Compassion

I

The military organization into which Major Gordon drifted during the last stages of the war enjoyed several changes of name as its function became less secret. At first it was called “Force X”; then “Special Liaison Balkan Irregular Operations”; finally, “Joint Allied Mission to the Yugoslav Army of Liberation.” Its work was to send observing officers and wireless operators to Tito’s partisans.
Most of these appointments were dangerous and uncomfortable. The liaison parties parachuted into the forests and the mountains and lived like brigands. They were often hungry, always dirty, always on the alert, prepared to decamp at any move of the enemy’s. The post to which Major Gordon was sent was one of the safest and softest. Begoy was the headquarters of a partisan corps in Northern Croatia. It lay in a large area, ten miles by twenty, of what was called “Liberated Territory,” well clear of the essential lines of communication. The Germans were pulling out of Greece and Dalmatia and were concerned only with main roads and supply points. They made no attempt now to administer or patrol the hinterland. There was a field near Begoy where aircraft could land unmolested. They did so nearly every week in the summer of 1944 coming from Bari with partisan officials and modest supplies of equipment. In this area congregated a number of men and women who called themselves the Praesidium of the Federal Republic of Croatia. There was even a Minister of Fine Arts. The peasants worked their land undisturbed except by requisitions for the support of the politicians. Besides the British Military Mission, there was a villa full of invisible Russians, half a dozen R.A.F. men who managed the landing ground and an inexplicable Australian doctor who had parachuted into the country a year before with orders to instruct the partisans in field hygiene and had wandered about with them ever since rendering first aid. There were also one hundred and eight Jews.
Major Gordon met them on the third day of his residence. He had been given a small farmhouse half a mile outside the town and the services of an interpreter who had lived for some years in the United States and spoke English of a kind. This man, Bakic, was in the secret police. His duty was to keep Major Gordon under close attention and to report every evening at OZNA headquarters. Major Gordon’s predecessor had warned him of this man’s proclivities, but Major Gordon was sceptical for such things were beyond his experience. Three Slav widows were also attached to the household. They slept in a loft and acted as willing and tireless servants.
After breakfast on the third day Bakic announced to Major Gordon: “Dere’s de Jews outside.”
“What Jews?”
“Dey been dere two hour, maybe more. I said to wait.”
“What do they want?”
“Dey’re Jews. I reckon dey always want sometin. Dey want see de British major. I said to wait.”
“Well, ask them to come in.”
“Dey can’t come in. Why, dere’s more’n a hundred of dem.”
Major Gordon went out and found the farmyard and the lane beyond thronged. There were some children in the crowd, but most seemed old, too old to be the parents, for they were unnaturally aged by their condition. Everyone in Begoy except the peasant women was in rags, but the partisans kept regimental barbers and there was a kind of dignity about their tattered uniforms. The Jews were grotesque in their remnants of bourgeois civility. They showed little trace of racial kinship. There were Semites among them, but the majority were fair, snub-nosed, high-cheekboned, the descendants of Slav tribes judaized long after the Dispersal. Few of them, probably, now worshipped the God of Israel in the manner of their ancestors.
A low chatter broke out as Major Gordon appeared. Then three leaders came forward, a youngish woman of better appearance than the rest and two crumpled old men. The woman asked him if he spoke French, and when Major Gordon nodded introduced her companions—a grocer from Mostar, a lawyer from Zagreb—and herself—a Viennese, wife of a Hungarian engineer.
Here Bakic roughly interrupted in Serbo-Croat and the three fell humbly and hopelessly silent. He said to Major Gordon: “I tell dese peoples dey better talk Slav. I will speak for dem.”
The woman said: “I only speak German and French.”
Major Gordon said: “We will speak French. I can’t ask you all in. You three had better come and leave the others outside.”
Bakic scowled. A chatter broke out in the crowd. Then the three with timid little bows crossed the threshold, carefully wiping their dilapidated boots before treading the rough board floor of the interior.
“I shan’t want you, Bakic.”
The spy went out to bully the crowd, hustling them out of the farmyard into the lane.
