Zadruga

by Margaret Pemberton

  Helga cleared her throat and Zita and Katerina stared at her, appalled. Miss Benson said swiftly, ‘I’m sorry, Helga. I didn’t mean to insinuate … I wasn’t referring to you!’

  ‘I’ve never been ashamed of being German,’ Helga said, unperturbed, ‘and I’m not ashamed of being German now. I’m just going to forget about it for a little while. Injured men won’t mind what accent I have if I’m tending them. They might even think I’m a Montenegrin.’

  In all the years that Helga had been in Karageorgevich service it was the nearest she had ever come to a joke.

  ‘Of course they won’t mind,’ Zita said, laying a hand reassuringly on Helga’s arm, her eyes suspiciously bright. ‘Now let’s go. It’s no use waiting for a lull in the shelling. There quite obviously isn’t going to be one.’

  It was the first time in her life that Katerina had ever known her mother to set off, on foot, down Prince Milan Street. Her amusement at the novelty soon vanished. Fires were raging in the east of the city and the night air was thick with the acrid smell of smoke and ash. Despite the obvious danger of being out in the open when shells were being fired so indiscriminately, the streets were thronged.

  ‘Don’t go towards the rivers!’ a woman shouted out to them, a shawl pulled close around her head, half a dozen terrified children at her heels. ‘The Austrians are trying to cross both the Danube and Sava! Head west, not east!’

  Carriage horses galloped wildly down the street, half demented by the roar and scream of mortars.

  ‘The side-streets will be safer!’ Katerina shouted to her mother. ‘The fewer horses there are, the less chance there is of our being run down!’

  Agreeing with her Zita plunged down the first alleyway she came to, hoping to God that her sense of direction wasn’t playing her false and that they would emerge in the vicinity of the hospital.

  ‘It never occurred to me the Austrians would be able to fire on us from across the river,’ Miss Benson gasped as they hurried as fast as they dared over the treacherous cobbles. ‘I always thought the river so pretty and even though I knew Hungary was on the opposite bank I never thought of it as being near!’

  ‘It’s near all right,’ Helga panted as they turned into another, even narrower alleyway. ‘The Austrians can shell Belgrade twenty-four hours a day if they choose to!’

  Katerina was just about to say robustly that Serbian cannon could also fire on Austrian positions from the advantageous heights of the Kalemegdan Bluff when she saw the sign over the café they were hurrying past. It was the Golden Sturgeon.

  It was crowded with students seeking shelter from the firing; students who were possibly homeless as Natalie had said so many of them were. She saw the little marble-topped tables and wondered if any of those taking shelter were friends of Gavrilo Princip’s; if they realized that it was in that café that the holocaust now taking place had been initially so idealistically and recklessly triggered.

  ‘I can hear our guns firing back!’ her mother shouted to her over the crashing sound of artillery fire. ‘Whatever their range they’ll be able to hit whatever is in the water! The Austrians won’t land! Major Zlarin won’t allow them to!’

  Katerina could only hope fervently that her mother was right. As they emerged from the alleyway she could see the lights of the hospital and lots of people, some of them injured, converging on it.

  ‘Scores of houses by the river have been demolished!’ a complete stranger shouted across to her. ‘Even the Konak has been shelled!’

  Katerina wondered how many female members of her family were taking shelter there and if any of them had been hurt. At least she didn’t have Natalie to worry about. Natalie was safe in London and the English Channel was far broader than the Sava and Danube. London wouldn’t be under shellfire nor, unless there was a catastrophe of mammoth proportions, was it ever likely to be.

  As they hurtled into the hospital a nursing sister ran to greet them, saying with heartfelt relief, ‘Thank God for extra pairs of hands! We have no wounded soldiery yet but the slums near the river have come under terrible shelling and we have lots of injured children. Do any of you have nursing experience?’

  ‘I have,’ Helga said, looking as efficient and capable as a hospital sister in her starched white apron.

  ‘Then go up to Ward Three. The rest of you make your way to what was the staff dining-room. Porters and a handful of nurses are busy filling it with emergency beds. Tell the nurses you are taking over from them and they can go back to their wards.’

