And a lot of other things, Isidor, when you look at them soberly were all trifles and nonsense; but every one of those trifles and nonsense was a fresh smear on the lens through which I looked at my town and my fellow citizens, and sometimes even at you, my boy. Filth and dirt had piled up in the space between us, some vile kind of filth. But you mustn’t think that my invalid reflections gave birth to my decision immediately — I was too experienced to give way to those early impulses. Initially they simply nourished my inclination toward the later decision of whose nature, dimension, and scope I had no notion.
And yet, retroactively, the future decision was already in force. My convalescence was progressing, the traces of violence had long disappeared, and my bones had mended, so that I had to think seriously about leaving my bed. The doctors confirmed that any further confinement could lead to dire consequences for my faculty of movement; to restore flexibility to my left leg and suppleness to my body, they prescribed exercises in my room and quiet walks in the fresh air. However, by cunning excuses I postponed getting up, while in the meantime receiving regular reports about my houses from my lawyer Golovan, who had temporarily taken over my office. Thus I delayed getting up until an immediate danger of pneumonia was foreseen if I remained physically inert any longer.
Well and good: I got up and performed the prescribed exercises, but didn’t go out at all — apart, of course, from going to the window, from where I had an excellent view over the delta at the mouth of the Sava, that gray, watery loop in the middle of the Pannonian plain. I supervised Golovan’s activities, but the sad fact is he did not love houses (nor they him); he was merely the representative of my will and passion. Very soon, because of the multiplicity of my affairs, Katarina was obliged to associate herself with him, even though until that time I had always spared her my business worries.
I wouldn’t be telling the whole story if I didn’t report here how much I was tormented by the fear of disrupting that personal relationship, of transforming it into abstract, anonymous figures with which I should have contact only through accounts, receipts, and Golovan’s and Katarina’s reports. Would that not have been similar to banking or, God forbid, stock-exchange transactions, in which numbers — phantom symbols — took the place of houses?
In order that this should not happen, Isidor, I ordered a photographer to prepare enlarged photographs of my houses from various angles — I kept a complete file of the plans, designs, and investment proposals — and I ordered models constructed according to the very best patterns out of ebony and jacaranda. (Use was made, over Katarina’s objections, of some elegant furniture which had belonged to her grandmother Turjaški.)
In this way I perpetuated the appearance of my houses at the very moment I left them. Seemingly left them, of course. In fact, from up there at Kosančićev Venac, as from an observation tower, I continued to watch over them tenderly. I also used photographs to note at quarterly intervals all the changes resulting from external action: atmospheric causes (sunshine, precipitation, frost), and movement or settling of foundations. If the climate caused deterioration, I recognized it in the cracking of the rendering like peeling skin; in the ricketlike appearance of the dried-up woodwork; in the faded pallor of the paint, which withered on the walls like the color of a person gnawed away by a malicious internal disease; in the damp streaks which lined the ceiling like a feverish brow.
At this point I can’t resist the temptation — after all, I’m writing my will — to make note of my personal contribution to building experiments, a contribution which under the name of “Arsénie’s glass” or “Arsénie’s glass leaf” was put into general use. My experts were continually complaining that they had no reliable means of establishing whether a crack was “dead” or “live,” “active” or “inactive”—an important matter, as its origin and therefore its treatment depend upon this: an “active” crack — one that’s getting wider — is caused by constant activity of the ground, which has to be guarded against, whereas an “inactive” crack remains as the result of some past movement, and can simply be filled in and left. But apart from close examination, there was no practical way of determining a crack’s behavior; they simply didn’t know how. Of course I knew even less: I was a property owner, not a builder. But here fortune smiled upon me. Nota bene, something like Isaac Newton and his apple. On several occasions my property owner’s map fell off the wall, for which I could blame neither its modest weight or the tape with which it was fixed. The only thing I noticed was a minute crack which ran crookedly across the paint like a fine wick. The next time, when I threw away the sticky tape and again tried to fasten the map to the wall, I realized that the crack had widened. I concluded that the plaster, paint, and my map were behaving toward the wall very much like skin over flesh, and were being affected by all the changes to which the layer beneath was subjected, just as our skin shrivels and cracks when the muscle beneath it is diseased. It became clear to me at once that quite by chance I had discovered a means of observing the behavior of a crack. The first trial experiment gave excellent results: a thin leaf of glass stuck slantwise across the crevice fell off after only the first week, showing that the crack was getting wider, was active. Despite the expense to which this discovery committed me — the wall had to be reinforced because of the unsound terrain — I was pleased: “Arsénie’s glass” became part of the history of building. But I’m digressing.
I hadn’t yet announced my intention of retiring, though I had hinted that I might transfer the renting and selling of houses to Golovan’s agency. As I might have foreseen, Katarina was delighted at the idea of my partial retirement, for she had always been jealous of my houses. She saw in Simonida, Sophia, Aspasia, Theodora, Agatha — with the superficial, benign naiveté of an exploiter — only walled, whitewashed, and painted cages for the collection of rent. She regarded my private relationships with them as, at the very least, eccentric. Yet when we had first become acquainted she proclaimed my passion “slightly unusual, different”; I believe it was my loyalty to architecture, and my capacity for elevating commerce to the status of art, which set me apart from her other suitors.
Anyway, Katarina received the news of my retirement with satisfaction. The poor woman even began to make plans. She said that at least in our old age — I was then fifty and she was nearly forty-five — we could live free of worries. After the war we could travel. We had traveled before the war, but never entirely for pleasure. Usually our transcontinental “wanderings”—only half transcontinental anyway, since I couldn’t bring myself to cross the Curzon Line — were associated with one of my business arrangements; either I had to view some new feature of residential architecture or attend some conference on housing, or I had to conclude a contract with foreign suppliers, so that I always seemed to carry my houses along with me.
There was as yet no word of my secret intention to seclude myself until the end of the war. Somehow that came about of its own volition. I kept on postponing going out of the house until one day Katarina asked me:
“Do you ever intend to go out of the house again, Arsénie?”
“I don’t know,” I said. I was telling the truth: I had no idea.
“What do you mean, you don’t know?”
“That’s just it, Katarina, I don’t.”
“Get a grip on yourself, or you’ll be an invalid for the rest of your life!”