The Bridge on the Drina (29 page)

All that day, both when he was off duty and while he was mounting guard, the picture of the young Turkish girl passed like a vision countless times through his mind. Next day, once again about noon when there were very few people on the bridge, she again crossed. Fedun again saw that face framed in the brightly-coloured shawl. All was as it had been the day before. Only their glances were longer, livelier and bolder, almost as if they were playing a game together. Stevan was again drowsing on the stone bench and later, as he always did, swore that he had not been asleep and that even when he was at home in bed he could not close an eye. On the way back the girl seemed almost ready to stop, looked the 
streifkorps 
boy straight in the eyes while he muttered a couple of vague and unimportant words, feeling as he did so that his legs failed him through emotion and forgetting completely where he was.

Only in dreams do we dare so much. When the girl was once more lost to sight on the farther bank the young man shivered with fright. It was incredible that a young Turkish girl should think of looking at an Austrian soldier. Such an unheard-of and unprecedented thing could only happen in dreams, in dreams or in spring on the 
kapia. 
He knew very well that nothing in this land or in his position was as scandalous and as dangerous as to touch a Moslem woman. They had told him that when he had been in the army and again in the 
streifkorps. 
The punishment for such daring was a heavy one. There had been some who had paid with their lives at the hands of the insulted and infuriated Turks. All that he knew, and most sincerely desired to keep the orders and regulations, but none the less he acted contrary to them. The misfortune of unlucky men lies in just this, that those things which for them are impossible and forbidden become in a moment easy and attainable, or at least appear so. Yet when once such things are firmly fixed in their desires they seem once again as they were, unattainable and forbidden, with all the consequences that they have for those who, despite everything, still attempt them.

On the third day too, about noon, the Turkish girl appeared. And as it is in dreams all took place as he would have wished, like a unique reality to which all else was subordinate. Stevan was again drowsing, convinced and always ready to convince others that he had not closed an eye; there were no passers-by on the 
kapia. 
The young man spoke again, muttering a few words, and the girl slowed her pace and replied, equally timidly and vaguely.

The dangerous and incredible game went on. On the fourth day the girl in passing, choosing a moment when there was no one on the 
kapia, 
asked in a whisper when he would next be on guard. He told her that he would be on duty on the 
kapia
again at dusk.

'I will bring my old grandmother to the market-place, where she is to spend the night, and I will return alone,' whispered the girl without stopping or turning her head, but darting a provocative and eloquent glance at him. And in each of those very ordinary words was the hidden joy that she would soon see him again.

Six hours later Fedun was once more on the 
kapia 
with his sleepy comrade. After the rain a chill twilight had fallen which seemed to him full of promise. Passers-by became fewer and fewer. Then on the road from Osojnica the Turkish girl appeared, wrapped in her shawl, its colours dimmed by the twilight. Beside her walked an old, bowed Turkish woman bundled up in a thick black 
feridjah. 
She walked almost on all fours, supporting herself by a staff in her right hand and holding on to the girl with her left.

They passed by Fedun. The girl walked slowly, accommodating her pace to the slow walk of the old crone whom she was leading. Her eyes, made larger by the shadows of early dusk, now gazed boldly and openly into the young man's as if they could not look away from him. When they disappeared into the market-place, a shiver passed through the youth and he began to pace with more rapid steps from one terrace to the other as if he wanted to make up for what he had lost. With an excitement that was almost fear he waited for the girl's return. Stevan was dozing.

'What will she say to me when she passes?' thought the youth. What shall I say to her? Will she perhaps suggest meeting somewhere at night in a quiet spot?' He quivered with delight and the excitement of danger lay in that thought.

A whole hour passed thus, waiting, and the half of another, and still the girl did not return. But even in that waiting there was delight. His eagerness rose with the falling darkness. At last, instead of the girl, his relief came. But this time not only the two 
streifkorps 
men who were to remain there on guard but also the sergeant-major Draženović in person. A strict man with a short black beard, he ordered Fedun and Stevan in a sharp and strident voice to go to the dormitory as soon as they reached barracks and not to leave it until further orders. The blood rushed to Fedun's face at the idea that he was in some way to blame.

The huge chill dormitory with twelve regularly spaced out beds was empty. The men were all at supper or in the town. Fedun and Stevan waited, troubled and impatient, thinking things over and
making vain guesses why the sergeant-major had been so stern and had so unexpectedly confined them to barracks. After an hour, when the first of the soldiers began to come in to sleep, a corporal burst in and ordered them loudly and harshly to follow him. From everything about him, the two felt that the severity against them was increasing and that all this presaged no good. As soon as they left the dormitory they were separated and questioned.

The night wore on. Even the last lights in the town were extinguished, but the windows of the barracks still blazed with light. From time to time there was a ring at the main gates, the clink of keys and the thud of heavy doors. Orderlies came and went, hurrying through the dark and sleeping town between the barracks and the 
konak, 
where lamps also burned on the first floor. It could be seen from all these signs that something unusual was afoot.

When, about eleven o'clock at night, they brought Fedun into the sergeant-major's office, it seemed to him that days and weeks had passed from those moments on the 
kapia. 
On the table burned a metal oil-lamp with a shade of green porcelain. By it was seated the major, Krčmar. The light fell on his arms up to the elbows, but the upper half of his body and his head were in shadow cast by the green shade. The young man knew that pale, full, almost womanly face, clean-shaven, with fine moustaches and dark rings around the eyes. The soldiers feared the slow heavy words of this big placid officer. There were few of them who could endure for long the gaze of those large grey eyes, and who did not stammer when replying to his questions, in which each word was softly yet separately, distinctly and clearly enunciated from the first to the last syllable as at school or in the theatre. A little away from the table stood the sergeant-major Draženovic. The whole upper part of his body also was in shadow and only his hands were strongly illuminated, hanging limply at his side; on one finger glistened a heavy gold ring.

