Aleksandar Tisma - The Book of Blam

The search patrol did not call on the Krkljuš family until the third day of the raid, a delay that saved all their lives but Slobodan’s. The gendarme captain in charge was a stocky, blue-eyed, Magyarized German with a droopy red mustache. He regarded the raid as a way of settling accounts with any member of the population who was neither German nor Hungarian, because he considered the existence of such people on the territory of the newly expanded Hungarian state contrary to nature. After checking the family’s papers and giving the apartment a superficial search, he ordered them to put on their coats, for “further investigation,” and sent them under escort to wait at the corner, because the truck assigned to his territory was unable to take care of all his suspects, given his single, ethnic criterion and the speed of his work. When the number of suspects grew to twenty or so, two armed soldiers prodded them into action and led them through the streets on foot. On the way they passed other patrols, trucks that other frightened suspects were climbing into, and, at various crossroads, piles of corpses in the snow. After crossing the center of town and a neighborhood of newly built houses, they turned down a newly paved road that went to the public beach on the Danube. The road was dark with crowds pressed together in rows of four, guarded by soldiers on either side and facing the river, which was blocked in the distance by a row of changing cabins as white as the snow around them. Once the small column the Krkljuš family was in joined this large one, the two soldiers from the roundup patrol reported to the commander of the escort patrol and returned to the center of town.

After all the ominous scenes they had witnessed on the way, the Krkljušes were almost happy to have reached a destination, any destination, together and in one piece. Despite the guards’ strict injunction against talking, they expressed their relief by asking one another whether they were cold and lamenting that they had not dressed more warmly.

Suddenly they heard shots and a burst of machine-gun fire down in front. Silence returned, but just as they began to recover, the column moved forward. When it came to a halt after ten or so steps, they strained their necks and asked the people in front what was going on. The responses were mixed, but a rumor spread through the column that, contrary to what they had been told, there was no “further investigation” at the beach, that people were being shot. Everyone was frightened. Mr. Krkljuš, gathering his courage and his knowledge of Hungarian, politely told the nearest guard that he had done an apprenticeship in Budapest and served in the Hungarian army and so was here by mistake. When ten or twelve others expressed similar concerns, the soldier, overwhelmed, stepped back, raised his gun, and threatened to fire into the column unless they shut their mouths that instant. Mrs. Krkljuš and her son Slobodan pulled Mr. Krkljuš back into the column, begging him to calm down or he would cause more harm than good. Again they heard shooting and machinegun fire, and again the column inched forward.

The cold was now making itself felt. The soldiers stamped their feet in the snow, slapped their sides under their armpits, paced back and forth, but the people in the column could do nothing but stand or, when a gap opened up between them and the row in front, move forward. From time to time the machine gun up ahead — closer now, and clearer and louder — fired its hurried bursts, or a single shot rang out, but then whole minutes passed when only the murmur of the crowd was audible, though interrupted now and then by a child crying when its mother grew too tired to hold it and passed it on to another pair of arms. People stared at one another in horror, wondering whether what awaited them was actually possible. They could not accept it: there had to be some kind of further investigation, and they would pass muster, their documents were in order, though they were puzzled why no one seemed to be coming back from the investigation, not this way at least. Maybe some other way.

With the next round of machine-gun fire they heard — for the first time, because they were close enough now — a scream, a single scream coming from the same direction. Their eyes filled with terror as they instinctively sought one another, joining arms, pressing closer together to fend off the shivering that came of cold and fear. Step by step they approached the entrance to the beach. Part of the column ahead of them had been checked; behind them the column kept growing, like a human conveyor belt, like grain walking to the mill.

A little girl who felt sick was taken by her mother to the side of the road to vomit, but a guard ran up immediately and chased them back. The stream from the girl’s mouth spattered the shoes of the people closest to her. Then an old man lost his balance and fell facedown in the snow, his black hat rolling from his gray head. The same guard ran up and ordered him to stand, poking him with his boot. Slobodan Krkljuš bent down and slipped his hands under the man’s arms to pick him up, but the guard yelled at him to get back in line. Either Slobodan did not understand or the impulse to help was too great, because he stayed with the old man, finally managing to lift him out of the snow. The soldier tore the rifle from his shoulder, took aim, and fired twice in succession. Slobodan collapsed on top of the old man, and the two of them lay motionless. Mrs. Krkljuš tried to throw herself on her son, but at the sound of the shots a group of soldiers came running and formed a circle around the bodies, threatening to shoot anyone who came near, and Mr. Krkljuš and Aca caught her and held her back from certain death. The column moved forward, closing ranks around the corpses and rendering them invisible. Mr. Krkljuš and Aca propped up the sobbing, semiconscious woman and led her forward, step by step. They were numb now and cured of all illusion: they were being thrust into an abyss of pure horror; they no longer noticed what was going on around them.

The roar of a motor approached, and a car full of officers sped past the column, raising great clouds of snow. It pulled up in front of the changing sheds. A few people in the column stood on their toes to get a better view. Soon everyone, prompted by the excited whisperings of the few, followed suit and saw the officers jumping out of the car and going up to the patrol commander, who gave a stiff, nearly trembling salute. The officers exchanged some words with him, and he turned in the direction of the beach and disappeared in double time behind the white cabins. The people in the column failed to grasp or dared not hope what the commander’s disappearance might mean until they heard “Left turn!” and the order to return to town.

They ran. They ran and pushed and shoved and sobbed — old men, old women, women with children in their arms. They ran, leaving the now silent beach behind, avoiding the corpses strewn along the roadside. Mrs. Krkljuš tore out of the crowd and flung herself on Slobodan, who was lying on his back at the edge of a ditch next to the old man, whose hat was now resting on his chest, courtesy of one of the soldiers, but the column forced them on, and the guards shouted threats, and Mr. Krkljuš and Aca again grabbed her and rejoined the running crowd.

They ran until they reached the Cultural Center building, where the soldiers tried to reassemble them. But the people bounded up the steps, stormed the door, and crowded in to where it was warm, human, familiar, dropping to the marble floor as if it were soft and comfortable. Soon loudspeakers above their heads began to buzz, and someone made a deliberate, formal statement to the effect that the raid was over, many dangerous elements had been uncovered and duly punished, and the citizens present there had been found innocent and would therefore continue to enjoy their constitutional rights and were free to go home.