by Ivo Andrić
The complex of buildings included a fine small two-story house where the seraskier’s headquarters were set up. It was separated from the main house in the Dženetić complex by a flower garden and high fence. An officer was always on duty in the dimly lit ground-floor room of the small house. He was rarely alone. Generally, one of his colleagues would sit with him to help the time pass for both of them. They sat, talked, played cards or sipped brandy from a green clay jug they kept hidden under a bench.
Here, in the early dusk of an autumn day, were the duty captain, Izet Effendi (a Pole named Kučinski until his conversion), youthful-looking, fair-haired, very musical and something of a painter, and his “guest,” Major Abdullah Effendi (a Hungarian, Nemeth Antal), a hot-blooded, irascible man, recovering from a wound in his leg. They were sipping drinks and listening in silence to piano music reaching them from the large neighboring house as a barely audible murmur or else as muffled thunder. This was Saida Hanuma, the seraskier’s wife, playing her regular exercises. And when the music died away for a moment, they could hear the leaves rustling as they were scattered by the wind through the empty, twilit lane. To stifle that ghostly sound, they embarked on a conversation that was always the same: about the misery of the refugee’s life, about the tedium of Bosnian towns and villages, about plans to go somewhere else, to abandon all this once and for all. This was what everyone in the traitors’ unit talked or at least dreamed about, always and everywhere, on all their campaigns, in Syria and Kurdistan or Macedonia, and they did so now, here in Sarajevo. Kučinski was more restrained and calmer, but Nemeth was out of control, he saw everything in the blackest colors and could not find words enough for his incurable bitterness. He struck the knee of his good leg repeatedly with his fist and spoke, as if to himself:
“Ah, I tell you: you shouldn’t live in a country under Turkish rule; not even one they ruled for a day. No one with any brains goes to such a country, and if by some misfortune he finds himself there, he should flee, putting at least fifty miles between himself and it. He should flee, even if he perishes in the process, or dies of hunger wherever he ends up. Anything, but this misery with no sense or dignity. Ah yes, we all talk or at least think like this, but we all keep on living here, without ever trying seriously to make a break. And with each day we are more deeply mired in this swamp. All this talk about what we should have done, what we need to do and what we should do—is nothing but empty words. And the day is not far off when it will not be possible to talk or think about breaking away and fleeing. And then. . .”
The major did not complete his sentence. He leaped up, reached for his bamboo cane and hobbled out without saying goodbye. Used to such attacks of alcoholic decisiveness in himself and others, the captain did not stir from his seat.
Music and brandy say the same thing, they relate the same, monotonous, incredible tale, opening up before him always the same diptych, one section of which bears a bright and joyful image, the other a dark, hopeless one, until both sides close, like the lid of a coffin, over a man and his desire to escape.
The following day, the talk—about flight and leaving Turkey—will resume, with new variations.
Both in their conversations with companions, and reporting to the seraskier himself, one and the same voice sounds within them: run away, leave, leave.
The first sips of drink, like the first notes of music, say that these hills around the town are not as impassable or impenetrable as they seem even on the loveliest sunlit day, especially at dusk, when shadows spread and mist descends. You are surprised that you hadn’t noticed it before. You see clearly: on all sides, flower-lined paths lead out of Sarajevo, and every step is a joy, because it’s taking you out of this town and this land. Where to? Anywhere, into a world of order and light, rational actions and clear human speech. And where might that be? Where is such a country? If you stop to think for a moment you see that there is no such place, nor could there be. Nevertheless, it exists. It’s created by life among these mountains, by these conditions. It’s a country that is not this country. Everything draws you to it and your whole life is reduced to how to reach it as quickly as possible. How? Simple. You just have to take off, and the road will guide you, carry you on. It’s no longer a human tread or a horse’s trot, but flying, real flying. Your ever stronger heartbeats merge into a single one. Your breath is stilled, your eyes dimmed by the golden clouds through which you are flying. This is not a journey, nor is it escape, but miraculous salvation at a moment when it seemed that everything had come to an end and there was no hope. Something beyond all probability is happening, the opposite of the obvious.
This lasts for a while, and it is so real and convincing, so certain, that there is no need to hurry the departure. There will always be time and opportunity, unlimited and in abundance. Yes, but the effect of alcohol, as of music, is neither unlimited nor omnipotent. After a certain time and a certain measure, an indeterminate time and unpredictable measure, there comes a moment of satiety. The effect of the spell begins to wear off, the magic fades and thins, and through its thinning weave reality can be glimpsed, evil and vengeful, worse and blacker than it was before the evening’s enchantment. You are in Sarajevo, sober and poisoned with sorrow. Before you looms the other, dark side of the picture.
There is no way out of Sarajevo. There are paths, but they are narrow, potholed, rough, and uneven as heaps of bones, or waterlogged and as dangerous as swamps. They are like traps. You do not really know where they lead or what they have in store for you, an unforeseen and unforeseeable ambush, or danger from a vile accident or an unwanted encounter. You may get stuck in the mud or break a limb without anyone to help you in this wilderness, where there is not a single living soul for a day’s walk in any direction and where people avoid the highways, flee from them. And it could happen that right at your journey’s end, within reach of freedom, suddenly, as in a bad dream, a policeman overtakes and stops you—in the name of the law.
