Bosnian Chronicle

by Ivo Andrić

  As during the first riot, Daville had thought of fleeing Travnik and saving himself and his family. Shut up in his room, he was torn by agonizing thoughts and imagined the darkest possibilities; but in front of the servants and the chancellery staff, even in front of his wife, he took great pains to keep his thoughts and his real mood strictly to himself.

  Yet even this common tribulation failed to bring the Consul and his senior assistant closer together. He would talk to Desfosses several times a day (being confined to the house, they met oftener than before), but the conversation brought him neither relief nor peace of mind. In addition to all his other worries, doubts, and disappointments, Daville had to remind himself every so often that he was living with a stranger and was separated from him by an unbridgeable abyss of ideas and habits. Not even the young man’s undeniable finer traits—his courage, his unselfishness and presence of mind, which came to the fore conspicuously in difficult moments like these—could mollify Daville. For it is in the nature of things that we take and judge the good qualities of a man only when they are offered to us in a form molded to our own ideas and inclinations.

  As he had always done, Daville looked with scorn and distaste at what was happening around them, interpreting everything in terms of native malice and the barbarous ways of life of these people, and was concerned only with maintaining and protecting the French interests. Desfosses, on the other hand, with a detachment that appalled Daville, analyzed all phenomena around him and tried to discover their causes and to clarify them by induction and also in relation to the circumstances that had spawned them, regardless of the advantage or disadvantage, friendship or hostility, that he or his Consulate might momentarily gain from them. This cold and disinterested objectivity of the young man’s had always puzzled Daville and annoyed him, all the more so as he couldn’t help seeing in it a clear sign of the young man’s superiority. In the present circumstances, he found it even more unpleasant and oppressive.

  Every talk they had, whether official, semiofficial, or private, elicited from Desfosses a wealth of analogies, free-ranging associations, and coldly objective conclusions, while on the Consul’s side it produced only irritation and offended silence which the young man did not even seem to notice.

  This son of a well-to-do family, in many ways so gifted, behaved intellectually like a millionaire—he was whimsical, bold, and prodigal. In the workaday routine of the Consulate he was of no great use to Daville. Although it was the young man’s job to make clean transcripts of the Consul’s reports, Daville avoided giving him this work. While still drafting it, he already squirmed at the thought that the youth, whose mind seemed to have a hundred eyes, would judge the report coldly and critically as he copied it. Even as he resented his self-consciousness, Daville could not help wondering after every other sentence how they would appear in his Chancellor’s eyes. So in the end he preferred to write and make fair copies of his more important reports himself.

  In short, in all this work, and more crucial still, in all his inward uncertainties over the larger events set in motion by Napoleon’s new expedition against Vienna, Desfosses was no help to him at all and was often a burden and a hindrance. The difference between them was so great and of such a nature that they were unable even to share their common good fortune. When toward the middle of July, about the time the riots were quelled, the news reached Travnik of Napoleon’s victory at Wagram and, shortly afterwards, of the truce with Austria, Daville perked up with one of his periodic moods of good humor. He felt that everything had gone off pretty well and was satisfactorily concluded. The only thing that spoiled his sense of well-being was the indifference of young Desfosses, who showed no exhilaration at the success, just as he had shown none of the doubts and fears that preceded it.

  It hurt and puzzled Daville to see the young man always with the same knowing noncommittal smile on his face. “As if he had a life subscription to victories,” was the way Daville described it to his wife, having no one else to complain to and unable to keep quiet any longer.

  Once more the Travnik summer drew to an end in a blaze of warm, rich days—days that were considered the finest and best by those who lacked nothing, and least burdensome by those who had to struggle alike in winter and summer.

