The Use of Man Read online

  Thus when Ćapa, pockmarked and long-necked, his thin, chapped lips twisted in a smirk, explained to Sredoje that only money was needed to achieve carnal power over a girl, that very afternoon—without a second thought—Sredoje took thirty dinars from his mother’s drawer in the dining room and scampered off to meet his new guide.

  They took a streetcar to the marketplace, entered a run-down tavern opposite its abandoned stalls, sat at a table by the wall, and, noting with relief that they were almost alone, ordered pear brandy from the dark, heavily built woman who had tottered toward them from behind the counter. Ćapa, more shamefacedly than his earlier bravado might have led one to expect, asked for a certain Živka. They waited, looking around furtively, embarrassed at every loud noise from another, distant, table, where three railwaymen were drinking. Finally Živka arrived, young and thin, with bulging eyes, her skirt above her knees. She sat down between them and hoisted her legs onto the table, so that her skirt rode up to the top of her stockings, showing her bandy thighs. Ćapa, with a wink, accepted this invitation with a grubby fist. After a drink was ordered and drunk, Ćapa and Živka came to a whispered agreement, got up, and left through a door behind the counter. Ten minutes later, Ćapa came back and told Sredoje that the girl was waiting for him in the courtyard. Going out obediently, Sredoje almost bumped into Živka by the door, in the semidarkness of early evening. She took his hand, led him across the rubble-strewn, sodden ground of the yard to a low building, into a room that smelled of laundry and damp rot, unbuttoned the front of his trousers, pulled him down onto the bed, spread herself beneath him, and drew him in. He felt a sudden release of all his pent-up tensions—and from that moment became the slave of taverns and houses that catered to such encounters. A slave of that submersion, after one’s own, in someone else’s orgasm. In its depth, of course, it was disappointing as well. Cold fingers, cold embraces, cold beds, coarse words, coarse haste. Or indifference, or anger, but always the expectancy of the next coupling, of the next woman, who by some miracle might receive him, submissive and elated, clean and sweet-smelling, ready just for him.

  8

  Although Milinko Božić was his friend, Sredoje Lazukić never spoke to him of his excursions into the demimonde. Milinko was too resolutely upright for anybody to think of involving him in such a subject. Besides, at the time of Sredoje’s adventures, Milinko was in love with Vera Kroner, and so taken with her that he would probably not keep anything secret from her, not even a friend’s confessions. He had sailed into love like a ship into a harbor—not a pirate ship, as in Sredoje’s imaginings, but a white ocean liner docking proudly before a crowd gathered on the quayside.

  During the evening promenade with Vera, Milinko strutted, squaring his shoulders, his dark-brown eyes darting back and forth in search of acknowledgment. Yet he was not in the least surprised that Vera had taken to him (it was Sredoje who was surprised), having become convinced that diligence and honesty made one worthy of everything, even of the favor of an exceptionally attractive girl. For that favor he had worked hard, from the moment he had first caught sight of Vera, just as he worked for good grades at school, or for his own pleasing looks by caring for his hair and teeth and working out in his spare time. Milinko had the gentle but resolute nature of his mother, whose ally he had previously been in bringing one war in the family to a victorious conclusion—his father’s suicide.

  Milinko’s father had been completely unlike the two of them: inflexible, short-tempered, weighed down by the credit he had accumulated by denouncing pro-Hungarians in the days of the formation of Yugoslavia. As reward he had received only the position of plainclothesman, the pay for which was barely sufficient for him to get married and set up house. He liked the responsibility of detective work, but, in hanging around taverns and street corners in order to keep an ear to the ground, he had begun to drink, and promotion had passed him by. The rebuff had embittered him. He adored his son and dreamed of securing for him a high social position, but an inadequate salary, much too much of which was spent on alcohol, dragged him steadily downward. His wife was ready to come to his aid. She had studied domestic science in school and could sew, but he forbade her to apply her skills to make money, in the belief that it would detract from his dignity as a policeman. So in secret she began to alter old dresses for her neighbors, for insignificant sums. With his investigative flair, he eventually uncovered the subterfuge, viewing it not only as disobedience but also as a kind of betrayal. On coming home drunk, he would drag the culprit from bed by her hair and force her to confess how many dresses she had worked on and what she had been paid, as if it were a question of adultery for money.

