“Balliol 1921–1924,” he said.
“Yes. Were we up together?”
“You wouldn’t remember me. I led a very quiet life. I remember seeing you about with the bloods.”
“I was never a blood.”
“You seemed one to me. You were a friend of Sligger’s. He was always very nice to me but I was never in his set. I wasn’t in any set. I wasted my time as an undergraduate, working. I had to.”
“I think you used to speak at the Union?”
“I tried. I wasn’t any good. So you’re going across to Jugoslavia?”
“Am I?”
“That seems to be why you’re here. How I envy you. I came out in the new year and the doctors won’t let me go back. I was there for the Sixth Offensive but I crocked up. They had to carry me for the last two weeks. I was only an encumbrance. The partisans never leave their wounded. They know what the enemy would do to them. We had men of seventy and girls of fifteen in our column. A few hours’ halt and then ‘pokrit’—‘forward.’ I don’t know what my academic colleagues would have made of it. We ate all our donkeys in the first week. At the end we were eating roots and bark. But we got clean through and an aeroplane picked me up with the rest of the wounded. Didn’t you have a pretty hard crossing from Crete?”
“Yes, how did you know?”
“It was all in the dossier they sent us. Well, I don’t have to tell you what real exhaustion means. Did you get hallucinations?”
“Yes.”
“So did I. You’ve made a better recovery than I. They say I’ll never be fit to go into the field again. I’m stuck in an office, briefing other men. Let’s get to work.”
He unrolled a wall-map. “The position is fluid,” he said, a curious official insincerity masking his easier, early manner. “This is as up to date as we can make it.”
And for twenty minutes he delivered what was plainly a set exposition. Here were the “liberated areas”; this was the route of one brigade, that of another; here was the headquarters of a division, there of a corps. A huge, intricately involved campaign of encirclements and counter-attacks took shape in Cattermole’s precise, donnish phrases.
“I had no idea it was on this scale,” said Guy.
“No one has. No one will, as long as there’s a royalist government in exile squatting in London. The partisans are pinning down three times as many troops as the whole Italian campaign. Besides von Weich’s Army Group there are five or six divisions of Cetnics and Ustachi—perhaps those names are unfamiliar. They are the Serb and Croat Quislings. Bulgarians, too. There must be half a million enemy over there.”
“There seem to be plenty of partisans,” Guy observed, pointing to the multitude of high formations scored on the map.
“Yes,” said Major Cattermole, “yes. Of course not all the regiments are quite up to strength. It’s no good putting more men in the field than we can equip. And we’re short of almost everything—artillery, transport, aeroplanes, tanks. We had to arm ourselves with what we could capture. Until quite lately those men in Cairo were sending arms to Mihajlovic to be used against our own people. We’re doing a little better now. There’s a trickle of supplies, but it isn’t easy to arrange drops for forces on the move. And the Russians have at last sent in a mission—headed by a general. You can have no idea, until you’ve seen them, what that will mean to the partisans. It’s something I have to explain to all our liaison officers. The Jugoslavs accept us as allies but they look on the Russians as leaders. It is part of their history—well, I expect you know as well as I do about Pan-Slavism. You’ll find it still as strong as it was in the time of the Czars. Once, during the Sixth Offensive, we were being dive-bombed at a river crossing and one of my stretcher-bearers—a boy from Zagreb University—said quite simply: ‘Every bomb that falls here is one less on Russia.’ We are foreigners to them. They accept what we send them. They have no reason to feel particularly grateful. It is they who are fighting and dying. Some of our less sophisticated men get confused and think it is a matter of politics. I’m sure you won’t make that mistake but I deliver this little lecture to everyone.”
At this moment Brigadier Cape put his head in at the door and said: “Joe, can you come in for a minute?”
“Study the map,” said Major Cattermole to Guy. “Learn it. I’ll be back soon.”
Guy was well instructed in military map-reading. He did as he was told, wondering where in that complicated terrain his own future lay.
