The Bridge on the Drina (34 page)

'The sprig of basil began to weep,

O gentle dew, why fall you not upon me?'

The guests, who until then had pretended not to notice and had been chatting together, all fell silent. At these first verses all of them, Turks and Christians alike, felt the same shiver of undefined desire, of thirst for that dew which lived in themselves as in the song, without distinction or difference. But when immediately afterwards the 
guslar 
continued softly:

'But it was not the sprig of basil . . .'

and lifting the veil from his metaphor began to enumerate the real desires of Turks and Serbs concealed behind these words of dew and basil, there arose divided feelings among the listeners which led them along opposing paths according to what each felt within himself and what each desired or believed. But none the less, by some unwritten rule, they all quietly listened to the end of the song and, patient and enduring, did not reveal their mood, but only looked into the glasses before them where, on the shining surface of the plum brandy, they seemed to see the victories so desired, the fights, the heroes, the glory and the glitter, such as existed nowhere in the world.

It was liveliest in the inn when the younger men, sons of rich local worthies, sat down to drink. Then there was work for Sumbo and Franz Furlan and Ćorkan the One-Eyed and Saha the Gipsy.

Saha was a squinting gipsy woman, a bold virago who drank with anyone who could pay, but never got drunk. No orgy could be imagined without Saha and her meaty jokes.

The men who made merry with them changed, but Ćorkan, Sumbo and Saha were always the same. They lived on music, jokes and plum brandy. Their work lay in the time-wasting of others and their reward in others' spendings. Their true life was at night, especially in those unusual hours when healthy and happy men are asleep, when
plum brandy and hitherto restrained instincts create a noisy and glittering mood and unexpected enthusiasms which are always the same yet seem always new and unimaginably beautiful. They were close-mouthed paid witnesses before whom everyone dared to show himself as he really was, or in the local expression 'to show the blood beneath the skin', without having afterwards either to repent or be ashamed; with them and in their presence everything was permitted which would be considered scandalous by the rest of the world and at home would be sinful and impossible. All these rich, respected fathers and sons of good families could, in their name and to their account, be for a moment what they did not dare show themselves, at least at certain times and at least in a part of their being. The cruel could mock at them or beat them, the cowards could shout insults at them, the prodigal could reward them generously; the vain bought their flattery, the melancholic and moody their jokes and pleasantries, the debauched their boldness or their services. They were an eternal but unrecognized need of the townsmen whose spiritual lives were stunted and deformed. They were rather in the position of artists in a milieu where art is unknown. There are always such people in a town, singers, jesters, buffoons, eccentrics. When one of them grew threadbare or died, another replaced him, for besides the notorious and well known there developed fresh ones to shorten the hours and make gay the lives of new generations. But much time would have to pass before such another appeared as Salko Ćorkan the One-Eyed.

When, after the Austrian occupation, the first circus had come to the town Ćorkan had fallen in love with the tight-rope walker and because of her had behaved so madly and eccentrically that he had been beaten and sent to prison, and the local worthies who had heedlessly led him astray and encouraged him to lose his head had had to pay heavy fines.

Some years had passed since then, the people had grown accustomed to many things and the arrival of strange players, clowns and conjurers no longer excited such universal and contagious sensation as had the first circus, but Ćorkan's love for the dancer was still remembered.

For a long time he had wasted his strength in doing odd jobs by day and by night helping the local begs and rich men to forget their cares in drinking and brawling. So it went from generation to generation. As some sowed their wild oats and withdrew, got married and settled down, other and younger ones who wanted to sow theirs took their places. Now Ćorkan was washed out and old before his time; he was far more often in the inn than at work and lived not so
much from what he earned as from free drinks and snacks given him by the customers.

On rainy autumn nights the guests in Zarije's inn were overcome by boredom. Their thoughts came slowly and were all concerned with melancholy and unpleasant matters; speech came with difficulty and sounded empty and irritating, faces were cold, absent or mistrustful. Not even plum brandy could enliven and improve their mood. On a bench in a corner of the inn Ćorkan drowsed overcome by fatigue, the moist heat and the first glasses of plum brandy; it was raining cats and dogs.

Then one of the sullen guests at the main table mentioned, as if by chance, the dancer from the circus and Corkan's unhappy love. They all glanced at the corner but Ćorkan did not budge and pretended to go on dozing. Let them say what they liked; he had firmly decided that very morning, after a heavy night's drinking, not to reply to their jeering and mocking and not to let them play crude jokes on him as some of them had done the night before in that very inn.

'I believe that they still write to each other,' said one.

'So you see, the bastard writes love-letters to one while another is on her knees to him here!' retorted another.

Ćorkan forced himself to remain indifferent but the conversation irritated and excited him as if the sun were burning his face; his only eye seemed as if it forced itself to open and all the muscles of his face stre'tched into a happy laugh. He was no longer able to maintain his motionless silence. At first he waved his hand in a casual and indifferent gesture and then said:

'All that is over, over long ago.'

'All over, is it? What a wretch this fellow Ćorkan is! One girl is pining away for him somewhere far away while another is going mad for him here. One is all over, this one here will soon be the same and then it will be the turn of a third. What sort of a fellow are you, you wretch, to turn their heads one after the other?'

Ćorkan leapt to his feet and approached the table. He had forgotten his drowsiness and fatigue and his decision not to be drawn into conversation. With hand on heart he assured the guests that it had not been his fault and that he was not so great a lover and seducer as they made out. His clothes were still damp and his face streaked and dirty, for the colour of his cheap red fez ran, but it was lighted up with a smile of alcoholic bliss. He sat down near the table.

