At what point he actually began to listen to the First Symphony for Piano and Foot Pounding Against the Rotten Oak Parquet, by the forgotten Viennese composer Gertrude Seghers-Stein, Rudolf Stubler was not able to recall. The music had completely engulfed him. He was drowning in it as in a dream, captivated by the out-of-tune little piano, as if it were a new instrument, unrelated to the piano. This was an instrument created in Bijeljina in the summer of 1943, for a piece of music that could be performed on no other instrument. In Gertrude’s little piano could be heard the scraping of Slavonian well pipes, the banging of the freight wagon doors closing before the eyes of humanity while the last bits of light strained through the uneven boards, the thunder of the artillery from the other side of the horizon, the motors of a thousand tanks rumbling to life at the same time on an early winter morning, somewhere far to the east, the scrape of Gypsy violins, the discordant, raw sound of tiny blows hammering against the dusty wires, thousands of smothered women and men who remembered Mozart before losing consciousness, the sound of the earth drumming against the coffin.
Overcome, mesmerized, he listened to his music teacher, who he’d thought had gone out of her mind, as he listened to the magnificent First Symphony for Piano and Foot Pounding Against the Rotten Oak Parquet.
When he got up from the chair, the clothes on his back were dry. The bank notes on the table had also long since dried.
Please, Mrs. Danica, accept this. What would I say to my father?
Ah, Drago, Drago, he was always so generous.
She was the only one who called Karlo Stubler Drago.
When you come next time, she said, the Second Symphony for Piano and Foot Pounding Against the Rotten Oak Parquet will follow. Prepare yourself and be patient. I wrote seventeen symphonies. Seventeen is a lucky number. Only you will hear them.
In July and August the sun and the rain alternated. As if by some rule of order, a sudden summer storm would hit. The wind uprooted trees and carried freshly washed sheets through Andrijevci, slinging them high in the air and letting them drop slowly atop the old oaks far to the east. It would suddenly grow colder and seemed the fall had arrived in the middle of July, but then the next day it would again be sunny and would remain hot for two or three days. The army had been camped in the vicinity of the village. No one knew why they had been posted there, out in the open, unless it was to serve as bait. There was talk among the soldiers that this was all temporary and they would soon be sent back to Germany. Or maybe to the east, some would add morosely.
Mladen’s last letter to Nevenka is dated 13 VIII 43.
As always it is written in fountain pen, but no longer in green ink. It is ordinary blue ink. The handwriting is even, so the letter must have been written on a table, perhaps in the Andrijevci tavern, the only one in the vicinity of the camp, which the soldiers could frequent given special permission. Mladen sounds absent, as if stringing sentences together to finish the letter as quickly as possible.
* * *
—
Dear Nevenka,
I’m sure you wanted to hear from me. I haven’t written because I’ve come to Croatia and don’t have much time. If only you knew how many pears, plums, and apples are here for us to eat. Lots of grapes too. We German soldiers are well liked here and are given everything for free.
We might soon be going back to Germany, but maybe not. Have you been swimming? It’s very hot here, but there are no rivers so we can’t swim.
Have you heard from Željko? Has he taken off, or is he still in Borovo?
What is the news of Nano?
With greetings to your mother and father, to Omama and Opapa, and with much love to you,
Your Mladen
* * *
—
In the course of 1943, after Easter and then again after their arrival in Croatia, Mladen had two three-day leaves. The second time, in late spring or early summer, he even went to Kasindol Street in Ilidža. Somewhere in the Stubler house there is a record of this visit: some ten photographs, small format shots taken in front of the house and in the garden. Mladen is in the uniform of a German soldier and around him the whole family. Only Franjo is not there. He was at work or for some reason did not want to have his picture taken.
