The Bridge on the Drina (40 page)

Among the grown-ups, only Alihodja prowled around and gazed sombrely and suspiciously both at the green tent while the work was going on and at the iron cover which remained on the bridge after it had been finished. He listened to all that was said or whispered; that a hole as deep as a well had been made in that pier and explosives placed in it, and that it was connected by an electrical lead to the bank so that the commandant could at any time of the day or night destroy the bridge right in the middle as though it were made of sugar and not of stone. The 
hodja 
listened, shook his head, thought it over by day when he retired to his 'coffin' and by night in bed when he should have been asleep; now he believed, now he rejected such an idea as mad and godless, but he worried about it continually so that even in his sleep the one-time 
mutevelis 
of Mehmed Pasha's
vakuf 
appeared before him and asked him severely what all this was and what were they doing to the bridge. He turned his troubles over and over in his mind. He did not want to ask anyone in the market, considering that for a long time past there had been no one with whom a sensible man could consult or converse reasonably, since all the people had either lost their senses and their reputations or were just as embittered and confused as he himself was.

None the less, he soon found an opportunity to learn more about it. One of the Branković begs from Crnče, Muhamed, who had done his army service in Vienna, had stayed there as a long-service man and been promoted to sergeant-major (he was the grandson of that Shemsibeg who after the occupation had shut himself up in Crnče and died of sorrow, and who was still quoted by the older Turks as an unattainable example of moral grandeur and logic). Muhamed-beg had that year come home on leave. He was a big tall man of reddish complexion, dressed in an impeccable dark-blue uniform with yellow rank-badges, red piping and little silver stars on his lapel, with white kid-gloves on his hands and red fez on his head. Courteous, smiling, irreproachably clean and neat, he walked in the market-place, his long sword tapping gently on the cobbles, greeting everyone amiably and confidently like a man who has eaten the bread of the Emperor, who has no doubt of his own importance or any reason to be afraid of others.

When this Muhamed-beg came to his shop, asked about his health and sat down to drink a cup of coffee, Alihodja took the opportunity of asking him, as an 'imperial man' who lived far from the town, for an explanation of the cares that oppressed him. He told him what the trouble was, what had been done on the bridge and what they were saying in the town, and asked him if such a thing were possible and whether they could plan the destruction of a bequest of such universal benefit as this one.

As soon as he had heard what was in question, the sergeant-major suddenly became serious. His broad smile disappeared and his ruddy clean-shaven face took on a wooden expression as if he were on parade at the moment of the command: attention. He was silent for a moment as if in indecision and then replied in a sort of hushed voice.

'There is something in all you say. But if you really want my advice, then it is best not to inquire about this or speak of it, for it comes under the head of military preparedness, official secrets and so forth and so on.'

The 
hodja 
hated all the new expressions and especially that 'and so forth and so on'. It was not only that the words grated on his ears,
but he felt clearly that, in the speech of these strangers, it took the place of an unspoken truth and that all that had been said before meant nothing at all.

'In the Name of God, don't stuff me up with their... "and so forth and so on", but tell me and explain, if you can, what they are doing to the bridge. There can be no secret about that. In any case what sort of a secret is that, if even the schoolchildren talk about it?' the 
hodja 
interrupted angrily. 'What has the bridge to do with their war?'

'It has, Alihodja; it has very much to do with it,' said Branković, once again smiling.

And he explained to Alihodja amiably but a little condescendingly, as if speaking to a child, that all this was provided for in the rules of the service, that this was the duty of engineers and bridge-builders, and that in the Imperial Army everyone knew only his own job and did not concern himself in the affairs of some other branch.

The 
hodja 
listened to him, listened and watched, but did not understand very much. Finally, he could no longer hold himself in.

'All that is very fine, my fine fellow, but do they know that this is a Vezir's bequest, built for the good of his soul and the glory of God and that it is a sin to take even a stone from it?'

The sergeant-major only waved his hands, shrugged his shoulders, pursed his lips and closed his eyes, so that his whole face assumed a crafty and obsequious expression, unmoving, blind, deaf, such as men can only achieve by long years of practice in old-fashioned and decaying administrations in which discretion has long degenerated into insensibility and obedience into cowardice. A page of white unsullied paper is eloquent compared with the dumb caution of such a face. A moment later, the Emperor's man opened his eyes, let fall his hands, composed his face and once again resumed his usual appearance of confidence and serenity in which Viennese good-humour and Turkish courtesy met and mingled like two waters. Changing the subject and praising with well-chosen words the 
hodja's 
health and youthful appearance, he took his leave with the same inexhaustible amiability with which he had come. The 
hodja 
remained confused and uncertain in himself but in no way less troubled than he had been before. Lost in his thoughts he looked out from his shop at the shining loveliness of that first day of March. Opposite him, a little to the side, stood the eternal bridge, everlastingly the same; through its white arches could be seen the green, sparkling, tumultous waters of the Drina, so that they seemed like some strange diadem in two colours which sparkled in the sun.

XVIII

The tension known to the outside world as 'the annexation crisis', which had thrown its ill-omened shadow over the bridge and the town beside it, rapidly subsided. Somewhere out there, by diplomacy and discussions between the interested parties, a peaceful solution had been found.

