Partisan

by Christopher Nicole

  Ivkov focussed. ‘It is the road to Divitsar. If we follow that, we will go right into the village.’

  ‘Hoorah!’ Elena said.

  ‘How far?’ Tony asked.

  ‘Maybe fifteen miles.’

  ‘Fifteen miles?’ Sandrine shouted. ‘You mean we have walked all night and made only five miles?’

  ‘You haven’t walked all night,’ Elena pointed out. ‘You were carried for most of it.’

  ‘Bitch!’ Sandrine snapped, and swung her hand.

  Elena caught her wrist and swung her own hand. Sandrine gave one of her shrieks as she was struck across the cheek, but she was full of fight and lashed out with her foot. It was Elena’s turn to cry out in pain, as Sandrine had not taken off her boots, but the Croatian had retained her grip on the Frenchwoman’s wrist, and the pair of them lost their balance together and went rolling down the hillside, legs kicking.

  Ivkov scratched his head.

  ‘Come on,’ Tony said, and scrambled down. He was afraid that Elena, so much bigger and stronger, might do the Frenchwoman an injury.

  Ivkov followed, dislodging a small avalanche of stones and dust, and they caught up with the women – just in time, Tony estimated, for Elena had Sandrine on her back and was sitting astride her thighs with both hands wrapped round her throat.

  ‘Stop that!’ he snapped, and grasped Elena’s shoulder to pull her off.

  Elena sat down with a bump. ‘She is a bitch and a malingerer.’

  ‘She’s your best friend,’ Tony reminded her. ‘And she’s one of us. There’s to be no more fighting.’ He knelt beside Sandrine. ‘You all right?’

  Sandrine was gasping for breath and stroking her throat. ‘She tried to kill me.’

  ‘We’re all pretty upset,’ he said. ‘She just lost her temper.’

  ‘I need something to drink.’

  ‘Over here.’ He helped her up and across the road to the stream. ‘Mind how you go.’

  The bank was lined with thick bushes. Sandrine carefully parted these, lay on the bank on her stomach and immersed her head in the water; he assumed she was drinking at the same time.

  She raised her head. ‘I would like to go in. Can I go in?’

  Tony shrugged. ‘I have no objection.’

  To his amazement she rose to her knees and lifted her dress over her head. Then she dropped her knickers to the ground and sat down to remove her boots and bandages. The rising sun bathed her body in golden splendour. She stepped down the shallow bank and into the water. It only came to her knees, but she waded out until it reached her waist, and there crouched, soaking her hair time and again.

  Elena and Ivkov arrived, pushing the bushes aside.

  ‘I told you, you can fuck her if you like,’ Elena said to Tony. ‘Ram her till she shouts for help.’

  Ivkov gave a heavy sigh, clearly contemplating surrogate duties.

  ‘I’m sure she’d shriek for help at the very idea,’ Tony said.

  ‘You do not know her. Beneath that china-doll exterior she is a bitch in heat, all the time.’

  Tony remembered what Sandrine had told him, of losing her virginity at thirteen. He hadn’t altogether believed her.

  ‘Anyway,’ he said, determined to lighten the atmosphere, ‘I’ve never been any good on an empty stomach.’

  ‘Well,’ Elena said, ‘I am going in too.’

  She threw her dress and underwear on the ground, pulled off her boots, and entered the water, carefully selecting a spot some yards away from the still soaking Sandrine, who had her eyes closed and was temporarily oblivious to her surroundings.

  Ivkov gave another of his sighs.

  ‘Very well, Ivkov,’ Tony said. ‘You may go in too. But stay away from the women.’

  He decided to go in as well; he needed a bath as much as anyone. He soaked and tried to think. But reality was very hard to grasp. This time last week he had not had a care in the world, only his next meeting with Elena to look forward to. His only problem had been whether he would be allowed to marry the girl . . . and if he really wanted to. He had always been an intensely private person, and the idea of being so intimate with someone scared him.

  Now, he did not suppose he had ever been so intimate with anyone before in his life than with these three people. Which added another dimension to his dilemmas: that of responsibility.

