Houses

by Borislav Pekic

  Yes, just as I was responsible for the destruction which threatened Simonida, and for that greedy shoemaker’s shop clamped to Aspasia’s tender back. I had taunted George with desertion, but what had I done myself? What difference was there between my seclusion at No. 17 Kosančićev Venac and his confinement at concession No. 17 in the New Cemetery? Even the coincidence of the numbers underscored the similarity of our cowardice.

  Meanwhile I had an oppressive feeling in my chest. I’d become unaccustomed to walking, even though formerly I’d been able to spend hour upon hour making the rounds of my own houses and building sites, and observing those of others, without feeling at all wearied. True, it was swelteringly hot—the warm air wrapped itself around me like a sticky band of flypaper—but more likely it was my seventy years which undermined my freshness and drove me to a bench where I could rest my legs.

  That morning the park was fairly empty. Children were clambering over the jungle gym like spiders along their glistening threads, the rusty moving parts of the swings and seesaws creaked piercingly, and children’s heads bobbed up and down from behind the ragged edge of the concrete sandbox like pink water lilies. (I’m ashamed to admit that I was never overfond of children. How many times had I come upon the front walls of houses defaced with their drawings just after the painters had finished their work? They all used colors in the same unexpected way, and pencils, chalk, coal, and sharp stones, too. My cousin Leonid Negovan termed these drawings “a direct expression of primitive, Altamira-like genius”—which was easy for him to say, since the houses were never his. I on the other hand—again, because the houses indeed often were mine—saw the drawings as evidence of bad upbringing for which the parents ought to be punished.)

  All that equipment and ironwork for children hadn’t even been there before, but the monument to Vuk still dominated the park. With my binoculars I made the aggressive iron figure stand out against the green foliage.

  GENERAL VUK, 1880–1916

  JADAR

  KONATICA

  BELGRADE

  VLASINA

  KAJMAKČALAN

  SIVA STENA

  GRUNIŠTE

  At that moment it seemed as if the general had rushed out of the forest, out from behind those scattered chestnut trees, with his chest out and one leg bent at the knee, bandaged with a field dressing, while the other leg pushed down at a sharp angle against the yellowed, rough-hewn pedestal. The policeman I had glimpsed bearing down on me before I finally lost consciousness on the cobblestones of Pop-Lukina Street had been something like that guerrilla general. I had been knocked down and my pince-nez smashed, but I could still—thank God—control my movements, although I could achieve little apart from defending my face against being trodden underfoot. Feet were trampling down everything around me as if crushing grapes in a vat, rising and falling with the speed and uniformity of a pneumatic hammer, but I couldn’t swear to it that I had any feeling of pain, nor could I hear the din which had been going on during the speech and later during the fight, while I had still been on my feet. On the contrary, as soon as I was knocked down everything suddenly went quiet, though it all continued to writhe, jostle, and stagger in the artificial silence, as if the tumult of a moment earlier had reached a pitch where it could no longer be heard even though still raging. Before everything went completely blank, I managed to focus my eyes, like the shaded lens of a pair of unadjusted binoculars, on a true copy of the Vuk monument: the policeman rushing at me with his truncheon swinging.

  Of that rumbled period when my senses returned—the process went on for quite a while, as I regained and lost consciousness several times—I recall only Katarina’s mistily swimming face; those jerky, ruby-red outlines which looked more like the darting tongues of a burning flame than living beings, cut certainly not like my nurses; and strangely, that green limb with the iron bandage around its joint, which, unattached to my body, plunged hissing into the furniture. My eyes finally cleared like a binocular lens at last adjusted for distance, and I managed to make out real objects from the fiery waves which, for a long while after I came to, went on flaring up from somewhere and setting fire to the corners of the room. It was our bedroom at Kosančićev Venac. Apparently I was being undressed, and someone was trying to pry something from my rigidly clenched fingers—something torn, hard, battered.