“In the name of the law!”
You look at him and at first you don’t understand, but he stands in front of you, real and terrible. You’ve seen hundreds of instances of lawlessness with your own eyes but never felt the benign protection of the law in this land. That is what you are fleeing from. And now, with a wild shout, in the name of some law, you are being stopped by an Anatolian vagrant, illiterate, underfed, pale-faced, with red-rimmed eyes, an empty linen haversack at his side and a greasy fez on his head. His boots are worn and down at heel. Half highwayman, half beggar, he resembles anything rather than a defender of the law. He points his great rifle, its bayonet extended like a black spit, at your chest. He yells in a hoarse voice to frighten his victim and bolster his own courage. His gaze flickers and shifts. It’s obvious that he himself is unsure of either his law or his authority, of the rifle or the hands in which he holds it. All in all: a pathetic sight. A poor man, resentful, in need of everything, who doesn’t himself know by what evil fate he was taken into the army or how long he will have to serve, or why he was the one cast into this remote and unfamiliar Bosnia. He doesn’t know where he will lay his head tonight, or whether he will eat tomorrow, or whether the head on his shoulders is secure. But in this place, at this moment, he sees himself as suddenly powerful, strong and important, capable of taking a stand as the sultan’s representative on the imperial highway, in the name of the law, and so avenge himself for everything that he never had in his life and never will have.
If he cannot eat or drink his fill, or enjoy all that other people have, he can console himself and satisfy himself by stopping a fugitive and so snuffing out his last dream of happiness, his one hope of salvation. He can do this, and he does it. And, such as he is, he is bigger than an impassable mountain. For an enforcer of the law is never alone. With his hoarse shout, he has already set in motion the military mechanism whereby this man will be sent back, along this same road, into the hell from which he is fleeing in order, in far more difficult circumstances, to continue to live until he falls and
expires.
There is no flower-lined road leading out of Turkey. There never had been. How could a man be so blind and gullible as to believe in such a thing. Devil take the brandy and music that conjure up such a vision. And of course, there is no land of order and liberty to which that road supposedly leads. Only the yellow, thin, crooked-toothed face of the policeman blocking out the world and wiping out all paths and routes of escape.
Confronted by this total futility, the captain stirs himself from his evening reverie and rubs his burning temples with the palms of his hands. No, in fact, there is no Anatolian face either, neither the policeman, nor his huge bayonet exist, at least for Captain Izet Effendi they don’t exist, for he will never set out from this place or seek a way out of this desolation. It’s all simply a vision, the fruit of the oppression and melancholy of this autumn evening, in this gloomy town in which, since the spring it seems, there has not been a single tranquil or cheerful human being.
IN CHAINS
IN MUJAGA Telalagić’s abandoned house, requisitioned by the artillery colonel Arifbey, the Polish emigré convert Ehring, there was a lively, cheerful atmosphere. A dozen officers, all refugees and converts like himself, had gathered for a lunch that Arifbey had arranged to celebrate moving into his new house. And, on that summer’s day, while the tall house on Širokača Street rang with noise and gaiety, its true owner was far away from Sarajevo, on a road fortunate people do not take.
Mujaga Telalagić was of humble origins, but while still a young man he had managed to make his mark in the Sarajevo business world and, through luck, hard work and skill, had acquired considerable assets. And now, in his middle years, his property and standing made him stronger than half the Bosnian beys. He found this intoxicating, becoming somewhat light-headed. Although a newcomer to wealth, he was one of those who had stood out in recent years as an opponent of all reform and innovation. This able and self-confident man had risen rapidly among the prominent people in Sarajevo and was on track to consolidate this position and secure what he had achieved for his descendants, enabling them to climb still higher. He believed that by defending the status quo he was defending not only what was now and what he possessed but also what his sons and grandsons would at some stage achieve. And he defended it with all the strength of his fierce will and modest intelligence, everywhere, on every occasion, more resolutely and openly than the older gentry and leaders by birth and origin. Those same Sarajevo beys let him stand out and lead the resistance, and when things became dangerous, in order to protect themselves, they “pushed him forward,” so that he came higher than many of them on Omer Pasha’s police list. He was arrested immediately after the arrival of the seraskier’s army and a few days later found himself in one of four chained lines of expelled dissenters being marched to Istanbul. Now they had passed through Metaljka in the east of the country and were making their way slowly up a rocky pass. Each chain held nine to eleven prisoners. They walked in silence, endeavoring to share the weight of their common chain equally and trying to minimize the choking and rubbing of the iron ring around their necks. When one felt the need to stop for a moment, he had to shout, so the others too would slow their pace.
The last in the last of the four chains, an elderly, sick bey from Visoko, was the only one on a horse. Mujaga Telalagić was next to him, second to last, on foot. His was the most difficult position. He had to walk right beside the bey’s horse, holding onto the saddle, leaning against it so the chain did not stretch too much between them and pull the bey out of his saddle. This meant that Mujaga’s bones cracked and the iron ring dug into his flesh, now on one side of his neck, now on the other.
