Miljenko Jergović: The Walnut Mansion (excerpt in English)

The Walnut Mansion

A hundred hundred years ago, when people still didn’t know that wind blows sails and that the wheels on a baby carriage turn, before there were any unchristened creatures, instead of karst and quarries there were dense pine forests everywhere. And in them lived fairies and sprites, there were more of them than people in the world. In those forests there were more birds than there are today anywhere, more bears, foxes, wolves and all kinds of creatures that one can’t even imagine. Everything was tame, they ate food off of each others’ heads because there were no beasts that acted wickedly to another animal. People were the only thing that wasn’t in those forests. If some hardhead took courage and went off into the forest, his mother would mourn him because he would never return home. Not alive or dead, nor would they be able to make out his soul on judgment day. That was the way it was! No man thought it up, nor did the Lord God either. It was the way of fairies and sprites.

Translated by Stephen M. Dickey, with Janja Pavetić-Dickey
(source: Vilenica Almanac 2024)