The Bridge on the Drina (44 page)

The conversation of the two unseen youths broke off for a moment, stifled by Bahtijarević's silence.

In the clear June sky, above the dark mountains on the horizon, the moon appeared. The white plaque with the Turkish inscription suddenly shone in the moonlight, like a dimly lit window in the blue-black darkness.

Bahtijarević then said something, but in so low a voice that only disjointed and incomprehensible words reached Stiković and Glasičanin. As so often in young men's discussions, in which changes of subject are rapid and bold, the conversation was now about another matter. From the study of oriental languages, they had now passed on to the content of the inscription on the white plaque before them and to the bridge and he who had built it.

Galus's voice was the louder and more expressive. While agreeing with Bahtijarević's praises of Mehmed Pasha Sokolović and the Turkish administration of his times, which had made possible the building of such a bridge, he now developed his nationalist views on the past and present of the people, their culture and civilization (for in such student discussions each follows his own train of thought).

'You are right,' said Galus. 'He must have been a man of genius. He was not the first nor the last man of our blood who distinguished himself in the service of a foreign empire. We have given hundreds of such men, statesmen, generals and artists, to Stambul, Rome and Vienna. The sense of our national unification in a single, great and powerful modern state lies just in that. Our own forces should remain in our own country and develop there and make their contribution to general culture in our name and not from foreign centres.'

'Do you really think that those "centres" arose by chance and that it is possible to create new ones at will whenever and wherever one likes?'

'Chance or not, that is no longer the question; it is not important how they arose, but it is important that today they are disappearing, that they have flowered and decayed, that they must make way for new and different centres, through which young and free nations, appearing for the first time on the stage of history, can express themselves directly.'

'Do you think that Mehmed Pasha Sokolović, had he remained a peasant's child up there yonder at Sokolovići, would have become what he became and would, among other things, have built this bridge 
ton 
which we are now talking?'

'In those times, certainly, he would not. But, when you come to think of it, it was not hard for Stambul to put up such buildings, when it took from us, and from so many other subject peoples, not only property and money, but also our best men and our purest blood. If you stop to think what we are and how much has been stolen from us through the centuries, then all these buildings are merely crumbs. But when we finally achieve our national freedom and our independence, then our money and our blood will be ours alone, and will stay ours. Everything will be solely and uniquely for the improvement of our own national culture, which will bear our mark and our name and which will be mindful of the happiness and prosperity of all our people.'

Bahtijarević remained silent, and that silence, like the most lively and eloquent speech, provoked Galus. He raised his voice and continued in a sharper tone. With all his natural vivacity and all the vocabulary then prevalent in nationalist literature, he set out the plans and aims of the revolutionary youth movement. All the living forces of the race must be awakened and set in action. Under their
blows the Austro-Hungarian monarchy, that prison of the peoples, would disintegrate as the Turkish Empire had disintegrated. All the anti-national and reactionary forces which today hinder, divide and lull to sleep our national forces will be routed and trampled underfoot. All this can be done, for the spirit of the times in which we live is our strongest ally, for all the efforts of all the other small and oppressed nations support us. Modern nationalism will triumph over religious diversities and outmoded prejudice, will liberate our people from foreign influence and exploitation. Then will the national state be born.

Galus then described all the advantages and beauties of the new national state which was' to rally all the Southern Slavs around Serbia as a sort of Piedmont on the basis of complete national unity, religious tolerance and civil equality. His speech mixed up bold words of uncertain meaning and expressions that accurately expressed the needs of modern life, the deepest desires of a race, most of which were destined to remain only desires, and the justified and attainable demands of everyday reality. It mingled the great truths which had ripened through the generations but which only youth could perceive in advance and dare to express, with the eternal illusions which are never extinguished but never attain realization, for one generation of youth hands them on to the next like that mythological torch. In the young man's speech there were, naturally, many assertions which could not have stood up to the criticism of reality and many suppositions which could not, perhaps, have borne the proof of experience, but in it too was that freshness, that precious essence which maintains and rejuvenates the tree of humanity.

Bahtijarević remained silent.

'You will see, Fehim,' Galus enthusiastically assured his friend as if it were a matter of the same night or the next morning, 'you will see. We shall create a state which will make the most precious contribution to the progress of humanity, in which every effort will be blessed, every sacrifice holy, every thought original and expressed in our own words, and every deed marked with the stamp of our name. Then v/e will carry out work which will be the result of our free labour and the expression of our racial genius, put up buildings in comparison with which all that has been done in the centuries of foreign administration will appear like silly toys. We will bridge greater rivers and deeper abysses. We will build new, greater and better bridges, not to link foreign centres with conquered lands but to link our own lands with the rest of the world. There cannot be any doubt any longer. We are destined to realize all that the generations
before us have aspired to; a state, born in freedom and founded on justice, like a part of God's thought realized here on earth.'

Bahtijarević remained silent. Even Galus's voice lowered in tone. As his ideas became more exalted, his voice became lower and lower, hoarser and hoarser, till it became a strong and passionate whisper and was finally lost in the great silence of the night. At last both young men were silent. But none the less Bahtijarević's silence seemed a thing apart, heavy and obstinate in the night. It seemed like an impassable wall in the darkness which by the very weight of its existence resolutely rejected all that the other had said, and expressed its dumb, clear and unalterable opinion.

