But I just couldn’t restrain myself. When Katarina again came into my room in search of the tortoise-shell combs to put in her hair, I impatiently inquired why, if she were really going on a journey, she hadn’t packed the day before.
“Some journey!” she said before going out. “I’m going to Vrnjce and you call that a journey!”
Then Mlle. Foucault said, “Madame Katarina isn’t going until tomorrow, Monsieur Negovan. For the moment we’re only going shopping.”
“For me,” I replied, “crossing the threshold is a journey, Mademoiselle Foucault. Outside the house, everything’s a journey.”
And so, in the irritated anticipation of my wife’s going out for a reason which, in these exceptional circumstances, in no way aroused my curiosity (normally I liked to be informed about everything), I went on investigating that part of the plain which, cut in half by the river Sava, stretched off to the west and ended in a yellowish, sulfurlike glow at the edge of the horizon. My view of the plain was set by a dark oak window frame which formed an extended rectangle around an airy canvas — oak that, dried by the June sun and the pearl-colored dusk, looked for all the world like some gilt-encrusted frame. The changing picture in that oblong frame, resembling a coat of arms composed of four identical fields, was shielded by a double barrier of glass whose clarity I cared for meticulously with a chamois cloth. A third glass wall belonged to the complex mechanism of the lens of my most powerful binoculars. Its brass chain clinking, it crawled across the window; whenever it stopped, it bored a large medallion, stamped with a cross with minute divisions on it, out of the magnified landscape.
During the long period of time that I had dedicated myself to it, the view had changed gradually but continuously before my eyes, making me aware that everything was being transformed with the same insistency — not just that part which was in my vicinity but all the rest too, all that area I couldn’t verify with my own eyes because of the limiting frame of the window, the range of my binoculars, and my voluntary immobility. Nevertheless, the changes which grafted themselves naturally on one another — like those of a tree from one year to the next, continuing imperceptibly like sleepers of some unending railway line — were not rude or unrestrained enough to cause me the kind of bewilderment, disbelief, or aversion that you feel when, returning home after a long absence you find your family changed, intolerably different from the attractive faces which hastened your return. Although I was present at these changes, even taking part in them from afar, I hadn’t lost the inborn Negovan capacity for awaiting and accepting new features only with suspicion until they had been subdued, assimilated, digested, as it were — just as hungry amoebae absorb life from around them, making it part of their own composition, and in so doing of course transform it in accordance with their own characteristics, simultaneously separating out the harmful, indigestible portions. On the contrary, my integration with the changes was conditioned by the fact that I had already assimilated the majority of them, especially the appearance of newly built-up areas, and adapted them to myself.
The changes have gone on everywhere, except on the river. Only the age-old water, with its constant color and unhurried, tranquil flow, gives to the view that consistency without which its transformation, however otherwise imposing, would be to the highest degree suspicious, in the light of that inbred wariness of which I just spoke.
The embankment is paved with rough granite slabs and little mounds of flowers which change color every three months, while in the center is a glistening flight of steps which for some reason attracts my attention, even though there is nothing exceptional about them, just a few pale-colored steps with a break halfway down, nothing more. Then comes that clumsy construction of broken lines — like a concrete silo under a triangular glass roof, before which, surprisingly enough, no grain wagons have ever been unloaded; an inexplicable building, quite unsuitable for leasing, which I wouldn’t own even if it were given to me, despite its favorable position facing the delta and the War Island. Then the King Alexander Bridge, now completely rebuilt. And high above everything, I see an arrogant palace with its asbestos shine, which is said to belong to the royal government — those monarchists really know how to spread themselves! — and which my binoculars, quite impartial in their magnetically attracted service, hold briefly in their hostile eye, then leave to pass on over the scantily tree-lined avenues and gardens, and alight rapidly on the New Township which, with its useless parks of wasted foundations, is the destination of all my imagined wanderings.
From my somewhat oblique vantage point at a kilometer’s distance, the newborn town has the untidy look of an unfinished model. With a certain nostalgia it brings to mind that heap of matchboxes, cubes, cardboard towers, and paper greenery which I used to see in Jacob Negovan’s studio whenever I dropped in to ask my enterprising cousin how his plans were coming along. The buildings themselves bear no resemblance to those I built through Jacob’s architectural firm or selected for purchase through the legal firm of Golovan & Son. They are somehow sad, poignant, abandoned, as if just barely managing to get along despite the great company of their fellows. They are all identical, empty, hardly giving any sign of life; their flylike eyes, lit by the morning sun, remind me piteously of a dovecote with its little glowing lamps. Most of all — and this is what causes me the greatest difficulty — they are quite impersonal, with nothing noteworthy on their expressionless façades to set them apart physically or spiritually. No individuality. They are not truly ugly in the accepted sense of the word; they are simply without character. Humped together in the plain, they are pitiful to look at, lined up like a despondent column of convicts whose individual identity has disappeared inside their coarse prison clothes.
None of my houses could suffer such a sentence. They were all personal, highly independent, and exceptionally conscious of their own architectural uniqueness — sometimes, I’m not ashamed to say, even of their own arrogance. Those intended for the masses also had a quality which distinguished them from the rest. Squat, close to the ground, built with unbaked clay bricks and roofed with ordinary tiles — they might be said to deprive their tenants of everything except a cavelike shelter — even these possessed, perhaps in their very unseemliness, something peculiarly their own. But those new buildings on the other side of the river in no way counted on the honor of attracting or pleasing the eye. One might have been deceived into thinking that they were too proud for that. I doubt it. They are not indifferent to the unfavorable opinion which their ponderous aspect has aroused, they have just become resigned to it, they have come to terms with their own unsightliness. They exude an air of inhuman fatalism which, ugly as it is, must sadden the heart of any true property owner.
I had studied those houses closely over a long period. I had to admit that from a purely commercial viewpoint they were extremely efficient, more efficient even than my own houses. In my houses too much expensive space was used up for no purpose at all. If the furniture that encumbered them were removed, they would look like the empty caverns of the Pharaohs’ tombs. Their ceilings were excessively high, like domes above a church nave (the living area below averaged five hundred cubic meters), and their disposition was irrational, vainly wasting expensive space on entrances, hallways, corridors, verandas, terraces, and balconies, turning the house into an impassable labyrinth dear only to the hearts of children. (I say this despite the fact that I myself spent a childhood among just such mysterious alcoves, transformed by my own imaginings.) These superfluous rooms did nothing to raise the rentable values in proportion, and the excessive size of the stairs simply ate up useful space, not to mention the area wasted on coal elevators — yes, coal elevators! — and on cellars, storage rooms, attics, laundry rooms, and porches. And then, the building materials: the finest stone, the hardest wood, the best plaster, the most durable paint. Marble from Venčac — sometimes even from Carrara! Porcelain, mahogany lamps, plaster rosettes, ceramic floors, wallpaper made in Prague! Finally, all those decorative and expensive eaves, loggias, oval niches in which we placed impressive standing figures, and the charming alcoves, chains, balustrades, candelabra, bas-reliefs with mythological scenes, and ornaments — all that stone flora and fauna which at my insistence blossomed from the façades of my houses.