Ljepota pobjede: Milja Marin

Milja Marin, devojačko Toroman

I went with them. The strangeness of this pastoral life mingled with the sultry heat of those summer days and the tedium of our march. Kosta's headquarters were then ten miles to the north-east, in the woods above Kotor Varosh; and at that time there were no riding horses to spare. We walked for days.

Round the bend in the track my party traipsed ahead of us, their feet scuffling in the dust, their rifles slung. No one can be got to bother about march discipline when he knows the immediate countryside is safe. The lean ponies that carry our essential stores, (including the wireless sets in their drab suitcases, the leaden-heavy accumulators, the charging engine which so often cannot be got to work, the rucksacks that are fat proof of our brief experience), hurry along between us, checking to pull at bushes in their perennial hunger, cobby Bosnian ponies which represent all transport in this army from ambulance to armoured car. The track winds along beside a torrent half-dried in the summer drought, that will be im­passable in the coming winter, a rock-paved path which leads from Petrovo Polje towards the valley of the Bosna. They talk intermin­ably as they go. Later on I could understand them and talk to them on a level of equal experience; for the time being it is slow work. "Is it as hot as this in Africa?" "It's even hotter."

Someone's eyes widen sympathetically: "My God, then you're lucky to be here."

A pause, then: "Excuse me for asking, druzhe, but did they send you here, or did you want to come? I mean, how do they treat you in your army?"

And they ponder the explanation that you give and discuss it afterwards with the commissar, and say conclusively, with labouring thoughts: "There, you see, that's a progressive people. Even their army doesn't kick them about. They really asked you if you'd like to come?"

And their eyes are on your improbable urbanity, your obvious physical discrepancy with their ox-like sinews, your still clean uniform and your still pale face.

"Of course they did."

"My God, that's something like an army. You should have seen our army before the war. D'you know that an officer'd as soon kick you as look at you: and if you answered back, my God, they'd crucify you. And you see what happened in that army. All those bloody-minded officers are getting fat with Drazha now, and waiting for the Germans to win the war. Well, we've changed all that and they'll be surprised."

Far above our heads the pair of ravens that nest in the ravine fly in wide circles, croaking hoarsely to each other. They are black wheeling fragments in the blue immensity. The ravine is a sun-trap in summer, and we sweat through our clothes, planned for winter, as we go.

"What kind of a pistol have you got, druzhe?" This is going to be a subject of never-failing interest and speculation. My pistol happens to be a Parabellum.

"But that's a German make. Vlatko's got one: he took it off a German officer the other day. Why do they give you a German pistol? Or perhaps your army doesn't have any pistols?" Their warm brown eyes are sympathetic: sarcasm is no part of their thoughts. It may well be that the English army has no pistols. "After all, nor has ours: we have to capture them always."

"Ah, don't be so silly," someone better-informed chimes in: "Of course they've got pistols. That's a great nation. England and America is a great nation."

"All right, I'm only asking." And then sudden illumination. "And you captured that Parabellum in Africa, eh, druzhe?"

It is hell to disillusion them. "No, they gave it to me."

"Who, the Germans?"—incredulously.

"No, you fathead," rebounds the better-informed. "His own army gave it to him." With sudden fury: "Ti neznash nishta. You don't know anything. It's because he can use German ammuni­tion."

"All right, all right, what's the excitement! Anyway, you said England and America is the same country. I've got an uncle in Pittsburg and he wrote a letter to my mother—it's my mother's brother, you see—ten years ago once: and he said the English are quite different from the Americans."

They argue away at this. "He says they don't speak the same language. And they live in a different country, he says. You've got to cross the ocean to get to America, he says. D'you know what he says?"—rhetorically, holding us all up on the narrow track to achieve better emphasis—"He says the English and the Americans are like the Italians and us. Quite different, he says."

The better-informed appeals to me. "That's wrong, isn't it, druzhe? If s the same language."

"That's right. The same language with some difference of ex­pression. Like Serb and Croat."

"Oh, but that's exactly the same language. Why, I can under­stand everything the Croats say. My mother's sister married a Croat, and her uncle's wife could speak Slovene, too."

The breach is healed over mutual congratulations on speaking both Serb and Croat, which is indeed exactly the same language. These parental complexities are to be a constant source of trouble and misunderstanding, arising from the great importance the South Slavs lay on family ties and the huge vocabulary they possess to describe them. Different words are used for mother's aunts and uncles, and father's aunts and uncles, and cousin and half-cousins and cousins God knows how many times removed. Men of the same generation are always brothers, no matter how distantly related; and if they are bom brothers then this must be stated and they become rodjen brat. It is rather confusing: but at the same time impor­tant and significant of the kind of people these are. They are emerg­ing from their clannishness into wider loyalties.

"That man over there's a Dalmatian. And that one's from the Boka. And I was born in Bosnia but my mother comes from Serbia, and my father's brother married a Srem woman. I stayed with them once in Srem. That's a rich country. They've got every­thing in Srem. Bosnia's a poor place."

