by Tim Pears
Pero walks beside the girl courier as she leads them on, eastwards. ‘One more night,’ she assures him, ‘and we will find them.’
Day turns to night. Bats fly in veering circuits above their heads. In the meadows and open rocky wastes the fickle mountain rain soaks them. In the woods it collects on branches and falls in large drops upon their necks, slides inside shirts, down their skin.
The rain turns the surface of the world to mud. Rich black soil becomes sticky, glutinous, heavy. It cleaves to their boots. It splatters up their trousers as they walk, encrusting the fabric like mossy black mould. Their feet sink into the mud and each squelching step is more arduous than the one before.
When they stop, at dawn, there is nowhere to sit that is clean and dry, even fallen logs have become soggy and dirty. They try to wash but their hands become covered in mud. Mud gets into their food. When Tom lies down, the wet earth hugs him in an uncomfortably strong embrace.
He sleeps in mud and dreams of sinking into the earth; wakes to find this has happened, a few inches. He is shivering, damp to his bones. He shudders and hauls himself out to face another grey, sodden day, thinking, I am alive! I, Tom Freedman, breathe again, my heart beats, blood pumps around my body.
July 3
THE OTHERS WAKE. The sky is a pale blue. Tom walks to the edge of the trees to take a piss. He looks out and can’t understand what he sees. He stands and stares at a lake down below that hadn’t been there before. Had it? They bivouaced at dawn, with a clear sight of a valley far below. Was there not pasture and meadow? Or is he confusing different days, or nights, with one another? Sunsets and daybreaks. He gazes upon the scene. A great watery riddle, which quite abruptly resolves itself. During the day, while they slept, the swollen river must have broken and flooded the valley, like Port Meadow in Oxford, where the Thames rises and spills across the flat grass.
While Tom sleeps, much can happen. It appears that Marko and Stipe had set snares this morning: the puny skinned carcasses of four rabbits are turning on wooden spits. With no salt or any other flavouring it is bland but welcome meat. As they are eating, Nikola, who is on lookout, brings two youths into their encampment. They claim to be from the second unit, near their hamlet high in the hills. After a prolonged discussion of direction and distance, and study of maps – which is not straightforward, for these boys have rarely seen such things, and cannot relate the maps’ markings to what they know on the ground – Jovan decides on coordinates, and Sid taps out the request for a drop, later tonight.
They set off in the pale light of the afternoon. Tom walks behind the old man. When they woke from sleep on the ground Tom saw Franjo wince: rheumatism, his son explained, in his hip joints. He soon walks it out. The oldest by far but he doesn’t falter. Tom’s not heard him utter a word. Nikola appears to do all the talking for them both. They are from a wine-growing area, Podravje, in the north-east – ‘the best wine in Yugoslavia’, Nikola claims. There were two older brothers; both joined the Partisans; both have been killed. When the boy also joined, on his sixteenth birthday, his father insisted on accompanying him. The mother and a sister are at home, looking after their vineyard.
Tom has never seen a father and son so similarly featured. Both are mildly handsome. They each stand the same height, no taller than Marija; are lean; walk a little bow-legged. Franjo’s hair is still light brown like his son’s, from behind it is hard to tell them apart save for Franjo’s slightly stockier frame. The only difference in their faces is that Nikola’s is smooth. To look at Franjo is to see what Nikola will look like in twenty-five years’ time; to look at Nikola is to know Franjo’s appearance at the same age. How strange that must be for the father, Tom thinks: to so clearly see himself every time he regards his son. He wonders if the two dead sons bore so similar a resemblance, or whether they bore the trace of their mother. Sometimes it happens, one parent’s genes pass on in their entirety to one child after another, the other parent invisible. These two, this pair, are like an allegorical painting brought to life, its meaning simple yet mysterious.
‘He watches over me,’ Nikola explains. ‘Of course, it is I who watch over him. But I am glad he is with me. I am proud. We will build the new world together.’
In the dying light, Tom lets his gaze linger on the old man’s footsteps. His boots are cracked, their soles worn down on the outside from his bandy gait.
