The Bridge on the Drina (32 page)

Earlier too there had been money and rich people, but these last had been rare and had concealed their money like a snake its legs and had revealed their superiority only as a form of power and protection, difficult both for themselves and for those about them. Now wealth, or what passed as such and was so named, was openly displayed in the form of pleasure and personal satisfaction, therefore the mass of the people could see something of its glitter and its gleanings.

So it was with all else. Pleasures which up till then had been stolen and concealed, could now be purchased and openly displayed, which increased their attraction and the number of those who sought them. What had earlier been unattainable, far off and expensive (forbidden by law or all-powerful custom) now became, in many cases, possible and attainable to all who had or who knew. Many passions, appetites and demands which till then had been hidden in remote places or left completely unsatisfied could now be boldly and openly sought and fully or at least partially satisfied. In fact even in that there was greater restriction, order and legal hindrance; vices were punished and enjoyments paid for even more heavily and dearly than before, but the laws and methods were different and allowed the people, in this as in all else, the illusion that life had suddenly become wider, more luxurious and freer.

There were not many more real pleasures nor, certainly, more happiness but it was undoubtedly easier to come by such pleasures and it seemed that there was room for everyone's happiness. The old inborn partiality of the people of Višegrad for a carefree life of enjoyment found both s'upport and possibilities of realization in the new customs and the new forms of trading and profit brought by the newcomers. Immigrant Polish Jews with their numerous families based all their business on that. Schreiber opened what

he called a 'general store', Gutenplan a canteen for the soldiers, Zahler ran a hotel, the Sperling brothers set up a soda-water factory and a photographer's 'atelier' and Zveker a jeweller's and watchmaker's shop.

After the barracks which had replaced the Stone Han, Municipal Offices were built of the stone that remained, with local administrative offices and courts. After these, the largest building in the town was the Zahler hotel. It was built on the river bank just beside the bridge. That right bank had been supported by an ancient retaining wall which shored up the bank on both sides of the bridge and had been built at the same time. So it happened that both to left and right of the bridge stretched two level spaces, like two terraces above the water. On these open spaces, which were called racecourses by the people of the town, children had played from generation to generation. Now the local authorities took over the left-hand 'racecourse', put a fence round it and made a sort of municipal botanical garden. On the right-hand one the hotel was built. Until then the first building at the entry to the market-place had been Zarije's inn. It was 'in the right place', for the tired and thirty traveller on entering the town from across the bridge must first light on it. Now it was overshadowed by the great building of the new hotel; the low old inn seemed every day lower and more humiliated as if it had sunk into the earth.

Officially the new hotel had been given the name of the bridge beside which it had been built. But the townspeople named everything according to their own special logic and according to the real significance it had for them. Over the entrance of the Zahler Hotel the inscription 'Hotel zur Briicke', which a soldier skilled in the trade had painted in large letters, quickly faded. The people called it 'Lotte's Hotel' and the name stuck. For the hotel was run by the fat and phlegmatic Jew, Zahler, who had a sickly wife, Deborah, and two little girls, Mina and Irene, but the real proprietress was Zahler's sister-in-law Lotte, a young and very pretty widow with a free tongue and a masculine energy.

