Clearly, the immediate danger posed by Niké was only the less serious half of his true reason for selling; as the owner of Y.B.C. (Yugoslav Barv Company), he was entering into important business agreements with I. G. Farben and was in need of credit and liquid funds. The idea of arranging for an auction had no other aim than to inflict harm on me, for he knew that no one could match my bid for Niké.
All the same, when I received Stefan’s announcement of the auction, I couldn’t have cared less; now at last Niké was within my reach. All the rest — Stefan’s intention of harming me with this vulgar contest, his shameless letter, his unpatriotic collaboration with the German aniline dye industry — all this had to give way before the prospect that tomorrow Niké would be mine, and I hers. So with my heart brimming over, as they say, I set off for Kosmajska Street, carrying in my saffian notebook all the house’s vital statistics (her architectural carte d’identité), with the unchristian intention of revenging myself on Stefan for his disloyalty toward both me and Niké. Couldn’t that deceitful horse trader have telephoned me and chivalrously saved Niké from the humiliation of being fingered all over by the dirty hands of the house buyers — for all the world like some African odalisque at the slave market? And couldn’t he have saved me from the even worse humiliation of being present as a helpless onlooker, since, according to custom, such sales had to be preceded by an exhaustive viewing of the article put up for auction? I would revenge myself upon him, therefore, by laying bare certain features of the house of which even her original architects were unaware, and which of course wouldn’t be noted on my cousin’s auction inventory.
But between me and Niké, alas, stood that inopportune mob.
•
And what did you feel when you first saw the mob, Arsénie?
Fear.
Fear of what? Of the mob, of the masses?
Only partially. To tell the truth, it wasn’t fear but rather anxiety that I might be late for the auction. I couldn’t count on their waiting for me, or on Stefan’s postponing the sale until my arrival!
But why then did he ask you at all? Couldn’t he have sold Niké without you? If he wanted to humiliate you, wouldn’t he have excluded you from the contest by selling the house to someone else?
I believe it was a question of loyalty. We didn’t like but simply tolerated each other. Nor did that mutual tolerance at any specific level of danger attain a selfless clan solidarity. In exceptional instances that included even legal matters; nevertheless, there were accepted limits which only outcasts such as George’s son Fedor ignored. Because of this passive loyalty, I hadn’t gone all out earlier to force a decision through the Town Hall to get the house pulled down.
But putting the squeeze on bills of exchange was permissible? To drive him into a financial dead end like a dog — that you could do?
That was business. Nobody stopped him from paying them off!
So you believe, then, that you didn’t hate the mob taking part in that procession?
Perhaps I did hate them, but only in the sense of their being an obstacle in my path, just as I would have been frustrated by a moat or a fortified wall. I had to be at Stefan’s at a definite time!
So from the beginning it was only the will to break through the barrier which urged you on?
At first it seemed impossible to get through — those creatures were stuck together thick as dough. I reckoned that with luck and a good deal of effort — I was really in good physical condition then — I would need at least two hundred meters of street length to get across by working my way diagonally to the opposite pavement; that meant coming right up against the cordon of police who were closing off Pop-Lukina Street from the Sava side.
But wouldn’t that have been the answer? The police would have let you through: you were a well-known figure, Vice-President of the Chamber of Commerce, the spokesman of our Trade Association. But most of all you were a Negovan, a name which had figured in every cabinet since Unification. They would surely have let you through and given you an armed escort.
There wasn’t any time for explanations.
Is that why you tried to work your way around the procession?
Yes.
But you weren’t successful?
No.
So you went back to the corner of Pop-Lukina and Zadar Streets. What next?
Next? Well, I stepped into the crowd, intending to get across the street.
Into that mob? Surrounded by frenzied people?
What is the point of these superfluous and unseemly details?
Are we carrying out an inquiry or not? Haven’t we decided to discover what kept us locked up there in Kosančićev Venac for so many years with that ivy-framed window facing west? With all those binoculars which could bring the world, defined by the parapet and the oak window frame, so near to us? With Katarina and her sobriety worthy of respect? With the property owner’s map — that work of St. J. Sušić from which the pinheads burgeoned like yellow pollen and sky-blue fruit, alongside the registers and leather folders with the carefully folded cartes d’identité of our houses? With the sided 30 × 30 photographic enlargements and several portraits in oils of the most outstanding of them? How can we find out the truth, if we conceal everything that was unpleasant or humiliating?
Perhaps after this pilgrimage you won’t go back like a disappointed fugitive to Kosančićev Venac and your imprisoning attic. Perhaps you will again conduct your business affairs without an intermediary. Simonida would not be in despair at the threat of pickax and crowbar if you hadn’t retreated — deserted, so to speak. And weren’t you not an hour ago sitting by the west window holding the Mayer to your tired eyes, dreaming of how you would extend your ownership to the other side of the Sava — if you took a liking to it, of course — when you had looked at it from close up?
At the very beginning, after I had cast myself into the mob, nothing particular happened. I stood there, at the spot where the ragged line of the asphalt joins the macadam, while in front of me pressed the galvanized throng. I could hear it breathing like an antediluvian monster flopping over a marsh on its belly, across its tertiary homeland. Most of the placards had been carried past. Now, above the tumult, the demonstrators turned their white, ragged backs toward me; the red banner was bleeding down there like a wound, a purple slash on the clear stone of Brankova Street. I still hesitated, though I knew I’d have to make up my mind quickly. Then suddenly I was sucked into the mass. A dozen or so demonstrators had been forced out by the pressure of the oncoming waves, and had swirled into Zadarska Street, like a crackling stream forced out of some giant tube, and when this group had hurled themselves back, they carried me along with them.
And you — did you hold back, did you resist?
Resist? Why should I have resisted? I wanted to get across.
That way?
Why not? I can’t honestly say that I was altogether passive in giving way to the pressure which was carrying me toward the center. Somehow, I held myself up. Instinctively I must have pushed with my back, on which I felt more weight with each linked step. I let my legs drag along the ground like two crooked black brakes, while my hands in their light-blue suede gloves pushed against someone in an overcoat of rough cloth from which one epaulet had been torn, its ribbon with a brass button dangling like a piece of torn yellow skin stuck on with a yellow Band-Aid. He was not in fact a soldier; inside the ragged collar I could see the bluish-white folds of a scarf, like a bandage flecked with dark blue iodine, and a web of gray, greasy hair with a cap pulled down over it. While I was being crushed like grain by these two millstones — the invisible body from behind and that foul-smelling one in front — at that fraction of a second which divided me from the rushing torrent of the procession (with greater presence of mind, a single bold step to one side might have saved me), I felt panic swift as a shot, powerful as a heart seizure, and so unbearable in its sudden acceleration that I began to scream for help.