Bosnian Chronicle Page 42

  21

  When at the beginning of the year 1812 signs began to multiply, and rumors began to spread, about a likely new war, Daville recoiled from those voices with the pained shudder of a man who knows what labors and anguish lie ahead.

  “Dear God! Dear God!” he muttered to himself, with a deep, drawn-out sigh, slumping in his chair and pressing the palm of his right hand over his eyes.

  It was the old story all over again, like two years before about this time, like those earlier years 1805 and 1806. And everything would repeat itself: the unrest and the worries, the pervading doubts and the sense of shame and loathing; and with it all, an abject hope that this time, too, everything might somehow end up well—this one more time!—and that life (this incongruous, sad, sweet, one and only life!), the life of empires, of human society, his own life and the life of his family, might somehow remain stable and enduring; that this trial might be the last; that there would be an end to this kind of existence in which a man was hurled up high and then plummeted earthward as in a swing run amuck, with just enough breath left in him to prove that he was alive. Doubtless it would all end up again with bulletins of victory, with advantageous peace treaties, but who could stand a life like this, a life that slowly and inexorably crushed one’s spirit and ate away at one’s conscience, who could find it in himself to go on paying the price such an existence demanded? What could a man give who had already given his all, whose strength had been wrung out of him? And still they were asked to keep on giving all they had and to accomplish the impossible, so that these eternal wars might finally be won and a man might take a breath and snatch a moment of peace and stability.

  “Peace, a little peace! Peace, peace,” he thought aloud, and the word was enough to lull him into a half-sleep.

  But before his closed eyelids, under the cool palm of his hand, there suddenly rose up the forgotten visage of the forgotten von Mitterer, sallow and woebegone, his deep wrinkles filled with greenish shadows, the ends of his pomaded mustache standing up stiffly, an unhealthy light burning in his dark eyes. It was with the same face, in this same room, this time last year, that von Mitterer had told him, in a voice of amiable equivocation, that next spring there was “sure to be quite a bit of noise.” (Yes, that was the exact barrack phrase he used!) And now he came back, implacably punctual, like some soulless, pedantic apparition, to remind him of that prophecy and tell him again that peace was an illusion and they were not to have it. Bitterly and with a kind of malice, as it had done the year before, when they were parting, the head of von Mitterer spoke the words: “Il y aura beaucoup de tapage.”

  Ugly words, spoken in an ugly voice, with a distinct edge of perfidy.

  “Beaucoup de tapage . . . de tapage . . . de tapage . . .”

  As if echoing the words, von Mitterer’s face began to nod in rhythm, growing more and more bloodless and deathlike. And then it was no longer von Mitterer; it was the pale and bloody severed head on the tip of the sans-culotte pike which he had glimpsed one morning from his Paris window more than twenty years before.

  Daville started, dropped the hand from his eyes and shattered his dream; with this he exorcised the apparition that had come to frighten him in his exhaustion and helplessness. The big wooden clock ticked steadily in the uncomfortably warm room.

  The spring began badly for Daville.

  The circular instructions, the growing frequency of couriers, and the shrilling tone of the press all seemed to indicate that big things and new campaigns were in the offing, that the whole war apparatus of the Empire was once again in motion. But Daville had no one he could discuss it with, no other opinions to compare with his own; there was no one to help him examine the general outlook and verify his doubts and fears, so that, in the light of a rational give and take, he might decide which part of his fear was real and which was only a figment of his imagination, apprehension, and weariness. Like all isolated people who are weak and worn out, whose self-confidence may be shaken from one moment to the next, Daville sought to find in the words and looks of others some confirmation and support for his opinions and actions, instead of searching for them in himself. But the misery was that while talk and advice were always plentiful, he could not have them when he most needed them; there was no one he could talk to clearly and openly about the things that truly worried him.

  Von Paulich tended to his own business, polite and cool, handsomely unapproachable, the imperial Austrian robot who did not waver or make mistakes. When they saw each other, they talked about Virgil or discussed the intentions of the European courts, but in none of these talks could Daville get around to testing the accuracy of his fears and forebodings, because von Paulich confined himself to decorous phrases like “alliance and family ties that exist between the Austrian and French courts,” or “the farsighted wisdom of those who nowadays jointly guide the destinies of European states,” and obstinately avoided saying anything clear or outright about the future. And Daville himself lacked the courage to ask those direct questions, for fear of giving himself away; instead he peered feverishly into the man’s strange dark blue eyes and was met again and again by the same unrelenting forbidding reserve.

  Talking to D’Avenat was no help either. He only recognized tangible things and practical questions. Anything that fell short of that stage of development did not exist for him.

  There remained his visits to the Vizier Ibrahim Pasha, and his talks with the people at the Residency. What he heard from the Vizier was a rehash of things repeated down the years, always the same, by now quite ossified, like the man himself.

  It was the first week of April, a time of the year when the Vizier grew restless and irritable at the prospect of having to fit out an army against Serbia, when he was swamped by demands and instructions from Istanbul that far exceeded his strength and patience.