  Katerina wondered if her mother had ever in her life been spoken to so peremptorily before and doubted it. She looked across at her, wondering if she was going to politely say that she had come to the hospital in order to nurse, not to make beds, but her mother’s aristocratically beautiful face was unperturbed.

  ‘When you have finished in the dining-room, come up to Ward Three,’ the nursing officer said as a groaning woman was led past them, blood seeping through the makeshift bandage around her head. ‘You’re going to be thrown in at the deep end I’m afraid. Shell splinters don’t make tidy wounds.’

  Katerina had never made a bed in her life, especially a bed made up of a coarse linen sheet and a rough blanket. Miss Benson, seeing her dilemma, said: ‘If we work as a pair we’ll make up twice as many beds twice as quickly.’

  Katerina agreed gratefully, noting with amazement that her mother had already set briskly to work, bed-making as if it were a task to which she had been born.

  As they made up bed after bed the deafening noise of the bombardment continued, the hospital’s walls shuddering with the vibration.

  ‘Wounded soldiers are being brought in now,’ a porter said to her as he brought her yet another armful of blankets from the store room. ‘Word is that we’ve trounced the troop ships which were trying to land. It won’t stop them from trying again, though. The sooner the allies send aid, the better.’

  Katerina pressed a hand against her aching back, wondering by what route aid would arrive. It wasn’t only men and ammunition that were needed. It was doctors and nurses and hospital supplies.

  ‘Let’s hope the Austrians haven’t managed to cross the Sava anywhere else,’ Miss Benson said to her quietly as they moved on to yet another bed. ‘Parts of the river can be crossed from Bosnia, can’t they? And what about the Drina?’

  Katerina didn’t want to think about the Drina. Her father was at Shabatz and if the Austrians made any attempt to invade from Bosnia he would be in the forefront of the fighting.

  The night seemed endless. Occasionally there were respites. Suddenly the noise of gun and artillery fire would stop but it never stopped for long.

  ‘We don’t have enough shells and cartridges to keep this pace up for long,’ the informative porter said to her as he squeezed the last makeshift bed into place. ‘Where the hell are the Russians, that’s what I’d like to know. And a few Frenchies wouldn’t go amiss neither.’

  Her mother interrupted the conversation by saying: ‘There’s no more to do here. Every possible bed is made up. Let’s go along to Ward Three and be useful there.’

  With a tightening of her tummy muscles Katerina followed her mother and Miss Benson from the bed-filled dining-room. She was by nature cool and calm and she knew that she possessed more than a fair share of common sense, but were those qualities going to be enough to enable her to cope with what lay ahead? She had never changed a dressing, never even seen a serious burn.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ Miss Benson said, coming again to her rescue. ‘We won’t be asked to do anything beyond our capabilities. Our work will be to carry out all the mundane tasks in order that the nurses will have more time for emergency nursing.’

  Katerina flashed her a grateful smile aware that in the last hour or so their relationship had subtly altered into one of friendship. She wondered what Miss Benson’s Christian name was and said tentatively: ‘I think we should be on first name terms, don’t you?’

  Miss Benson shot her an answering s
mile that made her plain face suddenly pretty. ‘My Christian name is Celestria, but I much prefer to be called Cissie.’

  In happy, new-found camaraderie they followed Zita up a flight of stone stairs and into the bloody mayhem of Ward Three.

  Major Ivan Zlarin stood wearily on the heights of the Kalemegdan Bluff and looked across the now empty river towards the distant banks. It was dawn and respite from enemy shelling had come at last. He took a cigarette from a pocket of his jacket and lit it, inhaling deeply, wondering if the Austrians were going to hold fire long enough for his men to get some much needed rest. For one night they had held an Austrian invasion of Belgrade at bay. For how many more nights would they be able to do so?

  He stared broodingly down at serpentine-green water littered with empty shell-cases. The river needed mining. If it were mined Austrian monitors would no longer be able to sail so close to the city and fire upon it with such impunity. He wiped beads of perspiration from his forehead. He had no mines, God damnit, nor had he any torpedoes and torpedo tubes. The only way he could continue to deter monitors and troop ships was by keeping them under constant artillery fire.

