The Great War

by Aleksandar Gatalica

  But strange things happened. Together with the ministers, there also came civil servants, who like all bureaucrats brought with them their stamps and seals, and they began to correspond with each other. One ministry wrote to another just two streets away, and Serbian urchins ran and carried the letters, opening them on the way and reading them aloud. Why was the Ministry of the National Economy writing to Mr Milorad Drashkovich, Minister of Public Works, when both the resources and the buildings were back in occupied Serbia, for God’s sake? What were they negotiating and proposing and drafting laws about? The refugee children who were given the role of couriers knew best. But children will be children: they got carried away with the game.

  Only yesterday, a Serbian Home Guard conscript, who had miraculously escaped death, otherwise a man of positive ideas and anything but an obscurantist, told me this story.

  ‘It’s a devilish business, Mr Pisano,’ he said.

  ‘In what sense, Monsieur?’ I replied in French, which he understood well and spoke with some skill.

  ‘The children really went overboard, they did.’ He stopped, lit a cheap ciga­rette and began puffing away at it like a Greek, without taking it out of his mouth. ‘They scampered around, were impudent, opened ministerial mail.’

  ‘But those ministries, you’ll agree –,’ I wanted to add.

  ‘Of course. I know what you’re going to say: what is there to write about when Serbia has shrunk to the size of an atoll in the Ionian Sea?’

  ‘But, Monsieur, what happened with the children?’

  ‘Things went too far and we adults, occupied with our own dying, were too slow to notice. One urchin was almost killed. It all started with the children playing. First of all, they just opened the mail. Later they began to call it out in the streets to the locals and the Greek kids in their colourful pants, who didn’t understand a word anyway. But then it went a step further. Down on the beach — I’m sure you know it, the lovely, sandy one a little way outside of the city — they made their own government: a children’s government. There was no one to stop them playing at it. At first, it looked like an ordinary game: all children play at being kings, but these urchins of ours began taking on the roles of Crown prince Alexander, of his father, old King Peter, of Prime Minister Pashich, and finally of all the ministers of the different ministries dotted about town. It was just for fun at first, a game like chasings or team leap­frogging. But then the boys went too far, Monsieur, because after having seen death and physical decay they could never return to childhood innocence.

  ‘Fights developed over who would play who. And just like in our cruel society where things are always put through by force alone, never with brains and ability, so our boys began to beat each other black and blue, most literally, and even to draw blood. Snotty-nosed as they were, no one paid any attention to them, so no one noticed their injuries, although we should have. The roles in that children’s drama weren’t shared but won with what raw muscle power those undernourished biceps could muster. The boys established in their own way that it was better to be prime minister than an ordinary minister, and Crown prince was better than prime minister. Then the strongest, I won’t tell you any names for now, became Alexander; the second strongest became Pashich, the third strongest old King Peter, and the others, also after bloody fistfights, assumed the roles of Laza Pachu, Momchilo Ninchich and the other ministers.

  ‘Afterwards the boys returned to the city, picked up the ministerial mail and immediately opened it. First they took it down to the beach and discussed every piece of mail with as much literacy and wit as they had, and only then delivered it to the ministries. The staff of the ministries which sent the letters, as well as the recipients, complained that delivery of the government mail was slow, but they knew they weren’t writing anything important anyway, so they never went further than grumbling. This allowed the boys to begin running their parallel government with crooked and hot-headed decisions.’

  ‘How did you find out about it all and prevent the children from doing the worst, Monsieur?’

  ‘How I found out? One of my adopted sons, so to speak, a grubby, gangly boy without a family, became the “Minister of Education and Religious Affairs, Lyubomir Davidovich”, and he told me everything. Things very soon got serious, Mr Pisano. ”Nikola Pashich” was a hot-tempered boy from Rudnik. He took his role very seriously, and every day he would give someone a good thrashing to serve as an example so no one would think of deposing him. But there were still pretenders. My little shrimp didn’t even think of taking it any further than “Minister Davidovich”, but there were petulant lads of fourteen who felt that they and no one else were born to be Crown princes and prime ministers.

