With respect to the future, however, Niké was a provocative and negligently chosen name for a house with which I dreamed of finding happiness. Viewed superficially, the name suited the house very well, for long before Katarina there had been a Niké in my life. (To tell the truth, that wasn’t her real name — she was christened Gospava. I called her Niké, not at all for those reasons which led Mrs. Nego-van-Georgijević to permutate the vulgar letters of her maiden name, but because of the likeness of that powerful, ripe woman to the Paeonian Niké of Olympus, the herald and patroness of military, gymnastic, and therefore why not amorous victories — in all cases, of course, except mine.) That Niké too had been proud, vulgar, and — why should I conceal it? — ugly, yet I had had a relationship with her which no one could understand, myself included, and had embarked upon it with the greatest pleasure. So, bearing in mind the adulterous nature of our relations, I should add that the original Niké, Gospava-Niké, was unhappily married to some clerk in the Adriatic Danube Bank. So the choice of name suited Stefan’s palace perfectly, except that regarding the future of our relations it was more than ominous, for it seemed to announce loud and clear the ill-fated end of my adventure.
This desire, however, which I could discern in Niké in a less and less cautious form with every meeting — a desire which by the laws of reciprocity was only strengthened by that feverish need for me to possess her — had grown so much in the meantime that it could no longer be concealed. Furthermore, its heightened suffering threatened to destroy our relationship completely, not to speak of its unfortunate effect on my work and my mental state.
So it had gone as far as it could go. I had to take action. Although I’m by no means proud of my behavior at that time, I’m setting it down here so that someone will at least know exactly what Arsénie Negovan was capable of doing, to make sure that the right house should get into the right hands — setting it down in the hope that my nobility of purpose can guarantee to these, my devious actions, at least that minimum of indulgence which history commonly affords in great abundance to other selfish human exploits. Doesn’t medicine inflict pain in order to drive some dangerous illness out of us? Doesn’t a mother use deception to guard her child from various temptations?
I’ve already said that there would have been nothing to gain from building a second Niké. To knock on Niké’s door as a buyer gave no promise of success either, for Stefan was far from sated with the advantages of owning a European palace in what till recently had been a remote Turkish province; it is well known what new householders are like when they begin to be reimbursed for all the pains that building has entailed for them. Moreover, the admiration for the house which the doyen of Belgrade landlords would have shown by his offer of purchase would have gone to Stefan’s head, and he might well have carried on with his building operations; instead of Niké, I might have acquired a competitor.
To keep Stefan in the dark about my intentions, I found, or rather hired, an intermediary whose special position — he was a minister without portfolio — made it natural for him to live in a magnificent house like Niké. But as I had to give serious consideration to my cousin’s still unfulfilled expectations as a houseowner, I was obliged in any case to soften up the ground for the intermediary: first, by complicating Stefan’s ownership of the house, and if possible even his occupation of it, by administrative subterfuges and deceptions; then, as though it were indirectly, through rumor, by hampering his enjoyment of his possessions. This latter I accomplished by undermining the self-esteem acquired by the house, and by destroying his and Jelena’s conviction that they had gained some great advantage from Niké by advancing their social standing in the most spectacular way.
My preparation—“the artillery barrage preceding a frontal attack,” as my brother George would have said — lasted for some time, about a year in fact, until, through the Town Hall, I had managed to obstruct the administration of his property. (In a typically Balkan manner no one could care less about the capital, and Stefan, out of spite and by means of unofficial interventions, had by now disfigured Niké with new but fortunately removable extensions.) By that time I had also managed to surround his wife with barbed insinuations, so that she completely lost her head and at last confided in me, seeking my advice as a relative and expert.
I took care to give wings to her doubts as to the taste with which the house was designed, particularly with respect to its location. It would have been well suited to Dedinje, I said, but in the middle of the commercial center, next to wholesale dealers and department stores, it gave the impression of an artificial Siamese pavilion which, I added to heighten the effect, had been built by craftsmen from every continent and from all the differing architectural traditions. I said that the house from a utilitarian point of view was a complete failure; that it was more like a riding stable with a great marble manège than the house of an industrialist. Finally, I brought her some building-industry magazines, and by showing her a number of advertised designs, pleasantly induced her to want each of them in turn instead of the house she already had; yet I took care that she didn’t decide on a design to which Niké could be adapted by inexpensive modifications.
And when the former minister Mr. K.L., my secret agent, made public his offer for the house, he was not turned down. Without this mental preparation of Mrs. Negovan-Georgijević, he undoubtedly would have been, but after some short time taken for reflection, and thanks to my anonymous influence, the formal agreement of purchase and sale was forthcoming. From then on, everything went smoothly. Even the negotiations concerning the purchase price turned out favorably for me. Through Mr. K.L. I kept putting the price down on various pretexts, while at the same time through other indirect accomplices — without their conscious collaboration, of course — I heightened my relations’ fear that by living in such a house, a house with a bad reputation, their social standing in the town was continuously declining — declining so much, in fact, that the foolish, unsuspecting Stefan began to imagine that his work was suffering because of that house, and not because of his own ineptitude.
And then Mr. K.L. — a minister without portfolio, and a fully equipped jackass in the bargain — Mr. K.L., at the party Stefan gave to celebrate the imminent conclusion of the sale, being probably drunk, telephoned Arsénie Negovan to tell him that he had become the owner of the palace at No. 41 Kosmajska Street. Obviously, he was unaware that the time he had spent in the Ministry of Internal Affairs had been completely wasted, since Stefan was listening in on another extension.
What more can I say? I had to come into the open as the purchaser. At once, of course, all Niké’s unpleasant and intolerable defects were transformed into virtues which Stefan couldn’t bring himself to renounce at any price.
(At the first cabinet reshuffle Mr. K.L. took over Foreign Affairs, and as far as I could see from my superficial grasp of politics, went on to conduct national affairs with the same flippancy that he had shown in mine.)
However, I didn’t give up. Under the pretext that the more prosperous people had moved out of town and into the hills, I lowered the rents of all the houses in Niké’s vicinity, and reduced Aspasia’s rent to suit even a pauper’s pocket, thus bringing down Niké’s value. While I could somehow cope with the other landlords — who, with justification, accused me of residence “dumping” and even of Bolshevism (here they made capital out of my time spent in Russia) — it was virtually impossible to convince Aspasia’s inhabitants that I wasn’t degrading them by this reduction of my profits, but simply giving my commercial, professional answer to the migration of riches, power, and reputation from one side of town to the other.