Life in the West

by Brian Aldiss

  Back in Belgrade. Roša had earned a rare holiday, she said. She took him on an old steamer down the Danube, brown with all the corpses of history. They stopped at Smederevo. Smederevo Fortress was one of the places Roša sang about when drunk. In its time it had been the largest fortress in all the Balkans. Its gigantic and ruinous towers stood against the Danube. It was a cold, depressing place; the wind blew from Russia. Masses of peasants had been forced to pile stone on stone, to erect this monstrous stronghold against the Ottoman Empire.

  There was no defence against history and the Turk. When Smederevo fell in 1459, the medieval state of Serbia was quenched like a torch in the river.

  A man was waiting for them in Smederevo. He was big and black-bearded. His name was Milo Strugar, and he became Squire’s friend. On that first occasion, he was hostile. He drove Roša and Squire away in an old black German car to a wooden-tiled house in the woods. There Squire was made privy to some of the plans of Yugoslav counter-intelligence.

  He never saw Roša again after that occasion. The bastards had sent her away, just to show him that you did what you were told. He learned the lesson.

  Long before the war, the Yugoslav and Soviet communist parties had forged close links; they were brother Slavs. But Stalin had offered Tito little support in his struggle against German invasion. The old channels of communication were now being obliterated. Yugoslavia had to stand on its own legs or fall under Soviet domination.

  Squire saw evidence of how ruthless both sides were. In this corner of Europe, in the broken towns and forests, the Cold War was real. Yugoslavia stood between East and West, mistrusting both; the fight was not merely of words, but of guns, fists and boots.

  Living became more complex while its issues simplified. The remnants of the fascist Ustache in Croatia, once linked to Hitler, were allying themselves with the Soviet Union. Their plan was to kill Marshal Tito. They had to be smashed. There were weeks, months, when tank movements on the other side of the frontier suggested that Soviet invasion was imminent.

  Squire thought much of his gentle father in those times. He thought of the dogs that had devoured his face. To some acts, there was no adequate response but killing. So in Serbia.

  He slept rough, became familiar with the forest. War was not a natural activity of man, but the equations of life forced it on him.

  He understood perfectly that the Yugoslavs had no alternative but to resist the Russians. Like tigers, they loved their freedom, and would defend it.

  More important to the strategists in the West was the fact that here communist was fighting communist for the first time. It gave cause for hope. The struggle was of immense significance for the rest of the world. As he identified with the Yugoslav cause, he saw clearly a parallel between this lonely war at one end of Europe and the role played at the other end of Europe by Britain, only seven years earlier.

  After Milo Strugar had tested him, the Yugoslavs began reluctantly to trust Squire. The Serbs preferred him to the Croats. In part, they trusted him because he was British. The label ‘Englishman’ was sweet in their mouths.

  Early in the ill year of 1948. Countries of Central Europe like Czechoslovakia sinking further under Russian ice. Romania becoming more sovietized, and more hostile to Yugoslavia. The USSR beginning to hamper traffic between Berlin and the West.

  The BIA sent Squire to the Yugoslav port of Rijeka, where mixed elements in the population caused unrest. Snipers still lurked in the hills above the city. Squire’s contact was a Serb called Slobodan, who ran a printing press as a cover for his other activities. Slobodan was a wild and unkempt man, extremely emaciated, who had lost his left eye in the mountains during his term as one of Tito’s partisans.

  Over cigarettes and slivovitz, and through many curses, Slobodan in his little oily shop explained how a shipment of arms of British manufacture had arrived in Rijeka from the British Zone in Germany. It was delivered in an armoured freight train, and the train was hauled into railway sidings near the docks, where it was guarded by a Special Operations unit of the Yugoslav Army. Regulars, not conscripts, said Slobodan, spitting. After some delay, the officer commanding Rijeka Arsenal — sited some miles inland from Rijeka — arrived with a convoy of trucks to take charge of the shipment. The train was empty.

  The major had immediately arrested the captain in charge of the guard unit, the driver and engineer of the train, the train guards, and just about all the officials connected with port operations. But the arms were not recovered.

