Bosnian Chronicle Read online

  The Vizier made Daville’s task easier by his usual unbending style, which perfectly matched his grim physical stiffness. Having listened to Daville’s words, in D’Avenat’s translation, almost without a movement or change in his expression, he wasted no words on the dead but passed on, forthwith, to the destinies and actions of the living.

  “So the plague came to Istanbul and struck some districts where it has never struck before,” the Vizier said in his grave cold voice, as if he were speaking through a mouth of stone. “We were not to be spared even that, it seems. The plague had to come, because we sinned. And I must be a sinner too, for it came into my house.”

  The Vizier fell silent, and Daville instructed the interpreter D’Avenat to say, in his capacity as doctor, that the nature of pestilence was such that even saintly, innocent people and homes were sometimes accidentally infected through a chance carrier of the dangerous germ.

  The Vizier turned his head slowly and looked at D’Avenat for the first time, as if only just noticing him, with that blind look in his black eyes which, though open, seemed not to see, like eyes of marble; then he turned back to the Consul.

  “No, it’s because of sin, all because of sin. The people in the capital have lost their reason and honor. They have all gone mad with their scramble after luxury and vice. And they have no guidance from those on top. This would never have happened if Sultan Selim were alive. So long as he was alive and in power, sin was banished from the capital; drunkenness, mischief, and dissipation were driven back. But now . . .”

  Once again the Vizier ran out of words, suddenly, like a mechanism that has run down; and again Daville tried to say something comforting and soothing, to explain how in the end sin and punishment must inevitably balance each other out and how, presumably, one day, there will also be an end to atonement.

  The Vizier refused to be comforted. “God is one. He knows the measure,” the Vizier said.

  Through the open window came the twitter of unseen birds, whose hopping sent a tremor through the vine leaves that overflowed into the room. On the steep slope opposite that cut off the view, they could see fields of ripe wheat divided by green boundaries of grass and hawthorn thickets. Suddenly, in the silence that had fallen after the Vizier’s words, they heard the shrill loud neighing of a colt somewhere on the slope.

  The audience came to an end with another brief allusion to Sultan Selim, who had laid down his life as a martyr and saint. The Vizier was moved, although neither his voice nor his face showed it. “May God give you every joy with your children,” he said as Daville began to take his leave.

  Daville replied by expressing the hope that the Vizier’s sorrow might soon give way to radiant joy.

  “As for myself,” said the Vizier, “I have lost so much in my life that I would be very happy indeed if I could now put on some plain clothes and hoe my garden far from the world and events. There is only one God!”

  The Vizier uttered this as though it were a set and long rehearsed phrase, or as if it were a vision that was uppermost in his mind, possessing a special and deep significance for himself which others could not understand.

  That summer of 1812, which had begun so badly, continued in the same vein.

  During the last war, against the Fifth Coalition, in the autumn of 1810, Daville had had it much easier in many respects. In the first place, although his struggle with von Mitterer and his collaboration with General Marmont and the fortress commanders on the Austrian frontier had been difficult and tiring, they had at least filled his time and occupied his mind with concrete problems and tangible goals. Secondly, Napoleon’s military campaign had gone well, from victory to victory, and, more important still, it had gone swiftly. Already the early autumn had brought the Peace of Vienna and at least a temporary quietus. This time, however, everything was distant and quite beyond grasping. The obscurity and the sheer gigantic size of it were frightening.

  Having to center one’s life and thoughts on the progress of an army somewhere on the steppes of Russia and having no clear idea about this army, its lines of advance, its resources and prospects, but having to guess and await developments, even the worst, while ambling up and down the steep garden paths around the Consulate—such was Daville’s life in those summer and autumn months. And there was nothing to make his waiting easier, there was no one to help him!