Even so, he raised his eyes from time to time to look at the motionless mask made up of the beard, moustache and deathly pallor of the bey’s face. He was never able to catch his eye, as if it was not there. Then he himself lowered his gaze, endeavoring in the same way to hold his head straight and high without looking at anyone. And he succeeded in this. It even seemed to him that the iron around his neck and the pain it caused assisted him and served as a support.
It was harder to overcome that other, increasingly acute pain, stabbing and burning his inner being with every step, that came from thinking of his house and family, his estate and the town he was leaving behind. That dragged him to the ground, and there was nothing to help him hold himself upright, apart from his own effort and his strength, which was steadily waning.
On each side of the narrow path, as though invisibly connected to the shackled men, almost merging with them, marched a dozen soldiers in new uniforms. They were bathed in sweat and kept shifting their guns from one shoulder to the other. At the end of the procession, his head bowed, rode a young, anxious lieutenant.
The further they went and the wilder and less familiar the landscapes they passed through, the greater the silent dejection of the prisoners. The land they were leaving settled in the pit of their stomachs, gnawing at them with an unfamiliar pain, confusing their thoughts and weighing down their footsteps. Istanbul, to which they were being led along endless roads, into an uncertain destiny, appeared unattainable, their homes and families were unreal, though sorely missed. And they themselves, until a few days earlier aware of their name and position, their every word and gesture, were beginning to forget who they were and where they came from, becoming merely captives, trudging in steel chains, thinking only of stopping somewhere softer and more even, and of turning their necks to lessen the way the steel cut into their flesh. They tried everything: loosening the chain, or making it taut, or holding it in their hands. Each of these methods seemed at first better and more comfortable, but after twenty or so steps turned out to be awkward and unbearable. Sweating and covered in dust, they kept asking those in front and those behind to pull less, to slow down, or to walk faster. Everything hampered them, because they were a burden to themselves. And the soldier beside each one of them was sullen and morose, trudging on, gazing blankly ahead. The day seemed interminable and the road infinite. The men’s steps and every human effort proved futile and impotent, so it made no difference whether one stepped forward or backward or stood still. And it happened from time to time that one of the chained men would stop, suddenly and with no sound or warning. Then there would be stumbling collisions, annoyed but subdued exclamations from the other men. And the soldiers too would stop without command or discussion.
Such unanticipated and unscheduled rests occurred from time to time, and lasted for at least ten minutes. But what did rests mean on such a journey? Uphill and downhill succeeded one another like two versions of the same torture, the heat was rising, and the inner torment made the chained men stagger and mumble as if under the influence of strong drink. Their bitterness, anguish and acute personal sense of injustice were such that they sometimes did resemble drunkenness and raving. Frequently, one of them would pass a hand over his face in an unexpected movement, like a man trying in vain to pull himself together, come to his senses and grasp what was happening; or else he would pronounce, half out loud, a random word that had sprung from an inner conversation and accidentally crossed his lips. From time to time, one of the prisoners would stagger and lurch as if about to fall. Both an instinct for staying upright and a law of courtesy and mutual concern that had not abandoned them even here, made both the man in front and the one behind him take his section of the chain and carry it for a while until he had come to himself. The steel was hot, which made it all the heavier.
One of the soldiers tried to sing, but only briefly, as if drunk. He stopped, silenced and shamed by the cold, reproachful glances of the men around him.
And so trudging along, before noon that day, they crossed out of Bosnia. Someone said it, out loud and needlessly, for everyone knew and felt it in any case, and those words did not make things better. The heat did not let up, as if the sun refused to leave the zenith; the sultriness increased and the fatigue in their legs and backs became ever greater.
The pain grew. And, increasingly, for each o
f them it all looked insane and impossible: this journey, the punishment, and the incomprehensible fact that those who were until yesterday free and powerful, themselves meting out punishment in the council or on their property, were now being forced out of their country as captives, leaving behind uncared-for dependents and scattered possessions. And their pain grew and soared, turning steadily into a delirious anticipation. With it the whole bleak senselessness through which this multitude of tormented people were being herded in chains seemed to grow and ripen, it grew and rose toward an apex, and there somewhere, at a given moment, it would have to burst as a shell fired from a gun explodes at a certain point on its parabola. And with that explosion, like a bubble, all these terrible and incredible things that had been happening to them and around them recently, all that had driven them from their homes and that was goading them on this difficult journey into an evil uncertainty would shatter and vanish like a fevered vision. And this whole absurd misunderstanding would suddenly become clear to them all. They would exchange glances, first among themselves, and then with the commander and his soldiers, and having understood each other with just a glance, they would sit down on the grass by the road and be unshackled, one by one. And then things would develop easily and naturally. And everything, so it seemed to the chained men, would be restored to its rightful place and would be as it was before this horror and upset. The authority and power of the old order and law would be reinstated, that is, everything they had always called order and law and thought of as the only possible world and natural disposition of things.