by Ivo Andrić
Two candles blaze like votive offerings. Outside, a wind, strong, nameless, and new to recent arrivals, is blowing and finding ways into the room. It seems unusual in every way. Its waves arrive at uneven intervals, now tepid, now cold, at one moment rushing down the steep mountain sides with a roar, the next arriving almost inaudibly, seeping in through all visible and invisible openings in the house. And this shows how the bey’s house is built, how neglected and dilapidated it is and how many cracks there are in it. It hisses, moans, trills and warbles like a wooden instrument with innumerable holes of unequal size.
These oriental houses, even when they belong to the wealthy, have something in common with watchtowers and guardhouses. The way they are built and the arrangement of the rooms, the carpets and furniture, it looks as though people live here temporarily and in transit. As though they had arrived the day before and were just settling in, or else they would be setting off the following day on a campaign whose end was out of sight. Even the town in which the house was situated was one of those towns that have come into being out of need, for defense, and its development has served above all the general, higher aims of a community, while the health and pleasure of its inhabitants is a secondary consideration.
He found that thought recurring in various Turkish towns, and it came to him in this Sarajevo night in which a man is not for an instant alone, as the wind attacks all his senses, while its treacherous gusts are felt like the constant presence of vague but malign forces constantly changing and alternating.
The wind feels on his face like someone’s icy, offensive and unpleasant breath. It creeps into his slightly raised right trouser leg and crawls over his goose-pimpled skin like the slimy touch of damp seaweed. Some gusts bring with them the sickly stench of the house, decaying deep within, and waves of indistinct aromas like unpleasant memories.
The candles on the table flicker. Their burning tips look like two restless little moths that could at any minute fly off and vanish in the darkness. From time to time, those two flames bend right down and then the room sinks into half-darkness, and when it seems that they will both blow out, they suddenly cast a stronger, braver light. This play of the light tires the eyes and makes reading difficult. Indeed no sense is spared! Irritated and weary, Atanacković lets his gaze fall from his book onto the floor, covered with a fine large carpet from Khorasan. Bought once in Salonika, it is exceptionally valuable. The vendor had said proudly that it was “fine as a rose petal, enduring as ox hide, bright as the emperor’s flower garden, and soft as the soul.” And now the carpet seems to want to come to life; it keeps shifting, trembling, rising and falling, one minute turning up at the edge, the next bubbling up in the middle. Atanacković wonders whether there is anything constant and secure in this windy night, and watches in disbelief as the carpet swells and ripples as if to fly away. He thinks of the flying carpets and fakirs’ charms and magic from stories, of the presence of unknown forces, of the possibility that this wind is outside the natural order of things and that something special might be about to happen that would change all in a person and around him. And along with that thought, he suddenly feels an icy shiver down his spine; but the thought is immediately driven away by another, true and rational thought that such phenomena are impossible. It’s all happening as in a dream and with the speed of a dream. And these two ideas, false and accurate, replace one another in a flash, at the same moment, with no measurable gap between them. Reality suppresses empty imaginings. But the trace of that cold shiver in his spine remains.
The man beside the candles waits patiently for it all to pass, like so many other trifling and serious troubles and discomforts. He knows well that this is just the night playing with the senses of a fifty-year-old man who has been worn out and vexed by the day; he knows that, unfortunately, there are no carpets that fly or winds that mean something, nor exceptional forces that could suddenly change the nature of a town or the direction of a person’s life. He knows it well, nonetheless sits wide-awake and idle, his senses taut, as though he is expecting precisely that. But it never comes. What comes are unexpected recollections, like uninvited images in dreams.
In Vienna. He was twenty-four; she not quite nineteen. They were returning from a walk along the old Schanze. Their friends were way ahead. He slowed his steps, and she urged him to hurry, but only in words. He kept taking her hand, but feeling no response, letting it go again. Silence. When they spoke, the wind fragmented their words. A strong March wind that developed buds and made everything flourish and burst into life, was roaring and whining as if a great flood was coming, pouring into all the streams, rivers and waterfalls, valleys and slopes of the hills. It took their breath away, stopped them in their tracks and pressed them against each other. The young man tried to speak of love, but the girl turned her head away and walked silently on, moving slowly, preoccupied with some unknown thoughts of her own.
The closer they came to the end of the Schanze, the stronger the wind grew. Darkness was rapidly falling. They came upon an isolated, young, recently planted linden tree. Resisting the wind, they grabbed hold of the smooth, bare trunk as though it was the mast of a little boat. And they stayed there. The girl leaned her back against the tree. Without a word, without a thought or presumption, he put his arms round both her and the slender tree. There was no resistance.
The darkness was gathering and the wind raged ever more wildly. They kissed unaware of themselves or anything around them, of what had been and what would be; they kissed not like two young people with a specific name and social position, but as though everything living on the earth that could kiss and be kissed had settled here this evening and wound itself around the tree, swaying in the wind with the two of them. Linked to the young tree, they rose and fell, flew over the earth and sky, sailed on waves and sank, happy shipwrecks on a carefree ocean. He saw and felt nothing but her face. That face with its closed eyes and half-open lips, which accepted his kisses without returning them, bright, like silver, cold with the evening damp, it blocked the world from him. Turned toward the gray sky, enraptured and motionless, it awaited his kisses as the earth does dew and sunlight.
