That was how the grandfather-to-be spoke, mixing languages and accents as if he’d lived all over. The father and mother listened, and it seemed that they wouldn’t have interrupted him if he’d kept talking until the next day. From this August was certain that the future child was his more than anyone else’s and that he should make the toys according to what he said. And that was something, though the progress wasn’t great.
Later they sat down in front of the house; Kata brought out some wine and salted sardines, and it was then that August first saw her belly. A small, rounded belly, as on Middle Eastern pictures, from which one still couldn’t tell that she was with child. For a moment he was afraid that she might miscarry. It happened often, out of the blue, that a mother would expel an unborn child from herself. She would simply bleed it out. No, he dared not think about that. It would be horrible both for them and for him. His big job would fall by the wayside, the one that he’d been waiting for all this time, the one that many never got. How many had there been who needed only to be allowed to paint the Sistine Chapel to become the greatest artist in history! August had long ago kissed good-bye the idea that he might be the greatest in history . He wasn’t the greatest, not even among these squalid people who didn’t have their own artists, but there was no one better than him at carving walnut! And there was no greater commission than this one: to create a work of art for someone who wasn’t born yet! It wouldn’t have been good for the woman to miscarry. The old man would be unhappy, the woman would be unhappy, and the knuckle-cracking young man would be unhappy along with them. And August would be too! This discovery captivated him. He was bound to people whom he didn’t know— he didn’t even know their names. Except that the future mother’s name was Kata.
“Oh, what a beautiful day!” August said and sighed. The sardines were a little too salty for his taste, and the wine was too bitter. But to tell the truth August didn’t like fish, and in his life he drank wine only to get drunk. Now he wasn’t trying to get drunk. All he wanted was for this day to last as long as possible, for nothing to change, and to stay with these people until evening.
His wish was fulfilled. He returned to Trsteno after midnight. Matilda was already asleep, and he quietly slipped into her bed feeling like an unfaithful husband. No matter how much he wandered and traveled around, August had never slept with another woman, nor had another woman caught his eye. But it often happened that he felt like an unfaithful husband. Always when something became more important to him than Matilda. And now those toys were more important to him. And not only the toys, but the child that was about to be born. He hadn’t awaited his own children with such joyful trepidation.
“I know!” he shouted before he opened his eyes. He wanted to tell her, but his hand fell on an empty space on the bed— Matilda had gotten up first, as she always did. That immediately rattled him, but he decided not to get up before he told her.
“Eureka!” he howled at the top of his lungs. “Eureka! Eureka! Eureka!” he shouted until his throat was sore, but it was no use. Matilda evidently wasn’t at home. He grumpily pushed away the duvet and hurled a shoe at the other end of the room. And then he thought that maybe he shouldn’t have done that. An artist couldn’t be angry if an ingenious idea occurred to him and at that be angry only because his wife wasn’t around. He went down into the cellar, stretching himself so he could touch the beams in the ceiling, but he was still a centimeter or so too short. That was precisely how much he’d shrunk in the last few years. After he drank a glass of milk, he was going to go to the lumberyard and pick out the five most beautiful pieces of walnut there. He would need at least five for what he’d thought up. More wood would be used for a toy for a child that was yet to be born than for a small church altar. That was the way it should be! The church served to correct and rework people who were already finished and thus incorrigible. This was for someone who still did not need an altar and, God willing, would never need one.
In a book entitled Modern Interiors of Cities of the Future, published by Ćelap Booksellers, he found a plan and a cutaway view of the kind of house that the majority of Europeans would live in around 1950, that is to say, in exactly forty-five years. The preface said that the book’s author, an engineer named Adolf Foose, had taken into account all the current and future achievements of the technological revolution, the cultural progress of our civilization, and generally man’s spiritual ascent to a higher stage of humanity, the not-too-distant future in which brotherhood and equality would reign . . . August had bought Modern Interiors of Cities of the Future the previous year in Zagreb, leafed through it on his way back to Trsteno, and then fallen into a deep depression and decided not to pick it up again.
