2

My name was Rade. And this is my story. A dead story. One of two thousand three hundred dead stories. Our stories, each and every single one, died with us. On the same day, Saturday, February 7th, 1942, according to the Gregorian calendar. All of us Serbs from the villages of Drakulic, Šargovac, Motike and the Rakovac coal mine, were slaughtered then. Between four o'clock in the morning and two o'clock in the afternoon. In a single working day of slaughter. That's right: in a single working day of slaughter! No more, no less. We were slaughtered by the Ustashi brought over from Zagreb for that purpose. The local Ustashi helped them wholeheartedly. We had no idea that they had arrived here. We neither knew nor sensed anything.

My village was called Drakulic. It was right next to Banja Luka. A Serb village: only Serbs lived in it, Orthodox Serbs. A nice, good-natured village. A village of good, honourable people. Who took good care of their property. There were never any quarrels in the village. Let alone fights. A wide road led to it from the town. Even a bit too wide by our standards and for our needs: eight metres. From the road, we children used to go uphill, all the way to Goli brijeg. The view from there was wide, stretching immeasurably into the distance: one could see Šargovac, Motike and Banja Luka perfectly well... Drakulic was even more important than Banja Luka, we thought naively. It was down there, whereas we were up here! The view from Goli brijeg was particularly enchanting in spring: from the greenery and flowers there protruded the red roofs of our houses, parts of the village encircled by fruit-trees in bloom - apple-trees, pear-trees, plum-trees, quince-trees... Even then, we would start imagining the autumn: ripe, succulent, sweet-smelling fruits, full barns, night-time maize-husking, songs coming out of every house. Our houses, with a few exceptions, were not big. They were nice, however, as far as all of us were concerned. The furniture inside them looked like town-style furniture, and the same held true for bedclothes and dishes, but the villagers also kept a lot of truly old things. These old things we often liked rather better than new ones: they were somehow unobtrusive, and looking worn and darkened the way they did, they reminded us of their long duration, as it were. And the long duration of those who had used them before us.

My grandmother, Stojka, who was old, like those things, took particular care of them. And of everything in the house and around the house that was old. For example, back in 1941, when we were about to start pulling down the old house in order to build a new one, she wailed loudly.

- Build a new house, the yard is wide enough, but don't pull down the old one! All of you here, as well as many before you, came out of your mother's womb and let out your first cry by that hearth. Leave the house alone, don't pull it down - she begged persistently, pleaded with us. And when, on top of everything else, she heard that a snake had been killed in the course of pulling down the foundations, no-one could calm her down or console her.

You killed a house snake, a guardian snake, woe is me! Whoever did it bother, pray tell, whoever did it bite? To whom among us did it ever do any harm? It guarded, as they say, the foundation and the roof. Merciful God, let no harm come out of this, but...

The house was being built fast, grandmother's Stojka's moaning was completely forgotten. The old looked after their business, the young after theirs.

That summer, too, was full of joy for us youngsters. Swimming in Široka rijeka contributed to that. We didn't go that often to the Šargovac River. Ours was both wider and deeper, and we liked it better. Many more young people used to gather there. And children. And the more children there were, the more noise, merriment, swimming and diving there was... I enjoyed getting away from all that noise occasionally and lying down in a meadow. And listening to the whispering of the grass while the wind gently blew around me. A magical, indescribable kind of whispering. I also liked breathing in the smells of wild flowers to the full. And watching the endless blue of the sky above...

My fellow villagers were not rich, but they gladly gave whenever asked, more out of the goodness of their hearts than because they had plenty to spare. They gave their land to our neighbours, Croats from Motike and Šargovac. It was a great plot of land for their graveyard, close to ours. So that our neighbours could bury their dead in a befitting manner, in accordance with God's law. They hadn't managed to reach an agreement about a plot of land for their own graveyard: that each of the two villages should give a little land for a common graveyard. Be it in Motike or Šargovac. Or elsewhere. Then we gave them our plot of land: no dead are to blame for the quarrels of the living! That's what we thought, all of us in our village. And they were grateful to us. Grateful, they said, for all time. They kept saying that they could never, nor would they ever forget that act of kindness. As long as they lived. That's what they said. Of course, we believed them: how could people not believe people!?

