug or someone who’d decided to kill himself and wanted to spend everything he had before doing so. And at that time at least, neither the one nor the other was a good recommendation for a suitor.
Before the end of the first semester Aris realized that nothing would come of his scholarly education. At the lectures, when he managed to go to them, he mainly dozed, sat hung-over, and tried to calm his stomach, which was raging inside him. And what the teachers were trying to teach him was uninteresting anyway. For two reasons. He was supposed to learn the basics, but as a boy he’d already passed through the advanced material. He knew how charges were brought and trials were conducted; what use would he have from learning the preliminary steps again? But the other reason why he had no desire to study was more important. He saw that he had eighteen years of torment behind him, of which he hadn’t been aware while it was going on. If he continued down the path on which his father had sent him, his whole life would be miserable. Without knowing what he really wanted, because he didn’t enjoy anything except Skadarlija, Aris sought a way to free himself from his father. Since nothing but death could deter Jovan Berberijan from passing on his law office to his son, Aris decided to feign tuberculosis. At first he planned on actually trying to get infected, but he gave up when people told him that that wasn’t so simple. Not everyone could catch tuberculosis, and no one could know how long it would take for the illness to progress far enough to free him from his studies. He didn’t have time because exams were approaching, and if he didn’t pass them, his father would realize what was going on and where his son was spending his days and nights in Belgrade.
He gave all his remaining money to Dr. Mušicki for the phony diagnosis. It was worth it because Mušicki acted out his part so well that he didn’t need to explain to the older Berberijan how the illness often progresses without the patient knowing he’s ill, and caverns begin to open up in people who were healthy the day before. All Berberijan did was crumple the paper on which the death sentence was written. Tears flowed down his motionless face, and Simeon Mušicki felt a great need to comfort him, as one comforted the fathers whose only sons were dying on such occasions. But since that was counter to the agreement that he’d made with the young man, the doctor said nothing and sighed. For each unspoken word of comfort, a sigh.
And so Mušicki earned the biggest money in his life, and Jovan Berberijan lost his reason to live. On Monday he sent Aris to the seaside, and on Wednesday he’d already fallen onto a sick bed from which he would never arise. Saveta washed, fed, and turned him from side to side for a full three years and despaired when he died. She loved him, no matter how he treated others, but she never reproached her son, though she knew that he’d made up the story about tuberculosis and that that story had killed Jovan. If she couldn’t change the situation, bawl out her husband, tell him that he was bringing misfortune upon their house, then she could at least accept and pity the both of them with that kind of tenderness that people usually call love, whereas they call the women who live in such love martyrs.
Aris Berberijan arrived in Dubrovnik in the early spring of 1931. He rented an apartment in the house of Mina Elez, an old maid who lived two houses down from the Sikirićes. Mina had a shop in her cellar for mending and darning women’s stockings and pleating women’s skirts. Regina often stopped by her place when a fair amount of bad stockings piled up in her house, but most often for no reason in particular, to look through fashion magazines that a nephew of Mina’s sent her every week from Munich or to talk a little with someone who understood her. Whereas others badgered her— What was she waiting for? Why didn’t she get married? Her time would pass!— Mina understood everything clearly. She only nodded, “Hey, dearie, I know how it is,” and kept on darning a stocking while Regina would detail her bad luck with men whom she found attractive or with others who found her attractive (and things were even harder with the latter).
Who knows how much Mina actually listened to her and how much of it all she even heard, because those stories were so typical, as if they’d been copied right out of an autograph album or one of Mir-Jam’s novels. Regina’s problems differed from those of other girls in only one respect. Whether it was fear or exaggerated pride, it’s hard to say, but she didn’t dare to strike out, dive, and plunge into the waters of love for the first time. Either the cliff was too high, or the sea below was shallow or too deep; she stood up above, started, and then stopped, afterward only to discover and invent everything that wasn’t right about the guy for whom she was supposed to take the plunge. The catalogue of male deficiencies was like a little picture printed in a hundred thousand copies that Regina’s entire generation carried close to its heart, especially the women, as had several generations before her. What was recorded in that catalogue wasn’t to be said out loud or written down because no one would believe it, and they would impute the whole affair to the wickedness and idleness of whoever was telling it. People scorn commonplaces and don’t believe that there is anything under the vault of heaven that might satisfy some general criteria, so then such things are simply not said and a great deal of human history is omitted from the history books. The part that can be described and explained only with the help of commonplaces ends up being the gray area of every historiography, an apparently uninhabited and unresearched area, a mysterious outline, a warping of space in the universe, or in any case something that scientists have been making up since the beginning of the century in order to return to reality the peculiarity that existed in it while God’s presence in the world was an absolute certainty. Therefore, Regina’s problem is only worth pointing out, and there’s no need to say any more about it.
