The War-A Story

...The road went parallel with an embankment along the river...

...The front began here and extended to the south and northeast, where it then hinged around the bigger river and from there on followed its course...

...Only the gaunt peasant remained in the clearing...

...I was afraid that they'd push the coffin in the water...

...The soldiers quickly untied the coffin and lowered it off the wagon...

...our village is far away...

...For this reason, the wisest course of action to follow in war is to destroy everything methodically: houses and roads, seed and livestock, bridges and museums, and above all else the human beings themselves and the conditions of their existence...

...A knot of wood had dropped out of the bottom of the coffin...

...They placed the lid beside the coffin, having neither the tools nor the time to nail it down...

...He's from our government, the people's government...

...Crumpled alongside the coffin, the mother began to brush the sweat-drenched hair away from her son's forehead, comforting him: "Don't be afraid, my darling boy, he's a good man, he's a good man...

...The old man began telling his story...

...Two days before, at dawn, the enemy had attacked and, as ill luck would have it, his son, young and inexperienced—he hadn't even reached 20 —had been hit by a grenade...

...I wanted to save him, to preserve someone of my blood...

...In war there must always be two opposing armed camps (without them there would be no war), and each side does everything in its power to destroy all that might be useful to the other...

...The father went on lamenting as if he hadn't heard the question: "I don't know myself where or why we're carrying him...

...This gave the father new courage and he again begged: "Don't put a curse on your soul, Major, have a little consideration...

...But the major gestured for him to lie down...

...But the Major ordered the soldiers to move them away, and they quickly retreated before the rifle barrels...

...it cannot foresee what may eventually be useful to the other side...

...For they were giving the right of way to a dead man who, in addition, was being led by a man in military uniform...

...The old man was all the more pathetic because he did not seem to be referring to himself or to his wife...

...Nor did the peasant make any secret of this...

...He rolled his eyes, made a move as though to get up, then smiled with embarrassment and remained lying on his back...

...the Major asked...

...THROUGHOUT that afternoon, misty and freezing and humid as are many winter afternoons, especially the afternoons of war, a funeral dirge was heard coming from the left bank, where the front was...

...The compact, gray clouds had descended so low they touched the water's surface, and darkness had fallen sooner than usual...

...The Captain knew what he had to do without being told and asked the driver for a pair of pliers and a hammer...

...The parents hurried after the wagon...

...Yes, I heard it myself, "he said triumphantly...

...By this time, close to the front and even some distance from it (for the front is here today, but tomorrow can move elsewhere), there did not exist a single bridge or scow or ferry of any kind...

...There is no work of man's hand or brain which might not prove useful to the adversary...

...Let us go with our dead while it's still light...

...After all, an army exists in order to possess all that the enemy possesses, or does not possess, or might possess...

...The young man himself seemed to understand only when the bullet split his heart: He cried out, arched up in the coffin, his limbs and head banged lightly against the wood, and suddenly his entire body slumped, as though completely drained...

...The father and mother stiffened and stood speechless...

...Encouraged by his wife's implorings, the father came to attention before the Major and, in a more dignified, soldierly tone, he too began to plead: "Have some consideration, Sir Comrade Major...

...And they stepped aside, treading in the muck unwillingly yet without protest...

...the only thing that counted was that he was a Captain), shouted almost angrily at the passengers already jammed on the scow to make room for the wagon...

...The passengers watched the scene with curiosity...

...So he kept silent and heaved a sigh...

...It was translated by Raymond Rosenthal...

...The big river, which ran from east to west, flowed into an even bigger river...

...This time the animals followed him quietly, eager to put their hooves on solid ground...

...And on the banks of these rivers there have always been wars and battles and frontiers, since human life is carried on across rivers which, depending on circumstances, either unite or separate...

...Besides, they knew that any new boat or scow would certainly be requisitioned...

...What can you do...

...War has no mind...

...The other two are dead...

...The officers decided the enemy planes were no longer a danger...

...I didn't want to hurt anyone, I swear to God, I swear to God...

...But he could not find the right words, or perhaps they seemed futile to him confronted by the immense sorrow of the peasant and his wife, who was quite obviously the dead man's mother...

