The Bridge on the Drina (5 page)

A little way behind the last horses in that strange convoy straggled, dishevelled and exhausted, many parents and relatives of those children who were being carried away for ever to a foreign world, where they would be circumcized, become Turkish and, forgetting their faith, their country and their origin, would pass their lives in the ranks of the janissaries or in some other, higher, service of the Empire. They were for the most part women, mothers, grandmothers and sisters of the stolen children.

When they came too close, the aga's horsemen would drive them away with whips, urging their horses at them with loud cries to Allah. Then they would fly in all directions and hide in the forests along the roadsides, only to gather again a little later behind the convoy and strive with tear-filled eyes to see once again over the panniers the heads of the children who were being taken from them. The mothers were especially persistent and hard to restrain. Some would rush forward not looking where they were going, with bare breasts, and dishevelled hair, forgetting everything about them, wailing and lamenting as at a burial, while others almost out of their minds moaned as if their wombs were being torn by birth-pangs, and blinded with tears ran right on to the horsemen's whips and replied to every blow with the fruitless question: 'Where are you taking him? Why are you taking him from me?' Some tried to speak clearly to their children and to give them some last part of themselves, as much as might be said in a couple of words, some

recommendation or advice for the way___

'Rade, my son, don't forget your mother....'

'Ilija, Ilija, Ilija!' screamed another woman, searching desperately

with her glances for the dear well-known head and repeating this incessantly as if she wished to carve into the child's memory that name which would in a day or two be taken from him forever.

But the way was long, the earth hard, the body weak and the Osmanlis powerful and pitiless. Little by little the women dropped back exhausted by the march and the blows, and one after the other abandoned their vain effort. Here, at the Višegrad ferry, even the most enduring had to halt for they were not allowed on the ferry and were unable to cross the water. Now they could sit in peace on the bank and weep, for no one persecuted them any longer. There they waited as if turned to stone and sat, insensible to hunger, thirst and cold, until on the farther bank of the river they could see once more the long drawn out convoy of horses and riders as it moved onward towards Dubrina, and tried once more to catch a last glimpse of the children who were disappearing from their sight.

On that November day in one of those countless panniers a dark-skinned boy of about ten years old from the mountain village of Sokolovići sat silent and looked about him with dry eyes. In a chilled and reddened hand he held a small curved knife with which he absent-mindedly whittled at the edges of his pannier, but at the same time looked about him. He was to remember that stony bank overgrown with sparse, bare and dull grey willows, the surly ferryman and the dry water-mill full of draughts and spiders' webs where they had to spend the night before it was possible to transport all of them across the troubled waters of the Drina over which the ravens were croaking. Somewhere within himself he felt a sharp stabbing pain which from time to time seemed suddenly to cut his chest in two and hurt terribly, which was always associated with the memory of that place where the road broke off, where desolation and despair were extinguished and remained on the stony banks of the river, across which the passage was so difficult, so expensive and so unsafe. It was here, at this particularly painful spot in that hilly and poverty-stricken district, in which misfortune was open and evident, that man was halted by powers stronger than he and, ashamed of his powerlessness, was forced to recognize more clearly his own misery and that of others, his own backwardness and that of others.

All this was summed up in that physical discomfort that the boy felt on that November day and which never completely left him, though he changed his way of life, his faith, his name and his country.

What this boy in the pannier was later to become has been told

in all histories in all languages and is better known in the world outside than it is amongst us. In time he became a young and brave officer at the Sultan's court, then Great Admiral of the Fleet, then the Sultan's son-in-law, a general and statesman of world renown, Mehmed Pasha Sokolli, who waged wars that were for the most part victorious on three continents and extended the frontiers of the Ottoman Empire, making it safe abroad and by good administration consolidated it from within. For these sixty odd years he served three Sultans, experienced both good and evil as only rare and chosen persons may experience them, and raised himself to heights of power and authority unknown to us, which few men reach and few men keep. This new man that he had become in a foreign world where we could not follow even in our thoughts, must have forgotten all that he had left behind in the country whence they had once brought him. He surely forgot too the crossing of the Drina at Višegrad, the bare banks on which travellers shivered with cold and uncertainty, the slow and worm-eaten ferry, the strange ferryman, and the hungry ravens above the troubled waters. But that feeling of discomfort which had remained in him had never completely disappeared. On the other hand, with years and with age it appeared more and more often; always the same black pain which cut into his breast with that special well-known childhood pang which was clearly distinguishable from all the ills and pains that life later brought to him. With closed eyes, the Vezir would wait until that black knife-like pang passed and the pain diminished. In one of those moments he thought that he might be able to free himself from this discomfort if he could do away with that ferry on the distant Drina, around which so much misery and inconvenience gathered and increased incessantly, and bridge the steep banks and the evil water between them, join the two ends of the road which was broken by the Drina and thus link safely and for ever Bosnia and the East, the place of his origin and the places of his life. Thus it was he who first, in a single moment behind closed eyelids, saw the firm graceful silhouette of the great stone bridge which was to be built there.

That very same year, by the Vezir's order and at the Vezir's expense, the building of the great bridge on the Drina began. It lasted five years. That must have been an exceptionally lively and important time for the town and the whole district, full of change and of events great and small. But for a wonder, in the town which remembered for centuries and discussed every sort of event, including all those directly connected with the bridge, not many details of the commencement of the operation were preserved.

The common people remember and tell of what they are able to grasp and what they are able to transform into legend. Anything else passes them by without deeper trace, with the dumb indifference of nameless natural phenomena, which do not touch the imagination or remain in the memory. This hard and long building process was for them a foreign task undertaken at another's expense. Only when, as the fruit of this effort, the great bridge arose, men began to remember details and to embroider the creation of a real, skilfully built and lasting bridge with fabulous tales which they well knew how to weave and to remember.

