The Bridge on the Drina (23 page)

He was a man of great stature and exceptional physical strength, not over literate but of great heart, sound common sense and a serene and open spirit. His smile disarmed, calmed and encouraged. It was the indescribable smile of a man who lives at peace with himself and with everything around him; his big green eyes contracted into narrow slits whence flashed golden sparks. And so he remained in old age. In his long overcoat of fox-fur, with his great red beard just beginning to turn grey with the years and which covered his whole chest, with his enormous hood beneath which his flowing hair Was plaited into a pigtail, he walked through the market-place as if he had indeed been the priest of this town beside the bridge and all this mountainous district, not for fifty years only and not for his church only, but from time immemorial, from those times when the people were not divided into their present faiths and churches. From the shops on both sides of the market-place the merchants greeted him, whatever their faith. Women stood to one side and waited with bowed head for 'grandad' to pass. The children (even the Jewish ones) left off their play and stopped shouting and the oldest among them, solemnly and timidly, would come up to the enormous hand of 'grandad' to feel it for a moment on their shaven heads and faces heated by play, and hear his merry and powerful voice fall upon them like a good and pleasant dew:

'God grant you life! God grant you life, my son!'

This token of respect towards 'grandad' had become a part of the ancient and universally recognized ceremonial in which generations of the townsfolk had grown up.

But even in Pop Nikola's life there was one shadow. His marriage had remained childless. That was, without doubt, a heavy blow but no one could recall having heard a bitter word or seen a regretful glance either from him or from his wife. In their house they always maintained at their own expense at least two children belonging to some of their relatives in the villages. These they would look after until they married, and then find others.

Next to Pop Nikola sat Mula Ibrahim, a tall, thin, dried up man with a sparse beard and pendulant moustaches. He was not much younger than Pop Nikola, had a large family and a fine property left him by his father, but he was so slipshod, thin and timid, that he seemed with his clear blue childlike eyes more like some hermit or
some poor and pious pilgrim than the 
hodja 
of Višegrad, descendant of many 
hodjas. 
Mula Ibrahim had one affliction: he stuttered in his speech, long and painfully ('A man must have nothing to do before he can talk with Mula Ibrahim,' the townsmen used to say in jest). But Mula Ibrahim was known for far around for his goodness and generosity. Mildness and serenity breathed out of him and at the first meeting men forgot his outward appearance and his stutter. He attracted all who were overburdened by illness, poverty or any other misfortune. From the most distant villages men came to ask advice of Mula Ibrahim. Before his house there was always a crowd to see him, and men and women often stopped him in the street to seek his advice. He never refused anyone and never handed out expensive charms or amulets as other 
hodjas 
did. He would sit down at once in the first patch of shade or on the first stone, a little to the side; the man would then tell all his troubles in a whisper. Mula Ibrahim would listen attentively and sympathetically, then say a few good words to him, always finding the best possible solution for his troubles, or would thrust his thin hand into the deep pocket of his cloak, taking care not to be overseen by anyone, and slip a few coins into his hand. Nothing was difficult or repugnant or impossible to him if it were a question of helping some Moslem. For that he could always find time and money. Nor did his stutter hinder him in this, for when whispering with his co-religionist in misfortune he forgot to stutter. Everyone went away from him if not completely consoled, then at least momentarily relieved, for it could be seen that he felt their misfortunes as if they were his own. Continually surrounded with every sort of trouble and need and never thinking of himself, he none the less, or so it seemed, passed his whole life healthy, happy and rich.

The Višegrad schoolmaster, Hussein Effendi, was a smallish plump man, well dressed and well cared for. He had a short black beard carefully trimmed in a regular oval about his pink and white face with round black eyes. He had been well educated and knew a good deal, but pretended to know much more and deceived himself that he knew even more. He loved to talk and to have an audience. He was convinced that he spoke well and that led him to speak a lot. He expressed himself carefully and affectedly with studied gestures, holding his arms up a little, both at the same height, with white soft hands with pinkish nails, shadowed by short black hairs. When speaking he behaved as if he were in front of a mirror. He had the largest library in the town, a bound chest full of books kept carefully locked, which had been bequeathed him by his teacher, the celebrated Arap-hodja, and which he not only conscientiously pre-served from dust and moth but even on rare occasions read. But the mere knowledge that he had so great a number of such valuable books gave him repute amongst men who did not know what a book was, and raised his value in his own eyes. It was known that he was writing a chronicle of the most important events in the history of the town. Among the citizens this gave him the fame of a learned and exceptional man, for it was considered that by this he held in some way the fate of the town and of every individual in it in his hands. In actual fact that chronicle was neither extensive nor dangerous. In the last five or six years, since the schoolmaster had first begun this work, only four pages of a small exercise book had been filled. For the greater number of the town's events were not considered by the schoolmaster as of sufficient importance to warrant entry into his chronicle and for that reason it remained as unfruitful, dry and empty as a proud old maid.

The fourth of the 'notables' was David Levi, the Višegrad rabbi, grandson of that famous old rabbi Hadji Liacho who had left him as inheritance his name, position and property but nothing of his spirit and his serenity.

He was pale and puny, with dark velvety eyes and melancholy expression. He was inconceivably timid and silent. He had only recently become rabbi and had married not long before. In order to seem bigger and more important he wore a wide rich suit of heavy cloth and his face was overgrown with beard and whiskers, but beneath all this one could discern a weak sickly body and the childish oval of his face peered out fearfully from the black sparse beard. He suffered terribly whenever he had to appear in public and take his part in discussions and decisions, always feeling himself to be weak and undeveloped.

Now all four of them sat in the sun and sweated under their formal clothes, more moved and anxious than they wished to show.

