by Igor Štiks
“Follow me then,” Catarina commanded, and the servants spread out, some on horseback, some with dogs, some on foot, screaming so loudly that the woods shook, and leaving behind old Mardi, who decided to give his soul a rest under a nearby tree.
The sun had just risen above the woods. Catarina raced forward. Enzo spurred his bay, and Maria did not fall a step behind. Catarina flew like an arrow amidst the densely spaced trunks of hundred-year-old trees, while Enzo’s nag, whose rider did not allow it to fall behind, felt the danger very well indeed, and even more so did Maria, who did not want to give him the opportunity of slipping away. This unfortunate fact—the fact that, as I said, Catarina was flying headlong in an unknown direction—clearly told the girl that the arranged plan had already largely fallen apart and that some new scheme was in effect. Even if she did not understand it clearly, she sensed it all too well in this mad dash.
Catarina suddenly turned aside and was lost amidst the pines. Enzo managed to keep pace with her, and Maria stopped where their horses had left deep tracks. There she sobbed quietly and for the first time, though without being completely aware of it, felt a hatred for her patroness, an unhealthy emotion for a young soul.
Meanwhile Enzo had fallen a good deal behind Catarina. After several minutes of following the hoof tracks and broken branches, he spotted her horse calmly drinking from a small spring. When he approached the water, he spied her washing her neck and face. At that moment he thought of all the things he would gladly sacrifice for this woman, but the list was cut short by her sudden turn. Enzo perceived her surprise when she said, “Ah, it’s you. Good . . . Why do you look at me so strangely?”
“It seemed to me that you were afraid.”
“Believe me, Master Enzo, fear in this place would be perfectly appropriate. For these woods are filled with bandits of all kinds, and until recently, as my husband revealed to me last night, Habsburg spies. I would not like to see them where you’re standing.”
“Nor in fact would I be happy meeting them in place of you,” Enzo replied, rebuking himself for not thinking of something wittier.
“All the rabbits have fled, as you see. What shall I do now?” she said plaintively.
“Rest a bit. After such a race . . .”
“Can it be that you are tired, Enzo? Come here, refresh yourself a bit. You didn’t notice that we lost Maria?”
What Maria? thought Enzo, as he approached. “No, I really didn’t. You led me too far astray, Catarina.”
Even before finishing his sentence, he had found her hand. She jumped suddenly away, like some sort of cat, glaring at him in an offended manner, but Enzo did not miss the fact that she had left her hand in his for an impermissibly long time. He took a step back and, bowing his head, apologized, “Forgive me, Catarina. I don’t know what came over me. The race must have deprived me of my senses.”
Although everything he had said to her after grasping her hand was pure courtliness, as we would say today, Catarina was nevertheless a bit frightened by his last words. She answered cautiously, as cautiously as she was able in such a situation, worried as she was that what seemed to her the overly loud beating of her heart would betray her. “Do not trouble yourself, Enzo. That must be it. The morning air has made you light-headed.”
She leaped quickly onto her horse and, before dashing away toward the approaching servants, said, “It seems to me that the girl is in love with you. Keep this in mind.”
Catarina rode away to the servants, and Enzo trotted toward the tree beneath which old Mardi was sleeping. In all directions the noise of excited hunters and the occasional cry of success could be heard. The upshot of the mistress’s hunt was, as usual, hardly enough to satisfy the needs of two healthy adults. But that was not really the reason for going hunting. Here what was being hunted was something concealed beneath the name of Mistress Mardi’s good humor. Nevertheless, on this occasion neither the love nor the enthusiasm of the servants could drive away the exhaustion and listlessness of Mardi’s wife. It was clear that she was eager to end the game she had started.
While the stable boys were putting those few rabbits in a sack, which afforded a moment of rest to the others, Maria uttered to Catarina the bitter words that had swollen up within her like a mountain river, and whose importance the mistress failed to see because of the infatuation taking root within her: “It’s as if you are still rushing along with the Lombardian, Madame.”
