In the Light of Morning

by Tim Pears

  Then a brave and bloody-minded pilot finds his way through a crack in the clouds, down between the craggy mountain peaks. Into the valley the plane appears, and then out flutter the parachutes, down come the free drops. Almost on the first one’s tail follows the second plane. Once a parachute fails to open and the heavy container comes whistling down to earth like a Roman candle, and with an almighty bang buries itself deep in the soft earth.

  Those members of the unit not acting as sentries sort the supplies, and then the members of Tom and Jovan’s odred help them carry everything to a hut a couple of hard climbing miles up into the mountains.

  Jovan and the unit leader confer, while Francika heats a kettle of stream water and then cooks food for all, rough ground meal moistened with hot water and patted into rubbery balls. Zganci. Today they are lucky, for Francika sprinkles the zganci with a few crumbles of pork rind that look and taste like bacon.

  They bid farewell to the newly supplied unit, who will attack the main line tomorrow, and walk a few miles before making camp. In the first light of dawn Jovan chooses a resting place and they lie down on their oilskins. Before Tom closes his eyes he sees ahead of him in the forest a long tree fallen, its passage checked by the branch of another tree. A perpendicular line across a phalanx of horizontals, the pattern reminds him of the rough timber Christ carried up to Calvary. He closes his eyes to pray. Perhaps it is tiredness, the exhaustion that is becoming his regular physical condition, but he cannot think of anything to say, no pleas for the living or the dead. ‘Thank you,’ Tom whispers. Who to? God? What for? That Jovan is with them? And why gratitude is the sentiment that comes forth, he does not know.

  The birds sing their early-morning songs. Tom’s drowsy brain turns them into lullabies, as he sinks into sleep.

  The Second Unit

  July 1

  TOM IS WOKEN by someone knocking on the door. For a moment, dream gives fluid way to memory. A man, a builder, was knocking on the walls of his parents’ home. Tapping the plaster with a wooden hammer, like a doctor checking the health of the house. To the boy that Tom was it looked like odd, mysterious adult behaviour he couldn’t quite explain.

  Wait. Wake. He is not at home but in the middle of a faraway country. He looks around. The trees are shrouded in a thin mist. The knocking continues. The speculative-sounding tap, tap-tap, of a woodpecker in the forest.

  Marija is already up. Tom watches her gathering kindling for a fire. She wears a battle-dress blouse and an old pair of plus-four trousers which she’s buckled about her ankles. She is a dark and strongly built woman of about thirty, with deep-blue, almost violet eyes. Her hair shines in the sun poking through the leaves. Unlike others’, lank and greasy, her hair looks as though she has just washed and brushed it. Her hands, too, Tom has noticed, are often more clean than anyone else’s.

  When she sees Tom is awake she invites him to help her eye and cut potatoes. After he’s performed his perfunctory ablutions he comes and sits beside her. He works slowly, carefully extracting blemishes, wasting little. Marija uses her knife twice as fast, cutting thick strips of skin away as she peels. He is sure she must waste precious food, but she seems to have no choice. Others begin to stir around them. Stipe sits nearby.

  ‘I have been to London,’ Marija informs Tom. ‘For a week I stayed in the Mayfair Hotel.’

  Her violet eyes, Tom thinks, are fierce, and sad. ‘You must have been rich to stay there.’

  ‘My husband was. He is a Serb. We lived in Belgrade. When the Germans came he was afraid, because I am Jewish. He left me and went to hide out in his family’s village.’

  Tom shakes his head. Marija nods in Jovan’s direction. ‘Not all Serbs are warriors like that one,’ she says. Jovan stands some yards away, studying a map. Tom glances towards him, and sees a fleeting smile suggest he overheard.

  ‘Even if all of them think they are,’ Marija says.

  Tom’s Slovene is improving each day: he understands almost everything people say, even though each of them, except for the father and son, has a different accent from each other, and for many things use entirely different words. The further north they’re from, the more German has entered their vocabulary.

  Right through his school and university days, Tom’s teachers had often commented on his gift for languages: such a good linguist for so reticent a youth. His brain soaked up vocabulary, retained it in his memory, he merely had to concentrate to find the words he’d read or heard. The same would happen at school in other subjects – History, Geography, Maths – but only briefly. Intense revision before an exam held numbers, dates, items of information; soon afterwards they slipped through his mental net and were gone.

