The Bridge on the Drina (17 page)

But when his work was in question, Hairuddin was alert and precise to the minutest detail. He disliked anyone to interfere with his work, a thing which happened more and more often as the insurrection developed. When the insurgents burnt some of the villages above the town, the anger of the Turks passed all measure. Not only did they arrest all insurgents and spies, or those whom they considered such, and brought them to the Captain on the bridge, but in their rancour they even wanted to take part in the execution of the sentence.

Thus one day dawn revealed the head of the Višegrad parish priest, that same Pop Mihailo who had found strength to joke with the 
hodja 
and the rabbi on the night of the great flood. In the general fury against the Serbs he had been killed, even though innocent, and the gipsy children stuck a cigar in his dead mouth.

Hairuddin strongly disapproved of such actions and prevented them whenever he was able.

When one day the fat Anatolian died unexpectedly of anthrax a new headsman, in truth far less skilful, continued his work and went
on doing so for several years, and until the revolt in Serbia had died down there were always two or three heads exposed on the 
kapia. 
In such times people quickly grow hardened and insensible. They soon became so accustomed to them that they passed them by indifferently and paid no more heed to them, so that they did not at once notice when they ceased to be exhibited.

When the situation in Serbia and on the frontier died down, the blockhouse lost its importance and its reason for existence. But the guard went on sleeping there, although the crossing of the bridge had long been free and without supervision. In every army things change slowly and in the Turkish army more slowly than in any other. And so it would have remained for God alone knows how long had not a fire broken out one night because of a forgotten candle. The blockhouse was made of resinous planks and was still warm after the heat of the day. It burnt to its foundations, that is to say down to the flagstones of the 
kapia.

The excited people of the town watched the huge blaze which lit up not only the bridge but also the mountains around, and was reflected in wavering red light on the surface of the river. When morning broke, the bridge again appeared in its former shape freed from the clumsy wooden monstrosity which had for years concealed its 
kapia. 
The white stones were tarnished and sooty, but the rains and snows soon washed them clean again. Thus nothing remained of the blpckhouse and the bloody events connected with it save a few bitter memories which paled and finally disappeared with that generation, and one oak beam which had not been burnt as it was fixed into the stone steps of the 
kapia.

So the 
kapia 
once again became for the town what it had formerly been. On the left terrace as one came from the town a coffee brewer once again lit his brazier and set out his utensils. Only the fountain had suffered, for the snake's head from which the water had flowed had been crushed. The people once again began to dally on the sofa and pass the time there in conversation, in business deals or in drowsy time-wasting. On summer nights the young men sang there in groups or sat there solitary suppressing their love-yearning or giving way to that vague desire to go out into the distant world to do great deeds and take part in great events which so often torments young people brought up in a narrow milieu. After a score or so of years a new generation grew up which did not even remember the deformed wooden carcass of the blockhouse or the harsh cries of the guard stopping travellers by night, or Hairuddin or the exposed heads which he had cut off with such professional skill. Only some of the old women, driving away the urchins who came to steal their
peaches, would shout in loud and angry curses:

'May God send Hairuddin to cut your hair for you! May your mother recognize your head on the 
kapia!'

But the children who ran away over the fences could not understand the real sense of these curses, though they knew, naturally, that they meant nothing favourable.

Thus the generations renewed themselves beside the bridge and the bridge shook from itself, like dust, all the traces which transient human events had left on it and remained, when all was over, unchanged and unchangeable.

VII

Time passed over the bridge by years and decades. Those were the few decades about the middle of the nineteenth century in which the Turkish Empire was consumed by a slow fever. Measured by the eye of a contemporary, those years seemed comparatively peaceful and serene, although they had their share of anxieties and fears and knew droughts and floods and epidemics and all manner of exciting events. Only all these things came in their own time, in short spasms amid long lulls.

The border between the two 
pashaluks 
of Bosnia and Belgrade, which passed just above the town, began in those years to become ever more sharply defined and to take on the appearance and significance of a state frontier. That changed the conditions of life for the whole district and for the town also, influenced trade and communications, and the mutual relations of Turks and Serbs.

The older Turks frowned and blinked in incredulity, as if they wished to drive away this unpleasant apparition. They threatened and discussed and then for months at a time forgot all about the matter, until harsh reality would once again remind them and alarm them once more.

Thus, one spring day one of the Turks from Veletovo, up there on the frontier, sat on the 
kapia 
and with deep emotion told the leading Turks gathered there what had been happening at Veletovo.

Some time in the winter, the man from Veletovo said, there had appeared above their village the ill-famed Jovan Mičić, the 
serdar 
of Ruyan, who had come from Arilje with armed men and begun to inspect and mark out the frontier. When they asked him what he intended to do and why he was there, he replied arrogantly that he had to give account to no one, least of all to Bosnian renegades, but if they really wanted to know he had been sent there by the Prince Miloš to find out where the frontier was to run and how much was to be included in Serbia.