...To reach it, the army had cut and sanded a path from the landingplace through the mud and stagnant puddles...

...Did he run away from the front...

...And so they ferried the inhabitants and their belongings across the river free of charge...

...When the Lieutenant warned him to keep in line, he merely turned around and, still running, made an impatient gesture and pointed at the hut with his cane: "I've got some urgent business to take care of there...

...Is this your son...

...Plucking up his courage, the young man sat up in the coffin...

...A peasant's foolishness—simply so that we can comfort ourselves with a grave...

...Then he added, quietly: "We do our duty and will continue to do it...

...The military command," he added, "respects the people's customs, even if it is more appropriate that a soldier rest alongside his fallen comrades...

...In an angry voice, the Major said: "Now carry him away...

...They were all busy with the trucks on the bank of the big river...

...the army of course must have a way of connecting the river's banks...

...Thus the surest way of harming the enemy is to destroy everything that might fall into his hands...

...This was his way with animals, yet now his voice was sadder and more tender, for a coffin of rough wood rested on the wagon...

...Both armies had dug in along the banks, gathering force to destroy each other in the spring, when the ice melts and the earth becomes green again...

...The Major seemed not to be listening...

...But the people who lived on the rivers' banks were not indifferent, though they, too, could not be blamed for the war...

...when it overtakes them, it must create havoc in their lives...

...He signaled for it to pull up...

...The Captain, who was blond and thick-set (though it didn't really matter how he looked...

...And without waiting for any order, the Lieutenant took the mother by the shoulders, though not roughly, tore her away from her son, forced her to her feet and pulled her to one side...

...She began to curse the peasant for his lies and his wickedness, and to beg the Major: "Be a good man...

...Even the few small dinghies which the fishermen had hidden from the retreating army had been confiscated by the advancing army, not so much because it needed them but because they might one day prove useful to the enemy: to transport spies or saboteurs or in case of a counteroffensive...

...Look at them...

...Then he walked over to the wagon, tapped the coffin with his index finger and gave the order to open it...

...They had thrown themselves on the corpse of their son, and were sobbing and screaming in spasms of grief...

...What good are my land and my house, and the State for that matter, if all that I have is wiped out...

...In any case, he said to the father, or perhaps to a man in the line: "In order, in order, everything must be in order...

...But the people, though not an army, had also become wise and would crowd around the ferry toward evening, when the enemy had stopped attacking and the army had not yet begun ferrying to the opposite bank...

...So it has always been and always will be: Big rivers flow into bigger rivers...

...They knew that a peasant (for only peasants lament their dead so obstinately, with a din that is stupefying) was transporting from the front the corpse of his brother (or father, or son) who had been killed in the war...

...But how did you manage to get a coffin at the front...

...But the soldiers had nothing with which to pull out the nails in the lid...

...Whether battles are fought on its banks or elsewhere is no less a matter of indifference to the river...

...The mother threw herself on it, wailing softly: "My house, my empty house...

...Up there there's no wood, no carpenters, nothing...

...The imminent publication of one of these, Conversations with Stalin, apparently was responsible for bis rearrest on Saturday, April 7. "The War," written while Djilas was in prison, appeared originally in a recent issue of the Italian magazine Tempo Presente (which was confiscated in Belgrade...

...But no one heard him...

...On the opposite bank, there were some soldiers and three officers—a Major from counter-intelligence...

...his aide, a Captain...

...It tore out all his guts...

...Inside lay a dark-haired, beardless young man, dressed in peasant clothes...

...And the gaunt peasant said to himself in astonishment: "But how could I know...

...A truck passed and, lifting his hand in which a few identity cards fluttered, the Major signaled it to stop...

...I was raised with horses...

...On this short, narrow trail, hemmed in on both sides by muddy slush churned up by cart wheels, the passengers lined up in single file, ready to show their papers to the Major, who had not yet emergd from his little hut on the road...

...Rubbing his hands as if to remove the dirt on them (the reins had been greasy and muddy), he replied with quiet modesty: "It's nothing, little uncle...

...In a similar manner, a soldier, prodding with the barrel of his rifle, pushed the father alongside his wife...

...he said, War is war...

