The Bridge on the Drina (30 page)

'And why did you take him across when this particular soldier was on guard?'

'Because he seemed to me the softest of them.'

'So?'

'So'

At the sergeant-major's insistence the woman continued. When everything had been prepared, Jakov had wrapped himself in the 
feridjah 
and just as it was beginning to get dark she took him disguised as her old grandmother across the bridge past the guard. The guard had noticed nothing, for this young man was looking at her and not at the old woman, while the other, older guard was sitting on the 
sola 
dozing.

When they got to the market-place, they had taken the precaution of not going right across it, but had used the side-streets. It was this had proved their undoing. They had lost their way in the town, which neither of them knew, and instead of coming out at the bridge across the Rzav and thus joining the road which led from the town towards both frontiers, they had found themselves in front of a Turkish café, just as some people were coming out. One of them was a Turkish gendarme, born in the town. This closely wrapped up old woman and the girl whom he had never seen before seemed suspect to him, and he followed them. He kept them in sight as far as the Rzav. Then he came nearer to ask them who they were and where they were going. Jakov, who had been watching him attentively through his face-veil, considered that the moment had come to flee. He threw off his 
feridjah, 
and pushed Jelenka at the gendarme so violently that they both lost their footing ('for he is small and insignificant to look at, but as strong as the earth and courageous above all other men'). She, as she calmly and clearly confessed, tangled herself with the legs of the gendarme. By the time that the gendarme had
freed himself of her, Jakov had already rushed across the Rzav as if it had been a stream, though the water was above his knees, and was lost in the willow clumps on the farther side. Then they had taken her to the 
konak, 
beaten and threatened her, but she had nothing more to say and would say nothing more.

In vain the sergeant-major tried evasive questions, flatteries and threats to get something more out of the girl, to learn from her about others who helped or sheltered bandits, or about Jakov's further intentions. All this had not the slightest effect on her. She had spoken freely enough of what she wanted to tell but despite all Draženović's efforts they could not get a word out of her about what she did not want to tell.

'It would be better for you to tell us all you know than for us to question and torture Jakov who has surely by now been caught on the frontier.'

'Caught who? Him? Ha, Ha!'

The girl looked at the sergeant-major with pity, as at a man who does not know what he is talking about, and the right corner of her upper lip rose disdainfully. In fact the movement of this upper lip, which looked like a writhing leech, expressed her feelings of anger, disdain or pride, whenever those feelings grew more than she could express in words. That writhing movement gave for a moment to her otherwise beautiful and regular face a troubled and unpleasant expression. Then with some quite childlike and fervent expression completely in contrast to that ugly writhing she looked out of the window as a peasant looks at a field when he wants to gauge the influence of the weather on the harvest.

'God help you! It's dawn now. From last night till now he has had time to get across all Bosnia, not merely to cross a frontier only an hour or two's march away. I know that much. You can beat me and kill me, I came with him for that, but him you will never see again. Don't even dream of it! Ha!'

Her upper lip writhed and lifted and her whole face seemed suddenly older, more experienced, bold and ugly. And when that lip suddenly ceased to writhe, her face again took on that childlike expression of bold and innocent daring.

Not knowing what more to do, Draženović looked at the major, who gave a sign to send the girl away. Then he resumed the interrogation of Fedun. This could no longer be either long or hard. The young man admitted everything and had nothing to put forward in his own defence, not even what Draženović himself had hinted at in his questions. Not even the major's words which contained a merciless and implacable judgment, but in which none the less there was
restrained pain because of their own severity, could wake the youth from his torpor.

'I had always considered you, Fedun,' Krčmar said in German, 'a serious young man, conscious of your duties and of your aim in life, and I had thought that one day you would become a perfect soldier, a credit to our unit. But you have been blinded by the first female animal to run in front of your nose. You have behaved like a weakling, like one to whom serious work cannot be entrusted. I am forced to hand you over to court-martial. But whatever its sentence may be, your greatest punishment will be to know that you have not shown yourself worthy of the confidence placed in you and that at the right moment you were unable to behave at your post like a man and a soldier. Now go!'

Not even these words, heavy, curt, carefully enunciated, could bring anything fresh to the young man's mind. He felt all that already. The appearance and speech of that woman, the bandit's mistress, the behaviour of Stevan and the whole course of that short enquiry had suddenly revealed to him in its true light his thoughtless, naïve and unpardonable spring fever on the 
kapia. 
The major's words only seemed to him to place the official seal on all that; they were more necessary to the major himself, in order to satisfy some unwritten but eternal demand for law and order, than to Fedun. As before a prospect of unsuspected grandeur, the young man found himself faced with a knowledge that he could not grasp; the meaning of a few moments of forgetfulness in an evil hour and in a dangerous place. Had they been lived through and remained unknown, there on the 
kapia, 
they would have meant nothing at all; one of those youthful pranks later told to friends during dull patrol duties at night. But thus, reduced to a question of definite responsibility, they meant everything. They meant more than death, they meant the end of everything, an unwanted and unworthy end. There would be no more full and frank explanations either to himself or to comrades. There would be no more letters from Kolomea, no more family photographs, no money orders such as he had sent home with pride. It was the end of one who has deceived himself and allowed others to deceive him.

Therefore he found not a word to reply to the major.

The supervision over Fedun was not particularly strict. They gave him breakfast, which he ate as though with someone else's mouth, and ordered him to pack up his personal effects, hand in his arms and all government property and be ready to leave at ten o'clock accompanied by a gendarme by the postal courier for Sarajevo, where he would be handed over to the garrison court.

