Bosnian Chronicle

by Ivo Andrić

  Hamdi Beg has spoken the last words testily. Now, in complete silence, he blows a cloudlet of smoke and continues. “Well, let them come! Let us see what happens and how many there are. No man’s candle burns forever, nor will this . . . this fellow’s . . .”

  Here Hamdi Beg gulps a little and gives a cough of suppressed annoyance, thus managing not to pronounce Bonaparte’s name, which is in everyone’s thoughts and on everyone’s tongue.

  As no one has anything further to add, the discussion of the latest piece of news is over.

  Soon the clouds veil the sun completely and a strong gust of cold wind blows through the valley. The leaves of the poplars along the riverbank rustle with a metallic sound. The cold shudder sweeping down the Travnik valley means that for this year an end has come to the sessions and chatting on the Sofa. One by one the begs commence to get up; they gesture silent greetings to one another and then scatter to their homes.

  1

  At the beginning of the year 1807 strange things began to happen at Travnik, things that had never happened before.

  No one in Travnik had ever supposed that the town was made for an ordinary life and for the workaday grind—no one, not even the last Moslem bumpkin from the mountain hinterland. This deep-seated feeling that they were somehow different from the rest of the world, that they were created and called for better and higher things, was as much a part of their life as the cutting winds from Vlashich, the cool waters of Shumech, and the sweet-tasting maize of the sunny fields around Travnik, and the people never lost this feeling, not even in sleep or the times of great difficulties or in the moment of death.

  This was especially true of the Moslems who lived in the town itself. But even the humble and the poor of the three faiths—the so-called rayah—scattered along the hilly outskirts or crowded together in separate suburbs, shared this feeling in their own way and each according to their station. And this was also true of their town itself, about whose situation and layout there was something special, typical, and proud.

  In reality, this town of theirs was a narrow and deep gorge which successive generations had in the course of time built up and brought under cultivation, a fortified passageway where men had paused and then settled down permanently, adapting themselves to it and it to themselves down the centuries. On both sides, mountains tumble down steeply and meet in the valley at a sharp angle, leaving barely enough room for a thin river and a road running beside it. It all reminds one of an oversize half-opened book, the pages of which, standing up stiffly on each side, are generously illustrated with gardens, streets, houses, fields, cemeteries, and mosques.

  No one has ever reckoned the number of hours of sunlight which nature has withheld from this town, but it is certain that here the sun rises later and sets earlier than in any other of the numerous Bosnian cities and small towns. The people of the town—Travnichani—do not deny it either, but they claim that, while it shines, it does so with a light that no other town can boast of.

  In this narrow valley, where the river Lashva flows along the bottom and the steep hillsides are full of the whisper of springs, rivulets, and water-mill channels, a valley full of damp and drafts, there is hardly a straight path or piece of level ground where a man may step freely and without paying attention. All is steep and uneven, crisscrossed and angled, linked and chopped up by private right-of-ways, fences, blind alleys, gardens, wicket gates, graveyards, and shrines.

  Here by the water, that fickle, mysterious, and powerful element, generations of Travnichani are born and die. Here they grow up, sallow-faced and delicate of body, but hardened and equal to anything; here they live, with the Vizier’s Residency ever before their eyes, proud, sensitive, haughty, fastidious, and cunning; here they work and thrive, or loaf around in genteel poverty; cautious and persevering, they don’t know how to laugh aloud but are masters of the sly leer; scant talkers, they are fond of the whispered innuendo; and here they are buried when their time comes, each according to his faith and custom, in marshy graveyards, making room for a new generation like themselves.

  So the waves of posterity go on, bequeathing one to another not only a peculiar common heritage of body and spirit, but also a land and a faith, not only an inherited sense of what is right and fitting and an instinct for recognizing and distinguishing all the byways, gateways, and alleys of their intricate town but also an inborn flair for judging the world and men in general. Thus equipped come the children of Travnik into the world; of all their attributes pride is the most conspicuous. Pride is their second nature, a living force that stays with them all through life, that animates them and marks them visibly apart from the rest of mankind.

  This pride has nothing in common with the naïve ostentation of prosperous peasants and small-town provincials who, smug in their pleasure with themselves, swell visibly and are loud in self-congratulation. On the contrary, their pride is of an inner and private kind; it is more like a burdensome legacy and an exacting obligation toward themselves, their families, and their town, set and conditioned by nothing less than the lofty, exalted, and quite abstract image which they have formed of themselves and their city.

  Still, every human feeling has its measure and limit, and the sense of one’s own grandeur is no exception. While it is true that Travnik is the seat of the Vizier and its people are well bred and neat, moderate and wise enough to deal with emperors, there are times in the lives of Travnichani when their pride becomes a nuisance and they yearn secretly for a relaxed and carefree existence, when they would settle for a humble life in one of these obscure small market towns that do not figure in the reckoning of emperors or in the clashes of states, that are bypassed and unaffected by world events and do not lie in the path of great and celebrated men.

