Bosnian Chronicle Page 47

  Daville kept on talking, saying everything that came to his mind, apropos of the disastrous winter, the general misery, and his secret fears.

  He had, he told her, seen and lived through many bad things that overtake a man in his tussle with the elements, both those around him and the ones that dwell inside him and are generated by human conflicts. He had known hunger and every kind of want during the Terror in Paris twenty years before. At the time it had seemed that violence and chaos were the nation’s only prospect and future. Greasy, tattered assignats of thousands and thousands of francs were not worth the paper they were printed on, and for a scrap of pork fat or a fistful of flour one had to traipse at night into the remote suburbs and haggle and bicker with shady characters in dark cellars. Day and night you had to scramble and worry about keeping alive, though life itself was worth very little and you might lose it at any moment through someone’s denunciation or a police error or simply by a quirk of chance.

  And he recalled his years of war in Spain, when for weeks and months on end he had worn one single shirt that molded on him with sweat and dust, and dared not take it off and wash it for fear that, at the least touch, it would split and tear into strips and rags, like something rotted through and through. Besides his musket, bayonet, a little powder and shot, his only other possession had been a waist belt of untanned hide, which he’d taken off of a dead Aragon peasant, who, for the glory of God, had taken up arms against the French vermin and Jacobins. The belt had seldom contained anything except, on a particularly lucky day, a piece of stone-hard barley bread which too had been snatched from someone or stolen from an abandoned house. And it was the time of stinging blizzards when neither warm clothing nor solid boots afforded any protection, when men forgot everything in their single-minded quest for cover and shelter.

  All these things he had known in his life, but never yet had he seen or felt the horror and force of winter in quite the same numbing, devastating degree as now. He had never dreamed that such a thing as this oriental poverty and want could exist, or this utter paralyzed helplessness which went with a long withering winter and lay heavy over the entire mountainous, spare, and luckless countryside like the wrath of God. This he had got to know only in Travnik, and only this winter.

  Madame Daville was not, in general, too fond of recollections of this kind and like all active, genuinely religious people she shrank from the kind of “loud musing” that led nowhere and was only a form of self-coddling that weakened one’s resistance to the environment and often led one’s thoughts astray. Up to that point she had listened dutifully, with a distinct effort, but now she rose, overcome by fatigue, and announced that it was time to sleep.

  Daville remained alone in the big room which was getting colder by the minute. He sat on alone for a long time yet, without anyone to talk to, and “listened” to the cold creeping into all things, shattering the core of everything it touched. As far as his mind could stretch, whether he thought about the East and the Turks and their disordered and unstable life, a life without value or purpose, or whether he tried to guess what was happening in France and what had become of Napoleon and his army, returning in defeat from Russia, everywhere his mind came up against misery, suffering, and dark uncertainty.

  So passed the days and nights of that winter, a winter which seemed endless and unrelieved.

  Sometimes when the cold let up for a day or two, there would be a heavy new snowfall that piled up high on top of the old layer, which was crusted over with a hard shell of ice that gave the earth, as it were, a new visage. Immediately afterwards there would be another wave of cold, bitterer than the first. One’s breath froze, the water turned to ice, the sun darkened. One’s brain grew numb, deadening all but one thought: how to survive the cold. It was only by a great effort that a man could rouse himself to remember that somewhere down below was the earth, the warm and living nurse-mother, capable of blossom and fruit-giving; for between him and the fruit there was now a white, frosty, and impassable no man’s land.

  The price of everything had soared right in the early months of the winter, but especially the price of grain; now there was no grain to be had at all. There was famine in the villages, and the town suffered from an acute shortage. One came across starved peasants in the streets, with empty sacks over their arms, desperately looking for corn. Street corners swarmed with beggars, wrapped in rags and blue from cold. Neighbors enviously counted each other’s meals.

  Both consulates tried to help the people and alleviate the miseries of hunger and cold. Madame Daville and von Paulich vied with each other in helping with food and money. Crowds of hungry people, mostly children, collected outside the Consulate gates. At first they were only gypsies, with here and there a Christian child, but as the winter grew longer and privation increased, one began to see Moslem orphans and poor who had come down from the outskirts. During the early days, Moslem children from the town houses waited for them in the bazaar and mocked them for begging and eating infidel food. They threw snowballs at them and shouted: “Starvelings! Infidels! Did you gorge yourself with pork? Starvelings!”

  But later the cold became so intense that these town youngsters would not set foot out of doors. In front of the consulates the throng of frozen children and beggars hopped and chattered with cold, so bundled in rags and tatters of every kind that it was hard to tell to what faith they belonged or where they came from.

  The consuls gave away so much grain that they remained without it. However, as soon as the winter let up enough to allow the pack drivers to come from Brod, von Paulich, with his usual skill and resolution, arranged for a steady supply of flour and food for his Consulate as well as for Daville.

