The Walnut Mansion

by Miljenko Jergovic

  They liked the fact that there were so many people. People had hardly gone outside for a month, but now the rain had stopped and everyone was going back out among people. True, those people weren’t particularly talkative; it was true that they were sizing each other up like roosters before a cockfight; it was true that some might lose their lives and that there wouldn’t be enough wares for everyone, but it was nevertheless somehow good. After the long, suffocating ordeals of going back and forth from the kitchen to the cellar, Niko was able to rest his mind. It stung him that his granddaughter hadn’t even looked at him that morning. She hadn’t said anything, even when he told her that he would bring something back for her too— the caravan drivers always brought sweets for children, kerchiefs for women, and a fine chibouk here and there, a nargileh or similar things to lure money out of your pocket. She acted as if she hadn’t heard or she didn’t care. But she did care! She’d cajoled him and buttered him up so many times in hopes that he would bring her something from town. He would always bring something because he knew she’d be excited. He’d spend a lot of money on a few dates, bring the first ripe rose hips, a hairpin or a fuzzy toy rabbit . . . But now she hadn’t even looked at him! Regardless of the fact that he really wanted her to look at him, to be happy at seeing him, to give him a hug and ask him to take her along. Or maybe she hadn’t looked at him precisely because it was so important to him. She was a child, but she already knew how to punish adults. Actually, how women punish men who love them. That was something new in the life of Niko Azinović. His wife Bare had never given him the silent treatment. She hadn’t had time because she’d died too early, but he was sure that she wouldn’t have done such things. Niko thought Bare was the embodiment of a real angel and so never married again.

  But what if the girl was right? He hadn’t lifted a finger when that jerk had frightened her, putting his finger on her forehead and looking at her the way a hunter looks at a bear cub, seeing where he would put a bullet in it so as not to damage the hide. Yes, he knew that nothing would happen and that all he needed to do was wait until those uninvited guests left, but the little girl hadn’t known that. And if she had, it wouldn’t have made any difference. She wanted him to defend her. But what she saw was him bowing his head before power. He didn’t defend her, and that was what mattered to her. She surely thought that those robbers had spared her life and that Grandpa wouldn’t have lifted a finger if they’d wanted to cut her throat.

  “I’m going home!” he said, getting up and reaching for his sack.

  “What’s wrong, did I say something wrong?” Dominko Pujdin asked and grabbed him by the arm.

  “No, but I have to go home. Now!”

  “Are you crazy?— the caravan is almost here. All kinds of things to buy. What’s wrong with you?”

  “Nothing’s wrong with me, but I’m going . . .”

  “And what are you going to tell everyone at home? What will you say to them when you’re feeding them bran, and whoever isn’t dirt poor is eating what the caravan brought?”

  Niko stopped. The old man was right. You can’t come home with empty hands and an empty sack. He’d done something wrong, and now he was wanting to make that right by doing something worse. But the thought that the girl was thinking what she surely was and scorned him was unbearable.

  “I insulted Regina. Terribly,” he said.

  “Who?” Dominko Pujdin asked; he didn’t understand.

  “My little girl. My granddaughter,” he said and his eyes filled with tears from the sound of his words.

  “Leave the child in peace,” he said, holding firmly on to Niko’s arm. “She’ll forget about it, whatever it was.”

  Dominko Pujdin couldn’t have done any more for him. He’d said something he didn’t believe, but he thought that it was what Niko wanted to hear. He couldn’t figure out what that man, who was his friend, was doing with his life. And had always been doing with it. Instead of getting over his wife and finding another, he had stayed alone. He spoke with children as if they were grown-ups. Next he would be speaking with birds and goats as if they were his equals . . .

  Niko sat back down on the sack, but in his mind he was going through everything he would do when he got back home. He would tell her that for her he would . . . No, he wouldn’t tell her anything. Not today. If she didn’t look at him and didn’t take what he was bringing her, he would act as if nothing were wrong. But the next day he would be waiting for those three with an axe— or should he borrow a hunting rifle from Dominko? Then he’d get them off his doorstep. The girl would watch that . . . No! Regina would watch it. From now on he wouldn’t call her a little girl, nor a child, or a little one . . . She had her own name! If he’d thought of her as Regina, he wouldn’t have acted like that. Or would he? It was no longer important. What was important was that he would chase them off his doorstep with an axe and a rifle! He would tell them off as he’d never told anyone off in his life. He’d also tell them that the only way they were coming in was over his dead body. Because they’d laid their hands on what he valued most. Regina was dearer to his heart than his two daughters. When you become a father, you fear your own children, but when you become a grandfather, you are the happiest you’ve ever been. He wouldn’t tell his daughter that, but he had to keep it in mind! If he’d thought that then, what had happened never would have happened. And if— God forbid— they attacked him, he would shoot! That was why it was better to get the rifle from Dominko. With an axe you’re never sure. He would shoot and kill! No court in the world would convict him for that. If someone tries to force their way into your home, you have the right to kill them! But what if you don’t? He would do hard labor if he had to, but there was no way he could stand by and watch his kin be threatened! If he’d thought like that the day before, he wouldn’t be feeling as he did today. It was better to go underground than to have your soul come apart. And his soul was coming apart!

