Miljenko Jergovic - The Walnut Mansion

“You’re crazy, you foolish women!” Grandpa Niko shouted at the group of women in their headscarves and swatted the air with his hand as if he were chasing away flies. “Which one of you started all this shit? Tell me, so I can give her what she deserves! Just how can you know that about Hvar and Korčula when not a single boat has sailed for ten days? Who told you about this? How?” he raged and in the end asked a completely rational question: Who had told them that olive groves were slipping into the sea?

No matter how panicked they were, the women were insulted by his attack. No one had actually told them about it, but if the whole town was abuzz, then it was true. It was less important how that truth had swum across the Korčula and Pelješac channels. Bad news is heard from afar, and what fool would lie and make up tales of woe? They tossed their black headscarves over their heads and went out into the rain. If there weren’t any men, there wouldn’t be so much misfortune in the world. The girl was on their side. That morning grandpa couldn’t be believed. He was angry because he knew that the three men were coming again that day. He’d been waiting for them since he’d woken up and couldn’t come up with any way of getting rid of them. Another thing that was hard to understand. If mother could chase off crazy Firgo when he came to ask for bread and she didn’t have half his strength, why couldn’t grandpa chase those men away? Only her father was calm that morning. He sorted his nails and sighed deeply. That was how Grandpa Niko sighed when he lost at briscola, but that only happened twice a year. Father lost at briscola every two minutes. He was calm, and he had it worst. The girl comforted herself a little. If father could get by with his sighs, then she could too. Without a heart.

At around noon someone knocked on the door. Grandpa rolled his eyes; for an instant all she could see were the whites of his eyes:

“Girl, they’ve come! Let’s go down into the cellar!”

The girl jumped up and went toward the door, proud that grandpa always called her when it was time to go to the cellar. Never her brothers. True, they wouldn’t have gone, but that wasn’t important. What was important was that he never called them. They weren’t up to going down into the cellar!

“Ooh, that’s you!” Grandpa Niko said, full of enthusiasm. Dominko Pujdin jumped back with surprise. He didn’t expect that Niko would ever receive him like that. They were the same age; they’d grown up together and fished together when they were young. Friends in any case, but not so close that they would want to see each other so much when they hadn’t seen each other for a couple of days.

“It’s not them; we don’t have to go to the cellar! Grandpa said, keeping up his cheer. Dominko Pujdin shook off his raincoat, something made his back twitch, and Grandpa asked him why he was going out if he had the shakes. He shot him a glance, as if to say it was something important, and Grandpa gaped at him as if to ask what had happened. Dominko Pujdin raised his eyebrows almost higher than his brow, as if to say it was something very confidential.

“What?” Grandpa Niko whispered.

“Nobody can know; otherwise it’s ruined,” said Dominko Pujdin. “A caravan is coming. The caravan drivers are arriving. .”

“It can’t be!” Grandpa said, astonished. The girl didn’t understand anything. Her mother came out of the kitchen as if she didn’t like what she was hearing. Her father stopped going through his nails.

“The caravan drivers!” he repeated, surprised. There couldn’t be any doubt that the caravan drivers were arriving and that this confidential information should be kept quiet. Because if people found out, the deal was ruined.

They each lit a cigarette of mint and tobacco. Good news had arrived, and it wasn’t proper to be stingy with people, including oneself. They sat enjoying their cigarettes for a bit, and then Grandpa asked:

“And how will we know when they’re here?”

Dominko Pujdin grinned as if he were Admiral Sterk:

“I’ve got it all arranged. They’ll let me know!”

Since he was waiting for the caravan drivers to come, Grandpa completely forgot about the uninvited guests. The girl hadn’t forgotten, but she was happy that he had. They hadn’t felt so good since it had started raining. Or they hadn’t felt so good since the beginning of the war. It was hard to remember good days since things had gone bad. And it had been a long time since things had started going the wrong way and against the order of the priests and the emperor. For those who had to have the sky fall on their heads to figure out that something was wrong, things had gone awry when Ferdinand had been killed in Sarajevo. That was when Dominko Pujdin had gotten the jitters. Others had already had a bad feeling during the Balkan Wars, when the underlings quartered what was once Turkish. Somewhere quite close, two or three hills away, blood would be spilled for land, and that was never good. No land was worth that, but the bigger trouble was that after the first man fell for land, the price of land began to rise to dizzying heights, and it would suddenly turn out that every inch of it sought new masters. And then blood would flow endlessly. People had to know that once doubt had been cast on what was Turkish, the same would happen with what was Austrian. Istanbul didn’t have the strength to keep its land, so let’s see if Vienna does! That was why Ferdinand had been killed in Sarajevo and the great war had begun. People waited for when their turn would come and their lives would be on the line. There was less and less food, and robbers and brigands again ruled the roads. The news that the caravan drivers were coming was therefore more valuable than the goods they were bringing. They would confirm that there was still justice and order in the world and that there was still respect for earthly laws, which were more important than the laws of states. And sometimes, it seemed, more important than God’s laws. The caravan drivers would prove that custom was still respected! And the word for custom in Dalmatia was the Turkish adet, one of the few Turkish words that had remained there, on the coast and even out on the islands. It was no wonder because how could one say that the caravan drivers were coming except according to the old Turkish adet.

They didn’t doubt that this was true at all, though it had been fifteen years since the last caravans had come. But since the war had started or since the merchant ships had become sparse and the trains stopped more often than they ran, people had been talking about caravan drivers. Someone had been to Sarajevo and had seen them. The Turks had realized that it was better to trade than to fight for someone else’s benefit and had activated the Izmir connections; Austria had overrun Serbia, and there was no longer anything to prevent smuggling; Syria had an abundance of dried mutton and kid meat and was planning on transporting it to the West; there were potatoes from Anatolia, corn and wheat from somewhere, spices, sugar, wine, brandy. . The people’s fantasies ran wild, and all fantasies were connected to the East. The Turks, Arabs, matchless Jewish merchants; Damascus and Baghdad; the secrets of serpentine writing that writhed from the right to the left; the legend of Moses, who’d led his people through the wilderness; mosques facing the rising sun; incomprehensible customs and habits began to take hold of the Christian peoples who were torn between the Austrians and the Italians and whom now hunger had led to believe that salvation would come from the other side of the world, the one that didn’t smell the odor of mustard gas, phosgene and diphosgene, and wasn’t taking part in this war of ours that was from day to day less and less ours. As no one knew hardly anything about the East, except that caravans came from the East, their hopes for salvation came down to stories about caravan drivers.