The Serbs Chose War, Ruth Mitchel 54. LEKA SAVES HER MAN NOT ALL THE MEMORIES of those terrible two months are tragic. There were the cases where sheer women's wit brought high success. There was, for instance, Leka, an ordinary little woman in a gray dress and with tousled hair, looking in no way superheroic or brilliant. Hear how she saved the lives of her husband, her four children, and herself. She and her husband were brought in, accused of being concerned in the killing of two German soldiers. The family was to die en masse and immediately. The husband was in the condemned cellar, incommunicado. He had done it. He was a Chetnik, which the Germans, of course, did not know or they would not have taken him even as far as the prison. Leka and I went to the toilet (the only place where one might whisper a few words alone) and held a consultation. There was not a sign of faltering or even of fear in Leka, though she was sure she would be tortured to betray accomplices. She had a scheme, a story. It had to do with a jealous aunt who wished her ill and had spread lies about her. As we went over it and tested it for catches, she looked at me, as I knew she would at her German judges, with such wide-eyed, limpid simplicity and honesty, such gentle worry proper to the situation, as to be irresistibly convincing. We grasped each other's hands and, hardly above a whisper, there in the lavatory, we sang the Chetnik song from the beginning to the end. We kissed as sisters kiss. The examination came. She returned neither elated nor depressed, just vividly alert, grimly concentrated on success. She had brought it off. It had worked. But there was more to do. The story must be conveyed to her husband. I had a tiny stub of pencil (which I held in my mouth when the ever-recurring wild pencil hunts were on), and we wrote the story on a scrap of wrapping paper I stole from the guardroom. I had become an expert thief. At exercise that afternoon we arranged for one of the girls to grow faint just by the air hole leading down to the cellar, the cell containing her husband. This trick was infallible as the guards, helpless in women's collapse, let us flutter round the patient. The plan was perfectly carried out. Quick as lightning she threw the note down the hole. Her story and manner had been so convincing, her assertions of loyalty to "dear Germany" so powerful, that he too was brought up for examination. Their stories exactly tallied, though "they could, of course, have had no communication"-and they both were released. It was, I believe, the only case in which a man once in the cellar got away alive. (One woman, myself, was there, too, and got out alive.) Leka went out just as she came in, neither elated nor frightened, just grimly determined. There was the case of my dear Katitsa, in many ways the grandest woman in the prison. How I should like to give her whole name for the roll of honor! She was a Serbian Jewess of fine stock, so simply, sincerely benevolent, so helpful to all, so trustworthy that she was the most loved person there. Even the guards treated her with grudging respect. While the Germans were, for special reasons, making a determined hunt for her parents, she got an oxcart, dressed as a peasant woman, and, whip in hand, walked right into Belgrade beside the slowly plodding beasts. She put the old couple in the bottom of the cart, and placed straw and household utensils on top of them. Then slowly, step by interminable step, she passed the soldiers, often challenged, always laughing and somehow escaping search-away to hide her old parents safely in the south. Later she was taken, and had already been in prison for months. Her health was sinking rapidly. If she would tell where her very wealthy father was she would be freed. There was, of course, not the slightest chance of her telling. It was Katitsa who got the first communication for me from outside. At that time the prisoners were allowed to have food sent in from home, the only sustenance provided by the management being thin bean soup twice a day and some raw unleavened stone-hard corn bread. As every precaution had been taken that the American consul should not know that I was there, for the first few weeks I received nothing. The result, as I have already mentioned, was that I ate more than anyone else, as every woman insisted on sharing her food with me and to refuse caused hurt feelings. The food got scarcer and scarcer. Women with influence were bought out or otherwise removed, and soon only six women of the twenty in our cell were receiving food. But Katitsa always received hers. I began to notice that she only pretended to eat, and gave almost everything away. Our tricks for getting messages in and out were innumerable. For one of us to be caught meant fearful scenes, and food for all was stopped for at least a day. It was a ticklish business. Yet hardly a day passed without some word getting in or out. After I had been there for more than three weeks without a sign that anyone outside knew I was alive, Katitsa, carefully wiping off the first layer of soot from a cooking pan, found this inscription written on the second layer: "Is it true Ruth Mitchell there? We heard she was dead. Answer immediately-urgent." Dear Katitsa was almost as excited and thrilled as I. Eagerly we wrote: "R.M. alive and well, hopes to fight again for Serbia. Who asks?" And we patted back the soot. Next day the message was very blurred. We made it out to be: "C. and all thank God." But who C. was, whether Chetniks, Mrs. C., Yanko, or several others, I could not guess. I shall know someday, I hope. Soon afterwards, by a method which, I am sorry to say, I cannot disclose, because it might bring great misfortune on a family, the American consul, Mr. Rankin, heard I was in the prison. A few days later another man, not knowing that the consul had already been informed, also succeeded in notifying him. This man was Iliya Gregovich, a Montenegrin from Petrovats and an American citizen. His friendship for me brought him great misfortune, which came about in this way: On the third day of my court-martial, as I was being hurried back to prison, a plain-clothes detective close at each shoulder, a tall, dark man came toward me, lifted his hat and said, in English: "How do you do, Miss Mitchell. How are you?" In my year in Montenegro I had spoken to probably every man in the country who spoke English. This was evidently one of them. I frowned, trying to signal to him to get away. But he insisted, still in English: "Don't you remember me? I met you in Budva." Instantly one of the detectives turned, seized him by the shoulder, and shoved him behind me into the prison. He was there three weeks while they questioned him constantly about me. He was clever enough to know nothing at all except "what everyone knows, that she is an American." He behaved with great dignity in the prison, but my feelings can be imagined when I saw him week after week, working in the yard. How grateful I was that he showed no resentment! On the contrary, he kept an eye on me, helping me in any way he could. He got cigarettes for me, hiding them behind the big garbage cans, which was the only place where, crouching low, we could sometimes steal a smoke out of sight of the guards. I in turn gladly went without food to leave it where he could find it. I dropped the last of my money beside him where he sat breaking stones. At last, since he was an American citizen with nothing against him (America was not yet in the war), they had to release him. Sternly they warned him, however, that if the consul heard I was there, he and any other person released meanwhile from the prison would be rearrested and transported to Germany. He did notify Mr. Rankin and then, in company with the consul himself, started for Lisbon. (The consul gone, my food, which he had sent in generous measure, stopped again.) At Frankfurt, Iliya was seized, and he went through twenty-one prisons before he succeeded in escaping into Switzerland. When I arrived on the transport train many months later in Lisbon, what was my delight to see him waiting on the platform for me! That was a joyous reunion. I must add another word of gratitude. Throughout his terrible vicissitudes Iliya had managed to save $54 in the heel of his shoe. In Lisbon, thinking I was penniless, he sent me by messenger-he was too delicate to face me-$30 of it! I shall not forget this thoughtfulness. Previous Chapter | Content | Next Chapter The Serbs Chose War, Ruth Mitchel