Miljenko Jergovic - The Walnut Mansion

“If it’s not baptized, that doesn’t mean it wasn’t without a soul but that its soul wasn’t baptized,” Fatso said.

“Turks are unbaptized, but people say that they have a soul,” Horse Face confirmed.

“It’s not that people say that, but they have souls like anyone else,” objected the third.

Niko took a drag, and it could be seen that the first two were frowning and the third bristled.

“Whose side are the Turks on?” asked Fatso sarcastically.

“They’re neutral, like shit from a new bride!” said Horse Face. The one in the French hat didn’t say anything. A few minutes of anticipation followed in which Fatso wheezed loudly, Horse Face clicked his tongue hoping to provoke a response, and Grandpa Niko breathed. The girl would recognize his sighs among hundreds of them. She pricked up her hears to hear whether the third one was breathing, but no sound came from where he was sitting. She was amused by the fact that he wasn’t there any more. And then she thought that maybe he really wasn’t there. Maybe he’d died like Lino. Simply stopped breathing. It could happen to anyone. It was wartime. Grandpa Niko took a drag, but she wasn’t quick enough. She didn’t manage to see the head in the French hat.

“I couldn’t care less about Turkey. I have no peace because I don’t know what happened to that child. And where its soul has been put. That’s my blood, and you’re thinking about Turkey because this didn’t concern your blood,” said Grandpa Niko.

“Of course it did. .” Horse Face interjected, wanting to say something.

“No it didn’t. If it had, you wouldn’t be thinking about Turkey,” Grandpa Niko interrupted him. If he said another word, he would throw him out, and he could think and fend for himself. And outside it was raining, now as it would forever. Or at least until the war ended.

Grandpa Niko had said a few days before that it was good that it was raining and that they should pray that it was also raining on the western front. When it rained only bombs and bullets killed, but poison gas didn’t. Every raindrop saved a human life. If it rained long enough, all of them would survive. As soon as you could smell the mustard gas, soldiers died, said Admiral Sterk. He wasn’t a real admiral but a common clockmaker, but since the war had broken out, his mind had gone to seed, and he told people that he was an admiral. If you believed him, he would repair your watch and pass on secret information to you from the western front. If you laughed, if you said “Jozo, you’re an admiral as much as I’m St. Peter!” as Antiša Bakunin had told him, then nothing would happen to your watch and you wouldn’t get any news from the front. The news didn’t matter, but how could you get along if you didn’t know what time it was? After Andrijica Ćurlin and Beko Albi had gone off to war and since Albi Abinun had fled to America before the war, Admiral Sterk was the only clockmaker left in town. Bakunin apologized to him, bowed down to the ground, and swore that he would personally promote him to a field marshal, but it was no use— Admiral Sterk wouldn’t repair his wall clock! And now Bakunin didn’t know what time it was, no matter whether it was day or night!

“He would pave over all the churches, kill anyone who wore a braid— from the emperor down to office heads; he would abolish the police, and he doesn’t even know what time it is,” Grandpa Niko said, mocking Bakunin, and added that he didn’t know who was the bigger nutcase of the two, Admiral Sterk or Antiša Bakunin. But he listened carefully to the news from the front, believed it, and remembered even what he didn’t understand. So, for instance, the fact that when one could smell the mustard gas, soldiers were dying. The girl didn’t know what mustard gas was and didn’t ask because she thought that this was something you were supposed to know. If you didn’t, it was better not to say so. She sniffed the air and thought she would be able to recognize the smell of mustard gas if it ever stopped raining. She would be the first to know when soldiers started dying.

“There’s no power greater than Russia,” Fatso said to break the awkward silence.

“Like we didn’t know that,” the one in the French hat said, coming to life.

“In Russia the sun rises twice,” Fatso persisted, “once in the west and once in the east.”

Hmm, and the girl had learned in school that it rises in the east and sets in the west! She waited for Grandpa Niko to tell him that.

“That’s not the reason why Russia is powerful. That’s because it’s a crazy country. People know very well where the sun rises,” the one in the French hat quibbled.

“Great, now some of us are smart too,” said Horse Face and sighed. Grandpa Niko took another drag and threw his cigarette in front of his feet. He didn’t have to put it out because the water was already coming into the cellar, and the cigarette went out on its own. The girl knew what was coming. Grandpa wanted the three of them to go but didn’t know how to tell them that. It had been that way for days. They came to get out of the rain and then wouldn’t leave. She didn’t know anything about those men, not their names or where they went. But they were always at the same place, right in front of their cellar, and thought that they would get wet. And Grandpa Niko would let them in, treat them to diluted wine vinegar, and wait for them to leave. He was interested in what had happened to Lino’s soul, and the three of them argued. It didn’t matter what about. But why did they have to do it in his cellar of all places, when Grandpa Niko didn’t want to argue? He was always angry after they left. Not even he knew who those people were, and maybe he didn’t even know their names. The girl didn’t ask him about that because she didn’t want to know what their names were. Those men weren’t from town. Grandpa Niko said that he hadn’t seen them before the war. He was in fact afraid of them. Before their first escape from the rain into his cellar, Grandpa Niko had only feared God. That was what he’d said, and she’d believed him. He could have kicked them out, but how and why? He said that he didn’t know.

