Whatever Constantine built was irreproachable. However, while his bridge was truly majestic it served no useful purpose. And his tower had been undeniably crooked, and it too had no purpose. (Yes, he lacked that purposefulness which distinguishes the rest of us Negovans. In that respect, more’s the pity, Fedor was right, the late Constantine had been a good but unusual builder.)
“Well, he was original,” I concede grudgingly.
“He was more than just original, Uncle, he was mad, and you know it.”
“Do you think I’d have worked with him if he were crazy?”
“It was precisely because he was crazy that you did! He didn’t steal from you, or try to cheat you with bad construction work, or falsify accounts, or exceed time schedules. And because you were his nephew he built houses for you below cost”—(this last is a lie)—“and the houses he built were sound, strong, and solid as a rock, just like himself.” (This about the quality of his work is true.)
We are approaching the mound of earth by the grave. In front of us, through the black silk forest of umbrellas, the coffin is being carried out of the hearse and placed on the bier; the mourners range themselves around it in tight rings. Yet again I try to reason with this insolent young man, having made up my mind to complain to his father George tomorrow about his abominable behavior.
“Before terminating this undignified dispute, I must point out to you that the late Constantine was my relative, friend, and business partner. In all three capacities I loved and respected him equally!”
(I had certainly respected him. It had hardly been possible to avoid an awe-filled reverence toward something that—heedless of rest, caution, and all obstacles, even of purpose—hovered round us like elemental bad weather, like a seismic catastrophe. In Uncle Constantine there was indeed something of those Biblical architects who ordered the wilderness with their bare hands, dislocated whole towns with a single magical sign, and built and destroyed palaces overnight. Even so I hadn’t loved him, and if asked why, I couldn’t have explained it. Perhaps my reserved nature, sensitivity, and moderation were offended by Constantine’s Tartar-like behavior, the unbridled wantonness of a conqueror who lives permanently on horseback and with a flourish carries out his work from the saddle. Or perhaps in that distaste, which of course had no bearing on our working partnership, there was something of a secret hatred of scientific architects who gave birth to buildings from within themselves, whereas I, with all my money, could only be the midwife. Even though Constantine had never been to a school of architecture and knew less about architecture than I did, as a builder he was closer to that mysterious process, the creation of a house.)
“You may have loved him, but you certainly didn’t respect him. In fact, you despised him because of his madness. And I, Uncle Arsénie, I loved him because of his madness. Even as a child I adored his nonsensical bridges over nowhere; his crooked, fairy-tale towers; his readiness to roll up his sleeves and mix lime just to feel the sheer joy of building something; the deep voice with which he summoned up the stone crushers; his down-to-earth Turkish oaths; but most of all, the fact that he genuinely loved those houses even though they didn’t belong to him. You loved them because they were yours!”
We are gathered around the rust-colored mound dug out of the grave. Mr. Arsenijević, Vice-President of the Builders Association, is leaning over the wet lectern, preparing to make a speech. The tomb has been built in accordance with Constantine’s own drawings. The rain is falling on the leaves and the dull gray marble slabs, on the umbrellas taut like drumskins, and on the tarpaulin sheet which had earlier covered the coffin. Knowing no other way of preserving the solemnity of the ceremony, I promise Fedor that after the funeral I will be available to explain everything concerning my relationship with Constantine if only he’ll calm down now, if only, for God’s sake, he’ll keep quiet.
“And it was your building on which the scaffolding collapsed—should I keep quiet about that, too?”
“It collapsed on his building. It just happened to be a house he was building for me.”
“That whore of a house killed him. He built it and it killed him. In true Negovan style, the house just shook him off once it didn’t need him any more, once he got to the roof!”
At last the Vice-President of the Builders Association began his speech, like a deity whose immediate intervention renders any human continuation superfluous. If he hadn’t begun, I would have hit Fedor without further hesitation—paternally, of course. I am sure that was just what he was waiting for, and that he would have returned my blow. But on all sides there were demands for silence and we were separated; I went off to take my place alongside the coffin.
