The Walnut Mansion

by Miljenko Jergovic

  Just when darkness began to settle on the camp, the stamp of horses’ hooves was heard.

  Whispers spread through the crowd: “Here they are . . . ! The caravan drivers . . . ! The caravan!”

  The man from Konavle winced— it couldn’t be possible that the Trebinje beys had let the caravan through! And his group of men ducked somewhat in fear. Or it only seemed so. Sreten Kozomara stuffed his register into his bosom. He wouldn’t need it any more today. But instead of the caravan, only four horsemen came around the bend.

  “Where are the goods . . . ?”

  “There aren’t any!” . . .

  “But this is only the advance party!”

  “And this idiot’s been telling us that the Turks plundered the caravan . . .”

  “We could have committed a sin!”

  “Can anyone see the caravan?”

  The horsemen’s hats were pulled down over their brows; one could see that they had come from afar. No one from Dubrovnik had ever seen such hats or the kind they appeared to be at that distance.

  “In my day they wore fezzes,” Niko said.

  “Ha, not even Turks from Foča are what they used to be!” said Dominko Pujdin, cheerful that everything was now going the way it should. But his cheer was short-lived, lasting only as long as it took for the horsemen to come close enough for them to see that the men in the hats had no faces. When they came closer, they could only see the horsemen’s eyes in slits in black hoods. They looked like heralds of the plague in church illuminations.

  “Sit down on the ground!” ordered the rider of a black horse. He rode out into the crowd a little to scare the people. His horse neighed and reared up; its horseshoes rang on the rocks, and four army rifles with bayonets attached flashed. The mass of people fell down on the ground, groaning, sighing, and blurting out appeals to God and the Blessed Virgin. The guard of the man from Konavle disappeared into the field of bowed heads. He alone remained standing, confused and upright, with his pistol in his belt and his arms spread wide as if he were going to catch a piglet running around in a yard.

  “What’s wrong with you, Prince Marko?! Can’t you hear?!” said the leader of the horsemen as he rode up to him. “Would you like Alija Đerzelez to ask you nicely or to skin you alive? Sit down when I tell you to!”

  If tears were worth anything, the man from Konavle would have wept his whole life away at that moment. He would have flowed away like a stream and disappeared in the grass and between the rocks, never to be seen again. He hesitated for a moment, though he didn’t know why, and then sat down in the grass, cautiously, as if the ground were full of sharp needles, whereupon he vanished forever from all heroic tales.

  That happened on the far end of the clearing, so Niko might not have heard every word, but what he did hear seemed familiar. As did the tattered shoes of untanned leather on the horsemen’s feet. He’d heard that voice once before; he knew it well, too well to be mistaken. He bent down and crouched a little more, pressing his head between his knees to be as inconspicuous as possible. He took three of his four ducats out of his pocket and pressed them into the ground. Dominko Pujdin trembled beside him and glanced around as if he were going to jump up and try to flee. There was a deathly silence, broken only by someone’s sobs.

  The two men on sorrel horses kept riding in a circle around the mass of people, while the fourth, the one who’d ridden up last and was obviously the least skilled on a horse, tried to dismount from his enormous mare. But each time it shifted, and he would sit back down.

  “Jump down already! You’re not jumping on a girl!” taunted one of the outlaws riding the sorrel horses, whereupon the fourth one simply fell off the mare and slammed onto the ground like the carcass of a calf taken off a meat hook. His hat flew off and his hood almost fell off as well. Someone giggled, but the man quickly jumped up, and then it could be seen that he was unhealthily obese. He put on his hat and spoke:

  “Listen to me good because lives are at stake. And they’re yours, not ours! What you’re going to do is come over here one by one, empty your pockets into this sack and then go over to the other end and sit down again. Do you hear? If it turns out that anyone didn’t put everything in, if he hides gold or money, he’ll get a bullet in the forehead. Got it?”

  There instantly arose a wailing, shouts, simultaneous curses and pleas, murmurs and yells, a cacophony that could probably be matched only by that at the lower gates of Purgatory. The leader fired into the air, and the black horse leaped. Evidently it wasn’t used to gunfire.