They left a little before it began to get dark. Every day it was the same. Fortunately, the days were getting shorter and shorter.

“God help us if they ever want to spend the night here,” Grandpa Niko said to her mother. She was in the kitchen boiling the laundry, and her father was sorting nails in the little bit of light cast by the fire in the stove. Hidden from view, her brothers tussled over two stone marbles.

“God help us, God help us,” he repeated and walked from one end of the room to another. Either he was looking for something, or he was trying to remember something. It had gotten dark, and now all of life was weighing down on his shoulders. It was important for his gall to pass as soon as possible, for no one to say anything rude to him, and for her brothers not to fight. If that happened, he would entertain them until they all fell asleep.

A hundred hundred years ago, when people still didn’t know that wind blows sails and that the wheels on a baby carriage turn, before there were any unchristened creatures, instead of karst and quarries there were dense pine forests everywhere. And in them lived fairies and sprites; there were more of them than people in the world. In those forests there were more birds than there are today anywhere, more bears, foxes, wolves, and all kinds of creatures that one can’t even imagine. Everything was tame; they ate food off of each others’ heads because there were no beasts that acted wickedly to another animal. People were the only thing that wasn’t in those forests. If some hardhead took courage and went off into the forest, his mother would mourn him because he would never return home. Not alive or dead, nor would they be able to make out his soul on judgment day. That was the way it was! No man thought it up, nor did the Lord God either. It was the way of fairies and sprites. They guarded the forest from everything human and divine, and you can guess for whom they did it! No, they didn’t do it for the devil because this was a hundred hundred years ago, and the devil didn’t exist yet. The fairies and sprites guarded the forest for the beasts, just as the beasts guarded the forest for them. And it would have stayed that way until the end of the world if this hadn’t happened: Srdelica, the daughter of a fisherman named Cipolić, fell ill, and his daughter had caught the eye of the young Lubinko. The young man was as smart as a book, as good as a calm sea, and so handsome that no one could say what he was as handsome as. If someone said that anything was as handsome as Lubinko, everyone would laugh and say that that person was a nut. Lubinko sought a cure for Srdelica, his love; he searched for it from Boka all the way up to Trieste, but there was no cure anywhere. The best healers told him that the only thing that could cure her were džundžur beans. Do you know what džundžur beans are? You don’t! But you’ll know at the end of the story. Not even Lubinko knew what džundžur beans were, nor did the healers or anyone living by the sea a hundred hundred years ago. But people knew that one could only find them on the other side of the dense, magic forests that grew where today we have only rock and karst. So whoever fell ill and needed džundžur beans was as good as dead. But the handsome Lubinko didn’t think like that. He kissed his Srdelica seven times, so the kisses would last until he came back, and set off into the forest to cross over to the other side, where the džundžur beans grew. Everyone tried to dissuade him; old Cipolić tried to dissuade him and told him that he would adopt him as his son if he didn’t go. He pleaded with him in the name of his daughter’s beauty, but Lubinko wouldn’t be talked out of it. If there were džundžur beans in the world, he had to go find them— that’s what he said and set off into the forest. He’d gone only three steps into the forest when it swallowed him up. He wouldn’t have been able to go back if he’d wanted to. That was how the fairies had arranged things. Whoever went in never came out. So he walked for a day, then two, and then three; he came upon all kinds of beasts— bears with rabbits’ ears, rabbits with bears’ heads, winged wolves that fed on pine nuts and drank sap instead of water— but not a single beast was afraid of him because the fairies had made things so that fear would never enter the forest. On the seventh day Lubinko came to a palace that was bigger than a city and higher than the sky. The tops of its towers were so high that an eagle wouldn’t be able to soar up to them. The palace wasn’t made of stone but of salt. The fairies and sprites lived there. He knew that right away but didn’t know how he knew. It just came to him. He stopped in front of the gate. His heart was pounding like crazy, but he remembered his Srdelica and knocked on the gate. He didn’t strike it very hard, but the gate collapsed into powder right in front of him, into pure white salt, and suddenly there appeared a beautiful maiden with hair of burning gold, with the figure of a cypress tree, and wings of wind. That was Varja, the queen of the fairies.