Free The Bridge on the Drina by Ivo Andrić Page A

beginning. Isn't it better to talk without that?'
    The peasant only breathed heavily through his nose, and remained silent.
    'Who was with you?'
    'His name was Jovan, but I do not know either his house or his village.'
    They brought the chains again and the burning hair and skin sizzled. Coughing from the smoke and writhing from the pain, the peasant began to speak jerkily.
    Th6se two alone had come to an agreement to destroy the work on the bridge. They thought that it had to be done and they had done it. No one else had known anything about it or had taken part in it. At first they had set out from the banks in various places and been quite successful, but when they saw that there were guards on the scaffolding and along the banks, they had thought of binding three planks together to make a raft and thus, unnoticed, approach the work from the river. That had been three days ago. On the first night they had nearly been caught. They only just got away. So the next night they had not gone out at all. When they tried again that same night with the raft, there had happened what had happened.
    'That is all. So it was, and so we worked. Now do what you will.'
    'No, no, that is not what we want. Tell us who made you do this! What you have suffered up till now is nothing to what you will get later on!'
    'Well, do what you like.'
    Merdjan then came nearer with a pair of pincers. He knelt in front of the bound man and began to tear the nails off his naked feet.
    The peasant remained silent and clenched his teeth but a strange trembling shook his whole body up to the waist even though he was bound which showed that the pain must have been exceptionally great. After a few moments the peasant forced a few muttered words through his teeth. The man from Plevlje, who had been hanging on his every word and waiting eagerly for some sort of admission, made a sign with his hand to the gipsy to stop and at once asked:
    'What was that? What did you say?'
    'Nothing. I only said: why in the name of God do you waste your time torturing me?'
    'Tell us who made you do it?'
    'Who made me do it? Why, the devil.'
    The devil?'
    'The devil. Certainly that same devil who made you come here and build the bridge!'
    The peasant spoke softly, but clearly and decisively.
    The devil! A strange word, said so bitterly in so unusual a situation. The devil! The devil is certainly somewhere in this thought the man from Plevlje, standing with bowed head as if the bound man were questioning him and not he the bound man. The words touched him on a sensitive spot and awoke in him all of a sudden all his anxieties and fears, in all their strength and terror, as if they had never been swept away by the capture of the culprit. Perhaps indeed all this, with Abidaga and the building of the bridge and this mad peasant, was the devil's work. The devil! Perhaps he was the only one to fear. The man from Plevlje shivered and shook himself. At that moment the loud and angry voice of Abidaga brought him to himself.
    'What's the matter with you? Are you asleep, good-for-nothing?' shouted Abidaga, striking his right boot with his short leather whip.
    The gipsy was still kneeling with the pincers in his hand and looking upwards with black shining eyes, frightened and humble, at the tall figure of Abidaga. The guards piled up the fire which was already roaring. The whole place shone; it was like a furnace but somehow solemn. What that evening had seemed a gloomy and undistinguished building all at once was transformed, became larger, widened out. In the stable and around it reigned a sort of solemn emotion and a special silence as there is in places where one extracts the truth, a living man is tortured or where fateful things occur. Abidaga, the man from Plevlje and the bound man moved and spoke like actors and all the others went on tiptoe with lowered eyes, not speaking save when forced to and then only in a whisper. Everyone wished to be somewhere else, only not to be in this place