The Great War
First published in 2014 by
Istros Books
London, United Kingdom
www.istrosbooks.com
© Aleksandar Gatalica, 2014
The right of Aleksandar Gatalica to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988
Translation © Will Firth, 2014
Graphic design: Frontispis.hr
Cover photograph courtesy of the Imperial War Museum, London (Q 31930)
Ebook conversion by leeds-ebooks.co.uk
ISBN: 978-1-908236203
This edition is supported by the National Library of Serbia and the Ministry of Culture and Information of the Republic of Serbia.
This project has been funded with support from the European Commission. This publication reflects the views only of the author, and the Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained therein.
Acknowledgements
The author would first and foremost like to thank Petar Pijanović and Professor Dragoljub Živojinović, the first readers of this novel. He is also indebted to the hundreds of eyewitnesses who were his eyes and ears in the Great War: above all John Reed, Princess Cantacuzène and the journalists of wartime Politika, who proved that authors can also write about things they haven’t experienced first-hand as long as they are informed about events by good, reliable witnesses.
ALEKSANDAR GATALICA
THE GREAT WAR
Translated from the Serbian by Will Firth
Contents
1914 – the Year of the Pathologist
Prologue: Two Revolver Shots
A Long Hot Summer
War
Letters of Life and Death
First Wartime Christmas
The Typhus Situation
1915 – the Year of the Trader
The Smell of Snow and Forebodings of Doom
The Man who Did Everything Twice
War and the Sexes
The Father of all Gothic Doctors
Best Wishes from Hell
Defence and Ultimate Collapse
1916 – the Year of the King
The Valley of the Dead
Far away, to the Ends of the Earth
Miracle Cures and Other Elixirs
Delusions as Broad as Russia
Corporals, Chaplains and Helmsmen
1917 – the Year of the Tsar
Betrayal, Cowardice and Lies
Their Time Has Passed
Death Wears no Watch
The Revolution Travels by Train
1918 – the Year of the Criminologist
The End – Kaput
The Pandemic
Silent Liberation
I am now Dead
Wishes for the New World
Epilogue: Dreams Made of Dreams
The Author
The Translator
The Heroes of this Novel
(by warring countries)
Serbia
DJOKA VELKOVICH, manufacturer of Idealin
GAVRA CRNOGORCHEVICH, manufacturer of counterfeit Idealin
Major TIHOMIR MIYUSHKOVICH
YANKO and DJURO TANKOSICH, conscripts from Voivodina
Mrs LIR, a lady from Belgrade
PERA STANISAVLEVICH BURA, journalist with Politika
ZHIVKA D. SPASICH, seamstress
Dr SVETISLAV SIMONOVICH, doctor to King Peter
King PETER I
Sergeant DIMITRIYE LEKICH, refugee
VLADISLAV PETKOVICH DIS, accursed Serbian poet
Major LYUBOMIR VULOVICH, sentenced to death
Major RADOYICA TATICH, artillery
Dr ARCHIBALD REISS, forensic scientist and writer
ALEXANDER, Crown Prince and later regent
Four heroic lieutenants with pocket watches
Austria-Hungary
MEHMED GRAHO, Sarajevo pathologist
TIBOR VERES, reporter for the Pester Lloyd
TIBOR NÉMETH, Hungarian soldier
SVETOZAR BOROEVICH VON BOINA, field marshal
HEINRICH AUFSCHNEIDER, psychoanalyst
BÉLA DURÁNCI, Munich actor
A VON B, spy
MARKO MURK, Croatian volunteer
CHARLES I, the last Austrian emperor
FRANZ HARTMANN, occultist from Munich
HUGO VOLLRATH, theosophist from Munich
KARL BRANDLER-PRACHT, theosophist from Leipzig
ANDOR PRAGER, young pianist
France
JEAN COCTEAU
LUCIEN GUIRAND DE SCEVOLA, scene painter and stage designer
GERMAIN D’ESPARBÈS, soldier
STANISLAW WITKIEWICZ, Polish refugee
GUILLAUME APOLLINAIRE
OLD LIBION, proprietor of the Café de la Rotonde
OLD COMBES, proprietor of the Closerie des Lilas
KIKI DE MONTPARNASSE, volunteer and model
PIERRE ALBERT-BIROT, producer of postcards
FERRY PISANO, war correspondent
Fifty heroes of Verdun
FRITZ JOUBERT DUQUESNE, spy
MATA HARI, spy
United Kingdom