Now Drakulic, our village, is a village of the dead. We were all slaughtered, as I've said, in a single day. We used to be, and then we were no more! The Ustashi, Croats, slaughtered us. Fifteen or so people survived the slaughter by pure luck: the miller, Marko Lipovac, a Croat from Budžak, saved all of them. I am a Christian, my soul was baptised, I want the truth to be known. The truth about everything, including Marko Lipovac. The complete truth. No-one has ever managed to hide the truth. That's what I've been taught: in church by our priest, Dušan Mackic, at home by my father, Mihajlo, in primary school at Šargovac by our teacher, Dobrila, at the Banja Luka grammar school by the catechist, Radovanovic. They kept repeating the words of the Bible to us: Thou shalt not kill, thou shalt not lie, thou shalt not steal! We were killed, lied to, robbed. And they believed that the truth would never be known. Now we, the dead, are here. We have come in accordance with the Maker's will, or through some cosmic mistake, to testify. And to bring charges. For, whatever happens on the planet Earth transmits its image and words to the endless expanse of the universe. I was in the fourth year of grammar school when our teacher, Nikola Kozomara, explained that to us. He was a mathematician, a good one. And a good man, too. And a joker, above everything else. He seemed to be fond of physics as well. He taught us bits of it in his spare time. Jokingly, nonchalantly, as it were. But in a most interesting, edifying manner.

- If you wink at a colleague of yours during the break - he used to say - you think that she'll be the only one to see it. No! That image is transmitted to the universe instantaneously. If you happen to kiss your girlfriend in some corner, you rascals, you get it into your head that the secret is yours and yours only. There is no secret there, either, not at all. The image has already reached the universe. Or if you copy the solution to a mathematical problem from a classmate, thinking that no-one will ever know about it, you are wrong: the image flutters away instantaneously on the wings of electromagnetic waves, straight into the universe. One fine day it will come back from there. To shame whom? Us! Thus...

We, the pupils, knew innumerable jokes of his. Some that are fit to be told and some that are not. Particularly those in verse. I'll recite two of them. The first one is entitled "The cleverest man"!

Why, this much everyone
Knows, to say the least,
The cleverest of all
Is a Catholic priest.
He knows that happiness
In marriage you can't find;
So he marries others
, Himself he will not bind.

Everybody laughed heartily upon hearing this little poem, pupils and teachers alike. Everyone but Friar Zvonko Brekalo. I'll explain why later. He was the only one who remained surly and frowning, his usual self. It was as if lightning was going to flash out of his eyes at any moment. No, not lightning! Lightning brings light, if only for a moment. Not lightning but darkness, darkness from the bottom of an abyss, from Hades, the sort of darkness one couldn't see through. The sort of darkness that froze one cold.

The other poem was called "Bad teachers". We gladly learned that one by heart because it dealt with the timeless, perennial conflict between teachers and pupils. In it, Kozomara ostensibly refuted the Principal's claim that there existed bad teachers:

There's no point, my friend,
In looking around,
For no bad teachers
Can truly be found.
The worst among them,
I swear it is true,
Are now principals,
For that is their due.
If any are left
Whose teaching is poor,
What will they become?
Principals, for sure.
As for those of them
Who knew how to moo,
Town clerks they've become,
Civil servants, too.
And those among them
With an empty head
Have by now become
Ministers instead.

We were taught at every opportunity to love people, to trust them, to respect them no matter what creed and nation they belonged to. Especially our teachers. We liked almost all of them. Our Orthodox catechist was Nenad Radovanovic. Well-educated, broad-minded! He knew not only Christian Science but also mathematics, physics, Greek, history... He never forced us to learn anything, not even Christian Science. That is probably why I still remember the words of Moses from Genesis: In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. And God said, Let there be light: and there was light. And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness...

