Houses

by Borislav Pekic

  I can also recall those younger designers, my contemporaries. Collaboration with them was even more difficult; somehow they began to understand architecture as a free expression of their own inventiveness and not in the natural way, as the most perfect realization of the client’s needs and wishes. With them (to hell with them, for all their talent!) I always risked an unpleasant surprise if I didn’t define every condition by contract and supervise its implementation from the drawing-board on, watch over the papers, and check the construction on the building site; for sometimes they designed what I wanted on paper, but built what they wanted on the building lot.

  Since the National Bank has induced me to mention the architects with whom I worked—to the discredit of the Negovan name—I must shed some light on the quarrel between those onetime friends and collaborators, Emilian Josimović of the Lyceum and my grandfather, Simeon Negovan, landowner. If I can’t help those now dead, nothing prevents me from transferring my gratitude to those who can profit from it, and of endorsing the bill of exchange to the heirs and descendants of Isidor’s generation in the following manner:

  •

  Article 3. I will that, after deduction of maintenance costs and taxes, the rent from my houses on Sveti Sava, Poincarret, and Kornelija Stanković Streets be collected in a trust fund, and at the end of each year there shall be designated by the Serbian Royal Academy of Sciences a worthy sum to reward the best work of residential architecture within the town of Belgrade, but only that not exceeding three stories.

  There is no objection in this legacy if other donors wish to associate themselves with the fund by their endowments, on the condition that the name “Arsénie Negovan Fund” be retained. As for the prizes, they may be given whatever name is deemed suitable.

  •

  We must approach the feud between Emilian Josimović and my grandfather from a somewhat earlier time.

  (It’s to him that I address myself, although it had never occurred to me before to write this in the form of a letter. Originally I hadn’t even intended to set down these notes about my sortie into town. I sat down at my desk to write my will. I was incapable of writing it all in one go. I began to make a draft on the backs of old bills and rent receipts, with the intention of writing it out later, sealing it with wax, and stamping the initials of “A.N.” with my signet ring. I shall use this pause to make a change in the legacy for the foundation of the trust fund: I think that the revenue from a single house will be adequate to show my gratitude—most probably, the house on Sveti Sava Street.)

  At that time, then, the Turkish quarter still sprawled around the Kalemegdan fortress, which was bordered by the Moat stretching like a Tartar’s bow from the Varoš-Kapija to the Danube. The Serbs built their homes below the Moat; the majority were houses of timber and unbaked bricks or, less often, plastered and whitewashed huts of woven branches with posts supporting roofs of straw or rushes. Then with youthful vigor they began to push their way uphill from the Sava embankment to the Terazije grazing land where, becoming arrogant, they built houses that rose up another story and were roofed with tiles, and that descended underground into largers, storerooms, and cellars: houses built in stone and walled around, and adorned with balconies and belvederes. Among them were the homes of the Negovans. These Negovans stood out, distinguished by a concept of European orderliness; they built up Gospodska and Pop-Pantina Streets (now Brankova and Marshal Biryuzov Streets), letting nothing fall from their grasp. Yet toward the mosques, fountains, bridges, and tumble-down alleyways and passages of the Turkish quarter, where the buildings of the old Austrian district lay in ruins, they displayed an Oriental impassivity. So it was hardly possible to think of an organized town—a Budapest-like way of life and means of communication—while in the upper and lower towns Asiatic chaos still reigned; each house was put up where and how the owner pleased, obstructing street vistas, cramping façades, and improving heights.

  In 1864, with the financial support of Simeon Negovan, and probably at his suggestion, Emilian Josimović, a teacher at the lyceum and the high school, set about drawing up the first regulatory plan for Belgrade, which he published under the title An Elucidation of the Proposal for the Regularization of the Area of the Town of Belgrade Situated along the Moat. With a Lithograph Plan to Scale 1/3000. Bearing in mind the lack of technical means with which it was prepared, this work deserved respect, but found none among the population of the town or with the Administration. Josimović proposed that the abandoned Turkish Moat be filled in and the ground rearranged into esplanades and public gardens in seven crescents.

