The Bridge on the Drina (24 page)

At that moment Pop Nikola began to speak in a calm deep voice. The colonel looked up and fixed his gaze on the face of the big man in the black cloak. That broad serene mask of a biblical patriarch held his attention for a moment. It may be that he did not understand, or that he pretended not to listen to, what the old man was saying, but that face could not go unnoticed. Pop Nikola spoke fluently and naturally, addressing himself more to the young officer who was to translate his words than to the colonel himself. In the name of all the faiths here present, he assured the colonel that they, and their people, were willing to submit themselves to the coming authorities and would do all that was in their power to maintain peace and order as the new authorities demanded. They asked the army to protect them and their families and make a peaceful life and honest toil possible for them.

Pop Nikola spoke shortly and ended abruptly. The nervous colonel did not have any excuse to lose patience. But all the same he did not wait for the end of the young officer's translation. Brandishing his riding-crop, he interrupted him in a harsh and uneven voice:

'Good, good! All those who behave themselves will be protected. Peace and order must be maintained everywhere. It must be, whether they like it or not.'

Then, shaking his head, he moved onward without a glance or a greeting. The 'notables' moved aside. The colonel passed them, followed by the officers and the orderlies with the horses. None of them
paid the least attention to the 'notables' who remained alone on the 
kapia.

All of them were disillusioned. For the day before, and all through the previous night, in which not one of them had slept much, each had asked himself a hundred times what that moment would be like when they had to welcome the commandant of the Imperial Army on the 
kapia. 
They had imagined him in every sort of way, each according to his nature and intelligence, and had been ready for the worst. Some of them had already seen themselves carried away immediately to exile in faraway Austria, never again to see their homes or their town. Others remembered the stories about Hairuddin who at one time used to cut off heads on this very 
kapia. 
They had imagined in every possible way, save that in which it had actually happened, the meeting with that small but curt and bad-tempered officer to whom war was life, who did not think of himself or pay any heed to others, but saw all men and all lands only as a subject or an occasion for war and conflict, and who behaved as if he were waging war on his own account and in his own name.

So they stood, looking at one another in uncertainty. Each of their looks seemed to say dumbly: 'We have got out of this alive. Have we really gone through the worst? What is still in store for us and what must be done?'

The police chief and Pop Nikola were the first to come to themselves. They came to the conclusion that the 'notables' had done their duty and that nothing more was left for them to do but to go home and tell the people not to be frightened and run away, but to take good care what they did. The others, without blood in their faces or thoughts in their heads, accepted this conclusion as they would have accepted any other, since they themselves were in no state to come to any conclusion.

The police chief, whom nothing could ruffle, went about his duties. The gendarme rolled up the long multicoloured carpet which had not been fated to receive the visit of the commandant, with Salko Hedo standing beside him as cold and unfeeling as Fate. Meanwhile the 'notables' dispersed each in his own way and each in his own direction. The rabbi hurried off with tiny steps in order to get home as soon as possible and feel again the warmth and protection of the family circle in which his mother and his wife lived. The schoolmaster left more slowly, deep in thought. Now that everything had passed so unexpectedly well and easily, though harshly and unpleasantly enough, it seemed to him quite clear that there had never been any real reason for panic and it seemed to him that he had never in fact been afraid of anyone. He thought only what importance this event should have in his chronicle and how much space should be devoted to it. A score of lines should be enough. Perhaps even fifteen, or maybe less. The nearer he got to his house the more he reduced the number. With every line spared it seemed to him that he saw all around him diminished in importance while he, the schoolmaster, became greater and more important in his own eyes.

Mula Ibrahim and Pop Nikola walked together as far as the slope leading to Mejdan. They both remained silent, astonished and discouraged at the appearance and bearing of the Imperial colonel. Both were hastening to get home as soon as possible and foregather with their families. At the point where their paths diverged, they stood and looked at one another for a moment in silence. Mula Ibrahim rolled his eyes and moved his lips as if continually chewing over some word that he was unable to utter. Pop Nikola, who had once more recovered his smile of golden sparks which encouraged both himself and the 
hodja, 
uttered his own and the 
hodja's 
thought:

'A bloody business, this army, Mula Ibrahim!'

