The Bridge on the Drina (12 page)

About the same time all that formless mass of criss-cross beams and supports over the river began to be reduced in size and to thin out and through it emerged, more and more clearly, the bridge itself, of lovely Banja stone. Individual workers and small groups were still employed on jobs which seemed to the people senseless and unconnected with the main construction, but by now it was clear even to the most doubting of the townsmen that out of all this work the bridge itself rose, to a single design and a faultless reckoning, over and above all these individual jobs. First the lesser arches, both in height and in span, which were nearest to the banks appeared and then, one by one, the others were revealed until even the last of them was freed of its scaffolding, showing the whole bridge with all its eleven arches, perfect and wondrous in its beauty, like a new and strange feature in the townsmen's eyes.

Quick to respond to good or evil, the people of Višegrad were now ashamed of their doubts and lack of belief. They no longer tried to conceal their wonder or to restrain their enthusiasm. Passage across the bridge was not yet permitted, but they collected on both banks, especially on the right one where the market-place and the greater part of the town were, and watched the workers passing across it and how they worked at smoothing the stones of the parapet and the raised seats of the
kapia. 
The Višegrad Turks watched this work
by another's hand at another's expense to which for a full five years they had given every sort of name and prophesied the worst of futures.

'Ama, 
but I always told you,' a little Moslem 
hodja 
from Dušče said excitedly and gleefully, 'that nothing escapes the Sultan's hand and that these men of sense would finally put up what they had in mind, but you kept saying: they won't do this, or they can't do that. Now you see they have built it, and what a bridge they have built, what convenience and what beauty!'

Everyone approved his words, though no one really remembered when he said them, and they all knew very well that he too had ridiculed the building and the man who had been building it. All of them were sincerely enraptured.

'Eh, fellows, fellows, see what is rising here, in this town of ours!'

'See how great is the Vezir's power and foresight. Wherever he turns his eyes there is profit and blessing.'

'Yet all this is nothing,' added the gay and lively little 
hodja, 
'there will be still finer things. You see how they are grooming and decorating it like a horse for a fair.'

So they competed in expressions of enthusiasm, searching for new, better and more high-flown words of praise. Only Ahmedaga Sheta, the rich grain merchant, a sullen man and a miser, still looked askance at the work and those who praised it. Tall, yellow and wizened, with black piercing eyes and thin lips that looked as if they were glued together, blinking in the fine September sun, he alone did not renounce his earlier opinion (for certain men are filled with unreasonable hate and envy greater and stronger than anything that other men can imagine). To those who enthusiastically praised the greatness and permanence of the bridge, saying that it was stronger than any fortress, he retorted disdainfully:

'Just wait till the floods, one of our real Višegrad floods! Then you will see what will be left of it!'

All of them argued bitterly with him and praised those who had been working on the bridge, especially Arif Beg, who with the smile of a great lord always on his lips had created such a work as though it had been child's play. But Sheta was firmly determined not to acknowledge anything of anyone:

'Yes, indeed. But if it had not been for Abidaga with his green staff and his tyranny and oppression, I ask you what could Old Baldie have done to finish the bridge despite his smile and his hands clasped behind his back?'

Offended at the universal enthusiasm as if it had been a personal insult, Sheta departed angrily to his shop, to sit in his usual place
where he could see neither sun nor bridge, nor hear the murmur and the movement of the excited throng.

But Sheta was an isolated example. The joy and enthusiasm of the citizens continued to grow and spread to the surrounding villages. In the early days of October, Arif Beg ordered a great feast for the completion of the bridge. This man of lordly manners, of unrelenting severity and strict honesty, who had spent all the monies confided to him for the purpose for which they were intended and had kept nothing for himself, was regarded by the people as the chief personage in this achievement. They spoke more of him than of the Vezir himself. So his feast turned out rich and brilliant.

The overseers and workers received gifts in money and clothing and the feast, in which anyone who wished could take part, lasted two days. The Vezir's health was celebrated in meat and drink, in music, dancing and song; horse and foot races were arranged, and meat and sweetstuffs divided amongst the poor. On the square which linked the bridge with the market-place, 
halva 
was cooked in cauldrons and served piping hot to the people. That 
halva 
even got as far as the villages around the town and whoever ate it wished good health to the Vezir and long life to his buildings. There were children who went back fourteen times to the cauldrons until the cooks, recognizing them, drove them away with their long wooden spoons. One gipsy child died after eating too much hot 
halva.

Such things were long remembered and spoken about when tales were told of the creation of the bridge, the more so since, it seems, generous Vezirs and honest officials in later years died out and such feasts became rarer and rarer and at last completely unknown, until in the end they passed into legend with the 
vilas, 
with Stoja and Ostoja and similar wonders.

While the feast lasted, and in general all those early days, the people crossed the bridge countless times from one bank to the other. The children rushed across while their elders walked slowly, deep in conversation or watching from every point the new views open to them from the bridge. The helpless, the lame and the sick were brought on litters, for no one wanted to be left out or renounce their share in this wonder. Even the least of the townsmen felt as if his powers were suddenly multiplied, as if some wonderful, superhuman exploit was brought within the measure of his powers and within the limits of everyday life, as if besides the well-known elements of earth, water and sky, one more were open to him, as if by some beneficent effort each one of them could suddenly realize one of his dearest desires, that ancient dream of man —to go over the water and to be master of space.

