I watched her putting on her coat. She did it quickly, decisively, methodically, unlike anyone else. She would never take it by the collar, put one arm into one sleeve, the other into the other sleeve, and finish the whole operation with an adjusting wriggle which settled the coat comfortably around the body. On the contrary, she began the process where others finished it: she first threw the coat across her back, then pushed both arms into the sleeves simultaneously, and with a supple movement lifted it onto her shoulders with a single jerk. The whole of Katarina’s nature was evident in this detail, the manner in which she put on her coat: that commanding Turjaški nature, hers by birth, aggressive in a masculine mold, of that inveterate kind which must do everything at one go, immediately.
Unexpectedly I felt pity — I can’t say remorse, but gentle commiseration — for her unenviable position in this house. I was afraid I had made a mistake in allowing Katarina to protect me, actually to believe she was protecting me in a way which is quite irrational for me, even monstrous in its finality and totality, and which has made me withered like this, helpless, dependent. Perhaps I would have acted more correctly if I had told them to let everything follow the course which God intended — as indeed, without my knowing it, her elder brother-in-law, the suffragan Bishop Emilian, had suggested. I knew, and that aroused my pity most of all, that she was torn by fear that some penetrating fact, some careless hint (just like the one that was going to take me out of the house the moment she was gone), some suspicious circumstance or unforeseen event, would break through and split open the protective shield they had forged for me with such great care. She feared that, completely unprepared, I would become a witness of reality, and that this reality, according to their limited reasoning, would bring about my annihilation. I knew also that, caught up in their agonizing game, they had to keep from me the enormity of the economic crisis which was raging outside and which, incidentally, could be deduced from the public works on the other side of the river. So great is their naiveté, they forget that my experienced eye could recognize the recession from minor and extraneous features: for example, the fact that my otherwise fastidious second cousin Maximilian has been going around in one and the same suit for several years; that, theoretically, in accordance with my desire for economy, we long ago dispensed with the aid of a servant; that, because of my condition, we haven’t celebrated Saint George’s day for quite some time; and most of all, that my tenants, with the inexplicable exception of the Mihajlovići, have been in such difficult circumstances that I have extended to them all that once exceptional principle whereby those who contribute to the upkeep of their apartments temporarily do not pay us rent.
“All right, Arsénie, I’m going now,” said Katarina. “I’ll see to it that I’m back by three.”
“You don’t have to hurry on my account.”
“The shops are only open until three and I have to pack.”
Before she shut the door, I straightened myself up in my chair and asked her if she planned to stop by Simonida. She paused. In the bright doorway she looked like a child’s figure made out of clay.
“I wasn’t intending to.”
Carried away by my own daring, I said, casually, stretching myself, that I had only suggested it because it was a long time since I had heard anything about Simonida. “You haven’t been there for a long time, Katarina — not since last winter.”
“Golovan has been there.”
“I don’t know,” I said, gazing into the framed opening between the wooden wings, which grew imperceptibly narrower. “He didn’t say anything to me. I only thought you might drop by if you were going that way.”
“All right. I’ll go if I have time.”
Then she shut the door and, in her quick, decided, methodical way, turned the key twice.
•
Listening to Katarina’s departing steps accompanied by the iron tap of her walking stick, I wondered if I hadn’t been guilty of imprudence. Katarina might guess that I had sensed something concerning Simonida’s future, perhaps suspected that things weren’t going well with my ward; in that case she would come back worried about my condition, for such a deterioration often brought on heart attacks. I have no idea what made me speak of Simonida. Perhaps I wanted to let Katarina know that I’m not dependent exclusively on her, even though I’d turned over my property affairs to her; but perhaps I’d just been too hasty, not having considered the effects. And now, instead of proceeding without hesitation to put my carefully conceived plan into action, I had to wait and listen. If she were to return, she would find me busy in a manner that would require a great deal of explanation.
Nevertheless, the enforced delay allowed me to pull myself together. Of course I thought about Simonida, for what could arouse me to action more than the misfortune which threatened that noble and gentle being? Of the danger itself I had heard quite by chance, from a conversation in whispers between Golovan and Katarina behind the door of my wife’s room. They had forgotten to close it and I heard them mention Simonida with apprehension, foreboding nothing good, and this ominousness was further confirmed by my wife’s request: “Don’t say a thing to Arsénie about all this.” In the hope of learning more details, I had carefully pulled myself toward the door and pressed my ear to the keyhole as if to an earpiece, ready to move hastily and be found once again near the window, armed with my binoculars, should the two of them suddenly come out. Thus I learned with fear, despair, and fury that my Simonida was to be demolished and most probably replaced, and that the decision had already been signed by the responsible authority.
My last-born, the lovely Greek Simonida with her fine, dark countenance, her milky complexion beneath deep blue eyelids, and her full-blooded lips pierced by a bronze chain, African style. Simonida with her old-fashioned perfumes, penetrating, heavy, moist like musk, hung about with the ornaments given her by her spiritual father, the War Ministry engineer and architect Danilo Vladisavljević, and with those whitish streaks across her body characteristic of both convalescents from kidney disease and old houses. In 1925 she was without exaggeration the finest-looking building in the vicinity of Kalemegdan Park, a real family dwelling with large, comfortable, dark, warm, wonderfully unpredictable spaces inside, with secret rooms, and not in the least resembling today’s termitelike architecture, those cell-like stone beehives which I could observe from the window. Simonida was especially dear to me, for it was she who had taught me that between possessor and possessed there is possible a deeper and at the same time nobler relationship than the purely financial one. It is to Simonida’s credit that I ceased to be a landlord in the accepted and hated sense of the word, and that, instead of a seignorial, enslaving, and gangsterlike attitude, I created toward my houses a mutually possessive relationship, something more akin to polygamy.