But it’s wrong to say that honest men were at a loss. They had it good because they could live their whole lives like that. Just as it was easy for murderers to kill people, it was easy for those who would never do it. It was difficult, however, when fate mixed up the roles and nothing depended any longer on how one lived.
He was standing with his arms spread wide while the quiet one dug through his pockets. The fat man held out the open sack and looked him straight in the eye. Maybe he was checking to see whether Niko recognized him, but if he did that, he quickly gave up. How couldn’t he recognize him?
“I thought you were smarter!” he said with regret in his voice. “You didn’t let us into your house because you were afraid that we might steal something, and yet you believed that the caravan drivers were coming. Damn— what caravan drivers?! We thought we’d fleece five idiots, but half the city came! They came, okay, but how did you end up out here?”
Niko said nothing, but he was searching for some way to show him that he wasn’t afraid of him. He thought Fatso would understand if he looked him in the eye, but Fatso didn’t care. It was quite clear that he didn’t care. As he spoke, he began to scan the clearing again, afraid that something might happen there or that a search party would arrive.
Just then the leader on the black horse rode up. “Well, who do I see here? Our buddy! Is there any vinegar, buddy? And where’s the child? See, I’ve collected some gold, and now it’s time to find a bride, and well, I’ve been thinking like people do . . .”
The rider hadn’t finished his sentence when Niko leaped over to the quiet one, grabbed the rifle from his shoulder, and gave it a jerk. The sling broke; the quiet one fell onto the ground, his hat flew off, and cries rang out among the people. Niko Azinović pointed the rifle at the man who’d insulted Regina and without hesitating pulled the trigger. Before the hammer struck its empty chamber, the steel of a bayonet plunged into him between his ribs. He fell with a clear and pure feeling of being cheated in life. The fat man dropped the rifle, whose bayonet remained in Niko, and he started running toward his horse. But it was too late. After one man had openly resisted, the others jumped to their feet and ran in a mad charge.
In an instant the crowd swarmed the two robbers, the one who’d wanted to run first and the one who’d wanted to stay to the end. Their revenge didn’t last long because there were too many of them who wanted it. Their toes popped as they kicked into the half-dead bodies. Coarse laborers’ heels smashed their temples. Someone’s thumbnail remained stuck in a nostril. Their fists hit into the deep folds of the fat one’s body. Someone remembered the rifle and smashed its ironbound butt into his skull; his brains popped and turned into the slush that paupers feed their piglets in wartime. It was all over in no more than two minutes. Then the crowd stopped as if on command.
“Don’t kill them; they should be tried!” someone blurted out, probably so he wouldn’t be held responsible.
“It’s over; they’re dead,” said another.
The fat robber lay with his head smashed, on which the only thing left whole and recognizable was one wide open dark eye, framed by long, girlish eyelashes. However, while Fatso’s hood had been torn from his head, the other robber was still in disguise. Someone had to unmask him, but for some reason the people began to hesitate and hem and haw, moving away from the corpses and withdrawing into the mass of people. Soon no one would know who’d been in the front rows, who had hit the most and broken their fingers, nor would they know whose thumbnail had remained in the nostril of the one-eyed fat highwayman.
“Hand the sack with the gold over here!” shouted the men who’d pushed their way closest to the dead men. “That’s right; let’s get the valuables! Everyone gets what he put in!”
Shouts and yells followed concerning what was whose and how much had been taken from whom. Whereas one could still figure out who the jewelry belonged to, Franz Joseph’s and Napoleon’s ducats were everyone’s and no one’s. Stricken with panic at the thought of being cheated or robbed once again, people forgot about the dead highwaymen. The fat mare grazed peacefully at the end of the clearing and would only raise its head and blink whenever someone shouted because someone else had stepped on their foot or already stolen their gold crucifix and their medallion of the Blessed Virgin from the robbers’ sack.
