The Bridge on the Drina (52 page)

'Herr Oberleutnant, Herr Oberleutnant, um Gottes willen.... Ich, unschuldiger Mensch . . . viele Kinder. . . . Unschuldig! Luge! Allés Lue! . . .' (Lieutenant, in God's name. ... I am innocent . . . many children . . . innocent! Lies!... All lies!). Vajo chose his words as if searching for those which were right and could bring salvation.

The soldiers had already approached the first peasant. He quickly took off his cap, turned towards Mejdan where the church was and
rapidly crossed himself twice. With a glance, the officer ordered them to finish with Vajo first. Then the desperate man from Lika, seeing it was now his turn, raised his hands to heaven imploringly and shouted at the top of his voice:

'Nein! Nein! Nicht, um Gottes willen! Herr Oberleutnant, Sie wis-sen . . . allés ist Luge.... Gott!... Ailes Luge!' But the soldiers had already seized him by his legs and waist and lifted him on to the trestles under the rope.

Breathlessly the crowd followed all that happened as if it were some sort of game between the unlucky contractor and the lieutenant, burning with curiosity to know who would win and who lose.

Alihodja, who had up till then only heard meaningless voices and had no idea of what was happening in the centre of that circle of densely packed onlookers, suddenly saw the panic-stricken face of Vajo above their heads and at once leapt up to shut his shop though there was a specific order of the military authorities that all places of business must remain open.

Fresh troops kept arriving in the town and after them munitions, food and equipment, not only by the overcrowded railway line from Sarajevo but also by the old carriage road through Rogatica. Horses and carriages crossed the bridge day and night and the first thing to meet their eyes was the three hanged men on the square. As the head of the column usually became wedged in the overcrowded streets, this meant that the bulk of the column had to halt there on the bridge or in the square beside the gallows until those in front had extricated themselves. Covered with dust, red-faced and hoarse from furious shouting, the sergeants passed on horseback between the carts and laden packhorses, making desperate signals with their hands and swearing in all the languages of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy and by all the sacred things of all recognized confessions.

On the fourth or fifth day, early in the morning, when the bridge was again crammed with supply vehicles which crawled slowly towards the crowded market-place, a sharp and unusual whistling was heard over the town and in the centre of the bridge, not far from the 
kapia 
itself, a shell burst on the stone parapet. Fragments of stone and iron struck horses and men. There was a rush of men, a rearing of horses and a general flight. Some fled forward into the marketplace, others back along the road whence they had come. Immediately afterwards three more shells fell, two in the water and one more on the bridge among the press of men and horses. In a twinkling of an eye the bridge was deserted; in the emptiness so created could be seen, like black spots, dead horses and men. The
Austrian field artillery from the Butkovo Rocks tried to get the range of that Serbian mountain battery which was spraying the scattered supply columns on both sides of the bridge with shrapnel.

From that day on, the mountain battery from Panos continually pounded the bridge and the nearby barracks. A few days later, again early in the morning, a new sound was heard from the east, from somewhere on Goleš. This sound was more distant but deeper, and incendiary shells fell even more frequently over the town. These were howitzers, two in all. The first shots fell in the Drina, then on the open space before the bridge where they damaged the houses around, Lotte's hotel and the officers' mess, and then regular salvos began to centre on the bridge and the barracks. Within an hour the barracks was on fire. The mountain battery from Panos sprinkled with shrapnel the soldiers trying to put out the fire. Finally, they left the barracks to its fate. In the heat of the day it burned as if made of wood, and shells fell from time to time into the burning mass and destroyed the interior of the building. So for the second time the Stone Han was destroyed and became once again a pile of stones.

After that the two howitzers from Goleš continually and regularly aimed at the bridge and especially the central pier. The shells fell sometimes in the river, right and left of the bridge, sometimes smashed to pieces against the massive stone piers and sometimes hit the bridge itself, but none of them hit the iron manhole over the opening which led into the interior of the central pier which held the explosive charge for mining the bridge.

In all that ten-days-long bombardment no major damage was done to the bridge. The shells struck against the smooth piers and rounded arches, ricocheted and exploded in the air without leaving other marks on the stone than light, white, scarcely perceptible scratches. The fragments of shrapnel bounced off the smooth firm stone like hail. Only those shells which actually hit the roadway left little holes in the gravel but these could hardly be seen save when one was on the bridge itself. Thus in all this fresh storm which had burst over the town, overturning and tearing up by the roots its ancient customs, sweeping away living men and inanimate things, the bridge remained white, solid and invulnerable as it had always been.

XXIII

Because of the continual bombardment all movement across the bridge ceased by day; civilians crossed freely and even individual soldiers scurried across, but as soon as a slightly larger group began to move they were sprayed by shrapnel from Panos. After a few days a certain regularity was established. The people took note of when the fire was strongest, when less and when it ceased altogether, and finished their more urgent tasks accordingly, so far as the Austrian patrols would let them.

The mountain battery from Panos fired only by day, but the howitzers from behind Goleš fired at night also and tried to hinder troop movements and the passage of supplies on both sides of the bridge.

Those citizens whose houses were in the centre of the town, near the bridge and the road, moved with their families to Mejdan or other sheltered and distant quarters, to stay with relatives or friends and take refuge from the bombardment. Their flight, with their children and their most necessary household goods, recalled those terrible nights when the 'great flood' came upon the town. Only this time men of different faiths were not mingled together or bound by the feeling of solidarity and common misfortune, and did not sit together to find help and consolation in talk as at those times. The Turks went to the Turkish houses and the Serbs, as if plague-stricken, only to Serbian homes. But even though thus divided and separated, they lived more or less similarly. Crushed into other people's houses, not knowing what to do, with time hanging on their hands and filled with anxious and uneasy thoughts, idle and empty-headed like refugees, in fear of their lives and in uncertainty about their property, they were tormented by differing hopes and fears which, naturally, they concealed.

