The Bridge on the Drina (48 page)

In that summer of 1914, when the rulers of human destinies drew European humanity from the playing fields of universal suffrage to the already prepared arena of universal military service, the town of Višegrad provided a small but eloquent example of the first symptoms of a contagion which would in time become European and then spread to the entire world. That was a time on the limits of two epochs in human history whence one could more easily see the end of that epoch which was closing than the beginning of that new one which was opening. Then one sought for a justification for violence and found some name borrowed
from the spiritual treasury of the past century for savagery and bloodlust. All that took place still had the outer semblance of dignity and the attraction of novelty, a terrible, short-lived and inexpressible charm which later disappeared so completely that even those who then felt it so strongly could no longer evoke its memory.

But these are all things which we recall only in passing and which poets and scientists of coming ages will investigate, interpret and resurrect by methods and manners which we do not suspect and with a serenity, freedom and boldness of spirit which will be far above ours. Probably they will succeed in finding an explanation even for that strange year and will give it its true place in the history of the world and the development of humanity. But here it is unique for us, for above all that was the fatal year for the bridge on the Drina.

The summer of 1914 will remain in the memory of those who lived through it as the most beautiful summer they ever remembered, for in their consciousness it shone and flamed over a gigantic and dark horizon of suffering and misfortune which stretched into infinity.

That summer did in fact begin well, better than so many earlier summers. The plums ripened as they had not done for« long before, and the wheat promised a good harvest. After ten years or so of troubles and commotions, the people hoped for at least a lull and a good year which would recompense in every way for the harms and misfortunes of earlier years. (The most deplorable and tragic of all human weaknesses is undoubtedly our total incapacity for seeing into the future, which is in sharp contrast to so many of our gifts, our skills and our knowledge.)

Sometimes there is such a year when the heat of the sun and the moisture of the earth combine, and the whole Višegrad valley trembles from the suberabundance of its force and the universal urge towards fecundity. The earth swells and everything in it bursts vigorously into buds and leaves and blossoms and brings forth fruit a hundredfold. That breath of fertility could easily be seen quivering like a warm blue cloud over every furrow and every heap of earth. The cows and goats walked with hindlegs astraddle and moved with difficulty because of swollen and brimming udders. The fish in the river which every year at the beginning of summer came in shoals down the Rzav to spawn at its mouth were in such numbers that the children scooped them out of the shallows in buckets and threw them on to the bank. The porous stone of the bridge became softer and as if it were alive swelled with the
force and abundance which beat upwards from the soil and hovered over the whole town in the heat of the dog-days in which everything breathed more quickly and matured more vigorously.

Such summers were not frequent in the Višegrad valley. But when one occurred, men forgot all the bad days that had been and did not even think of the misfortunes which might still be in store, but lived with the threefold intensity of the life of the valley upon which the blessings of fertility had fallen, themselves only a part in that game of moisture and heat and ripening juices.

Even the peasants who always found occasion to complain of something had to agree that the year had fruited well, but to every word of praise they added the qualification: 'If this weather holds. . . .' The merchants of the market-place threw themselves headlong into business like bees into the cups of flowers. They scattered into the villages around the town to make deposit payments on wheat in the ear and plums still in blossom. The peasants, bewildered by this invasion of eager buyers, as well as by the large and exceptional yield, stood beside their fruit trees already bending under the weight of fruit or beside the fields which were like waves in the wind, and could not be sufficiently prudent and restrained to deal with the townsmen who had taken the trouble to come to visit them. That prudence and restraint gave their faces a shuttered and anxious expression, twin of that mask of woe worn by peasant faces in years of bad harvest.

When the merchants were rich and powerful, it was the peasants who came to them. On market days the shop of Pavle Ranković was always full of peasants in need of ready money. So too was the shop of Santo Papo who had for long been the leading figure among the Višegrad Jews, for even despite the fact that banks, mortgage banks and other credit facilities had long existed in the town, the peasants, especially the older ones, liked to commit themselves in the old-fashioned way with the merchants from whom they bought their goods and with whom their fathers before them had contracted obligations.

Santo Papo's shop was one of the highest and most solid in the Višegrad market. It was built of stone, with thick walls and a floor of stone flags. The heavy doors and window-shutters were of wrought iron and there were thick close grilles on the tall and narrow windows.

The front part of the building served as a shop. Along the walls were wooden shelves filled with enamel ware. From the ceiling, which was exceptionally high, so that it was lost in the gloom, hung lighter goods: lanterns of all sizes, coffee-pots, traps, mouse-traps and other objects of twisted wire. All these hung in great bunches. Around the long counter were piled boxes of nails, sacks of cement, plaster and various paints; hoes, shovels and mattocks without handles were strung on wire in heavy garlands. In the corners were large tin containers with paraffin, turpentine and lamp-black. It was cool there even in the height of summer and even at noon was dark and gloomy.

But most of the stock was in the rooms behind the shop, through a low entry with iron doors. The heavy goods were kept there: iron stoves, crowbars, ploughshares, picks and other large tools. They were all piled up in great heaps so that one could only walk between the piled goods along the narrow paths as if between high walls. Perpetual darkness reigned there and no one entered save with a lantern.

A chill dank air of stone and metal, which nothing could warm or disperse, exuded from the thick walls, stone ceiling and piled up iron. That air in a few years transformed the lively and red-cheeked apprentices into silent, pale and puffy assistants, but made them skilful and thrifty. It was undoubtedly harmful also to the generations of shopkeepers but it was at the same time sweet and dear to them since it meant the feeling of property, the thought of gain and the source of riches.