Within moments of dusk settling, the rain begins to fall again. As if, once the light blue of the sky fades, it is the night out of which rain comes. They plod on, over great ridges that beckon one on to their summits, only for each one to turn out to be no more than another crest, the real peak yet to come. Then when, eventually, the top is attained Tom sees it is a mere foothill to another fortress of stone; further peaks corrugate the vista as far as the eye can see.
The two youths find the second unit, a knot of hard-bitten woodsmen in a moonlit clearing. One carries an axe, rather than a gun. None have uniforms; their clothes look handmade, of wool or leather. Tom imagines they’d be living in the forest, in woodcutters’ cottages, even if there were no war. The two groups march in silence to the drop zone. The rain stops falling, the clouds part. Right on time, the planes come. At the noise of their engines, Tom’s heart swells. He looks across and though it is dark he can see Sid Dixon grinning too. The leader of the unit assures Jovan that his men can hide everything, Jovan’s odred should be on its way.
Pero leads them on. They tramp through damp, dark woods. Suddenly in the night a horrible sound, a long drawn-out screech, of distress or warning – What the hell is it, bird or beast? – or the anguished love call of some unknown animal rutting. It howls again, away to one side of them, off in the looming darkness. Tom stops to peer into the gloom, but he is the only one. To the others, it is of no interest.
The Third Unit
July 4
TOM WAKES AT midday to the smell of wood smoke. Everyone else is already up, agitated. The fire is not theirs. Stipe and Marko have gone off to find out to whom it belongs. Tom is waiting with the others, their rucksacks packed, weapons at the ready, by the time the pair return. They report to Jovan. It seems from their demeanour that there is no immediate danger.
The encampment consists of half a dozen simple tents, single sheets folded into triangular shelters open at each end, held up by rough poles and guy ropes. Their inhabitants gaze at the Partisans. They are almost all children: girls in headscarves and loose skirts that might once have been brightly coloured, now are faded and threadbare; gaunt, bare-chested boys with the grave and sombre faces of men. Older girls have babies on their skinny hips; Tom cannot tell whether they are mothers or sisters of the infants they hold. All share the same hollow-eyed expression, the same exhausted curiosity.
A small old man sits on the low branch of a tree. He seems to be looking at things now here, then there, that are not apparent to anyone else. Tom watches him, his odd behaviour compelling: he is blind, and is turning not his eye towards sights but his ear towards sounds.
There are one or two older women, with whom Jovan confers. He comes back to his group. ‘We must feed these people,’ he says.
Franjo and Nikola go off in one direction, Marko and Pero in another. ‘Watch our cooking pot,’ Marko warns Francika over his shoulder. ‘And tell the Englishman to keep hold of his wireless.’
‘They are starving,’ she admonishes him.
Marko grins, without humour. ‘A gypsy stops stealing only when he is dead,’ he says. ‘And even then, if you have something missing, I advise you to search his grave.’
Francika and Marija stay with the women and children, sharing their rudimentary medicine. Stipe sharpens his knife. Jovan finds a thick, low branch for him to use. He tells Tom he does not want to risk sending or receiving a radio signal.
‘What happened to the men, sir?’ Sid asks Tom.
‘No one knows,’ Tom tells him.
Shortly before dusk the hunters return. Franjo and his son have half a dozen rabbi
ts; Marko and Pero have been more successful: each man hauls the carcass of a small deer over his shoulders. Francika has built up the gypsies’ fire. The carcasses are not big. Stipe butchers them, one after the other, on the branch Jovan found. He cuts their red fur-lined skin in swatches, which one of the gypsy girls gathers and takes to a tent.
Francika sets the deer meat roasting on spits across the fire. The gypsies gather to watch. The mothers hold their children back like trained puppies, with guttural commands. The children stare at the food; their expressions suggest that the sight, or the smell, of it pains them. When it is almost ready the elder woman says a grace, and the children cross themselves. When they are permitted to eat they do not fall upon the food but consume it with a disciplined persistence, chewing their way deliberately through the meat, filling their stomachs with it, as if stashing it away to fuel them for weeks to come. The Partisans watch them: this is real hunger. The blind old man chews the meat with his gums. He looks to Tom like a runner falling ever further behind the rest of the pack. Tom looks around, and sees that the older woman is weeping. He asks Marija why. ‘She is so happy,’ Marija tells him. ‘That is why.’
