Bosnian Chronicle Read online

  Yet even dreams of beauty must be paid for. Sometimes, as he held the bowl of soap lather in his thin blue hands and stood beside his fat master, busy shaving the pate of some effendi, the older man would notice his vacuous look and indicate with his eyes and a familiar gesture that he was supposed to pay attention to the master’s razor and learn, instead of gaping, cretinlike, into the blue yonder through the open shop door. The boy would start, look nervously at the master, and then glue his eyes to the razor. But a minute later his look would glaze over again and his eyes, peeled to the naked bluish swath left on the effendi’s pate by the master’s razor, would see on it the garden of paradise and a creature of exquisite beauty whose feet moved with gazelle-like grace. Once again the master would notice his mooning and deal out the first clout—with his free left hand, on whose forefinger there would be a thick gob of used-up shaving lather. Then it would take all of Salko’s skill to hold on to the lather bowl while quietly absorbing the smack, for so much depended on it. Otherwise the whacking became a rain of lather and even the clay pipe came into play.

  Such was master Hamid’s system for curing his apprentice of woolgathering, for coaxing sense into his head while shaking nonsense and idle thoughts out of it, and generally persuading him to keep his eyes glued to the work at hand.

  However, that same life force which we mentioned at the beginning kept breaking to the surface like an underground stream, unbidden and unsuspected, welling up at different points and in different strengths and testing its power on an ever greater number of human beings of both sexes. And so it erupted even in places where there was no room for it and where, because of the resistance it was bound to meet, it could not possibly maintain its hold.

  Ever since she came to Travnik Frau von Mitterer had been visiting and making gifts to the Catholic churches and chapels in the countryside. She did this not so much because she wanted to, but because the Colonel insisted, for he was anxious to increase his influence among the Catholic clergy and their congregations.

  Vases of imitation porcelain were ordered from Vienna, and bargain candelabra and gilded twigs, all cheap and tasteless junk but a rare novelty in these parts. From Zagreb they obtained some embroidered brocade stoles and chasubles, made by the nuns of that city, which the Consul’s wife donated to the monastery at Gucha Gora and to the priests of the village churches around Travnik.

  But even on these errands, which were to serve a practical purpose beside pleasing God, Anna Maria could not keep a sense of proportion. As always, she was carried away by her passionate temperament which sooner or later was bound to twist everything she undertook, achieving the opposite of what she intended. By her zeal she very soon raised doubts among the Moslems, and alarmed and bewildered the friars and people of Dolats, who were mistrustful and apprehensive as it was. In making and distributing her gifts, she was capricious and unpredictable; she barged into the churches, rearranged the altar decorations to suit her taste, decided what was to be aired and laundered, which walls were to be whitewashed. The friars, who in any case abhorred innovations and disliked anyone’s meddling in their affairs, even with the best of intentions, at first watched it all in amazement, and soon afterwards began to exchange glances and discuss it among themselves and plot active resistance.

  To the chapel priest in the nearby village of Orashye, this extraordinary zeal of Frau von Mitterer came to be a real temptation and danger. The chaplain, whose name was Fra Miyat Bakovich, was alone at the time, as his superior, whose name was also Fra Miyat but who was generally known as “the Carter,” was away on business for the Order. The chaplain was a frail, nearsighted young man, given to daydreaming. He found it hard to bear his isolation and the bleak village life, and he had not yet firmly found his feet in the Order.

  On this young chaplain Anna Maria descended with all the protective ardor of which she was capable, with that half-maternal, half-loverlike concern which so easily creates awkwardness and confusion even in more experienced and poised men. For a time in early summer she rode out to Orashye twice and three times a week, dismounted at the chapel with her escort, called the young priest out and gave him advice on how to order his church and his home. She meddled in his household, his daily schedule, and his church services. And the young friar gazed at her as if she were a marvelous and unexpected vision, too exalted and dazzling to be experienced without some pain. The narrow band of white lace around her neck, above the black fabric of her riding habit, shone as if it were made of light itself; to pupils that have never dared to look a woman straight in the face, it was blinding stuff. In her presence, the young chaplain shivered as in fever. And Frau von Mitterer looked with delight at those skinny, trembling hands and at the friar’s face, while he died of shame at his own awkwardness.

  And when she rode down the slope and away toward Travnik, the young chaplain sat devastated on the bench in front of the old parish house. In those moments everything seemed withered, lusterless, and dull to him, the village, the church, and his work. But next time, as soon as he caught a glimpse of the riders from Travnik, everything would shine and bloom once more. The confused trembling would start all over again, made more fevered by his desire to break free once and for all, as soon as possible, from that loveliness that so dazzled and ravaged him.

  Luckily for the chaplain, Fra Miyat the Carter returned to the parish before long and the young man confessed himself thoroughly and wholeheartedly. The Carter was a husky energetic man of fifty, with a broad face, short upturned nose, and slanting eyes; experienced and tactful, witty and full of jokes, a learned and eloquent friar. He had no difficulty in sizing up the situation and divining the poor chaplain’s predicament.