I also remember the holy lessons from The Gospel according to Matthew: Take heed that ye do not your alms before men, to be seen of them: otherwise ye have no reward of your Father which is in heaven - those are the Gospel words. Then this: Therefore when thou doest thine alms, do not sound a trumpet before thee, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, that they may have glory of men... But when thou doest alms, let not thy left hand know what thy right hand doeth: That thine alms may be in secret: and thy Father who seeth in secret himself shall reward thee openly. And when thou prayest, thou shalt not be as the hypocrites are: for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and in the corners of the streets, that they may be seen of men... But thou, when thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret; and thy Father which seeth in secret shall reward thee openly. But when ye pray, use not vain repetitions, as the heathen do: for they think that they shall be heard for their much speaking... After this manner therefore pray ye: Our Father which art in heaven, Hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven...

The Muslim pupils were taught Islamic religious science by some Muslim priest, Derviševic, a khoja, whom I saw only a few times. As for those pupils who were Catholics, they were taught by Friar Zvonimir Brekalo, who, according to what pupils were saying about him in low voices, was a hardened Ustashi. I must admit that I didn't know what that meant, so a classmate of mine, his name was Jankovic, told me that a hardened Ustashi could slaughter a man like a chicken. He could do so even if he had never seen the person in question, that is, if the latter could have done him no harm. That I truly couldn't understand, and I didn't ask anything else, for fear of turning out to be a fool in front of Jankovic and the others. Later I heard that this Brekalo had slaughtered Serbs, even in our village. Even then I couldn't believe it: how could he teach Christian Science and slaughter people who had done him no harm?

We were taught natural science by Branko Novkovic, a good-natured man of frail health. When one of us didn't know a lesson, he took it as a personal tragedy. We learned his subject most gladly - so as not to disappoint him. We were also very fond of Božidar Nikolic, a painter, who taught us drawing: he wasn't too demanding, good-natured and slightly absent-minded as he was. One would be even more justified in saying so of Vlado Miloševic, our music teacher. He was also in charge of our choir. Unsurpassed at it, as they said. Dr Rudolf Siber, who taught philosophy and German, commanded respect due to his large figure. He commanded even greater respect due to his knowledge, strictness and fairness. I also remember Derviš Tafra, our geography teacher, well. He had a reputation for having a very strong personality: whatever he had in mind, he would say openly. They said that, despite his name and surname, he spoke of himself as a Serb. Once he mentioned in passing that his ancestors had been called Stojovic before being converted to the Mohammedan faith. Or Stojanovic, something like that. When the Ustashi came to our grammar school, he declared himself a Serb, demanding that he should be exiled to Serbia along with the other Serbs, so they exiled him, too... We were taught Serbian by Mato Džaja. An excellent teacher, strict but fair. Živojin Pejatovic, the history teacher, was a special case due to being preoccupied with the Slavs. Whatever he happened to be lecturing on, he just had to mention them in passing.

- Slavs have had a prominent role on the stage of world history - he would say, carried away - since time immemorial. Their presence was felt as early as the close of that prehistoric era, the dark era when only the initial rays of historic light were slowly breaking through. Their Indo-European prehistoric homeland, more than five thousand years ago, was in the wide plains among the rivers Oder, Wisla, Dniester and Dnieper, from where they migrated for centuries...

He explained that the Greek historian Herodotus, in the 5th century B.C., spoke of Slavic tribes - Neurs and Budins - as Scythian slaves, that for full five centuries afterwards there was no record of them until the Roman historians Plinius Senior, Tacitus and Procopius mentioned them under the names Weneds, Wents, Wenets, then Sorabs and Sorbs.

- What do those names remind you of? - he would ask in a lively tone of voice, his outstretched index finger pointing at our faces, adding quickly himself: "Sorab, Sorb, doesn't that remind you of Srb, Serb! And what else does that tell us? That Serbs are an old, ancient people, not upstarts and nobodies..."

He gave a very picturesque description of ancient Slavs: fair-haired, very tall, strong, hunters, fishermen and warriors, mild-mannered people who worded amongst themselves.

- Now, what does it mean, worded? - he would ask, then answer himself, too impatient to wait for anyone to do so. "They talked among themselves and were able to communicate despite the fact that there were so many of them, spread across a very wide territory. They believed in supernatural beings and many greater and lesser gods - Svetovid, Perun, Dažbog, Staribog, Crnobog, Volos, Horz, Mokoš, Svarog, Triglav, Radigost, Crnoglav - to whom they made sacrifices, made idols, shrines. They also respected the power of fairies and naiads, as well as that of vampires and witches...

These beliefs, he would go on explaining, were in evidence for a very long time, not just with Russians, Ukrainians, Byelorussians, Poles, Lusatians, Czechs and Slovaks, who remained in their ancient homeland, but with us - Serbs, Croats, Slovenes, and Bulgarians, who migrated to the Balkans until the 7th century. He would conclude in a less enthusiastic manner:

- This, gentlemen, is important, too: we have always been aware of our common Slavic roots, and yet, unfortunately, we have engaged in mutual extermination very often. I fear that such a thing will happen again, all too soon...

This image, I believe, had reached the cosmic expanses even before the Ustashi slaughter occurred in our villages - Drakulic, Motike, Šargovac and the Rakovac coal mine. It was sent into space, only to return here. As, no doubt, everything that has taken place on Earth since the beginning of the world will recur before the eyes of man. Man will thus be faced with the whole of his past, the past of the planet Earth, the ball of fire that it was originally, the volcanoes, seas and oceans that followed, the deserts of ice, the first living creatures. He will meet the monsters of that period, giant-sized and frightening: the flying reptiles, archaeopteryxes, dinosaurs. The just will live safely and comfortably, sinners will suffer terribly. Woe to sinners!

We, the Serbs who were slaughtered on Saturday, February 7th 1942, according to the Gregorian calendar, were no sinners. The people from my village looked after their land and their women, planted cereals, fruit and vegetables, made brandy and jam. In autumn, they left quince fruits in their rooms so that they should fill them with their pleasant smell until winter, when the smell of Christmas roast would replace it, or even after that. They went to church regularly. They prayed to Jesus Christ and all the saints, celebrated assiduously their patron saints' days and those of other saints. They didn't even think of taking that which was not theirs. The Lord in heaven, therefore, bountifully rewarded us as earthly martyrs and righteous people: he gave us heavenly peace and endless bliss! We are still there, only our souls returned among the living fifty years after the slaughter in order to testify. Just for a little while. We, the slaughtered Serbs, did so in order to impart the whole truth to the living Serbs. To confront them with it. So that a thing like that should never happen again. And to shame them for having forgotten us who were slaughtered: they have waited too long, five long decades, for our bodies to unite in death! For having forgotten our executioners, too: alas, they have allowed the victims and the executioners to become one. According to the teaching of our Lord, it was their duty to forgive but never to forget!

Nobody knew much about our village, Drakulic, and its past. It once happened, I remember, that some traveller, trader, tramp, God knows what he was, came across our village. He asked the villagers, who, as was customary on a summer Sunday, were gathered at Arman, in the centre of the village:

- Does anyone know why your village is called that, Drakulic? The older villagers shrugged their shoulders. The young men and women were dancing the kolo, singing, having fun. Nobody felt like starting a conversation with the stranger. He repeated his question:

- Doesn't anyone really know why this village is called Drakulic?

- Maybe we do know, but we are relaxing now. It is the Holy Sabbath today... - they replied casually. Then I told the stranger what I had heard somewhere long before but hadn't really believed. The story had it that a young man from Lika had just married a sturdily built, incredibly beautiful girl. In those far-off times of Turkish rule, the local bey heard the news and showed up at the wedding feast. He rode a dark-coloured horse, dark as the darkest night. Six other Turks rode along, armed to the teeth, leading another saddled horse with them.

- I heard that your bride was exceptionally beautiful. Bring her over here at once... Come on, I'll do her no harm. Just want to see her... - the bey, remaining in the saddle, said calmly to the bridegroom. The older people there, well-respected villagers one and all, hearing of possible trouble to the bridegroom, pleaded with the bey:

- Honourable bey, do dismount. Let your men dismount, too. You and your men can help yourselves to what we've got here, what God has given us... The bey and his men then really did dismount and walked over to the tables laden with all sorts of food and drink, whereupon the bey ordered, frowning:

- Get this pork out of my sight at once! And bring new knives and bowls with lamb immediately. Or goat. Everything on a clean table-cloth. And bring new, clean wine jugs. All this is to be done while I get my pipe ready! - he added, getting out his long-stemmed pipe, tobacco and other accessories. Everything was done quickly, in accordance with his wishes, so the Turks ate and drank for quite long time while the bridegroom's father attended to their needs throughout. When they had finished eating, he poured them some more wine, which they drank, gurgling contentedly. Following this, burping loudly and patting their swollen stomachs, they lit their pipes again. All of them. The bey, puffing languidly on his pipe, exhaling the fragrant tobacco smoke, closed his eyes all of a sudden: he seemed to have fallen asleep. He no longer looked like the evil Turkish oppressor that he was but more like a good-natured old man, overcome by the great quantities of food and drink. But he suddenly snapped out of it, opened his eyes and said, smiling with a crafty sort of smile:

- Ah, this was all very fine indeed, my dear host! But let me see, why was it that we came here in the first place? Omer, bring the bridegroom and the bride over. Then we can be on our way, praise be to Allah...

Omer went away and came back bringing the bridegroom and the bride, and people gathered all around them. The bridegroom mumbled shyly and humbly:

- This, honourable bey, is she, my Koviljka... May we go now?

- You may, you may, run along... Just you go. And she'll stay with me, just for tonight...

According to the story, no sooner had the bey said "tonight" than the bridegroom pulled out a knife hidden behind his back and slit the bey's throat before the other Turks had time to blink. A great uproar and commotion ensued, but the bridegroom fled into the wood as if he had wings. Thus he ran for days, the story says, as fast as his feet could carry him, all the way to here. He hid in the thickest part of the wood, above today's Upper Drakulic, amidst the bramble. When the villagers saw him for the first time, he told them his sad story, asking them not to reveal his hiding place to the Turks:

- I am a Serb, brothers, just like you. My surname is Drakulic. God, it seems, has decided that I should leave my bones here, among these brambles of yours...

- An interesting story, an empty story! - the stranger exclaimed, pouring another glass of brandy down his throat. "That, lad, was no young man from Lika - he went on immediately - nor was his surname Drakulic. That was Dracula! None other than Dracula! Have you heard of Dracula? And does that story mention that after that event the people of Drakulic started dying all of a sudden for no apparent reason, that only barely visible bite marks were found on their throats?" - he asked, looking me in the face.

Seeing that I was totally confused, that I knew nothing about that, he explained: there seemed to be no doubt whatsoever that the bridegroom in question was Dracula in person. Or some successor of his, some younger vampire. That the real Dracula was the ruler of Transylvania, in today's Romania, a long time ago, and that his name was Vlad. That he was a Count, a rich man, naturally. During the daytime, he ruled his country just like any other ruler. At night, when his people were asleep, he would go about his vampire business, turning his long black cloak into wings.

He would drink the blood of his sleeping victims, sinking his two long eye-teeth into their necks. He fed himself killing them. That, in fact, was his only, his sweetest food. He added that even he, Dracula, had no idea that he was a vampire or that his evil seed was dissipated everywhere. Finally, he told me:

- Mark my words: Dracula's children will come here again, some new little Draculas. They will slaughter every last one of you and gorge on your blood. They will swoop down upon you like black birds, destroy you. Your graves will be nowhere to be found...

I had completely forgotten the prophecy of this strange visitor to our village, I had thought him to be a pretentious prophet, grumbler and loony. That is why I have never told this to anyone before. And when, on that black Saturday, February 7th 1942, I saw the Ustashi in our yard, the stranger's words flashed through my head. Little Draculas! Black birds! Standing around us in a circle on the downtrodden whiteness of snow in their black uniforms, the Ustashi resembled black ravens indeed. It seemed to me that hoarse croaking was the only sound coming out of their throats, a horrible indication of our impending death. One of them, thick-set and bow-legged, his insignia showing on his shoulders and his medals on his breast, stood against the fence opposite me. He was reading something out. Just precisely what, I couldn't make out right away: it seemed to me that he was not a human being but an ominously croaking raven. That he had a long red beak in place of a mouth, a beak emitting clouds of black steam the moment he opened it. The same appeared to hold true for the other Ustashi, nervously stamping their feet on the snow, shifting their weight from one leg to the other.

Then the thick-set Ustashi looked over his shoulder, let out a guttural shout:

- Here comes Friar Filipovic!

I knew Friar Miroslav. He passed through our village rather often, on his way to the Catholic cemetery, which was located on a plot of land above the village, which our villagers had given to the Croats, in order to perform funeral services or for the Day of the Dead. All of a sudden, I admit, I felt as if a heavy burden had been taken off my chest. The image of ravens in the snow, which had obsessed me until then, disappeared at once. I felt ashamed, convinced that my fears had been groundless. There's the good Friar, a priest, a man authorised to interpret God's thought on this earth - I thought, feeling much calmer now - and no evil can befall us in his presence. On the contrary...

- Where is - the thick-set one asked Filipovic - Brekalo, Friar Zvonko?

Filipovic just waved his hand casually, pointing to the neighbouring hamlet, then shouted:

- Ustashi - officers, non-coms and fighters - our fine beloved Headman in person sent you to this place of great sin and Greek-Orthodox schism, following the instructions of Our Lord Jesus Christ, crucified on the cross for defending our holy Catholic faith. It is, therefore, your holy task to remove these filthy ticks from the clean body of the Croatian land. Thus will you be able to stand before Our Lord and our Headman honourably, with a clear conscience. And when you bring your work to a successful conclusion, having applied yourselves to it with the utmost zeal and conscientiousness, I shall petition the Lord to pardon the sins of all of you here... - he promised, smiling almost imperceptibly, his left hand resting upon his belt and gun holster, while his right, outstretched palm made a sudden movement, as if ordering someone to cut, pierce, mow something down.

He may have said something else, I don't remember. What I do know for certain is that forty, maybe even more of my relatives, the Piljagics, were driven into our large yard. And that those Ustashi threw themselves at them like hyenas, whereupon horrible sounds of wailing were heard. My younger sister Savka, who was standing right next to me, was assaulted by a young Ustashi, almost a boy. He started raping her in front of our very eyes.

- Save me, brother, don't let him do it - she cried, horrified.

In the blink of an eye, I jumped on the fellow, grabbed hold of his thin neck and held it tightly. I thought I heard his neck snap, hoarse wheezing coming out of his throat. I think that at that moment my hands turned into a pair of big steel pliers. That all of me turned into a pair of pliers somehow. I don't know. The only other thing I remember is a hollow-sounding, very strong blow against the back of my head. Nothing else. Nothing whatsoever...

Content | Next: 3rd chapter

Copyright © 1998 Jovan Babic
Copyright © 1998 Zaduzbina Petar Kocic, Banja Luka - Beograd