  A full-scale search of Rijeka was in progress when Squire arrived. Slobodan, a true anarchist, had no patience with the blundering military. With mighty curses, he told Squire that he had better ideas of his own.

  ‘I’ve got orders to contact the major i/c arsenal,’ Squire said.

  ‘Screw that, I have more genius in my arse than him in his head. Listen to my report.’

  Slobodan had received a tip from an informant that a barge or barges had been sighted off-shore during the previous night, a few miles to the north. The barges were showing no navigation lights. All was obvious to Slobodan — you cut out the floors of the freight cars, remove the crates of arms, and steal them away by sea, not land. Sea is safer by night than land by day or night.

  ‘Barges don’t get far in one night. Come, we go see for ourselves in my fast car.’

  Squire found himself packed into a tiny Zastava, bumping dangerously over the coast road, while Slobodan gave him an almost incomprehensible resume of his family history, in which dismemberment figured rather largely.

  After making a few enquiries, they stopped at a small bay west of Opatia, under the humped slopes of Mount Ucka. A black-clad widow-woman who lived up the mountainside swore she could see from her window a newly risen rock or a newly sunken ship under the surface of the Adriatic.

  They parked the car and went down to examine the situation. The waters of the Kvarner Bay lapped a line of beach rare on this rocky coast. There were fresh but confused marks in the sand — someone had obliterated tell-tale signs with a sack. The steeply shelving shoreline would allow a shallow draught barge to pull into the beach without trouble, and under cover of dark unloading operations could be effected with little risk of discovery: this region, Istra, was under dispute between Yugoslavia and Italy, with parts still administered by British forces; many of the inhabitants had fled, leaving the country almost deserted. The ravages of incessant warfare were plainly seen.

  Slobodan and Squire prowled the beach. On trees and bushes fringing the sand they found freshly broken branches, as if vehicles had moved in. They were searching among the bushes when they came on the body of a man dressed in fisherman’s clothes. His jersey was clotted with blood. He had been stabbed several times in the rib-cage. His beard was matted with mud and blood. Anger and pain still contorted his rigid face. Ants crawled between his teeth.

  ‘It’s Milo,’ said Squire. ‘Milo Strugar…’

  ‘Jebem te sunce!’ growled Slobodan, thrusting a rampant fist up at the sky. When he recovered, he stuck a cigarette into Squire’s mouth and asked, ‘What do you know of this man?’

  ‘Milo was my mentor, the first Serb to trust me. As to what he was working on hereabouts, it was secret. I know of it only in general.’ He hesitated, not entirely trusting the savage Slobodan, then plunged on, still overcome with shock. ‘Milo had a lead given him by a Croatian Member of the Skupstina [Parliament], an old Partisan pal of his. That I know. I heard only that trouble of some kind was going on in Labin — the Croat spoke of a planned armed insurrection, aimed at getting rid of Tito and manned by disaffected Ustashe elements. Supported by high-level Soviet backing. Where is Labin?’

  Slobodan dragged the cigarette from his mouth and pointed inland with fist and cigarette. ‘Twenty kilometres up in the hills, not more. Let’s go!’

  Squire leaned over his friend’s torn body, but Slobodan grasped him roughly by the shoulder.

  ‘Cut out that girlie stuff. Weep for your pal later — first, r
evenge the bugger. Let’s get to Labin, stir up things there, find guys who’ll help us. These thugs here are desperate.’

  Sten guns, magazines, old Cyrillic type-faces, carpenter’s tools, and hand grenades mingled on the back seat of Slobodan’s car. They had rattled noisily on the road from Rijeka. He threw a blanket over them before proceeding. They rattled again as the car accelerated in a pungent whiff of Jugopetrol. Milo Strugar’s body was left lying in the bushes with the ants as they headed up the steep tracks of Istra.

  The season was late April. The sun made the hillsides blaze with warmth, exhaling a sweetness that reached them through the open windows of the Zastava. Bumblebees buzzed among short-lived flowers. They drove amid a stand of pines, in which the sun flickered as through a blind, and swerved round a gigantic bend to confront the characteristic landscape of Istra.

