Even so, you mustn’t forget that this experience lasted only a short time.
I don’t know how long it lasted.
It can’t have lasted long because you yourself observed that your rank was moving in a line parallel with the left corner of Kosmajska Street.
Perhaps it was the sight of that corner which brought me to my senses. Arsénie, what are you doing, I thought, they’re waiting for you at Stefan’s. You’re going to an auction! They’re selling Niké. What’s happening to you, for Christ’s sake?
You’d been caught up in a howling dance, that’s what. And as they carried you along arm in arm, they were chanting: “Better war than the Pact, better a grave than be a slave!” And your feet in your lacquered shoes were dangling in the air, hardly touching the ground. You were held by two fat women in suffragette’s black whose biceps, wound around your arms, looked like a crab’s shiny claws tearing their prey apart. The two women were breathing like two balloons overfilled with explosive gas, forcing air out of their lungs and showering you with saliva like frothy gruel.
“Better war than the Pact, better a grave than be a slave!”
I was hatless, and my light summer coat was almost torn off my back. I had to do something.
“My good ladies—”
“War grave, war grave!”
“I beg you—”
“War grave war grave!”
“I believe that all this is quite—”
“Wargravewargravewargravewargrave!”
An extremely undignified situation—I would even say comical—if at the same time it hadn’t all been so pitiful, if I hadn’t been violently pushed, jostled, banged, scratched, pulled, tugged in that wave from whose foaming crest I was dangling like an eggshell battered against a cliff.
I think you said something else to the woman on your left?
The lady had a brigand’s mustache and a voice like a stonecrusher at full blast. She wasn’t a woman! She was a loading crane!
What did you say to her?
That I was sorry but we had to part now, that I was glad to have met her, and that my name was Arsénie Negovan.
I don’t think she was listening.
I told her that it was our last chance to say good-by.
You said that to the one on your right.
It was no longer a woman lurching about there, but a war veteran who had pushed his hook under my elbow so skillfully that my arm felt like a telegraph pole, a pygmy-size telegraph pole along whose miniature iron crosspieces a tiny leather creature was climbing.
“What time is it?”
Yes, I actually asked him what time it was because I couldn’t get my hand down to my vest. He said he didn’t know, but thought Comrade N.N. would start the meeting at any moment.
Meeting! We thought with alarm of Stefan, of Niké, and the auction. And we made one more heroic effort to break out of the onrushing mass, this time without saying anything to anyone.
Meanwhile the ranks of the demonstrators had begun to shudder as if with the sharp jolt of a tender and a railway car connecting, so that my nose was brutally thrust down between someone’s shoulders, while behind me some ponderous being rose up and wrapped its wet, shaggy sleeves around my head. This was the limit: to be kept forcibly in that unruly mass in the street, like a tramp, hatless, with one sleeve half torn and the buttons dangling, my nose buried in a moist, crumpled bit of cloth reeking of tobacco! The very thought of appearing at Stefan’s, in front of Niké, dirty, crumpled, as if I had just crawled out of a heap of rubble—infuriated me.
Suddenly something went wrong. We had stopped on a slope, deprived of that common motion which had allowed some freedom of movement. The concentrated pressure became more unbearable, and the prospects of getting out more remote. It was as if an invisible circular press was working from the walled-in edges of the procession to compact us slowly together, so as to grind us into mincemeat, then squeeze us out into Brankova Street.
The placards had again turned their ashen, daubed faces toward me, and the blood-red banner was again toiling uphill until it stopped high above me and was spread out, its poles rattling, like the purple sky of Theophany, like an open wound in the dark, chilling air. (Made of worn crèpe de chine, it was stiff as a board buffeted by the wind.) Meanwhile the howling had diminished to a dull decrescendo in which, here and there, angry words arose rapidly and subsided into the tired strain of a rumbling chorus melody in which the themes and the instruments that bore them mingled as in some fantastic Concerto Grosso.
And then that head emerged.
Yes, perhaps ten meters from where I was standing, an egg-shaped head, fleshy and purple with cold, extricated itself from the mass. Slowly the man rose like a bather from the sea, with his arms on high, calling for silence.
“Comrades and citizens!”
He took his time to settle his thickset body firmly on the shoulders of his bearers. The war veteran whose hook was tucked under my elbow cried out, “Silence, let’s hear him!” The speaker stood on high above the procession, like a statue at a religious festival, his clenched fists raised toward the sky.
“Down with the butcher Hitler!” “Down with him!” “Long live the Army!” “The Army!” The singing and responses sounded like an open-air church service with several different denominations holding forth at the same time.
“Comrades and citizens, today the peoples of Yugoslavia have washed away a shameful stain from their pure body. The overthrow of the traitorous Prince Paul and his blood-thirsty collaborators is the result of the popular struggle for peace and independence our country has been waging in recent days, days of such crucial importance for the world.”
“Down with the government of traitors!”
“Down with the German hirelings!”
I pulled my watch out of my vest pocket: it was a quarter to seven. The auction had been announced for seven. I hoped that the gathering would spend at least a half hour looking over Niké’s plans and financial records.
