The Bridge on the Drina (43 page)

'You are putting the cart before the horse,' shouted Herak, analysing Stiković's article. 'It is not possible for the Balkan peasant, plunged in poverty and every sort of misery, to found a good and lasting state organization. Only the preliminary economic liberation of the exploited classes, the peasants and the workers, that is to say the greater number of the people, can create real conditions for the formation of independent states. That is a natural process and the road we all must take, and in no way the other way round. Therefore both national liberation and unification must be carried out in the spirit of socialist liberation and renascence. Otherwise it will happen that the peasant, worker and ordinary citizen will introduce their pauperism and their slavish mentality, like a mortal contagion, into the new state formations and the small number of exploiters will instil into them their parasitical, reactionary mentality and their anti-social instincts. Therefore enduring states or a healthy society cannot exist.'

'All that is foreign book-learning, my good fellow,' answered Stiković, 'which vanishes before the living impetus of awakened nationalist forces among the Serbs and then among the Croats and Slovenes also, though tending to one aim. Things do not come to pass according to the forecasts of German theoreticians but advance in complete accord with the deep sense of our history and our racial destiny. From Karageorge's words: 'Let each kill his Turkish chief the social problem in the Balkans has always solved itself by the way of national liberation movements and wars. It all moves beautifully logically, from the less to the great, from the regional and tribal to the national and the formation of the State. Were not our victories at Kumanovo and on the Bregalnica also the greatest victories of progressive thought and social justice?'

'That remains to be seen,' broke in Herak.

'Who does not see it now, will never see it. We believe ...'

'You believe, but we believe nothing, but want to be convinced by actual proofs and facts,' answered Herak.

'Surely the disappearance of the Turks and the weakening of Austro-Hungary as the first step towards her annihilation are really the victories of small, democratic peoples and enslaved classes in their aspiration to find a place in the sun?' Stiković developed his idea.

'If the realization of nationalist aims brings with it the creation of social justice, then in the Western European states which have for the most part achieved all their nationalist ideals and are in that matter satisfied, there should no longer be any major social problems, or movements, or conflicts. Yet we see that that is not so. On the contrary.'

'And I keep telling you,' Stiković answered weariedly, 'that without the creation of independent states on the basis of national unity and modern conceptions of personal and social liberty, there can be no talk of "social liberation". For, as some Frenchman once said, politics come first. .. .'

'The stomach comes first,' interrupted Herak.

The others too became heated and the naïve students' discussion became a youthful squabble with everyone talking at once and interrupting one another and which, at the first quips, degenerated into laughter and shouting.

That was a welcome excuse for Stiković to break off the argument and remain silent, without having to give the impression of a withdrawal or a defeat.

After Zorka and Zagorka who went home about ten o'clock, escorted by Velimir and Ranko, the others too began to disperse. At last only Stiković and Nikola Glasičanin were left.

These two were about the same age. At one time they had gone to school together and had shared the same lodgings in Sarajevo. They knew one another down to the last detail and just for that reason they could neither of them make up their mind whether they really liked one another. With the years the distance between them naturally became wider and harder to bridge. Every vacation they met again here in the town and each took the other's measure and looked on the other as an inseparable enemy. Now the beautiful and wayward schoolmistress Zorka had also come between them. In the long months of the previous winter she had gone about with Glasičanin who had never concealed, or been able to conceal, that he was in love. He had plunged head over heels in love with all the fire that embittered and dissatisfied persons can put into such an emotion.

But as soon as the summer months came and the students began to appear, the sensitive Glasičanin was unable to avoid seeing the interest that the schoolmistress showed in Stiković. For that reason the old tension between them, which had always been kept hidden from others, had greatly increased. All this vacation they had not once been alone together as they were now.

Now that chance had so arranged it, the first thought of each of them was to separate as soon as possible without conversation which could only be unpleasant for both. But some ridiculous consideration, known only to youth, prevented them from doing as they wished. But in this embarrassment chance again helped them and lessened at least for a moment the heavy silence that oppressed them.

In the darkness could be heard the voices of two youths who were walking on the bridge. They were moving slowly and just then halted by the 
kapia 
behind the angle of the parapet, so that Stiković and Glasičanin could not see them, or be seen by them, from their seat on the 
sofa. 
But they could hear every word and the voices were well known to them. They were two of their younger comrades. Toma Galus and Fehim Bahtijarević. These two kept themselves a little apart from the group which comprised most of the other students and which gathered every evening on the 
kapia 
around Stiković and Herak, for, although younger, Galus was a rival of Stiković both as a poet and as a nationalist speaker. He did not like Stiković nor admire him, while Bahtijarević was exceptionally silent, proud and reserved as befitted a true grandchild of a family of begs.

Toma Galus was a tall youth with red cheeks and blue eyes. His father, Alban von Galus, the last descendant of an ancient family of the Burgenland, had come to the town as a civil servant immediately after the occupation. He had been for twelve years a forestry inspector and now lived in the town on pension. At the very beginning, he had married the daughter of one of the local landowners, Hadji Toma Stanković, a robust and full-blown young woman of dark skin and strong will. They had had three children, two daughters and one son, all of whom had been christened into the Serbian Orthodox Church and had grown up like real townsmen's children and grandchildren of Hadji Toma.

Old Galus, a tall and formerly a very handsome man, with a pleasant smile and masses of thick white hair, had long become a real townsman, 'Mr Albo', whom the younger generation could not think of as a foreigner and a newcomer. He had two passions which harmed no one; hunting and his pipe, and had made many old and true friends, both among the Serbs and among the Moslems, throughout the whole district who shared his passion for the chase. He had
completely assimilated many of their customs as if he had been born and bred amongst them, especially their habit of cheerful silence and calm conversation, so characteristic of men who are passionate smokers and who love hunting, the forests and life in the open.

