by Alan Bardos
Gavrilo opened the door, pushing Johnny in, and he was hit by the overpowering smell of stale wine. The singing stopped as soon as he entered and the door slammed shut behind him. It was pitch black and for a terrible moment Johnny thought he'd been lured into a trap and would be found the next morning in the blood-red mud of the Miljacka, with his throat cut.
Gavrilo walked up behind him and Johnny tensed. He was pretty badly bruised, but was determined to make a good account of himself.
'Jevtic, light a candle for goodness' sake. I can't see a thing!' Gavrilo called.
'Gavroche! Come in my friend - forgive me. We did not notice it getting dark,' came back a cheery greeting at the same time as a candle was lit. Johnny exhaled slowly, relieved. He saw that he was in a cramped room with young men dressed much the same as Gavrilo and himself, all sitting at plain wooden tables and drinking red wine. Johnny's heart lifted at the sight of all the casks and barrels around him.
'Gavroche, over here!' the cheery voice called. It belonged to a slightly more flamboyant member of the group who was signalling to Gavrilo. Rather than the den of cutthroats he'd been expecting, he realised that they were in some sort of Bohemian hangout. 'Come join us, and bring your new friend,' Jevtic said. To emphasise the invitation, they resumed their singing.
'Maybe later, Jevtic,' Gavrilo answered and led Johnny to a table near the only window in the place. Johnny took a seat and leant against a wall, sticky with red wine.
He looked out at Lateiner Bridge and then turned back to Gavrilo. 'Gavroche?'
'A nickname - it's after the character from "Les Miserables",' Gavrilo answered as Jevtic came to their table.
'Like Gavroche, poverty and injustice intensifies Gavroli's spirit and purpose,' Jevtic said, putting down a carafe of wine and two cups. 'Here, on me.'
'Thank you,' Johnny said, pouring himself some wine and ignoring Gavrilo's indignant look.
'Jovo, this is Jevtic,' Gavrilo said. Jevtic bowed and went back to his friends.
'Nice chap,' Johnny observed, sipping his wine, which was surprisingly good.
'Jevtic was a housemate of mine in Belgrade. He and his intellectual friends come here to drink wine and sing.'
'Very decent chap,' Johnny reiterated, drinking more wine and feeling it warm and relax him.
'He's a good friend but is unwilling to take action for our people. I find coming here a good way to be inconspicuous to the police and to appear to be acting as every other person our age acts,' he said, giving another disapproving look as Johnny poured a second cup of wine.
'Sorry - would you like some Gavrilo? Very rude of me,' Johnny said. Gavrilo shook his head. 'What do they do?' Johnny asked, glad to be amongst some lively company again.
'Jevtic's a writer. They're all poets and writers,' Gavrilo answered, in a tone which Johnny thought attached a great deal of prestige to their chosen vocations. 'These people, however, are for the most part, incapable of a great idea.'
'Do you have any particular poet or writer you admire?' Johnny asked. He was hoping that if he could get Gavrilo to talk about himself he wouldn't ask him any difficult questions about where he came from.
'I enjoy reading Dumas, Walter Scott and of course Sherlock Holmes.' That was safe ground for Johnny; he could talk about them. 'I also greatly admire poets like Sima Pandurovic and the elegant way he expresses his mistrust of life, and Vladimir Vidric, wary of his own pipe-dreams about love. And you?'
'What?' Johnny's mind went blank. This was precisely what he'd been trying to avoid.
'Who do you admire, Jovo? You must have a favourite writer or thinker.' Johnny swore under his breath, wishing he'd read the primer Breitner had given him. 'You must be an admirer of Nietzsche at least,' Gavrilo said.
'Nietzsche, yes. He's very good.' Johnny finished his wine and poured himself another. Gavrilo glared at him, his clear blue eyes burning, but there wasn’t anything brutal or threatening in his face.
'Jovo, if we are to restore what our people have lost, to instil a revolution in their hearts, we must be true to our ideals. We must forgo our bodily pleasures - be that women or alcohol. We have to remain pure and unstained.'