Catarina grudgingly waved her hand, warding off all the advancing poison, and, clenching her teeth, said candidly, “I am tired, Maria. Let us head toward the master.”
Meanwhile, Enzo had returned to the place from which the race had begun, sat down next to Mardi, and opened his canteen. Mardi stirred at the harsh odor of brandy and, still half-asleep, gladly took the bottle.
“I expect that this will return me my strength, dear Enzo. I’m so weary. And she, by God, it’s as if she were living in another world. How do you explain to a woman that the country is at stake?” he said, indicating the seriousness of his work and not concealing a certain pride that performing it afforded him. “I’m too kind. That’s why things are like this for me. She knows I would kill for her,” he added more softly, looking with affection toward the cloud of dust and listening to the horses’ commotion, which made the forest tremble.
“That, I hope, will not happen,” said Enzo, comforting both Mardi and himself.
“Well, you never know. But leave off. We must protect ourselves from the Habsburgs. Today I shall announce to the people that we are taking special precautions.”
“Is it dangerous? What are we to do?”
“It’s so bad that mothers in Rimini bring their children in from the streets as early as before dusk.”
“Before dusk?” repeated Enzo, clearly disturbed, emphasizing every syllable. “Double the guard, Master.”
“I already have,” said Mardi, a note of clear satisfaction in his voice. “No one is going to threaten my home, young man.”
“But who would dare?” Enzo said, ending the conversation as he took a sip of brandy and recognizing once again all the dear man’s simplemindedness, which offered security and egotism. Enzo felt himself under some strange protection, yet at the same time, Mardi’s short speech had breathed fear into his soul. But should he go against himself?
They all soon set off for the castle, having sent little Beppo to take their game quickly to the kitchen once they’d concluded that two bags were enough to contain it all. Beppo carried a few pheasants, the two or three rabbits, and a wild piglet. The tired company dragged itself on; the sun had reached the middle of the sky, and fatigue of differing kinds could be discerned on the faces of Catarina’s hunting troop. The Mardis ambled before Enzo, so that he heard Francesco remark upon his wife’s pallor and rebuke her with the words, “I told you, darling, hunting is a man’s game. Who has ever seen a noblewoman engaged in such labor! This work is not for you. You understand that it’s harmful to you. Give it up. Why such stubbornness, my dear . . .” and so on and so forth.
How boring and senile the old man is, thought two minds in the column, treacherously, at nearly one and the same instant.
4
In the morning, two days after this encounter, I went down to the beach when no one was swimming, in search of at least a little relief from the oppressive heat. I took along a well-known poetry book by Enzo Strecci for added pleasure as I relaxed under a pine tree after my morning swim. These were the poems that he wrote in the days preceding his fall, and it was that morning that I read the verses that just then seemed a proper stimulus for my melancholy. They shall be the motto of my narrative, worth chiseling onto the gravestone under which I shall be placed.
My inconstant heart one vow alone torments
That what has come upon me not be forgotten.
It did not take long before someone’s hands were suddenly placed over my eyes. I could tell they were a woman’s, and the first thing I thought of was that impertinent little creatur
e who’d so loudly expressed her love for my blackberries. Her thick, dark hair, and that threatening tongue, and those mocking eyes above her slightly Greek nose now appeared in my head as a worthy challenge, and the charm of this vision did not disturb my intense impulse toward deeds that would be pleasing to God.
A wave of heat rushed through my body, and I said, “So my blackberries are good, you think?”
But then the hands quickly fell away and I heard, “Don’t be angry, Niccolò, I didn’t mean anything by it.” I realized to my disappointment that it was Anđa. She moved away, looking at the sea, as if surprised by my question.
“You know how it is. It has to be that way,” she added, justifying herself sadly.
I wanted to soften her somehow and said, “But how could you possibly malign my blackberries, Anđa? Am I the sort of person one can build a young Communist career on?” Such was my attempt, but she did not take up the joke, blushing instead and continuing stubbornly to watch the rippled sea.