There were only two chairs in Major Gordon’s living room. He took one and invited the woman to use the other. The men huddled behind and then began to prompt her. They spoke to one another in a mixture of German and Serbo-Croat; the lawyer knew a little French; enough to make him listen anxiously to all the woman said, and to interrupt. The grocer gazed steadily at the floor and seemed to take no interest in the proceedings. He was there because he commanded respect and trust among the waiting crowd. He had been in a big way of business with branch stores throughout all the villages of Bosnia.
With a sudden vehemence the woman, Mme. Kanyi, shook off her advisers and began her story. The people outside, she explained, were the survivors of an Italian concentration camp on the island of Rab. Most were Yugoslav nationals, but some, like herself, were refugees from Central Europe. She and her husband were on their way to Australia in 1939; their papers were in order; he had a job waiting for him in Brisbane. Then they had been caught by the war.
When the King fled the Ustashi began massacring Jews. The Italians rounded them up and took them to the Adriatic. When Italy surrendered, the partisans for a few weeks held the coast. They brought the Jews to the mainland, conscribed all who seemed capable of useful work, and imprisoned the rest. Her husband had been attached to the army headquarters as electrician. Then the Germans moved in; the partisans fled, taking the Jews with them. And here they were, a hundred and eight of them, half  starving in Begoy.
Major Gordon was not an imaginative man. He saw the complex historical situation in which he participated, quite simply in terms of friends and enemies and the paramount importance of the war-effort. He had nothing against Jews and nothing against communists. He wanted to defeat the Germans and go home. Here it seemed were a lot of tiresome civilians getting in the way of this object. He said cheerfully: “Well, I congratulate you.”
Mme. Kanyi looked up quickly to see if he was mocking her, found that he was not, and continued to regard him now with sad, blank wonder.
“After all,” he continued, “you’re among friends.”
“Yes,” she said, too doleful for irony, “we heard that the British and Americans were friends of the partisans. It is true, then?”
“Of course it’s true. Why do you suppose I am here?”
“It is not true that the British and Americans are coming to take over the country?”
“First I’ve heard of it.”
“But it is well known that Churchill is a friend of the Jews.”
“I’m sorry, madam, but I simply do not see what the Jews have got to do with it.”
“But we are Jews. One hundred and eight of us.”
“Well, what do you expect me to do about that?”
“We want to go to Italy. We have relations there, some of us. There is an organization at Bari. My husband and I had our papers to go to Brisbane. Only get us to Italy and we shall be no more trouble. We cannot live as we are here. When winter comes we shall all die. We hear aeroplanes almost every night. Three aeroplanes could take us all. We have no luggage left.”
“My dear madam, those aeroplanes are carrying essential war equipment, they are taking out wounded and officials. I’m very sorry you are having a hard time, but so are plenty of other people in this country. It won’t last long now. We’ve got the Germans on the run. I hope by Christmas to be in Zagreb.”
“We must say nothing against the partisans?”
“Not to me. Look here, let me give you a cup of cocoa. Then I have work to do.”
He went to the window and called to Bakic for cocoa and biscuits. While it was coming the lawyer said in English: “We were better in Rab.” Then suddenly all three broke into a chatter of polyglot complaint, about their house, about their property which had been stolen, about their rations. If Churchill knew he would have them sent to Italy. Major Gordon said: “If it was not for the partisans you would now be in the hands of the Nazis,” but that word had no terror for them now. They shrugged hopelessly.
One of the widows brought in a tray of cups and a tin of biscuits. “Help yourselves,” said Major Gordon.
“How many, please, may we take?”
“Oh, two or three.”
With tense self-control each took three biscuits, watching the others to see they did not disgrace the meeting by greed. The grocer whispered to Mme. Kanyi and she explained: “He says will you excuse him if he keeps one for a friend?” The man had tears in his eyes as he snuffed his cocoa; once he had handled sacks of the stuff.
They rose to go. Mme. Kanyi made a last attempt to attract his sympathy. “Will you please come and see the place where they have put us?”
“I am sorry, madam, it simply is not my business. I am a military liaison officer, nothing more.”
They thanked him humbly and profusely for the cocoa and left the house. Major Gordon saw them in the farmyard disputing. The men seemed to think Mme. Kanyi had mishandled the affair. Then Bakic hustled them out. Major Gordon saw the crowd close round them and then move off down the lane in a babel of explanation and reproach.

