by Tim Pears
They walk slowly back around the curved hillsides of the valley to their farmhouse. Tom stumbles. He wonders how many shots he drank in the end, and how much alcohol was really soaked up by the bread and sausage. His thoughts do not cohere. Surely it is still the afternoon, yet the sun is not shining. The sky is grey. Drinking always renders Tom thuddingly stupid.
‘What was all that about?’ he asks.
‘Leave it to the grown-ups,’ Jack says, striding ahead. ‘Don’t worry your little head about it.’ He stops abruptly, and waits for Tom to catch up. ‘I’m sorry, Freedman, but you need to face one or two realities about our friends here. Remember, above all, that they do what their Uncle Joe tells them.’
All Tom can think of is that he needs a tall glass of cool well-water and a few hours’ sleep before leaving for the airfield tonight. ‘But a landing in Istria? Is that true?’
‘Of course,’ Jack says. They walk on, side by side. ‘As your commissar friend said, it’s no secret. The Dalmatian islands, while they’ve been occupied by the Germans, have been a chain of defensive spikes,’ he tells Tom. ‘But the Partisans are contesting them now. If and when the islands are taken from the Germans, they’ll become perfect dropping-off points. We could come up around Trieste and attack the German army in Italy from behind.’ Unlike Tom, Jack is one of those whose brain cells are enlivened by fermented fruit. ‘The Jugs want to snatch Trieste for themselves. And what’s more, I’ll wager they want not just Trieste but a part of southern Austria. That’s what happens in war: the border moves in one direction, and when the tide turns the victors shift it in the other.’
Content with his diagnosis, Farwell strides along. ‘I’ll prepare a report and give it to Morris to send,’ he announces.
There is confusion around the airfield. The doctor, Olga, has refused to bring her patients down to the landing field until the planes arrive. Tom explains to Pero, to pass on to the senior staff officer, that Allied rules do not allow for any plane to stay on the ground for more than thirty minutes. If the Slovenes wait until the first plane lands, there will not be enough time to get the injured down from the hospital. Messages shuttle to and fro. Olga does not yield.
The first plane lands. A message is sent to the hospital. Supplies are unloaded and they do indeed, Tom sees, disappear into the night. Word comes from the hospital: the patients are on their way. One or two wounded men who were already in the valley board the first plane, but there is no sign of the hospital patients. The thirty minutes tick by. One after another propellers whirr, the Dakotas’ thick black tyres bounce and rumble over the field and the planes take off into the dark sky, empty.
Tom returns to the Mission farmhouse. He knows the mile-long route by heart, and is so tired he is practically asleep on his feet, but he moves fast. It seems that he remembers someone calling his name, and wonders dimly who it was. Halfway home he crosses a glade and realises that someone – or something – is following him. He stops, turns. A figure trots towards him. ‘I was calling you,’ the man gasps. ‘Did you not hear?’ It is Jovan. ‘How fast you stride, Tom,’ he says, drawing close. A foot away Tom can just about see his face in the starlight. Jovan is smiling. ‘Have you time to talk with an old friend?’
They lie on the grass, the fresh dew seeping through their coats. ‘I am sorry, Tom,’ Jovan says. ‘For my behaviour.’
‘It’s been hard,’ Tom tells him.
‘For me, too. But I have had a greater responsibility than mere friendship. I can only hope that you understand.’
‘It’s good to see you,’ Tom says. ‘I mean you, as you were, the Jovan I know.’ He is no longer tired. They smoke, and drink slivovka from a bottle Jovan has with him.
‘You know,’ Tom says, ‘in Bari, in the officers’ mess, Churchill was broadcast, giving one of his great speeches. A thousand miles away the Nazis were banging on the door of my country, bombing it daily. And my companions turned from the wireless and resumed their game of cards without a trace of emotion. Their cynicism made me sick. Yet I felt stupid for being moved.’ He takes a slug of liquor. ‘And now I’m here, where liberty is not taken for granted but fought for, dreamed of, seized.’
Jovan nods. ‘Do you trust your own commanding officer?’
‘Trust?’ Tom asks, shocked. ‘Yes, of course. With my life.’
‘Even though you do not like him? Are there not things he does not tell you? He is more interested in our troop movements than in the enemy’s.’