While the young man was taking down his things from the shelf above his bed, those of his comrades who were still in the dormitory tiptoed out, closing the door carefully and silently behind them. Around him grew that circle of loneliness and deep silence which is always formed around a. man whom ill fortune has struck, as around a sick animal. First he took off its hooks the black tablet on which his name, rank, detachment number and unit were written in oil colours in German and placed it on his knees, with the writing down. On the black back of the tablet the young man scribbled hastily with a scrap of chalk: 'All that I leave please send to my father at Kolomea. I send greetings to all my comrades and beg my superiors to pardon me. G. Fedun.' Then he looked once more through the window, relishing that little piece of the outside world that he was able to see through its narrow frame. Then he took down his rifle, loaded it with a single charge of ball still sticky with grease. Then he took off his shoes and with a penknife cut his stocking over his big toe, lay down on the bed, wrapped his arms and legs around the rifle so that the top of the barrel was pressed firmly beneath his chin, shifted his right leg so that the hole in his stocking fitted over the trigger and pressed. The sound of the shot rang through the barracks.

After a great decision, everything becomes simple and easy. The doctor came. A Commission of Enquiry was held and attached to its findings a record in duplicate of Fedun's interrogation.

Then arose the question of Fedun's burial. Draženović was ordered to go to Pop Nikola and discuss the matter with him; could Fedun be buried in the graveyard even though he had taken his own life, and would the priest agree to conduct the service, for the deceased was by faith a Uniate.

In the last year Pop Nikola had suddenly grown old and weak in his legs, so he had taken as assistant for his great parish Pop Joso, a taciturn and nervous sort of man, thin and black as a spent match. In the previous few months, he had carried out almost all the duties of the priest and the services in the town and villages, while Pop Nikola, who could only move with difficulty, dealt mainly with what he could do at home or in the church next to his house.

By the major's order, Draženović went to Pop Nikola. The old man received him lying on a divan; by him stood Pop Joso. After Draženović had explained the circumstances of Fedun's death and the question of his burial, both priests remained silent for a moment. Seeing that Pop Nikola did not speak, Pop Joso began first, timidly and uncertainly; the matter was exceptional and unusual, there were difficulties both in the canons of the church and in established custom, but if it could be shown that the suicide had not been of sound
mind then something might be done. But then Pop Nikola sat up on his hard and narrow couch, covered with an old and faded rug. His body once again assumed that monumental form which it had once had when he walked through the market-place and was greeted on all sides. The first word that he said illuminated his broad and still ruddy face, with his huge moustaches which tangled in his beard and his heavy almost white eyebrows, thick and bushy, the face of a man who has learnt from birth how to think independently, to give his opinion sincerely and to defend it well.

Without hesitation and without big words he answered both priest and sergeant-major directly:

'Now that the misfortune has happened, there is nothing more to be done about it. Who with a sound mind would ever raise his hand against himself? And who would dare to take it on his soul to bury him as if he were without faith, somewhere behind a fence and without a priest? But you, sir, go and give orders that the dead man be prepared and we shall bury him as soon as we can. In the graveyard, most certainly! I will sing his requiem. Later, if ever some priest of his law should happen to pass this way, let him add or alter as he wishes, should he not find everything to his liking.'

When Draženović had left, he turned once more to Pop Joso, who was astonished and humiliated.

'How could we forbid a Christian to be buried in the graveyard? And why should I not sing his requiem? Isn't it enough that he had bad luck when he was alive? There, on the other side, let those ask about his sins who will ask all the rest of us about ours.'

Thus the young man who had made his mistake on the 
kapia 
remained for ever in the town. He was buried the following morning. Pop Nikola sang the requiem, assisted by the sacristan Dimitrije.

One by one his comrades of the 
streifkorps 
filed past the grave and each threw on it a handful of earth. While two sextons worked rapidly, they stood there a few seconds longer as if waiting for orders, looking across to the far side of the river where, close to their own barracks, rose a straight white column of smoke. There, on the level patch of grass above the barracks, they were burning the bloodstained straw from Fedun's mattress.

The cruel fate of the young 
streifkorps 
boy, whose name no one ever remembered and who had paid with his life for a few spring moments of inattention and emotion on the 
kapia, 
was one of those incidents for which the townspeople had much understanding and long remembered and repeated. The memory of that sensitive and unlucky youth lasted far longer than the guard on the 
kapia.

By next autumn the insurrection in Herzegovina had fizzled out.

A few of the more important leaders, Moslems and Serbs, fled to Montenegro or Turkey. There remained only a few 
haiduks 
who in fact never had much real connection with the insurrection about conscription but had worked for themselves. Then those too were either captured or driven away. Herzegovina was pacified. Bosnia gave recruits without resistance. But the departure of the first recruits was neither simple nor easy.

Not more than 100 young men were taken from the entire district, but on the day they were mustered before the 
konak, 
peasants with their bags and a few townsmen with their wooden chests, it seemed as if there were plague and uproar in the town. Many of the recruits had been drinking steadily from early morning and mixing their drinks. The peasants were in clean white shirts. There were few who had not been drinking and these sat near their belongings, drowsing behind a wall. The majority were excited, flushed with drink and sweating in the heat of the day. Four or five boys from the same village would embrace, and then put their heads close together and swaying like a living forest begin a harsh and long-drawn chanting as if they were the only people in the world.