  They’d been sitting for two hours, and people kept coming. It seemed as if all of Dubrovnik had found out about the caravan. At one point it started to get on Dominko Pujdin’s nerves. He was really galled when he realized that everyone had learned the same thing in confidence, maybe at the same time, in the same way that he had. Yeah, what kind of people are we?— he wondered. The worst pagan had more honor than that! And now the problem with Niko: every so often he would look at him. He would try to start a conversation, but Niko would answer curtly. It was clear that nothing mattered to him, and he kept staring at the same spot, getting wrinkles like an old oak tree— with every minute a new wrinkle appeared on his face, and one could see that great anguish had taken hold of him. Worst of all was that Dominko Pujdin was sure that his anguish was all for nothing.

  “Turks have plundered the caravan! In Trebinje, at Arslanagić Bridge,” said a giant of a man in a Konavle peasant outfit as he made his way through the people. “We don’t have any choice but to get ready and head up there!” he said, gripping a muzzle-loading pistol (which was probably two hundred years old) to show that he was already ready to go.

  “What will we do up there? If they plundered the caravan, then there won’t be any stuff left. I don’t feel like dying, thank you very much!”

  “I’m not going!” Čare Nedoklan objected.

  “Well, I’ll go, by God! Are my kids supposed to go hungry just because of some Turkish thugs?” said another voice. The crowd began to stir and separate; everyone went in his own direction, swearwords flew, and people cursed God, others’ mothers, and unborn Turkish children, and there were those who just gave up, grabbing their sacks and baskets to go home.

  “Nobody’s leaving here!” the man from Konavle shouted, jumping out in front of the dispersing crowd and waving his pistol. “Let me just see a traitor to his kind! I’ll cut his throat with these hands!” he shouted. The people stepped back.

  Niko and Dominko Pujdin hadn’t made their decision for one side or the other but hid and waited for the fury to pass or for what had to happen in suc
h situations. That it would come to an angry march on Trebinje seemed unlikely to them. And if they did go, they would cool down on their way there.

  The man from Konavle skipped around as if he’d lost his mind, ran around the mass of people like a sheepherder around his flock, and assembled those who agreed with him. Soon there were seven men, all ne’er-do-wells: one with water on the brain (whom no one knew), another barefoot and in torn pants (he had nothing that could buy him anything except his aggressive manner), three city dandies from good houses (men who’d avoided their mobilization calls and now wanted to fight the Turks), and one more named Sreten Kozomara, a defrocked Serbian priest who’d known how to choose his side with cunning since the days of the assassination. He’d gone burning Serbian houses and smashing Serbian shops, all so no one would torch his house. Sreten was the fiercest one of them apart from the man from Konavle. He would knock a man’s hat off, jerk on the mustache of someone who argued with him, threaten anyone who objected to going on the march to Trebinje.

  The seventh one of this strange group was Admiral Sterk. “We should take riflemen’s positions!” he said, tugging the sleeve of the man from Konavle. “And appoint a commander— I’m highest in rank!” he said, pestering the pistol-packing hero like a blowfly. Since he wasn’t from Dubrovnik and didn’t have a watch that might break, the man from Konavle didn’t know who Admiral Sterk was. But he took an immediate dislike to him— he hated the habit that townsfolk had of touching people when talking to them. And they always wanted something. He pushed Admiral Sterk away but not too hard. As a man pushes a man away when he starts bothering him. But the admiral ended up sprawled on the ground, and as he lay on his back, he started calling for help:

  “Provocateur! Provocateur! People, don’t believe what he says!”

  But the people moved away from him as much as the man from Konavle and his little group would allow them.

  They didn’t even get involved when he grabbed Admiral Sterk by the throat and started to strangle him and yell for him to shut up. And not even when the admiral wouldn’t shut up but kept on saying incomprehensible, but evidently hostile, words. They didn’t even do anything when Admiral Sterk started wheezing. No one dared tell the man from Konavle to let him go and explain to him that the admiral was crazy but that he was one of them and repaired their watches, right until the admiral went limp in the man’s grip and lay on the ground.

  “Look, the pig wet himself!” Sreten Kozomara said and laughed and then was suddenly grim. He probably expected for the others to laugh, but no one did.

  The man from Konavle looked in confusion at the work of his hands, a dead man who was lying with his legs spread apart and drinking the sky with his bulging eyes. The sky had cleared without them noticing. Someone calm and collected might have asked what was bluer— the eyes of a dead man or the sky after twenty-eight days of rain?

  The first victim halted the warlord and his men for a moment. No, he wasn’t afraid because he’d just killed someone; rather, he was inwardly surprised at how easily the soul had flown out of the man who’d opposed him. That showed how little he was worth and how little he was actually alive. He was like an ant— step on it and it’s gone. Or a moth— you make a mechanical swat at it, and it comes apart on your palm. The man from Konavle was unable to feel guilty. Had he done something unusual, something that people otherwise didn’t do to others? No! It would have been different if he’d cut his throat or smashed his skull with the handle of his pistol. That would have been too much if the man hadn’t done anything wrong! Maybe this one had done something wrong, maybe he hadn’t. Who the hell knew? God would send his soul where it belonged. God or St. Peter. It didn’t matter. The man from Konavle was not learned enough to know how those things worked.