Tom wonders quite how much Jack has not told him. ‘Do you trust your commander?’ he asks.
‘I am obedient to our revolution,’ Jovan tells him.
‘Yes, and we have a common enemy. Why do you deny us?’ Tom says. ‘Your Allies. Me.’
‘Study your history, Tom. Your Civil War was so long ago, it has become myth for you.’ Jovan speaks quietly, his voice warm, neither arguing nor preaching. ‘Here our new country is being born, and pain is inevitable. The intolerance of nature in producing a healthy child sometimes gravely damages the mother, does it not?’
They talk, and smoke. Tom waits for Jovan to mention Marija, but he does not, so Tom asks if he has seen her.
‘Once. Twice.’ Jovan gestures over his shoulder. ‘She is in the woods there, somewhere. I think, my friend, that I will wait until you have gone before I speak to her again.’
Tom shakes his head. Dawn breaks so slowly that Tom is unaware of it, he only finds Jovan’s face becoming clearer, as if illuminated not by light but the renewed pleasure of his own gaze upon it. Tom asks him of the future. When Jovan smiles, his handsome face creases. He must be as tired as Tom. His face and hair are damp with dew.
‘Our Partisan Army is how big, exactly, I’m not sure – three hundred thousand? In a population across Yugoslavia of sixteen million. So what of the Chetniks, the Ustasha, and their sympathisers? What of the peasants, who keep their weapons oiled, hidden, and ready to hand? What of those who stayed safe in the occupied cities and towns? They say that in Zagreb the well-heeled women have kept pace with the fashions of Paris. Those generals strolling in their gardens in Belgrade: will they welcome us? No, I do not think they will.’
‘But they will not fight you?’
Jovan smiles grimly. ‘There are others enough for that. This is where it will end, Tom, do you see? Here in Slovenia. It will be hell on earth, very soon. All the dregs will end up here, fighting for their rotten lives. Chetniks, Ljotic’s treasonous Serbs. Croatian fascist Ustashi and Muhammadan Bosniaks of the Waffen SS Mountain Division, whose savagery is beyond description. White Russians, Cossacks, Swabians from the Banat who joined the Prinz Eugen Division and have hunted us without mercy for the last two years. They’ll all be washed up here, the detritus of war, along with anti-communist civilians tagging along behind them like rats.’ Jovan shakes his head. When their eyes meet, Tom sees the hatred and resolve that fatigue cannot extinguish. ‘We must be strong,’ Jovan says, ‘and build our new country.’
‘And are you strong?’ Tom asks.
‘We are.’ Jovan laughs. ‘Of course we are.’ He gets up, offers a hand, pulls Tom to his feet. They embrace. Jovan steps back. ‘If tomorrow,’ he says, ‘once again I am only the commissar, forgive me.’
How odd: in the forest, on the hard ground, with strange noises, shifting light and temperature, Tom often slept deeply. In a thick-walled farmhouse, under sheet and blanket on a soft mattress, sleep is fitful; he springs wide awake with his mind fretting. Trust curdles. Is there nothing he can do to restore it?
August 16
IN THE MORNING they eat their breakfast in sombre mood. Sid Dixon is preoccupied. Jack Farwell has Tom encipher his long report to base.
‘I can’t agree with you, Jack,’ Tom tells him. ‘Stopping the provision of weapons?’
‘Until we can be sure what they’re being used for.’
Tom tells Jack what happened last night: that Allied planes took off without waiting for the wounded. ‘They already feel furious, that we don�
��t understand how much store they set by saving their wounded. Refusing to take their patients to Italy will make it much worse.’
‘Threats are the only thing they’ll understand,’ Jack avers. ‘These are all we have to bargain with. Send the report as written.’
There is a knock on the door. Their housekeeper opens it. It is Pero, but he does not come in; he would prefer that one of the British officers step outside. When the housekeeper tells them, Tom does not bother to translate but goes out himself.
There are two Partisan soldiers. Each of them is tough looking, as brawny as Stipe. ‘These are your bodyguards,’ Pero says. He is embarrassed, his eyes do not meet Tom’s. ‘They have been assigned to you for your own protection.’
‘Thank you,’ Tom says. ‘Please, pass on our thanks to the commander.’ He salutes each of the soldiers. Whatever is going on, he will remain formal and polite in his manners.
