Houses

by Borislav Pekic

  The bookkeeping columns dedicated to Niké, however, were half-empty. The last entries referred to Stefan’s letter (the invitation to the auction); then, under March 27, 1941, a space had been left where I intended to note down the price for which I bought the house. Under a later date was the information that on the evening of the 27th, as I was being carried back to Kosančićev Venac, the house was sold to Mr. Jovan Martinović, a wholesale grain dealer. Beneath Niké no line had been drawn; her account had not been balanced.

  Was it because I had been guilty of her misfortune?

  Was I guilty?

  Alors, suppose that I hadn’t come upon the demonstrators, or that I’d pushed my way through the mob, taken part in the auction, and bought Niké. What difference would it have made, during the bombing in which she was destroyed? I couldn’t have protected her from the bomb: she would have been hit anyway.

  No, Arsénie, you can’t give a true answer until you know how she was hit and to what extent she was damaged. Perhaps with a certain effort and expense she could have been put right and restored. Her plans still existed. (Even so, would that new, resurrected Niké have been my Niké, or just her successful imitation?) Perhaps Mr. Martinović hadn’t regarded such an error as either profitable or useful. For Mr. Martinović it had just been a heap of ruins like any other. I had to pay a visit to Mr. Martinović. Only he could give me the information that would establish the true measure on my part in her downfall.

  The Martinovići lived in Topličin Venac, and it wasn’t difficult to find them: my memory for houses was infallible. There was no building which I couldn’t describe in detail, especially if it had attracted my attention because of some unusual feature. I could hardly remember Martinović himself, but recalled his house distinctly—most probably because of its color, since it had no other striking feature. It looked in fact as if it had been rubbed with wet ash. And if the house lacked character, this was entirely in keeping with the reputation Martinović enjoyed as a grain dealer in the market place. Now the house was hardly upright on its foundations, it was so run-down. Its paint—still cadaverous but visible—had peeled, as if the walls had been afflicted by some skin disease. The window panes were cracked; the wood was moldering like that of old sea chests. The crooked and rusty drainpipe came down, like a tin intestine, only as far as the ground floor, and ended in a broken stump.

  Although Jovan Martinović had never been a house-proud owner in the professional sense of the word—my judgment of him was for that reason more tolerant than otherwise—he was not, even so, capable of such shameful neglect. Its desolate state could only mean that he had moved on, God forbid, gone bankrupt, which would not have entirely surprised me, since against all my warnings he had foolishly involved himself in speculation on the stock exchange. Unfortunately, my worst supposition was confirmed. As soon as the door of the mezzanine floor was opened, and the warm, dark, fishy smell of the entrance hall mingled with the semi-darkness of the stairway which smelled of a cold, unwashed marble ash tray, it became quite apparent that Mr. Martinović had indeed experienced the catastrophe I had foreseen.

  Anyway, in the doorway, distorted on the smoky porch, as if from the depths of a dream brought on by an upset stomach, there appeared a strange being, an undulating form swathed in a shaggy bathrobe. Controlling my uneasiness at not knowing who it was I had in front of me, I said that I should like, if possible, to speak with Mr. Jovan Martinović.

  “Are you blind or something? It says there clearly: Martinović, two short rings and one long.”

  Indeed, on a slip of paper pinned to the doorpost it was written: two short and one long.

  “Forgive me. I don’t see too well.”

  “Go ahead, Grandpa, you don’t have to explain!”

  With these words, the carnival-like being moved aside and banged its fist on the board which had replaced the glass in the inside door.

  “Martinović, someone to see you!”

  My reception was preceded by a scurrying from the other side of the board-backed door, a hurried scraping as if furniture was being moved. As I waited, it occurred to me that I should have written or at least telephoned before barging in on them. The door at last opened and in its narrow frame appeared a dried-up woman in a dressing gown of loose violet cotton. I recognized her, I admit unashamedly, more from the location than from memory.

