by Ivo Andrić
The curse of mankind, Idris Effendi often thought, lies not in the fact that one may sometimes be left without anything and go hungry, but that our very existence is connected with food and drink. Anyone able to free himself of that dependence would be the one to make a real man of himself, a being not subject to humiliating anxieties and fears. Only then would what was now happening to Idris Effendi become impossible: for fear of hunger, more difficult and more terrible than hunger itself, is capable of driving a man mad, degrading and tormenting him.
This misguided way of thinking and distorted perception led Idris Effendi, indirectly, into all sorts of difficulties.
Everything that was bought for ready money or that would sooner or later have to be paid for, or returned, none of that was for him proper food and drink or genuine pleasure: it simply weighed on his stomach and poisoned his blood. Anything he ate and drank at his own house was for him soured in advance: he knew its origin, its price and measure, and could see its rapid disappearance. Watching the way his relatives and servants stuffed that cursed food into themselves, and seeing it disappearing from in front of his own self, made it seem as if it had all been devoured before it ever reached his table. The only food he was able to eat with pleasure was what he was given by others, but without payment or debt or obligation, in passing and by chance. That was all he felt gave him strength, while the best and sweetest food was something found, begged or even, perhaps, plucked or stolen.
All this made him deeply ashamed. Everything in him rebelled against such mad, unworthy thoughts and feelings, because they were at odds with his beliefs and true status; but nothing could prevent them from arising, at any time and often.
It should also be said that Idris Effendi was no less tormented by the other expenses life entails. He suffered increasingly and in an increasingly strange way from every kind of expenditure, whether on food, clothing or footwear, bread or soap, ink, paper, tobacco, a modest glass of boza or expensive malvasia. It was all the same. Everything you acquired was eaten or drunk, squandered or torn, worn out or broken frighteningly fast, and, so it seemed to him, in his house—as if cursed—faster than anywhere. For him, all the good things the world offered were immediately transformed into fear of their loss, into bitter regret. And he regretted everything, because everything crumbled and was lost forever, vanishing before his eyes and slipping out of his grasp. He felt this at every step, in the most ordinary, everyday actions. As he watched members of his household eating, wearing out their clothes and furniture, he felt that they did so in a fit of extravagant madness and malice toward him. He looked at them then with murder in his eyes, snapping at them, while at times real hatred and simmering anger would erupt from him. As he washed in the bathroom—and he enjoyed bathing and being clean—his glance would fall on the soap foaming in his hand—and everything in him grew dark, he felt like weeping and wailing as he saw the hard, reliable metal coin with which he had paid for this pleasure being transformed into airy little bubbles, into short-lived foam, into nothing. He endeavored to catch every last one of those bubbles of soap lather and rub it into his skin, so that it would not disperse and vanish in vain. In the end, even that small pleasure brought him only torment and bitterness.
At least no one sees the way a person behaves while bathing, so that particular torment and anxiety remained within him, but similar things occurred to Idris Effendi in the middle of the street. His head bowed, frowning, he would be going about some business, when he suddenly felt anger rising in his chest at the small sharp Sarajevo cobblestones that ruined footwear, mercilessly destroying one’s soles. He trod cautiously, endeavoring to step only onto broad, smooth stones. At the same time, he wondered: would one’s soles wear out less quickly if one stepped onto a stone with one’s toes or heels first? He could not decide, so he tried first one then the other; this made his footsteps uneven, alternately small and short, or unusually long. And the citizens of Sarajevo, observing the vizier’s official in the street out of the corner of their eye, fearfully, were perplexed as to what this strange way of walking might mean. And as none of them could ever have begun to guess what it was that sometimes drove Idris Effendi to scamper about and perform acrobatics in the lanes, they did not put much effort into trying to find an answer, but tucked this kind of walking into their great arsenal of unusual and incomprehensible ills and troubles that, they felt, Omer Pasha had brought with him, in order to inflict total misery on this unhappy land.
It was the same with everything. And almost all the time. Moments of happy oblivion when Idris Effendi was not tormented by such thoughts were rare. He neither fully lived his life nor relished the things he had, but vacillated over their acquisition, agonized over their cost, suffered as they wore out. And, along with them, he was himself wearing out, dying.
And all that made the life of this wealthy man and high military official into a small but terrible place of torture.
Idris Effendi hid his profound and constant fear of hunger and want, along with his unhealthy dread of expenses and all kinds of outlay as best he could, although it was not possible to conceal it altogether. In the eyes of the people he worked with, he seemed eccentric, a sickly and unsociable man who lived for his duties and his work, devoid of any sense of a full life and its joys. Only those who came into closer contact with him could have any idea of how sick and unhappy he was.
The kavedžibaša Ahmet Aga, who could sometimes see through even complex people and perceive their hidden passions and unacknowledged ailments, had long since taken the measure of Idris Effendi and assessed him according to his standards. From time to time, he would put aside a plate of some special dish and send it to him, knowing how much that would please and obligate him.