Then she changed the subject, growing cheerful: “Will you come to the pier today?”
“Maybe,” I answered, still thinking about the lovely creature. “Your friends will be there, too?”
She threw a rock away nervously and said, “Why do you ask?” She looked at me from under her brows. “You fancy one of them, maybe?”
“No, no. I was just asking.”
“So you don’t like any of them?” she asked, now trying to outsmart me.
“Well, you’re all so pretty.”
“But one is prettier to you, right?”
“I can’t decide,” I said, smiling like a man destined to carry a load he finds sweet, but Anđa did not continue the game. She appeared almost insulted.
“It’s that new girl, isn’t it? You like her,” she said, and without waiting for an answer, she ran off.
She stopped after several paces and responded, ominously, to the confusion in my eyes, “Watch out for her father. People say he’ll stop at nothing when it comes to her.”
I took her warning with a sneer and her resentment with the arrogance of an eighteen-year-old. Who could know to what extent, but she, too, had a hand in the misfortune that was about to come upon me. While I walked slowly home, Anđa’s accusation rang in my ears like a beautiful possibility, like the pleasure of something brand-new in a set of familiar, tired surroundings. And when that something is also irresistible, that much more are the heart and mind nourished with all sorts of often impossible thoughts.
Whether there is something in desire or if the devil himself drives us all to the path of ruin, I do not know, but what I had seen in my garden made me think that I had no choice but to give myself up to fate. Approaching the house, I saw the very same blackberry bush moving nervously as if someone were picking berries on the other side. It seemed crazy because I couldn’t believe that Ivanka would be gathering them half-ripe. I called out her name, but there was no answer. I sneaked into the garden like a thief but was interrupted by a familiar voice.
“Was it Anđa again?” I asked the friar impatiently, calling from the chair at the other end of the room, which by now was completely dark.
“If only it had been,” he said, and paused. “It was she. I realized it when she spoke.”
“They’re getting better from day to day,” she said. “I don’t know about you, but I like sour things. They’re not good when they get ripe. It’s the sign that their end is near.”
“The other day you stuck out your tongue at me, but now you’re milling about in my garden,” I said, pretending to be cold and unmoved, but in my chest it was as if a small African ensemble were warming up. I was a bit frightened by her impertinence and resolve, and the courageous way she addressed me. I lowered my eyes for that reason, pretending to pick the overly sour blackberries.
“Am I milling about your heart, too?” she asked, without blinking, while I made a firm decision, at that very moment, not to become confused. “How am I doing in there?” she went on.
“You’ll have a tougher time getting there.” See how clever and inscrutable I was with her?
“We’ll see about that,” she said and then approached to within a foot of me. I was as calm as a stone and wouldn’t for the life of me have stepped even an inch away. She put a blackberry up to my lips and, holding it there with her fingers, moved it slowly across them, as if she were using it to draw them again, and then suddenly she put it into her mouth and once again stuck out her tongue at me, this time to show me the whole blackberry on it.
The excitement must have driven all the blood from my face because she laughed loudly and repeated her words. “We’ll see about that,” she said, backing away. “Hey, meet my father. I followed him here. He’s upstairs, in the house.”
“What?” Her words struck me, bringing me back from the world of anticipated delight, and I instantly recalled Anđa’s warning.
“Only sshhh!” She disappeared behind the fig tree while I sorted out my thoughts according to Anđa’s prudent words and tried to imagine the threat that was her father, who, as she said, cared dearly about his only daughter. I repeated the warning to myself even after I had realized that I was falling in love and that, like a lover after all, I was prepared to throw caution to the wind. What Petra had said frightened me all the same, but I consoled myself, thinking that this was some new foolishness on her part.
She was telling the truth. In the doorway of my father’s room stood Petar Nižetić in the dark blue uniform of a security police commander and, though it was summer, shiny boots up to his knees. His hat was tipped back rakishly, which made his thin, sweat-plastered hair readily visible. He looked all puffy, like an admirer of the loza brandy they made so well in the part of the country from which he had come to us. He stared at me as a person of power stares, cocking his head mockingly to one side without responding to my greeting, until my father, from his bed, said, “This is my son, Comrade Nižetić.”
