Antun Gustav Matoš: Memories

[...] The picturesque Srem with companions everywhere, and all of them welcome warmly the travelling students who, as is customary for never-graduates, go per pedes apostolorum. Melons, water-melons, Gypsies, vineyard-guarding women, tamburitza musicians, dusky, large groves with shepherds and swineherds like those in [the works of] Matija Antun Reljković, pretty and generous young wives... I was born Sremac, but being an inhabitant of Zagreb, I had never seen my cradle-land, so small wonder that – at a wrong hour – love was roused for my home. I forgot that I was a soldier now, and therefore an outcast. Warming sun, the hills of Fruška Gora, Branko's* Danube, hospitable monasteries in the shade of old linden-trees, snowy crosses of the red-legged storks in the soft blue skies, motionless fingers of the churches in faraway parish villages, first evening lights in the gloomy vagabondish twilight, scared-off flocks of starlings, yellow and blue clusters of fruitful plum-trees, white colonies of noisy geese.  In the elongated, golden cobweb above the inviting moss on the farmhouse roofs – quiet old farms and frolicsome horses of the Sava Valley, the scent of the last hay: I got intoxicated by all of that, the soil, the good-natured people, like by the power of the old wine of Karlowitz, so I lived and enjoyed myself mischievously, in expectation of something bad to happen. In the village of Privlaka near Vinkovci, I had fallen in love with a beautiful, dark-haired Šokica. I stayed with her, that is, in her aunt's house, for a couple of days, and my dear J. was waiting for me in Vukovar. Of course, I failed to meet him in time, and I was left alone. And sobered up. Autumn leaves, fog, rainfalls fell in my ways. Roaming around for a whole month. Ragged like a beggar, swarthy like a Gypsy. It was – either back to the army or to Belgrade. Serbia became my option, and – since left with no travel expenditures – I crossed the Danube from Vukovar to visit my grandfather famed all around the Bačka as a (head)master, teacher Grga. who was then spending his summertime at the beautiful village of Plavna, next to a Danubian marsh rich in deer and swamp birds. I explained that my parents did not let Grandpa know for fear of frightening him, and I did right. He believed me when I told him I was on a leave with permit. Within two hours we oared into the village. Under the old mulberry tree, the Narodne novine ['People's Gazzette'] were shaking in those familiar old hands. My relatives, the peasants of the Bačka, were generous hosts to me, and three days later I went back to Mitrovica via Vukovar, wherefrom I was to head to Belgrade. About seven in the evening, I was waiting for the train and entertained a lawyer's wife, very kind lady, when gendermes turned up in the waiting room. I got arrested. What a scene!
The lawyer's lady defended me as if I had been Dreyfus himself, telling them I was a student and not a soldier, yet in vain. A fellow-soldier from my detachment had betrayed me. He had just happened to do some judicial matter at the Mitrovica Court.
I was thrown into the worst of gaols. A heap of insiders' litter under the planks. It took but minutes till I was full of lice and bedbugs. Rats were hopping into my trousers, and the intercession in my favour undertaken by the patriotic Mr.Gamiršek, industrialist, and Mr. Relić, journalist, proved to be of no avail. All dear day I was not given a crust of bread, for as a soldier I had 'no right' to eat in a prison for civilians. I felt very happy when a cop escorted me off to the railway station and Petrovaradin. I was so hungry that it never crossed my mind to escape. From Ruma on, we were alone, and the guard fell asleep; the maize in the vast field was high enough and hospitable, but I stayed there hoping for some rest and the clean soldiers' dining room. However, the hope let me down, too. My guard got off at Majur instead of Petrovaradin, and when we arrived at the town, lunchtime had been over. That was Saturday. Since the next day, on Sunday, the officers were to be absent from their office, it became clear that I was to starve until Monday.
I was thrown into a lock-up by one of the town gates, behind the Wachzimmer, with a stone instead of bed. Until Sunday, guard was stood by Czech artillerymen who, in answer to my begging for food, hit against the wooden enclosure of my cage with their rifle-butts. Fortunately, the guard was changed and an infantry frontiersman secretly threw in some soldiers' bread to me.
It was not before Monday that I was 'received' and forwarded into a broad white room with an exit toward the northeastern town gate. There were a couple of civilians with me, because they had violated the manouvering rules. To my great luck, the convicts under investigation wear their unit uniforms, and – as there were no hussars in Petrovaradin, I could wear my worn-out civilian clothes until my uniform arrived from my headquarters. The first day was fine, more or less. I still had good appetite, I slept well, and my fellow-sufferers (a peasant, a supplier from Križevci and two Gypsies) made up agreeable company. Physically, I was still broken. Bodily pain is the best remedy for the pain of the soul. But on the third day, the peasant and the supplier were set free, and I stayed there with the Gypsies. No sleep would comfort my eyes any longer. At dawn, I would dream terrible dreams. We were not allowed to smoke, so we only smoked some terrible tobacco smuggled in by the baker around eleven a.m., while we were going, with armed guards, to the common cauldron. As we had no matches, we would light our cigarettes, rolled into old newspapers, by hitting iron against the iron furnace and catching sparkles from the ashes held in dry old cloth. Outdoors, it was already raining and drizzling, the first autumn rain, sad and yellow, and the mist was weighing upon our souls like a leaden chain.
It was mere two hours prior to the act that I decided to escape. I am telling this well-known story, because so far I have usually kept inquisitive people intrigued, and because most incredible versions of the event have been published – for example, that I plunged into the Danube from Varadin fort, that fire was opened at me and that I swam all way down to Belgrade.
So, one morning, at the end of September 1894, the weather was playfully pleasant, the sun was shining, and I was watching through the bars those glistening and reddish hues on the back of the officer's horse on pasture nearby; beside the horse, a cavalry stableman was lying on his back with his eyes shut and singing. I thought of the long winter coming, the loneliness inside the tomblike walls, the shame of being there. The most troubling thoughts were those of the deprivation of the mind and of reading, which meant that I could leave the shameful place one day as a cretin, an idiot, a coward, a candidate for the good-for-nothing reputation. I decided to take to flight, that very day, as soon as possible, instantly, to escape or get killed. I had never been in the area before, but I did know approximately where Novi Sad and Belgrade were. One could feel them...
Every day before eleven, a gaoler-sergeant would come in with as many guys as many convicts there were, for each of us was provided food by another company. Outside, a few steps away from the gaol doorway, at the inner rampart gate, a sentry used to walk days and nights.
One had to snap the right moment and slip out at the moment when the gaoler and the guys were farthestmost from the exit door, and steal out into the corridor when the soldier turns his back. My fate and fortunes saw to it that I could take advantage of all such moments. Before the sergeant came, I had pushed our table diagonally from the door into the far corner, so, when the gaoler was inside with the last of the food-carrying guys, I slipped out into the corridor and saw the sentry walking up and away, not toward me. Before he reached the far point at the town gate, I ran to the other one, the exit in the rampart, crossed the bridge and – on the sunlit road – met an ugly old woman (malum omen!) with a basket and a parasol. Fortunately, the path has a bend there, disappearing round the walls, so the possible possee could not spot me from the town gate. I jumped into a ditch, then crossed two or three lower walls, and found myself on a path running toward the Novi Sad bridge. I hid among the willows by the Danube, and when I reached the bridge, the noon churchbells started chiming in Novi Sad and Petrovaradin. The bridge was crowded with people, mostly soldiers. Midway on the bridge, I met the audience-officer who had received me; we passed each other without him seeing me, owing to the pillars that separated the road from the pedestrian walkway. I did not turn around once. And in my back, I had a sense as if several specialist marksmen had me in sight.