The Complete Stories (51 page)

  "But we are Jews. One hundred and eight of us."

  "Well, what do you expect me to do about that?"

  "We want to go to Italy. We have relations there, some of us. There is an organization at Bari. My husband and I had our papers to go to Brisbane. Only get us to Italy and we shall be no more trouble. We cannot live as we are here. When winter comes we shall all die. We hear aeroplanes almost every night. Three aeroplanes could take us all. We have no luggage left."

  "My dear madam, those aeroplanes are carrying essential war equipment, they are taking out wounded and officials. I'm very sorry you are having a hard time, but so are plenty of other people in this country. It won't last long now. We've got the Germans on the run. I hope by Christmas to be in Zagreb."

  "We must say nothing against the partisans?"

  "Not to me. Look here, let me give you a cup of cocoa. Then I have work to do."

  He went to the window and called to Bakic for cocoa and biscuits. While it was coming the lawyer said in English: "We were better in Rab." Then suddenly all three broke into a chatter of polyglot complaint, about their house, about their property which had been stolen, about their rations. If Churchill knew he would have them sent to Italy. Major Gordon said: "If it was not for the partisans you would now be in the hands of the Nazis," but that word had no terror for them now. They shrugged hopelessly.

  One of the widows brought in a tray of cups and a tin of biscuits. "Help yourselves," said Major Gordon.

  "How many, please, may we take?"

  "Oh, two or three."

  With tense self-control each took three biscuits, watching the others to see they did not disgrace the meeting by greed. The grocer whispered to Mme. Kanyi and she explained: "He says will you excuse him if he keeps one for a friend?" The man had tears in his eyes as he snuffed his cocoa; once he had handled sacks of the stuff.

  They rose to go. Mme. Kanyi made a last attempt to attract his sympathy. "Will you please come and see the place where they have put us?"

  "I am sorry, madam, it simply is not my business. I am a military liaison officer, nothing more."

  They thanked him humbly and profusely for the cocoa and left the house. Major Gordon saw them in the farmyard disputing. The men seemed to think Mme. Kanyi had mishandled the affair. Then Bakic hustled them out. Major Gordon saw the crowd close round them and then move off down the lane in a babel of explanation and reproach.

  II

  There were thermal springs at Begoy. The little town had come into being about them. Never a fashionable spa, it had attracted genuine invalids of modest means from all over the Hapsburg Empire. Serbian rule changed it very little. Until 1940 it retained its Austrian style; now the place was ravaged. Partisans and Ustashi had fought there, or, rather, each in turn had fired it and fled. Most houses were gutted and the occupants camped in basements or improvised shelters. Major Gordon's normal routine did not take him into the town, for the officials and military were in farmhouses like his own on the outskirts, but he daily frequented the little park and public gardens. These had been charmingly laid out sixty years before and were, surprisingly, still kept in order by two old gardeners who had stayed on quietly weeding and pruning while the streets were in flames and noisy with machine-gun fire. There were winding paths and specimen trees, statuary, a bandstand, a pond with carp and exotic ducks, and the ornamental cages of what had once been a little zoo. The gardeners kept rabbits in one of these, fowls in another, a red squirrel in a third. The partisans had shown a peculiar solicitude for these gardens; they had cut a bed in the centre of the principal lawn in the shape of the Soviet star and had shot a man whom they caught chopping a rustic seat for firewood. Above the gardens lay a slope wooded with chestnut and full of paths carefully graded for the convalescent with kiosks every kilometre, where once postcards and coffee and medicinal water had been on sale. Here for an hour a day in the soft autumn sunshine Major Gordon could forget the war. More than once on his walks there he met Mme. Kanyi, saluted her, and smiled.

