Sword of Honor
The officer whom Guy succeeded had fallen into a melancholy and was recalled for medical attention; he had left by the aeroplane that brought Guy. They had had ten minutes’ conversation in the light of the flare path while a party of girls unloaded the stores.
“The comrades are a bloody-minded lot of bastards,” he had said. “Don’t keep any copies of signals in clear. Bakic reads everything. And don’t say anything in front of him you don’t want repeated.”
The squadron leader remarked that this officer had been “an infernal nuisance lately. Suffering from persecution mania if you ask me. Wrong sort of chap to send to a place like this.”
Joe Cattermole had fully instructed Guy in his duties. They were not exacting. At this season aeroplanes were coming in to land at Begoy almost every week, bringing, besides supplies, cargoes of unidentified Slavs in uniform, who disappeared on landing and joined their comrades of the higher command. They took back seriously wounded partisans and Allied airmen who had “bailed out” of their damaged bombers returning from Germany to Italy. There were also “drops” of stores, some in parachutes—petrol and weapons; the less vulnerable loads, clothing and rations—falling free as bombs at various points in the territory. All this traffic was the business of the squadron leader. He fixed the times of the sorties. He guided the machines in. Guy’s duty was to transmit reports on the military situation. For these he was entirely dependent on the partisan “general staff.” This body, together with an old lawyer from Split who bore the title of “Minister of the Interior,” consisted of the General and the Commissar, veterans of the International Brigade in Spain, and a second-in-command who was a regular officer of the Royal Jugoslavian Army. They had their own fluent interpreter, a lecturer in English, he claimed, from Zagreb University. The bulletins dealt only in success; a village had been raided; a fascist supply wagon had been waylaid; mostly they enumerated the partisan bands who had found their way into the Begoy area and put themselves under the command of the “Army of Croatia.” These were always lacking in essential equipment and Guy was asked to supply them. Thus the General and the Commissar steered a delicate course between the alternating and conflicting claims that the partisans were destitute and that they maintained in the field a large, efficient modern army. The reinforcements excused the demands.
The general staff were nocturnal by habit. All the morning they slept. In the afternoon they ate and smoked and idled; at sunset they came to life. There was a field telephone between them and the airfield. Once or twice a week it would ring and Bakic would announce: “General wants us right away.” Then he and Guy would stumble along the rutted lane to a conference which took place sometimes by oil lamp, sometimes under an electric bulb which flickered and expired as often as in the headquarters at Bari. An exorbitant list of requirements would be presented; sometimes medical stores, the furniture of a whole hospital with detailed lists of drugs and instruments which would take days to encipher and transmit; field artillery; light tanks; typewriters; they particularly wanted an aeroplane of their own. Guy would not attempt to dispute them. He would point out that the Allied armies in Italy were themselves engaged in a war. He would promise to transmit their wishes. He would then edit them and ask for what seemed reasonable. The response would be unpredictable. Sometimes there would be a drop of ancient rifles captured in Abyssinia, sometimes boots for half a company, sometimes there was a jack-pot and the night sky rained machine-guns, ammunition, petrol, dehydrated food, socks, and books of popular education. The partisans made a precise account of everything received, which Guy transmitted. Nothing was ever pilfered. The discrepancy between what was asked and what was given deprived Guy of any sense he might have felt of vicarious benefaction. The cordiality or strict formality of his reception depended on the size of the last drop. Once, after a jack-pot, he was offered a glass of Slivovic.
In mid-April a new element appeared.
Guy had finished breakfast and was attempting to memorize a Serbo-Croat vocabulary with which he had been provided, when Bakic announced:
“Dere’s de Jews outside.”
“What Jews?”
“Dey been dere two hour, maybe more. I said to wait.”
“What do they want?”
“Dey’re Jews. I reckon dey always want sometin’. Dey want see de British captain. I said to wait.”
“Well, ask them to come in.”
“Dey can’t come in. Why, dere’s more’n a hundred of dem.”
Guy went out and found the farmyard and the lane beyond thronged. There were some children in the crowd, but most seemed old, too old to be parents, for they were unnaturally aged by their condition. Everyone in Begoy, except the peasant women, was in rags, but the partisans kept regimental barbers and there was a kind of dignity about their tattered uniforms. The Jews were grotesque in their remnants of bourgeois civility. They showed little trace of racial kinship. There were Semites among them, but the majority were fair, snub-nosed, high cheek-boned, the descendants of Slav tribes judaized long after the Dispersal. Few of them, probably, now worshipped the God of Israel in the manner of their ancestors.
A low chatter broke out as Guy appeared. Then three leaders came forward, a youngish woman of better appearance than the rest and two crumpled old men. The woman asked him if he spoke Italian, and when he nodded introduced her companions—a grocer from Mostar, a lawyer from Zagreb—and herself, a woman of Fiume married to a Hungarian engineer.
Here Bakic roughly interrupted in Serbo-Croat and the three fell humbly and hopelessly silent. He said to Guy: “I tell dese people dey better talk Slav. I will speak for dem.”
The woman said: “I only speak German and Italian.”
Guy said: “We will speak Italian. I can’t ask you all in. You three had better come and leave the others outside.”
