Houses

by Borislav Pekic

  Then the portal, a special feature of that deranged house which seemed to lead not into an ordinary lay dwelling but into a shrine: a shrine to Money, perhaps, and in which I failed to recognize, until I got up close to it, a wild variation of the triple-nave porch of King Milutin in the cathedral church of the Sacred Presentation of the Virgin at Hilendar. Its various divergences from the original were the obvious contribution of Madame Jelena Negovan-Georgijević to that weird house: the surround was like Hilendar, of white marble, perhaps slightly more grained, grayer, but it was outlined by the Tree of Good and Evil. The vault, also like Hilendar, was supported by three consoles; three Doric caraway trees in the form of a half-rolled leaf with protruding veins, which would suggest to the uninitiated a family crest, although no Negovan ever bore such a thing. On the plaque behind the caraways it looked as if someone in righteous anger had smashed a beer bottle against the door jamb—which, all things considered, would not have been surprising. Finally, the door itself was quite independent of its Mount Athos original: it was oak, cruciform, double-paneled, and from it, as from a gloomy face, emerged the thick yellow tongue of an engraved doorknob.

  And so, when I saw her for the second time, I mollified my judgment of Stefan’s house; I went on calling her a monstrosity, but there was no further mention of avoiding her at all costs, and what’s more, I singled out the gutter as a successful combination of the useful and aesthetic. Leaving aside the details, the portal was the only feature which I could in no way swallow, but this apart, the house was to the highest degree an individual expression. In principle, of course, I liked such powerful and imposing houses, and in actual fact, they were the only ones I liked. Among my own houses not one could want for praise, not only for some particular feature, but for the special impression which the house made as a whole. Now, one way or another, I began to go around more often; pretexts about Aspasia were no longer necessary. With every meeting the dome, that hidden boil on her tin crown, became not a breast but a bud which oxidization had successfully changed into spring greenery; the four petrified tears which slid down the tympanum now excellently matched her troubled face (later I came to believe that they were tears of longing for me); while only the portal of the house stubbornly maintained its sobering role and had the effect of a single startling feature in an attractive face, a feature which, by some inverted logic, charms us more than all the other features which truly attract us.

  I did not recognize my true feelings for the house, however, until the day Stefan moved into it. As I was passing along Kosmajska Street from Topličin Venac, I came upon several moving vans in front of Stefan’s house. The movers were carrying in the furniture under the nervous and petulant supervision of Helena, Madame Georgijević herself. The movers were going in with the pieces of furniture and coming out empty-handed, so that they formed a kind of elliptical chain like a bicycle’s, whose far end revolved around the orange, sunlike, red-lead perspective of the portico while the other end, closer to me, rubbed against the hampers of the moving vans, whose gray-green sides looked as if they’d been painted with the cadmium used for bridges. Along the diameter of that circle Mrs. Georgijević moved like some tireless pedal, scattering to left and right her hysterical and contradictory directions.

  I have remembered every detail concerning what I could call a revolutionary upheaval in my relations with Stefan’s house, as if my brain had been a molten copper alloy on which the mold of that moving day had stamped a lasting copper-plate impression; the cirrus clouds hung in white hempen and woolen strands against the sky, barely touched with shadows from the east; in the air was a promise of rain for whose freshness the overheated stone, asphalt, glass, and tile gasped and thirsted; and the bells of the cathedral were ringing—it was the hour for vespers, that mournful moment when color, outline, and sound merge. I stood there across the way from the newly peopled house like a snail curled up in Kleont’s gate—not to be seen, recognized, or spoken to. I was struck as by a clap of thunder with epiphanic love for that building which only the day before I was calling a monstrosity, and for whose demolition I had even in a certain sense been agitating—a building which had been leading me on very effectively at each meeting, so that I now found myself in the humiliating and comical position of a cuckold who is secretly present at the wedding of his beloved to another man; or, bearing in mind that I was not conscious of my affection until the moment Stefan moved in, in the painful position of the poor fool who discovers he’s in love at the moment the object of his passion is led to the altar. Nota bene, this comparison with all its boldness is perhaps not the happiest one, but if it doesn’t lead to the conclusion that I’m mad (to marry a house is after all not such a widespread desire), it will help me even belatedly to judge the depth and strength of my feelings. For everything—that mastodon-sized entrance, like an altar in whose sacristy candles were burning; the guard of honor that the movers constituted; the mystic twilight of the street, in which I felt as if I were in the nave of a church; the insistent ritual ringing of the bells—everything made me, in the cavern of the gate, feel like a betrayed lover hiding behind a column, as in that well-known poem by Rajić, “On the Day of Her Wedding”:

