A book against the evil of time

“Osim Srba, teško danas da ima poštenih ljudi”

Drago Mazar, Two couriers

...

Before World War II, Drago Mažar had a mother, Maria, a younger sister, Nada, and three older brothers: Božidar, Josip, and Ivica. His brothers died in the partisans: Ivica was arrested in 1941 while trying to organize an uprising in Jajce and was shot in Gospić; Josip, Šoša, was killed in 1944 in the battles for Travnik and a monument was erected to him there, in Travnik; Boško, Božidar, died in 1945, and his mother died of typhus in 1943, in a mobile partisan hospital. Before her death, she will hallucinate that her son Josip is coming.

And Drago is with his brothers. As a seventeen-year-old, he participated in skirmishes with the Ljotićevci and Frankovites, in the Workers' Cultural and Artistic Society Pelagić, which was founded by the communists, he conducted the youth choir, led the tambourine and acting section, towards the end of 1940 he was arrested and deported to the Međurečje camp, one of those camps that the Kingdom established for the removal of rebels, leftists and non-committals (the most famous is probably Bileća), from where he is released in order to be recruited, and he meets the breakup of Yugoslavia in Sarajevo, where his security, skill and self-confidence in moving through the murky waters of social disunity are again shown.

Muddy and cold waters, this time Vrbas, will meet him a little later in Banja Luka, rifles and a machine gun will emerge from them and he will hide them, together with Karl Rojc, in a tomb at the Catholic cemetery, and these will be the weapons with which the first partisans will go to war.

In the war and revolution, it seems, Drago Mažar developed his self-confidence into an almost luxurious courage - often, with a select entourage, he disguises himself, wears a Home Guard, German, Chetnik uniform and thus goes among the enemies, disarms them, stalks them, listens to their intelligence and becomes a very skilled intelligence officer, although he is not particularly enthusiastic about it. Sometimes it seems to slip through the thin cracks of guts. She is recovering from her injuries in the hospital in Čemernica, and will leave there before the Chetniks attack her. There, on Čemernica, his friend Karlo Rojc will be killed, and the Chetniks will massacre the wounded, among them the manager of the hospital, Ajša Karabegović.

Josip Mažar Šoša was declared a national hero in 1949, and Ivica and Drago in 1953.

RHYMO STORYTELLING

And now, ten days ago, Draga's novel arrived from Zagreb Two couriers, the book was first published in Sarajevo's "Svjetlosta" in 1950, the second time in Banja Luka's "Glas" in 1972, and last year in Zagreb and Banja Luka. A book that, I admit, I didn't know about, but I had to know about, like Ćopić A breach (1952), or Deaf gunpowder (1957), because in it Mazar deals with many topics that interested me when I was writing for years In forests and mountains: by the establishment of the first partisan detachments, by their being thrown into the incomprehensible cruelty of the world in which they find it difficult to find their way and in which, often, in those first days, they look like confused, unskilled, sloppy children whose rebellion is doomed to failure, then the split of the insurgent movement, what is called a "crisis" (but it was actually a Chetnik betrayal and a coup: the occupier thoroughly corrupted the Chetniks, and they covered this circumstance with the ethos of sacrifice), and, finally - couriers.

The two couriers from the title of the novel are Šuco, an illegal, the son of impoverished Sulejmanbeg Arslanović, a shoemaker, a city boy, from Banja Luka, and Marko, Markuša, as doctor Mladen Stojanović addresses him, a black-faced country boy from Knešpolje (yes, Kulenović's Knešpolje), whose family will be killed by the Ustashas at the beginning of the war, in one of the many massacres. Couriers are heralds, messengers, and partisan couriers are some kind of secular, godless angels of the revolution (ángelos is a messenger in Greek). Their essence lies in the ease and dexterity of movement, in not recognizing borders, in overcoming them, and this is exactly what allows Mažar to base his storytelling almost rhizomically, his view is everywhere, in the bourgeois houses of Banjaluka and Prijedor, in rural potleušice, in zbegs, in the infamous Black House and the "blue salon" torture camp, in Ustasha camps and in partisan bivouacs, in the forests and snow-covered Manjaca.

The two couriers know about each other, but they have never met, and in the last chapter of the novel Šuco asks, when he finds himself on Kozara, on Markušina mountain: "And where is Marko? - He is looking for you, so you can look for yourself forever! - replied the old man."

