20
Sredoje Lazukić viewed the Occupation with the vindictive pleasure of a descendant viewing the corpse of his haughty ancestor. Yesterday’s circle of constraint, though he had not seen it then as constraint, was broken. Law and order were no more, because they were maintained by an invader with a machine gun across his chest and pale eyebrows and a frown beneath the rim of his steel helmet. Respect was no more: hunger and fear had destroyed it. Patriotism was no more: shame had made a mockery of it.
Belgrade, the great metropolis, the capital described in school textbooks, the residence of the monarch for whom every Sunday prayers were said in church, was spread out before Sredoje like a junkyard. The surviving inhabitants poked around the still-smoking ruins, retrieving an undamaged picture, a chair in one piece, a jar of jam miraculously unbroken. Worried housewives, their shoulders hunched, roamed the marketplaces, which the peasants warily avoided, buying their food instead in doorways and alleyways at three times the normal price. The taverns were empty, as were the movie houses and the station waiting rooms, because word had got around that the Germans were seizing people at such places of assembly and putting them to work clearing the streets of rubble.
People sat in their apartments, said nothing, sighed, looked out the windows, drank slivovitz from their meager reserves, and played cards without paying attention. They slept badly, cursed, ground their teeth. Hatred said they should have nothing to do with this gloomy, disrupted new life, but empty stomachs said to hell with hatred, and empty stomachs won. So the people came out, exposing themselves to police seizures and insults, and they observed the curfew, became accustomed to seeing the bodies of hanged men on Terazije Square, and breathed grateful sighs of relief when they reached home. They located the offices of the new authorities and submitted applications for identity cards and ration books. They submitted requests for work or to be given their old jobs back. They curried favor with those who had been the first to associate with the Germans and to gain their confidence. They began to learn German.
Nemanja Lazukić and his son spent several days at the apartment of his old friend Spasoje Gigić, who was a tax assessor. In that time, Lazukić said almost nothing, opening his mouth only to sigh. Then he set off to make the rounds of those of his acquaintances in Belgrade who had family in Novi Sad, to try to get a message to his wife and learn about the situation there. He came back distraught, but more animated: On its arrival in the town, the Hungarian army had shot a hundred prominent Serbs. This confirmed his fears. But he had outwitted the enemy.
In the houses where he had sought news, he met refugees like himself, men faced with the inevitability of starting a new life; they had need of his advice and even his help as a lawyer. He obtained a few papers for them, helped with two or three formalities in court, and for this received valuables from them in payment. In the evening, he discussed with Spaso and Spaso’s portly wife, Živana, who had problems with her legs, how to convert these articles into ready cash, because he wanted to relieve the couple of the burden of his and Sredoje’s keep, though for form’s sake they refused at first. Finally they established a number of contacts for him, and from then on the chain of transactions that led from legal services to money assumed a certain regularity. Then the chain shortened: watches, jewelry, and cameras could be used directly as barter, without the necessity of going to the Town Council and court offices. The lawyer became a pawnbroker.