  In the month of October 1809, peace was concluded at Vienna between Napoleon and the Austrians, creating the new Illyrian provinces that included Dalmatia and Lika, regions that were in Daville’s sphere of activity. A Governor-General and an Intendant-General arrived in Ljubljana, the capital of the new Illyria, with a whole staff of police, customs and revenue officials, who were to organize the administration and, more particularly, establish trade and communications with the Levant. Earlier, General Marmont, the commander in chief of Dalmatia, who had gone to Wagram in time to join the battle, had been appointed Marshal. And now Daville, contemplating all these developments around him, experienced the melancholy but not unpleasant feeling of one who has contributed to the victory and glory of others and has himself been left in the shadow, without glory or rewards. He rather liked the sensation, and it helped him to bear his troubles at Travnik, which no victory could do much to change.

  A nagging question still remained, one that tormented him now as it always had, one he had never dared to admit or confide to anyone: Is this at last the final victory and how long will the peace last? To this query, on which depended not only his own peace of mind but the future of his children, he could find no answer either in himself or around him.

  At a particularly solemn audience Daville acquainted the Vizier in some detail with Napoleon’s victories and the provisions of the Peace of Vienna, with special reference to the territories in the close neighborhood of Bosnia. The Vizier offered him congratulations on the victories and spoke with satisfaction of the fact that their good neighborly relations would continue and that henceforward, under French rule, there would be quiet and order in the lands around Bosnia.

  But the words “war,” “peace,” and “victory” had a dead and remote sound on the Vizier’s lips. He delivered them in a cold hard tone of voice, with a stony expression on his face, as if he were talking of things in the distant past.

  The Vizier’s Secretary, Tahir Beg, with whom Daville spoke the same day, was much livelier and more talkative. He asked questions about the situation in Spain and wanted to know the details of the administrative structure in the new Illyrian provinces; it was apparent that he wished to inform himself and compare notes professionally. Yet all his amiable garrulity and shrewd questioning revealed no more than had the Vizier’s mute, leaden indifference. One gathered from the general temper of his talk that he could as yet see no end to warfare and to Napoleon’s conquests. And when Daville pressed him for a clearer statement, the Secretary sidestepped a direct reply and parried, with a shrewd smile: “Your Emperor has won. Everyone sees the victor in a blaze of light, or, as the Persian poet says, ‘The victor’s face is like a rose.’”

  As usual, Daville was left vaguely discomforted by the peculiar smile that never faded from the Secretary’s face, and that gave a diabolical slant to his eyes and made him almost squinty. And after every conversation with him Daville felt bewildered and somehow cheated; instead of indicating some solution or answer, the talk would raise new questions and fill him with alarming uncertainties. And at that the Secretary was the only person in the Residency willing and able to talk business.

  As soon as the peace treaty was signed, contact between the two consulates was re-established. The consuls called on each other and wordily expressed their precarious joy at the peace just concluded; the effusiveness served to hide their embarrassment over all the petty tricks they had played on each other over the last few months. Daville tried hard not to offend von Mitterer by putting on an air of “victor,” while at the same time enjoying the advantages that victory had given him. The Colonel spoke cautiously and made his points like a man who was unwilling to dwell on the uncomfortable present and who expected a good deal more of
the future. Both hid their true opinions and real fears under a veil of desultory small talk—a frequent recourse of older people who still hope for something from life, yet are well aware of their helplessness.

  Frau von Mitterer had not yet exchanged visits with Mme Daville and had been lucky so far in avoiding Desfosses, who, of course, had been “dead” for her since the spring, laid to rest in the large necropolis of her previous disenchantments. Throughout the time of Napoleon’s campaign against Vienna she had remained stubbornly and aggressively “on the side of the great and incomparable Corsican, with all my heart,” and had thus poisoned her husband’s days and nights, for he could not, even in the privacy of his bedroom, bear to listen to such indiscreet bravado without a stab of pain at every thoughtless word.