Niko’s head was resting in the lap of his friend, the top of the bayonet was sticking out of his chest just below his right breast. The old man looked with interest at how the hole in his shirt widened every time he sighed or exhaled, and the steel blade on which no blood was visible grew upward to the sky. That sight amused him and took his mind off other thoughts. If he concentrated enough, he no longer even felt pain. Dominko Pujdin spoke without stopping, asked him questions, and wiped the sweat from his brow with his hand. He tried to call someone over and for no good reason fidgeted continuously, like a child that couldn’t calm down. Like a child that asks, “Why this? Why that? How come?” and you patiently answer it until it falls asleep. But there were no answers that could be given to him. Because Niko didn’t understand a single word that he was saying. That was strange because Dominko Pujdin didn’t speak any foreign languages. So what language was he speaking then? Well, who could know what happened or didn’t happen in the meantime as he lay on the ground sleeping and people were stampeding all around him?! The people were hurrying somewhere; they ran like crazy but didn’t bother him. He had his nap in peace and wondered at himself. Before, everything would have bothered him; he would have woken up at any rustling and felt envy for heavy sleepers. But now everything was perfectly fine for him. He had had to grow old to get real sleep. Not even crazy Dominko bothered him now. He felt that he would fall asleep again, and he was happy about it. Kata wouldn’t be angry; she would mend the hole in his shirt easily. That was easy for her. She’d inherited hands of gold from her mother. What was most important was for a person to get a good night’s sleep.
“People, a man has died!” Dominko Pujdin shouted as loud as he could, but no one heard him. They were wrangling over the empty sack with the gold.
“My Niko is gone, people!” he continued, more for himself than for others.
Only for an instant did he think of his ducats, but he remained sitting on the ground, with Niko’s head on his lap and a feeling that with every moment there was less and less of a reason for him to tell anyone about this. Soon some women would come, the army and police would appear, Dr. Hans Eberlich would take him by the hand and lead him to a carriage, and some men in black would take his friend Niko Azinović off toward a hill.
“Why are they carrying him?” he asked Eberlich.
“Everything will be okay,” the Kraut answered, as the comforting fog of veronal descended on the lights in the harbor.
Niko Azinović was one of four victims on the day after the great rains: he, Admiral Sterk, Čare Nedoklan, and— if he could be considered a victim— Antiša Bakunin!
No one was particularly surprised, not to mention moved, when it was revealed that the mute robber was actually the most notorious anarchist in the city, a dropout from the University of Vienna. Many were relieved because Antiša was not family or kin to anyone in the city. His father, Captain Ante Bartulović, was from the Bay of Kotor and had moved to Dubrovnik after he’d stopped sailing. People didn’t know the real reasons, but they probably had something to do with Antiša’s mother, a noblewoman from Trieste whom people in the Bay of Kotor called the Trieste Tart because of her hats and short skirts. Shortly after they bought a house in the Pile district, the captain died, and Mrs. Francesca spent all her savings on Antiša’s studies in Vienna. God only knows what kind of company he fell in with there, but after wasting seven years there, Antiša was deported to his birthplace because he’d taken part in anti-imperial demonstrations and preparations for the assassination of the director of the Vienna Opera. The former might have lent him some status in his home town, but the latter (that he’d wanted to kill the director of the Vienna Opera!)
only provoked mockery and scorn. Instead of settling down and waiting for people to forget about his Vienna episode, Antiša bristled and argued and tried to convince anyone and everyone that the Vienna Opera was one of the main levers in the oppression of the enslaved peoples of the Habsburg monarchy and its director an important and crucial functionary of the state as the highest means of exercising terror on the individual. He didn’t notice that they were taunting him and goading him into saying the same thing over again for the hundredth time. It was too late when it finally occurred to him that they’d made him into the biggest object of ridicule in town. Then it didn’t matter what he said. Sometimes they called him Antiša Carusoe, other times they called him Antiša Bakunin, but both nicknames were equally derisive.