  It was that very object, which seemed to have become part of my fist as if to give me some little comfort, that helped me back to consciousness: my lost hat, the Borsalino with the cleft crown, stiff turned-up brim, and black silk band. In a sorry state, it’s true, but I recognized it. (In any case it had my name inside it.) How I had managed to find it I couldn’t say, nor could the police patrol which found me, identified me, put me in a hired cab and with true deference brought me to Kosančićev Venac. The sergeant could only say with official certainty that when the red mob had been dispersed, they had pulled Mr. Negovan out of a gutter where the sewer carries the—pardon the expression—shit into Kosmajska Street. But they could not say how he had got down there among the excreta, unless he’d taken part in the riot, which, given the gentleman’s reputation, they certainly couldn’t believe (although one never knows). He had been in a bad, an extremely bad, way: beaten, unconscious, left for dead, and as they say, ready for the last rites; in his left hand he was gripping the aforementioned hat, from which they unsuccessfully tried to separate him while they were getting him into the cab.

  The diagnosis was made by our family doctor, and confirmed by the second opinion of the surgeon George Negovan (whose professional assistance I myself would never have requested). This diagnosis, which I have kept among my papers, states: Fractura tibiae et fibulae dextre, Fractura costarum II lat. sin. et III, IV lat. dex., Contusio cerebri et Haematoma faciae et corporis, which confirmed that both bones of my lower leg were broken; that three ribs were cracked (the second on the left and the third and fourth on the right side of my rib cage); that I had suffered cerebral contusions (the effects of which made themselves felt in the temporary paralysis of the left side of my face); and that, finally, I was completely covered with bruises and swellings from blows received during the incident.

  Afterward, when they removed my plaster and replaced it with an elastic lace-up corset such as our mothers used to wear, Katarina told me that for quite some time I had been delirious with a temperature as high as 104° F., and that in my delirium I had been taking part in an auction of Niké where I was bidding against the strangest rivals: a man called “Hook,” another called “N.N.,” and “Christina.” I easily identified Hook as the war veteran, and N.N. as the speaker who had preceded me at the demonstration; only Christina baffled me. Then it dawned on me that this name stood for the hefty suffragette I was pressed against while we were marching toward Brankova Street.

  (Christina, the sister of my architect Jacob Negovan, was a person quite untouched by sanity; although her half-wittedness was known and accepted, it won’t be out of place here for me to note the outward symptoms of her madness. She was a socialist, a left-wing one at that. Furthermore she was a jockey, a suffragette, a bicyclist, a Spanish correspondent in 1937, the first Serbian woman to fly in a balloon, a cellist, and a Trotskyite. She learned Chinese, wore demonstrative black with a red rose on the First of May, and in the fashion of Georges Sand, her spiritual grandmother, smoked with a spindle-shaped ivory cigarette holder like a Turkish pipe. Since I was of course a “reactionary,” she had long ago broken off with me, and had resigned herself to awaiting the World Revolution, a revolution which never came.)

  This whole experience—the lynch mob, my injuries, and the misunderstanding over Niké—wouldn’t have been so important, if during my convalescence which went on for, well, almost six months, I hadn’t become preoccupied with refashioning both my business and private life in some new and as yet unconsidered way. There was nothing else for it, Arsénie, you had to adapt yourself to time—I’m not saying submit to it, but come to terms with it. Avoid struggling against it
s headstrong changes like a mule against the driving harness. All in all, set about something fundamental, one of those lifesaving turnarounds which, according to some higher motivation, had dispersed the sons of the Moskopolje potter, Simeon Nago, to the four corners of the earth, and had subsequently kept their descendants on the sunny surface of life.

  The feeling of insecurity was accentuated by the German invaders who during my recovery had stormed the redoubts of our old-fashioned life. Personally, I had nothing against the Germans: given my strained resources, the cessation of building activity came at just the right time. The Germans, it’s true, requisitioned some of my houses, but they kept excellent accounts and paid adequate compensation for what they destroyed. As far as the bombing was concerned, I ascribe all that to their debit, for the first raids were theirs and the subsequent ones were provoked by their presence; but as my lodger, Major Helgar, said: “Das ist ein Krieg, Herr Negovan!” Yes, it was war, something subnatural, elemental, which opened up like a crater beneath certain of my houses, to swallow them up and return them to the earth whence they had come.

