by Igor Štiks
He finally conquered his fear and approached her resolutely, close enough to sense that on this evening her beauty found itself in the most favorable conditions for displaying all its power. He was overcome by the immobility one feels upon meeting something long sought after, that silent tension of the body that, before we take the object into our hands, forces us to pause for a moment, as if every passing second increases its value. The rapid movement of her breast, her figure shining in outline as she leaned against the window, her face beneath the dark veil, her lips whose contours could be seen only when she turned her head to one side, her words of caution . . . oh Lord, it was worth the wait.
“Come no closer. That is close enough for us to hear each other well. Even very well. As I told you, there are many things we must discuss. You cannot, Enzo . . . because of everything . . .”
“Order me to leave, Catarina. Bring this miserable presence in your shadow to an end. Expel him who stands in the way of your happiness. It will be better for us both—”
“Silence. Do not say such things, Enzo. God hears all.” She paused as he took another step. “Don’t make me . . . ,” she began but broke off and closed her eyes. She realized that she had lost all sense of confidence, that what she had wanted to say had flown away irretrievably with her veil, that she was losing herself amidst Enzo’s ever-strengthening scent.
Once she opened her eyes, she understood that, in short, it was too late. No longer could she order him to back away. No longer could she utter his name. Or bring the two of them to their senses.
8
The friar paused after his final words, as if he lacked the strength to go on.
“You went back after all,” I said.
“You’re a good listener, Bosnian,” he complimented me and went on. “Yes, I went back from Trieste, right into the hands of my enemies. Only a few days had passed since the night of my departure from Rab, and there I stood on the ship deck looking at my hometown: our four cathedral towers, the outlines of the Church of St. John the Evangelist and St. Mary’s, the Rector’s Palace and Dominis-Nimira Palace, as well as the walls of the St. Andrew Monastery. All this meant I was home. I remember a strange fever coming over me, a strange homecoming joy. I thought about her and expected much. Still, my thoughts were merely a product of suffering then, the warped optics of a young man in love. Yes, only a couple of days had passed since the Resolution, and the heat that came down on us was a warning from God.”
From the moment I stepped onto the town quay, I considered what my father might say, his anger, and how I could defend myself. I believed that our love, Petra’s and mine, was still a secret, that I had nothing to be afraid of, and that I had returned to begin living my real life. I passed through Rab’s streets slowly, taking my time on my way home. It crossed my mind to arrange a meeting with her that very evening. Such thoughts overtook me completely, and my excitement in the midst of the peaceful town seemed to me like a torch on a dark, clear night. This late in the afternoon, the island felt so serene. There was no sign of what was to befall me just a few paces ahead.
A little over an hour had passed since my arrival, and I decided to go home. But that had been enough time for the news to reach my persecutors. I remember being surprised to see a man in a blue uniform run across the end of an alley, covering the distance in two or three hops. At that moment, it seemed as if some dark premonition had crept into my lungs. But I went on and, just at the spot where the man had skipped across, felt a strong blow on the back of my head, upon which I blacked out.
The next thing I saw was my father’s face. When I realized he was standing over me, it seemed to me that I had never left the house where I was born. It was obvious his strength was ebbing because he was hardly able to pat my head wordlessly. In that delirium I had a false sense that I was under his roof, which for a brief moment filled me with delight, but as I tried to get up, I felt pain in my shoulder and neck. The ceiling filled with angels, which I had just begun to make out, and my father’s first words were enough to dash all my hopes: “Just tell me, what made you come back? I’ve been waiting for you to wake up and thinking of nothing but that. What made you come back?”
I raised my head and saw we were not alone. Seven more people were crammed with the two of us into that small room with painted angels. I knew some of them. I will not tell you their stories because that would take us too far afield, and yet it would amount to the same—that the new government had something against them. I turned around and saw the barred windows, and all my doubts about my present condition were cleared away by the uniformed man who peered through the small opening in the heavy wooden door.