Mladen in a garden chair, his elbow leaning against the table, while Nevenka stands beside him, proud. She has placed her arm hand around his shoulders. The unknown photographer told her to do this to make the picture more dynamic. Around the table to each side, standing or sitting, are Karlo, Johanna, Rika, Vilko, and Olga. Nano is not there either. He was in Bijeljina by then, overseeing the trench digging around the city.
Mladen next to the apiary. Alone. Karlo had built the wooden structure with Rudi’s help, then painted it with the carbolineum used for coating railroad tresses, which Karlo’s son-in-law Franjo had purchased at the railway shop, requesting a receipt so no one would accuse him of having stolen it. The apiary was supposed to be a temporary structure until a stronger, more solid one was built, but it stood on the same spot for seventy years. It was beautiful, and so generations of Stublers and Stubler grandchildren had their pictures taken beside it. Mladen must have walked with the photographer across those two hundred meters, along the raised beds with the strawberries and green lettuce and the red and black currant bushes to have his photo taken there. Mladen walks through the garden in the uniform of a German soldier, with symbols and epaulets of whose importance we are unaware, the photographer with his camera and stand behind him. When the family heard that Mladen was coming home, they had probably brought over one of the two photographers who had studios in Ilidža during the war: Alfons Kafka or Đuro Karlović. Probably it was Kafka, for Karlo Stubler had known him for years, and for a time they had frequented each other’s homes.
Mladen standing beside the round garden table. Again everyone is around him. There are two unfamiliar people. Probably neighbors whom, at the time when we looked at these photos – a year or two after Olga’s death – no one remembered anymore. A bowl of apples on the table. Where had apples come to Ilidža from in May or June? Or had Mladen been on leave at the end of July when the Petrovka apples were ripe? But the apples in the picture are not Petrovkas. I wracked my brain over this question for a long time: they are large peacetime apples of the kind that never grew in the yard on Kasindol, and the year was lean 1943. The figures in the picture are careful not to obstruct the view of the bowl; the apples were there to be seen, just as was Mladen in his neatly buttoned uniform.
They are artificial, plastic apples, that had come into fashion in the last years before the war. Housewives used them to decorate their tables. They did not rot and were prettier than real ones. When the family had gone out to have their pictures taken, they had taken the apples out to the garden with them. The year was 1943, but they did not want to look hungry in the photos. For them that year was not terrible. It was a page from their life’s calendar, and one had to embellish reality. Let it be seen that in honor of the grandson’s visiting on his leave they had brought out the best apples.
If Mladen had lived, perhaps these photographs would have been compromising for him. Or if the family history had unfolded differently, if after the war people from the picture had ended up in important positions in the new society, these pictures would have been dangerous. But as it was it made no difference. The Stubler family history unfolded outside social and political history, and after 1943 they would never intersect with it again. The truth is that both political and social history would end at about the same time. The Stublers would disappear, as would Yugoslavia, the last country in which their kuferaš biographies might have found their reason for being.
When I looked at these photographs for the first and last time in 1987 or the year after, it seemed to me that everyone in the picture, and not just the young girl, was proud of Mladen’s uniform. It was an uncomfortable thought and I did not speak it out loud, nor did I
ask any questions. How could I have asked, when they all sat there beside me, staring at the photos, smiling sweetly, as if they were in the presence of a little Christ in his mother’s arms. They mentioned the names of the people in the pictures, adding information and dates. I could have asked whether Kafka or else Karlović had taken them, but there was no way I could have asked why the people in the pictures, why Mladen’s close relatives, suddenly seemed so proud of his uniform? A senseless question. They strove for order, filled out all the necessary forms properly, stood before the office windows, produced the necessary documents, had their pictures taken, produced evidence regarding their employment, and – aside from that one fatal mistake of Karlo’s, when he supported the workers in their strike – spent their lives in bureaucratic rectitude, hoping the state would express to them its gratitude protecting them from danger. Nothing in 1943 seemed so certain as the uniform of a German soldier. To everyone but Franjo.