  The French consignments of cotton via Bosnia had been halted at the start of the winter, though Freycinet continued to write despairing letters and made plans to discontinue the whole enterprise. Moreover, there was common agreement among the people that the French, by paying excessive wages to the pack drivers, had not only pushed up the cost of living but had created the food shortage by tempting the peasant away from agriculture. All in all, “Bonaparte’s War” was responsible for everything. As so often in history, the people made of their bête noire a victim who must carry on his shoulders the sins and transgressions of everyone; and there were more and more of those who, without even knowing why, began to look for relief and deliverance in the rout and disappearance of this Bonaparte, of whom they knew nothing except that he had become “a burden on earth,” for he spread war, unrest, rising prices, sickness, and want wherever he went.

  Over in the Austrian countries, on the other side, where the people groaned under a load of taxes, fiscal crises, compulsory military service, and bloody casualties, Bonaparte had already become a subject of story and song, and was looked upon as the main cause of all misery and an obstacle to personal happiness for everyone. In Slavonia, lone girls of marriageable age sang:

  “Oh Frenchman, thou mighty Emperor!

  Let the lads go, the girls were left behind;

  The quinces and apples are rotting away

  And the gold-spun bodices as well.”

  This ditty crossed the river Sava, was taken up all through Bosnia, and reached Travnik.

  Daville was familiar with the way these generalizations sprung up, took root, and spread in these regions, and how difficult and futile it was to try to combat them. And besides, now as earlier, he could only struggle against them halfheartedly and with insufficient strength. He went on writing the same reports and giving the same instructions to his staff and his agents, and he kept up with the Vizier and everyone else in the Residency. All of these things were the same as before, only he, Daville, was no longer the same.

  He walked upright and conducted himself quietly and with assurance. Outwardly everything was the same. And still there were some things that had changed forever, both around him and within him.

  Had it been possible for someone to measure his will-power, the trend of his thoughts, and the forc
e of his inner urges and outward movements, he would have found that the rhythm of all Daville’s actions was by now much closer to the rhythm in which this Bosnian town breathed, lived, and worked, than to the rhythm which had animated his movements six or seven years before, when he first arrived here. The transformation had taken place slowly and imperceptibly, but it had been steady and relentless. Daville now shrank from putting things in writing, from instant and clear decisions, he was afraid of novelty and of guests, and shuddered at every change or the thought of change. He preferred a fleeting moment of assured peace and respite to the years that were yet to come, bringing no one knew what.

  The external changes too were difficult to hide. People who live together in huddled proximity and are thrown upon one another day after day are slower to notice that they are ageing and changing. All the same, the Consul had visibly grown feebler and older, especially in the last few months. The vigorous shock of hair above his forehead had wilted and become flatter and was turning a grayish hue, like the color of blond people whose hair begins to go gray all of a sudden. His cheeks were still rosy, but the skin was drier and beginning to sag under the chin and lose its freshness. In the aftermath of the painful toothaches that had plagued him that winter he was beginning to lose some teeth.

  These were the tangible ravages which, in the course of years, had been imprinted on Daville by the Travnik frosts, rains, and humid winds, by family worries, small and great, and by the never-ending consular duties, but especially by his inner conflicts and unrest over the recent events in the world and in France.

  Such was Daville’s situation at the end of the sixth year of his unbroken residence in Travnik, as he faced the new developments after Napoleon’s return from Russia.

  24

  When, in the middle of March, the cold wave broke at last and the ice, which had seemed everlasting, began to thaw, the town was left cowed and limp as after an epidemic, its streets washed out, the houses scarred, the trees bare, the people worn out and troubled, as if having survived the cold was only a prelude to the still greater extremity of having to find food and spring seed and a way out of the tight, remorseless squeeze of debts and loans.

  One such day in March, once again in the morning, and once again in that deep and dire voice in which D’Avenat had for years, monotonously and implacably, conveyed pleasant and unpleasant news, important as well as irrelevant, the interpreter informed Daville that Ibrahim Pasha was being transferred, though he had not yet received a new assignment. According to the firman, he was to leave Travnik and await further orders at Gallipoli.

  When, five years before, he had been told in the same fashion of Mehmed Pasha’s transfer, Daville had been excited and had felt a strong compulsion to talk about it, to busy himself and plot ways and means of countering that decision. This time, however, although the news hit him badly and meant a great loss in the present circumstances, he no longer found the strength to protest and oppose it. Ever since this last winter and the catastrophe at Moscow, he had come to feel more and more that everything was tottering and crumbling; and each new loss, no matter what side it came from, seemed only to corroborate and justify that feeling.

  All was coming down—emperors, armies, institutions, fortunes, ambitions that were sky-high—so why shouldn’t this unfortunate half-dead Vizier also come down one day, he who had sat all these years leaning now to one side, now to the other? Everyone knew the meaning of the phrase “await further orders at Gallipoli.” It was banishment, pining away in isolation, and virtual penury, without a chance of appeal, explanation, or redress.

  As he thought about it longer, Daville realized that he was losing an old friend and a dependable protector, and at a moment when he perhaps needed him most. Yet try as he might he could not summon up any of that excitement and zeal and eagerness to write, warn, criticize, and ask for help which he had felt at the time of Mehmed Pasha’s departure. Everything must come down, even one’s friends and supporters. And the man who got up in arms and tried to save himself or the others, achieved nothing in the end. And so the Vizier, with his perpetual list, must also collapse and go away like all the rest, and all one could do was nurse one’s sorrow.

