“You feel sorry for us, do you? But you want more anyway. Can’t get enough, you greedy monsters, can you? You’d take all we’ve got — money, belongings, our very souls! Well, that to you!” Here, believe it or not, she actually demonstrated it, in vivo. “There’s nothing more for you to take and divide up. And you made my children emigrate, you filthy gangsters. Go steal from each other now!”
“Oh, mon Dieu! Pull yourself together, madam!”
“What sort of madam am I, you bastard! A madam in a calico dress, a madam who eats once in a blue moon, a madam who washes fucking old men’s fucking drawers! Thieves! Pigs! Godless mobsters!”
“Moi, je ne comprends rien, parole d’honneur. Je suis un homme de grande renommée!”
“Pigs!”
“Pardon, pardon! Vous avez eu la bonté de vois souvenir de moi — Arsénie K. Negovan, rentier de la rue Kosančićev Venac, numéro dix-sept!”
Although I’m free to leave out this sordid scene in pleno (have I mentioned that I’m writing on the back of tax forms and rent receipts?), and although for my own posthumous memory and the Martinovići’s reputation it would be well to do so, nevertheless I have included it since these events, together with other events that awaited me on my walk, were clearly and prophetically significant. And so, with a certain restraint regarding the choice of words but not the events, I’m writing down how, pursued by the lady’s oaths, I cautiously beat a retreat toward the door, reflecting meantime that if there were no other way, I should have to make use of my cane. For the time being, however, the enraged woman contented herself with the coarse oaths whose sense was quite beyond my comprehension, nor was I, quite honestly, in any mood to puzzle it out.
“Why don’t you leave him in peace for once, you filthy cheat? Can’t you see that the man’s dying? Do you want to finish him off altogether? Hasn’t my husband done his time? Fifteen years he served in prison — innocent — so that those no-good bastards could get fat on our estate!”
“Madam!”
“Get out!”
“Please, I can explain—”
“Explain? What did you explain to us back in forty-four? Get out of here, and tell those who sent you that the Martinovići have nothing more for you to confiscate. You can still get this!” She brandished her clenched fist. “Just look at him, all dressed up with a hat and a tie! Don’t you think I can tell a secret policeman when I see one?”
Obviously, any explanation was useless. Also, her shouting might alarm the neighbors and involve me in a scandal. I managed to reach the stairs, but as I was going down, trying to maintain an appearance of businesslike haste in my withdrawal, Joška, the horse dealer’s daughter, leaned over the wooden handrail and continued to hurl imprecations down at me:
“And that house that so caught your eye, you couldn’t take that away, bloodsucker! The bastards knocked it down, thank God, leveled it to the ground. You could only take the stones, and take them you did, and how! You even took the rubble away from us! I hope they use them for your grave! And you can come back with the police if you want, I don’t give a damn!”
I quickened my step to a pace just short of a run and didn’t stop until I was in Topličin Venac. The woman’s outburst at the top of the stairs had ended in groaning, sobbing, shouting, and the devil knows what else.
My Niké, then, was hit during the Allied bombing and couldn’t have been repaired at all, even if she had been in my hands. So from all the evidence, I could be considered neither guilty of, nor even an accessory to, her destruction. Unfortunately, I had to pay for the merited relief with shame at being so eager to accept it. Had I really so little feeling left for the house, that I preferred it to have been razed to the ground in order to preserve my own peace of mind?
That’s right, Arsénie, that’s right! If you’d really wanted to find a way around the procession, you’d have taken the streetcar and gone behind it along General Mišić Street, around Kalemegdan Park and the Zoo.
No streetcar could have got out from Kosančićev Venac onto the boulevard under those circumstances.
Or you could have telephoned to request a postponement of the auction.
Impossible! That was quite contrary to good business practice.
Why didn’t you participate in the auction by phone? You had the right to nominate a representative — it could have been anyone. From Kosančićev Venac you could have raised the price until your last rival withdrew.
Yes, indeed, but I didn’t think of it at the time.
Perhaps you were afraid that Niké’s strength would displace all the other houses from your mind. She clearly had tendencies in that direction: she was selfish, egocentric, jealous of every thought which your affairs obliged you to devote to rival buildings.
Reflecting on all this, I have at last found enough courage to utter the word premeditation. It had been a hypocritical hope that Niké’s destruction, over which I had certainly had no influence, would liberate me from my feeling of guilt, for the house had died even before the bombs sought her out. Niké passed away on March 27, 1941, at 1900 hours, when it became clear to everyone on Kosmajska Street that Arsénie Negovan was not coming to the auction. And it was I who had killed Niké.
Yes, just as I was responsible for the destruction which threatened Simonida, and for that greedy shoemaker’s shop clamped to Aspasia’s tender back. I had taunted George with desertion, but what had I done myself? What difference was there between my seclusion at No. 17 Kosančićev Venac and his confinement at concession No. 17 in the New Cemetery? Even the coincidence of the numbers underscored the similarity of our cowardice.
Meanwhile I had an oppressive feeling in my chest. I’d become unaccustomed to walking, even though formerly I’d been able to spend hour upon hour making the rounds of my own houses and building sites, and observing those of others, without feeling at all wearied. True, it was swelteringly hot — the warm air wrapped itself around me like a sticky band of flypaper — but more likely it was my seventy years which undermined my freshness and drove me to a bench where I could rest my legs.
That morning the park was fairly empty. Children were clambering over the jungle gym like spiders along their glistening threads, the rusty moving parts of the swings and seesaws creaked piercingly, and children’s heads bobbed up and down from behind the ragged edge of the concrete sandbox like pink water lilies. (I’m ashamed to admit that I was never overfond of children. How many times had I come upon the front walls of houses defaced with their drawings just after the painters had finished their work? They all used colors in the same unexpected way, and pencils, chalk, coal, and sharp stones, too. My cousin Leonid Negovan termed these drawings “a direct expression of primitive, Altamira-like genius”—which was easy for him to say, since the houses were never his. I on the other hand — again, because the houses indeed often were mine — saw the drawings as evidence of bad upbringing for which the parents ought to be punished.)
All that equipment and ironwork for children hadn’t even been there before, but the monument to Vuk still dominated the park. With my binoculars I made the aggressive iron figure stand out against the green foliage.
GENERAL VUK, 1880–1916
JADAR
KONATICA
BELGRADE
VLASINA
KAJMAKČALAN