It wasn’t known whose mind was the source of the idea of the robbery or who had thought up and spread the tale of the caravan, but everything pointed to him. The other dead robber wasn’t from Dubrovnik, nor did anyone recognize him, and as for the two who’d gotten away on horseback, it also seemed probable that they weren’t from the city. If they had been, people would already know somehow, or people would have heard that someone was missing from someone’s household. But such a robbery could have occurred only to someone who lived in the town, knew the people there, and thus knew how to set the bait for them. The main thing was to lure them outside the city, get them to gather up all the gold from their houses, and get greedy. The caravan was coming! Everyone knew about it, and everyone kept it from everyone else, so everyone thought he was the only one who knew. If it had been any different, the plan would have surely failed or the booty would have been more meager. As it was, people went with the intention of buying up the whole caravan, feeding and satisfying their families, and reselling what was left to recover their expenses. Antiša had conceived the plan perfectly, but he thought it more important to hit back at the town that had humiliated him than to get rich. That was his mistake. He wanted to leave them without a penny to their names, naked and barefoot in an empty clearing, and then watch them humbly return home as fools and asses. Maybe he would have succeeded if it hadn’t been raining for nearly a whole month and his outlaws hadn’t started stopping in at Niko Azinović’s cellar out of sheer boredom.
Regina’s grandfather and Antiša Bakunin were buried on the same day. Niko’s funeral was the largest since the beginning of the war, and the town might not have seen a bigger funeral except when bishops died. Three priests saw him off; almost everyone whom he’d helped to regain their gold came to pay their respects. A lot of women and children gathered, as well as representatives of military and police authorities, plainclothes agents who were working on the case of the caravan, a large number of curious people, and wretches and misfits who came to every meeting of any historical significance. Niko Azinović became a hero and a martyr; it was said that he’d rushed at rifles with his bare hands without defending himself and his rights, consciously choosing death so others could live with dignity. He’d saved the property of his fellow citizens and the honor of the city. Only his bravery had spared Dubrovnik from the largest robbery in its history. That was what was said by those who saw off Grandpa Niko. And after each one read what he had to say over the open grave, he went up to Kata and Angelina, hugged them, and comforted them, promising that the sacrifice of their father would never be forgotten. The little girl moved away, fleeing from the moist palms that patted her face and hair. She listened and remembered. Instead of protecting her, who’d loved him and was his, he’d tried to defend people whom he didn’t love or know.
Antiša Bakunin was buried outside the cemetery wall, in weeds and wild cabbage because people threatened that they would smash the grave of Captain Ante Bartulović if his son was buried in his family’s grave.
Father Ivan didn’t want to see him off to the hereafter and explained that Antiša had been an anarchist and an anti-Christian and that in view of this, the sacraments that Antiša’s unfortunate mother was requesting didn’t mean anything. She paid two workers to dig a hole and buried him herself. If there was anything comforting in his sad fate, it was that the town would not remember Antiša Bakunin as an object of ridicule. His attempt at robbery would grow into a legend that would speak for a while about the conflict between Antiša the Antichrist and Niko the Martyr, only for Niko’s character to pale soon and disappear from a story whose final version told about how in the First World War Antiša Bakunin and three outlaws killed and robbed charitable men who were trying to save the town from hunger.
In contrast to him, the wretched man from Konavle acquired no fame. A few months before the fall of the Austro-Hungarian Empire he was sentenced to death and hanged in a prison yard. How did he conduct himself under the gallows, and did he feel any regret about the murder of the city’s last clock-maker? Nothing is known about that, nor is it known where he was buried, but it is possible that Father Ivan didn’t forget his soul and that he gave his blessing to its repose.
The corpse of the fat robber was never identified, and it was buried in a metal coffin beyond the military shooting range. The two robbers who escaped were never caught. However, the police worked on the case of the caravan until the end of the war and the fall of the Habsburg monarchy. The Serbian Royal Army was about to reach the Adriatic, the negotiations on the establishment of a state for the South Slavs had ended, and the Habsburgs were already preoccupied with tragedies of their family instead of tragedies of the state when plainclothes police agents were still questioning people, listening to conversations in bars and taverns, and trying to learn from women and children the manner in which the story about the arrival of the caravan had spread through the town. Inspector Aldo Tomaseo, who’d been assigned to the case, didn’t believe that the robbery could have been organized and perfectly carried out by four men. Rather, there must have been a network of people who’d gone from house to house telling people that the caravan drivers were coming. Indeed, Tomaseo had a hard time figuring out how anyone could have believed in something that had disappeared with the departure of the Ottoman Empire from the Balkans. But that secret would be revealed, he thought, as soon as he fingered the group that had spread the rumors.