  He blew a wreath of smoke into the acrid air. Geographically, he had the advantage. There were a whole series of heights looking down over the river and he had seen to it that all were equipped with cannon. If it weren’t for the two islands in the Sava, he could have been said to be holding the upper hand.

  The islands; his heavy black brows met as he frowned even more deeply. Gyspy Island and Little Gypsy Island were Habsburg possessions lying mid-way between the Austro-Hungarian banks of the Sava and the Serbian banks, providing a screen behind which Austrian monitors could take refuge from his shellfire.

  He needed to capture the islands, but how? Without monitors and mines and torpedoes how could he conduct any fight on either the Sava or the Danube? His deep thought was disturbed by the sound of running footsteps.

  ‘I did as you asked, Major Zlarin!’ a young corporal gasped, floundering to a halt. ‘I went to the Vassilovich konak but neither Madame Vassilovich nor her daughter were there. A butler seems to have taken over and has opened the house to scores of people seeking shelter from the shelling. He said he was under Madame Vassilovich’s instructions to do so and that she and her daugher are at the hospital and have been all night.’

  ‘Injured?’ Ivan snapped, forgetting temporarily all about the problem of the islands. ‘Which of them was injured?’

  ‘Neither, sir.’ The corporal pressed a hand to his side and struggled to regulate his breathing. ‘They’re there as nurses, sir.’

  A spasm of relief passed over Ivan’s hard-boned face. ‘And the city?’ he asked, mindful that it was the city he was striving to protect.

  ‘Not good, sir. Austrian howitzers got the Konak in their sights and part of the roof has gone. The British Legation has been shelled and a hole you could drive a tank through has been blasted in the eastern gable of the Russian Legation. The wood houses near to the river suffered the worst. Fires are still raging and people are taking advantage of the lull in the fighting and leaving the city in droves.’

  ‘Go to the hospital. Tell Madame Vassilovich that my advice is for her and her daughter to leave immediately for Nish. Tell her you are under instructions to accompany them there and afford them protection. Do you understand?’

  ‘Yes, sir. I’ll go at once, sir.’

  Jubilant at the thought of such an easy assignment the corporal drew in a ragged breath, saluted, and set off at a trot down the hill towards the smoking, ravaged streets.

  Ivan turned and looked once more out across the river. The sun was beginning to rise now, streaking the sky with long piercing fingers of gold and red. Katerina Vassilovich. Even at a moment like this, when the defence of the city rested on his shoulders, it was impossible for him to keep from thinking of her. She possessed an air of calm and tranquillity that had at first intrigued him and then had become vitally necessary to him. It was soothing to be in her company. She didn’t chatter and giggle as so many girls her age did. There was emotional and intellectual substance to her and for the first time in his life he had found himself thinking more and more about marriage.

  Zara would not be pleased at his decision. His widowed cousin, only a year or so his junior, had been his mistress for the last ten years. Until recently it had been an exceedingly satisfactory arrangement, then he had met Katerina and begun to be aware of how frumpily plump and middle-aged Zara had begun to look. He doubted if Katerina would ever look middle-aged. Certainly Zita Vassilovich didn’t do so, though she was easily in her mid-forties, and Katerina possessed the same kind of Raphaelite beauty as her mother.

  His eyes sharpened, all thoughts of love fleeing. From the eastern end of Gypsy Island Austrian monitors were again easing into view.

  ‘Get back to your positions!’ he shouted to his tired troops. ‘Prepare to fire!’

  It was mid-morning before Katerina and Zita made their way home in order to check on the arrangements made in their absence for providing shelter for the city’s poor. Both of them were more physically exhausted than they had ever been before in their lives. The sights that met their eyes as they hurried through wood-paved Terazije Square and down Prince Milan Street, did nothing to cheer them. Though there had been a lull in the bombardment much earlier in the morning, it had continued almost without a break ever since and house after house had sustained damage.

