Miljenko Jergovic - The Walnut Mansion

For nine full months (the time that the friar smeared the doorknob) the palms of the young divinity students smelled of garlic. In that year of 1931 a season of shallow and tepid contemplation lasted from spring until winter. It was revealed that in the rituals of the church the stench of garlic did more harm than the smell of incense did good. The good Lord probably would have forgotten his children without hearing the voices of their hearts if that love had lasted and if Aris Berberijan hadn’t disappeared from the city as suddenly as he’d appeared. After that the bitch also lowered her tail, and her eyes filled with tears.

Why did Aris run away from Regina? She would never find an answer to that question, and as long as she sought it, it would determine the course of her life and take her in directions in which, if it hadn’t been for him, she would never have gone. After the first nights they spent together in the hospital, they became everything that lovers can be for one another. She’d found the man of her life, with whom she would bear children and build a house on the coast, far from neighbors and vicious rumors outside their four walls, a man with whom she would sit on a verandah under an arbor and listen to bees buzzing above clusters of grapes that were bursting under the September sun and watch sails out on the high sea under which industrialists from Prague were enjoying their cruises; she’d found a man with whom she’d spend time while the sun set and alongside whom she would await her dying hour, on a shared bed, at the same moment, holding hands under their wedding photograph, which their grandchildren would inherit and take with them to other cities and countries.

In no time he forgot his father and the ground in which he was preparing to lie in eternal sleep, the law office that was already covered in dust, and under the door of which there was a growing pile of invitations to diplomatic balls, firemen’s parties and soirées with colleagues, a gathering of criminal law specialists in Opatija, and congratulations on forgotten anniversaries and verdicts that had saved the skins of murderers. Aris didn’t have an answer to the question of whether he’d really fallen in love with Regina or she’d just helped him to split with his past and flee the deceit that he’d committed. Nor did he give it any serious thought. Regardless, Aris had no doubt about it. Love was everything that didn’t remind one of indifference, unhappiness, or hatred.

But the first step he took toward her was also his last. He would have agreed to live like that to the end of his life, fifty meters away from her home, receiving her every night into his bed and waking up alone because she ran home at five so no one would notice that she wasn’t there. He was afraid of anything more than that. Or he couldn’t endure the rhythm to which she planned their future life.

The next spring they would get married, and a year later they would have their first child. And then they already needed to be thinking about building a house! Or maybe it would be better to forget everything and leave the city immediately? To go to America? Maybe Italy? They said that New Zealand was heaven on earth, though it was far away, in the middle of the ocean. And it was better to be as far away as possible. Where those you’re running away from can’t reach you. And maybe Zagreb or Novi Sad? That was simpler. Building a nest among one’s own people and surrounded by customs that weren’t foreign.

He patiently refused Regina’s offers and ideas. He would find a bad spot or a factory error in every one of them, and she would smile and say:

“Yes, I hadn’t thought of that.” But not half an hour later she had something new in mind, some happiness that he then found to have some defect. Instead of thinking that Aris in fact didn’t want it, which any rational woman would have realized, Regina had the impression that something was wrong with her. She planned badly, silly things came to her mind, and she would have already lost her head if it hadn’t been for him. Fortunately, Aris was as smart as he was handsome, so he always told her what was wrong with what she’d thought up. But he was also just as good, allowing her to keep coming up with ideas, plans, and fantasies. Another would have forced his will on her, but he wouldn’t! He waited for her to discover something that would make them happy and was clever at the same time! Months passed in that imaginary waiting game, right until Aris realized that he’d jumped out of the frying pan and into the fire. Regina’s plans for happiness resembled his father’s questions about what was just. The time to run away again was drawing near.

Mina darned stockings, pleated skirts, and pretended not to notice and not to realize what was going on. The man who had settled into the house of fear and sadness had liberated her from Petka’s death. She opened every door, went through the rooms, including the one in which the strand of spittle with the little droplet at the end had broken. She wiped away the dust and rearranged things that had been fated never to be moved from where the dead hand of her angel had placed them. On days when there was no southerly wind, when the air was like clear water, and the stars were aligned for a childlike happiness, Mina smiled at herself. She was the master of fate and fear; she mutely spread her arms and nodded, instructively as if someone were watching her. The days, months, and years when she’d avoided the empty house seemed silly. But there was no going back— it had happened once and wouldn’t happen again! You’re the slave of your images, and you always will be. When you emerge from bondage— which was possible with a lot of luck and if your angel was so inclined— the years you lost remained in the fetters. She could sense this on nice days as she cleaned Aris’s rooms and lifted clouds of dust that could remember Petka’s epithelium, hair, and fingernails. A ray of the sun is contoured best in a cloud of dust. Only then do you see its edges clearly, when it is sharply refracted in the crystalline mirror or a young woman’s vanity.

Why is it that women’s dressing tables are called the same thing as the futility of human endeavor? Because in city apartments young women’s dressing tables are the cenotaphs of young souls. That was where Petka primped herself, combed her hair, and put on makeup for a love that never came. The mind is the place for a young woman’s hope, and hope is the most a soul can have. A soul without hope is the soul of an old woman. Old age comes early, much earlier than the time when men stop turning around to look at you. Old age comes when you build bulwarks around yourself that love can’t scale. Petka built them early, and Mina took after her older sister. They turned into old maids, which was the second biggest scandal in this city. The biggest would have been for people to declare them to be whores. Or even worse (and there are such cases), if people had spoken about them both as old maids and as whores. In that case there wouldn’t have been any quiet compassion, according to which people draw a distinction between women without love and women who go too far in love. The change that Aris brought into Mina’s life was like a belated revolution, but the harvest it produced was one of a kind of quiet happiness. At least on clear and sunny days and on nights when the stars were perfectly aligned. Then she had the temerity to do what she’d never dared before. She would talk with Petka’s shadow, laugh out loud at her fears, wipe away the dust that was turning into a gray sheep’s fleece under her hand. And then her heart would start pounding when she touched one of his things. A shaving brush, a razor with an ivory handle, a belt with a buckle in the shape of an eagle’s head, the smooth and firm leather of his shoes. In their polished black surface she could see her own face, a wrinkled and deformed dwarf laughing silently. And then she would grow afraid of Aris’s coming back unexpectedly. She skipped across the parquet floor and didn’t know where to go. She was bathed in alternating waves of hot and cold sweat. Everything that the man left behind was so dangerous and attractive. She found a little red rubber pump for enemas; she could feel a handful of hazelnuts in her throat; she couldn’t breathe. Poor man, if he’d told her, she’d have mixed him some tea for such problems! She quickly chased away an inappropriate thought. She squeezed the pump with her ring finger; it hissed air and there was the smell of chamomile; a few grains of dust flew up toward the sky. She ran out of the room and locked the door. If he came unexpectedly, she’d tell him that she’d grown afraid. She lay down on his bed. The pillow had absorbed the lavender in Aris’s hair; her heart beat like ten galley slaves trying to escape from a sinking ship. For a few seconds she didn’t know what to do and ran toward the bathroom and wet herself halfway there.