Aldo Tomaseo was retired immediately after the new liberators arrived, and the colonel of the Royal Army kicked him out of his office when he tried to explain the nature of that criminal case and the need for the case of the caravan to be solved regardless of the new international situation and relations in Europe. Bitter and confused, Tomaseo returned to his native Pula, where he wrote correspondence on his own account and to no avail at all and sent it to the Dubrovnik authorities.
“A poisonous viper is in your bosom, and the robbery of the century awaits you, sooner or later . . .”
In the house of the deceased Niko Azinović times of poverty and gloom followed. None of his savings remained, the vineyards had grown wild because there was no one to work them, and the first dusk always brought with it growing numbers of empty thoughts and boredom. The boys told one another their grandpa’s tales but most often would get into a fight because of differences they had about how to interpret them, so their mother had to forbid that game. In a few months the little girl grew up, changed, and became serious. It seemed that she’d forgotten her grandpa. She hadn’t, however, forgotten the džundžur beans. She would get two marbles, close her eyes, and pass her crossed fingers over them. The miracle was still there. The two marbles would become four.
I
It was late summer 1904. The grape harvest was coming up; there had been just the right amount of rain. It was the kind of year one could only wish for. At least as far as grapes and wine were concerned. August was sitting under his outside stairs with a piece of walnut wood between his knees. What was it going to be? The neck of a gusle that the French ambassador would ceremoniously present to the Montenegrin king Nikola when arriving to pay his respects? Or a model of the Santa Maria delle Grazia for Captain Vojko šiškić that would adorn his house in Perast? Or would it neverthe
less be the head of Prince Marko that the Sarajevo Mountaineering Club had ordered for its meetinghouse? August never knew in advance what he was going to make out of which piece of wood but sat and waited, with a chisel in one hand and a mallet in the other, for his mind to focus on what he might make that day. Some days were for making ships, and others simply weren’t. And Captain Vojko had no business trying to hurry him up. He’d told him straightforwardly that the ship would be made in three days according to the plan that he’d been given. But only when the time came for working on ships! Say, when the sirocco swept down and the sea rose so no one was sailing out; well, at such time he didn’t feel like doing anything but sitting somewhere out of the wind and rain and making model ships. And there were still two more months for the gusle. They were easy to make if you had the right wood, but you had to wait for it. Right until it came along among dozens of other apparently identical logs. Not every kind of walnut wood was the same; the best was that Herzegovinian walnut. A sapling that took root in rocky ground and didn’t need too much water as it grew and turned into a big tree. Bosnian walnut might have produced good nuts, but in its soul it was like a man who caroused, gorged, and guzzled to excess; wasn’t good with women and children; and aged before his time. Its wood rotted easily and was hard to cure. But when it did dry, it became crumbly and wasn’t for making gusle. If it were up to August, he’d always say that there was no better walnut than Herzegovinian walnut!
They say it’s a sin to cut down a tree that bears good fruit! Yes, and August would have admitted that too. When the barren years came without wheat, potatoes, or corn, there was nothing better to eat than walnut meat. There were those who fed on fish every day. Paupers and misers! But he’d never gotten used to fish. If God had created man to feed on fish, he would have given him fins on his back and gills to breathe under water! Those who said that Jesus had fed people with fish were lying, just as those who said there was a wood called mahogany that was better than walnut were lying. First of all, August had never held a piece of mahogany in his hands, and second, those who said that one thing was better than another should have first said what was wrong with walnut and thus how mahogany was better. Well, they couldn’t do it! And they didn’t know because you wouldn’t be able to find a flaw in walnut wood if you sought one for a hundred years!
The Walnut Mansion Page 62