The Walnut Mansion Read online

  Marija Kablar looked at this woman who wouldn’t stop shouting and couldn’t figure out how she’d ended up in her office, who had sent her or for what purpose. Marija Kablar was simply a police archivist and was three months away from retiring. She’d been sitting in room 407 for two and a half years, ever since the files had all been digitized, doing nothing and waiting for her time to be up. She would drink coffee and turn over a miniature hourglass. From eight in the morning to four in the afternoon she would turn it over exactly seven hundred and twelve times; she had counted on several occasions, and the number of times always came out to be seven hundred and twelve. She rarely read the newspaper or turned on the small Japanese transistor radio, so one could say that apart from coffee and the little hourglass her workday was devoid of content. In two and a half years someone had knocked on her door only about a dozen times, always by mistake, except for once when they came to check the fire extinguishers. At first she was afraid that she would be fired, but she calmed down when she realized that they had forgotten her and would have a hard time finding her among the two hundred or so employees before her sixty-fifth birthday, which was when she would go to the personnel department and announce that she was retiring. That’s how it goes; if she didn’t remember to do it herself, they wouldn’t either and would probably let her stay on for another twenty years. After she had divorced her husband six years earlier (when he’d run off with a woman thirty years younger), and after all her friends and those she might meet at the City Café had died off or moved away, all Marija Kablar was waiting for was her pension so that she could return to Glamoč, a town she’d left a half a century before but was still the place where she would have her peace in life, or so she imagined. The arrival of this unknown woman upset her; she worried that it wasn’t a coincidence because the woman addressed her by name immediately; okay, her name was there on the door, but below it also said “senior archivist,” so it was unlikely that there was a mistake. It was more likely that someone had remembered her and decided to give her some trouble—if nothing else, to remind her how she was sitting there doing nothing and still getting paid. And just when she had only three months left to go.

  “I think you’ve made a mistake; I don’t work on cases,” she said cautiously, looking at the teary-eyed woman over her glasses. She always looked over her glasses when she wanted to look really serious and self-confident.

  “I’m not mistaken. I’ve been trying to say that the whole time, but nobody will listen to me. I’m really not mistaken. I’m trying to save an innocent man. And that’s not a mistake. It’s no sin. Tell me, has that really become a sin too?” the guest asked, pressing her. She made the impression of a fairly sincere but at the same time unbearably theatrical woman. She was either crazy or under the spell of having found herself in a police station.

  “Ma’am, I’m only an archivist. Nothing else.”

  “Really? Where’s your archive? Show me where the archive is!”

  “Did you read what it says on my door?”

  “No, why would I?” the woman said, lying, and Marija Kablar began to panic. So someone had sent her. That much was certain.

  “Whoever sent you here to me made a mistake. Believe me . . . !”

  “Pardon, do you believe in God . . . ?”

  “Who do you think you are asking questions like that?!” Marija said angrily. Now they would hang atheism around her neck, too. She couldn’t figure out what the reason was. What did they care whether she went to church or not when they knew full well that she didn’t?

  “I’m nobody, that’s who. And I don’t believe in God, but I do believe that what goes around comes around, every wicked thing . . .”

  “Fine. So what?”

  “Why won’t you help me?” the woman asked. She sat there, squeezing a small glossy purse in her lap, the kind people carry to a funeral or the theater. That little detail saddened Marija somewhat. Rubber boots on an old man waiting in a line at the bank, a University of Los Angeles T-shirt on a Gypsy child begging in front of a church, a necktie on a dying man, a run in the stocking of a former British prime minister, a black glossy purse in the hands of a woman in a police station: details that moved her more than scenes of real misfortune.

  “I’d help you, but it’s simply not my job . . .”

  “It’s not anyone’s job. How terrible it is that helping someone has become a job . . .”

  “But, ma’am, I can’t help you. It’s simply not in my power . . .”

  “My name is Dijana. You probably read about me in the newspapers . . .”

  “I’m sorry, but I hardly ever read the newspapers . . .”

  “You must have heard people talking about it. The whole town is talking about it. Some ‘Dr. Mengele’ in our hospital took the life of a ninety-seven-year-old lady. That’s what they say.”

  “Believe me, I haven’t heard a thing about it. Nothing at all. I try to hear as little as possible. And she was your mother? I’m sorry, missus . . . missus . . .”

  “Dijana—don’t you remember? You’re not sorry. If you were sorry, you’d have listened to what I was saying . . .”

  “But I did! You were talking and I was listening . . .”

  “And did you understand anything?”

  “No . . .”

  “See, you didn’t. You’re just waiting for me to get out of here. You’re putting up with me because you’re polite, and unlike the others, you can’t bring yourself to throw me out. . . .”

  “I’m really sorry. You’re right—it’s wrong. Everybody needs to have people listen to them . . .”

  “You’re just saying that because it sounds like the thing to say.”

  Marija truly believed that the police should have someone whose work was simply to hear people out. Then fewer people would murder out of desperation or revenge. There should be someone, say, a psychiatrist or a priest, whose job would be to calm people down and convince them that things would get better.

  “Who’s the young man?” asked Marija.