  The first thing he did was to send the chaplain back to the monastery. And next time Frau von Mitterer rode up with her escort, instead of the embarrassed chaplain it was the Carter who came out to meet her. Smiling and relaxed, he sat down on an old tree stump and through a cloud of cigar smoke told the surprised Consul’s wife, in reply to her suggestion about some church arrangement: “I wonder, madam, why you should want to break your legs on these rough village roads when the good Lord gave you every opportunity of sitting at home in complete ease and comfort. May the Lord give you long life, but you’d never be able to make order in these churches and chapels of ours, even if you spent all of the Emperor’s treasury on them. Our churches are just like us—anything better wouldn’t do. So if you have any gifts for our village churches, send them up with someone. We’ll be delighted to have them, and you shall have God’s own reward.”

  Offended, Frau von Mitterer tried once more to talk about the church and the parish, but Fra Miyat gave a humorous turn to all her remarks. And when she angrily mounted her black horse, the parish priest snatched the small friar’s cap off his rumpled hair, made an impish little bow, and said in a voice both humble and bantering: “A fine horse, madam, good enough for a bishop.”

  Anna Maria never again visited the chapel at Orashye.

  About the same time, the parish priest of Dolats approached Colonel von Mitterer in this matter. Since the Brothers looked upon the Consul as a friend and protector and didn’t wish to offend him in any way, they chose the portly and lumbering but sly and clever Fra Ivo to intimate to the Consul in some way that the zeal of Frau von Mitterer was not convenient; he was to do it tactfully, so as not to offend either the Consul or his wife. Fra Ivo, whom the local Moslems called “Fox,” and for good reason, accomplished this in very good style. He first explained to the Consul how, for fear of the Turks, the friars had to watch their every step and exercise particular care in meeting and being seen with other people, how welcome they found the gifts which Frau von Mitterer brought them, and how they would never stop thanking God for her and for what she gave. He wound up his long tale with a subtle unspoken hint, to the effect that they would be delighted to receive further gifts, but it might be better if Frau von Mitterer didn’t deliver them personally and desisted from supervising their distribution an
d use.

  However, Frau von Mitterer had already lost interest in churches and was disenchanted with the friars and their flocks. She burst in on the Colonel one morning and unleashed a hail of insults and harsh words on his head. The French Consul, she cried, was perfectly right to seek the company of Jews who were better educated than these Turkish Catholics. She came up to him and demanded to know whether he was a consul-general or a sacristan. She swore never again to set foot either in the Dolats church or in the parsonage.

  That was how the young chaplain at Orashye was saved from what would have been an idle game to Anna Maria, but which for him might have been a grave trial. The incident also marked the end of Anna Maria’s “religious period” in her life in Travnik.

  The force we have been referring to all this time did not spare the French Consulate on the other bank of the Lashva, for she made no distinction between flags and sovereign emblems.

  While Mme Daville was tending to her children on the ground floor of the “Dubrovnik Depot,” while Daville pored over his long consular reports and knotty literary plans on the floor above them, the “young Consul” was struggling with his loneliness and with the desires which that state of mind breeds but cannot satisfy. He helped Daville in the chancellery and rode through the countryside, he studied the language and the customs of the natives and worked on his book about Bosnia. He did everything he could to fill his days and nights. And yet, when a man is young and still free from the worries of life, there remains enough vitality and time for yearning and loneliness and for those hour-long wanderings which only youth knows.

  That was how the “young Consul” discovered Jelka, a young girl from Dolats.

  We have seen how Mme Daville, after coming to Travnik, needed time and patience to gain the confidence of the Brothers and the sympathy of the Dolats folk. In the beginning, even the poor balked at the idea of giving their children in service to the French Consulate. But after they had got to know Mme Daville better and saw how many useful things the maids learned from her, the people eagerly volunteered to work for Madame Consul. All at once, there were several Dolats girls in the Consulate doing housework or learning the needlework which Mme Daville taught them.

  During the summer months there would be three or four girls at one time doing needlework or knitting. They sat by the windows on the broad veranda, bent over their work and singing softly. Going in and out of Daville’s office, Desfosses often passed the line of girls. They would then bend their heads even lower and their singing would falter and become ragged. Striding down the wide passage in his long-legged fashion, the young man often took a better look at the girls and spoke a word or two by way of greeting, to which they were usually too bashful to reply. Indeed, it was hard for them to know what to reply, because each time he said something different, usually a phrase he had picked up that day, which confused them quite as much as his open manner, his brisk movements, and his bold and clear voice. After a whole series of these encounters, under the strange logic that rules these kinds of relations, Desfosses came to be most impressed by the girl who dropped her head lowest when he passed by.

