The Bridge on the Drina (49 page)

So 
did summer begin.

But none the less at the very beginning of that year of blessing there fell a tiny shadow of fear and sorrow. In the early spring, at Uvac, a small place on the former Turco-Austrian frontier and the new Serbo-Austrian border, a typhus epidemic broke out. As the place was on the frontier and two cases had occurred in the gendarmerie station, the Višegrad military doctor, Dr Balas, went there with one male nurse and the necessary medicines. The doctor skilfully and resolutely did all that was necessary to isolate the sick, and himself undertook their treatment. Of fifteen who had been taken ill only two died and the epidemic was limited to the village of Uvac and stamped out at its source. The last man to take ill was Dr Balas himself. The inexplicable manner in which he had caught the disease, the shortness of his illness, the unexpected complications and sudden death, all bore the stamp of genuine tragedy.

Because of the danger of infection the young doctor had to be buried at Uvac. Madame Bauer with her husband and a few other officers attended the funeral. She gave some money for a tombstone of roughly hewn granite to be erected over the doctor's grave. Immediately afterwards she left both the town and her husband and it was rumoured that she had gone to some sanitorium near Vienna. This was the story current among the girls in the town; the older people, as soon as the danger had passed and the measures against the epidemic ceased, forgot both the doctor and the colonel's lady. Inexperienced and uneducated, the town girls did not know exactly what the word sanatorium meant, but they had known very well what it meant when two persons walked about the paths and foothills as the doctor and the colonel's wife had done until lately. Pronouncing that strange word in their confidential dis-

cussions about the unhappy pair, they loved to imagine that sanatorium as some sort of mysterious, distant and melancholy place in which beautiful and sinful women expiated their forbidden loves.

That exceptionally lovely and fruitful summer grew and matured over the fields and summits around the town. In the evening the windows of the officers' mess, over the river and by the bridge, were lighted and wide open as in the previous year, only the sound of the piano and the violin no longer came from them. Colonel Bauer sat at his table with a few of his senior officers, good-humoured, smiling and sweating from the effects of the red wine and the heat of the summer.

The young men sat on the 
kapia 
on warm nights and sang. It was nearly the end of June and the students were shortly expected to arrive, as they did every year. On such nights on the 
kapia 
it seemed as if time had stopped, while life flowed on endless, rich and easy and one could not foresee how long it would continue thus.

At that time of the night the main streets were illuminated, for the town had had electric light since spring that year. About a year earlier an electrically driven sawmill had been built on the river bank about a mile from the town and beside it a factory for extracting turpentine from pine refuse; it also produced resin. This factory had made an agreement with the municipality to light the town streets from its private power station. So the green lamp-standards with their petroleum lights disappeared, and with them tall Ferhat who used to clean and light them. The main street which stretched the whole length of the town, from the bridge to the new quarter, was lit by powerful lamps of white milky glass, while the side-streets which branched off to right and left and meandered around Bikavac or climbed upwards to Mejdan and Okolište were lighted by ordinary bulbs. Between these lines of similar lights stretched long irregular patches of darkness. These were courtyards or large gardens on the slopes.

In one of these dark gardens Zorka the schoolmistress was sitting with Nikola Glasičanin.

The dissension which had arisen between these two last year, when Stiković had appeared at the time of the vacation, had lasted for long, right up to the beginning of the new year. Then, as every winter, preparations for the Festival of St Sava had been begun in the Srpski Dom. A concert and a play were being prepared. Both Zorka and Glasičanin took part and returning home after the rehearsals they had spoken together for the first time since the previous summer. At first their talks had been short, reserved
and distant. But they did not stop seeing one another, for young people prefer even the most bitter and hopeless of lovers' quarrels to the boredom and loneliness of a life without the play and thoughts of love. Somewhere in the course of their endless arguments they had made peace, they themselves knew not how or when. Now, on these warm summer nights, they met regularly. From time to time the figure of the absent Stiković rose between them and the whole pointless argument flamed up again, but it did not drive them apart, while every reconciliation drew them closer and closer together.

Now they sat in the warm darkness on the stump of an old walnut tree and wrapped in their own thoughts looked down at the big and little lights of the town along the river which roared monotonously. Glasičanin, who had been talking for a long time, was now silent for a moment. Zorka, who had been silent all evening, remained silent as only women know how when they are disentangling their love troubles in their minds, those troubles which are more intimate and more important to them than anything else in life.

About this time last year, when Stiković had first appeared on the scene, Zorka had thought that an endless paradise of happiness had opened before her, in which perfect affinity of feelings and unity of thought and desires had the sweetness of a kiss and the duration of a human existence. But that illusion had not lasted long. However inexperienced and enraptured she may have been, she could not fail to notice that this man quickly took fire but equally quickly burnt out, according to his own ideas, without any consideration for her and without any connection with those things which she considered greater and more important than either herself or him. He had left her almost without saying goodbye. She had been left a prey to indecision from which she suffered as from a hidden wound. The letter which had come from him had been perfectly phrased, a perfect example of literary skill, but as measured as a counsel's opinion and as clear and as transparent as an empty glass jar. In it he had spoken of his love, but as if the pair of them had already been a century in their graves, like persons famous and long dead. To her warm and vivid reply came his card: 'In the tasks and anxieties which harass and annoy me I think of you as of a peaceful Višegrad night, filled with the sound of the river and the perfume of unseen grasses.' And that was all. In vain she tried to remember when she had heard the sound of the river and sensed the perfume of those unseen grasses. They existed only on his postcard. Certainly she did not remember them, even