  So all my finest dreams are cast asunder,

  Your head is covered by the marriage crown,

  Beside you at the altar stands another—

  My vibrant love for you too lowly grown!

  However, there was this difference, decisive for the future: I was Arsénie Negovan, a property owner, and not a whimpering poet; I couldn’t forgive a passion, once begun, as charitably as the poet; and I was not, even then by the gate, prepared to give up so easily and promise, like Master Rajić:

  I shall not cast my curse on him or you,

  Or even on bitter fate which caused our meeting;

  Nor can I curse myself, poor loving fool,

  For thus I would my own true love be cursing.

  How could I? Of course I wouldn’t go around cursing anyone, there is no profit from anathema, still less from severing relations. What I was going to undertake was much closer to common than poetic sense: I’d simply try to get possession of the house.

  (I must say at once that for some time I considered building elsewhere exactly the same house—without the portal, of course—but I soon gave up the idea. In the first place, however true a copy it might have been, it would still not have been that house, nor would it have been tolerable for me to think that I was living with a copy, no more than a lifeless imprint.)

  I took my first step toward gaining possession of the house at the housewarming, when I presented Stefan with a carved ivory miniature of Michelangelo’s Moses, to whose face the sculptor at my request had given, most discreetly of course, something of my features (the horns were in fact very much in accord with my position). At the same time I requested that my gift be placed at the very heart of the house: in the central, gallerylike hall, on the magnificent fireplace of light-brown Carrara marble in which half-burnt logs with skillfully installed little purple lamps behind them gave the appearance of a slowly burning fire, and on whose extensive mantelpiece, consistently faithful to her humble taste, Madame Negovan-Georgijević had set out alum-white griddles, bowls, goblets, pots, jugs, vessels, and majolica beakers, and among them, like some devilish guard, ornately dressed miniature figures which one would have thought baked of fairground marzipan rather than of Meissen porcelain. In this way I was constantly with Niké (Niké was the secret name I gave to the house as soon as we fell in love), and as it were, legitimized our adulterous relationship.

  Indeed, during my ever more frequent visits to Stefan, all that happened between myself and his house can hardly be described in any other way than adultery, and since it all took place under cover of the host’s innocent hospitality, adultery in the most shameful circumstances. But when did great passions worry about such small considerations? Did Abélard and Héloïse think about trifles? So for some time Niké and I illicitly, and therefore rather unhapp
ily, carried on our affair—though I don’t say that in our cautious concealment, with all its tension, there wasn’t a certain conspiratorial excitement, and worthy reward in plenty in those lightninglike changes of feeling which we underwent, usually when, awaiting the arrival of Niké’s master or mistress, we remained alone in one of the salons, in the hall, on the stairs, or somewhere else. Our romantic meetings in the street can also be counted here, for in the course of my business walks, which I continued according to the schedule in my saffian leather notebook, I used to pass her every day at a predetermined time. On these occasions quite brazenly, almost leaning out over her luxurious conservatories and balconies, she would give herself up to my wondering gaze, and her face, intent on keeping our sinful secret, would let slip those four clear Corinthian tears which I could only interpret as unsatisfied desire for me.