  The Germans too brought changes whose essential nature I strove to fathom, lying in my plaster trough which stank of sweat-soaked, powdered chalk. I strove to fathom all these changes, and Major Bruno Helgar, and Cousin Stefan, and the green man with an iron hook instead of a fist; and N.N., the speaker who proclaimed the Revolution; and the Russian merchants in their overcoats, on their knees; the Solovkino wire with its fivefold noose; Fractura tibiae et fibulae dextre; George’s unwarlike end; Fedor G. Negovan, who used to come see us lowered into our graves; the attempt to demolish my Katarina on Lamartine Street; Agatha’s undermined health; the reason why I wasn’t allowed to give my lecture to the Sisters of Serbia; and Isidor, my Isidor.

  And a lot of other things, Isidor, when you look at them soberly were all trifles and nonsense; but every one of those trifles and nonsense was a fresh smear on the lens through which I looked at my town and my fellow citizens, and sometimes even at you, my boy. Filth and dirt had piled up in the space between us, some vile kind of filth. But you mustn’t think that my invalid reflections gave birth to my decision immediately—I was too experienced to give way to those early impulses. Initially they simply nourished my inclination toward the later decision of whose nature, dimension, and scope I had no notion.

  And yet, retroactively, the future decision was already in force. My convalescence was progressing, the traces of violence had long disappeared, and my bones had mended, so that I had to think seriously about leaving my bed. The doctors confirmed that any further confinement could lead to dire consequences for my faculty of movement; to restore flexibility to my left leg and suppleness to my body, they prescribed exercises in my room and quiet walks in the fresh air. However, by cunning excuses I postponed getting up, while in the meantime receiving regular reports about my houses from my lawyer Golovan, who had temporarily taken over my office. Thus I delayed getting up until an immediate danger of pneumonia was foreseen if I remained physically inert any longer.

  Well and good: I got up and performed the prescribed exercises, but didn’t go out at all—apart, of course, from going to the window, from where I had an excellent view over the delta at the mouth of the Sava, that gray, watery loop in the middle of the Pannonian plain. I supervised Golovan’s activities, but the sad fact is he did not love houses (nor they him); he was merely the representative of my will and passion. Very soon, because of the multiplicity of my affairs, Katarina was obliged to associate herself with him, even though until that time I had always spared her my business worries.

  I wouldn’t be telling the whole story if I didn’t report here how much I was tormented by the fear of disrupting that personal relationship, of transforming it into abstract, anonymous figures with which I should have contact only through accounts, receipts, and Golovan’s and Katarina’s reports. Would that not have been similar to banking or, God forbid, stock-exchange transactions, in which numbers—phantom symbols—took the place of houses?

  In order that this should not happen, Isidor, I ordered a photographer to prepare enlarged photographs of my houses from various angles—I kept a complete file of the plans, designs, and investment proposals—and I ordered models constructed according to the very best patterns out of ebony and jacaranda. (Use was made, over Katarina’s objections, of some elegant furniture which had belonged to her grandmother Turjaški.)

  In this way I perpetuated the appearance of my houses at the very moment I left them. Seemingly left them, of course. In fact, from up there at Kosančićev Venac, as from an observation tower, I continued to watch over them tenderly. I also used photographs to note at quarterly intervals all the changes resulting from external action: atmospheric causes (sunshine, precipitation, frost), and movement or settling of foundations. If the climate caused deterioration, I recognized it in the cracking of the rendering like peeling skin; in the ricketlike appearance of the dried-up woodwork; in the faded pallor of the paint, which withered on the walls like the color of a person gnawed away by a malicious internal disease; in the damp streaks which lined the ceiling like a feverish brow.