  He had, as an officer, been trained to accept responsibility. But his responsibility had been that of duty – to responsible men. If, as a section or company commander, he had been responsible for the lives and well-being of his men, there had always been the comforting feeling that those men had been as highly trained as himself, each totally aware of his own skills and his own place in the scheme of things, each requiring only to be pointed in a certain direction by his officer to know what to do next.

  These three people, even Elena, had accepted his leadership absolutely, but without the discipline to obey immediately and without question. Yet they were trusting their lives to his judgement, even if they must know that he had as little idea of what might happen next as themselves.

  Sandrine waded through the waist-deep water towards him. Now her eyes were open, and water flowed from her pale yellow hair down her cheeks, dripped from her armpits and nipples. ‘You are a good man, Tony Davis,’ she said.

  ‘You said that once before,’ he reminded her. ‘I really would wait until we see how this turns out before you make a final judgement.’

  She made a moue. ‘You are afraid of me. Of my sex. Of what it might do to you.’

  ‘You could very well be right.’

  ‘Listen, I would like to fuck with you.’

  ‘With no breakfast?’

  ‘Which is more important to you, sex or food?’

  ‘Well, I hate to sound totally gross, but at this moment . . . Oh, Jesus Christ!’

  The roar of engines rose even above the sound of rushing water; the vehicles were quite close.

  ‘On the bank,’ he snapped.

  He scooped Sandrine from the water and dashed to the bank. He threw her, and then himself, on the ground, pulling their discarded clothes and weapons against them. Elena and Ivkov did likewise, and they huddled beneath the bushes, watching the road, down which there now came four motorcycle outriders, followed by several trucks filled with soldiers. German soldiers. In the rear of each truck there was mounted a machine-gun; the gunners were glaring at the hills to either side.

  Fortunately, their interest was in the hills; they did not even look at the roadside bushes. The convoy passed and continued to descend the hill.

  ‘Is it not strange,’ Elena remarked, ‘that every time the Germans find us, we are naked.’

  ‘They did not find us,’ Sandrine said.

  Tony was too preoccupied to notice that his little group was off on a tangent again. ‘How many villages lie along this road?’ he asked Ivkov.

  ‘Only Divitsar.’

  ‘Then those men must have come from there.’

  ‘I think so.’

  Tony looked at his watch; it was just seven. ‘Then it was a dawn raid. Do you think the village is still standing?’

  ‘Would we not have heard the firing?’ Elena asked.

  ‘Not if it is still more than ten miles away,’ Tony said. ‘Get dressed.’

  They dragged on their clothes.

  ‘What are we going to do?’ Sandrine asked.

  ‘Keep going. There is nothing else to do.’

  *

  They walked for five hours, stopping for ten minutes in every hour. They followed the road, keeping a careful lookout for any signs of German activity, but all they saw was the occasional aircraft, too high to be interested in them.

  Their stomachs rolled with hunger, and they were again desperately thirsty. Soon Sandrine began to limp, but, stung by Elena’s jibes, she refused to ask for help.

  And then it began to rain. The sky spent a couple of hours darkening, which was in the first instance a relief as the sun rose higher and be
came hotter. But by noon the glow was entirely blocked out, a cold wind came down from the mountains, and the rain followed, equally cold.

  They looked at Tony.

  ‘We keep going,’ he said.

  The rain was heavy and made nonsense of their scanty clothing; huge drops thudded on their unprotected heads and shoulders. They walked with bowed heads, and Tony reckoned they could walk right into the middle of a German patrol without even realising it.

  And indeed they were in the middle of a group of men before they knew it. The men wore ponchos and waterproof hats, and carried a variety of weapons.

  ‘Identify yourselves,’ someone said.

  ‘I am Ivkov the bath-keeper,’ Ivkov said. ‘I have come to see my brother.’

  ‘Where are you from?’

  ‘We are from Belgrade. These are my friends.’

  The spokesman peered at Tony and the two women.

  ‘You are Serbs?’

  Tony spoke before anyone else could. ‘I am a British officer. This lady is a French journalist. This lady is a Serb.’

