Miljenko Jergovic - The Walnut Mansion

Little Luka sat on the floor, and it seemed that not even he was particularly interested in Father Ivan’s appearance. He was more interested in a lizard that ran through the kitchen and slipped under the china closet. And the priest, of course, knew his parishioners well and what kind of house he was coming into, so he didn’t pay attention to those who were there. With Angelina’s mute assistance he said his prayers quickly, crossed the air over dead Kata, extended his hand to everyone, and went outside hastily and without saying good-bye. It was Christmas Eve, and it was almost indecent to die on Christmas Eve.

Father Ivan had hardly left when Dara Živoderka showed up, a woman in her late fifties who ran an unregistered funeral home in the city. Stout and strong, with arms like a circus weightlifter’s, she would take care of everything that a mourning family wasn’t ready for or trained to do. She carried Kata into the bedroom by herself, laid her down on the floor beside the bed, and took all of the necessary equipment out of a large leather suitcase that she carried with her: a tin basin, wooden clamps for straightening out crooked joints (in case the deceased had stiffened in an irregular position), a silk kerchief for closing jaws, various pairs of scissors, and polished medical instruments that resembled gynecological ones that had no practical purpose apart from convincing families of the seriousness of Dara’s work. She ordered all the men to leave the room and sent Regina to fill the basin. When she came back, she found her mother already completely naked.

“Stand here and don’t ask anything,” the woman ordered. She moistened a sponge and started to wash the dead body. She was agile, with a routine in her movements that one sees only in professional dishwashers in large hotels. She knew the anatomy of the human body, its folds, depressions, and bulges better than the Creator.

“Get the clothes ready that you’re going to move your mother in,” she said, cleaning the dough off Kata’s hands. Regina didn’t understand her right away. What move? Probably to avoid deluges of tears, Dara made efforts not to say death, procession, or funeral ceremony, and somewhere she’d probably heard how Muslims talked about all of that. The deceased moves to the akhira and continues on, according to her merits, to jannah, where the souls of the blessed reside, or to jahannam, where the sinful are subjected to the torments of hell. It was the same as with the Christians, in fact, but without words that would summon tears.

Regina got out her mother’s black dress clothes from the closet— a skirt, a blouse, and a hood that Kata wore when she went to funerals. Dara dressed the deceased again without anyone’s help.

“What about underwear?” the daughter asked softly.

“She won’t need it,” she answered firmly, placed the body on an even bed, folded the dead fingers on her chest, and said, “Okay; now don’t move her any more, and you can light a candle, but be careful so nothing catches fire.”

As she left the room, Dara crossed herself, just for herself and without looking any more at the result of her work. She did that as protection against curses and bad dreams. She charged a lot for her services, and left to wait and see whether death would bring sorrow to any other homes on that day before Christmas.

In those years Dara Živoderka was probably the most hated person in the city but maybe also the only woman about whom people didn’t make comments when she passed. Nor was she followed by loud gossip. If anything was said about Dara, it was done under one’s breath, in a whisper, and with the strictest discretion. People superstitiously feared her powers, and you never knew when you might need them. She came mostly without an invitation, after Father Ivan had finished his work, so people believed that she and the parish priest had some kind of business arrangement. The people of the city couldn’t agree on whether the priest took a part of her fee or whether the agreement with Dara was a part of his curatic mission. Naturally, the pious believed in the second and the godless in the first. On the basis of such things, one could tell what kind of attitude people took toward the Almighty better than from their behavior at Mass every week.

But everyone agreed on one thing: Dara occupied a higher position in the social hierarchy than Father Ivan. Parish priests come and go, but she remained in eternal collusion with death. The world recoiled from the dead, from evil spirits and the superstition that dying was infectious. They didn’t want to see the naked bodies of their parents, brothers and sisters, or dead children. Especially not withered genitalia, pudenda that had lost their last hair, members that had created them and of which all that remained was a wrinkled tobacco pouch, what you know exists but has to remain hidden. It’s terrible to touch icy skin and move stiff limbs, to see those close to you turning into useless, lifeless objects. Not even the most fervent believers could accept Father Ivan’s comfort completely. They too needed Dara Živoderka to liberate them from death. And everyone was glad that she came alone and uninvited because it wasn’t pleasant to pass by her house, let alone knock on her door.

She lived outside the city walls, below the hospital, with a Czech woman named Jarmila who had come on vacation before the war and never gone back to Prague again. They rarely saw that woman. She never went down into the city, but in the summertime she would sun herself and swim on the hidden rocks in the direction of Trsteno. Fishermen saw her lying alone in the sun and were enchanted by her naked body. She would be wearing only men’s military underwear and nothing else. But one didn’t talk much about that either, out of fear of Dara. Nor did they talk about what the two women meant to one another. Four years later, in the summer of 1931, it would be shown that there exist things much worse than open gossip, when one of the most sickening crimes in the history of the city took place. Dara Živoderka found Jarmila’s mutilated body, minus its head and breasts, on the hidden rocks after her friend hadn’t come home for two nights. The police didn’t find the murderer, nor was Jarmila’s head ever found.

Until her death in the late ’60s a crazed Dara searched for Jarmila’s skull, and the people of the city could hardly get used to the idea of preparing the deceased for the hereafter without anyone’s help. In the summer of 1931 an unspoken love was ended, and there was no longer anyone to care for the bodies of the dead.

Their neighbor Mare Laptalinka had evidently been waiting in front of their house for Dara Živoderka to finish her work so she could knock on their kitchen window. Bepo rolled his eyes and said nothing. Mare had pushed the most to get the best look possible at the deceased, and now she was there again.

“You should live, my children!” she said and held out a pan of stewed codfish. She looked around; Kata was no longer there. “Here, children, if you need anything. .,” she mumbled and ran out.

Đuzepe had hardly opened the pan, filling the room with an aroma that gives a kitchen color and form, when someone else was already knocking on the door.

Stjepo Alar, Bartol’s father and an old widower, was holding a dish full of fritters. He smiled as if to apologize, extended his hand to the two older sons, opened his mouth to say something to Regina, but couldn’t remember what he wanted to say.

“My Mirica, she wasn’t yet twenty, also died of heart trouble. It used to be that only men died of heart trouble. This world’s gone crazy. .”

Bepo offered him brandy, but Stjepo was in a hurry because there were already tears in his eyes. It had been fifteen years since Mirica had died. Bartol was only nine months old at the time, and his father had had to replace his mother. He changed him, cooked for him, did the washing, ironing, and everything that was a shame for men. For Stjepo it wasn’t shameful, but it was sorrowful. Whatever he did, it reminded him of Mirica, and every so often tears would run down his cheeks. He cried a whole sea of tears and couldn’t make his peace with it at all. People pitied him at first, but soon they started saying how Stjepo was a little flighty. A poor child with such a daddy! Because it wasn’t normal to cry so much for a woman. Maybe she’d been good to him, but she certainly wasn’t the only woman under the sun. He shunned company and withdrew into his house, partly because he couldn’t stop crying in front of strangers and partly because of an insult that he couldn’t endure. As soon as someone said that there were still good women and that he should find a mother for the child (even if they had the best of intentions), it was as if someone had driven a knife into his heart. Mirica was the only woman for him because she was his first and had departed like that. Such loves are hard to get over.