It took time for the two of them to pull themselves together and remember the reason for their arrival in that unbelievable place, in that city, which was bigger and more powerful than what any living person could imagine a city could be. Rafo still hadn’t realized that he was going to stay there, and Alija was already sorry that he was going to leave. He took a piece of paper out of his pocket. It said where he was supposed to take the boy but didn’t say in whose care he was supposed to leave him. That wouldn’t worry Alija, not a chance!— because the little boy was nevertheless the emperor’s godchild, and no matter how big Sarajevo was, everyone here also had to know what it meant to be a bud of the soul of Franz Joseph II. He wasn’t the godfather of just anyone! Because even if he were emperor a hundred times, he couldn’t be a godparent ten times. Seven or eight was enough! Alija was overcome with pride, and his self-confidence returned because he’d concluded that Trebinje had what Sarajevo didn’t.
On the left bank of the Miljacka, when one crossed the Latin Bridge, a three-story house had been built in the western fashion way back during the time of the Turks. Ivan Karadža had built it, an important merchant and a coach driver who maintained links with Dubrovnik and Venice that weren’t broken even during the time of rebellions and wars, when all links would be broken and trading caravans had to be accompanied by strong units of the sultan’s soldiers. Karadža, however, didn’t need the sultan’s soldiers, nor was he afraid of highway robbers. He always had agreements with all warring sides and rebels, and the highway robbers didn’t touch him because he always made efforts to have a reputation worse than those escorting the robbers. Two or three times, during a time of great hunger and Karađorđe’s revolts in Serbia, some wretches attacked Karadža’s caravan, but neither were any of his men hurt, nor did the robbers get away with any loot. No one knew for certain what happened to those robbers, except that it was well known that none of them made it back home.
People said that Ivan Karadža would cut out their eyes, that he would tear out their fingernails, and that on the night of the big party that followed every attack he would light a fire with his own hands and build it up to a great blaze. Then he would tie the leader of the robbers to a skewer with a wire and roast him alive. And it was told on the square that he did it so that only the man’s lower half, from the waist down, would be on the heat. The leader would live long enough to see when Karadža took a knife and cut a good piece of fatty meat and smeared it with a bulb of onion on the victim’s eyes. That was only one of the horror stories about Karadža, and there were more. Some concerned Karadža’s alleged taste for pederasty and sodomy— these contained even more horrible details, but no one knew the truth. Ivan himself never denied a single story about himself, so if anyone said anything ugly to him or accused him of anything, he just walked gentlemanly on by. He dressed in the latest bourgeois fashion, and around 1820 he was the first Sarajevan to walk the city in a top hat. He caught the eye of many a young woman, including Muslim married women, because he was handsome and strong. The Ottomans valued him, the local authorities respected him, and he allegedly had a good reputation with the merchants and diplomats of Istanbul.
When in 1878 Baron Filipović’s troops were already fighting for Pašino Brdo and entering the town, Karadža got out of his sick bed, dressed up, put on his hat, and went off to the city administration, taking one step at a time.
He was already almost one hundred. People had already started gradually forgetting both him and the legends about him, but he found it proper to go to the Turkish city administration, express his condolences on the ceding of Bosnia, and tell them that it was his desire to remain on the best of terms with his Turkish friends. The administration, however, was already empty, and he didn’t find anyone there except one servant, Haji Asim Brutus, the father of nine children, pious, but a savage man. Asim didn’t recognize him but knocked his hat off, livid: the infidel had gotten full of himself and put on a pagan hat even before his side took the city!
Terrible Ivan Karadža only looked at him in confusion and tried to bend down to pick up his hat but couldn’t do it.
“What the hell do you need a hat for if empires like this crumble?” he allegedly commented and expired the next day.
Does one need mention that he died unhappy? No, but that would fit into the legend about Karadža. It was a pity that Sarajevo wasn’t a city of songwriters, as was Mostar, and that there wasn’t anyone to compose a song about Karadža that would be sung accompanied by a tamboura or fiddle and preserve the memory of that unusual man.