Pero and Nikola have gone to keep watch. In the light of the campfire, one of the gypsy boys steps forward and juggles with two, three, four sticks of wood. Then it is the turn of a small girl: she sings a simple song while an older boy beats the rhythm for her with two pieces of stone. They have eaten and now they take it in turns to perform. Two boys throw a smaller one between them; the tumbler has long hair and is as light as a bird, and he flies from one boy to the other. The old man sings with a child’s voice. They are expressing their gratitude for the meal, Tom tells Sid. Just then Nikola and Pero come back from their watch, to be replaced by Marko and Francika. Tom notices one of the women talking to an older girl. No sooner have the guards sat down than they are each joined by one of the older gypsy girls.
Two boys dance, grinding their heels into the dirt. A girl sings a loud and fretful song. The next time Tom looks over, he sees that Pero and Nikola, and their acquaintances, have gone, vanished into the darkness away from the fire. What is happening sinks in. Aghast, Tom crosses over to where Jovan is sitting beside Marija, and tells him that the girls are giving themselves to the Partisans: they must be told that they do not need to. Jovan puts an arm around Tom’s shoulders.
‘They are a proud people,’ he says. ‘Allow them their pride. They would rather give what they can than give nothing, and be beholden to us.’
‘But they’re girls,’ Tom objects. ‘Surely…’ He stops speaking.
Jovan pats him on the back. ‘We have done well today,’ he says. ‘No bridges blown, but a good day nonetheless.’
July 5
TOM FALLS ASLEEP by the fire. After what feels like a few minutes he is woken: a new courier has appeared, a boy of about fourteen. They pack up speedily and leave the gypsies with brief goodbyes, and head out. The boy keeps them moving very fast: they have a long walk ahead of them, back across the Pohorje towards the main line. Within minutes their encounter with the gypsies seems to Tom as if it were a dream.
The night is dark, and there is little fear of running into German patrols, but he is aware of the Black Hand’s reputation for carrying out their atrocities at night. Still, he appreciates that he is stronger than even a week ago. Becoming geared to the tempo of guerrilla life. Leg muscles, lung capacity adapting, he is growing tougher all the time, and they are walking fast, striding, at a pace he can comfortably maintain.
That day they sleep under a parachute canopy. More meat is caught, and cooked. It is salty, like pork. ‘Why do the rabbits here taste better than in England?’ Tom wonders.
Marko laughs, his bad teeth showing. ‘It is rat!’ he says. ‘Even Slovene rat is better than English rabbit.’
In the afternoon, Tom writes a letter home, though there is no prospect of it being sent. Francika cuts Marija’s hair. Sid, watching, requests a trim, too. When it is time for the regular scheduled wireless contact, Sid sets up his equipment. Francika sits beside him, watches how he taps the keys. Sid makes contact with HQ, another drop is agreed for midnight, in two nights’ time.
As they are packing up, Nikola runs into their clearing. ‘Come,’ he says to Jovan, ‘see what I have found.’
They drop to the edge of the forest, by an alpine meadow, and there is a wild plum tree. Pero joins Nikola clambering up: the youngsters shake the branches, purple plums cascade to the ground.
‘It is a miracle to grow so high up the mountain,’ Marko says. ‘They will be very sour.’
Stipe bites into one. ‘Madonna,’ he says, and crosses himself.
They are firm, like large damsons, but as sweet as juicy plums. The soldiers eat their fill, scooping out the stones with their tongues and spitting them on the ground.
As they sit around, Pero realises that his cap is missing. Everyone helps him search for it, until Marija tells him to look up: there it is, hooked to a branch high up in the plum tree. As everyone sees it, so they become aware of Nikola trying, without success, to contain his laughter. Pero leaps at him, and the two young Partisans roll on the ground and wrestle, though it is not a fair fight since Nikola cannot stop his giggles, and Pero is soon catching them, too.
Sid Dixon watches, shaking his head. Eventually he can contain himself no longer. ‘No, lads, no,’ he declares. He goes over and pulls them apart. Asking Tom to translate, he explains how even wireless operators got a brief bout of training in Secret Operations martial arts.
