At the line where the cobblestones gave way to a radical band of asphalt and I came out of the shade into the sun, I had the disturbing impression of leaving behind a forsaken region where eternal stillness reigned, broken only rarely by a sound of unknown origin, by some indistinct voice, the dense noise of the wings of a startled bird, the muffled squeak of a gate at the mercy of the wind, or a ship’s siren. I had the impression that the area which I had passed through so far was nothing more than an annex, an unusual continuation of my room; that the sidestreet with its close-set walls was only the corridor leading out of my house; and that the sunlit opening at its end, marked by a square metal sign warning me that I was entering the blue parking zone, was the door through which I would leave. It was as if I had still to take the first step toward Simonida.
I immediately told myself that my worry could not have been occasioned by the crowds I had encountered after stepping out of an empty street. Those people were quietly going about their business; indeed, most of them could have lived in my apartments without my losing self-respect. But I was no longer among them, among my own clientele, for suddenly I found myself in the midst of quite different people: again for the nth time and who knows at what cost, it was March 27, 1941; once again I was hurrying to Stefan’s auction and once again I came upon an unruly mob.
People were milling about in all directions, banging into one another, pushing each other aside like badly directed billiard balls. I had to get out of their way for most of them seemed not to heed where they were going, but on bumping into one another changed their course and with the same surefootedness set off in a new direction determined by the chance collision. It was as if they were bumping against muscular rubber mattresses from which they were flung back still more wildly, and then whirled around bemused in an elastic cage composed of invisible springs. But all of them, densely packed and growing denser as more arrived, were moving down toward Brankova Street and the concrete apron in front of the King Alexander Bridge, where a three-deep cordon of police was waiting for them. Not even those rioters whom the volcanic pressure at the center had driven into my street as into an empty sleeve, were by all appearances grateful at being squeezed out of this frightful mill whose grinding stones, turned by the mill wheel of hate, crushed, pounded, and ground them. No, with visionary blindness they again hurled themselves into it, pushing into the moving current of flesh as into plastic clay, and again merged with it in a ritual ecstasy which deprived them of control over their limbs. There could be no question of any individuality or reasoned initiative here: thus assimilated, faceless, depersonalized, they rushed on toward the bridge, deprived of any individual movement or personal choice of the direction which the demonstration was taking. It was as if all the separate strength of their previously independent bodies had been gathered together by a single all-absorbing superbody or omnibody which, freed from individual cares and restraints, was smashing and destroying everything in their now unburdened name.
Loyally subordinating themselves to this unifying force, they linked arms in a solid trellis of fists and pushed forward as if boiling over from a white-hot cauldron of discontent and despair. The participants in these demoniacal rounds were constantly replaced by others; sidelong tremors broke apart their single-line chains, tore at their links, replaced them with more resistant, firmer ones. Those who were pushed aside, after having been battered for a time by the oncoming ranks, would grab on to other lines, for which it appeared a lesser strength was sufficient, for they were out of direct range of the constraining blockage, lower down at the approaches to the bridge.
Stretched up over the mob were poles bearing the Yugoslav and Serbian flags. (One of them was red, yes, completely red like newly shed blood.) They were carried between two masts and looked like a bloodied bandage which had just been unwound from a giant’s forehead. I felt myself once again in the outskirts of Voronezh, in the midst of an evil mob of rioters, their ranks like rows of coal-black, sodden hovels. It was 1919, the White General Marmontov had already retreated across the Don, and under the protection of the riflemen of Budyony’s Sixth Cavalry — who, clustered together into smallish, perhaps even fortuitous groups, looked down from their horses with soldierlike indifference, half-dozing — the mob was dragging frightened, stunned people out of porchways: people in dressing gowns, kaftans, fur coats, cloth cloaks, field overcoats, waterproof capes, and coats with sable collars — from their appearance, respectable middle-class folk and even, I fear, property owners who, as was later explained to me, were counterrevolutionaries, Denikinites, Black Hundreds, and black marketeers. They were beating them with staves and forcing them to crawl in the gutter before their own houses, which they did quite earnestly, even so to speak committedly, while they were battered in the clinging autumn mud with the same staves, pickaxes and hammers. Then the crowd moved toward other houses where the wailing, like that of a forlorn and abandoned dog, awaited them.
Now, today, I beheld placards of brown paper, cardboard, and cloth on which slogans were inscribed in black and red oiclass="underline"
DOWN WITH THE ANTIPEOPLE PACT!
LONG LIVE THE ARMY!
DOWN WITH THE GOVERNMENT OF TRAITORS!
DOWN WITH FASCISM!
DEATH TO THE GERMAN HIRELINGS!
BETTER THE GRAVE THAN BE A SLAVE!
BETTER WAR THAN THE PACT!
All this I could understand (though not of course approve), since in those conceited sentiments there was much more of a national, Slav, Kosovo, Salonika-front spirit than of revolutionary intent. But among the protests, and especially among the demands, were some which by their radical Bolshevik line took me back to Voronezh and that macabre railway halt of Solovkino. The troublemakers — undoubtedly Moscow stooges — were brandishing placards on which I made out with amazement:
DOWN WITH THE CORRUPT BOURGEOISIE!
WE DEMAND A POPULAR FRONT!
DEMOCRATIC FREEDOM FOR THE MASSES!
LONG LIVE OUR RUSSIAN BRETHREN!
WORKERS, UNITE SOLIDLY IN THE STRUGGLE FOR OUR COMMON CAUSE!
UNION WITH THE USSR!
ALL POWER TO THE PEOPLE!
Which was only a more cunning way of saying: all power to the Soviets, all possessions to the nonworker rabble!
One might think that for my own peace of mind I would have chosen a roundabout route for my visit to Simonida, a detour which would lead me away from that howling procession of hysterical fiends gathered from all sides on the afternoon of March 27, 1941, on Pop-Lukina Street, and still surging down it right up to the present day as if awaiting me, as if again blocking the road in front of me. I had been afraid only of that single corner in my dream, yet here I was now stopped by a familiar stone angle with a passageway, into which I had retreated to avoid being trampled down. Could I have reached Simonida by the more accessible Paris Street? I must say at once that it would have been impossible, just as it had been impossible at that first, real encounter. I had done all I could do to get away from them! I had gone around the corners on the vertical line which joined Kalemegdan Park to Nemanja Prospect. Yet each time I came up against the procession I tried to outflank it, keeping to streets which were parallel. No good! It flowed along densely in an all-blanketing layer which settled upon pavements and houses, just like vacuoles and minute bubbles of protoplasm which feed through their skin, consuming open space. And every minute I was in danger from that jellylike, voracious mass, one of whose extruded sleeves, having penetrated into the sidestreets, might suck me in like a stream of gelatine that in sliding down a glass absorbs sprinkled droplets from all sides.