Miljenko Jergovic - The Walnut Mansion

Aldo Tomaseo was retired immediately after the new liberators arrived, and the colonel of the Royal Army kicked him out of his office when he tried to explain the nature of that criminal case and the need for the case of the caravan to be solved regardless of the new international situation and relations in Europe. Bitter and confused, Tomaseo returned to his native Pula, where he wrote correspondence on his own account and to no avail at all and sent it to the Dubrovnik authorities.

“A poisonous viper is in your bosom, and the robbery of the century awaits you, sooner or later. .”

In the house of the deceased Niko Azinović times of poverty and gloom followed. None of his savings remained, the vineyards had grown wild because there was no one to work them, and the first dusk always brought with it growing numbers of empty thoughts and boredom. The boys told one another their grandpa’s tales but most often would get into a fight because of differences they had about how to interpret them, so their mother had to forbid that game. In a few months the little girl grew up, changed, and became serious. It seemed that she’d forgotten her grandpa. She hadn’t, however, forgotten the džundžur beans. She would get two marbles, close her eyes, and pass her crossed fingers over them. The miracle was still there. The two marbles would become four.

It was late summer 1904. The grape harvest was coming up; there had been just the right amount of rain. It was the kind of year one could only wish for. At least as far as grapes and wine were concerned. August was sitting under his outside stairs with a piece of walnut wood between his knees. What was it going to be? The neck of a gusle that the French ambassador would ceremoniously present to the Montenegrin king Nikola when arriving to pay his respects? Or a model of the Santa Maria delle Grazia for Captain Vojko šiškić that would adorn his house in Perast? Or would it nevertheless be the head of Prince Marko that the Sarajevo Mountaineering Club had ordered for its meetinghouse? August never knew in advance what he was going to make out of which piece of wood but sat and waited, with a chisel in one hand and a mallet in the other, for his mind to focus on what he might make that day. Some days were for making ships, and others simply weren’t. And Captain Vojko had no business trying to hurry him up. He’d told him straightforwardly that the ship would be made in three days according to the plan that he’d been given. But only when the time came for working on ships! Say, when the sirocco swept down and the sea rose so no one was sailing out; well, at such time he didn’t feel like doing anything but sitting somewhere out of the wind and rain and making model ships. And there were still two more months for the gusle. They were easy to make if you had the right wood, but you had to wait for it. Right until it came along among dozens of other apparently identical logs. Not every kind of walnut wood was the same; the best was that Herzegovinian walnut. A sapling that took root in rocky ground and didn’t need too much water as it grew and turned into a big tree. Bosnian walnut might have produced good nuts, but in its soul it was like a man who caroused, gorged, and guzzled to excess; wasn’t good with women and children; and aged before his time. Its wood rotted easily and was hard to cure. But when it did dry, it became crumbly and wasn’t for making gusle. If it were up to August, he’d always say that there was no better walnut than Herzegovinian walnut!

They say it’s a sin to cut down a tree that bears good fruit! Yes, and August would have admitted that too. When the barren years came without wheat, potatoes, or corn, there was nothing better to eat than walnut meat. There were those who fed on fish every day. Paupers and misers! But he’d never gotten used to fish. If God had created man to feed on fish, he would have given him fins on his back and gills to breathe under water! Those who said that Jesus had fed people with fish were lying, just as those who said there was a wood called mahogany that was better than walnut were lying. First of all, August had never held a piece of mahogany in his hands, and second, those who said that one thing was better than another should have first said what was wrong with walnut and thus how mahogany was better. Well, they couldn’t do it! And they didn’t know because you wouldn’t be able to find a flaw in walnut wood if you sought one for a hundred years!

Since he’d moved to Trsteno from Tolma— and that was years and years ago since he’d been there for half his life— August Liščar had never touched another wood with his chisel. Those who liked oak and pine, they could just make tables, coffins, and doors for poor men’s houses. They could hew and keep quiet! When God was creating the world, he had first created artists and dilettantes and then walnut and oak for each. He commanded the former to make his world more beautiful, and the latter he obligated to hew and keep quiet. They could work so the poor folk didn’t rise up! But they weren’t supposed to say anything! As soon as their kind started talking, August would leave the tavern, even if he left a half a bottle of wine on the table.

He knew what he was talking about because he’d traveled halfway around the world on horseback or by train, from škofja Loka to Salonika, and all he’d ever bought was walnut. You had to travel because the wood wouldn’t come walking to you on its own, and people didn’t cut down their own walnut trees unless they were in deep trouble or had some compelling need. Once, when he was passing through Buna, Mostar, and Lištica and saw beautiful trees whose trunks played Mozart and Brahms when you knocked on them, it occurred to him to get a rifle, assemble a band of highwaymen, and go to the gates of those houses and tell the owners, “Your walnut or your life!” But that was just a joke; his mama Fanika and his papa Pepi hadn’t raised him to be a robber, nor would he have ever taken anything against someone’s will. He also understood that walnut trees were important to people; they cared about the nuts they produced and their ancestors who’d planted them. For them a walnut tree in their yard was like a coat of arms over the entryways of the houses of Dubrovnik nobles. There was no difference! Both the one and the other showed that a person had struck roots there. But those people didn’t know, nor could they know, how much the soul of a felled walnut tree was worth.

There was no misfortune greater than war and pestilence! That was written in the holy scripture, so August couldn’t object, but wars and epidemics were good for his work and his art. In the summer of 1878 he had cut down more than enough walnut trees in Herzegovina and Bosnia for a whole lifetime. Fortunately, he had still been young, had strength, and had been assisted by two apprentices, Feriz and Josip— who knew what they were doing now?! They’d cut trees in every village and city, and people had sold them their trees for peanuts. Embittered by their defeat and the arrival of Christian rule, they had sold their property if someone wanted to buy it and left for Turkey. August had done them a favor because they received money for something they had never even expected to be able to sell. But it didn’t matter; every one of those beys, agas, or whatever they were, each one of them, wearing his turban or fez, would stand in the middle of his grove or yard with tears streaming down his face when they cut down his walnut tree. It was hard to watch a grown man cry! When that happened, the world lost something that not even God could replace. When a man cried, that was a sign that empires were collapsing, customs were changing and better times were coming for unborn children, and times of death had arrived for everyone who bowed to old banners. Only when their walnut trees were cut down did these men understand what it meant to leave the place where they’d been born. Maybe a few of them would repent and accept the Austrian emperor, but it was already too late because their walnut trees were already gone.