  “Use your heads, people! We’re offering to let you go back to your wives and children alive and well!”

  No one wanted to go first. They shoved one another, those in the rear savagely kicking those in front of them in the back, until the man with the bag finally grabbed the first one by the collar and pulled him to himself.

  “Don’t, for the love of God!” cried the victim, Stjepo Mašklinica, a cobbler with twelve children, one of the few God-fearing men who went to Mass twice a day and gave alms even when they didn’t have enough to eat.

  “Well, brother, you got it wrong; I don’t love any God,” the fat one with the sack retorted and opened up the sack. Stjepo looked at him the way that St. Sebastian looked at the bowmen, thrust his hand into his pocket, and pulled a neatly folded white handkerchief out of it. In it was a ducat with Napoleon’s image on it. Stjepo kissed the ducat and dropped it into the sack. The fat man roared with laughter:

  “And you pulled this whole stunt to trick me?”

  The cobbler had to take off his coat; the fat man searched him thoroughly and tore away the thin lining of his coat but found nothing. He hurled the coat into the mass of people. Then Stjepo had to take off his pants and his shoes, and finally he had to unwrap his footcloths. The fat man searched through everything and threw all of it into the people but didn’t find anything.

  “You mean you thought you were going to buy something from the caravan drivers with a single ducat?”

  Barefoot and wearing nothing but his shirt, which covered his private parts, Stjepo Mašklinica stood there and almost felt guilty. He’d been motivated by the same things as the others, both avarice and the lure of fancy things. Poor Stjepo didn’t know what he might buy from the caravan drivers. He’d gone like the others, hidden like the others, and lied to everyone about where he was going. He sat his bare backside down on the grass and tried to cover himself with his shirttails.

  The fat man pulled the next one out of the crowd. That one was a little richer, but he tried to hide two rings in his socks and as a punishment he hit him in the head with the butt of his rifle. The first time he only groaned, and then he did it again and split his forehead. Blood started flowing. People saw that this was no joke.

  “The next one who tries to cheat will have to pick his brains out of the grass!” the leader called out. He was on his black horse a little to one side, watching and simultaneously keeping control of the mass of people and checking what the fat man was doing.

  Niko recognized three of the four robbers. The leader on the black horse was French Hat with the little head; Horse Face was riding around them on a sorrel horse, and Fatso, who’d seemed to be their leader when they were in his cellar, was the one with the sack. The fourth rider didn’t interest him, and he wouldn’t have been able to recognize him because he still hadn’t spoken or done anything to give himself away. Niko still couldn’t figure out what the point of their daily visits had been. They’d spent hours in his cellar, and that had to have had some connection to what was happening. Had they been trying to find something out from him? If they had, he hadn’t noticed. He’d been absentminded and afraid; he’d believed that all he had to do was put up with them and they would go. And they did go, but they came back. He would have knocked them on their asses if it weren’t for what had happened the day before . . . He thought of Regina, who was now playing under the kitchen table while Kata was kneading bran bread. Her little house was underneath that table;
she cleaned it and made order in it, looked after the children, waited for the husband to come home from work, and tied the grandfather’s shoes because he could bend down only with difficulty.

  Niko couldn’t understand that. Why did the grandfather in her imagination have a hard time bending down so that she had to tie his shoes? Everything else in Regina’s little wooden house was modeled on his house. The only difference was that the grandfather underneath the kitchen table was weak and feeble. If he was still there. If Regina hadn’t kicked him out of her house.

  As the minutes passed, the highwaymen became more and more nervous. They were in a hurry because it would soon be evening and someone’s crazy wife might get the police to start searching for her husband. Or maybe their wives might start coming all on their own, and there would be a huge, noisy scene; soldiers would appear from somewhere, and all kinds of things could happen. The fourth one started helping the fat one with the sack and the searches. He beat people, tore open their clothes, but continued to say nothing. Niko concluded that he had to be someone from the city who had reason to be afraid of being recognized. The first thing he’d done when he jumped down from his horse was put a rag over Admiral Sterk’s dead face. That meant he knew him.