The foundations of the world and the bases of life and human relationships in it have been fixed for centuries. That does not mean that they do not change, but measured by the length of human existence they appear eternal. The relation between their endurance and the length of human existence is the same as the relation between the uneasy, moving and swift surface of a river and its stable and solid bed whose changes are slow and imperceptible. The very idea of the change of these 'centres' is unhealthy and unacceptable. That would be as if someone wished to change and measure the sources of great rivers or the sites of mountains. The desire for sudden changes and the thought of their realization by force often appears among men like a disease and gains ground mainly in young brains; only these brains do not think as they should, do not amount to anything in the end and the heads that think thus do not remain long on their shoulders. For it is not human desires that dispose and administer the things of the world. Desire is like a wind; it shifts the dust from one place to another, sometimes darkens the whole horizon, but in the end calms down and falls and leaves the old and eternal picture of the world. Lasting deeds are realized on this earth only by God's will, and man is only His blind and humble tool. A deed which is born of desire, human desire, either does not live till realization or is not lasting; in no case is that good. All these tumultuous desires and daring words under the night sky on the 
kapia 
will not change anything basically; they will pass, beneath the great and permanent realities of the world and will be lost where all desires and winds are stilled. In truth great men and great buildings rise and will rise only where they are appointed to arise in God's thought, in their right place independent of empty transient desires and human vanity.'

But Bahtijarević did not utter a single one of these words. Those who, like this Moslem youth of noble family, carry their philosophy in their blood, live and die according to it, do not know how to express it in words, or feel the need to do so. After this long silence
Stiković and Glasičanin only saw one or other of the pair of unseen comrades throw a cigarette stub over the parapet and watched it fall like a shooting star in a great curve from the bridge into the Drina. At the same time they heard the two friends slowly and softly moving away towards the market-place. The sound of their footsteps was soon lost.

Alone once more, Stiković and Glasičanin started and looked at one another as though they had only just met.

In the pale moonlight their faces showed in bright and dark surfaces sharply defined, so that they seemed much older than in fact they were. The glow from their cigarettes had a sort of phosphorescence. Both were depressed. Their reasons were quite different, but the depression was mutual. Both had the same wish; to get up and go home. But both seemed as if nailed to the stone seats still warm from the day's sunlight. The conversation of that pair of young comrades which they by chance overheard had been welcome to them as a postponement of their own conversation and mutual explanation. But now it could no longer be avoided.

'Did you hear Herak and his arguments?' Stiković spoke first, referring to the evening's discussion, and at once felt the weakness of his position.

Glasičanin, who for his part felt the momentary advantage of his position as arbiter, did not reply at once.

'I ask you,' went on Stiković impatiently, 'in these days to speak of class struggle and recommend small measures, when it is clear to every last man amongst us that national unity and liberation carried out by revolutionary methods is the most pressing aim of our community! Why, that is downright silly!'

His voice held both a question and an appeal. But again Glasičanin did not reply. In the hush of that revengeful and vindictive silence, the sound of music came to them from the officers' mess on the river bank. The ground-floor windows were wide open and brightly lit. A violin was playing with a piano accompanying it. It was the military doctor, Regimentsarzt Balas, who was playing, accompanied by the wife of the commander of the garrison, Colonel Bauer. They were practising the second movement of Schubert's Sonatina for violin and piano. They played well together but before they were halfway through the piano was ahead and the violinist stopped playing. After a short silence, during which they were doubtless arguing about the disputed passage, they began again. They practised together almost every evening and played until late at night, while the Colonel sat in another room playing endless games of 
preference 
or simply dozing over Mostar wine and tobacco while the younger officers joked
among themselves at the expense of the enamoured musicians.

Between Madame Bauer and the young doctor a complicated and difficult story had in fact been building up for months. Not even the keenest-eyed among the officers had been able to decide on the real nature of the relationship. Some said that the tie between them was wholly spiritual (and naturally laughed at it), while others said that the body had its due share in the matter also. The two were, however, inseparable, with the full fatherly approval of the Colonel who was a good-natured man, already blunted by long service, the weight of years, wine and tobacco.

The whole town looked on these two as a couple. Otherwise, the whole officers' mess lived a completely isolated life, without any connection with the local people and citizens or even the foreign officials. At the entrance to their parks, filled with beds of rare flowers laid out in circles and stars, a notice announced impartially that it was forbidden to bring dogs into the parks and that civilians were not allowed to enter. Their pleasures and their duties were alike inaccessible to all who were not in uniform. Their whole life was in fact that of a huge and completely exclusive caste, which cherished its exclusiveness as the most important aspect of its power and which beneath a brilliant and stiff exterior concealed all that life gave to other men of greatness and poverty, sweetness and bitterness.

But there are things which by their very nature cannot remain hidden, which break down every barrier however strong and cross even the most strictly guarded frontier. 'There are three things which cannot be hidden,' say the Osmanlis, 'and these are: love, a cough and poverty.' This was the case with this pair of lovers. There was not an old man or a child, man or woman, in the town who had not come across them on one of their walks on unfrequented paths around the town, lost in conversation and completely blind and deaf to everything about them. The shepherds were as used to them as to those pairs of beetles than can be seen in May on the leaves by the wayside, always two by two in loving embrace. They were to be seen everywhere; along the Drina and the Rzav, by the ruins of the old fortress, on the road leading from the town, or around Stražište, and that at any time of the day. For time is always short to lovers and no path long enough. They sometimes rode or drove in a light carriage, but for the most part walked, and walked at that pace usual to two persons who exist only one for the other, and with that characteristic gait which shows that they are indifferent to everything in the world save what each has to say to the other.