“Let’s go,” Luka whispered to Dijana.
“Just go; go and farewell!” the tavern keeper said, who’d caught Luka’s words; “you don’t even need to pay! Just don’t ever come back here again! It’ll be better for you, you old pig!”
They went toward their house in silence. Luka was ashamed because he hadn’t stood up to the man in front of the little girl, and she was happy that they’d gotten out of there. That man was certainly one of the three men in Yalta, she concluded. Uncle Luka just didn’t want to tell her that, and she wasn’t going to ask him, so he wouldn’t have to lie to her or he wouldn’t have to see what she saw—that Uncle Luka was afraid of that man. For all she cared, he could be afraid; they’d be afraid of the man together. Dijana would be more afraid, just so that Uncle Luka would have it easier. Luka was worried about what the tavern keeper might have heard about him since he came back like that. And who might he have heard it from? He wouldn’t get an answer, but he never went back to any of the taverns in Kuna with Dijana. He would remain like that until their last trip together.
That was the only bad thing that happened on Luka’s and Dijana’s adventures. Otherwise there was only tenderness and happiness, for him as much as for her. In those crazy years they were each other’s guardian angels. He’d saved her from Regina’s crazy obsession with that other Dijana. The girl had become the apogee of a lie, but she’d saved Luka from years of partisan revenge, love and hatred for Stalin, and everything else that might have cost him his head if he hadn’t played Robinson Crusoe, hadn’t had a guardian angel for his gambling, and hadn’t gone off with her to Kuna. They would have continued protecting one another if Dijana hadn’t gone off to school and Regina hadn’t decided at that time to take Dijana’s life into her own hands. As long as someone needed to feed and dress her, teach her her first words, and create images of a happy childhood for her, Regina had left her child in Luka’s care, but the moment the little girl had to go out among other children and thus find herself before the eyes of the city, Regina tore her out of her brother’s arms. It was enough that he wasn’t like ordinary people and that he was the shame of the family. She wasn’t going to let him shape and knead her daughter according to his own standards. And besides, what would a female Luka be like? A little whore that would smile at everyone and be everyone’s crazy entertainment and delight. Maybe a man could be like that, but thank you very much, a woman couldn’t! Especially not a woman from the Delavale line who already bore wickedness within herself.
After the first days of September in 1951 Regina never again let Dijana go play cards with her Uncle Luka or play Robinson Crusoe. It didn’t matter whether it was a weekday or Sunday; she forced her to sit next to the stove and study, in the same wooden chair in which she would grow old and which would burn up along with everything else in the wartime blaze in 1991. She told Luka not to interfere with her child and not to do any harm if he couldn’t be of any use. He pulled back, partly because he believed his older sister and partly because he didn’t think he could save anyone besides himself. Right until he fled to Italy, he watched calmly as Dijana’s mother raised her, barely saying anything and forgetting the promises that he’d made to her and about the secret brotherhood that he’d created with her. That was his only sin, but no one even remembered it.
Regina made inquiries about Diana Vichedemonni for another ten years after she’d buried the rusty can with the inscription Santos and the picture of a laughing black woman. She wrote the owners of the ships on which Ivo had sailed since the ’30s, asking them to please send the lists of sailors. She lied, saying that she was searching for her brother, with whom she was supposed to divide a great inheritance. She promised money if they found him, made up stories about Swiss bank accounts, signed her name as the Contessa Regina Della Valle, and went to Professor Svitić to have her letters translated into Italian, French, German, and English. She ordered a stamp with her name and monogrammed stationery, until she’d spent the family gold and sold all their vineyards on Pelješac. This obsession with an unknown woman, the only person who could extinguish the fire of Regina’s rage at life, was too expensive in every sense. Besides the family estate, the value of which was better expressed in memories than in the fluctuations in the price of gold on the world markets, Regina put everything else up for auction. What belonged to her and what didn’t. Diana Vichedemonni became her only thought, the center of the cosmos, a black sun in her heliocentric experience of the world. Everything that did and didn’t exist revolved around that name, around its own axis, and around Diana. No one would be able to escape the gravitational pull of that black sun, nor could anything that Regina heard, saw, sniffed, touched, or felt, no matter in which way. A whole half-century later the whole family would come flying apart because of Diana Vichedemonni, and a new chain of misfortunes would begin, in which Regina’s death would involve people who’d never had any prior connection to her. The heliocentric systems of misfortune repeated in cycles. They were the only living history, a history that didn’t die away but was passed from generation to generation and from age to age. They existed even hundreds of years later. Just as Hitler’s crimes were still alive for the wider world and caused suffering for children who were born after the collapse of the Third Reich, so for small worlds, familial microcosms, and romantic unions such small crimes, completely insignificant from the perspective of historiography, were eternal.
From time to time answers came from Lloyd’s and George J. Robinson & Sons, in which they directed Regina to the Yugoslav embassies in London and Washington. A letter also came from Samuel F. Klein, a prewar shipbuilder in Trieste who was living in Haifa in 1951. He wrote her that he didn’t know anything about the fate of his four ships but that all the papers had burned in the fires that had been lit by the black shirts in 1938, that he was sorry that the lady couldn’t locate her brother but was surprised that she was only looking for him on account of the inheritance: “My advice to you is to look for him for some other, more noble reasons. Then the dear Lord will grant that you find him!”
