The Bridge on the Drina (35 page)

Hadji Omer had already been married more than thirty years. His wife came from a famous family and was renowned for her cleverness and good sense. Their property behind the fortress was a whole settlement in itself, progressive and rich in everything. His shops in the town were solidly built and his income assured and large. All this was not so much due to the peaceable and indolent Hadji Omer, who did little more than walk twice a day to the town and back, as to his able and energetic, always smiling wife. Her opinion was the last word on many questions for all the Turkish women of the town.

His family was in every way among the best and most respected in the town, but the already ageing couple had no children. For long
they had hoped. Hadji Omer had even made the pilgrimage to. Mecca and his wife had made bequests to religious houses and given alms to the poor. The years had passed, everything had increased and prospered, but in this one most important matter they had received no blessing. Hadji Omer and his good wife had borne their evil fortune wisely and well but there could be no longer any hope of children. His wife was in her forty-fifth year.

The great inheritance which Hadji Omer was to leave behind him was in question. Not only his and his wife's numerous relations had concerned themselves in this matter, but to some extent the whole town also. Some had wanted the marriage to remain childless to the end, while others had thought it a pity that such a man should die without heirs and that his goods should be dispersed among the many relations, and had therefore urged him to take a second, younger wife while there was still a chance of heirs. The local Turks were divided into two camps on the question. But the matter was settled by the barren wife herself. Openly, resolutely and sincerely, as in everything she did, she told her undecided husband:

'The good God has given us everything, all thanks and praise to Him, concorn and health and riches, but He has not given us what he gives to every poor man; to see our children and to know to whom to leave what shall remain after us. That has been my bad fortune. But even if I, by the will of God, must bear this, there is no reason why you should do so. I see that the whole market-place is concerning itself with our troubles and urging you to marry again. Well, since they are trying to marry you off, then it is I who want to arrange your marriage for you, for no one is a greater friend to you than I.'

She then told him her plan; as there was no longer any likelihood that they two could ever have children, then he must bring to their home, beside her, a second wife, a younger one, by whom he might still be able to have children. The law gave him that right. She, naturally, would go on living in the house as 'the old 
hadjinica' 
and see that everything was done properly.

Hadji Omer long resisted and swore that he asked no better companion than she, that he did not need a second wife, but she stuck to her opinion and even informed him which girl she had chosen. Since he must marry in order to have children, then it were best that he take a young, healthy and pretty girl of poor family who would give him healthy heirs and, while she was alive, would be grateful for her good fortune. Her choice fell on pretty Paša, daughter of the seamstress from Dušče.

So it was done. At the wish of his older wife and with her assistance, Hadji Omer married the lovely Paša and eleven months later Paša gave birth to a healthy boy. So the question of Hadji Omer's inheritance was settled, the hopes of many relations were extinguished and the mouths of the market-place sealed. Paša was happy and 'the old 
hadjinica' 
satisfied, and the two lived in Hadji Omer's house in concord like mother and daughter.

That fortunate conclusion of the question of Hadji Omer's heir was the beginning of Corkan's great sufferings. That winter the principal amusement of the idle guests in Zarije's inn was Ćorkan's sorrow at Paša's marriage. The unfortunate lover was drunk as he had never been before; the guests laughed till they cried. They all toasted him and each one of them got good value for his money. They mocked him with imaginary messages from Paša, assuring him that she wept night and day, that she was pining for him, not telling anyone the real reason for her sorrow. Ćorkan was in a frenzy, sang, wept, answered all questions seriously and in detail and bewailed the fate which had created him so unprepossessing and poor.

'Very well, Ćorkan, but how many years younger are you than Hadji Omer?' one of the guests would begin the conversation.

'How do I know? And what good would it do me even if I were younger?' Ćorkan answered bitterly.

'Eh, if I were to judge by heart and youth, then Hadji Omer would not have what he has, nor would our Ćorkan be sitting where he is,' broke in another guest.

It did not need much to make Ćorkan tender and sentimental. They poured him rum after rum and assured him that not only was he younger and handsomer and more suitable for Paša but that, after all, he was not so poor as he thought or as he seemed. In the long nights these idle men over their plum brandy thought up a whole history; how Ćorkan's father, an unknown Turkish officer, whom no one had ever seen, had left a great property somewhere in Anatolia to his illegitimate son in Višegrad as sole heir, but that some relations down there had stayed the execution of the will; that now it would only be necessary for Ćorkan to appear in the rich and distant city of Brusa to counter the intrigues and lies of these false heirs and recover what rightly belonged to him. Then he would be able to buy up Hadji Omer and all his wealth.

Ćorkan listened, went on drinking and only sighed. All that pained him but at the same time did not stop him from sometimes thinking of himself so, and behaving as a man who has been cheated and robbed both in this town and over there somewhere in a distant and beautiful land, the homeland of his supposed father. Those around him pretended to make preparations for his journey to Brusa. Their
jokes were long, cruel and worked out to the smallest detail. One night they brought him a supposedly complete passport, and with coarse jokes and roars of laughter pulled Ćorkan into the centre of the inn and turned him round and examined him, in order to inscribe his personal characteristics on it. Another time they calculated how much money he would need for his trip to Brusa, how he would travel and where he would spend his nights. That too passed a good part of the long night.