•
The news of the misfortune spread from the residence into the seraskier’s harem like wildfire.
After the initial shock and stunned silence, Saida Hanuma began first to pace restlessly about, and then to thunder and fulminate through the rooms. She slammed doors, threw cushions about, kicked stools over. She called for the servants, one after another.
“Hatidža, Hatidža!”
The puzzled girl, who had been standing in front of her for some minutes, assured her quietly, trembling with fear:
“Here I am. Right here. Hatidža.”
Blinded by her towering fury, the woman walked right past her, still shouting, “Hatidža! Hatidža!” and then, finally, she stopped and looked at the girl with her huge, astonished eyes.
“You? Out of my sight! Who asked for you? You’re all I need!”
Then she would shout some other name, and when that girl appeared, she drove her out as well, calling her insulting names in Turkish and Romanian and throwing whatever came to hand after her.
And when she tired of shouting and pacing, she sat down in a corner and wept, with suppressed angry sobs, the way capricious and proud women weep, ashamed of their tears but lacking the strength to restrain them. Her crying was beginning to calm her, when, as ill luck would have it, Karas was announced.
Seeing that the hanuma was regaining her composure, one of the servants summoned the courage to enter and inform her that the painter had been waiting for some time in his studio, in the “men’s quarters.” He was awaiting her orders. As though this announcement was just what she needed, Saida threw a feredza over her light-colored European housedress, and, accompanied by Osman, an old servant, she made her way to Karas’s temporary studio.
As soon as she entered, she threw off the dark-green feredza revealing herself suddenly to the bewildered painter, with quivering lace and ruffled veils fluttering round her pale pink housedress.
“Na! Na! Was sagen Sie denn dazu?”
The painter, who had been nowhere since the previous night and not received any visitors that day, knew nothing of the misfortune that had occurred in town and now, confused by such a greeting, mumbled something into his beard. While the woman continued in German in a raised voice.
“He ha
sn’t heard yet! Of course! What do you know? Nothing. You gentlemen artists in your ivory towers dip and dab your paint, and don’t look at what’s happening down on the earth, among us wretched ordinary people.”
Tears were on their way, they could be heard in her voice, but she suppressed them with an effort of will, which made her fury rise to a new level. She had meant to tell the bemused painter calmly what had happened, but, stirred up by her own words, she immediately began shouting and stringing curses together, with no clear connection, order or logic. She showered him with questions, not letting him speak, not waiting for a reply, she attacked him as if he were to blame.
“What is this? What kind of country is this that will devour us all? And what kind of scoundrels and criminals have gathered in this residence? All degenerates! Even angels would be corrupted by these idlers and perverts! And they’ve grown worse since they came to this country. All that cast a spell over poor Antoine and drove him crazy, he changed completely and went out of his mind. Because what he did isn’t like him, not at all. He would never have done that in a different country, among different people. But here, here even a lamb of God could turn into a lynx, a tiger. In Wallachia, they only abuse women, here they kill them. That’s all they know. What great courage and glory! The very air here poisons a person and drives him to despair and madness. Poor Antoine!”
Had some other man been standing in front of her, more decisive, more capable, or at least a little more indifferent to her, perhaps he would have succeeded in calming the distraught woman. But as it was, immediately forgetting what he had heard, the painter could not take his eyes off her and her big angry movements, her beauty that could have made the world happy, but she refused to see anyone or know anything, seeking here, as everywhere else and in everything, only suffering, her own and that of others, and plunging into it to the point of madness, of self-destruction. Without a word and motionless, he gazed at her movements as at a dance of unbridled natural forces. How much beauty, but also how much energy and unconscious greatness there was in this woman! What capacity for disgust and bitterness! How much understanding and compassion for everyone—except him!
Convinced that he was thinking about her and what she was saying, he in fact thought only of himself, of the happiness that escaped him and the contentment that fled as soon as he glimpsed and desired it. And now it seemed that his sad, besotted gaze aroused a new wave of bitterness and fury in her that had too many causes and she could not find enough objects to vent it on. Her rage grew, while her speech changed direction and no longer made sense.
“Antoine, Antoine, what was he? A degenerate fool. Yes, he was capable, but capable of anything. As we have seen. How could we have been so blind? Who would have taken such a dangerous madman into his household? And what did that eunuch need with all this? He chose that unfortunate woman to avenge his impotence. But she didn’t know what she was up against and that’s why she ran, poor thing. Had she simply screamed, he would have been scared out of his wits and forgotten that he had a weapon. Even armed, she would have been able to crush, grind, flatten him with her bare hands, and later they would have found his precious pistol buried in him, like a nail in a meatball.”
