The priest cleared his throat, read a prayer that incorporated Rastko’s name and profession, in a clear, sharp voice intoned the psalm for the dead, and, making the sign of the cross over the grave, signaled to the two gravediggers with his eyes. They set to work, lowering the coffin on ropes and shoveling earth over it. Nemanja Lazukić moved toward the grave, but Sredoje held him back until he realized that his father wanted only to throw a handful of earth on the coffin. He helped him to do this, and repeated the gesture himself. When the grave was filled and the earth shaped into a mound with light blows of the shovels, Sredoje gently urged his father to move away, to leave.
The priest fell in step beside them and asked, “Where will you go now? Do you have a place to stay?” When they said no, he nodded as if that was what he had expected. “I’ll go with you to the inn and we’ll make arrangements with the landlord.” They quickened their pace back into town, taking the same streets. The priest asked briefly how Rastko had met his end, wrinkling his nose at their answer. Lazukić stammered out a question about the funeral expense, but the priest with a wave of the hand murmured that there was plenty of time for that. “Now we will have to help one another more,” he added after a pause, lowering his voice confidentially and casting a glance at the two of them.
It was dusk now, and there were fewer people on the streets, but the inn, the same inn they had entered upon their arrival in Ub, was if anything more crowded, and at a table in the center two German soldiers sat with glasses in front of them. The priest motioned to the proprietor to come out from behind the counter and talked with him for some time; then the proprietor came up to Lazukić and told him that he had one guest room upstairs and would prepare it for him. The priest said good-bye to them and left.
“Would you like a bite to eat?” asked the proprietor.
Lazukić shook his head indifferently and asked where the room was. But at the mention of food, Sredoje felt a hunger as violent as a blow in the stomach. “I don’t mind waiting for something to eat,” he said.
While the proprietor took his father upstairs, Sredoje found an empty chair at a corner table next to a man who was half asleep. It wasn’t until he sat down and leaned against the back of the chair that he felt how tired he was; his whole body throbbed. The proprietor came back, looked for Sredoje, and walked over to him. “I only have beans, but they’re good.” Sredoje nodded. The food arrived, and he threw himself at it, savoring the warmth and flavor of each spoonful he swallowed. After polishing his plate and drinking his fill of water, he slumped back in his chair, covered with sweat. The proprietor lit a kerosene lamp behind the counter (evidently there was no power), and the customers, as if at a prearranged sign, began to leave. Even the man at Sredoje’s table came to life, got up, and hobbled off.
But several guests stayed on at the middle table, gathered around the two German soldiers. The soldier who sat facing Sredoje, a fair-haired, middle-aged man, took out of his jacket pocket letters, photographs, cigarettes, and a penknife, and displayed them to those assembled, precisely pronouncing the German words for each—meine Frau, mein Sohn, meine Tochter, Deutsche Zigaretten, Taschenmesser—as if introducing them to parts of himself in order to become closer to them, to be better understood. The locals—one a dark, stout, older man in a worn suit, another bony, with close-cropped hair, and another wearing a hat, his mustache drooping—obediently observed these objects, nodding, and with smiles described to each other in Serbian what they saw, as if it were something of great value and importance. Then they in turn, poking their thumbs at their chests, gave their own names and professions. The stout man was a barber, and as proof he produced a razor from the top pocket of his coat; the man with the close-cropped hair was a leather worker; and the one with the hat and the drooping mustache was a cobbler. All had their businesses on the main street, they informed the German, calling him over to the door and pointing, after a few misunderstandings, to their shops.
When it seemed that subject was exhausted, the German beckoned them to the table; the proprietor, too, approached. Then the German took out a pack of cards and, grinning at his own cleverness, started to cut and shuffle with the fingers of one hand. He laughed, showing a row of metal teeth; everybody else laughed, too, except for Sredoje, whose eyes were too tired to watch the lightning movement of the brightly colored, smooth surfaces of the cards. His head ached, so he got up, left the laughter and exclamations of approval, and went up the stairs. At the top he found a half-open door to a little room and in the dimness recognized his father on the only bed. Sredoje undressed and lay down next to him. His father sighed, “My Rastko, my Rastko,” let out a moan, then continued snoring fitfully. For a long time Sredoje was kept awake by his headache and the laughter from the room below, which now and then exploded into roars of mirth.