  While he was still pondering this, unable to come to a decision, a message arrived from the Residency that the Vizier wanted to talk to him.

  At the Residency there was an atmosphere of confusion and scurrying, but the Vizier seemed unchanged. He talked of his transfer as though it were merely the latest and perfectly natural link in the long chain of misfortunes that had been dogging him for years. As though he were himself anxious to complete the chain process, he had decided not to tarry here but get under way in the next ten days—that is, at the beginning of April. He had been informed that his successor was already proceeding to Travnik, and he would on no account wait for him here.

  Like Mehmed Pasha once, the Vizier claimed to be a victim of his pro-French sentiments. (Daville was well aware that this was one of those oriental lies or half-truths which circulate and intermingle with genuine bonds and true kindnesses, just as bad money circulates together with the good.)

  “Yes, yes. So long as France was advancing and conquering, they kept me here and didn’t dare to touch me. Now that she’s down on her luck, they’re replacing me, so that I should not have any contact or opportunity to work with the French.”

  (At that the counterfeit money suddenly turned into legal tender, and Daville, forgetting the Vizier’s inaccurate premise, woke up to the reality of French defeat. That chilling cramp of queasiness, now tightening, now lessening, which had so often gripped his stomach here at this Residency, seized him now again as he quietly heard the Vizier’s recital, from its false cordiality to its bitter truth.)

  “Lies and truth are mixed up,” thought Daville as he waited for the interpreter to translate words which he himself had understood perfectly well—“everything is so mixed up that no one can tell what is what, but one thing is certain: everything is tumbling down.”

  The Vizier had already passed from the subject of France to that of his own relations with the Bosnians and with Daville personally. “Believe me, these people need stricter and tougher viziers. True, they say the poor of the country call me a blessing—which is all I ask for. The rich and the strong hate me. They misinformed me about you too, in the beginning, but then I got to know you and soon realized that you were my only friend. Praise be to Allah, the One and Only! And, believe me, I myself have asked the Sultan several times to recall me. My needs are infinitesimal. I would best of all like to work my garden like a common hired hand and spend my last days in peace.”

  Daville expressed his good wishes and spoke reassuringly of the future, but the Vizier spurned all comfort.

  “No, no! I know exactly what to expect. They will find something to blame me for, to get me out of the way and seize my lands—I know, because they’ve tried it before. I can almost hear them plotting against me in the high places, digging the ground from under me, but what can I do? Allah is One! Ever since I lost my favorite children and so many of my family, I have been ready for further bad news. If Sultan Selim were alive, things might have been different. . . .”

  Daville knew the mechanics of what was to come. And D’Avenat translated almost from memory, as though it were the text of a familiar ritual.

  As he was coming out of the Residency, Daville could not help observing how the bustle and tension were mounting by the minute. The extensive and motley household of the Vizier, which in the last five years had multiplied, taken root, and blended itself into the dwelling and the surroundings, was now suddenly beginning to totter as if about to fall.

  Behind every partition and door there were voices, hurried footsteps, the banging of hammers, the thudding of chests and trunks. They were all trying to save themselves. The large, intriguing, yet closely knit family was turning back toward the great obscurity of Turkey and was seething, creaking, and toiling in every fiber. The only one who remained aloof and i
mmovable in this hustle and commotion was the Vizier; he sat in his usual place, Turkish fashion, leaning slightly to one side, like a caparisoned stone idol borne aloft by a swaying, bewildered throng.

  Next day servants brought to the French Consulate a whole flock of domestic and tame animals, Angora cats, greyhounds, foxes, and white bunnies, which Daville solemnly awaited and received in the courtyard. The page who had accompanied the menagerie stood in the middle of the yard and announced in his best courtly manner that these creatures had been pets in the Vizier’s household and the Vizier was now leaving them in the care of a friend. “He loved them, and must now leave them to the one he loves.”

  The page and the servants were given presents and the animals were taken to a shelter in the courtyard at the back of the house.

  Madame Daville was appalled, but the children were jubilant.

  Several days later, the Vizier called Daville once more, to say good-bye privately, unofficially, and as a friend. This time he was genuinely moved. He shunned all blandishments and half-truths and would-be compliments. “Man must part with everything, and now our time has come. We have met like two exiles, cast out and thrown among these wild people. We have long been friends here and will always remain thus, if we should meet once again in some better place.”

  Then a great new thing happened, unknown in the five years of ceremonial at the Residency. The pages rushed up to the Vizier and helped him get up. He rose with that sudden clipped movement of his, and it was only now that Daville saw how tall and powerful he was; then he crossed the room slowly and heavily, without a wasted motion, gliding on invisible feet like a hulking upright cannon shell on wheels. All of them descended into the courtyard. There stood the polished and spanking black carriage, an old gift of von Mitterer’s, and a little beyond it a fine thoroughbred bay horse with dappled white and red nostrils, in full harness.