Mina liked her company, Regina’s daily lament, her litany of complaints and bellyaching filled with men’s names, spoken in such a way that one would think they weren’t real people but saints in whom no one believed any more. Though that was no reason not to blame them for all the sudden strong storms and squalls, for open shutters smashed against stone walls, for bedsheets torn furiously from clotheslines in a sudden northerly wind, when the only question was whether it would blow them out to sea or turn them into sails that would carry off that damned city and leave it lying in the wreckage of sunken sailboats.
Mina’s head teemed with such thoughts. They were ornate, numbered, and each had a hundred little images. If anyone who wasn’t Mina somehow (God forbid) entered her head, he would have gone crazy right away from all those little images. But for her they were ordinary, day-to-day occurrences.
Bedsheets and dragons; giant octopi once seen at the fish market, which Czech photographers took pictures of but the city forgot the very next day; an anthill in the unused chimney of a nobleman’s villa that had been turned into a museum; pots with marigolds on a window in Begovina and men in fezzes passing underneath the window; the roar of the River Buna and the summer drone com
ing from the dervish tekke; Mt. Velež in the sunlight on a calm summer day, when a storm has descended on its peak, striking it with thunder and lightning; Allah’s quarries; sardines that opened and closed their eyes as they waited for a quick knife to take the scales off their backs and the salt in which their last fishy thoughts reposed; the agonies of salted fish backs, their sinful souls; Christian saints caught in fishing nets; a crucifix made from a pine branch; pillows being aired in springtime in a window of someone who had died the day before; the sea as black as pitch and the smell of lavender in the pockets of men’s coats; a captain’s hat high on a dresser in a house where there were a lot of children; May Day bonfires; gendarmes with their swords drawn and Avram, a.k.a. Lenin, who flashed his penis at them in provocation; a condom in the palm of a Dutch sailor and his fingers, which smelled of rubber long after— which frightened her and she ran away; grains of sand under her toenails; motorboats that took foreigners to Lokrum; rowboats that took aging hunting dogs to an islet where there was no food or water; a thimble forgotten in a yard, half full of the first autumn rain; three rotten carob pods in the corner of a cellar— one winter at the turn of the century; little Gypsies with measles running after city kids to infect them; pustules full of lymph; festering sores on the flanks of an emaciated Bosnian horse loaded with baskets of Travnik cheese; an open umbrella, fallen into the sea and carried out into the offing. These were some of the images that passed through Mina’s mind at any moment. Whereas others thought in the words of the language they had learned first, she thought in images and was special in that regard. Women considered Mina to be foolish, but they didn’t dare say out loud that she was crazy. They said nothing about the images in her head in front of the men; it was better if they didn’t know about her and didn’t badmouth her. One simply couldn’t get by without Mina. Mina was the only one in town who darned stockings and pleated skirts— and the fashion of pleated skirts was at least ten years old, and who knew how long it was still going to be around? Maybe it would never pass: fashion had been invented by rich people with nothing better to do who couldn’t have cared less if it took a long time to iron pleated clothing— it was easier to iron five men’s shirts than one pleated skirt! But whoever thought highly of themselves and had a reason to go out in public would surrender to the dictates of Paris and praise God for having created Mina. Besides, she did that work well. True, they couldn’t compare her with anyone else because she was the only one who did it, but that said something in itself. If darning stockings were a simple task, women would darn them themselves. If anyone could pleat a skirt, there would certainly have been as many shops for pleating as there were barbershops and beauty salons, and the world wouldn’t have depended on that one of Mina’s.