  Awakened by the shouts and crying, Milinko would sit up in bed and watch wide-eyed these settlings of accounts. As soon as his father’s rage subsided, he would spring up and run barefoot in his nightshirt to his mother, to help her to her feet and bathe her bruises. His father by then would be holding his head in his hands, and for him Milinko had not even a glance of understanding. In time, the policeman could no longer endure it. After one such angry dispute, he ran from the house (it was in December and snowing), rushed to the shed, smashed in the door with a blow of his fist, entered, pulled out his revolver, and shot himself in the temple.

  This spectacular end left no scar whatever on Milinko, as it would have on many other, less sensitive, children. Instead, it simply strengthened his conviction that evil must always succumb to virtue. Moreover, his mother’s life and his own, after his father’s death, took such a turn for the better that the conviction was unavoidable. The policeman’s salary came to an end, of course (being replaced by a paltry pension), but so did all those wasteful expenses that had piled up debts and quarrels. Mother and son left their cold two-room apartment overlooking the street in a middle-class neighborhood, where they had been held in contempt because of the shouting matches and bloody battles, and rented another place, much cheaper, at the back of a large courtyard, among modest working people who respected them, and who formed a suitable milieu for the work of the humble, conscientious seamstress that Milinko’s mother willingly became.

  Her sewing machine, which had come to her as part of her dowry, hummed all day by the window in her kitchen and until late in the evening, while in the only other room Milinko sat at a table studying. For him, too, to be able to work alone, without his father’s outbursts, was akin to bliss. He sat at a high, oval walnut table, the surface of which was protected by blue wrapping paper held down by thumbtacks. With his books, notebooks, and pencils arrayed closely around him, he felt like a hero behind the ramparts of a besieged town, a hero who was acquiring the knowledge that would allow him to save it.

  Very early, as far back as elementary school, he had understood the importance of time for successful learning: how time inevitably—as if independent of one’s will—contributed to the achievement of one’s aim, but only if beforehand the connecting link between the source and mouth of the river of knowledge was correctly established, just as the needle of his mother’s machine had to be correctly positioned on the cloth. He felt himself to be the master of time and therefore the master of knowledge, and since he believed that knowledge opened the door to all ambitions, he felt himself to be the master of his destiny as well.

  This feeling fostered a self-assurance that made him attractive. He never hurried, but always looked at others calmly, with smiling dark-brown eyes; at school, his responses were restrained, for he knew that there would be ways and time enough to show his ability, and his teachers valued him highly. His classmates did not hold him less in their esteem for that. He thus became friendly even with Sredoje, who was a less-than-average pupil, but who, thanks to his home circumstances—particularly his mother’s penchant for surrounding herself with beautiful things and good books—possessed an extracurricular knowledge unavailable to Milinko. This at once aroused the latter’s interest. “How do you know that?” he asked in surprise when Sredoje informed him that a certain term in tennis was pronoun
ced differently from what the rules of the Serbian language prescribed. And how was one to acquire a legitimate opinion about matters of this sort outside school, which avoided such dilemmas? Where was one to look? That was how he found out about encyclopedias, those repositories of knowledge that Sredoje had skimmed through even before he could read, attracted by their colored pictures.

  The possibility that Milinko, too, would be able one day to open such a book was crucial in his getting close to Sredoje and coming to tolerate the latter’s bouts of indifference and mockery, which Milinko treated with a smile, as mischievous irrelevancies. His patience was rewarded one day when Sredoje invited him home to the villa, as the house with the dome was then referred to. There, Sredoje had his own room, on the second floor, with a view of a carefully trimmed lawn and three young pines. Not allowing himself to be corrupted by this luxury, Milinko waited impatiently for the afternoon to end, dutifully going over arithmetic exercises with Sredoje, whose attention was no more than apathetic. For doing so, he had been promised, after the ailing Mrs. Lazukić retired, that he could go downstairs and stand in front of the tall glass bookcase in the now-empty living room, where Sredoje would hand him the huge book.