The man who now sat in the front part of the cool, half-lit shop at a small table beside a great green Wertheim safe in no way resembled that turbulent and vivacious Santo who had once, thirty years before, had his own special way of shouting 'Rum for Oorkan!'. The passage of years and the work in the shop had changed him. Now he was heavy and ponderous and yellow in the face; dark rings about his eyes stretched half way down his cheeks; his eyes had grown weak, those black and protruding eyes which now peered out from behind spectacles with thick lenses and metal rims, with a severe and yet timid expression. He still wore his cherry-coloured fez as a last remnant of his one-time Turkish costume. His father, Mente Papo, a wizened and bald old man in his eighties, was still in reasonable health though his sight was failing. He would come to the shop on sunny days. With his watery eyes which seemed to be melting away behind thick spectacles he would look at his son seated by the safe and his grandson at the counter, breathe in that aroma of his shop and then return home at a slow pace, his right hand resting on the shoulder of his ten-year-old great-grandson.

Santo had six daughters and five sons, most of them married. His eldest son, Rafo, already had grown-up children who helped
his father in the shop. One of Rafo's sons, who bore his grandfather's name, was at the Sarajevo secondary school. He was a pale, short-sighted and slender youth who at the age of eight had known perfectly how to recite the poems of the patriotic poet Zmaj, but otherwise was not good at his studies, did not like to go to the synagogue or help in his grandfather's shop during the holidays and said that he was going to become an actor or something equally famous and unusual.

Santo sat bowed over the huge, worn and greasy counter with an alphabetical ledger, and in front of him, on an empty nailbox, squatted the peasant Ibro Ćemanović of Uzavnica. Santo was reckoning up how much Ibro already owed him and therefore how much and on what conditions he could obtain a fresh loan.

'Sinquenta, sinquenta i ocho . . . sinquenta i ocho, sesienta i tres . . . ,' Santo whispered, reckoning in Ladino Spanish.

The peasant watched him with anxious anticipation as if watching an incantation and not listening to the account which he already knew to the last 
para 
and which ran through his head even when he was asleep. When Santo finished and announced the amount of the loan with interest, the peasant murmured slowly: 'Will that be so ... ?' merely to gain time enough to compare his own reckoning with Santo's.

'So it is, Ibraga, and in no way different,' replied Santo in the formula time-honoured in such cases.

After they had agreed on the state of present indebtedness, the peasant had to demand a fresh loan and Santo to make clear the likelihood and the conditions. But that was no rapid or easy task. A conversation developed between them, similar in the minutest detail to the conversations which, ten years ago or more, also before the harvest, had been held in this same spot between the father of Ibro from Uzavnica and Santo's father, Mente Papo. The main subject of the conversation would be broached in a torrent of words which meant nothing in themselves and which seemed entirely superfluous and almost senseless. Anyone uninitiated, looking at them and listening to them, might easily have thought that the talk had nothing to do with money or a loan, or at least so it often appeared.

'The plums are well forward and brought forth much fruit amongst us, even more than in any other district,' said Santo. 'It has been years since there was such a crop.'

'Yes, thanks be, they have borne well enough; if Allah permits the weather to hold there will be fruit and bread. One cannot deny it. Only who knows what the price will be,' said the anxious
peasant, rubbing his thumb along the seam of his heavy green cloth trousers and looking at Santo out of the corner of his eye.

'There is no way of telling that now, but we shall know by the time you bring them to Višegrad. You know the saying; the price is in the owner's hands.'

'Yes, that is so. If Allah allows them to ripen and mature,' the peasant again qualified.

'Without God's will, naturally, there is no gathering nor reaping; however much man looks to what he has sown, it will avail him nothing if he have not God's blessing,' broke in Santo, raising his hand to heaven to show whence that blessing should come, somewhere high above those heavy blackened rafters of the shop from which hung peasant lanterns of all sizes and bundles of other goods.

'It will avail nothing, you are right,' sighed Ibro. 'A man sows and plants but it is just as if, by the Great and Only God, he had thrown it all into the water; one digs, hoes, prunes and picks, but no! If it is not so written there will be no blessing on it. But if God decides to give us a good harvest then no one will lack and a man may clear himself of debt and then become indebted once more. Only let him keep his health!'

'Ah, yes. Health is the main thing. Nothing is as important as health. So is man's life; give him everything and take health from him and it is as if he were given nothing,' affirmed Santo, turning the conversation in that direction.

Then the peasant also expressed his views on health, which were just as general and commonplace as Santo's. For a moment it seemed as if the whole conversation would be lost in futilities and generalizations. But at a favourable moment, as if by some ancient ritual, he returned to the opening question. Then began the bargaining for a new loan, over the amount, the interest, the terms and the methods of payment. They discussed it for long, now vivaciously, now quietly and anxiously, but in the end they came to an agreement. Then Santo rose, took a bunch of keys on a chain from his pocket and without removing them from the chain, unlocked the safe which began by creaking, opened slowly and solemnly and then, like all large safes, closed with a fine metallic noise like a sigh. He counted out the money to the peasant, down to the copper 
hellers, 
all with the same care and attention, with a solemnity that seemed a little sad. Then in a changed and more animated voice:

'Well, is that all right by you, Ibraga? Are you satisfied?'

'Yes, by God,' the peasant replied quietly and pensively.

'May God send you blessing and profit! Till we meet again in good health and good friendship,' said Santo, now quite lively and gay; and he sent his grandson to the café across the way for two coffees, 'one bitter, one sweet'..

A second peasant was already awaiting his turn in front of the shop bound on the same errand and similar reckonings.

With these peasants and their reckoning about the coming harvest and the gathering of the plums, the warm and heavy breath of an exceptionally fruitful year penetrated into the twilit gloom of Santo's shop. The green steel safe sweated from it and Santo stretched the collar around his fat, soft, yellowish neck with his forefinger and wiped the steam off his spectacles with a handkerchief.