Bosnian Chronicle Page 51

  Daville dismissed D’Avenat and remained alone in the snowbound dusk. A swelling cloud of humidity rose up from the valley below. All sound was muffled in the high soft snow. Down at the bottom, the snow-capped mausoleum of Abdullah Pasha was barely visible. The tower window above the grave shone with the feeble light of the taper that was burning inside.

  The Consul shivered. He felt weak and feverish. A bright welter of recent impressions and news swirled through his weary, passive mind. Then, as often happens to people who are exhausted and worried to distraction, everything he had heard and gone through that day, all the difficulties and embarrassments that might still be in store for him tomorrow and in the future, suddenly drained out of his consciousness and he thought only of what he saw before him—of the octagonal stone mausoleum by which he had walked so often, of the flickering taper flame inside that now barely pierced the evening mist and which he and Desfosses had once called “eternal light,” and of the origin of the tomb and the story of Abdullah Pasha who was resting in it.

  He thought of the low stone sarcophagus covered with a green pall, on which was written “May the All-Highest light his tomb!”; of the thick wax candle on its high wooden candelabrum which burned day and night over the dark grave in a feeble effort to persuade God to grant the prayer in the pall inscription, and which God was unwilling to grant, it seemed. He thought of the Pasha, who had risen high when still a young man, and had died accidentally on a visit to his native country. Yes, he remembered it all, as if the fate of other people and his own were one and the same thing. He remembered how Desfosses, before he left, had finally managed to see and read Abdullah Pasha’s testament.

  Knowing how little light there was in this valley, the Pasha had made over his houses and tenant holdings to an endowment fund, to which a cash legacy was later added, all for the purpose of having at least one great taper burn over his tomb to the end of time and the world. And he had arranged and legalized it all while he was still alive, in writing, before the magistrate and witnesses—specifying the kind of wax that was to be used, the weight of the candle, the wages of the man who would light it and change it—so that no successor of his or an outsider would ever be able to deny or betray his will. Yes, the Pasha knew well about the dark evenings and foggy days in this narrow valley, where he would have to lie till Judgment Day, and he knew too how quickly men forgot the living and the dead alike, how they betrayed trust and broke their promises.

  And while he lay ill in one of these townhouses, without a hope of recovery, without a hope that his eyes, which had seen so much of the world, would ever again behold a more generous view than that from his bedside, the only thing that could soften his boundless grief over a misspent life and a premature death was the thought of the pure beeswax that would burn over his tomb with an even, soundless flame, with no smoke or molten gobs. And so, all that he had won by great effort, courage, and acumen in his short life, he gave for this little flame now trembling delicately over his helpless remains. In his stormy life, having seen many countries and kinds of people, he had learned that fire was at the root of all creation; it was the breath of life and also its destroyer, visible or invisible, in one degree or another, in forms without number. And so he devoted his last thoughts to fire. True, this little orange tongue of flame was not very secure or significant, nor was it likely to be there till the very end, but it was the best one could do—shed a small, permanent light on a puny fragment of a gloomy and cold land.

  Yes, it was a strange bequest—but they were a strange people! Yet any man who had lived here for some years and passed his nights like this by the window could understand it easily and well.

  He could hardly take his eyes off the faint glow that sank deeper and deeper into the humid miasma of darkness. Then, all at once, the memories of the day flooded back into his mind again, the strained conversation with the Vizier, the memory of Ibrahim Halimi Pasha, and Tahir Beg, the former Secretary, of whose death he had learned that evening. More real than he had been when he lived at Travnik, the Secretary rose up before Daville; bent at the waist, with shiny eyes that pierced a little with their unnatural glitter, the Secretary was saying, as he once had said on a cold evening like this: “Yes, monsieur, everyone sees the victor in a golden cloud. Or as the Persian poet says, ‘A victor’s face is like a rose.’”

  “So it is!” Daville thought. “The victor’s face is like a rose, but the face of a defeated man is like a graveyard that makes people turn their heads and run.”

  Daville spoke this aloud—it was the answer he should have made to the Secretary when he was still alive. And then he recalled the rest of his talk with the late Secretary. He felt another cold shudder and a trembling in his whole body, and he rang for the servant to bring in the candles.

