Even now I probably can’t explain why I never felt the need to give 17 Kosančićev Venac a name. Viewed from the street, the house had no special qualities. On a fine-grained brown plane, consisting of three vertical fields above a raised plinth which was pierced by three horizontal cellar windows, rose the ground floor and the second story, separated by two medallions in the shape of stone insignias in relief. On the third level a wooden door bound with forged iron opened onto a semicircular patio, while the whole building was topped by an almost flat roof, bordered by a balustrade with closely set railings in the form of stone skittles. It was natural that my own habitation should not inspire me in the same way as Simonida or the uninhibited, not to say lascivious, Theodora. Nevertheless, despite her lack of visual appeal, she possessed something unique. Since this was not visible from the outside, you had to go around and down onto the embankment, and look at her from the river, to see what it was that set her off: she possessed the finest orientation on the plateau of Kosančićev Venac, and her windows, facing west and overgrown with ivy, offered an unequaled view over the Srem plain.
From the window everything seemed new, different. But with the exception of the gas station, nothing on Srebrnička Street had actually changed. Not even the Turkish cobblestones had been replaced by macadam — something I had tried to get done before the war. Whenever I’d thought about this sortie, I’d always envisaged myself on some unfamiliar corner, groping about helplessly like a blind man who taps the objects around him with his white walking stick, searching for traces of the past from which to orient himself. There was, I will admit, something childish in my behavior in those imagined surroundings; a grown man shouldn’t have suffered the kind of agony I brought on myself. What’s more natural than a town being transformed from year to year, built up and demolished. Had I not myself contributed to its metamorphosis, had I not myself pulled down single-story cottages to build my houses in their place? Still, whenever I had tried to apply this reasoning to my imagined outing, after wandering for some time unimpeded through the transformed but still recognizable streets, I’d always end up at that inevitable and fateful corner (it was built of reddish brick, faced with whitened edges; the angle of the pavement at the corner was railed off with an iron chain of heavy, rusty links, whereas on the opposite side, which always remained incomplete for me, there was a square with an elliptical asphalt promenade) — that fateful corner on which everything suddenly became unknown, strange, hostile.
I can’t say that the fear of that brutal corner disappeared after I’d taken a few steps, but that fear was put into perspective. I convinced myself that even if I did stumble upon that corner, the actual experience would be far less shattering than the imagined one. To develop some defense mechanism, I had to pay special attention to everything that differed in the slightest from the picture of the town I had carried with me when I had irreversibly withdrawn from public life, to everything which during my absence had been built, added to, set up, changed, removed. And of course not only to houses, although they obviously dominated my interest, but to companies, advertisements, traffic signs, kiosks, shops, cars, and perhaps (why not?) even people.
And so, entering Zadarska Street, I stopped to read on the decrepit sloping roof of a battered old house, in crooked, chalked letters: “Reconnaissance Detachment Toza Dragović.” I took this simply as a novelty and not, as might have been expected, a reason to feel disturbed, in that so many years after the war this puerile visiting card of some reconnaissance company of the Royal Army had not been erased, but remained to deface the house.
In the triangle between Srebrnička and Zadarska streets there was a bench which had been squeezed between the wall and a gnarled chestnut tree with such force that its slats, studded with large-headed nails, seemed to have grown right into the tree trunk. It looked as if, because it had served as a seat for so long, one end had reverted to its original form; or as if, by some strange quirk of reversed metabolism, the tree had put forth worm-eaten, flattened branches which parodied human handiwork. I was familiar with that deformed bench, too, only previously it had been surrounded by a small garden which now, still defending inch by inch the approach to the house, was being gradually pushed back by the street.
But the house itself held evil memories for me, not in its outward appearance, which was still fairly well preserved and solid, unmarred by any foreboding cracks, but because of a fullness which is characteristic of T.B. victims, people rotting away under a deceptively healthy exterior; it reminded me of the tragedy of Agatha. What had brought a serious crisis upon Agatha were my relations with Major Bruno Helgar, the only German whom, since he lived in the requisitioned flat downstairs, I had been forced to see with any regularity. Given the hostile attitude to the Occupation, my own forebearance couldn’t be understood, still less approved of, without the knowledge that the entry of the Germans into Belgrade — in other respects a cause for lamentation — didn’t affect me materially. I was sorry, of course, that it had come to this (despite the fact that I had criticized the government for their adverse attitude, and especially because of the provocative street riots which led me so irrevocably to seek a safe asylum in my home), and I of course shared the general unease with which one awaits an administration whose legal mechanism is unknown and whose measures of government cannot be foreseen. But with the exception of the cessation of building activity (I had already on my own largely given up the buying and building of houses), and the requisitioning of accommodations (which also in no way troubled me, for the Germans, in moving out the former inhabitants, took care of my possessions with truly Teutonic scrupulousness; given such an attitude to my houses, the question of financial compensation, although important, was never decisive for me) — with these exceptions, then, the only conflict between us arose as a result of the raid of April 6, 1941, in which the poor, blameless Agatha suffered. The other houses came out of it with minor damage — some were untouched — but Agatha perished, even though her position was not prominent, nor was there any tempting military object nearby.
However, that part of her fate which was the most unusual (when shall I ever stop mourning her?), and which made her a precursor of that solid house on Srebrnička Street, was that the mortal wound she had suffered that April went unnoticed. In the obvious sense of the word, there was no wound; nevertheless, for three full years thereafter, Agatha was in fact dying as she looked the very picture of health. She was expiring silently without any signs of weakness, without a single cry, without that cracking, grinding, and splitting which betray decaying buildings, until at Easter 1944 she gave way and, untouched by any bomb, collapsed of her own accord like a tower of cards. Seven tenants were crushed under her ruins, and the inquiry which was opened on a petition against me by their relatives took as its starting point the ignorant, base, and of course quite erroneous premise that property owners in their pursuit of profit rent houses which are dilapidated and liable to fall down. The inquiry categorically cleared me of that repulsive suspicion. Experts affirmed that Agatha, up to that time a perfectly sound and well-preserved building, had been seriously but unnoticeably damaged internally in the first German bombing — something like a human visceral hemorrhage — so that before she suddenly collapsed she was undermined from inside, decomposed, shattered; they affirmed that the owner had absolutely no way of knowing this and that in that year, 1944, a single distant shock had been sufficient to demolish her. There was no doubt that the house in front of which I was now standing would end up in the same way. And having made this observation, I was ready to proceed along Zadarska Street toward Topličin Venac.