The Bridge on the Drina (56 page)

Outside it was by now full day.

He could not have said even approximately how long he lay there. What roused him out of his deep unconsciousness was a light and at the same time the sound of voices. He came to himself with difficulty. He knew very well that he was lying there in complete darkness and yet through the narrow entrance a ray of light reached him from the shop. He remembered how the world had been filled with sound and uproar in which a man's hearing was deafened and his entrails melted within him. Now there was silence once more, but no longer like that silence that had seemed to him so sweet before the cataclysm that had thrown him down where he was now, but like some evil sister of it. How deep was this silence he best realized by some weak voices which, as if from a great distance, were shouting his name.

Realizing that he was alive and still in his little room, the
hodja
extricated himself from the mass of objects that had fallen on top of him from the shelves, and rose, groaning continually and uttering cries of pain. Now he could hear the voices from the street clearly.

He went down and crawled through the narrow opening into the shop. It was littered with fallen and broken objects, all in the full light of day. The shop was wide open, for the door-shutter, which he had left leaning but unlocked, had been knocked over by the blast.

In the chaos and disorder of scattered goods and damaged objects that lay in the centre of the shop was a heavy stone about the size of a man's head. The
hodja
looked up. Clearly the stone had flown through the air, breaking through the weak roof of wooden shingles. Alihodja looked again at the stone, white and porous, smooth and clean-cut on two sides but sharp and crudely broken on the other two. 'Ah, the bridge!' thought the
hodja
but the voices from the street summoned him even more loudly and peremptorily and would not let him think.

Bruised and still only half-conscious, the
hodja
found himself face to face with a group of five or six young men, dusty and unshaven, in grey uniforms with forage-caps on their heads and peasant sandals on their feet. All were armed and wore crossed bandoliers filled with small, shining bullets. With them was Vlado Marić the locksmith, but without his usual cap, wearing a fur hat and with the same cartridge belts across his chest. One of the men, clearly the leader, a young man with thin black moustaches and a regular face with fine features and fiery eyes, at once addressed the
hodja.
He was carrying his rifle over his shoulder like a hunter and had a thin hazel switch in his right hand.

'Hey, you! Do you usually leave your shop wide open? If anything is missing you will say that my soldiers have pillaged it. Do you expect me to look after your goods for you?'

The man's face was calm, almost without expression, but his voice was angry and the switch in his hand was raised threateningly. Vlado Marić came up and whispered to him.

'Very well, then. Perhaps he is a good and honest man, but if I find he has left his shop yawning wide open again, he will not get off so easily.'

The armed men went on their way.

'Those are the others,' said the
hodja
to himself, looking after them. 'Why should they light on me as soon as they come into the town? It seems that nothing can change in this town without the whole lot falling on my head!'

He stood in front of his damaged shop, mouth open, with heavy head and broken body. Before him lay the square which, in the early morning sun, looked like a battlefield, scattered with large and small bits of stone, tiles and broken branches. His gaze turned to the bridge. The
kapia
was there where it had always been, but just beyond the
kapia
the bridge stopped short. There was no longer any seventh pier; between the sixth and the eighth yawned a gulf through which he could see the green waters of the river. From the eighth pier onward the bridge once more stretched to the farther bank, smooth and regular and white, as it had been yesterday and always.

The
hodja
blinked his eyes several times in unbelief; then he closed them. Before his inward sight appeared the memory of those soldiers whom he had seen six years before, concealed beneath a green tent, digging at that very pier, and he recalled the picture of that iron manhole which in later years had covered the entrance into the mined interior of the pier, and also the enigmatic yet eloquent face of Sergeant-Major Branković, deaf, blind and dumb. He started and opened his eyes again, but everything in front of him remained just as it was before; the square, scattered with large and small blocks of stone, and the bridge without one of its piers and a yawning gulf between two roughly broken arches.

Only in dreams could one see and experience such things. Only in dreams. But when he turned away from this improbable sight, there stood before him his shop with the great stone, a tiny part of that seventh nier, among his scattered goods. If it was a dream, it was everywhere.

Further down the square he could hear shouting, loud words of command in Serbian and steps hurriedly drawing nearer. Alihodja rapidly put up his door-shutter, locked it with a great padlock and began to make his way home, uphill.