'Let's light another one. We've time, by the soul of my grandmother! He's no bird to fly down to the bridge,' said Pop Nikola, like a man who has long learnt how to conceal with a jest his own and others' thoughts and fears.

All looked at the Okolište road and then went on smoking.

The conversation flowed slowly and carefully, forever coming back to the imminent welcome to the commandant. All were agreed that it was Pop Nikola who should greet him and bid him welcome. With half-closed eyes and brows furrowed so that his eyes became those two golden-studded slits that formed his smile, Pop Nikola looked at the three others long, silently and intently.

The rabbi was quivering with fright. He had hardly strength to
puff the smoke away from him but let it linger in his moustaches and beard. The schoolmaster was no less scared. All his eloquence and his dignity as a man of learning had vanished suddenly the day before. He was very far from realizing how disconsolate he looked and how greatly he was scared, for the high opinion which he had of himself did not allow him to believe anything of the sort. He tried to deliver one of his literary addresses with his studied gestures that explained everything, but his fine hands only fell into his lap and his words became mixed up and halting. Even he himself wondered where his customary dignity had vanished, and vainly tormented himself trying to recover it, as something to which he had long been accustomed and which now, when he needed it most, had somehow deserted him.

Mula Ibrahim was somewhat paler than usual but otherwise calm and collected. He and Pop Nikola looked at one another from time to time as if they understood one another by their eyes alone. They had been close acquaintances since youth and good friends, insofar as one could speak of friendship between a Turk and a Serb in times as they then were. When Pop Nikola in his youthful years had had his 'troubles' with the Višegrad Turks and had had to fly for refuge, Mula Ibrahim, whose father had been very influential in the town, had been of some service to him. Later, when more peaceful times had come and relations between the two faiths had become more bearable and the two of them were already grown men, they had made friends and called one another 'neighbour' in jest, for their houses were at opposite ends of the town. On occasions of drought, flood, epidemic or other misfortune they found themselves working together, each among men of their own faith. Otherwise, whenever they met at Mejdan or Okolište, they greeted one another and asked after one another's health, as priest and 
hodja 
never did elsewhere. Then Pop Nikola would often point with his pipestem at the town beside the river and say half in jest:

'All that breathes or creeps or speaks with human voice down there is either your or my responsibility.'

'It is so, neighbour,' Mula Ibrahim would stutter in reply, 'indeed they are.'

(And so the townsmen who could always find time to mock at everyone and everything would say of men who lived in friendship: 'They are as close as the priest and the 
hodja'; 
and this saying became a proverb with them.)

These two now understood one another perfectly though they did not exchange a word. Pop Nikola knew how hard it was for Mula Ibrahim and Mula Ibrahim knew that it was not easy for the priest.

They looked at one another as they had done so many times before in their lives and on so many different occasions, as two men who had on their souls that double burden of the town, the one for those who crossed themselves, the other for those who bowed down in the mosque.

At that moment the sound of trotting was heard and a Turkish gendarme hurried up on a scraggy pony. Scared and out of breath, he shouted at them from a distance like a town-crier.

'Here he is; the one on the white horse!'

The police chief too arrived, always calm, always amiable, always silent.

Dust rose from along the Okolište road.

These men, born and brought up in this remote district of Turkey, the rotten-ripe Turkey of the nineteenth century, had naturally never had the chance of seeing the real, powerful and well-organized army of a great power. All that they had been able to see till then had been the incomplete, badly fed, badly clothed and badly paid units of the Sultan's 
askers 
or, which was even worse, the Bosnian irregulars, the 
bashibazouks, 
recruited by force, undisciplined and fanatic. Now for the first time there appeared before them the real 'power and force' of an Empire, victorious, glistening and sure of itself. Such an army dazzled them and checked the words in their throats. At the first sight of the saddlery and the tunic-buttons another world could be sensed behind these hussars and 
jaegers 
in parade kit. Their astonishment was great and the impression profound.

First rode two trumpeters on two fat bays, then a detachment of hussars on black horses. The horses were well groomed and moved like girls with short tidy steps. The hussars, all young and fresh, with waxed moustaches, in red shakos and yellow frogged tunics, seemed rested and vigorous as if they had just come out of barracks. Behind them rode a group of six officers led by a colonel. All eyes were fixed on him. His horse was larger than the others, a flea-bitten grey with a very long and curved neck. A little behind the officers came the infantry detachment, 
jaegers, 
in green uniforms, with a panache of feathers on their leather caps and white bands across their chests. They shut out everything save themselves and seemed like a moving forest.

The trumpeters and hussars rode past the priest and the police chief, halted on the market-place, and drew up along the sides.

The men on the 
kapia, 
pale and shaken, stood in the centre of the bridge facing the officers. One of the younger officers spurred his horse up to the colonel and said something to him. All slowed down. A few paces in front of the 'notables' the colonel suddenly halted
and dismounted, as did the officers behind him as if by order. The soldiers whose duty it was to hold the horses hurried up and led them a few paces back.

As soon as his foot touched the ground, the colonel seemed another man. He was a small, undistinguished, overtired, unpleasant and aggressive man, behaving as if he alone had fought for all of them. Only now could it be seen that he was simply dressed, dishevelled and ungroomed, in contrast to his pale-faced smartly-uniformed officers. He was the image of a man who drives himself mercilessly, who continually overtaxes himself. His face was flushed, his beard untrimmed, his eyes troubled and anxious, his tall helmet a little on one side and his crumpled uniform seemingly too big for his body. He was wearing cavalry boots of soft unpolished leather. Walking with legs apart like a horseman he came closer, swinging his riding-crop. One of the officers spoke to him, pointing out the men ranged before him. The colonel looked at them shortly and sharply, the angry glance of a man continually occupied with difficult duties and great dangers. It was at once evident that he did not know how to look in any other way.