The Europe That Was Read Free Page A

disturb her. He begged her to tell him if there were not a way to hide powder burns and to make a bullet wound appear as if it had been inflicted from a distance.
    Her memories went as far back into the past as Brancovitch’s today. She knew a trick handed down from the time when the Turkish Janissaries raided the valleys to recruit Christian boys and drove the Serbs up into crags where liberty could be preserved at the price of hunger.
    â€˜You will buy two thick loaves,’ she instructed him, ‘of good wheat bread, not our peasant bread. Tie a loaf on each side of the leg and fire through them.’
    Her prescription was obviously sound. Pavlo trusted it as if she had given him an infallible charm. He begged her not to reveal the secret to any of the other families who had husbands or sons called up for the Army. He did not fear that they would give him away. Mutual loyalty among the Serbs was absolute. No, he was alarmed lest they might all play the same trick and consequently all go to prison.
    â€˜They are as brave as I,’ he said with a conceit which was national rather than personal.
    â€˜But their wives have not the courage of your Despina,’ she answered.
    It always took time—very naturally—to find Mirko Brancovitch. When at last they were able to tell him about the bread, he saw the point and was professionally enthusiastic. He suggested that the loaves should be at least a day old, since new bread might slow up the ball like a sandbag. And, to avoid shattering the bone, he was going to load with only a quarter charge of powder.
    He was far more willing to oblige Pavlo and Despina than before. He explained that he had given his lonely thoughts to their problem. It was in his interest, too, that Pavlo’s leg should be broken so long as it was plain that he had been shooting not at him, but at the police. And it was about time he did, or Danilo might be transferred to some other district.
    Danilo was responsible for enforcing such law as he could over fifty square miles of rock. He and Brancovitch were of the same clan and most reluctant to interfere with each other; but for the sake of higher authority an occasional exchange of shots was essential.
    â€˜If you are willing to swear that I fired at Danilo from ambush and he fired back,’ Brancovitch said, ‘there will be no questions afterwards.’
    Yes, he could ensure Danilo’s co-operation and silence. No trouble at all there. The greatest difficulty still lay ahead. You, forty years later, the former bandit would explain, could never suspect it. The greatest difficulty was to get the bread.
    Time was beginning to run short. In three days’ time Pavlo had to report to the depot. The nearest baker was half a day’s journey away, and even he did not bake town bread unless it were specially ordered. Neither Despina nor her neighbours had an oven which would bake loaves of the texture and thickness required.
    Experiments with a little white wheat flour and inadequate fuel were hopeless. They dared not use any substitute. So one of the last precious days and nights of Pavlo and Despina had to be sacrificed while he walked to the town, gave his order to the baker, slept in the open and returned the next day with the loaves.
    It seemed extraordinary that bread should cost so much when at home it cost nothing—nothing, that is, but Pavlo’s indispensable labour and the children’s scrabblings among the rocks to find dry, burnable roots. But all of them agreed that such loaves were a perfection of food, satisfying eye, scent and touch. The sons stroked the crust with little wondering hands.
    The following morning Danilo turned up at the Popovnics’ cottage with his rifle slung on his back. His presence there would be easy to explain to his officer. He was paying a visit to answer Pavlo’s ignorant questions, to see what he was up to and to ensure that he was making no preparations for escape.