Bosnian Chronicle Read online

  How was one to avoid staggering from exhaustion and the giddy rush that had been going on for years, yet how was one to chuck everything and abandon all further effort and endeavor? How was a man to see clearly or understand anything in the general and incessant scramble and confusion, and then again how was he to march through fatigue, convulsions, and uncertainty toward some new, vanishing, nebulous horizon?

  It seemed only yesterday that he had listened with excitement to the news of the Austerlitz victory, with its promise of hope and settlement; only this morning that he had written his verses about the Battle of Jena; only a little while ago that he had read bulletins of the victory in Spain, the entry into Madrid, the sweeping of the English troops clear out of the Iberian Peninsula. The echo of one campaign had scarcely died down and already it was mingling with the tumult and fury of new events. Were the laws of nature really to be changed by force, or was everything to be smashed on their rocklike constancy? Sometimes it looked as if the first might happen, sometimes the second; yet there was no clear conclusion. The spirit grew numb, the brain refused to function. In this state and mood he kept marching along, together with other millions of people; he worked and talked, trying his best to keep in step, to do his part, not showing or breathing his oppressive, wretched doubts and confusion of soul to anyone.

  And now, here it was beginning all over again, down to the last detail. He received Le Moniteur and Journal de l’Empire, containing articles that explained and justified the need for the new campaign and forecast its certain success. (While he read them, Daville had no doubt that that was how things were and how they ought to be.) Then days and weeks would follow in which he debated with himself, doubted, waited for something to happen. (Why war again? How long would it last? How would all this affect the world, Napoleon, France, and Daville himself and his family? Would their luck hold out this time, or would they live to see their first defeat, a harbinger of the end to come?) But later there would be a bulletin of new successes, with the names of cities occupied and countries overrun. And finally a total victory and a victorious peace, with new territorial gains and new promises of a general reconciliation, which in fact would never take place.

  Then, together with all the rest, and perhaps louder than the rest, Daville would celebrate the victory and talk about it as though it were a self-understood thing, in which he too had played a part. And no one would ever see or know those sickening doubts and trepidations which victory had dispelled like mist and which he was now trying to forget himself. For a short time, but only a very short time, he would deceive even himself, but soon the imperial war machine would give another heave and he would begin another private game with himself, identical with those he had played before. And all of it was sapping and whittling him down and made for a life that seemed peaceful and orderly to the naked eye, but which in fact was an unbearable torment and went sorely against his deeper grain and the whole of his real being.

  The fifth coalition against Napoleon was formed during that winter and was made public, suddenly, in the spring. As he had done four years before, but even more swiftly and daringly, Napoleon’s answer to the treacherous attack was a lightning strike at Vienna. Now even the uninitiated could see why the consulates had been opened in Bosnia and what purpose they were meant to serve.

  All contact ceased between the French and the Austrian at Travnik. Their household staffs did not greet one another, the consuls avoided meeting each other on the street. On Sundays, during the high Mass in the church at Dolats, Mme Daville and Frau von Mitterer and her daughter sat far apart from one another. The two consuls paid court to the Vizier and his staff more assiduously than before and intensified their cultivation of the friars, the Orthodox priests, and leading citizens. Von Mitterer broadcast the proclamation of the Austrian Emperor, Daville the French bulletin of the first victory at Eckmühl. Couriers overtook and crossed one another on the road between Split and Travnik.

  General Marmont wanted at all cost to take his Dalmatian troops and join up with Napoleon’s main army before a decisive battle took place. He therefore asked Daville for information about the districts he would have to pass through on his way north, and kept sending him fresh instructions. This trebled the volume of Daville’s work and made it increasingly burdensome, expensive, and complex; all the more so as von Mitterer watched his every step and, being an experienced military man and past master of frontier intrigue and jockeying, used every conceivable trick to prevent General Marmont’s passage through the provinces of Lika and Croatia. As the number and gravity of Daville’s tasks mounted, so did his energy, his resourcefulness, and his will to fight. He managed, with the help of D’Avenat, to discover and organize all those who from sentiment or self-interest were against Austria and willing to work in that direction wherever they could. He sent appeals to the Turkish fortress commanders along the frontier, especially to the captain of Novi, the brother of the unfortunate Ahmed Beg Cerich, whom he had been unable to save from death in the Travnik prison; he encouraged them to foray into the Austrian territory and offered them money and equipment for the sallies.

