The Bridge on the Drina (20 page)

A-a-a-aah, kkkh ... A-a-a-aaah ... kkkkh!'

Down on the ground floor Avdaga was struggling with his nightly attack of coughing.

She heard the sound and could see her father clearly, almost as if he were there before her, as he sat and smoked, sleepless and tormented by his cough. She could see his big brown eyes, as well known as a dear landscape, eyes which were just like her own, save that they were shadowed by old age and bathed in a tearful yet laughing shimmer, eyes in which for the first time she had seen the inevitability of her fate on that day she was told that she had been promised to Hamzić and that she must finish her preparations within a month.

'Kkha, kkha, kkha, Aaaaah!'

That ecstasy of a moment before at the beauty of the night and the greatness of the world was suddenly extinguished. That perfumed breath of the earth ceased. The girl's breasts tightened in a brief spasm. The stars and the expanse disappeared. Only fate, her cruel and irrevocable fate on the eve of its realization was being completed and accomplished as the time passed in the stillness of that immobility and that void which remained beyond the world.

The sound of coughing echoed from the floor below.

Yes, she both saw and heard him as if he were standing beside her. That was her own dear, powerful, only father with whom she had felt herself to be one, indivisibly and sweetly, ever since she had been conscious of her own existence. She felt that heavy shattering cough as if it had been in her own breast. In truth it had been that mouth that had said yes where her own had said no. But she was at one with him in everything, even in this. That yes of his she felt as if it were her own (even as she felt too her own no). Therefore her fate was cruel, unusual, immediate, and therefore she saw no escape from it and could see none, for none existed. But one thing she knew. Because of her father's yes, which bound her as much as her own no, she would have to appear before the 
kadi 
with Mustajbeg's son, for it was inconceivable to think that Avdaga Osmanagić did not keep his word. But she knew too, equally well, that after the ceremony her feet would never take her to Nezuke, for that would mean that she had not kept her own word. That too was inconceivable, for that too was the word of an Osmanagić. There, on that point of no return, between her no and her father's 
yes, 
between Velje Lug and
Nezuke, somewhere in that most inescapable impasse, she must find a way out. That was all she thought of now. No longer the expanses of the great rich world, not even the whole route from Velje Lug to Nezuke, but only that short and pitiful little scrap of road which led from the courthouse in which the 
kadi 
would marry her to Mustaj-beg's son, as far as the end of the bridge where the stony slope led down to the narrow track which led to Nezuke and on which, she knew for a certainty, she would never set foot. Her thoughts flew incessantly up and down that little scrap of road, from one end to the other, like a shuttle through the weave. They would fly from the courthouse, across the market-place to the end of the bridge, to halt there as before an impassable abyss, and then back across the bridge, across the market-place to the courthouse. Always thus; back and forward, forward and back! There her destiny was woven.

And those thoughts which could neither remain still nor were able to find a way out, more and more often halted at the 
kapia, 
on that lovely and shining 
sofa, 
where the townspeople sat in conversation and the young men sang, and beneath which roared the deep swift green waters of the river. Then, horrified at such a way of escape, they would fly once again, as if under a curse, from one end of the journey to the other and, without finding any other solution, would stop there once again on the 
kapia. 
Every night her thoughts more and more often halted there and remained there longer. The very thought of that day, when in fact and not only in her thoughts she must go along that way and find her way out before she reached the end of the bridge, brought with it all the terror of death or the horror of a life of shame. It seemed to her, helpless and forsaken, that the very terror of that thought must remove or at least postpone that day.

But the days passed, neither fast nor slow, but regular and fateful and with them came at last the day of the wedding.

On that last Thursday in August (that was the fateful day) the Hamzićs came on horseback for the girl. Covered with a heavy new black veil, as if under a suit of armour, Fata was seated on a horse and led into the town. Meanwhile, in the courtyard, horses were loaded with the chests containing her trousseau. The marriage was announced in the courthouse before the 
kadi. 
So was kept the word by which Avdaga gave his daughter to Mustajbeg's son. Then the little procession set out on the way to Nezuke where the formal wedding ceremonies had been prepared.

They passed through the market-place, a part of that road without escape which Fata had covered so often in her thoughts. It was firm, real and everyday, almost easier to traverse than in her imagination.

No stars, no expanse, no father's muffled cough, no desire 
for 
time to go more quickly or more slowly. When they reached the bridge, the girl felt once more, as in the summer nights before her window, every part of her body strongly and separately, and especially her breasts in a light constriction as if in a corselet. The party arrived on the 
kapia. 
As she had done so many times in her thoughts those last nights, the girl leant over and in a whisper begged the youngest brother who was riding beside her to shorten her stirrups a little, for they were coming to that steep passage from the bridge down to the stony track which led to Nezuke. They stopped, first those two and then, a little farther on, the other wedding guests. There was nothing unusual in this. It was not the first nor would it be the last time that a wedding procession halted on the 
kapia. 
While the brother dismounted, went around the horse and threw the reins over his arm, the girl urged her horse to the very edge of the bridge, put her right foot on the stone parapet, sprang from the saddle as if she had wings, leapt over the parapet and threw herself into the roaring river below the bridge. The brother rushed after her and threw himself at full length on the parapet, managing to touch with his hand the flying veil but was unable to hold it. The rest of the wedding guests leapt from their horses with the most extraordinary cries and remained along the stone parapet in strange attitudes as if they too had been turned to stone.

That same day rain fell before evening, abundant and exceptionally cold for the time of year. The Drina rose and grew angry. Next day the yellowish flood waters threw Fata's corpse on to a shoal near Kalata. There it was seen by a fisherman who went at once to notify the police chief. A little later the police chief himself arrived with the 
muktar, 
the fisherman and Salko Corkan. For without Salko nothing of this sort could ever take place.