  ‘They were aided in this by the mail they opened. They understood little of the business of government, but they read the words “danger”, “peril”, “death” and “disease” — and ever more “death” and “dizease” — and this raised the fever in the already sickly children’s bodies. In order to take on the role of Nikola Pashich, one violent brat from Prizren broke the arm and collarbone of the former “Nikola Pashich”, that small boy from Rudnik, and threatened to kill him if he said a word to anyone. Like a wounded lion, the ousted boy obeyed and dutifully took on the role of the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Balugdzhich; the new “Nikola Pashich” had been in that role and now advanced to Prime Minister. But that wasn’t the end of it. The “Crown prince”, a boy from Barayevo, repulsed several attacks, and “old King Peter” too (played by a former shepherd boy from Homolye) was anything but meek in defending his royal dignity.

  ‘When the dust had settled a little, as we say, and the flea-circus had stabilized, new mail began to arrive from the Serbian capital of Corfu which brought fresh turmoil and strife to the children’s government. The boys saw that the real Crown prince Alexander had seriously clashed with the real Prime Minister Pashich, and they thought that if that was the way things were in the grown-up world, it had to be like that with them too. The boy from Prizren, “Nikola Pashich”, started to look askance at the little Barayevo boy who was “Crown prince”. If better letters had begun arriving from hotel Bella Venezia, where the seat of the Serbian government was, everything would probably have simmered down, but Alexander reprimanded Nikola Pashich in the grown-ups’ mail and demanded that he give account of what he had done and whom he had met in the first months of 1916, and our Pashich replied on eleven finely typed pages.

  ‘The boys took all that with grotesque earnest and distorted it as only children can. In the end, they decided that the dual-power situation had to end and called a fist-fight duel between “Nikola Pashich” and the “Crown prince”. The other “ministers” took sides, with some helping the “premier” get ready, while others, including my “Davidovich”, assisted the “future king” in this battle, which one boy was meant not to emerge from alive. They arranged the duel just like adults, stripped off their clothes and began to brawl with wild abandon, Monsieur, egged on by gruesome chants of all the other boys — it was terrible. My boy told me that they slapped, punched and scratched each other, lunged and tried to gouge out each other’s eyes and tear off their testicles. They were both squeaking and shrieking like fledglings, when things started to go amiss for “Nikola Pashich”. The “Crown prince” pinned him to a cliff, pushing him against the jagged rocks, which began to take the skin off his back, while from the front he stuck his thumb into his left eye and tried to gouge it out. At the last moment, some Greek shepherds arrived on the scene and separated the boys.

  ‘The Prizren boy is now in our hospital on the other side of Corfu and the “victor” in an improvized lock-up in the city. Medics are trying to save the first boy’s eye, but the authorities don’t know what to do with the juvenile delinquent: the wretch weeps and says it was all just a game. Well, Monsieur, that is the story — another tale told by this war.’

  My Home Guard conscript turned, spat out his cigarette butt and left. In as long as it takes to smoke a cigarette,
I had heard a truly terrible children’s story from the war. I looked around me: fig trees with their finger-like leaves bent down as low as my head, and their heavy, purple fruit seemed to me like children’s battered faces.

  Later, I asked some Greeks in Corfu city about the boys’ flea-brained commune. One of them, in typical Hellenic fashion, said:

  ‘That’s Serbian business, sir. The Serbs are splendid people: we have both pleasure and benefit from them. Many have since become relatives by marriage. You are sure to have heard of Ioannis Gazis, the owner of the hotel Bella Venezia. Well, he has turned his tavern and guest house into the seat of the Serbian government, and I hear he is going to marry off a third daughter to a Serb. But in spite of the good will, sir, we Hellenes don’t quite understand the Serbs. We don’t know if they’re alive, and if they are, how that’s possible. That’s the problem.’