Earlier too it had happened to him that while he was thus going uphill his breath had failed him and he had felt his heart beating where it should not have been. For a lone time past, from his fiftieth year, he had found the hill on which his house was built steeper and steeper and the way home longer and longer. But never so long as it was today when he wanted to get away from the market-place as quickly as possible and get home as soon as he could. His heart was beating as it should not have, his breath failed him and he was forced to halt.

Down below there, it seemed, thev were singing. Down below there, too, was the ruined bridge, horribly, cruellv cut in half. There was no need for him to turn (and he would not have turned for anything in the world) to see the whole picture; in the distance the pier cut short like a gigantic tree-trunk and scattered in a thousand pieces and the arches to left and right of it brutally cut short. The broken arches yawned painfully towards one another across the break.

No, not for anything would he have turned round. But he could
not go forward, uphill, for his heart stifled him more and more and his legs refused to obey him. He began to breathe more and more deeply, slowly, in measure, each time more deeply. That had always helped him before. It helped him now. His chest seemed to grow easier. Between the measured deep breathing and the beating of his heart he established a sort of balance. He began to walk once more and the thought of home and bed stimulated and drove him on. He walked painfully and slowly and before his eyes, as if it moved along in front of him, was the whole scene with the ruined bridge. It was not enough to turn one's back on a thing for it to cease to goad and torment one. Even when he shut his eyes he could still see it.

Yes, thought the
hodja
more animatedly, for he was now breathing a little more easily, now one can see what all their tools and their equipment really meant, all their hurry and activity. (He had always been right, always, in everything and despite everybody. But that no longer gave him any satisfaction. For the first time it did not really matter. He had been only too right!) For so many years he had seen how they had always been concerning themselves with the bridge; they had cleaned it, embellished it, repaired it down to its foundations, taken the water supply across it, lit it with electricity and then one day blown it all into the skies as if it had been some stone in a mountain quarry and not a thing of beauty and value, a bequest. Now one could see what they were and what they wanted. He had always known that but now, now even the most stupid of fools could see it for himself. They had begun to attack even the strongest and most lasting of things, to take things away even from God. And who knew where it would stop! Even the Vezir's bridge had begun to crumble away like a necklace; and once it began no one could hold it back.

The
hodja
halted again. His breath failed him and the slope suddenly grew steeper before him. Again he had to calm his heartbeats with deeo breathing. Again he succeeded in recovering his breath, felt himself revive and walked on more quickly.

So be it, thoueht the
hodja.
If they destroy here, then somewhere else someone else is building. Surely there are still peaceful countries and men of good sense who know of God's love? If God had abandoned this unluckv town on the Drina, he had surely not abandoned the whole world that was beneath the skies? They would not do this for ever. But who knows? (Oh. if only he could breathe a little more deeolv, get a little more air!) Who knows? Perhaps this impure infidel faith that puts evervthing in order, cleans everything up, repairs and embellishes everything onlv in order suddenly and violently to demolish and destroy, might spread through the whole world; it
might make of all God's world an empty field for its senseless building and criminal destruction, a pasturage for its insatiable hunger and incomprehensible demands? Anything might happen. But one thing could not happen; it could not be that great and wise men of exalted soul who would raise lasting buildings for the love of God, so that the world should be more beautiful and man live in it better and more easily, should everywhere and for all time vanish from this earth. Should they too vanish, it would mean that the love of God was extinguished and had disappeared from the world. That could not be.

Filled with his thoughts, the
hodja
walked more heavily and slowly.

Now they could clearly be heard singing in the market-place. If only he had been able to breathe in more air, if only the road were less steep, if only he were able to reach home, lie down on his divan and see and hear someone of his own about him! That was all that he wanted now. But he could not. He could no longer maintain that fine balance between his breathing and his heartbeats; his heart had now completely stifled his breath, as had sometimes happened to him in dreams. Only from this dream there was no awakening to bring relief. He opened his mouth wide and felt his eyes bulging in his head. The slope which until then had been growing steeper and steeper was now quite close to his face. His whole field of vision was filled by that dry, rough road which became darkness and enveloped him.

Or the slope which led upwards to Mejdan lay Alihodja and breathed out his life in short gasps.

Table of Contents

INTRODUCTION

TRANSLATOR'S FOREWORD