by Ivo Andrić
The world at times seemed to her like an endless dense undergrowth through which males, like greedy wild beasts, pursued powerless females.
And as she struggled to come to terms with these first dark places in her, a real and unimagined misfortune arose.
In the middle of summer, just as she was preparing to go home for the vacation, her father appeared unexpectedly in Vienna. He was transformed. Suddenly aged, he spoke little and behaved strangely. The girl put this down to fatigue from the journey, but, as she observed him more closely, she noticed that his hair was falling out, he found it difficult to string syllables together when he spoke, and he had odd attacks of irrational, childish fury. This was a great surprise, at first incomprehensible, then painful and frightening. The sick man went from doctor to doctor, passed from one to another, charging substantial fees. And, in the end, he was confined in a private clinic for the mentally ill in a leafy suburb of Vienna. There he faded, increasingly lost by the day. The girl abandoned her studies. Toward the end of the following winter, her father, who had meant everything to her, died suddenly of pneumonia. This saved him from a long, ugly decline. He was buried in a small cemetery, which, covered with snow, looked like an illustration in a Christmas fairy tale.
Now everything began to go wrong for her. It was as though she were suddenly naked and unprotected in public and she realized that it was not enough to love everyone and adore music: the world wanted something more from you.
She left Vienna, which had become hard to bear, and returned home. There difficult days awaited her. Her brother was in Budapest studying. The empty house, her unkind, dull relatives, the limited surroundings—all intensified her grief and drove her to despair. She slept little and irregularly, in a brightly lit room, with her old nurse-maid. She lived on warm milk and brandy, because she felt that every mouthful of solid food would choke her, while the brandy miraculously lifted the leaden curtain that shut out her view of the world and cut her off from all pleasures in life.
She needed to return to Vienna for just a few more months to complete her studies. Her teachers and all her Viennese friends who had placed such hopes in her gifts urged her to do so, but she could not summon up the courage to go back to the city where she had seen her father die. And so she began to deteriorate.
Salvation came suddenly and from far away.
In her wealthy relatives’ house in Vienna, before her father died, the girl had met Prince Gika of Bucharest. Nikolae Gika was a sixty-year-old bachelor, rich, or perhaps more extravagant than rich, and a lover of music and painting. He was well known in Viennese salons and artistic circles as a patron of the arts. Thin, with a shock of gray hair and a smooth, ruddy face, he had something of a shy, gifted youth about him. He spoke with a lisp and dragged his stiff left leg behind him. Gika was an ardent and disinterested admirer of the girl from Brasov, her playing and her beauty. She called him Onkel Niki. He gave her access to the aristocratic houses of Vienna and showed a fatherly concern for her development and progress.
Now the prince sent her an invitation from Bucharest, formally issued by his sister, married to a Cantacuzene. They invited her to come to stay for a few weeks, to have a change of scene and to rest.
She spent the whole winter in Bucharest. The family introduced her into high society and after hesitating for some time she took up music again. She played in private salons. The idle Phanariot snobs vied with one another over the beautiful red-haired pianist. She found their wooing amusing, while their barely restrained lust repelled her and she rebuffed them in no uncertain terms. But she accepted invitations to dances and outings in sleighs, and their champagne that quickly stimulated gaiety and seemed to be a cure for her insomnia.
When she returned to her hometown in the spring, she lived a quiet, normal life. Except that she had not lost her habit of drinking brandy or wine. On the contrary, the doses of alcohol she needed to maintain her external confidence and inner balance steadily increased. She felt that the calm and energy she had once known were slowly returning. And she was considering going back to Vienna and completing her studies, just as political turmoil erupted in Austria. She used this as a welcome excuse to postpone her departure from week to week. And when revolutionary uprisings broke out in Hungary as well, her father’s friend sent word offering her temporary refuge at their home in Bucharest. She set off, after lengthy consideration, with the strange sense that she would never return to her family home.
