by Ivo Andrić
To start with, this atmosphere of shameless deceit is insupportable. A man feels that he’s going to suffocate. But, with time, he becomes accustomed to breathing in it and to holding himself in a state of constant attention and defensiveness. Living for a long time with such people, in my posts in Turkey, I long ago became accustomed to it. Nevertheless, I find this pasha more difficult than anyone before him. You have to be on your guard even in your sleep. That’s the only way I succeed in defending myself from his lies. He only managed on one occasion to deceive me totally and completely. He told me the truth. Used to him always lying, I kept trying to guess what could be concealed behind what he was saying and taking account of all possibilities, apart from the one he had mentioned. And I was deceived. It was as he had said. Now I see that he’s capable of anything, that I must bear in mind the possibility that despite a thousand lies, half-lies and half-truths, he might at a given moment tell the whole truth. And that now unsettles me, makes my dealings with him ever more difficult.
It unsettles me and makes me angry. When I’m awake and in my sleep, this man angers me, with his appalling egoism and lack of any consideration for others. No one seems to be aware of the extent, depth and power of this egoism, that it is outside the order of known human phenomena, and that it should be exhibited to the world as a geographical or zoological discovery. For all to see and know.
Taking advantage of the exceptional circumstances in which he moves, and he moves only in exceptional ones, through his achievements, this man has risen so far above everyone and everything, that he lives in his own world, his own reality and his own truth, for himself. He doesn’t need and nor is he able any longer to take account of anyone else’s truth or reality, but does whatever he wants and takes whatever he needs. And everything around him is simply an instrument or an impediment. He removes the impediment and makes use of the instrument.
In my ceaseless struggle with him, inseparable from him, and always dependent on his word and his actions, I’m alarmed to see that I’m increasingly losing my sense of another, true reality and, as if delirious, I’m beginning to imagine and create a commander, to attribute to him qualities and intentions and vices and abilities that he doesn’t have, and that this is making my position even more difficult than it actually is. So infectious and so destructive is the power of deceit. As though I haven’t been sufficiently cheated and deceived, I’ve begun to cheat and deceive myself. And that angers and upsets me even more. And that’s why I must put an end to it, pull myself together and stop thinking and—writing. Free myself of this laughable need, like that of an unhappy young girl, to carry on this imaginary correspondence.
Here Atanacković threw his pen down and rose from the table. He paced up and down the room, which was for him the worst kind of movement and always an indication of a bad mood, then he picked up the pages he had written and folded them lengthwise several times. He grasped the long bundle of papers in the middle with a pair of scissors, like pincers, and held it over the two candles that were burning at a slight distance from each other. The paper burned slowly from both ends, but the flame grew stronger the closer it came to the middle. Watching it, he thought this time, as he always did: a flame is the intoxication of inert matter. Out loud he said, and so loudly that he was startled:
“But then, we all tell lies, and we’re not much better than he is.”
And he set off at once into the adjoining cold room, determined to stretch out and, if he could, fall sleep.
FEBRUARY IN SARAJEVO
WHAT THE month of February was like that year in Sarajevo is hard to imagine and impossible to describe. As soon as it had passed, what had been worst about it was forgotten. And once it no longer lived in the memory, it was as though it had never been. This made things easier for people. But while it lasted, that month was terrible and appeared to every living creature endless and insupportable.
A damp, unhealthy winter, as though made to measure and entirely suited to everything that was happening to this town and to the people connected with it then by force of circumstance or their own free will. There had been no heavy snowfall, as is usual at this time of year, but everything was covered with a crust of ice that kept shrinking and melting during the day, but freezing and thickening again at night. As if high up, above the low, gray sky, there lay an enormous black iceberg, spreading an insidious chill, penetrating through every smallest crack, biting into any exposed skin, bowing people down and infecting them with despondency. The sun, invisible, neither rose nor set, and it would have been hard to say what made the light of day or why it was extinguished and covered by darkness. At crossroads and empty spaces between buildings were heaped the remains of everything that a settlement besieged by winter casts out. Traces of ash and coal, human and animal excrement and urine, rags and straw, rubbish of every kind. It seemed as though the squalid aspects of the life of this town, which no one took care about, would dominate its appearance forever, because there was no deep snow to cover it nor good south wind to blow and clear it all away.