  Indeed, times had become such that one couldn’t look forward to anything pleasant or expect anything good. For that reason the proud and discerning people of Travnik hoped that in fact nothing would happen and they would be allowed, as far as possible, to lead their lives without changes or surprises. Anyway, what good could possibly result from rulers being locked in combat, from nations giving each other bloody noses, from scorched and burning lands? A new vizier? He would not be worse or better than his predecessor, while his swarming entourage would be an unknown quantity, hungering and lusting for Lord knew what new things. (“The best vizier we ever had,” they said, “was the one who got as far as the frontier, then went straight back to Istanbul and never even set foot in Bosnia.”) Some foreigner? A distinguished bird of passage, perhaps? But one knew exactly what that meant. They spent a little money and distributed a few gifts, and the moment they were gone, next day as it were, questions were asked and police inquiries instituted. Who were they and what were they, with whom did they spend the night, who was seen talking to them? And by the time you disentangled and cleared yourself, you regretted it ten times over and lost more money than you may have made on the stranger. Or perhaps a spy . . . ? Or a secret agent of an unknown power, with dubious intentions? When all was said and done, it was hard to tell what a man might bring or whose scout he might be.

  In short, things were not too promising nowadays. It was better by far to eat one’s bread and live one’s days in peace—as much as one had left of either—in this the noblest of all cities on earth, and may the good Lord save us from glory, from important visitors, and from great events.

  Such, in the opening years of the nineteenth century, were the thoughts and private hopes of the leading men of Travnik, although, naturally, they kept them to themselves; for it was characteristic of the Travnichani that between their wishes and thoughts and a visible or audible expression of them there was a long and devious road not easily traversed.

  In the last few years especially—at the end of the eighteenth and the beginning of the nineteenth century—events and changes had come rather fast and thick. Indeed, there was a regular assault of events from every quarter, a clashing and a tumble that ranged all over Europe and the great Turkish Empire a
nd reached even into this tight little valley, settling here like flood water or a sand drift. Ever since the Turks had withdrawn from Hungary, the relations between the Ottoman Empire and the Christian world had grown steadily worse and more complex, as had conditions in general. The warriors of the great Empire, the agas and the spahis, who had been forced to relinquish their rich estates on the fertile Hungarian plain and to return to their cramped and poor country, were bitter and resentful of everything Christian; and while they multiplied the number of mouths that had to be fed, the number of hands available for work remained as before.

  On the other hand, these same wars of the eighteenth century that were easing the Turks out of the neighboring Christian lands and bringing them back to Bosnia, filled the local rayah—or subject Christians—with bold new hopes and opened up daring new horizons; and this too was bound to influence the attitude of the rayah to their imperial overlord, the Turk. Both sides—if one may speak of two sides at this stage of the struggle—fought each in its own way, and with the means that were suited to the times and circumstances. The Turks elected repression and force, the Christians fought back with passive resistance, cunning, and conspiracy, or readiness to conspire. The Turks defended their right to live and their way of life, the Christians fought to gain those rights. The rayah was getting “uppish” and was no longer what it used to be. This conflict of interests, beliefs, yearnings, and hopes produced a convulsive atmosphere which the long Turkish wars with Venice, Austria, and Russia made only tenser and more constricting. In Bosnia the mood grew somber and brooding, clashes became more frequent, life more difficult; order and sense of security waned by the day.

  The beginning of the nineteenth century brought an uprising in Serbia that was symbolic of the new times and new methods of struggle. The Bosnian knot tightened more ominously still.

  As time went on, the rebellion of the Serbs caused more and more worries, trouble, damage, expense, and loss throughout Turkish Bosnia, and thus to Travnik as well, though more to the Vizier, the authorities, and the other Bosnian towns than to the Turks of Travnik itself; to the latter no war was big or important enough to warrant a contribution of their wealth, let alone their persons. The Moslems of Travnik spoke of “Karageorge’s rebellion” with rather forced contempt, just as they always found some sneering epithet for the army which the Vizier sent against Serbia and which the fumbling and bickering local chieftains assembled, in their slow and chaotic way, in the environs of Travnik.

  A more deserving topic of conversation in Travnik was the European campaigns of Napoleon. At first, these were discussed as if they were distant events that needed retelling and interpretation but which had not, and could not possibly have, any connection with the daily life of Travnik. The arrival of the French army in Dalmatia unexpectedly brought this fabled “Bonaparte” much nearer to Bosnia and Travnik.

  Simultaneously there came to Travnik a new vizier, Husref Mehmed Pasha, bringing with him a new respect for Napoleon and an interest in everything French—an interest far greater, the Travnichani felt, than was becoming to an Osmanli and a high representative of the Turkish Empire.

  Perturbed and irritated by it all, the local Moslems began to express their feelings about Napoleon and his exploits in terse and cryptic sentences or else with a disdainful pursuing of lips. Still, none of it could quite remove and protect them from Bonaparte or from the events which, like ripples of water radiating from their center, spread from him with mysterious speed to every corner of Europe, or which, like a blaze or the plague, caught up with all men whether they tried to run from it or hoped to escape it by staying put. The unseen and, to them, unfamiliar conqueror seemed to inject their city, as he did so many other cities of the world, with unrest, excitement, and commotion. For years to come the hard ringing name of Bonaparte was to echo through the valley of Travnik and, whether they liked it or not, the townspeople were often to mouth its gnarled, angular syllables; the name would long buzz in their ears and hover before their eyes. For the “Times of the Consuls” were at hand.