Well, it was to that address, to Karadža’s mansion, that Alija was supposed to deliver Rafo. And he took him there and turned him over to two nuns who were temporarily residing there while their convent was being constructed on Banjski Brijeg, a picturesque glade next to a mosque and cemetery in the Mejtaš district. One of the nuns was named Rozalija and was plump, ruddy, and smiling. The other was named Paulina and was tall and thin as a pole for knocking down plums.
Alija laughed as soon as he saw them and grew uneasy. He became tongue-tied in his attempts to explain what he was laughing about. The two of them, however, knew what was going on with the midget and started teasing him. It seemed that at any moment the ground under Alija would open and swallow him up and that this was the only way that Allah could save him from his shame.
“Sit down here. Here’s some brandy if you drink, but if you don’t drink, then may we be forgiven for offering it, just as you are forgiven for the things you ask forgiveness for,” said Paulina, feigning earnestness.
Fat Rozalija showed Rafo his room: a military bunk with fine, embroidered sheets, an office cabinet, and a crucifix on the wall. Three tarps hung from wall to wall and hid the worm-eaten boards. It wasn’t a place where someone would want to spend the rest of his life, but on the other hand he felt the warmth people feel when something has been allotted and furnished for them. The boy put down his bag next to the bed as the nun waited to hear what he would say. She wanted to hear the boy say that he felt good there, and then she would laugh. Rafo didn’t say anything, but Rozalija still laughed. Rozalija believed that laughter couldn’t hurt and that laughter hadn’t ever done anyone harm and never gave up on that idea. She always laughed, as if St. Elijah had commanded her never to stop. That was the meaning of her mission and the way in which she intended to cure an unbelieving world.
After lunch, which they ate together with the masons building the convent, Alija said that he was going on a walk around town to buy a kerchief, roasted chickpeas, and sweets. He didn’t mention the low women in front of Paulina and Rozalija, who were serving the hungry menfolk. He winked at Rafo conspiratorially, more to encourage himself, and skipped outside.
“Don’t come back late,” Paulina called after him. “This is a house of God!” Rozalija hugged the boy and laughed again. She knew that this was what one was supposed to do when someone was alone for the first time. You hug him, and he has to feel better. If you see that he doesn’t, then you kiss him on the cheek. And he goes crazy because a nun kissed him on the cheek! And naturally, he feels better.
The scent of ash water on Rozalija’s sleeve moved Rafo. Or was it the smell of coarse peasant soap sold by women from the Sava region in all Bosnian markets, which was the first hygienic product for mass consumption in the history of that land? What exactly he smelled wasn’t important, but tears came to Rafo’s eyes. He thought that he would never see Alija again.
He spent the rest of the day in bed next to the open window.
“Let the child rest; he traveled all day and night,” Rozalija said.
“And will I ever get any rest?” Paulina quipped, just to spoil her older colleague’s joy a bit. Rafo slept and woke up every ten minutes or so, listened to the noises outside, and then suddenly dozed off again.
“Baskets! Baskets! Buy your baskets!” called a nasal male voice. A horse-drawn wagon clattered by on the pavement. Dogs barked and horses neighed. And then the muezzin sounded from a mo
sque. It was loud, as if he were calling to prayer right under Rafo’s window. A few moments later a second was heard, and far off in the distance a third. Church bells rang at different times. Copper pots banged as they fell off the wagon of an inattentive merchant. A child who’d been hurt playing war between believers and infidels cried for help. From a garden a woman’s voice wailed: “Mustafa! Mustafaaaaa! Mujooooo! May lightning strike you dead, so help me God!”
After that he didn’t wake up until he was awoken by a bright oil lamp and Rozalija’s hand on his shoulder. The nun was frightened and didn’t laugh.