'You are right, a b-b-b-bloody business,' stuttered Mula Ibrahim raising his arms and saying farewell with a movement of his head.

Pop Nikola went back to his house by the church, slowly and heavily. His wife who was waiting for him asked no questions. She at once took off his boots, took his cloak and removed the hood from the thick sweaty mass of red and grey hair. He sat down on a low divan. On its wooden arm a glass of water and a lump of sugar were ready waiting. After refreshing himself and lighting a cigar he closed his eyes wearily. But in his inmost thoughts still flashed the image of that colonel, like a flash of lightning that dazzles a man and fills his whole field of vision so that nothing else may be seen and yet it is impossible to look away from it. The priest puffed his smoke far away from him with a sigh and then spoke quietly as if to himself:

'A strange sort of bastard, on my grandmother's soul!'

From the town could be heard a drum and then a bugle of the 
jaeger 
detachment, gay and penetrating, a new and unusual melody.

XI

Thus the great change in the life of the town beside the bridge took place without sacrifices other than the martyrdom of Alihodja. After a few days life went on again as before and seemed essentially unchanged. Even Alihodja himself plucked up his courage and opened his shop near the bridge like all the other traders, save that now he wore his turban slightly tipped to the right so that the scar on his wounded ear could not be seen. That 'leaden weight' which he had felt in his chest after seeing the red cross on the arm of the Austrian orderly and reading the 'Imperial words' had not actually vanished, but it had become quite small like the bead of a rosary, so that it was possible to live with it. Nor was he the only one who felt such a weight.

So began the new era under the occupation which the people, unable to prevent, considered in their hearts to be temporary. What did not pass across the bridge in those first few years after the occupation! Yellow military vehicles rumbled across it in long convoys bringing food, clothing and furniture, instruments and fittings hitherto unheard of.

At first only the army was to be seen. Soldiers sprang up, like water from the earth, behind every corner and every bush. The market-place was full of them, but they were also in every part of the town. Every minute of the day some frightened woman would scream, having unexpectedly come across a soldier in her courtyard or in the plum-orchard behind her house, in dark blue uniforms, tanned by two months of marching and fighting, glad that they were alive and eager for rest and enjoyment, they sauntered through the town and the country around. Few of the citizens went to the 
kapia 
for now it was always full of soldiers. They would sit there, singing in various languages and buying fruit in their blue leather-peaked caps with a yellow metal cockade on which was cut the imperial initials FJI.

But when autumn came the soldiers began to move away. Slowly and imperceptibly there seemed fewer and fewer of them. There
remained only the gendarme detachments. These requisitioned houses and prepared for a long stay. At the same time officials began to arrive, civil servants with their families and, after them, artisans and craftsmen for all those trades which up till then had not existed in the town. Among them were Czechs, Poles, Croats, Hungarians and Austrians.