  Elena snorted, but did not speak.

  ‘Come with us,’ the leader said.

  Tony walked beside him. ‘We had to hide from a German column, down the hill.’

  The man nodded. ‘They were at our village last night, looking for Yugoslav soldiers.’

  ‘Did they cause much damage?’

  He shook his head. ‘They found nothing, so they spent the night and went away again this morning.’

  That didn’t really sound like the Germans who had raped Belgrade, Tony thought, but he decided against saying so. ‘Will you give us shelter?’

  ‘That is up to our mayor. You are the sort of people the Germans were looking for.’

  ‘We are fighting on your side.’

  ‘We are not fighting anybody,’ the man pointed out. ‘You must talk with our mayor.’

  ‘This mayor—’

  ‘His name is Ivkov. He is the brother of the bath-keeper.’

  ‘Thank God for that,’ Tony said.

  Ivkov did not look convinced. But their immediate hosts seemed happy enough, especially as they found themselves shepherding two extraordinarily attractive young women, even if both Elena and Sandrine resembled drowned rats at the moment.

  Half an hour later they came upon the houses, straggling to either side of the road. These were hardly more than huts, but they were solidly built of stone with wood roofs and chimneys, from several of which issued wisps of smoke. Halfway along the single cobbled street on the left there was a larger building, with two storeys, which Tony guessed was the town hall. Opposite was another larger than usual building, although with only one floor; this he reckoned was the tavern. Oddly, there was no church. But then, this was a Communist community.

  Just beyond the village there was a stream, tumbling down the hillside from the quite high hill beyond and continuing down the slope behind the houses. The stream obviously kept the community supplied with fresh water, although there could be no doubt, from the smell, that sanitary arrangements were primitive. Above the stream, on the sloping hillside, there was a considerable area under cultivation. This large vegetable garden, taken in conjunction with the numbers of goats on the hills beyond, indicated that these people were totally self-sufficient, at least as regards food.

  The rain continued to teem down, but what appeared to be a large proportion of the population turned out to welcome them, including women and children and growling dogs, as well as several goats and a horde of chickens.

  They were escorted up the street, surrounded by questions and comments, until they reached the town hall. Here there waited several quite well-dressed men, and one or two women, also clearly a cut above the rest of the inhabitants. One man in particular, tall and stout and wearing a gold medallion on a chain round his neck, was clearly the mayor. He was also clearly Ivkov’s brother, and the bath-keeper hurried forward to explain who they were. He had learned his lesson from the past few days, and did not delineate Elena’s nationality; Tony could only hope none of these people had ever had any reason to visit the Kostic boarding house.

  Petar Ivkov listened carefully to what Boris had to say, the while looking from Tony to the women; disturbingly, he made no effort to embrace his brother as was the Serb way, nor, indeed, did he appear very pleased to see him. But when Boris had finished, the mayor turned to one of his own women. ‘Take these ladies and find them some clothes to wear,’ he said.

  ‘Do you have a hot bath?’ Sandrine asked. ‘I am freezing.’

  ‘You can bathe in the stream.’

  ‘But that will be cold.’

  ‘It will have to do.’

  ‘What about food?’ Elena said. ‘We are starving.’

  ‘And feed them,’ the mayor said to the woman who had been instructed to procure them clothing.

  ‘Will we return here?’ Elena asked.

  ‘When you have been fed and clothed,’ Petar Ivkov said. ‘You will come inside,’ he told Tony.

  Tony and Ivkov followed him into a large warm room; there was a roaring fire in the grate. Petar Ivkov gestured them to the table, where home-made bread and goat’s cheese and rough wine was placed in front of them. Then he sat down himself. ‘Tell me of Belgrade.’

  Tony would have preferred to be offered a change into dry clothing himself, and equally a bed, but the food and wine were most acceptable.

  ‘Did your recent guests not tell you what happened?’ he asked as he tore off pieces of bread.

  ‘They said there was some resistance.’

  ‘They have destroyed the city,’ Boris said.

  ‘They were fools,’ his brother said. ‘To attempt to resist.’