II

There were thermal springs at Begoy. The little town had come into being about them. Never a fashionable spa, it had attracted genuine invalids of modest means from all over the Hapsburg Empire. Serbian rule changed it very little. Until 1940 it retained its Austrian style; now the place was ravaged. Partisans and Ustashi had fought there, or, rather, each in turn had fired it and fled. Most houses were gutted and the occupants camped in basements or improvised shelters. Major Gordon’s normal routine did not take him into the town, for the officials and military were in farmhouses like his own on the outskirts, but he daily frequented the little park and public gardens. These had been charmingly laid out sixty years before and were, surprisingly, still kept in order by two old gardeners who had stayed on quietly weeding and pruning while the streets were in flames and noisy with machine-gun fire. There were winding paths and specimen trees, statuary, a bandstand, a pond with carp and exotic ducks, and the ornamental cages of what had once been a little zoo. The gardeners kept rabbits in one of these, fowls in another, a red squirrel in a third. The partisans had shown a peculiar solicitude for these gardens; they had cut a bed in the centre of the principal lawn in the shape of the Soviet star and had shot a man whom they caught chopping a rustic seat for firewood. Above the gardens lay a slope wooded with chestnut and full of paths carefully graded for the convalescent with kiosks every kilometre, where once postcards and coffee and medicinal water had been on sale. Here for an hour a day in the soft autumn sunshine Major Gordon could forget the war. More than once on his walks there he met Mme. Kanyi, saluted her, and smiled.
Then, after a week, he received a signal from his headquarters in Bari saying: Unrra research team require particulars displaced persons Yugoslavia stop report any your district. He replied: One hundred and eight Jews. Next day (there was wireless communication for only two hours daily): Expedite details Jews names nationality conditions. So his duty took him away from the gardens into the streets where the lime trees still flourished between the stucco shells. He passed ragged, swaggering partisans, all young, some scarcely more than children; girls in battle dress, bandaged, bemedalled, girdled with grenades, squat, chaste, cheerful, sexless, barely human, who had grown up in mountain bivouacs, singing patriotic songs, arm-in-arm along the pavements where a few years earlier rheumatics had crept with parasols and light, romantic novels.
The Jews lived in a school near the ruined church. Bakic led him there. They found the house in half darkness for the glass had all gone from the windows and been replaced with bits of wood and tin collected from other ruins. There was no furniture. The inmates for the most part lay huddled in little nests of straw and rags. As Major Gordon and Bakic entered they roused themselves, got to their feet and retreated towards the walls and darker corners, some raising their fists in salute, others hugging bundles of small possessions. Bakic called one of them forward and questioned him roughly in Serbo-Croat.
“He says de others gone for firewood. Dese ones sick. What you want me tell em?”
“Say that the Americans in Italy want to help them. I have come to make a report on what they need.”
The announcement brought them volubly to life. They crowded round, were joined by others from other parts of the house until Major Gordon stood surrounded by thirty or more all asking for things, asking frantically for whatever came first to mind—a needle, a lamp, butter, soap, a pillow; for remote dreams—a passage to Tel Aviv, an aeroplane to New York, news of a sister last seen in Bucharest, a bed in a hospital.
“You see dey all want somepin different, and dis is only a half of dem.”
For twenty minutes or so Major Gordon remained, overpowered, half-suffocated. Then he said: “Well, I think we’ve seen enough. I shan’t get much further in this crowd. Before we can do anything we’ve got to get them organized. They must make out their own list. I wish we could find that Hungarian woman who talked French. She made some sense.”
Bakic inquired and reported: “She don’t live here. Her husband works on the electric light so dey got a house to demselves in de park.”
“Well, let’s get out of here and try to find her.”
They left the house and emerged into the fresh air and sunshine and the singing companies of young warriors. Major Gordon breathed gratefully. This was the world he understood, arms, an army, allies, an enemy, injuries given and taken honourably. Very high above them a huge force of minute shining bombers hummed across the sky in perfect formation on its daily route from Foggia to somewhere east of Vienna.
“There they go again,” he said. “I wouldn’t care to be underneath when they unload.”
It was one of his duties to impress the partisans with the might of their allies, with the great destruction and slaughter on distant fields which would one day, somehow, bring happiness here where they seemed forgotten. He delivered a little statistical lecture to Bakic about block-busters and pattern-bombing. But another part of his mind was all the time slowly being set in motion. He had seen something entirely new, which needed new eyes to see clearly: humanity in the depths, misery of quite another order from anything he had guessed before. He was as yet not conscious of terror or pity. His steady Scottish mind would take some time to assimilate the experience.