  Couriers came and went more often now but they brought scant news of the war. There was no comfort or reassurance to be had from official bulletins, in which strange names of unknown cities were mentioned, cities one never heard of before—Kovno, Vilna, Vitebsk, Smolensk. And the couriers themselves, usually full of tales and all kinds of news, were overworked, short-tempered, and silent. One missed even the untruths and wild speculation that normally filled the air at such times, which at least might rouse one and provide a welcome respite from brooding and uncertainty.

  The work of transporting French cotton through Bosnia had finally settled down and was progressing quite well, or so at least it seemed in comparison with the worries and fears that hung over the larger enterprise going on in the far north. True, the pack drivers kept raising their prices, the peasants continued to steal cotton en route, the Turkish customs officials changed their minds all the time and their venality was bottomless. Freycinet wrote despairing letters, couched in the fevered tone of foreigners who have had to contend too long with unsuitable food, with intractable people and inimical conditions. Daville followed the all too familiar symptoms of the disease and sent back wise, moderate, and statesmanlike replies, counseling patience in the service of the Empire.

  Yet even as he did this, he too was casting about desperately for some hopeful sign that would encourage him and quiet his own uncertainties and his hidden but nagging fear of it all. But there was nothing a man could hold on to or depend on. As always in such cases, as once it had happened with the young captain from Novi, Daville felt himself surrounded by a living wall of faces and eyes that were cold and dumb, as in a wordless conspiracy, or else enigmatic, empty, and lying. Who was there to turn to, who was there to ask, who might know the truth and be willing to say it?

  As often as he saw the Vizier, the question asked was always the same terse one: “Where is your Emperor now?”

  Daville would mention the town cited in the last bulletin, and the Vizier would wave his hand lightly and say in a quiet voice: “May he soon enter St. Petersburg, God grant it.” Saying this, he would give Daville a look that chilled his insides and made his heart still heavier.

  And the attitude of the Austrian Consul was no less disheartening. It only exacerbated Daville’s apprehensions.

  Immediately after the French army had moved against Russia and the news had come that Austria was this time marching alongside Napoleon as an ally, with a force of over thirty thousand under Prince Schwarzenberg, Daville had called on von Paulich in the hope of discussing the prospects of the great campaign in which both their courts were now happily on the same side. He was met with a quiet and frosty politeness. The Colonel was more strange and distant than ever before; he behaved as if he had never heard of the war or the alliance, and he left Daville to brood about it alone, to rejoice in the successes and tremble at the thought of failure all by himself. When Daville pressed him for at least one word of agreement or disapproval, the Colonel lowered his fine blue eyes to the ground, and those blank eyes of his suddenly seemed wicked and dangerous.

  After every visit to von Paulich, Daville came home even more puzzled and despondent. In other ways too the Austrian Consul was plainly fostering the impression, with the Vizier and among the people at large, that he was not in the least sanguine about this war and preferred to stay aloof, and that the whole undertaking was exclusively a French affair. D’Avenat’s observations in the bazaar seemed to bear this out.

  Coming home preoccupied with such thoughts and impressions, Daville would find his wife busily organizing their winter stores. Taught by the experience of the past years, she now knew ex
actly which vegetables kept longer and better, which of the local fruit varieties were the most suitable for preserving, and what to do against humidity, cold, and seasonal changes. Her bottled fruits and jar preserves had improved in quality from year to year; her meals had become richer and more varied, the waste and spoilage more and more negligible. She trained and personally supervised the women helpers and worked with them whenever she could.

  Daville knew well (he too from long experience!) that it was idle and useless to interrupt her in the midst of work, the more so as she had no head for abstract discussions and would not know what to say about the fears and anxieties that preyed on his mind. The least concern over the children or the house or even himself, was to her a far more important and more suitable topic of conversation than the most complex “states of mind” and preoccupations which obsessed him so constantly, and which he would have dearly loved to confide to someone. He knew only too well that his wife (a peerless and dependable companion otherwise) was now, and always had been, totally engrossed in the work of the moment, as if nothing else in the world existed and the whole human race, from Napoleon down to the Consul’s wife in Travnik, was equally up to its ears, each in his own way, in their preparations for the winter. As far as she was concerned, God’s will was done every moment of the day and night, everywhere, in all things. And what else was there to talk about?

