The Bridge on the Drina (16 page)

'I know that it is not pleasant, gentlemen, for you to have to listen to these things and that I should not even speak of them before you, but you have stopped me and told me that I should tell you the whole truth, wherever it may lead. God is truth and God is One! And now, I beg you, let me go on my way for I am due today at Banja, at the Monastery of the Holy Trinity.'

The interpreter Shefko translated, struggling in vain to find in his poor knowledge of the Turkish language equivalents for abstract ideas. The Captain of the Guard, a sickly Anatolian, still only half awake, listened to the confused and disconnected words of the translator and from time to time threw a glance at the old man who, without fear or evil thoughts, looked back at him and confirmed with his eyes that everything was just as the interpreter had said, though he knew not a word of Turkish. Somewhere in the back of his mind it was clear to the Captain that this man was some sort of half-witted infidel dervish, a good-natured and harmless madman. And in the old man's staff, which they had already cut through in several places thinking that it was hollow and that messages were concealed in it, they found nothing. But in Shefko's translation the old man's words seemed suspicious, smelled of politics and seditious intent. The Captain, for his part, would have let this poor dim-witted creature go his way, but the rest of the soldiers and civil guards had gathered together there and were listening to the interrogation. There was his sergeant Tahir, an evil man, sullen and rheumy-eyed, who had already several times slandered him to his chief and accused him of lack of care and severity. Then too there was that Shefko, who in his translation was obviously putting the worst possible construction on the old man's exalted phrases and who loved to stick his nose into everything and carry tales even when there was nothing in them, and was ever ready to give or to confirm an evil report. Then too there were those Turks from the town, volunteers, who went their rounds sullenly and self-importantly, arrested suspicious characters and interfered needlessly in his official duties. They were all there. And all of them, these days, were as if drunk
with bitterness, from desire for vengeance and longed to punish and to kill whomsoever they could, since they could not punish or kill those whom they wished. He did not understand them, nor did he approve of them, but he saw that they were all agreed that the blockhouse must have its victim this first morning. He suspected that because of their intoxication of bitterness he might be the one to suffer if he opposed their wishes. The thought that he might have unpleasantness because of this mad old fool seemed to him intolerable. And the old man with his tales of the Serbian Empire would not in any case get very far among the Turks of the district who, these days, were like a swarm of angry bees. Let the troubled waters carry him away, even as they had brought him here....

As soon as the old man had been bound and the Captain was preparing to go into the town so as not to have to watch the execution, some Turkish policemen and a few civilians appeared, leading a poorly dressed Serbian youth. His clothing was torn and his face and hands scratched. This was a certain Mile, a poor devil from Lijesko, who lived quite alone in a water-mill at Osojnica. He might have been nineteen at most, strong and bursting with health.

That morning before sunrise Mile placed some barley in the mill to be ground and then opened the big millrace and went into the forest to cut wood. He brandished his axe and cut the soft alder branches like straws. He enjoyed the morning freshness and the ease with which the wood fell before his axe. His own movements were a pleasure to him. But his axe was sharp and the thin wood too frail for the force that was in him. Something within him swelled his breast and drove him to shout aloud at each movement. His cries became more and more frequent and connected. Mile who, like all men of Lijesko, had no ear and no idea of how to sing, sang and shouted in the thick and shady forest. Without thinking of anything and forgetting where he was, he began to sing what he had heard others singing.

At that time, when Serbia had risen in revolt, the people had made of the old song:

'When Alibeg was a young beg

A maiden bore his standard ..." a new song:

'When Karageorge was a young beg

A maiden bore his standard . . .'

In that great and strange struggle, which had been waged in Bosnia for centuries between two faiths, for land and power and their own conception of life and order, the adversaries had taken from each other not only women, horses and arms but also songs.

Many a verse passed from one to the other as the most precious of booty.

This song, then, was one recently sung among the Serbs, but stealthily and in secret, in closed houses, at family feasts or in distant pastures where a Turk might not set foot for years at a time and where a man, at the price of loneliness and poverty in the wilds, might live as he wished and sing what he liked. And it was just this song that Mile, the mill attendant, had thought fit to sing in the forest just below the road along which the Turks of Olujac and Orahovac passed on their way to the market in the town.

Dawn had just touched the crests of the mountains and there, in that shady place, it was still quite dark. Mile was all wet with the dew but warm from a good night's sleep, hot bread and work. He brandished his axe and struck the slender alder near its root but the tree only bent and bowed like a young bride who kisses the hand of the 'kum' who leads her to marriage. The alder was sprinkled with cold dew like a fine rain and remained bent, for it could not fall because of the thickness of the greenery around. Then he cut off the green branches with his axe in one hand as if playing. While he was doing this he sang at the top of his voice pronouncing certain of the words with enjoyment. 'Karageorge' was something vague but strong and daring; 'maiden' and 'standard' were also things unknown to him, but things which in some way answered to his most intimate dreams; to have a girl of his own and to bear a standard. In any case there was a sweetness in pronouncing such words. And all the strength within him drove him on to pronounce them clearly and countless times over. His utterance of them seemed to renew his strength making him repeat them still more loudly.

So sang Mile at the break of day until he had cut and trimmed the branches for which he had come. Then he went down the wet slope dragging his fresh burden behind him. There were some Turks in front of the mill. They had tethered their horses and were waiting for someone. There were ten of them. He felt himself again, as he had been before he had set out to get the wood, clumsy, ragged and embarrassed, without Karageorge before his eyes, without a girl or a standard near him. The Turks waited until he had put down his axe, then fell on him from all sides and after a short struggle bound him with a halter and took him to the town. On their way they beat him and kicked him in the groin, asking him where was his Karageorge now and saying evil words about his girl and his standard.