Next door Cape sat at his table staring resentfully at a gold hunter watch, handsomely engraved on the back with a crown and inscription. “You know all about this, of course, Joe?”
“Yes, I told Major Cernic to report it to you.”
“He was in a great state about it.”
“Can you blame him?”
“But what am I supposed to do?”
“Report it to London.”
“It’s the hell of a thing to have happened just when the Jugs were beginning to trust us.”
“They’ll never trust us as long as they know there’s an émigré government in London. Properly handled this might be the opportunity for repudiating them.”
“There’s no doubt it’s genuine, I suppose?”
“None whatever.”
“Not a political move?”
“Not on our part. It’s exactly what it purports to be—a presentation watch inscribed in London to Mihajlovic as Minister of War. A Serb brought it out, who was ostensibly coming to the partisans. Fortunately he got drunk at Algiers and showed it to a young American I know, who was passing through. He tipped me off, so the partisans arrested the agent as soon as he arrived.”
“He was going to have gone across? You know the odd thing about it is that it shows there must be a means of communication between Tito’s chaps and Mihajlovic’s.”
“Only through the enemy.”
“Damn,” said Cape, “damn. I’d just as soon the fellow got his watch as have all this rumpus. What happened to the Serb?”
“He was dealt with.”
“This isn’t soldiering as I was taught it,” said Cape.
*
Major Cattermole returned to Guy. “Sorry to leave you. Just a routine matter. I’d pretty well finished my tutorial and the brigadier is free to see you. He’ll tell you where you are going and when.
“You are in for a unique experience, whatever it is. The partisans are a revelation—literally.”
When Major Cattermole spoke of the enemy he did so with the impersonal, professional hostility with which a surgeon might regard a malignant, operable growth; when he spoke of his comrades in arms it was something keener than loyalty, equally impersonal, a counterfeit almost of mystical love as portrayed by the sensual artists of the high baroque.
“Officers and men,” he proclaimed exultantly, “share the same rations and quarters. And the women too. You may be surprised to find girls serving in the ranks beside their male comrades. Lying together, sometimes, for warmth, under the same blanket, but in absolute celibacy. Patriotic passion has entirely extruded sex. In fact, one of the medical officers told me that many of them had ceased to menstruate. Some were barely more than schoolchildren when they ran away to the mountains leaving their bourgeois families to collaborate with the enemy. I have seen spectacles of courage of which I should have been skeptical in the best authenticated classical text. Even when we have anesthetics the girls often refuse to take them. I have seen them endure excruciating operations without flinching, sometimes breaking into song as the surgeon probed, in order to prove their manhood. Well, you will see for yourself. It is a transforming experience.”
Seven years previously J. Cattermole of All Souls had published An Examination of Certain Redundances in Empirical Concepts; a work popularly known as “Cattermole’s Redundances” and often described as “seminal.” Since then he had been transformed.
Brigadier Cape’s head appeared again at the door.
“Come on, Crouchback.” And Guy
followed him next door. “Glad to see you. You’re the third Halberdier to join our outfit. I’d gladly take all I can get. I think you know Frank de Souza. He’s on the other side at the moment. I know you’ve spent the evening with our G2. You haven’t got a parachute badge up.”
“I didn’t qualify, sir.”
“Oh, I thought you did. Something wrong somewhere. Anyway, we’ve got two or three places now where we can land. Do you speak good Serbo-Croat?”
“Not a word. When I had my interview I was only asked about my Italian.”