  And even after that Daville kept going to the window, watching the taper glow in Abdullah Pasha’s tomb and the tiny, dull lights in the houses of Travnik; and he pondered further on the meaning of fire in the world, the lot of victors and vanquished, remembering the living and the dead, until all the windows guttered one by one, even those of the Austrian Consulate. (Victors go to bed early and sleep well!) The only light left was the sad taper of the mausoleum and at the opposite end of the town one other light, bigger and different. There, in a still-house, they were making plum brandy, as they did every year at this time.

  At the other end of the Travnik gorge, where the wet snow was high, they had set up the first still in the coopery of Peter Fufich and begun to distill brandy. The shop was outside the city, on the bank of the Lashva itself, below the road that went to Kalibunar.

  The hollow was packed with soggy snow and full of cold drafts. In the coopery by the water’s edge the “witches’ cauldron” sang and hissed all night long and smoke coiled through a vent under the roof.

  Logs of green wood squealed under the cauldron, around which there was a constant coming and going of muffled, grimy, and frozen men, who fought the smoke and flying sparks, the wind and the drafts, and, on top of it all, the sharp tobacco smoke which kept burning their lips and stinging their eyes.

  One of them was Tanasiye, the well-known expert on stills and brandy. During the summer he worked off and on for short periods, but as soon as the first plums fell he would go from house to house, in every town in the Travnik district, and sometimes even farther afield, for no one knew better how to ferment the plums, how to judge when the mash was ripe, or how to “cook” and draw the finished brandy. He was a dour man who had spent a lifetime in drafty and smoke-filled still-houses, always pale and unshaven, sleepy and in bad humor. Like all masters of their trade, he was perpetually dissatisfied with his own work and with his helpers. Angry mumblings and sharp words of disapproval constituted his entire conversation.

  “Not like this! Don’t let it burn over! No more! Don’t touch it! Stop, that’s enough! Take your hands off! Get away!”

  After these bad-tempered and slurred growlings, which both he and his helpers understood very well, there would finally emerge from Tanasiye’s cracked and sooty hands, from the smoke, the mashy ooze, and the seeming disorder, a perfect and thoroughly professional end product—a fine clear brandy, decanted according to type into “single still,” “sharp,” “mild,” and “double still”—a shining fiery liquid, clear and “medicinal,” free of sediment and burnt taste, showing no trace of the labor and filth that had gone into its making, no tang of smoke or rot, but smelling of plums and orchards and flowing nobly into the casks like a pure and precious essence.

  Up to that moment Tanasiye had fussed over it as though it were a delicate newborn babe. Now, when it was done, he forgot to grumble and harp and only twitched his lips, as if whispering a wordless spell; with a practiced eye he watched the slow trickle of the spirit and, without ever testing it on his tongue, he determined its quality, proof, and class.

  Around the fire that burned under the still there would always be a few visitors, people from the town; and among them, more often than not
, there would be an idler or a gate crasher, a fiddler or a storyteller, for it was pleasant to eat and drink and tell stories by the cauldron fire, even though one’s eyes watered from the smoke and one’s back was always icy from the draft. As far as Tanasiye was concerned, these people were as good as nonexistent. He muttered and went about his work, forever ordering and telling his helpers what not to do, and in doing so he simply walked through or over the men by the fire as if they were made of air. He seemed to accept these loafers as an integral part of the still-house. At all events he neither addressed them by name nor made a move to drive them away nor seemed to notice them.

  That was how Tanasiye had made brandy for over forty years in town after town, hamlet after hamlet, monastery after monastery; and he was still the same, except that he had visibly aged and shriveled. His growling was not as fierce as it had been, and often ended up in a coughing fit or in an old man’s rasp and wheeze. His thick bushy eyebrows had turned gray, and were smeared, like the rest of his face, with the soot and clay used in the coating of the still-pot. And under those matted brows one could barely make out a pair of eyes that were like glass chips, flashing out one moment and guttering the next.

