The Bridge on the Drina (51 page)

Next day the news spread that Vlado Marić, Glasičanin and a few other young men had fled to Serbia. All the other Serbs with their families, and all that they had, remained in that overheated valley as in a trap. Every day the atmosphere of danger and menace could be felt to be growing denser over the town. Then, in the last days of July, the storm burst over the frontier, a storm which would in time spread to the whole world and decide the fate of so many lands and cities, as well as that of the bridge on the Drina.

Only then began the real persecution of the Serbs and all those connected with them. The people were divided into the persecuted and those who persecuted them. That wild beast, which lives in man and does not dare to show itself until the barriers of law and custom have been removed, was now set free. The signal was given, the barriers were down. As has so often happened in the history of man, permission was tacitly granted for acts of violence and plunder, even for murder, if they were carried out in the name of higher interests.

according to established rules, and against a limited number of men of a particular type and belief. A man who saw clearly and with open eyes and was then living could see how this miracle took place and how the whole of a society could, in a single day, be transformed. In a few minutes the business quarter, based on centuries of tradition, was wiped out. It is true that there had always been concealed enmities and jealousies and religious intolerance, coarseness and cruelty, but there had also been courage and fellowship and a feeling for measure and order, which restrained all these instincts within the limits of the supportable and, in the end, calmed them down and submitted them to the general interest of life in common. Men who had been leaders in the commercial quarter for forty years vanished overnight as if they had all died suddenly, together with the habits, customs and institutions which they represented.

The day after the declaration of war on Serbia a 
schutzkorps 
squad began to patrol the town. This squad, hastily armed and intended to assist the authorities in their hunt for Serbs, was made up of gipsies, drunkards and other persons of ill repute, mainly those who for long had been at odds with society and the law. A certain Huso Kokošar, a gipsy without honour or definite occupation, who had lost his nose in early youth as a result of a shameful disease, led the dozen or so ne'er-do-wells armed with old-fashioned Werndl rifles with long bayonets, and lorded it over the market-place.

Faced with this threat, Pavle Ranković, as President of the Serbian Church and School Community, went with a number of other leading members to the sub-prefect Sabljak. Sabljak was a pale, puffy man, completely bald, born in Croatia, who had only recently been appointed to Višegrad. Now he was excited and he had not slept well; his eyelids were reddened and his lips dry and bloodless. He was wearing high boots and in the lapel of his huntsman's coat wore some badge in two colours: black and yellow. He received them standing and did not offer them seats. Pavle, yellow in the face, his eyes like two thin black slits, spoke in a hoarse unfamiliar voice:

'Sir, you see what is going on and what is being prepared, and you know that we, Serbs and citizens of Višegrad, have not wanted this.'

'I know nothing, sir,' the Prefect curtly interrupted him in a voice harsh with vexation, 'and I want to know nothing. We have other, more important, things to do now than listen to speeches. That is all I have to say to you!'

'Sir,' Pavle began again calmly as if trying by his own calm to moderate even this irritable and angry man, 'we have come to offer you our services and to assure you....'

'I have no need of your services and there is nothing for you to
assure me about. You have shown at Sarajevo what you can do....'

'Sir,' continued Pavle resolutely and with unchanged voice, 'we would have liked within the limits of the law ...'

'So! Now you remember the law! To what laws have you the effrontery to appeal... ?'

'The laws of the state. Sir, which apply to all.'

The Prefect suddenly became serious as if he had calmed down a little. Pavle at once took advantage of this moment of calm

'Sir, permit us to ask you whether we may be sure that our lives and property and those of our families will be respected, and if not, what we should do?'

The Prefect spread out his hands, palms upward, shrugged his shoulders, closed his eyes and convulsively shut his thin, pale lips.

Pavle knew only too well this characteristic gesture, pitiless, blind-deaf-dumb, which state officials adopt in important moments and saw at once that it was no use going on talking. The Prefect, after lowering his hands, looked up and said more gently:

'The military authorities will advise everyone what they must do.'

Now it was Pavle's turn to spread out his hands, close his eyes and shrug his shoulders for a moment, and then say in a deep, changed voice:

'Thank you. Sir.'

The representatives bowed stiffly and clumsily. Then they filed out like condemned men.

The market-place was filled with aimless movement and secret consultations.

In Alihodja's shop were sitting a number of prominent Turks, Nailbeg Turković, Osmanaga Sabanović and Suljaga Mezildjić. They were pale and worried, with that heavy, fixed expression which can always be seen on the faces of those who have something to lose when faced with unexpected events and important changes. The authorities had called on them to place themselves at the head of the 
schutzkorps. 
Now they had, as if by chance, met here to discuss without being overheard, what they ought to do. Some were for accepting, others for holding back. Alihodja, red in the face, excited, with the old light in his eyes, resolutely opposed any idea of participation in the 
schutzkorps. 
He addressed himself especially to Nailbeg who was for taking up arms since they, as leading citizens, should place themselves at the head of the Moslem volunteer detachments instead of a bunch of gipsies.

'I will never mix myself up in their affairs as long as I am alive. And you, if you had any sense, would not do so either. Can't you see
that these Vlachs are only making use of us and that, in the end, it will all come back on our own heads?'

With the same eloquence as he had once used in opposing Osman Effendi Karamanli on the 
kapia 
he showed them that there was nothing good 'for the Turkish ear' on either side and that every intervention on their part could only be harmful.