“Well, oddly enough that isn’t a disadvantage. We’ve had one or two chaps who spoke the language. Some seem to have joined up with the partisans. The others have been sent back with complaints of ‘incorrect’ behavior. The Jugs prefer to provide their interpreters—then they know just what our chaps are saying and who to. Suspicious lot of bastards. You’ve heard Joe Cattermole’s piece about them. He’s an enthusiast. Now I’ll give you the other side of the picture. But remember Joe Cattermole’s a first-class chap. He doesn’t tell anyone, but he did absolutely splendidly over there. The Jugs love him and they don’t love many of us. And Joe loves the Jugs, which is something more unusual still. But you have to take what he says with a grain of salt. I expect he told you about the partisans pinning down half a million men. The situation, as I see it, is rather different. The Germans are interested in only two things. Their communications with Greece and the defense of their flank against an Allied landing in the Adriatic. Our information is that they will be pulling out of Greece this summer. Their road home has to be kept clear. There’s nothing else they want in Jugoslavia. When the Italians packed up, the Balkans were a total loss to them. No question now of cutting round to the Suez Canal. But they are afraid of a large-scale Anglo-American advance up to Vienna. The Americans very naturally prefer to land on the Côte d’Azur. But as long as there’s any danger of an Adriatic landing the Germans have to keep a lot of men in Jugoslavia, and the Jugs, when they take time off from fighting one another, are quite a nuisance to them. The job of this mission is to keep the nuisance going with the few bits and pieces we are allowed.
“When the partisans talk about their ‘Offensives,’ you know, they are German offensives, not Jug. Whenever the Jugs get too much of a nuisance, the Germans make a sweep and clear them off, but they have never yet got the whole lot in the bag. And it looks more and more likely that they never will.
“Now, remember, we are soldiers not politicians. Our job is simply to do all we can to hurt the enemy. Neither you nor I are going to make his home in Jugoslavia after the war. How they choose to govern themselves is entirely their business. Keep clear of politics. That’s the first rule of this mission.
“I shall be seeing you again before you move. I can’t tell you at the moment where you’ll be going or when. You won’t find Bari a bad place to hang about in. Report to G.S.O. II every day. Enjoy yourself.”
*
Few foreigners visited Bari from the time of the Crusades until the fall of Mussolini. Few tourists, even the most assiduous, explored the Apulian coast. Bari contains much that should have attracted them; the old town full of Norman building, the bones of St. Nicholas enshrined in silver; the new town spacious and commodious. But for centuries it lay neglected by all save native businessmen.
Now, early in 1944, the city had recovered the cosmopolitan, martial stir it enjoyed in the Middle Ages. Allied soldiers on short leave, some wearing, ironically enough, the woven badge of the crusader’s sword, teemed in its streets; wounded filled its hospitals; the staffs of numberless services took over the new, battered office-buildings which had risen as monuments to the Corporative State. Small naval craft adorned the shabby harbor. Bari could not rival the importance of Naples, that prodigious, improvised factory of war. Its agile and ingenious criminal class consisted chiefly of small boys. Few cars flew the pennons of high authority. Few officers over the rank of brigadier inhabited the outlying villas. Foggia drew the magistras of the Air Force. Nothing very august flourished in Bari, but there were dingy buildings occupied by Balkan and Zionist emissaries; by the editors of little papers, more directly propagandist and printed in a variety of languages; by the agents of competing intelligence systems; by a group of Russians whose task was to relabel tins of American rations in bold Cyrillic characters, proclaiming them the produce of the U.S.S.R., before they were dropped from American aeroplanes over beleaguered gangs of communists; by Italians, even, who were being coached in the arts of local democratic government. The allies had lately much impeded their advance by the destruction of Monte Cassino, but the price of this sacrilege was being paid by the infantry of the front line. It did not trouble the peace-loving and unambitious officers who were glad to settle in Bari.
They constituted a little world of officers—some young and seedy, some old and spruce—sequestered from the responsibilities and vexations of command. Such men of other rank as were sometimes seen in the arcaded streets were drivers, orderlies, policemen, clerks, servants and sentries.
In this limbo Guy fretted for more than a week while February blossomed into March.
Every day he reported to headquarters. “No news yet,” they said. “Communications have not been satisfactory for the last few days. The Air Force aren’t playing until they know what’s going on over there.”
“Enjoy yourself,” Brigadier Cape had said. That would not have been the order of Ritchie-Hook. There was no biffing in Bari.