  Again, now, it is as if Tom’s brain already holds a matrix for each language he’s so far encountered. The rules of grammar, syntax, conjugation: his brain whirs like a fruit machine, the oddities of the language slot into place. There is not only singular and plural in Slovenian, for example, but also dual, where precisely two of something are being discussed, with noun forms specific to two. When it is two people being spoken of, such as Jovan and Marija, the linguistic structure seems to suggest partnership; romance.

  It remains less easy for Tom to make himself understood, his rendition of words is pitiful: sometimes he says something and the other person gapes at him as if he has burped. Though the Slovenes are laconic, and shy, they savour vowels in their mouths, along journeys from one consonant to the next. In English it is a virtue to clip syllables, and whole words, as short as possible. There are countless place names, for example, like Worcester or Bicester, with syllables entirely omitted. When Marija speaks to him, by contrast, every syllable is an opportunity for oral expressiveness: a simple letter of the written word can contain two, even three, changes of direction on Marija’s tongue. The place they are in, the Pohorje, becomes in her voice, Poya-haw-ria.

  ‘How did you come to join the Partisans?’ he asks her.

  ‘I left Belgrade, and came back to Ljubljana. My parents were no longer there. I stayed with my cousin, a doctor. After the Italians left and the Germans took over, in the autumn of last year, my cousin was arrested and taken away. Jews are used as hostage fodder; for reprisal executions. I knew they would find me soon. I took to the woods.’

  Tom has grown leaner. He takes advantage of this lull: he unloops his trouser belt and with the tip of his penknife cuts a new hole. ‘And now,’ he says, ‘you carry the ammunition for Stipe and his gun?’

  Marija laughs out loud. Stipe, whittling a twig with a black-handled jack-knife, sits close enough to overhear, and frowns. ‘I carry the gun for her,’ he says, in a deep voice that rumbles out of his barrel chest.

  ‘Our machine gunner was killed, we were left alone with the gun, I had to use it,’ Marija said. ‘It was the first time I had ever fired anything. In my life! We discovered that I could do it very well.’

  ‘She is the best shot I have seen,’ said Stipe. ‘At two hundred metres she can put a burst through a saucepan lid.’

  ‘Yes,’ Marko, who has joined them, agrees. ‘You would be surprised, Englishmen. This woman is a crackshot.’

  Tom translates for Sid, who puts on a worried expression. ‘I thought there was something scary about her, sir.’

  They eat the boiled potatoes. Francika passes around some more zganci. Stipe puts down his whittling. He is dark, saturnine, glowering in repose, yet once animated he lightens, appears to shed weight, to lose his forbidding countenance.

  ‘And you?’ Tom asks him. ‘When did you join?’

  ‘The Germans came to my village one morning,’ Stipe replies. ‘They believed we had helped to feed Partisans, to give them information. There were many trucks, with much space in them. I slipped into the fields, and watched from a distance as they burned our houses. I had nothing left, what could I do? The Germans are the best recruiters for their enemies.’

  Stipe shakes his head at a memory. ‘After they had gone I went back into the village. The poorest house
s had failed to catch alight. The women who owned them decided it would be best to burn them, since whoever emerges to govern the country is likely to pay the cost of rebuilding the village. They tried to set fire to their own houses, but they couldn’t do it. The fires wouldn’t take.’

  Stipe walks away, picking his teeth with the stump of the peg he had whittled. Tom notices that Pero has gone. Off in search of a courier, Jovan explains, for they are entering an area Pero doesn’t know.

  Sid Dixon sets up his wireless. ‘I’ve got a problem, sir,’ he tells Tom. ‘With static and atmospherics. Can’t get a signal.’

  It seems never to be in the field quite how it was in training. Here there are always snags and pitfalls. They spend most of the day roaming the forest, trying to find a radio signal. Marija becomes involved. She tells Nikola to carry the aerial up a tree. ‘Higher,’ she yells. ‘Climb, boy. As high as the wire will go.’

  The day passes in waiting. Jovan tells them they will stay in the same place in the forest that night, with a guard who is changed each hour.

