In the Light of Morning

by Tim Pears

  There’ll be no joy here, it will take better tack – and a more experienced fisherman – to capture this one. Tom moves on, recasts. So this, he imagines, is what captivates the angler, this mood: in passive, hopeful expectation of a tug, and then the challenge to one’s skill, and the primitive excitement of the capture of prey. A state of being on the brink. A state of imminence. The immediate past, even up until a moment ago, is forgotten; the future holds no fear. What lies beyond a few metres from him even unto the infinities of space have no relevance to anything at all.

  A small fish rises a few yards from where he stands; then, just under the bank, another, a larger one. Tom feels a heavy tug, and the end of his rod curves into a hoop. He guesses immediately it is only a small one, a half, a quarter of a pound. It fights gamely, as Sid tells him all trout do, but he has it landed in a moment. It lies motionless on the pebbles with an open, gaping mouth, but as he bends to pick it up it flips and twists. Tense muscular spasms. He grasps the slippery body firmly in his left hand, works the hook free from its mouth. Then he bends again and strikes its head against a stone. It lies limp in his palm, its silver sides spotted with rose. It has a delicate cucumber scent he’s not noticed before, with the others he’d caught. Its eyes stare, expressionless. Its slipperiness is beginning already to grow viscous against his palm.

  What has he done? Smashed the delicate mechanism inside the tiny skull of the trout. The living machine, now broken.

  Tom and Sid climb back up the stream in the afternoon, one on either bank, gathering the fish they’ve caught, so many they weave a rudimentary tray to carry them. Two dozen they bear to their disbelieving comrades, a biblical gift.

  His mother used to roll trout in oatmeal, fry them and serve with melted butter. Here Francika simply grills them on the skillet as they are, but Marija garnishes the fish with a tangy herb she has found by the stream, and the Partisans and the Englishmen relish every mouthful of the crisp skin and the pale, succulent flesh.

  July 21

  ‘I DON’T KNOW where we are,’ Pero says. This is their second night on the move, a day in the forest without food, searching for the next courier.

  ‘We are lost,’ says Marko, spitting at the ground.

  ‘I did not say that,’ Pero objects. ‘No, we are not lost. This is a lie. I am just not sure where the seventh unit is.’

  The courier line has been broken. Pero thought he knew the area but it seems he was mistaken. Their maps are too small-scale to be any more than a general guide, little help with the particularities of the terrain. They march on, using Tom’s compass, in an easterly direction.

  They come to a tiny hamlet. No dogs bark in the night but geese cackle and hiss, hostile to their passing. Two figures are already up and going about their business. They see the travellers are Partisans and try to scurry inside and close their doors. The Partisans ask for food but they will not give them any. Their last sustenance was a brew of nettles. ‘Not a bad cuppa, sir,’ Dixon had pronounced. ‘Could do with a spot of sugar.’ The trout is already a distant memory.

  ‘You have food,’ Jovan tells the villagers.

  ‘No, no, we have no food.’

  He offers to pay but they refuse.

  ‘It’s clear this village is pro-quisling,’ Tom says to Jovan. ‘We are starving. I don’t understand. We have to take their food.’

  Jovan shakes his head.

  ‘I don’t think I get it, sir,’ Sid Dixon tells Tom. ‘If they’re collaborating with the enemy, they’re lucky not to be shot, never mind lose a bit a grub.’

  Tom pursues the issue with Jovan.

  ‘No, Tom,’ Jovan insists. ‘We can’t take their food. We cannot give the Liberation Front a bad name.’

  They leave the village unharmed. Jovan explains to Tom that Marshal Tito ordered as long ago as early ’forty-two that anyone taking food from or harming civilians will be shot.

  ‘It purified us,’ Jovan says. ‘It helped to make us into a proud army. And there is a Chinese proverb. ‘“Partisans among the people are like fish in a river: the river can live by itself, but not the fish.”’

  ‘I admire your discipline, Jovan,’ Tom assures him. ‘I just wish I wasn’t so damnably hungry.’

  As they walk from the village the geese stretch their necks at them and hiss out hate. Sid asks Tom to order him not to run into their midst and grab one by its neck.

