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

into the whirlpool everything alive or dead, not only in the town but also from great distances away. With the second year the number of workers had grown to such an extent that they equalled all the male inhabitants of the town. All carts, all horses and oxen worked only for the bridge. Everything that could creep or roll was taken and pressed into service, sometimes paid but sometimes by force. There was more money than before, but high prices and shortages increased more rapidly than the money flowed in, so that when it reached men's hands it was already half eaten away. Even worse than the rise in prices and the shortages was the unrest, disorder and insecurity which now enveloped the town as a consequence of the incursion of so many workmen from the outer world. Despite all Abidaga's severity, there were frequent clashes among the workers, and many thefts from the gardens and courtyards. The Moslem women had to keep their faces veiled even when they went into their own yards, for the gaze of the countless workers, local and foreign, might come from anywhere and the Turks of the town kept the practices of Islam very strictly, the more so since they were all recently converted and there was scarcely one of them who did not remember either a father or a grandfather who was a Christian or a recently converted Turk. Because of this the older persons who followed the law of Islam were openly indignant and turned their backs on this chaotic mass of workers, draft animals, wood, earth and stone which grew ever larger and more complicated on both sides of the ferry and which, in the underpinning operations, broke into their streets, their courtyards and their gardens.
    At first they had all been proud of the great bequest which the Vezir was to erect in their district. Then they had not realized, as they now saw with their own eyes, that these glorious buildings involved so much disorder and unrest, effort and expense. It was a fine thing, they thought, to belong to the pure ruling faith; it was a fine thing to have as a countryman the Vezir in Stambul, and still finer to imagine the strong, costly bridge across the river, but what was happening now in no way resembled this. Their town had been turned into a hell, a devil's dance of incomprehensible works, of smoke, dust, shouts and tumult. The years passed, the work extended and grew greater, but there was no end or thought of end to be seen. It looked like anything you like, but not a bridge.
    So thought the recently converted Turks of the town and, in private among themselves, avowed that they were fed up to the teeth with lordship and pride and future glory and had had more than enough of the bridge and the Vezir. They only prayed Allah to deliver them from this disaster and restore to them and their homes their former peace and the quietness of their humble lives beside the old-fashioned ferry on the river.
    All this affected the Turks, but even more it affected the Christian  rayah  of the whole Višegrad district, with this difference, that no one asked their opinion about anything, nor were they even able to express their indignation. It was now the third year since the people had been on forced labour for the new bridge, they themselves and all their horses and oxen. And that too not only for the local  rayah  but also all those from the nearby districts. Everywhere Abidaga's guards and horsemen seized the  rayah  from the villages and even the towns and drove them away to work on the bridge. Usually they surprised them while sleeping and pinioned them like chickens. Through all Bosnia, traveller told traveller not to go to the Drina, for whoever went there was seized, without question of who or what he was or where he was going, and was forced to work for at least a few days. The young men in the villages tried to run away into the forests, but the guards took hostages from their houses, often women, in place of those who fled.
    This was the third autumn that the