Draženović opened the interrogation:

'Tell us how you passed the time between five and seven o'clock while you were with assistant 
streifkorps 
private Stevan Kalacan on guard duty on the 
kapia?'

The blood rushed to Fedun's head. Every man passed his time as best he could, but no one had ever thought that he would later have to answer for it before some strict judge and give account of everything that had taken place, to the minutest detail, to the most hidden thoughts and the last minute. No one, least of all when one is twenty-three years old and that time has been spent on the 
kapia 
in spring. What was he to answer? Those two hours on guard had passed as they had always done, as they had done the day before and the day
before that. But at that moment he could not remember anything everyday and usual which he could report. Only incidental, forbidden things rose in his memory, things that happen to everyone but which are not told to one's superiors; that Stevan had dozed as usual; that he, Fedun, had exchanged a few words with an unknown Turkish girl, that then, as dusk was falling, he had sung softly and fervently all the songs of his own country awaiting the girl's return and with it something exciting and unusual. How hard it was to reply, impossible to tell everything but embarrassing to remain silent. And he must hurry, for time was passing and that only increased his confusion and embarrassment. How long had his silence lasted already?

'Well?' said the major. Everyone knew that 'well' of his, clear, smooth and forceful like the sound of some strong, complex and well oiled machine.

Fedun began to stammer and get confused as though he felt himself guilty from the very start.

The night wore on, but the lamps were not extinguished either in the barracks or in the 
konak. 
Interrogations, evidence and the confrontation of witnesses followed one another. Others who had mounted guard on the 
kapia 
that day were also interrogated. But it was clear that the net was closing around Fedun and Stevan and, in their interrogation, about the old Turkish woman whom a young girl had taken across the bridge.

It seemed to the young man as if all the magical and inextricable responsibilities that he had felt in his dreams were falling on his shoulders. Before dawn he was confronted with Stevan. The peasant closed his eyes cunningly and spoke in a forced voice, continually harking back to the fact that he was an illiterate man, a peasant, and sheltering himself from all responsibility by always referring to 'that Mr Fedun' as he insisted on calling his companion on guard.

That's the way to answer, the young man thought to himself. His entrails were crying out from hunger and he himself was trembling all over from emotion though it was still not clear to him what this was all about and where exactly lay the question of his guilt or innocence. But morning brought complete explanation.

All through that night a fantastic round-dance whirled about him; in its centre was the major, cold and implacable. Himself dumb and unmoving, he allowed no one else to be silent or at peace. In bearing and appearance he no longer seemed like a man, but like duty embodied, the terrible ministrant of justice inaccessible to weakness or sentiment, gifted with supernatural strength and immune from the ordinary human needs of food, rest or sleep. When dawn broke,

Fedun was once again brought before the major. There was now in the office, besides the major and Draženović, an armed gendarme and a woman who, at first sight, seemed unreal to the young man. The lamp had been extinguished. The room, facing north, was cold and in semi-darkness. The young man felt as if this were a continuation of his dream of the night before which refused to pale and vanish even in the light of day.

'Is that the man who was on guard?' Draženović asked the woman.

With a great effort which caused him pain Fedun only then looked full at her. She was the Moslem girl of the day before, only bareheaded without her shawl and with her heavy chestnut plaits wrapped around her head. She was wearing brightly coloured Turkish trousers, but the rest of her dress, blouse, sash and bolero, was that of the Serbian girls from the villages on the high plateau above the town. Without her shawl, she seemed older and sturdier. Her face seemed different, her mouth large and bad-tempered, her eyelids reddened and her eyes clear and flashing as if the shadows of the day before had fled from them.

'It is,' the woman replied indifferently in a hard voice which was as new and unusual to Fedun as her present appearance.

Draženović went on asking her how many times in all she had crossed the bridge, what she had said to Fedun and he to her. She replied for the most part precisely, but proudly and indifferently.

'Good, Jelenka, and what did he say to you the last time you crpssed?'

'He said something but I don't know exactly what, for I was not listening but only thinking how I could get Jakov across.'

'You were thinking of that?'

'Of that,' answered the woman unwillingly. She was clearly worn out and did not want to say more than she must. But the sergeant-major was inexorable. In a threatening voice which betrayed his conviction that he must be answered without argument he forced the woman to repeat all that she had said at her first interrogation at the 
konak.

She defended herself, shortened and skipped various bits of her earlier evidence, but he always checked her and by sharp and skilful questioning made her go back over it all again.

Little by little the whole truth was laid bare. Her name was Jelenka and she came from the village of Tasić in Upper Lijeska. Last autumn the 
haiduk 
Jakov Čekrlija had come into her district to pass the winter hidden in a stable above her village. They had brought him food and clothing from her house. For the most part it had been she who had brought it. They had liked the look of each other and had
become lovers. When the snow began to melt and the 
streifkorps 
squads came more frequently, Jakov had decided to cross into Serbia at all costs. At that time of year the Drina was hard to cross even if it had not been patrolled and there had not been a permanent guard on the bridge. She had gone with him, determined to help him even at the risk of her life. They had first descended to Lijeska and then to a cave above Okolište. Earlier, on Glasinac, Jakov had obtained some Turkish women's clothes from some gipsies; a 
ieridjah, 
Turkish trousers and a shawl. Then she, on his instructions, began to cross the bridge at a time when there were not many Turks about, since one of them might ask whose was that unknown girl, and in order that the guard might grow accustomed to her. Thus she crossed three days running, and then decided to take Jakov with her.