  “Which young man . . . ?”

  “The one you were talking about. The guy who isn’t guilty . . .”

  “Dr. Ares Vlahović,” Dijana answered, as if that name should mean something to her. Marija nodded her head mechanically, as if it did.

  “And what was your relationship to him . . . ?”

  “Nothing; what would it be?!” Dijana said, upset at what she seemed to be hinting at. The neighbors hadn’t started gossiping yet, but they would, and she knew they would, and knew that the first thing they’d say would be that she’d been sleeping with the young doctor and was now ready to betray her own mother just to save him.

  “Why do you have to be like that? Why did you think of that right off . . . ?”

  “I didn’t think anything. I was just asking . . .”

  “Do you believe that someone’s own mother, their own flesh and blood, can turn into a monster, into someone completely unrecognizable?”

  “I suppose so. All kinds of things happen to people when they get old . . .”

  “Well, why are you asking me about him then . . . ?”

  “Do you think . . . ?”

  “No, but I know what you were thinking of . . .”

  “I wasn’t, I’m really sorry, but I wasn’t. I’m embarrassed—see how I’m blushing? I really wasn’t thinking anything like that.”

  Marija looked at this woman and wondered whether she was crazy or whether she’d really said something she wasn’t supposed to or didn’t mean. It would have never occurred to her to hint at something like that. She realized that she wasn’t going to be able to get Dijana off her back just like that. If Dijana walked out of the room now, Marija would retire and return to Glamoč to spend her days in a place that should be a paradise for her, but she would be continually tormented by the thought that she’d maybe insulted and turned away a woman who’d come into her office with a real problem. The first one in her thirty years of work in the police. Right after she h
ad started working for the archives and received her official ID card and pistol (in those days there were so many pistols that they were even issued to police archivists), she expected everything to be as it was in the movies. Inspectors would come with unsolved cases from twenty years before, and she would search through registries late into the night to unlock the mysteries of murders in apparently unimportant lists, living an exciting life full of the pursuit of justice. Nothing remotely similar ever happened. Her work for the police didn’t differ from work in a communal enterprise; she filed away papers that no one needed any more, and it was hardly six months before they took her pistol away. The years of cutbacks had probably begun. She didn’t crave a life like those in the movies; she didn’t believe she deserved it. She only had a passing thought that she might have a life like that. Afterward, she thought herself silly. She was thirty-five then and shouldn’t have been girlish enough to get carried away by such things.

  “What was she like before she got old?” she asked Dijana, hoping to make things right.

  “I don’t know any more. In any case she was normal . . .”

  “You’ll get over it. I can tell that you’re strong.”

  “You’re just saying that. You don’t know me.”

  “I don’t, but you can tell when a woman still has fight in her.”

  “So you believe in things like that?”

  “I have to. Otherwise I couldn’t do it . . .”

  “What, you mean work for the police?”

  Marija laughed, and only then did Dijana notice the years on her face; she realized that this woman wasn’t in a position to do anything. That was probably why she hadn’t sent her away.

  “No, I didn’t mean that, but get by in general, in life. Do you want me to order us some coffee? That’s really the most I can do . . .”

  “Fine, that’s at least a start,” Dijana said and hung her purse on the back of her chair. That was a sign of trust that didn’t go unnoticed.

  “I feel a little better now,” Dijana said after a boy in a black-and-white waiter’s outfit brought the coffee. She took a look at him: he was black-haired and pimply, with thin black whiskers under his nose.

  “He’s in his first year of waiter training,” said Marija after he went out. “They send them to the police to get practice. It’s easier than paying a professional . . .”

  “Wow, you really sound like someone in the police! Nobody would call a waiter a professional,” she said and laughed.

  “I’m glad you’re feeling better . . .”

  “But you still think I’m crazy, right . . . ?”

  “I’ll be honest: I’m not thinking anything. I just know that you’re not having an easy time of it. Nobody does if they’re coming in here. Unless, of course, they’re just getting a new driver’s license . . .”

  “I really want for you to believe me. For someone to believe me . . .”

  “I do believe you, every word you’re saying. Why would you lie to an old archivist? That hasn’t happened yet. And it won’t. I’m retiring in only three months . . .”

  “You already have to retire? That can’t be,” Dijana lied; “you don’t look that old at all . . .”

  “And I’ll never set foot back in this building. Take a look at that wall. There used to be shelves with files of unsolved sex crimes. They reached from the floor to the ceiling, a whole wall full of rapes. Before me some guy from Trebinje worked in here; they fired him because he read all that filth and they caught him masturbating. Can you believe it? He was pleasuring himself over the rape of a fifteen-year-old girl! I think they put me in here because I was a woman and probably wouldn’t have that kind of temptation. So there you have the story of the police and my work here . . . And where are those files now . . . ? I suppose most of the cases were tossed out due to the statute of limitations. Who would keep documentation of rapes from thirty or more years ago? The archive was mostly computerized not too long ago. Since then I’ve been sitting here and doing nothing . . .”

  “And so nobody knows about any of it any more. The train has left the station, as if none of it had ever happened . . .”

  “That’s right. More or less . . .”