  With respect to the future, however, Niké was a provocative and negligently chosen name for a house with which I dreamed of finding happiness. Viewed superficially, the name suited the house very well, for long before Katarina there had been a Niké in my life. (To tell the truth, that wasn’t her real name—she was christened Gospava. I called her Niké, not at all for those reasons which led Mrs. Nego-van-Georgijević to permutate the vulgar letters of her maiden name, but because of the likeness of that powerful, ripe woman to the Paeonian Niké of Olympus, the herald and patroness of military, gymnastic, and therefore why not amorous victories—in all cases, of course, except mine.) That Niké too had been proud, vulgar, and—why should I conceal it?—ugly, yet I had had a relationship with her which no one could understand, myself included, and had embarked upon it with the greatest pleasure. So, bearing in mind the adulterous nature of our relations, I should add that the original Niké, Gospava-Niké, was unhappily married to some clerk in the Adriatic Danube Bank. So the choice of name suited Stefan’s palace perfectly, except that regarding the future of our relations it was more than ominous, for it seemed to announce loud and clear the ill-fated end of my adventure.

  This desire, however, which I could discern in Niké in a less and less cautious form with every meeting—a desire which by the laws of reciprocity was only strengthened by that feverish need for me to possess her—had grown so much in the meantime that it could no longer be concealed. Furthermore, its heightened suffering threatened to destroy our relationship completely, not to speak of its unfortunate effect on my work and my mental state.

  So it had gone as far as it could go. I had to take action. Although I’m by no means proud of my behavior at that time, I’m setting it down here so that someone will at least know exactly what Arsénie Negovan was capable of doing, to make sure that the right house should get into the right hands—setting it down in the hope that my nobility of purpose can guarantee to these, my devious actions, at least that minimum of indulgence which history commonly affords in great abundance to other selfish human exploits. Doesn’t medicine inflict pain in order to drive some dangerous illness out of us? Doesn’t a mother use deception to guard her child from various temptations?

  I’ve already said that there would have been nothing to gain from building a second Niké. To knock on Niké’s door as a buyer gave no promise of success either, for Stefan was far from sated with the advantages of owning a European palace in what till recently had been a remote Turkish province; it is well known what new householders are like when they begin to be reimbursed for all the pains that building has entailed for them. Moreover, the admiration for the house which the doyen of Belgrade landlords would have shown by his offer of purchase would have gone to Stefan’s head, and he might well have carried on with his building operations; instead of Niké, I might have acquired a competitor.

  To keep Stefan in the dark about my intentions, I found, or rather hired, an intermediary whose special position—he was a minister without portfolio—made it natural for him to live in a magnificent house like Niké. But as I had to give serious consideration to my cousin’s still unfulfilled expectations as a houseowner, I was obliged in any case to soften up the ground for the intermediary: first, by complicating Stefan’s ownership of the house, and if possible even his occupation of it, by administrative subterfuges and deceptions; then, as though it were indirectly, through rumor, by hampering his enjoyment of his possessions. This latter I accomplished by undermining the self-esteem acquired by the house, and by destroying his and Jelena’s conviction that they had gained some great advantage from Niké by advancing their social standing in the most spectacular way.

  My preparation—“the artillery barrage preceding a frontal attack,” as my brother George would have said—lasted for some time, about a year in fact, until, through the Town Hall, I had managed to obstruct the administration of his property. (In a typically Balkan manner no one could care less about the capital, and Stefan, out of spite and by means of unofficial interventions, had by now disfigured Niké with new but fortunately removable extensions.) By that time I had also managed to surround his wife with barbed insinuations, so that she completely lost her head and at last confided in me, seeking my advice as a relative and expert.

  I took care to give wings to her doubts as to the taste with which the house was designed, particularly with respect to its location. It would have been well suited to Dedinje, I said, but in the middle of the commercial center, next to wholesale dealers and department stores, it gave the impression of an artificial Siamese pavilion which, I added to heighten the effect, had been built by craftsmen from every continent and from all the differing architectural traditions. I said that the house from a utilitarian point of view was a complete failure; that it was more like a riding stable with a great marble manège than the house of an industrialist. Finally, I brought her some building-industry magazines, and by showing her a number of advertised designs, pleasantly induced her to want each of them in turn instead of the house she already had; yet I took care that she didn’t decide on a design to which Niké could be adapted by inexpensive modifications.

