Miljenko Jergovic - The Walnut Mansion

“What are you doing here, poor man?” the queen asked him.

“I’m going to the other side; I’m going to get džundžur beans!” Lubinko answered courageously.

“No man has reached the other side,” the fairy said and laughed at him.

“Has anyone ever reached your palace?” Lubinko asked her.

“No,” answered the queen. “Every one of them up to now killed an animal or stepped on an ant. And here there is a rule that you turn into whatever you kill right away. The demi-beasts that you met were once people,” the fairy said to him and asked him why he needed džundžur beans.

“I need them for medicine.”

“And are you sick?”

“I’m not sick, but my Srdelica is.”

“And you’d turn into a forest animal for her?” the queen asked, surprised.

“I’d turn into a rat if it would help her get better.”

The queen fell into thought and was not happy. How could she be happy when she’d taken a fancy to such a hero?

“And is your Srdelica prettier than me?” she asked.

“It depends on who you ask,” answered Lubinko. “I think she is!”

But how could poor Srdelica be prettier than the queen of the fairies?! Varja the fairy was the prettiest of all female beings in the world. But the problem was that Lubinko was the most handsome of all male beings in the world. More handsome than all the sprites put together, and Varja had fallen in love with him!

“Here’s what you and I will do,” she began. “I’ll pick you some džundžur beans, and you’ll give me your heart!”

“I can’t give you my heart when my heart is locked, and my Srdelica has the keys,” Lubinko said to her.

“Don’t you worry about the keys,” the fairy said. “If you give me your heart, I’ll unlock it.”

Lubinko saw that the fairy had magic powers and that she had the medicine for Srdelica, so he agreed. He waited for three days in front of the palace of salt for the queen to bring the džundžur beans, and on the fourth day there she was, with wounds on her legs, half dead because it was a long way to the other side even for her.

“Beautiful fairy, give me the džundžur beans,” Lubinko said straightaway, and she clenched something in her palm and said:

“I’m not giving them. First you pluck out your heart as a pledge that you’ll come back.”

“How can I pluck it out? I can’t live without my heart.”

“You can; why wouldn’t you be able to? Whoever plucks out his heart in the enchanted forest can live without his heart; he just can’t love. I’ll return it to you as soon as you fulfill your vow, and we’ll live happily in the palace of salt.”

Lubinko had no choice and plucked out his beating heart, and the fairy gave him two brightly colored marbles.

“Those are džundžur beans. Have Srdelica close her eyes, cross her middle and index fingers, and pass them over the džundžur beans like that. As soon as it seems to her that there are four of them and not two, she’ll be healthy. Then you come back to me because your heart is with me. You will suffer great misfortune if you don’t return.”

Lubinko promised Queen Varja to come back and knew there and then that he wouldn’t keep the promise. When he got back home, Srdelica was already half dead. She was bidding farewell to her mother and father, ready to lie down in her cold grave. But as soon as she passed her crossed fingers over the magic džundžur beans, her strength and health came back to her. She jumped up out of her bed, and a great celebration followed. From Boka to Trieste they celebrated for seven days and seven nights. Everyone celebrated, only Lubinko and Srdelica didn’t. When he touched her, it was as if he were touching wood; when he looked at her, it was as if he were looking at a corpse; and when he wanted to kiss her, Srdelica turned her head away. He was as cold as ice to her and as disgusting as green carob. He looked like her Lubinko but was as foreign to her as a black Arab. She didn’t know what was going on. He did! They were no longer for one another, but they wept together for seven days and seven nights. Being able to cry together was all that was left of their love. During that time the fairy queen realized that Lubinko wasn’t coming back, that he’d deceived her, and that she held a locked heart in her hands in vain. She was unhappy; she was desperate and was ready to give her queendom for his love. The other fairies told her that she’d gotten involved in something wicked; the sprites danced and sang around her all day long, hoping that one would capture her heart and thus save the queendom, but she didn’t look at any of them. The queen took the key that unlocks all hearts and said, “If you won’t be mine, you won’t be anyone’s!”

She shoved the key into the lock of Lubinko’s heart, and as soon as she did that, the palace of salt began to collapse, and the forest started withering. No one could bear looking at that horror, and all living beings on the Earth closed their eyes. After they had blinked seventeen times, in the place where the enchanted forest had been there was only a quarry and karst, and the palace had turned into a pillar of salt as high as the sky. The bora swept the salt into the sea, and ever since that time the sea has been salty, just as since that time all living creatures have blinked. They began blinking because they couldn’t watch the ruin of the queendom of the fairies. When on the eighth day Lubinko went to the forest to get his heart from Varja, there was no forest, no fairies, no strange beasts.

They had disappeared because the queen had committed evil and unlocked a heart that belonged to another woman. So, you see, that’s how the forest above the sea disappeared, and that’s how people without hearts came into being and unhappiness took hold in the world.

As always, he finished the story in darkness and silence. No one asked any questions; the boys just gave one another their stone marbles, and every time they passed their crossed fingers over them, it seemed to them that there were four. That was proof that Grandpa Niko hadn’t made anything up and that a hundred hundred years before there had been džundžur beans, a magic medicine for fatal illnesses. His little girl needed no such proof. She believed her grandpa’s stories because you had to believe that something so terrible was true. One can always make up stories in which everything has a happy end. Terrible stories are true. If Grandpa Niko lied sometimes, that night he surely wasn’t. The girl was cold, although she was covered with thick down quilts, between her brothers whose hot, sleeping bodies would await the dawn peacefully. She didn’t sleep but tried to hear the beats of her heart as she usually heard them when she plugged her ears well or when she didn’t breathe for a fairly long time. No matter what she did, now she couldn’t hear her heart. She’d lived the fate of handsome Lubinko! Who knew how or why?! She hadn’t deceived anyone, hadn’t told a lie, but had still ended up without a heart. Something would be missing from the world; she would see it as soon as it grew light. The girl was sure and was desperate. Her brothers were sleeping peacefully. Nothing would happen to them.

It was raining for the twenty-eighth day. Rumors came that there were mudand rockslides all around. People said that on Korčula and Hvar whole olive groves and vineyards had disappeared, along with houses and boundary stones. People stood on the shore and looked at their plots under the seas. They had no choice but to turn into fish and start cultivating seaweed. Since morning the neighborhood women had been coming to see her mother Kata, and all of them said the same thing. Just as Korčula and Hvar had fallen into the sea, so will we all— if the rains continue— fall right into the sea! They listed the names of the island towns that had disappeared; many in town had relatives there. They listed the names of the people. They did that as if reading a school roster, and horror filled their eyes. It was the first time people spoke about misfortune without any malice. The girl was sure that she had some role in all of that. She was to blame for the imminent flood. The women blinked and wrung tears of fear from their eyes. She blinked too. The whole world had started to blink while the enchanted forest was disappearing. That morning they were blinking more quickly and more often. No one was talking about the war. For the first time in the last two and a half years.