  All around them people were fleeing. Ox-drawn carts laboured westwards piled high with domestic possessions and with the elderly and infirm. Children scampered alongside, some bright-eyed at the drama and excitement, others bewildered and frightened. Belgraders too stubborn to leave, or too poor to make the attempt, were valiantly shopping for bread and collecting water from public pumps as if shrapnel and incendiary bombs were an everyday part of their lives.

  ‘As I think they are going to be,’ Zita said as an electric-tram car rattled past them for all the world as if it were an ordinary morning. ‘There’s no real military purpose to this constant firing on the city. All the military targets are on the heights overlooking the river. This constant lobbing of shells and incendiaries is purely to cause panic and destroy property and it’s my guess the Austrians are going to continue with it until the city is either completely deserted or flattened.’

  ‘Or both,’ Katerina said tautly as they passed a ramshackle little cottage with its upper storey completely blasted away. A black-garbed Moslem woman was standing in the doorway, silent tears rolling down her face.

  Zita went across to her, saying gently, ‘Your house is far too unsafe to stay in. Bring your family and belongings to the Vassilovich konak on Prince Milan Street.’

  The woman knuckled her tears away, staring at her first in suspicious disbelief and then, when she realized that Zita was serious, in profound gratitude.

  ‘If you know of anyone else needing shelter, tell them they can find it there,’ Zita added, saying as she returned to Katerina, ‘Let’s pray I’m right about the strength of the walls and the safety of the cellars. I’ll never forgive myself if I’m not.’

  Katerina didn’t answer her. The great iron gates leading to the courtyard had come into view and she was fearful of what might meet their eyes when they reached them. The soundly-built Konak had been hit by shellfire and so it wasn’t beyond the realms of possibility that their own home was damaged. Steeling herself for the worst she took a deep steadying breath as they approached the gates.

  The roof, walls and windows were all intact and she let out a shuddering sigh of relief. Their own house was further west of the rivers than the Konak and the Legations. Perhaps it was out of reach of Austrian cannon and howitzers. Perhaps it would never be hit and the strength of its walls and cellars never put to the test.

  ‘I’m going to check that the ballroom and cellars have been turned into suitable public shelters,’ her mother said, a slight unsteadiness in her voice betraying her own vast relief, ‘and that Co
ok is running a soup-kitchen. Then we must sleep before returning to the hospital, even if it’s only for a couple of hours.’

  Katerina nodded, so tired she wondered how she was still managing to walk. There were handcarts and ox-carts littered all over the courtyard, testament to how quickly word had spread that shelter was to be found within. Hoping fervently that her own bedroom hadn’t been transformed into a sanctuary for strangers she accompanied her mother up the steps and into a house scarcely recognizable as being the one they had left only twenty-four hours earlier.

  Children could be heard shouting and babies crying and there was a stale indefinable smell in the air.

  There was no sign of the butler, instead it was Laza who greeted them.

  ‘We’re doing our best, Ma’am,’ he said to Zita. ‘Trouble is, word that you were offering shelter spread like wildfire and there’s been far too many people coming, saying they were burned out, for us to cope with them properly. It’s the sanitary arrangements that are the most difficult problem …’

  Zita raised a hand slightly, motioning him to silence. In her eagerness to help the injured she had been blind as to where she could best, at the moment, be of use. Until Laza could cope in her absence her place was in her home, organizing it as a refuge for the public in a way no-one else would be able to.

  She said quietly to Katerina, ‘You get what rest you can. I’m going to stay here for a while.’

  Katerina nodded, realizing the sense of her mother’s decision. Wearily she began to climb the stairs to her room wondering how much longer the city could hold out without Allied help; wondering if the ballroom would ever again ring to the glorious notes of ‘The Blue Danube’; if they would ever again enjoy leisurely afternoon tea on an immaculately kept lawn.

  All through August and September the onslaught continued and all through August and September Major Zlarin and his men held the Austrian forces at bay. News of what was happening elsewhere in Serbia was sketchy and infrequent. Only at the beginning of October did word arrive from Alexis.