If he were to live to see that year of 1950, which was downright impossible, he would be a hundred and ten years old and would be too old for all the pleasures that would be available then. He’d been born too late and lived in the twilight of a dark age full of ignorance and primitivism, wars, rebellions, and pointless bloodletting. The day before they’d still burned witches, and Turkish soldiers galloped all over the place with drawn sabers, ready to lop off the head of anyone who resisted them. That had probably gone on for around a thousand years, but then something happened: the telegraph was invented, railroad trains started rolling, gas lamps turned night into day, and the people of the world started at an accelerated pace toward happiness, welfare, and all kinds of pleasures. It killed him to know that without being able to live to see the fruits of those changes. And that was why he decided not to open that book again. He thought about taking it to Dubrovnik, to Salamon Levi, and to give it to his used bookstore for half the price. Fortunately he hadn’t gotten around to it because then this ingenious idea would never have crossed his mind: to build a house that Europeans would live in in 1950! That would be a toy for a child of the future, and it didn’t matter whether it was a boy or a girl. A house was the only thing in this sad world that belonged to men and women alike.
On the ground floor there was a reception room with three armchairs, a tea table, and a divan in the three colors of the French flag. In one corner there was a shoe polishing machine and a moving mirror. Here there was also a refrigerator with refreshing drinks, a movie projector, and a household telegraph. On the first floor, in addition to a toilet and a large bathroom, there was a parlor for social games, with a pool table, a piano, and Japanese bamboo furniture, that led to a kitchen with an electric stove, a refrigerator, and a series of devices whose purpose August was unable to discover. Maybe the author had placed them there just in case, without himself knowing what their function was. Here there was also a bedroom with a master bed, closets, and an electric massage table. On the second floor there were two more rooms, and in the attic, a roomy storage space in which Adolf Foose had put household objects from the past. He had done that to emphasize the contrast, but August realized that it was a precautionary measure. If the future led to ruin or the people ever had enough of it (and that was possible too!), then they would simply take down the old stuff from the attic and go back to where they had once been. The house of the future was perpetually bathed in sunlight because an electric motor rotated the house to face the sun. It had large windows and a view of an Alpine lake, above which snowy peaks rose and predatory birds flew. One day, in the distant year of 1950, cities would coexist with nature; they would be located alongside the habitats of wild animals and in the middle of forests, where there was fresh air and the colors of nature were appealing to the eye. Industrial zones would be moved to the Sahara Desert and underneath the surface of the sea, and it wasn’t even impossible that they would be moved to the Moon . . . People would travel by means of electric trains, electric carriages, balloons and electric flying machines. Walking would be reduced to a minimum, and all animals would live free. No one would eat meat, the flatlands of Europe would glow golden in fields of grain, there wouldn’t be states or governments, the king would change every year, and his name would be pulled out of a drum. Kingl
y rule would be allowed to every adult citizen who hadn’t previously broken the law . . .
Okay, August didn’t believe every word of it! But Foose’s house was a good basis for what he’d imagined on his own, without electrical appliances, multi-functional furniture, and an excess of optimism. Besides, in 1950 the future child would be forty-five years old, which was not a time when one started to live. August would create a house that would be equally good both tomorrow and in 1950.
He sent a letter to the French ambassador in which he informed him with regret that he would be unable to make the gusle for King Nikola. He told Captain Vojko that nothing would come of the Santa Maria delle Grazia because it was beneath his honor to make a model of a ship that had never existed.
“You should be ashamed for trying to deceive your own children. Admit to them that you sailed the world on low ships and not on Columbus’s caravels!” he wrote to him and told him that he shouldn’t try to find him and talk him into it because if August Liščar decided something today, it wouldn’t change for the rest of his life! He was proud of himself. He was refusing work again, as he’d done in the best of times, and had quit behaving like a frightened old man who was convinced that no one needed him any more.