  When I finished my conversation with the Greek, who like my Serbian Home Guard conscript smoked a cheap cigarette without taking it out of his mouth, I looked up into the sky. The clouds sailed like frigates driven by the wind, and I thought about how long it will take for all the wounds and scars of this terrible war, whose end cannot be glimpsed, to be erased and undone.

  * * *

  Order no. 327-PR-1916

  Belgrade City Council

  Since Belgrade is all but deserted and the remaining population is of hostile disposition towards our army, all officers and soldiers of the Dual Monarchy are ordered to patronize the following workshops and stores in Belgrade. For small items of daily use: exclusively the Grncharevich, Krstich & Co. grocery store on Sava Quay. The proprietor is a good artisan and does not cheat at the scales. For shoe and other leather repairs, be they of harness or soldier’s kit: Brothers’ Markovich cobbler and saddler’s shop. For sanitary and health-care products: Dushan M. Yankovich’s cosmetics business. Herr Yankovich is a sympathiser of the crown and accepts both Austro-Hungarian money and impounded Serbian currency. For tobacco and rolling paper: Milisav Rakonyac’s tobacconist shop on Danube Quay, and for sartorial services: exclusively the tailor shop of Zhivka D. Spasich in former Prince Eugene Street, house no. 26. The owner co-operates directly with the Miyatovich, Yovanovich & Co. fabric and accessories store, is friendly to our officers, and has even mastered German to a significant degree. All stipulations in this dispatch are to be considered orders, not mere recommendations.

  Signed: Dr Schwarz

  Administrator of Belgrade

  Seal of the Belgrade City Council

  * * *

  ‘Monsieur, Monsieur, you must hear my story too!’ said a man who grabbed my sleeve and wouldn’t let go. All around me was Salonika again, that great hub of merchants, the city where Venizelos’s northern-Greek revolt had led to a much better atmosphere than one month earlier. The Allies reached an agreement with the new-old Greek premier that a large part of the Central Powers’ troops should be tied down on the new Salonika Front here in the south so as to give at least a short reprieve to my compatriots’ unfortunate troops on the Western Front. Greek King Constantine was given the option of abdicating or of fleeing Athens with weapons in hand like the Greek kings of old. As soon as the king decided to leave the country, there was an almost universal sense of relief, and later a diffuse joy for no particular reason, and the Jews and Bulgarians called out the prices of their wares more cheerfully, passers-by strode with surer step, and the plumes of smoke from the funnels of the Allied torpedo boats rose unruffled into the sky. So I was all the more surprised when a stranger grabbed my sleeve and spoke to me in a heavy voice even before I could turn to face him.

  ‘You are Ferry — Ferry Pisano, the war correspondent. You wrote so beauti­fully for Le Parisien about my long-suffering Serbian people. And the piece about our brats in Corfu . . . I hope people in France read it, even though we had to sort out the problem ourselves. But, Monsieur, would you write up what I have to tell? a very real story about the life and lovely death of one Serb in your country?’

  I agreed. I was intrigued by what he called a ‘lovely death’. Can death really be nice? I’ve heard that freezing to death is the nicest way to die and that the person even feels warm at the very end.

  ‘I don’t know about “lovely death”,’ I said, ‘unless your compatriot perhaps froze to death. The winter of fifteen-sixteen was terrible, wasn’t it?’

  ‘No, no,’ answered that unusual man, and I noticed his wrinkled forehead, sunken cheeks and the strange moustache which clung to the slopes of his rugged face. He began to flail about with his thin and pronouncedly long arms; everything about him was scraggy and loose like a riverside willow which sways in the slightest breeze. ‘My bro, Monsieur, died from peace.’

  ‘What peace?’

  ‘He went through the Calvary of Albania; he was caught up in a bombard-ment by German aeroplanes in Durrës on the coast; he went to France all tense, finally came to rest there, and died.’