As in earlier times during the 'great floods' the older people both among the Turks and the Serbs tried to cheer up those with them by jokes and stories, by an affected calm and an artificial serenity. But it seemed that in this sort of misfortune the old tricks
and jokes no longer served, the old stories palled and the witticisms lost flavour and meaning, and it was a slow and painful process to make new ones.

At night they crowded together to sleep, though in fact no one was able to close an eye. They spoke in whispers, although they themselves did not know why they did so when every moment there was above their heads the thunder of the guns, now Serbian, now Austrian. They were filled with fear lest they should be 'making signals to the enemy' although no one knew how such signals could be made nor what they in fact meant. But their fear was such that no one even dared to strike a match. When the men wanted to smoke they shut themselves up in suffocating little rooms without windows, or covered their heads with counterpanes, and so smoked. The moist heat strangled and throttled them. Everyone was bathed in sweat, but all doors were fastened and all windows closed and shuttered. The town seemed like some wretch who covers his eyes with his hands and waits for blows from which he cannot defend himself. All the houses seemed like houses of mourning. For whoever wished to remain alive had to behave as though he were dead; nor did that always help.

In the Moslem houses there was a little more life. Much of the old warlike instincts remained but they had been awakened in an evil hour, embarrassed and pointless in face of that duel going on over their heads in which the artillery of the two sides, both Christian, were taking part. But there too were great and concealed anxieties; there too were misfortunes for which there seemed no solution.

Alihodja's house under the fortress had been turned into a Moslem religious school. To the crowd of his own children had been added the nine children of Mujaga Mutapdžić; only three of these were grown up and all the rest small and weak ranged one after the other differing by an ear. In order not to have to watch them or to call them at every moment into the courtyard, they had been shut up with Alihodja's children in a large room and there their mothers and elder sisters dealt with them amid a continual flurry and fusillade of cries.

This Mujaga Mutapdžić, known as the 'man from Uzice', was a recent comer to the town (we shall see a little later why and how). He was a tall man in his fifties, quite grey, with a great hooked nose and heavily lined face; his movements were abrupt and military. He seemed older than Alihodja although he was in fact ten years younger. He sat in the house with Alihodja, smoked incessantly, spoke little and seldom and was wrapped up in his
own thoughts whose burden was expressed in his face and his every movement. He could not remain long in any one place. Every so often he would rise and go outside the house and from the garden watch the hills around the town, on both sides of the river. He stood thus with head raised, watching carefully as if for signs of bad weather. Alihodja, who never allowed him to remain alone, tried to keep him in conversation and followed him.

In the garden, which was on a steep slope but was large and beautiful, the peace and fecundity of the summer days reigned. The onions had already been cut and spread out to dry; the sunflowers were in full bloom and around their black and heavy centres the bees hummed. At the edges the small flowerets had already gone to seed. From that elevated place one could see the whole town spread out below on the sandy spit of land between the two rivers, Drina and Rzav, and the garland of mountains around, of unequal height and varied shapes. On the level space around the town and on the steep foothills scraps and belts of ripe barley alternated with areas of still green maize. The houses shone white and the forests that covered the mountains seemed black. The measured cannon fire from the two sides seemed like salutes, formal and harmless, so great was the extent of the earth and the sky above it in the serenity of the summer day which had only just begun.

The sight loosened the tongue even of the care-filled Mujaga. He thanked Alihodja for his kind words and told him the story of his own life, not that the 
hodja 
did not already know it, but Mujaga felt that here in the sunlight he could lessen the tension that gripped and strangled him. He felt that his fate was being decided here and now on this summer's day by every roar of the guns from one side or the other.

He had been not quite five years old when the Turks had had to leave the Serbian towns. The Osmanlis had left for Turkey but his father, Sulaga Mutapdžić, still a young man, but already respected as one of the leading Turks of Uzice, had decided to cross into Bosnia whence his family had come in olden times. He had piled the children into baskets and with all the money which in such circumstances he had been able to get for his house and lands he had left Uzice forever. With a few hundred other Uzice refugees he had crossed into Bosnia where there was still Turkish rule, and settled with his family in Višegrad where a branch of the family had once lived. There he passed ten years and had just begun to consolidate his position in the market when the Austrian occupation had taken place. A harsh and uncompromising
man, he had thought it not worth his while to fly from one Christian rule only to live under another one. So, a year after the arrival of the Austrians, he had left Bosnia with his whole family, together with a few other families who had not wished to pass their lives 'within the sound of the bell', and settled in Nova Varoš in the Sanjak. Mujaga had then been a young man of little over fifteen. There Suljaga had gone on with his trading and there the rest of the children had been born. But he was never able to forget all he had lost in Uzice, nor could he get on with the new men and different manner of life in the Sanjak. That was the reason for his early death. His daughters, all pretty and of good reputation, had married well. His sons took over and extended the small inheritance left them by their father. But just when they had married and had begun to take deeper root in their new country came the Balkan Wars of 1912. Mujaga had taken part in the resistance put up by the Turkish army against the Serbs and Montenegrins. The resistance was short but it was neither weak nor unsuccessful in itself, but none the less, as if by some charm, his fate, like that of the war itself and of many thousands of men, was not decided there but somewhere far away, independent of any resistance, strong or weak. The Turkish army evacuated the Sanjak. Not willing to await an adversary from whom he had already fled as a child from Uzice and whom he had now resisted without success, and having nowhere else to go, Mujaga decided to return to Bosnia under that same rule from which his father had fled. So now, for the third time a refugee, he had come with his whole family to the town in which he had passed his childhood.