EDWIN MCDERMOTT, bass from Edinburgh
FATHER DONOVAN, Scottish chaplain
OSWALD RAYNER, assassin
FLORRIE FORDE, music-hall singer
SIDNEY REILLY, spy
ANNABEL WALDEN, nurse
Germany
HANS-DIETER HUIS, opera singer
FRITZ KRUPP, Zeppelin bombardier and later pilot
STEFAN HOLM, soldier
LILIAN SMITH (SCHMIDT), music-hall singer
FRITZ HABER, chemist
WALTHER SCHWIEGER, submarine commander
HANS HENZE, right-handed pianist and left-handed poet
PAUL WITTGENSTEIN, left-handed invalid pianist
ALEXANDER WITTEK, architecture student
MANFRED VON RICHTHOFEN, pilot
Fifty heroes of Verdun
ADOLF HITLER, lance corporal of the 16th Bavarian Infantry (List Regiment)
Turkey
MEHMED YILDIZ, Istanbul spice trader
CAM ZULAD BEY, Istanbul policeman
Russia
SERGEI CHESTUKHIN, neurosurgeon
LIZA CHESTUKHINA, Sergei’s wife
GRAND DUKE NICHOLAS
SERGEI VORONIN, Menshevik, soldier
BORIS DMITRIEVICH RIZANOV, soldier
VLADIMIR SUKHOMLINOV, Governor-General of Kiev
YEKATERINA SUKHOMLINOVA, Vladimir’s wife
COUNT VLADIMIR FREDERIKS, First Secretary of the Court
ILYA EHRENBURG
NICHOLAS II, the last Russian tsar
Tsaritsa ALEXANDRA
KARL RADEK, Bolshevik
YURI YURIEV, acclaimed actor
LEON TROTSKY, Bolshevik negotiator in Brest-Litovsk
A fortune-teller travelling in the trains of the October Revolution
Italy
GIORGIO DE CHIRICO
Note to readers: please be aware that in keeping with the standard practice of the period the novel is set, all Serbian names have been anglicised in order to allow easier pronunciation for the English reader. Major city names remain in the original.
1914
THE YEAR OF THE PATHOLOGIST
Suspects arrested in Sarajevo following the assasination, 1914
PROLOGUE: TWO REVOLVER SHOTS
The Great War began for Dr Mehmed Graho when he was least expecting it, just when he was told that ‘two important bodies’ would be brought to the mortuary in that June heatwave. But for Dr Graho, hunched and ageing but still hale, with a bald head and prominent flat pate, no bodies were more
important than others. All the corpses which came under his knife were waxy pale, with cadaverously gaping mouths, often with eyes which no one had had time to close, or had not dared to, which now bulged and stared away into space, striving with their lifeless pupils to catch one last ray of sun.
But that did not disturb him. Ever since 1874, he had placed his round glasses on his nose, donned his white coat, put on long gloves and begun his work at the Sarajevo mortuary, where he removed hearts from within chests, felt broken ribs for signs of police torture and searched the stomachs of the deceased for swallowed fish bones and the remains of the last meal.
Now the ‘important bodies’ arrived, and the pathologist still hadn’t heard what had happened out in the streets. He didn’t know that the Archduke’s car had been backing out of Franz Joseph Street and that there, from out of the crowd on the corner near the Croatia Insurance building, a little fellow had fired two revolver shots at the heir to the Austrian throne and the Duchess of Hohenberg. At first, the bodyguards thought the royal couple was unharmed and it looked as if the Archduke had only turned and glanced away in the other direction, to the assembled crowd; the Duchess resembled a doll in a Vienna shop window, and a moment later blood gushed from her noble breast; Franz Ferdinand’s mouth also filled with blood, which trickled down the right-hand side of his orderly, black-dyed moustache. Only a little later was it established that the important persons had been hit, and within fifteen minutes the male of the couple had become an ‘important body’. Half an hour after that, the important female person hadn’t awoken from her state of unconsciousness, lying in the umbrage of the Governor’s residence, and she too was declared an ‘important body’.