'I'm sorry?' Johnny said quietly. He couldn't believe what he'd just heard.
'I thought you understood that, after we talked of how the Austrians corrupt the morality of our people.' Gavrilo's eyes burned with fury again, but still there was nothing brutal or threatening in his face, which Johnny found particularly unnerving, as he wondered just how much rage lay beneath the surface of Gavrilo’s calm exterior.
'Yes, yes of course,' Johnny said, trying to look shamefaced. ‘I am not capable of great ideas.’
‘Your political character is not yet fully formed. I will continue to guide you.’
Johnny involuntarily reached for the wine, then stopped as the shop door creaked open and Ilic entered. He greeted the Bohemians and joined Johnny and Gavrilo at their table.
'Is it arranged?' Gavrilo asked.
Ilic nodded. He exchanged a discreet glance with Gavrilo and turned to Johnny. 'Jovo - you wish to take action?'
'I do.' Johnny's bowels tightened.
'Come, I will have need of you in the morning,' Ilic said.
The three of them got up to leave, but Jevtic called over. 'You can't leave good wine undrunk! We must have a song - stay, stay!' The others around him joined the chant. It was clear that they wouldn't be able to leave quietly.
Johnny smiled. 'We'd better do as they ask. The idea is to appear the same as everyone else.'
Chapter 22
Misko Jovanovic lit another cigarette and unable to remain still, paced along the platform of Doboj station, searching for the man he'd arranged to meet.
This had all started one terrible morning two weeks before, when he’d been woken from the sleep of the innocent by two peasants, who had come to his home in Tuzla. They’d handed him a note from his friend Veljko Cubrilovic, asking him to, "Look after these things”. Jovanovic had asked the peasants what "these things" were and to his dismay they had untied six bombs and four pistols from around their belts and placed them on his kitchen table.
Jovanovic had not been able to believe what was happening; he was a pillar of the community - a respected businessman. He'd been married less than a year and had a newborn baby. He’d felt sure that "these things" were to be the ruin of everything.
'They're from the honourable teacher,' one of the peasants had said.
Veljko Cubrilovic was one of his closest friends, his child's godfather and a respected teacher. They were both members of the Sokol, an organisation that celebrated Pan-Slavic culture. Veljko had introduced him to Narodna Odbrana, another patriotic organisation that celebrated Serbian culture, but also carried out covert activities, principally distributing illegal propaganda.
Jovanovic had been reluctant to join, but he had eventually decided that it was his patriotic duty to do all that he could for his people, even though distributing pamphlets was a far cry from handling weapons.
The peasants had started to look anxious and Jovanovic saw that it had become dangerous to be with him. 'The things belong to some students,' one of them had said, as if that settled everything.
'I don't know any students,' Jovanovic had replied, trying not to shout.
'They will be at the Serbian Reading Room at nine o'clock.'
Jovanovic had hidden the weapons and then hurried to meet the students. The Serbian Reading Room was on the floor below his apartment, directly above a cinema he'd just opened.
They’d looked bad, Jovanovic remembered. The two of them had made an effort to clean themselves up, but they’d still looked as if they'd been sleeping rough for days.
Jovanovic had taken them into a side room where they could talk. He’d been relieved they were there, although he hadn’t been able to stop shaking. The small one, Gavrilo, had seen this and had stared at him coldly throughout the whole interview. Jovanovic's relief at seeing them had soon started to fade when
they asked him to take the weapons on to Sarajevo. Jovanovic had explained as firmly as he dared that there was no way he was prepared to take that kind of a risk.
In the end, he’d agreed to look after the weapons. He couldn't force them to take them back and Gavrilo, the one who'd stared at him, had said that someone would come in a couple of days, and had then asked for a way that he would be able to identify himself to Jovanovic. Jovanovic had suggested a box of his favourite brand of cigarettes, Stefanija. He was going to need them.
He’d had to wait ten days with the weapons hidden in a box under his dining room table before another young man had turned up. This one was slightly older and much better dressed than the previous two and wore a black tie. He’d shown Jovanovic a box of Stefanija cigarettes and had introduced himself as Danilo Ilic.