...This was extended to 10 years in 1957 when The New Class was published...

...The officers would have liked to have begun using the scow even before sunset to bring these poor, grief-stricken folk to the other bank...

...Who...

...He too was blond, but tall and with a sparse, discolored mustache which made his beardless chin all the more prominent (his appearance also didn't matter, for it was only important that he was a Lieutenant...

...A STORY By Milovan Djilas The War Milovan Djilas' exclusive article in The New Leader of November 19, 1956, "The Storm in Eastern Europe," led almost immediately to his arrest and a three-year prison term...

...evidently what was happening did not interest him, or else he had more important things to do and troubles of his own...

...They die every day, sometimes we ferry more dead men than live ones...

...An elderly peasant, tall, thin and gaunt-faced, asked the old man: "Did you go to the front to bring back your son...

...The battle front cut right across the big river...

...Now Captain, don't hold it against me if I didn't tell you...

...They're weeping and crying just like they did before...

...One could see that the Captain wanted to say a few comforting words, which at the same time would be an admission, something like: "Yes, freedom has a high price...

...For three months a battle had been going on along the big river...

...This was quite reasonable, since the soldiers were there and did what they were doing precisely because of the war...

...Suddenly he jumped down on the bank, grabbed the reins, and tugged the horses toward the boat: "Give them to me, little uncle...

...But the Captain was made ill-at-ease by this show of gratitude...

...Swiftly, as though he had only been waiting for the command, the Captain pulled his revolver out of his holster and clicked a bullet into the chamber...

...But the gaunt peasant, the one whose son had been killed a month before, bending over and waving his cane in his right hand as though it might help him in his haste, rushed toward the hut, paying no attention to anyone...

...As the adversaries were of equal strength, neither could pry the other loose, particularly now that winter was fast coming on (a winter campaign demands more men and equipment...

...The parents did not hear him...

...Then the Captain walked up to the coffin and shot the young man in the heart with such dexterity and speed that the echo of the report seemed to resound even before the barrel had been brought close to the boy's chest, and before the petrified parents had time to realize what was happening...

...How could I know...

...The Captain agreed...

...I've already given two of them, and now he also has gone...

...You shouldn't hold it against me either," he said, turning to the parents...

...The mother was the first to recover...

...At that moment the scow touched the other bank...

...The tall peasant, seemingly deaf to the words of the grief-stricken parents, his Adam's apple bobbing up and down on his long neck, said: "My son was killed too, a month ago, but I didn't carry him back...

...Instead of the Captain, the Lieutenant, who was at the tiller, spoke up...

...He had gone with his wife to where they were fighting to bring his son some food and clean clothes...

...but every river—and therefore this one—is indifferent to whether or not the front divides it...

...It's our duty to help the people, that's why we're here...

...the peasant echoed sorrowfully...

...The Major was a dark-haired, rather young-looking man...

...perhaps he was too busy checking the travelers' documents...

...But finally the scow came snorting from the canebrake, to cross the river...

...I thought it was a spy or something like that," he said to himself...

...Gently he tried to move the mother away from the" coffin, but she remained on the ground—still crouching, almost knotted up in herself—her clenched fists pressed against her cheeks, bemoaning even more desperately her desolate house and her black fate...

...The horses shied, and the Captain again took hold of the reins...

...so are the fields and vineyards, the villages and towns...

...There was a sudden silence, with only the sounds of the wagon grating on the sand and boots squelching in the mud...

...All soldiers are good fellows when they are not soldiers, and even when they are soldiers, provided they are not fighting...

...The dirge, first low and indistinct, now suddenly flooded out in a blare, as though the peasants had waited for the motor to quiet and the scow to tie up next to the bank...

...Men must continue living in war and despite war, and behind the front the local population tried to repair the ferries which ran between the two banks...

...But even if these men lived elsewhere, the war would have created havoc in their lives as soon as it reached their land...

...Captain," the Major said, "Do your duty...

...But they had to keep it hidden because enemy reconnaissance planes kept darting out of the clouds, almost as if they enjoyed inspecting the river, which was neither blue nor silvery but yellow and muddy, lined with bare, blackened willow trees submerged among dark, rotten reeds that fused with a sky of the same color...

