Miljenko Jergovic - The Walnut Mansion

“Don’t think about making a move because I’ll break your legs!” he warned the boy before he pulled his hat down over his eyes and drifted off into a slumber in which he tried to calm the sprouted onion and the spoiled Glamoč potatoes that had been frozen who knows how many times before they had ended up in Ivan’s borek. The wheels of the trainset clattered in a regular rhythm, as if the unerring hand of God were tolling church bells and calling his flock to repentance. The flood was coming, and the only ones who were safe were those who had the least to lose. Ivan had less than nothing and could slumber more deeply than any of the other passengers in the trainset.

He was awakened by a painful drumming in his temples. He thought that the pain was coming from the noise of the wheels and gripped the boy firmly by the elbow. Rafo groaned softly— so he was there! And then he felt that something strange was happening in his bowels. He heard the panicked signal of his own intestines; the strength of his muscles in their attempts to contain what was forcing its way out was growing feebler and feebler. A harsh heat, greasy, painful, and viscous, was raging inside him. He didn’t know what to do! Either he would jump out of the train and take a shit like a man, even if Rafo got away from him, or he would hold the fire inside him and protect the right of an eldest son, defend his honor before the Trebinje square, and save his soul. . The only thing he couldn’t do was soil his pants! People would smell it, and their scorn would devour him; they would kick him off the train and kick him in his side with their boots. . The trainset crept up Mt. Ivan slowly; it was hardly moving. His head was about to burst and flashes of light obscured his vision. Tightening the most important muscle in his body, he took the chain out of his bag and, without saying a word, started chaining up the boy’s legs and locking them. He couldn’t care less whether the conductors would see him; he tightened the chain as much as he could, and then, moments before he soiled himself, he ran through the car. The passengers watched him in confusion; a lady with a hat jumped up and frowned— maybe he was a pickpocket who was running from the police! Her purse was luckily in its place because he’d already jumped out of the train. He got caught in some branches and slammed down onto the rocks. His muscle had relaxed, a little spurt streamed into his underwear, but Ivan pulled himself together quite quickly, pulled his pants down, and with an explosive whine released from himself water, fire, and the unbearable stench of digested plum brandy. His head hurt unbearably; he closed his eyes and strained to eject what was left. Then, without losing time to wipe himself, he pulled up his pants and ran toward the train. The horror of the human heart can be such that a person no longer feels pain. He ran as he’d never run in his life.

The legend of the emperor’s godchild was finished all because Ivan Sikirić’s intestines had started working when the Mostar-Sarajevo trainset was almost at the top of Mt. Ivan, which divided Herzegovina from Bosnia and prevented the Mediterranean climate from reaching all the way to Sarajevo, presenting a challenge for architects and designers of the railway schedule because there was no locomotive that could ascend Mt. Ivan with a speed of more than a walk. But as soon as it crossed the top of the pass at Bradina, the trainset rushed at full speed toward the golden valleys and the Sarajevo basin so that not even the swiftest Arab horses could catch up to it. Ivan Sikirić ran in vain after the last wagon. He called and swore into the night in vain. He was left alone in the middle of unfamiliar country, where all one could hear was the howling of wolves and the distant sobs of forest fairies and spirits. Luckily, that was a year with no snow and no hard frost because otherwise he would have frozen to death by morning.

They reported Rafo’s disappearance, made inquiries everywhere: Had anyone seen him? Had anything been heard? Were there any children anywhere about whom it wasn’t clear who their parents were? They spent all their savings on phony reports and spies, whom they sent to Bihać, Višegrad, and Brodska Vrata. But the boy seemed to have disappeared without a trace. An inquiry came from the Sarajevo prep school asking why Rafo Sikirić hadn’t shown up for classes. Two nuns wrote letters every week with a request to contact them. Some people from the police also came. There was a suspicion that the family was preventing the boy from returning to school. .