  Of course I could see it all. I take in everything with a lightninglike glance, whose efficacy comes from communication with houses and was perfected at auctions. The room looked like a refuge in which the Martinovići, burnt-out survivors, had hidden the remains of their devastated possessions: canvas shades through which a greenish dusty light barely settled on the faded, threadbare surface of an office sofa; a table covered with a worn oilcloth; a triple Altdeutsch dresser, which creaked at every step; battered walls from which ribs of wallpaper hung down like dried tobacco leaves; and finally—there in the corner of the room, probably once the kitchen—a Moorish folding screen which in the pale glimmer from the window looked like ice overgrown with wild flowers and briars. I sensed too the bitter smell of stale medicines, musty leather, unaired eiderdowns, decaying clothes, parchmentized documents, and other petty reminders of decay: in a word, the intangible scent of misfortune. My professional experience helped me identify in it that element by which ruin, that final death throe of wasted riches, is distinguished from the smell of innate, inherited poverty—a smell which I had met long ago in the houses I rented out to people in the suburbs until, out of shame and loyalty to my theory of mutual possession, I sold them all without excessive loss and some even at a profit. I was at the very center of the devastation which Speculation had left behind; I was standing on the cold ashes of Possession, which had burned down in the fire of a gambler’s mad rush for easy profits, made on the bitter green baize of the roulette wheel of the stock exchange, in the lackeylike service of the god Mammon. And I felt unspeakably sorry that I had come here at all.

  “How could I not remember? You’re Colonel Negovan!”

  “You’re thinking of my brother, General Negovan. I concern myself mainly with houses, my dear lady.”

  “Oh?” she said suspiciously. “Then you’re not from the Secret Police?”

  “I don’t belong to any firm or company, madam. I concern myself with houses, if I may say so, in a special way, on my own account, for the love of it so to speak.”

  “We don’t own houses any more.”

  “Of course, I understand. Speculation. Gambling on a rise during a fall, a fall before a rise.”

  At this Mrs. Martinović, with dismay out of all proportion to the sympathy I expressed, declared that she hadn’t understood a thing about all those speculations; in fact she said her husband hadn’t involved her in his shitty business affairs, in fact she hadn’t found out about them until the trial, and she had nothing more to add to what she’d said earlier under oath.

  “I told him to leave all that alone!”

  “I told him that too, madam. In any case,” I added cautiously, “I’m certainly far from disagreeing with you. But with your permission I’d still like to discuss this matter with your esteemed husband. If he’s at home, of course.”

  Without turning around she pointed over her shoulder at the Moorish screen.

  “Where else would he be? Of course he’s at home. He’s over there.”

  She then explained that Mr. Martinović had been ill for a long time, was in fact paralyzed and barely alive.

  “But he is alive?”

  “Barely. His whole left side is gone.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that. Truly sorry. With me it was my right side. Does that mean, my dear lady, that there is no way of communicating with him?”

  “It depends. I’ll go see.”

  She disappeared behind the screen; the cretonne flowers visibly darkened; I heard a scraping noise and saw a metal bedpan disappearing below the bottom edge of the partition like a tortoise beneath its white enamel shell. Then there
was the creaking of the bed and mattress, and a hissing sound like escaping gas, followed at intervals by that bubbling, gurgling whistle with which sewage bursts through blocked drainpipes. Finally I could hear Mrs. Martinović:

  “That Negovan is here. Do you remember him?”

  I couldn’t hear the sick man’s answer so I thought it useful to add: “Arsénie K. Negovan from Kosančićev Venac!”

  “Arsénie K. Negovan from Kosančićev Venac!” repeated the woman clearly. It was apparently difficult for the paralyzed man to give any sign of having understood. “He’s here, behind the screen. He says he wants to ask you something.”

  When the woman reappeared from behind the screen she was holding the goosenecked bedpan in her hand.

  “Try for yourself,” she said sharply, “only don’t move the screen. Bring your chair up. That’s right. He can hear quite well, but it’s difficult for him to speak. Especially when he gets excited.”