For the next few months he worked from dawn until dusk making the walnut house. His back didn’t ache once, his joints didn’t swell, and in his arms and hands he felt the same strength that he’d had when long ago, somewhere in Bosnia, he’d lifted the trunk of a hundred-year-old walnut tree off the ground. He made the basic shape quickly, in seven or eight days. He didn’t need more to divide the house into rooms and make the interior staircases, but the real work began with the doors, the furniture, and the household accessories. At first he had to fashion needles, razors, and nail scissors into tools with which he would, for example, hollow out a bathtub the size of a thumb or kneading troughs that were smaller than a fingernail. He worked on the kneading troughs for two days, working harder than he had on ten heads of Prince Marko. But in the end they looked real. It was even more difficult to decorate the period furniture, put door-knobs on the doors, and make a set of miniature kitchen knives. He adhered to the rule that there was nothing so tiny that it couldn’t be made. He made kitchen rags from little pieces of silk and rugs from Matilda’s formal dresses.
Every Saturday he went to the grandfather-to-be, sat with him in front of his house, and met the sunset with sardines and wine. He watched Kata’s belly grow and her face swell and listened to the father-to-be crack his knuckles as he tried to say who knows what. He shared a peace with those people that he’d never felt before. He declared the toy to be a secret and a surprise and wouldn’t give in for anything in the world and reveal what he was building. Kata would pester him, plead with him to tell her, poke him, and pull on his coat. She touched August, and if there was something that he couldn’t stand, it was for people to touch him, remove an invisible hair from his shoulder, cheerfully pat him on the back, or grab his forearm when they wanted to tell him something important . . . But it didn’t bother him when she did it. He laughed, waved her away, and said that he was an old man and that he enjoyed it when such a pretty young woman wanted something from him. Kata would blush and run off into the kitchen, and then the grandfather would jab him in the ribs with his elbow, raise his eyebrows, and flash his eyes. Just like a pimp going around and offering his girls! But there was nothing unseemly in this, nothing behind it. Only the childlike happiness of old men who, you see, became a little silly waiting for a new life.
A month before Kata gave birth, a race began between August and the child that was coming into the world. Two rooms were still unfinished, and he still had to make the future residents of the house: a man, a woman, three children, and a dog. And a doghouse, too. The residents would also be made of walnut. Rag dolls had always gotten on his nerves and wouldn’t be appropriate if the child were a boy. Boys never played with rag dolls, but people and dogs made of walnut wood were as much a part of the male world as they were of the female world. Every joint on the figures needed to be movable; the people would sit, stand, walk, turn their heads, and move their fingers, and the dog would have a movable jaw so that people could see him barking. He also imagined what their faces would look like. At first he wanted the adults to look like Kata and her husband. But why would the child want to have toys that had the faces of its mother and father? He changed his mind. How had such a stupid idea crossed it?!
The last few days he had been working at night as well. Only so the house would be done on time. So then he had to give up on the dog and decide on only two children. Thus came the last Saturday, and the midwife said that Kata would have to give birth during the next week. August worked on finishing the gate of the house before dawn and then lay down for an hour before the tanner Ante came with a horse-drawn cart to take him and the toy to Dubrovnik. Everything was finished: the man and the woman were sitting in armchairs and looking at one another; the children were running around in front of the house; the clean, white kitchen was all shiny, and plates had been set on the table for breakfast. He hadn’t made the plates from walnut wood but from plaster. Why? Somehow it seemed inappropriate to make plates from that noble wood. They had to break easily when it came to family arguments and times of despair. But now, when everyone loved one another and lived in the comfort of modern life, the plates on the table changed like the seasons. Some were for breakfast, others for lunch, and still others for dinner. And then it started all over again. In the small world of the walnut house time passed more quickly. Five minutes of a child’s play were enough for a day to come to its end, and in half an hour a year would pass. In a year of flesh and blood, a century of wood had passed. In the world of walnut people lived longer. They lived for as many centuries as childhood lasts.