“Oh, dearie, I know how it is,” Mina would say, closing up her shop as she did every afternoon and then going to the post office to get the fashion journals or little packages with special string that also arrived from Munich. Then she would continue on to the city aquarium, where deep-sea fish languished in watery dungeons. She’d felt a tenderness ever since she’d seen them for the first time some fifty years before. Since then she came to visit the fish every day, except for Sundays, when the aquarium was closed. She talked to them, listened to their grief, comforted them, and brought a little light and freedom into their meager lives. If she believed in anything, Mina believed that God had granted that she be the confessor of fish. She heard the confessions of their unhappiness but not their sins because fish never sin.
Regina accompanied her as far as the steps that went down toward the city.
“I know how it is,” said Mina for the third time that afternoon.
Regina went home to see whether Luka had come back from school. The same ritual repeated itself every workday, but today it would be fateful for the two women. As Mina waited in the post office for Vito the postal clerk to find her packages in gray burlap bags, a stranger wearing an expensive gray suit and carrying two leather suitcases in his hands appeared in the entryway. He held the door open with his shoulder, trying to push his way inside but kept getting caught on something on one side or the other. He would have probably managed by setting down the two suitcases and opening the heavy iron door all the way and going in, if everyone’s eyes hadn’t been glued to him.
For Mina, Vito, and two idle city ladies, Rudolph Valentino had just appeared! Five years before women had cried for him, and men had acted like they didn’t care or that a weight had fallen from their shoulders because he, the handsomest man in the world, ignited flames of outright jealousy in them from a distance of a few thousand kilometers. For the city’s parish priest, also a man, his full name, Rodolpho Alphonso Guglielmi di Valentina d’Antonguolla, amounted to unambiguous proof that he was the devil. Could a Christian soul really bear such a name? In his Sunday sermon, after the city had mourned Valentino for seven full days, he warned husbands to keep their eyes on their wives, sisters, and daughters because Satan had sowed his seeds in their hearts. From every tear they shed for the American imposter, the shoots of the devil sprouted. And just as shoots eat up the tubers from which they grow so that nothing is left of a potato, nothing would be left of their wicked female hearts. That was how it was and no other way, so the men should watch out! Thereupon the female side of the church got up from the pews out of protest, and all of them, except for a few old women, walked out. It was told that on that Sunday a horrible curse had rung out in the cathedral. It had been spoken by a voice that didn’t belong to any of those present.
For the believers that was unambiguous proof that the reverend father was right and that Rudolph Valentino was Satan. But Satan never died; rather, he changed the place and time of his appearance. He comes in various guises, usually contrary to his real nature. Goodness and innocence, like great physical beauty, are always a signal of danger for the faithful, so any foreigner is better off if he comes across to them as nefarious and ugly.
Seeing the stranger trying to make his way into the post office with the suitcases and recognizing in him the actor from a time when people watched films with their eyes only, whom they had mourned but never gotten over, all four of those present, even Vito the postal clerk, immediately thought it was Satan coming to their city instead of returning to America. It was hard to know who was glad about that if it were true, and whether Vito felt any of those female reasons for joy within himself, but it was a fact that they all watched him alike and that they all shared the same surprise, from one pair of eyes to the next. Mina collected herself the quickest, ran to the door, and opened it wide. The stranger thanked her with a nod and smiled. He walked up to the counter (the two unemployed women stepped a couple of meters back from him, each in a different direction), stopped in front of Vito, sighed deeply, and the postal clerk watched him and waited to see which language the foreigner would speak.
“Good day, and excuse me if I’m bothering you with something that doesn’t have anything to do with the mail, but I don’t know who to ask. I was in a barbershop, but they sent me to you. You see, I’m looking for an apartment! Not for a day or two but for six months at least. So you see, if you can tell me who to go to, I’d be very grateful to you.”