  They lie on the ground. Jovan, a yard or two away, reaches out and pats Tom on the shoulder. Tom grasps Jovan’s hand, and squeezes it. They nod to each other. Tom smiles. Words, he realises, are superfluous; their companionship does not need them. Jovan loosens his grip, and turns over to sleep.

  At some point in the night rain starts falling; silently at first.

  July 2

  WARM RAIN FALLS through the trees. The Partisans sleep in their oilskins, close together under an outstretched parachute, and wake with mosquito bites. Sid Dixon’s face is swollen. Marko says something that makes the others laugh. Tom translates. ‘He says you look like you’ve been sparring with Joe Louis.’

  Sid nods in rueful acknowledgement. Marko gives him a comradely slap on the shoulder.

  Tom himself has hardly been bothered by the mosquitoes. I must have cold blood, he tells himself; though protection from insects is something to be grateful for. His clothes are damp, he feels grubby: a hot bath, a bed with clean sheets, fresh underwear, seem like the highest luxuries imaginable.

  Pero returns, with a girl who tonight will lead them towards the second unit, high in the mountains.

  Another meal of zganci, which Sid admits to Tom he’s had enough of now to satisfy his curiosity. Pero asks Jovan to tell them all a story from the early days of the war.

  ‘They may not want to hear these tales,’ Jovan says.

  ‘Yes,’ Marija declares. ‘Of course we do. We Slovenes love stories; even Serb ones.’

  And so Jovan nods, and after a moment’s reflection says, ‘After the capitulation, we members of the Party left Belgrade. We returned to our villages, to initiate the struggle there. But there was nothing to be done in my home in Herzegovina: the Ustasha fascists were established, and everyone knew everyone, I would have lasted no time at all. So I joined friends and we travelled to Montenegro. Comrade Tito had given orders to carry out only small guerrilla attacks against the Italians there, but do you know what happened? The people rose up! We offered to lead them but they ran ahead of us.’

  Stipe nods approvingly. ‘Did you throw the Italians into the sea?’

  ‘In the beginning all fought together,’ Jovan continues. ‘Royal Army officers commanded our units. Clan leaders fought with their villagers. It was a peasant army spread too thin: the Italians sent more troops, and counter-attacked.’

  ‘Tell them about the Albanians!’ Pero interjects.

  Jovan shakes his head at Pero’s enthusiasm. ‘Outside Kolašin the Italians were flanked by Albanians, who ran like dogs through the woods. They were glad to resume fighting with Montenegrins, as they had under the Ottoman Empire. They shot wildly and as they ran they yelled, “You peasant rats, we’re coming to kill you, you Christian runts!”’

  Jovan frowns. ‘We were forced to retreat. We gave up the towns we’d won. People withdrew into their clans. The Chetniks began to think about self-preservation instead of national pride.’

  Marko spits onto the forest floor. ‘We will fight until these bastards have left our country, don’t you worry about us.’

  ‘A free Slovenia in a free Yugoslavia,’ Pero declares.

  Francika has passed round the green stems of a plant, which the soldiers chew. Tom and Sid copy them, dumb human ruminants. The plant tastes grassy, and green, and leaves an aftertaste of soil.

  Sid leans over to Tom. ‘Can you ask her, sir,’ he says, nodding to Francika, ‘how she came to be with the Partisans?’

  ‘I was not political at all,’ Francika explains. She is twenty-three years old, and a widow. Her husband was a village shopkeeper. He had no interest in politics, either. All they wanted was to make a living from their shop, to enjoy the respect of their neighbours, to have a family. ‘A German officer was killed,’ she says. ‘Two years ago. A hundred men from our valley were taken at random and executed in revenge. My husband was one of them. I joined the movement in rage, in despair.’ She looks at Sid. ‘I loved my husband, so very much, but now I find I have sometimes almost forgotten him. Here, with these people, I found a kind of home.’

  Tom has noticed that Francika is always ready to help: mending clothing, loading up packs, preparing camp. She is methodical, pedantic, she repeats things to make sure the listener has taken note, yet they do not seem to find this irritating. Though calm, unhurried, she is always ready when it is time to move. Jovan tells Tom that, if something were to happen to him, Francika would take over the leadership of this group. ‘There would be a moment’s discussion,’ he predicts, ‘then all would agree. Even Marija.’

  But for now Jovan is the unquestioned leader. He is self-controlled, unruffled, used to imposing his authority with few words. He’s not been with this group any longer than Tom, yet commands their instinctive respect. His orders are thoughtful, clear and certain. His voice is even in tone. Like Marija, he seems able to maintain a neatness in his appearance despite the primitive conditions and constant movement. After the initial fury at his banishment from headquarters, he seems to have reconciled himself to this minor mission.

  The two of them are drawn naturally together, Jovan as glad as Tom to have someone with whom to talk on equal terms. It amuses Jovan to posit Tom as a representative of the British establishment. ‘Why do you support the Yugoslav royalty? Even now you still expect Marshal Tito to form a government with Petar. Let Petar stay with your royal family in Buckingham Palace! Let them play cricket on the lawn.’

  ‘Croquet,’ Tom says, smiling.

  ‘Whatever they want,’ Jovan says, ‘I don’t mind,’ and then in English, in the manner of Clark Gable, ‘I don’t give a damn.’ Tom is drawn to Jovan, as he recalls he was drawn, once, to an older boy at school whom he hero-worshipped.

  Jovan’s discipline is imposed by small measures. He insists that his men shave at least every third day; tells them that they will be mistaken otherwise for Chetniks, who have vowed not to shave their beards until the Germans are gone – and the communists wiped out. Sid Dixon, when he learns this, begins to shave again. ‘To be honest, Major Farwell was right, sir,’ he tells Tom. ‘I was beginning to look just like my old granddad.’

  They set off late in the afternoon. The rain has stopped falling. The air is cool and clear. The forest is interspersed with luminously green alpine meadows. Footsteps raise the scent of chamomile. The grass here, Marko tells them when they pause to rest, using florid gestures as well as words to express what the wireless operator cannot understand, would be cut three or four times a year. ‘And from cows grazing such rich grass, what creamy milk we would have.’

  ‘When I was a shepherd,’ Marko tells the company, ‘there was one meadow I took my sheep to that was full of wild herbs. They fed on sage, thyme and fennel. Their mutton was so good, oh my God.’ He has to stop to lick his lips and swallow the saliva in his mouth. ‘It needed nothing but a slow cook.’

  Tom is sure it’s true. They could reach out and pull the grass to eat themselv
es, almost. Marko is forty-three, he says; an old peasant, rough-shaven, his jaw virtually toothless, in ragged clothes and a battered felt hat. He sports badly healed scars, his hands are cracked and swollen. He embodies a rural poverty that has been eradicated in England save for those who hang on to it.

  ‘Look at him,’ Marija tells Tom, when they walk again. ‘That should be a shepherd’s crook in his hand, not a Sten gun; those clips of ammunition in the pockets of his torn jacket? They should be corn for his chickens.’ Marko procured the Sten gun for himself from the batch of weapons dropped for the first unit, and he holds it with a childish grip, tender and proud. Some months ago, Marija tells Tom, in a different part of Slovenia, a German Storch light reconnaissance plane was flying low. A peasant Partisan was driving his team of horses along a country lane. He pulled his Sten gun from under his seat and fired a burst at the plane. A bullet did some miraculous damage, for the Storch went into a spin and crashed. Now every Slovene Partisan wants a Sten gun, and to down a plane of his own.

  Marija is often close to Tom, at his side when they pause. When she speaks to him she stands very close, and touches his arm, in a way that English women do not.

  ‘What farm did you come from?’ she asks.

  ‘I was in Intelligence,’ he tells her. ‘We sent our agents into France, Poland, Czechoslovakia. Then suddenly we needed people in Yugoslavia; who could learn the language quickly, and had some idea of what was required. The top brass looked around the office and thought: Of course! Right here!’ He smiles. ‘I knew in theory all there is to know of what awaited us. In reality, everything is a surprise.’

  Tom looks up. Marija is studying him, too intently. He looks away shyly. ‘Why do you ask?’

  ‘You are not a warrior,’ she tells him without a pause for thought that such an accusation might wound him. ‘There is something you lack.’ Marija shakes her head. ‘Or something you possess that warriors lack. Do not be upset, Tom. I have seen enough in this year for my lifetime. Of course we must fight, now, but when it is over what will they be good for, these brutal heroes of ours?’ She looks pensive, and says, ‘Me, too. What will I be good for?’