The only thing that was unfinished on the little house was the inscription over the gate. He thought about it for a long time, and all kinds of names came to mind, but none was good enough. Maybe it wouldn’t be important to the child, but August wanted a name for this work of art of his. For the most beautiful thing that he’d created with his hands, for something that it had been worthwhile to labor on all these months and that justified all the years of August’s life. Maybe he wasn’t a great artist, maybe he’d just imagined that he was an exception among so many woodcarving dilettantes, but this little house was something that no one could deny. No one in the world. And it had been created for a single child. That made him happy— that his most important piece of walnut woodcarving was meant for a child.
He had been sleeping on an ottoman that he’d lowered into the storeroom so that he wouldn’t disturb Matilda while he worked. He snored, ground his teeth, and wheezed like a woodland rodent as it slowly became light outside and the aurora illuminated the house of the happy people with its reddish glow through the open window. The glow passed over the wooden faces of the man and woman, which changed their expressions in the play of the shadows— from fatigue and thoughtfulness to a foolhardy cheer characteristic of people when they are seized by a happiness that erases any thought that ugly things might still occur in life. At the moment when they’d been most happy, Ante’s head blotted out the light: “Master, it’s morning, the light of day!” August jumped up from the ottoman like an eager private, and the day could begin.
They arrived at the last minute because Kata’s water had already broken; the midwife was running around the house and banging metal washbasins; the knuckle-cracking father stood pale as a ghost in front of the house and barely moved when grandfather and August asked him to help them. The midwife didn’t want to let them into Kata’s room.
“This isn’t for men!” she shouted. “You just push it in and then don’t worry about anything!” she continued as August tried to make order in the walnut house. “Get out, or may St. Elijah strike you with lightning and knock some sense into you!” she shouted as August arranged the little wooden children and parents in the house: the father knelt in prayer with his hands f
olded in front of the room’s crucifix, the children were sleeping, and the mother was looking over at Kata’s bed. The midwife pushed him out of the room before he managed to check whether the children’s heads were turned toward the wall. What was about to happen creates the greatest beauty in the world, but it wasn’t for their eyes.
The three of them sat down in front of the house, from which they soon heard Kata’s screams. She called to her mother, to Jesus and Mary, whined like a sick dog in the rain, and then screamed again and said, “Rafo, Rafo, Rafo, my good Rafo . . .” It was then that the father cracked his knuckles and August realized that he was Rafo. Rafo and Kata. That has a nice ring, and one could age well with those names, August thought. And those names were somehow homey. Life would go well for them; they would work and make something out of their lives . . . He philosophized like this so he wouldn’t have to look at the other two. The old man was smoking cigarette after cigarette, as if the world was coming to an end and not a baby coming into the world. He was so afraid for his daughter that he couldn’t show any happiness about his grandchild. That was normal. And August had also been worried about Matilda, and whenever she was in labor, he denied the child as Peter denied Jesus. If God had asked him then, he would have told him, “Stop this, o Lord! Don’t let there ever be any more births!” Fortunately, God doesn’t ask fathers or grandfathers about anything. Because if he did, children wouldn’t be born or only soulless people would be able to have them, those who don’t love their wives or daughters. But all would be well! It always was. Or almost always was. That day everything would be good. Rafo and Kata would have their child and be happy. One could hear that in their names. If August and Matilda could be happy, and their names were more suitable for Romanian circus performers than for married couples, why wouldn’t Rafo and Kata be happy today? In the end August also started cracking his knuckles. The little bones of four men’s hands popped, and it sounded like a hunter was stalking wild boar through dry brush. Grandfather smoked, clenched his fists tightly, and listened to Kata’s screams and cries to God. And finally, when the contractions stopped, she again said, “Rafo, Rafo, Rafo, my good Rafo!”
The Walnut Mansion Page 64