That had been yesterday morning and to Jovanovic's horror, Ilic had told him to put the weapons in a discreet package and find someone to take them on the following day to Doboj, a town up the line. Ilic had explained that he couldn't carry the weaponry in his pockets and as he was a stranger in town, the gendarmes could well stop him.
There wasn't anyone else to take them and Jovanovic had business in Doboj, so reluctantly he’d said he'd take them himself. They’d agreed to meet in Doboj Station's waiting room, early the next morning.
When Jovanovic got to Doboj, with the weapons in the most inconspicuous box he could find, wrapped with newspaper, there was no sign of Ilic. He began to panic. The weeks of worry finally caught up with him and his only thought at that moment was to make as much distance between himself and the weapons as possible.
Jovanovic put the package on a table in the second-class waiting room, placed his cape over it and went to look around the station in case the student type had wandered off. The walk calmed him and then the realisation of what he'd done caught up with him. Jovanovic had left a box full of contraband weapons in the middle of a public area - anyone could steal or report them. Rushing back, he found that nothing was amiss. The station cat was sleeping peacefully on the package, digging its claws into his expensive cape.
He decided to take the package into town and leave it with a friend who owned a tailor's shop, after which, he went off to conduct his business, unencumbered.
Jovanovic got back to the station in time to meet the next train from Sarajevo. He could have wept with joy as the gaunt figure of Ilic at last appeared from the smoke and soot of the train.
*
Johnny was in a bad way. They'd spent most of the night at the wine shop and one drink had quickly followed another, in the bid to blend in. The Bohemians were very hospitable and didn't mind standing a drink or two, but now he was paying the price. He really wasn't used to drinking wine, not by the jug anyway. Princip had managed to stay out of the drinking though and had been able to wake Ilic and himself, when they'd overslept.
The last thing Johnny needed was a train ride to goodness knows where. Ilic was furious with him; somehow the drinking to excess had been his fault and now all Ilic's plans had fallen through and their whole venture could collapse because of a foolish night of indulgence. Ilic went so far as to suggest that they had acted like common tavern roughs, or worse yet, the Austrians themselves.
Johnny fancied that Ilic had been looking at him rather curiously since they’d got on the train and he had started to test Johnny’s knowledge of Kierkegaard, Edgar Allan Poe and Walt Whitman, all of whom Ilic had translated into Serbo-Croat. Johnny hadn't read any of them. He wasn't overly fond of poetry, or philosophy for that matter, which did nothing to ease the tension or prove Johnny's credentials as a Young Bosnian.
As the train went further and further into the unknown, Johnny started to worry that he was being taken out to be shot in the forests that endlessly rushed past the window. He decided to try and lighten the mood.
'Do you really need to wear a black tie today?' Johnny asked. Ilic never took it off.
'I wear it as a constant reminder of death.'
Johnny smiled. 'Yes, and when we're this hungover we don't need to be reminded of death.'
Ilic looked at him sourly. It hadn't been a good joke admittedly, but Johnny at least expected him to play the game.
'I have a stomach ulcer and shouldn't drink, ' Ilic replied sullenly. Evidently, he felt that was Johnny's fault as well.
It was a relief when the train stopped at Doboj and Ilic pulled him up from his seat. 'Follow me, but don't be seen. If you think I'm being followed by a police agent, distract him.'
Johnny stopped - he thought he might be getting set up to give himself away as an informant.
'How am I meant to distract a policeman?' Johnny asked.
'I don't know - sing him a song. You didn't have any difficulty singing last night.' Ilic smiled enigmatically and jumped off the train. Johnny vaguely remembered singing the Eton Boating Song, which had caused great amusement, but he was seriously starting to wonder if this whole thing was just an elaborate plan to get him out of the city, so that Ilic could discreetly dispose of him.
Ilic was met at the station by an elegant man in his early forties, with a thick handlebar moustache - not the usual sort he'd seen associating with the gang. The chap nearly broke down when he saw Ilic, but he managed to pull himself together and led Ilic out of the station.
