Hmm, and the girl had learned in school that it rises in the east and sets in the west! She waited for Grandpa Niko to tell him that.
“That’s not the reason why Russia is powerful. That’s because it’s a crazy country. People know very well where the sun rises,” the one in the French hat quibbled.
“Great, now some of us are smart too,” said Horse Face and sighed. Grandpa Niko took another drag and threw his cigarette in front of his feet. He didn’t have to put it out because the water was already coming into the cellar, and the cigarette went out on its own. The girl knew what was coming. Grandpa wanted the three of them to go but didn’t know how to tell them that. It had been that way for days. They came to get out of the rain and then wouldn’t leave. She didn’t know anything about those men, not their names or where they went. But they were always at the same place, right in front of their cellar, and thought that they would get wet. And Grandpa Niko would let them in, treat them to diluted wine vinegar, and wait for them to leave. He was interested in what had happened to Lino’s soul, and the three of them argued. It didn’t matter what about. But why did they have to do it in his cellar of all places, when Grandpa Niko didn’t want to argue? He was always angry after they left. Not even he knew who those people were, and maybe he didn’t even know their names. The girl didn’t ask him about that because she didn’t want to know what their names were. Those men weren’t from town. Grandpa Niko said that he hadn’t seen them before the war. He was in fact afraid of them. Before their first escape from the rain into his cellar, Grandpa Niko had only feared God. That was what he’d said, and she’d believed him. He could have kicked them out, but how and why? He said that he didn’t know.
They left a little before it began to get dark. Every day it was the same. Fortunately, the days were getting shorter and shorter.
“God help us if they ever want to spend the night here,” Grandpa Niko said to her mother. She was in the kitchen boiling the laundry, and her father was sorting nails in the little bit of light cast by the fire in the stove. Hidden from view, her brothers tussled over two stone marbles.
“God help us, God help us,” he repeated and walked from one end of the room to another. Either he was looking for something, or he was trying to remember something. It had gotten dark, and now all of life was weighing down on his shoulders. It was important for his gall to pass as soon as possible, for no one to say anything rude to him, and for her brothers not to fight. If that happened, he would entertain them until they all fell asleep.
A hundred hundred years ago, when people still didn’t know that wind blows sails and that the wheels on a baby carriage turn, before there were any unchristened creatures, instead of karst and quarries there were dense pine forests everywhere. And in them lived fairies and sprites; there were more of them than people in the world. In those forests there were more birds than there are today anywhere, more bears, foxes, wolves, and all kinds of creatures that one can’t even imagine. Everything was tame; they ate food off of each others’ heads because there were no beasts that acted wickedly to another animal. People were the only thing that wasn’t in those forests. If some hardhead took courage and went off into the forest, his mother would mourn him because he would never return home. Not alive or dead, nor would they be able to make out his soul on judgment day. That was the way it was! No man thought it up, nor did the Lord God either. It was the way of fairies and sprites. They guarded the forest from everything human and divine, and you can guess for whom they did it! No, they didn’t do it for the devil because this was a hundred hundred years ago, and the devil didn’t exist yet. The fairies and sprites guarded the forest for the beasts, just as the beasts guarded the forest for them. And it would have stayed that way until the end of the world if this hadn’t happened: Srdelica, the daughter of a fisherman named Cipolić, fell ill, and his daughter had caught the eye of the young Lubinko. The young man was as smart as a book, as good as a calm sea, and so handsome that no one could say what he was as handsome as. If someone said that anything was as handsome as Lubinko, everyone would laugh and say that that person was a nut. Lubinko sought a cure for Srdelica, his love; he searched for it from Boka all the way up to Trieste, but there was no cure anywhere. The best healers told him that the only thing that could cure her were džundžur beans. Do you know what džundžur beans are? You don’t! But you’ll know at the