The ravine widens out into a pleasant copse of evergreens. We halt for a rest and a drink in the river. The ponies splash in up to their hocks and muzzle in the cool flowing water; horseflies sting away at their unprotected flanks, and their tails swish to and fro as they stand there in the shade. Loads are adjusted and if possible eased on their backs. We lie on pine needles and gaze up at the sky through the meshwork of evergreens.

"How long have you been away from home, druzhe?" They lean on their elbows and throw fircones at the ponies. "Four years."

"My God, you must be homesick." A pause. "I've been away since last Vidovdan but one. That's thirteen months. My sister's a partisan, too. She's a nurse. She's in the Fifth Kozara."

"Who?" interupts someone.

"Ljubitsa. Ti znash. That big blonde girl we saw when we were at Prejedor. That's my sister. My mother's brother's daughter."

"God knows what the women will be like after this war," says someone else gloomily. "There'll be no decency at home."

"Bozhe majku, kako si Bosanats What a Bosnian you are! That's a reactionary point of view. Don't you know we're fighting for the equality of women, the rights of women? Haven't you heard of the Women's Anti-Fascist Front?" Turns to me—"This is a backward country, druzhe: that's the trouble: you can't get people to understand."

"Mother of God—and who the hell are you to understand better than me? I only said the women'd get above themselves." Throws a fircone at our bolnicharka, our company nurse: "Like you, Mara."

Mara is seventeen and strong as a horse. There is no subtlety or gentle understatement in Mara. She is a well-built girl with short-cropped brown hair and a big, pale, wistful face: she joined three months ago and is everyone's favourite. She has the intensity of innocence and strength of faith that characterize so many of these girls and make them, on the whole, braver and more admirable than the men.

"Fat lot of good you'd be without women." This is such an obvious proposition to Mara, who knows so well the impossibility of running a farm without a woman's help and hard work that the subject bores her; she returns to the preoccupation of cutting her nails with a pocket knife that is part of her medical equipment, scissors not being much found in Bosnia. The conversation dwindles.

"Otchemo. Let's go," suggests the company commander, jump­ing up. The pine needles are soft and the day is unbearably hot. "Come on, come on," he urges, "we can't stay here all day."

Reluctantly the column gets to its feet and wanders on again down the valley under the trees. They are dressed in a medley of uniforms, mostly German, here and there a British battledress blouse or slacks, rarely indeed the two together, occasionally a piece of civilian improvisation; their boots are broken and their foot-rags filthy; sometimes they wear opantsi, Serbian moccasins with long upturned toes and cross-straps, the most comfortable possible foot­wear once your feet are hardened to them. They have German rifles and a few sub-machine guns, Schmeisser or Beretta or Sten; on their belts they carry clusters of hand grenades, their chosen weapon, round grenades of Jugoslav manufacture (from the arsenal of Kraguyevats, or latterly of partisan makeshaft), Hun stick grenades. Mills grenades which are inconvenient to carry on your belt but of kingly detonating power; and with the grenades they have on their belts cartridge pouches and spare magazines and odds and ends of equipment according to fancy and possession.

The defile widens out and evergreens give way to water-meadows, the river flows more largely and there are signs of habitation. A sentry we had not seen bawls out at us in shattering tones, his rifle poking forwards:

"Stoj!"

"Partizani," we shout back.

"Jedan napred, ostali stoye!" One of us goes forward, the rest slow down to a snail's pace: the sentry peers distrustingly into our faces as we pass him. Too many people have been caught that way.

The last man disappears into the trees which shelter the village. Above the empty meadow with its sedge thickets beside the water and its green silence the wheeling ravens croak to each other in an empty sky. They seem like black fragments in that blue immensity.

Do željezničke stanice pratila me je, noseći veliki kofer pun sanitetskog materijala, jedna mala, mlada, živahna i lijepa djevojka. Nisam joj znao ime. Na njoj je bilo i da mi izvadi voznu kartu. Kofer je bio veoma težak i jedva mi je uspjelo da joj ga istrgnem iz ruku i da ga sam ponesem...
S nepoznatom pratiljom ostao sam gotovo pola časa na stanici, sve dok nisam ušao u vagon. Kada je voz krenuo, mahali smo jedno drugom dok se nismo izgubili iz vida.
Neće proći mnogo vremena, a uspjeću da saznam da je ta osamnaestogodišnja djevojka bila Nada Dimić. Prepoznao sam je i na jednoj fotografiji koju mi je neko pokazao. Kad sam čuo kakvo se herojstvo krilo u toj djevojčici, kako se borila dok je ustaše nisu savladale, kako je pobjegla iz zatvora i ponovo bila uhapšena, ubivši jednog neprijateljskog oficira i ranivši drugog, kako su je ponovo mučili danima i noćima, sve do strijeljanja, a da nije odala ni svoje ime - ona se u meni uzdigla kao neugasiva žiža ljudske svjetlosti.