A YUGOSLAV I ONCE KNEW

New Zealand Listener, Volume 4, Issue 103, 13 June 1941, Page 10

A YUGOSLAV I ONCE KNEW

A SHORT _ STORY Written for "The Listener" by

J. GIFFORD

MALE

partly fiction. What I mean is that part of it happened and part of it didn’t, though the part which didn’t happen quite likely did. You'll see what I mean later on. A story is partly fact, It concerns a Yugoslav I once knew by the name of Wally Martinovich, who was a good friend of mine and was a hell of a fine man all round. There was no doubt about it that Wally Martinovich was the big shot in the town where I live. It was because he had never been known to take a man down in his life and also because he ran the best fish shop and restaurant in the town. It’s a funny thing about the Greeks and Yugoslavs. They have a genius for keeping restaurants. Outside their own country, that is to say. I suppose that if you ever went to Belgrade or Athens, not that it’s very likely now, you would find cheap, smelly restaurants occasionally just like you do here, because that would be only natural, wouldn’t it? Well, Wally Martinovich, as I said, was a big shot in our town, In ten years he had built up one of the nicest businesses I ever saw. Wally didn’t do much of the hard work, of course. He left that to his wife and his two daughters, who were big, square girls with red cheeks and a well-scrubbed look about them. Wally used to sit behind the counter at the front and smoke his pipe and pass the time of day as you went out. He never seemed to bother about what went on in the kitchen, but every now and then I’ve seen him stalk in and have a look round, examining the steaks to see if they had been kept away from the flies, and if the silver had been cleaned properly. God help them if the girls had been slacking on it, for Wally would fly into a-rage and clip them on the ear or bang their heads together. Perhaps that was why he served the best meals in town. * * * WALLY came out to New Zealand about 30 years ago. His family were poor peasants in a village near Zagreb, where Wally told me the soil was so poor they had to scrape and scratch to grow enough food to keep themselves alive even. He hadn’t known anything about New Zealand except that a cousin of his had come here and was making good money digging kauri gum. So Wally landed up in North Auckland, a big, stolid Yugoslav (they called them Dalmatians then, regardless of where they came from) without a’ word of English beyond Yess pleez and No He dug gum for a year or two and made a little money, and because he was a smart sort of fellow he picked up English in no time, though he always said Yess pleez and No tank. After a while he was wise enough to see that the gum was nearly worked out, and the next thing we knew, Wally was going round the country in an old car buying grass seed from the cockies, We laughed

at him and said, You’d make more money digging drains, Wally. But he smiled and said, Make plenty money — you watch. And what is more, he did make money. At the same time as he bought grass seed he would sell the cockies gumboots and cheap clothes. He picked these up at bankrupt sales in town, and naturally he made a profit both ways, on the grass seed and on the gum boots and clothes. One day he gave a lift to a welldressed old chap from the city, who turned out to be an insurance manager, and the next week Wally was selling insurance. It sounds hard to believe, but in a year’s time Wally was one of that insurance company’s crack salesmen. I can see now why he was so successful. First of all he had the Yugoslavs. There were hundreds of them in North Auckland and they stick pretty close together. And there wasn’t a farmer within a hundred miles who didn’t know Wally and trust him. Like most Yugoslavs, the idea of cheating had never occurred to him. That goes a long way, especially when you are dealing with cow-cockies, who are a suspicious lot. Perhaps I shouldn’t say suspicious, but they have been taken down so many times that their first reaction when you try to sell them anything is-This smart Alec thinks he’s dealing with just another ignorant cow-cocky. He’s not going to take me down. * * * ALLY got wealthier and wealthier. Though he was never mean, he didn’t fling his money round, and he stuck to the same old car until it was a wonder he was ever allowed to drive it. All the same, one or two of us knew he could buy and sell nine out of ten men in North Auckland. We told him he was foolish buying a restaurant, too, but again Wally slapped us on the back and laughed and said, you watch. It seemed he couldn’t go wrong. He bought a half interest in a fishing launch, and got his fish the cheapest way. And he bought a half interest in a farm and reared his own meat and made some money-on the side from cream. He was popular with nearly everybody in town except a man whom I won’t mention by name, who ran another restaurant, and we even used