  Von Mitterer, through the friars at Livno, sent news and proclamations into Dalmatia, which was under French occupation, kept in touch with the Catholic clergy in northern Dalmatia, and helped to organize resistance against the French.

  All the paid agents and volunteer workers of the two consulates scattered in various directions and their activity began to make itself felt in a general unrest and in frequent clashes.

  The friars stopped all intercouse with the people at the French Consulate. In the monasteries prayers were offered for the victory of Austrian arms over the Jacobin hosts and their godless Emperor, Napoleon.

  The consuls visited and received people with whom ordinarily they would never be seen, they distributed gifts and bribed generously. They worked day and night, not sparing their strength or wasting too many scruples on the means they employed. In this the Colonel had many more things in his favor than Daville. True, he was a tired man, ground down by troubles and ill health, yet to him this way of life and struggle was nothing new and it accorded with his experience and training. Faced with orders from the higher authority, the Colonel soon forgot himself and his family and slid into the well-worn rut of imperial service, jogging along without joy or enthusiasm but also without a second thought or futile arguments. Besides, the Colonel knew the language, the country, the people, and local conditions and had no difficulty in finding sincere and selfless helpers wherever he turned. All this was nonexistent in the case of Daville, who was forced to work under all manner of handicaps. Even so, his sense of duty, his alertness of mind and innate Gallic fighting spirit sustained him and goaded him to keep in the forefront of the race; not only that, but he managed to give as good as he got.

  Despite all this, if things had depended only on the two consuls, their relations would not have been quite so bad. The worst elements were their petty officials and clerks, their agents and servants, who observed no limits in their intrigue and blackening of each other. They were carried away by their official zeal and personal vanity as a huntsman is carried away by his passion, and they forgot themselves so far that in their eagerness to humiliate and squeeze each other out they degraded and lowered themselves in the eyes of the rayah and the gloating Turks.

  Both Daville and von Mitterer saw clearly how damaging this reckless and unsparing tug of war between them was to both camps and to the prestige of Christians and Europeans in general, and how undignified it was for the two of them, the only representatives of civilization in this barbarian wilderness, to grapple and wrestle in front of these people who hated, despised, and misunderstood them both, and to call on these same people to be their witnesses and judges. Daville, who was in a weaker position, felt this especially. He decided, through the intermediary of Cologna, who was regarded as an unofficial person, to draw von Mitterer’s attention to this and to propose to him that they both curb their overzealous co-workers
a little. Cologna would be contacted by young Desfosses, since the interpreter D’Avenat was not on speaking terms with the old doctor. At the same time, through his devout wife and by other feasible means, he wanted to influence the friars and to indicate to them that, as the representatives of the Holy Church, they were sinning when they gave their exclusive and one-sided endorsement to one of the embattled sides.

  To show the Brothers how groundless were their accusations about the godlessness of the French regime and in order to place them under greater obligation, he hit on the idea of asking them for a permanent paid chaplain for the French Consulate. Through the parish priest of Dolats he sent a letter to the bishop of Foynitsa. When he received no reply, it fell to Mme Daville to approach Fra Ivo and convince him personally what a good and fitting thing it would be if the friars were to assign one of the Brothers as chaplain and were to modify their attitude toward the French Consulate in general.

  One Saturday afternoon Mme Daville went to Dolats, accompanied by an “Illyrian” interpreter and a groom. She had carefully chosen a weekday, when there would be evening Benediction in the church, rather than a Sunday when there was a throng of people and the parish priest was busy.