end of the story. Not even Lubinko knew what džundžur beans were, nor did the healers or anyone living by the sea a hundred hundred years ago. But people knew that one could only find them on the other side of the dense, magic forests that grew where today we have only rock and karst. So whoever fell ill and needed džundžur beans was as good as dead. But the handsome Lubinko didn’t think like that. He kissed his Srdelica seven times, so the kisses would last until he came back, and set off into the forest to cross over to the other side, where the džundžur beans grew. Everyone tried to dissuade him; old Cipolić tried to dissuade him and told him that he would adopt him as his son if he didn’t go. He pleaded with him in the name of his daughter’s beauty, but Lubinko wouldn’t be talked out of it. If there were džundžur beans in the world, he had to go find them— that’s what he said and set off into the forest. He’d gone only three steps into the forest when it swallowed him up. He wouldn’t have been able to go back if he’d wanted to. That was how the fairies had arranged things. Whoever went in never came out. So he walked for a day, then two, and then three; he came upon all kinds of beasts— bears with rabbits’ ears, rabbits with bears’ heads, winged wolves that fed on pine nuts and drank sap instead of water— but not a single beast was afraid of him because the fairies had made things so that fear would never enter the forest. On the seventh day Lubinko came to a palace that was bigger than a city and higher than the sky. The tops of its towers were so high that an eagle wouldn’t be able to soar up to them. The palace wasn’t made of stone but of salt. The fairies and sprites lived there. He knew that right away but didn’t know how he knew. It just came to him. He stopped in front of the gate. His heart was pounding like crazy, but he remembered his Srdelica and knocked on the gate. He didn’t strike it very hard, but the gate collapsed into powder right in front of him, into pure white salt, and suddenly there appeared a beautiful maiden with hair of burning gold, with the figure of a cypress tree, and wings of wind. That was Varja, the queen of the fairies.
“What are you doing here, poor man?” the queen asked him.
“I’m going to the other side; I’m going to get džundžur beans!” Lubinko answered courageously.
“No man has reached the other side,” the fairy said and laughed at him.
“Has anyone ever reached your palace?” Lubinko asked her.
“No,” answered the queen. “Every one of them up to now killed an animal or stepped on an ant. And here there is a rule that you turn into whatever you kill right away. The demi-beasts that you met were once people,” the fairy said to him and asked him why he needed džundžur beans.
“I need them for medicine.”
“And are you sick?”
“I’m not sick, but my Srdelica is.”
“And you’d turn into a forest animal for her?” the queen asked, surprised.
“I’d turn into a rat if it would help her get better.”
The queen fell into thought and was not happy. How could she be happy when she’d taken a fancy to such a hero?
“And is your Srdelica prettier than me?” she asked.
“It depends on who you ask,” answered Lubinko. “I think she is!”
But how could poor Srdelica be prettier than the queen of the fairies?! Varja the fairy was the prettiest of all female beings in the world. But the problem was that Lubinko was the most handsome of all male beings in the world. More handsome than all the sprites put together, and Varja had fallen in love with him!
“Here’s what you and I will do,” she began. “I’ll pick you some džundžur beans, and you’ll give me your heart!”
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��I can’t give you my heart when my heart is locked, and my Srdelica has the keys,” Lubinko said to her.
“Don’t you worry about the keys,” the fairy said. “If you give me your heart, I’ll unlock it.”
Lubinko saw that the fairy had magic powers and that she had the medicine for Srdelica, so he agreed. He waited for three days in front of the palace of salt for the queen to bring the džundžur beans, and on the fourth day there she was, with wounds on her legs, half dead because it was a long way to the other side even for her.
“Beautiful fairy, give me the džundžur beans,” Lubinko said straightaway, and she clenched something in her palm and said:
“I’m not giving them. First you pluck out your heart as a pledge that you’ll come back.”
“How can I pluck it out? I can’t live without my heart.”
“You can; why wouldn’t you be able to? Whoever plucks out his heart in the enchanted forest can live without his heart; he just can’t love. I’ll return it to you as soon as you fulfill your vow, and we’ll live happily in the palace of salt.”