  At this point I can’t resist the temptation—after all, I’m writing my will—to make note of my personal contribution to building experiments, a contribution which under the name of “Arsénie’s glass” or “Arsénie’s glass leaf” was put into general use. My experts were continually complaining that they had no reliable means of establishing whether a crack was “dead” or “live,” “active” or “inactive”—an important matter, as its origin and therefore its treatment depend upon this: an “active” crack—one that’s getting wider—is caused by constant activity of the ground, which has to be guarded against, whereas an “inactive” crack remains as the result of some past movement, and can simply be filled in and left. But apart from close examination, there was no practical way of determining a crack’s behavior; they simply didn’t know how. Of course I knew even less: I was a property owner, not a builder. But here fortune smiled upon me. Nota bene, something like Isaac Newton and his apple. On several occasions my property owner’s map fell off the wall, for which I could blame neither its modest weight or the tape with which it was fixed. The only thing I noticed was a minute crack which ran crookedly across the paint like a fine wick. The next time, when I threw away the sticky tape and again tried to fasten the map to the wall, I realized that the crack had widened. I concluded that the plaster, paint, and my map were behaving toward the wall very much like skin over flesh, and were being affected by all the changes to which the layer beneath was subjected, just as our skin shrivels and cracks when the muscle beneath it is diseased. It became clear to me at once that quite by chance I had discovered a means of observing the behavior of a crack. The first trial experiment gave excellent results: a thin leaf of glass stuck slantwise across the crevice fell off after only the first week, showing that the crack was getting wider, was active. Despite the expense to which this discovery committed me—the wall had to be reinforced because of the unsound terrain—I was pleased: “Arsénie’s glass” became part of the history of building. But I’m digressing.

  I hadn’t yet announced my intention of retiring, though I had hinted that I might transfer the renting and selling of houses to Golovan’s agency. As I might have foreseen, Katarina was delighted at the idea of my partial retirement, for she had always been jealous of my houses. She saw in Simonida, Sophia, Aspasia, Theodora, Agatha—with the superficial, benign naiveté of an exploiter—only walled, whitewashed, and painted cages for the collection of rent. She regarded my private relationships with them as, at the very least, eccentric. Yet when we had first become acquainted she proclaimed my passion “slightly unusual, different”; I believe it was my loyalty to architecture, and my capacity for elevating commerce to the status of art, which set me apart from her other suitors.

  Anyway, Katarina received the news of my retirement with satisfaction. The poor woman even began to make p
lans. She said that at least in our old age—I was then fifty and she was nearly forty-five—we could live free of worries. After the war we could travel. We had traveled before the war, but never entirely for pleasure. Usually our transcontinental “wanderings”—only half transcontinental anyway, since I couldn’t bring myself to cross the Curzon Line—were associated with one of my business arrangements; either I had to view some new feature of residential architecture or attend some conference on housing, or I had to conclude a contract with foreign suppliers, so that I always seemed to carry my houses along with me.

  There was as yet no word of my secret intention to seclude myself until the end of the war. Somehow that came about of its own volition. I kept on postponing going out of the house until one day Katarina asked me:

  “Do you ever intend to go out of the house again, Arsénie?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. I was telling the truth: I had no idea.

  “What do you mean, you don’t know?”

  “That’s just it, Katarina, I don’t.”

  “Get a grip on yourself, or you’ll be an invalid for the rest of your life!”

  “Nonsense! I feel all right. I’ve never felt better.” That wasn’t absolutely true, but I had no time for confessions. And it was better that way.

  As usual, Katarina couldn’t let it be: “You’ve been told to walk in fresh air for at least an hour every day.”

  “Don’t you think I do?”

  Indeed, I had established my regular walk inside the house. I had opened all the doors between the rooms and made myself a “track” long enough so I didn’t have to turn around every minute, since a change of stride bearing weight on my damaged right leg still caused me pain.