  Those whose turns came later could hide a few ducats or a ring without much of a risk because there was no time to dig through people’s pockets thoroughly. Čare Nedoklan tried to take advantage of this and held out one ducat and a ring with a blue stone for the fat man. This might have satisfied him, but it wasn’t enough for his crony. The latter whispered something to the fat man; poor Čare had to undress, and they found four more ducats, two chains, and seven rings in his pockets and socks. He shivered from fear and the cold as the gold coins disappeared one by one into the darkness of the sack.

  “For this we’re going to stick you exactly thirteen times,” said the fat one. At that instant the quiet one unslung his rifle from his shoulder, and with an agile movement, as if he were pitching hay, he thrust his bayonet into Čare’s belly. Čare groaned and doubled over, and the quiet one stabbed him next to his shoulder blade. He stabbed him exactly thirteen times, even when Čare Nedo-klan was already lying on the ground. Afterward the robbery proceeded much more quickly. People threw everything they had into the sack. The fat man’s voice was shaky, and it seemed that he wanted to get it all over with as soon as possible.

  When the sun went down, Kata was already half-crazed with worry. Grandpa Niko hadn’t come back; the boys where roughhousing all over the place; her little girl wouldn’t come out from under the table and wasn’t saying a word; Rafo was picking through the nails more and more nervously, sighing like a furnace, and softly farting the whole time. She could kill him now! Instead of going to meet the old man and help him carry the goods home, he was messing around at home and exercising his butt. Everyone in the house farted out loud; he was the only one who was embarrassed. He thought his farts would be quiet, but it didn’t work out that way, and his backside produced a whine that made the children laugh at him. He could have just farted like a man. But that didn’t matter. What had happened to Grandpa Niko? Where was Angelina? Not even she would have gone looking for him but would have wandered around all day long. She argued back and forth with herself like that and then left her bread dough unkneaded, put on her shoes, and ran out. She stopped on the top of the cliffs and didn’t know in which direction to go so that she and Grandpa wouldn’t miss each other. And so she gave up and went back home. The boys had just gotten into a fight, and Rafo was trying to pull them apart.

  “C’mon dammit, c’mon dammit, c’mon dammit . . . ,” he said trying to get them apart, but it didn’t work, and he finally sat down on his chair. She swore to them that she would go get Niko’s whip and thrash all of them if anyone’s nose started to bleed. Luckily, that didn’t happen, and they settled down all on their own.

  Underneath the table Regina was burying the grandfather in her little house. He’d died from varicose veins and tuberculosis. She’d made him a coffin from an old, cracked dough tray, put together a cross from a broken wooden spoon, and softly hummed a Mass through her nose. She’d never heard a Requiem Mass or what priests said at funerals, so she made it up.

  “Grandpa croaked because he was no use to anyone,” the priest said in a nasal tone. “He was good, slaughtered piglets; Jesus and Mary have mercy on his soul. He spilled the cup in all four directions. A piece of shit, a cow’s cunt, catgut, whore, leprosy, slobber, and holy cross, have mercy on his soul,” he continued devoutly, already so carried away that he started talking too loud and forgot that others could hear him. “Grandpa croaked, for all the saints and Jesus; the diarrhea has been passed, shit, fart, leprosy, slobber,” the unusual priest spoke almost in a shout from the girl’s lips as she sat with her hands folded. “God let the worms eat him, in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghoooooost, aaameeeen!”

  As she lowered the dough tray into the imaginary grave, she felt something tugging on her ear, like hot pliers. She suddenly became afraid.