Lubinko had no choice and plucked out his beating heart, and the fairy gave him two brightly colored marbles.
“Those are džundžur beans. Have Srdelica close her eyes, cross her middle and index fingers, and pass them over the džundžur beans like that. As soon as it seems to her that there are four of them and not two, she’ll be healthy. Then you come back to me because your heart is with me. You will suffer great misfortune if you don’t return.”
Lubinko promised Queen Varja to come back and knew there and then that he wouldn’t keep the promise. When he got back home, Srdelica was already half dead. She was bidding farewell to her mother and father, ready to lie down in her cold grave. But as soon as she passed her crossed fingers over the magic džundžur beans, her strength and health came back to her. She jumped up out of her bed, and a great celebration followed. From Boka to Trieste they celebrated for seven days and seven nights. Everyone celebrated, only Lubinko and Srdelica didn’t. When he touched her, it was as if he were touching wood; when he looked at her, it was as if he were looking at a corpse; and when he wanted to kiss her, Srdelica turned her head away. He was as cold as ice to her and as disgusting as green carob. He looked like her Lubinko but was as foreign to her as a black Arab. She didn’t know what was going on. He did! They were no longer for one another, but they wept together for seven days and seven nights. Being able to cry together was all that was left of their love. During that time the fairy queen realized that Lubinko wasn’t coming back, that he’d deceived her, and that she held a locked heart in her hands in vain. She was unhappy; she was desperate and was ready to give her queendom for his love. The other fairies told her that she’d gotten involved in something wicked; the sprites danced and sang around her all day long, hoping that one would capture her heart and thus save the queendom, but she didn’t look at any of them. The queen took the key that unlocks all hearts and said, “If you won’t be mine, you won’t be anyone’s!”
She shoved the key into the lock of Lubinko’s heart, and as soon as she did that, the palace of salt began to collapse, and the forest started withering. No one could bear looking at that horror, and all living beings on the Earth closed their eyes. After they had blinked seventeen times, in the place where the enchanted forest had been there was only a quarry and karst, and the palace had turned into a pillar of salt as high as the sky. The bora swept the salt into the sea, and ever since that time the sea has been salty, just as since that time all living creatures have blinked. They began blinking because they couldn’t watch the ruin of the queendom of the fairies. When on the eighth day Lubinko went to the forest to get his heart from Varja, there was no forest, no fairies, no strange beasts.
They had disappeared because the queen had committed evil and unlocked a heart that belonged to another woman. So, you see, that’s how the forest above the sea disappeared, and that’s how people without hearts came into being and unhappiness took hold in the world.
As always, he finished the story in darkness and silence. No one asked any questions; the boys just gave one another their stone marbles, and every time they passed their crossed fingers over them, it seemed to them that there were four. That was proof that Grandpa Niko hadn’t made anything up and that a hundred hundred years before there had been džundžur beans, a magic medicine for fatal illnesses. His little girl needed no such proof. She believed her grandpa’s stories because you had to believe that something so terrible was true. One can always make up stories in which everything has a happy end. Terrible stories are true. If Grandpa Niko lied sometimes, that night he surely wasn’t. The girl was cold, although she was covered with thick down quilts, between her brothers whose hot, sleeping bodies would await the dawn peacefully. She didn’t sleep but tried to hear the beats of her heart as she usually heard them when she plugged her ears well or when she didn’t breathe for a fairly long time. No matter what she did, now she couldn’t hear her heart. She’d lived the fate of handsome Lubinko! Who knew how or why?! She hadn’t deceived anyone, hadn’t told a lie, but had still ended up without a heart. Something would be missing from the world; she would see it as soon as it grew light. The girl was sure and was desperate. Her brothers were sleeping peacefully. Nothing would happen to them.
