Miljenko Jergovic - The Walnut Mansion

“Good day, and excuse me if I’m bothering you with something that doesn’t have anything to do with the mail, but I don’t know who to ask. I was in a barbershop, but they sent me to you. You see, I’m looking for an apartment! Not for a day or two but for six months at least. So you see, if you can tell me who to go to, I’d be very grateful to you.”

Vito looked at the man in confusion. Maybe he’d been sent from the royal palace. He would probably be some prince but surely not Prince Karađorđević: the Karađorđevićes looked different, weren’t that refined. Although it wasn’t impossible, at least judging from his build, because the Karađorđevićes were also slender and tall. Thin, but strong. Just look at him— he was thin as a matchstick, but he could carry three sacks of cement in his arms! Vito would have taken him in— it would be good to know such people, whatever they were and wherever they came from, but God forbid he show him his house! That would be like trying to put him up in a doghouse or a chicken coop. Too bad, but that’s what he deserved since he always took care of others more than himself. If it were any different, if he’d thought of himself, if he’d hoped for anything else but to be a mailman and a postal worker all his life, he would have built a house in which he might receive a man like this, and then everything would have gone better. You’re the same as the company you keep— people didn’t say that for nothing! But now it was over; he’d missed his chance. That’s too bad, really too bad, he thought, shook his head, and seemed to the stranger to be mentally handicapped.

“Come over to my place,” Mina spoke up. Everyone was taken aback for a moment.

“But you. .,” one of the other women started to say but stopped. And Mina was almost surprised to have heard her own voice. They all laughed at the same time, all four of them. They felt as if they were at a chance meeting of a nobleman and a noblewoman in front of the restroom in the Hindenburg. Someone was inside, sitting on an ivory toilet seat and playing with the gold chain of the water tank, and everyone had to pee.

She took him to her place, to the second-story apartment that she hadn’t gone into since the day her sister had died. Petka had been ten years older than Mina; she hadn’t ever married either, nor had she needed anyone else since she had her sister. Petka’s death was the only truly terrible event in Mina’s life. She just lay down one day after lunch, as she always did, and never woke up again. If it had been different, if Petka had suffered, if she’d heralded her departure with any kind of sign, it would have been easier for her sister. As it was, that was the one image that dimmed her thoughts and came suddenly. When it seemed that everything was fine and that there was peace everywhere, Petka’s white face would flash through her mind: her half-open lips, with a thin strand of spittle hanging from them, thinner than the finest thread, at the end of which there was a tiny globule sinking downward that would break the strand at any moment. She couldn’t remember whether it actually did, whether the strand broke. Actually she couldn’t remember anything because the next moment she shouted and ran from the room and out of Petka’s apartment. And then she fell down the stone steps that led to the yard. She didn’t know what she’d wanted then— to call for help, to escape death, which was preparing to come for her too? Or maybe she hadn’t wanted anything and so fell and spent a month in the hospital, where the doctors told her that she would never walk again? They always said such things. What did doctors know about walking?! Nothing. Just as they couldn’t tell her what Petka had died from. Could it have been the rancid oil that did her some harm? Or was it that the chard wasn’t young? Chard had to be picked and eaten while it was still young, before it turned bitter and got to be full of poisons. Who knows what kinds of poisons kill people, where they all are, and how they are accumulated?! If people knew how to take care of themselves, they wouldn’t ever die. Death wasn’t something natural, like the changing of the seasons, spring, summer, fall, and winter. Rather, everyone died from some illness. And every illness came from some poison. Petka had died from some poison too. Mina knew this and didn’t need anyone to tell her about it. People were unhappy, miserable creatures; people were cats that didn’t know enough to run off of trolley tracks. And people didn’t know what all killed them! If they knew, they would be angels! Angels were harmed by the same poisons as people, but angels knew what was poisonous and gave it a wide berth. The more poisons there were in the world, the less angels protected people. They didn’t have the time or a way to do it because they had to protect themselves. And it was better that way because if angels thought more about people than about themselves, they would soon disappear. Just as Petka disappeared, and when you get old, it seems that everyone with whom you’ve lived is disappearing. You don’t die until you’re all alone. Mina was convinced that this was true. She didn’t believe in God or the saints because she didn’t know what God was supposed to be or what the point of being a saint was except that they were supposed to be in eternal torment. Only a sick imagination could come up with saints! But Mina did believe in angels! Angels were here and everyone saw them. Children and adults, believers and unbelievers, smart people and people with no brains at all. It was just that people didn’t recognize that they were angels of all things and thought that they’d seen something else. People, just like angels, didn’t have time either. That was why one should pity both of them. Almost as much as the fish. Petka might have been Mina’s angel. But maybe she wasn’t. Maybe she was nevertheless just her sister. Who would know any more? Time had passed; a lot had been forgotten. And how could anyone even know that someone was their older sister? You were born, and they told you that! But people tell children all kinds of things, and they believe it when they grow up.