Under the blockhouse on the 
kapia 
where they had just bound the half-witted old man some of the town ne'er-do-wells had joined the soldiers even though it had only just dawned. Amongst them were

a number of refugees from Serbia whose homes there had been burnt down. All were armed and wore a solemn expression as though a great event or a decisive battle were in question. Their emotion rose with the rising sun. The sun rose rapidly, amid shining mists down there on the skyline above Goleš. The Turks waited for the terrified youth as if he had been a revolutionary leader, though he was ragged and miserable and had been brought from the left bank of the Drina where there was no insurrection.

The Turks from Olujac and Orahovac, exasperated by the arrogance which they were unable to believe was not intentional, bore witness that the young man had been singing in a provocative manner beside the road songs about Karageorge and the infidel fighters. He, frightened, in wet rags, scratched and beaten, his eyes filled with emotion that made him seem to squint, watched the Captain as if he were hoping for salvation from him. As he came rarely to the town he had not known that a blockhouse was being erected on the bridge; therefore everything seemed to him strange and unreal as if he had wandered in his sleep into a strange town filled with evil and dangerous men. Stuttering and keeping his eyes on the ground, he swore that he had never sung anything and that he had never struck a Turk, that he was a poor man, who looked after the water-mill, that he was cutting wood and did not know why he had been brought here. He shivered from fear and was really unable to understand what had happened and how, after that exalted mood down there by the freshness of the stream, he had suddenly found himself bound and beaten here on the 
kapia, 
the centre of all interest, before so many people to whom he had to answer. He had himself quite forgotten that he had ever sung even the most innocent of songs.

But the Turks stood by their words; that he had been singing insurrectionist songs at the moment they had been passing and that he had resisted them when they wanted to bind him. Each of them confirmed this on oath to the Captain who interrogated them:

'Do you swear by Allah?'

'I swear by Allah.'

'Is that the truth?'

'That is the truth.'

So thrice repeated. Then they put the young man beside Jelisije and went to waken the headsman who, it seemed, slept very soundly. The old man looked at the youth who, confused and ashamed, blinked since he was not used to being the centre of attention in broad daylight on the bridge surrounded by so many people.

'What is your name?' the old man asked.

'Mile,' said the youth humbly, as if he were still replying to the Turkish questions.

'Mile, my son, let us kiss,' and the old man leant his grey head on Mile's shoulder. 'Let us kiss and make the sign of the Cross. In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost. In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.'

So he crossed himself and the youth in words only, for their hands were bound, quickly, for the executioner had already arrived.

The headsman, who was one of the soldiers, rapidly finished his task and the first comers, who descended the hills because of market day and went across the bridge, could see the two heads placed on fresh stakes on the blockhouse and a bloodstained place, sprinkled with gravel and smoothed down, on the bridge where they had been beheaded.

Thus the blockhouse began its work.

From that day onwards all who were suspected or guilty of insurrection, whether caught on the bridge itself or somewhere on the frontier, were brought to the 
kapia. 
Once there they rarely got away alive. The heads of those connected with the revolt, or simply those who were unlucky, were exposed on stakes placed around the blockhouse and their bodies thrown from the bridge into the Drina if no one appeared to ransom the headless corpse.

The revolt, with shorter or longer periods of truce, lasted for years and in the course of those years the number of those thrown into the river to drift down to 'look for another, better and more reasonable land' was very great. Chance had decreed, that chance that overwhelms the weak and unmindful, that these two simple men, this pair from the mass of unlearned, poverty-stricken and innocent, should head the procession, since it is often such men who are first caught up in the whirlpool of great events and whom this whirlpool irresistibly attracts and sucks down. Thus the youth Mile and the old man Jelisije, beheaded at the same moment and in the same place, united as brothers, first decorated with their heads the military blockhouse on the 
kapia, 
which from then onwards, as long as the revolt lasted, was practically never without such decoration. So these two, whom no one before then had ever seen or heard of, remained together in memory, a memory clearer and most lasting than that of so many other, more important, victims.

So the 
kapia 
disappeared under this bloodstained blockhouse of ill repute and with it vanished also all meetings, conversations, songs and enjoyment. Even the Turks passed that way unwillingly while only those Serbs who were forced to crossed the bridge hastily and with lowered heads.

Around the wooden blockhouse, whose planks with time became first grey and then black, was quickly created that atmosphere that always surrounds buildings in permanent use by the army. The soldiers' washing hung from the beams and rubbish was tipped from the windows into the Drina, dirty water and all the refuse and filth of barrack life. On the white central pier of the bridge remained long dirty streaks which could be seen from afar.

The job of headsman was for long always carried out by the same soldier. He was a fat and dark-skinned Anatolian with dull yellowish eyes and negroid lips in a greasy and earthen-coloured face, who seemed always to be smiling, with the smile of a well-nourished and good-humoured man. He was called Hairuddin and was soon known to the whole town and even beyond the frontier. He carried out his duties with satisfaction and conscientiousness; and certainly he was exceptionally swift and skilful at them. The townsmen used to say that he had a lighter hand than Mushan the town barber. Both old and young knew him, at least by name, and that name excited awe and curiosity at the same time. On sunny days he would sit or lie all day long on the bridge in the shade under the wooden blockhouse. From time to time he would rise to inspect the heads on the stakes, like a market-gardener his melons. Then he would lie down again on his plank in the shade, yawning and stretching himself, heavy, rheumy-eyed and good-humoured, like an ageing sheepdog. At the end of the bridge, behind the wall, the children gathered inquisitively and watched him timidly.