Pero’s discomfort is painful. He is half-turned away, shifts from one foot to the other: though he must stay, he does not want conversation. Tom looks up. Clouds are like grey rags fluttering in the high mountains. There will soon be rain here in the valley.
Tom returns inside, drinks the dregs of the coffee substitute they are served.
‘Shall we put him on the next plane?’
Tom frowns at Jack. ‘Pero?’ He wants to send Pero to Italy?
‘Dixon. Is he any use to you? Doesn’t look like it.’
‘The Partisan woman he’s fallen in love with,’ Tom says. ‘There’s no word of her.’
‘Nor will there be. Not now. Look, you remember they told us there’s only so long you can last in the field. Dixon’s licked. He needs to be got out.’
Tom listens, and nods agreement.
After Sid has wired the report, Farwell asks Tom to send Pero to request an interview with the commander, so that he can be informed of the report and what it contains. The relief – that he can leave, if only temporarily – is evident in Pero’s open smile. He trots off towards the wood.
Pero returns an hour later. ‘It is not possible today.’
When Tom relays this to Jack, Farwell decides he will go and sit on the terrace of the National Liberation Front Headquarters until it becomes possible.
His way is blocked by the two Partisans outside. Their bodyguard has become an armed guard.
While Jack fumes and blusters, Tom withdraws to his room. He has a headache: the sky is closing in on the earth, the atmospheric pressure compresses his skull. He writes a note to Marija. He’s not sure why. He feels he ought to, yet with a pen in his hand he doesn’t know what to write. If he does not pursue her, who knows whether the chance of love, of marriage, will arise again. Nothing can come of it, anyhow: look at Dixon and his Francika, it will not be allowed – which only renders the prospect more romantic. Or should he say what he believes to be true? He is not the man for her.
Tom writes the note, but can he now trust Pero to deliver it? He folds it away in a pocket of his jacket.
In the evening the storm comes, first the sound: a delicate roll like the tympanum in Sibelius’ Finlandia Suite. Then a silence, a stillness, as the light fades, before it falls like a herd of wild horses, thundering past them, rain crashing to the ground.
August 17
THE PLANES HAVE stopped coming. The Englishmen are under virtual house arrest. Sid Dixon stirs himself when it’s time for a sked, to send messages that state: ‘No change.’ Pero tells Tom that Slovene Home Guard forces seem by all accounts to be growing stronger, despite the fact that the Germans, their patrons, are clearly facing ultimate defeat.
‘Further proof of the Partisans’ passivity,’ Jack exclaims when Tom shares the rumour at breakfast. The house is gloomy. Their hostess has lit lamps though it is a morning in August.
But Jack is in bullish mood. ‘They’ll buckle before we do,’ he insists. ‘We’ve been playing liar dice for centuries.’
‘They really think we’re up to something?’
‘If we weren’t, we’d hardly be doing our job, would we?’
Tom frowns. ‘What job?’ he asks.
‘Of course it’s good to derail a few trains,’ Jack says, in a voice he must think is meant to sound reassuring. ‘Look, Freedman,’ he says, and begins to shift the cups and bowls, plates, cutlery, glasses, pots of jam and of honey, around the table. ‘Yes, the PM wants a landing in Istria. Not to send our troops round the corner and down into Italy but to send them straight up here, through the middle of Slovenia and up through the Ljubljana Gap.’
‘A southern front,’ Tom says. He stares at the rearranged utensils in amazement.
‘Brooke’s behind it,’ Jack continues. ‘Alexander’s been behind it all along. He’s even prepared to take troops from the impasse in Italy, as well as new divisions, send them through the Gap and into the plains of the Danube.’ Jack picks up a knife and makes as if to stab someone. ‘Churchill wants to “thrust a dagger under Germany’s armpit”, as he puts it. The problem, naturally, is the Americans. Clark’s amenable, but Marshall’s dead against it. And Roosevelt, I’m afraid, is as naive as he’s honourable. He wants to please Stalin, to keep to what they agreed in Tehran; he doesn’t understand that there’s no point in winning the war on the battlefield and then losing it at the conference table.’
Tom struggles to take it all in. Jack smiles. It seems to please him inordinately to know more than his junior officer. He calls for their hostess, and hands her the coffee jug for a refill.