Alija had taken care of everything in its turn, content that the prices weren’t as he’d expected. He’d thought that Sarajevo would be an expensive city, and it turned out to be cheaper than Trebinje, Čapljina, and Mostar, cheaper than Dubrovnik, which had always been the essence of cheapness. Not only had he bought more roasted chickpeas and sweets than he thought he would, but he’d also bought a wooden train with a locomotive. It was a spitting image of the Mostar-Sarajevo trainset! If it had been colored black, there wouldn’t have been any difference at all! That train had everything: two smokestacks, a coal car, and a restaurant car . . . If you looked hard, you might also find those two waiters, a raspberry juice and brandy . . .
The gift made him so enthusiastic that he began to fantasize about getting his three sons to work as railroaders. As soon as they saw the train, they wouldn’t think of anything else.
And there were all kinds of kerchiefs, for various prices. The cheapest were the simplest: black, the ones that Christian women used to cover their heads when someone died; Muslim women used them to cover themselves when they went to a mosque during Ramadan. Colored kerchiefs were somewhat more expensive: yellow as the moon or cornbread, red as when you cut your finger, some as blue as the sky, others as blue as the sea in high summer, green as grass and flags, violet as who knows what . . . At first Alija thought he would buy a violet one because he couldn’t think of anything that was so violet, but then he remembered Nafa. She certainly wouldn’t put something on her head if she didn’t know how it got its color. If he didn’t know, then she didn’t either. And then Alija saw a dizzying array of kerchiefs, and then Alija realized something that he should have known but hadn’t occur to him until he saw them. To hell with kerchiefs that only have one color! There were all kinds of multicolored kerchiefs— from those with flowers, roses and carnations, to those with flourishes and decorations. The stranger the decoration and the harder it was to tell what in reality it resembled, the more expensive the kerchief.
The most expensive kerchiefs in the market had decorations that one didn’t even see on mosque carpets, and they were also embroidered with gold thread. A thread of pure gold ran ever so faintly through the middle of the kerchief and across the decorations, as if put there by accident. Such kerchiefs cost Alija’s yearly pay. He looked at them and wondered: dear God, what fool would buy that for his wife? A very rich fool. But they weren’t fools because they were rich but because they didn’t have eyes to see that those kerchiefs were ugly. What marred them was what was the most expensive— gold! And God created gold to make each thing more beautiful.
Alija was astonished because he’d seen for the first time that gold can make something ugly. And he would have been glad if he could have been spared that knowledge. God help us from realizing that beauty can be ugly, he thought, and bought his Nafa the prettiest kerchief in the market. It had decorations that were more modest than a mosque carpet but were just right for her head, her looks, and her mind. Prettier decorations wouldn’t look good on her because Nafa would look uglier in them. And he would be ashamed to be beside her. The decorations on that kerchief seemed to have been thought up for her and him. So when they strolled through Trebinje on the emperor’s birthday or when he took her to Dubrovnik to see Stradun and how well the pavement was done there, everyone would say, “Now look at that fine woman, a real lady, and just look at her husband; he looks like he graduated from all the schools in Vienna!”
And all that because of the correct choice of kerchief. Alija was proud both of himself and of his choice, and of his Nafa, who was now waiting for him to return from his distant journey, from Sarajevo, the big city that was too big for viziers and so they never made it their seat of power. Or they were afraid of losing their sense of sight and their power of speech because of such beauty.
