Miljenko Jergovic - The Walnut Mansion

“I have, but. .,” Mirna said and stopped.

She wasn’t sure what to believe. It seemed impossible that there was something that happened to every girl that she knew nothing about.

“Soon other things will start happening to you, things that aren’t abnormal or anything to get upset about, but your mother will tell you about them when she gets back. You won’t have to ask her anything. She’ll tell you herself as soon as she sees you.”

Klara was starting to feel a little uncomfortable. In the darkness of the room, in which the only light came from the starry sky, she was sitting with a girl and was unable to tell her something that was so simple to say but for some reason wasn’t said just like that, especially to a child to whom one had not given birth.

“But I don’t think I want to go to school now,” the girl said when her teacher had already gotten up. “There’s simply no way I’m going to do that.”

“Why don’t you want to go? What’s happening to you now will soon happen to other girls. What would happen if all girls stopped leaving the house as soon as they start turning into women?”

“But there’s only one and it’s huge. Everyone can see it.”

“So what if everyone can see it? Get some sleep and we’ll see you tomorrow. Be happy that everything is okay.”

“What were you doing so long in her room?” asked Regina, who’d been waiting for her outside the door. Klara thought it would be good to tell that old hag everything she had coming and a lot more, but she didn’t say anything except good-bye when she was at the door. And even that was too much in a way.

“God forbid I ever set eyes on you again, you fucking cunt,” mumbled Regina after she slammed the door behind the teacher.

She was furious; a spider would have died from poisoning if it bit her. It was as if someone had defiled her house and poisoned the air that she breathed. She sat down by the hot stove, popped her knuckles, and cursed everyone to herself in order: her daughter, who was whoring around who knew where and with whom — and it wouldn’t be a surprise if it were some black man, and her children, who hadn’t even really hatched yet but were already adding to the family shame, picking up where their parents had left off. She cursed herself because she’d been tricked again, which always happened, and someone again expected her to feel guilty. But as far as she was concerned, Regina Delavale wasn’t guilty of anything. Others would have known that she wasn’t guilty if they had lived her life, day in, day out, year in, year out, or at least heard her story from someone. They wouldn’t hear it from her. She would stay as silent as a tomb and put up with everything as long as she could, and when she couldn’t go on any more, then her dead mouth would swallow it.

“Get the hell out of here, you whore’s bastard!” she yelled at Darijan when he came into the kitchen for bread and Eurocream. He tiptoed out as if fleeing a cage of lions in a nightmare.

Mirna obeyed her teacher and went to school the next morning. She put on the biggest shirt that Darijan had and Dijana’s raincoat over that, but out on the street there wasn’t a pair of eyes that didn’t stare at her. Women dressed in black whispered to one another and pointed at the girl; men in the City Café put their newspapers down on their tables and watched her pass by; groups of children laughed. She was sure that it wasn’t because her breast was noticeable now — they couldn’t even see it; rather, grandma’s lady friends had spread the story, and the story would grow until everyone stared at her. The more people there were that looked at her like that, the fewer there were that didn’t see her. That was good in a way. Darijan walked a few steps behind her and didn’t raise his eyes from the street. They looked like city paupers who would only be pitied by the author of all those fairy tales, but he was far, far to the north and had been dead for a long time.

Strangely, it was her schoolmates who were least interested in her breast. After she took off the raincoat, they all took a good look at the bulge under her shirt, as if on command, and were immediately disappointed because after listening to the stories of the adults, they’d believed it to be much bigger. Afterward they were ready to forget that tit. When you’re little and you measure life in days and not years, you often see a miracle happen, but more often you’re disappointed and convinced that there wasn’t any miracle.

Boris Werber, the son of a couple of painters who’d moved from Zagreb the year before, reacted more excitedly but only because the story of the little Amazon hadn’t reached his parents. “Look at her titty!” he exclaimed and grabbed Mirna, whereupon Darijan lunged at him and a fight ensued that left the little Werber with a cut over his eye. When the teacher came into the room, there was blood all over the place, and Boris was howling as if someone were skinning him alive.

The principal showed up too: “Who was fighting?” he asked. He grabbed Darijan by the ear and hauled him off to his office. The teacher ran after them but stopped and turned on a dime like a basketball player starting back down the court and ran back to the bloodied Boris. Then all hell broke loose, but it didn’t have any lasting consequences or, as was the custom, create new problems in the staff room and lead to enmity among the families of pupils that were still somehow on good terms. They took little Werber to the health clinic, where he received stitches on the cut over his eye; Klara ran back and forth between his frenzied parents and the principal, who had to have the background of the episode explained to him as well as the reason why Darijan’s parents couldn’t come to the school the next day so that everything could be resolved according to some pedagogical ideal.

The next day Tobias Werber, Boris’s father, came to the classroom. “It’s good that you protect your sister, but don’t kill a friend,” he said to Darijan. “And you, now you know what will happen to you if you don’t act like a gentleman with the ladies,” he said, turning to his son. And everyone was proud: Mirna was proud of her brother because he had defended her; the principal was proud of the teacher because she knew things about her pupils that their parents didn’t; Boris Werber was proud of his father because the general consensus was that he was a big man, unlike most fathers. Darijan alone didn’t have anyone to be proud of. After the bloody duel Mirna’s breast was no longer the talk of the classroom, but it would be the talk of the town up until Dijana returned from Africa, which was when the war began. While she was unpacking her bags, explosions began to reverberate. Since she hadn’t heard a word about the news at home for four full months, she had no idea what was going on and ran in a panic into the kitchen, where Regina was putting the plates into the cupboard.

“Mother, what’s that?” she asked, and her mother laughed furiously, as if she had expected just such a question.

“Nothing; soon they’ll come and slaughter both of us like pigs! They won’t ask which one of us is a pig and which isn’t.”

These words shocked Dijana more than the explosions did. No matter how she could be, the old lady had never talked like that.

“Mother, what’s wrong with you?”

“You’re asking me what’s wrong with me, you’re asking me that! There are your two children; ask them to tell you! Take a look at your little girl if you’re a mother, and then ask me something.”

“And what should I look at on her? You mean her tit? So I should look at that?! If I’d known what you’re like, I’d never have gone.”

“And it would have been better if you hadn’t.”