  And when the former minister Mr. K.L., my secret agent, made public his offer for the house, he was not turned down. Without this mental preparation of Mrs. Negovan-Georgijević, he undoubtedly would have been, but after some short time taken for reflection, and thanks to my anonymous influence, the formal agreement of purchase and sale was forthcoming. From then on, everything went smoothly. Even the negotiations concerning the purchase price turned out favorably for me. Through Mr. K.L. I kept putting the price down on various pretexts, while at the same time through other indirect accomplices—without their conscious collaboration, of course—I heightened my relations’ fear that by living in such a house, a house with a bad reputation, their social standing in the town was continuously declining—declining so much, in fact, that the foolish, unsuspecting Stefan began to imagine that his work was suffering because of that house, and not because of his own ineptitude.

  And then Mr. K.L.—a minister without portfolio, and a fully equipped jackass in the bargain—Mr. K.L., at the party Stefan gave to celebrate the imminent conclusion of the sale, being probably drunk, telephoned Arsénie Negovan to tell him that he had become the owner of the palace at No. 41 Kosmajska Street. Obviously, he was unaware that the time he had spent in the Ministry of Internal Affairs had been completely wasted, since Stefan was listening in on another extension.

  What more can I say? I had to come into the open as the purchaser. At once, of course, all Niké’s unpleasant and intolerable defects were transformed into virtues which Stefan couldn’t bring himself to renounce at any price.

  (At the first cabinet reshuffle Mr. K.L. took over Foreign Affairs, and as far as I could see from my superficial grasp of politics, went on to conduct national affairs with the same flippancy that he had shown in mine.)

  However, I didn’t give up. Under the pretext that the more prosperous people had moved out of town and into the hills, I lowered the rents of all the houses in Niké’s vicinity, and reduced Aspasia’s rent to suit even a pauper’s pocke
t, thus bringing down Niké’s value. While I could somehow cope with the other landlords—who, with justification, accused me of residence “dumping” and even of Bolshevism (here they made capital out of my time spent in Russia)—it was virtually impossible to convince Aspasia’s inhabitants that I wasn’t degrading them by this reduction of my profits, but simply giving my commercial, professional answer to the migration of riches, power, and reputation from one side of town to the other.

  In desperation I had the idea of buying up other houses on Kosmajska Street, which were available above the market price, and then settling in them the dirtiest gypsy element I could find, whose proximity would have driven the Devil himself out of hell. But I gave up the notion: I couldn’t subject houses to such an onslaught, not even for the love of Niké.

  Finally I was so overcome by fury, never mind the cost, that I bought a plot of land adjacent to Niké. I brought in quantities of building material, as if I were going to build nothing less than a skyscraper; I set cranes and bulldozers to work, although no plans were drawn up for any building; I sent trucks up and down the street, and generally started building operations of a kind that would convince even a deaf man that the days ahead would not be easy. Then one night, thinking over the amount that my passion, my craving, was costing me, I decided that it would be better to satisfy it in a cheaper way—with patience, cunning, words—instead of throwing away the money saved up for my grandiose plans, my architect’s vision of a future Belgrade. So I stopped the construction work, sold the plot of land at a profit, and once again fell into a state of depression.

  The war crisis was already upon us when I decided to clear the matter up one way or another. I asked my cousin to surrender the house to me for an amount which he himself should determine. For the first time in my commercial career I compromised myself in a business transaction: I placed in his hands my admission that the object of the transaction pleased me so much that I renounced the right to help determine its price. Bearing in mind the condition, the patently unreasoning condition (for if my interest hadn’t been at the very limits of good commercial practice, I would certainly not have approached him so directly, from a commercial point of view so indecently, so childishly)—bearing in mind the condition that I had to buy the house at any price, I said that, given my obsessive feeling toward her, I had no choice but to go to the owner with an appeal to our family ties, however much they had degenerated. He could name any figure he chose, he could himself write it on the check, here was my check book, I wouldn’t even look at it, I didn’t even intend to make use of that final limit on which purchases customarily depended: the hope that the sum in question would remain within the bounds of logic or of my financial possibilities. If it were nevertheless outside such possibilities or logic, even this wouldn’t matter as I would sell some other houses; in any case it was Niké that at all costs I had to have.