The corpse was lying in soft wet sand. The waves moved it to and fro and from time to time their cloudy waters washed over it. The new black veil which the waters had not succeeded in pulling off had been turned back and thrown over her head; mingled with her long thick hair it formed a strange black mass beside the white lovely body of the young girl from which the current had torn away the thin wedding garments. Frowning and with set jaws Salko and the fisherman waded out to the shoal, caught hold of the naked girl and, embarrassed and carefully, as if she were still alive, took her to the bank from the wet sand in which she had already begun to sink, and there at once covered her with the wet and mud bespattered veil.

That same day the drowned girl was buried in the nearest Moslem graveyard, on the steep slope below the hill on which Velje Lug was
built. And before evening the ne'er-do-wells of the town had collected in the inn around Salko and the fisherman with that unhealthy and prurient curiosity which is especially developed among those whose life is empty, deprived of every beauty and lacking in excitement and events. They toasted them in plum brandy and offered them tobacco in order to hear some detail about the corpse and the burial. But nothing helped. Even Salko said nothing. He smoked continuously and with his one bright eye looked at the smoke which he blew as far away as possible from him with strong puffs. Only those two, Salko and the fisherman, looked at one another from time to time, lifted their little flasks in silence as if pledging something invisible and drained them at a gulp.

Thus it was that that unusual and unheard of event took place on the 
kapia. 
Velje Lug did not go down to Nezuke and Avdaga's Fata never became the wife of a Hamzić.

Avdaga Osmanagić never again went down into the town. He died that same winter, suffocated by his cough, without speaking a word to anyone of the sorrow that had killed him.

The next spring Mustajbeg Hamzić married his son to another girl, from Brankovići.

For some time the townspeople talked about the incident and then began to forget it. All that remained was a song about a girl whose beauty and wisdom shone above the world as if it were immortal.

IX

Some seventy years after the Karageorge insurrection war broke out again in Serbia and the frontier reacted by rebellion. Once more Turkish and Serbian houses flamed on the heights, at Zlijeba, Gostilje, Crnice and Veletovo. For the first time after so many years the heads of decapitated Serbs again appeared on the 
kapia. 
These were thin-faced short-haired peasant heads with bony faces and long moustaches, as though they were the same as those exposed seventy years before. But all this did not last long. As soon as the war between Serbia and Turkey ended, the people were again left in peace. It was, in truth, an uneasy peace which concealed many fearful and exciting rumours and anxious whisperings. More and more definitely and openly was there talk of the entry of the Austrian army into Bosnia. At the beginning of the summer of 1878 units of the regular Turkish army passed through the town on their way from Sarajevo to Priboj. The idea spread that the Sultan would cede Bosnia without a struggle. Some families made ready to move into the Sanjak, amongst them some of those who thirty years before, not wishing to live under Serbian rule, had fled from Uzice and who were now once again preparing to flee from another and new Christian rule. But the majority stayed, awaiting what was to come in painful uncertainty and outward indifference.

At the beginning of July the 
mufti 
of Plevlje arrived with a small body of men, filled with a great resolve to organize resistance in Bosnia against the Austrians. A fair-haired serious man of calm appearance but fiery temperament, he sat on the
kapia 
where, one lovely summer's day, he summoned the Turkish leaders of the town and began to incite them to fight against the Austrians. He assured them that the greater part of the regular army would remain in Bosnia despite its orders and would join with the people to oppose the new conqueror, and called on the young men to join him and the townspeople to send provisions to Sarajevo. The 
muîti 
knew that the people of Višegrad had never had the reputation of being enthusiastic fighters and that they preferred to live foolishly rather
than to die foolishly, but he was none the less surprised at the lukewarm response that he encountered. Unable to control himself any longer he threatened them with the justice of the people and the anger of God, and then left his assistant Osman Effendi Karamanli to go on convincing the people of Višegrad of the need for their participation in a general insurrection.

During the discussions with the 
mufti, 
the greatest resistance had been shown by Alihodja Mutevelić. His family was one of the oldest and most respected in the town. They had never been noted for their fortune, but rather for their honesty and openness. They had always been reckoned obstinate men, but not susceptible to bribes, intimidation, flattery or any other consideration of lower type. For more than 200 years the oldest member of their family had been the 
mutevelia, 
the guardian and administrator of Mehmed Pasha's foundation in the town. He looked after the famous Stone Han near the bridge. We have seen how, after the loss of Hungary, the Stone Han lost the revenues on which it depended for its upkeep and by force of circumstances became a ruin. Of the Vezir's foundation there remained only the bridge, a public benefit which did not require special maintenance and brought in no revenue. So there remained for the Mutevelićs only their family name as a proud memorial of the calling which they had honourably carried out for so many years. That calling had in fact ceased at the time when Dauthodja had succumbed in his struggle to maintain the Stone Han, but the pride had remained and with it the traditional custom that the Mutevelić family was called upon above all others to look after the bridge and that it was in some way responsible for its fate, since the bridge was an integral part of the great religious foundation which the family had administered and which had so pitiably dried up. Also by long established custom one of the Mutevelić family went to school and belonged to the 
ulema, 
the learned body of the Moslem clergy. Now it was Alihodja. Otherwise the family had greatly diminished both in numbers and property. They now had only a few serfs and a shop, which they had kept for a long time past, in the best position in the market-place, quite close to the bridge. Two elder brothers of Alihodja had died in the wars, one in Russia and the other in Montenegro.