  Her name was Jelka, and she was the daughter of a small shopkeeper who had a modest house, full of children, at Dolats. Her strong brown hair fell in a thick bang over her forehead and down to her eyes. An indefinable quality, which had something to do with the way she dressed and with her beauty, marked her apart from the other girls. The young man learned to recognize the glossy brown chignon and the firm white nape of her neck among the bowed heads of the other needleworkers. And one day, when he gazed a little longer at that bent neck, the girl unexpectedly lifted her head, as if his eyes burned her and she wished to escape them; and in doing so, showed him for a moment a fresh wide face, with shiny but gentle brown eyes, a firm and slightly irregular nose, and a strong though perfectly turned mouth with lips that were almost identical in shape and barely meeting. Surprised, the young man stared at the face and saw a faint quiver in the corners of the full mouth, as though she wanted to cry but was checking herself, while the brown eyes lighted up with a smile in spite of it. The young man smiled back and called out a phrase from his “Illyrian” vocabulary, the first one that came to his mind, since at that age and in that situation all words are fitting and meaningful. To hide her laughing eyes and her lips, with their faint quiver of intimated but nonexistent tears, the girl dropped her head again and once more presented him with her white neck under the brown bun of hair.

  The scene was repeated several times in the next few days, like a private game between them. All games have a tendency to go on and perpetuate themselves, but the tendency becomes irresistible when the players are a young girl like this and a lonely young man, torn by desire. The trite phrases, the lingering glances, and the unconscious smiles thus come together and fuse into a solid bridge that virtually builds itself.

  He began to think of her at night and in the morning when he woke up; he began to look for her, first in his thoughts, and then in actual reality, and to meet her more and more often, as if by chance, and gaze at her more and more pointedly. It was the time of the year when everything sprouted and burst into leaf and flower, and so she appeared to him as an aspect—a distinct flesh-and-blood aspect—of that rich, pullulating world of plants and trees. “She’s a sapling,” he told himself, like a man humming a refrain who knows neither why he is humming nor the meaning of the refrain. With that rosy skin and bashful smile of hers, and that trick of hanging her head like a flower nodding in the wind, she did, indeed, become associated in his mind with flowers and fruit, although in a deeper and special sense, which he didn’t pause to examine—something like a materialized quintessence of fruit and flowers.

  When the spring was well advanced and the garden was in leaf, the girls sat and worked outdoors. There they embroidered all through the summer.

  If anyone wanted to find out about Travnik from two travelers, one of whom had spent the winter there and the other the summer, he would get two completely opposite views of the town. The first would say that he had lived in hell, and the other that he had been close to paradise. Places like Travnik, which are badly situated and have a trying climate, usually have a few weeks in the year which, by their beauty and delightful contrast, make up as it were for all the fickleness and hardship of the other seasons. In Travnik, this period falls between the start of June and the end of August, making the month of July a time of extraordinary glory.

  When the last deep hollow has yielded up its puddle of snow, when the spring blizzards and rains have died away; when the winds have lost their bluster, cold and tepid in turns, now gusty and full of sound, now light and ruffling; when the clouds drift up at last toward the high blurred edge of the sheer amphitheater of the mountains that ring the town; when the balmy glitter of leisurely days begins to roll back the night in real earnest and on the slopes above the town the meadows take on a yellow tinge, while sagging pear trees carpet the stubble fields with the generous surfeit of their harvest, dropping down from its own weight—that is when the short and lovely Travnik summer begins.

  Desfosses cut short his excursions to the countryside and spent many hours in the sloping garden of the Consulate, walking the same paths and looking at the same shrubbery as if they were a wonder he had never seen before. And Jelka usually managed to be there before the other girls, or lingered on when they had gone. From the patch of level ground on which they sat and worked, she went more and more often down to the house for thread or water or a bite to eat. Now she and the young man often met on some narrow path or other that was hemmed in by thick greenery. She would lower her broad white face, and he would smile and speak his “Illyrian” words, in which the letter r sounded throaty and slurred and the accent was always on the last syllable.

  One afternoon they tarried a little longer on one of those little-used paths that was lost in the foliage, where even the shadows breathed heat. The young girl wore loose Turkish trousers of a dove color and a tight-fitting
waistcoat of pale blue silk with a single button. Her ruffled shirt was pinned at the neck with a silver brooch. Her arms, bare to the elbows, were young and smooth and the skin on them had a rosy blush. The young man took her by the forearm. The spot where he touched her blanched at once, leaving a pale imprint of his fingers.

  Her lips—pale rose, full-fleshed, completely and strangely alike—curled up slowly in that imploring and, as it were, tearful smile, but a moment later the girl bowed her head and clung to him, mute and giving like spring grass or the twig of a young tree. “A sapling,” he thought once again, but the weight pressing against him was a human being, a woman in a faint of tenderness, with a mind still struggling but already resigned to heartbreak and submission. Her arms hung limply at her sides, her mouth was half-open, the eyelids partly drawn, as in a swoon. There she was, pressed into him, around him, fey with the agony of love, with the ravishing promise of love and the shadow of horror that came in its wake. Clinging, numbed, struck down, she was the image of utter surrender, helplessness, defeat, and despair, and of rare greatness too.

  Throbbing with his own blood, the young man exulted in his happiness and an irrepressible sense of triumph. Yes, that was it! Had he not always felt, and said in so many words, that this poor, barren, and God-forsaken country was actually a land of untold bounty? And here, now, one of its hidden beauties was reaching out for the light of day.