The most complex reaction to his presence, however, came from Blanka Blam. She was annoyed with him for being so free and easy, so unreliable, for making a mess of his room and dirtying it further with visits from women of ill repute, for keeping her husband from his work and her children from their studies; on the other hand, she was enthralled by him, in that he represented her first earnings and therefore a new independence. She looked after him not as a member of the family, not as a matter of course, along a well-established emotional track, but literally, strictly, as if he were a temperamental but useful machine in constant need of appraisal and adjustment. Popadić gradually became the axis not only of her monetary calculations but also of her feelings and worries. She began to think of him as her own creation, exclusively hers to direct, to return to the straight and narrow, to make better use of — but how?
Then came the painful incident with Lili. They needed a bold yet discreet gynecologist, and neither she nor Vilim Blam nor any of their law-abiding friends could come up with one. She had no choice but to turn to her tenant with his connections in the fast, fashionable, bachelor set. Popadić not only proved ready to cooperate; as it turned out, one of his closest friends was himself the sort of doctor Mrs. Blam was looking for, and Popadić immediately undertook the delicate negotiations. Since neither Vilim nor the children were to guess what was afoot, Popadić and Blanka took to whispering together. She would slip into his room the moment she heard him arrive, hoping to find out when things would be settled and how, fretting, weeping; he would comfort her. And so it happened that in those difficult, dangerous times of commotion and secrecy, Blanka Blam’s femininity underwent a feverish late blossoming, which awakened Popadić’s desire and led him, early one morning when the house was dark and quiet, to lure her into his room and make her, after a bit of panicky but ineffectual resistance on her part, his mistress.
The affair went on unnoticed for a month or two, until Popadić, perhaps having come into a bit of money, set out in search of new conquests and began returning home at dawn again. One night he brought a woman who, instead of disappearing in the morning, timidly stuck her head into the kitchen and asked if she couldn’t make a cup of tea for herself. Startled, Blanka Blam gave her some boiling water. But when the woman began settling in and even brought over a suitcase with her things, Blanka tearfully announced to her husband that the situation was unacceptable and it was his duty as man of the house to turn the intruder out. Assuring her that Popadić would soon tire of the girl as he had of the others, Vilim Blam only poured oil on the fire. Increasingly nervous and upset, Blanka renewed her demand, but Vilim kept giving excuses. One day, after a particularly vehement argument, she flew into the tenant’s room and ordered his concubine to leave the premises immediately. In the midst of the insults and screaming that followed, the woman clutched her ample bosom, rolled her eyes, and fell to the floor, her limbs twitching wildly. Popadić shouted for help, and the rest of the family, which had been following the quarrel from the dining room, came running. Together they managed to lift her onto the bed, where her round white legs, which Popadić unsuccessfully tried to cover with a blanket, continued to shake. The convulsions loosened the woman’s tongue as well as her limbs, and in her delirium she revealed that the person who wanted her removed was her rival. When Vilim Blam grasped her meaning, he screamed, grabbed a pitcher of water, the first object he could find, and — aiming perhaps at Popadić, perhaps at his wife — hurled it against the glass door. The deafening crash of broken glass put an end to the scene: the woman on the bed calmed down, Vilim Blam burst into tears, and Blanka Blam threw herself on his breast and, calling over the children, who were by then also in tears, withdrew with the family to their part of the house. The children were sent to bed, and Vilim and Blanka Blam stayed up late into the night weeping and whispering more or less the same words of reproach and repentance in the dining room, as Popadić and his guest were whispering next door.
The guest left the house that night, and it was tacitly understood that Popadić would move out the moment he found another place to live. But two days later he received notification that he was to report immediately for military duty, and his only goodbye was a note asking the Blams for permission to leave his belongings — two suitcases in the corner of his room — until such time as he could arrange for someone to come for them. He was unable to do so, however, because no sooner had his unit been assembled than it was sent to Serbia. He came for the suitcases himself two months later, dark from the sun, unshaven, and wearing a suit much too big for him: he had bought it surreptitiously from an Užice coffee house owner on the day the army surrendered to avoid being taken prisoner.
In the meantime, Vojvoda Šupljikac Square had become a battlefield, the scene of the Serbian army’s retreat in disarray and the entry of Hungarian occupation forces amid a barrage of artillery fire intended to kill off the leaders of the previous regime as quickly as possible. Among the hundreds of victims in this first purge was the owner of the newspaper Blam and Popadić worked for, and the offices were soon closed. This shared misfortune, together with the blood that had flowed since they last met, served to mitigate the shame between them. Blam sat Popadić down in the dining room to hear what turned out to be Popadić’s none too glorious adventures as a soldier, and when evening fell and the patrol marching past reminded them of the curfew, Blam went into the kitchen, where his wife had retreated, and after a short consultation offered the homeless Popadić his old room until things calmed down. Sincerely moved, Popadić shook Blam’s hand and accepted.
Vilim Blam’s generosity did not go unrewarded: spurred by the loss of his job and the desire to return to his idyllic existence, Popadić tirelessly made the rounds of his acquaintances, and although he did not realize it at the time, he was simultaneously working for his landlord. He made inquiries, offered his services, carried on negotiations, and finally found his way to the newly appointed vice-governor, a Hungarian lawyer he had often played cards with and who, as luck would have it, was entrusted with the task of putting the public life of the occupied city in order. A new round of talks and deal making followed, and one day Popadić ran home from the governor’s office beaming and with two pieces of news: the Serbian paper Glasnik would begin publication again under a new name and under his, Popadić’s, editorship, and as a sign of the government’s confidence in him he had been given a three-room flat in the Mercury vacated by a Yugoslav official recently packed off to Serbia. First came the congratulations, then the farewells. On her husband’s orders, Blanka Blam served coffee and wine. Popadić made a solemn vow to find a place for Vilim Blam in the new setup, not on the editorial staff, of course, which would call unwanted attention to him, but in advertising, where he had been when the war broke out. Life, different as it was, could thus basically go on as before.