Miljenko Jergovic - The Walnut Mansion

With the arrival of autumn she calmed completely and no longer even spent days sitting in front of the television. She was reconciling herself to her fate and waiting for the birth of her child, having succeeded in convincing herself that when that happened, her life would take such a path that she would be like one of the Singhs who didn’t have to think about one another. She only got upset when every few weeks one of Vid’s brothers would come by to ask her if she needed anything and whose arrival would remind her to whose lifelong loyalty she had sworn herself, but that would happen less and less frequently as the days of mourning passed on and they began to realize what kind of woman from hell their Vid had run off after. They stopped all contact with the Delavale house after Dijana said in response to a suggestion by one of them that she name the child Vid or Vida that it was out of the question, not in the least because she thought it was an ugly name in both its male and female versions, but more importantly because it would remind her for the rest of her life of someone who was dead and might put a curse on her child so that it might suffer its father’s fate.

After that the six Kraljev men never darkened their doorstep; Nusreta would only call occasionally, asking how she was feeling, whether she wanted anything or would like her to send some oranges from their garden. But Dijana’s pregnant state didn’t produce any special wishes, nor did it awaken any desire for certain foods, as is often the case, or at least fruit, which would let a woman divine the character of her child in its future life. If an expecting woman obsessively asked for strawberries, then she was probably going to have a daughter, but if she had a boy, he would have a number of birthmarks all over his body, pale skin, and effeminate movements. If she wanted lemons and oranges, she was going to have a son who’d be loved by everyone, always ready for fun and jokes, and would have it easy in life, or a daughter whose beauty would be unbearable for her competition. But if the woman wanted red meat, she was going to have sickly children who wouldn’t be distinguished by anything else or be bestowed with special talents or beauty, but not curses either. . Thus, it was known what every expecting mother’s wish meant, and so those who were well intentioned and those not so well intentioned were just waiting to hear what she would say and would jump to fulfill her every wish, no matter what it was or what it meant, convinced that they were the couriers of a fate that was already written down and couldn’t be changed. Dijana, however, was a mystery. Although she ate beyond any measure, she didn’t care what she ate. When Nusreta would ask, “Don’t you want some oranges, girl?” she would only laugh and say for the hundredth time that she didn’t.

She gave birth on the twenty-first of December. At first Mirna came into the world easily and quickly, and then Dr. Žižić shouted, “There’s one more!”

Dijana howled both from the pain and because she had reconciled herself to having her dead Vid’s child but not his twins. Darijan took much longer to come out, as if he’d burrowed into his mother’s womb, clutching her uterus with his little claws, not wanting to come out at all.

He was born just as the radio broadcast two twelve-gun artillery salutes fired inside the capital, Belgrade, and two six-gun salutes in the capitals of the socialist republics, which marked Army Day in memory of the day, thirty-nine years before, when Comrade Tito had organized the First Proletarian Brigade in the small Bosnian town of Rudo. The speaker pointed out that this was the first time that they were marking this date without their greatest son and glorious military leader, and Dijana was finally able to breathe.

The news that the newborns were twins, a boy and a girl, spread through the hospital, and this information likewise had to be a sign that needed only to be read so we would know what fate was telling us through its little emissaries, the condottieri of a new age, in the face of whom everyone felt fear and wanted to allay it in every way.

“Well, now I can relax,” Regina whispered over their wall to her neighbor Emilija, who happened to be weeding dead marigolds from her frozen garden so they wouldn’t come up in the spring.

Her warty face smiled bitterly: “Well, it’s good that you’re relaxing too!”

As Regina went down the steps of the hillside lane, she heard Emilija repeating, “Well, my Regina, oh, my Regina. .” For every uprooted marigold stalk she would say Oh, my Regina once, and there were so many dead marigolds that she was still repeating her formula when Regina was long gone and could no longer hear her.

She went on repeating it for a full forty minutes, when she lay down among the marigolds, taking care not to crush any of them, and died.

Dijana ran away from home for the first time when she was twenty-five. If one can really call what she did running away and if at that age, regardless of the circumstances, you aren’t in control of your own life.

She packed her things while Regina was out and left a note on the table saying that she was going to leave with the one she loved, that she was ready to sacrifice everything to be with him, and so was doing just that. She pushed her bags and suitcases through the bathroom window so the neighbors wouldn’t see and her mother wouldn’t find out about it before she got back home. She left the house as if she were only stepping out into the garden, then grabbed her luggage, which had crushed a whole patch of green onions, and threw it over the stone wall, where a taxi was already waiting.

Unfortunately, that was the first and last romantic episode in Dijana’s flight from home. Everything that would happen over the next nine months was more like those dark French films that were in fashion in those years than it was the escape from home and love story that she had been imagining.

Dijana sat in the bus station waiting room. She looked through a glass door and watched swimmers in a swimming pool that had been built on that spot according to someone’s crazy idea of good architecture, and it occurred to her how easy it was to act rashly. She scolded herself for not having known that earlier. Heartfelt desires confuse people, especially if they desire something that’s easy to get provided they give up something else. Now, for example, people about to leave on trips were watching the swimmers with longing in their hearts. The swimmers, on the other hand, watched the travelers and longed to be going on a trip. Dijana believed she had risen above those travelers and swimmers. She was going to a city she had never seen before, to be with a man she loved, though she knew almost nothing about him. But she wasn’t worried about that either. Love isn’t a crime and doesn’t depend on dossiers full of all kinds of data and facts that pigeonhole someone in one way or another. You fall in love and that’s it, she thought, and nobody, least of all Regina, was going to tell her she was wrong.

She left the platform, which was bathed in sunlight, and the city, whose painful August glare was one of the reasons the tourists needed to see it only once to remember it their entire lives. And there was only one tiny cloud over her joyous mood. She had forgotten her sunglasses on the shoe cabinet.

Eight hours later, the bus was making its way into Sarajevo through fog and deep snow. The driver had to force the men out into the cold several times. In short-sleeve T-shirts, almost barefoot, they pushed the vehicle through snowdrifts. They cursed in the name of God and the Virgin Mary, cursing both meteorologists and Bosnia itself, a small country that seemed like it ought to be close to the sea but had by some mistake actually been planted at the North Pole. Only the night before the news on the television had said that Yugoslavia would wake up to a sunny morning — a wonderful opportunity to take advantage of the charm of late summer and head for the beaches, rivers, and lakes to relax after another day of hard work.