The following morning he was again awakened by shouts from below. He opened his eyes and saw his father sitting on the bed, barefoot, staring into space, fingering his three-day growth of graying beard. “Poor wretches that we are, my son,” he muttered, shaking his head. They got up, dressed, and went downstairs.
Sredoje saw the same faces he had left the night before: the barber, the proprietor, the leather worker. Only the Germans and the cobbler were gone. He said to his father, “That dark-haired man is a barber. We’ll ask him to shave you.” But the proprietor, who had overheard, laughed loudly. “Shave you! Don’t you know? They cleaned us out!” That started the rest of them talking, interrupting each other: their shops had been broken into and looted; everything that could be taken had been taken, everything.
“Even our razors and scissors,” said the barber in disgust. “Our needles, too,” said the leather worker. “All the bottles, glasses, all the money from the till,” said the proprietor in despair. But the thief was not named.
Nemanja Lazukić, unaware of the Germans the night before, asked what had happened, but the only answer was a dismissive wave of the hand. The talk of possessions disappearing prompted him to inquire about the suitcases Rastko had with him in the military cart: Had anyone seen them? Had the soldiers who brought in the body? But no one knew anything about the suitcases or the soldiers.
“There’s no hope at all,” the proprietor told him. “Since this morning they’ve been taking the soldiers away, and your men are probably among them.” For breakfast, all the proprietor could serve was sherbet and bread. “I couldn’t give you anything else if you killed me,” he growled. “They even took my coffee. I don’t know how I’m going to feed my family.” But after breakfast he invited Lazukić and Sredoje into the cold kitchen, where he let Lazukić shave with his razor.
Once in the street, Lazukić and Sredoje saw a group of Yugoslav soldiers, without rifles, walking two by two, escorted by armed Germans. The local people stood on the sidewalk, watching this silently, solemnly, but with no sign of life in their eyes. No one paid attention to Lazukić and his son anymore; it was as if they had been absorbed into the occupied and looted town of Ub. They went to see the priest.
They found him in front of his house, without his surplice, in trousers and an old coat, feeding the chickens. They barely recognized him. He did not put down the basket filled with maize or ask them into the house; he simply accepted the money that the lawyer put into his free hand and nodded.
“Will you look after the grave, please, until I am able to do so myself?”
“I will, I will,” replied the priest, turning to the chickens, who were piping impatiently around him.
They went out to the cemetery and found it deserted, not a single visitor. Lazukić wept before the fresh mound, caressed the cross, which bore no inscription. “We’ll come back soon, we will,” he whispered. Then they walked back into the town.
At the inn they asked the proprietor over to an empty table to consult him on how to proceed with their journey. Confidentially, as if they were his own family, he told them all he knew: the roads were jammed, the Germans were looting and capturing Yugoslav soldiers strande
d on the roadsides, and prices were astronomical.
“Any news about Belgrade?” asked Lazukić.
“They say Belgrade’s been razed.”
The lawyer flinched. “But where can we go to, other than Belgrade? I have a good friend there who will take us in.”
“Why don’t you go home?” the proprietor suggested, blinking at them from beneath his impressive eyebrows.
“Home? Never!” Then Lazukić qualified the refusal: “At least for the time being, until we hear what’s going on there. But help us find a cart to take us to Belgrade. I feel so weak after all that has hit me that I can’t go on foot.”
The proprietor promised to do his best. He gave them lunch, despite what he had said earlier about having nothing: beans, perhaps from the same pot from which Sredoje had been served the night before. They spent the afternoon in the inn, listening to idle talk, until they were bored to tears, and to bickering, to rumors of looting and battles “down south,” where it was said that the main force of the army had remained intact. In the late afternoon the proprietor brought a well-fed young man to their table, who downed two brandies at Lazukić’s expense before agreeing to come with his cart the next morning. They went to bed.