III

They found the Kanyis’ house. It was a tool shed hidden by shrubs from the public park. A single room, an earth floor, a bed, a table, a dangling electric globe; compared with the schoolhouse, a place of delicious comfort and privacy. Major Gordon did not see the interior that afternoon for Mme. Kanyi was hanging washing on a line outside, and she led him away from the hut, saying that her husband was asleep. “He was up all night and did not come home until nearly midday. There was a breakdown at the plant.”
“Yes,” said Major Gordon, “I had to go to bed in the dark at nine.”
“It is always breaking. It is quite worn out. He cannot get the proper fuel. And all the cables are rotten. The General does not understand and blames him for everything. Often he is out all night.”
Major Gordon dismissed Bakic and talked about U.N.R.R.A. Mme. Kanyi did not react in the same way as the wretches in the schoolhouse; she was younger and better fed and therefore more hopeless. “What can they do for us?” she asked. “How can they? Why should they? We are of no importance. You told us so yourself. You must see the Commissar,” she said. “Otherwise he will think there is some plot going on. We can do nothing, accept nothing, without the Commissar’s permission. You will only make more trouble for us.”
“But at least you can produce the list they want in Bari.”
“Yes, if the Commissar says so. Already my husband has been questioned about why I have talked to you. He was very much upset. The General was beginning to trust him. Now they think he is connected with the British, and last night the lights failed when there was an important conference. It is better that you do nothing except through the Commissar. I know these people. My husband works with them.”
“You have rather a privileged position with them.”
“Do you believe that for that reason I do not want to help my people?”
Some such thoughts had passed through Major Gordon’s mind. Now he paused, looked at Mme. Kanyi and was ashamed. “No,” he said.
“I suppose it would be natural to think so,” said Mme. Kanyi gravely. “It is not always true that suffering makes people unselfish. But sometimes it is.”
Major Gordon returned to his quarters in a reflective mood that was unusual to him.

