The Bridge on the Drina (15 page)

But two days later the waters suddenly fell, the skies cleared and the sun broke through, as warm and rich as it does on some October days in this fertile land. On that lovely day the town looked pitiable and terrible. The houses of the gipsies and the poorer folk on the banks were bent over in the direction of the current, many of them roofless and with the mud and clay of their walls washed away, displaying only a black trellis of willow branches so that they looked like skeletons. In the unfenced courtyards the houses of the richer townsmen gaped open with staring windows; on each a line of reddish mud showed how deeply it had been flooded. Many stables had been washed away and granaries overturned. In the lower shops there was mud to the knees, and in that mud all the goods that had not been taken away in time. In the streets were whole trees rooted up and brought there by the waters from no one knew where, and the swollen corpses of drowned animals.

That was their town, to which they must now descend and go on with their lives. But between the flooded banks, above the waters which still raged noisily, stood the bridge, white and unchanged in the sun. The waters now reached halfway up the piers and the bridge seemed as if it were in some other and deeper river than that which usually flowed beneath it. Along the parapet still remained deposits of mud which had now dried and were cracking in the sun, and on the 
kapia 
was piled up a whole heap of small branches and rubbish from the river. But all that in no way altered the appearance of the
bridge, which alone had passed through the flood unaltered and emerged from it unscathed.

Every man in the town set to work at once to repair the damage and no one had time to think of the meaning of the victory of the bridge, but going about his affairs in that ill-fated town in which the waters had destroyed or at least damaged everything, he knew that there was something in his life that overcame every disaster and that the bridge, because of the strange harmony of its forms and the strong and invisible power of its foundations, would emerge from every test unchanged and imperishable.

The winter which then began was a hard one. Everything that had been stored in courtyards and barns, wood, wheat, hay, the flood had carried away; houses, stables and fences had to be repaired and fresh goods had to be obtained on credit to replace those which had been destroyed in warehouses and shops. Kosta Baranac, who had suffered more than any, because of his overbold speculations with plums, did not outlive the winter, but died of mortification and shame. He left his young children almost penniless and a number of small but widespread debts in all the villages. He was recalled in the memory of the town as a man who had overtaxed his strength.

But by the next summer the recollection of the great flood had begun to pass into the memory of the older men, where it would live long, while the younger people sat singing and talking on the smooth white stone 
kapia 
over the water which flowed far below them and accompanied their songs with its murmurings. Forgetfulness heals everything and song is the most beautiful manner of forgetting, for in song man feels only what he loves.

So, on the 
kapia, 
between the skies, the river and the hills, generation after generation learnt not to mourn overmuch what the troubled waters had borne away. They entered there into the unconscious philosophy of the town; that life was an incomprehensible marvel, since it was incessantly wasted and spent, yet none the less it lasted and endured 'like the bridge on the Drina'.

VI

As well as floods there were also other onslaughts on the bridge

and its 
kapia. 
They were caused by the development of events and the course of human conflicts; but they could do even less than the unchained waters to harm the bridge or change it permanently.

At the beginning of last century Serbia rose in revolt. This town on the very frontier of Bosnia and Serbia had always been in close connection and permanent touch with everything that took place in Serbia and grew with it 'like a nail and its finger'. Nothing that happened in the Višegrad district—drought, sickness, oppression or revolt—could be a matter of indifference to those in the Uzice district, and vice versa. But at first the affair seemed distant and insignificant; distant, because it was taking place on the farther side of the Belgrade 
pashaluk, 
insignificant since rumours of revolt were no sort of novelty. Ever since the Empire had existed there had been such rumours, for there is no rule without revolts and conspiracies, even as there is no property without work and worry. But in time the revolt in Serbia began to affect the life of the whole Bosnian 
pashaluk 
more and more, and especially the life of this town which was only an hour's march from the frontier.

As the struggle in Serbia grew, more and more was demanded from the Bosnian Turks. They were asked to send men to the army and to contribute to its equipment and supply. The army and the commissariat sent into Serbia passed to a great extent through the town. That brought in its train expenses and inconveniences and dangers not only for the Turks, but especially for the Serbs who were suspected, persecuted and fined in those years more than ever before. Finally, one summer, the revolt spread to these districts. Making a detour around Uzice, the insurgents came to within two hours' march of the town. There, at Veletovo, they destroyed Lufti Beg's fortified farmhouse by cannon fire and burnt a number of Turkish houses at Crnice.

There were in the town both Turks and Serbs who swore that they
had heard with their own ears the rumbling of 'Karageorge's gun' (naturally with completely opposite feelings). But even if it were a matter for doubt whether the echo of the Serb insurrectionists' gun
 
could be heard as far as the town, for a man often thinks that he can hear what he is afraid of or what he hopes for, there could be no doubt about the fires which the insurgents lit by night on the bare and rocky crest of Panos between Veletovo and Gostilje, on which the huge isolated pines could be counted from the town with the naked eye. Both Turks and Serbs saw the fires clearly and looked at them attentively, although both pretended not to have noticed them. From darkened windows and from the shadows of dense gardens, both took careful note of when and where they were lighted and extinguished. The Serbian women crossed themselves in the darkness and wept from inexplicable emotion, but in their tears they saw reflected those fires of insurrection even as those ghostly flames which had once fallen upon Radisav's grave and which their ancestors almost three centuries before had also seen through their tears from that same Mejdan.