At that time, Russian and Turkish occupying troops were stationed in Bucharest and there were frequent parades, balls and receptions. Ida was already well integrated into society. Nikolae Gika endeavored to make everyone aware of her great musical gift, while her youth and beauty spoke for themselves.
One evening there was an official reception at the residence of the supreme commander of the Turkish army in Moldavia and Wallachia, Omer Pasha. The Kuza family palace where he was staying was brightly lit, both outside and in. There, with an audience of formally dressed and glittering Bucharest high society, Turkish and Russian officers, Austrian and English diplomats and military observers, by the light of numerous candles and crystal chandeliers, Ida played Mozart’s Concerto in C Major.
After the concert, the host, a tall Turk with a short, black, slightly graying beard and fiery eyes, in a glittering marshal’s uniform, with a curved saber, inlaid with gold and diamonds, which everyone knew to be a personal gift from the sultan for his victories, approached the piano, offered the pianist his hand and escorted her back to her seat.
Her playing and still more her appearance made her the focus of that festive occasion. In a long dress of white muslin, with innumerable folds and frills, with her large, bright amber eyes, with a heavy plait of abundant hair coiled at her nape, she looked, alongside the victorious marshal, like an exceptional creature from the world of beauty and music, herself a magnanimous victor who cared nothing for victory.
At that time she really did not care about anything. She felt only that she was growing, that she was hovering high up in free flight, that she could do anything but wanted nothing. She had forgotten everything she had left behind and was not thinking one day ahead. All people looked the same and equally uninteresting to her; she could ask whatever she wanted of any of them, and get whatever she asked—but she wanted nothing and needed no one.
That unusual state of elation was short-lived.
First she began to feel revulsion to the Bucharest high society. And once she had uncovered the first blemishes and cracks, it went on from there. She quickly saw that the wealthy were prepared to do anything for money, that there was nothing sacrosanct or constant in their lives. It was only her protector and friend Nikolae Gika who still linked her to that milieu. But a new problem arose with him.
Of late he had begun to spend time alone with her more often, caressing her more warmly, and looking at her in a new way. In the evening, returning from social gatherings with music and champagne, he would escort her to her bedroom. There he helped her undress, kissing her bare arms up to her shoulders. At first, she accepted this cheerfully and lightheartedly, like everything else around her. She was fond of this aging man and felt close to him, with his fine youthful hands and large black eyes looking out with an unusually wise and warm gaze. But when he began to behave more freely as he sat on her bed, a curtain came down inside her, shutting out her earlier carefree life, and it seemed to her that she had abruptly descended from the heights where she had been fearlessly floating, and was now standing with both her feet on the hard, merciless ground.
The girl resisted, defended herself with brief, patient gestures, straightened her garments and pushed the old man’s hands away. As though in fun. She badly wanted not to show that she understood the nature of his intentions; she did not dare admit what was happening even to herself, or to call it by its true name. She thought that, by playing innocent, she would somehow restore things to their rightful place and re-establish her former relationship with her father’s friend. A st
rong, noble sense of shame for herself, for him, for the world, did not yet allow her to show that she understood precisely what he was trying to do. It seemed to her that any word she spoke would remove the very last mask of an honorable, harmonious and joyful life from the world and reveal its true face, which could not be contemplated or endured. So she made a great effort to hide her feelings of profound discomfort, shame and horror. Only waves of blood in her cheeks and beads of sweat on her brow betrayed what was going on inside her. But the man misinterpreted this, finding in it a stimulus for greater boldness. He was evidently no longer able to control himself or to see things as they were and as they ought to be.
•
From early in the morning the girl began to think about what the evening might bring. The brilliance and breadth of Bucharest life were still there, but she could no longer respond to them, because wherever she went she was aware of a dull constriction inside her. Her grief for her father, repressed by her new circumstances and carefree life, began to resurface. Her father’s incomprehensible illness and difficult death now loomed before her again, blocking out the whole world and seeking an explanation she was unable to find.
She kept deciding to put an end to this torment and her ambiguous situation, but inexplicable scruples, a wretched sense of indignity of which she was ashamed, and consideration for her friend held her back. Then the decision came unpredictably and unexpectedly.