  So Daville sat in his big chair, pressed his eyeballs, and, after a faint sigh (“Dear God. Oh dear God!”), reached for his Delille and opened a volume at random, in the middle of a poem. He was, in fact, looking for something that neither life nor books could give: a compassionate fellow spirit who would be willing to listen and would have an endless capacity for understanding, to whom he might talk openly and receive lucid and honest answers to all questions. In this dialogue he might then, as in a mirror, see himself for the first time as he really was and learn the true value of his work and determine, without ambiguity, his own position in the world. Here at last he might be able to separate all that was real and well founded in his scruples, premonitions, and fears from all that was imagined and not based on fact. In this sad valley which now contained the sixth year of his loneliness, that might have been a true release.

  But such a friend did not come. He never would come. Instead of him, there appeared only strange and undesirable guests.

  Even in the years past a traveling Frenchman would sometimes arrive, or a foreigner carrying a French passport, and he would stay on in Travnik, seeking Daville’s help or offering his services. Lately, however, they had become more frequent.

  Travelers arrived, suspicious-looking merchants, adventurers, impostors, who had lost their way and had departed from their itinerary for a side trip to this impassable, poor country. They were all in transit or fleeing from somewhere, en route to Istanbul, Malta, Palermo, and looked upon their stay in Travnik as a punishment and a piece of bad luck. To Daville each of these unexpected and undesirable guests meant a series of troubles and excitements. He had grown unused to dealing with his compatriots and people from the West altogether. And like all easily disturbed people who are not sure of themselves, he found it hard to tell a lie from the truth and was apt to waver between unfounded suspicion and unwarranted trustfulness. Intimidated by the ministry circulars which kept up a barrage of warnings to the consulates to be on the lookout for English agents, who were alleged to be very cunning and cleverly disguised, Daville saw an English spy in each of these travelers and went to a great deal of trouble either to unmask him or defend himself against him. In reality, these men for the most part were lost souls, strays and unfortunates, dislocated people, refugees, the flotsam and jetsam of a stormy Europe which Napoleon’s campaigns and policies had furrowed and whipped every which way. From them too, Daville was often able to get some idea of what “the General” had done to the world in the last four or five years.

  Daville disliked them for another reason. Their almost panicky eagerness to get out of Travnik as soon as possible, their exasperation with the slovenly, crude, equivocating local folk, the despairing helplessness of their struggle against the land, the inhabitants, and the conditions, were a poignant reminder to Daville that he himself was marooned and wasting the best years of his life in a backwater.

  Every one of these uninvited guests meant trouble and pain for Daville; they seemed to come expressly to be a stone around his neck, to make him a laughingstock in the eyes of all Travnik. And so he used every means he could—money, indulgence, persuasion—to get them out of Bosnia as soon as possible, so as not to have to look at these embodiments of his fate, these witnesses of his bad luck.

  A number of these chance travelers had passed through before, but never as many as this year, when the campaign against Russia began, and never had they been such a weird, suspicious-looking, and disreputable lot. It was fortunate that D’Avenat was a type of man who never, not even in circumstances like these, lost his sense of reality, his coolly arrogant presence of mind, and his consummate indifference to most people and things, which came in handy in settling even the toughest cases.

  One afternoon on a rainy day in May a group of travelers arrived in front of the main town inn. A crowd of children and bazaar loafers collected right away. Out of wraps and shawls there appeared three people in European dress. A small dapper man; a tall sturdy woman with a rouged and powdered face and dyed hair, like an actress’s; and a plump little girl of twelve years. All three were tired and sore from long riding over rough roads, hungry, cross with one another and with everyone around them. They wrangled no end with the caravan drivers and the innkeeper. The little man, who was dark-haired and sallow, hopped around in the lively fashion of a southerner; he shouted, gave orders, bawled out the woman and the child. At length their trunks were unloaded and stacked at the inn entrance. The agile little man took the girl under both armpits, lifted her and sat her on the topmost case, ordering her not to budge from there on any account. Then he went to look for the French Consulate.