  ‘Your people did not attempt to resist,’ Tony said, ‘until it was forced on them.’ He looked around the faces, for several of the men had come into the room with them. ‘Do you not resent this?’

  The men shuffled their feet and exchanged glances.

  ‘Why did you not surrender?’ Petar asked. ‘Then you would have been sent to Germany as a prisoner of war. You would have been safe.’

  ‘It is my duty to fight the Germans,’ Tony said. ‘As it is yours.’

  Petar snorted. ‘For what?’

  It was Boris’s turn to snort. ‘He takes his orders from Moscow. And Stalin is Hitler’s friend.’

  ‘It is not my place, nor that of my people, to fight and die for a corrupt and decrepit regime,’ Petar declared. ‘I take you in because you are my brother, and I take you in, Englishman, because you are my brother’s friend. But there is no war here in Divitsar. Remember this. Now tell me, have you encountered any Cetniks on your way here?’

  ‘Cetniks?’ Tony frowned. He had heard the word, of course; in Serbian it actually meant members of an armed company, but it was commonly used to delineate supporters of the royal family, which had suffered in popularity as a result of Prince Paul’s subservience to the Nazis.

  ‘He means government soldiers,’ Boris explained, waggling his eyebrows.

  Tony made a quick decision. He had no idea what the women, and Elena in particular, might be saying to their hosts. ‘We encountered some troops, yes. Like us, they were trying to escape.’

  ‘Do you know of the bombing raid last night?’

  Tony nodded. ‘We were there.’

  ‘But you were not hurt,’ Petar said thoughtfully. ‘And you wish to fight the Germans.’

  ‘As I said—’

  ‘It is your duty. It is my duty to preserve the lives and wealth of my people. The Germans are the enemies of the government of Yugoslavia, which has chosen to defy them. We are also the enemies of the government of Yugoslavia, which has chosen to outlaw us. You understand that?’

  ‘Ah . . . yes,’ Tony said. ‘I hope you will not blame me for not sympathising with your point of view.’

  ‘Right now, my friend, it is my point of view that matters to you. I have said I will give you shelter – temporary shelter – because you are a frien
d of my brother. You may remain here while my people see if they can locate others who may be willing to take you in, and who may even wish to fight the Germans with you.’

  ‘But—’ Boris began.

  Tony silenced him with a quick shake of the head. He was willing to let the future take care of itself; right now they needed rest and recuperation more than anything else. ‘Then we are grateful,’ he said.

  ‘You should be,’ Petar said. ‘Now, these women, they belong to you?’

  ‘Ah . . . yes.’ Tony couldn’t risk them belonging to anyone else.

  Petar grinned. ‘They are very handsome. But two? I will give you much for the fair one.’

  ‘I’m sorry. She is very special.’

  ‘Ah. Then the dark one?’

  ‘She too is very special.’

  Petar frowned, and then grinned again. ‘You are a glutton, Captain Davis. A very fortunate glutton. There is an empty house at the end of the street. Its owner recently died. I give it to you for the duration of your stay here. You will be required to earn your keep. You will take your turns on watch in the hills. You have bullets for those guns?’

  ‘Not many.’

  ‘Let me see them.’

  Boris handed over his rifle. ‘I have a dozen cartridges in this bandolier,’ he said.

  Petar gave back the weapon. ‘Normal army issue. We have bullets. Captain.’

  Tony gave him the Webley revolver, and he made a face. ‘Point three-eight. I do not think we have these.’ He broke the gun. ‘Six.’

  ‘And I have six more.’

  ‘They will have to do.’ He gave a bellow of laughter. ‘Until you meet up with another British officer, eh?’

  ‘We also have a tommy-gun, but no cartridges, and a Luger pistol.’

  ‘Taken from the Germans? Let me see it.’

  ‘It belongs to one of the women.’

  ‘You let a woman have a pistol?’

  ‘I told you, it’s hers.’

  ‘And does she know how to use it?’

  ‘Very well.’

  ‘Strange woman,’ Petar commented. ‘Has she bullets?’