IV

The partisans were nocturnal in their habits. They slept late in the mornings, idled about at midday smoking, ate in the early afternoon, and then towards sundown seemed to come alive. Most of their conferences took place after dark.
That evening Major Gordon was thinking of going to bed when he was summoned to the General. He and Bakic stumbled along cart tracks to the villa which housed the general staff. They found the General, his second-in-command, the Commissar, and the old lawyer who was called the Minister of the Interior.
Most meetings in this room were concerned with supplies. The General would submit a detailed, exorbitant list of immediate requirements—field artillery, boots, hospital equipment, wireless apparatus—and so forth. They worked on the principle of asking for everything and item by item reducing their demands to practicable size. In these tedious negotiations Major Gordon enjoyed the slight advantage of being the giver and the final judge of what was reasonable; all the partisans could do was dissipate any sense he might have of vicarious benefaction. He always left feeling a skinflint. Formal politeness was maintained and sometimes even a faint breath of cordiality.
Tonight, however, the atmosphere was entirely changed. The General and the Commissar had served together in Spain, the second-in-command was a professional officer from the Royal Yugoslav Army, the Minister of the Interior was a nonentity introduced to give solemnity to the occasion. They sat round the table. Bakic stood in the background. His place as interpreter was taken by a young communist of undefined position whom Major Gordon had met once or twice before at headquarters. He spoke excellent English.
“The General wishes to know why you went to visit the Jews today.”
“I was acting on orders from my headquarters.”
“The General does not understand how the Jews are the concern of the Military Mission.”
Major Gordon attempted an explanation of the aims and organization of U.N.R.R.A. He did not know a great deal about them and had no great respect for the members he had met, but he did his best. General and Commissar conferred. Then: “The Commissar says if those measures will take place after the war, what are they doing now?”
Major Gordon described the need for planning. U.N.R.R.A. must know what quantities of seed corn, bridge-building materials, rolling stock and so on were needed to put ravaged countries on their feet.
“The Commissar does not understand how this concerns the Jews.”
Major Gordon spoke of the millions of displaced persons all over Europe who must be returned to their homes.
“The Commissar says that is an internal matter.”
“So is bridge building.”
“The Commissar says bridge building is a good thing.”
“So is helping displaced persons.”
Commissar and General conferred. “The General says any questions of internal affairs should be addressed to the Minister of the Interior.”
“Tell him that I am very sorry if I have acted incorrectly. I merely wished to save everyone trouble. I was sent a question by my superiors. I did my best to answer it in the simplest way. May I now request the Minister of the Interior to furnish me with a list of the Jews?”
“The General is glad that you understand that you have acted incorrectly.”
“Will the Minister of the Interior be so kind as to make the list for me?”
“The General does not understand why a list is needed.”
And so it began again. They talked for an hour. At length Major Gordon lost patience and said: “Very well. Am I to report that you refuse all cooperation with Unrra?”
“We will cooperate in all necessary matters.”
“But with regard to the Jews?”
“It must be decided by the Central Government whether that is a necessary matter.”
At length they parted. On the way home Bakic said: “Dey mighty sore with you, Major. What for you make trouble with dese Jews?”
“Orders,” said Major Gordon, and before going to bed drafted a signal: “Jews condition now gravely distressed will become desperate winter stop Local authorities uncooperative stop Only hope higher level.”
A fortnight passed. Three aeroplanes landed, delivered their loads and took off. The R.A.F. officer said: “There won’t be many more of these trips. They usually get snow by the end of October.”
The partisans punctiliously checked all supplies and never failed to complain of their quantity or quality.
Major Gordon did not forget the Jews. Their plight oppressed him on his daily walks in the gardens, where the leaves were now falling fast and burning smokily in the misty air. The Jews were numbered, very specially, among his allies and the partisans lapsed from his friendship. He saw them now as a part of the thing he had set out hopefully to fight in the days when there had been a plain, unequivocal issue between right and wrong. Uppermost in his conscious mind was resentment against the General and Commissar for their reprimand. By such strange entrances does compassion sometimes slip, disguised, into the human heart.
At the end of the fortnight he was elated to receive the signal: “Central Government approves in principle evacuation Jews stop Dispatch two repeat two next plane discuss problem with Unrra.”
Major Gordon went with this signal to the Minister of the Interior who was lying in bed drinking weak tea. Bakic explained, “He’s sick and don’t know nothing. You better talk to de Commissar.”
The Commissar confirmed that he had received instructions.
“I suggest we send the Kanyis.”
“He say, why de Kanyis?”
“Because they make most sense.”
“Pardon me?”
“Because they seem the most responsible pair.”
“De Commissar says, responsible for what?”
“They are the best able to put their case sensibly.”
A long discussion followed between the Commissar and Bakic. “He won’t send de Kanyis.”
“Why not?”
“Kanyi got plenty work with de dynamo.”
So another pair was chosen and sent to Bari, the grocer and the lawyer who had first called on him. Major Gordon saw them off. They seemed stupefied and sat huddled among bundles and blankets on the airfield during the long wait. Only when the aeroplane was actually there, illumined by the long line of bonfires lit to guide it, did they both suddenly break into tears. When Major Gordon held out his hand to them, they bent and kissed it.
Two days later Bari signalled: “Receive special flight four Dakotas 1130 hrs tonight stop dispatch all Jews.” In a mood of real joy Major Gordon set about making the arrangements.

V

The landing strip was eight miles from the town. Before dusk the procession started. Some had somehow contrived to hire peasant carts. Most went on foot, bowed and laden. At ten o’clock Major Gordon drove out and found them, a dark mass, on the embankment of what had once been a railway. Most were asleep. There was mist on the ground. He said to the Squadron Leader: “Is this going to lift?”
“It’s been getting thicker for the last hour.”
“Will they be able to land?”
“Not a chance.”
“We’d better get these people home.”
“Yes, I’m just sending the cancellation signal now.”
Major Gordon could not bear to wait. He drove back alone but could not rest; hours later, he went out and waited in the mist at the junction of lane and road until the weary people hobbled past into the town.
Twice in the next three weeks the grim scene was repeated. On the second occasion the fires were lit, the aeroplanes were overhead and could be heard circling, recircling and at length heading west again. That evening, Major Gordon prayed: “Please God make it all right. You’ve done things like that before. Just make the mist clear. Please God help these people.” But the sound of the engines dwindled and died away, and the hopeless Jews stirred themselves and set off again on the way they had come.
That week came the first heavy fall of snow. There would be no more landing until the spring.
Major Gordon despaired of doing anything for the Jews, but powerful forces were at work on their behalf in Bari. He soon received a signal: “Expect special drop shortly relief supplies for Jews stop Explain partisan HQ these supplies only repeat only for distribution Jews.” He called on the General with this communication.
“What supplies?”
“I presume food and clothing and medicine.”
“For three months I have been asking for these things for my men. The Third Corps have no boots. In the hospital they are operating without anaesthetics. Last week we had to withdraw from two forward positions because there were no rations.”
“I know. I have signalled about it repeatedly.”
“Why is there food and clothes for the Jews and not for my men?”
“I cannot explain. All I have come to ask is whether you can guarantee distribution.”
“I will see.”
Major Gordon signalled: “Respectfully submit most injudicious discriminate in favour of Jews stop Will endeavour secure proportionate share for them of general relief  supplies,” and received in answer: “Three aircraft will drop Jewish supplies point C 1130 hrs 21st stop These supplies from private source not military stop Distribute according previous signal.”
On the afternoon of the 21st the Squadron Leader came to see Major Gordon.
“What’s the idea?” he said. “I’ve just been having the hell of a schemozzle with the Air Liaison comrade about tonight’s drop. He wants the stuff put in bond or something till he gets orders from higher up. He’s a reasonable sort of chap usually. I’ve never seen him on such a high horse. Wanted everything checked in the presence of the Minister of the Interior and put under joint guard. Never heard such a lot of rot. I suppose someone at Bari has been playing at politics as usual.”
That night the air was full of parachutes and of “free-drops” whistling down like bombs. The Anti-Fascist Youth retrieved them. They were loaded on carts, taken to a barn near the General’s headquarters and formally impounded.