Those few moments seemed then as long as some new, abundant season.
And then . . . But at the very thought of what that “then” carried and what it meant, the whole wonder of the evening on the old Schanze, the girl and the slender tree and the kisses disappeared. The glorious, revived image of so many years ago flared and burnt itself out in one single lightning spark, blinding him and leaving him sightless in the dark.
Out of that dark, which was gradually dispersing and thinning, he saw the two weak flames, then the open book on the table under the feeble light of the two candles, and on the book—his two hands.
He jumped up. Around him a spacious, half-furnished Turkish room; the corners lost in darkness. No trace of his dream recollection. Only the wind was still there, but a different, Sarajevo wind that whistled up in the attic rafters and played like a ghost with the corners of the thin carpet from Khorasan.
LYING
BEFORE every one of his meetings with the seraskier, Atanacković would spend some time considering all he was going to say and what responses he might be able to give to the pasha’s questions, which were as unexpected as they were impudent and perfidious. He endeavored to rehearse his conversation with the seraskier as well as possible, examining questions and answers, proofs and counter-proofs, the way an officer practices a parade march on the eve of a formal march-past. But after the meeting, it was worse. The seraskier would simply move inside him and settle there. For two days the consul was unable to think of anything else. He just kept going over their conversation, analyzing it. He was angered by the pasha’s observations and questions, belatedly finding in them an offensive tone and hidden traps, and he appraised his own responses, which now seemed to him inadequate and feeble or else too caustic and personal; he found weakness and ineptitude in his own behavior and thought with bitterness and envy of his opp
onent, who invariably managed to impose not only his chosen topic but also its tone. He wondered in surprise how he had spent a whole hour unquestioningly listening to the seraskier unraveling and unfolding his banal half-truths and blatant lies, and how he could have allowed him to grant his lie precedence over the consul’s truth. How? Why?
The seraskier’s propensity for lying and, particularly, his manner of lying, brought Atanacković to a pitch of cold inner fury that prevented him from thinking calmly or drawing proper conclusions. The idea would take him where he had no desire to go, into general reflections about lies and truth, it clouded his vision, and he no longer saw in front of him the actual pasha with whom he had to work and live and do battle day by day, case by case, but a real monster. His current frame of mind was a kind of drunkenness or temporary poisoning. He felt quite lost and completely transformed. The wise, calm, pedantic Consul General Atanacković had disappeared, and in his place was a man of wild imagination and inflamed conscience, in conflict with himself and people and the whole world, determined to clarify everything in himself and around him, or to be defeated, all at once and utterly. In such moods, the consul would take up his pen and write a letter to the kind of friend to whom one can say everything and who—does not exist. In that letter, the consul general related everything that could not be included in an official report or communicated to a living being. And when, after a day or two, the “attack” passed, he would read through the lengthy letter in surprise, fold it several times and burn it with his office candle, then return to his regular tasks, collected and tranquil—until the next round. Sometimes he would burn his letter immediately, before the ink of the last lines was dry. And, watching it burn, he would think, as always when he looked at fire: “Flames—orgies of inert matter.”
And he was writing this evening.
Oh, compared to him, what are all the liars of the world? Nothing. Dilettantes, unskilled novices, half-schooled pupils and apprentices. He lies with the inevitability of natural phenomena, he lies the way the wind blows, a dog barks, a cock crows; he lies because he can do nothing else. He was granted the gift of lying by nature, the way others have perfect pitch or a fine voice.
That’s what I was thinking yesterday, while he calmly, warmly and convincingly expounded his proposal for the export of timber from Bosnia, where we would get all the benefit and he none. He was, so to speak, giving us as a gift both the Bosnian forests and transportation costs. I let my thoughts roam long and freely, barely listening to him, knowing from long ago that it didn’t matter what he said, because it had nothing to do with what he was thinking, and his thought had to be sensed, guessed or concluded from the facts, looked for anywhere but in what he was saying. For as long as he spoke, he was hiding his true thought even from himself.
That’s what happens when he proposes something or wants something from you. But when you propose something or want anything at all, he listens attentively, not looking at you, but past your ear, somewhere into the distance, as though, if he concentrated, he could read there how he had to respond. And as you spoke, you were constantly offended and tormented by the feeling that he wasn’t listening to you, that he wasn’t even aware of your presence, but was rehearsing his lie. And when you finished, after you had outlined your proposal or request, he would look straight at you with his dark eyes, distant and slightly moist with strain, and say something that could be approval, agreement, rejection, anything, but which was in any case—a lie. And he would say it brazenly and casually, without making the slightest effort to connect one word with another or one sentence with another logically, to conceal at least the most blatant contradictions.
