I fumbled in my pocket for my handkerchief, to wipe away the sweat on my forehead. It was hot and I had lost my hat. I missed it very much. I felt for my handkerchief and at the very instant I found it, I asked myself what I was sitting on. With an effort I raised myself slightly and pulled from under me the piece of cloth which was spread out neatly on the step. It had been torn from a larger piece, bright red. Bright red and very cheap, judging by the quality. It belonged to their flag, the flag which he had been carrying.
That could only mean that I had come into direct contact with him. Most likely he had rushed me and I had to defend myself by hitting him with my stick. He had fallen in the sand without letting go of the flag. He had tried to get up, turning toward me while still on his knees. Two thin streams of blood were running down his left cheek, forming between them the swollen dark little island of the birthmark. And I had struck him again with my stick, this time not from behind on the back of the head, but in the face and on the crown of his head.
I kept on hitting and hitting and hitting.
When was that? How many years had passed since then?
On the hatstand in the hallway, amid the other sticks, is the one with the dog’s muzzle for a handle. I put it there when I returned from my walk, and I haven’t had it in my hands since. Probably I should interrupt my work, pick it up, and examine it—I would know what to look for. I haven’t been able to do it. Perhaps later. Yes, I shall certainly do it later. When I get to the end of my will, and there’s nothing left to do but pile the furniture against the door and wait.
From a distance, my window shone in the dark rear of the house, like a tiny sun in a universe of stone. Its light dimmed and brightened, as if summoning me back to the protection it had offered for so many years. I brought it so close with my binoculars that it seemed as if I could touch the gleaming glass. When I put the binoculars down, the illusion disappeared. That was how it had always been with those useless instruments. They had pretended to help me but in fact had just deceived me. They had cunningly convinced me that I knew and understood the objects which they had brought near to me, whereas in fact those objects had remained just as distant as before. Perhaps even more so.
There on the steps, I knew what I had to do. First of all, I had to pull myself together, tidy myself up. Then I would go home and get to work. Katarina wouldn’t have returned yet. She had gone off with Mlle. Foucault to buy a ticket for her trip to the spa the next morning, and to take care of other matters connected with her journey. Mlle. Foucault was to look after me during her absence. On any other occasion such an arrangement would have infuriated me, but now, as a result of this wretched affair at the underpass, it admirably suited my intentions. Katarina would leave without any idea of what was going on. Even if, as was probable, she eventually found out about the disturbances, she would be too far away to grasp their seriousness. And they wouldn’t spread as rapidly as that. They would meet resistance, delaying things at least long enough for Kosančićev Venac to hold out for several days.
I looked at my watch (now, too, I’m checking the time left me to finish what I’m writing) and verified that I should start for home if I didn’t want Katarina to learn of my absence. Before putting the watch back in my pocket, I listened to the beating of its heart; surrounded by rubies in its gold casing, it looked like a tiny model of the planetary system. The mechanism still worked perfectly, although it had belonged to my father. Inside its cover was an engraved dedication: To Canon Cyrill S. Negovan, Chaplain of the 1st Infantry Regiment, Drina Division, for the faith and fear of God which he instilled in us, and his exceptional skill as a marksman. Colonel Živojin T. Maksimović.
The heart of that watch was beating surely and regularly, but my own was suddenly beginning to hesitate and flutter. For the second time that same day it let me down. The discomfort beneath my rib cage advanced rapidly with antlike steps into my hands, which were shaking treacherously as, blinking to disperse the mist from my eyes and gasping for breath, I tore the cellophane wrapping from the pills. I swallowed them hurriedly, though in fact I hadn’t a single valid reason for doing so.