  Among disorderly and tumbled hills of karst were contrasting patches of cultivation, or the thread of a river. Tender green larches shone from broken slopes, backed by darker pines and cypresses. Fertile and barren lay close, yet distinct. Uncompromising on extravagant bluffs, towns stood out, fortresses as well as villages, each with its Italianate steeple, each dilapidated and without sign of life, each the colour of the hillside it crowned. As the car wound along the road which linked the deserted towns, it passed an occasional donkey, led by a peasant whose ruddy face was powdered by the dust of the thoroughfare.

  Squire scrutinized this landscape through field glasses, alert for movement. Istra could provide cover for a whole army. The lorries loaded from the barge could not be far off: they would travel by night, remaining in hiding by day. They drove past shells of houses that bore evidence of the bitter civil war which had still to die completely. Slogans painted crudely on their facades, reading ‘Mi Smo Hrvati’ and ‘Hocemo Tito’ (‘We are Croats,’ ‘We want Tito’), had provided their occupants with a kind of rough life insurance. The gutted facades threw back the sound of their passage as they roared by; the car could be seen and heard for miles. And the karst towered above them in a welter of flowering maquis and broken stone.

  Labin appeared round a shoulder of mountainside, grey on the top of its appointed hill. It was perhaps five winding kilometres distant when Squire saw figures on a looming hillside to their right. Not sheep. Men, running. Two of them, three. They dived for cover behind a stone wall and were seen no more. Beyond the wall was a grey-roofed building, slotted into the dip between two hills.

  ‘Turn up to the right,’ Squire said. ‘Someone’s had a moment of panic up there.’ He felt his stomach knot unpleasantly. There was no knowing what they would meet.

  Some metres further on, a track led off the road to the right. Without hesitation, without decelerating, Slobodan turned up it, belting between stone walls in a cloud of dust. Squire leant back, grabbed a sten from the rear seat, rammed a magazine in it, and set it on Slobodan’s lap, muzzle forward. He selected another sten for himself and held it at the ready. His eyes searched the landscape for hostile movement. Without a word, steering perilously with one hand, Slobodan leaned back and picked up three hand grenades, which he stuffed into a pocket. He winked at Squire. Seeing the point of the operation, Squire also pocketed some grenades.

  The narrow track twisted in a manner more suitable for sheep than cars. Twice, metal shrieked as they clipped the stone walls with their mudguards. Then they broke through into a farm yard. Some miserable pullets scattered before their bumper. Ahead and to their left were ruinous buildings. Slobodan braked, keeping the car in clutch and rolling slowly forward as the two men craned their necks for signs of life, stens pointing through the car windows. The farm building to their left had been a mean habitation at the best of times; now the ground- floor windows were roughly boarded up, and the words ‘Hocemo Tito’ painted on the stonework in inelegant red lettering, with a communist star for emphasis.

  In its remote situation, it was a place that had already witnessed violence.

  As the Zastava came level with the last window, a machine gun opened fire from the upper room. The rear side window of the car shattered and glass flew. Slobodan swore.

  Without hesitation, he spun the wheel and sent the car speeding forward, turning left and shooting round the corner of the farm building. He pulled one of the grenades from his pocket. The car braked just before it ran into a wall of stone. With a yell at Squire, Slobodan jumped out of the vehicle and flung himself behind it. Squire followed, chased by another burst of fire from above.

  Squire was still feeling numb. He watched as Slobodan pulled the pin from his grenade, stood to aim, and flung the grenade through the nearest upstairs window of the farmhouse. The grenade disappeared. A second of silence. Then it exploded. Cries and shouts sounded. Tiles clattered down.

  Time seemed to move very slowly. Smoke drifted from the window in a leisurely fashion. And Squire regained his ability to move.

  Someone was firing at the Zastava from the lower floor, taking pot-shots through the boarded windows with a revolver. Squire left the shelter of the car at a run, throwing himself down against the front of the building. One of the boards blocking the window by the front door was broken. He crawled to a position beneath it. Rising, he lobbed a grenade through the hole. Pressing himself against the stonework, he waited in fierce anticipation, teeth clenched. As the explosion came, he moved to the door. He kicked it in and burst forward, firing his sten, all strictly according to the training manual. It came like second nature.

