Robert Kroner, vaguely aware of this role of his house, found confirmation of it only in the round brown eyes of Milinko Božić, eyes filled with reverence. One time, when the young man arrived early to call for Vera and was left for several minutes standing stiffly in the dining room, Kroner came out to offer him a chair. Noticing, as they chatted, that Milinko looked curiously and admiringly at the book-lined inner depths of his study, he invited him in. First they took down the encyclopedias and placed them on the table: the one-volume Yugoslav editions, a German one, Meyer, in twelve large tomes, and a Hungarian, Revay, in eight. Milinko realized then how narrow was the range of his information, based on only secondary sources and limited by the knowledge of only two languages. He shared this thought openly with Kroner, who, nodding in agreement, began to speak about the history of reference books and the law of influences.
“It’s like people,” he told Milinko, who was all ears. “Even nations borrow from each other. Nothing is born in a vacuum, nothing develops from itself alone, and anyone who claims otherwise — usually to laud the culture to which he belongs — is lying. All life is imitation. The way we live in this house is a copy of the way my father and mother lived in it, and they in turn patterned themselves on others. This kind of home, these objects, the storeroom in the back, the courtyard through which one passes from the private world into the business world and back again, all existed long ago, before this house, and served as a model when it was built and furnished. You could probably trace the migration of this type of merchant’s house, going back in time, from street to street, from the outskirts of town to the center, from town to city. Thus Novi Sad would perhaps lead you to Szeged, Szeged to Pest, Pest to Vienna, Vienna to Berlin. It might have been in 1862, or 1852, when this kind of merchant’s house was first adopted in Berlin. The same goes for books, whether they contain artistic material”—for material, Kroner said “Stoff,” the German word, unable to find an adequate Serbian term—“or whether they are of a scientific nature. Invariably you find traces of imitation. For example, an idea current in my youth in Austria and Germany, Dr. Freud’s psychoanalysis, had only recently been mentioned in Novi Sad, and then critically, but it will be accepted in the next generation. This is where the intelligent man has an advantage: instead of waiting for a new idea or style to reach him via its long geographical-temporal course, he can receive it at the very beginning, before everyone else. In Novi Sad, the merchant who first built himself an Austrian house had an advantage over the old-fashioned merchant who used the market stall. Similarly, the intellectual who reads the books that are current among the larger, more developed nations will have an advantage over the one who waits for innovations to come to him.”
Here he paused, allowing Milinko to plunge into the books before him, and returned the volumes to the shelves when they were done with. But Milinko suddenly stopped and sighed: What was the use of looking at something he couldn’t obtain? He would have to go to Austria to buy books of this kind — to Germany, that is, now that the two countries were combined— with his pockets full of marks. Not at all, Kroner said cheerfully. In every trade, even in the book trade, business could be done by correspondence, and Milinko had only to send a postcard to the publishers of the encyclopedias he wanted, and he would receive detailed catalogs and price lists. “Unfortunately, or let us say, in this case, fortunately”—his thin, mobile mouth in a wry smile—“Austria — or, rather, Germany — is now not only our neighbor but, so to speak, our second identity, which undoubtedly will make it easier for such purchases to be made.” He went around the wide desk, opened a drawer, rummaged through it, and pulled out a bundle of brochures and booklets held together by a yellow rubber band. “These are some old catalogs I happen to have.” He spread them out, arranged them on the desk. In addition to printed information, there were photographs of the books in rows of dark red, blue, green. “Brockhaus, Langenscheidt, Meyer, Knaurr — you’ll find those the most interesting,” pointing to each with his long, thin middle finger. “Of course they are out of date; you must ask for new ones.” He tore a sheet of paper from a note pad and handed it to Milinko with a pencil. “I suggest you draft a simple request first, to fit on a postcard.” He looked over Milinko’s shoulder as the sentence was slowly and thoughtfully written. “I think it might be better to put schicken instead of senden. Sounds more businesslike,” he remarked, but otherwise noted, with surprise, that Milinko’s German was correct. “If only Gerhard or Vera could write a letter like that! How long have you been studying German?” When he learned that Milinko had been taking lessons as long as Vera and that, unlike Vera and her brother, he had never heard German spoken, Kroner was most impressed. Milinko, flattered, did his best to carry out these instructions, and on his next visit he reported to his adviser that the postcards were mailed.
Milinko waited for the replies, and Kroner waited with him, never once failing to ask about them when Milinko came to the house. The first reply arrived after ten days: a stiff, yellowish-brown envelope with a two-pronged metal fastener and a white address sticker with Milinko Božić’s name and address neatly typed. From it slid a whole pile of triple-folded brochures describing expensive books: histories, geographies, encyclopedias, dictionaries, much more than Milinko had requested or expected. He immediately took the package to Kroner, who was not at home, but Milinko asked the maid to put the envelope in the study, and that evening he went back so that they could enjoy it together. They studied the catalogs, read them over each other’s shoulders in half-whispers, but raised their voices when they came to important things: number of volumes, price, method of payment. Kroner took a pencil and underlined. Milinko made up his first order. More catalogs arrived, and soon thereafter a parcel of books: Knaurr’s World Atlas, which they examined together in great excitement. The ordering became, within the limits of Milinko’s schoolboy budget, a constant occupation for them, an inexhaustible subject of plans and discussions.
But then, on Main Street, after large-scale renovation of an ironmonger’s shop vacated by a Serb, there appeared display windows full of German books at very reasonable prices, and a sign over the entrance, in Gothic letters: DEUTSCHE BUCHHANDLUNG. Milinko could now browse, inspect, and buy on the spot anything he wanted, no longer needing the assistance of Kroner to cross the boundaries, albeit “erased,” between countries. For Kroner, this meant a separation. If he went into the German bookshop with Milinko and was recognized as a Jew, they might throw him out, insult him. And he, insulted, might lose his temper. So he stayed at home, retreating into its rooms and furniture, into their lifelessness and silence.