A month later a sealed letter arrived from Ivan Polak that informed the first-grade pupil Rafo Sikirić that he’d been expelled from the school due to his disregard for school discipline and unexcused absences and that the decision had been forwarded to the minister of education personally. Three weeks later instead of the imperial appanage a request came for the money from the previous month to be paid back. That was a sign to the Sikirićes that Emperor Franz Joseph had renounced his godchild and that they didn’t know whether he was dead or alive. Instead of showing concern, instead of sending people to search for him across the empire, and instead of acting as godparents do in times of distress, the emperor had requested that his money be returned! In that winter of 1892, the Sikirićes were bitterly disappointed in the monarchy.

The town looked on their tragedy with malicious gloating, but regardless— the reputation of the Habsburgs sank very low in all of Trebinje! That wasn’t the state that they’d been hoping for, nor did its emperor treat all his subjects in the same manner. Or didn’t godparenthood mean anything in Vienna? It didn’t matter what the problem was, the people didn’t think it was right. No more letters arrived from the palace or from the Sarajevo government concerning the emperor’s godchild. The Sikirićes paid back the money, along with the interest and the revenue stamps.

And Ivan simply shut himself out of everything. No one dared even mention Rafo in front of him: not Rafo, not Franz Joseph, not the town square, nothing of anything that had been important to him and that had ever troubled him. He rarely went down into the city. He took care of his bees, and when his memory stung him, he touched the scar on his cheek and immediately forgot everything. He lived like that for five more years, and then in the rainy spring of 1898, while he was unchaining his beehives, a swarm of hornets attacked him and stung him all over. The beasts had slipped into one of the beehives, killed the bees, and settled there. He crawled to the house and died shortly afterward. They didn’t open the coffin before the funeral because his face was so disfigured that the neighbors wouldn’t have believed it was him.

More than ten years would pass before Rafo Sikirić came to his hometown again, as a married man. Some didn’t recognize him, and others didn’t want to. He asked his brothers whether any of the estate was his. They told him none of it was and not to risk his neck and ask again! He didn’t ask again, nor did he ever see any of his family afterward. He worked as a station porter in Konjic. He cleaned the Mostar railroad station and ground corn for a boza maker, slept in his cellar, and acted like he didn’t feel anything when at night the fat old man touched him with a trembling hand. He loaded ships near Metković; he carried tobacco for smugglers to Split and šibenik. .

He grew and shot up like weeds along a railway track, listless as God had created him and always alone, with no need for friends or company. What kept him alive was the horror that he’d endured while hanging from the plum tree. He worked all day long so that afterward he could sleep free, without thoughts and dreams.

He ended up in Dubrovnik because there was no longer any work in Metković, and a lot of snow had fallen and it was impossible to make it further toward Konjic and Jablanica. He got a job in the Gruž harbor and rented an apartment from Granny Petka, an old maid and the last offspring of a once eminent captain’s family. She was a drunkard who’d already gone off her rocker somewhat, from either old age or alcohol. After she’d sold the more valuable furniture, her father’s maritime diaries, her grandfather’s pipe collection (there were a few hundred pipes from all continents made of wood, clay, and one— a Greek one— of stone), sixteen inherited paintings (the oldest was from the period before the Hundred Years’ War), countless marine and geographic maps drawn with the pens of the greatest Portuguese, English, and Bay of Kotor masters, Granny Petka no longer had any source of money for brandy, so she spent months in the harbor looking for someone to whom she could rent out part of her house. Sailors waiting to set sail, dock workers, and all manner of jobless men who gather in all harbors and railway stations of the world turned down the old woman’s offer down to a man. First of all, it was expensive— she wanted a bottle of brandy every second day, which at that time cost serious money, and second of all, she didn’t give the impression of someone at whose place a man would want to sleep the night if he didn’t have to. Small and hunched, with an enormous witch’s nose on her thin face, dressed in unbelievably dirty rags, she stank of all the most unpleasant smells that a human nose could imagine. The stench arrived first, and only afterward would she appear, shouting like a newspaper boy: