The Serbs Chose War, Ruth Mitchel 55. PRISON BERNHARDT PIGEONS USED TO FLY down into the prison yard, seeking-sad irony! - food. (Now the poor birds are probably themselves all dead and eaten.) How yearningly we used to watch them, winging free toward the drifting free clouds! Hahn used to practice his bad revolver marksmanship on them, and there were many wounded birds. I remarked on the prettiness of a brown one, asking that he should at least not shoot at that one. As he was at that time being very cordial to me, he decided I was to have it. Without my knowledge he fixed up an elaborate trap with a box and string and caught it. I was horrified, and when he was cutting its wings I could not help saying bitterly: "You have forgotten something." "What?" he asked, eager to please. "A yellow armband and a yellow star." He looked at me, nonplussed. "You have captured and imprisoned a perfectly innocent tame creature: it must obviously be a Jew." Soon, as he grew more and more darkly morose, such frank remarks became impossible. This little brown pigeon gave us great satisfaction. A swastika, picked out in red; black, and white pebbles, had been made in the yard, and the Jews were forced to keep it in order. Our mouths watered to spit on it, but we knew that if anyone did so all prisoners would be paraded and every third one shot. My dear little brown pigeon relieved the strain. Regularly, as if trained, it sat on that swastika and did its business. Yes, there was comedy, even in that hellhole. Bedbugs were not quite as bad here as in some prisons in Germany, notably in the Salzburg prison and in the huge Promenade prison in Vienna, where the straw sacks were black with ancient grease. Sometimes in our Belgrade cell these night prowlers, dizzy with blood, would start crawling up the wall in the daytime. Lidia's eagle eye was on the watch for them. Suddenly she would start up with a fierce cry: "Lyubitsa, bugs!" (It was so beautifully like Betsy Trotwood with her famous "Janet, donkeys!" that it gave me endless delight.) Instantly a pretty peasant girl in bright headshawl would spring up. Lidia, the slim, fastidious, elderly lady, her nose wrinkling in disgust, would knock down the nauseous insect with a broom. Lyubitsa would pounce upon it with cries of joy and extinguish it in the night pail. Lidia and I were "lice wardens." Any woman brought in who looked less than absolutely clean was taken to the toilet, stripped and carefully examined. We never once found a single louse: the women's cells at least were completely free of them. The flies buzzed in thick, crawling swarms. In the office they had flypapers, but my request for one had met only with pleased sneers. I hit upon a scheme which solved the problem. The walls were painted dark brown up to six feet high and above that were white. Whatever loots clean to a German is clean. On inspection day everything had to look spotless. I had an inspiration With towels we instituted a great hunt. We killed flies in hundreds But we squashed them only above the brown line, and they made nasty splotches on the pure-white wall. At the next inspection the chief was horrified. We got our flypapers. Cica (pronounced Tseetsa) was tall, ugly, and absolutely fascinating. She was a born actress, really a genius if ever I saw one, but she had never been on the stage. She was incapable of telling or even seeing the truth. So she lived in a world of extravagant make-believe, impervious to pain or even facts. Possessed of unfathomable reserves of gaiety, she went through the days, working harder than anyone else, laughing, full of lightning sharp repartee. We were enormously grateful to her, and though she bickered perpetually and was struck violently in the face by Hahn for a pert answer, everything was forgiven our Cica. She was in prison because high German officers had "fallen" for her, and higher ones, therefore, believed her dangerous. She didn't seem to know that there was a war on. This all was just a great adventure! She could bewitch the women too. When she was in the mood- and how we tried to work her up to it!-she could carry us away to faerie, away to realms of happiness where bestiality and Germans never had been known. I can see her now, after light-out, standing in her transparent nightie (borrowed; she had absolutely nothing of her own), the reflected light from the corridor behind her, in the narrow space between our converging feet. Very slim, very supple, she would tell in a husky whisper and dramatize something she said had happened to her. Soon we would be rolling, sobbing in smothered hysterics, everything else forgotten. She was mad for cigarettes. Half our days were taken up with plots for getting Cica cigarettes. She smoked up the stovepipe in the wall while we stood guard at the door. One night every trick had been fruitless. She was desperate: she must have a cigarette. So she got up to the window and simply called the guard. Afraid she was going to make a rumpus and get him into trouble (no guessing what Cica was capable of 1), the fellow came over from the gate. But no barking or hissed threats could down Cica. Her back-chat was excruciating, and soon he too was laughing. But he was adamant: no cigarette. Suddenly she saw my belt on a nail. She snatched it, put one end round her neck, the other round a window bar and, in violent despair, pretended to hang herself-with horribly realistic groans and gurgles. The guard was beaten. She let down the belt, and a cigarette, lighted, came up. Dear Cica! She got out and gaily came back to the prison several times. She brought us fruit-bought, I fear, with "the wages of sin," but none the less gratefully received. 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