But . . . , I thought, where are we?
“The Benedictine monastery, next to St. Andrew’s,” said one of the men arrested with us under, they explained, the same accusation.
My father, they said, was the leader of the Cominform rebellion on the island. I was his accomplice. Three farmers from the inland were informers. And the four Italians, including the two of us, were agents of the Italian Communist Party, which, when Yugoslavia was in question, sided with Stalin. Such was the indictment according to which they were all arrested a day after my departure. My fleeing to Trieste was taken as strong evidence for the case against my father. He told me that we were facing imprisonment and perhaps even death. I hugged him and wept. In response, he only managed to ask again, “Niccolò, what made you come back here?”
He looked consumed from the inside. His pallor and dryness showed unmistakably that he was near death, and seeing him like that, I was overwhelmed by embarrassment over my reason. So I said nothing. I could not look him in the eye. My foolish return enabled me to see him off to the death that was sneaking up on him. I, too, played a part in the journey he took, his death, as silent and swift as that of a fish.
Sometime before evening, Nižetić entered the room. Deftly twisting the nightstick in his hands, he stood at the door, obviously pleased with the effect, and said, “What’s up, birdies? Feel better now that you’re not alone, eh? You, kid, you’re coming with me. This is the end for you, this time.”
I started walking toward the door, but before I crossed the threshold, his stick stopped me, and he said, “What did I tell you? You’re fucked or I’m not Petar Nižetić.”
I passed through the long monastery corridor, and the guard, whom I would owe my life to, followed. Officiously, without saying a word, he walked behind me to the first turn. When we were alone in the staircase leading to the basement, he asked, “Is your name Darsa?”
“Niccolò Darsa,” I replied without turning.
“Just making sure you’re the same guy who shared a desk with me in school,” he said, then laughed and stopped in the middle of the corridor, waiting for me to stop and turn. There was no doubt. It was Ivan Mršić, the son of a farmer from the island’s interior, with whom I’d attended the first grades of the improvised Communist Partisan school. I hadn’t recognized him under his cap and police uniform. I was so happy I almost jumped on him, but suddenly he pointed his bayonet at me and shouted, “Move on, you treasonous scum!”
The order echoed through the corridor, and I had no choice but to turn away, which is when I saw a police lieutenant coming from the basement. “Carry on, Mršić, carry on! Don’t give the bandits any peace!” he said as he passed.
We went on in silence to a narrow basement room, where I was supposed to wait for Nižetić. Mršić made me sit on a chair, then positioned himself, out of precaution, at the door.
“I was with them when we were arresting your father,” he said, “and when we followed you around town. They almost picked me to smack you over the head.” He laughed. “But let’s get serious, Niccolò! Don’t say a word about this to anyone, you understand? I’ll help you as much as I can, but don’t ask for too much. I’m not safe, either.” Then he revealed everything to me. “Listen, it seems he’s after you, no joke. People say that you messed with his daughter, at least that’s what Per
e said, the one who saw you sneaking into her house. He got suspended the other day for disobedience, so now he’s spreading rumors. At least until Nižetić gets to him, and then . . .”
He said much more, but the whirl of thoughts in my mind kept me from either hearing or responding. I muttered a couple of incoherent questions, trying to collect my thoughts. From the moment I had regained my senses, the others and I had tried to prepare a defense and kept hoping that we would get a chance to dismiss all the ridiculous accusations in court. I’d never allowed myself to take Nižetić’s threats seriously, the words he’d repeated only minutes before. In my blindness, I had removed her from everything that was happening to us, convinced that our love was secret and that it was only waiting for all the outside misunderstandings to be sorted out before continuing its anonymous course.
But now it was clear. I understood Nižetić’s desire for revenge. I asked Ivan to repeat what he’d told me. I put my head into my hands. When facing disaster, we all become like sheep that stand petrified before the fire and sometimes leap into it. The thought of my father and those who were thrown in prison with him terrified me.