  Then, after a week, he received a signal from his headquarters in Bari saying: Unrra research team require particulars displaced persons Yugoslavia stop report any your district. He replied: One hundred and eight Jews. Next day (there was wireless communication for only two hours daily): Expedite details Jews names nationality conditions. So his duty took him away from the gardens into the streets where the lime trees still flourished between the stucco shells. He passed ragged, swaggering partisans, all young, some scarcely more than children; girls in battle dress, bandaged, bemedalled, girdled with grenades, squat, chaste, cheerful, sexless, barely human, who had grown up in mountain bivouacs, singing patriotic songs, arm-in-arm along the pavements where a few years earlier rheumatics had crept with parasols and light, romantic novels.

  The Jews lived in a school near the ruined church. Bakic led him there. They found the house in half darkness for the glass had all gone from the windows and been replaced with bits of wood and tin collected from other ruins. There was no furniture. The inmates for the most part lay huddled in little nests of straw and rags. As Major Gordon and Bakic entered they roused themselves, got to their feet and retreated towards the walls and darker corners, some raising their fists in salute, others hugging bundles of small possessions. Bakic called one of them forward and questioned him roughly in Serbo-Croat.

  "He says de others gone for firewood. Dese ones sick. What you want me tell em?"

  "Say that the Americans in Italy want to help them. I have come to make a report on what they need."

  The announcement brought them volubly to life. They crowded round, were joined by others from other parts of the house until Major Gordon stood surrounded by thirty or more all asking for things, asking frantically for whatever came first to mind—a needle, a lamp, butter, soap, a pillow; for remote dreams—a passage to Tel Aviv, an aeroplane to New York, news of a sister last seen in Bucharest, a bed in a hospital.

  "You see dey all want somepin different, and dis is only a half of dem."

  For twenty minutes or so Major Gordon remained, overpowered, half-suffocated. Then he said: "Well, I think we've seen enough. I shan't get much further in this crowd. Before we can do anything we've got to get them organized. They must make out their own list. I wish we could find that Hungarian woman who talked French. She made some sense."

  Bakic inquired and reported: "She don't live here. Her husband works on the electric light so dey got a house to demselves in de park."

  "Well, let's get out of here and try to find her."

  They left the house and emerged into the fresh air and sunshine and the singing companies of young warriors. Major Gordon breathed gratefully. This was the world he understood, arms, an army, allies, an enemy, injuries given and taken honourably. Very high above them a huge force of minute shining bombers hummed across the sky in perfect formation on its daily route from Foggia to somewhere east of Vienna.

  "There they go again," he said. "I wouldn't care to be underneath when they unload."

  It was one of his duties to impress the partisans with the might of their allies, with the great destruction and slaughter on distant fields which would one day, somehow, bring happiness here where they seemed forgotten. He delivered a little statistical lecture to Bakic about block-busters and pattern-bombing. But another part of his mind was all the time slowly being set in motion. He had seen something entirely new, which needed new eyes to see clearly: humanity in the depths, misery of quite another order from anything he had guessed before. He was as yet not conscious of terror or pity. His steady Scottish mind would take some time to assimilate the experience.

  III

  They found the Kanyis' house. It was a tool shed hidden by shrubs from the public park. A single room, an earth floor, a bed, a table, a dangling electric globe; compared with the schoolhouse, a place of delicious comfort and privacy. Major Gordon did not see the interior that afternoon for Mme. Kanyi was hanging washing on a line outside, and she led him away from the hut, saying that her husband was asleep. "He was up all night and did not come home until nearly midday. There was a breakdown at the plant."

  "Yes," said Major Gordon, "I had to go to bed in the dark at nine."

  "It is always breaking. It is quite worn out. He cannot get the proper fuel. And all the cables are rotten. The General does not understand and blames him for everything. Often he is out all night."

  Major Gordon dismissed Bakic and talked about U.N.R.R.A. Mme. Kanyi did not react in the same way as the wretches in the schoolhouse; she was younger and better fed and therefore more hopeless. "What can they do for us?" she asked. "How can they? Why should they? We are of no importance. You told us so yourself. You must see the Commissar," she said. "Otherwise he will think there is some plot going on. We can do nothing, accept nothing, without the Commissar's permission. You will only make more trouble for us."