People lie everywhere, out of distress or need, out of spite or habit, but the Levantine lying contained something particularly offensive. The Ottoman dignitaries were accustomed to speaking for the most part with those inferior to themselves, before whom they did not need to feel either shame or consideration, or to make the effort at least out of politeness to give their lying some appearance of truth. And, to cap it all, the convert from Lika conveyed an indiscreet and domineering malice, which was not the case with real Turks.
But even if he saw at once that your proposal corresponded entirely to his interests, that he should accept it, he would still not do so. First he would refuse you no matter what was involved in order to humiliate you, to lie to you. That was his custom, it was useful to him, for a lie was for him the same as air, an essential atmosphere in which he moved and found ever new possibilities. Later he would, of course, accept what you had proposed, as most advantageous to him, while hiding behind his back an already prepared new lie.
He kept to the unwritten Istanbul principle, which he had brought to perfection: for the lie to be complete and useful as an instrument in the battle, the truth had to be hidden, nothing should be definitive or dependable. Thus everything would remain uncertain, everything could always be revoked or altered, even what had been said, formally promised or signed, even if it had been carried out. Everything had to remain for as long as possible and as far as possible under a question mark so that his opponent, and an opponent was everyone with whom he did business, would always be in doubt and so constantly blocked in his decisions, and thus from that angle too weakened and placed in a subordinate position.
True to that principle, the seraskier hid every truth, in roughly the same way that people in another world hide lies. And he did this consistently, masterfully, so that he alone was able to negotiate his web of lies and truths, and not lose himself in a labyrinth of his own making. He practiced it equally in the most important and the least significant matters, official and personal.
When he ordered horses readied for some official visit in Sarajevo or excursion outside town, he always stipulated a false number of horses and a false departure time, and gave his adjutant a false purpose for the journey, only to change everything at the last minute. He always gave the civil governor and his wife, and everyone who was supposed to meet him, false information about the day and time of his departure from Sarajevo or his return, and then changed them several times, finally arriving at an hour he hadn’t indicated and from a direction from which no one expected him.
Naturally, he treats me the same way. Now, for instance. He knows, for certain, that the vizier’s residence isn’t going to remain in Travnik, but will be transferred to Sarajevo. That’s clear to everyone and the seraskier himself must know better than anyone, but to all my personal and written inquiries he replies vaguely. And he does so because he doesn’t want me to have any reliable information that would enable me to make specific proposals to my government and undertake measures to consolidate and organize the consulate; he doesn’t want me and my staff to begin regular work under human conditions. He knows how much this unsettles me and complicates my work and my private life, and that’s precisely why he does it.
Even his way of deceiving everyone in everything has two faces. On the one hand, he conceals like a snake its legs every trifle about himself and his intentions and work, while on the other he sometimes surprises his interlocutor with unexpected confessions and a boundless sincerity. He tried that to an extent with me, at our first conversation, and his doctor alerted me to it. There were occasions when the pasha would speak about himself, not only with the doctor but with people he met for the first time and who he knew to be enemies, with the same cruel and bloody sincerity, saying things not even a drunken man would have said in front of a witness. It seems the seraskier so despises everyone that he is entirely indifferent to whom he opens up and lets himself go, with no shame or consideration, when he needs to for a reason known only to himself or, perhaps, not even to himself. And it all seems more like disdain and an insult than a sign of trust and intimacy. Roughly the way a man will undress in front of servants without embarrassment.
But that sincerity too is false, no doubt about that, and it serves him no less than his concealing the truth. The bouts of sincerity are entirely calculated and transient. No one c
an use them against him, because he would refuse to acknowledge them and deny them with assurance. Besides, the moment he expresses these confessions, he erases them from his consciousness, and so it’s easy to deny them sincerely and with complete conviction, even to mock them as senseless and utterly implausible.
And so, of course, ever more people consider him a dangerous liar and heartless cynic who respects neither himself nor others. But that doesn’t bother him. He doesn’t give it a thought. I’ve never seen a man so indifferent to what others think and say about him. The main and only important thing for him is that at all times, with each individual, he achieves what he needs, through lies, the truth, threats or direct moral or physical pressure. All the rest: reputation, respect, morality, immorality, honor and logic, all that for him is mere words that have some value as words, and he makes use of them, but they have no connection whatever with his life and work.
And, it has to be said, he himself doesn’t expect anything other than similar treatment. Because he knows nothing of selfless and noble acts and never did, he doesn’t believe they could exist without ulterior motive or hidden calculation, and he never has done.
That’s what the seraskier is like and so are, more or less, those around him. Anyone who is not either leaves his circle or is instantly destroyed.
I know all this, and I can see it, but tomorrow or the next day I shall watch his composed face and listen to his serious talk, both lively and convincing as God’s own truth. And, in defending myself to myself from the hypnotic effect of his words and appearance, I’ll whisper: “He’s lying! Can’t you see he’s lying!”
It’s hard to imagine, let alone express, how much this sours relationships, hampers all tasks and perverts life. But these people don’t care about work or life, only about force and will, which help them to maintain their position, and they will maintain it with the last vestige of their power and the ultimate lie.