  Once opened, there glistened before his excited eyes long columns of information in small type. He took his time examining the book, reading here and there at random, to make sure that it was really what Sredoje had said it was and what he himself had imagined. He then turned to the front matter (something that Sredoje had never done) and carefully took note of the title and details of publication. The following day he recited these to the proprietor of the bookshop near the school, who returned in triumph from his storeroom carrying a copy of the very same book and more than happy to inform him of the price.

  During the next few months, Milinko saved up to buy the Minerva Encyclopedia of General Knowledge. In time he became an avid encyclopedia collector, for an encyclopedia exactly corresponded to an ideal he had imagined but could not believe existed: a book containing nothing superfluous—as was often the case with schoolbooks, intended for the dull, average pupil—but only the most essential facts all so arranged that they could be located without reference to chronology (as in history books) or taxonomy (as in texts on natural science), but according to one’s needs.

  But Milinko’s discovery, however much it fed his imagination, served also to undermine his self-assurance. It alerted him to the danger of overlooking other important sources of knowledge, simply by being unaware of them. He no longer dared lose touch with Sredoje. He sought his friendship during breaks between classes; he made a point of sitting next to him; he flattered him, and decided that his visit to the Lazukić villa should be reciprocated.

  So it was that Sredoje found himself in a courtyard as big as a lake, surrounded by one-room apartments, among which Milinko’s was just another pebble on the shore. Something was going on in each of these apartments, in full view of the other tenants. Heads were sticking from windows; someone was standing or sitting at this or that door. Here everything hewed to its natural state, warm and homey: the rooms were places for the basics, for sleeping and cooking, and water was drawn in a bucket from a well whose shiny bottom could just be made out through the darkness. Sitting at the entrance door, where a three-legged stool had been placed for him, Sredoje found himself being offered warm pumpkin pie from a copper pan straight from the kitchen stove. Such elemental surroundings agreed more with his temperament—inclined not to knowledge, as was Milinko’s, but to simple pleasures—than those of the remote villa at Liman, and he became a regular visitor.

  Milinko, who would have been happier near the villa’s serious books, came to terms with his role as host, for by keeping Sredoje at his side he could be sure of keeping abreast of everything he needed to know. Milinko’s mother, too, felt gratitude toward Sredoje, even as her sharp eye took in the cut of his trousers, the styling of his hair, the weave of his warm clothes, and how many layers he wore. He became her model. And when one day he happened to remark with a scowl, “Pa wants me to take German lessons,” mother and son (she stopping her machine, he raising his head from his book) glanced at each other meaningfully. “German?” asked Milinko, recovering from a rush of excitement that made his mouth dry. “But we don’t take German till next year!” In their class at school, French was the only foreign language then required. Sredoje wrinkled his nose. “It has nothing to do with school. Pa says it’s our last chance, if we want to keep on top of events.” The seamstress and her son looked at Sredoje expectantly, waiting for him to explain this half-threat, half-promise, but since nothing more was forthcoming, she lowered the needle again and resumed turning the wheel of her machine, while Milinko resumed his reading.

  But that evening they sat down by the lamp in the kitchen to talk it over. Milinko proudly opened his encyclopedia and read the entry under “Germany,” an article three and a half pages long with two illustrations: a panorama of the city of Berlin and a portrait of Chancellor Bismarck wearing a pointed helmet. The next morning, they asked Sredoje who was going to teach him German. He could not tell them exactly but promised to find out. These inquiries went on for some time, until one day he brought along a piece of paper on which was written, in his mother’s studied schoolgirl script: “Fräulein Anna Drentvenšek, 7 Stevan Sremac Street, courtyard, left.” Milinko and his mother exclaimed on hearing it was in their neighborhood, but managed to hide their delight.

