The General of the Dead Army (19 page)

Sometimes he would comfort himself with the thought that it was something he was bound to expect. And his fear that if he kept making use of sentences or words deriving from people in the kingdom of the dead, he would fetch up there himself, this fear did finally pass. He had in effect joined up with them; day after day, season upon season, he had entered this universe and, never mind what he did now, there was no escaping it any more.

Henceforth he had grown accustomed to it, and there were even days when, in place of his earlier torment, he felt a kind of serenity. And with this feeling came the cold satisfaction that this universe had accepted him.

*

Usually we spent the entire day smoking, leaning against the bridge parapet or sitting in the little hut with its notice over the door: “Cofee - Orangeade,” printed all lopsided by the fellow who ran it. There were six of us guarding the bridge. The road over it was a strategic route opened up by the Austrians in the First World War and allowed to fall into disuse soon after it. We’d arrived only a few days after the refurbishing of the bridge and the road was finished. The soldiers who’d repaired them had also built a blockhouse and a small block for living-quarters at the same time. So everything was ready for us when we got there. We set up our heavy machine-gun in the blockhouse and kept a light one in the barrack block - for emergencies
.

The country all round was dreary and empty. Just uncultivated land with a few little rocks and trees scattered about. And the village was tiny - ten houses at most. Strange stone houses they were, with tiny little slits for windows, just like the slits in our blockhouse
.

At first we nearly went mad with boredom. There were only very occasional army vehicles going by, and the villagers made it quite clear they didn’t want anything to do with us. All day long we just walked to and fro beside that parapet and threw stones in the stream. Then at night we took turns on guard duty
.

But then, one fine day, down the path from the mountain we saw a man approaching leading three mules loaded with planks, crates, and rolls of tarred paper. He was a trader from the nearby town. In two days he had put up a hut just by the bridge and painted up in black paint, above the entrance, the words: “Cofee - Orangeade”
.

From that day onwards we became assiduous customers. Although he had only painted
cofee
and
orangeade
over the door he did in fact sell raki and a horrible sort of local wine. From time to time soldiers from a passing lorry would draw up outside and get out for a drink; it was as though his bar had managed to whip up a little life in that dismal spot. Sometimes even the villagers came for a drink. But it wasnt the trader’s raki that attracted them, andhis rotgut wine even less. They had other things on their minds. They’d come to exchange their eggs for our cartridges. It was strictly forbidden, of course, but we did it all the same. At night, during our guard duty, we’d fire a salvo or two of rifle shots, then ask for twice as many replacements next day as wed actually shot. And the ammunition we managed to hoard in that way we swappedfor eggs
.

But those fusillades into the dark were ill-omened. It was as though they were a signal we had ourselves sent to ill fortune; because after a while the partisans did begin to worry us in good earnest. If it hadn’t been for the blockhouse they’d have wiped us out in no time
.

The first of us was killedon the bridge, while he was on guard duty one night. Apparently the partisans had made an attempt to blow the bridge up, but our sentry hadprevented them by giving the alarm. In the morning we found him dead beside the parapet. He was lying in a very strange position, with his mouth open. Did you ever see that film
Death of a Cyclist?
Well when I went to see it I almost yelled out right in the middle of it. The body, on the screen, was so much like that vision I still have engraved in my mind
.

Scarcely two weeks went by before it was the second ones turn. The circumstances were identical you might say. We were pretty sure the village people were shooting at us themselves, but we had no proof. Wed stopped bartering our cartridges with them by now of course. But it was too late
.

After a third of our number had been killed we decided not to keep watch out on the bridge any more. With the replacements for our casualties we had also been sent a search light, which was now set up inside the blockhouse and used to sweep the bridge at irregular intervals. With its hundreds of black, interlacing girders, which gave it a spooky, insect-like look, it had an altogether sinister and frightening appearance. Sometimes, in the middle of the night, I would look out at it outlined in that harsh, white light and feel a presentiment that it was going to swallow us all up, one after another
.

And the partisans were not about to give up
.

The fourth of our men was killed the same night I was wounded. That’s all I know about it though, because I was hit in the first few seconds of the attack. When I came to again I realized I’d been hoisted up onto a mule that was now walking slowly across the bridge. The planks made strange cracking noises under its shoes. It was morning, a grey winter morning. My eyes just starednumbly at the innumerable bolts filing past so close to them. Then I felt my heart contract as something heavy and cold pushed down on it, and that one moment left a scar on me for ever
.

As the mule left the bridge and set off slowly along the road I managed to twist my head round a bit and look back for the last time at the blockhouse, at the dismal houses of the peasants scattered over the plateau, at our men’s graves at the foot of the bridge (the last one still to be dug) and at the wooden hut, passing quite close at that moment, with its squalid sign: “Cofee- Orangeade”
.

The general sat on a block of concrete smoking. Below him, at the foot of the bridge, the workmen were searching and digging in the spaces left by the huge shattered blocks scattered on all sides among the twisted pieces of rusty ironwork. The new bridge had been built a few hundred yards further downstream, where the new road emerged from its cutting near an oil-store. What had been the mountain road was now overgrown with bushes and brush.

The explosion must have been terrible, the general thought to himself. The bridge had been sliced in two, the great concrete tiers had been shattered into fragments and sent soaring as far as the blockhouse - some even farther - along the disused road. Near the bridge there still stood an old wooden hut, and over the door it was still possible to make out the words:
Cofee - Orangeade
. When they had arrived, a week before, the hut, like the bridge, the blockhouse and part of the road, was half destroyed. The tarred paper with which it had been roofed was ripped in places, a number of boards had been torn away, and a good many of those remaining were rotten. But two days later a travelling licensee of the local catering union turned up. He had brought cigarettes, brandy, and a stove to make coffee on. It was like manna from heaven for everyone, because apart from the five full-time workmen they had taken on another seven on a temporary basis, and the whole lot of them - to say nothing of the drivers, the expert, the priest and the general - were doomed to two long and wearisome weeks in the spot. So, after he had nailed up some new planks in one or two places and weighted the torn strips of tarred paper down with big stones so that the wind couldn’t lift them, their state victualler had duly set up shop in the old hut.

His bar whipped up a little life in the place. In the morning the workers would take their coffee or a small glass of brandy there before starting work. During the day the villagers would loiter outside for hours on end, watching the workmen dig.

Two of them, the general happened to notice just then, seemed to be in the process of explaining something to the old foreman, gesturing with their hands towards a spot somewhere down at the foot of the bridge.

Who knows which of them fired at the sentries? the general would think every time he saw the villagers coming down to mingle with the workmen or buy cigarettes at the hut. It was now a week since they had arrived and by now he was able to recognize some of them by sight.

The priest and the expert were clambering along the embankment towards him. The gorges in the mountains all around them were deep in mist.

“Foul weather,” the general said.

The priest nodded.

“The Albanians have a proverb,” he said: “‘Bad weather is forgotten in a friendly house’.”

“Then we certainly haven’t much hope of forgetting it,” the general said. “No one in this country would even open their front door to us.”

“Quite so,” murmured the priest. “We’re fastened to this bridge and can’t pull ourselves free.”

“I can’t stand this place, with those peasants prowling about and watching us dig up our dead.”

“It’s true, they do prowl,” the priest said. “I think they must be deriving some sort of satisfaction from our work.”

“Those men guarding the bridge, they knew them. They lived with them as neighbours for quite a long while, they bartered their eggs with them for bullets, and yet it was one of them for sure who shot those men.”

“They hang around our excavations as though they were waiting for a chance to boast to our workmen and our drivers that they were the ones who actually killed the sentries,” the priest said. “Have you noticed one old man in particular? He has a long moustache, a big revolver stuck in his belt, and he comes here every morning, very stately and solemn, strolling around among the workmen.”

The general scowled. “The one with two or three medals stuck on his chest who walks with his head up in the air? The expert told me that his son was killed by our troops.”

“Oh, is that so?”

“Apparently he pinned the medals on as soon as he heard we were here, then came straight down to parade himself with his revolver in his belt. And he’s done it every day since.”

“Even the Albanian workmen don’t escape his contemptuous looks. Yesterday, when the expert asked him about something, the old fellow didn’t even deign to reply.”

“He’s an old fanatic. Presumably he feels the expert and the workmen are in some way our allies. What I do know,” the general continued as though imparting a confidence, “is that we must be prepared for anything. I distrust that kind of psychopath. You never know, he could go crazy one day, pull out his gun, and just shoot at us in broad daylight!”

“It’s very possible,” the priest said. “Anything could happen with a crack-brained old fellow like that about. One must be careful.”

They heard the thunder rumbling again in the gorges of the mountains all around.

The general lit a cigarette.

“I find the interest these villagers are showing in our excavations more or less understandable,” he said. “A soldier who used to be one of the detachment guarding this bridge came to me before we left home and described what life was like here in wartime. When I was sitting over there just now I was thinking over what he had told me - for perhaps the tenth time.”

“We remind them of those war years.”

“Yes, it’s quite natural. During the war they found their whole destiny suddenly linked with that of the bridge. Its proximity proved fatal. As soon as the bridge had been destroyed, our troops swept in, intent on reprisal, and massacred them. Without this bridge, life in a village so cut off from the rest of the world would just have gone flowing calmly on, and the currents of war would never have reached it. But the bridge was there, and it was the cause of everything. And now, out of the blue, we have appeared and started looking for our soldiers’ remains. This stirs up their memories and makes them restless. They come and go, buy cigarettes at the hut which maybe more than anything else reminds them of the climate of those days.”

The priest listened carefully.

“Dwelling on the past. Nothing can be more dangerous.”

The general had the impression that the other was not anxious to pursue that line of thought.

After lunch the general settled down to work on his lists for a while. They now had all sorts of notes scattered down their margins. Not identified. Reference 1184. See report of exhumation. Head missing. Not identified. See report of exhumation. Head missing. Not identified. See report of exhumation. Right arm shorter than left. Reference 1099. Number 19301. Listed as killed twice. Dentition does not correspond. Not identified …

That afternoon it began to rain. The workmen gathered in the cold, smoky hut and watched the fine rain falling outside.

T
HAT EVENING THE OLD
workman became ill. He had begun to feel slightly unwell during the afternoon, but he had decided it wasn’t important. By evening he was looking pale and felt he needed to lie down. Everyone simply assumed he’d caught a chill. He was taken to one of the village houses and settled down in front of a big fire to keep warm. But as night drew on, his condition grew even worse.

It was still not dawn when the expert woke the general as he needed to borrow the car.

“The foreman is in a pretty bad state. We must get him to the nearest hospital urgently.”

The priest had woken in his turn.

“What is the matter with him?” he asked. “He looked perfectly well yesterday afternoon.”

“I can’t tell you exactly,” the expert said. “I’m afraid it’s an infection. He has a scratch on his right hand.”

“An infection?” the general broke in, lifting his head in surprise.

The expert left.

“What’s really wrong with him, I wonder,” the general said.

“I think it probably is an infection,” the priest said. “His face was quite grey yesterday evening.”

“What rotten luck!”

“Perhaps a rusty greatcoat button, or a broken bone. They opened a whole lot of graves yesterday.”

“Yes, but he knows what he’s about. He’s the one who always shows the others how to go about it.”

“Obviously he won’t have noticed,” the priest said. “Perhaps he had mud on his hands and just didn’t know he’d scratched himself.”