Robert Kroner based his thinking on the broadcasts of Radio London, which called upon Europe to put up a resolute, long-term resistance against the barbaric Germans in the expectation of an Anglo-Saxon invasion of the Continent that would bring salvation and a new order, an order humanitarian, of course, and democratic. Hitler, infuriated by such beneficence, in his hoarse speeches called this appeal and promise the paranoid delusion of the Jews and plutocrats. Sep Lehnart, too, by his tales of massacres, which later became a reality in Novi Sad, gave the lie to the Allied chances of success, and Gerhard found both arguments convincing. Unlike the female members of the family, who were uninformed, Gerhard had access to his father’s room even during those sacred hours when the radio, its volume turned down, followed the signal of three short dots and single dash by flooding the soft nighttime silence with a river of encouragement in the name of justice and people’s rights. Rarely was he patient enough to hear out these assurances of his survival. “Hah!” He would laugh drily, curtly. “Nonsense!” He scoffed at any hopeful news and made remarks as the announcers, commentators, writers, or politicians spoke in their English-contaminated Serbian or German. This irritated his father, who was hunched over in front of the darkened circle on the speaker. “Shhh!” he would say, waving his bony hand. “I can’t hear!” At which Gerhard would shrug disdainfully and wander around the room or the adjacent dining room, making sure that his shoes squeaked as loudly as possible. Nevertheless, he always remained within earshot of the broadcast, and his father always let him resume his uncompromising opposition after that nervous pacing. It was as if the two hoped that suddenly an item of news might provoke the same reaction from both. They went on listening, until Gerhard once again broke in, loudly deriding as naïve some forecast of a quick and favorable conclusion to the war, or fumed because of the exaggerated patriotism that London asked of its supporters on the Continent.
“We should be confident, eh?” he would repeat, taking malicious pleasure in the well-worn phrases, accurately mimicking the speaker’s accent. “We should close ranks? Why don’t you come over here for a while to show us how that’s done? Don’t be afraid. You’ll go on getting your pay; it’ll accumulate in English pounds, and if you get out of this alive, you can collect it all from the cashier. But bring a spare pair of underpants with you; you may fill the first.” Kroner’s narrow face twisted at such boorishness and his “Shhh, I can’t hear” became more desperate and more forlorn. Then, when the broadcast was over and the silence of the summer night could again return to the room, they grew calmer, but only to express their opposing views more clearly. “Still, things are improving,” Kroner would sometimes say. “They’re no longer advancing on Moscow, and in the Caucasus they’re even losing positions.” “Losing!” retorted Gerhard. “It’s all lies! Why should they suddenly start losing positions, when we know what the balance of the forces is?” “It’s not what you think,” Kroner returned. “Just a few days ago there were deliveries of American military supplies to the Russians; millions of tons are getting through, convoy after convoy.” “But the Germans have all of Europe supplying them.” “That’s propaganda. What Europe? And even so, what is Europe compared with the combined forces of England and America?” “But your America isn’t in any hurry to get into the war.” “To all intents and purposes, America is in the war. A lot of the planes defending England are American-made. The tanks in Russia, too, are about a third American. And America hasn’t even started its military production yet.” “What about their men? Where are they?” “This war won’t be decided by men, but by machines, don’t you see?” “No war will ever be decided by anything but men. That’s where you’re deceiving yourself. You sit at home listening to Radio London and imagine that machines made in America will settle the war. But the Germans go on killing. They kill tens of thousands every day. When you count up how many they’ll kill in a year, you can see that they’ll wipe out everyone who resists.” “No. Killing only gives rise to new resistance.” “What resistance? From people like you?” “I’m a civilian. I have no weapons. And there’s no front where I could go and fight.” “If everybody took up a club and hit a German over the head, we’d be rid of them by now.” “Don’t be silly. A club. You talk as if we were in the Stone Age. This is the age of technology. Death spews from tanks, from bombers.” “You won’t frighten the Germans one bit with that kind of talk.” “And you, with your criticisms, one would think you’re on their side!” “I can detach myself from my personal fate. Yes, I’m impressed by the efficient way they fight, and all the fine talk of your experts on the radio disgusts me.” “For God’s sake, Gerhard, one has to prepare for a war.” “One has to win a war, Father.”
It was a running argument; they stopped only when they became weary, or when it was time for the next broadcast from London, in another of the languages Kroner could understand. He had memorized the schedule, and while he argued with Gerhard, he would cast furtive glances at the alarm clock, which was placed alongside the radio on a chest and set back a little, so that only he, in his armchair near the receiver, could see it. Suddenly his bony hand would reach for the knob, click it on, and behind the dark patch of the speaker, as if a wild beast were awakening, the silence would become heavy, expectant, then be shattered by the crackling, buzzing, and whining of distant static, which culminated in the familiar roll of that nighttime drum. For Gerhard, who was absorbed in the conversation, pacing from one end of the room to the other, these preparations often passed unnoticed, and he would stop dead in his tracks as if stung. “Again?” But his father would already be bent over the set and waving his hand above his head—“Shhh!” Gerhard would turn his back on him then in contempt and leave, slamming the door behind him, so that it reverberated throughout the house.
Milinko would never have acted with such rudeness, and not only because this was not his house. Here, as everywhere, he was acquiring knowledge, and therefore had to be attentive, watchful. He would take Vera home from their walk, shyly kiss her good night in the twilight at the gate, his arm around her narrow waist, pressing her body against his, and afterward linger there alone, his eyes straying to the door that led down a long hallway to the living quarters. In this loitering there was, in part, a young man’s desire to steal secretly into a certain room with a white virginal bed, where, hidden from all eyes, he would be able to hold that warm, supple body truly close. But he was intimidated, felt too great a respect for the people and circumstances that stood between him and his beloved. Only here, at this gate, through which carts drawn by heavy, sweating horses thundered during the day, and handcarts filled with crates were pulled by Žarko the porter, this gate turned by the evening stillness into an antechamber to such lofty pleasures as reading, listening to the radio, playing the piano, and quiet conversation — it was only here that he understood how much his own home, squeezed in a communal courtyard ruled by housewives, was unenlightened, exposed, disorderly. The realization made him value even more the one he had come to visit. He would never forget the moment when, at the very start of his friendship with Vera, he came to call for her and, after ringing the doorbell, was invited in by a middle-aged, ample-bosomed maid in a starched white apron. Room after room opened before him, spacious rooms, full of furniture, but also of objects of no particular use — vases, pictures, bowls. In one room off to the side sat a thin, angular, dark-skinned man with a book in front of him, reading. It was a scene full of calm and equilibrium, dignity, reason, like a sculpture, a work of noble beauty among the other ornaments of the house. From then on, when he came to see Vera, Milinko came also for that scene: the serenity acquired by knowledge. Even the Occupation, which thrust the Kroner family into a dangerous and humiliating position, could not ruffle that serenity; on the contrary, the danger and the humiliation only enhanced the special quality of this house. The Kroner house, besieged by the times, in extremity, was a kind of anvil of history.