  As soon as she could find time, the seamstress, dressed in her best, though not ostentatiously, set off, with scrap of paper in hand, down the first side street. She returned with the very best of impressions (“You know, she’s not the least bit stuck up”); nor did the cost of the lessons exceed their expectations. Before coming to a decision, Milinko, it’s true, reminded his mother of her intention to buy new bed linen, but she silenced him by saying that one good alteration could make up for the extra expense. And so Milinko and the lawyer’s son began taking private lessons in German, and he was able to ask, on equal terms with his friend, “When do you have a lesson with Fräulein? Mine is tomorrow.” The seamstress, too, was pleased to pronounce that strange foreign word and would remind her son, quite unnecessarily and contrary to her custom, “Don’t forget you have a lesson with Fräulein.” She felt, although she could not have expressed it, that, thanks to this new arrangement, the spirit of the great world had entered her courtyard quarters, putting it on equal footing with those homes that most valued progress.

  This was to some extent a prophetic feeling, for by attending lessons at Fräulein’s, her son Milinko—and, for that matter, Sredoje Lazukić—was given the opportunity of meeting Vera Kroner, who came from just such a home. Fate therefore offered Vera to both of them, but, at the time, the offer was to be taken up only by Milinko.

  Sredoje felt anything but attracted to Vera, who confused and exasperated him. Why did she mince along on those small, neat feet of hers, placing one in front of the other as delicately as if she were holding something between them? Why did she lower her long auburn lashes over slanting eyes, and then, once Sredoje had almost gone past, suddenly raise them to cast a swift, curious glance at him? Why did she twist her red hair into that long, narrow plait that bobbed up and down against the back of her black coat, so short it ended above her knees? He would have liked to punish her for all those artificialities, to shake them out of her, as one shakes dust from an old dress.

  One winter, the second or third of their acquaintance, coming back from a lesson at Fräulein’s, he caught sight of her in a side street, pressed against the wall by the onslaught of a dozen boys bombarding her with snowballs. A hand in a white woolen mitten was raised to protect her face and neck from the cold, wet blows. She had also half lifted one leg, sheathed in a white cotton stocking and high black snow boot, pulling up her knee as though to shield, however unavailingly, the middle of her body. The snowballs were hitting not only her but also the yellow wall of the house beside which she stood, leaving irregular w
hite imprints with dull thuds. The boys worked furiously to pick up snow and press it into snowballs, throwing them as fast as they could and uttering hoarse cries of satisfaction, like beaters rousing game. Sredoje stopped, held his breath, and looked at Vera. He was not sure whether to run to help her (after all, she was a pupil of the same teacher) or, on the contrary, to join those who were attacking such an enticing target.

  Then one of the boys, perhaps the ringleader, stopped his assault, ran up to Vera, threw his arms roughly around her neck, and pressed a loud kiss on her scarlet cheek. At that, they all rushed to follow his example, and the girl was suddenly surrounded by boys jostling each other to hug and kiss her, as if she were a piece of food that each had to take a bite of quickly and run off with a mouthful. Sredoje, still standing aside, sensed in those sudden movements, those short guttural cries, the warmth and softness of the virginal body squirming and yielding under their attack. He, too, rushed up to her, pushed aside two bigger boys, and pressed his lips to her hot cheek, wet with tears, snow, and saliva. Her skin gave beneath his kiss like a sweet, ripe plum.

  At that moment hands seized him from behind and pulled him away from her with a jerk. He had only time to see her slanting eyes following him, curious and frightened. He had to defend himself against the boys who had attacked him and struck out with his fists; he received a blow behind the ear and hit someone in the stomach with his elbow. His anger flaring, he flailed out all around indiscriminately, and when there was no one left, for all the boys had run away, he saw that the place where Vera had been standing was vacant, too, that she had taken advantage of the scuffle to escape.