When he was sober Ćorkan protested; he both believed and disbelieved all he was told, but he disbelieved more than he believed. When he was sober he believed, in fact, nothing at all but as soon as he was drunk he behaved as though he believed it all. For when alcohol got a grip on him he no longer asked himself what was true and what was a lie. The truth was that, after the second little bottle of rum, he already seemed to feel the scented air from distant and unattainable Brusa and saw, a lovely sight, its green gardens and white houses. He had been deceived, unfortunate in everything from birth, in his family, his property and his love; wrong had been done to him, so great a wrong that God and men were alike his debtors. It was clear that he was not what he appeared to be or as men saw him. The need to tell all those around him tormented him more with every glass, though he himself felt how hard it was to prove a truth that was to him clear and evident, but against which cried out all that was in him and about him. After the first glass of rum, he explained this to everyone, all night long, in broken sentences and with grotesque gestures and drunkard's tears. The more he explained the more those around him joked and laughed. They laughed so long and heartily that their ribs and their jaws ached from that laughter, contagious, irresistible and sweeter than any food or drink. They laughed and forgot the boredom of the winter night, and like Ćorkan drank themselves silly.

'Kill yourself!' shouted Mehaga Sarač who by his cold and apparently serious manner best knew how to provoke and excite Ćorkan. 'Since you have not been man enough to seize Paša from that weakling of a Hadji Omer, then you oughtn't to live any longer. Kill yourself, Ćorkan; that is my advice.'

'Kill yourself, kill yourself!' wailed Ćorkan. 'Do you think I haven't thought of that? A hundred times I have gone to throw myself into the Drina from the 
kapia 
and a hundred times something held me back.' 'What held you back? Fear held you back, full breeches, Ćorkan!' 'No, no. It was not fear, may God hear me, not fear!' In the general uproar and laughter Ćorkan leapt up, beat his breast
and tore a piece of bread from the loaf before him and thrust it under the cold and immobile face of Mehaga.

'Do you see this? By my bread and my blessing, it was not fear, but . . .'

Suddenly someone began to hum in a low voice:

'On thy face it shines no longer. . . .'

Everyone picked up the song and drowned Mehaga's voice shouting at Ćorkan.

'Kill. . .kill. . .your-self. .. !'

Thus singing they themselves fell into that state of exaltation into which they had tried to drive Ćorkan. The evening developed into a mad orgy.

One February night they had thus awaited dawn, driving themselves mad with their victim Ćorkan, and themselves victims of his folly. It was already day when they came out of the inn. Heated with drink, with veins swollen and crackling, they went to the bridge which at the time was coated with a fine layer of ice.

With shouts and gusts of laughter, paying no heed to the few early passers-by, they bet among themselves; who dares to cross the bridge, but along the narrow stone parapet shining under the thin coating of ice.

'Ćorkan dares!' shouted one of the drunkards.

'Ćorkan? Not on your life!'

'Who daren't? I? I dare to do what no living man dares,' shouted Ćorkan beating his breast noisily.

'You haven't the guts! Do it if you dare!'

'I dare, by God!'

'Ćorkan dares!'

'Liar!'

These drunkards and boasters shouted each other down, even though they could scarcely keep their feet on the broad bridge, staggering, teetering and holding on to one another for support.

They did not even notice when Ćorkan climbed on to the stone parapet. Then, suddenly, they saw him floating above them and, drunk and dishevelled as he was, begin to stand upright and walk along the flagstones on the parapet.

The stone parapet was about two feet wide. Ćorkan walked along it swaying now left now right. On the left was the bridge and on the bridge, there beneath his feet, the crowd of drunken men who followed his every step and shouted words at him which he scarcely understood and heard only as an incomprehensible murmur; and on
the right a void, and in that void somewhere far below, the unseen river; a thick mist floated upwards from it and rose, like white smoke, in the chill morning air.

The few passers-by halted, terrified, and with wide-open eyes watched the drunken man who was walking along the narrow and slippery parapet, poised above the void, waving his arms frantically to retain his balance. In that company of drunkards a few of the more sober who still had some commonsense watched the dangerous game. Others, not realizing the danger, walked along beside the parapet and accompanied with their cries the drunken man who balanced and swayed and danced above the abyss.

All at once, in his dangerous position, Ćorkan felt himself separated from his companions. He was now like some gigantic monster far above them. His first steps were slow and hesitating. His heavy clogs kept slipping on the stones covered with ice. It seemed to him that his legs were failing him, that the depths below attracted him irresistibly, that he must slip and fall, that he was already falling. But his unusual position and the nearness of great danger gave him strength and hitherto unknown powers. Struggling to maintain his balance, he made more and more little jumps and bent more and more from his waist and knees. Instead of walking he began to dance, he himself did not know how, as free of care as if he had been on a wide green field and not on that narrow and icy edge. All of a sudden he felt himself light and skilful as a man sometimes is in dreams. His heavy and exhausted body felt without weight. The drunken Ćorkan danced and floated above the depths as if on wings. He felt as if a gay strength flowed through his body which danced to an unheard music and that gave him security and balance. His dance bore him onward where his walk would never have borne him. No longer thinking of the danger or the possibility of a fall, he leapt from one leg to the other and sang with outstretched arms as if accompanying himself on a drum.

"Tiridam, tiridam, tiritiritiritiridam, tiridam, tiridam. . . .'

Corkan sang and himself beat out the rhythm to which dancing surefootedly he made his dangerous crossing. His legs bent at the knees and he moved his head to left and right.

'Tiridam, tiridam .. . hai . . . hai. . . .'

In that unusual and dangerous position, exalted above all the others, he was no longer Ćorkan the One-Eyed, the butt of the town and the inn. Below him there was no longer that narrow and slippery
stone parapet of that familiar bridge on which he had countless times munched his bread and, thinking of the sweetness of death in the waves beneath, had gone to sleep in the shade of the 
kapia.

No, this was that distant and unattainable voyage of which they had spoken every night at the inn with coarse jokes and mockery and on which now, at last, he had set out. This was that glorious long-desired path of great achievements and that in the distance at the end of it was the imperial city of Brusa with its real riches and his legitimate heritage, the setting sun and the lovely Paša with his son; his wife and his child.