The accusation that Fedor leveled at my house, and through her at me, was that I was responsible for any injury she inflicted on anyone. (The house was called Efimia, after Efimia, daughter of Lord Drama and wife of the Despot Uglješa, since her exterior was to have been a copy of the monastery of Saint George at Stari Nagoričan.) But she was mine only in the sense that she was built for me and at my expense; according to law and custom, during the building and right up to the time when she was handed over to me by the Building Works Commission, all the responsibility for her behavior rested exclusively with her builder, Constantine. This, of course, in no way diminished my regret over the accident. Constantine could have gone around to any other site that day, and climbed up on any other scaffolding; by ill luck, any of them could have been unsoundly erected (though we mustn’t ignore his Herculean weight), and under any one of them the lime pit could have been left open. Yet despite Efimia’s guiltlessness, I never had the heart to move into her, and although I had intended her for Katarina and myself, I hurriedly sold her, taking care to make but little profit on the sale. As for Constantine, he didn’t die immediately after his fall. He remained an invalid for some time and, strange though he was, not mad but irrational. Not in the least God-fearing or considerate of my feelings, he got his son to build him a tomb in the shape of Efimia. As a reproach to me he kept its model, just like the model of a church depicted in the donor’s embrace, on his night table beside his medicine cabinet, right up until the day he died.
Here, finally, I have an opportunity to indicate how I wish to be buried, that is, if present circumstances (which bode little good) allow distinguished people to be buried at all; if I’m not buried in a ditch, like those of my class whose extermination I once witnessed; and if events generally take a turn in our favor.
•
Article 4. I wish to be buried according to the rites of the Serbian Orthodox Church, on the plot of land at the New Cemetery which I bought for that purpose and paid for in a proper and legitimate manner, so that no one else may have the right to be buried in that place, either by right of marriage or any other kinship.
•
Article 5. I wish that above my grave there be placed a stone of similar proportions to the size of the mound, and that it be constructed by taking from each of my forty-nine houses (including even the one on Gračanička Street), but in no way to the detriment of their appearance, a cornerstone, and that all be harmoniously incorporated into my gravestone so that its composite pieces freely form a pattern, and that on the mosaic thus formed be placed in Cyrillic letters the inscription THE LAST HOUSE OF ARSÉNIE NEGOVAN, PROPERTY OWNER, and beneath the name, engraved in gold, the year of my birth, 1891, and the year of my death, whenever that may be.
•
Article 6. I further declare that, apart from the ones enumerated above, I have no other needs in death, but desire these my wishes to be carried out just as I have stated and in no other way.
•
And now to describe my unannounced meeting with Simonida. Except for Niké’s absence from Kosmajska Street and what was awaiting me on the other side of the river, it was the misunderstanding with Simonida that caused me the greatest distress. It was for Simonida’s good that I had ignored my heart condition and concealed my going out from Katarina, exposing myself to the
mortal danger of illness. In the expectation that the sight of the favorite among my houses would trouble me, I had protected myself with my pills; but it wasn’t like that, far from it. When we actually met, I didn’t feel even the slightest hint of the sudden and overwhelming elation of ownership anticipated. I don’t say, of course, that I looked at her indifferently, as if at someone else’s house, but I didn’t feel her to be my Simonida, I simply didn’t recognize her as the Simonida of my dreams and memories. A huge crane in the garden pointed to the forthcoming destruction. The house itself was not in the best possible condition: Simonida’s façade was crumbling a little, flaking away; the pointing was losing its sharpness, and the rustic brickwork its healthy color of noble stone, the wreath beneath the eaves above the gate had cracked in the center, and its garland had withered and faded, as had the bouquet of stone lilies over the doorway; the iron blooms masking the cellar windows had rusted; and the plaster cast of Saint George, who on the medallion was transfixing a plaster dragon with a plaster lance, had completely lost its detailed relief and its vital strength of the Champion of the Lord.
