Miljenko Jergovic - The Walnut Mansion

And he made one more Marko with his eyes closed! Everything in one go, with no need for any corrections and with half his power and less effort. It had to be like that. In those thirty or so years (in fact it would soon be forty, and if one counted his first carpentry projects, forty-five), August had conquered walnut wood like Napoleon’s army had conquered Europe, but he had to make Prince Marko with that limit in skill and knowledge that was characteristic of a master’s youth. Coarse and feigned imprecision, without the finesse with which he made other objects. Because if he made Marko with these all-knowing hands, then it wouldn’t be Marko any more, and no one would recognize him. Oh, if he were to collect all the heroic heads he’d ever made and line them up one next to the other— what a series that would be! And each one was the same. And not a one of them would reveal to anyone when it was made and how he’d felt as he worked on it, whether he’d been ill or had just had a child, whether he’d been working in the middle of the hellish smithing of the Sarajevo market square, or whether it had come about in šabac. Whom he’d been thinking of while he was working, whether he was having a difficult time. . Nothing of that could be seen on the heads of Prince Marko. That was why they were art.

The next day he would go early in the morning to Dubrovnik. To talk with that man and hear what his grandchild was going to be like. Someone would think it stupid to ask a grandfather what his grandchild would be like, but August believed in such things. We’re like people wanted us to be before we were born. Cities were full of princes and princesses, and it was easy to imagine what their grandfathers and grandmothers had thought while they were waiting for their grandchildren. In villages there were more quiet, industrious people who often resembled their own bulls. Mostly they were the seventh or eighth sons of their fathers and mothers. If they’d wanted them, their imaginations were already spent. No one imagined those people, so they came out like that.

August ruminated as another sunny day opened up over the sea and the grasshoppers tuned their instruments. Like an opera orchestra right before a performance of a work it has played so often that each musician knows his part by heart and tunes his strings and taps his bow on them just for fun.

The grandfather-to-be was filled with cheer when he saw him.

“Who’s this I see?!” he exclaimed and hugged him. None of this made any sense, neither speaking like that nor hugging someone whom you barely knew, but it didn’t bother August. He hugged him back so the man wouldn’t feel awkward when he realized how silly his actions had been. And why should one forever be a sourpuss? Matilda didn’t tell him that for nothing. Sometimes even August had to admit that she knew what she was talking about.

He led him into his house, and the house was exactly as August expected it to be. The house of poor folk in a city, with no lineage or roots, who’d worked hard for generations, weeded their gardens and vineyards, went fishing, sold Herzegovinian tobacco, and saved little by little, ducat by ducat, brick by brick— until they got that house. It wasn’t ugly or beautiful, expensive or cheap, but just as they themselves were. Good people. And his daughter wasn’t some beauty, but you couldn’t say that she was ugly either. A girl of real Dalmatian stock who would grow stocky and fat with the years, stand with her hands on her hips and her legs spread gently at twilight, calling her children. Now he could imagine a version of her in walnut.

“Your name is Kata? There was once a queen, and her name was Katarina Kosača. She sought justice for her queendom in Rome and died there. Her grave is in the church. They say she was beautiful,” August said, and she laughed. Just as if he’d said that she was beautiful. And that made him glad.

Her husband was a placid man; he was too quiet, but as soon as he opened his mouth, he started cracking his knuckles. He really cracked them harshly. It was good that he didn’t say more because if he had, he’d have lost his fingers.

“It’s going to be a girl,” said her grandfather, speaking in a way that was uncharacteristic for these parts.

“God only knows,” said the mother. “Maybe it’ll still be a boy!” And the father shrugged his shoulders, cracked his knuckles a little, and thought to himself but didn’t say anything.

“I don’t know what our child will be like. Intelligent and good-looking! It certainly won’t be rich; there’s no one for it to take after to be that. I’m worried less about what it will be like than about how people will treat it. That’s what’s important! Let’s hope it’s not worse than others. Let’s hope it’s not more wicked and that it doesn’t want more for itself than the next one wants for itself. So, that’s what I’d wish for. If it’s like that, there’s a greater chance it will have a happy life and take less misfortune to its grave. But you never know. You don’t even determine what you yourself will be like, nor do others. Not even God does. You know what they say in Herzegovina: I got the shit end of the stick! Well, if you get the shit end of the stick too many times, then nothing else can help. Two fishermen take the same line, the same hook, and the same kind of bait, go together to the same spot, and cast out at the same time. One of them catches a forty-pound dentex, and the other doesn’t catch a thing. The other one got the shit end of the stick.”

That was how the grandfather-to-be spoke, mixing languages and accents as if he’d lived all over. The father and mother listened, and it seemed that they wouldn’t have interrupted him if he’d kept talking until the next day. From this August was certain that the future child was his more than anyone else’s and that he should make the toys according to what he said. And that was something, though the progress wasn’t great.

Later they sat down in front of the house; Kata brought out some wine and salted sardines, and it was then that August first saw her belly. A small, rounded belly, as on Middle Eastern pictures, from which one still couldn’t tell that she was with child. For a moment he was afraid that she might miscarry. It happened often, out of the blue, that a mother would expel an unborn child from herself. She would simply bleed it out. No, he dared not think about that. It would be horrible both for them and for him. His big job would fall by the wayside, the one that he’d been waiting for all this time, the one that many never got. How many had there been who needed only to be allowed to paint the Sistine Chapel to become the greatest artist in history! August had long ago kissed good-bye the idea that he might be the greatest in history. He wasn’t the greatest, not even among these squalid people who didn’t have their own artists, but there was no one better than him at carving walnut! And there was no greater commission than this one: to create a work of art for someone who wasn’t born yet! It wouldn’t have been good for the woman to miscarry. The old man would be unhappy, the woman would be unhappy, and the knuckle-cracking young man would be unhappy along with them. And August would be too! This discovery captivated him. He was bound to people whom he didn’t know— he didn’t even know their names. Except that the future mother’s name was Kata.

“Oh, what a beautiful day!” August said and sighed. The sardines were a little too salty for his taste, and the wine was too bitter. But to tell the truth August didn’t like fish, and in his life he drank wine only to get drunk. Now he wasn’t trying to get drunk. All he wanted was for this day to last as long as possible, for nothing to change, and to stay with these people until evening.