At first it seemed that they had come by chance, as if driven by the wind, and as if they were coming for a short stay to live more or less the same life as had always been lived here, as though the civil authorities were to prolong for a short time the occupation begun by the army. But with every month that passed the number of newcomers increased. However, what most astonished the people of the town and filled them with wonder and distrust was not so much their numbers as their immense and incomprehensible plans, their untiring industry and the perseverance with which they proceeded to the realization of those plans. The newcomers were never at peace; and they allowed no one else to live in peace. It seemed that they were resolved with their impalpable yet ever more noticeable web of laws, regulations and orders to embrace all forms of life, men, beasts and things, and to change and alter everything, both the outward appearance of the town and the customs and habits of men from the cradle to the grave. All this they did quietly without many words, without force or provocation, so that a man had nothing to protest about. If they encountered resistance or lack of understanding, they at once stopped, discussed the matter somewhere out of sight and then changed only the manner and direction of their work, still carrying out whatever was in their minds. Every task that they began seemed useless and even silly. They measured out the waste land, numbered the trees in the forest, inspected lavatories and drains, looked at the teeth of horses and cows, asked about the illnesses of the people, noted the number and types of fruit-trees and of different kinds of sheep and poultry. (It seemed that they were playing games, so incomprehensible, unreal and futile all these tasks of theirs appeared to the people.) Then all that they had carried out with so much care and zeal vanished somewhere or other as if it had been lost without trace or sound. But a few months later, sometimes even a year later, when the whole thing had been completely forgotten by the people, the real sense of these measures which had seemed so senseless was suddenly revealed. The 
mukhtars 
of the individual quarters would be summoned to the 
konak 
(the administrative centre) and told of a new regulation against forest felling, or of the fight against typhus, or the manner of sale of
fruit and sweetmeats, or of permits for the movement of cattle. Every day a fresh regulation. With each regulation men saw their individual liberties curtailed or their obligations increased, but the life of the town and the villages, and of all their inhabitants as a mass, became wider and fuller.

But in the homes, not only of the Turks but also of the Serbs, nothing was changed. They lived, worked and amused themselves in the old way. Bread was still mixed in kneading troughs, coffee roasted on the hearth, clothes steamed in coppers and washed with soda which hurt the women's fingers; they still span and wove on tambours and hand-looms. Old customs of 
slavas 
(patronal feasts), holidays and weddings were kept up in every detail and as for the new customs which the newcomers had brought with them there were only whispers here and there as of something far off and incredible. In short, they lived and worked as they had always done and as in most of the houses they would continue to work and live for another fifteen or twenty years after the occupation.

But on the other hand the outward aspect of the town altered visibly and rapidly. Those same people, who in their own homes maintained the old order in every detail and did not even dream of changing anything, became for the most part easily reconciled to the changes in the town and after a longer or shorter period of wonder and grumbling accepted them. Naturally here, as always and everywhere in similar circumstances, the new life meant in actual fact a mingling of the old and the new. Old ideas and old values clashed with the new ones, merged with them or existed side by side, as if waiting to see which would outlive which. People reckoned in florins and kreutzers but also in grosh and para, measured by arshin and oka and drams but also by metres and kilos and grams, confirmed terms of payment and orders by the new calendar but even more often by the old custom of payment on St. George's or St. Dimitri's day. By a natural law the people resisted every innovation but did not go to extremes, for to most of them life was always more important and more urgent than the forms by which they lived. Only in exceptional individuals was there played out a deeper, truer drama of the struggle between the old and the new. For them the forms of life were indivisibly and unconditionally linked with life itself.

Such a man was Shemsibeg Branković of Crnče, one of the richest and most respected begs in the town. He had six sons, of whom four were already married. Their houses comprised a whole small quarter surrounded by fields, plum-orchards and shrubberies. Shemsibeg was the undisputed chief, the strict and silent master of this

community. Tall, bent with years, with a huge white gold-embroidered turban on his head, he only came down to the market to pray in the mosque on Fridays. From the first day of the occupation he stopped nowhere in the town, spoke to no one and would not look about him. Not the smallest piece of new clothing or costume, not a new tool or a new word was allowed to enter the Branković house. Not one of his sons had any connection with the new authorities and his grandchildren were not allowed to go to school. All the Branković community suffered from this; amongst his sons there was dissatisfaction at the old man's obstinacy but none of them dared to oppose him by a single word or a single glance. Those Turks from the market-place, who worked and mingled with the newcomers, greeted Shemsibeg when he passed through the market with a dumb respect in which was mingled fear and admiration and an uneasy conscience. The oldest and most respected Turks of the town often went to Crnče as if on a pilgrimage to sit and talk with Shemsibeg. Those were meetings of men who were determined to persevere in their resistance to the end and were unwilling to yield in any way to reality. These were, in fact, long sessions without many words and without real conclusions.