Here, at the peak of her insanity, her imagination flagged impotently, but she could not stop, as if someone was talking through her. Now she was yelling:
“What did he want, the poor devil? And if he did . . . if he did want something, why didn’t he pay that, that . . .”
She suddenly stopped, as though ashamed at the thought of the corpse and grave of the unknown, unhappy woman, and did not say the insulting word she had been about to utter. But after a brief silence and a few furious long steps, the shouting resumed.
“Or, what do I know, why didn’t he sort things somehow, but not like this, though, not so terribly. No, he too was poisoned . . . by this town and this house where talk is of nothing but blood and killing.”
She stopped for a moment, as if she had stumbled over something, and stayed silent, head bowed, as over a dead body, but then began once more to pace and shout:
“Yes, killing and lechery! Because everything in this house is infected with foul, profane lechery: timber and stone and every last rag; bread and water and air are infected with it; and lechery kills, it must kill, for it’s the same as death, unnatural, shameful death. I wager this mishap too has emerged from the kavedžibaša’s den. And while poor Antoine lies dead, without human sympathy and, presumably, without a grave or funeral, I’m convinced that the slimy criminal, that merry-making scoundrel is sitting on his sofa, nibbling sweetmeats and preparing new victims of boundless, dark lechery. Convinced!”
Her fists clenched, tears filling her eyes, the woman simply poured forth curses, invoking damnation on these people, on the residence, on Bosnia and Herzegovina, and cursing the day she set foot on this soil.
Helpless as in a dream, devastated by sorrow, Karas watched as this great beauty, for whom he longed, was dispersed in the wind, flung into the mud, dragging everything after it. But at the same time, accustomed to find in all around him a picture or a subject for a picture, he saw in the woman raging before him one of the ancient maenads he had copied from marble reliefs in Rome and marveled at the complete and perfect likeness.
While his maenad was crashing, like a wound-up toy, around the large room in all directions, knocking into the walls, it occurred to him that it would be best if they began painting, and he saw that as a life-saving idea and fortunate guile. But no sooner had he hinted that they could, perhaps, start to work, the woman erupted into a new rage.
“What, what do you want? Blood is flowing in the streets, like water or slops, and you want to start mixing and diluting your paints. People are killing themselves right next to us, and you, you: ‘Let’s start painting!’ Have you any sense, since you have no heart? And what will you paint? One feels like spitting on all the paintings of this world, while he . . . ah!”
She came straight for him, her right hand outstretched, as if about to hit him.
“Or maybe you’re thinking we should play some music together, something in your Roman style, sad, ma non troppo, exciting but—light?”
With this acerbic and contemptuous question, she came right up to him, forcing him to raise his eyes and look at her. Her face was dreadful. Uneven red patches had broken out on her fine skin, her big eyes looked faded, as if blind, her wonderful mouth, swollen and red as if she was in labor, disfigured, but in a way that provoked both fear and respect. No, there was no way that could be painted.
The pasha’s wife and the residence had both vanished, all that remained was incomprehensible madness and black ruin. Incapable of fully grasping great human torment and true misfortune, he was nevertheless ashamed to see that even this crazed woman had a better sense of what was right and what was not, what was possible and what was not. The great room with the easel in the center looked to him like a cage with no way out. And he never would have found the way out had not the woman herself, in her distraught stumbling, suddenly fallen against a door and disappeared through it, along with her shouting and the clatter of her furious footsteps. After her, faithful as a shadow, slipped Osman.
Hardly believing in this unexpected salvation, the painter immediately withdrew from the studio as from a den of wolves.
Once out in the street, he looked fearfully at the passersby. After what he had just witnessed at the residence, he half expected to meet everywhere only distress, fury and aggression, but these people were walking calmly, their eyes lowered, as if nothing had happened in this town and nothing ever could happen that would dismay or trouble them in their dull tranquility. Tranquility, that was all he wanted. And something of their unbelievable calm seemed to have been transferred to him. He endeavored to walk at the same pace as they did, as if he had not learned or seen anything, as if there had been no murder or suicide, and as if that beautiful woman was not raging frantically through the half-empty rooms of the residence. At times it seeme
d to him that it really might be possible to go in the direction opposite from what was happening in reality, not wondering where the path led, not looking back, not remembering, not thinking. But at the same time he felt that this was a delusion, an impotent illusion born of impotence, and that such a path led nowhere, not even to a swift end. But still he continued to tread that path, so he could continue, just for a few moments, to turn his back on real life.
•
At the same time, the story of Kostake, the man from the seraskier’s household, the story of his crime and his personal tragedy, spread in different directions and to a different rhythm, to grow and branch out, present everywhere but invisible as an underground stream. It was taken up by travelers and idlers, picked up and repeated in a whisper by those same people who, apparently calm and indifferent, strolled through the town streets as if they knew nothing about any of it and had no wish to know.