On the top floor of the hotel were six clean and well furnished guest-rooms and on the ground floor two public rooms, one large and one small. The large one was patronized by the humbler clients, ordinary citizens, non-commissioned officers and artisans. The smaller one was separated from the larger by large frosted-glass doors on one of which was written EXTRA and on the other ZIMMER. That was the social centre for officials, officers and the richer townspeople. One drank and played cards, sang, danced, held serious conversations and closed business deals, ate well and
slept well in clean sheets at Lotte's. It often happened that the same group of begs, merchants and officials would sit from dusk until dawn and still go on until they collapsed from drink and lack of sleep or grew so tired over their cards that they could no longer distinguish them (they no longer played hidden away secretly in that dark stuffy cubby-hole at Ustamujić's inn). Those who had drunk too much or had lost all they had Lotte would see off the premises and then turn to welcome fresh and sober guests eager for drink and play. No one knew and no one ever asked when that woman rested, when she slept or ate and when she found time to dress and freshen herself up. For she was always there (or at least so it seemed) at everyone's beck and call, always amiable, always the same and always bold and discreet. Well built, plump, with ivory-white skin, black hair and smouldering eyes, she had a perfectly assured manner of dealing with guests, who would spend freely but were often aggressive and crude when overcome by drink. She would talk sweetly, boldly, wittily, sharply, flatteringly with all of them, smoothing them down. Her voice was hoarse and uneven but could at moments become a sort of deep and soothing cooing. She spoke incorrectly, for she never learnt Serbian well, in her own piquant and picturesque language in which the cases were never right and the genders uncertain, but which in tone and meaning was entirely in keeping with the local way of expression. Every client had her at his disposal to listen to all his troubles and desires in recompense for the money he spent and the time he wasted. But these two things, spending money and wasting time, were all he could be sure of; everyone thought there would be more to it, whereas in fact there was not. For two generations of the rich spendthrifts of the town Lotte was a glittering, expensive and cold 
lata morgana 
who played with their senses. Those rare individuals who had supposedly got something out of her, but who were quite unable to say what or how much, were the subject of local stories.

It was no simple matter to know how to deal with the rich and drunk townsmen in whom unsuspected and coarse desires were often roused. But Lotte, that untiring and cold woman of chilled passions, quick intelligence and masculine heart tamed every fury, silenced every demand of uncontrolled men by the inexplicable play of her perfect body, her great cunning and her no less great daring, and always succeeded in maintaining the necessary distance between herself and them, which only served to inflame their desires and increase her own value. She played with these uncontrolled men in their coarsest and most dangerous moments of drunkenness and
rage, like a torero with a bull, for she quickly got to know the people with whom she had to deal and easily found the key to their apparently complex demands and all the weak points of those cruel and sensual sentimentalists. She offered them everything, promised much and gave little, or rather nothing at all. For their desires were, of their very nature, such as never could be satisfied and in the end they had to content themselves with little. With most of her guests she behaved as if they were sick men who from time to time had passing crises and hallucinations. In fact it could be said that despite her trade, which of its nature was neither pleasant nor particularly chaste, she was an understanding woman of kind nature and compassionate heart who could help and console whoever had spent more than he should on drinks or had lost more than he should at cards. She sent them all mad, for they were naturally mad, deceived them for they wanted to be deceived and, finally, took from them only what they had already been determined to throw away and lose. In fact she earned very much, took good care of her money and in the first few years had already managed to accumulate a considerable fortune, but she also knew how to 'write off' a debt magnanimously and to forget a loss without a word. She gave to beggers and the sick and with much tact and care helped rich families who had fallen into destitution, orphans and widows from better houses, all those 'ashamed poor' who did not know how to beg and were embarrassed at accepting alms. All this she did with the same skill as she showed in running the hotel and controlling the drunken, lustful and aggressive guests, taking from them all that she could, giving them nothing and yet never refusing them finally or completely.

Men who knew the world and its history often thought that it was a pity that fate had given this woman so narrow and undistinguished a part to play. Had her fate not been what or where it was, who knows what this wise and humane woman, who did not think only of herself and who, predatory yet unselfish, beautiful and seductive but also chaste and cold, ran a small town hotel and emptied the pockets of petty Casanovas, could have been or could have given to the world. Perhaps she would have been one of those famous women of whom history tells and who have controlled the destinies of great families, of courts or states, always turning everything to good.

At that time, about 1885, when Lotte was at the height of her powers, there were rich men's sons who spent days and nights in the hotel, in that special room with doors of milky frosted glass.