But all my bitter sadness over Simonida’s deterioration was nothing before the astonishing evidence of my eyes that, entirely without my approval, a square hole had been cut in the fence around the garden and blocked off with a three-paneled iron shutter across which, in black tarred letters and split into syllables, was written GA RA GE. Needless to say, I went over to remove that vile scrawl. Apart from my fragile gloves, I had nothing with which to erase it. Soon I began to pant so hard that I had to go back across the street to a park and find a bench on which to sit and calm myself, and then decide—while never taking my binoculars off of her—what to do for her good.
Only there on the bench, under the blue, reposing shade of the trees—positioned just as if, armed with my binoculars and curiosity beside the west window, I hadn’t left my armchair, I realized that this house was no longer the house which, held in the spell of my uncertain memory and my lawyer’s false photographs, I had imagined her to be. Despite the identical likeness of the exterior, she was not my Simonida, but another building, perhaps another Simonida, perhaps even a building which merited a completely new name. Because of my failure to recognize her, I had a premonition of futility—one that would grow from then on and become even stronger, so that these farewell lines are poisoned with foreboding—a feeling that I shall have explained fully by the end of my testament.
I must also mention that a similar feeling of powerlessness had seized me when faced with the plans of my first house. From a freehand and for my taste slovenly sketch, fingermarked and smudged with erasures, I could hardly get a conception of any house, never mind recognize the one which its overenthusiastic creator warmly commended as mine. But it was my first investment, my baptism as a builder, so I didn’t utter a single one of those harsh observations which later would undermine so cunningly the inventive élan of those experts I hired subsequently. So the house was still a secret for me, carefully concealed under a veil of incomprehensible graphic figures. What she was really going to be like I found out only after her cross sections, basic plans, and frontal views, as well as her estimated costs, had been submitted for my approval, and I had put them together into a single three-dimensional view.
I judged houses as I judge a picture. I sincerely doubt that the whole turned out even as its own creator had imagined it, although on several occasions he tried to assure me that it had. In fact, he could only have surmised what the future house would be like. When the house appeared, it was nothing like the house I had visualized. It was a ponderous sculpture painted in the Greek fashion, before which I stood as before any other finished object, strictly excluded from its being, powerless to pierce the impenetrable surfaces with which it was hermetically sealed off on all sides. Only when I went into the house and wandered among perspectives permeated with the smells of paint and varnish, could I feel her inside me and see her. What I recognized from my first experience was that architecture is a sculpture that is hollowed out, so that man in movement can be situated in the empty space, that immediately afterward this sculpture becomes architecture by virtue of this hollowing out. This is what made of me the property owner that I am.
From then on I was remarkably mistrustful of those elegantly colored graphic representations, those unreal projections of future houses. A plan can never convey the true charm, but only hint at one of the possible realities of a building, while perspectives, despite Brunelleschi, can only timidly indicate an intangible internal territory, but cannot authentically reproduce it as an ordinary human step does, or can only reproduce it wrongly. So even the best drawings say less about a house than a web of transparent human bones from an X-ray image say about a man. Models too express an unreal volume; they could perhaps be successful if their dwarf-sized dimensions weren’t incapable of depicting a building’s spatial reality, which corresponds exclusively to the dimensions of a man.
Perhaps made drowsy by the sultry June air, I fell asleep for a short while. Suddenly I was awakened by the excited shout of a man who after a brief moment of puzzlement I recognized as Tomaž Šomodjija, Simonida’s concierge.
“In God’s name, esteemed Mr. Arsen, what are you doing here?”
If in Simonida’s deterioration I hadn’t detected Šomodjija’s sabotage, and if it hadn’t been my intention to resume control of my affairs, I might have shown a warmer welcome (in any case familiarity was not characteristic of my relations with inferiors)—all the more since this Tomaž or Toma, known as “maestro,” had been one of my first Hausmeisters. But all extenuating considerations had to be set aside, so as to reassert Arsénie Negovan’s authority as an employer. So I overlooked the elation with which Maestro Toma ran up to me, and said with some anger:
“Voilà, Mr. Šomodjija, as you can see, I’m sitting here regretting that I ever entrusted one of my favorite houses to you and allowed that shameless lawyer Golovan to supervise you. But before you hear what I think of your disloyal actions and what I intend to do, I’m willing to hear your explanation. If you have one, naturellement!”