  “Have you lost your mind?” her mother asked and gave her a bloodcurdling look, as if she would devour her whole then and there. Even her father was on his feet again:

  “To hell with you and those women’s games!” he said as harshly as he knew how. She felt like putting up a fight, to fall down on the floor and hit and kick until they kneeled down and begged her to stop. But her mother didn’t let go of her ear and only held onto it more tightly. Tears started flowing down Regina’s face all on their own. It hurt and burned, but even worse: she knew that she hadn’t done anything wrong, and yet no one would believe her. She’d been burying the grandfather in her little house. She hadn’t been thinking of theirs. Their grandfather had ceased to exist for her after that man had tried to take her soul with his finger. Or he’d done something else; it didn’t matter. Their grandfather hadn’t defended her, so the priest wouldn’t hold a Requiem Mass for him. Her priest! There was no Requiem Mass for those who had no souls.

  Darkness had fallen, and the robbers had about thirty more victims to go. On the far end of the clearing, where those who’d already been robbed were sitting, it was already apparent that the daring of the mass of people was growing in proportion to the amount of valuables that had been lost.

  Someone would swear out loud: “Fuck you and your three mothers!”

  Others made threats: “I’ll find you wherever you hide and wind your intestines around a pole!” . . .

  People were squirming, and it wasn’t certain that one or two hadn’t already fled, soon to return with a search party. The fat man in charge of the sack had already appealed to the leader to let them quit— the sack was already full enough; they shouldn’t overdo it. But the quiet one wouldn’t let him. He was determined to get the last gold-plated ring. He slapped people, tore open their shirts and pants. One could hear blows, slaps, and groans, but not a sound came out of his mouth.

  “That one must be a mute, but I’m surprised he’s not deaf; he can hear what the others tell him,” said Dominko Pujdin, failing to understand.

  “Either he’s a mute or he’s from town,” said Niko gloomily. “The others aren’t!”

  “How do you know they aren’t?”

  “I just do,” he answered. He had no desire to try to explain, and how could he explain that in recent days he’d drunk three liters of vinegar and spent more time with them than with his own children?

  But that couldn’t end so simply! He didn’t know how it might end, but he was sure it wouldn’t end like this. A ducat wasn’t a big problem (though he’d stuck three into the ground as if it were sweetbread for a party); the rings of his dead wife also weren’t such a problem (they should have been thrown into her grave, but people wouldn’t let him, saying that the living might have need of gold); the slaps that were waiting for him weren’t a problem either. If he ended up looking like an ass, he wasn’t a bigger ass than all the others who also ended up looking like asses. He’d fare just like every
one else. He wasn’t any better or any smarter than these people. But those three men had pestered him for days and abused and insulted him. And it was on him that they’d tested out their courage for what they were doing now. And damned if they hadn’t! The finger on Regina’s forehead was like the finger of God. He hadn’t dared to take a stand against it.

  Niko Azinović had never been a big hero. He lived precisely according to the principles that children are raised by. People told him: you shouldn’t steal, you shouldn’t use bad language, you shouldn’t kill, you shouldn’t lie. Rather you should always wait your turn, obey the laws of men and God, work hard, and life will give everything back to you. Fathers told other children the same thing, just as their children would tell it to their children, and those children to theirs, as long as there was a world, people, and children. There were few who would adhere to all that and act just as their parents taught them to. Niko, to his detriment, was one of the few who did. Everyone would say he was a coward, but he wasn’t a coward; it was just that he had been told that nothing was gained by force and with curses. He could see with his own eyes a hundred times that these were lies and that brutes always got on better, but no one could change just like that and change from one thing to another. Just as thrashings and hard labor wouldn’t teach a thief not to steal, what a genuinely respectful man saw with his own eyes couldn’t convince him that he wasn’t better off. If people insult you, steer clear of them! He kept to that because he thought it was better but also because it was easier for him like that. What property he inherited, he would also leave to his children. He never drank or gambled any money away, nor did he earn anything. He had as many grapevines as his father had left him. He had lived in his house and patched his father’s boat for years, until the wood was completely worm-eaten. And then he had built a new one himself. His way of life could hardly have offered him anything more. That was the way it was in Niko’s time, and who knew whether it could have ever been any different? If it could have, people couldn’t remember that time.