  As dawn breaks they quench their thirst with dew droplets on fir cones. They make camp in the forest. Tom sleeps well. He wakes to find Francika has amassed a stew of boiled clover and wild spinach, birch bark and roots. It tastes good, and is greatly appreciated; though Tom would give much for a hunk of bread or meat; for tucker.

  Morale is low. They are hungry, have no courier, are vulnerable.

  ‘I don’t like it, sir,’ Sid tells Tom.

  ‘Me neither.’

  They lie, dozing, fearful, gazing at nothing other than sunlight playing through the tops of the trees.

  Marija sits beside Tom. They pull stems of grass, and suck them. ‘I am scared,’ she tells him. ‘This I don’t like! I don’t want to be frightened. Let them kill me, let me kill them.’ She turns to Tom and fixes him with her piercing gaze. ‘Do you see?’ she asks.

  ‘I do,’ Tom says, nodding. ‘I understand.’

  July 22

  THEY PASS A tiny chapel that must serve a small number of isolated settlements. They stop at a farm. Dawn is almost upon them. Jovan posts Stipe on sentry duty and the rest enter the farmhouse. Jovan tells the family that they will not be allowed to leave the house until the odred has departed. The mother is trembling as she prepares food. There is an old man white with fear. The emotion is so palpable that the children as they emerge pick up on it instantly, and freeze against the wall of the kitchen. Do they believe the Partisans will kill them, good Catholics as they undoubtedly are? They have a plaster figure of the Virgin Mary in a shrine in the wall of the kitchen. Are they already scared of German reprisals? Most likely the husband is with the Home Guard, and they fear that this will be found out – if the Partisans don’t know already.

  Jovan is friendly, talking with the children, counting out money to pay the mother for the food they take. Tom was supplied with gold sovereigns and Reichsmark notes in Italy that he keeps in a money belt around his waist, and which he doles out to Jovan.

  Half of them sleep on the bench that runs around the wall of the room, the rest on the floor, on hay brought in from the barn. Tom now sleeps with his gun on one side and pack on the other so that he can grab them in the dark if needs be. He sleeps with his boots on. ‘If you need to piss in the night,’ Marko advises him, ‘don’t go out alone. You may be attacked by the dogs.’

  They are given delicious venison stew when they awake. Like animals that hunt, they have starved; now there is food, they gorge themselves. Afterwards, Sid sets up the radio. Francika helps him. Still they communicate in single words, though the number increases daily.

  ‘Aerial.’

  ‘Anten. Bunka?’

  Sid chuckles. ‘Knob,’ he says, raising his eyebrows.

  Francika pokes him, mock-angry.

  Tom goes outside. From the high farm he can look across into a lower valley, with two small farms along its ridge, and beyond the rocky peaks of mountains looming above. It is one of those late-summer days in which autumn is already present: ribbons of mist hang in the valley, there is a thin grey skin of cloud above which Tom can sense the sun waiting to burn through, and dissipate all the moisture in the air and on the ground. It will be a hot afternoon again. But for now the sky is grey and all the colours are muted, yet separate from each other, somehow drenched in their own existence: the trees are dark green, the houses are white, the fence poles around the small gardens and paddocks are a hard bleached brown.

  As if by a miracle a courier appears. How did he find them? Sid Dixon makes contact with Italy. There’s heavy rain in Normandy and the western front has halted, but the Russians have entere
d Latvia.

  There will be a drop the day after tomorrow a few hours’ march from here. After their initial destruction of the bridge and the tunnel, all such major targets were well guarded; even with the subsequent six units’ modest actions – rocks in steep cuttings thrown onto the line here, rails blown there – enemy troops are patrolling up and down the tracks.

  Jovan sends Pero, Nikola and Stipe out around the mountain to look for movement down below. They return, each reports seeing none, so Jovan decides that rather than press on to the seventh unit and wait with them for the drop, they should stay here tonight, and for a second day.

  The effect is extraordinary: everyone becomes busy, doing things they have not had time to carry through – washing clothes, for there is now time to dry them. Their mood is carefree. They relax. Tom realises the tension under which they live most of the time, even when nothing is happening. Jovan has decided they are safe, for now.

  The nervous old man seems to have made the decision to throw in his lot with his unwanted guests. He produces a bottle of plum brandy and pours small glasses for the Partisans. It is fumy and rough and very strong, and on empty stomachs, having not touched alcohol for weeks, the effect is immediate. It is as if their host has infused them with giddiness; a levity.

  The Slovenes tease Jovan for his Serb defects; he mocks them for their national weaknesses. Defects of which he is proud; weaknesses they cherish.

  ‘If you went to any Slovene town on a Saturday night you would find everyone reeling in the streets, they are all drunkards,’ Jovan tells Tom. ‘Women as well as men. In Serbia we are able to celebrate all day and all evening without losing control of our senses.’

  ‘It is because Serbs don’t work,’ says Stipe. ‘Yes, they lie around all day with nothing to do but eat and drink. We Slovenes work hard, like the English, and then we have but a short time to enjoy ourselves.’

  ‘You know, Tom,’ Marija says, ‘even before the war, the Slovene authorities did not beat and torture our political prisoners. Instead of doing our own dirty work, Serb inquisitors were imported.’ She looks towards Jovan. ‘Is this not true?’ she asks.

  Jovan nods reluctantly. ‘I was told this myself, when I was in prison,’ he says.

  Sid and Francika talk to each other in their conversation of single words.

  ‘Cigarette,’ Sid says, rolling her one.

  ‘Cigaretni,’ Francika says, accepting his proffered lighter.

  ‘Gasper,’ Sid says, and smiles.

  ‘Gyas perr,’ Francika copies him, and they chuckle at each other idiotically.

  ‘Brandy?’ Sid asks her, holding up his glass.

  Francika mimes the fruit from which it’s made, plucking plums from their branches. ‘Slive.’

  Sid imitates her actions and becomes a juggler, not picking but throwing the invisible fruit up in the air. And then clumsily dropping them. ‘Plums,’ he says.

  Francika manages to nod despite her laughter. ‘Slivovka.’

  More brandy is produced, there is further talk and laughter. At some point Tom realises he needs some fresh air. He goes outside. It was sweaty and raucous in the smoke-filled, cramped parlour, and his head is ringing. He stumbles away from the house, and takes a piss in the field. He feels dopey, content not to think about anything. He walks halfway back to the house but then stops, and turns away from the house once more. Through a wash of blue-white nebulae the sky is alight with stars. As Tom watches, he sees one fall, over on the western edge of his vision. He closes his eyes. The silence and the cool night air are delicious. Then he becomes aware of something. Someone, beside him, did they touch his arm? He opens his eyes.

  ‘It’s very strange, isn’t it?’ Marija says.

  ‘Strange?’ Tom asks. ‘How so?’

  ‘What we are doing is so important. It really is. I believe this. And then we look up there and realise it’s not important at all.’

  Tom nods. They both gaze upward. He can sense her arm hanging beside his. He wonders how close their fingers are to each other’s. Will she let hers brush against his? Will his fingers reach out, and take hers? Time passes. No, it seems they will not.

  After a while Marija stirs. He thinks they are parting, to return inside, but they are held together a moment longer by some mild force – no more, perhaps, than a lull of indecision, or a slight reluctance to have a pleasant moment end – and just as he realises how close not just their arms but their whole bodies are to one another Marija kisses him in the starlit darkness. He smells the brandy on her breath at the same time as he tastes the fruit on her tongue, lingering, warm. He feels flushed with something close to embarrassment to be kissing his friend. He puts out of his mind that it is Marija kissing him, it is no one, just lips, a mouth, a warm tongue, it could be anyone, anyone at all.

  Marija presses against him, surely feels his arousal. As if the merest evidence of his desire satisfies something in her, she pulls away from him. He thinks he sees a gleam of triumph in her moonlit eyes.

  ‘No,’ Marija whispers. ‘No, Tom, we cannot. For myself, I do not care, but I could not stand it if they shot you too.’

  Tom, urged on by the novel power of such a kiss, pulls her back to him and kisses her deeply. When eventually they pull apart both are short of breath.

  ‘Oh, Tom,’ Marija gasps. She turns and runs into the pasture, her footsteps receding into the silent darkness. Tom stands, confused and triumphant. So that is what it is, to kiss a woman. It is not unpleasant, not at all. Perhaps it would be possible, the rest of it too? Not just the cloisters of academia but also a family, a normal life?

  July 23

  THEY SLEEP LIKE hibernating animals. Wake with mild and not entirely unwelcome headaches. ‘Feel pretty seedy,’ Tom admits to Sid. Their skin is puffy from oversleep – what greater luxury? And food – again a stew, lamb this time, with hot bread straight from the brick oven beside the stove, and thick red wine. Jovan is paying well, and the woman and the old man have found their stores for them.

  Marija does not look at Tom, but he watches her. She somehow communicates, lets him know that she is aware of him. Her mind picks up his body on its radar.

  Towards noon Tom is standing outside the house when he hears aircraft overhead. He looks up and sees a single Fieseler Storch dive-bomber above, at low level. He assumes it is on its way somewhere, but suddenly he sees it nose over into an almost vertical dive. Tom is dimly aware of Jovan calling him inside, but is rooted to the spot. A quarter of a mile away lies another farmhouse and barn, higher and more out in the open than the one they are in. The plane hits it with 500-pound bombs. Someone grabs Tom and pulls him in. They watch from the crowded window. Before it leaves, the plane strafes the bombed farmhouse with 20-mm-cannon fire, a gratuitous aggressive gesture.

  Tom looks at Jovan, who nods. From Sid’s expression he too realises: their radio transmission yesterday was monitored, their position plotted. They have been saved by two farms being unusually close together. The German pilots have picked the wrong one.

  As they stand watching, they become aware of the family they are staying with. The children are crying. The old man says, ‘There are ten people there.’

  There is surely no one alive in the blown-up burning ruins. They are responsible for this horror. They want to stay, to bury the dead, but Jovan says they cannot: an enemy patrol will come to inspect the carnage. Tom places ten gold coins on the dresser in the kitchen. Not enough sovereigns have ever been minted for reparation. They leave hurriedly, in dazed and sombre mood. There is a faint smell of roasting meat in the air.

  July 24

  THEY WALK ALL afternoon and all night, led by their courier towards the seventh unit. It is hot. Tom thinks of the dead family, probably much like the one they stayed with four hundred yards away: slaughtered for the sake of what? A few rail tracks?

  Dawn finds them plodding grimly across the saddle of a hill. Having walked as stunned automatons they now become more alert. The world becomes visible arou
nd them. Tom sees jagged rocks of the peak that juts against the sky, the firmament attaining colour as if being slowly injected with blue dye. Wispy white clouds. Dark vegetation grows below the bare summit, it looks like moss in the distance, and gradually small individual trees become apparent scattered high up, marooned from the forest below, their brave blind seeds blown into a crevice with a little mud, taking root and growing in the thin wind-ridden air up there, stunted and alone. There is a scent of something musky, suddenly, perhaps a pine marten or a fox passed across this track a moment ago. There is the sound of a single songbird, one Tom cannot identify. An excitable cheep, cheep, cheep that runs up and down as if on a little thin rollercoaster of song. Perhaps he has never heard it before, it is native to this area of southern Europe: yet he suspects he has, and simply never noticed. Tom apprehends the world with all his senses being born afresh. This world in all its glory. This world which man sullies with his sordid deeds. Is Christ the redeemer present here? Or must we redeem it ourselves?

  There has been no rain for days now. Sweltering nights, baking days. The earth on open ground is cracked in the form of a honeycomb. Tom looks at the sun and back at the ground and sees black bees rise from the fissures: specks on his eyes.

  They walk parch-mouthed. Tom dreams of drops of water on his tongue. He walks next to Jovan, his head lolling. Suddenly Jovan speaks. ‘In the house I grew up in,’ he says, ‘we drank rainwater from a cistern attached to the roof. In the hot weather, worms would grow in the water, and multiply quickly. A few pinches of salt was enough to kill them.’

  The group pauses. Jovan tells them the story of his climbing Mount Biokovo, a white rock mountain on the Dalmatian coast, with his student friends ten years ago. They were intrigued to see peasant women in their black dresses climbing too, and followed them to a cave, so deep that winter ice was still preserved there in late summer. Some women went down on ropes and cut the ice with axes; others pulled the ice – and their companions – out. They took the ice to sell to restaurants and cafés in Makarska, the coastal town below.