Johnny followed from what he thought was a safe distance but he had no idea how to trail a man. He turned around; there didn't seem to be anyone about and having seen the state of the person Ilic had met, Johnny felt confident that he would be able to deal with them both, should they lead him down a blind alley.
He relaxed and gazed up at the medieval castle that overlooked the town, almost missing Ilic and his contact entering a tailor's shop. He glanced around but there was no sign of an ambush or a tail. He stepped into an artisan shop and started examining the wares on display, trying to appear inconspicuous. Something caught his eye amongst the coffee sets and brass plates. It was a curved knife, about six inches long, which looked like something from Beau Geste; Johnny thought it could come in handy if things turned nasty.
He bought the knife and returned to the street in time to see Ilic come out of the tailor’s shop with a box under his arm that had been tied up with thick cord. Seeing Johnny, he signalled frantically for him to come with him. Ilic was very nervous and Johnny guessed the reason, as he neared him. There was an ominous metallic clank from the box and Johnny suspected that he was desperately under armed. Whatever it was that fate was going to throw at him next, he knew that it was neatly tied up in that box.
The train journey back to Sarajevo was even more of an ordeal than the outgoing one. Ilic was extremely tense and so, in consequence, was Johnny.
'Do you believe in our cause, Jovo?' Johnny baulked at such a direct question. 'Do you believe that tyranny against the people justifies the use of violence to overthrow or kill a tyrant?'
'The tyrant must be destroyed,' Johnny answered. He'd heard Gavrilo talk like that and assumed that was what Ilic wanted to hear, but Johnny had misjudged him. Ilic became melancholy and stared out of the window as he spoke.
'My father was a cobbler. He died before I started school and left us in poverty. My mother took in washing to support us and then boarders. I had to share my room with Gavrilo. He had real fire, but knew nothing - a peasant from the mountains. I taught him about poetry, the Russian revolutionaries, political philosophy...' Ilic trailed off, lost in memory.
'You were a worthy teacher,' Johnny said.
'And now he has surpassed me, that small, sensitive boy, five years my junior. Tell me Jovo, what is your background? You don't strike me as a peasant's son.'
Johnny smiled, guessing what Sir George would have said about that statement. He couldn't tell if Ilic was probing further into his background or trying to remember why he was sitting on a train with a box full of illegal arms. The only thing Johnny knew for sure was that if Ilic did suspect him and was going to “do him in”, he would use whatever was in that box
to do it.
'Well, like yours, my mother was forced to do work that was beneath her,' Johnny replied. His mother had been significantly better placed than a common laundry maid, but he was hoping that if he could make some sort of connection with Ilic he would be less likely to shoot him. 'She eventually married a school teacher. They disowned me when I was expelled from school. As you know, the older generation don't share our idealism.'
'You were expelled from school for organising a student strike?' Ilic asked looking back from the window.
Johnny tensed. 'Yes, that's right.'
'What were you striking for?'
Johnny had organised the strike to protest against having to do double prep. He'd roused his brother pupils to rise up – they'd had nothing to lose but their chains. It was meant as a harmless prank to get at Simpson, the housemaster, and everyone had laughed. Unfortunately, the school, caught up in the moral outrage over the Tonypandy Riots and working class unrest in general, had unceremoniously kicked Johnny out in disgrace.
Johnny wasn't sure how that would sit with Ilic. The train was coming to a stop at one of the outlying stations, but that didn't distract him. Ilic wanted an answer.
'The school tried to make us sing the national anthem of our oppressors,' Johnny said eventually. He'd heard that some Young Bosnians had organised school strikes for similar reasons. Ilic cringed at the answer and stood up abruptly; he'd plainly been hoping for something a bit more profound.
'I had thought you might be different Jovo, but you're a zealot, like Gavrilo and the rest.' Ilic picked up the box, which made a blood-curdling clank. 'We're getting off here.’
'What?' Johnny looked at the sign outside - they were at Alipasa Most Station, miles from Sarajevo.
'The express is subject to searches by the police,' Ilic said, in answer to Johnny's confusion, and then he jumped out of the train. Johnny felt for the reassurance of the knife in his pocket and followed him.