During this leave Mladen arrived with an elaborate desertion plan. Instead of going back to camp in Slavonia, he would take the train to Dubrovnik. All he needed was a well-made counterfeit pass, and he already had someone who could do it for him. In Dubrovnik he was to be met by Uncle Andrija Ćurlin, who, through his connections, would dispatch him by boat to the English. The idea was bold, youthful. The English had not yet even landed in Sicily, but Mladen had patiently worked it all out. An acquaintance was to provide him with a pass. Actually, it wasn’t an acquaintance but the first cousin of Mladen’s girlfriend. Franjo was to call Uncle Andrija in Dubrovnik from a phone that could not be listened in on. Uncle Andrija had already promised Mladen he would hide him if he deserted. The idea of joining the Partisans was no longer mentioned. Why?
Olga was horrified. She hissed around the apartment, shouting under her breath, in fear someone might overhear. She forbade Franjo to call Andrija in Dubrovnik. She told Mladen she would kill herself if he deserted and was arrested and shot. She would kill herself, let Franjo and the Partisans worry about Javorka.
The arguments and recriminations about something that had yet to happen continued for three days. She threatened and threateningly imagined Mladen’s death. He would jump from a train somewhere near Konjic or Jablanica, they would shower him with rounds of gunfire, and he would fall dead into the Neretva. They would hunt him in Mostar and Čapljina, in Trebinje and Gruž. He suffered and perished several times, and she would furiously tell it to his face, pressing him to return to the German camp at Andrijevci and everything would be right, in accord with the protocols and rules, in keeping with how a citizen ought to behave before governmental and military authorities…
Calm reigned on the final morning. He was dejected, his great plans had fallen through, his father had not called Uncle Andrija but looked at him sadly, leaning against the kitchen door, saying nothing. His mother was kind, as if all was good, peaceful and quiet, as if she were sending him to Sokol camp and would accompany him to the station. Don’t, he said to her. L. will see me off. His mother had only met her once, when Mladen was in the seventh grade at the gymnasium and L. a year older. This is my girlfriend, he had said to his mother. She extended her hand to her. The girl shook it firmly; she was beautiful. Olga had been proud of Mladen’s choice. Daughter-in-law, she joked to someone, that’s our daughter-in-law. But she had thought it would quickly pass. High school love affairs were short lived.
L. J.’s name was never spoken in our house, though we all knew it. It is unclear how, but in the years when this was contemplated, people knew L.J. was our secret relation. Mladen’s first and last girlfriend, whom he was with from the seventh grade until the end. Olga had shaken her hand once; her grip had been firm and decisive. Franjo never met her. We did not exchange a word with her. No one. We would just smile at her as we passed. She would smile back. That was how we expressed our sympathy to her and she to us, with a smile. When I grew up, I would smile at L.J. too, and she would smile at me. Did she know Mladen had been my uncle, even though I was born twenty-three years after his death? Probably not. Sarajevo was a small town and someone was always smiling at L.J.