'We thought,' said the man from Veletovo, 'that the Vlach was drunk and did not know what he was saying, for we have long known
him as a bandit and a rascal. So we refused to let him stay and then forgot all about him. But not more than two months later he came again, this time with a whole company of Miloš' soldiers and a delegate of the Sultan, a soft pale fellow from Stambul. We could not believe our eyes. But the delegate confirmed everything. He lowered his eyes in shame, but he confirmed. Thus, he said, it had been ordered by Imperial decree that Miloš should administer Serbia in the Sultan's name and that the frontier should be marked out, to know exactly to what point his authority stretched. When the delegate's men began to drive in stakes along the crest below Tetrebica, Mičić came and pulled them up and threw them aside. The mad Vlach (may the dogs eat his flesh!) flew at the delegate, shouted at him as if he were a subordinate and threatened him with death. That, he said, was not the frontier; the frontier had been fixed by the Sultan and the Russian Tsar who had given a 
ferman
to Prince Miloš, it now ran along the Lim down as far as the Višegrad bridge and thence down the Drina; thus all this land is part of Serbia. This too, he said, is only for a certain time; later it will have to be advanced. The delegate had great trouble in convincing him and then they fixed the frontier above Veletovo. And there it remains, at least for the present. Only from then on we have been filled with doubt and a sort of fear, so that we do not know what to do or where to turn. We have discussed all this with the people of Uzice, but they too do not know what has happened nor what to expect. And old Hadji-Zuko who has twice been to Mecca and is now more than ninety years old says that before a generation has passed the Turkish frontier will be withdrawn right to the Black Sea, fifteen days' march away.'

The leading Turks of Višegrad listened to the man from Veletovo. They seemed calm to all outward appearance, but inwardly they were shaken and confused. They squirmed unintentionally at his words and caught hold of the stone seat with their hands, as if some powerful and invisible force were shaking the bridge beneath them. Then, mastering themselves, they sought words to lessen and diminish the importance of this event.

They did not like unfavourable news or heavy thoughts or serious and despondent conversations on the 
kapia, 
but they could see for themselves that this boded no good; nor could they deny what the man from Veletovo had said or find words to calm and reassure him. So they could scarcely wait for the peasant who had brought this unpleasant news to return to his village in the mountains. That, naturally, would not lessen the anxiety but it would remove it far from them. And when in fact the man went away, they were only
too pleased to be able to return to their usual habits, and to go on sitting peacefully on the 
kapia 
without conversations which made life disagreeable and the future terrifying, and to leave it to time to soften and ease the weight of the events which had taken place over there behind the mountains.

Time did its work. Life went on, to all appearances unchanged. More than thirty years passed since that conversation on the 
kapia. 
But those stakes which the Sultan's delegate and the 
serdar 
of Ruyan had planted struck root and brought forth fruit, late-ripening but bitter to the Turks. The Turks had now to abandon even the last towns in Serbia. One summer day the bridge at Višegrad was burdened with a pitiable procession of refugees from Uzice.

It was on one of those hot days with long pleasant twilights on the 
kapia 
when the Turks from the market-place filled both the terraces over the water. On such days melons were brought there on donkey back. The ripe canteloupes and water-melons had been cooled all day long and in the early evening people would buy and eat them on the 
sofa. 
Usually two of them would bet whether the inside of a certain water-melon were red or white. Then they would cut it open and whoever lost paid for it and they would eat it together, with talk and loud jokes.

The day's warmth still beat up from the stone terraces but with the twilight there was a cool refreshing air from the water. The middle of the river shone, and near the banks under the willows it turned a shadowy dull green. All the hills around were reddened by the sunset, some strongly and others scarcely touched. Above them, filling the whole south-western part of that amphitheatre which could be seen from the 
kapia 
were summer mists of continually changing colour. These mists are among the most beautiful sights to be seen in summer on the 
kapia. 
As soon as the daylight grows strong and the sun leaps up, they appear behind the mountains like thick white silvery-grey masses, creating fantastic landscapes, irregular cupolas and countless strange buildings. They remain thus all day long, heavy and unmoving above the hills surrounding the town which swelters in the sun. The Turks who in early evening sat on the 
kapia 
had those mists always before their eyes like white silken Imperial tents which in their imagination evoked vague shapes of wars and forays and pictures of strange and immeasurable power and luxury, till darkness extinguished and dispersed them and the skies created fresh magic from the stars and moonlight.

Never could the wonderful and exceptional beauty of the 
kapia 
be better felt than at that hour on such summer days. A man was then as if in a magic swing; he swung over the earth and the waters
and flew in the skies, yet was firmly and surely linked with the town and his own white house there on the bank with its plum orchard about it. With the solace of coffee and tobacco, many of those simple citizens, who owned little more than those houses and the few shops in the market-place, felt at such times the richness of the world and the illimitability of God's gifts. Such a bridge, lovely and strong, could offer all this to men and would continue to offer it for centuries to come.

This was just such an evening, an evening filled with chatter and laughter and jokes among themselves and the passers-by.

The sprightliest and loudest jokes centred on a short but powerful young man of strange appearance. This was Salko Ćorkan, One-eyed Salko.

Salko was the son of a gipsy woman and some Anatolian soldier or officer who had at some time been stationed in the town and had left it before this unwanted son had been born. Shortly afterwards, his mother too had died and the child had grown up without anyone of his own. The whole town fed him; he belonged to everybody and nobody. He did odd jobs about the shops and houses, carried out tasks which no one else would do, cleaned the cesspools and street channels, and buried anything that had died or had been brought down by the waters. He had never had a house or occupation of his own. He ate whatever he happened to find, still standing or walking about, slept in attics, and dressed in parti-coloured rags given him by others. While still a child he had lost his left eye. Eccentric, good-humoured, merry and a drunkard, he often worked for the townsmen for a word or a joke instead of pay.