  Old man Simeon, my grandfather, supported Emilian Josimović with both his reputation and his purse against the Administration, and against the landowners who feared losses in the proposed indemnification for property lying within the area encompassed by the “regularization.” Of course Emilian didn’t keep secret from Simeon his sketch for the reconstruction of the street network along the Moat, and certainly entrusted to his benefactor, before they were made public, all the changes which he had thought of in the composition of the town. But as early as the geodetic survey stage, Josimović took the opportunity to give a double warning of the danger of speculation in land, whose value would rise or fall for the most part in accordance with the location of the plots vis-à-vis the sketch. The government had bought up scarcely a third of the land from the Turkish expropriates, so that two-thirds were still for sale. Josimović wanted the state to take it all. In this he had Simeon’s support, or so it seemed.

  Nevertheless, as is often the case when commerce and science come together in a development project, interests were common but not identical. Quickly it became known that Simeon Negovan, personally or through intermediaries, had bought up the major part of the land along the projected park, exactly that area which Josimović had categorized as of prime value. Simeon had paid a hundred ducats, whereas the valeur en recouvrement of the land was almost a thousand, and a year later the market price rose to three thousand. Breaking off family relations and repudiating his role as godfather (to which their friendship had brought him in the meantime), the now furious architect showered my grandfather with imprecations whose bitter traces, barely hidden by the academic vocabulary, can be recognized even in the Introduction to his An Elucidation of the Proposal for the Regularization of the Area of the Town of Belgrade Situated along the Moat. I consider the reproaches exaggerated, since without Simeon’s support Josimović’s work would certainly not have existed at all. There was much lack of understanding among the townspeople, particularly the landowners, and much indifference in the Administration. Furthermore, an architect’s greatest work must be exclusively in his mind and his heart: Josimović was entirely obsessed with the new Belgrade, and had no wish for anyone to make anything out of it along the way. Given all this, his complaint that he had “suffered so many unfavorable circumstances from all sides,” which surely refers to Simeon Negovan, is in no way justified, for he didn’t grasp all the favorable circumstances from which he profited, thanks indeed only to Simeon Negovan.

  To somehow stop Simeon—not at all out of malice or to serve some higher principle, but to eliminate doubts about secret collusion between them, and therefore to make it impossible for Simeon to profit from this purchase of land—Josimović proposed a law to the government by which the resale of plots of land along the Moat would be forbidden, except to the State and the Municipality, and at the original sale price. To make sure that this law would destroy Simeon’s speculations, Josimović also demanded that the owners of plots of land be obliged to put up buildings on them within a certain time limit, “according to the regulations affecting the place in question.” He calculated that even Simeon didn’t have sufficient resources to build on all the plots simultaneously. However, before it was entirely certain that this regulation would become law, Simeon had erected, practically overnight and as if by magic, a row of shacks and hovels of any material at hand. In the absence of building regulations they could indeed be c
onsidered houses, since they had a certain modest resemblance to them. Just how modest that resemblance was can be seen from a description Josimović gave after his final defeat: “The hulk of an old boat, dragged up from the Danube by mules and plastered with clay and caulked with tin plate, was set up like an unsightly pediment in the middle of a plot of land, beneath which, in my lunacy, I had imagined a French park with a patriotic monument, and an ornate pool with graceful water fountains.”

  And now of course, although I don’t have the courage to justify my ancestor, I ask myself: if Simeon Negovan hadn’t acted as he did, could Arsénie Negovan, disdaining profit, enjoy today only the beauty of what he possesses? Like it or not, in commercial affairs it often happens that you have to proceed by roundabout routes, defiles, and shortcuts, and resort to measures a more idealistic man would gladly avoid. Commerce is war: merchants must be continually at war in defense of Possession. You are attacked from ambush and you yourself attack from behind; you camouflage your own intentions and spy out those of your enemies; you sound false alarms, sign false truces, and put out false news. In such a commercial war there are no friends; everyone breaks with everyone, everyone plots against everyone, and alliances are unreliable and short-lived.