This was not a time to travel or work: everything, from human thought to animal movement, seemed paralyzed and numbed. Houses closed up, harboring as much fear, hatred and lifeless sorrow as they had been able to absorb during the events of the summer and autumn. There were restrictions and shortages in almost all of them, and hunger and illness in many. Cold and meager rations. There was no fuel, nor the will or ability to purchase or gather any. People destroyed their fences or cut down the one mulberry tree in their yard, by night one could hear the muffled crack of a plank someone in the neighborhood was stealing. The peasants did not come into town and it was impossible to get out of it. Uncertainty, expense and shortages meant that people were more engaged in giving and taking, stealing and appropriating, than in buying and selling. The winter, and, still more, fear of the army, made traveling impossible, while commerce had ceased to make sense. This otherwise charming and orderly town now lived a kind of cave life, where before, even when things were at their most difficult, people had always endeavored to preserve their appearance and dignity. In the bitter, wretched cold of this war-torn February, it was as if the last spark of life had been extinguished in every living thing and now they were simply enduring, not caring how they looked or where they were going. Everything was difficult, and, worse, everything was ugly, slippery, cold, gray and hostile. Disgraced and humiliated. The seraskier’s winter. A time for black thoughts, and ugly, senseless actions.
It was not quite a year since the arrival of the seraskier but he had evidently accomplished his tasks in the Sava valley and Krajina districts and was concluding them with undoubted success also in Herzegovina. Insofar as Turkish and Bosnian affairs could be resolved by decrees, apparent reforms, rifles, artillery, burning and beating, one might say that he had resolved them and completed his task on this bloody campaign as well. He was the victor. While the appearance of the town showed the other side of his victory and success. He neither looked for it nor saw it, but he knew. And everything else that went with his victories was already here: triumphalism and flattery, hatred, envy and defamation, arrogance and injustice and general dejection.
Omer knew this moment well from his earlier “subduing” and “quelling” campaigns in other rebellious regions. Wherever an uprising took hold and he had to be sent on the dangerous and difficult mission that no one else could have accomplished, he was all-powerful and unchallenged, because he was indispensable. He was flattered and bribed, gifts came from all directions, filling his house and coffers, no one dared refuse him anything. The sultan was his best friend, while the viziers and other public servants were at his disposal in every way. As long as the campaign lasted, all followed his bloody work with bated breath. But as soon as it was clear that Omer was going to quell the uprising and restore order, as always, everything turned against him. In Istanbul, great successes were not forgiven. Then a real competition to undermine and destroy the victor began. The sultan cooled, while men from hi
s entourage became once more what they really were: jealous blackmailers. Since time immemorial, a whole system had been in operation for how best to destroy a man who had successfully accomplished some military or administrative task. All means were used to minimize his contribution, there was suddenly incomprehensible sympathy for the vanquished, slanders were dreamed up, intrigues initiated, accusations of excessive cruelties and vainglorious, dark plans were made. And, in the end, the victor had to consider himself fortunate if he succeeded, through a series of cunning counteractions, in emerging unscathed with at least some of the property he had acquired or plundered and managing to have all the “mistakes” he had made in carrying out his task written off. That would often be his entire reward. And when he withdrew, embittered, to his estate on the outskirts of Istanbul, all the accusations and calumnies ceased at once. The victory was forgotten, the victor “forgiven,” and he could now live peacefully on his own land. Until the next occasion when the sultan needed his services, and until he was despatched on a new campaign against some other rebellious region. And then, in one way or another, the same old game began again.