  “They don’t know what they’re doing over there,” he complained to Daville, who had been hoping to ease his own mind through this conversation. “They don’t know what they want, that’s all I can say. They want me to move together with the Pasha of Nish, and at the same time, so that we should attack the rebels on two sides. But they don’t know, and don’t want to know, what my real resources are. How can my oxen keep pace with their horses? Where will I find ten thousand men and feed them and fit them out? You can’t put three Bosnians together without a squabble about who’s to be first—none of them would dream of being the last, of course. And even supposing I could manage all this, what good are these Bosnian heroes when they refuse to fight on the other side of the Drina and Sava? Their bravery and proverbial heroism go as far as the Bosnian frontier and no farther.”

  It was obvious that the Vizier was unable to think or speak of anything else at that moment. He became almost animated, if one could use that word in describing him; he waved his hand as if trying to chase away a persistent fly.

  “Furthermore, one shouldn’t waste words on Serbia, it’s not worth talking about. Ah, if Sultan Selim were alive, it would all be quite different.”

  And once the subject of the unfortunate Selim III was broached, then, for that day at least, it was useless to expect conversation on any other topic. And that was exactly what happened.

  About this time Daville sent a special gift to Tahir Beg, the Vizier’s Secretary, just to be able to visit him and hear what he had to say.

  After having vegetated through the winter, more in bed than on his feet, Tahir Beg was now beginning to revive; he was more agile and talkative, almost unnaturally lively. His face was already lightly touched with the April sun and his eyes shone as though he were a little drunk.

  The Secretary talked breathlessly and feverishly about Travnik, about the winters they had spent there together (it was his fourth and Daville’s fifth), about the feelings of friendship and the bond of common suffering which their long stay in the town had forged between the Vizier and his staff and Daville and his family; about Daville’s children; about the spring; about a great many other things th
at may have sounded irrelevant on the surface but were in fact close to Tahir Beg’s heart in his present mood. Quietly, with a small but lively smile, as though he were saying something that had only just occurred to him and which he hoped would convince Daville no less than himself, he said like a man reciting: “Spring makes up for everything, straightens everything out. As long as the fields keep flowering, over and over again, as long as there are people who look at them and enjoy them, everything is in the best possible order.”

  With a brown, sunburned hand, the nails of which were strangely ribbed and bluish in color, he made a movement indicating how all things evened out.

  “And there will always be people to do that, because those who cannot or don’t know how to see the sun and the flowers pass on constantly, and new ones arrive in their places. As the poet says, ‘Children replenish and purify the river of mankind.’”

  Daville nodded approvingly and had to smile, looking at the man’s beaming face, but privately he thought: “He’s saying these things because, for a reason God only knows, they mean something to him at this moment.” And he began at once to maneuver the conversation from spring and children to empires and wars. Tahir Beg took up every subject and discussed it with the same mild and smiling eagerness, as if he were opening a new, fascinating book.

  “Yes, we too hear that new wars are imminent. Who shall join whom and who shall fight whom, we’ll soon see. But that there will be war this summer, that’s certain.”

  “You really think so?” Daville asked, dismayed.

  “According to what one reads in your newspapers, it would seem certain,” the Secretary replied with a smile. “And I have no reason to disbelieve them.” Tahir Beg tilted his head a little and gave Daville a very bright, almost piercing look, a look reminiscent of that of a wild marten or weasel, nimble little beasts that kill and gorge on blood but will not touch the flesh of the slain animal. “I say certain,” the Secretary went on, “because, to the best of my knowledge, the Christian powers have not stopped fighting one another in all these centuries.”

  “The Eastern, non-Christian states haven’t either,” replied Daville.

  “No, that’s true. But the difference is that the Moslem countries wage war in an open manner, without hypocrisy or prevarication. War has always been an important part of their mission in the world. Islam came to Europe under a warrior’s banner and has managed to stay here up to the present day either by making its own wars or by taking advantage of the wars among the Christian powers. And, as far as I know, the Christian states condemn wars so strongly they’re always blaming one another for starting them. But while they’re condemning them, they never cease to wage them.”

  “There’s much truth in what you say,” Daville encouraged the Secretary, hoping at last to make him talk about the Russo-French conflict and hear his opinion, “but do you really believe that the Tsar of Russia will risk incurring the wrath of the greatest Christian ruler and the most irresistible army in all Christianity?”

  The eyes of the Secretary lit up more strongly and became more piercing still. “I have not the vaguest idea about the Tsar’s intentions, my respected friend, but allow me to draw your attention to something I observed a long time ago, namely, that war is constantly raging over the face of Christian Europe, only it keeps shifting from here to there, just as a man carrying an ember of coal in the palm of his hand would shift it from one side to another to avoid burning himself. At this particular moment the ember happens to be somewhere on the European frontiers of Russia.”

  Daville began to realize that he was not, after all, going to learn anything here that was either interesting to him or had some bearing on his uncertainty, for this man, like the Vizier, was only saying things which his inner need of the moment compelled him to say. Nevertheless, he decided to make one more attempt, a blunt and direct one. “It is no secret,” he said, “that the principal aim of Russian policy is to liberate subject peoples of the same faith, which, of course, would include these territories here, under the Ottoman rule. Therefore, many consider it a foregone conclusion that Russia’s real war plans are directed against Turkey, rather than against countries of western Europe.”

