SIVA STENA
GRUNIŠTE
At that moment it seemed as if the general had rushed out of the forest, out from behind those scattered chestnut trees, with his chest out and one leg bent at the knee, bandaged with a field dressing, while the other leg pushed down at a sharp angle against the yellowed, rough-hewn pedestal. The policeman I had glimpsed bearing down on me before I finally lost consciousness on the cobblestones of Pop-Lukina Street had been something like that guerrilla general. I had been knocked down and my pince-nez smashed, but I could still — thank God — control my movements, although I could achieve little apart from defending my face against being trodden underfoot. Feet were trampling down everything around me as if crushing grapes in a vat, rising and falling with the speed and uniformity of a pneumatic hammer, but I couldn’t swear to it that I had any feeling of pain, nor could I hear the din which had been going on during the speech and later during the fight, while I had still been on my feet. On the contrary, as soon as I was knocked down everything suddenly went quiet, though it all continued to writhe, jostle, and stagger in the artificial silence, as if the tumult of a moment earlier had reached a pitch where it could no longer be heard even though still raging. Before everything went completely blank, I managed to focus my eyes, like the shaded lens of a pair of unadjusted binoculars, on a true copy of the Vuk monument: the policeman rushing at me with his truncheon swinging.
Of that rumbled period when my senses returned — the process went on for quite a while, as I regained and lost consciousness several times — I recall only Katarina’s mistily swimming face; those jerky, ruby-red outlines which looked more like the darting tongues of a burning flame than living beings, cut certainly not like my nurses; and strangely, that green limb with the iron bandage around its joint, which, unattached to my body, plunged hissing into the furniture. My eyes finally cleared like a binocular lens at last adjusted for distance, and I managed to make out real objects from the fiery waves which, for a long while after I came to, went on flaring up from somewhere and setting fire to the corners of the room. It was our bedroom at Kosančićev Venac. Apparently I was being undressed, and someone was trying to pry something from my rigidly clenched fingers — something torn, hard, battered.
It was that very object, which seemed to have become part of my fist as if to give me some little comfort, that helped me back to consciousness: my lost hat, the Borsalino with the cleft crown, stiff turned-up brim, and black silk band. In a sorry state, it’s true, but I recognized it. (In any case it had my name inside it.) How I had managed to find it I couldn’t say, nor could the police patrol which found me, identified me, put me in a hired cab and with true deference brought me to Kosančićev Venac. The sergeant could only say with official certainty that when the red mob had been dispersed, they had pulled Mr. Negovan out of a gutter where the sewer carries the — pardon the expression — shit into Kosmajska Street. But they could not say how he had got down there among the excreta, unless he’d taken part in the riot, which, given the gentleman’s reputation, they certainly couldn’t believe (although one never knows). He had been in a bad, an extremely bad, way: beaten, unconscious, left for dead, and as they say, ready for the last rites; in his left hand he was gripping the aforementioned hat, from which they unsuccessfully tried to separate him while they were getting him into the cab.
The diagnosis was made by our family doctor, and confirmed by the second opinion of the surgeon George Negovan (whose professional assistance I myself would never have requested). This diagnosis, which I have kept among my papers, states: Fractura tibiae et fibulae dextre, Fractura costarum II lat. sin. et III, IV lat. dex., Contusio cerebri et Haematoma faciae et corporis, which confirmed that both bones of my lower leg were broken; that three ribs were cracked (the second on the left and the third and fourth on the right side of my rib cage); that I had suffered cerebral contusions (the effects of which made themselves felt in the temporary paralysis of the left side of my face); and that, finally, I was completely covered with bruises and swellings from blows received during the incident.
Afterward, when they removed my plaster and replaced it with an elastic lace-up corset such as our mothers used to wear, Katarina told me that for quite some time I had been delirious with a temperature as high as 104° F., and that in my delirium I had been taking part in an auction of Niké where I was bidding against the strangest rivals: a man called “Hook,” another called “N.N.,” and “Christina.” I easily identified Hook as the war veteran, and N.N. as the speaker who had preceded me at the demonstration; only Christina baffled me. Then it dawned on me that this name stood for the hefty suffragette I was pressed against while we were marching toward Brankova Street.
(Christina, the sister of my architect Jacob Negovan, was a person quite untouched by sanity; although her half-wittedness was known and accepted, it won’t be out of place here for me to note the outward symptoms of her madness. She was a socialist, a left-wing one at that. Furthermore she was a jockey, a suffragette, a bicyclist, a Spanish correspondent in 1937, the first Serbian woman to fly in a balloon, a cellist, and a Trotskyite. She learned Chinese, wore demonstrative black with a red rose on the First of May, and in the fashion of Georges Sand, her spiritual grandmother, smoked with a spindle-shaped ivory cigarette holder like a Turkish pipe. Since I was of course a “reactionary,” she had long ago broken off with me, and had resigned herself to awaiting the World Revolution, a revolution which never came.)
This whole experience — the lynch mob, my injuries, and the misunderstanding over Niké—wouldn’t have been so important, if during my convalescence which went on for, well, almost six months, I hadn’t become preoccupied with refashioning both my business and private life in some new and as yet unconsidered way. There was nothing else for it, Arsénie, you had to adapt yourself to time — I’m not saying submit to it, but come to terms with it. Avoid struggling against its headstrong changes like a mule against the driving harness. All in all, set about something fundamental, one of those lifesaving turnarounds which, according to some higher motivation, had dispersed the sons of the Moskopolje potter, Simeon Nago, to the four corners of the earth, and had subsequently kept their descendants on the sunny surface of life.
The feeling of insecurity was accentuated by the German invaders who during my recovery had stormed the redoubts of our old-fashioned life. Personally, I had nothing against the Germans: given my strained resources, the cessation of building activity came at just the right time. The Germans, it’s true, requisitioned some of my houses, but they kept excellent accounts and paid adequate compensation for what they destroyed. As far as the bombing was concerned, I ascribe all that to their debit, for the first raids were theirs and the subsequent ones were provoked by their presence; but as my lodger, Major Helgar, said: “Das ist ein Krieg, Herr Negovan!” Yes, it was war, something subnatural, elemental, which opened up like a crater beneath certain of my houses, to swallow them up and return them to the earth whence they had come.
The Germans too brought changes whose essential nature I strove to fathom, lying in my plaster trough which stank of sweat-soaked, powdered chalk. I strove to fathom all these changes, and Major Bruno Helgar, and Cousin Stefan, and the green man with an iron hook instead of a fist; and N.N., the speaker who proclaimed the Revolution; and the Russian merchants in their overcoats, on their knees; the Solovkino wire with its fivefold noose; Fractura tibiae et fibulae dextre; George’s unwarlike end; Fedor G. Negovan, who used to come see us lowered into our graves; the attempt to demolish my Katarina on Lamartine Street; Agatha’s undermined health; the reason why I wasn’t allowed to give my lecture to the Sisters of Serbia; and Isidor, my Isidor.