VI

The war in Yugoslavia took a new turn. The first stage of German withdrawal was complete; they stood now on a line across Croatia and Slovenia. Marshal Tito flew from Vis to join the Russian and Bulgarian columns in Belgrade. A process of reprisal began in the “liberated” areas. The Germans remained twenty miles to the north of Begoy, but behind nothing except snow now closed the road to Dalmatia. Major Gordon took part in many Victory Celebrations. But he did not forget the Jews; nor did their friends at Bari. In mid-December Bakic one day announced: “De Jews again,” and going out into the yard Major Gordon found it full of his former visitors, but now transformed into a kind of farcical army. All of them, men and women, wore military greatcoats, Balaclava helmets, and knitted woollen gloves. Orders had been received from Belgrade, and distribution of the stores had suddenly taken place, and here were the recipients to thank him. The spokesmen were different on this occasion. The grocer and lawyer had disappeared forever. Madame Kanyi kept away for reasons of her own; an old man made a longish speech which Bakic rendered “Dis guy say dey’s all very happy.”
For the next few days a deplorable kind of ostentation seemed to possess the Jews. A curse seemed to have been lifted. They appeared everywhere, trailing the skirts of  their greatcoats in the snow, stamping their huge new boots, gesticulating with their gloved hands. Their faces shone with soap, they were full of Spam and dehydrated fruits. They were a living psalm. And then, as suddenly, they disappeared.
“What has happened to them?”
“I guess dey been moved some other place,” said Bakic.
“Why?”
“People make trouble for them.”
“Who?”
“Partisan people dat hadn’t got no coats and boots. Dey make trouble wid de Commissar so de Commissar move dem on last night.”
Major Gordon had business with the Commissar. The Anti-Fascist Theatre Group was organizing a Liberation Concert and had politely asked him to supply words and music of  English anti-fascist songs, so that all the allies would be suitably represented. Major Gordon had to explain that his country had no anti-fascist songs and no patriotic songs that anyone cared to sing. The Commissar noted this further evidence of Western decadence with grim satisfaction. For once there was no need to elaborate. The Commissar understood. It was just as he had been told years before in Moscow. It had been the same thing in Spain. The Attlee Brigade would never sing.
When the business was over Major Gordon said: “I see the Jews have moved.”
Bakic was left outside nowadays, and the intellectual young man acted as interpreter. Without consulting his chief he answered: “Their house was required for the Ministry of Rural Economy. New quarters have been found for them a few miles away.”
The Commissar asked what was being said, grunted and rose. Major Gordon saluted and the interview was at an end. On the steps the young interpreter joined him.
“The question of the Jews, Major Gordon. It was necessary for them to go. Our people could not understand why they should have special treatment. We have partisan women who work all day and have no boots or overcoats. How are we to explain that these old people who are doing nothing for our cause, should have such things?”
“Perhaps by saying that they are old and have no cause. Their need is greater than a young enthusiast’s.”
“Besides, Major Gordon, they were trying to make business. They were bartering the things they had been given. My parents are Jewish and I understand these people. They want always to make some trade.”
“Well, what’s wrong with that?”
“War is not a time for trade.”
“Well, anyway, I hope they have decent quarters.”
“They have what is suitable.”