The frontier, always so inflammable, for once did not flare up. The army which had filled the town and the frontier villages in the first days of spring began to withdraw. But as always the changes which the crisis had brought remained after it had passed. The permanent garrison in the town was much larger than it had been before. The bridge remained mined. But no one gave it a thought except Alihodja Mutevelić. The piece of land on the left flank of the bridge above the ancient retaining wall, which had been the town park, was taken over by the military authorities. The fruit trees in the centre of the park were cut down and a fine building erected. That was the new officers' mess, for the former mess, a small one-storied building up at Bikavac, was now too small for the increased number of officers. So that now, on the right of the bridge was Lotte's hotel and on the left the officers' mess, two white almost identical buildings and between them the square, surrounded by shops and, on a small rise above the square, the great barracks which the people still called the Stone Han in memory of Mehmed Pasha's caravanserai which had once been there but had now disappeared without trace.

Prices, which had leapt up the previous autumn because of the large number of soldiers, remained unchanged, with much greater likelihood of further rises than of returning to their former level. That year a Serbian and a Moslem bank were opened. The people made use of money-orders like medicines. Now everybody incurred debts more freely. But the more money a man had the more he needed. Only to those who spent more than they gained did life seem easy and good. But the merchants and business men were worried. Terms of payment become shorter than ever. Good and reliable eus-

tomers were fewer and fewer. The number of articles whose price was higher than the people could afford to pay was ever greater. Business was on a small scale, and cheaper and cheaper types of goods were in demand. Only bad payers bought freely. The only sure and safe business was army contracting or work for some government institution, but not everyone could get it. State taxes and municipal dues became larger and more numerous; the strictness of the collectors increased. One could feel from afar the unhealthy fluctuations of the exchanges. The profits which arose from them went into unseen hands, while the losses reached even the most remote corners of the monarchy and struck the retail traders, both as sellers and consumers.

The general feeling in the town was neither more serene nor more calm. That sudden slackening of tension did not result in a real appeasement either among the Serbs or the Moslems; it left to the first a concealed disillusionment, to the second distrust and fear of the future. The expectation of great events began to grow once more, without visible reason or direct cause. The people hoped for something or were afraid of something (in actual fact some hoped while others feared) and looked on everything in the light of those hopes and fears. In a word, men's hearts were disturbed, even among the simple and illiterate, especially among the younger people, and no one was any longer satisfied with the monotonous sort of life which had dragged on for years. Everyone wanted more, asked for better or trembled in fear of worse. The older people still regretted that 'sweet tranquillity' which in Turkish times had been regarded as the main aim of existence and the most perfect expression of public and private life, and which had still existed in the first decades of the Austrian administration. But there were few of these. All the others demanded an animated, noisy and exciting life. They wanted sensations or the echo of sensations or at least variety, noise and excitement which would give the illusion of sensation. That desire changed not only the state of men's minds but even the external appearance of the town. Even that time-honoured and established life on the 
kapia, 
that life of quiet conversation and peaceful meditations, simple jokes and lovesick songs between the waters, the sky and the mountains, began to change.

The coffee merchant obtained a gramophone, a clumsy wooden box with a big tin trumpet in the shape of a bright blue flower. His son changed the records and the needles and was continually winding this raucous contraption which echoed from both banks and made the 
kapia 
quiver. He had been forced to get it in order not to be left behind by his competitors, for now gramophones could be

heard not only at meetings and in the reading rooms but even in the humblest cafés where the guests sat under a lime tree, on the grass or on brightly-lit balconies, and talked with few words and in low voices. Everywhere the gramophone ground and churned out Turkish marches, Serbian patriotic songs or arias from Viennese operettas, according to the tastes of the guests for whom it played. For men would no longer go where there was neither noise, glitter nor movement.

Newspapers were read avidly, but superficially and hastily; everyone looked only for the sensational news printed in large type on the front page. There were few who read the articles or the news in small type. All that took place was accompanied by clamour and the brilliance of big words. The younger people did not think that they had lived that day if by the evening their ears were not singing or their eyes had not been dazzled by what they had heard or seen in the course of the day.

The 
agas 
and 
eSendis 
of the town came to the 
kapia, 
serious and outwardly indifferent, to listen to the latest news about the Turco-Italian war in Tripoli. They listened avidly to all that was written in the papers about the heroic young Turkish major, Enver Bey, who beat the Italians and defended the Sultan's lands like a descendant of the Sokollis or the Kuprulus. They frowned at the raucous music of the gramophone, which prevented their thinking, and, without showing it, trembled deeply and sincerely for the fate of the distant Turkish province in Africa.

It chanced that just then Pietro the Italian, Maistor-Pero, returning from work clothed in his linen overall, white with stone-dust and stained with paint and turpentine, crossed the bridge. He had grown old and bent and even more humble and timid. As at the time when Lucchieni assassinated the Empress, it seemed, by some logic incomprehensible to him, that he was again guilty of something which his Italian fellow-countrymen, with whom for many years he had had no contact, had done somewhere in the outer world. One of the Turkish youths shouted:

'So you want Tripoli, you bastard! You there, I mean!' and made obscene gestures at him.

But Maistor-Pero, bent and tired, with his tools under his arm, only pulled his hat further over his eyes, feverishly bit on his pipe-stem and hurried home to Mejdan.