•
I must admit that this afternoon, the third since the events that have so dominated my confession, I’m in a particularly happy frame of mind. Until recently I was disturbed, troubled by anxiety, even dismayed, but today I’m composed. No, I’m by no means calm—I’m not completely prepared for what’s coming—but I’m composed, and its clear to me what I have to do. With regard to the fate which awaits me and my houses, there can be little ambiguity. It’s like a big business deal. As long as the affair he’s involved in swings back and forth, like a pendulum between victory and defeat, the businessman’s heart spans the amplitude of uncertainty. But as soon as the affair is decided one way or the other, and turns out a success or a failure, the businessman relaxes: nervousness gives place to the calm reckoning up of accounts, the calculation of profit or loss, and preparations for some new project to recuperate the loss or multiply the gain. But if, as in my case, the commitment has already taken the irreversible route toward catastrophe, and the pendulum of fate has adopted its final position, then nothing remains but to plan how to submit to it in the easiest possible way.
Only the presence of Mlle. Foucault still bothered me. I have mentioned that on that first day Katarina had packed her things to go to the spa; now I must add that on the following day she left without having found out anything about the time I had spent out of the house. I have the impression she was surprised at the tenderness with which I said good-by. It was not our custom to show openly any of the devotion we had for each other, but I considered that the unusual circumstances allowed me, even required me, to make an exception, for I hadn’t the slightest doubt that Katarina’s kiss, which I tenderly returned, marked the end of our fifty years of happy marriage, and in a modest way, of course, our golden wedding anniversary.
Before leaving, Katarina gave Mlle. Foucault the instructions necessary to satisfy the demands of my way of life, having no idea that in the meantime it had changed radically, that it had evolved new demands which no one could satisfy for me. Indeed, it would be unjust if I failed to acknowledge the diligence and loyalty, however superfluous now, with which Mlle. Foucault carried out her duties, particularly if one bears in mind the intolerance which had always colored our relationship. Naturally she had to treat me for the bruises I had received. In a moment of inspiration I explained them away as the result of falling on the parquet floor, whereupon she upbraided my “childish lack of caution,” mon imprudence, and as she swathed my aching welts with raw meat, muttered:
“I do not understand, Monsieur Negovan, I really do not understand how a grown man could fall down just like that! Je ne comprends pas cela—un homme de votre agilité!”
“You don’t understand anything,” I answered in exasperation. “Précisément rien! Absolutely nothing!”
“On the contrary, you are the one who understands nothing!” The malice with which she made this pronouncement I attributed to the inventiveness with which she kept up the subterfuge that was meant to preserve my mental security. “Absolutely nothing. Précisément rien!”
“Tell me, Mademoiselle Foucault,” I asked, imitating the guttural pronunciation of her r’s, “the French marshal, his Excellency Franchet d’Esperey, didn’t he ever fall down?”
“Monsieur Negovan,” she said authoritatively, like a teacher of military history at St. Cyr, “marshals, and especially French ones, fall down only when hit by a bullet!” And with that she withdrew, exclaiming, “Quelle insolence! Quelle insolence!”
Making use of one of the few pieces of military data at my disposal, I shouted after her: “And what about Pétain? What shall we do about Pétain? Et que ferons-nous de Pétain, du Maréchal Pétain?”
This dispute—my personal war of independence—was repeated every time the compresses were changed. Nevertheless, the raw meat was doing its job: I felt stronger hour by hour, especially in my
arms, which were of importance to me, not just for the writing of my will—that was in fact almost finished—but in order to move the furniture, without which my plan couldn’t be brought to its conclusion.
Mlle. Foucault came in early each morning when I was already writing, but fortunately she fussed around in the kitchen without showing any interest in my work. Only in the afternoons did she take her knitting and sit down in the armchair opposite my desk as if she were the mistress of the house. She reassumed this touchingly familiar position after my evening meal, which by habit I took in the study, until nine o’clock, when she gave three yawns—always three but brief, one right after the other—and said: “Enfin, I think it’s time for bed.” She then rolled her knitting into a neat ball, pushed it into her nurse’s bag, took away my writing implements in the middle of a sentence, and despite all my protests led me off to the bedroom. For obvious reasons I undressed even though I’d get up again as soon as she had left. Meanwhile on the one-legged table in the study, she prepared the bottle with my drops and pills, which I would use if I became ill in her absence. Then with irritating zeal she would tuck me in on all sides, put out the light, and having wished me good night in French (always in French), she would leave. The last thing I heard before I got up and resumed my work was the sharp rattle of the key in the lock.
