The Bridge on the Drina (22 page)

So in a few moments there took place what in any one of those moments would have seemed impossible and incredible. There was no one who would have considered that this deed was good or possible, yet everyone to some extent played his part in the fact that the 
hodja 
found himself on the bridge nailed by his right ear to a wooden beam which was on the 
kapia; 
and when everyone fled in all directions before the Schwabes who were coming down the slopes into the town, the 
hodja
remained in this strange but comic position, forced to kneel motionless since every movement, even the slightest, was exceedingly painful and threatened to tear off his ear, which seemed to him as heavy and as large as a mountain. He cried out, but there was no one to hear him or release him from his painful situation for everything living had hidden in the houses or scattered into the villages for fear, partly of the Schwabes who were coming and partly of the insurgents who were leaving. The town seemed dead and the bridge as empty as if death had swept it clean. There was neither living nor dead to defend it, only on the 
kapia 
the motionless Alihodja crouched down with his head stuck to the beam, groaning with pain but even in this position thinking up fresh proofs against Karamanli.

The Austrians approached slowly; from the farther bank their patrols had seen the two cannons in front of the caravanserai and they at once halted to await the arrival of their mountain guns. About midday they fired a few shells from the shelter of a little wood
at the deserted caravanserai. They damaged the already ruined 
han 
and destroyed those exceptionally fine window grilles, each cut from a single piece of soft stone. Only after they had got the range and overturned the two Turkish cannons and seen that they were abandoned and that no one replied did the Schwabes cease their fire and begin to approach the bridge and the town with every precaution. Some Magyar 
honveds 
approached the 
kapia 
slowly with their rifles at the ready. They halted in uncertainty before the huddled 
hodja 
who in fear of the shells, which had whistled and grumbled above his head, had for a moment forgotten the pain from his nailed ear. When he saw the hated soldiers with their rifles trained on him, he began to utter piteous and prolonged sobs, since that was a language that everyone understood. This prevented him from being shot. Some of them continued their slow advance step by step across the bridge while others remained by him looking at him more closely and unable to understand his position. Only when a hospital orderly arrived did they find a pair of pliers, carefully extracted the nail, one of those used for shoeing horses, and released Alihodja. So stiff and exhausted was he that he collapsed on the stone step, groaning and sobbing. The orderly dressed his ear with some sort of liquid which stung. Through his tears the 
hodja 
as if in a strange dream looked at the broad white band on the soldier's left arm and on it a large regular cross in red material. Only in fever could such repulsive and terrible sights be seen. This cross swam and danced before his eyes and filled his whole horizon like a nightmare. Then the soldier bound up his wound and fixed his turban over the bandage. His head thus bandaged, and as if broken in his loins, the 
hodja 
dragged himself to his feet and remained so for some moments leaning on the stone parapet of the bridge. With difficulty he collected himself and regained his calm.

Opposite him, on the far side of the 
kapia, 
beneath the Turkish inscription in the stone, a soldier had affixed a large white paper. Though his head was throbbing with pain the 
hodja 
could not restrain his curiosity and looked at that white placard. It was a proclamation by General Filipović, in Serbian and Turkish, addressed to the population of Bosnia and Herzegovina on the occasion of the entry of the Austrian army into Bosnia. Screwing up his right eye, Alihodja spelt out the Turkish text, but only those sentences printed in large letters:

'People of Bosnia and Herzegovina!

'The Army of the Emperor of Austria and King of Hungary has crossed the frontier of your country. It does not come as an enemy to take the land by force. It comes as a friend to put an end to the
disorders which for years past have disturbed not only Bosnia and Herzegovina but also the frontier districts of Austria-Hungary.

'The King-Emperor could no longer see how violence and disorder ruled in the neighbourhood of his dominions and how misery and misfortune knocked at the frontiers of his lands.

'He has drawn the attention of the European States to your position and at a Council of the Nations it has been unanimously decided that Austria-Hungary shall restore to you the peace and prosperity that you have so long lost.

'His Majesty the Sultan who has your good at heart has felt it necessary to confide you to the protection of his powerful friend the King-Emperor.

'The King-Emperor decrees that all sons of this land shall enjoy the same rights before the law and that the lives, faith and property of all shall be protected.

'People of Bosnia and Herzegovina! Put yourselves with confidence under the protection of the glorious standards of Austria-Hungary. Welcome our soldiers as friends, submit yourselves to the authorities and return to your occupations. The fruits of your toil will be protected.'

The 
hodja 
read haltingly, sentence by sentence. He did not understand every word, yet every word caused him pain, a special sort of pain completely distinct from those pains which he felt in his wounded ear, in his head and in his loins. Only now, from these words, these 'imperial words', was it at once clear to him that everything was ended for them, all that was his and theirs, ended in some strange fashion once and for all; eyes go on seeing, lips speaking, man goes on living but life, real life, exists no more. A foreign tsar had put his hand on them and a foreign faith ruled. That emerged clearly from those big words and obscure commands, and still more clearly from that leaden pain in his breast which was fiercer and harder to bear than any human pain that could be imagined. It was not thousands of fools like that Osman Karamanli who could do anything or change anything (thus the 
hodja 
continued to argue within himself). 'We shall all die', 'We must die'. What was the use of all that hullabaloo when, here and now, there had come for a man a time of disaster in which he could neither live nor die, but rotted like a stake in the earth and belonged to whomever you wished but not himself. That was the great misery which the Karamanlis of all sorts did not see and could not understand and which by their lack
of understanding they made even heavier and more shameful.