  Smoke, dirt, whirling particles of straw, billowed in his face. Through the filth, he saw that the meagre room contained six men. All were in a demoralized state. The two nearest Squire had suffered directly from his grenade. Their uniforms were torn and bloody. They sprawled on the floor groaning, surrounded by blood and guns. Squire kicked the guns out of the way. At the other end of the room were four men who had been sitting round a table, drinking coffee from a metal flask; one was hurt and clutched his face, moaning; the other three offered no resistance and climbed nervously to their feet at the ferocious sight of Squire, raising their hands above their heads.

  Pointing the sten at them, he went forward, satisfied to see them cower back. They were dressed in rough civilian clothes. All were young and pallid of face. They had no guns. It occurred to him that they might be drivers. He made them undo their belts and throw them out of the nearest window, through a broken board. They stood facing him, holding up their trousers and shaking visibly, faces ghastly. They plainly expected to be murdered. He felt no compassion.

  He whistled through the board to Slobodan, who whistled back and pointed upstairs. The important people would be up there. Squire blazed away experimentally through the boards above his head. Oaths sounded. Through the loose boards in one of the rear windows, he saw a body go by — someone had jumped for it. Slobodan’s sten chattered. He wouldn’t let them get away.

  There was nothing for it but to rush the stairs, hoping the enemy there were also temporarily demoralized. He ran up the steps in a crouch, yelling, firing from the hip. He flung himself flat as he entered the room. Bits of tile went flying as Slobodan fired from below.

  A narrow-faced man with a mole on one cheek, his eyes narrowed, fired point blank at Squire and missed. He was crouching behind a wooden crate. His uniformed sleeve had snagged on a bent nail. As he jerked his arm to free himself, Squire half-rose and swung his sten. He caught the narrow-faced man hard across the eyes with the barrel.

  He staggered to his feet. Another uniformed man, who had been taking cover behind an upturned wooden bed, rose and jumped from the window. A shot and a shout sounded. Slobodan was in control out there.

  ‘Okay, Squire?’ he yelled. ‘Want help?’

  Slobodan’s first grenade had effectively wrecked the room. Maps and a leather briefcase lay on the floor, against a shattered vodka bottle. In one corner, the walls were splattered with blood; a man lay there, his head hidden. He twitched faintly. Squire went over and kicked him, but he was completely out of action. T
hat left only the narrow-faced man, who had fallen face-down over the packing case.

  Squire prodded him in the ribs with his gun. ‘Up!’

  Despite the blow with the sten, which should have cracked the front of his skull, the man still had fight in him. He had concealed a broad-bladed military knife in his right hand. As he came up from the crate, he struck at Squire with a practised underarm stroke. Squire swerved to save his ribs and kicked the man on the shin. The man fell back onto his other leg, his face suffused with blood, his pupils dilated with the determination to kill. He charged in again, knife first. The bullets from Squire’s gun caught him full in the chest. He staggered backwards over the crate and fell to the floor among shards of roofing tiles. His left leg kicked for a moment.

  Squire went and leaned against the nearest wall, panting and trembling. He slung the sten over one shoulder and wiped repeatedly at his face with his hand. Sweat poured from him. ‘Father, father, I’m sorry…’ When he realized he was repeating the phrase over and over, like a mantra, he tried to take control of himself. A fit of sneezing overcame him.

  He went to the rear window and spat out into the bushes beneath, cleansing his mouth.

  ‘You finito up there?’

  Slobodan stood below, covering three men with his gun. They leaned, faces inwards, against the farmhouse, hands above their heads, trousers round their knees. Slobodan gave the Thumbs Up sign.

  Squire could not speak.

  ‘I’ve got Zvonko Nedec here. That’s worth something. Who’ve you got up there?’

  Nedec was a well-known pro-Soviet Croat, high on the Belgrade wanted list.

  Squire went into an empty corner of the room and was violently sick. Sweat poured from him. He found himself weeping. The vomit splashed his boots and slacks.

  Confused, he realized after a moment that Slobodan was in the room, driving Nedec before him, the latter with hands tied and face ashen; stains down the front of his trousers showed where he had pissed himself in fright. Only Slobodan was enjoying himself. He clapped Squire on the shoulder.