to say to him, some day we'll put you up for Mayor, Wally. He would have made a good one, too. bg * * OU can imagine the surprise I got when Wally told me he was thinking of selling out and going back to Yugoslavia. It was in November of 1938, I remember, and we had all noticed that Wally seemed more worried than most of us about what was happening in Europe. He got quieter and quieter. just sitting behind the counter and smoking a pipe and frowning over the paper. He’d sit for hours puzzling out the cable news, and hardly look up when we spoke to him. It is bad business, he said to me one day. War, war — who wants war? My family, we lost half our young men against the Italians. We know what it means, just like you here. And then he told me how he had worked it out that when the war did come it would not be long before Yugoslavia was in it. Czechoslovakia, gone like that (a snap of the fingers) and after that, who knows? But he was quite sure there would be war in the Balkans once again. I and my family should be home in days like this, Wally said with a frown, At home they are poor, and I have much money-too much for myself. They are old and weak, my people, and I am still strong. If you take my advice Wally, you'll stay here, I said. It won’t be as bad as you think, and in any case we're going to put you up for Mayor next election. But he shook his head and looked more puzzled and mournful than I’d ever seen him. Then a week after that he told me he’d decided to sell out. It was no use arguing with him. He just shrugged his shoulders and said, I must go home. A month later he had got his business cleaned up, and we gave him a farewell in the Anglican hall. Two days later I went down to Auckland to see him off on the boat. * * * T 2.30 o’clock on the. afternoon of Monday, April 7, 1941, Wally Martinovich, on guard at the western approach to a military aerodrome ten miles from the village of Krizevc, had come (Continued on next page)

SHORT STORY (Continued from previous page) to the conclusion that modern warfare was a cold, thankless, even boring business. Or at any rate, his participation in it so far was. This was what he had returned from New Zealand for. " They are poor and I have much money, they are old and weak and I am still strong." And all he had done for the defence of Yugoslavia was stand on guard beside a road leading to an aerodrome, armed with a rifle and 150 rounds of ammunition. He had no uniform, He had no military status. He was a citizen soldier with a rifle which he was afraid he would not be able to handle very proficiently, and 150 rounds of ammunition. As he stamped round in the bitter wind which blew up the valley, he reflected that after all he had little stomach for this business of war. But when one occupied the position one did in one’s village, he supposed he was doing the only thing possible, Away up the valley he could hear artillery fire. He knew the Germans were there, strange, efficient soldiers on motor cycles, with small machine-guns which they fired from the waist. In an hour or two, probably, they would arrive at the aerodrome, He wished that Mate Simich, his good neighbour and fellow citizen soldier on guard duty, were a little nearer so that he might talk to him. te * * |¥ Wally Martinovich had been a big " shot in the town where he had lived in New Zealand, it was nothing to the stature he: had assumed on his return to the small village of Krizevc, near Zagreb, The village had buzzed with excitemient for days. Strong-faced, shortcropped peasants shook him by the hand and drank endless glasses of wine with him. Wrinkled old people observed to each other wisely that they had always known young Martinovich would do well for himself,

Wally’s family shone in his splendour. Wally was rich. Wally had made much money, and now Wally had come back to his own people. It was pleasant enough being a celebrity in the village of Krizevc, and for a long time the war had seemed far away. Even during the spring and.summer of 1940, it just meant bigger headlines in the papers, and new topics to discuss over one’s wine. The only direct evidence the thoughtless people of Krizevc had of the storm which was raging outside their doors was that more and more of their young men were being called up for military training and that ten miles from the village a large area of waste land was being transformed into a military aerodrome. * * F SUDDENLY Wally Martinovich heard the drumming of aeroplane motors, and shading his eyes with his hand, he saw them, nine single-motored ‘planes, flying in threes like black arrowheads against the blue sky. Soon they were over the aerodrome, a little to the east, and as he watched he saw three of them turn over lazily, the sun flashing on their wings. and come hurtling down, The racketing roar of their engines rose to a higher pitch. It was diving right on you, this front one, right on you. You stood still, shivering, waiting for it, but the roar reached a final peak and the bomber levelled out and flashed away, and then came the blast of the bomb. One after the other they came, and when nine had dived at you, nine more. Wally Martinovich, a quarter of a mile from the nearest bombs, clutched the earth with two hands. ‘ * * * T about half-past three there was a lull, but not for long. In the distance came seven, fifteen, no, it must be at least thirty big ones. Low down this time. Like passenger ‘planes, but big ones. And then — parachutes. One minute thirty big ’planes, and the next, the sky is filled with hundreds of parachutes. What should a man do? One rifle

and the sky filled with hundreds of parachutes, and each carrying a machinegun. What is a man to do? Wally Martinovich fumbled with his rifle, saw that there was a shell in the breech, licked his lips and swallowed. But the parachute troops were descending as lightly as blown thistledown, squarely on the aerodrome a quarter of a mile from where he was standing. One, however, caught by a freshening gust of wind, is going to land right on top of you. Swinging a little in his harness he’s coming straight at you. No use shifting your rifle from hand to hand awkwardly, what are you going to do about it? Hell, it is straight down at you, What should a man do, and such a big German? One must shoot, Swallow, lick your lips, take aim carefully, get him in the sights now, take two pressures, quick, before he can use his machine-gun. But at exactly the same moment as Wally Martinovich took the second pressure on the trigger of his rifle the German parachute trooper tumbled to the ground and simultaneously opened fire from his hip with a sub-machine gun. When the first of the Nazi motorcyclists arrived half an hour later they found the parachute trooper and Wally Martinovich both dead, both carelessly shrouded in the delicate silk fabric of the parachute.