Miljenko Jergovic - The Walnut Mansion

He spent the rest of the day in bed next to the open window.

“Let the child rest; he traveled all day and night,” Rozalija said.

“And will I ever get any rest?” Paulina quipped, just to spoil her older colleague’s joy a bit. Rafo slept and woke up every ten minutes or so, listened to the noises outside, and then suddenly dozed off again.

“Baskets! Baskets! Buy your baskets!” called a nasal male voice. A horse-drawn wagon clattered by on the pavement. Dogs barked and horses neighed. And then the muezzin sounded from a mosque. It was loud, as if he were calling to prayer right under Rafo’s window. A few moments later a second was heard, and far off in the distance a third. Church bells rang at different times. Copper pots banged as they fell off the wagon of an inattentive merchant. A child who’d been hurt playing war between believers and infidels cried for help. From a garden a woman’s voice wailed: “Mustafa! Mustafaaaaa! Mujooooo! May lightning strike you dead, so help me God!”

After that he didn’t wake up until he was awoken by a bright oil lamp and Rozalija’s hand on his shoulder. The nun was frightened and didn’t laugh.

Alija had taken care of everything in its turn, content that the prices weren’t as he’d expected. He’d thought that Sarajevo would be an expensive city, and it turned out to be cheaper than Trebinje, Čapljina, and Mostar, cheaper than Dubrovnik, which had always been the essence of cheapness. Not only had he bought more roasted chickpeas and sweets than he thought he would, but he’d also bought a wooden train with a locomotive. It was a spitting image of the Mostar-Sarajevo trainset! If it had been colored black, there wouldn’t have been any difference at all! That train had everything: two smokestacks, a coal car, and a restaurant car. . If you looked hard, you might also find those two waiters, a raspberry juice and brandy. .

The gift made him so enthusiastic that he began to fantasize about getting his three sons to work as railroaders. As soon as they saw the train, they wouldn’t think of anything else.

And there were all kinds of kerchiefs, for various prices. The cheapest were the simplest: black, the ones that Christian women used to cover their heads when someone died; Muslim women used them to cover themselves when they went to a mosque during Ramadan. Colored kerchiefs were somewhat more expensive: yellow as the moon or cornbread, red as when you cut your finger, some as blue as the sky, others as blue as the sea in high summer, green as grass and flags, violet as who knows what. . At first Alija thought he would buy a violet one because he couldn’t think of anything that was so violet, but then he remembered Nafa. She certainly wouldn’t put something on her head if she didn’t know how it got its color. If he didn’t know, then she didn’t either. And then Alija saw a dizzying array of kerchiefs, and then Alija realized something that he should have known but hadn’t occur to him until he saw them. To hell with kerchiefs that only have one color! There were all kinds of multicolored kerchiefs— from those with flowers, roses and carnations, to those with flourishes and decorations. The stranger the decoration and the harder it was to tell what in reality it resembled, the more expensive the kerchief.

The most expensive kerchiefs in the market had decorations that one didn’t even see on mosque carpets, and they were also embroidered with gold thread. A thread of pure gold ran ever so faintly through the middle of the kerchief and across the decorations, as if put there by accident. Such kerchiefs cost Alija’s yearly pay. He looked at them and wondered: dear God, what fool would buy that for his wife? A very rich fool. But they weren’t fools because they were rich but because they didn’t have eyes to see that those kerchiefs were ugly. What marred them was what was the most expensive— gold! And God created gold to make each thing more beautiful.

Alija was astonished because he’d seen for the first time that gold can make something ugly. And he would have been glad if he could have been spared that knowledge. God help us from realizing that beauty can be ugly, he thought, and bought his Nafa the prettiest kerchief in the market. It had decorations that were more modest than a mosque carpet but were just right for her head, her looks, and her mind. Prettier decorations wouldn’t look good on her because Nafa would look uglier in them. And he would be ashamed to be beside her. The decorations on that kerchief seemed to have been thought up for her and him. So when they strolled through Trebinje on the emperor’s birthday or when he took her to Dubrovnik to see Stradun and how well the pavement was done there, everyone would say, “Now look at that fine woman, a real lady, and just look at her husband; he looks like he graduated from all the schools in Vienna!”

And all that because of the correct choice of kerchief. Alija was proud both of himself and of his choice, and of his Nafa, who was now waiting for him to return from his distant journey, from Sarajevo, the big city that was too big for viziers and so they never made it their seat of power. Or they were afraid of losing their sense of sight and their power of speech because of such beauty.

When the muezzins fell silent at dusk, Alija completed his purchases, and he still had money to return to Dubrovnik in style. Herr Heydrich wasn’t stingy after all. He’d given his faithful servant enough to treat himself too and to return home with dignity. Alija was a little ashamed of the episode with the borek. Thank God he was a coward because how would he face Herr Heydrich?! Not to mention the sin that he would have committed by leaving his children hungry. Oh, the fear God gave him was good, Alija thought. The only thing that worried him a little was whether Allah counted wicked thoughts in a man’s final reckoning. And how heavy were the uncommitted acts of spite on Alija’s scales? No one knew that, not even Hafiz Sulejmanaga Ferizoglu of the Ali-paša Mosque, whom, you see, Alija didn’t remember as he had spent so much time choosing a kerchief. He’d been enchanted by the silk and didn’t think of God in time and go to the mosque. And that was a sin. But how great? He started worrying and grew sad, and in a moment all of the joy of that day turned to lead. The roasted chickpeas, the sweets, the kerchief. . How had his mind not seen that God was tempting him all the time?! But why did he have to do it just like that? He hadn’t been buying gifts for himself but was trying to make his wife and children happy.

Alija consoled himself with the thought that making them happy was the same as making Him happy, adapting and adding to the few Koranic suras that he thought he’d memorized and understood.

Still, he would go to Skenderija to see the Austrian whores, the fabled low women before whom everyone kneeled when they saw them. That would be his temptation, Alija thought, lying to himself. He would go to them, see them, and sniff the air, but he wouldn’t touch them. He would show Allah how great his faith was. He would be humble, tiny as he already was, but hard as a stone in the foundation of the world. Hard as the stone that the pine above the Neretva clung to. As he went like a sleepwalker toward Skenderija, a ruffian laughed at his question of where that was and said:

“Just go straight along the Miljacka, and when you can smell women’s parts, well, you’re at Skenderija.”

Alija mumbled the prayers that he could remember and looked up every so often at the sky, expecting that God would probably give him some sign if what he was doing wasn’t good. The sweets in his breast pocket were melting, his pockets full of roasted chickpeas were about to burst, he squeezed the kerchief so hard his fingers tingled, but Alija felt nothing as his heart dragged him to the low women and his soul froze in terror.