...And the mother concluded with a mournful cry: "What is there to say...

...It's our duty to report anything suspicious...

...blood flowed through it, dark and silent...

...War means plunder and absolute control over men and the conditions of their existence...

...The peasant thanked the Captain, showering all sorts of blessings on him and the army...

...But tell me, who are you carrying in the coffin...

...As soon as the soldiers had set down the coffin, the horses began moving by themselves...

...So their sole means of transport across the river was a motor-driven military scow...

...The gaunt peasant, peeking from behind the Major's shoulder with a quizzical yet sly smile on his face, hopped up and down excitedly...

...and a Lieutenant who was directing traffic on the scow...

...A crowd of peasants surrounded by a herd of livestock burst onto the boat, and in the crush an elderly peasant with a shaggy beard tried in a gentle voice to coax his nervous, shying horses forward...

...No, he didn't run away...

...That's who I'm carrying in the coffin...

...There's something alive in that coffin...

...The driver of the truck drove off as soon as he got back his tools...

...War is war...

...The soldiers pulled them away from the coffin firmly, but not roughly...

...the father and mother didn't even see him alive, they weren't able to hear his last words from his own lips...

...The Lieutenant said: "Strange people, these peasants...

...When he answered the peasant, he seemed to be speaking not to the man standing before him, but to some absent person for whom the regulations prescribe a civil tone: "You have nothing to worry about...

...The horses immediately sensed a strong, determined hand...

...We'll settle everything according to orders...

...other parents carried away their dead, though, to tell the truth, without a coffin...

...The front, with its trenches, dugouts and excavations of various kinds, had spread devastation over a strip of land about 30 miles wide enclosed by the two rivers...

...They carefully returned the coffin to the wagon, not forgetting to tie it fast...

...But they lacked the tools and materials to do the job...

...Laying back their ears they followed the Captain, testing the solidity of the gangplank and its height above the water with their hooves...

...and a peasant woman, also quite old, her face wrapped to the eyes in a kerchief, gripped the coffin's cover with a bony hand, as if unable to tear herself away...

...Nevertheless, after being paroled last year, Djilas began working on several books...

...My son," the peasant said, "my only son...

...In a few moments the soldiers pulled out the nails in the coffin's lid and the Major, who had finished checking documents, gave the order to lift it...

...I'm carrying my ruined life, my only son...

...The land is also indifferent to whether the front crosses it or not...

...I waited for us to get across the river, where the higher authorities are...

...The scow had to leave as soon as possible, for the military trucks were already waiting in a line on the road...

...It's the end for us, our fire is extinguished forever...

...They did this quite willingly, for they came from the same region in which the war was being fought, but they did it only during the hours when the scow was not being used by the army for the war...

...or at the first light of dawn, when the enemy had not begun its air raids and the army had stopped crossing the river...

...Nobody had told him to go, and he stood there like one who had a special right to remain...

...When the wagon reached the top of the bank, the Major was waiting for it...

...We are parents, this is our son...

...his expression was more curious than cold (of course, it didn't matter how he looked, what counted was that he was a Major...

...And you people over there, make room...

...The Captain dragged the horses forward, ignoring the people lined up on the trail...

...As if at an order, he fell back and lay rigid...

...The soldiers on the scow were good fellows...

...The enemy planes preferred to attack during the daylight hours, so the scow worked for the army at night and for the people by day...

...Everyone immediately understood that the gaunt peasant had something important to tell the Major in the hut...

...The mother kept her hand on the coffin, whining incomprehensibly, and the father groaned aloud as he walked beside the horses, forgetting this time to coax them on...

...He had fought in a war, he knew what a soldier needed...

...Hup, my beauties, hup, take me to my empty house and my sorrow," the peasant whispered softly, tugging lightly at the reins, while the woman, crying shrilly and despairingly, embraced and fondled the coffin with her other hand...

...In that region the soil and sun were kind to human life, and men lived there...

...In retreating to the west, the enemy troops had destroyed all the bridges over the rivers and had smashed all the boats, even those tiny and flimsy ones that can barely hold a pair of lovers (and lovers, since they love each other, sit very close together...

...Let him rest together with his comrades...