But Mazara seems as if this is not enough, so near the end of the novel he introduces the almost phantasmagoric character of the third courier, a German, who is not German by ethnicity but is called so because he is deaf, a young man of incredible strength, born in the village of Ćukovac, Kotorvaro county, as a fifteenth child, healthy, with hearing and the ability to speak, who was destroyed by his family and expelled by the village community. "The forest became his refuge and he rebelled. His relatives disowned him." A German, whose real name was Milenko, and whom Skender Kulenović also remembers, is trying to establish some new connections with the world through his courier service, he is deaf and mute angels, a messenger without a voice.

UNENGUINOUS ON THE TASK

And now let's see where is that rigid, ideologically restrained, flat socialist realism that many maliciously expect in a novel written by the hand of yesterday's partisan and published in 1950, where are those monolithic heroes carved out of stone?

The people of Skojev near Mazar sing to "International" as "Get up, you earthlings." cemetery". In the diary kept by the courier Šuco under the date of July 30, it is written: "We managed to cross seven kilometers during the night and destroy half of the equipment", and the following day: "People cannot be recognized because of the rain and mud. The guide wandered, and we followed him." A little later, writing about the attack on Skender Vakuf, in the middle of August, he describes an escort of about a hundred peasants to the unwanted, they are dressed in women's dresses, covered with scarves, their faces are grimaced, like some kind of masquerade, they are armed with sabers, knives and stakes, they make noise and arlauch, expecting robbery and, in their carnival licentiousness, who knows what else. When Slobodan Mitrov, a Spanish fighter, experiments with a black stick, he does it so clumsily that he injures his comrades around him. It is precisely this clumsiness, not being in control of events, being thrown into the cruelty of war in which one must survive, if not for oneself, then for the sake of others, who are even more insecure and powerless than themselves, that makes Mazarev's characters attractive. They seem to be suffering from redundant of life, from the awareness of community, which is actually the essence of humanity.

In this light, I must return to the initial quote of this text, the one in quotation marks. That is the unspoken thought of peasant Uncle Sima. The Ustashas killed his wife and grandson, and he, a burnt-out man with no one left, joins the partisans. In the den of war without front and background, in which everything is mixed up, thrown out of his rural environment, in constant movement, he meets different people for the first time, those who do not care what tribe they belong to, he meets them in extreme situations and, it seems to him, he actually knows that it will not be like that with the Serbs, and at the end of the novel he proves it with one drastic act.

Drago Mažar died at the end of 1991. There is a book by a Banja Luka journalist in which the almost testamentary words of Mazare are quoted: "Evil has come to your doorstep. I leave, and you see what you will do and how you will do it", but I would not give full confidence to that testimony, due to the general frivolity of the entire text. It is certain that Drago Mažar, years before his death, watched as the world, in the construction of which he and his brothers participated, was falling apart, as the Yugoslav civilization was disappearing. A year after Draga's death, in 1992, in Travnik, forever unknown persons will destroy the stone head of Josip Mažar Šoša with explosives twice, in October and December. In Banja Luka today there are streets of the Chetnik voivodes Rada Radić and Uroš Drenović, in Manjaca, in honor of the latter, the All-Serbian Assembly is held, the assembly is fostered, and it's not just in Banja Luka, it's like that in all the cities of our former country. There was an elementary school in the Vrbanja settlement in Banja Luka, it was named after Ajša Karabegović, the woman who ran the hospital in Čemernica, the school is still there today, but it has a different name. Aisha was killed by the Chetniks, in such a brutal way that I can't describe that gruesome death. How did Ajša complain to the people of Banja Luka that today they do not want to remember her name - Ajša means alive, Živka - but to celebrate her executioners? "Apart from the Serbs, there are hardly any honest people today."

Novel Two couriers it is rarely a well-equipped book. It opens with an inspiring foreword by Luja Parežanin, and closes with an afterword by Banja Luka historian Vladan Vukliš, who should be known to more zealous readers by his capital monograph. Yugoslav and Spanish Civil War. It was illustrated by Mirjana Radovanović, in the spirit of partisan linocuts, and designed by Miloš Miletić. A unique book published by the Serbian National Council from Zagreb and the Archives of the Republic of Srpska from Banja Luka. A book against the evil of time.