VII

The gardens in winter seemed smaller than they had done in full leaf. You could see right through them from fence to fence; snow obliterated lawns and beds; the paths were only traceable by bootprints. Major Gordon daily took a handful of broken biscuits to the squirrel and fed him through the bars. One day while he was thus engaged, watching the little creature go through the motions of concealment, cautiously return, grasp the food, jump away and once more perform the mime of digging and covering, he saw Mme. Kanyi approach down the path. She was carrying a load of brushwood, stooping under it, so that she did not see him until she was quite close.
Major Gordon was particularly despondent that day for he had just received a signal for recall. The force was being re-named and reorganized. He was to report as soon as feasible to Bari. Major Gordon was confident that word had come from Belgrade that he was no longer persona grata.
He greeted Mme. Kanyi with warm pleasure. “Let me carry that.”
“No, please. It is better not.”
“I insist.”
Mme. Kanyi looked about her. No one was in sight. She let Major Gordon take the load and carry it towards her hut.
“You have not gone with the others?”
“No, my husband is needed.”
“And you don’t wear your greatcoat.”
“Not out of doors. I wear it at night in the hut. The coats and boots make everyone hate us, even those who had been kind before.”
“But partisan discipline is so firm. Surely there was no danger of violence?”
“No, that was not the trouble. It was the peasants. The partisans are frightened of the peasants. They will settle with them later, but at present they are dependent on them for food. Our people began to exchange things with the peasants. They would give needles and thread, razors, things no one can get, for turkeys and apples. No one wants money. The peasants preferred bartering with our people to taking the partisans’ bank-notes. That was what made the trouble.”
“Where have the others gone?”
She spoke a name which meant nothing to Major Gordon. “You have not heard of that place? It is twenty miles away. It is where the Germans and Ustashi made a camp. They kept the Jews and gypsies and communists and royalists there, to work on the canal. Before they left they killed what were left of the prisoners—not many. Now the partisans have found new inhabitants for it.”
They had reached the hut and Major Gordon entered to place his load in a corner near the little stove. It was the first and last time he crossed the threshold. He had a brief impression of orderly poverty and then was outside in the snow. “Listen, Mme. Kanyi,” he said. “Don’t lose heart. I am being recalled to Bari. As soon as the road is clear I shall be leaving. When I get there I promise I’ll raise Cain about this. You’ve plenty of friends there and I’ll explain the whole situation to them. We’ll get you all out, I promise.”
Major Gordon had one further transaction with Mme. Kanyi before his departure. There fell from the heavens one night a huge parcel of assorted literature—the gift of one of the more preposterous organizations which abounded in Bari. This department aimed at re-educating the Balkans by distributing Fortune, The Illustrated London News and handbooks of popular, old-fashioned agnosticism. From time to time during Major Gordon’s tour of duty bundles of this kind had arrived. He had hitherto deposited them in the empty office of the Director of Rest and Culture. On this last occasion, however, he thought of Mme. Kanyi. She had a long, lonely winter ahead of her. She might find something amusing in the pile. So he despatched it to her by one of the widows, who finding her out, left it on the step in the snow. Then within a few days the road to the coast was declared open and Major Gordon laboriously made his way to Split and so to Bari.