  Tonight the party around the fire was bigger than usual. There was Peter Fufich himself, the owner of the coopery, and two other Travnik Serbs, merchants, one ballad singer, and Marko of Djimriye, a fortuneteller and a saintly man who traveled around Bosnia all the time and sometimes dropped in at Travnik, though he never ventured beyond the coopery or went into town or the bazaar.

  This Marko was a grizzled, neatly turned-out peasant from eastern Bosnia, small but wiry, with an air of deftness and authority about him. He was known as a soothsayer and diviner. In his home village he had grown-up sons and married daughters, a house and lands. After the death of his wife, he had begun to lead a life of prayer, to admonish people and divine the future. He was not greedy for money, and refused to tell fortunes indiscriminately. He was brusque and unsparing with sinners. The Moslems knew him and winked at his soothsaying.

  When Marko came to a town, he did not look for well-to-do houses but sat down in a coopery or a humble hut, beside the fire. He talked with the men and women gathered there. Sometimes, in the course of the evening, he would go out into the night and remain there for an hour or two; on his return, damp with dew or rain-soaked, he would squat by the fire where his audience was still waiting for him, and, gazing at a thin board of larchwood, would start to talk; often, however, before he did that, he would turn to one of the group, scold him sharply for his sins, and ask him to leave the company. He did that with women especially. He would stare long and fixedly at some woman and then tell her quietly but firmly: “Daughter, your arms are on fire right up to the elbows. Go and put out the fire and stop sinning. You know the sin I’m talking about.”

  Blushing crimson, the woman would slink out of the room and Marko would then begin his soothsaying on matters of general interest to all the assembled.

  Tonight too Marko had gone outside, despite a cutting wind and sleet. Now he looked at his little board, tapping it with the index finger of his left hand, then gazed at it some more and slowly began. “There is a fire smoldering in this town, smoldering in many places. It cannot be seen, because people carry it inside them, but one day it will blaze out into the open and strike the guilty and innocent alike. On that day the upright ones will not be in the town, but outside it. Far outside. Let every man pray that he shall be among them.”

  Then, all of a sudden, he turned slowly and intently to Peter Fufich. “There’s a sound of weeping in your home too, Master Peter. It is a loud one and will get louder still, but there will be a change for the better. The change is about to begin. But you must go to church and remember the poor. Keep the candle burning under the icon of St. Dimitri.”

  As the old man spoke this, Peter Fufich, who was ordinarily a proud and arrogant man, bowed his head and stared at his silken waistband. There was an awkward silence, until Marko resumed gazing at his little board and tapping it with his nail, deep in thought. Out of that scratchy sound there came, imperceptibly, his gentle but firm voice, first in a thick mumble of slurred words, then clearer and more distinct: “Oh, wretched Christians, wretched Christians!”

  It was one of those dire oracular pronouncements that Marko made from time to time, which were afterwards spread from mouth to mouth among the Serbs.

  “Lo, they walk forth in blood. The blood is up to their ankles, and rising still. Today, for a hundred years more, and then one half of the next hundred, nothing but blood. That much I can see. Six generations adding their blood one to another in bucketfuls. All of it Christian blood. And a time will come when every child will read and write and people will talk to each other from one end of the world to the other. They will hear every word, but will not understand one another. Some men will gather up power and wealth such as the world has never seen, but their riches will vanish in blood and all their skill and cunning will not help them. Others will grow poor and hungry, they will eat their own tongues from hunger and pray for death to finish them off, but death will be slow and deaf. And whatever the soil shall bear, all food will have the bitter taste of blood. The Cross will tarnish over by itself. Then a man will come, naked and barefoot, with no staff or satchel, and he will blind everyone with his wisdom, his strength and beauty, and cast out the tribe of blood and violence, and he will comfort every soul. And the era of the Third One of the Trinity shall begin.”

  Toward the end of the speech, the old man’s words had grown less audible and distinct, grading finally into a soft murmur that was indistinguishable from the faint rhythmical tapping of his nail on the thin dry board of larchwood.

  They all gazed into the fire, deeply affected by the words.