Now the two important bodies had arrived, and no one had told Dr Graho who they were. But one glance at the male corpse’s uniform with its breast full of medals and one look at the long, trailing, silk dress of the female body told him who had come under his scalpel. When he had undressed them and washed their wounds he was told not to extract the bullets from their bodies but just to mix a plaster slurry and make casts of their faces. That is probably why he didn’t notice that the Archduke had a small malignant tumour in the oral cavity and that something had been killed together with the lady which could have been a foetus in her womb.
Just put the plaster on their faces and take their masks. And that he did, while shouts out the front of the mortuary mingled with the warm summer wind from the River Milyacka and the distant sound of sobbing. Just a little further away, in the street, a crowd set off to lynch the assassins. Discarded weapons were found beneath the Latin Bridge. In the panic, informants spread various rumours, mixed with copious perversion and lies, while Dr Graho stirred the plaster dust and water in his metal basin to make sure the mixture wouldn’t start to set before he applied it to the faces.
First of all, he covered the noblewoman’s rounded forehead with the crease in the middle, then her slightly stubby nose with flaring nostrils. He filled the nasal cavity well, spread plaster between the eyelashes and carefully, like an artist, shaped the eyebrows, applying the paste almost lovingly to every hair. This was fitting preparation for the Archduke’s countenance and his black, handlebar moustache, which had to be faithfully preserved for posterity and the many bronze castings which — so he imagined — would grace every institution of the Dual Monarchy for decades to come. Was he afraid? Did his nerves show? Did he perhaps feel a little like a demiurge, crafting the posthumous image of what until just half an hour ago was Austria-Hungary’s most powerful to-be? Not at all. Dr Graho was one of those people with no loose thoughts buzzing around in their head. He didn’t daydream, nor was he plagued by nightmares. The souls of the dead from his day’s work didn’t haunt him when he closed his eyes at night. If it were otherwise, he wouldn’t have been able to become Sarajevo’s main pathologist in 1874 and receive deceased Turks and the dead of all three faiths day in, day out.
Nor did his hand tremble now. He modelled the plaster beneath the heir apparent’s lower lip, painstakingly shaped the dimple in his clean-shaven chin, covered his eyelids and attentively devoted himself to the moustache. First of all, he removed the tallow which gave it body and then did his very best to ensure that every black moustache hair was given its coat of plaster. When he had finished, two limp, completely naked bodies with white face-masks lay side by side beneath his hands. Now he had only to wait; but then something strange happened.
First one word, then another.
Had someone perhaps come into the mortuary? One of his assistants, or a policeman? He turned around, but there was no one nearby, and the words were coalescing into a whisper. What language was it? At first, he thought it seemed a mixture of many languages: Turkish, Serbian, German and Hungarian, all of which he knew, but they were intermingled with others — Asian, he thought, African, and extinct ones like Aramaic or Hazaragi. But no, he must be fooling himself. This doctor, who never dreamed, sat down quietly on the chair; still unmoved by fright. He looked at the bodies to ensure they weren’t moving; yet even if by some chance they did, it wouldn’t have surprised him either. When the anima leaves, the body can go wild and twitch in a frenzy. He had seen this back in 1899, when one poor wretch kicked and shuddered almost a whole day after death, as if he had electricity running through him, and very nearly fell from the dissection table. Or take the woman, perhaps in 1904 or — that was it — 1905, who seemed to breathe all evening. Her beautiful, youthful breasts, which no child had suckled, rose and fell evenly before the eyes of Dr Graho, as if her dead mouth still drew breath; but it was all a trick of the eye and the doctor later documented the case in a well-received article for a Vienna medical journal.