She shed a tear at those words and pitied a man whom fate had led to say such things. That couldn’t be anything other than fate, she thought: from some, death takes away everyone they loved and all those who never did any wrong. She didn’t know that Samuel F. Klein could have told her at least part of the truth about Ivo if she’d only asked the right questions instead of asking for a list of sailors on the ship Leonica. And maybe Klein would have recognized who was writing to him if she’d written her surname as it was properly spelled. Or maybe he even knew and that was the reason why he was telling her to find better and more noble reasons for her search. It’s a difficult claim to make, but it wasn’t impossible that Samuel F. Klein might have saved Regina Delavale in more fortunate circumstances or if her rage had been a little softer and more reasonable. Maybe it would have been enough for her to have known who in fact Samuel F. Klein was.
VII
In the winter of 1942, Samuel F. Klein was a captive in the attic of the Banja Luka prep school. No one had actually captured him; even so, he didn’t dare go out because he was a son of Abraham, one of those whom you could recognize by their noses, as people said. But Klein was given away by more than his big, eagle-like nose, which reached almost all the way down to his chin: he looked just like one of those Nazi character sketches. He was short and hunched, with a narrow chest and legs that were bowed as if he were riding a barrel; he had beady eyes, bushy black eyebrows, and hair that was always greasy (none of the shampoos and pomades he was able to get in good times from London and Paris had helped). Had he gone down from the prep school attic, he wouldn’t have reached Gospodska Street before someone nabbed him. If not the Ustashas, then some conscientious citizens, and there were as many of those in Banja Luka as anywhere else in ordinary times and in states with no racist laws on the books. People who reported stray dogs to the city dog pound would also report Jews and Gypsies after the establishment of the great German Reic
h or any other Reich.
Klein thought about this as he lay on the dusty ottoman and played with a large school globe. He was bothered by a single memory: in 1919 he’d been sitting in his nephew Hugo’s law office in Sušak, and Hugo, excited about the final establishment of authority and normal life, telephoned the local mayor and warned him of the need to establish a city dog pound because stray dogs had reproduced so much during the war years and the years of anarchy that they threatened epidemics of infectious diseases. Not only did Samuel not object, but he agreed with his nephew and was genuinely surprised by the mayor’s lack of interest in the problem and the rude manner in which he got rid of the Sušak lawyer on the telephone.
Had the dogs really disturbed them? Had they been aggressive, and did their nightly barking annoy the two of them? No matter how he tried to invent positive answers, Samuel F. Klein couldn’t remember a single negative experience with dogs in Sušak. Shaggy and hungry, they steered clear of people and ran when they saw a man fifty meters away. They seemed fairly disappointed by the entire race of bipeds. The dogs of Sušak, Klein thought, had reached a third evolutionary phase: from their wild ancestors and their docile forefathers there had arisen the contemporary kind of dogs: those resigned to their fate, creatures of fear, terror, and philosophical melancholy. When they were left alone, they lay on trash heaps and blinked in the sunlight. Apart from their communication with each other, that was their only interaction with the outside world. The sun alone didn’t threaten them with evil.
Why then had those dogs bothered him and his nephew Hugo? He realized that the dogs hadn’t bothered them. Rather, they’d transformed their euphoria at the birth of a new state into a feeling that measures needed to be taken against stray dogs. It was one of numerous hygienic imperatives. And in times when states were being built, men lived on imperatives. If they hadn’t been so enthusiastic about their new state, they would have in all likelihood realized that there were much greater threats to public hygiene than dogs. Or they wouldn’t have thought about public hygiene at all. Similar rules were in effect now, and because of them he didn’t dare leave the attic. The only difference lay in the fact that the need for dog pounds had been replaced by the need for camps, and the elimination of stray dogs had in the contemporary world been turned into the elimination of Jews, Gypsies, and Orthodox Christians. That is, people. Men weren’t the same as dogs, but the excitement that occurred when a Reich or another state came into being didn’t recognize the difference between men and dogs.
The question that Klein pondered most, and to which there was no answer, was this: would he, if he weren’t a son of Abraham, be an alert and conscientious citizen of the new state and report bipeds without pedigrees? He didn’t understand how people could become wild beasts overnight, and he tried to convince himself that this couldn’t ever happen to him. But then he would remember 1919, the pins with the likeness of King Petar the Liberator; anxious looks toward Rijeka, which people guessed was going to go to the Italians; and the relief that he’d felt when his nephew Hugo decided to offer their joint contribution to the birth of a new state. He took no consolation in the fact that nothing had come of the dog pound or that both of them would have been sorry had they seen people hunting down dogs. The fact that he’d felt or done something on account of the state that he otherwise wouldn’t have was indisputable. Patriotism dribbled all around like honey from a silver spoon, and it sought blood with which it could mix. Whether it was the blood of dogs or men depended more on the nature of the newborn state than it did on the souls that were the source of the patriotism. The new state of 1919 left its citizens the freedom to choose their victims, and so Samuel and Hugo chose stray dogs; the state of 1941 stated clearly in its laws whose blood it sought. And this was written out on every street corner, every signboard, on the emblem and the flag. It was manifest in its military and police uniforms, their colors and cut, the death’s heads and heroic songs of elite units. Patriotism was honey and blood. The living were divided into patriots and those beings whose blood was to be sacrificed. A month of staying in the prep school was enough for Samuel F. Klein to swear that he would never love another state again.
He’d come to Banja Luka in the autumn of 1941 from the village of štivor near Prnjavor, traveling on the horse-drawn wagon of Husnija Hadžalić, under some hay that gave him allergy attacks. He’d thought that he was going to suffocate a dozen times or so in two days. But worse than that was the fact that Husnija, otherwise a gem of a person, had no idea what an allergy was. He was sticking his own neck out to save Klein’s; both of them would have been executed on the spot if someone had discovered a Jew under the hay. And he was deeply disappointed in the man whom he was trying to save:
“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 real
ly 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.
The Walnut Mansion Page 32
