Borislav Pekic - Houses

Arsénie’s story touches on its author’s at a curious tangent: At the tender age of eleven, Pekić took part in the anti-German protest of March 27, 1941—the very one that precipitated Arsénie’s retreat from the world. The resulting arrest was only the future writer’s first. More serious consequences followed the next arrest, in 1948, by the new regime: five years in prison, during which time he contracted tuberculosis. After reading of how Pekić resorted to toilet paper to keep his diary in prison, one might see differently Arsénie’s use, in his self-imposed prison, of the backs of old rent bills to record his memories. After his release, Pekić found success as a writer, but in 1971 he emigrated to London. With the end of Communism, he returned to Belgrade and helped form the new Serbian center-left Democratic Party in 1990. As with Arsénie, however, there was to be one more demonstration: an anti-Milošević rally in 1991, at which he was assaulted by security forces. No more than liberation from the Germans did liberation from Communism lead, in Pekić’s lifetime, to the democracy he’d desired. But he already knew that Arsénie was deluded in imagining “the explosive return to their God-given place of things violently overturned.” He died the following year, in London, of cancer.

— BARRY SCHWABSKY

Since I have now reached those years in which man’s allotted span comes to its natural end, and moreover since my health is no longer of the best, I, Arsénie Negovan, son of Cyrill Negovan, rentier here residing, have decided, being fully lucid and in possession of all of my mental faculties as prescribed by law, to set down this testament, and in it to state my final, incontestable will regarding my movable and immovable possessions, and whatsoever may concern their preservation as follows…

Being of advanced years and in declining health, I, Arsénie Negovan, son of Cyrill Negovan and owner of this property, have come to the decision on this third day of June, 1968, being fully lucid and with all my mental powers unimpaired, to compose my testament on the basis of the right I have by law, and in it to divide up my movable and immovable…

Bearing in mind all that I experienced in the course of that evil morning, and being conscious of the serious threat that very soon I shall be in a position where in all probability I shall be unable to express anything at all, most particularly my legal will, I have lost no time nor allowed myself respite…

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As I take up my pen to explain in more detail this haste to write my will — haste for which my advanced years and my declining health are only a pretext — it will be best for me to begin without the hypocrisy of so-called introspective reflection and by admitting that on that morning, which I’m convinced was decisive for the course of my hitherto uneventful life, I was very upset, filled with anxiety, not to say disturbed. I hadn’t been in what for me, a man of substance and Vice-President of the Chamber of Commerce, was such an exceedingly unseemly state since 1941, when I formally submitted my decision to retire from my business affairs. For it was already apparent to even the feeble-minded that those who were left with the decaying Monarchy around their necks were rushing headlong to destruction. So I entrusted to that misalliance of my wife, Katarina, and the family lawyer, Mr. Golovan (former King’s Counsel) while still myself retaining overall control, of course — such matters as the routine collection of rents and loan interest; all that degrading business connected with the presentation of promissory notes which had expired as a result of broken leases; and even that more attractive aspect — the only one among all the financial advantages which allowed one something unselfish, passionate, and truly constructive: the maintenance and expansion of the property owner’s capital.

But considering my careful, self-centered mode of life and advanced years — they total seventy-seven, unfortunately, and I hadn’t crossed my threshold during the last twenty-seven — everything that I had in mind to undertake immediately upon my wife’s departure (for which she had already largely prepared herself), and that required from me a much more substantial sacrifice than that which I had made long ago in resigning my active functions, was without doubt near to remaining simply a mournful fantasy reserved for some more courageous year. Indeed, almost the same distress had seized me in 1919 when I first encountered the Bolsheviks in the eastern suburbs of Voronezh during a ghostly raid by Semyon Mikhailovich Budyony’s Red Cavalry, with their pointed green-felt caps, and their leather overcoats strapped tightly round by the many bands of their cartridge belts. With that immediacy peculiar to the Negovans, I had understood that I had no wish ever to encounter them again, even in some benign form, even among the harmless nonpareilles announcements from the Soviet Union. That same distress seized me yet again in 1924 (and with this, except for my feelings of shame at the March Putsch, the list of my states of exceptional anxiety is completely exhausted), when I took possession of my first house, the first of those noble, luxurious, excellent model buildings which today, I hope to the satisfaction of all, embellish the capital.

In the feverish anticipation of at last being alone, I had dragged the armchair to the western window earlier than usual. At that observation post (although the term firing position would have better suited that fat, turret-shaped dormer window jutting out over the grimy, worn roofs of Kosančićev Venac, and the aggressive mood in which I took possession of it) I would stay sometimes from noon on, until dusk, spreading its black dust down the river, impeded any further contact with the view and the New Township, whose construction I had continuously followed through binoculars of varied type, size, and range. The day before yesterday I was “on station” early — thus did I designate my favorite armchair when it stood up close to the window; in any other position it lost that honorary appellation and reverted to the anonymous status of furniture — I was, I say, “on station” from dawn on, running the risk that Katarina would notice my agitation, interpret it as an outward symptom of my illness, and put off her departure for the spa.

I even pretended not to notice Mlle. Mélanie Foucault, who was sitting behind me, sterilizing surgical needles in a tin bowl; or rather, seeming totally absorbed with the area I was scanning with a pair of Mayer artillery binoculars, I manifested a complete absence of respect for the presence of my brother’s housekeeper. At a favorable moment I would ask for George; yes, that would do, if only to conform to the established rules of that senseless game in which I and his combined companion, nurse, and maidservant indulged ourselves — a game providing still further confirmation of my already ample observations of the general’s way of life. But now, I confess, I restrained myself. In the ensuing quarrel which would undoubtedly get out of control, I might have given myself away. On any other occasion, care for my considerably undermined health and my mood — which was as changeable as the sun’s movement in the heavens — would have been welcome, even though I usually countered such care with ill-humored refusal; now, however, any excessive interest in my person could easily have turned into a trap which could end my plan before it had even started. For it was necessary, more than necessary, for me to be left without surveillance as soon as possible, and for my solitary morning to be assured of Katarina’s absence in order to be spent exactly as I intended.