  He came back with D’Avenat, who could barely conceal his disdain. The man gave his name as Lorenzo Gambini, born at Palermo; he explained that he had been a merchant in Rumania until quite lately and was now returning to Italy, as he could no longer bear living in the Levant. They had cheated him, plundered him, and ruined his health there. To go back to Milan, he needed a visa. He had been told to get it here at Travnik. He had an old passport issued by the Cisalpine Republic. He was anxious to move on right away—without a moment’s delay—because, he said, every extra day he spent among these people drove him crazier and he would not be responsible for himself and his actions if he stayed here any longer.

  D’Avenat arranged with the innkeeper to find them quarters and food, without listening to the traveler’s breathless outpouring.

  The woman broke into the conversation, in the weary tearful voice of an actress who knows she is getting older and can neither forget it nor learn to live with it. From the top of her trunk the little girl cried that she was hungry. They all spoke simultaneously. They wanted to get to their room, to eat, rest, get the visa, leave Travnik as soon as possible, and clear out of Bosnia. But what they needed most urgently, it seemed, was to talk and quarrel, for they neither listened to nor cared to understand each other.

  Oblivious of the innkeeper and turning his back to D’Avenat, the little Italian shouted at the woman who was twice his size: “Keep out of it! Don’t say anything! If you hadn’t talked and I hadn’t been a fool to listen to you we wouldn’t be here now, damn you!”

  “You blame me? Me? Oh!” screamed the woman, rolling her eyes to heaven and glancing around the circle of bystanders as if calling on them to be her witness. “Oh, my youth, my talent, everything, everything have I given him! And now I’m to blame!”

  “So you are, my beauty! Yes, my sunshine! If I suffer and sink, it’s all your fault. And if I finish it all right here and now, that’ll be on your head too . . . !” With a practiced movement, the little man whipped a
big pistol from his voluminous traveling cloak and pressed the muzzle to his temple.

  The woman gave a shriek and rushed toward the fellow, who had no intention of carrying out his threat; she threw her arms around him and began to babble.

  Perching on top of the pile of trunks, the plump little girl quietly ate a piece of Albanian yellow cake that someone had given her. D’Avenat scratched himself behind the ear. The Italian had already forgotten the woman and his suicide gesture, and was passionately explaining to D’Avenat that he must have the visa the next morning; he brandished a crumpled and dogeared passport, scolding the girl in the same breath for getting up there instead of helping her mother.

  D’Avenat promised to let him know in the morning. After a last instruction to the innkeeper, and without another glance at the curious family or a word of reply to the stream of explanations and appeals from the Italian, he set off for the Consulate.

  A large and inquisitive crowd remained at the gates of the inn. Puzzled and wondering, they stared at the foreigners and their dress and unusual behavior, as if the scene were a stage or a circus. The Moslems on their shop platforms and the working people who were passing by looked on darkly from under their eyebrows and at once averted their heads.

  No sooner had D’Avenat returned and managed to tell the Consul about the peculiar visitors they had acquired, and had shown him Gambini’s passport, a fantastic affair of loose pages and stitched extension flaps, full of visas and endorsements, than there was a hue and cry at the gate of the Consulate. Lorenzo Gambini had come in person and was demanding a private interview with the Consul. The gate kavass barred the entrance. A group of bazaar urchins was watching him from a distance, evidently having sensed that wherever this foreigner went there was bound to be trouble, noise, and excitement. D’Avenat came out and sharply warned the sputtering man to pipe down; however, he babbled on about how well he’d served the French cause and how he would have a few words to say in Milan and in Paris as well. But he obeyed in the end and went back to the inn, threatening to shoot himself on the Consulate’s doorstep if he did not get his passport back by the next morning.