When the muezzins fell silent at dusk, Alija completed his purchases, and he still had money to return to Dubrovnik in style. Herr Heydrich wasn’t stingy after all. He’d given his faithful servant enough to treat himself too and to return home with dignity. Alija was a little ashamed of the episode with the borek. Thank God he was a coward because how would he face Herr Heydrich?! Not to mention the sin that he would have committed by leaving his children hungry. Oh, the fear God gave him was good, Alija thought. The only thing that worried him a little was whether Allah counted wicked thoughts in a man’s final reckoning. And how heavy were the uncommitted acts of spite on Alija’s scales? No one knew that, not even Hafiz Sulejmanaga Ferizoglu of the Ali-paša Mosque, whom, you see, Alija didn’t remember as he had spent so much time choosing a kerchief. He’d been enchanted by the silk and didn’t think of God in time and go to the mosque. And that was a sin. But how great? He started worrying and grew sad, and in a moment all of the joy of that day turned to lead. The roasted chickpeas, the sweets, the kerchief . . . How had his mind not seen that God was tempting him all the time?! But why did he have to do it just like that? He hadn’t been buying gifts for himself but was trying to make his wife and children happy.
Alija consoled himself with the thought that making them happy was the same as making Him happy, adapting and adding to the few Koranic suras that he thought he’d memorized and understood.
Still, he would go to Skenderija to see the Austrian whores, the fabled low women before whom everyone kneeled when they saw them. That would be his temptation, Alija thought, lying to himself. He would go to them, see them, and sniff the air, but he wouldn’t touch them. He would show Allah how great his faith was. He would be humble, tiny as he already was, but hard as a stone in the foundation of the world. Hard as the stone that the pine above the Neretva clung to. As he went like a sleepwalker toward Skenderija, a ruffian laughed at his question of where that was and said:
“Just go straight along the Miljacka, and when you can smell women’s parts, well, you’re at Skenderija.”
Alija mumbled the prayers that he could remember and looked up every so often at the sky, expecting that God would probably give him some sign if what he was doing wasn’t good. The sweets in his breast pocket were melting, his pockets full of roasted chickpeas were about to burst, he squeezed the kerchief so hard his fingers tingled, but Alija felt nothing as his heart dragged him to the low women and his soul froze in terror.
It was almost midnight when Rozalija woke up Rafo. Alija hadn’t come in for the night, and she and Paulina were worried because he too had been left in their care and because the people in Trebinje had told them that he was a good but somewhat simpleminded man who’d never been in a big city and had asked if they could keep an eye on him so he didn’t get lost. Rozalija thought that this had been said in jest— would they really entrust the boy to a simpleton?— but when Alija didn’t show up, both she and Paulina were seized with panic. They’d seen him as he was, and did they really not have enough sense to keep him from going into town? They asked Rafo whether Alija had happened to mention what he was going to do in Sarajevo, whom he might meet, and where they would go.
The boy repeated the story about the gifts and mentioned the wise hafiz whose prayer Alija wanted to hear, but he kept quiet about the low women. One certainly didn’t talk about such things in front of nuns, but, more important, he wanted to keep Alija’s secret and protect his friend. Even if the nuns didn’t report to Trebinje that Alija had gone to prostitutes, they would certainly look on him with derision. And only because they didn’t know th
e real reason why he wanted to see the low women.
On that night no one in the Karadža mansion slept. The nuns were dumbfounded with fear, and Rafo mostly kept silent and stared ahead. Rozalija and Paulina had visions of terrible stories from the time of the Turks. They remembered various cutthroats, agas, and ghazis who would draw their daggers at anyone who gave them a passing look, and the boy was tormented by an obsessive thought that Alija was dead and that he’d killed him. He’d killed him by taking a liking to him after they met— the first time he’d taken a liking to a stranger. Actually, maybe he didn’t love anyone else. His brothers, sisters, nephews, relatives, cousins, aunts, his kin and relatives by marriage— all had been fated to be his, and his attitude toward them was the same as to how he breathed. With no will of his own, by an irresistible habit, with no soul in fact. He would have erased them if he could have, just as he would have stopped breathing if it were somehow possible to do so of one’s own free will. Alija was the only person he’d chosen, and for that reason Alija was dead. At that moment he didn’t pity him. His guilt was too great for him to be able to pity him. It was so great that that divine house would have collapsed under it if it hadn’t been built by Ivan Karadža.
The Walnut Mansion Page 53
