The Bridge on the Drina (33 page)

Lotte went up to him fearlessly, easily and naturally.

'What is it, Eyub? What are you making such a noise about?'

'Where have you been? I want to know where you have been ..,' stammered the drunkard in a voice already appeased and looking at her as if she were a vision. 'They are giving me some sort of
poison to drink. They are poisoning me, but they do not know that I . . . if I . . .'

'Sit down, sit down quietly,' the woman consoled him, with her white perfumed hands playing just in front of the young beg's face. 'Sit down. I will get you bird's milk to drink if you want it. I will get it for you myself.'

She called the waiter and gave an order in German.

'Don't talk that lingo which I don't understand in front of me; all this 
firtzen-fiirtzen, 
for I . . . well you know me. . . .'

'I know, I know, Eyub: I know no one better than you, Eyub, but you I know. . . .'

'Hm! Who have you been with? Tell me!'

The conversation between the drunk man and the sober woman maundered on without end or meaning, without sense or conclusion, beside bottles of some expensive wine and two glasses; one, Lotte's, always full and the other, Eyub's, continually filled and emptied.

While the young spendthrift stuttered and muttered on in his thick drunkard's voice about love, death, hopeless yearning and similar matters which Lotte knew by heart, for they were the stock in trade of every local drunkard, she rose, went over to the other tables at which sat the other guests who met regularly every evening in the hotel.

At one table was a group of young worthies who had only just begun to frequent the cafés and drink, town snobs for whom Zarije's inn was too boring and too ordinary and who were still intimidated by the hotel. At the others were officials, strangers, with an officer or two who had abandoned the officers' mess for that day and come down to the civilian hotel with the aim of touching Lotte for a quick loan. At a third were the engineers who were building the first forest railway for the export of timber.

In a corner reckoning something sat Pavle Ranković, one of the young but richer merchants and some Austrian or other, a contractor for the railway. Pavle was in Turkish style dress with a red fez which he did not take off in the café. His small eyes looked like two lighted slits, black and thin in his pale face, but which could widen and become unusually large and diabolically merry in exceptional moments of joy or triumph. The contractor was in a grey sports suit with high yellow laced boots which reached to his knees. The contractor was writing with a gold pencil attached to a silver chain, and Pavle with a short stub which some wood dealer, a military contractor, had left behind in his shop five years before when buying nails and hinges. They were concluding an
agreement for the feeding of the workers on the line. Completely wrapped up in their tasks, they multiplied, divided and added; they ranged rows of figures, one set visible, on paper, by which each hoped to convince and deceive the other, and another, invisible and in their heads, closely and quickly reckoned, in which each for himself sought for hidden possibilities and profits.

For each of these guests Lotte found the right words, a full smile or even a silent glance full of understanding. Then she returned once more to the young beg who was again beginning to become uneasy and aggressive.

In the course of that night, throughout the whole drinking bout, with all its noisy, yearning, lachrymose or coarse phases, which she knew so well, Lotte would find a few moments in which she could go back once again to her room and in the milky light of the porcelain lamp continue her rest or her correspondence, until downstairs some scene would begin again or until they called her down.

Tomorrow was another day, just such another with the same scene of drunken spending, and for Lotte the same anxieties which she must meet with a smiling face and the same task which always seemed an easy yet desperate game.

It seemed incomprehensible and inexplicable how Lotte could manage the quantity and variety of tasks which she carried out day after day and which demanded of her more cunning than a woman has and more strength than any man could muster. But none the less she was able to finish everything, never complaining, never explaining anything to anyone, never speaking about any task which she had just finished or which still awaited her. Despite all that she always managed to find an hour or two every day for Alibeg Pašić. He was the only man whom the town believed had won Lotte's sympathy, genuinely and independently of any source of profit. But he was also the most reserved and taciturn man in the town. The eldest of the four Pašić brothers, he had never married (in the town it was believed that this was because of Lotte), never took part in business or public life. He never drank to excess or went into cafés with men of his own age. He was always of the same mood, universally amiable and restrained towards all, without distinction. Quiet and reserved, he did not avoid society or conversation, yet no one ever remembered any opinion expressed by him or ever repeated anything that he had said. He was sufficient unto himself and completely satisfied with what he was and what he seemed in the eyes of others. He himself had no need to be or to seem in any way different from what he
was and no one expected him or asked him to be anything else. He was one of those men who bear their social position as some heavy and noble calling which completely fills their lives; an inborn, great and dignified position justified by itself alone and which cannot be explained, nor denied nor imitated.

