Miljenko Jergovic - The Walnut Mansion

Regina fled from such rumors as much as she could, and when someone asked her about her brother, she said that she’d had nothing to do with him for a long time— he’d renounced his family and inheritance, and it was known for a fact that Đovani was in Paris and that coming back was the farthest thing from his mind.

“He’s there because he likes to feel the male member in his ass,” she said; “he’s fucking Frenchmen and doing who knows what else.”

And so everyone who asked anything fled as fast as their feet could carry them, knowing that Regina was capable of describing in detail what male and female mouths don’t say and ears don’t want to hear.

Soon the rumors quieted down, probably because there was nobody to confirm them or because people started saying that Đovani had been seen in France. The driver of the Yugoslav consul had met him and spoken with him. He was a rich and respected man, dealt in real estate, and had already forgotten their language a little. That piece of evidence was stronger than any other and stronger than the wickedness of the city. Fascinated by the fact that someone born among them had forgotten words of his native speech, people also forgot what had been written in the newspapers. Or they believed that there was another Đovani Sikirić who had less brains and luck and wasn’t from their city.

On the sixth of May, 1937, the zeppelin Hindenburg, named after the glorious marshal who had handed over power to Hitler four years earlier, burst into flames as it landed in Lakehurst, New Jersey. Thirty-three of ninety-seven passengers were killed, and the tragic end of the largest and most famous zeppelin in history would be the leading story in all the newsreels the following summer.

This disaster was nothing less than the fateful end of an airborne Titanic, and despite all the romantic overtones, it had a more ominous effect on moviegoers than the worsening civil war in Spain, the battles for Guadalajara and Malaga, the Japanese attacks on Shanghai, and even the futuristic predictions that in ten years, at most by 1955, the majority of Europeans would fall victim to alopecia caused by frequent, prolonged undulations. The flaming crash of the zeppelin, after which the development of that kind of airship came to a complete halt, was particularly shocking to moviegoers, especially those who went in the summer because they all dreamed of flying in a zeppelin one day. The images of lounges with stylish furniture in which kings and queens, barons, lords, wealthy European gentlemen, and adventurers drank champagne and laughed at jokes that would never reach the ears of ordinary people were repeated during several summer seasons, piquing people’s imaginations and producing sighs all along the Adriatic coast.

The viewers didn’t notice that there were always the same pictures with the same faces and glasses because from summer to summer people forgot what they’d seen in the newsreels, and all they remembered was their enthusiasm for the luxurious palaces that hung in the air, crystal chandeliers, and string quartets that at a few thousand feet above the earth change one’s image of the world. If it was true that lounges flew and that this same life, just much prettier and richer, was possible in the air, above oceans and mountains, then borders would no longer exist for people, worries would lose their meaning, and death would cease to be a certainty. One needed only to collect the fortune needed to pay for the flight, board a zeppelin, and fly off on the wings of progress with kings and queens. With those who’d be saved first from every known misfortune.

The Hindenburg was magnificent not only because it was announced in the newsreels to be the largest and most powerful zeppelin, but also because its name was as heavy as lead, massive as the steel mills on the Ruhr that belched forth the fires of the strongest industry in the world day in, day out. That name was as if hammered into the earth, louder and more sonorous than all other names. Not even God himself called Himself that. But then that same heavy Hindenburg nevertheless soared up into the clouds, lighter than a chocolate wrapper smoothed flat by a child’s hand. The heaviest word that summertime moviegoers had ever heard floated off into the sky like a little feather!

When the news arrived that the Hindenburg had exploded in flames and that the smiling faces and hands holding glasses of champagne had disappeared in smoke and dust, the viewers were shocked to the core. They stared at the screen like children who’d woken up and found that they’d been transformed into unhappy adults.

Regina ran crying out of the Cosmos Cinema before the beginning of the movie Gertrude’s Sin, a German love story set in the snowy Alps that had been the talk of the town. The scenes from Lakehurst were unbearable for her. People in top hats carrying gentlemen’s canes watched the Hindenburg disappear from a polite distance, and they seemed bored. She saw their backs moving more and more quickly to the sluggish rhythm of the moving pictures and the American sky into which the ugly black smoke was billowing. And that black smoke was full of what had been people, their wealth and fame, and what had been the hope of an era. A part of her life was billowing up into the sky because she’d believed in the possibility of that flying world and that it was her future, if today was someone else’s present. It’s always like that, she thought; what the wealthy can have today, the whole world can have tomorrow. One only had to have enough patience and wait, and everything would end up in its place. Cities would soar up into the clouds, together with their poor folk and those who didn’t even have money for bread, in some even larger zeppelins, and in the end the whole world would be free, leave Earth, and fly through spaces bigger than the sky. She imagined such a scenario watching the newsreels and didn’t pay any heed to all the talk about how thirty-two was too old for a woman to be unmarried, and she was about to miss the bus. She watched the zeppelin and didn’t worry. There was something to wait for up until the Hindenburg went down in flames.

And then it was over. At the start she looked at the screen in confusion; the speaker was excitedly speaking of people who were turning into living torches. Death came quickly, before those unlucky people managed to remember God. Luka laughed bitterly at those words and poked her with his elbow. He couldn’t feel all that horror; he was only irritated at the voice that kept talking. He looked at his sister and poked her again— could she hear? She just sat with her mouth slightly agape and stared ahead, as if she were hypnotized or she could see all the stupid things that the voice was talking about.

“Wow, look at that smoke!” he whispered when the big black cloud of smoke appeared on the screen again, and Regina jumped up from her seat and began to push her way to the door.

She stepped on people’s feet. A woman squealed like a mouse because Regina had stepped on her corn. The woman’s husband cursed God and the blessed Virgin Mary. The rows in the cinema began to stir; the people stared at the girl who was running in sobs toward the exit. Luka couldn’t figure out what was going on. It was the first time Regina had done something he couldn’t explain. That was the moment, or so he thought, when her disagreement with the world began.

But it was more likely that the disagreement had occurred at least six years earlier, when Luka wasn’t yet nine, and his sister had fallen in love with Aris Berberijan, a law student from Novi Sad. His rich father had sent him to the Adriatic so his tuberculosis could be treated with fresh air, though Aris actually wasn’t even suffering from tuberculosis. He was suffering from something else, however, which led him to bribe doctors and pay enough money to buy a house in the center of town to a Dr. Mušicki in exchange for a confirmation that he had tuberculosis, in which two open caverns and six more months to live were mentioned rather dramatically.