  "But at least you can produce the list they want in Bari."

  "Yes, if the Commissar says so. Already my husband has been questioned about why I have talked to you. He was very much upset. The General was beginning to trust him. Now they think he is connected with the British, and last night the lights failed when there was an important conference. It is better that you do nothing except through the Commissar. I know these people. My husband works with them."

  "You have rather a privileged position with them."

  "Do you believe that for that reason I do not want to help my people?"

  Some such thoughts had passed through Major Gordon's mind. Now he paused, looked at Mme. Kanyi and was ashamed. "No," he said.

  "I suppose it would be natural to think so," said Mme. Kanyi gravely. "It is not always true that suffering makes people unselfish. But sometimes it is."

  Major Gordon returned to his quarters in a reflective mood that was unusual to him.

  IV

  The partisans were nocturnal in their habits. They slept late in the mornings, idled about at midday smoking, ate in the early afternoon, and then towards sundown seemed to come alive. Most of their conferences took place after dark.

  That evening Major Gordon was thinking of going to bed when he was summoned to the General. He and Bakic stumbled along cart tracks to the villa which housed the general staff. They found the General, his second-in-command, the Commissar, and the old lawyer who was called the Minister of the Interior.

  Most meetings in this room were concerned with supplies. The General would submit a detailed, exorbitant list of immediate requirements—field artillery, boots, hospital equipment, wireless apparatus—and so forth. They worked on the principle of asking for everything and item by item reducing their demands to practicable size. In these tedious negotiations Major Gordon enjoyed the slight advantage of being the giver and the final judge of what was reasonable; all the partisans could do was dissipate any sense he might have of vicarious benefaction. He always left feeling a skinflint. Formal politeness was maintained and sometimes even a faint breath of cordiality.

  Tonight, however, the atmosphere was entirely changed. The General and the Commissar had served together in Spain, the second-in-command was a professional officer from the Royal Yugoslav Army, the Minister of the Interior was a nonentity introduced to give solemnity to the occasion. They sat round the table. Bakic stood in the background. His place as interpreter was taken by a young communist of undefined position whom Major Gordon had met once or twice before at headquarters. He spoke excellent English.

  "The General wishes to know why you went to visit the Jews today."

  "I was acting on orders from my headquarters."

  "The General does not understand how the Jews are the concern of the Military Mission."

  Major Gordon attempted an explanation of the aims and organization of U.N.R.R.A. He did not know a great deal about them and had no great respect for the members he had met, but he did his best. General and Commissar conferred. Then: "The Commissar says if those measures will take place after the war, what are they doing now?"

  Major Gordon described the need for planning. U.N.R.R.A. must know what quantities of seed corn, bridge-building materials, rolling stock and so on were needed to put ravaged countries on their feet.

  "The Commissar does not understand how this concerns the Jews."

  Major Gordon spoke of the millions of displaced persons all over Europe who must be returned to their homes.

  "The Commissar says that is an internal matter."

  "So is bridge building."

  "The Commissar says bridge building is a good thing."

  "So is helping displaced persons."

  Commissar and General conferred. "The General says any questions of internal affairs should be addressed to the Minister of the Interior."

  "Tell him that I am very sorry if I have acted incorrectly. I merely wished to save everyone trouble. I was sent a question by my superiors. I did my best to answer it in the simplest way. May I now request the Minister of the Interior to furnish me with a list of the Jews?"

  "The General is glad that you understand that you have acted incorrectly."

  "Will the Minister of the Interior be so kind as to make the list for me?"

  "The General does not understand why a list is needed."

  And so it began again. They talked for an hour. At length Major Gordon lost patience and said: "Very well. Am I to report that you refuse all cooperation with Unrra?"

  "We will cooperate in all necessary matters."

  "But with regard to the Jews?"

  "It must be decided by the Central Government whether that is a necessary matter."

  At length they parted. On the way home Bakic said: "Dey mighty sore with you, Major. What for you make trouble with dese Jews?"