That is how it was this time as well. The rigid, arrogant Hajrudin Pasha lost the battle in his conflict with the seraskier and had to leave his post in Bosnia. And as soon as he reached Istanbul, he set about demolishing his opponent with rare zeal wherever he could. A fiery Circassian, he was tireless in this endeavor. On the other hand, the families of the executed or exiled Bosnian and Herzegovinian beys and leading men submitted their own complaints and accusations, through relatives and friends in Istanbul, to all men of influence, right up to the grand vizier himself. In these oral and written submissions, Omer Pasha was depicted as the embodiment of evil and vice. He and his entourage and members of his family were said to live a dissolute life, unworthy of an imperial military commander and true Muslim. He had appropriated for himself and those around him the greater part of the money and valuables he had confiscated from the condemned. From the outset he had reached out, through Governor Jelačić in Zagreb, to the court in Vienna with the aim of detaching Bosnia and Herzegovina from Turkey and declaring himself the king of those lands, a Christian king, of course, and under the protection of Austria. That was why he had destroyed the beys and disarmed the Muslims, while protecting the rayas and leaving them weapons, because he intended to turn them into his kingdom’s army, the core of which would be the murtad-tabor he had taken to Bosnia for that purpose.
This was all absurd, but for that very reason dangerous, because in those times the wildest stories were the easiest to believe and caused the most damage. The Istanbul conservatives from the ranks of the army and ulema accepted these and similar accusations indiscriminately and without verification and made use of them in their general resistance to the sultan’s reforming policies.
Naturally, Omer Pasha was quickly informed about the charges trumped up against him in Istanbul. To crush such rumors and justify himself, he undertook countermeasures. First, he broke off all connections with Zagreb. He banned, under threat of severe punishment, all imports of books and newspapers from “nonbelievers.” And then he set in motion the persecution of Christians in Bosnia and Herzegovina. With lightning speed, all weapons “down to the smallest knife” were collected from the rayas. Many leading men and priests in the villages and towns were imprisoned. Friar Jukić, Omer Pasha’s former colleague and advisor, was arrested and exiled to Asia Minor. So now it was the common people’s turn to curse the seraskier who had done all this deliberately and in public, and with excessive severity, to make clear and widely known that he did not spare the rayas either, and was working exclusively for the good of the sultan and the state.
In the end, it was inevitable that the foreign officers of the murtad-tabor should also feel the consequences of the seraskier’s countermeasures. To crush all the accusations against his officers, Muslim converts, he forbade them in the strictest terms from publicly drinking wine and required them to conscientiously observe all Muslim religious rituals. At the same time he ordered those rumored not to have been circumcised when they converted to Islam to carry out this regulation of the Muslim faith within a few days. And it must be done in public, so that word of it reached Istanbul.
All this was implemented speedily and crudely to the point of absurdity. As always, there was a striking disproportion between the methods Omer employed and the aims he wished to achieve, but that was a fundamental attribute of such personages and their struggle for advancement and survival.
The seraskier’s decree for the compulsory and urgent circumcision of the officers was worded so as to emphasize Omer Pasha’s “particular concern” for the strict observance of religious regulations and rituals. The seraskier’s attention had been drawn, the decree stated, to “the surprising and unbelievable fact” that some of his officers who had embraced Islam several years earlier had not been circumcised on the occasion of their conversion to the pure, true faith. Their number was insignificant, it stated, but it had troubled the seraskier, who in all things watched over the strict observance of religious regulations, and he had ordered this unaccountable lapse on the part of those who had carried out the conversion to Islam of the said officers to be put right with all haste and in a ceremonial manner. Etc.
