Miljenko Jergovic - The Walnut Mansion

Lunchtime had passed when the train arrived in Mostar, where everyone had to change to another trainset that was going to leave for Sarajevo in two hours. The dispatchers and conductors would pronounce the word trainset with a special dignity in their voices, as if they were speaking about Mozart or Brahms, and take every possible opportunity to mention the Sarajevo trainset.

“Please purchase tickets for the Sarajevo trainset in the station,” they reminded the passengers, though most of them weren’t traveling any farther than Mostar.

“The Sarajevo trainset will be brought up forty minutes prior to departure. . The trainset is equipped with a special restaurant car, a Viennese restaurant on steel wheels— a wonder of the world. .! The Sarajevo trainset departs punctually and never arrives with a delay at its final destination. . Spitting on the floor of the trainset is strictly forbidden. .! The trainset consists of six, seven, or nine cars. We cannot know in advance. .! The trainset has the strength of a thousand of the strongest horses in the empire, which stretches from the northern to the southern seas. .! The trainset is a marvel of human engineering; the good Allah will have to try hard to create a greater miracle. .! If we nevertheless run late, it’s not due to the trainset but to objective circumstances on the route. .! Woman, are you continuing on with the trainset. .? Well, you don’t need the trainset; you’re already crazy enough on your own!” The Herzegovinian railway workers spoke their sweet speech in rhythm and made a clear distinction between trains and trainsets. What ran from Dubrovnik to Mostar was an ordinary train, but the unprecedented marvel that would take selected passengers to Sarajevo was a trainset. Why? Well, you’ll find out, you who’ll have the luck and a reason to travel beyond Mostar! When you cross the invisible line that divides Herzegovina from Bosnia, you’ll understand right away when God quit creating the world and at which moment he started making a trainset out of it. It was easy to imagine the envy that the travelers on a train felt toward those who would continue their journey on the trainset.

The name of the midget assigned to accompany Rafo from Dubrovnik to Sarajevo was Alija, and he worked in the Trebinje city administration stoking fireplaces and ovens. They chose him of all people so the boy wouldn’t experience a shock as soon as he sat down in the train. There was no more ordinary or simpler person than Alija in the city administration, so the little boy would have an easier time adapting to and accepting his transition from one world to another. Even an adult would be frightened the first time he went from a carriage to a steel behemoth and a locomotive replaced horses, so how wouldn’t a child?! But Alija accepted the task like a reward for his faithful service to the emperor and his homeland. He’d never dreamed of being able to see beautiful Sarajevo, and he told Rafo everything he was going to do in Sarajevo until his return to Trebinje, down to the smallest detail. He would buy roasted chickpeas and sweets for the children, buy the prettiest silk kerchief for his wife Nafa in the Bezistan Market. Then he would stroll streets where only gentlemen walked and go to the Alipaša Mosque, where the daily prayers were recited by Hafiz Sulejmanaga Ferizoglu, the most intelligent hafiz west of Damascus. Hafiz Ferizoglu knew not only the honorable Koran by heart, but also everything the Muslim mind had thought up from the beginning of time. . And after all that Alija would go to Skenderija, which was probably some street in the middle of Sarajevo where real Vienna whores sold you-know-what! But those weren’t just any whores; they weren’t like Saveta and Kata in Trebinje— they were wild girls, the prettiest there were, and there were few like them even in the sultan’s harem! They’d gone to school for their trade; they even have those kind of schools in Vienna, so they knew how to turn men into roosters and stallions, into Rudonja the bull, whose seed was paid for in ducats. Alija wouldn’t go to bed with the Sarajevo low women, Allah forbid, because how would he look Nafa in the eye and how would he perform the abdest? He just wanted to get a look at them. He’d been hearing tales of their beauty for ten years; anyone from the city administration who went to Sarajevo was bewitched by the low women, and there were also men who wouldn’t touch their own wives with a ten-foot pole after they had gone to bed with them. The file clerk Hamza had been with three low women and had lost his mind when he got back to Trebinje. When they mounted you and started singing their German songs, you forgot who you were and whom you belonged to. You turned into a winged charger, and it seemed to you that— God forgive me— the houries of paradise were spurring you onward. There was no greater sin, and Alija wasn’t going to burden his soul with that, even if he didn’t love his wife. But he loved her so much that even now he felt empty without her, so he would just peep into the yards with the Viennese whores, get a whiff of their fragrances— and they surely smelled of roses and jasmine. Because what could smell better than roses and jasmine? Then he would run outside so the spell wouldn’t intoxicate him— God forbid— and lead him into temptation.

Alija babbled constantly and regardless of the fact that he was sitting beside a boy whose whiskers hadn’t even started growing and who, in all likelihood, had no idea about any kind of female spells.

Rafo listened to him and nodded. He could have repeated everything that Alija said between Dubrovnik and Mostar, but it didn’t concern him, nor did he think about what the midget was saying. He was preoccupied with his own torments and would only occasionally lower his gaze to Alija’s feet, which didn’t reach the floor. When Alija got completely carried away by his enthusiasm for Sarajevo and the low women, he would squirm on the bench and kick with his feet like a little boy. In that scene there was a sorrow that Rafo could easily bond with.

In Mostar they went to eat borek before the Sarajevo trainset was moved up.

“That’s what Herr Heydrich ordered,” Alija said darkly and irrefutably. Rafo knew that he had to eat, even though his stomach was contracting from misery, because if he didn’t eat the borek Alija would probably collapse from fear before that Herr Heydrich. The midget said his name with fear, and it was very probable that he regretted that he himself wasn’t of a heroic nature. Because if he were, he would have kept quiet about the borek, and then he would have had more money for the roasted chickpeas, the sweets, and the kerchief. He would have cheated the emperor and the state and gotten by better in life. That was possible, Alija thought, but God hadn’t granted him to be like that. Whoever was granted this would get rich, spend his earthly days in luxury, and end up in dark jahannam. Alija was comforted because this was so, but again he couldn’t understand why his heart filled with pain if it was true that God sees everything and thieves go to hell. Difficult questions for his little mind! He had to get them out of his head, especially on that day when he was going on this, his longest journey, with which he’d been rewarded for his faithful service to the Viennese emperor. It was true that it was an earthly recognition, but it wouldn’t have come to pass without the approval of the great Allah, who sees everyone and knows everything. The emperor’s will was collaborating with the will of God. It pays to be good, he thought, as he watched Rafo struggling with the borek. Herr Heydrich had reminded him to buy himself some borek too. But if he told Heydrich that he hadn’t been hungry, he wouldn’t ask Alija to return the money. Herr Heydrich wasn’t stingy. Herr Heydrich was a gentleman.