  If, however, the property owner has in view the welfare of the nation and the people—even though this may not have been immediately apparent, or his act may even have seemed to harm the nation and the people—then the act can be approached with a clear conscience. Possession is not increased by profit for its own sake; it is increased in order to grow and multiply, and to live for the good of all. I know this from my own experience. Like my grandfather Simeon Negovan, I was exposed to all kinds of animosity even when my motives were the most honest.

  I’ll relate only one such incident. During the Great Crisis of ’29 I wanted to take advantage of the ridiculously low price of building materials and also of the particularly low piecework rates. Earlier I had already bought several well-placed sites, on which I decided to build houses. But I had little ready cash available and was forced to count every penny, as they say. At that bad moment even the poorer tenants, particularly those who had no regular income or jobs, began to make excuses to avoid paying their rent, some for as long as six months. The individual sums were not large, but because of the number of delinquents, I showed a large deficit. This deficit threatened to destroy all my building plans. So I set about obtaining my rights. At first, of course, only in a gentle fashion. I paid a visit, reminded here, wrote a letter there, warned, cajoled, and where words were of no avail, began to threaten a little. In this way I finally got satisfaction from the majority. A few I had to take to court, though this was unpleasant for me and I almost became ill from the sessions. Among those evicted there happened to be an old lady living alone, a Russian woman with weak nerves, and as is invariably the case, a general’s widow. It was not surprising that because of her nerves she had to try everything until at last she managed to bring it all to an end. But was I really to blame? I’m not the one who beat her husband to death in a ditch nor did I start that Revolution, to have the widow’s misfortune hung around my neck in Belgrade, thousands of kilometers from her native Sevastopol! It was hardly a bed of roses for me either, and what’s more, Madame General had only herself to worry about, while without exaggeration I bore on my shoulders a whole small town made up solely of my houses, and all the future buildings which I had in my head. Moreover, had I been told about her, I would have closed my eyes. But I quite honestly didn’t know about the general’s widow; she had just moved into No. 18 Gračanička Street. It was probably because of this woman that I hated the house so much that I pulled her flag out of the property owner’s map and burned her model; the architectural reasons for that hatred must have been only secondary, although welcome in that they replaced the true ones. The widow’s windows were on the first floor, but unluckily the basement was high off the ground. Her furniture was already out on the street, waiting in the van. While Golovan was trying to persuade her to leave peaceably and without scandal, she broke away from the policeman and jumped out the window. Truly, it was all very regrettable and I, inasmuch as it was in my power, amply expressed my sorrow. I paid her posthumous debts, incurred her funeral expenses, and even meant to pay damages, but didn’t know to whom.

  Therefore, I have the right to assert that this town was built up by people of the mettle of Arsénie, Simeon, and his other grandson, too: Constantine Negovan, whose funeral I couldn’t put out of my mind that morning. For once again, as from Gračanička Street I made out the contours of Kalemegdan Park, I was assailed by memories of his cortege. I am walking slowly along an avenue glistening with rain between huge, looming graves, memorial stones, marble slabs, and granite crosses toward a grave dug in a wet ornamental grove; I am surrounded by a procession, vaulted by umbrellas like black silk flowers, like dark-membraned mushrooms, at a certain distance from the lacquered carriage from whose plate-glass body the coffin shines, a casket girt with silver in a jeweler’s display cabinet; I am walking to the spot where, behind the choir of the Association of Architects, the funeral attendants were lined up in their red jackets, carrying circular wreaths of rosemary, laurel, and purple roses with gilt expressions of condolence printed on their mourning bands.

  The procession’s ranks have already formed, the funeral march can barely be heard above the buzz; I move off slowly, keeping myself well behind the front rows of the family in whose midst I should be. But my efforts to get away from Fedor Negovan are fruitless. Clearly, I am the Negovan he has decided to hate today. My turn at last.