  All Travnichani, without exception, like to appear unruffled and to affect an air of impassivity. Yet the rumored arrival of a consul —now a Frenchman, then an Austrian or a Russian, then again all three of them together—caused them to worry and entertain hopes; it touched off desires and anticipations that were difficult to hide altogether, that in fact set their minds working more briskly and gave a lively new note to their conversation.

  Very few of them understood the real import of these rumors, which had been bandied about since the fall, and no one could say specifically which consuls were expected or what their business in Travnik was supposed to be. In the prevailing mood, a single scrap of news, a chance hint of something unusual, was enough to stir their imagination, to call forth much talk and guessing; and, beyond that, many doubts and fears, many secret thoughts and longings of the kind which a man does not admit or broadcast but keeps to himself.

  The local Moslems, as we have seen, were apprehensive and inclined to sound churlish when discussing the possible arrival of a consul. Mistrustful of everything that came from abroad and hostile in advance toward anything new, the Turks hoped privately that these rumors were no more than spiteful gossip typical of unsettled times, that the consuls might never come, or that, if they came after all, they would shortly pack up and vanish again, together with the bad times that had brought them.

  The Christians, on the other hand, Catholics and Orthodox alike, received the news with joy and passed it along by word of mouth, stealthily and in whispers, extracting from it vague new hope and a promise of change to come. Any change could only be for the better. And of course each of them thought of the prospect in his own fashion and from his own point of view, which was often diametrically opposed to the viewpoints of others.

  The Catholics, who were in the majority, dreamed of an influential Austrian consul who might bring with him the help and protection of the mightly Catholic Emperor at Vienna. The Orthodox, who were fewer in number and had been steadily persecuted during the last few years on account of the Serbian rebellion, expected little—either from a French or an Austrian consul—but they saw in it a good omen and a proof that the Turkish authority was weakening and that better times were on the way—times of unrest and therefore of deliverance. But they were quick to add that naturally “nothing would be accomplished without a Russian consul.”

  Even the small but lively community of Sephardic Jews found it hard, in the face of such news, to maintain the businesslike reserve which the centuries had taught them; they were stirred by the hope that Bosnia might get a consul of the great French Emperor, Napoleon, “who is good to the Jews like a good father.”

  The rumor of the imminent arrival of foreign consuls, like most rumors in our land, cropped up suddenly, grew to fantastic proportions, and then ceased just as suddenly, only to reappear in a new form and with new intensity several weeks later.

  In the middle of winter, which happened to be short and mild that year, these intimations took on an appearance of reality for the first time. There arrived from Split a Jew by the name of Pardo who, together with a Travnik merchant called Juso Atias, began to look around for a suitable house for the French consulate. They went everywhere, consulted with the town mayor and inspected the properties of the Moslem trust foundation with the administrator. Finally they chose a large, rather neglected house belonging to the foundation where, as far back as anyone could remember, the itinerant merchants from Dubrovnik used to put up and which, for that reason, was called Dubrovnik Lodge. The house stood on one side of the town, above a Moslem school, in the middle of a large, steeply sloping garden traversed by a brook. As soon as terms were agreed upon, they engaged artisans, carpenters, and masons to repair the house and put it in order; and this dwelling which up till then had languished apart and gaped at the world with empty windows, came to life all of a sudden and began to attract the attention of the townspeople and the curiosity of children and loiter
ers. There was talk that a coat of arms and a flag were to be displayed, permanently and conspicuously, on the building of the foreign consulate. These were things which, in fact, no one had ever seen before; the Moslems pronounced the two weighty and important words seldom and with a frown, while the Christians whispered them often and with a certain malice.

  The Moslems of Travnik were, of course, too shrewd and too proud to show their true feelings, but in conversation among themselves they made no attempt to conceal them.

  For some time now they had been fretting and troubled in the knowledge that the fences of the empire were tumbling along the frontiers and that Bosnia was fast becoming an open territory, trampled not only by the Osmanlis but by unbelievers of the whole wide world, where even the rayah dared to raise its head more boldly than ever before. And now they were about to be overrun by some infidel consuls and spies, who were sure to use every opportunity to boast of the power and sway of their emperors. And so, little by little, the death knell would be sounded to the good order and “beautiful quiet” of Turkish Bosnia, which in any case had been progressively more difficult to keep and defend for many years past. It was plainly Allah’s will and design that the Turks should rule up to the river Sava, and the “Schwabes” beyond. Yet now all Christendom was challenging this patent ordinance of the Almighty, tugging at the frontier fences and digging under them day and night, both openly and in secret. Lately too the divine will itself showed unmistakable signs of blurring and softening. “What else is likely to happen, who else is likely to come?” the older Turks asked themselves with heartfelt bitterness.

  And in fact what the baptized folk were saying about the rumored opening of foreign consulates only went to prove that the chagrin of the Moslems was not unjustified.