She was from an old Tašlihan Serbian family, with a quite famous surname that appears in all the old Sarajevo chronicles and histories. In 1878 her great-grandfather had greeted the Austrian troops in the name of all the Orthodox of the city, not to express subservience to Baron Filipović but to ask the representatives of the empire, which he believed would remain in Bosnia for a long time, as long as Turkey had, how he and his people might be of help. That had not been subservience – rather, the old Serb, who was a businessman, considered this to be the easiest way to prevent harm from coming to his people and to continue their affairs, which had been briefly interrupted by the war. The Austrians were able to respect such an attitude, just as the Turks, while they ruled over Bosnia, had respected the head of the Tašlihan family, and his reputation with the new occupier only grew, as it did both among the locals, those of his faith and those of others, and among the kuferaši. The family’s wealth grew over thirty-five years of peace, and L’s father and uncles all studied in Vienna. Only the murder of the prince, the event that triggered the Great War, destroyed the peace of the wide J. courtyard with its Turkish cobblestones and tall white walls, while the shop windows were shattered, their promissory notes fell in value, and a portion of their bank holdings disappeared. The walls drew in misfortune like moisture. But only for a short time. Although during the war he dispensed the majority of what he owned, the gold, money, and goods, L.’s grandfather was still on his feet in 1918, upright, with a black Christian fez on his head. For the liberators, though they were of his faith and language, he did not express overmuch enthusiasm. He said in public that toward others one should be open and toward one’s own cautious, and for this statement he was reproached. He said what he thought, but with clarity and measure, so his words did not cost him. The J. family would never again attain the wealth they had had in Austrian times, but they would remain one of the two or three richest Serbian families in Sarajevo. They could have achieved more, but their grandfather did not conduct any business affairs with the government or allow the family name to be overly used before the authorities. It would not be good if anyone in the marketplace thought the J’s were doing better because there was a Serbian king. That would not be good at all, said her grandfather, and her father and uncles did not give it another thought, proceeding instead as if the old man was always correct. J.’s grandfather died in the middle of summer 1940. The entire Serbian marketplace was at the funeral, which was conducted by the bishop of the Orthodox Church of Sarajevo. The funeral of the elder J. was the most important social event in Sarajevo during the last summer before the war.
After the Ustaše arrived in Sarajevo at the end of April 1941, they took control of the J. family’s shops, but their homes were not touched, nor did any of their family members experience harm. L.’s father skillfully avoided offers of expressing loyalty to the Croatian authorities, though as a Croat of Orthodox faith, he could have taken part in the expressions of fidelity that began to flow toward Zagreb after the first great crimes, thereby improving the Ustaše’s reputation among the Germans, who had criticized them for unnecessary crimes against the Serbs, and also for the living conditions of his own compatriots in Sarajevo. He didn’t want to take part in this at any cost; he didn’t want to assist evil.
L.’s father knew she was going out with Mladen. Probably he inquired what kind of home the young man came from, though this was not a problem in Sarajevo. Did it bother him that he was Catholic? There is little likelihood that it would have troubled him, given that his younger brother, L.’s uncle, was married to a Catholic woman, a Pole, the daughter of Emil Streche, professor of Latin at the Great Boys Gymnasium. Mladen and L. were together for three years. If it had bothered him, he would have done something to separate them.
Was it useful to him that his daughter was going out with a German soldier in 1943? Maybe so. They did no
t hold hands in public – Mladen did not want that – but they were seen walking together along Ferhadija Street. He was tall, thin, and blond, straight as a German triumphal obelisk; she a highbred Tašlihan girl who resembled the future Claudia Cardinale, her hair long, flying in all directions, dyed with Istanbul henna.
Why didn’t he take her hand? They would walk side by side with their shoulders touching so that not even a sheet of paper could have slipped between them.
Was he perhaps afraid someone might call her a German slut? A Serb and also a German slut? This was quite possible in Sarajevo. Although he would write to little Nevenka, “We German soldiers are well liked here and are given everything for free,” and maybe he believed these words while he was writing them, still Mladen understood well what German soldiers were in Sarajevo. And why they liked them in Slavonia and gave them fruit at no charge. He could imagine that one of his gymnasium comrades, some Young Communist, might call L. a German slut, as perhaps he might have done under different circumstances. Or no, he wouldn’t have.
What is known: he confided in her his plan to desert and make his way to Dubrovnik. L.’s first cousin would help with the papers. After the war B.J. worked in the Federal Executive Council and then went into diplomatic service. He would become a Yugoslav ambassador somewhere in Latin America. At that time, in the early summer of 1943, he was a member of the communist underground in Sarajevo. He would remain in the city until the arrival of the Partisans, one of the few who did not fall victim to Luburić’s police. A bright, cheerful person, calm and collected under all circumstances. Mladen had probably talked with him during his previous leave. What had B.J. told him?
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