In the morning, when they looked out the window of their room, they saw a fine, light sleet falling on roofs and streets. They went downstairs, drank some sherbet, and waited. Their driver was not to be seen. Lazukić paced impatiently to the door and back, asking the proprietor question after question, while the latter tried to calm him: Yes, the man would come; for the money he was promised, he would not let them down. And indeed, suddenly the driver appeared at the door in rubber boots, holding a whip. “Where are those people bound for Belgrade?” he shouted. “Let’s go, we must hurry!”
Taking their leave of the proprietor, they went out into the street, into snow, and saw a peasant cart with a small horse, its head lowered. In the cart were two elderly peasants and a fat woman wrapped in a black shawl with a child on her knees.
“You didn’t say there would be other passengers,” protested the lawyer.
“That’s the way it is, sir,” retorted the driver with an impudent grin, tightening the horse’s harness. “Take it or leave it.”
They climbed into the cart, squeezed past the other passengers, and found a place for themselves on a thin layer of straw. The driver jumped on in front (there was no seat for him, either), sat on the floor of the cart with his legs hanging over the side, and cracked the whip. The little horse set off at a canter, slowed down at once, and continued at an even walking pace. Under the heavy sky, along the slushy road, side by side with columns of soldiers marching into captivity, they covered, just barely, the distance to Obrenovac by evening. The driver unloaded them at the marketplace and announced that he was returning to Ub.
“We agreed that you would take us to Belgrade! That’s why I gave you a thousand dinars.” Lazukić was the only one to object.
“I don’t know anything about that! There’s a war on!” replied the driver gruffly. He whipped the horse. Yet as he was turning the cart around, he shouted over his shoulder, “Go see if there’s a train.”
This they did at once, and at the railroad station found out that there would be a train for Belgrade the next morning. They spent the night in the waiting room, and the next day, just before noon, the train was ready. Without tickets—the ticket office was closed—they jumped into a car, along with hundreds of people carrying suitcases and bundles. The train lurched and rattled along for four hours, until it reached Belgrade.
Lazukić and Sredoje set off on foot. Directly opposite the station, they saw the first heavily damaged building, around which a group of men were digging, supervised by armed Germans. There were ruins on every street, mansions and shacks reduced to the equality of rubble. Bricks and mortar lay everywhere. They had to make their way around them or, in places, climb over. Closer to the center, there was less destruction, but at one corner they came across a corpse: a man stretched out, feet in low shoes, legs spread wide, body and head covered with wrapping paper held down by half a brick, which someone had placed there to keep it from blowing away. From beneath the corpse had come a dark pool of blood, now coagulated, like jelly. Down the street a German soldier in a steel helmet with a machine gun across his chest, guarding a gate, looked at them hard. “They mean business,” Lazukić whispered to Sredoje after they passed the soldier, and he quickened his pace. “As long as we find my good friend at home. Where else could we go tonight?”
At Terazije they entered a multistoried building, climbed to the third floor, walked all the way down a corridor open to a courtyard, knocked on a door. Nemanja Lazukić threw his arms around the heavy man with a mane of black hair and a neatly trimmed mustache who came out in his shirtsleeves, squinting suspiciously. “Spaso, brother, it’s an evil hour that brings us together.”
18
Other departures from home.