“Organized resistance began as far back as 1935 . . .”
In 1935 I bought Agatha and Christina and I was negotiating for Stephanie, but I didn’t finally acquire her until 1940.
“Remember, comrades, our demonstrations for the elections of May 5, for the Civil War in Spain!”
Although my late cousin Constantine, the builder—the only person with whom I could discuss houses properly without being laughed at—was of a different opinion, I myself liked Spanish architecture, especially their plateresque. (I prefer Enrique Egas to the more famous Juan de Herrera anytime, for without that cladding which is considered artificial, these buildings would be indecently bare and ugly.)
“. . . on the occasion of the Anschluss in Austria, when our sister Czechoslovakia was shamefully attacked and occupied!”
Fortunately the Germans didn’t bomb Prague as they later did Warsaw—though to tell the truth, some of the most beautiful houses in the Polish capital were saved. Such preservation is crucial for a town.
“Comrades, students, and workers! At last that great day—the day we can boldly express our infinite love for our powerful brother, the great Soviet Union, invincible land of workers and peasants!”
“And soldiers!”
“And soldiers. That is why we demand a pact of mutual aid with the Soviet Union, which alone can guarantee the peace and independence of this country. And that is why we cry: Long live the Soviet Union, the bastion of peace and independence for smaller nations!”
By now the invited buyers will have assembled, probably standing around that Empire-style salon on the ground floor. Soon they will be starting off on their tour of the house. Yon (Jelena’s Transylvanian variant of the name of the butler, John) will be serving drinks in conical glasses of Czech crystal, which he carries around on a gilt tray like a church collection bowl. Those fine gentlemen can choose between delicate aromatic liqueurs and harsh, fiery, warming alcohol. Before this afternoon they have seen Niké only from the outside, and
each has imagined her interior in his own way. Now they will see that they have been mistaken; Niké will put their pampered imagination to shame, mysterious Niké who hasn’t yet opened her doors to them or revealed her wonderful marble perspectives and her dusky outlines lit by lacquered wall lamps. In sordine the first cautious impressions are exchanged, concurrently misleading and covered with mimicking disguises. The guests around Stefan cordially inquire what has become of the mistress of the Negovan-Georgijević house and discover that she has asked her husband to excuse her absence. “In fact, she loves this house so much that she couldn’t bear to be present at its sale.” Of course the potential buyers recognize the appeal of her owner’s anguish. All this is terribly complicated. Commerce is a distasteful business in which no intelligent man would involve himself if it didn’t, as sociology defines it, help develop the forces of production without which mankind would perish.
Meanwhile, everyone’s eyes are fixing themselves on Niké’s tender innards like the moist tentacles of an octopus. Exploratory probes verify the soundness of her walls, the quality of the construction work, the individuality of the ornamentation. At the far edge of the conversation flow figures, measurements, queries, impressions, and data. Those present seem indifferent, indolent, inattentive, but in fact they are impatiently awaiting the auction, though they refrain from commenting on Stefan’s delay. And so they wait with the fire of battle in their bellies, a fire that competition will ignite with every ringing stroke of the auctioneer’s hammer on the improvised stand in the vestibule. The discontent at the delay keeps growing and the whole hardened gathering is transformed imperceptibly into a minefield where each careless step can lead to an explosion. In the nick of time Stefan invites them, according to custom, to follow him so he can show them the house, “which, gentlemen, I shall do without embellishment or exaggeration.” No, he won’t influence the buyers at the auction by a single observation—he knows he couldn’t even if he wanted to: these marketeers of the capital are wolves—but he’ll serve them as Cicerone, an impassive guide through his architectural kingdom which, as they probably already know, is patterned on the plans of Dietrich and Eizenhofer for the Academy of Sciences in Vienna, built in 1755.
But you can be absolutely certain that during this obvious procrastination he’ll be surreptitiously glancing at the clock, that yellow sunlike face over the doorway, and listening for the ring of your arrival, at first surprised that you aren’t there, later perhaps offended, and of two minds whether to abandon his personal haughtiness and telephone to find out why you haven’t responded to his loyal invitation. Nevertheless, he won’t reach for the phone, not because those present would suspect some kind of collusion between relatives but because, after thinking it over, he must have realized how much the absence of Arsénie Negovan was to his advantage, how well it suited his hypocritical aim of not surrendering the house to me—the customary Negovan vileness (which as usual would seem correct to everybody), entirely neglecting the fact that my desire for Niké had forced the price up to vertiginous heights. And so all of them—except me, of course—will turn to the owner and, following his advice from the hall, choose the quickest way to get around the house, while at the same time fixing as precisely as possible in their adding-machinelike heads the numbers, measurements, and impressions they note on the way. And where are you, just when you’ve been given the chance of becoming Niké’s official owner (for you long ago made her your own)? Instead of cutting short that whole undignified comedy by stating an insurmountable price, you’re shivering here on the cobblestones, hatless, torn, spat upon, stained with mud, trapped by fetid bodies and coarse voices of encouragement from out of whose fine net you can again distinguish the baritone of the orator:
“The deposed government was the embodiment of blood-thirsty illegality, unrestrained corruption, and willful treachery! We call upon citizens, students, peasants, and the esteemed intelligentsia to join with the workers in the struggle for the rights of the people! We call upon the army to unite with the people! We demand the abolition of concentration camps! We demand freedom of the press, a general amnesty, and a ruthless purge of the government.”