  ‘And what is so interesting here for a newspaper story?’

  ‘I’ll tell you, Monsieur, just you listen.’

  And so he began his tale.

  ‘Before our troops embarked for Corfu, my poor bro Dimitriye Lekich, who was ill and particularly weak, was put straight in a sick-convoy with a dozen other men and officers and transferred to Brindisi. From there he was sent to recover in France, in the little town of Aix-le-Bains.’

  ‘I know it. A sweet little town.’

  ‘Sweet indeed, Monsieur, but listen to what happened to Dimitriye. He came to that little town, found out that I was on Corfu, and began to write. A first postcard came for me, an illustrated French card from the manufactory of a certain Mr Birot. On the front there was a picture of French soldier holding a bunch of flowers with a young woman by his side. My bro wrote on that first card: “Today is our second day in Aix-le-Bains. There are fifty-two of us Serbs here (soldiers, nurses and staff). In the summer, this pretty little town becomes a veritable city with up to ten tourists for every local. Now we Serbs are the tourists, who count the days and ponder the fate of our dear Fatherland, partly consoled by the hearty welcome given us by these wonderful people.” Later he added on a second postcard: “We have everything we need here (accommodation and three square meals a day), and they won’t let us pay for anything. Wherever we go, they won’t take any money. At the beginning, we were told this was because the French Ministry of Finance hadn’t issued an ordinance dealing with dinars. And until it does, our smiling hosts say, they will ‘put it on the slate’ or even serve us ‘gratis’.” After that, the postcards kept arriving but my bro felt ever more awkward.’

  ‘Just a minute, how do you mean “bro”?’

  ‘We say “pobratim” or “pobra”. It means he’s my sworn brother — a really good friend.’

  ‘I see. Please go on.’

  ‘And so my bro became glum. How can that be, I ask myself? He’s living like Count Giesl, high on the hog, food and drink for free, and he feels awkward. And he wrote to me that the hosts were becoming ever more amiable. My bro goes out in the morning, and breakfast is for free; at noon in the searing heat there’s beer for free; when he gets peckish in the afternoon, they serve him partridges, together with partridge eggs — all for free; the musicians play in the evening, and the band leader doesn’t even have to be given a tip: he plays song after song for free. You see, Monsieur, he found it rather awkward. It was like that for a week, and for a second week it was still the same. Come the third week, he decided to start paying. An invalid allowance came via the Red Cross in gold, and he decided to change it into francs so he could finally start paying his costs. But not only did his hosts not want to hear of it, they also became unfriendly. At first just a little, and they nudged him away from the counter and apologized that they “didn’t know the purity of the gold”. Talk about a cheap excuse — every greengrocer’s assistant knows the test of biting the coin!

  ‘The first day after the invalid allowance came, Dimitriye therefore was unable to cash the gold
. The gold coins remained in his pocket, and the sequence of generosity continued: another free breakfast, another cool beer at noon, quail instead of partridge in the afternoon, and in the evening there was music until after midnight, and all that without payment. Still, my bro didn’t make it a late night, and in the morning he went to the bank again. Now they got really unfriendly. “You Serbs don’t know what hospitality is,” they yelled at him. “You insult us with your gold! If it was silver we might perhaps exchange it.” He wrote to me about all this and also complained how damn much he was able to write on those postcards of Birot’s, and I laughed. If only I had held my tongue, Monsieur, because shortly afterwards I received official notification from Aix-le-Bains: Junior Sergeant Dimitriye Lekich died on such and such a date from complications with jaundice. To go by the date given by the authorities, my bro could only have written me those first two cards describing the town and mentioning that the French Ministry of Finance hadn’t issued an ordinance dealing with dinars. So who wrote the other postcards then, Monsieur?’

  With that, the stranger whipped a wad of Birot’s postcards out of his pocket and began waving them in front of my face like a ruffian who wanted to get into a fight with me right there in the street, in front of the shopkeepers and passers-by.