The Turkish youths formed a round dance, a 
kolo, 
around the cauldrons of 
halva 
and then led the dance across the bridge, since it seemed to them that they were flying and not treading the solid earth. The dance wound round in circles about the
kapia, 
the dancers beating their heels and stamping on the new flagstones as if to test the stoutness of the bridge. Around that winding, circling 
kolo 
of young bodies tirelessly leaping up and down in the same rhthym, the children played, running in and out between the dancing feet as if through a moving fence, standing in the centre of this 
kolo 
which was being danced for the first time in their lives on that bridge about which there had been so much talk for years, and even on the 
kapia,
wherein, it was said, the unlucky Arab was imprisoned and showed himself of nights. Enjoying the young men's 
kolo, 
they were none the less overcome by that fear which the Arab himself, when he had been alive and working on the bridge, had always instilled into the children of the town. On that high, new and strange bridge, it seemed to them that they had long forsaken their mothers and their homes and were wandering in lands of black people, marvellous buildings and strange dances; they trembled, but were unable to keep their thoughts from the Arab or to abandon the wonderful new 
kapia. 
Only some fresh marvel could have distracted their attention.

A certain Murat, known as 'the dumb one', a dim-witted youth from the noble family of Turković from Nezuke, who was often the butt of the town, suddenly climbed on to the stone parapet of the bridge. There were shrieks from the children, startled cries from the older people, but the idiot, as though under a spell, with outstretched arms and head flung back, went along the narrow stones, step by step, as though he were not flying above the waters and the depths but taking part in a wonderful dance. Parallel with him walked a crew of urchins and nondescripts urging him on. On the farther side of the bridge his brother Aliaga waited for him and spanked him like a small child.

Many people went far down the river, half an hour's walk, to Kalata or Mezalin, and looked thence at the bridge, standing out white and delicate with its eleven arches, like a strange arabesque on the green waters amid the dark hills.

About this time too a great white plaque was brought, with an engraved inscription, and built into the 
kapia, 
into that wall of reddish stone which rose a good six feet from the parapet of the bridge. The people gathered around the inscription and looked at it until some seminarist or koranic student was found who would, with more or less ability, for a coffee or a slice of water-melon or even for the pure love of Allah, read the inscription as best he could.

A hundred times those days they spelt out the verses of the 
tarih, 
written by a certain Badi, which gave the name and title of the man who had made the bequest as well as the fortunate year 979 ah, that is to say 1571 in the Christian calendar, when it was completed. This Badi for good money wrote easy and sonorous verses and knew well how to foist them upon great men who erected or restored great buildings. Those who knew him (and who were somewhat envious of him) used to say mockingly that the vault of heaven was the one and only building on which there was not a 
tarih 
from Badi's pen. But he, despite all his fine earnings, was a poor famished devil continually at odds with that special sort of penury that often goes with verse writing like a kind of curse and which no amount of pay or salary can assuage.

Because of their literary shortcomings, their thick heads and lively imaginations, each of the local scholars read and interpreted in his own way Badi's 
tarih 
on the stone plaque which, as every text once revealed to the public, stood there, eternal on the eternal stone, always and irrevocably exposed to the looks and interpretations of all men, wise or foolish, evil or well-intentioned. Each one of these listeners remembered those lines which best suited his ear and his temperament. So what was there, engraved on the hard stone in the sight of all men, was repeated from mouth to mouth, often changed and corrupted into nonsense.

On the stone was written:

'See how Mehmed Pasha, the greatest among the wise and great of his time.

Mindful of the testament of his heart, by his care and toil

Has built a bridge over the River Drina,

Over this water, deep and swift-flowing.

His predecessors had not been able to put up anything.

I pray that by the Mercy of Allah this bridge will be firm

And that its existence will be passed in happiness

And that it will never know sorrow.

For in his lifetime he poured out gold and silver for his bequest

And no man can say that fortune has been wasted

Which has been spent to such an end.

Badi, who has seen this, when the bridge was completed gave this 
tarih.

"May Allah bless this building, this wonderful and beautiful bridge".'

But at last the people had eaten their fill and had wondered enough, walked enough and had listened to the verses of the inscription to their hearts' content. The nine days' wonder became a part of their everyday life and they crossed the bridge hurriedly, indifferently, anxiously, absent-mindedly as the tumultuous waters that flowed beneath it, as if it were only one of the countless roads that

they and their beasts trod beneath their feet. And the plaque with the inscription fell as silent as any other stone.

Now the road from the left bank of the river was directly connected with that end of the road on the level space on the farther side. Gone was the dark, worm-eaten ferry with its eccentric ferryman. Far below the last arches of the bridge there remained that sandy rock and the steep banks equally difficult to ascend or descend and on which travellers had waited so despairingly and had called so vainly from one bank to the other. All that, together with the stormy river, had been surmounted as if by magic. Men now passed far above, as if on wings, straight from one high bank to the other, along the wide strong bridge which was as firm and lasting as a mountain and which echoed under horses' hooves as if it were made only of a thin plaque of stone.