Once again the chorus uttered “That’s right!” Several times—a kind of liturgical “Amen, amen” in which the orator’s élan was lost.
“We demand the abolition of the power of capital over human labor. We demand that factories, railways, and mines be nationalized and transferred to collective ownership!”
“And the banks—banks—the banks, too!”
The sonorous voice rang out like a shot whose crystal clarity shattered the silence. The enflamed audience was saving its breath for new acclamations.
But whose voice was that? Who appended to industry, transport, and the mines, those cancer wounds of our domestic economy, that most malignant one of all: banking? Or has the owner of that decisive voice disowned it? For these past twenty-seven years perhaps he’s been ashamed to think of it, or he’s decided that the voice must have been fortuitous; an automatic reflex which burst out of the speaker’s throat as an undisciplined offshoot of some inner soliloquy. Or is this the first false step that we’ve been looking for? Naturally the owner of that voice would gladly abandon this dangerous reconstruction and hurry on to Simonida, who anxiously awaits him.
That would be the best thing to do.
And afterward would you go back up to Kosančićev Venac, back into your ark of gopher wood, and seal it within and without, while outside those impenetrable walls of your beloved houses continue to be destroyed?
No, not for anything. That’s all over and done with.
If that’s really so, and I hope it is, if you really think that despite the passage of the years you can take over your own affairs again, why does it cause you such anguish to recall what made you give them up?
Because of what I shouted about the banks. Though it seemed as if it wasn’t really me shouting at all.
But it was.
Unfortunately.
I hated banks, I have always hated banks and bankers. I even hated bank notes. From the bottom of my owner’s heart I despised everything placed willfully between Possessed and Possessor, everything which transformed true possession into mere power over empty, hollow, emaciated figures.
So Arsénie Negovan, Vice-President of the Chamber of Commerce, sank so low as to settle accounts with the banks as part of a mob. And after he had been carried away by, let’s say, excitement, and had shouted stupidly, “And the banks—banks—the banks, too!—instead of coming to his senses and beating a retreat, he went on:
“It’s the fault of the Yiddisher banks!”
In such a senseless manner and quite without dignity—couldn’t he see what was going on around him?—he had caused the audience to focus, as if moved by a giant hand, on him. From everywhere came resounding echoes of his ridiculous exclamation (“That’s right!” “Down with the usurer banks!” “Let’s hear him!”). And those nearest him—above all the bovine suffragette in black and the veteran with a hook for an arm—took hold of him and, despite his resistance, raised him high onto someone’s shoulders as if into a saddle, his legs fast around someone’s neck, his unsteady fingers grasping hold of someone’s hair. He found himself face to face with the orator in the trench coat, who was awaiting him with encouraging approval in the shadow of the blazing sky.
As soon as I was more or less settled up there, I thought of my hat. I hoped now I’d be able to spot it. But of course it was nowhere to be seen; the rabble had demolished it.
Surely you felt an urgent need to do some explaining. Deceived by your unfortunate cry and your bedraggled appearance, they took you for one of them, a comrade as it were, and expected you to say something in the spirit of your first pronouncement. But the only thing that you should have said was that you had nothing to say to them, except that you disapproved of their barbarous behavior; that you wanted to be lowered to the ground; and that a path should be cleared for you to Kosmajska Street becau
se you had more important business to attend to.
From the perspective of a promenade through more or less empty streets, dozing beneath a veil of slanting greenish light crisscrossed here and there by housewives sluggishly returning home from the market or by a civil servant hurrying to his office—from such a peaceful, leisurely perspective, that was truly all that Arsénie K. Negovan should have communicated to the people below him. But in the context of the rebellious mood of the streets, including the unpleasantness of losing my hat, the torn-off buttons, those evil placards, and especially the red banner beneath which, as under a royal canopy, the preceding orator was enthroned—not to mention my memories of Solovkino—any explanation of the kind suggested would have been devoid of reality. In that sense, my life had always differed from my work. Even if I had attempted some sort of explanation, they wouldn’t have heard me. No one would have heard me. It had already gone too far.
But couldn’t you have tried something else? Wasn’t there something behind your acceptance of the role of street orator?
Something behind it?
Stop and think for a moment. You’d listened to the whole speech, hadn’t you?
Yes. But I was looking at my watch the whole time, hoping that the crowd would disperse and let me reach Kosmajska Street. Indeed, I spent the whole time imagining the events at Niké: Stefan welcoming the buyers, serving them drinks, wondering why I’d failed to show up.
But you still listened to the speech—so carefully that even now, after many years, you can repeat it to the last detail.
Houses Page 11