Bosnian Chronicle

by Ivo Andrić

  It was the kind of great fear, unseen, imponderable, but all-pervading, that comes over human communities from time to time, coiling itself around some heads and breaking others. At times like these many people, blinded and bedeviled, lose sight of reason and courage and of the fact that everything in life is fleeting, and that although human life, like every other thing, has its value, that value is not unlimited. And so, cowed by the passing specter of fear, they pay a price for their bare life that is far in excess of its value, they do low and mean things, they humble and shame themselves, and when the moment of fear has passed, they realize that they have ransomed their life too dearly, that they have not even been in real jeopardy but have simply knuckled under to the irresistible wraith of fear.

  The garden of Lutva’s coffeehouse was left deserted, although spring had set in and the lime tree above the garden was turning green. All that the Travnik begs dared to do was entreat the Vizier humbly to forgive the Mayor his mistakes (although no one knew what these were) and to spare his life out of consideration for his old age and previous services.

  All the other prisoners in the fortress, the dice players, horse thieves, and arsonists, were tried in short order and led to the chopping block and their heads were stuck on poles and displayed in public places.

  The Austrian Consul promptly interceded for the arrested friars. Daville did not wish to be outdone—save that, in his own petition, he mentioned the Jews as well as the friars. The Brothers were released first; they were followed by the Jews who came out one by one and were immediately assessed and fined. They left so much money at the Residency that all the Jewish cashboxes were emptied down to the last penny—that is to say, the last penny of the funds set aside for bribery. The one who remained longest in the fortress was the monk Pakhomi, whose case no one took up. At length he too was ransomed by his small and poor congregation for a round sum of three thousand groschen, of which more than two thirds were contributed by two brothers, Peter and Jovan Fufich. As for the begs of Travnik and other towns, some were let go while others were being arrested, so that there were always ten or fifteen of them in the fortress.

  That was how Ali Pasha began his rule in Travnik and hastened to get up an army against Serbia.

  25

  The sense of extremity that gripped Travnik with the coming of the new Vizier, preying on the whole town but especially crushing to those individuals who happened to be the immediate victims of it, was of course localized in this mountain range which rings and hems in the city, and was echoed only dimly in the reports of the two Travnik consuls, reports which in those days hardly anyone in Paris or Vienna had the time to read with any attention. For the great outside world was then filled with rumors of the momentous drama of Napoleon’s collapse.

  Daville spent the holiday period of Christmas and New Year’s in terrified waiting, obsessed by the thought that all was lost. When it was learned that Napoleon was back in Paris, things took a turn for the better. Reassuring comments began to arrive from Paris, instructions and circulars as well as news that the Grande Armée was being reorganized and that the government was taking firm measures in all departments.

  Once again Daville was ashamed of his faintheartedness. Yet this same timidity drove him now to seek refuge in nebulous hopes, so great is weak man’s need to deceive himself and so boundless his capacity for being deceived.

  At the end of May came the bulletins of Napoleon’s victories in Germany, at Lutzen and Bautzen. The old game was resumed once more. But in Travnik, at this time, there was so much woe and dejection and fear of the new Vizier and his Albanians that no one was in the mood to listen to victory bulletins.

  At about that time Ali Pasha marched against Serbia—having first “struck order and discipline” into everyone without exception. Even here his methods were unlike those of his predecessors. In the old days these “departures for Serbia” used to have the aspect of a public festival. Day by day, week by week, the drilling field at Travnik was the scene of a gradual mustering of fortress captains from the interior of Bosnia. They came in their own sweet time, arbitrarily, bringing whatever type of force suited them, in any size they thought fit. And having reached Travnik, they would settle there and start haggling with the Vizier and the local authorities, making demands and laying down conditions, asking for provisions, equipment, and money, while for the public benefit they put on a show of martial enthusiasm and sword-rattling pomp.

