The Bridge on the Drina by Ivo Andrić Read Free Book Online

felt fear and anxiety taking root in him.
    A great and incomprehensible disaster had fallen upon the town and the whole of the district, a catastrophe whose end could not be foreseen. First of all began the felling of the forests and the transport of the timber. So great a mass of scaffolding arose on both banks of the Drina that for long the people thought that the bridge would be built of wood. Then the earthworks began, the excavations, the revetting of the chalky banks. These were mostly carried out by forced labour. So everything went on until the late autumn, when work was temporarily stopped and the first part of the construction completed.
    All this was carried out under Abidaga's supervision and that of his long green staff which has passed into legend. Whomever he pointed at with this staff, having noticed that he was malingering or not working as he should, the guards seized; they beat him on the spot and then poured water over his bleeding and unconscious body and sent him back to work again. When in late autumn Abidaga left the town, he again sent for the notables and told them that he was going away to another place for the winter, but that his eye would still be on them. All would be responsible for everything. If it were found that any part of the work had been damaged, if a single stick were missing from the scaffolding, he would fine the
    whole town. When they ventured to say that damage might be caused by floods, he replied coldly and without hesitation that this was their district and the river too was theirs as well as whatever damage it might cause.
    All the winter the townsmen guarded the material and watched the construction works like the eyes in their head. And when with the spring Abidaga once again appeared, with Tosun Effendi, there came with them Dalmatian stone-masons, whom the people called 'Latin masters'. At first there were about thirty of them, led by a certain Mastro Antonio, a Christian from Ulcinj. He was a tall, handsome man of keen eye, bold glance and hooked nose, with fair hair falling to his shoulders and dressed like a noble in the western manner. His assistant was a negro, a real negro, a young and merry man whom the whole town and all the workmen soon nicknamed 'the Arab'.
    If in the previous year, judging from the mass of scaffolding, it seemed as if Abidaga had intended to build the bridge of wood, it now seemed to everyone that he wanted to build a new Stambul here on the Drina. Then began the hauling of stone from the quarries which had already been opened up in the hills near Banja, an hour's walk from the town.
    Next year a most unusual spring broke near the Višegrad ferry. Besides all that which sprang up and flowered every year at that time, there arose out of the earth a whole settlement of huts; new roads made their appearance and new approaches to the water's edge. Countless oxcarts and packhorses swarmed on all sides. The men from Mejdan and Okolište saw how every day, like a sort of harvest, there grew there by the river a restless swarm of men, beasts and building material of every kind.
    On the steep banks worked the master stone-masons. The whole area took on a sort of yellowish colour from the stone-dust. And a little farther along, on the sandy plain, local workers were slaking lime and moving, ragged and pale, through the white smoke which rose high from the kilns. The roads were torn to pieces by the overloaded carts. The ferry worked all day, taking from one bank to the other building material, overseers and workmen. Wading in the spring waters up to their waists, special workmen drove in piles and stakes and put in position gabions filled with clay, intended to break the current.
    All this was watched by those who up till then had lived peacefully in their scattered houses on the slopes near the Drina ferry. And it would have been well for them had they been able only to watch, but the work soon became so extensive and its impetus so
    great that it drew