'Rum for Ćorkan!' shouted Santo Papo, a fat and greasy Jew, son of Mente and grandson of Morde Papo, leading hardware merchants.
Corkan had recently begun to drink rum instead of plum brandy whenever he could get hold of it. The new drink was as if made for such as he; it was stronger, quicker in effect and pleasantly different from plum brandy. It came in small flasks of two 
decis 
each, with a label showing a young mulatto girl with luscious lips and fiery eyes with a wide straw hat on her head, great golden earrings and the inscription beneath: Jamaica. (That was something exotic for a Bosnian in the last stages of alcoholism bordering on delirium. It was made in Slavonski Brod by the firm of Eisler, Sirowatka and Co.) When he looked at the picture of the young mulatto girl, Ćorkan also felt the fire and aroma of the new drink and at once thought that he would never have been able to know this earthly treasure had he died even a year before. 'And how many such wonderful things there are in this world!' He felt deeply moved at this thought and therefore always waited for a few pensive moments before he opened a bottle of rum. And after the satisfaction of that thought came the delight of the drink itself.

This time too he held the bottle before his face as if conversing with it unheard. But he who had first managed to draw him into conversation asked him sharply:

'Why are you dreaming about that girl, you wretch; are you going to take her as your wife or play about with her as you did with all the others?'

The girl in question was a certain Paša from Dušče. She was the prettiest girl in the town, poor and fatherless, a seamstress as was also her mother.

During the countless picnics and drinking bouts of the past year the young bachelors had talked and sung much about Paša and her inaccessible beauty. Listening to them Ćorkan had gradually and imperceptibly become enthusiastic too, he himself did not know how or why. So they began to tease him about her.

One Friday they took Ćorkan with them for 
asikovanje 
(to flirt with the town girls in the Turkish manner) when from behind the courtyard gates or the window lattices muffled giggles could be heard and the whispering of the unseen girls within. From one courtyard where Paša and her friends lived a sprig of tansy was thrown over the wall and fell at Ćorkan's feet. He hesitated in confusion, not wanting to tread on the flower and undecided whether to pick it up. The youths who had brought him clapped him on the back and congratulated him that Paša had chosen him from so many and had shown him greater attention than anyone else had ever obtained from her.

That night they had gone drinking beside the river under the walnut trees at Mezalin and continued until dawn. Corkan sat beside the fire, solemn and withdrawn, now joyous, now pensive. That night they would not let him serve the drinks or busy himself preparing coffee and snacks.

'Don't you know, fellow, the meaning of a sprig of tansy thrown by a girl?' said one of them. 'It means that Paša is telling you: I am pining away for you like this plucked flower; but you neither ask for my hand nor allow me to go to another. That is what it means.'

They all began to talk to him about Paša, so lovely, so chaste, alone in the world, waiting for the hand that should pluck her, and that the hand for which she was waiting was Corkan's and his alone.

They pretended to get angry and shouted loudly; how did she come to cast her eye on Ćorkan? Others defended him. As Ćorkan went on drinking he came almost to believe in this marvel, only to reject it at once as an impossibility. In conversation he insisted that she was not the girl for him, and defended himself against their jeers by saying that he was a poor man, that he was growing old and not very attractive, but in his moments of silence he let his thoughts dwell on Paša, her beauty and the joy that she would bring, heedless whether such joy were possible for him or not. In that wonderful summer night which with the plum brandy and the songs and the fire burning on the grass seemed endless, everything was possible or at least not completely impossible. That the guests were mocking and ridiculing him he knew; gentlemen could not live without laughter, someone had to be their buffoon, it always had been and always would be. But if all this were only a joke, his dream of a marvellous woman and an unattainable love, of which he had always dreamed and still dreamed today, was no joke. There was no joke in those songs in which love was both real and unreal and woman both near and unattainable as in his dream. For the guests all that too was a joke, but for him it was a true and sacred thing which he had always borne within himself and which had become real and indubitable, independent of the guests' pleasure, of wine and of song, of everything, even of Paša herself.

All this he knew well and yet easily forgot. For his soul would melt and his mind flow like water.

So Ćorkan, three years after his great love and the scandal about the pretty German tight-rope walker, fell into a new and enchanted love and all the rich and idle guests found a fresh game, cruel and exciting enough to give them cause for laughter for months and years to come.

That was in midsummer. But autumn and winter passed and the game about Corkan's love for the beautiful Paša filled the evenings
and shortened the days for the merchants from the market-place. They always referred to Corkan as the bridegroom or the lover. By day, overcome by the night's drinking and lack of sleep, when Ćorkan did odd jobs in the shops, fetching and carrying, he was surprised and angered that they should call him so, but only shrugged his shoulders. But as soon as night came and the lamps were lit in Zarije's inn, someone would shout 'Rum for Corkan!' and another sing softly as if by chance:

'Evening comes and the sun goes down: On thy face it shines no longer... .'

then suddenly everything changed. No more burdens, no more shrugging of shoulders, no more town or inn or even Ćorkan himself as he was in reality, snuffling, unshaven, clothed in rags and cast-off clothing of other men. There existed a high balcony lit by the setting sun and wreathed in vines, with a young girl who looked for him and waited for the man to whom she had thrown a sprig of tansy. There was still, to be true, the coarse laughter around him and the crude jests, but they were all far away, as in a fog, and he who sang was near him, close by his ear:

'If I could grow warm again

In the sunlight that you bring me. . . .'

and he warmed himself in that sun, which had set, as he had never been warmed by the real sun which rose and set daily over the town.

'Rum for Corkan!'

So the winter nights passed. Towards the end of that winter Paša got married. The poor seamstress from Dušče, in all her beauty of not quite nineteen years, married Hadji Omer who lived behind the fortress, a rich and respected man of fifty-five—as his second wife.