  While this was going on, armed, uniformed, and sinister strangers could be seen loafing in the streets of Travnik. The noisy and flamboyant circus on the drilling field would go on for weeks. Tents were hitched and campfires burned. In a clearing in the center, a lance with three horsetails was stuck into the ground, spattered with the blood of rams which had been killed as a sacrifice for the good luck of the expedition. Drums throbbed, bugles sounded, prayers were read. In short, everything that could possibly delay departures was done. And often the principal and climactic attraction of the whole thing lay in this mustering and in the attendant festivities, so that the majority of warriors never saw the battlefield at all.

  But on this occasion, under the beady eye of Ali Pasha, the affair went off in grim silence and under a cloud of fear, with no special celebration but also without any wrangling and tarrying. As food was scarce, the men lived on scant rations from the Vizier’s store. No one felt like singing or making music. When the Vizier came down to the field for a personal inspection, he ordered the beheading of the commander from Cazin, for having brought ten soldiers fewer than he had promised; immediately afterwards he chose a man from the commander’s mortified contingent and made him the new captain.

  This was how the present expedition set off for the Serbian frontier, where Suleiman Pasha was already waiting with his force.

  Once again Travnik was left in the supreme command of the old Mayor, Ressim Beg, whom Ali Pasha had sentenced to death upon his arrival and whose life the begs had only just managed to save. The ordeal to which the old Mayor had been subjected was, in the Vizier’s opinion, the best guarantee that this time he would carry out his office satisfactorily, in accordance with the Vizier’s wishes and plans.

  What earthly purpose would it serve, mused Daville, to burden the pathetic old man with bulletins of Napoleon’s new victories? What point was there in telling anyone about them?

  The Vizier had gone off with his army and his Albanians, but the terror had remained behind him, as cold and hard and lasting as the hardest wall; behind him too lingered the ghost of his return, more potent than any threat and crueler than any punishment.

  The town remained as if deaf and dumb; empty, drained, and hungering as never before in the last twenty years. As the days grew longer and sunnier, there was less time for sleeping and more for the pangs of hunger than during the short days of winter. Groups of wasted scabby children ambled through the streets, looking for what was not to be found: wholesome food. People journeyed as far as Posavina beyond the river Sava, looking for grain, or even for seed.

  The market days began to resemble ordinary days. Some shops did not bother to open. The merchants squatting on their wooden platforms were sullen and glum. There had been no coffee or imports from overseas since the previous autumn; staple foods were nonexistent. The only customers were those shopping for things which were not there. The new Vizier had levied such high taxes on the bazaar that a good many store owners had had to borrow in order to meet them. And the fear was so pervasive that no person dared to utter a complaint, not even within the four walls of his home.

  In the shops and houses there was talk of how six Christian emperors were banding together to strike at Bonaparte, how they had all conscripted every last male into their armies and how there would be no plowing, no digging, no sowing or harvesting until Bonaparte was brought to his knees and destroyed.

  Now even the Jews took care not to be seen around the French Consulate. Freycinet, who had set about liquidating the French agency at Sarajevo, wrote that th
e local Jews had suddenly presented all their demand notes and bills and that he was quite unable to meet all his obligations. And Paris had stopped answering letters altogether. As for the Consulate, the payroll and expense funds had not been received for three whole months.

  While viziers were being changed at Travnik and Europe was preoccupied with great events, in the little world of the Consulate things continued their natural course: new lives were born and old ones came to the end of their span.

  Madame Daville was again pregnant and in her last months. She bore the pregnancy as easily and unobtrusively as the one of two years before. She spent the whole day with her helpers in the garden. Thanks to von Paulich, she had managed once again to obtain the necessary seeds from Austria and was looking forward to great things from her seedling flats, even though the confinement came at an awkward time for her, just when her presence in the garden would be most needed.

  At the end of May a fifth child was born to the Davilles, this time a boy. The child was weak and was therefore christened right away. He was registered under the name of Auguste-François-Gérard in the parish of Dolats.