III

In the spring of that year when the Vezir had made his decision to build, his men arrived in the town to prepare everything necessary for the construction work on the bridge. There were many of them, with horses, carts, various tools and tents. All this excited fear and apprehension in the little town and the surrounding villages, especially among the Christians.

At the head of this group was Abidaga, who was responsible to the Vezir for building the bridge; with him was the mason, Tosun Effendi. (There had already been tales about this Abidaga, saying that he was a man who stopped at nothing, harsh and pitiless beyond measure.) As soon as they had settled in their tents below Mejdan, Abidaga summoned the local leaders and all the principal Turks for a discussion. But there was not much of a discussion, for only one man spoke and he was Abidaga. Those who had been summoned
¹
 saw a powerfully built man, with green eyes and an unhealthy reddish face, dressed in rich Stambul clothes, with a reddish beard and wonderfully upturned moustaches in the Magyar fashion. The speech which this violent man delivered to the notables astonished them even more than his appearance: 'It is more than likely that you have heard tales about me even before I came here and I know without asking that those tales could not have been pleasant or favourable. Probably you have heard that I demand work and obedience from everyone, and that I will beat and kill anyone who does not work as he should and does not obey without argument; that I do not know the meaning of "I cannot" or "There isn't any", that wherever I am heads will roll at the slightest word, and that in short I am a bloodthirsty and hard man. I want to tell you that those tales are neither imaginary nor exaggerated. Under my linden tree there is no shade. I have won this reputation over long years of service in which I have devotedly carried out the orders of the Grand Vezir. I trust in God that I shall carry out this work for which I was sent and when at the completion of the work I go hence, I hope that even harsher and darker tales will go before

me than those which have already reached you.'

After this unusual introduction to which all listened in silence and with downcast eyes, Abidaga explained that it was a matter of a building of great importance, such as did not exist even in richer lands, that the work would last five, perhaps six, years, but that the Vezir's will would be carried out to the fineness of a hair and punctual to a minute. Then he laid down his first requirements and what he therefore expected from the local Turks and demanded from the 
rayah—
the Christian serfs.

Beside him sat Tosun Effendi, a small, pale, yellowish renegade, born in the Greek islands, a mason who had built many of Mehmed Pasha's bequests in Stambul. He remained quiet and indifferent, as if he were not hearing or did not understand Abidaga's speech. He gazed at his hands and only looked up from time to time. Then they could see his big black eyes, beautiful and short-sighted eyes with a velvety sheen, the eyes of a man who only looks to his work and does not see, does not feel and does not understand anything else in life or in the world.

The notables filed out of the small stuffy tent, troubled and downcast. They felt as if they were sweating under their new ceremonial clothes and each one of them felt fear and anxiety taking root in him.

A great and incomprehensible disaster had fallen upon the town and the whole of the district, a catastrophe whose end could not be foreseen. First of all began the felling of the forests and the transport of the timber. So great a mass of scaffolding arose on both banks of the Drina that for long the people thought that the bridge would be built of wood. Then the earthworks began, the excavations, the revetting of the chalky banks. These were mostly carried out by forced labour. So everything went on until the late autumn, when work was temporarily stopped and the first part of the construction completed.

All this was carried out under Abidaga's supervision and that of his long green staff which has passed into legend. Whomever he pointed at with this staff, having noticed that he was malingering or not working as he should, the guards seized; they beat him on the spot and then poured water over his bleeding and unconscious body and sent him back to work again. When in late autumn Abidaga left the town, he again sent for the notables and told them that he was going away to another place for the winter, but that his eye would still be on them. All would be responsible for everything. If it were found that any part of the work had been damaged, if a single stick were missing from the scaffolding, he would fine the

whole town. When they ventured to say that damage might be caused by floods, he replied coldly and without hesitation that this was their district and the river too was theirs as well as whatever damage it might cause.

All the winter the townsmen guarded the material and watched the construction works like the eyes in their head. And when with the spring Abidaga once again appeared, with Tosun Effendi, there came with them Dalmatian stone-masons, whom the people called 'Latin masters'. At first there were about thirty of them, led by a certain Mastro Antonio, a Christian from Ulcinj. He was a tall, handsome man of keen eye, bold glance and hooked nose, with fair hair falling to his shoulders and dressed like a noble in the western manner. His assistant was a negro, a real negro, a young and merry man whom the whole town and all the workmen soon nicknamed 'the Arab'.

If in the previous year, judging from the mass of scaffolding, it seemed as if Abidaga had intended to build the bridge of wood, it now seemed to everyone that he wanted to build a new Stambul here on the Drina. Then began the hauling of stone from the quarries which had already been opened up in the hills near Banja, an hour's walk from the town.

Next year a most unusual spring broke near the Višegrad ferry. Besides all that which sprang up and flowered every year at that time, there arose out of the earth a whole settlement of huts; new roads made their appearance and new approaches to the water's edge. Countless oxcarts and packhorses swarmed on all sides. The men from Mejdan and Okolište saw how every day, like a sort of harvest, there grew there by the river a restless swarm of men, beasts and building material of every kind.

On the steep banks worked the master stone-masons. The whole area took on a sort of yellowish colour from the stone-dust. And a little farther along, on the sandy plain, local workers were slaking lime and moving, ragged and pale, through the white smoke which rose high from the kilns. The roads were torn to pieces by the overloaded carts. The ferry worked all day, taking from one bank to the other building material, overseers and workmen. Wading in the spring waters up to their waists, special workmen drove in piles and stakes and put in position gabions filled with clay, intended to break the current.