With the guests in the large hall Lotte had little contact. That was the job of the waitress Malčika and the 
'zahlkelner' 
Gustav. Malčika was a shrewd Hungarian girl well known to the whole town who looked like the wife of some lion tamer, and Gustav, a small, reddish Czech-German of irrascible nature, bloodshot eyes, bow legs and flat feet. They knew all the guests and all the townspeople; they knew who were or were not good payers, their habits when drunk, whom to receive coldly and whom to welcome cordially and whom not to allow to enter at all for 'he was not for this hotel'. They took care that the guests should drink a lot and should pay regularly, but that everything should end smoothly and well since it was Lotte's motto: 'Nur kein Skandal!' If sometimes, exceptionally, it so happened that someone went unexpectedly be-serk in his cups or, after already getting drunk at some less reputable café, should force his way into the room, then Milan the servant appeared, a tall broad-shouldered and hairy man from Lika, of gigantic strength, a man who spoke little and did all the odd jobs. He was always correctly dressed as a hotel servant (Lotte saw to that). He was always in his shirt-sleeves, with a brown waistcoat and white shirt, with a long apron of green cloth, with sleeves rolled back summer and winter to show his huge forearms as hairy as two brushes, and with finely waxed moustaches and black hair stiff with perfumed military pomade. Milan was the man who extinguished every scandal at its very conception.

There was a long-established and consecrated tactic for this disagreeable and undesired operation. Gustav kept the furious and drunken guest in conversation until Milan came up behind him; then the 
zahlkelner 
suddenly moved out of the way and Milan seized the drunkard from behind, one arm round his waist and the other round his neck, so swiftly and skilfully that no one was ever able to see what 'Milan's grip' really was. Then even the strongest of the town ne'er-do-wells flew like a rag-doll through the doors which Malčika held open at just the right moment, and through them into the street. At the same moment Gustav threw his hat, stick and anything else he had with him after him and Milan put the whole weight of his body and clanged down the metal shutter over the door. All this was over in the twinkling of an eye, in close co-operation and smoothly, and almost before the other guests could turn to look, the unwelcome
visitor was already in the street and could, if he were really maddened, beat a few times with knife or stone on the roller-blinds as the marks on it showed. But that was not a scandal in the hotel but in the street, a matter for the police who in any case always had a man on patrol in front of the hotel. It had never happened to Milan, as had been the case in other cafés, that the guest knocked anyone down or rushed through the rooms breaking tables and chairs or clung with arms and legs to the door so that afterwards not even a yoke of oxen could drag him away. Milan never brought any excessive zeal or bad humour to his task, no love of fighting or personal prejudice; therefore he finished the matter swiftly and perfectly. A minute after the expulsion he was back at his work in the kitchen or pantry as if nothing had happened. Gustav only went, as if by chance, through the 
Extrazimmer 
and looking at Lotte, who sat at some table with the better guests, suddenly closed both eyes which meant that something had happened but that everything was now settled. Then Lotte, without stopping her conversation or ceasing to smile, also blinked quickly and imperceptibly, which meant:

'All right, thank you; keep an eye on it!'

There remained only the question of what the expelled guest had drunk or broken. That sum Lotte wrote off in Gustav's accounts when they made up the accounts for the day, which they did late at night behind a red screen.