  Before going out she turned around and said: “He’s suffered very badly.”

  “Mr. Martinović? Can you hear me?”

  Sheltered by the Spanish wall—I knew those difficult circumstances from my own experience—the paraplegic strove to control the contorted dam of his mouth. With my cheek to the brown patterned cloth I could almost see the two brittle, transparent wires of his bloodless lips twisting their still sound ends until their painful edge dropped down the stubbly chin, filled with a bubbling foam in which the agitated tongue was bathed as if in pink soapy water, seeking for words. At last I myself began to move my lips, as if only by mutual effort would we be able to squeeze a voice from his jaw. His voice finally broke through, greatly distorted by the unnatural position of the facial muscles, but quite intelligible:

  “My time’s done.”

  I tried hard to explain to him to what an extent his recovery lay in his own hands. A man must never at any cost resign himself to his misfortune. Medicines are mere palliatives. I myself had been in his position. Even worse, in fact, for broken bones had preceded the apoplexy, and even contusia cerebri for which there was clinical evidence. Yet here I am, thank God.

  “You’ll still feed us all, my friend,” I said, having in mind his grain-trading business. But it seemed that his contribution to our meeting would consist solely of one and the same thought.

  “They told me that my time was done.”

  “Of course,” I said, “you’ll soon be out and about again.”

  “What for? My time’s done!”

  “Well now, you just need a bit more will power.”

  Afraid that he might slip away from me again, I asked him if he remembered the house that had belonged to my cousin, Stefan Negovan, the building at No. 41 Kosmajska Street, which we used to call a monstrosity. “On March 27, 1941, at 1900 hours, a private auction was arranged for Niké, at which I, unfortunately, was late in arriving. And you bought it.”

  There was no answer. “My dear Mr. Martinović, I most humbly beg you to give me some sign that you understand me.”

  “My time’s done. What more do you want?”

  “Bon, excellent, Mr. Martinović, everything will be all right, tout va être très bien. By the way, I suppose you didn’t know that I—how shall I put it?—was linked to that house by certain intimate obligations which aren’t worth speaking of here. It’s all over and done with, I don’t hold it against you, please believe that I completely absolve you of any impression that you acted disloyally toward me. Anyway, business is business. But while Niké—that house—never actually belonged to me, I was always sincerely interested in her development, until circumstances arose which for a long time hindered me from giving her my personal attention. And so, to make a long story short, I was left completely uninformed—about that house on Kosmajska Street, I mean. What exactly did you do with her?”

  I’m ashamed to admit it, but my patience was beginning to give out. Nevertheless, I controlled myself once again and expressed my sincere sympathy for the calamity which had befallen him, to which the only answer through the screen was a dull groaning and the apathetic formula to the effect that his “time was done.” Simultaneously, I was considering whether in his wife’s absence I couldn’t remove the screen and “encourage” the invalid just a little more, when something happened which threw me quite literally off balance.

  Mrs. Martinović had stolen unnoticed behind me and now wrenched with all her strength at the rickety chair on which I was sitting, so that I suddenly found myself on the floor. Yes, collapsed on the floor, almost knocking the screen down across the invalid. While I was getting up—quite smartly, considering my years—my hostess rudely disposed of my tentative conclusion that my mishap had been an accident, for she bent over me to knock me down the moment I got up again.

  “You feel sorry for us, do you? But you want more anyway. Can’t get enough, you greedy monsters, can you? You’d take all we’ve got—money, belongings, our very souls! Well, that to you!” Here, believe it or not, she actually demonstrated it, in vivo. “There’s nothing more for you to take and divide up. And you made my children emigrate, you filthy gangsters. Go steal from each other now!”

  “Oh, mon Dieu! Pull yourself together, madam!”

  “What sort of madam am I, you bastard! A madam in a calico dress, a madam who eats once in a blue moon, a madam who washes fucking old men’s fucking drawers! Thieves! Pigs! Godless mobsters!”

  “Moi, je ne comprends rien, parole d’honneur. Je suis un homme de grande renommée!”