Young Galus had matriculated that year at Sarajevo and that autumn was due to go on to Vienna to study. But in the matter of these studies there was a division of opinion in the family. The father wanted his son to study technical sciences or forestry and the son wanted to study philosophy. For Toma Galus only resembled his father in appearance and all his desires led him in a completely opposite direction. He was one of those good scholars, modest and exemplary in everything, who pass all their examinations with ease as if playing at them, but whose real and sincere interests are taken up with satisfying their somewhat confused and disordered spiritual aspirations outside school and outside the official curriculum. These are students of serene and simple heart but of uneasy and inquisitive spirit. Those difficult and dangerous crises of the life of the senses and emotions through which so many other young men of their age pass, are almost unknown to them, therefore they find difficulty in stilling their spiritual anxieties and very often remain all their lives dilettantes, interesting eccentrics without stable occupation or definite interests. As every young man must not only fulfil the eternal and natural demands of youth and maturity and also pay tribute to the current spiritual moods and fashions of his time, which for the moment reign amongst youth, Galus too had written verses and was an active member of the revolutionary nationalist student organizations. He had also studied French for five years as an optional subject, taken an interest in literature and, more especially, philosophy. He read passionately and indefatigably. The main body of reading of the young men at school in Sarajevo at that time consisted of works from the well-known and enormous German publishing list 
Reclams Universal-Bibliotek. 
These small, cheap booklets with yellow covers and exceptionally small print were the main spiritual food available to the students of that time; from them they could become acquainted not only with German literature, but with all the more important works in world literature in German translation. From them Galus drew his knowledge of modern German philosophers, especially Nietzsche and Stirner, and in his walks in Sarajevo along the banks of the Miljačka held endless discussions about them with a sort of cold passion, in no way linking his reading with his personal life, as so many youths often do. This type of young scholar just through his examinations, ripened too early and overloaded with all kinds of varied, chaotic and unco-ordinated knowledge, was
not rare among the students of that time. A modest youth and a good student, Galus knew the freedom and the unrestraint of youth only in the daring of his thoughts and the exaggerations of his reading.

Fehim Bahtijarević was a townsman on his mother's side only. His father had been born in Rogatica and was now 
kadi 
(Moslem judge) there, but his mother was from the great local family of Osmanagić. From his earliest childhood he had passed a part of the summer vacation in the town with his mother and her relatives. He was a slender youth, graceful and well formed, fine-boned but strong. Everything about him was measured, restrained, controlled. The fine oval of his face was sunburnt, his skin browned with light touches of a dark bluish shade, his movements few and abrupt; his eyes were black with blue shadings in the whites and his glance burning but without sparkle. He had thick eyebrows which met, and a fine black down on his upper lip. Such faces are reminiscent of Persian miniatures.

That summer he too had matriculated and he was now waiting to get a state grant to study oriental languages in Vienna.

The two young men were continuing some conversation begun earlier. The subject was Bahtijarević's choice of studies. Galus was proving to him that he would be making a mistake in taking up oriental studies. In general Galus spoke much more, and more animatedly, than his companion for he was accustomed to be listened to and «to lay down the law, while Bahtijarević spoke shortly, like a man who has his own fixed ideas and feels no need to convince anyone else. Like most young men who have read much, Galus spoke with a naïve satisfaction in words, picturesque expressions and comparisons, and with a tendency to generalize, whereas Bahtijarević spoke dryly, curtly, almost indifferently.

Hidden in the shadows and reclining on the stone seats, Stiković and Glasičanin remained silent as if they had tacitly agreed to listen to the conversation of their two comrades on the bridge.

Finishing the conversation about studies, Galus said belligerently:

'In that you Moslems, you begs' sons, often make a mistake. Disconcerted by the new times, you no longer know your exact and rightful place in the world. Your love for everything oriental is only a contemporary expression of your "will to power"; for you the eastern way of life and thought is very closely bound up with a social and legal order which was the basis of your centuries of lordship. That is understandable. But it in no way means that you have any sense for orientalism as a study. You are orientals but you are making a mistake when you think that you are thereby called upon to be
orientalists. In general you have not got the calling or the true inclination for science.'

'Really!'

'No, you haven't. And when I say that, I am not saying anything insulting or offensive. On the contrary. You are the only nobles in this country, or a least you were; for centuries you have enlarged, confirmed and defended your privileges by sword and pen, legally, religiously and by force of arms; that has made of you typical warriors, administrators and landowners, and that class of men nowhere in the world worries about abstract sciences but leaves them to those who have nothing else and can do nothing else. The true studies for you are law and economics, for you are men of practical knowledge. Such are men from the ruling classes, always and everywhere.'

'You mean that we should remain uneducated?'

'No, it does not mean that, but it means that you must remain what you are or, if you like, what you have been; you must, for no one can be at the same time what he is and the contrary of what he is.'

'But we are no longer a ruling class today. Today we are all equal,' Bahtijarević broke in once more with a touch of irony, in which was both bitterness and pride.

'You are not, naturally you are not. The conditions which at one time made you what you were have changed long ago, but that does not mean that you can change with the same speed. This is not the first, nor will it be the last, instance of a social caste losing its reason for existence and yet remaining the same. Conditions of life change but a class remains what it is, for only so can it exist and as such it will die.'