VIII

Bari had much besides the bones of St. Nicholas. Those who were quartered there complained but they constituted the Mont Parnasse of the Allied Armies. One met more queer old friends in its messes and clubs than anywhere else in the world at this last stage of the war, and to those on leave from the Balkans its modest amenities seemed the height of luxury. But Major Gordon, during his fortnight of “reporting to headquarters” had deeper interests than on earlier leaves. He was determined to get the Jews out of Croatia and by dint of exploring the byways of semi-official life, of visiting committees and units with noncommittal designations in obscure offices, he was in fact able to quicken interest, supply detailed information and in the end set the official machine to work which eventually resulted in a convoy of new Ford trucks making the journey from the coast to Begoy and back for the sole and specific purpose of rescuing the Jews.
By the time that they arrived in Italy Major Gordon was back in Yugoslavia for a brief appointment as liaison with a camp of escaped prisoners of war, but he got news of the move and for the first time tasted the sweet and heady cup of victory. “At least I’ve done something worthwhile in this bloody war,” he said.
When next he passed through Bari it was on his way home to England, for the military mission was being wound up and replaced by regular diplomatic and consular officials. He had not forgotten his Jews, however, and, having with difficulty located them, drove out to a camp near Lecce, in a flat country of olive and almond and white beehive huts. Here they rested, part of a collection of four or five hundred, all old and all baffled, all in army greatcoats and Balaclava helmets.
“I can’t see the point of their being here,” said the Commandant. “We feed them and doctor them and house them. That’s all we can do. No one wants them. The Zionists are only interested in the young. I suppose they’ll just sit here till they die.”
“Are they happy?”
“They complain the hell of a lot but then they’ve got quite a lot to complain about. It’s a lousy place to be stuck in.”
“I’m particularly interested in a pair called Kanyi.”
The Commandant looked down his list. “No trace of them here.”
“Good. That probably means they got off to Australia all right.”
“Not from here, old man. I’ve been here all along. No one has ever left.”
“Could you make sure? Anyone in the Begoy draft would know about them.”
The Commandant sent his interpreter to inquire while he took Major Gordon into the shed he called his mess, and gave him a drink. Presently the man returned. “All correct, sir. The Kanyis never left Begoy. They got into some kind of trouble there and were jugged.”
“May I go with the interpreter and ask about it?”
“By all means, old man. But aren’t you making rather heavy weather of it? What do two more or less matter?”
Major Gordon went into the compound with the interpreter. Some of the Jews recognized him and crowded round with complaints and petitions. All he could learn about the Kanyis was that they had been taken off the truck by the partisan police just as it was about to start.
He had one more day in Bari before his flight home. He spent it revisiting the offices where he had begun his work of liberation. But this time he received little sympathy. “We don’t really want to bother the Jugs any more. They really cooperated very well about the whole business. Besides the war’s over now in that part. There’s no particular point in moving people out. We’re busy at the moment moving people in.” This man was in fact at that moment busy despatching royalist officers to certain execution.
The Jewish office showed no interest when they understood that he had not come to sell them illicit arms. “We must first set up the State,” they said. “Then it will be a refuge for all. First things first.”
So Major Gordon returned to England unsatisfied and he might never have heard any more of the matter, had he not a cousin in the newly reopened Ministry at Belgrade. Months later he heard from him: “I’ve been to a lot of trouble and made myself quite unpopular in getting information about the couple you’re interested in. The Jugs are very close but at last I got matey with the head of the police who wants us to return some refugees we’ve got in our zone in Austria. He dug out the file for me. Both were condemned by a Peoples’ Court and executed. The man had committed sabotage on the electric light plant. The woman had been a spy for a “foreign power.”
Apparently she was the mistress of a foreign agent who frequented her house while the husband was busy destroying the dynamo. A lot of foreign propaganda publications were found in her house and produced as evidence. What very unsavoury friends you seem to have.”
It so happened that this letter arrived on the day when the Allies were celebrating the end of the war in Asia. Major Gordon was back with his regiment. He did not feel inclined to go out that evening and join in the rejoicing. The mess was empty save for the misanthropic second-in-command and the chaplain (although of Highland origin the regiment was full of Glasgow Irish and had a Benedictine monk attached to them).
The second-in-command spoke as he had spoken most evenings since the General Election..... “I don’t know what they mean by ‘Victory.’ We start the bloody war for Poland. Well that’s ceased to exist. We fight it in Burma and Egypt—and you can bet your boots we shall give them up in a few months to the very fellows who’ve been against us. We spent millions knocking Germany down and now we shall spend millions building it up again.....”
“Don’t you think, perhaps, people feel better than they did in 1938?” said the chaplain.
“No,” said the second-in-command.
“They haven’t got rid of that unhealthy sense of guilt they had?”
“No,” said Major Gordon. “I never had it before. Now I have.”
And he told the story of the Kanyis. “Those are the real horrors of war—not just people having their legs blown off,” he concluded. “How do you explain that, padre?”
There was no immediate answer until the second-in-command said: “You did all you could. A darn sight more than most people would have done.”
“That’s your answer,” said the chaplain. “You mustn’t judge actions by their apparent success. Everything you did was good in itself.”
“A fat lot of good it did the Kanyis.”
“No. But don’t you think it just possible that they did you good? No suffering need ever be wasted. It is just as much part of Charity to receive cheerfully as to give.”
“Well, if you’re going to start preaching a sermon, padre,” said the second-in-command, “I’m off to bed.”
“I’d like you to tell me a bit more about that,” said Major Gordon.