Today for the first time I dared to pull my pyjamas over my shirt and underclothes so that, in my struggle for time, I could reduce its waste to an absolute minimum; I could hear her clattering her heels and the bottles, but she still didn’t come into the bedroom. I was really getting angry: she exasperated me with her attention and at the same time spied on me; because of her, I hadn’t managed to take a look at the newspaper which I had bought on the way home and was keeping hidden under the carpet. If she saw me reading it, I would have to offer some awkward explanation. But I intended to glance through it rapidly, as soon as I finished my will.
This last I have to finish in the course of the night; by tomorrow morning everything must be ready and sealed. Sealed with sealing wax, stuffed inside a white envelope, and placed in the bottom of the top right-hand drawer of my desk, whose key will be hanging with the other keys at my belt.
At last Mlle. Foucault came in. “Perhaps you would like me to sleep here, Monsieur Negovan?”
“Thank you, no.”
“Vous me paraissez éreinté, un peu pâle, n’est-ce pas? You’re not feeling ill?”
She felt for my hand to take my pulse, but alas, under the blanket she touched my shirt cuffs, confirmed her suspicions, and snapped:
“Grand Dieu, Monsieur Negovan! What do these childish tricks mean? Sleeping in your underclothes, I wouldn’t have expected that from a man your age! Such vulgar behavior—honestly! Une telle conduite ne s’est même pas passée dans les tranchées de Salonique!”
“To hell with your Salonika!”
“If you please, get undressed at once. Vite! Vite! And don’t think I won’t come back to make sure!”
While she waited in the study, I got undressed. Quite honestly, I hadn’t been so furious for years. I must ask, therefore, that my rather violent vocabulary not be misconstrued.
“Such a thing,” I shouted, “Marshal Franchet d’Esperey would obviously never have done! He wouldn’t have been brave enough! Isn’t that right, Mademoiselle Foucault? Nor would my blessedly departed brother, monsieur le général, have ever so degraded himself, n’est-ce pas, Mademoiselle Foucault? But there was no mob of louts with clubs waiting at the gates of their houses! No, Mademoiselle Foucault! But Arsénie Negovan refuses to die in a nightgown simply because—without any permission from me—you take it into your head to play governess! I categorically refuse to die in my pyjamas! I won’t die like those Russian merchants who hardly had time to throw fur coats over their nightshirts! Some didn’t even have time for that, they were beaten to death in their nightshirts! Can you hear me, Mademoiselle Foucault? Est-ce que vous m’avez entendu?”
I don’t know if she heard me or not; if she had, it would have had no effect at all on her behavior. She came in with a firm, masculine step, tucked in the edges of the blankets, put out the light, and said arrogantly:
“I’m going now. We’ll keep all this from Madame Katarina, of course. Bonne nuit, monsieur.”
“Go away, mademoiselle!”
Stretched out in the warm, slack darkness, I listened to the sound of Mélanie’s heels fading away. Suddenly I was back in the children’s room of our house on Gospodska Street. George was squirming about in the next bed (Marko, the future Emilian, was already away at the seminary), and those steps dying away like the ticking of a clock were my mother’s. My mother had been there just a moment before; the sweet smell of lilies still hung in the air. Together we had said an Our Father and a Hail Mary, then she had covered us up, and kissed us on the forehead. Lying there, I listened as her steps receded, ready to jump out of bed and set off with my brother on pirate adventures over the vast and mysterious continent of our darkened room.