  “Did you see?! Did you see?! Take a good look! And you too. Come and see whether you want to raise a fuss; take a look at what happens to those who do!” said the one with water on the brain and went out into the crowd of people. But the people looked away; they didn’t want to have anything to do with either the one with water on his brain or the man from Konavle; nor did they see or hear anything . . . And no one would be able to accuse them of anything afterward. But it chafed them that they had their ducats in their pockets. They needed to hide them somehow— sew them into the lining of their coats, keep them under their tongues, shove them up their rear ends if need be, anything but walk around obliviously with the family valuables they still had. If you didn’t say anything, your life wasn’t on the line. But your ducats were! Sooner or later the man from Konavle would remember their ducats, and then it was all over. The caravan wasn’t coming, there were no caravan drivers, and their doorsteps were far away . . .

  “Should we wait until tomorrow?” asked Čare Nedoklan slyly. “If we leave today for Trebinje, we won’t arrive until evening. And it’s better to arm ourselves!”

  At first the proposal seemed reasonable to the man from Konavle. The people in Trebinje would be waiting for them and slaughter them all like sheep if they went like they were. But if he let his band disperse now, he would never be able to get it back together; he knew this well. They were from Dubrovnik! They always hid before it came to bloodshed. The Turks had burned everything from Gruda and Vitaljina to Cavtat and the entrance to the city, and each time they had welcomed them with open arms. They would spread out rugs for them on Stradun, treat them, grease their palms, and praise them. Seven times! Well, they wouldn’t do that now!

  “Fine,” the man from Konavle began; “we can’t go into battle like this. You speak the truth. So let’s do this: whoever has a rifle, knife, or pistol at home— he can go; and whoever doesn’t— he can camp here!”

  Of course, it turned out that everyone had weapons and that the town was armed better than Franz Joseph’s army. Angry and ready for a fight, they rushed to head home, and then they would come back armed to the teeth at dawn the next morning. All they wanted was for the man from Konavle to let them go. Among a few hundred men there wasn’t a one now who wasn’t ready to hit the Turks hard.

  “I’ve got two hunting rifles!” said Dominko Pujdin, standing up on his toes so the man from Konavle could see him and Sreten Kozomara could write it down in his register.

  But just when they thought they were going to make an ass of him, the man from Konavle began to speak:

  “But you’ll leave all the money and ducats you have on you here, and you’ll get them back tomorrow when you come with your rifles!”

  The crowd fell silent abruptly. Their gazes wandered, and no one felt like going home any more. Those who a few moments before had acted as if they had whole arsenals in their cellars suddenly had no weapons other than maybe some fish spears. Sreten Kozomara grinned cunningly, tapped his pencil on his black book, and awaited his leader’s decision.

  They’d tried to deceive him, but after seven Turkish campaigns the town of Konavle had come to its senses. There would be no more Turkish sit-down parties in Dubrovnik on the backs of those from Konavle! He was proud of himself and his intelligence and looked down on them. Just as a falcon looks down on a rabbit nibbling grass and acts as if he’s not there. The rabbit thinks the bird can’t see a thing. Oh, the poor thing, the man from Konavle thought, enjoying his role, and then realized that he hadn’t done himself any good at all by not letting himself be outwitted. The Dubrovnikers would stay there all night long, but in the morning he wouldn’t have anything he needed to head out for Trebinje. Who would bring the rifles? And there were too many people for him to shake the ducats out of their pockets and pack them off to get their weapons. They would resist if he tried it and would rather die than leave their valuables in his care. That was the only thing you didn’t dare take from them— the only thing that they would give their lives for. All their honor, courage, and integrity were tied up in it! The people from Dubrovnik cared nothing about anything other than their ducats and their asses. That was why they’d come there. They waited for the Turks to send them cheese and prosciut
to, to exchange valuables for valuables, to trade and kiss the Turks’ asses. And they couldn’t care less whether the Turks burned down everything Christian up to the city gates on their way in or out. Filth and riffraff! They multiplied among themselves, fought among themselves, spat on each other, and didn’t care about anyone outside the city walls. They didn’t let anyone in who didn’t show them power and who wasn’t one of the Turks. And if he was, they let him in and bewitched him, fawned over him, and patted his Turkish ass until he himself didn’t know why he’d come. That was how the man from Konavle looked at his potential troops, and it really seemed to him that he had more in common with the Turks than with them. He and the Turks would look at each other over their gunsights; he would slaughter them and they would slaughter him; he would parade their heads on pikes as pretty village girls fainted, just as the Turks would hang his head up from a tower at the border, to warn all Christians that they’d come before a world ruled by the star and crescent. In a strange way the Turks were his brothers, and these people who clutched their ducats in their sweaty palms and tried to find a way to run off were nothing to him. It is terrible when a leader realizes that his people are below his ankles.