  “ ‘Make thee an ark of gopher wood; rooms shalt thou make in the ark, and shalt pitch it within and without with pitch, and, behold, I, even I, do bring a flood of water upon the earth.’—I hope you don’t mind if I accompany you, Uncle?”

  “Of course I mind! But under the circumstances I can do nothing to stop you.”

  “Quite right.” He isn’t grinning in his usual manner, but I’m irritatedly aware that beneath the youthful pockmarked cheeks something pleases him. “That’s what I’m counting on.”

  He sucks air in noisily and then, barely opening his mouth, spits in front of him with a dull hiss on the spot where his next step is about to fall.

  “Would it be too much to ask you not to spit while you’re in my company?”

  “No, but it wouldn’t make any difference. I just can’t seem to stop my own body from unloading itself inside the family circle, entouré de sa chère famille. Just look at them, the bastards: black and gold products of Levantine and Serbian brigandry. The same black morning coats and black bowlers, the same black, egg-shaped heads on their stocky black bodies, the same thin gold wives, gold ornaments, gold teeth, gold manners, gold words, and gold reserves. The Negovans have gathered in their black and gold colors to show the world that they’re still here, that they’ll be here forever even though one of their number is no longer with them!”

  “Do you have any special reason for making this already sad duty even more onerous?” I ask.

  “Perhaps I have, Uncle,” he answers calmly. We stopped for a moment. “I’ve decided that ordinary funerals are not good enough for a Negovan.”

  “What would you suggest?”

  “You ought to be burned at the stake! In the main square, urbi et orbi, for everyone to see. In front of the Prince’s statue, say. Like Sardanapalus. With your money, your wives, your servants, your horses, pictures, bonds, and your houses! With all your abilities and success.”

  “And coronaries,” I add resignedly, “and gallstones.”

  “And gallstones too, of course—those most precious of stones.”

  I step discreetly but firmly into the front row, yet he continues brazenly: “Ashes are lasting and dry. First-class packaging. The relative is delivered after being weighed on an apothecary’s scales, and packed in a transparent cellophane box with a printed obituary—in gilt lettering, of course.” Taking my arm, he whispers: “Uncle,
why don’t you carry your dead around with you?”

  Completely taken aback, I ask:

  “My dead? In God’s name, Fedor, what are you talking about?”

  “Constantine, Uncle—Constantine Negovan. Wasn’t he killed by one of your houses?”

  I decided to ignore him. On no account will I pay attention to his provocation. And I’ll see to it that I don’t present this brat with such an opportunity again.

  “You like to show your teeth, don’t you, Uncle Arsénie? And not just any teeth, but your gold teeth. Even from your deathbed. Luckily, Negovans don’t die, they simply replace one another, like the green baize on a roulette table. That’s why you’re invited to pay your last respects to the ever mourned Constantine, son of Simeon Negovan, builder, model father and son, faithful husband and brother, noble relative and friend, esteemed employer and benefactor, skillful Daedalus, architect of the city of Belgrade. Crap! It’s the living Negovans you’re supposed to pay your respects to!”

  “What a scoundrel you are!” I say as Timon Negovan approaches me, takes me by the arm, and inquires whether I’ve yet found a building contractor to take over Constantine’s projects. No, not yet. I’ll never find anyone to measure up to Constantine. I’ll have to do something soon, of course. There’s no place for indecision. The building season is nearing its end, the rainy season has already started, and any further delay in construction could be disastrous.

  Timon agrees and walks off. Once again Fedor is behind me:

  “Is there a single person here, apart from Jacob, who has come to honor Constantine? Everyone knows that our most esteemed builder was mad! He built grandiose bridges across rivers to areas that had no roads—in the belief that roads would be built as soon as bridges could carry them across the rivers! He built a leaning tower fit to rival Pisa, but so crooked that it toppled over even before its completion! He would have been ruined if you hadn’t restrained him through credits from Timon’s bank.”