'For a long time ast no one has asked us about anything or paid the least heed to our opinions. The Schwabes entered Bosnia and neither Sultan nor Kaiser asked: "By your leave, begs and gentlemen". Then Serbia and Montenegro, until yesterday our serfs, rose in revolt and took away half the Turkish Empire and still no one ever thought about us. Now the Kaiser attacks Serbia and once again no one asks us anything, but only gives us rifles and trousers to make us Schwabe decoy ducks and tells us to hunt the Serbs lest they should tear their own trousers climbing Sargan. Can't you get that into your heads? Since no one has ever asked us about so many important things over so many years, this sudden favour is enough to make one burst one's ribs laughing. I tell you; there are big things at stake and it is best for him who does not get himself mixed up in them more than he must. Here on the frontier they have already come to grips and who knows how far it will spread? There must be someone behind this Serbia. It could not be otherwise. But you, up at Nezuke, have a mountain in front of your windows and can see no farther than its stones. Better give up what you have begun; don't go into the 
schutzkorps 
and don't persuade others to go. Better go on milking the dozen serfs you have left while they still bring you in something.'

All were silent, serious and motionless. Nailbeg too was silent. He was obviously offended, though he concealed it. Pale as a corpse, he was turning over some decision in his mind. Save for Nailbeg, Alihodja had undecided them and cooled their ardour. They smoked and silently watched the endless procession of military wagons and laden packhorses crossing the bridge. Then, one by one, they rose and made their farewells. Nailbeg was the last. To his sullen greeting, Alihodja once more looked him in the eyes and said almost sadly:

'I see that you have made up your mind to go. You too want to die, and are afraid lest the gipsies get in first. But remember that long ago old men said: "The time has not come to die but to let it be seen of what stuff a man is made". These are such times.'

The square between the 
hodja's 
shop and the bridge was crammed with carts, horses, soldiers of all kinds and reservists coming to report. From time to time the gendarmes would lead a group of bound
men across it; Serbs. The air was filled with dust. Everyone yelled at the top of his voice and moved about more quickly than the occasion demanded. Faces were flushed and running with sweat; curses could be heard in all languages. Eyes were shining with drink and from sleepless nights and that troubled anxiety which always reigns in the presence of danger and bloody events.

In the centre of the square, directly facing the bridge, Hungarian reservists in brand-new uniforms were hewing some beams. Hammers sounded and saws were busy cutting. Around them a group of children had gathered. From his shop window Alihodja watched two beams being set upright. Then a mustachioed Hungarian reservist scrambled up them and placed a third horizontally across the top. The crowd pressed around them as if 
halva 
were being given away, forming a living circle around the gallows. Most of them were soldiers, but there were also some Turkish village wastrels and gipsies from the town. When all was ready a way was made through the crowd and a table was brought and two chairs for the officer and his clerk. Then the 
schutzkorps 
brought first two peasants and then a townsman. The peasants were village serfs from the frontier villages of Pozderčić and Kamenica and the townsman a certain Vajo, a man from the Lika, who had long ago come to the town as a contractor and had married there. All three were bound, haggard and covered with dust. A drummer was standing by, waiting to give a roll on his drums. In the general flurry and commotion the noise of the drum sounded li distant thunder. Silence fell on that circle around the gallows. The officer, a Hungarian reserve lieutenant, read in a harsh voice the sentences of death in German; they were then translated by a sergeant. All three had been sentenced to death by a summary court, for witnesses had declared on oath that they had seen them giving light-signals by night towards the Serbian frontier. The hanging was to be carried out publicly on the square facing the bridge. The peasants were silent, blinking as if in perplexity. Vajo, the man from Lika, wiped the sweat from his face and in a soft sad voice swore that he was innocent and with frenzied eyes looked around him for someone to whom he could still say it.

Just at that moment when the sentence was about to be carried out there burst through the crowd of onlookers a soldier, small and reddish, with legs bowed like an X. It was Gustav, the one-time 
zahlkelner 
in Lotte's hotel and now a café-owner in the lower market-place. He was in a new uniform with a corporal's stripes. His face was flushed and his eyes more bloodshot than usual. Explanations began. The sergeant began to hustle him away but the bellicose café-owner held his ground.

'I have been an intelligence agent here for fifteen years, in the confidence of the highest military circles/ he shouted in German in a drunken voice. 'Only the year before last in Vienna I was promised that I could hang two Serbs with my own hands when the time came. You don't know with whom you have to deal. I have earned my right to ... and now you ...'

There were murmurs and whispers in the crowd. The sergeant stood in perplexity not knowing what to do. Gustav became even more aggressive and demanded that two of the condemned men be handed over to him so that he could hang them personally. Then the lieutenant, a thin dark man with the manner of a gentleman, as despairing as if he were himself one of the condemned men, without a drop of blood in his face, rose. Gustav, even though drunk, stood to attention but his thin red moustaches quivered and his eyes rolled to left and right. The officer came close to him and thrust his head into that flushed face as if he would spit on it.

'If you don't get out of here at once, I will give orders for you to be bound and taken to prison. Tomorrow you will report to the officer of the day. Do you understand? Now get out! March!'

The lieutenant had spoken in German with a Hungarian accent, quite softly, but so sharply and exasperatedly that the drunken café-owner at once thought better of it and was lost in the crowd, incessantly repeating his military greeting and muttering vague words of excuse.

Only then did the attention of the crowd return to the condemned men. The two peasants, fathers of families, behaved exactly alike. They blinked and frowned from the sun and the heat of the crowd around them as if that were all that was troubling them. But Vajo in a weak and tearful voice asserted his innocence, that his competitor was responsible for the charge, that he had never done any military service and never in his life known that one could make signals with lights. He knew a little German and desperatedly linked word with word, trying to find some convincing expression to halt this mad torrent which had swept him away the day before and which now threatened to sweep him off this earth, innocent though he was.