“You don’t say! Well, look at him, a young man already!”
“He’s come to have a talk,” said my father by way of introduction since there was no getting anything more from the stranger. “He’s the new commander. We’ve already . . .”
“We’re just checking, young man. Just checking. We, Comrade Darsa,” he said, turning toward my father, “are watching over you fallen Communists. We know if you’re straying farther from the path or, with any luck, improving.”
My father passed over these words, lowering his head, and Nižetić turned to me. “How old are you, kid?”
“Eighteen,” I answered confidently.
“A little older than my daughter, actually.”
This seemed to me like a sign of appeasement, like a moment of possible sympathy, so, disobeying her command, I unfortunately blurted out, “I met your daughter the other day at . . .”
I stopped when I saw his sullen expression. Nižetić stepped toward me—Anđa was a guardian angel—but stopped just close enough to pat my face, suddenly and somehow gently, with his big, soft palm. A father smilingly offering life advice: “I kill for what’s mine, kid. Communism and her.” Still smiling, he drew his finger across his neck. “These two are sacred to me. I don’t know anything else.”
The ensuing silence was broken by Nižetić himself, who was probably satisfied with the effect of its length. “Stay in touch, please. You know where the station is,” he said, walking toward the door, and as he stepped out, added, like a guest who has not yet crossed the threshold and whose return is already happily anticipated, “Let us keep each other safe from greater evil, brothers.”
CHAPTER THE FOURTH
The hunt had exhausted everyone, while the silence during and after the meal stimulated the desire of those present to sink into soft sheets and sleep through the afternoon. Some, in truth, desired to calm their turbulent thoughts. During the quiet meal Enzo’s kind heart was nevertheless struck by the mistress’s silence, which, it seemed, had lasted ever since the scene at the spring. During th
e entire dinner, not a single glance, wince, or gesture came from her direction. Had the morning’s encounter been a mere empty fantasy? Had she not left her hand in his too long? He wasn’t a child after all, so didn’t he know what this meant?
These thoughts of Enzo, which without exaggeration we may call rather melancholic, were interrupted by Mardi, who wanted to inform his intimate circle that he expected them to be present when, within a few hours and from the terrace of the main tower, he warned his subjects of the danger in which they and the whole country found themselves; that is, when he would introduce special security measures across the whole territory of Mardi county, which had the great honor and fortune to be protected from ill fate by his newly rampant and, in such a state (he took great pleasure in saying), strikingly resilient lynx.
After Mardi’s speechifying, Enzo returned to his spacious chamber rather dejected, in the manner of a gambler after an unsuccessful night. He threw his waistcoat onto the chair, left his hat on the sofa, shoved his boots up to the door of the oak armoire, and listlessly pushed his trousers to the edge of the bed. He sank onto the bed with his full weight, eagerly awaiting the first rays of the peaceful afternoon sun, which would sweep his emerging sadness away, or so he was hoping when, suddenly, he found himself on a horse next to Mardi, embracing him forcefully despite the impediments of the quiver and standard with its familiar lynx. Then he was galloping behind Mardi through a forest at such a speed that all he could see was the glitter of the leaves. Toward what was the honorable duke rushing?
Our vessel set forth
After Habsburg spies,
Oh, he who does not swear or curse
Will perish in the bishop’s chains . . .
And while the song echoed all around, Enzo saw Catarina approaching from one side, aiming her bow menacingly at them. Mardi laughed as if he were on his way to a wedding, truly, as if he were not even threatened by her obvious insanity. And she released an arrow that struck Enzo below his chest. He saw from her tears and furious destruction of the bow that he had not really been the target, but that learning how to hunt is not easy. Mardi saw what had happened, took out his own dagger, and thrust it into Enzo’s body just below the first wound, from which much blood was already flowing . . .