One February night they came home late from a reception at which there had been a lot of alcohol. She herself had drunk a glass of champagne too many. An oppressive south wind was blowing. The eaves dripped, the gutters rang with the thaw, and the horses slipped on the thick layer of ice under the melting snow. Once again, Gika followed her into the house. But when they came to the narrow corridor leading to her room, the girl suddenly stopped, and, laying her hand on his shoulder, said with naive solemnity:
“Don’t come into my room tonight.”
For a moment the man was taken aback, and then he put his arms round her waist and gently drew her after him into the corridor, saying something incomprehensible in a soft, pleading voice. Once again she relented. Silently. In her bedroom the scene from previous nights was repeated: his excited and ludicrous “assistance” with her evening preparations. Always the same attempts to undo her corset and lift her skirt over her knees. This time she found the game particularly tedious and difficult. She sat down on the bed. He lowered himself beside her and, as usual, tried to widen her already low décolleté. She drew back and resisted for a while, but at a certain moment her head fell back involuntarily onto the pillows. Then she felt the emboldened man clamber with difficulty onto the bed, struggling with his paralyzed left leg. Weary and sleepy, she did not resist the way she wanted. But he could not be still. She felt his hands digging and burrowing like moles through her starched skirts, crumpling and tearing the cotton, organdy and silk.
At that moment the clear realization flared in her like a flame that an age-old game was beginning to be played on her: that the wild beast that lives in men was now after her. As though it had a hundred paws, it was tearing through the thick branches in which she was hidden, breaking them, maddened by the desire to reach her, naked and defenseless, to tear her to pieces and devour her.
By the light of the brief, flaming explosion that erupted in her, she saw the bushes through which she was running burn away to reveal an endless, deserted road and on it, quite close, her father from the days of his decline, and in the distance, her unworthy mother, sorrowful and in mourning.
Suddenly wide awake and sober, the girl found her will and her strength, she pushed and she kicked, throwing the man off her like a doll and began to storm round the large, half-lit room.
Gika sat on the carpet, in the pose of a child cast out of a game, watching in confusion and alarm as the tall woman strode furiously from one end of the room to another. Her clothing was torn and in disarray. Her left shoulder was bare as was her left breast protruding, shapely and firm, to one side. She waved her arms, her fists clenched. Her heavy steps made the flame of one of the candles tremble; her red hair swirled and her large eyes gleamed with a dark glow, now full of restrained tears, black and vengeful.
Suddenly everything changed within them and between them. The man, who had finally struggled to his feet, was now standing leaning against the wall and, as if roused from sleep, watching the agitated half-naked woman, in fear and wonder. In his passionate art lover’s imagination, he was irresistibly reminded of Judith in paintings by old masters and it seemed to him that at any moment he would see in her right hand a short, sharp heavy saber and in her left the bloody head of Holofernes. Meanwhile, the woman, now barely aware of him, strode up and down the spacious room. She waved her arms in time with her long nervous steps as if reaching for both an invisible sword and an inaccessible head that she ought to sever. At the same time, staring into the distance, she spoke loudly and breathlessly, as though sending embittered reproaches to someone far beyond the walls of the house.
Onkel Niki listened to her disjointed sentences, but he was unable to connect or fully understand them. Her words were directed somewhere above his head, to someone else, greater and more important than he was; this made him feel both humiliated and frightened: he dared not, could not join in that conversation. While she talked to herself, almost lasciviously, in disjointed sentences, which only she could understand, about her desolation that concerned only her and for which she was not seeking anyone’s understanding or sympathy.
