The little restaurant at the rear of my delicatessen was famous for Ćevapčići. The best in Sarajevo. The best in Bosnia. The national dish, but be careful how you use that ‘national’ word. All the young people liked them – portions of grilled, ground meat served on a plate, with flatbread and finely chopped raw onions. At my place – everybody knew Moritz Schiller’s near the Latin Bridge over the River Miljacka – they came with kaymak: thick, creamy cheese which melts a little over the well-seasoned mix of pork and beef.
I saw him standing just outside the front entrance on that day in June all those years ago, when the archduke narrowly escaped with his life, and I recognized him immediately – Gavrilo Princip. He’d been a customer of sorts when he was still at school – that is before he was expelled for being part of a demonstration – and I hadn’t seen him for a couple of years, but he hadn’t changed much in appearance except for the adolescent moustache – small, thin as a toothpick. I had been a kind of friend to him – I listened and I took note of what he said, which must have flattered him I suppose. He was a young idealist, loud and strident in his views. I said “of sorts” because he never bought much, but he often found the money for my cevapčići. “Eat, Gavrilo,” I would say, “build yourself up!” I always made sure he had extra put on his plate.
There had been trouble. Everybody knew a bomb had exploded close to the heir apparent as the royal cars had passed through the streets, and I suppose he should have been taken back to the railway station immediately and put on the next train to Vienna, but no, he had stayed on and gone to a function at the civic hall. I guessed immediately that Gavrilo was involved. He was just outside, staring along the road by the river, at the people milling about, with his right hand pushed deep into his coat pocket. I am not sure exactly why I walked out of the shop towards him. Perhaps I felt responsible. For him? For a student who might shout at me?
He did. “Gavrilo,” I said, in the polite, gentle voice I use with customers. “Gavrilo, you should eat something.”
“What! Eat? Leave me!” he shouted. Some heads turned, but other people were shouting across the road, about Serbs, if I remember.
“Gavrilo. You would be safer inside. Sit down at a table and eat a plate of ćevapi…”
“Moritz,” he said, realizing who I was. “Moritz, I’ve got a loaded gun – ”
“ – which you are not going to wave about, I think.” I knew for certain at that moment what was in his mind. “Gavrilo, it’s dangerous for you here.”
“I am not afraid of danger. I have work to do.”
“Perhaps not today, Gavrilo. You look pale. Your eyes… you should come inside just for a little while. Come and talk to me, Gavrilo.” I pulled a little at his arm. “Listen to what they are shouting just over there. If they found out you were a Serb –“
“I would shoot if they attacked me!”
“I know you would, Gavrilo but what would that do? I pulled at him again, and this time he responded, as if he had made a sudden decision for himself. He walked quickly towards the restaurant section. I took him to a little table he might have remembered from his schoolboy visits, and nodded to the man in the kitchen. Gavrilo was shivering in a kind of rage. I sat down opposite him.
“It’s not been a good day for me, Moritz,” he told me. “I am a dead man if they catch me, but I think I can trust you, because you’ve always listened to me. I’ll be out of the city soon.”
“You are with some companions, I am guessing.”
“Friends I met in Belgrade – but we are all from Bosnia originally. Bosnia which the Austrians have taken, and they are now imposing all sorts of torments on my people. We managed to wrench free of the Turks, and then – ”
“I have heard this from you before. I understand what you are talking about.”
“Every Serb, Croat and Slovene should be an enemy of Austria. Serbia has the moral duty to help with the unification of all the South Slavs, under its leadership. Unification or Death!”
I could see what he could not. The open-top limousine with Franz Ferdinand and his wife Sophia next to him was clearly visible through the front window, stopped. I was utterly amazed, but did not let it show. And he had a gun! Yes, I really did control myself. “So am I going to eat or what?” I nodded again to the man, who brought the plate. Gavrilo seemed to calm down a little as he looked at it. He ate surprisingly slowly. It was food to savour at leisure. I watched as the archduke’s car moved away, its engine spluttering into life again.
The men in uniform were behind him as he finished his last good meal for a long while. They had the pistol out of his pocket before he knew what was happening. One of them managed to say, “Thanks for your message, Herr Schiller.”
“They won’t hang you, Gavrilo,” I said to him. “You’re not twenty yet.” I don’t think he heard me. He was trying to curse them and me, but a gloved hand was over his mouth as they dragged him off, overturning the table as they did so. So the archduke got back safely to stand up to the old timers and push for more autonomy for ethnic groups in our multicultural empire. What a mercy he wasn’t hurt. If he had been, who knows what the consequences might have been?
Richard Wilcocks
(Published in Spadina Literary Review, Toronto)