  Fra Ivo received Madame Consul very civilly, as always. He told her that the bishop’s reply had arrived “that morning” and he was just getting ready to send it on to the Consul-General. The reply was negative, for much to their regret, in these difficult times when they were poor, persecuted, and few in number, they did not have enough friars even for the immediate needs of their flock. Moreover, the Turks would be only too apt to look upon such a chaplain as an agent and a spy and would take it out on the Order as a whole. In short, the bishop was very sorry not to be able to grant the French Consul’s request and begged him to understand his position, etc., etc.

  So wrote the bishop, but Fra Ivo made no bones of the fact that even were he able and allowed to do so, he himself would never permit a chaplain of their Order to serve in one of Napoleon’s consulates. Madame Daville tried, in her mild-mannered way, to correct his opinion; but the friar, in his carapace of fat, remained unbending. While freely acknowledging his personal respect toward Mme Daville, for her sincere and undoubted piety (the Brothers, in general, had much more respect for Mme Daville than for Frau von Mitterer), he nevertheless stuck to his viewpoint obstinately. He accompanied his words with a rather fierce lopping motion of his huge hand, which sent an unwitting shudder through Mme Daville. It was obvious that his instructions were clear, his attitude set, and that he had no desire to discuss it with anyone, least of all with a woman.

  After reassuring her once more that he would always be at her service for any spiritual needs but that, in all other respects, he must stick to his viewpoint, Fra Ivo left her and went into the church, where Benediction was about to begin. That day, for some reason, there were quite a number of friars and visitors at Dolats and this gave Benediction a special air of solemnity.

  If she could have followed her own impulse, Mme Daville would have returned home right away, but considerations of duty required that she stay for Benediction, lest anyone get the idea that she had come only to talk to Fra Ivo. This normally poised woman, who was not given to excesses of feeling, was upset and offended by the parish priest’s reaction. The unpleasant conversation had been all the more disagreeable as due to her upbringing and her temperament she had always kept aloof from such general problems and public affairs.

  Now she stood in the church beside a wooden pillar and listened to the muffled and yet ragged chanting of the friars, who were kneeling on both sides of the altar. Fra Ivo was saying Benediction. Portly and lumbering though he was, he yet managed, whenever necessary, to bend down lightly and nimbly on one knee and then straighten up again in one swift, unbroken movement; but Mme Daville still had a vivid mental picture of his huge hand in its cutting gesture of refusal, and of his eyes, hard with pride and obstinacy, as he had looked at her interpreter during their talk just now. Never before in France had she seen that look either on a priest’s or a layman’s face.

  The Brothers sang the Litany of the Virgin in a soft chorus, in their peasant voices. A deep voice took the lead: Sancta Maria.

  And they all replied hoarsely, in unison: Ora pro nobis.

  The voice went on: Sancta virgo virginum . . .

  Ora pro nobis, the other voices answered all together.

  The praying voice continued to call out the attributes of Mary with a long drawl: Imperatrix Reginarum . . . Laus sanctarum animarum . . . Vera salutrix earum . . .

  And after each one, the chorus echoed in a ringing monotone: Ora pro nobis.

  Madame Daville would have wanted to join in and pray the familiar litany, which she had once listened to in the drafty cathedral choir of her native Avranches, but she could not forget the conversation of a little while before or push away the thoughts which mingled with her prayer.

  “We all say the same prayers, we are all Christians and of the same faith, and still there are such gulfs between us,” she thought, still seeing in her mind’s eye the fierce stubborn look and the cutting hand movement of this same Fra Ivo who was now singing litanies.

  The chanted catalogue went on undiminished: Sancta Mater Domini . . . Sancta Dei genitrix . . .

  Yes indeed, one knew that these gulfs existed, together with all the other enmities between peoples, but it was only when a person went out into the world and felt them in his own life that he truly realized how great they were, how deep and unbridgeable. What sort of prayer should one pray that could fill up and erase all these gulfs? Her mood of dejection told her that there was no such prayer; but at this point her mind stopped short, helplessly bewildered, and she whispered quietly, joining her barely audible voice to the steady chant of the friars which kept recurring like a wave, over and over again: “Ora pro nobis!”