Then I got up, and, while dressing myself even more meticulously than usual, I thought about Mlle. Foucault. I in no way approved of Katarina’s fondness for this naturalized Serb, even though her social origins were beyond reproach, and her services to Serbia had been rewarded with military decorations. Nor was I moved by Katarina’s story about how during the Occupation Mlle. Foucault had sold her own possessions but preserved the general’s, in order to support him—most probably because I despised his games with tin soldiers from the bottom of my heart. In all fairness, though, I’ll add that the dominant trait of her personality was loyalty, the loyalty of a domestic animal, which after George’s death she had transferred to Katarina and in part to me. If that devotion hadn’t been combined with such an authoritarian will, arrogance, and insistence, I swear I’d have written of Mlle. Foucault in a far more kindly manner. And so, still retaining my hateful memory of her, but in the knowledge that Katarina will be pleased:
•
Article 9. To Mlle. Mélanie Foucault, retired army nurse, along with the apartment on Lamartine Street I leave, for her enjoyment during her lifetime, the basement house in Tadeusz Koszczuski Street, so that she may receive the rent until her death. Afterward the house is to revert to my universal heir as designated by this will.
•
Now that’s done. Katarina will see that, despite my stern demeanor, property owner’s affairs have not alienated me from those everyday sentiments which she herself has cultivated. The legacies to Mlle. Foucault, Mr. Martinović, and the caretaker Maestro Šomodjija—not to mention those to Katarina, Isidor, and Emilian—give proof of my finer feelings, which have been disputed all my life. And since I’ve firmly resolved to leave nothing to that double-dealing lawyer Golovan (apart from the sad duty of certifying this will as cosignatory), and since I have no reason to leave anything to my country, which tomorrow will take everything it can lay its hands on anyway—voilà!
It is precisely that possibility which has worried me whenever I turn from my reminiscences to my will. All the time I’ve felt a certain resistance whose origin I haven’t been able to grasp. I attributed it to my hesitation as to what to leave and to whom, when I passed from my memoirs to my will, and to the sparseness of my own story, when I returned from my will to my life. But my anxiety was a natural consequence of my action; it resided in the irreconcilable contradictions between the order which I prescribed in this document—order which calls for legality, continuity, and justice—and the disorder which brings with it revolution: disorder which, constituting the life of the lower strata, calls for force, discontinuity, and illegality. Therefore one of the two, my memoir or my will, must be in vain. These incidental jottings of my memoir surely can’t be futile; they didn’t have to be and don’t need to be acted upon. But my will must be, if it is to be a will at last, if it is to be upheld as a document which determines the future of my property.
And when did a revolution ever have consideration for property?
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br /> When did it ever recognize the right of inheritance?
When did it ever respect any rights of ownership at all?
Perhaps this revolution will do all that.
Perhaps it will show some concern for that man who was carrying the red flag—the one who ruined my hat—if he’s still alive, of course.
Will it or any of its Aramaic brethren perhaps see to it that Mlle. Foucault gets what she has justly merited, or the humble caretaker Šomodjija? And that my houses are distributed as I have determined in this document?
What is it all for? Why am I writing a will?
To abandon it now, half finished—wouldn’t that be an act of surrender to the mob, quite incompatible with the dignity of a Negovan, and even more dangerous than the loss of my Boer hat?
No, not for anything could Arsénie allow his bookkeeping, of which this will is the crowning glory, to be left unbalanced. That would be beneath his professional honor.
And then, well, even the Revolution would have to give way to some kind of order and proclaim laws to be observed, among which those concerned with personal property and personal relations would occupy an honored place—even if the sense of possession was to all appearances abolished. And tomorrow, when Arsénie Negovan will be no more, people will accumulate personal property, and having done so will want to leave it to their children. And their children will want to go on accumulating and add what they accumulate to that already accumulated, and leave it to their children—and so on for ever and ever. The sense of possession is ineradicable; it will go on for as long as man exists, and heart and mind and character, and virtues and vices, and memories and goods and houses, and all this is only one huge estate under mortgage to death which during our lifetime we can augment or disperse.
Because of this, I won’t lay down my pen until I have concluded my testament, after which come what may!
Not counting Emilian, whom I don’t consider an heir, I still have two legacies to make, two further paragraphs in which I will leave my library to my nephew Isidor (insofar as it’s concerned with building), and an appendix to the one in which, along with all my movable assets, I will leave No. 17 Kosaničićev Venac to Katarina. In these additional paragraphs I must take care of the most delicate part of my last wishes: my efforts on behalf of my beloved houses.
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