In the early evening they would drowse there, beside the stove, forgetting in dreams or fatigue where they were or why they were sitting there or what they were waiting for. Profiting by this lull, Lotte would withdraw into a little room on the first floor intended for the potboys, which she had converted into her 'office' where she allowed no one to enter. That tiny room was heaped up with every kind of furniture, with photographs and objects of gold, silver and crystal. There too, hidden behind a curtain, was Lotte's green steel safe and her little desk which was quite invisible beneath a pile of papers, bills, receipts, accounts, Austrian newspapers, cuttings about the money market and lottery lists.

In that tiny overcrowded and stuffy room, whose only window, smaller than any other in the building, looked directly and at short range on to the smallest arch of the bridge, Lotte spent her spare moments and lived that second, hidden part of her life which belonged to her alone.

In it Lotte, in those hours of stolen freedom, read money market reports and studied prospectuses, wrote up accounts, answered letters from banks, made decisions, gave instructions, dealt with bank deposits and made fresh payments. To all those downstairs and to the world in general this was an unknown side of Lotte's work, the true and invisible part of her life. There she cast aside the smiling mask and her face grew hard and her glance sharp and sombre. From this room she corresponded with her very numerous relatives, the Apfelmaiers of Tarnovo, her married sisters and brothers, various nephews and nieces and all the hordes of Jewish poor from Eastern Galicia, now scattered throughout Galicia, Austria and Hungary. She controlled the destinities of a whole dozen Jewish families, entered into the minutest details of their lives, arranged their marrying and giving in marriage, sent healing to the sick, warned and admonished the workshy and spendthrift and praised the thrifty and industrious. She resolved their family quarrels, gave counsel in cases of misunderstanding and doubt, and incited all of them to a more understanding, better and more dignified way of life and at the same time made this more possible and easier for them. For with each of her letters she sent a money order for a sum sufficient to ensure that her counsels were listened to and her advice followed and that certain spiritual or bodily needs be satisfied or shortages avoided. In this raising of the standard of the whole family and the setting of each individual member on his feet, she found her sole real satisfaction and a reward for all the burdens and renunciations of her life. With each member of the Apfelmaier family who rose even a single step in the social
scale, Lotte felt that she too rose and in that found her reward for her hard work and the force to struggle onward.

Sometimes it happened that when she came up from the 
Extra-zimmer 
so exhausted or disgusted that she had not even the strength to write or to read letters and accounts she simply went to the little window to breathe the fresh air from the river. Then her gaze would fall on that strong and graceful arch of stone, which filled the entire view, and the swift waters beneath. At dusk or dawn, in sunshine, winter moonlight or the soft light of the stars, that arch was always the same. Its two sides swept upwards, met at the sharp apex and supported one another in perfect and unwavering balance. As the years rolled on that became her only and familiar view, the dumb witness to whom this Jewess with the two faces turned in the moments when she demanded rest and freshness and when in her trade and her family trials, which she always solved for herself, she came to a dead centre and a point where there was no way out.

But such restful moments never lasted long for it always happened that they were interrupted by some cry from the café below; or new clients demanding her presence or some drunkard, awakened and ready for renewed onslaughts, shouting for more drinks, for the lamps to be lighted, for the orchestra to come, and always calling for Lotte. Then she would leave her lair and, carefully locking the door with a special key, go down to welcome the guests, or by her smile and her special vocabulary to smooth down the drunkard like a newly awakened child and to help him to a chair where he could recommence his nightly session of drinking, conversation, song and spending.

Down below everything went wrong when she was not there. The guests squabbled among themselves. A beg from Crnče, young, pale and haggard, spilled every drink brought to him, retorted to everything said to him and insisted on picking quarrels with the staff or the guests. Save for a few short intervals, he had been drinking in the hotel for days past, and lusting after Lotte, but he had drunk so much and longed so greatly that it was clear that some deeper, much greater misery unknown even to himself was driving him on, something greater than his unrequited love for, and unreasonable jealousy of, the lovely Jewess from Tarnovo.