Bakic scowled. A chatter broke out in the crowd. Then the three with timid little bows crossed the threshold, carefully wiping their dilapidated boots before treading the rough board floor of the interior.
“I shan’t want you, Bakic.”
The spy went out to bully the crowd, hustling them out of the farmyard into the lane.
There were only two chairs in Guy’s living-room. He took one and invited the woman to use the other. The men huddled behind her and then began to prompt her. They spoke to one another in a mixture of German and Serbo-Croat; the lawyer knew a little Italian; enough to make him listen anxiously to all the woman said, and to interrupt. The grocer gazed steadily at the floor and seemed to take no interest in the proceedings. He was there because he commanded respect and trust among the waiting crowd. He had been in a big way of business with branch stores throughout all the villages of Bosnia.
With a sudden vehemence the woman, Mme. Kanyi, shook off her advisers and began her story. The people outside, she explained, were the survivors of an Italian concentration camp on the island of Rab. Most were Jugoslav nationals, but some, like herself, were refugees from Central Europe. She and her husband were on their way to Australia in 1939; their papers were in order; he had a job waiting for him in Brisbane. Then they had been caught by the war.
When the King fled, the Ustachi began massacring Jews. The Italians rounded them up for their own safety and took them to the Adriatic. When Italy surrendered, the partisans for a few weeks held the coast. They brought the Jews to the mainland, conscribed all who seemed capable of useful work, and imprisoned the rest. Her husband had been attached to the army headquarters as electrician. Then the Germans moved in; the partisans fled, taking the Jews with them. And here they were, a hundred and eight of them, half starving in Begoy.
Guy said: “Well, I congratulate you.”
Mme. Kanyi looked up quickly to see if he were mocking her, found that he was not, and continued to regard him now with sad, blank wonder.
“After all,” he continued, “you’re among friends.”
“Yes,” she said, too doleful for irony, “we heard that the British and Americans were friends of
the partisans. It is true, then?”
“Of course it’s true. Why do you suppose I am here?”
“It is not true that the British and Americans are coming to take over the country?”
“First I’ve heard of it.”
“But it is well known that Churchill is a friend of the Jews.”
“I’m sorry, signora, but I simply do not see what the Jews have got to do with it.”
“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.”
“Signora, 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 the orderly 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. Guy 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 Guy.
“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, signora, 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. Guy saw them in the farmyard disputing. The men seemed to think Mme. Kanyi had mishandled the affair. Then Bakic hustled them out. Guy saw the crowd close round them and then move off down the lane in a babel of explanation and reproach.
*
Full summer came in May. Guy took to walking every afternoon in the public gardens. There were winding paths, specimen trees, statuary, a bandstand, a pond with carp and exotic ducks, the ornamental cages of what had once been a miniature zoo. The gardeners kept rabbits in one, fowls in another, a red squirrel in a third. Guy never saw a partisan there. The squat, swaggering girls in battle-dress, with their bandages and medals and girdles of hand-grenades, who were everywhere in the streets, arm-in-arm, singing patriotic songs, kept clear of these gardens where not long ago rheumatics crept with their parasols and light, romantic novels.
The only person Guy ever saw was Mme. Kanyi whom he saluted and passed by.
“Keep clear of civilians” was one of the precepts of the mission.
*
Later that month Guy noticed an apprehensive air at headquarters. General and Commissar were almost ingratiating. He was told there were no military developments. No demands were made. On a bonfire in the garden quantities of papers were being consumed. He was for the second time offered a glass of Slivovic. Guy had not to seek for an explanation of this new amiability. He had already received news from Bari that Tito’s forces at Dvrar had been dispersed by German parachutists and that he and his staff, the British, American and Russian missions had been rescued by aeroplane and taken to Italy. He wondered whether the General knew that he knew. A fortnight passed. Tito, he was informed, had set up his headquarters under Allied protection on Vis. The General and the Commissar resumed their former manner. It was during this period of renewed coldness that he received a signal: U.N.R.R.A. research team requires particulars displaced persons. Report any your district. This phrase, which was to be among the keywords of the decade, was as yet unfamiliar.
“What are ‘displaced persons’?” he asked the squadron leader.
“Aren’t we all?”
He replied: Displaced persons not understood, and received: Friendly nationals moved by enemy. He replied: One hundred and eight Jews.
Next day: Expedite details Jews’ names nationalities conditions.
Bakic grudgingly admitted that he knew where they were quartered, in a school near the ruined Orthodox 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 Guy and Bakic entered a dozen or more barely visible figures 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 one’s 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 Guy 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 isn’t a half of dem.”
For twenty minutes or so Guy 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 Italian. She made some sense.”
Bakic inquired and reported: “She don’t live here. Her husband works on d’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 singing companies of young warriors. Guy breathed gratefully. 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.
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 blockbusters and pattern-bombing.
They found the Kanyis’ house. It was a former potting-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. Guy 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 Guy. “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.”
Guy 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 Guy’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.”
That evening Guy was summoned to general headquarters. A full committee, including even the Minister of the Interior, sat grimly to meet him. Their manner was of a court martial rather than a conference of allies. Bakic stood in the background and the young interpreter took over.