On a dark blue plaque fixed to the lined façade of the clinic, just above eye level, there was written in large white enameled letters: MARSHAL BIRYUZOV STREET.
So they had renamed Kosmajska Street. But who was this Biryuzov? A Russian Czarist officer had once been commander in chief of the Serbian Army, but that was during the reign of Prince Milan Obrenović, and his name was Chernyaev, not Biryuzov; Mikhail Grigoryevich Chernyaev. Moreover, he hadn’t been a marshal but a general, like George. I could recall only one other general. (Budyonny too, of course, came to mind, although it was inconceivable that a royal street could bear the name of that regicide.) That general who had defended Port Arthur against the Japanese — his name was Kuroglatkin — or was it Kurosatkin?
Standing underneath the plaque which shone slantwise in the sun, I tried to think who that marshal could be. Finally I concluded that most probably he was one of those military brains whose operations George considered “infantile” maneuvers based on still more infantile premises, George being convinced that the front lines on both sides were commanded by complete idiots. There was a certain injustice in the fact that all sorts of Biryuzovs were honored in the names of the most eminent streets in the capital, whereas the man who had criticized them could only achieve a gilt inscription on a cemetery cross. And there were the most serious reasons for upbraiding the Town Council in that, on renaming the street, they hadn’t consulted the citizens of the town, not to mention its home owners. On my way to Niké, I concluded that the restoration of the street’s old name was one of the questions I would take up as soon as I had begun to sort out my business affairs.
As I approached No. 41, which was still hidden by the projecting fronts of the houses this side of it, my excitement grew. My reflections on Kleont and his house avec le caractère de Cléont, were only, of course, an excuse for keeping my thoughts away from the forthcoming meeting with Niké, a meeting which without doubt would resemble the sobering encounter of two lovers who, after years without contact, approach each other apprehensively, wondering whether their former passion — which they wish to make eternal — will have withstood the changes both have suffered. Thus I was approaching Niké with a gnawing pain inside me. It wasn’t my fault I hadn’t arrived at the auction, but then again it was, since I’d made that unfortunate speech.
I was so agitated that I again had to stop to calm my facial muscle, that wound-up monster beneath my right cheek whose hot and cold quiverings announced that it was again about to be seized by a convulsive spasm. When I had managed to massage it back into its den, and my lips were no longer jerking as if tied to my forehead with strings, I took the last step. I crossed over the street toward Kleont’s house — to the spot where I would be able to take in Niké at a single glance.
It is impossible for me to describe at one and the same time what I saw and felt at that moment. It seemed to me that in reality I could see nothing at all, that I was inventing everything, so that I should see my Niké just as I had left her, leaning out over her conservatories and balconies, following me with her eyes filled with the violet glow of the sun. But now I couldn’t see her — probably the effect of my self-inflicted punishment was still at work — for over her leveled foundations as over an abandoned grave overgrown with brambles, weeds, and briars, stretched a rectangular square with three internal walls built of stone anthills like the walls of a casemate, a square with paved paths crossing in the form of an X. Nearby were placed groups of two red and two green freshly painted benches. The houses at the rear of the square were blurred, as if, in the same band of colorless horizon, an unsteady camera had taken several pictures of buildings, one on top of the other.
Niké no longer existed. My enchanting Niké was dead, dead and buried beneath an offensively ugly stele in the shape of a public promenade. Not only she but her closest family had been brutally rooted out — probably according to some inhuman principle of co-participation in misfortune. Everything that was there in her place seemed so unreal that, completely unhinged by this somnambulist vision, I thought — what am I saying, I hoped — that I had lost my way (this isn’t Kosmajska Street, it’s the street of some Biryuzov!), and that as soon as I pulled myself together I’d find the right one, where Niké would be waiting for me. But the awareness that I was leaning on Kleont Negovan’s house, and that my disappointed gaze could turn to Aspasia whenever it wanted, brought me harshly back to the fact that Niké was no more, that if I wished, I could walk around her tomb.
And you, Arsénie, you were so certain that you knew everything about the outside world simply because you found out about your brother’s death? There are other things too which have ceased to exist in the meantime — your Niké, for example — and who knows what else. Of course, they would have stayed alive if you hadn’t seen them dead.
I directed my steps toward the square as if approaching a deathbed, a deathbed without a corpse, a concrete and grassy catafalque from which the coffin had long ago been removed. Where a luxurious fireplace with Moses’ hybrid face had once stood, there were now red and green benches. Dry, dusty grass grew from the vestibule; on the first step of that portal which had caused me so much irritation, there now stood a rusty hydrant; in the middle of the salon where I had imagined the gathered buyers, was a wrought-iron tube with flowers; and over it all rose the empty stories of the burning June air. Nothing was left of Niké. Not even the cadaverous breath of a cemetery. Even the most insignificant carrion leaves a skeleton behind under the sky’s mantle; our own dead give off incomprehensible phosphorous signs from under the earth; ruined buildings resist destruction and withdraw deep underground, keeping their own remembrance in the scarcely discernible shape of their former foundations; shattered stars are scattering particles even now. But of Niké there was no trace — only a cross-shaped pathway stamped on the barren earth like a brand. And the picture of Niké in the Chinese embossed ivory frame on my desk.
Nothing held me here now. I walked on toward Aspasia, but with the feeling that I owed something to Niké’s memory. It would have been heartless to leave without making an attempt to find out under what circumstances she had been destroyed. The most natural thing, of course, would have been to call on Kleont. But that would have required an explanation for which, at the moment of mourning, I was least of all disposed.
As I approached Aspasia I noticed a sign: a clumsily drawn shoe, and next to it white as chalk: SHOEMAKER — SOFRONIJE ŽIVIĆ—COURTYARD: TURN RIGHT. Sofronije Živić, shoemaker? No, there was no one with that name among my tenants. Nor had Golovan told me of a shoemaker in Aspasia. But it was quite clear why he had remained silent. He knew well that I didn’t allow workshops in my houses, still less crude signs hung over their doorways. There could be no further doubt that my lawyer had been lying to me about many details concerning my houses. In this light, his obliging behavior became understandable and his exaggerated conscientiousness took on a different meaning. Standing beneath that chalklike shoe, I remembered another illuminating incident. I had asked that the business records be brought to me for inspection. The weather was bad, the temperature ten degrees below zero. Golovan had come personally, by car in fact, to hand over the books. Feeling guilty about disturbing him, I had asked him why in God’s name he hadn’t sent the books with one of his clerks. He replied that he had prepared them personally in order to provide me with supplementary information. This explanation had seemed reasonable, and it gratified me to see in it that professional pride which had disappeared from commercial affairs. But in actual fact Golovan had feared lest I question his subordinates and so find out everything he had been concealing from me. I decided that a clarification of this puzzling situation would be my first concern on returning to Kosančićev Venac.