Ivan told me what had been happening since my departure, the public meetings all around the island, the arrests of some groups of Cominform supporters and their transfer to nearby islands under the Velebit, the quick trials and harshness that were here to stay. He also told me about himself, about serving in the police for the last two months. “Why now, goddamn it?” he said dejectedly.
Returning to my case, he asked, “Is what Pere says true, that Nižetić is after you just because of his daughter? I mean, because of you?”
I quickly, in a few minutes, revealed everything from the beginning. Then he told me, with a glance around, what I had not dared to ask. “Almost no one has seen her since then. Nižetić keeps quiet. There are rumors around town that he keeps her tied up inside the house. The other day a woman saw her standing at the window practically naked, shouting something . . . in Italian. People say Nižetić grabbed her and pulled her inside. They say they’re crazy, the both of them. But—” He suddenly stopped and became a guard again. “Attention, Captain!”
Nižetić dismissed him and sat at the other end of the narrow table. All he intended to do with me did not take longer than half a minute. He got up slowly, pulled out his wide police strap without saying anything, put the gun on the table, wrapped one end of the strap around his right hand, stood still for a moment looking straight into my eyes, and then began hitting me all over with its buckle. He screamed as if in tears, “So you screw other people’s daughters . . . eh? Eh? Treacherous vermin! Screw my daughter, will you . . .”
After a couple of blows I remember nothing. I lay on the floor while Nižetić struck me all over, especially my stomach and groin, who knows for how long. Ivan told me later that for a couple of minutes, the monastery echoed as if someone were being slain in there. I don’t know. He destroyed my kidneys and mutilated my body.
The friar came closer to me. He lifted his habit around his abdomen and showed several deep, long scars. I muttered what came to my mind, something just for something’s sake, to remove the scene from my eyes. “Horrible.”
“Yes. If only that had been all,” he said bitterly. “You don’t know, child, what horrible is. Surely not how horrible this was. Nobody can know what this was like.” He stopped. He seemed insulted by my interference, the inadequacy of my words, their redundancy. He said nothing for a few seconds, and I thought he was finished. But then he sighed, like a swimmer before the final leg of a race, as if gathering his strength.
“Right. Ivan and another guard took me to the cell in that state. They told me later that my father wept like a child and only caressed my hair, lacking the strength to do anything more, while the others tried to help me as well as they knew. I will never forget those people. They nursed me and watched over my father’s last hours, which began the very next morning and lasted through one day and one night. He couldn’t swallow the water Ivan brought us in secret. His soul departed his body before the dawn of the following morning. All shrunk and tiny, he ended clenching my hand. I heard no last words from him, not a sound even. He died silently. Perhaps because suffering needs no comment.”
CHAPTER THE EIGHTH
Had we been crouching next to Maria—who, with her ear pressed against the door to Catarina’s chamber, had hardly managed to make out anything of the conversation with Enzo—at the moment when they grew silent, after which only rustling could be heard from inside (of fabric or whispers it was impossible to say), we would have seen her tears silently dropping onto her thighs. Had we been able to sit beside her for some ten minutes, we would have realized what was going on inside, and, like Maria, we would have risen and left for our quarters. But our hearts would have remained beating quietly in our chests; our minds would not have plotted what Maria’s mind then plotted; we would not have been bent on revenge, or, like Maria, already considering the manner of its execution.
Enzo stole out of the room soon after the trumpets had sounded the master’s return. It was near three in the morning. Before he left her bed, Catarina explained all the major aspects of the customs she had adopted, the customs that would, she made clear, protect their love, their happiness, beneath the flying Mardi standard. He could not cease to admire the woman’s worth. After they’d dressed and set out, he for his room, she for her marital bed, he kissed her several times in the corridor, to which she responded by pressing her finger to his lips in a token of caution.