  Madame Daville’s delivery brought forth the same lively reaction as her previous one: gossip and the sympathies of the whole distaff side of Travnik, visits, inquiries, and good wishes from all sides, even birthday presents, despite the shortages and the general want. The only thing missing was a gift from the Residency, but that was because the Vizier had gone to the Drina with his army.

  Although so many things had changed in the last two years—particularly relations between people and conditions in the country—the general idea of family life had remained unchanged. Everything that had to do with it exacted a strong and unchanging fascination for these people, like a hallowed relic whose value was universal, lasting, and unbounded by changes and events in the world at large. For in communities like these the life of every person was firmly centered in the family, as in a perfectly wrought closed circle. Yet these circles, though strictly separate, had an invisible common center somewhere, so that a part of each impinged on and overlapped the others. Therefore nothing that happened in one family could fail to leave the others indifferent, and every person took a sympathetic interest in all family events, births, weddings, and deaths, and did so heartily, eagerly, with the spontaneity of a natural reflex.

  About the same time, the former interpreter of the Austrian Consulate, Nicholas Rotta, fought his last, pathetic, and desperate fight with his destiny.

  The von Mitterer family had for years employed an old Hungarian woman who was so obese and rheumatic that she could hardly move. She was an excellent cook, genuinely devoted to the family, and at the same time an unbearable tyrant to all the staff. Anna Maria had quarreled and made peace with her for fifteen long years. However, as the Hungarian was getting heavier and slower, they had taken a young woman from Dolats to help her. Her name was Lucia, and she was strong, useful, and energetic. She took the moody old cook in stride so well that she learned cooking and scullery work from her. When the von Mitterer family left Travnik, taking, naturally, their “house dragon” with them, as Anna Maria called the old Hungarian, Lucia stayed behind as von Paulich’s cook.

  This Lucia had a sister, Andja, who was the black sheep of the family and a disgrace to the whole Dolats community. When still a girl, she had gone on the primrose path and had been cursed from the pulpit and thrown out of Dolats. Now she owned a roadside coffeehouse at Kalibunar. Lucia, like the rest of her family, suffered a great deal on account of this sister, whom she loved very much and with whom, despite everything, she never could break completely. From time to time she would go to see her in secret, although these visits caused her more pain than even her longing for her sister, for Andja obstinately stuck to her ways, while Lucia, after pleading with her in vain, would cry over her every time as if she were already dead. And still they could never entirely give up seeing each other.

  Wandering aimlessly around Travnik and the countryside, with nothing to do, yet trying to appear busy and important, Rotta often came as far as Andja’s coffeehouse at Kalibunar. Little by little he struck up a friendship with the loose woman, who, like himself, was an outcast and was beginning to age and take to drink.

  Some time around Easter, Andja came to the Consulate to see her sister Lucia. After they had talked for a while, she came out with the blunt and startling suggestion that they poison the Austrian Consul. She had brought the poison with her.

  It was just the sort of plan that might be hatched in a disreputable coffeehouse in the dead of night, between two sick and unfortunate creatures whose brains were in a fog of alcohol, ignorance, hatred, and warped infatuation. Rotta had apparently quite turned Andja’s head, for she swore to her sister that the poison was a very special one designed to make the Consul waste away and die by slow imperceptible degrees, as from a natural disease. She promised Lucia a huge reward and a life of luxury with Rotta, whom she, Andja, planned to marry and who was certain to get another high post after the Consul’s death. And she produced a sum of cash in solid ducats. In short, all three of them would be happy and without a care in the world for the rest of their lives.

  Listening to her sister’s proposition, Lucia almost died of fright and shame. She quickly took the two white phials and hid them in the pockets of her skirt, then grabbed her sister by the shoulders and began to shake her, as if to bring her out of a morbid trance, imploring her, on their mother’s grave and in the name of all that was holy, to push these thoughts and designs from her head and come to her senses. In order to convince and shame her, she told her of the Consul’s kindness and what a mortal sin it would be even to think of repaying his goodness in this ghastly way. She urged her to break off with Rotta immediately and have no more truck with him.

