Miljenko Jergovic - The Walnut Mansion

“You say the hay suffocates you. Of course it would when you’re from the city. It’s good it only suffocates you. It’s a wonder it doesn’t pinch and stick you. May thunder strike me dead if I understand anything you’re saying! The Ustashas are after you. The police are chasing you. You’ve got the whole government after you. Oh, no more, no less than the government! But your own ass isn’t as important as showing Husnija that you grew up in silk and velvet and that his hay bothers you. As if I wouldn’t have wanted to roll around in silk and velvet. But, my good man, I warmed myself in cowshit! And I thought there was nothing better than that. Until I came to the city and you told me my hay bothers you. Allah Jalla Shanuhu wouldn’t be able to get a grip on Himself if he saw this. But fortunately He doesn’t see it. He gave up on this stuff a long time ago.”

Klein tried in vain to explain the nature of his illness to the peasant.

“What kind of illness is it that doesn’t pass from person to person and you only get it from hay?” Husnija asked.

“Some people get it from hay, others from flour, flowers, or berries.”

“There’s no such illness, and that’s that! Do you know what that illness of yours is called in Bosnia?” Husnija asked him. “It’s called a dog’s whim! But you come down with it while you’re a child, and no one’s ever heard of an old fart catching it. No sir! And do you know what the only medicine is for a dog’s whim? A stick, a whip, and a willow switch, right across the ass! Some need more, some less, but they’re all cured of it. I fear it’s too late for you.”

As he listened to him, Klein didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. But in any case he regretted having shown himself in such a bad light to the man who was saving his skin. When they parted, Klein wanted to give him two Franz Joseph ducats, but Husnija wouldn’t take them.

“My hand would fall off if I took them,” he said and vanished into the night. It would have been worth more than gold to him if the good Allah had made the world so that people didn’t curse his hay.

Franjo, the school janitor, put Klein up in the attic so he could stay there for five or six days, until a contact came who would transfer him to the Italian zone of occupation. Until then Franjo would feed and attend to him. He wouldn’t need a thing, but he wasn’t supposed to show his face below the attic, nor should he lower his feet from the ottoman during the day, when the pupils were at school, because the ceilings were thin and someone would hear it. So during the day there was no taking a shit or a piss. If he got the urge, he’d better go in his pants! If he behaved differently and the Ustashas discovered him, Franjo would act as if he didn’t know about him and would spit on him and give him a kick in the ass to boot. But if he was smart and followed the rules, there was no chance of anyone discovering him. The agreement was made: every evening the janitor would bring him food and a newspaper, and every morning he would carry away the full night pot.

“Well, I’ve never seen anyone who shits and pisses as much as you!” the janitor told him on the third day.

Klein blushed and began to apologize, only to realize later that Franjo liked talking about shitting, pissing, and farting. That was probably some kind of mental defect of his, but he could go on about those three things for hours, in thousands of different ways, and it really cheered him up when Klein realized this and started telling him about his experiences.

They would sit on the ottoman in complete darkness for hours and tell one another stories of their own and others’ toilet experiences. Franjo was most enthusiastic when Klein told him about a Frenchman, about whom the Zagreb Jutarnji list had written way back in ’20-something, who could fart the whole Marseillaise without missing a single note.

“You say not a single false note anywhere?! A perfect ear!” Franjo exclaimed, laughing like crazy. “And people bought tickets to hear him?! And women came to the concerts?! Wearing hats? And they took clothespins to plug their noses. You know what I tell you?! He was a great man! If you’re not just making him up. If you are, then you’re a great man. On my mother Mara, I’ve never heard a better tale in my life. Is the master farter still alive? Of course, how could you know whether he’s alive? If he is, he must be having a hard time. Now he can play the Marseillaise for some Kraut and lose his hide,” he said, worried about the fate of the Parisian musician.

After he traded stories with the janitor, Samuel F. Klein was left alone and he read the newspaper, in which he searched for news of a world without war. There were few such pieces of news, and there had always been few of them. But you didn’t notice until the war spread to your own backyard. It didn’t take a world war for all the pages of all the world’s newspapers to have nothing but stories of wars of the present and future. Only earlier he’d read newspapers without trepidation and without feeling that he of all people was affected by what they wrote about. Back then, if a mental disquiet came over him, which happened very seldom — once or twice in six months, and he felt that every tragedy was connected to every other tragedy, and that every one of them would come to his doorstep — then he simply wouldn’t read the newspapers. He waited for the disquiet to pass, and when that happened, he returned to the unrest in the world, calm and collected. But now everything was different. There were no news stories that he didn’t take very personally. Thus, the newspaper became a man’s intimate diary for that day. The day before someone else had known how he would feel today.

Ten days passed like that, but the contact who was supposed to smuggle Klein into Italy never showed up.

“It’s happened before,” said Franjo, trying to comfort him. Unsuccessfully, because Samuel was already on the verge of a nervous breakdown. Soon he would either jump off the roof of the prep school or walk outside, and they could catch him and do whatever they wanted with him. There was no way he was going to stay there any longer.

“Do as you please, effendi!” the janitor said angrily. “You just go ahead and jump, and for all I care, they can quarter you and cut your throat, but why did you come here to me? Do you think I like doing this, keeping Orthodox and Jews up here in the attic? You say some keep goats and chickens, and crazy Franjo took you in so he could give you food and drink to fatten you up! It’s kind of like that, except you don’t lay eggs or give milk, and now you want to turn yourself in to the Ustashas to boot. Well, you know what I’d do to you if you were a chicken? I’d cut your head off! I fed you, and I’ll be the one to cut it off! Since you’re not a chicken, I can only say that you’ve screwed me good,” Franjo said and left the attic without saying good-bye.

That night he didn’t leave him anything to eat or drink, so Klein, hungry and thirsty, had to think hard about both his stomach and his nerves. This kind of life made no sense, and if half the world wanted to see him dead, then it was really smartest to say, “Fine, here’s my head since it’s worth so much to you! I don’t get much use out of it.” If I do that, Klein thought, nobody has the right to rebuke me for it, not those who are in the same position as me, not even God if he exists. Klein was ready to end his suffering and was, as Husnija said, done with life. His kin were condemned to disappear, over there where he was called a Yid and here where they called him a Jew and in every corner of the globe where he was called thousands of various names, and it made no sense at all. Nor was there any way for Samuel F. Klein of all people to resist it.