  The Secretary refused to be sidetracked. “What are you to do? Foregone conclusions don’t always turn out to be right. But if the thing that many consider’ should really come about, then it is not difficult to foresee what the course of events would be. Everyone knows that these territories have been at the point of the sword, that they shall be defended by the sword, and, if it must be, lost by the sword. None of which changes what I have said by one iota.”

  With that Tahir Beg stubbornly went back to his original subject. “If you will think back with an open mind you will see that wherever Christian Europe extends her authority and brings in her customs and her kind of order, war usually follows—war between Christian and Christian. You can see it in Africa, in America, in the European territories of the Ottoman Empire that have gone to some Christian state. And if it ever happens, through the will of Fate, that we should lose these territories to some Christian country, as you mentioned just now, it will be the same story here. It might easily happen, in fact, that in another hundred or two hundred years, on this very spot where you and I at this moment are discussing the possibility of a Moslem-Christian war, Christians will mark their liberation from Ottoman rule by mutual bloodletting and slaughter.”

  Tahir Beg laughed aloud at his vision. Daville smiled too out of politeness, for he was anxious to keep things amiable and artless, even though he felt displeased and fretful over the drift of the conversation.

  What remained of their talk was garnished and scented by Tahir Beg with fresh reflections on the wonders of spring, on youth—which was eternal, even though the young ones were not—on friendship and good-neighborly feelings that made even harsh countries tolerable and pleasant to live in.

  Daville listened to them with a smile, which he hoped would mask his dissatisfaction.

  On the way back from the Residency, as often happened, he exchanged impressions with D’Avenat. “How does Tahir Beg seem to you?” he asked, by way of opening the conversation.

  “He’s a sick man,” D’Avenat said flatly and promptly fell silent.

  Their horses came together again.

  “He seems to have recovered quite well this time.”

  “That’s just what’s wrong with him, he’s recovering all the time. If he keeps recovering at this rate, one day he’ll . . .”

  “You mean . . . ?” Daville left his question unfinished.

  “Yes, exactly. Did you see his hands and eyes? The man is just barely this side of death, by the grace of drugs,” D’Avenat said in a low voice, but firmly and gravely.

  Daville did not reply. Now that his attention was drawn to it and he remembered part of the Secretary’s talk without the benefit of his peculiar smile and manner, he did find it disconnected, exaggerated, and not quite normal.

  Yet all that D’Avenat had said, and especially the crude and brusque manner in which he had said it, grated on Daville in a way he could not explain to himself, like some painful discord or a personal affront. He spurred his horse a length ahead of D’Avenat’s. It was a sign that the conversation was over. “Strange,” thought Daville, his eyes resting on the broad shoulders of the Vizier’s sergeant who rode ahead and made way for them, “strange how no one here shows any pity or natural compassion which among us is a common and spontaneous reaction to another person’s suffering. Here one had to be a beggar or a cripple or have his home burned down from under him to arouse any pity at all. There is no pity here between men of the same rank and station. One might live here a hundred years and never get used to their heartless way of talking, to their bleak morality and uncouth directness. One might never become thick-skinned enough not to be pained and offended by it.”

  Like a sudden loud explosion, the voice of the muezzin from the Speckled Mosque rang out above them. The voice rose and vibrated wit
h a forceful, aggressive, shrilling kind of piety that seemed to burst from the fullness of the muezzin’s chest. It was the hour of noon. A second muezzin, on a minaret somewhere out of sight, joined him; his deep ringing voice trailed after the voice of the bazaar muezzin like a devout and eager shadow. The voices accompanied Daville and his escort all the way back to the Consulate—mingling, catching up, and fading in the air above them.

  About that time, on the Feast of the Annunciation, there came the anniversary of the christening of Daville’s little daughter. Daville took advantage of it to invite to lunch von Paulich and the parish priest of Dolats, Fra Ivo Yankovich, with his young curate. The friars accepted the invitation, but it was obvious right away that their attitude had not changed. They were both overpolite, avoided Daville’s eyes and looked past his shoulder, in a furtive, oblique fashion. Daville knew this look of the Bosnians (long years and many dealings with the Bosnians had seen to it), and he knew well too that whatever was hidden behind it was quite outside his powers of persuasion. He was no stranger to the crabbed and mysterious inwardness of these Bosnians, who were as touchy about themselves as they were harsh and callow when the boot was on the other foot. And he braced himself for this luncheon as though it were a tricky game which he knew in advance he could not win but which had to be played all the same.

  The conversation before the meal and at the table was confined to general topics; the note was one of genteel but harmless insincerity. Fra Ivo ate and drank with such gusto that his normally flushed face turned a faint shade of purple and his tongue loosened up. The copious meal had quite the opposite effect on his young curate, who grew paler and more taciturn.

  As they were having their first smoke, Fra Ivo deposited the large fist of his right hand on the table—a fist tufted with red hair at the joints—and, without any preamble, waded into a lecture on the relations between the Holy See and Napoleon.