‘Dirty fighting it is, borrowed from the Japs and the Chinks,’ he explains. ‘If you’ve got to fight, you don’t have a nice dance like these two lads, you get it over with as quick as you can. Aim for the most vulnerable points of your opponent’s body. I’ll ask our comrade here to help me demonstrate.’ Sid extends a hand to Stipe, who clambers to his feet. Stipe pretends to attack him and Sid pretends to respond with an elbow in the eyes, then a knee in the groin. ‘Not the Marquess of Queensberry rules, like you’d expect from us, I shouldn’t doubt.’ They swap parts: Sid acts out the role of villain with great gusto, and he succumbs melodramatically every time. It is very funny, not only to Tom but to the Partisans too. Sid gives Francika a stick to use as a knife and shows her how to attack some of the twenty-two parts of the human body where a lethal wound can be made.
‘What if the enemy has a knife,’ Jovan asks, ‘but you do not?’
‘There’s only one answer to that, sir,’ Sid tells him. He casts around, and points into the distance, to the highest mountain peak. ‘Run like hell.’
Before they leave they stuff their pockets with the sweet fruit, and periodically help themselves to one as they march through the night. Tom sees Sid and Francika pass them one to the other.
July 6
TOWARDS MORNING AS they walk in the darkness Tom begins to sense that it must be raining again. He can hear no sound of rain falling on leaves, or on the ground, yet the dampness upon him is unmistakable. With the first faint light, the sky unblemished above, he can make out not rain but dew on his comrades, silvering their clothes, their caps, their hair.
At dawn they stop at another farmhouse; another frightened family feeds them, a good meal of wild pig, mushrooms, potatoes. This house is wealthier than any Tom has seen so far: the furniture well-made and sturdy; chests, a crib, painted with brightly coloured flowers and religious motifs.
Dead beat, they kip down all squashed together on the floor in the parlour. They go out like a light, and are sound asleep for two, three hours; thereafter each enjoys only fitful sleep. Woken by aching hip, a companion’s snores, or by lice, which lay their white eggs in the seams of clothing. Tom is unaware of them while up, but trying to sleep, he can feel them squirming over his skin.
In the afternoon, as they stir, Nikola says, ‘My father was afraid to lie down to sleep. He was worried that the lice would walk away with him.’
Outside, Tom finds Jovan in quiet conversation with a b
oy, a girl and an old woman: he is explaining the war to them, what the National Liberation Front will do for the peasants and the small farmers. It is simple-minded propaganda. Tom watches. Jovan’s patience with these uneducated people, that he takes such care over them, Tom has not seen such behaviour before.
Afterwards Jovan tells Tom: ‘We can’t survive without the support of the people. In the towns and cities we have clandestine workers moving around: they recruit civilians into the Liberation Front, they hold secret meetings, they find informers in the local police and Home Guard. In the country everything is more dispersed, of course, but we have to know the farmhouses where we can stop. All the time we must keep explaining to the people that it is their revolution.’
And people were beginning to sense, now, in this summer of 1944, that the years of German occupation would not go on for ever. Not now that the Americans, the British and the Russians were on the Partisans’ side. ‘Every Slovene who sees you, Tom, in your British uniform, sees the end of enemy occupation come a little sooner.’
They eat bread with dandelion and vinegar; half an onion each, bitten raw like an apple. Today Jovan asks Tom if Sid is Scottish. ‘Are you sure you are not from north of the English border, like Pero’s mother?’ he asks, waiting for Tom to translate.
‘Thinks I’m a Jock, do he, sir?’ the Devon farm boy says.
‘I suspect it’s your accent, Dixon,’ Tom says. ‘Or it could be your unarmed combat skills. I believe the major regards it as a compliment.’
‘Every Serb village in Yugoslavia has its veterans of the Salonika front,’ Jovan tells them. ‘My father was one. Many men would never talk of it, but my father was one who did. He told me little of the horrors, but often of the delicious rations the English soldiers shared with him in the trenches: chocolate, and marmalade. And he told me of the Scottish nurses. Oh my God, how he loved them!’ Jovan says, winking at Pero, acknowledging the young man’s rare parentage. Pero blushes with pleasure.