Miljenko Jergovic - The Walnut Mansion

He crossed the Drina with Lieutenant Lazar Kobilović’s unit and descended into eastern Herzegovina via Kalinovik. Mihailović hadn’t sent them to fight, take revenge, or sabotage railway lines and roads used by the Italian and German troops. The mission of Kobilović’s group was more important, maybe even decisive for the fate of the Ravna Gora movement: propaganda and propagating ideas about the struggle against the occupiers among the unruly Serbian villagers and bands of highway robbers who’d proliferated in the territory under Ustasha control but were not under the command of the Royal Yugoslav Army in the Homeland or under the high command of the partisans. Colonel Mihailović thought it important to win those people over for two reasons: it would strengthen his position in any possible negotiations with Tito concerning their possible unification under a joint command, and he would have more arguments in seeking aid from the English, who’d already been hearing rumors that the Chetniks weren’t fighting against the Germans but were only going on revengeful rampages against the Muslim and Catholic populations. Those rumors were correct, which seriously concerned the Colonel, because he would have a difficult time convincing the English that the units taking part in such revenge weren’t under his control.

But on the way to Nevesinje, which was the farthest point west that Kobilović’s unit would reach, the nature of the mission changed. As they passed through burned and slaughtered villages, meeting armed holdouts with all kinds of insignia on their caps, Lieutenant Kobilović concluded along with his thirty men that what was going on in Herzegovina had nothing at all to do with Mihailović’s ideal Yugoslav state. Talking about one people and several tribes and about Yugoslavia as a parliamentary democracy could only get one killed. But what was more important for Lazar was that losing one’s life meant losing one’s honor too. It wasn’t possible to be a brother to a brother who’d renounced you; it wasn’t possible to create a home with someone who was going to cut your throat. This was a time when men had only one choice: either kill or be killed. On the evening before Đovani Sikirić would cross himself three times before a miraculous picture of St. Panteleimon, Lazar Kobilović called him to his room.

“You’re a good man, but you’re not a Serb,” Kobilović told him. “And this isn’t the war of Uncle Draža’s fairy tales. There’s no Yugoslavia here, no King Petar, no brothers of three faiths. This, my son, is a hellish cauldron, and we’re all stewing in it. And only some of us will make it out alive. Either they’ll walk over our bodies, or we’ll walk over theirs. There can be no mercy as long as the slaughter continues. Mercy, my Đovani, comes with peace. Then we’ll forgive and be forgiven. Well, that’s what I wanted to tell you. And now, listen up! I’ve packed you half a flatbread and all the bacon and cheese there is in this sack. There’s a revolver too so that you can defend yourself if someone attacks you. Here are some civilian clothes. I can’t tell you any more, and you don’t need to say anything, but make up your mind yourself. Every bird flies to its flock, and it’s good that way. I’ll know that on the other side is someone I can say is a good man. And you’ll be like a brother to me.”

Đovani listened to the lieutenant, and his heart rose into his throat. He opened his mouth to say something, but the latter grabbed him by the hand: “Quiet; don’t sell your honor for cheap money. Think it over till morning. And if you go, know that you’ve been forgiven.”

That night Đovani slept peacefully, without thinking about what Lazar Kobilović had told him. In the morning they kissed each other on the cheek, and the lieutenant’s eyes were full of tears.

“Brother Jovan, from today your blood is my blood,” he said to Đovani.

And so on the day of St. Panteleimon began the ruin of one Parisian university student, Regina’s smartest and most sophisticated brother, who’d absorbed all the scorn of the nobility for the vulgarity of the poor and the ugliness of the plebs from his home city (or from some unknown distant forefather). From that day on everyone who saw him alive would call him Jovan.

In that autumn of 1942, the partisans fled from Herzegovina, torn asunder by betrayal, and Pavelić, trying to carve out a border along the Drina, left that rocky southern wasteland to the care of the Italians (“If the sea is theirs, then let them fight for the karst too!”). So the Ustasha forces withdrew ahead of the Chetniks without putting up any resistance and left the care of the old land of Hum to the local population, which was mainly Muslim. The ravines, which were already halfway full of God’s Orthodox children, were filled overnight with Muslims and Catholics from Popovo Polje, as well as craftsmen and tradesmen with Czech, Polish, and Austrian names and surnames who were considered to be Croats, probably according to the logic of the cross.

Everything happened quickly and suddenly. Thus it happened that overnight the Ustasha sentries, city authorities, and mobile courts-martial disappeared, and when people awoke in the morning, Chetniks with fairly long beards were already to be seen herding women in shalwars, old men and children, and a few adult men who (probably because of heavy sleep) hadn’t escaped through a window. (“If you’re a Muslim or a Catholic— and you are, because what could you have been here until yesterday— you knew that someone would come for you like this.”) They would take them to a ravine, if there was one nearby; to a gorge, if the village was on high ground; or to a remote place where the villagers tossed animal carcasses. And there the ritual would begin.

First they would pick out an old man. A Chetnik officer or squad leader, whom they often called a duke, would order the old man to remove his hat or fez and kneel down and would approach him from behind. The head of the victim would reach up to his waist. Some would lean their members and scrotums against the crown of the victim’s head so they might feel the fear of the old Turks, but others would simply grab him by the hair, jerk his head backward, and cut his throat with an English army knife or a dagger. If they were at a ravine or gorge, then he would kick the victim in the back, and the latter would disappear without a sound. But if there was no ravine, then a real agony would begin before the eyes of all there who were going to kill or be killed. Namely, either there is some technical difference between slaughtering pigs and slaughtering men, or the squad leader would regularly be the least skilled in his work, but the death of the first victim usually went on longest. The old man would flop around on the ground trying to stop the blood with both hands, gurgling, gasping, and flailing with his feet in the dirt for some time, or in some not altogether rare cases, he would jump up and start running, and the Chetniks would have to get out of the way so the crimson spray wouldn’t get all over them, stiff and strong as the jets of water from the hoses gentlemen use to water their gardens. Those runs, however, were short. Never more than thirty meters, when the man would fall and remain lying motionless on the ground. Dying like that was easier because it didn’t take very long.

When the first victim had been finished off, the women started wailing, crying, calling for help, making the strangest pleas that any living man has ever heard. They pleaded in the name of God and all the angels, in the name of their neighbors, friendship, and the fact that someone had saved someone’s life thirty years before or that one of them had breastfed an Orthodox child because its mother had no milk. They pleaded fervently, as no one ever had before. But it was no use because the eyes of the men with the knives were already full of blood. No one can know for sure, but it’s likely that there were no other victims in the whole war anywhere in Europe who pleaded with their murderers like that. Maybe it was because the murderers were mostly people among whom the victims had lived and whom they’d greeted when they met at the market. Some of the women would also remember that their great-grandfathers had been forced to convert to Islam but that they had always celebrated St. Nikola’s name day in the house.