Meanwhile the ranks of the demonstrators had begun to shudder as if with the sharp jolt of a tender and a railway car connecting, so that my nose was brutally thrust down between someone’s shoulders, while behind me some ponderous being rose up and wrapped its wet, shaggy sleeves around my head. This was the limit: to be kept forcibly in that unruly mass in the street, like a tramp, hatless, with one sleeve half torn and the buttons dangling, my nose buried in a moist, crumpled bit of cloth reeking of tobacco! The very thought of appearing at Stefan’s, in front of Niké, dirty, crumpled, as if I had just crawled out of a heap of rubble — infuriated me.
Suddenly something went wrong. We had stopped on a slope, deprived of that common motion which had allowed some freedom of movement. The concentrated pressure became more unbearable, and the prospects of getting out more remote. It was as if an invisible circular press was working from the walled-in edges of the procession to compact us slowly together, so as to grind us into mincemeat, then squeeze us out into Brankova Street.
The placards had again turned their ashen, daubed faces toward me, and the blood-red banner was again toiling uphill until it stopped high above me and was spread out, its poles rattling, like the purple sky of Theophany, like an open wound in the dark, chilling air. (Made of worn crèpe de chine, it was stiff as a board buffeted by the wind.) Meanwhile the howling had diminished to a dull decrescendo in which, here and there, angry words arose rapidly and subsided into the tired strain of a rumbling chorus melody in which the themes and the instruments that bore them mingled as in some fantastic Concerto Grosso.
And then that head emerged.
Yes, perhaps ten meters from where I was standing, an egg-shaped head, fleshy and purple with cold, extricated itself from the mass. Slowly the man rose like a bather from the sea, with his arms on high, calling for silence.
“Comrades and citizens!”
He took his time to settle his thickset body firmly on the shoulders of his bearers. The war veteran whose hook was tucked under my elbow cried out, “Silence, let’s hear him!” The speaker stood on high above the procession, like a statue at a religious festival, his clenched fists raised toward the sky.
“Down with the butcher Hitler!” “Down with him!” “Long live the Army!” “The Army!” The singing and responses sounded like an open-air church service with several different denominations holding forth at the same time.
“Comrades and citizens, today the peoples of Yugoslavia have washed away a shameful stain from their pure body. The overthrow of the traitorous Prince Paul and his blood-thirsty collaborators is the result of the popular struggle for peace and independence our country has been waging in recent days, days of such crucial importance for the world.”
“Down with the government of traitors!”
“Down with the German hirelings!”
I pulled my watch out of my vest pocket: it was a quarter to seven. The auction had been announced for seven. I hoped that the gathering would spend at least a half hour looking over Niké’s plans and financial records.
“Organized resistance began as far back as 1935…”
In 1935 I bought Agatha and Christina and I was negotiating for Stephanie, but I didn’t finally acquire her until 1940.
“Remember, comrades, our demonstrations for the elections of May 5, for the Civil War in Spain!”
Although my late cousin Constantine, the builder — the only person with whom I could discuss houses properly without being laughed at — was of a different opinion, I myself liked Spanish architecture, especially their plateresque. (I prefer Enrique Egas to the more famous Juan de Herrera anytime, for without that cladding which is considered artificial, these buildings would be indecently bare and ugly.)
“… on the occasion of the Anschluss in Austria, when our sister Czechoslovakia was shamefully attacked and occupied!”
Fortunately the Germans didn’t bomb Prague as they later did Warsaw — though to tell the truth, some of the most beautiful houses in the Polish capital were saved. Such preservation is crucial for a town.
“Comrades, students, and workers! At last that great day — the day we can boldly express our infinite love for our powerful brother, the great Soviet Union, invincible land of workers and peasants!”
“And soldiers!”
“And soldiers. That is why we demand a pact of mutual aid with the Soviet Union, which alone can guarantee the peace and independence of this country. And that is why we cry: Long live the Soviet Union, the bastion of peace and independence for smaller nations!”
By now the invited buyers will have assembled, probably standing around that Empire-style salon on the ground floor. Soon they will be starting off on their tour of the house. Yon (Jelena’s Transylvanian variant of the name of the butler, John) will be serving drinks in conical glasses of Czech crystal, which he carries around on a gilt tray like a church collection bowl. Those fine gentlemen can choose between delicate aromatic liqueurs and harsh, fiery, warming alcohol. Before this afternoon they have seen Niké only from the outside, and each has imagined her interior in his own way. Now they will see that they have been mistaken; Niké will put their pampered imagination to shame, mysterious Niké who hasn’t yet opened her doors to them or revealed her wonderful marble perspectives and her dusky outlines lit by lacquered wall lamps. In sordine the first cautious impressions are exchanged, concurrently misleading and covered with mimicking disguises. The guests around Stefan cordially inquire what has become of the mistress of the Negovan-Georgijević house and discover that she has asked her husband to excuse her absence. “In fact, she loves this house so much that she couldn’t bear to be present at its sale.” Of course the potential buyers recognize the appeal of her owner’s anguish. All this is terribly complicated. Commerce is a distasteful business in which no intelligent man would involve himself if it didn’t, as sociology defines it, help develop the forces of production without which mankind would perish.
Meanwhile, everyone’s eyes are fixing themselves on Niké’s tender innards like the moist tentacles of an octopus. Exploratory probes verify the soundness of her walls, the quality of the construction work, the individuality of the ornamentation. At the far edge of the conversation flow figures, measurements, queries, impressions, and data. Those present seem indifferent, indolent, inattentive, but in fact they are impatiently awaiting the auction, though they refrain from commenting on Stefan’s delay. And so they wait with the fire of battle in their bellies, a fire that competition will ignite with every ringing stroke of the auctioneer’s hammer on the improvised stand in the vestibule. The discontent at the delay keeps growing and the whole hardened gathering is transformed imperceptibly into a minefield where each careless step can lead to an explosion. In the nick of time Stefan invites them, according to custom, to follow him so he can show them the house, “which, gentlemen, I shall do without embellishment or exaggeration.” No, he won’t influence the buyers at the auction by a single observation — he knows he couldn’t even if he wanted to: these marketeers of the capital are wolves — but he’ll serve them as Cicerone, an impassive guide through his architectural kingdom which, as they probably already know, is patterned on the plans of Dietrich and Eizenhofer for the Academy of Sciences in Vienna, built in 1755.
But you can be absolutely certain that during this obvious procrastination he’ll be surreptitiously glancing at the clock, that yellow sunlike face over the doorway, and listening for the ring of your arrival, at first surprised that you aren’t there, later perhaps offended, and of two minds whether to abandon his personal haughtiness and telephone to find out why you haven’t responded to his loyal invitation. Nevertheless, he won’t reach for the phone, not because those present would suspect some kind of collusion between relatives but because, after thinking it over, he must have realized how much the absence of Arsénie Negovan was to his advantage, how well it suited his hypocritical aim of not surrendering the house to me — the customary Negovan vileness (which as usual would seem correct to everybody), entirely neglecting the fact that my desire for Niké had forced the price up to vertiginous heights. And so all of them — except me, of course — will turn to the owner and, following his advice from the hall, choose the quickest way to get around the house, while at the same time fixing as precisely as possible in their adding-machinelike heads the numbers, measurements, and impressions they note on the way. And where are you, just when you’ve been given the chance of becoming Niké’s official owner (for you long ago made her your own)? Instead of cutting short that whole undignified comedy by stating an insurmountable price, you’re shivering here on the cobblestones, hatless, torn, spat upon, stained with mud, trapped by fetid bodies and coarse voices of encouragement from out of whose fine net you can again distinguish the baritone of the orator: