In the Light of Morning

by Tim Pears

  Jovan is beside him now, telling him something. Tom cannot hear him. He has to repeat it. ‘Firing blind,’ he says. ‘They don’t know where we are.’

  Through his clenched-jaw grimace Tom forces himself to stutter, ‘What is it?’

  ‘Artillery,’ Jovan says. ‘Seventy-fives.’

  No sooner has Tom comprehended this than it becomes clear to him that the German guns have changed direction and are now trained elsewhere: the explosions are some distance away. He comes slowly to himself.

  Who are we? he wonders. What are we? That I can swing so wildly between bravado and cowardice? What did my response to danger depend on? Whatever my mood happened to be at that moment? What I had eaten, how I had slept? If the compass swings so wildly, what is the foundation of this reality? Perhaps there is none, and we are no more than brief displays of animal behaviour; we bloom into existence, then splutter and die, for no reason at all.

  At a signal, presumably, though Tom does not see or hear it, others around him start to scuttle away, in a similar general direction, crouched as low as they can. In the same moment he realises that there are dead bodies left behind, and wounded: one man who cannot move is given a pistol; another has been shot in the arm and been patched up, and he runs with the others.

  They jog through the trees, their rucksacks bumping against their backs. The sound of shells exploding in the woods recedes behind them. Tom hears the sound now of his and others’ footsteps, of equipment bashing and chinking against bodies, of panting breaths. It strikes him that they could be running smack into a well-planned ambush. If so, so be it. He will run until he stops.

  They gather in a copse of linden trees. The Slovenes take this as a bad omen, that here they may perish, beneath their country’s symbolic tree, and when a plane circles overhead they are certain; but though they are terrified they do not mind, it seems to please them, Tom observes, that fate should be so thoughtful. There are forty of them now. The plane drops a few bombs into the trees, far enough away to induce laughter. Marko brandishes his Sten gun. ‘I won’t even bother to bring this one down,’ he says. ‘We are better off letting the pilot waste his ammunition.’

  The plane flies away. There is silence. And then they hear a single, emphatic rap. For a second, their brains scramble to decipher the sound: it could be animal utterance; or is it a treefall? In that second Marko, standing a few feet from Tom, crumples to the ground.

  The single rifle shot of a sniper.

  Partisans begin firing into the wood. Stipe kneels and gathers Marko in his arms, puts his comrade’s body over his shoulder, and rises. Tom picks up the light machine gun. Is he too busy to be afraid? He looks over his shoulder for a split second and sees with incredible clarity figures in the trees: wild men with hair falling on their shoulders like women and flowing black beards. Those who’ve sworn not to shave or cut their hair until King Peter is back in Belgrade.

  He turns and follows others, once more running, bent over if they can. Snipers are setting their sights on their backs. They sprint and weave, and then they slow but they do not stop, they must keep moving, jogging, trotting along, for if they stop they will be shot. Keep going, keep going, keep going. Tom’s consciousness slips its moorings and quite suddenly he is not here but in his childhood: cross-country running. His school had its own, archaic traditions, like all such places, some perpetuated not by the masters but by the boys themselves. One was to have a sixth-former run behind a pack of younger pupils, armed with a stick: he would hit the legs of the boy at the back, who would overtake the next, who would then be whacked, and so on. Tom was only ever struck once. A reasonable athlete, there were enough clumsy, uncoordinated boys behind him. But the memory of that single instance, when he was coming down with flu and should have been tucked up in the matron’s wing, not out on the farm tracks they ran along, still stung the back of his calves for its cruelty. Passed on from boy to boy.

  Yet the memory takes him now from this ordeal, running for his life, so that he glides, in a trance, out of his body.

  After a long while they slow down, and stop to catch their breath. Tom rests the butt of the LMG on the ground. Stipe stands breathing like a bull, snorting, the bellows of his great barrel chest heaving, his shoulders rising and falling. He still carries Marko’s body across his shoulders.

  ‘Lay him down,’ Jovan tells him.

  Stipe shakes his head. He cannot speak for heaving breaths.

  Jovan looks him in the eye and says, ‘You’re carrying a dead man. Lay him down, Stipe.’

  They cover Marko with mulch and leaves, and press on.

  In the afternoon they rest. Francika goes to the other groups. She collects all the food they have. Potatoes, some sugar, a little sheep’s cheese, dry and hard and sour. One man has a shank of mutton but they do not dare roast it. Francika allocates a tiny portion to each Partisan, dividing them up on an outspread oilskin. Some watch her with a desultory, keen-eyed vigilance. When she is ready, each man and woman takes an equal share. Tom holds separate morsels on his tongue before he swallows them. He mingles the raw potato with granules of sugar, and with the sour cheese, savouring the taste. He doubts whether he has ever enjoyed such a delicious meal.

  Looking around, at the members of the other groups and their leaders, he understands that it is not only himself who looks to Jovan to extricate them safely from peril, and words come to him from the Last Supper. ‘I will strike the shepherd, and the sheep of the flock will be scattered.’ They depend on him, they believe in him.

  There are two ponies. They are unsaddled and led off into the woods to wander. The Partisans cannot take these animals with them any further for fear that a neigh or a stumble will give them away.

  Sid Dixon comes to Tom. ‘Sir,’ he says, ‘I don’t know where the wireless is.’

  ‘You must do,’ Tom says.

  ‘We’ve still got the battery, but not the bloody wireless. It’s been lost, sir.’

  Tom shakes his head. The wireless could have been exploded, or shot, or dropped off a cliff edge. But lost? He goes immediately over to Jovan, and tells him. Jovan’s face colours so rapidly that for that instant Tom wonders if he is about to strike him. ‘It is impossible,’ Jovan spits. Then he looks at the ground, shakes his head. He sighs, and looks back at Tom.

  ‘We cannot go back. There’s nothing to be done. We shall continue on our way without it.’

  It is early evening. The woods around them have been quiet for an hour. In another hour they will make their move.

  ‘We dodge about,’ Marija tells Tom. ‘We are Slovenes. We are not running away. Not at all. We slip through encirclements.’ She laughs her throaty laugh. Marija’s bravado, and that of her comrades, is amusing. But it is more than that: thrilling, too. A form of resistance in itself.

  ‘Let the Serbs retreat. We Slovenes infiltrate enemy lines,’ she tells him, and those around them laugh too.

  There are two couriers and, having scouted ahead, each comes back as the light is fading. One has a message for Jovan from headquarters: they are to come off the mountain range and make their way to a rendezvous point down on the plain. He tells the others in his group. Marko’s death, and their own predicament, have brought them to a sombre state, but this order lightens their mood.

  They wait, as the twilight thickens, for Jovan’s order, but he will not be hurried. Partisans betray their nervousness and impatience, walking away from their companions to empty their bladders. Vehicles below them open up with odd shells that land behind them, where the trees grow thick. The crack of a detonation; three or four seconds later, a shell lands with a crash.

  At last Jovan is ready. Quietly, they form up a column and follow the two couriers. They move across a crest and see over the tops of the trees below them the branch railway line down in the valley. Magnesium-white parachute flares are sent up into the night sky, where they hover for some trembling seconds, then die away in silence. It seems odd, to Tom, that they make no sound. As if Guy Fawkes N
ight were rendered mute. He can see yellow points of light along the line, enemy garrisons presumably. Night patrols will be out by now. The Partisans slip down off the crest, in amongst the trees again.

  They know they must not be discovered as they descend for then the Germans encamped behind them will close in. Now and then the trees thin and Tom sees a flare shoot up, hang in the air, and vanish. He keeps close behind Jovan, himself tracking the couriers. Marija keeps close behind Tom. They march in the darkness, perhaps towards their deaths. Tom is tired, hungry. He has been in this country little more than two months, and though he knows that his companions’ struggle only coincides in part with his own, still he figures that part is enough; he feels a fierce, exhausted happiness.

  They reach the far edge of the trees. Have they broken through the cordon undetected? Or does the greater danger yet lie before them? They look out across fields of sweetcorn. How fortunate it wasn’t wheat sown here, Tom thinks, for then they’d be running across stubble and open ground – the sweetcorn harvest must be later. The railway lies a few hundred yards away. Every minute or so the dark night becomes brilliant with magnesium light, bluish, blinding. They go through the shoulder-high maize in a dark and silent column. When a flare goes up they drop to their knees and wait, watching the flare hover like a candle held up by a trembling hand. Then it dies and they scramble to their feet and file onward. The maize is wet with dew now and swishes against them as they go. From a village to their right an Armoured Fighting Vehicle fires bursts into the dark woods above and behind them, tracer streaking like livid red scars across the overcast.

  They cross the single-track railway line unseen and carry on out of the Pohorje, trudging westward. What fools, Tom thinks, what bloody fools they are, to let us out of their jaws. He begins to laugh and realises that others are laughing too, afore and aft of him as they walk along, the line of Partisans overflowing with relief and the sheer joy of outwitting their large and brutal enemy. Tom grabs Jovan’s sleeve to halt him, and wraps his arms around him. ‘We did it,’ he says. ‘We did it.’

  Jovan returns his embrace. But when they let go, he says, softly, ‘For now.’

  August 4

  THEY NAP IN the last of the darkness then rise and walk on. They ferry the Savinja river north of Polzela, and cross the plain to the west. The maize is high and the field corn is ripe. Each of them breaks off a cob, unwraps the husk and the silky strands, and bites a mouthful of hard yellow kernels. They let their saliva soften it and though they know that it is fodder for the beasts of the field, unfit for human consumption, they chew the cud of each nutty mouthful as they walk, and are grateful.

  Beyond the maize are great hop fields, phalanxes of rough brown poles and thick overhead wires, like the lines of telegraph poles but all confused together instead of strung out in a long line across the flat landscape. The thinner wires are festooned with green garlands of hops, mere weeks from picking and used to embitter the taste of beer drunk from here to deep inside the Third Reich. As they pass through the verdant avenues, the Partisans breathe the herby spicy air into their lungs. Tom breaks off some hops and rubs them in his hand, breaking open the flower, and the smell is fresh and tangy as sap from a pine tree.

  They head north, back to the looping trajectory of the river, and climb into the woods to follow it, west, cresting the shoulders of hills above the Upper Savinja valley.

  CHAPTER SIX

  In the Valley

  August 5

  A TWO-MAN BODYGUARD escorts them into the present encampment of the Fourth Zone Headquarters. At first it is like approaching one of their own bivouacs – parachute canopies, food stewing, the muted sounds of human movement and activity. Except that the encampment continues, dreamlike, unrolling into the forest, and they walk on past many fires, military tents, horses, hundreds and hundreds of men camped out amongst the trees, dozing, smoking, cleaning weapons. It is unreal, only his stomach rumbling with each variation of aroma of food cooking feels real to Tom; but the effect of fatigue is to disconnect him from his body, and even the grumbling gut inside him could be elsewhere; belong to someone else. They walk on, into the heart of the Partisan army in the Fourth Zone. And just as they had, a month earlier, splintered off as a tiny odred from the main body of soldiers marching down from Mount Rogla, so now the Slovenes are reabsorbed into their army.

  Tom feels his hand taken, and squeezed. He stops and turns. Marija gazes intently at him. She scans his face, his features, his eyes, as if to commit the precious sight to her memory. He nods, unsure what to say. For an awful moment he sees her blue eyes fill with tears and realises she is going to cry. But then Marija smiles, squeezes his hand, and lets go of it. She turns and joins Stipe and the others, who follow a soldier away between tents. Jovan, Tom sees, watches her go, with an infinitesimal shake of his head.

  They walk on, until the soldier accompanying them stops and says something to Jovan, who says to Tom and Sid, ‘The Allies’ tents are over there. I must go this way. I shall see you later, my friends.’

  It strikes Tom that perhaps this is the very opposite of the truth: they will never see each other again, each lost from the other in this army in the forest. He feels the blood drain from his face. Suddenly it seems that standing upright is not something to be taken for granted any longer, for the trees are swaying; perhaps there is a breeze but no, it is an earthquake; delirious how the ground buckles, it is shifting in waves…

  ‘Sir!’ Dixon catches him by the right arm and shoulder.

  Jovan takes his other side and holds him up. Their escort brandishes a water bottle and proffers it to Tom’s lips. He drinks. Held in his comrades’ powerful grip, he feels the world steady on its axis. In time, its clever equilibrium returns.

  ‘We need food,’ Jovan says. ‘We shall all eat soon.’

  ‘Jack.’

  Farwell is at the far end of the tent, with his back to the entrance. Flanked by two other men, all three bent over, studying whatever lies on a large table there. Farwell turns as Tom steps forward.

  ‘Good God, man!’

  Tom prepares to embrace his colleague, but is forestalled: Farwell puts his hand out towards him. Tom takes it and shakes it vigorously, grinning, unsure why he is so glad to see his senior officer, who looks just as he had when they parted a month ago: the major’s pale, pasty face appears to have seen little of this hot southern summer.

  ‘Good God!’ Farwell repeats. ‘What the hell have they done with you?’ He scans Tom up and down, frowning.

  It occurs to Tom that he has not seen his reflection for days, maybe weeks; had lost any interest in what he looks like. Now Farwell is a kind of mirror.

  ‘Looks like your Jugs have dragged you through every thorn-bush in Slovenia,’ he says, whether with approval, or disappointment, is hard to say. ‘Good to have you back, Freedman. Go and get yourself cleaned up, rest if you need to. I’ll have some food sent over. We’ll debrief later. I’ll show you what’s being planned down here. Should be quite a show.’

  August 7

  WHEN TOM BEGINS to wake from a long sleep it is the smell of the canvas, warming in what mid-morning sun filters through the trees, that enters his consciousness first. Slowly it dawns on Tom that having eaten his fill, and put his head down for a nap on a brand-new camp-bed, he must have slept for some eighteen hours, in a deep dreamless oblivion.

  Tom finds Jack Farwell exactly where he left him, back in the tent, neatly dressed, poring over maps. He nods at Tom, and sweeps his hand over the table.

  ‘We’ve all been running like rabbits over these mountains, trying to keep ahead of the wolves, broken up into small battalions and tiny groups, like yours. Now it seems our hosts have had enough. They’re gathering everyone here, we’ve dropped planeloads of supplies, and they’re planning to take the whole of this valley. These Jugs may not look like soldiers, Freedman,’ he says, ‘they’re a bunch of ruffians, the lot of them. They’d kill us to see if we’d gold fillings in our teeth. But by God, th
ey’re up for a scrap.’

  Jack takes a pencil and points to an area on the map.

  ‘We’re here,’ he says. ‘The Savinja flows down from the Karavanken Alps. For ten miles it’s carved itself a narrow valley, with high mountains on either side. There are German garrisons in two small towns, Luce, here, and Ljubno, here. Below Ljubno the valley opens out. They want to take these garrisons and plug the valley at either end. The idea is to set up an airfield on a nice flat field. Then we can really get supplies in here.’

  ‘When’s it go up?’ Tom asks.

  ‘Tomorrow night. I’ve got us seats in the circle above Ljubno. I think you’ll find it’s a nice spot.’

  The two of them sit in folding canvas chairs. Jack tells Tom that Rennes has been taken. ‘And there’s an uprising in Warsaw: the Reds have reached the Vistula, they’ll be kicking the Krauts out any day now.’

  He then listens with impatience to Tom’s debrief.

  ‘There are ten units spread across the mountain range. We supplied seven of them before we were brought out. It would have been eight, but the planes never came.’

  ‘How many bridges were blown?’ Jack demands. ‘How many days was the line out of action?’

  Tom shakes his head. ‘It’s impossible to say. As time went on we had to leave once the planes had made their drops.’

  ‘So you didn’t even see the action? They may not even have used the explosive? Damn it, man, what’s the point of intelligence if you haven’t got any?’

  Does Jack, who has been in the same country all this time, not realise how dangerous it was to stay in one place?

  ‘We had no choice. The enemy were behind us all the way. Jovan had to keep us moving.’

  ‘Ah.’ Jack nods. ‘I did wonder where he’d got to. They never told me he’d gone with you. Should have known.’

  When Tom tells him they have lost their radio, Jack is furious. ‘What the hell was Dixon doing?’