as he, it seemed, did not remember anything that had taken place between them. Her mind darkened with the thought that she had been deceived and that he had deceived her, and then consoled herself with something that she herself did not understand and which was less likely than a miracle. 'It is not possible to understand him,' she thought to herself, 'he is strange and cold, selfish, moody and capricious, but perhaps all exceptional men are like that.' In any event what she felt was more like suffering than love. Her inner flinching and the break that she felt in the depths of her being made it seem to her that the whole burden of that love which he had provoked lay upon her alone, and that he was lost somewhere far in the fog and the distance which she dared not call by its real name. For a woman in love, even when she has lost all her illusions, cherishes her love like a child she has not been destined to bear. She hardened her heart and did not reply to his card. But after a silence of two months another card arrived. It was written from some high mountain in the Alps: 'At a height of 2,000 metres, surrounded by people of various tongues and nationalities, I look at the boundless horizon and think of you and last summer.' Even for her years and her little experience that was enough. Had he written: 'I did not love you, I do not love you now, nor will I ever be able to love you,' it could have been no clearer or more painful to her. For when all was said and done, it was love that was in question, not far-off memories or how many metres above sea-level a man was writing, nor what people were around him nor what languages they spoke. And there was nothing about love!

A poor girl and an orphan, Zorka had grown up in Višegrad with some relations. After she had finished her studies at the Teachers' Training College at Sarajevo, she had been posted to Višegrad and had returned to the house of the well-to-do but simple folk to whom she felt in no way attached.

Zorka had grown thin and pale and had withdrawn into herself, but she had confided in no one, and did not reply to his Christmas message of greetings, which was equally short, cold and faultless in style. She wanted to come to terms with her own grief and shame without anyone's help or consolation but, weak, discouraged, young, ignorant and inexperienced, she became more and more involved in that inextricable net of real events and great desires, of her own thoughts and his incomprehensible and inhuman behaviour. Had she been able to ask anyone or to take anyone's advice, it would certainly have been easier for her but shame held her back. Even so it often seemed to her that the whole town
knew about her disappointment and that mocking and malicious glances seemed to burn into her as she walked through the marketplace. Neither men nor books gave her any explanation; and she herself did not know how to explain anything. If he really did not love her why had there been all that comedy of passionate words and vows during the vacation last year? What had been the reason for that episode on the school bench, which could only be justified and defended by love, without which it fell into the mud of unbearable humiliation? Was it possible that there were men who respected themselves and others so little that they would enter lightheartedly into such a game? What drove them on if not love? What did his burning glances, his warm and halting breath, his passionate kisses mean? What could they mean, if not love? But it was not love! She saw that now, better and more clearly than she would have liked. But she could not resign herself truly and lastingly to such a thought (who has ever been able to resign themselves completely to it?). The natural conclusion of all these internal conflicts was the thought of death which always lurks on the frontiers of every dream of happiness. To die, thought Zorka, to slip from the 
kapia 
into the river as if by chance, without letters or farewells, without admissions or humiliations. 'To die' she thought to herself in the last moments before going to sleep and on recovering consciousness in the morning, in the midst of the most lively conversations and beneath the mask of every smile. Everything in her said and repeated those words—'to die! to die!' — but one does not die, but lives with that insupportable thought within one.

Comfort came from the source she least of all expected. Some time about the Christmas vacation her hidden torment reached its height. Such thoughts and such unanswered questions destroy one even more than an illness. Everyone noticed changes for the worse in her and worried about her, her relatives, her headmaster, a merry man with many children, and her friends, advising her to see a doctor.

Good luck had it that just at this time were the rehearsals for the St Sava festivities and that, after so many months, she again talked with Glasičanin. Up till then he had avoided every meeting or conversation with her. But that goodwill that usually reigns at these naive but sincere dramatic and musical shows in small places, and then the clear cold nights as they returned home, saw to it that these two young estranged persons should draw closer to one another. Her need to lessen her torment drove her on and his love, deep and sincere, drove him.

Their first words were naturally cold, defiant, double-edged, and their conversations long explanations without issue. But even those brought solace to the girl. For the first time she could talk with a living being about her inner, shameful wretchedness without having to confess its most shameful and painful details. Glasičanin. spoke to her of it long and animatedly but with warmth and consideration, saving her pride. He did not express himself more harshly about Stiković than was inevitable. His explanation was such as we have already heard that night on the 
kapia. 
It was short, sure and unsparing. Stiković was a born egoist and a monster, a man who could love no one and who as long as he lived, himself tormented and unsatisfied, would torture all those whom he deceived and who were near to him. Glasičanin did not speak much of his own love, but it was evident in every word, every glance and every movement. The girl listened to him, remaining silent for the most part. After every such conversation she felt more serene, more at peace with herself. For the first time after so many months she had moments of respite from her internal storms and for the first time succeeded in looking at herself as other than an unworthy being. For the young man's words, filled with love and respect, showed her that she was not irretrievably lost and that her despair was only an illusion even as her dream of love the previous summer had been only an illusion. They had taken her out of that gloomy world in which she had already begun to lose herself and sent her back to living human reality, where there was healing and aid for everyone, or nearly everyone.

Their talks continued even after the St Sava celebrations. The winter passed and after it the spring. They saw one another almost every day. In time the girl came to herself, grew stronger and healthier, and was transformed, quickly and naturally, as only youth can be. So too passed that fruitful and uneasy summer. People were already accustomed to regard Zorka and Glasičanin as a couple who were 'walking out'.