It had not begun tonight or yesterday but long ago. She vividly remembered one night in Vienna. There was a performance of Haydn’s Concerto in G Major for Cello and Orchestra. The cellist was a famous Italian; a graying, upright and distinguished man whose face shone with a fine pale glow as he played. She was overcome by the weight of so much beauty and felt like kneeling before such perfection. After the concert, her tutor arranged for her to be in a group of selected music lovers assembled to honor the maestro. Enraptured, she had clasped his slender, smooth right hand in both of hers. Then the maestro’s velvety eyes stopped on her face. She did not believe her ears when he asked her to come to dinner at his hotel, with a few other music lovers. She found herself the only guest at the dinner. They talked about music, but she kept looking around, waiting for the others. At first, the maestro pretended to be expecting someone else, but then with a new and disagreeable leer he said that perhaps it was for the best, that it would be nicer if they were alone. They were in a private dining room, silk upholstered, scattered with oriental rugs. She spoke about his playing, and he about her beauty. Talking about his loneliness as he wandered from town to town, he ate and drank, while she nibbled little bits of food and firmly refused any alcohol. When the painful meal was over, the waiter withdrew, and the room took on the appearance of a trap with no way out.
The maestro was smoking a long, fragrant Havana cigar. They moved to a small sofa in the corner. At once he tried to put his arms around her. A strange thought occurred to her. To tell him that she had been left without a father, with good teachers and a number of friends, but with no real love or protection. Perhaps that would touch him and deflect him from his intentions. But the maestro was thrusting himself on her increasingly openly and vigorously, and she rejected that idea and that hope, and began to defend herself. She did so decisively. She leaped up, grabbed her velvet evening cloak from the sofa and wrapped herself in it as though exposed to the sharpest frost. Unable to master her, he unbuttoned his white silk shirt and drew her face onto his bare chest, offering her his heart in disconnected words, while she was aware only of the disgusting heat of that rough chest—and resisted with all her strength. Finally he abandoned all scruples. He attacked her like a wild beast, muttering and slobbering, with the face of a bad boy from her childhood. Then he calmed down again and circled around her, pretending not to take her resistance seriously, cajoling her in sweet Italian and German words, which were in curious contrast to his behavior as he tried
to grab her and overpower her. He did not succeed in this and there was ever less prospect that he would. Having freed herself from her original fear and embarrassment, now it was just disagreeable, even a little ridiculous. Wrapped tightly in her long velvet cloak, smooth and cold as a statue, she was stronger than he was, more skillful and calm; she avoided his embraces nimbly, so that his arms closed on air. And when he did succeed in coming closer, she pushed him away forcefully, as in a rough game, with her shoulders, her chest or her knee. Her face, with its tightly closed lips and scowling eyebrows, had an expression of mild malice but also contemptuously smiling resolve.
The maestro kept on thrusting himself on her for a long time, tedious for both of them, altering his tactics, yet not abandoning his aim. But then, just when he was at the height of a new paroxysm, he suddenly sagged. He covered his face with his hands for a moment, then straightened up, old and weary, but stiff and calm, and pulled the green cord of the hotel bell. He instructed the portly waiter who appeared promptly to accompany the lady to the entrance, where a carriage was waiting.
She was so disappointed and subdued that she confided in her relative. The woman gave her a lengthy talking-to, accusing her of being too trusting and recommending more restraint and less faith in men, because all of them thought only of one thing, how to seduce and ruin foolish young women.
“You lack the female sense of caution and cunning that every peasant girl has,” said her relative reproachfully. “And there’s nothing more dangerous for a woman. You behave as if all human beings were the same sex. And when something happens, like this incident with the Italian musician, you’re shocked and desolate, but after a few days you forget and are again prepared to accept, with complete trust, everything a man tells you as the sacred, selfless truth. If only you weren’t so lovely and appealing. But as it is, one day you really will go to the devil, and in the stupidest and ugliest way. You’ll be broken and ruined by some incidental passerby not worth your little finger. And afterward, afterward you can cry your eyes out, nothing will help. Because even then you won’t be able to grasp the real reason for your suffering. That’s why I’m warning you: since nature hasn’t endowed you with the instinct of cunning and self-preservation, which every normal woman has, it has at least given you common sense, so let your reason tell you where danger lies. Open your beautiful big eyes and see clearly where you stand, what you’re doing, with whom you associate. This world is not composed of laughter and music, as you may think. No!”