Miljenko Jergovic - The Walnut Mansion

Thus she developed her story about sane people and normal people, which might have had little to do with what was written in books but was true. Truth is everything one believes in, and it’s easy for there to be truth in the idea that insanity is more contagious than the plague or cholera.

That was death without a grave, she concluded after she’d thought about it for days and changed her mind about whether she would go to see Bepo in Jagomir. Insanity was contagious. She realized this when her life began to change only because she knew where her brother was. And it changed by virtue of the fact that a difference arose between what she saw and heard and what was real. Maybe not even anything that was happening to her or anything that had remained when Ivo died was what it was, but what it wasn’t. The difference between “is” and “isn’t” lies in the decision for something to be or not to be.

She would look at Dijana, her little girl, and wonder whether the problem lay in the name she bore or in the life that had begun within her. And she didn’t love her with the love that she’d imagined when she was carrying her or as she listened to other mothers talk about what it meant to have a child.

“They told me you’re not eating,” she began as soon as they sat down on the bed.

“How’s the girl? I’m sorry I haven’t seen her,” he said, acting as if he hadn’t heard.

“She’s fine. Getting bigger every day,” she said; it was the first thing that came to mind.

“If she takes after Ivo, she’ll be tall. Taller than you by a head, and maybe taller than her uncles. That’s right. We grew taller than our papas and mamas, and they were taller than our grandpas and grandmas. In three hundred years men will be like cypress trees, and women like poplars. They’ll marvel at the little houses we lived in. They’ll laugh at us, but we won’t care because we won’t be around any more,” he said, cracking his knuckles until the joints stopped popping. Then he stopped.

“Bepo, why aren’t you eating?” Regina asked.

“We don’t leave much of any value to our children. To our children or future generations. No matter how we might think we’re leaving them a lot, no matter how much we’ve sacrificed, it won’t mean anything to them. A little world that you can’t move into. It’s as if we’d inherited the little we have from ants. In America there are anthills that are a hundred times bigger than ours, but they’re still not big enough for people to live in,” he said and waved his hands. Then he made anthills in the air with his palms, left just enough space for an ant between his index finger and thumb, and used his palms to show the difference between the large ones and small ones.

“You’ll die on me from hunger,” Regina interjected as soon as he ran out of things to say and show.

“We believe that communism is something great and eternal. We think so because it is in proportion to us, but it won’t be for our children and our children’s children. The little ones can’t understand the big people, just as we can’t understand them. We know only that communism will seem trivial to them. They’ll take a red banner between two fingers, like this, and will walk across Russia in three steps because Russia will seem small to them too, much smaller than Pelješac. You just watch children growing big, and you see that there’s no point in measuring the world on a scale bigger than your own life. I’ve come to understand that!” he said raising his voice and lifting his finger above his head. That was the gesture of a strict teacher, an attempt at being funny.

“Bepo,” she said, grabbing him by the hand, “what’s wrong, dear Bepo?” she asked and started crying.

“That won’t help you at all,” he snapped at her in disgust; “how can you ask me that and cry? If you’re going to cry, ask something else!”

She hurriedly wiped away her tears with her sleeve: “Here, I’m not crying any more. What’s wrong with you? Tell me,” she said, trying to smile.

“Oh, that’s better! And not so I think I’ve stolen an apple. Nothing’s wrong with me. Every morning Dr. Hoffman brings me Politika and Oslobođenje, and I see that nothing can be done with the world. Take a look, a cease-fire has been signed between India and Pakistan. They were fighting over Kashmir, and it really seems to me that Kashmir is their Bosnia. I imagine it has a lot of sheep, green mountains with snowy peaks. Why else would they fight over it? The only thing I can’t understand is what’s going on with Berlin. Stalin won’t let the English enter the city via the railways and roads, so the English fly in and out more than a thousand times a day in airplanes. As if the Russians couldn’t shoot down their airplanes. It really seems to me that the Allies are spiting them.

He showed how airplanes take off and land and did it so well that his hands almost seemed to turn into big military transport planes.

“And you’re acting out of spite!” she said.

“Why do you think so?” he asked, saddened.

“Because you’re not eating, Bepo. You’ll die if you don’t eat.”

“Mother in Heaven, you’re treating me like a child. ‘You’ll die if you don’t eat, you’ll die if you don’t eat.’ I’m sure you talk to Dijana like that. Do you think I’m a child just because I’m in a mental hospital?”

“I don’t think so. I just think you’re acting out of spite.”

“Hamdija certainly told you that. He’s a good, simple-minded boy. Hoffman wouldn’t talk such nonsense. The boy doesn’t know what life is.”

“They’re both worried about you. You’ll die.”

“Of course I’ll die. Everyone dies, right, don’t they? They die no matter what.”

“Why aren’t you eating?”

“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you. If I could tell you at all. But I can’t! That’s between me and the movement. Once you get into it, there’s no getting out. But I don’t regret a day of it. I’m only sorry about Spain and Granada. Spain will never again be what we dreamed it would be. It’ll be too small for our children, and they’ll toss it aside like a toy. We’re the last who knew how beautiful it was. And how big it was.”

“Are you going to eat?”

“Regina, you’re stubborn as a mule. You didn’t used to be like that.”

“Are you ever going to eat again?”

“You’re crying again! Have you lost your nerves? Watch out; that’s how it starts. Ask Hoffman if you don’t believe me. No, I’m not a child, and you don’t have to pester me. Or are you trying to help me? I’m beyond help. I ate my share of bread, and I don’t need any more.”

Regina jumped up, grabbed her chin, which was quivering uncontrollably, and ran out of Bepo’s room, straight into Hamdija’s arms. He led her without a word down corridors full of empty echoes, in which her sobs sounded like the grating noises of a cabinet being pushed from one end of an empty parlor to another.

He placed a glass of sugar water in front of her. Dr. Hoffman pointed over to the cabinet with his eyes, and Hamdija took out a bottle and two brandy glasses. Regina tried with all her might to keep a straight face so she wouldn’t burst into a sobbing mess.

“Have a drink, ma’am; unfortunately we haven’t come up with a better medicine than brandy!”

Hoffman downed the brandy that Hamdija poured for him and shook like a shaggy dog coming out of a lake. His every hair stood on end, more from fear than anything else, because he knew that Bepo Sikirić wasn’t going to be dissuaded. And that was Hoffman’s choice: either he could wait for them to put him up against the wall, or he could pass judgment on himself.

It occurred to him to give himself an injection of morphium; there’s no nicer way to die than with morphium, if any death can be nice. The older he got, the more he wanted to live, and the fewer reasons he had to die. At one time he’d been ready to die for his emperor and king and flew into such a rage at those who’d killed Archduke Franz Ferdinand at the Latin Bridge that the next day he enlisted as a volunteer in case Vienna decided to punish Serbia militarily, but his enlistment papers got lost somewhere and no one called him up for the army when war was finally declared. They probably figured that a psychiatrist wouldn’t be much use on the front or might even damage the combat morale of the regiment.