  They had not understood the message, but its veiled content held them spellbound and filled them with the vague excitement which prophecies usually kindle in simple folk.

  Tanasiye got up to look at the still. Then one of the merchants asked Marko whether Russia would be sending a consul to Travnik. There was a silence, in which everyone felt that the question was out of place at that moment. The old man was irritated and answered sharply: “There will be neither a Russian Consul nor any other. The ones who are here will soon be gone. And soon the years will come when the main road will bypass this town. You will long to see a traveler or merchant, but they will not come near the town. You will buy and sell amongst yourselves. The same money will pass from hand to hand, but will not stay long enough in any hand to get warm or make a profit.”

  The merchants looked at one another. There was an uneasy silence, though a very short one, for it was broken almost immediately by an argument between Tanasiye and his helpers. Then the merchants too started talking, and the old man once more assumed his usual modest and smiling expression. He opened his ancient leather bag and began to take out cornmeal bread and several dark red onions. The young helpers laid some cuts of beef on the coals and the meat began to sizzle with a zesty, pervading aroma. They did not offer any to the old man, for it was well known that he never ate anyone’s meals but lived only on the dry food from his little leather bag. He ate slowly and with relish, then went to a corner of the still-room where the smoke and the smell of roast meat would not reach him, and there, curling up quietly like a schoolboy, his right cheek in the hollow of his palm, he went to sleep.

  As brandy was passed around, the conversation among the merchants grew more lively; but still they kept glancing toward the corner where the old man slept, lowering their voices as they did so. His presence filled them with a sense of unease and a certain solemn gravity which they rather liked.

  Tanasiye went on stoking the fire with beech logs, drowsy and churlish as always, undaunted and patient like Nature herself, unaware that at the other end of Travnik a French Consul was watching the red glow of his fire, not even aware, in his simplicity, that there were consuls and living people in the world who could not sleep.

 
; 27

  Daville spent the opening months of 1814, his last months in Travnik, in utter isolation, “ready for anything,” without any instructions and without news of any kind either from Paris or Istanbul. He paid the kavasses and servants out of his own pocket. Among the French authorities in Dalmatia there was near anarchy. French couriers and travelers had stopped coming. News from Austrian sources, which reached Travnik slowly and irregularly, grew less and less favorable. He stopped going to the Residency, for the Vizier showed him less and less attention and treated him with a certain vacuous and offensive kindliness, which hurt him worse than any rudeness of insult. Moreover, his harshness and intolerance were becoming an unbearable strain on the whole country. His Albanian detachment treated Bosnia as though it were a conquered land, and took from the Turk and Christian alike. Discontent rose and swelled among the Moslem population—not the loud kind that spent itself in roistering and headless frenzy in the streets, but the stifled, rankling kind that goes on smoldering a long time and, when it breaks out, leads to blood and slaughter.

  The Vizier’s Serbian victory had gone to his head. True, according to the stories of eyewitnesses and people in the know, the victory subsequently turned out to have been somewhat dubious, and Ali Pasha’s role in it less than notable, but to himself, apparently, it was a great and significant victory; in his own eyes, at any rate, his stature as victor seemed to increase with every day that passed. His reckless outbursts against the begs and prominent Moslems, too, gained momentum by the day. And it was precisely this that weakened his position. For although violence can spread terror and achieve some useful ends, it is not enough for a lasting rule. Terror soon blunts as an instrument of government. And every one seems to know this except those who, impelled by circumstances or their own instincts, perpetrate terror.

  The Vizier knew no other way of governing. He never even noticed that the begs and the notables had stopped fearing him and that his policy of ruthlessness, which had spread panic to begin with, no longer terrified anyone and was therefore, from his own point of view, no longer effective. Earlier they had trembled from fear, but now they were “numb and indifferent”; whereas he, on the other hand, shook with fury at the least sign of obstinacy or insubordination, even at their pregnant silence. There was a flurry of correspondence between the fortress commanders, the begs were whispering among themselves, and an ominous hush settled on the bazaars throughout the country. With the approach of warmer weather, there might well be an open movement against Ali Pasha’s regime. D’Avenat, for one, felt certain that this would happen.