You could have got an extra floor out of each and every one of those houses with no trouble at all, and on each floor you could have squeezed out at least one more apartment. Assuming an average monthly rent of 500 dinars for the four two-story apartment blocks, and reckoning in, of course, that possible third story, one could have collected, after taxes and upkeep, about 4,500 dinars monthly, or 54,000 a year. If this calculation were applied to all my houses, I could have collected more rent in one year than what I’ve earned until today. But I never allowed myself to sink to the mere taking of profits with the same coldly calculating approach as do the present-day owners.
Indeed, it would have been futile for me to bother with something irrelevant. I was no longer capable of doing anything worthwhile for my “old ladies,” as I called them. This was not because any such venture would have demanded a considerable contribution, or because it would have run into administrative barriers (my influence, though long unused, is still considerable), but because any such adaptation, conversion, or extension would have undermined that fatherly relationship which had grown up between myself as the guardian, and each house as my ward. As we grew old together, we also grew to understand each other and began to behave like an old married couple. It was the kind of relationship which I had never managed to preserve with any living being, with the partial exception of Katarina. Such a disloyal act could have seemed like getting rid of a long-time servant at the very moment when, completely exhausted by years of faithful service, he had become undesirable.
But with those imposing buildings in the silent circle of my binoculars I still had nothing in common. I had not ordered or financed their construction. Perhaps, I can’t deny it, I had once been of two minds about buying them up. I say “perhaps,” for even then I didn’t believe that I could make any real contact, not to say alliance, with them, although as an experienced owner and landlord I couldn’t entirely exclude the possibility.
Running my inquiring gaze down the curve which like some sleepy many-headed snake was formed by the largest of the buildings, I often asked myself what I really knew about them. I had never been near them, touched or inspected them from any side other than the front which was visible from where I was; I had never sniffed their walls to sense and memorize that special smell which — despite the lime, concrete, plaster, and paint — is the property of every house. Indeed, the only thing I was sure of was the pragmatic concept behind them — a concept which I had never respected or blindly agreed with, but which I am somehow inclined to take into consideration. I was fortunate that, thanks to the position of the window overlooking the river, I was obliged to give them my attention and, restraining my prejudices, to watch the growth of their sinewy family. I thought: I’ll always have time to buy them, if it comes to that. First just one, of course. I’d buy that light, chalk-colored one or that pockmarked one on the other side of the railway line. Houses are like people: you can’t foresee what they’ll offer until you’ve tried them out, got into their souls and under their skins. If they don’t come up to expectations, I said to myself, I’ll sell them. If they show up well, I’ll keep them. Then I’ll buy the others, until the whole new district is mine and I can make them independent and individual so that they’re known by a name and not just referred to in passing as a general concept: subdivision, new suburb, quarter, region, blocks, or district. I’d think about that when they were really mine, entered in the land register under the name of Golovan. I must confess, despite all the advantages that it would offer by way of revenue, I’ve never been able to possess a house which I wouldn’t have the courage to show to my friends and clients and, touching its dignified façade, proclaim proudly: “This belongs to me!”
I could foresee that very soon I would no longer be able to contain my impatience at Katarina’s continual postponement of her departure: first one of her cotton gloves was missing, then she wanted advice about which brooch to pin on the ribbed pleat of her blouse, then she kept wandering about in search of her baskets, then again she had trouble making up her mind among her various hats, which apart from such rare sorties aren’t worth fussing over. Although I was sure that they were all used to my sullenness, I was afraid lest my rudeness toward our guest be interpreted as resulting from my illness, officially diagnosed as heart trouble. And so, with a sigh of resignation, I put the Mayer on the shelf with the other binoculars and asked Mélanie the question which she had evidently been expecting, since she had the answer ready and waiting.
“Eh bien, Mademoiselle Foucault, how is my brother George today?”
Mercilessly rolling her r’s in her throat and catching them with the tip of her tongue, the spinster answered hesitatingly that, thanks to God’s mercy, it could be said that Général Negovan was on the whole well, very well in fact, that he hadn’t been constipated recently or suffered those many and painful disorders of his digestion about which she normally informed me whenever she visited us.
All this time she was looking somewhere past me, and with an ardor worthy of an angler, fishing the needles out of the bowl and holding them up before that empty gaze. In the gray depths of the room, they glistened like precious stones fashioned in the shape of miniature lances. Then she plunged them back into the boiling water.
Listening to this familiar and monotonous lamentation — which frankly irritated me rather than aroused my sympathy, for I knew how little patience my brother had with it all — I asked Mélanie why she looked somewhere past the person she was talking to whenever the conversation came around to George, as if the general were spying on her with some internal magic eye which took in everything concerning him and that only she, thanks to some mysterious sense akin to a keyhole, could see and understand. This might explain her wandering gaze, which had to be brought into direct focus with whatever the woebegone George was really feeling at the time. So I added peevishly:
“Well, I suppose it’s because he doesn’t get about enough, he’s holed up between those four walls and doesn’t budge.”
It was a pitiless game with the old nurse’s loyalty, but I had no choice. If I wanted her to go away quickly, I had to put her spaniel-like attachment to my brother — which, I was certain, was mixed in the final analysis with doubtful and almost certainly unrequited tenderness — to the test.