  “Pigs!”

  “Pardon, pardon! Vous avez eu la bonté de vois souvenir de moi—Arsénie K. Negovan, rentier de la rue Kosančićev Venac, numéro dix-sept!”

  Although I’m free to leave out this sordid scene in pleno (have I mentioned that I’m writing on the back of tax forms and rent receipts?), and although for my own posthumous memory and the Martinovići’s reputation it would be well to do so, nevertheless I have included it since these events, together with other events that awaited me on my walk, were clearly and prophetically significant. And so, with a certain restraint regarding the choice of words but not the events, I’m writing down how, pursued by the lady’s oaths, I cautiously beat a retreat toward the door, reflecting meantime that if there were no other way, I should have to make use of my cane. For the time being, however, the enraged woman contented herself with the coarse oaths whose sense was quite beyond my comprehension, nor was I, quite honestly, in any mood to puzzle it out.

  “Why don’t you leave him in peace for once, you filthy cheat? Can’t you see that the man’s dying? Do you want to finish him off altogether? Hasn’t my husband done his time? Fifteen years he served in prison—innocent—so that those no-good bastards could get fat on our estate!”

  “Madam!”

  “Get out!”

  “Please, I can explain—”

  “Explain? What did you explain to us back in forty-four? Get out of here, and tell those who sent you that the Martinovići have nothing more for you to confiscate. You can still get this!” She brandished her clenched fist. “Just look at him, all dressed up with a hat and a tie! Don’t you think I can tell a secret policeman when I see one?”

  Obviously, any explanation was useless. Also, her shouting might alarm the neighbors and involve me in a scandal. I managed to reach the stairs, but as I was going down, trying to maintain an appearance of businesslike haste in my withdrawal, Joška, the horse dealer’s daughter, leaned over the wooden handrail and continued to hurl imprecations down at me:

  “And that house that so caught your eye, you couldn’t take that away, bloodsucker! The bastards knocked it down, thank God, leveled it to the ground. You could only take the stones, and take them you did, and how! You even took the rubble away from us! I hope they use them for your grave! And you can come back with the police if you want, I don’t give a damn!”

  I quickened my step to a pace just short of a run and didn’t stop until I was in Topličin Venac. The woman’s outburst at the top of the stairs ha
d ended in groaning, sobbing, shouting, and the devil knows what else.

  My Niké, then, was hit during the Allied bombing and couldn’t have been repaired at all, even if she had been in my hands. So from all the evidence, I could be considered neither guilty of, nor even an accessory to, her destruction. Unfortunately, I had to pay for the merited relief with shame at being so eager to accept it. Had I really so little feeling left for the house, that I preferred it to have been razed to the ground in order to preserve my own peace of mind?

  That’s right, Arsénie, that’s right! If you’d really wanted to find a way around the procession, you’d have taken the streetcar and gone behind it along General Mišić Street, around Kalemegdan Park and the Zoo.

  No streetcar could have got out from Kosančićev Venac onto the boulevard under those circumstances.

  Or you could have telephoned to request a postponement of the auction.

  Impossible! That was quite contrary to good business practice.

  Why didn’t you participate in the auction by phone? You had the right to nominate a representative—it could have been anyone. From Kosančićev Venac you could have raised the price until your last rival withdrew.

  Yes, indeed, but I didn’t think of it at the time.

  Perhaps you were afraid that Niké’s strength would displace all the other houses from your mind. She clearly had tendencies in that direction: she was selfish, egocentric, jealous of every thought which your affairs obliged you to devote to rival buildings.

  Reflecting on all this, I have at last found enough courage to utter the word premeditation. It had been a hypocritical hope that Niké’s destruction, over which I had certainly had no influence, would liberate me from my feeling of guilt, for the house had died even before the bombs sought her out. Niké passed away on March 27, 1941, at 1900 hours, when it became clear to everyone on Kosmajska Street that Arsénie Negovan was not coming to the auction. And it was I who had killed Niké.