  When vespers were finished, she humbly took the benediction from that same hand of Fra Ivo’s.

  Outside, in front of the church, she found Desfosses and his groom waiting, beside her own escort. He had been riding through Dolats, and when he found out that Mme Daville was in church he decided to wait for her and accompany her back to Travnik. She was glad to see the familiar, cheerful face of the young man and to hear the sound of her mother tongue.

  They rode back to town along the broad, dry road. The sun had set, but the whole countryside was still bathed in a luminous, reflected yellow light. The clay surface of the road looked red and warm, while the new foliage and the flower buds on the undergrowth stood out against the dark bark, as if they were made of light itself.

  Beside her walked the young man, flushed from exercise, and chatting away with a good deal of animation. Behind them was the sound of the grooms’ footsteps and the stomping of Desfosses’s horse, which one of the servants was leading by the rein. The murmur of the litanies was still in her ears. Now the road began to slope downhill. The roofs of Travnik loomed ahead, with thin blue smoke above them, and the sight of them brought back the reality of ordinary life with its needs and tasks, far removed from her dismal thoughts, doubts, and prayers.

  About the same time Desfosses had his talk with Cologna.

  He went to see him one evening, around eight o’clock, accompanied by a kavass and a groom carrying a lantern. The house stood on one side of a steep rise, enveloped in a damp mist and thick darkness. Unseen waters from the spring of Shumech filled the night with a purl. This sound of water was muffled and transmuted by the darkness and magnified by the silence. The path was wet and slippery; in the meager, flickering light of the Turkish lantern it looked as new and unfamiliar as a forest glade trodden by human feet for the first time. The gate to the house appeared just as mysterious and unexpected. The threshold and the ringed doorknockers were illuminated, but everything else was in darkness; shapes and dimensions of objects stretched away into the night, defying identification. The door gave out a hard, hollow sound when the kavass knocked. The noise struck Desfosses as somehow rude
and out of place, almost a physical pain, and he winced at the man’s excessive zeal, which seemed to him boorish and uncalled-for.

  “Who’s knocking?” The voice came from above, more like an echo of the kavass’s banging than a question in its own right.

  “The young Consul. Open up!” shouted Ali, the kavass, in that unpleasant, needlessly sharp voice in which young people are apt to talk to one another in the presence of a senior.

  Male voices and the gurgle of water from afar—it was all like some casual and unexpected cries in a forest, without a known cause and without a visible effect. Finally there was the rattle of a chain, the creaking of the lock, and the noise of a latch. The gate opened slowly and behind it there stood a man with a lantern, pale and drowsy, wrapped in a shepherd’s coat. Two lights of unequal intensity illumined the sloping courtyard and the low dark windows of the ground floor of the house. The two servants’ lanterns vied with each other to light the ground at the young Consul’s feet. Bemused by this interplay of voices and flashing lights, Desfosses suddenly found himself before the wide, open door of a large ground-floor apartment, which was full of smoke and the heavy reek of tobacco floating on the moldy air.

  In the middle of the room, by a large candelabrum, stood Cologna, tall and stooping, dressed in a weird assortment of Turkish and European garments. On his head was a small black cap, from under which peeped long, sparse tufts of gray hair. The old man bowed deeply and spoke resonant greetings and compliments in that peculiar language of his which might have been either corrupt Italian or half-learned French, all of which sounded glib and stilted to the young man, empty conventions that were not only devoid of cordiality and genuine respect but lacked even the normal conviction a speaker might be expected to put behind his words. And then all at once everything he had encountered in that low-ceilinged, smoky apartment—the reek and the appearance of the room, the figure and the speech of the man—coalesced into a single word, so quickly, so vividly and clearly that he all but said it out aloud: age. Melancholy, toothless, forgetful, lonesome, earth-bound old age, which corroded, travestied, and embittered all things—thoughts, sights, movements, and sounds—all things, even light and smell themselves.