  “No, that’s not right. Someone did that stuff. The rapes, I mean. And some women suffered. That stays with you your whole life . . .”

  “Most of them are no longer alive . . .”

  “It’s still not just . . .”

  “I agree, but it’s all over now.” Marija thought that maybe this woman had been raped. You never know when you might say something you shouldn’t. That’s why it’s always better to make sure you speak of the bad things in life as cautiously as possible, no matter what they are. And so she probably shouldn’t have said what was in those files because maybe this woman . . .

  “This doctor is going to be charged with murdering my mother,” Dijana said, “and what should I do now? He didn’t kill her, and that person wasn’t her any more.”

  Marija was sorry that things were getting back to where they had been at the start. She wanted Dijana to calm down but without burdening her with something that—no doubt—could only be the cause of harm and mutual shame. She felt it to be an imminent danger that could only be averted if Dijana gave up on her intentions.

  “It would be best to wait for the trial,” she said; “the police don’t give up easily. When they bite, they don’t let go. My advice is to wait and not say anything to anybody. This is a small city, you know.”

  “What are you trying to say?” she asked frowning and sat up in her chair.

  “That vicious stories get started easily. People are just waiting for a victim . . .”

  “But I’m not the victim; the victim is a young man who will end up in jail even though he’s completely innocent,” said Dijana, already wondering whether she should get up and leave without saying anything because there was no point in this, talking to someone who was so insensitive she couldn’t tell sandbox fights and children’s games from the plight of a man, no matter who, who was completely innocent, who might suffer and pay with his life for something that could and should have been avoided if only everyone had been decent.

  “If this story gets out,” said Marija, trying to calm her, “then everything will be pointless. Not even a court will believe you. I’ve seen such situations a thousand times.” She was lying; she’d never even been in a courtroom. “You tell the truth on the witness stand, and then the other side makes a lunatic out of you. The prosecution brings witnesses, usually neighbors, who say you’re crazy and that you were always like that. You didn’t greet them on the stairs; you tormented your own mother, who, naturally, was a wonderful woman, and so on. I’m warning you; that always ends the same way,” Marija said. Her self-confidence was on the rise, and she made up a story on the fly: “A long time ago, it must be thirty years now, it happened that an old man, a retired harbor master who lived in Lapad, perished when his house caught fire. The police concluded that it was a suicide, but his daughter (who later had to emigrate to Australia) told everyone in Dubrovnik that her father hadn’t killed himself but was murdered by his own son, her stepbrother, for his inheritance. And how do you think that ended? Whom did they believe? So you just wait for the trial and then tell the truth. Maybe people will be shocked, maybe they’ll say all kinds of things behind your back, but at least you’ll be in the clear . . .”

  “Is that what you think? I don’t know how I can live if I don’t do something for that young man . . . ,” Dijana said, and that sounded to Marija like a pretty lie told by someone who spends his whole life threatening to sacrifice himself for something. But no matter what, she wanted to avoid getting caught up in this story, especially now when the end was so near. Marija Kablar didn’t think of that end as going into retirement, but as the end of a life full of misunderstandings and deceptions with which she’d never been able to cope. It all seemed instead like an endless course in a driving school. The instructors changed from time to time, shouted
at her, and lost their nerves because with so many years she still couldn’t learn what others did in two months. In such a life there wasn’t too much suffering or sadness because it passed easily, but it passed without any kind of goal or real satisfaction. After her husband left her, she realized that she’d never loved him, but she didn’t do anything because she had nothing with which to compare her love or the lack thereof. Someone else would find solitude after years of marriage to be terrible, but Marija continued to live her own life the morning after he left, as if she’d always been an old maid, with rituals that were all like the one with the hourglass. She only felt unease at the darkness and what couldn’t be seen in it and at the fact that after he left, she never spoke with anyone for more than ten minutes. She began to notice who all had died, disappeared, or left town and so had decided to leave this empty place in her first month of retirement and return to Glamoč. A whole life had been definitively wasted, but she didn’t regret it. She only wanted what would come afterward to be just like the time before she’d become aware that she was alive. Dijana’s arrival was the first serious threat to her peace.

  “Just stay calm,” she said, “and don’t put too much stock in anything anybody says.” Dijana turned to get her purse and said, “You’ve helped me; you should know that you have!” And she really believed it. Marija got up and her sleeve caught the coffee cup, just enough to cause the porcelain to rattle fleetingly.

  “I’m glad we met,” she said and extended her hand.

  “We’ll surely meet again,” Dijana responded, searching for something she’d forgotten on the table and underneath it. She left satisfied, though she hadn’t achieved anything that she’d intended to when she’d come to the police station. She hadn’t even told the story of what had happened in the municipal hospital, on account of which all charges against Dr. Vlahović should be dropped and the ongoing campaign against him in the newspapers and on the city squares should be stopped. She was satisfied that she’d gotten someone to listen to her for half an hour, no matter what she’d been saying, because that could be a new beginning for her, after which she could forget the past months, a time that at one moment had seemed to be a complete and utter catastrophe, when she’d stopped remembering what her mother had once looked like and that she’d had a mother at all.