The Great War. Aleksandar Gatalica

ruffians and snotty-nosed apprentices to find out who his rival was. He saw red when he heard it was Crno­gor­che­vich, with whom he had shared a room as a young man and paid for the experience with an empty belly because everything he earned went towards the rent.

      He placed one more ad in Politika, warning “Mr Crno­gor­che­vich and those who assist him” to withdraw their fake product from the market or else “suffer all manner of sanctions: legal, commercial and personal”, but the shoe-polish imposter wasn’t to be deterred. Moreover, as a seasoned swindler, he immediately pointed the finger at Velkovich and claimed he was the one selling the bogus Idealin and that they should have court-appointed experts examine both products to prove which was genuine. But they were in the midst of the hot summer that followed the Balkan Wars in the south, and it was also the turbulent week when the diplomatic note of the Austrian government was to be delivered by Count Giesl, the Austrian Minister at Belgrade, so initially no one paid much heed to that little dispute.

      The sworn rivals considered their next steps, and the first thing they each came up with was to find some heavies to beat up the other and wreck his ‘shameful manufactory’, but it turned out that hooligans were in short supply. They therefore decided to resolve the matter with a duel! Velkovich and Crno­gor­che­vich agreed to this on the same day as a peculiar aeroplane was seen in the sky above the city; it circled for ten minutes before disappearing back over the Danube into Austria-Hungary in the direction of Visnjica. As there was no tradition of duelling in Belgrade, the two shoemakers scarcely knew all the prepara­tions needed for a proper duel, so they largely went by the kitschy French novels which both of them read, relying on their hazy memory of duels described with the sentiment usual to that kind of pulp.

      They scoured the city for pistols and eventually both of them found a Browning (Crno­gor­che­vich a long-barrelled model, Velkovich a short one). Then they set off in search of seconds, and white shirts with lace on their chests and tight breeches à la Count of Monte Cristo, as if they were preparing to get married, not to face death. At roughly this stage, the sensation-hungry press took an interest in the matter and unshaven Belgrade busybodies turned their attention to it. Partly, at least, it was intended to distract readers from the concern so amply incited by the front pages. The shoemakers were declared to be gentlemen, great masters of their trade and rivals in a contest for an elusive woman’s hand, but hardly anyone mentioned that the duel had actually been set over shoe polish.

      The press coverage was sufficient for the Belgrade police to also take an interest. It was established that neither Velkovich nor Crno­gor­che­vich had done military service because they had been sent to the rear during the Serbian-Bulgarian War of 1885, so probably neither of them had ever fired a bullet. But the Brownings were itching to be used, and a site had to be found, “just like the fateful battle of the Ottomans and the Serbs found its Kosovo”, as one journalist put it. At first, the shoemakers wanted their ‘field of honour’ to be in Topchider Park, but the Belgrade City Council ordered that there was to be no shooting and killing in that waterlogged wood as it would endanger the peace; the king’s nearby summer residence would be steeped in sorrow if he heard of the incident.

      The fierce rivals’ seconds therefore proposed the nearby hippodrome. It was decided that the duel be held on race day, on the Feast of Saints Peter and Paul, in the week of 29 June according to the old Julian calendar, immediately after the five scheduled races had been run. And so a sizeable crowd gathered, this time less because of the horses than because of humans with the brain of a horse, if that is no insult to gentle ears.

      The starting guns were the first to fire: the first consolation race was won by the stallion Gevgelia, while White Rose triumphed in the second consolation race, Greymane crossed the line first in the derby, the jockeys’ race was won by the mare Countess and the officers’ race, to the bookmakers’ surprise, by the yearling Kireta from the same stable. It was getting on for seven in the evening by the time Djoka Velkovich and Gavra Crno­gor­che­vich strode out into the middle of the grassy, sports field, which the race track wound around. At first, everything resembled those heart-rending nineteenth-century novels. The crowd was cheerful and amused. Death, it seemed, would also be vaudevillian. But the doctors at the side had alcohol and balls of cotton ready on their stools, nonetheless. The seconds dressed the death-daring rivals in their white shirts. Both of them really had insisted on lace. The pistols were loaded with just one round and cocked. The duellers walked back to a distance of one hundred metres and then raised their arms.

      At that moment, everything ceased to look like a novel. This was probably because the bloodthirsty crowd roared ever more loudly, and the hand of each shoemaker trembled. Velkovich was unable to even hold up his outstretched left arm, while Crno­gor­che­vich’s gun in his right hand jammed and the bullet didn’t want to exit the barrel. Now it was Velkovich’s turn to fire using his short Browning, and send his adversary to meet his maker if his bullet found its mark. But he hesitated, while the clamour of those who knew they were part of a crowd and wouldn’t be to blame for anything afterwards grew and grew. When his fear-blanched forefinger finally pulled the trigger, the cartridge exploded in his hand, bursting the barrel of his pistol and badly scorching the right side of his face. Velkovich collapsed and the doctors came running. In the confusion, the seconds declared Crno­gor­che­vich the victor of the last duel in Belgrade before the Great War.

      Fake Idealin and its proprietor thus won the day, and a whole month before the war began it was sold in Belgrade as the real McCoy; but shoes in Belgrade, like those in Bosnia, still dried out and warped in the oppressive heat. This made Dr Mehmed Graho resolve to buy a new pair. He dropped in at an old cobbler’s in the market place. Once he had bought shoes in Serbian-owned shops, but they were now closed. Their smashed windows were boarded up, and Dr Graho complained that Sarajevo was increasingly becoming a battlefield and a dump — since no one collected the rubbish left behind after demonstrations. He entered the cobbler’s shop with that in mind, pointed to a pair of ordinary brown shoes and tried them on. Without an inkling that anything important would happen to him, he focused his attention on buying a pair of new shoes for himself. He was flat-footed and constantly had swollen joints, so not every pair suited him. In fact, he had great difficulty finding the right footwear, and this time, too, he gave up the idea of buying the handsome, perforated brown shoes.

      He returned home and set about shaving. First he lathered under his nose, then on his cheeks and finally under his chin. He looked at his face in the mirror, and not as much as a glimmer of the day’s events at the mortuary passed through his mind. He made the first stroke with the razor slowly and carefully so as not to cut himself. He’d be on duty in the evening and knew he mustn’t look slovenly. He arrived at the mortuary shortly after seven. Several bodies came in that night which didn’t interest him. He examined them, carried out two simple autopsies and then sat on the metal chair for a long time, waiting for new work. Nothing happened until morning, and he managed to doze a little.

      A LONG HOT SUMMER

      Hans-Dieter Huis is singing today!

      Maestro Huis is to perform at the Deutsche Oper accompanied by Germany’s best master-singers and the orchestra conducted by the great Fritz Knappertsbusch. Huis will sing the role of Don Giovanni in Mozart’s opera. All of Berlin is feverish with excitement, and every lime tree in Unter den Linden Street seems to be repeating this refrain. The tickets have long since sold out. It’s the talk of the town!

      The greatest German baritone hadn’t sung this role for more than one and a half decades. This was because he had apparently been something of a Don Juan himself in the previous century, causing one young teacher from Mainz to take poison because of him. He therefore decided not to sing the role of Don Giovanni any more during that overripe nineteenth-century, and he held that promise even longer — right up until 1914.

      Now the memory of the tender young teacher had paled, but had it entirely? For maestro Huis, the Great War began when he realized that he felt nothing inside: neither sadness, nor joy, nor any true faith in his art. He was sitting in front of the mirror and doing his make-up without anyone’s help when that realization came home to him. He put on the powdered Don Giovanni wig and looked into his already aging face, weary with the scars of many roles. He