Sep Lehnart’s, on an early morning in May 1941, in blue trousers too short for him, in a white shirt and canvas shoes with worn rubber soles that let through the cold of the earth. Bareheaded, his hair newly cut, and carrying a small parcel of food his mother had prepared for him and silently, tearfully pushed into his unwilling embrace before letting him go and awkwardly walking after him as far as the gate to wave farewell. Pride and shame. Straightening his shoulders, so everyone can see how grown-up and determined he has become, but pressing the parcel against his thigh so no one will notice it. Just trying to get through the streets as quickly as he can. But no, let it last as long as possible, let everyone watch him from behind the curtains secretly drawn in front of their thumping cowards’ hearts. Girls still asleep in their high beds, in white linen nightgowns, with the scent of their bodies beneath the eiderdown, while here, a mere two meters away, strides tomorrow’s soldier, hard, pitiless, ready for the ordeals of battle. Degenerate Germans, those neighbors of his, fat-bottomed, dull-witted, greedy for a mother’s chicken paprikash and a new motorcycle. Rich, they don’t understand that wealth is uncertain if not backed by force, here in a foreign land where the people would happily drive them out with jeering whistles and stones. Wealth-weakness, wealth-sin. Only the wealth of an entire nation is justified: as a means for it to spread worldwide, in the cause of power everlasting.
At the cross-street he passes Heim’s house—where he used to roll barrels, suffer blows—the house pretending to be padlocked, with shutters lowered on its dozen windows: We’re not here, we don’t exist. To smash that silence, that sniveling, that false humility, to break the gate, the windows, and drag them, the bloodsuckers, out by their fleshy bat ears—the bearded old man, his bald, weak-eyed wife, and his repressed son—onto the dirty street, to wipe it with their faces in atonement for having lifted their hands against a German. His muscles are quivering; it’s he who has to be silent now. Restraint, denial of vengeance, not being allowed the pleasure of a personal settling of scores. Everyone will settle scores with everyone, but impersonally, coldly, when the order is given, when the time comes.
Down there on Dudarska Street the truck is revving up. Could he be late? He breaks out in a sweat; he has no watch, but he knows that he started well ahead of time. But here comes one of his companions, along the opposite side of the street, not hurrying. His friend at least has a bag, old and shapeless, it’s true, his father’s locksmith’s bag, but not a bundle deprived of any sign of profession. Perhaps Sep could ask him to take the parcel and put it in the bag. But that would draw attention, it’s better to say nothing, and anyway, why not be proud of his poverty, the fact that all his provisions are wrapped in a sheet of paper and held in one hand? Is it not a state that already belongs to the past? The boys on the truck are humming, two of them are jostling, to get warm. But Sep is no longer cold, he is warmed up from walking and also at the thought of leaving.
Here’s the driver, a real soldier, in uniform, hands in his pockets, cigarette hanging out of his mouth. Is it far? No one knows
, it’s a military secret. Good. As far as Sep is concerned, they can go to the ends of the earth and never again set eyes on this selfish village and its people with no honor and no backbone. He puts his hand on the truck’s cold metal side, to climb on, but his parcel is in the way. He drops it, the paper comes open, two pork chops roll into the grass. He sweats again. Did anyone notice? They’re laughing, but fortunately not at him; one of his comrades slipped in the scramble and fell into the truck. Sep clambers over the side. From now on, if anyone asks, the package is not his. If only they would get moving as quickly as possible.
Reza Kroner’s departure in the autumn of 1944. Flight. Shaken by the uncertainty of whether they will leave or not, uncertain night after night next to Hermann in bed, often with no embrace, for he is exhausted, having to run around all day long with messages; there are too few men left, what with all the larger units withdrawn. Rumors. Snoring, waking, listening to the distant rumble, it’s the guns, she knows, though it’s the first time she’s heard them. But he denies it. No, the Russians aren’t coming, he knows for sure, he’s been told, they’ll be stopped by a counterattack from the flank, near Belgrade and in Hungary. You’re crazy, Hermann, she tells him, you’re blind, the last faithful dog, can’t you see that everyone is running, even the captain has left, and that lieutenant will, too, we’ll be the last two left, they’ll shoot us, I don’t want to be shot, I’ve suffered enough, you killed my son, I can’t go on. She keeps on at him until he shuts her up with “Jewish whore!” Silence. In the morning her eyes are burning, as soon as he leaves she falls into a deep sleep and dreams of water.
The Use of Man Page 20