  That summer Anna Maria had a sudden recurrence of an old passion: her love of animals. Her morbidly exaggerated pity for beasts of burden, dogs, cats, and cattle kept breaking out at every step. The sight of bony laboring small oxen, wearily putting one spindly leg in front of another while a black cloud of flies whined and settled on the tender flesh around their eyes, could throw Anna Maria into a nervous crisis. Carried away by her passionate nature, she championed these animals no matter what the place of the circumstances, without any moderation or compunction, and so, of course, courted new disappointments. She collected lame dogs and mangy cats, and nursed them and looked after them. She fed the birds, even though they were gorged with the bounty of summer. She chided the peasant women for carrying chickens slung over their shoulders, strung by the feet and hanging head downward. She halted overladen carts and overburdened horses in the streets of the town, demanding of the peasants that they reduce the load, salve the sores of the animals, repair the worn harness that was causing them, or loosen the girth that was cutting into their flesh. But in this country such demands were unprecedented and led to difficulties, for no one could understand them; they were bound to end in ridiculous scenes and embarrassing incidents.

  One day, in a steep alley, Anna Maria came across a big cart piled high with sacks of grain. A team of oxen labored in vain to pull the enormous load up the hill. The men then brought an underfed horse, harnessed it at the head of the oxen, and began to drive them up the slope with loud shouts. The farmer walked beside the oxen and took turns whipping their bony flanks and beating them across their soft muzzles, while the horse was switched mercilessly by a hefty Moslem from the neighborhood, stripped to the waist and deeply tanned, a certain Ibrahim Zhvalo, one of the lowest men in town, a drunken cart driver who occasionally doubled as a hangman and so deprived the gypsies of their income.

  The oxen and the horse in front could not be goaded to pull together, and the farmer ran back every other moment to brace the wheels with a stone. The animals panted and quivered. The cart driver swore hoarsely and volunteered the opinion that the left ox was malingering and did not pull at all. They started once more, but the ox on the left stumbled and fell to his knees; the one on the right and the horse pulled on. Anna Maria screamed, ran up and tearfully began to importune the cart driver and the peasant. The latter pushed the stone under the wheel and stared in astonishment at the foreign lady. But the Moslem Zhvalo, bathed in sweat and furious at the ox which was only pretending to pull, turned in a rage toward Anna Maria, wiped the sweat off his forehead with the hooked finger of his right hand and shook it to the ground, cursed poverty and those who allowed it to exist, then, gripping the whip in his left hand, walked straight up to Anna Maria. “Get out of my sight, woman, and don’t you start making trouble, or, by God, I’ll—” Saying this, he sliced the air with his switch. Anna Maria saw his face close above hers, twisted in a snarling grimace, full of pockmarks, scars, sweat, and dust, a vicious and angry but above all a tired face, almost in tears from exhaustion, like that of a runner who has just won a race. At that moment her groom ran up in alarm, pushed the frantic driver aside and took Anna Maria home, weeping aloud in helpless fury.

  For two days Anna Maria shivered whenever she thought of that scene and tearfully demanded of her husband that he punish those men for their cruelty and for insulting the wife of a consul. At night she would suddenly start from her sleep, jump out of bed screaming, and try to ward off the vision of Zhvalo’s face.

  The Colonel did his best to calm his wife with soothing words, although he knew there was nothing to be done. The sacks of oats the men had carted were for the Vizier’s stable. Zhvalo was a person without any standing and a complaint against him would accomplish nothing; bringing action against him could only debase one. And, in the last analysis, it was all the fault of his wife, who, as she had so often done on other occasions, had meddled in things that were not her business, in an ill-advised manner, and who even now, as usual, was deaf to all reason and explanation. So he comforted her as best he could, promising her everything, as he would a child, and stoically put up with the reproaches and abuse which she hurled at him, in the hope that she would forget her obsession.

  Meanwhile there was news at the French Consulate. Madame Daville was in the fourth month of her pregnancy. Outwardly unchanged, small and frail as ever, she moved quietly and nimbly around the big house and the garden of the Consulate, preparing, stocking up, anticipating, and giving orders. This fourth child was giving her more trouble than the previous ones. Yet all these chores, and even the physical discomforts of pregnancy, helped to soften the pain of losing her little boy so suddenly the previous autumn. Although she never spoke a word about it, he was constantly in her thoughts.