  Taken aback by this resistance and censure, Andja pretended to give up her plan and asked her sister to give her back the two phials, but Lucia would not hear of it. And so they parted—Lucia dazed and in tears, and Andja in silence, with a peeved and enigmatic expression on her red face. Unable to close her eyes that night, Lucia tossed in her bed and went through agonies. And when the morning came, she set out for Dolats, without telling anyone, and confided the whole thing to the parish priest, Fra Ivo Yankovich. She gave him the poison phials and asked him to do what he thought best to avert a sin and a catastrophe.

  The same morning, without losing a moment, Fra Ivo called on von Paulich, told him everything, and handed over the poison. The Consul at once wrote a letter to Daville, in which he informed him that his protégé Rotta had tried to poison him, and that there were witnesses and evidence to prove it. The wretch had made a mess of it, as was to be expected, but he, von Paulich, left it to Daville’s good judgment to decide whether he wanted to extend the further protection of the French Consulate to a man of that caliber. In a similar letter, he also reported the whole business to the town Mayor. Having done that, the Consul quietly resumed his work and his old life; he went on eating the same food, kept the same servants and the same cook. However, everyone else was greatly distressed: the Mayor, the friars, and especially Daville. D’Avenat was ordered to give an ultimatum to Rotta: either he was to leave Travnik forthwith or lose the protection of the French Consulate and be arrested by the Turkish authorities for a proven attempt of poisoning.

  Rotta vanished from Travnik that same night, together with the woman Andja from the Kalibunar coffeehouse. D’Avenat notified the French authorities in Split about Rotta’s recent exploits and his treacherous, untrustworthy character. He advised them not to give him a service job of any kind and recommended that they pack him off back to the Levant and let him fend for himself.

  26

  This time the summer months brought some relief and a semblance of quietude. The season of fruit came, wheat and barley ripened, the people ate better and felt a little easier. But the talk of war, of the great account settling and Napoleon’s inevitable collapse before the end of summer, did not cease. The friars
, especially, encouraged a whispering campaign to that effect among the people. They did it so stealthily and efficiently that Daville could neither catch them red-handed nor combat them as he should have.

  One day in early September von Paulich, with a bigger escort than usual, paid a visit to his French colleague.

  All through the summer, while fantastic rumors and highly improbable items of news had been circulating against the French, von Paulich had remained composed and impartial in his relations with everyone. Every week he had sent Mme Daville samples of his flowers and vegetables, raised from seed they had bought together. In his rare meetings with Daville he had given as his opinion that a general war was unlikely and that there was no indication whatever that Austria might abandon her neutral position. He had quoted Ovid and Virgil. He had discussed the causes of famine and shortages in Travnik and sketched out a method by which such trouble might be circumvented. And, as always, he had talked of these things as if the point of discussion were a war on some other planet and the famine in another part of the world.

  And now, exactly at noon of that quiet September day, in Daville’s study on the ground floor, von Paulich sat across from Daville, more solemn than usual, but calm and cool as always.

  He had come, he said, because of the persistent rumors that were circulating among the local populace about an imminent war between Austria and France. As far as he knew, these reports were unfounded, and he wanted to reassure Daville on that point. Nevertheless, he also wanted to take this opportunity to tell him how he envisaged their relations in the event that war really did come. Gazing at his folded white hands, the Colonel calmly outlined his views.

  “In all matters of politics or war our relations should, in my opinion, remain the same as heretofore. In any case, as two Europeans and men of honor who have been tossed into this country in the line of duty and forced to live in exceptional circumstances, I do not think we should harass and malign each other before these barbarians, as once may have been the case perhaps. I thought it my duty to tell you so, in view of the gossip-mongering, which I believe is quite unfounded, and to ask your opinion about it.”