I did not recognize my true feelings for the house, however, until the day Stefan moved into it. As I was passing along Kosmajska Street from Topličin Venac, I came upon several moving vans in front of Stefan’s house. The movers were carrying in the furniture under the nervous and petulant supervision of Helena, Madame Georgijević herself. The movers were going in with the pieces of furniture and coming out empty-handed, so that they formed a kind of elliptical chain like a bicycle’s, whose far end revolved around the orange, sunlike, red-lead perspective of the portico while the other end, closer to me, rubbed against the hampers of the moving vans, whose gray-green sides looked as if they’d been painted with the cadmium used for bridges. Along the diameter of that circle Mrs. Georgijević moved like some tireless pedal, scattering to left and right her hysterical and contradictory directions.
I have remembered every detail concerning what I could call a revolutionary upheaval in my relations with Stefan’s house, as if my brain had been a molten copper alloy on which the mold of that moving day had stamped a lasting copper-plate impression; the cirrus clouds hung in white hempen and woolen strands against the sky, barely touched with shadows from the east; in the air was a promise of rain for whose freshness the overheated stone, asphalt, glass, and tile gasped and thirsted; and the bells of the cathedral were ringing — it was the hour for vespers, that mournful moment when color, outline, and sound merge. I stood there across the way from the newly peopled house like a snail curled up in Kleont’s gate — not to be seen, recognized, or spoken to. I was struck as by a clap of thunder with epiphanic love for that building which only the day before I was calling a monstrosity, and for whose demolition I had even in a certain sense been agitating — a building which had been leading me on very effectively at each meeting, so that I now found myself in the humiliating and comical position of a cuckold who is secretly present at the wedding of his beloved to another man; or, bearing in mind that I was not conscious of my affection until the moment Stefan moved in, in the painful position of the poor fool who discovers he’s in love at the moment the object of his passion is led to the altar. Nota bene, this comparison with all its boldness is perhaps not the happiest one, but if it doesn’t lead to the conclusion that I’m mad (to marry a house is after all not such a widespread desire), it will help me even belatedly to judge the depth and strength of my feelings. For everything — that mastodon-sized entrance, like an altar in whose sacristy candles were burning; the guard of honor that the movers constituted; the mystic twilight of the street, in which I felt as if I were in the nave of a church; the insistent ritual ringing of the bells — everything made me, in the cavern of the gate, feel like a betrayed lover hiding behind a column, as in that well-known poem by Rajić, “On the Day of Her Wedding”:
So all my finest dreams are cast asunder,
Your head is covered by the marriage crown,
Beside you at the altar stands another—
My vibrant love for you too lowly grown!
However, there was this difference, decisive for the future: I was Arsénie Negovan, a property owner, and not a whimpering poet; I couldn’t forgive a passion, once begun, as charitably as the poet; and I was not, even then by the gate, prepared to give up so easily and promise, like Master Rajić:
I shall not cast my curse on him or you,
Or even on bitter fate which caused our meeting;
Nor can I curse myself, poor loving fool,
For thus I would my own true love be cursing.
How could I? Of course I wouldn’t go around cursing anyone, there is no profit from anathema, still less from severing relations. What I was going to undertake was much closer to common than poetic sense: I’d simply try to get possession of the house.
(I must say at once that for some time I considered building elsewhere exactly the same house — without the portal, of course — but I soon gave up the idea. In the first place, however true a copy it might have been, it would still not have been that house, nor would it have been tolerable for me to think that I was living with a copy, no more than a lifeless imprint.)
I took my first step toward gaining possession of the house at the housewarming, when I presented Stefan with a carved ivory miniature of Michelangelo’s Moses, to whose face the sculptor at my request had given, most discreetly of course, something of my features (the horns were in fact very much in accord with my position). At the same time I requested that my gift be placed at the very heart of the house: in the central, gallerylike hall, on the magnificent fireplace of light-brown Carrara marble in which half-burnt logs with skillfully installed little purple lamps behind them gave the appearance of a slowly burning fire, and on whose extensive mantelpiece, consistently faithful to her humble taste, Madame Negovan-Georgijević had set out alum-white griddles, bowls, goblets, pots, jugs, vessels, and majolica beakers, and among them, like some devilish guard, ornately dressed miniature figures which one would have thought baked of fairground marzipan rather than of Meissen porcelain. In this way I was constantly with Niké (Niké was the secret name I gave to the house as soon as we fell in love), and as it were, legitimized our adulterous relationship.
Indeed, during my ever more frequent visits to Stefan, all that happened between myself and his house can hardly be described in any other way than adultery, and since it all took place under cover of the host’s innocent hospitality, adultery in the most shameful circumstances. But when did great passions worry about such small considerations? Did Abélard and Héloïse think about trifles? So for some time Niké and I illicitly, and therefore rather unhappily, carried on our affair — though I don’t say that in our cautious concealment, with all its tension, there wasn’t a certain conspiratorial excitement, and worthy reward in plenty in those lightninglike changes of feeling which we underwent, usually when, awaiting the arrival of Niké’s master or mistress, we remained alone in one of the salons, in the hall, on the stairs, or somewhere else. Our romantic meetings in the street can also be counted here, for in the course of my business walks, which I continued according to the schedule in my saffian leather notebook, I used to pass her every day at a predetermined time. On these occasions quite brazenly, almost leaning out over her luxurious conservatories and balconies, she would give herself up to my wondering gaze, and her face, intent on keeping our sinful secret, would let slip those four clear Corinthian tears which I could only interpret as unsatisfied desire for me.