But the former concierge (I say “former” because I had decided that his replacement was urgent), probably faced with the impossibility of finding excuses, leaned toward me with both hands on his stick, completely overwhelmed by shame, and moved from one foot to the other while anxiously striving in his meager Serbo-Hungarian vocabulary to justify for himself. He had heard, he said, from the lawyer Golovan that méltóságos úr Arsen, esteemed Mr. Arsen, had been taken ill from too much worry, and that he hadn’t left his room at Venac since the war. But he, Tomaž, becsulet szavamra, honest to God, went several times to visit méltóságos úr Arsen to give an account of his house on Paris Street, but, becsulet szavamra, when he got to Venac esteemed Mrs. Katarin told him that esteemed Mr. Arsen couldn’t receive him. But Tomaž, becsulet szavamra, was sorry, but understood and went back to Paris Street. Two months later he again went to Venac, but esteemed Mrs. Katarin again told him that it was strictly forbidden that méltóságos úr Arsen see Tomaž and worry. Then later lawyer Golovan, at night in October, told him: “Maestro Tomaž, we’re very sorry but you can’t take care of esteemed Mr. Arsen’s house any more, though you can still live upstairs, padláson, in attic.”
I was on the point of asking him if he meant to complain of the manner in which the lawyer had given him notice. But I realized that, in the heat of my desire to renew my professional authority, I would have acknowledged that he had worked here for years without my approval and knowledge. So instead I confirmed that certain instructions of that nature had indeed been given, but that they seemed to have been taken too literally.
“That’s right, esteemed Mr. Arsen, that’s what Tomaž thought. Tomaž knows what goes on, like in October when Bela Kun and the mob came, shouting no more masters, no more méltóságos úr Arsen, now all are equal, all brothers! But Tomaž knew that would be catastrophe. And Tomaž thought that maybe méltóságo
s úr Arsen would come back one day, so from his own good heart he painted windows, brought new tiles, and swept every day. Then a man from the Magistrate came and said the house would be pulled down, so Tomaž should repair nothing more. Then Tomaž went for the last time to see Mr. Arsen, but esteemed Mrs. Katarin came outside the house and said, becsulet szavamra, let them pull it down, let them pull all down! So tell me the truth, esteemed Mr. Arsen, what more could I do?”
What more, indeed? Although he hadn’t yet reached Martinović’s distracted state, his thoughts often wandered, and he mixed up people, events, and years. Thus his dismissal had become entangled with Bela Kun’s violence, and he spoke unhappily of Simonida, as if for some time she hadn’t belonged to me at all. But at the same time it was certain that my suspicions had done him a painful injustice, and I was left with only one means to redress it: Tomaž Šomodjija would be the first person honored with the announcement of the “return of Arsénie Negovan,” and the first one invited to share in it.
“Does that mean that esteemed Mr. Arsen has come back?” His body straightened up, his every word was accompanied by a hearty bang on the bench with his ironclad stick. “Esteemed mister is again taking work in his own hands?”
“Bien sûr! That’s why I came.”
“And Maestro Tomaž will again be in the service of méltóságos úr Arsen, caring for the house on Paris Street?”
“Of course.”
“Becsulet szavamra?”
“Becsulet szavamra, Maestro Tomaž. From this very moment on!”
Even now I feel a tingling of pride when I recall with what pleasure, eagerness, and hope we took pencils and notebooks from our coats—he the battered account book which I had given to him with Simonida’s keys, and I the saffian leather notebook which I had always taken with me on inspections. In the latter, under March 1941, I had written the date of Niké’s auction—my last pro memoria. As for Šomodjija’s account book—all my superintendents had similar ones—he jotted down in it all the important events in Simonida’s life, and whatever was needed for her care. I used to read it on the spot, crossing out the unnecessary requests but transferring the appropriate ones to my saffian notebook, so that I could verify their implementation.
Houses Page 17