The Archduke and Duchess could even have embraced and it wouldn’t have surprised him. But they were speaking . . . the words wrested themselves from regional idioms and made their way to him articulately and clearly all in German. He tried to tell where the whisper was coming from and quickly established that it was the mouths beneath the plaster masks which were articulating them. Now he was alarmed. This was far from physiologically predictable and would hardly go towards a convincing lecture before the Imperial Society of Pathologists. Franz Ferdinand and his Duchess were speaking to each other. Dr Graho leaned his ear right up to Franz Ferdinand’s mouth, and from beneath the plaster mask he heard one muffled but still discernible word:
‘Darling?’
‘Yes, my dear?’ immediately came the reply from the Duchess.
‘Do you see these lands, this forest, whose leaves grow and fall as fast as if the years flew by like minutes?’
In reply, there followed only the Duchess’s: ‘Are you in pain?’
‘A little,’ the important male body answered. ‘And you?’
‘No, darling, but there’s something firm over my mouth, and it’s not the clay of the grave.’
Mehmed Graho recoiled. The plaster casts hadn’t yet set on the faces of the royal couple, but at hearing the Duchess’s words he set about removing them with trembling hands. He was fortunate that the plaster didn’t break because that would certainly have cost him the position he had quietly held ever since Ottoman times. With the two, mercifully intact death-masks in his hands, he looked at the splotchy faces of the wax-pale figures on his table. The lips were moving, he could swear to it now.
‘I’m naked,’ said the male body.
‘I’m ashamed. You know I’ve never ever been nude before you,‘ the woman replied.
‘But now we’re going.’
‘Where?’
‘Away.’
‘What will we leave behind?’
‘Grief, a void, our dreams and all our pitiable plans.’
‘What will happen?’
‘There will be war, the great war we’ve been preparing for.’
‘But without us?’
‘Actually, because of us . . . ’
At that moment, a man dashed into the mortuary. He addressed Dr Graho in Turkish:
‘Doc
tor, have you finished? Just in time! The new uniforms are here.’ He continued in German: ‘My God, how terrible it is to see them naked, and their faces messy with plaster. Wash them quickly now. The court delegation will be arriving any minute. The bodies need to be embalmed and taken by express train to Metkovich harbour, from there to be shipped to Trieste. Come on, doctor, snap out of it! It’s not as if they’re the first dead bodies you’ve seen. Once they’ve stopped breathing, the Archduke and Duchess are just bodies like any others.’
But the voices, and the war, the great war . . . Dr Graho was about to ask . . . but he didn’t say a word. Dead mouths don’t speak after all, he thought, as he handed the plaster casts to the stranger, without knowing if he was a policeman, secret agent, soldier, provocateur, or even one of the assassins. Afterwards everything went the usual mortuary way. The bodies were dressed, a new coat was quickly put on over the Archduke’s breast, new, imitation medals were attached in place of the old, bloodied and bent ones, a new gown almost identical to the silk one in pale apricot was slipped on over the Countess’s chest (no one thought of underwear now), and an evening came on just like any other, with that gentle breeze in the valley which cools Sarajevo even in summer.
Dr Graho was on duty in the days that followed. None of the bodies on his table moved and none of them said a word, but 850 km to the north-west the entire Austrian press was firing verbal salvos at the Serbian government and Prime Minister Nikola Pashich, whom German-speaking journalists had always despised. The reporter, Tibor Veres, worked for the Budapest daily Pester Lloyd, whose editorial office was housed in a dark, altogether diabolical building on the Pest side of the city, right by the Danube. Veres was an ethnic Hungarian from the border province of Bachka, and since he had a knowledge of Serbian he was entrusted with monitoring the Serbian newspapers. The Great War began for Veres when he read in one of papers: “Vienna, where diligent Serbian businessmen have invested for years, is becoming a bandits’ den, and the slander of Austro-Jewish journalists more and more resembles the baying of dogs.” Veres flew into a rage. He later admitted to a few colleagues that he was offended not so much as a Hungarian Jew (which he pretended to be) but as a journalist (an exaggeration, because he was an ordinary hack). And over a mug of black beer at the local tavern he snarled: ‘I’ll get them for this!’, and the drunken company took up his words in a boisterous chorus: ‘Hurrah, he’ll get them for this!’
The Great War Page 1