The seraskier’s office ensured that the spiritual and civil leaders in Bosnia and Istanbul were informed of the content of the decree. Very few people knew exactly how that strict order was in fact executed. Here too, everything was done halfway, sloppily, superficially and insincerely. The text of the decree was communicated to the officers of the murtad-tabor, but they were told confidentially and in a roundabout way that the affair should not be taken too seriously. It was intended to hoodwink the ordinary people and silence the bigoted Bosnian hodjas. In effect, the ceremony of circumcision would take place, but no one present would be cut or circumcised. And that is roughly what occurred.
The announcement did not apply to those who had been adherents of the Jewish faith before they converted to Islam, since it was considered that, as Jews, they must already have been circumcised in their earliest childhood. Many thought of hiding behind this disposition, even if they were not Jews. The senior officers affirmed that they had been circumcised some time before in Istanbul on the occasion of their conversion to Islam. They had to be taken at their word. Only the junior officers made their way, over three or four days, in small groups, on horseback to Isabey’s hammam, on the left bank of the Miljacka River. On those days the baths were closed to citizens. It was announced that only the officers who were to be circumcised were bathing on those days, so that the news would spread through the town and the country. After their bath, they returned to their officers’ quarters on Gorica Hill. They remained in their rooms for a few days, ostensibly recovering from their operation.
What had been seen as a “wise move” in Omer Pasha’s personal strategy turned out in reality chaotic, comic and distasteful, and in the end both shocking and pathetic.
Early one Thursday morning, the last group, the most obdurate and stubborn officers, mostly Poles, passed through the town on horseback toward Isabey’s baths. The night before there had been a wild drinking spree on Gorica Hill. Those who were supposedly to be circumcised were the hosts. Numerous crude jokes were told on their behalf. The large, overheated room shook with laughter, and in contrast, the desperately pale Captain Kot recited first in a deep, funereal voice and then in a whisper some verses about the human gaze, which circles vainly around, like a confused bird, because there is nothing either beautiful or dignified on which it could alight. Finally, that whisper too was hushed and the captain fell into a deathly silence.
He was not susceptible to alcohol. So that even now, although he had been drinking glass after glass of strong brandy, and responded to every toast “in the engineers’ style,” draining each one, he was troubled by sober thoughts. And he had been troubled by this whole business. Not just this evening but for a fortnight now there had bee
n obnoxious talk and tasteless jokes about the ill-fated circumcision of adult men, officers of the murtad-tabor. For even the worst and most painful events are not in themselves as bad and painful as all the ugly and inhuman things people can think and say about them. He knew that nothing untoward could happen to him, nevertheless he experienced the whole business as the utmost disgrace. Although, truth to tell, any disgrace seemed to him utmost. He found it hard to think about the pathetic human body that could be sullied and demeaned in so many ways. When he reflected, as he walked in broad daylight, on all the gossip around this enforced circumcision, his head began to reel, his groins throbbed with a dull pain and his mouth twitched as if he were about to vomit.
So at this drunken gathering, avoiding now one officer after another, he withdrew ever further, into the depths of the room, into half-darkness, but there he was trapped by the verbose, self-important Captain Reuf. He was a desk officer, fluent in many languages and the indispensable translator in Omer Pasha’s headquarters. The small, beardless offspring of the large Italian-Hungarian Nagy-Marussi family, he had an exceptional memory, he read and wrote perfectly in Latin, Italian, German, Hungarian and Turkish, and knew some of the Slav languages as well, using them with greater or lesser ease. He was a born interpreter and intermediary, with an unusual ability to serve others, to eliminate and forget himself in his work, to identify completely with other people’s interests, defending them and explaining them in the best possible way. A sharp-witted, skilled and useful man, but impotent. As Dr. Fritz put it, he could make no headway with women but could not resist thinking or talking about them. He would try to turn even the most ordinary conversation in that direction, always coming up with some bold joke or saucy “manly” comment. And when he had had a bit to drink, these were lascivious wisecracks and erotic anecdotes, or some obscure confessions that were supposed to offer proof of his constant interest in the female sex and his masculinity, which nature had in fact entirely denied him.