‘Are you saying,’ Tom begins, ‘that you’ve been gathering gen about the Partisans, while I’ve been scarpering about the hills of Slovenia as a cover? A decoy?’
‘Certainly not!’ Jack tells him. ‘Good God, no. What you boys have been doing is vital. But I’ve had other things to do as well. The point is, we want to reach Vienna before the Russians.’
‘While Stalin,’ Tom nods, ‘is desperate to get as far south and east as possible, never mind beat us to Berlin.’
Jack grins. ‘You’re getting it. Not quite as stupid as you look, Freedman,’ he says. ‘The Allies have to block Soviet expansion in southern Europe. The fact is,’ he says, lighting a cigarette, ‘you and I are pawns, Freedman, as we always knew we were. It’s just that the game we’re in is rather larger than you realised.’
The chicory coffee is poured. Jack takes a sip and says, ‘I do believe I’m finding this less revolting by the day.’
‘So we’re more duplicitous than they are,’ Tom says. ‘And always have been? At least it’s their bloody country. We’ve not been playing a straight hand from day one?’
Jack Farwell peers through the smoke at Tom, shakes his head. ‘Don’t go native on me, there’s a good chap,’ he says. ‘You’d be no use to anyone.’
Throughout the morning the rain roars and crashes upon the roof and the ground. Tom peers out of the window, through the falling rain, is just able to make out the two bodyguards sheltering under the beech tree a few yards from the house, huddled inside inadequate oilskins. Needlessly miserable. The weather’s enough to keep the British under house arrest anyhow. It will also deter an enemy attack on the valley.
August 18
‘DO NOT WORRY, we are going to give you handouts, with all the information you need.’
Jack and Tom have been summoned to the Partisan Headquarters. After two days the rain has eased to a drizzle, and they have trudged through mud. Jovan hands them each a piece of paper with German positions, and movements, typed out on it.
‘We can’t verify this.’ Jack shakes his head. ‘It’s meaningless. We need to see for ourselves.’
When this has been translated, the commander nods, with a broad, knowing smile that reminds Tom of the bad acting in the Partisan play he saw: yes, the smile says, it is just as we suspected. ‘Before you take out our wounded, you have demanded information. We give it to you. You are not happy. Why? Because it is other information you want. Our troop numbers and positions.’
‘Why would we give
a damn about your forces?’
The commander smiles again. His behaviour suggests an odd mixture of Machiavellian statecraft and peasant cunning. ‘You and your American friends want to take Austria,’ he says.
While Tom translates, so he anticipates Jack’s reaction. The procedure is comical.
‘What the hell do we want with Austria?’ Jack responds, his hackles rising; the Englishman’s acting is of a slightly higher standard than the Slovene’s. Tom watches with acute embarrassment. And shame. For how can Jovan suspect what Jack is up to, yet believe Tom knows nothing of it? ‘We want to get off this damned continent and go home,’ Jack continues. ‘But of course we’ll stay and administer disputed border areas; and the frontiers will be determined by post-war peace negotiation, and treaties.’
The commander rises to his feet. ‘You think we should trust you to sort out our borders?’ he asks. He gestures to Jovan, who passes fresh sheets of paper to the Englishmen. ‘German troops are reinforcing north of here, as you can see,’ the commander says, pointing at the paper. He smiles again, and sits down, begins to write in a ledger.
The meeting is over.
Jack and Tom return to their Mission house in a gloomy, paranoid mood, only to find Dixon and Morris eager with news from Brigadier Maclean, head of the British Mission to Yugoslavia: an order from Marshal Tito, via the British, to his Fourth Zone command to launch a major attack against rail and road targets in Slovenia in the first week of September. It is to be coordinated with other such offensives throughout the Yugoslav territories, in order to impede the withdrawal of German forces from the Balkans, and their redeployment against the Allies on the western and eastern fronts.
This is the first time a Partisan order has been transmitted to a British liaison officer, to be delivered by him to the Partisans. ‘The Germans must have broken the Jug signals,’ Jack tells Tom. He can hardly contain his glee. There is a further message, stating that there should be no mention of the attacks in Partisan radio messages. Jack takes Morris with him to deliver the order. At first the bodyguard will not let them leave the house, but Tom translates until they understand that an order from their supreme commander is the issue, whereupon they escort Farwell and Morris at a fast pace.