Mina was very disturbed and didn’t go into Petka’s apartment. For two full years. So she wouldn’t see that image or another even more terrible one.

And yet now she was unlocking the door while Rudolph Valentino stood behind her. Actually a perfect likeness of him; Mina wasn’t crazy enough to believe in priests’ tales! And how could Rudolph Valentino know their language? He was breathing behind her as if he were frightened too.

“He’s so handsome,” Mina whispered, covered her lips with her index finger, and pointed up at the ceiling.

“What’s up with you?” Regina asked, confused. Her friend had never spoken first, and it had never happened that she found her just sitting amid stockings that needed darning and doing nothing. She just widened her eyes like those lizards that in summertime slip into cold bedrooms from the terraced soil outside and watch people napping in the afternoon with the gaze of elderly people when they stop in front of something pretty lying in the dirt on a road.

“He’s so handsome, dearie! You can’t imagine,” Mina continued.

“Who are you talking about?” asked Regina. Maybe Mina had gone crazy from so much solitude. Her years weighed heavily on her, more years than you can imagine when you’re a girl and only twenty-six years old, and what’s more you know that even twenty-six is a lot, too old for everything you haven’t begun but should have. Especially for everything that’s come to pass since the day your childhood ended but couldn’t stir you to act. Mina was an old turtle; her little head smiled from inside its oversized armor, and you wondered whether that was a beak in the middle of her face or maybe still a nose. Did turtles have beaks or noses? No one knew because no one cared. Too old for anything, Mina was slowly crossing from one side to the other. Something on the other side frightened Regina that morning, and it would have frightened anyone who knew Mina and loved her. There weren’t very many such people, and Regina was first among them. That was what she thought. Or used to think. When Mina got old, Regina would take care of her and be the substitute for the man she’d never met. People got married mainly with thoughts of old age, their own infirmity, and death. They imagined that the other one would look after them, feed them chicken soup, and salt the earth that would cover them. No other reasons existed. That was the only one. And then you wondered whether it was selfish for every man and woman to think that they would die first. And either she or he would watch over you and rearrange the black clothes in the closets. The men’s black clothes were always under the women’s because that’s the way the world was. One always had to please the man. However, there was justice in the fact that it was often they who died first. No one could set that up any differently; death takes us away as it sees fit and not according to the choices of men. And people who die alone are the ones who lose out. Mina wasn’t going to die alone! Regina had decided that long ago, but now she was wavering. Mina was suffering from insanity, and her young friend didn’t want to have anything to do with insanity. Insanity was a disgrace, and no one lost his mind by accident. With every crazy person there is a tiny decision to become insane. No one dies of his own free will; people always lose their minds of their own volition. Regina was convinced of this in the early spring of 1931. And she often thought about it. About insanity and crazy people. About Bepo Ozretić, who mumbled old Turkish curses, recognized no one, didn’t turn around or twitch when children called out his name. And he smelled of urine and shit. It couldn’t be that he didn’t want that. He’d been the captain of a ship, had a family and a gray stone coat of arms over the entrance to his house. First he took a hammer and knocked off the coat of arms, and then he started smelling like urine and shit. That’s what he wanted, that’s what he deserved, and it made sense that his family and in-laws had abandoned him.