Those flickering and uneven flames, scattered along the dark background of the summer night, wherein skies and mountains merged, seemed to the Serbs like some new constellation in which they eagerly read bold presentiments and, shivering, guessed at their fate and at coming events. For the Turks they were the first waves of a sea of fire which was spreading there in Serbia and which, even as they watched, splashed against the mountains above the town. In those summer nights the wishes and the prayers of both circled around those flames, but in different directions. The Serbs prayed to God that these saving flames, like those which they had always carried in their hearts and carefully concealed, should spread to these mountains, while the Turks prayed to Allah to halt their progress and extinguish them, to frustrate the seditious designs of the infidel and restore the old order and the peace of the true faith. The nights were filled with prudent and passionate whisperings in which pulsed invisible waves of the most daring dreams and wishes, the most improbable thoughts and plans which triumphed and broke in the blue darkness overhead. Next day at dawn, Turks and Serbs went out to work and met one another with dull and expressionless faces, greeted one another and talked together with those hundred or so commonplace words of provincial courtesy which had from times past circulated in the town and passed from one to another like counterfeit coin which none the less makes communication both possible and easy.

When, soon after the feast of St Elias, the fires disappeared from
Panos and the revolt was pushed back from the Uzice district, once again neither the one side nor the other showed their feelings. And it would really be difficult to say what were the true feelings of either side. The Turks were gratified that the revolt was now far away from them and hoped that it would be entirely extinguished and would end there where all godless and evil enterprises ended. But none the less that gratification was incomplete and overshadowed for it was hard to forget so close a danger. Many of them for long after saw in their dreams those fantastic insurgent fires like a shower of sparks on all the hills around the town or heard Karageorge's gun, not as a distant echo but as a devastating cannonade which brought ruin with it. The Serbs, however, as was natural, remained disillusioned and disappointed after the withdrawal of the fires on Panos but in the depth of their hearts, in that true and ultimate depth which is revealed to no one, there remained the memory of what had taken place and the consciousness that what has once been can be again; there remained too hope, a senseless hope, that great asset of the downtrodden. For those who rule and must oppress in order to rule must work according to reason; and if, carried away by their passions or driven by an adversary, they go beyond the limits of reasonable action, they start down the slippery slope and thereby reveal the commencement of their own downfall. Whereas those who are downtrodden and exploited make equal use of their reason and unreason for they are but two different kinds of arms in the continual struggle, now underground, now open, against the oppressor.

In those times the importance of the bridge as the one sure link between the Bosnian 
pashaluk 
and Serbia was greatly increased. There was now a permanent military force in the town, which was not disbanded even in the long periods of truce, and which guarded the bridge over the Drina. To carry out this task as well as possible with the minimum of labour, the soldiers began to erect a wooden blockhouse in the centre of the bridge, a monstrous erection crude in shape, position, and the material of which it was made (but all the armies of the world put up, for their own special aims and momentary needs, buildings such as this which, later on, from the point of view of normal peaceful life appear both absurd and incomprehensible) . It was a real two-storeyed house, clumsy and hideous, made of rough beams and unplaned planks, with a free passage like a tunnel beneath it. The blockhouse was raised up and rested on stout beams, so that it straddled the bridge and was supported only at its two ends on the 
kapia, 
one on the left and the other on the right terrace. Beneath it there was a free passage for carts, horses and pedestrians, but from above, from the floor on which the guards slept and to
which led an uncovered stairway, it was possible to inspect all who passed, to examine papers and baggage and, at any moment, should the need arise, to stop them.

That indeed altered the appearance of the bridge. The lovely 
kapia 
was concealed by the wooden structure which squatted over it with its wooden beams like some sort of gigantic bird.

The day the blockhouse was ready it still smelt strongly of resinous wood and steps echoed in its emptiness. The guards at once took up their quarters. By dawn on the first day the blockhouse, like a trap, already claimed its first victim.

In the low and rosy sun of early morning there collected beneath it the soldiers and a few armed townsmen, Turks, who mounted guard around the town by night and so helped the army. In the midst of this group stood a little old man, a vagabond religious pilgrim, something between a monk and a beggar, but mild and peaceful, somehow clean and sweet in his poverty, easy and smiling despite his white hair and lined face. He was an eccentric old fellow named Jelisije from Čajniče. For many years he had been wandering about, always mild, solemn and smiling, visiting churches and monasteries, religious meetings and festivals; he prayed, did penance and fasted. Earlier the Turkish authorities had paid no attention to him and regarded him as a feeble-minded and religious man, letting him go where he would and say what he liked. But now, due to the insurrection in Serbia, new times had come and harsher measures prevailed. A few Turkish families had arrived in the town whose property had been destroyed by the insurgents; they spread hatred and called for vengeance. Guards were everywhere. Supervision was intensified, the local Turks were anxious, filled with rancour and ill-will and looked on everyone bloodthirstily and with suspicion.

The old man had been travelling along the road from Rogatica and by bad luck was the first traveller on the day when the blockhouse had been completed and the first guards had taken up their posts there. In fact he had chosen the very worst time, for the day had not fully dawned. He bore before him, as a man carries a lighted candle, a sort of thick stick decorated with strange signs and letters. The blockhouse swallowed him up like a spider does a fly. They interrogated him curtly. They demanded who he was, what he was doing and whence he came, and commanded him to explain the decorations and writing on his staff. He replied freely and openly, even to questions that had not been asked him, as if speaking before the Last Judgment of God and not before a group of evil Turks. He said that he was no one and nothing, a traveller on this earth, a transient in a transient world, a shadow in the sun, but that he passed his few and
short days in prayer and in going from monastery to monastery, until he had visited all the holy places, all the bequests and the tombs of the Serbian tsars and nobles. As to the signs and letters on his staff they represented the times of Serbian freedom and greatness, past and future. For, said the old man, smiling gently and timidly, the day of resurrection was coming soon and, judging from what he had read in books and from what might be seen on the earth and in the skies, it was now quite near. The kingdom was reborn, redeemed by trials and founded on truth.