Miljenko Jergovic - The Walnut Mansion

Unaware either of one another or of Panther’s escape to the partisans, they kept working, and on one starry April night the villager Husnija Hadžalić brought Ivo Delavale to Franjo the janitor. He just dropped him off, without an accompanying letter or money for food, as packages are left at the post office. Franjo complained and held his head in his hands but to no avail. Underneath a pile of dusty placards about tuberculosis, syphilis, cholera, and the “If you wash your hands, you’ve cleared your conscience” campaign, one more ottoman was found in a corner of the attic. And then Franjo completed the household protocol: “During the day keep your lips sealed because everything can be heard, and don’t think anyone gives a fuck about you at night!”

He was mad as hell and convinced that all three of them would die of hunger. And he prayed to God that a fourth wouldn’t be arriving soon.

At first the name Samuel F. Klein meant nothing to Ivo, although he’d read it in 1933 and 1934 at the head of the dining table of the Leonica, certainly the nicest and most comfortable ship on which he’d sailed. And not only did he remember that name, written in Gothic script with red ink, but he’d also seen a photograph of the ship’s owner above it at breakfast, lunch, and dinner. He’d wondered countless times what type of man he must be if he exposed his name and picture so that sailors could spit on it, swear at his mother, and curse the day that they’d set foot on the ship. And they would swear at him and curse him because they had to do it to someone, and if they feared God, the captain, and the first deck officer, they would let the first person whose picture they saw have it — the Austrian emperor, the Yugoslav king, or a naked beauty whose picture was pasted on the inside of a toolbox. They would swear at a face in old newsprint, and if not even that was there because on ships pictures were few and far between, they would swear at themselves because they weren’t at home catching fish on a trawl line but sailing around the Tierra del Fuego and praying to God that the Pacific was as peaceful as its name suggested and not as it was according to its nature. It’s always the same, on every ship and on every voyage, and everyone who has ever sailed, even as a passenger, knows it. He couldn’t believe that the owner of the Leonica wasn’t aware of that or that he was so proud of his name and personage that he would subject his name and picture to the impulses of anguished sailors. There were those who spat on him for luck and for a calm sea. Every evening, instead of prayers for calm, they would clear their throats and spit at the face of the man with the bow tie and the high top hat. Ivo didn’t swear at him or spit at him but amused himself by trying to figure out what made him tick. That man might differ from other men in some way, in something that made him interesting. But hardly any of that could be learned from a single photograph. None of the crew had met the owner of the Leonica, nor did they know any more about him. The mystery of the photograph remained unsolved, if it even existed and if anyone besides Ivo Delavale saw anything more in it than a target for spittle and an icon for oaths and curses.

When the Leonica sailed out of his life and Ivo boarded uglier, rustier, and more hazardous ships that had no dining halls or portraits of emperors, kings, or Jesus Christ, Samuel F. Klein would often cross his thoughts. But there wasn’t anything at all in the appearance of the dusty little man in the attic of the Banja Luka prep school, who sincerely rejoiced at his arrival because he would no longer be alone for days on end, that might remind one of the spit-covered portrait on the wall of the dining hall and the name written in Gothic script. He fit right in with the broken globes, portraits of deposed rulers. and maps with outdated borders. It was as if he himself had been taken out of use in some educational reform and had been taken up to the attic instead of to the municipal dump. He was nice and amusing when he spoke about his numerous ailments or about recipes for cakes for holidays, holy days, and saints’ days.

“Well, if somebody asked me now what I miss most and what I’ll pine for if I say good-bye to this life, I’d say to him — cake, nothing but cake! I’ve survived everything, but I can’t survive without Sacher torte!” Klein said on their first night together, and Ivo couldn’t figure out whether he was complaining or making a joke at his own expense. The same doubt would linger on until the end of their time together. Even after they knew more about one another than the best of friends do, Ivo wouldn’t be sure when Klein was making fun of himself or wanted to share his despair and sorrow with him. He would stay up till dawn counting the cakes that he’d ever eaten and recalling pastry shops and cities, and there were many of them all over the world. In an instant he would jump from the baklava of Bitolj and Istanbul to the Kaiserschmarrn of Vienna and then to the apple pie that he’d tried the one time he’d traveled to America in 1921 or 1922. He told of jelly rolls he’d eaten in a Hungarian shop in Subotica and about the difference between apricot jam and rose-hip jam — the former was perfect for jelly rolls, but the latter tasted better in crispier cakes. He told how there was no better drink than boza, at least to go with cakes, and then about the Turkish delight in Prilep, the pauper’s halva in Bosnian towns, and the floating island desserts that you like only as long as you are someone’s grandchild — when your grandmas and grandpas died, your craving for floating dessert disappeared.

Ivo listened to him and drifted off to sleep. Klein would talk for a long time yet, even when he realized that no one was listening to him. He’d gotten a craving for tales of cakes because he couldn’t talk about them with Franjo.

In the morning the janitor took away the chamber pot, which was twice as full as it ordinarily was.

“It can’t go on like this,” he said. But he himself didn’t know how things could continue and what to do with the people whose care was entrusted to him. When he’d taken on this task, Franjo believed that he was doing a good deed and that he wouldn’t come out behind on it but would also feed himself and supplement his diet on Panther’s money. However, since there was no longer any money and Panther wasn’t around, his good deed began to make less sense. Everyone was working for himself, only he was working to his own detriment; he was carrying other people’s shit around the prep school and awaiting the day when the Ustashas would find him out.

Outside it was spring, the kind that had come only seldom during the years of peace. The hills surrounding the city sprouted, bloomed, and blossomed; buzzing and chirping drowned out the noise of German trucks. Armies prepared to move on each other. Prep school graduates prepared to leave for Stalingrad. Pavelić’s speeches and songs celebrating the beauty of the homeland resounded from loudspeakers on the square. . The world was in a season of perfect harmony; it was only Franjo’s life that was topsy-turvy. In early evening one could hear the sounds of a tambouritza and a song about the sad story of two friends, Latif and Sulejman, who — for one hundred and fifty years already — had been leaving Banja Luka in the spring and asking one another the same question: “Are you sorry?” Well, how could a man not be sorry to leave such beauty behind only because he knew it couldn’t last? Shouldn’t you live for no other reason than you know that from the perspective of the oak trees above šehitluci Hill you’re already long dead? It’s better to be born like an animal, enjoy every spring day, and have no idea that there will be something else tomorrow, something that isn’t nice and might make you regret that you’re alive.