XV

There were many ways by which the turbulent and skilfully expelled guest, if he were not immediately taken to prison from outside the hotel, could recover his spirits and his strength after the unpleasantness that had befallen him. He could totter to the 
kapia 
and refresh himself there in the cool breeze from the waters and the surrounding hills; or he could go to Zarije's inn which was only a little farther on, in the main square, and there freely and without hindrance grind his teeth, threaten and curse the invisible hand that had so painfully and definitely thrown him out of the hotel. There, after the solid citizens and artisans who had only come to drink their 'evening nip' or chat with their fellows had dispersed, there was no scandal, nor could there be, for everyone drank as much as he liked or as much as he could pay for, and everyone did and said what he liked. There was no question of asking a guest to spend money and drink up and at the same time behave as if was sober. Though if anyone went beyond due measure there was always the solid and taciturn Zarije himself whose scowling and bad-tempered face discouraged even the most rabid drunkards and brawlers. He quietened them with a slow movement of his heavy hand and a few words in his gruff voice:

'Hey you there! Drop it! Enough of your fun and games!' But even in that old-fashioned inn where there were no separate rooms or waiters, for there was always some fellow or other from the Sanjak to serve the drinks, new habits mingled wondrously with the old.

Withdrawn into the farthest corners the notorious addicts of plum brandy sat silent. They were lovers of shadow and silence, sitting over their plum brandy as if it were something sacred, hating movement and commotion. With burnt-out stomachs, inflamed livers and disordered nerves, unshaven and uncared for, indifferent to everything else in the world and a burden even to themselves, they sat there and drank and, while drinking, waited until that magical light which shines for those completely given over to drink should
at last burst upon them, that joy for which it is sweet to suffer, to decay and finally to die, but which unfortunately appears more and more rarely and shines more and more weakly.

The most noisy and talkative were the beginners, for the most part sons of local worthies, young men in those dangerous years which mark the first steps on the road to ruin, paying that tribute which all must pay to the vices of drink and idleness, some for shorter, others for longer periods. Most of them did not remain long on this road but turned away from it, founded families and devoted themselves to thrift and labour, to the daily life of a citizen with vices suppressed and passions moderated. Only an insignificant minority, accursed and preordained, continued on that road forever, choosing alcohol instead of life, that shortest and most deceptive illusion in this short and deceptive life; they lived for alcohol and were consumed by it, until they became sullen, dull and puffy like those who sat in the corners in the shadows.

Since the new ways of life began, without discipline or consideration, with more lively trade and better wages, as well as Sumbo the Gipsy who had accompanied all the townsmen's orgies for the past thirteen years with his 
zurla, 
or peasant clarinet, there now came often to the inn Franz Furlan with his accordion. He was a thin reddish man with a gold earring in his right ear, a woodcarver by profession, but too great a lover of wine and music. The soldiers and foreign workmen loved to listen to him.

It often happened that a 
guslar 
(a player on the one-stringed fiddle) could also be found there, usually some Montenegrin, thin as a hermit, poorly dressed but proud in bearing, famished but ashamed, proud but forced to accept alms. He would sit for some time in a corner, noticeably withdrawn, ordering nothing and looking straight in front of him, pretending to notice nothing and to be indifferent to everything. None the less it could be seen that he had other thoughts and intentions than his appearance revealed. Within him wrestled invisibly many contrary and irreconcilable feelings, especially the contrast between the greatness that he felt in his soul and the misery and weakness of what he was able to express and reveal before others. Therefore he was always a little confused and embarrassed. Proudly and patiently he waited for someone to ask for a song from him and then hesitantly took his 
gusle 
out of his bag, breathed on it, looked to see if his bow had been slackened by damp, and tuned up, all the while quite clearly wanting to attract as little attention as possible to these technical preliminaries. When he first passed the bow across the string it was still a wavering sound, uneven as a rutted road. But just as somehow or other one passes such a road, so he too
through his nose with closed mouth began softly to accompany the sound and complete and harmonize it with his voice. When at last the two sounds merged into a single melancholy even note which wove an accompaniment for his song, the miserable singer changed as if by magic and all his troubled hesitation disappeared, his inner contradictions calmed and all his outer cares forgotten. The 
guslar 
suddenly raised his head, like a man who throws off the mask of humility, no longer having need to conceal who and what he was, and began unexpectedly in a strong voice his introductory verses: