Little Bastards in Springtime
Read Little Bastards in Springtime Online
Authors: Katja Rudolph
IN SPRINGTIME
A N
OVEL
KATJA RUDOLPH
for Ali Drummond
nine hundred years and counting
When the leaders speak of peace,
The common folk know
That war is coming.
When the leaders curse war
The mobilization order is already written out.
—B
ERTOLT
B
RECHT,
War Primer
The duty of youth is to challenge corruption.
—K
URT
C
OBAIN
Prologue
Baka told me the story of how she walked up into the mountain forest to join the partisans so many times that I can write it down without hesitation in ten minutes flat. All the words are already there, I don’t have to think up a single one. It’s a good place to begin. Sava, this is for you.
T
HE GIRL SQUATS BY THE ROADSIDE, ARMS
resting on knees. She can see far out into the valley, a haze of green and rust punctuated by dabs of oily black smoke. Beyond this rise mountain peaks capped by snow. She has all she needs with her: food for several days, a change of underclothing, a knife she took from the kitchen just before slipping away. Directly below, where the road enters the mountain forest, the Italians are burning her village and along with it, she prays, her father, her uncle, her brothers, and her loathsome husband-to-be.
The girl has been waiting without stirring since morning, savouring the stillness, the solitude, how the sun moves inexorably across the sky. The harsh white of noon is replaced by a golden afternoon, which, following an interval of fading light, blooms into a luminous pink sunset. With dusk, the girl calls her
prayer back from the changeable sky. She no longer wishes for her father and the others to burn to death within earshot of fascist curses. She is satisfied to be up in the mountains away from them. Let them live their lives, let me live mine, she thinks.
As the sun sets she hears footfalls. Indistinct on the loose edge of the road, their soft crunching and sliding might be the sound of an animal burrowing but for their purposeful regularity. The girl listens with anticipation. She was told to expect a man when night fell. She knows what he will say to her once he comes upon her. She knows how she will respond.
The man is at her side. She senses him as much as she can see him. He is a dense breathing presence undulating in the blue and purple night. She can feel warmth radiating from his body, smell his cigarette breath, his sharp salty sweat.
“Do you wish to continue with me?” he asks her.
He speaks in a dialect that the girl has not heard before. She feels a shiver rush from her lower back to the crown of her head and arches her spine with pleasure, knowing the gesture will remain invisible. This is the marriage ceremony I choose, she thinks, this is my special day. Up here, on a moonless night, bathed in forest scents, no witnesses to steal the moment from me. A man from a distant region whom she has yet to lay eyes on asks her a question she can with all her heart say yes to. There is a tremor in her voice when she replies.
“Yes, let us continue together to higher ground.”
The man and the girl walk side by side through the night. They say nothing more. Occasionally, he reaches out and touches her arm; occasionally, she reaches out and touches his. In this way, they stay within three feet of each other as they move quickly into the mountain. After some time, the girl takes notice of her body, the way her muscles propel her forward in a complex
sequence of contraction and relaxation, the way her ligaments secure her joints, the way her arms swing rhythmically at her sides and her breath steadies and deepens despite her exertion. It does all of this of its own accord, the girl notices, leaving her mind free to wander, for the first time in her life, in an immaterial world of its own making. In this state of entrancement, time and place no longer fetter her; she conjures up a hundred diverse futures for herself, none of which include the vile man her father intends her to marry, or the house in the village to which she would be tied for the rest of her life. She would like this night march and its visions of the wide world to go on forever.
Eventually, however, light seeps through branches and morning arrives. The girl looks outward again. She sees a narrow path through pine trees. She sees mountainside thrusting upward beyond the treetops. She sees the man, who is tall and wiry and leans forward to counterbalance the weight of his pack, walking next to her.
“Day is breaking,” he says. “We are almost there.”
“I like walking distances in the dark,” the girl responds. “It’s the first time I’ve done it.”
“Well, that’s good,” replies the man. “There’s going to be a lot of that. We conduct our raids and ambushes like bee stings, quick, sharp, painful, then we melt away into the forests, hills, and sometimes high, high up into the mountains where there is snow and the enemy and all his machinery cannot follow.”
The camp is a peasant farm. There’s a barnyard, several tall hay cones, a stone farmhouse to the left, a wooden barn and several smaller sheds to the right. The girl sees the farmer leaning in the doorway of one of them, his anxious eyes on the road; he could be one of her uncles, one of her neighbours. She knows his wife and children are in there, waiting for their uninvited guests to
leave. The girl and the man follow the sound of raised voices into the farmhouse and to the kitchen. Fifteen soldiers are squeezed tightly into its dim confines—thirteen men, two women, each talking loudly over the others. Their faces are swarthy and slick with an oily sheen, since the kitchen is stuffy and hot, and their hair minus caps is matted and stringy. Propped up next to each is a rifle, different from the guns the girl has seen hunters carrying in the village. All at once all present turn, look at her, raise their mugs, and shout, “Welcome, Partizanka!” Then the girl is jostled to the end of the long table.
“We’ll take you to training camp from here,” the man says. “For now, meet your comrades, eat and drink.”
A mug of tea, a boiled egg, a slice of sausage, a piece of bread are placed in front of her. There is no plate. She takes a sip of tea.
“What’s your name?” asks the partisan next to her. He has a scraggly beard, a cigarette tucked behind each ear, and round spectacles emphasizing soulful brown eyes. He’s wearing a uniform the girl does not recognize.
“I haven’t decided yet,” she says.
“Oh?” His eyebrows rise, his forehead wrinkles.
“I’m going to choose my own name.” The girl says this with a deep feeling of joy.
“Well, Yet-to-Be-Named, you are about to learn everything we know about resisting and terminating the occupation. Harassing the enemy, cutting communications, guerrilla operations like that. And active offensives. I am the political commissar here, by the way.”
He reaches out a hand. The girl shakes it.
“I know why I’m here,” the girl says.
“The occupiers are not our most important enemy,” continues the commissar. “Our most important enemy is all that
stands in the way of a united Yugoslavia and a just and equitable society.”
“Yes, I know,” says the girl.
“The Germans and their Axis are superior in weapons and equipment, but we have—”
“—knowledge of terrain, speed of mobility,” the girl finishes for him.
The commissar squints at her, then smiles. “That’s it,” he says. “You’ve heard our lecture in the village. You children learn fastest.”
“Yes, I did. In the village.”
“The children will all be ruined by war, that’s the truth of it,” the commissar announces, not to her but to the table in general. “Yet some will rise arduously from the ruins to change the world for the better.” No one is listening to him. “And when the next war breaks out, the same will happen,” he continues. “When this cycle has occurred enough times, the ruined children of war will have changed the world sufficiently to eradicate the benefit of war to any man, venture, nation, or empire and there will be no more wars. You see, progress!”
“Maybe it will only take one more generation,” the girl says.
“Maybe. That is our intention,” says the commissar. “Death to fascism, freedom to the people!”
He turns to talk to the man beside him.
The girl chews her bread. She peels her egg. The food is good. After this brief exchange, no one pays attention to her, so she sits and concentrates on tasting and lets the hubbub of voices envelop her. In this way, she finishes eating, then turns her attention to the two partizankas at the other end of the table, strange luminous creatures in the girl’s eyes, wearing men’s uniforms, gesticulating boldly with their hands and jumping out of their seats as
they talk. One of them has cut her hair short, the girl notices. A dark lock has fallen down over her forehead and stays there, stuck down by sweat. The girl is thinking about this, whether she will cut her own hair short, when the room falls abruptly silent. She looks around wide-eyed. For a heartbeat everyone is motionless, heads cocked, listening. And there it is, gunfire at the sentry’s post a hundred yards down the road.
The soldier at the head of the table barks, “Go,” and “Now,” and a cacophony of chairs tipping over and guns being picked up and mugs smashing as they’re swept off the table accompanies the scramble for the door. The girl is dragged out of her seat, the kitchen, the farmhouse by the two partisans sitting closest to her, the commissar, and an old-man soldier with a head of grey hair and a gaunt, pitted face. She is aware of a bruising grip on each upper arm, of her head dangling awkwardly on the stem of her neck, of her knees dragging along the floor, then banging on the ridge of each step down to the farmyard. And there she is set on her feet and pushed hard toward the back perimeter of the farm.
“Run,” the commissar shouts. “It’s a raid. Follow us.”
The girl runs, following her comrades out of the farmyard and into a field beyond it. There she observes them fanning out, each one heading to the forest at the edge of the field. Gun- and mortar-fire echo against the mountainside, and raised voices too, the orders of the enemy officers, the pleading of the farmer, the cries of his family, the shrieks of animals. When she reaches the edge of the forest, the girl stops to look back. The farm buildings are on fire, the animals are being slaughtered. She turns, enters the forest, and chases after the officers’ whistles. When they are all together, running in single file, the whistles stop and they move silently but for the rasp of their breathing, ever uphill, off the path, ducking between trees, jumping over roots.
SPRING 1992
Mayday, Mayday
I
T’S CLOUDY BUT WARM FOR APRIL. WARM AT
least in the huge crowd of people. Thousands of bodies pressed together, all breathing on each other.
“It’s an unpredictable month,” Mama says, looking at the sky.
There is mist on the hills surrounding the city and trees are wearing haloes of green. I’ve seen swallows making their nests in the roofs. I struggle to take off my coat, I hand it to her. She tells me to put it on again.
“You’ll get a cold,” she says.
I swear at her, but she’s distracted by the crazy energy of the marchers. Everyone’s mouth open, shouting, whistling, singing. There are signs. There are flags. I can hear drums up front, and next to us is a big group of miners from Tuzla who sing, “
We miners, we don’t drink wine, we only drink the smoke coming out of the mines.
” There are old men and old ladies too. And lots of students in leather jackets and scarves. They’re chanting, “We don’t want cantons,” “Resist nationalist propaganda,” “Fuck the World Bank,” “We want to live together,” “Yugo, we love you.” Things like that. And there’s a beggar on the sidewalk with a sign that reads, My W
IFE REFUSES TO COOK FOR
ME
, I
WANT CHANGES.
I think it’s funny, but Mama and Papa aren’t laughing.