  Young Desfosses was spending his last days at Travnik. He was only waiting for the first courier to arrive from Istanbul or Split on his way to Paris, in order to set out with him. He had been recalled to the Ministry and had already been notified that he would be sent to the Embassy at Istanbul before the end of the year. The outline of his book on Bosnia was complete. He was glad that he had got to know this country and was happy to be able to leave it. He had fought against its silence and endured many hardships and now, serene and undefeated, he was departing.

  Before his departure, on the Feast of the Assumption, he visited the monastery at Gucha Gora with Mme Daville. Monsieur Daville did not accompany them, as the relations between the Consulate and the Brothers had become very strained. Indeed, they were more than strained: the struggle between the French Imperial Government and the Vatican was at its peak just then. The Pope had been banished, Napolean excommunicated. For months now, the Brothers had not come near the Consulate. And yet, thanks largely to Mme Daville, the friars at Gucha Gora received them both very cordially.

  Desfosses could not help admiring the Brothers’ subtle flair for separating their personal duties toward the guests from the public obligations of their calling and their stern concept of duty in general. Their attitude was a fine balance of reserve and offended dignity that was in keeping with their position, and just the right amount of friendliness demanded by the laws of ancient hospitality and that simple humanity which reaches beyond the clashes of the moment and transient circumstances. Indeed, there was a little of everything in their manner, in nice proportions, and all of it blended together into a smooth, rounded whole and was conveyed with the utmost poise, with an air of ease that lent their gestures and facial expressions a thoroughly relaxed and natural look. One could hardly have expected so much composure and such an innate sense of proportion from these coarse, harassed, and quick-tempered men with their bristling whiskers and ridiculous clean-shaven round heads.

  Once more he saw the piety of the Catholic peasantry and had a close look at the life of the Franciscan Order, “Bosnian version”; once more he talked and argued with monsieur, mon adversaire, Fra Julian.

  It was a fine and warm festival day at the best time of the year, when fruit was ripe and the foliage still green. The huge whitewashed monastery church quickly filled with peasants in their clean holiday clothes, in which white was predominant. Just before High Mass began, Mme Daville went inside. Desfosses remained in the plum orc
hard with Fra Julian, who happened to be off duty. They walked up and down, talking.

  As always when they met, conversation turned to the relations between the Church and Napoleon, then to Bosnia, to the work and role of the Brothers, and the lot of Bosnians of all persuasions. All the windows of the church were open and from time to time they could hear the tinkle of the altar boys’ bells and the deep old-man baritone of Brother Superior, intoning passages of the Mass.

  The two young men enjoyed arguing as healthy children enjoy a game. And their discussion, conducted in bad Italian and full of naïve, challenging statements and obstinacy for its own sake, went around and around in a circle and kept coming back to the starting point.

  “I don’t expect you to understand us,” was the friar’s answer to most of Desfosses’s remarks.

  “But I do think,” protested Desfosses, “that in all this time I’ve got to know your country pretty well. Contrary to other foreigners, I have tried to understand the hidden values as well as the shortcomings and backwardness which a stranger is so quick to notice and so quick to condemn out of hand. So you must allow me to tell you that I find the attitude of your Order often hard to understand.”

  “And I tell you that you can’t possibly understand.”

  “But I do understand, Fra Julian. The point is that what I see and understand I cannot approve. This country needs schools, roads, doctors, contact with the outside world, work, and enterprise. I know that you won’t be able to realize and achieve these things as long as the Turks are here and the communications between Bosnia and Europe are what they are. But still, you’re the only educated class here and you ought to prepare your people and prod them in that direction. Instead of which, you take the side of the reactionary European powers and their feudal policies and want to align yourselves with the part of Europe that’s living in the past and must perish. And this puzzles me, because your people are not fettered in traditions and class prejudices and should, on the face of it, take their place among the free and enlightened nations of Europe.”