Miljenko Jergovic - The Walnut Mansion

After he shaved the last of Dijana’s hair, he cheerfully slapped the girl on the back of her head.

“There you go; now you look just like a boy!” he said, brushed off her bald head with a feather brush, and put baby cream on her skin. “Hey, Uncle šime will give you the Nivea for free! There’s usually a special charge for that!” he said, trying to cheer up the child somehow.

She stared at the mirror, motionless and aghast, and saw someone there who did resemble her but wasn’t her and couldn’t be her because it had large, terrible eyes and two eyebrows like black crescent moons, above which red-gray skin rose like on the heads of Gypsies and rachitic Bosnian children who were brought every summer in trucks to the front of the Villa Magnolia to relax and, as their teacher put it, have the sea and fresh air full of the scent of pines boost their blood count and strengthen their bones.

“Those are your comrades,” she explained to the class, “who will build our homeland and socialism with you!”

The pupils listened as if what she were saying was the silliest thing on the face of the earth or she were trying to tell them a lie that no two-year-old would believe. The boys in the back rows couldn’t contain their giggles because how could they believe that their teacher was in her right mind when she tried to convince them that they were no different from those bald Bosnian monkeys with the aquamarine eyes and the huge heads? They were there, were normal, had hair, and spoke like people speak. They would have sooner believed it if the teacher told them that the goat munching leaves and almonds behind the school was actually an elephant than agree to be the same as Bosnians. The latter were ugly, warty, and dirty, no matter how much they bathed in the sea.

“Tito loves you and them the same!” the teacher said, making her last argument, which wasn’t any more convincing, but not even the bravest in the classroom would laugh at that.

Dijana was looking at one of those Bosnians right now, one who blinked when she blinked. He moved his nose, bit his lip, and did everything that she did. She was ashamed because the little Bosnian she was looking at was her. That shame was greater than her hatred for her mother, the horror at her hands being stuck to her head, her fear of the dark, her rage at being made fun of in school, or her sorrow and melancholy and everything else she thought and felt. There was no longer anything in the world that she was stronger than and that she might stand up against. As soon as she went outside — she knew well — everyone would look at her as they looked at those anemic and brittle-boned creatures that were brought to the villas of local landowners, which were where the history and culture of the city had been born. The partisans humiliated that culture in the most horrible way, showing the people of the city in no uncertain terms that they placed more importance on some rachitic children from the midst of Turkish cities than the civilized customs of these city walls. It was as if they’d let swine in to root around in the villas of our noblemen! Dijana wasn’t aware of the essence of that humiliation, but she understood its significance well. She walked behind her mother with her head bowed; the breeze that blew softly on her skin reminded her that she was naked and condemned to be another.

She went to school with a hat pulled down over her head, and when the teacher told her to take it off, asking how she could be so uncouth as to sit in the classroom with a hat on, Dijana burst into tears, thrust her face into her palms, so miserable and helpless that those in the back rows started to giggle again.

Vlaho Andrijić, a star student in the first row, said: “Comrade, she won’t take her hat off because šime shaved her bald!”

At this point the whole class burst into laughter, and as the teacher hadn’t realized what this was all about or who šime was and what had happened, she thought that Vlaho was smarting off again, which was a habit of his anyway, and grabbed him by a lock of hair above his ear. He wailed, and she sent him to the corner as punishment.

“And now you get that hat off!” she shouted in a strict tone, proud of the fact that a deathly silence had come over the classroom. Dijana didn’t answer. She was hiding her face and crawling along the school bench. The teacher approached her with a firm stride — oh how well things were going today! — and grabbed the hat. Dijana covered her head with her hands; her little palms could hardly cover the shameful spot, and she froze like a statue. The teacher was befuddled; she didn’t know what to say (it was terrible to be at a loss for words in front of thirty living mouths) and then regretted bitterly what she’d done. She succeeded so rarely in imposing her authority, and when she had, now this of all things had to happen. She squatted down by Dijana’s bench; tears were dripping on the black wooden floor.

“I’m sorry, child,” she whispered. Then she got up, clapped her hands twice and said, “We’re going outside; PE is next!”

Everyone forgot the bald sensation in a moment. “Hurray!” shouted the gigglers in the back rows, and the classroom emptied as quickly as a fire station does when a fire breaks out. Only three remained in the room: the teacher, Dijana, and Vlaho, who continued to smart off. If he was being punished, well, he might as well be punished for something!

“Andrijić, get outside!”

She asked Dijana what had happened — was she being punished for something at home, or had she gotten lice? But the girl didn’t say anything: “Comrade, don’t! Comrade, don’t! Comrade, don’t!” was her response to each question.

Well, not two weeks had passed before Dijana went off to school without the raincoat again! And in such bad weather to boot! Regina no longer knew what to do or how to bring her to her senses. There had been ten days of peace in the house; she hadn’t resisted anything, hadn’t dug in her heels about anything, and then everything started all over again. It was shameful to think, let alone say it, but Regina would have liked most to beat her with a rolling pin until she broke the devil in her. If the devil could be broken at all and if he hadn’t crawled too far down inside her. She would kill her only to make a woman of her, Regina thought in a rage as the bora outside grew stronger and stronger. The roofs of the houses distended, the beams in the garrets creaked, the crown of the old mulberry tree vanished, the one that had always been visible from the window, over behind the house toward the city center. That’s how easy it is for people to end up alone, she thought. You can’t leave the house or call out to anyone; the bora carries you away as soon as you poke your nose outside. And it was the same for everyone. Only some were at home with their families, and she was all alone and might die now without anyone knowing or caring. Every house in the city was like an island. There are two kinds of islands — those that have been settled and the barren ones. On the barren ones there isn’t a living soul, and the settled ones are full of people. Regina was the only one who was on an island that didn’t belong to either kind and was living alone when she didn’t care for solitude. And the minute she felt good on her own, everyone was crowding around her, she thought, feeling sorry for herself. She would have shed tears if only there had been a man to take them into his soul. She was still under fifty; she had a small child and nothing but death to look forward to.

She pulled a kerchief out of the dresser that smelled of starch and lavender and sighed a little. “O God, woe is me,” she said as if someone were listening.

It wasn’t long before lightning started outside, and thunder could already be heard from the far side of the hill, although out at sea the horizon was in sunlight and it seemed that there wasn’t even any wind blowing out there. Whoever wasn’t preoccupied with themselves and their miseries, real and imagined, had to feel fear. Nature was all topsy-turvy, and that fifth of March would be remembered and retold as a day when a bora blew unlike any other and brought rain from parts of the world that never sent rain this way. Or maybe it wasn’t like that because clouds have always come from every corner of the sky and winds have swept through wherever they could pass, but the fifth of March, 1953, had to be remembered for something that had never happened before. People had to invent a story about it.