Free The Trigger by Tim Butcher Page A

world.
    ‘Our people came back home to the village after the uprising and they thought things would get much better,’ Nikola said, shaking his head. ‘They built their homes again here in Obljaj and thought that, as Christians now ruled by Christians, they would be better off. But nothing changed. It was still a tough life of survival, struggling to live off this land and paying tax, tax and more tax.’
    Just as under the Ottomans, various family members survived by working for the occupiers, retained as border guards or policemen for the foreign empire. I asked the family about the claim made by one historian that Princip’s uncle, Ilija, eldest brother of his father, had served for a time as an Austro-Hungarian gendarme – a question I felt was potentially important, as an influence on the young boy’s motivation for the assassination. Once more, the family memory was blank. Instead they emphasised the dire conditions of life for their forebears at the dawn of the twentieth century, and to do this convincingly all they had to do was relate what happened to six of Princip’s siblings.
    ‘First there was Bosiljka, who died as a child,’ Nikola said. ‘Then there was Koviljka who was next to die, and Djuradj after her, and Branko after him and two others who were never christened and died without a name.’ It was well over a hundred years since six out of nine children from one family had died, but for the Princip clan that would be too soon to forget.
    After two hours of intensive listening, note-taking and tallying what I had read about Princip against what his family remembered, we all needed a break. I could not help noticing that the Princips had not offered Arnie and me coffee – a cultural ritual for visitors that I knew to be almost sacred. They were not being unfriendly. They were simply too poor.
    I arched my back extravagantly, and Mile picked up on the cue. ‘Let’s go,’ he said. ‘I need to walk a while and I want to show you something that might teach you a little about Gavro’s parents.’ Mile led Arnie and me back through the village and out onto the approach road where we had been dropped earlier that day. The sun was low in the sky and two teenage boys were walking across the fields carrying fishing rods. ‘Trout,’ he said, catching my interest keenly. Trout-fishing is a love of mine. ‘They are going after trout in the Korana. It’s a beautiful fishing river.’
    There was an enthusiasm about Mile that I was beginning to enjoy, a curiosity about my interest in his ancestor. ‘So many people have said so many things about Gavro over the years,’ he said. ‘But they forget he was a country boy from this village. His world was a small world, basically the fields and forests and mountains you can see from where we are standing. He would have gone fishing, I am sure, just like those boys over there. He would have walked the hills I walked, shepherding the family’s flock of sheep like I did when I was a boy. But in those days, people from a place like this never left. They were born here, married here, worked here, died here.
    ‘Look at Gavro’s parents. His father, Petar – but everyone called him Pepo – was from this village. His mother was Marija – everyone called her Nana – and where did she come from? Well, if you look over there you will see where.’ He was now pointing along the valley to a collection of farm buildings less than a mile away. ‘Don’t laugh, but that is known as Little Obljaj because it is smaller than where we are now, Greater Obljaj. Nana came from there. You basically lived your whole life within walking distance of where you were brought up. And when you ended your life you still didn’t leave.’
    He had led us into the local graveyard, weaving his bulky frame through grass and weeds that grew waist-high in places and past clutches of gravestones, many of which were penned behind railings inside family plots. ‘This is where Gavro’s parents