Once in his bed, he fell into a deep, sound, and silent sleep the likes of which he had not enjoyed for months. He awoke near the midday meal, perfectly relaxed and happy. He cast a hasty glance at his manuscripts, and just as he was preparing to take up his work in earnest, with renewed energy in body and soul, the bell called him to descend that very moment to the dining hall.
He found the Mardis already seated. Maria, as a close friend, ate in the same room but, appropriately, at a different table.
“Ah, here is our Enzo, looking very spirited today,” remarked old Mardi, offering Enzo a chair beside him.
From excitement and insane happiness, Enzo did not even glance at Catarina, while she, aware of the danger, greeted him almost inaudibly. Maria leaned over her meal and said not a word. Her silence had lasted the whole morning, and Catarina was frightened (Perhaps she sensed something? Perhaps she knew?) by such behavior. She decided to talk to her, to find out the cause of the girl’s apathy and also to soothe her own turbulent thoughts.
After the meal, as usual, Mardi began talking about what was happening abroad—the current political situation of his region, his meeting of the night before with the bishop, his new counterintelligence triumphs. In short, those present learned that a group of spies had been caught the morning before at San Benedetto and that each of them had had a piece of black cloth with the iron Habsburg coat of arms on it, serving them as a sign of recognition and a pass for the border posts. Later he showed them some pieces of the cloth that were, as he pointed out, a part of the war booty, and then continued by telling them that some of the spies were later interrogated by the bishop and his investigator, Fra Giovanni, and that the information which was extracted from them confirmed that the bishop’s action was altogether appropriate, but that it was also just the beginning and such actions would need to be continued with greater intensity and support, in order to avoid the unfortunate destiny of Enzo’s homeland.
Mardi added that after news of the arrest had spread through the county, a multitude had gathered before the bishop’s palace, demanding a swift public execution. The execution had been performed the night before by torchlight. Mardi mentioned that this had seemed to pacify the anxious crowd, adding that tax collection for the war was not going well and that some village leaders were protesting against the bishop’s measures.
A brief discussion followed in which Enzo was especially active, while Catarina made only occasional remarks and Maria
remained disturbingly quiet. He asked Mardi for details of the case, commented on possible political implications, and praised the efficiency of the bishop and Mardi’s soldiers. The old man seemed especially pleased by the course of the discussion, and, with the wisdom that came from many years’ engagement in politics and a generosity that told him not to keep that wisdom to himself but pass it on, he continued speaking at great length so that they left the dining room only some hours later.
Catarina, it must be said, invited the maid to her chambers in order to keep her company as usual, but the latter responded somewhat reticently, saying that she had a terrible headache and that it was already late. These words troubled Catarina a great deal, first, because they seemed unpleasantly familiar, and second, because they were not at all true: it was only three o’clock in the afternoon.
9
They took us from the cell to an improvised courtroom that morning, several hours after my father’s death. I remember flies buzzing around us, as if some of it had been left on our hands and clothes. At several tables joined together in the middle of the room, which the Benedictine priests had perhaps used for their meals, sat three people. These were the judge, the prosecutor, and Petar Nižetić. Several old men and police clerks, representing a jury, were on their right. They sat us on a bench on the left side of the room, beside the state lawyers who’d been assigned to the case.
Believe me, we hadn’t even sat down before the judge had opened the case book and called the witnesses. Some were prisoners in gray rags, people I’d never seen before, let alone met. They spoke very convincingly about our guilt, accusing my father of organizing an uprising. They did not pass silently over their own guilt, but asked the court to be merciful. The time allotted for our response was short. We denied what was stated and swore we were innocent. Our lawyers only repeated what we had said and asked for milder punishments, even before our guilt had been proven. The jury did not deliberate long. The judge expressed his regret that the main culprit had escaped punishment by his own death, adding that we were as responsible as he. Praising Nižetić’s action, he sentenced us to death by firing squad. And that was all the people’s authorities had to say about it.