It was raining for the twenty-eighth day. Rumors came that there were mudand rockslides all around. People said that on Korčula and Hvar whole olive groves and vineyards had disappeared, along with houses and boundary stones. People stood on the shore and looked at their plots under the seas. They had no choice but to turn into fish and start cultivating seaweed. Since morning the neighborhood women had been coming to see her mother Kata, and all of them said the same thing. Just as Korčula and Hvar had fallen into the sea, so will we all— if the rains continue— fall right into the sea! They listed the names of the island towns that had disappeared; many in town had relatives there. They listed the names of the people. They did that as if reading a school roster, and horror filled their eyes. It was the first time people spoke about misfortune without any malice. The girl was sure that she had some role in all of that. She was to blame for the imminent flood. The women blinked and wrung tears of fear from their eyes. She blinked too. The whole world had started to blink while the enchanted forest was disappearing. That morning they were blinking more quickly and more often. No one was talking about the war. For the first time in the last two and a half years.
“You’re crazy, you foolish women!” Grandpa Niko shouted at the group of women in their headscarves and swatted the air with his hand as if he were chasing away flies. “Which one of you started all this shit? Tell me, so I can give her what she deserves! Just how can you know that about Hvar and Korčula when not a single boat has sailed for ten days? Who told you about this? How?” he raged and in the end asked a completely rational question: Who had told them that olive groves were slipping into the sea?
No matter how panicked they were, the women were insulted by his attack. No one had actually told them about it, but if the whole town was abuzz, then it was true. It was less important how that truth had swum across the Korčula and Pelješac channels. Bad news is heard from afar, and what fool would lie and make up tales of woe? They tossed their black headscarves over their heads and went out into the rain. If there weren’t any men, there wouldn’t be so much misfortune in the world. The girl was on their side. That morning grandpa couldn’t be believed. He was angry because he knew that the three men were coming again that day. He’d been waiting for them since he’d woken up and couldn’t come up with any way of getting rid of them. Another thing that was hard to understand. If mother could chase off crazy Firgo when he came to ask for bread and she didn’t have half his strength, why couldn’t grandpa chase those men away? Only her father was calm that morning. He sorted his nails and sighed deeply. That was how Grandpa Niko sighed when he lost at briscola, but that only happened twice a year. Father lost at briscola every two minutes. He
was calm, and he had it worst. The girl comforted herself a little. If father could get by with his sighs, then she could too. Without a heart.
At around noon someone knocked on the door. Grandpa rolled his eyes; for an instant all she could see were the whites of his eyes:
“Girl, they’ve come! Let’s go down into the cellar!”
The girl jumped up and went toward the door, proud that grandpa always called her when it was time to go to the cellar. Never her brothers. True, they wouldn’t have gone, but that wasn’t important. What was important was that he never called them. They weren’t up to going down into the cellar!
“Ooh, that’s you!” Grandpa Niko said, full of enthusiasm. Dominko Pujdin jumped back with surprise. He didn’t expect that Niko would ever receive him like that. They were the same age; they’d grown up together and fished together when they were young. Friends in any case, but not so close that they would want to see each other so much when they hadn’t seen each other for a couple of days.
“It’s not them; we don’t have to go to the cellar! Grandpa said, keeping up his cheer. Dominko Pujdin shook off his raincoat, something made his back twitch, and Grandpa asked him why he was going out if he had the shakes. He shot him a glance, as if to say it was something important, and Grandpa gaped at him as if to ask what had happened. Dominko Pujdin raised his eyebrows almost higher than his brow, as if to say it was something very confidential.
“What?” Grandpa Niko whispered.
“Nobody can know; otherwise it’s ruined,” said Dominko Pujdin. “A caravan is coming. The caravan drivers are arriving . . .”
“It can’t be!” Grandpa said, astonished. The girl didn’t understand anything. Her mother came out of the kitchen as if she didn’t like what she was hearing. Her father stopped going through his nails.
“The caravan drivers!” he repeated, surprised. There couldn’t be any doubt that the caravan drivers were arriving and that this confidential information should be kept quiet. Because if people found out, the deal was ruined.
The Walnut Mansion Page 58
