Decency is indecency’s conspiracy of silence.
—George Bernard Shaw
Johan held up his hand to Ernest in apology. “Please tell me if I am telling you facts of which you are aware. I am no history teacher. Did you know that if one kills a man, one is an assassin; if one kills millions, one is a conqueror; but if one kills everybody, one is a god.”5
What he told of then was the terrain of myth and legend. And of hard and menacing men.
Narodna Odbrana (National Defense) recruited and trained young men to fight for its anti-imperialist cause. Indoctrination was minimal, as hatred for the imperialists in Vienna was tangible from a young age. It was as innate as it had been once inert, and saboteurs and agents provocateurs were rife throughout the territories as well as inside Austria itself. The mischief of this fifth column increased with the passing weeks and months. They—Narodna Odbrana—had become so effective that the government in Vienna recognized their work, openly asking diplomatic Belgrade to curb the terrorists’ actions. Belgrade’s old ally of Moscow was in no position to back up the Serbs at this point, given the Russians’ recent exertions against the Japanese. So Serbia relented to Vienna, but with reluctance. Whether the Serbs continued to encourage more covert operations is difficult to determine. That a blind eye was turned is probably closer to the truth.
Johan was keen to point out to Ernest that the insurgents were not all of the same level of experience.
“Yes, there was a conspiracy,” he said. “But you know that the literal translation of conspiracy is ‘to breathe together.’ These café conspirateurs, these ragtag, epistatic assassins, could hardly breathe individually, never mind together. This is why they were chosen. Each had developed tuberculosis, and so could be recognized from forty yards by a chest-rattling bloody cough. Each carried Cabernet-stained handkerchiefs. The ugly splutter of infection means that the illness’s victims can identify one of their own in a bar or on a tram. The cough is that of a peeved sea lion. It is one of nature’s sicker versions of the wood pigeon chatting on a sweet April morning to his mate, or a whale’s haunting moans from a thousand miles. The grubby body would jackknife; the burgundy cloth would be produced almost immediately, invariably from an old gray jacket, shredded down to a hessian sack. The hand would cover the mouth in a spasm of the whole torso and chest. Veins would protrude on the neck, the eyes crossing and watering. A blob of spittle dropped into the manky rag, which was then checked for its blood content. The victim knew already that there was blood there. It was one more ratchet to his last day, his last breath, yet he would always open the cloth to check its contents, in the infinitely optimistic hope that it might be clear, just a mouthful of gob. As if it were just a summer head cold he remembered having had as a six-year-old. He would pray for a palmful of yellow dribble with snotty green islands. Yet he knew what to expect. Death, or more precisely Mycobacterium tuberculosis, now known as bacillus tuberculosis. A little parasitic beggar which attacks the mucous membranes of the lungs. It forms nodules called tubercles, causing rampant bleeding. It was angry enough in its own distant youth to occur elsewhere on the geography of the body, including the balls and even the unsuspecting hip. The fungus then became saprophytic. This meant that it digested the organic matter which it had destroyed before moving on to the next course. A cancer mutates and grows as a tumor; TB simply eats the cells away.”
Johan broke off for a minute. Ernest thought better of speaking.
“I knew little of it at the time,” the older man continued. “I was busy having fun. If I had read newspapers like I read books, I would have known. If anything, some militant Serbs were perceived dangerous individuals and thugs in alleys and bars with razors and broad fists.”
With the potency of one’s strength reduced by the entry requirements of either youth or tuberculosis, one’s level of proficiency is likely to be far lower. One such boy had been charged with the assassination of the Hapsburg military chief, General Potiorek. The murder weapon of choice was a poisoned dagger. The venue was Vienna. He had botched that, even leaving his tool back in Belgrade.
And so, a dedicated faction of the National Defense was founded: Ujedinjenje ili Smrt (literally Union or Death) was born.
For the fear of underusing vowels, may we from now on refer to Ujedinjenje ili Smrt under their usual anglicized name of the Black Hand?
This was their seal:
On that same founding night, a sick young man called Gavrilo Princip was inducted while spluttering vile germs from his lungs. He had a lazy eye and he wore a hard-pencil mustache. His would be a special task.
The Black Hand was a dark and multiplying cell of nefarious intentions, and its appetite for destruction was growing.