Deep in his thoughts Alihodja slowly left the bridge. He did not even notice that the Austrian red-cross man was accompanying him. His ear did not pain him as much as that leaden and bitter pain which had risen in his breast after reading 'the imperial words'. He walked slowly and it seemed to him that never again would he cross to the farther bank, that this bridge which was the pride of the town and ever since its creation had been so closely linked with it, on which he had grown up and beside which he had spent his life, was now suddenly broken in the middle, right there at the 
kapia; 
that this white paper of the proclamation had cut it in half like a silent explosion and that there was now a great abyss; that individual piers still stood to right and to left of this break but that there was no way across, for the bridge no longer linked the two banks and every man had to remain on that side where he happened to be at this moment.

Alihodja walked slowly, immersed in these feverish visions. He seemed like a seriously wounded man and his eyes continually filled with tears. He walked hesitantly as if he were a beggar who, ill, was crossing the bridge for the first time and entering a strange unknown town. Voices aroused him. Beside him walked some soldiers. Amongst them he saw that fat, good-natured, mocking face of the man with a red cross on his arm who had taken out the nail. Still smiling, the soldier pointed to his bandage and asked him something in an incomprehensible language. The 
hodja 
thought that he was offering to help him and at once stiffened and said sullenly:

'I can myself.... I need no one's help.'

And with a livelier and more determined step he made his way home.

X

The formal and official entry of the Austrian troops took place the following day. No one could remember such a silence as then fell on the town. The shops did not even open. The doors and windows of the houses remained shuttered though it was a warm sunny day towards the end of August. The streets were empty, the courtyards and gardens as if dead. In the Turkish houses depression and confusion reigned, in the Christian houses caution and distrust. But everywhere and for everyone there was fear. The entering Austrians feared an ambush. The Turks feared the Austrians. The Serbs feared both Austrians and Turks. The Jews feared everything and everyone since, especially in times of war, everyone was stronger than they. The rumbling of the previous day's guns was in everyone's ears. But even if men were now only listening to their own fear, no one living that day would have dared to poke his nose out of doors. But man has other masters. The Austrian detachment which had entered the town the day before had routed out the police chief and gendarmes. The officer in command of the detachment had returned his sword to the police chief and ordered him to continue his duties and maintain order in the town. He told him that at one hour before noon next day the commandant, a colonel, would arrive and that the leading men of the town, that was to say the representatives of the three faiths, were to be there to meet him when he entered the town. Grey and resigned, the police chief at once summoned Mula Ibrahim, Husseinaga the schoolmaster, Pop Nikola, and the rabbi David Levi and informed them that as 'recognized notables' they must await the Austrian commandant next day at noon on the 
kapia, 
must welcome him in the name of the citizens and accompany him to the market-place.

Long before the appointed time the four 'recognized notables' met on the deserted square and walked with slow steps to the 
kapia. 
Already the assistant chief of police, Salko Hedo, with the aid of a gendarme, had spread out a long Turkish carpet in bright colours to
cover the steps and the middle of the stone seat on which the Austrian commandant was to sit. They stood there together for some time, solemn and silent, then seeing that there was no trace of the commandant along the white road from Okolište, they looked at one another and as if by common consent sat down on the uncovered part of the stone bench. Pop Nikola drew out a huge leather tobacco pouch and offered it to the others.

So they sat on the 
kapia 
as they had once done when they were young and carefree and like the rest of the young people wasted their time there. Only now they were all advanced in years. Pop Nikola and Mula Ibrahim were old, and the schoolmaster and the rabbi in the prime of life. They were all in their best clothes, filled with anxiety both for themselves and for their flocks. They looked at one another closely and long in the fierce summer sun, and each seemed to the others grown old for his years and worn out. Each of them remembered the others as they had been in youth or childhood, when they had grown up on this bridge, each in his own generation, green wood of which no one could tell what would be.

They smoked and talked of one thing while turning another over in their minds, glancing every moment towards Okolište whence the commandant upon whom everything depended was to come and who could bring them, their people and the whole town, either good or evil, either peace or fresh dangers.

Pop Nikola was undoubtedly the most calm and collected of the four, or at least seemed so. He had passed his seventieth year but was still fresh and strong. Son of the celebrated Pop Mihailo whom the Turks had beheaded on this very spot, Pop Nikola had passed a stormy youth. He had several times fled into Serbia to take refuge there from the hatred and revenge of certain Turks. His indomitable nature and his conduct had often given occasion both for hatred and revenge. But when the troublous years had passed, Pop Mihailo's son had settled down in his old parish, married, and calmed down. Those times were long ago and now forgotten. ('My character has changed long ago and our Turks have become peaceable,' Pop Nikola would say in jest.) For fifty years now Pop Nikola had administered his widespread, scattered and difficult frontier parish calmly and wisely, without other major upheavals and misfortunes than those which life brings normally in its train, with the devotion of a slave and the dignity of a prince, always just and equitable with Turks, people and leaders.

Neither before him nor after him in any class of men or in any faith was there a man who enjoyed such general respect and such a reputation amongst all the townspeople without distinction of faith.
sex or years, as this priest whom everyone called 'grandad'. He represented for the whole town the Serbian church and all that the people called or regarded as Christianity. The people looked on him as the perfect type of priest and leader so far as this town in these conditions could imagine one.