Vito looked at the man in confusion. Maybe he’d been sent from the royal palace. He would probably be some prince but surely not Prince Karađorđević: the Karađorđevićes looked different, weren’t that refined. Although it wasn’t impossible, at least judging from his build, because the Karađorđevićes were also slender and tall. Thin, but strong. Just look at him— he was thin as a matchstick, but he could carry three sacks of cement in his arms! Vito would have taken him in— it would be good to know such people, whatever they were and wherever they came from, but God forbid he show him his house! That would be like trying to put him up in a doghouse or a chicken coop. Too bad, but that’s what he deserved since he always took care of others more than himself. If it were any different, if he’d thought of himself, if he’d hoped for anything else but to be a mailm
an and a postal worker all his life, he would have built a house in which he might receive a man like this, and then everything would have gone better. You’re the same as the company you keep— people didn’t say that for nothing! But now it was over; he’d missed his chance. That’s too bad, really too bad, he thought, shook his head, and seemed to the stranger to be mentally handicapped.
“Come over to my place,” Mina spoke up. Everyone was taken aback for a moment.
“But you . . . ,” one of the other women started to say but stopped. And Mina was almost surprised to have heard her own voice. They all laughed at the same time, all four of them. They felt as if they were at a chance meeting of a nobleman and a noblewoman in front of the restroom in the Hindenburg. Someone was inside, sitting on an ivory toilet seat and playing with the gold chain of the water tank, and everyone had to pee.
She took him to her place, to the second-story apartment that she hadn’t gone into since the day her sister had died. Petka had been ten years older than Mina; she hadn’t ever married either, nor had she needed anyone else since she had her sister. Petka’s death was the only truly terrible event in Mina’s life. She just lay down one day after lunch, as she always did, and never woke up again. If it had been different, if Petka had suffered, if she’d heralded her departure with any kind of sign, it would have been easier for her sister. As it was, that was the one image that dimmed her thoughts and came suddenly. When it seemed that everything was fine and that there was peace everywhere, Petka’s white face would flash through her mind: her half-open lips, with a thin strand of spittle hanging from them, thinner than the finest thread, at the end of which there was a tiny globule sinking downward that would break the strand at any moment. She couldn’t remember whether it actually did, whether the strand broke. Actually she couldn’t remember anything because the next moment she shouted and ran from the room and out of Petka’s apartment. And then she fell down the stone steps that led to the yard. She didn’t know what she’d wanted then— to call for help, to escape death, which was preparing to come for her too? Or maybe she hadn’t wanted anything and so fell and spent a month in the hospital, where the doctors told her that she would never walk again? They always said such things. What did doctors know about walking?! Nothing. Just as they couldn’t tell her what Petka had died from. Could it have been the rancid oil that did her some harm? Or was it that the chard wasn’t young? Chard had to be picked and eaten while it was still young, before it turned bitter and got to be full of poisons. Who knows what kinds of poisons kill people, where they all are, and how they are accumulated?! If people knew how to take care of themselves, they wouldn’t ever die. Death wasn’t something natural, like the changing of the seasons, spring, summer, fall, and winter. Rather, everyone died from some illness. And every illness came from some poison. Petka had died from some poison too. Mina knew this and didn’t need anyone to tell her about it. People were unhappy, miserable creatures; people were cats that didn’t know enough to run off of trolley tracks. And people didn’t know what all killed them! If they knew, they would be angels! Angels were harmed by the same poisons as people, but angels knew what was poisonous and gave it a wide berth. The more poisons there were in the world, the less angels protected people. They didn’t have the time or a way to do it because they had to protect themselves. And it was better that way because if angels thought more about people than about themselves, they would soon disappear. Just as Petka disappeared, and when you get old, it seems that everyone with whom you’ve lived is disappearing. You don’t die until you’re all alone. Mina was convinced that this was true. She didn’t believe in God or the saints because she didn’t know what God was supposed to be or what the point of being a saint was except that they were supposed to be in eternal torment. Only a sick imagination could come up with saints! But Mina did believe in angels! Angels were here and everyone saw them. Children and adults, believers and unbelievers, smart people and people with no brains at all. It was just that people didn’t recognize that they were angels of all things and thought that they’d seen something else. People, just like angels, didn’t have time either. That was why one should pity both of them. Almost as much as the fish. Petka might have been Mina’s angel. But maybe she wasn’t. Maybe she was nevertheless just her sister. Who would know any more? Time had passed; a lot had been forgotten. And how could anyone even know that someone was their older sister? You were born, and they told you that! But people tell children all kinds of things, and they believe it when they grow up.
The Walnut Mansion Page 43