In his idleness Guy went to the old town where he found a dilapidated romanesque church where a priest was hearing confessions. Guy waited, took his turn and at length said: “Father, I wish to die.”
“Yes. How many times?”
“Almost all the time.”
The obscure figure behind the grille leaned nearer. “What was it you wished to do?”
“To die.”
“Yes. You have attempted suicide?”
“No.”
“Of what, then, are you accusing yourself? To wish to die is quite usual today. It may even be a very good disposition. You do not accuse yourself of despair?”
“No, father; presumption. I am not fit to die.”
“There is no sin there. This is a mere scruple. Make an act of contrition for all the unrepented sins of your past life.”
After the Absolution he said: “Are you a foreigner?”
“Yes.”
“Can you spare a few cigarettes?”
V
In Westminster Cathedral at almost the same time Virginia made her first confession. She told everything; fully, accurately, without extenuation or elaboration. The recital of half a lifetime’s mischief took less than five minutes. “Thank God for your good and humble confession,” the priest said. She was shriven. The same words were said to her as were said to Guy. The same grace was offered. Little Trimmer stirred as she knelt at the side-altar and pronounced the required penance; then she returned to her needle-work.
That evening she said to Uncle Peregrine, as she had said before: “Why do people make such a fuss? It’s all so easy. But it is rather satisfactory to feel that I shall never again have anything serious to confess as long as I live.”
Uncle Peregrine made no comment. He did not credit himself with any peculiar gift of discernment of spirits. Most things which most people did or said puzzled him, if he gave them any thought. He preferred to leave such problems in higher hands.
VI
Summer came swiftly and sweetly over the wooded hills and rich valleys of northern Croatia. Bridges were down and the rails up on the little single-track railway-line that had once led from Begoy to Zagreb. The trunk road to the Balkans ran east. There the German lorries streamed night and day without interruption and the German garrisons squatted waiting the order to retire. Here, in an island of “liberated territory” twenty miles by ten, the peasants worked their fields as they had always done, subject only to the requisitions of the partisans; the priests said Mass in their churches subje
ct only to the partisan security police who lounged at the back and listened for political implications in their sermons. In one Mohammedan village the mosque had been burned by Ustachi in the first days of Croatian independence. In Begoy itself the same gang, Hungarian trained, had blown up the Orthodox church and desecrated the cemetery. But there had been little fighting. As the Italians withdrew the Ustachi followed and the partisans crept in from the hills and imposed their rule. More of their fellows joined them, slipping in small, ragged bodies through the German lines; there were shortages of food but no famine. There was a tithe levied but no looting. Partisans obeyed orders and it was vital to them to keep the good-will of the peasants.
The bourgeois had all left Begoy with the retreating garrison. The shops in the little high street were empty or used as billets. The avenues of lime had been roughly felled for firewood. But there were still visible the hall-marks of the Habsburg Empire. There were thermal springs, and at the end of the preceding century the town had been laid out modestly as a spa. Hot water still ran in the bath house. Two old gardeners still kept some order in the ornamental grounds. The graded paths, each with a “view-point,” the ruins of a seat and of a kiosk, where once invalids had taken their prescribed exercise, still ran through boskage between the partisan bivouacs. The circle of villas in the outskirts of the town abandoned precipitately by their owners had been allotted by the partisans to various official purposes. In the largest of these the Russian Mission lurked invisibly.
Two miles from the town lay the tract of flat grazing land which was used as an airfield. Four English airmen had charge of it. They occupied one side of the quadrangle of timbered buildings which comprised a neighboring farmhouse. The military mission lived opposite, separated by a dung heap. Both bodies were tirelessly cared for by three Montenegrin war-widows; they were guarded by partisan sentries and attended by an “interpreter” named Bakic, who had been a political exile in New York in the thirties and picked up some English there. Both missions had their wireless-sets with which to communicate with their several headquarters. A sergeant signaler and an orderly comprised Guy’s staff.