Miljenko Jergovic - The Walnut Mansion

She’d never understood those tears or why people cried when they weren’t unhappy or what that sorrow was that people enjoyed more than any kind of happiness. They were fretful and irritable, all those uncles and aunts, as soon as the conversation turned to something that was still alive and in existence and for which they would, or so Patricia thought, shed tears like that at some later date.

When Fanelli, the head doctor, had assembled his nurses and asked them who knew how to sing, and when three of them responded that they did, and when he then called them into his office for auditions, Patricia thought that the old guy had lost his mind, which was evidently a common occurrence in that generation. Like many of her aunts and uncles, he must have felt like summoning his youth with the singing, but as soon as he chose her, folded his hands, and said, “Wow, that’s really beautiful!” she began to get seriously worried that he had some dishonorable intentions in all of this. But then he went on: “A patient of ours for some years now, Mr. Sikirić, otherwise a wonderful person, a cheese merchant, but what cheese it was! I’ve been all around France and Holland, and I know cheese; I can vouch that I’ve never seen such a selection of cheese anywhere. Well, Mr. Sikirić’s carcinoma is in its terminal phase. I told him ‘Luka, we’re friends; I don’t want to lie to you.’ And he says, ‘My dear Fanelli, is there a friendship in which no lies are told? — You only tell the truth to taxpayers and women you don’t love!’ Okay, I won’t go on about that. You’re young, you’re not interested in that stuff, and it’s not nice to tell about your personal secrets, though I’d like to. You know, Luka is a very witty man, but fine; that’s not what this is about. Rather, he wants to die in his city, on the other side of the Adriatic, and he asked me to pick out a nurse who can sing well to accompany him on his trip. He didn’t tell me why he needs a singer, but I have no doubt that it’s something very good. You, Patricia, are ideal for this. You know your work, you’re beautiful, and you sing well. This isn’t just work but something more important than work. You’ll see! You’ll never forget Luka.”

Patricia’s knees almost gave out from fear. She believed that the last wish of a dying patient could only be something erotic in nature. He certainly wasn’t interested in her only to burst into tears in the end, and if it weren’t that, why would he want a pretty young singer? She didn’t dare say “no” to Fanelli, but she was prepared to quit her job if the patient that she was accompanying crossed the line. Which line? Well, the one that she would draw.

For two days she thought about where that line should be, and the more she thought about it, the greater her confusion became. At first she decided firmly that she wouldn’t allow the man to touch her. She would satisfy him in everything that didn’t require touching him. Maybe he wanted her to perform some deathbed striptease to a dirty song. Was it okay to agree to that? Of course not. There was no difference between stripping for money and sex for money. So he could forget the striptease! It was amazing how lowlifes remained lowlifes in their final hour.

But what if she liked him? What if he was a lovable and precious guy, just the type she’d been dreaming of? What if he was the type that she would fall in love with if she met him in different circumstances and by a happier twist of fate? Why wouldn’t she strip for someone like that? Because it was a matter of principles that you dared not abandon. Yes, but you regret having acted on such principles more often than you do if you’ve given them up. She decided that she would strip if it turned out that Luka was her type of man. But what if he wanted more than that? If he tried to get more than that, then he certainly wasn’t her type. As a rule that was true, but rules were the same as principles. Those two words kind of had the same meaning but just sounded a little different to her, so if one could have regrets because of principles, one could also have regrets because of rules. In the end she decided to act depending on the situation, but with that her fear of meeting Luka Sikirić was not lessened. “Am I a whore now?” she wondered as she packed her suitcase.

After only half an hour of traveling together with that male skeleton, whose skin had an unhealthy reddish-gray hue and had become as thin as tracing paper from his illness, on whose face the only living things were his eyes and scars, whereas everything else on his body looked like an artificial corpse, Patricia could tell that he was just her type of man. He might have looked different, been less alive, with open, putrescent sores and macerated lesions; he could have stunk and had the head of a brontosaurus and wooden pegs instead of hands, but Luka would still have been the same, the one that she’d wanted, thinking that such men existed only in her imagination. Where else were there funny princes who found all the reasons for their happiness in their princesses and thought only of entertaining them?

She decided to agree to do anything Luka might want and was disappointed when she realized that she’d been chosen for something that was supposed to happen only after he was dead. This would pain her for years, and for years she would want someone to whom she could tell how she’d wanted to strip and sing in front of the man of her life when she’d met him in the last days of his. The man who didn’t think that strange would be her husband. And there was no chance of her getting married to anyone who didn’t understand her love story or thought that it was perverse, that she was led by dark desires. Patricia’s desires were as innocent as Luka Sikirić had been innocent.

She sang his last wish as it grew light outside, as hung-over men hauled empty crates from one end of the market to the other, small wooden boats sailed out to sea, birds and cats awoke, and a woman in a nightgown curled up against the wall at the head of her bed, as if she were unsure whether she was dreaming. Tears streamed down her face even before Patricia said, “Luka’s dead.” Because she’d realized what had happened or because she too was like Patricia’s aunts and uncles.

That was how Regina lost her last brother.

“Comrade, when did your child die?” asked a bowlegged midget who was hurrying after Regina. He could have been sixty, but she wouldn’t have been surprised if he’d been only thirty. Among lunatics and ne’er-do-wells, whom God endowed with the intelligence of a five-year-old, it wasn’t always easy to tell who was how old. Their time flowed differently than it did for everyone else: for some of them it was quicker, for others it was slower, but never as it was for the people who considered themselves normal. That was the most obvious difference between the sane and insane. If not the only difference that was completely reliable.

“Comrade, what did your child die from?” the midget persisted, and as soon as she turned around to chase him off, he ran and hid behind a tree. He came back when she started walking again, keeping two steps behind her and asking another question: “Comrade, does your heart ache? You carried your child under your heart, and now it’s empty there.” She grabbed a rock and threw it at him to scare him. He jumped and squealed like a little dog when someone steps on its tail, though the rock missed him by three meters.

“Comrade, take me; I’ll be a good child. No mother gave birth to me; I came from the war. Take me; I’m war booty,” he said, offering himself.

Regina tried to ignore him. Fortunately the road to Jagomir was empty, and no one saw the woman in black and the bald little monkey chasing her, because an onlooker would have surely laughed, made some smart-aleck remark, or grabbed the midget and beaten him up, convinced that he was doing it to protect normal people from lunatics.