Naja

Naja by Edna Worthley Underwood

Pero recounts to the narrator, while they walk beside the Danube near D—, the story of his love for a peasant girl named Naja. He first saw her in the forest tending her herd while she stitched a bright-colored apron, and after a stiff, uncertain exchange he learned her name: Naja, daughter of Toscha Nedeljković. He returned to the forest daily to be with her, and she gradually grew confiding, telling him of village gossip, of her refusal to join the spinning room or the Kolo dance because of what villagers said about spinning rooms and about girls who laugh in spring and weep in fall. She spoke of her father's bitterness over the "commensuration"—the land-measuring—and revealed that the village pope had plotted with the indznir (engineer) to give the old graveyard, where her ancestors had been buried since the family came from Bosnia, to the rich estate owners, replacing it with a new graveyard in the forest among wolves and foxes. One early morning Pero came upon Naja washing and combing her hair by the brook in her father's plum garden and, overcome, embraced and kissed her without warning. She pulled away, hurt and ashamed, telling him that if he truly cared for her he would not have done that. She wept among the pinks; Pero, ashamed, did not approach her again, though he sensed a softening in her as dawn broke over the garden. His friend Geza, a landowner, interrupted the moment, and Pero left with him. He did not see Naja again before being sent away on duty for four months. Later, summoned to district court, Pero learned that in Naja's village the peasants had revolted against the land allotment: plowmen for the landowners were beaten, and the mayor and pope were seized and locked in a guardhouse. As an officer with a reputation for suppressing uprisings, Pero was ordered to lead the military response. His landlady mentioned that a peasant girl—likely Naja—had come repeatedly asking after him during his absence. Eager to see her again, he bought her a silk handkerchief and knitting yarn before riding to the village. He arrived in time to save the pope and elders from the burning guardhouse and put down scattered resistance in the fields, but the main confrontation occurred at the graveyard, where nearly the whole village had gathered—armed with sticks, a few guns, scythes, and hoes, one man beating a drum. The crowd, defiant, declared they would not yield the graveyard of their ancestors to the landowners and denounced the pope and elders as having sold them out. Pero, remembering Naja's earlier words, searched anxiously for her but did not see her and felt relief. As the peasants' anger grew and grew bolder against the soldiers, the captain pressed Pero for orders; Pero at last commanded an attack, initially having the soldiers fire into the air. The peasants, believing the soldiers as subjects of the emperor would not truly fire on them, jeered and held their ground. Fighting broke out: four soldiers and fifteen peasants fell, and the crowd fled, leaving the soldiers in possession of the graveyard. Then Naja appeared on a hilltop, calling the fleeing villagers cowards and urging them to return and defend their ancestors' graves, tearing open her shirt and daring them to shoot her. Pero recognized her voice and, in the chaos following the captain being shot and falling wounded, lost track of exactly what happened next—only that Naja's white breast was suddenly marked with blood, and she fell. He ran to her; she recognized him but could not speak. He carried her, wounded, to the village, but she died just after he laid her on her bed, her wide dead eyes fixed on him. Pero closes his account describing the guilt that has haunted him since—asking how he could have done worse, and calling himself her murderer, done for the benefit of those ill-disposed toward the peasants, invoking the saying "the voice of the people is the voice of God." The narrator relates that when, two years later, he read that Pero had been killed in the battle of Zajcar, he felt thankful. He closes by reflecting that whenever he thinks of Naja, the peasant girl, hope brightens his heart, for a nation with daughters like her need not fear the future.

By Edna Worthley Underwood · First published 1919 · Genre: Tragedy, Romance, Historical Fiction · 3,168 words

First lines

XAVER ŠANDOR-GJALSKI

For some time I had known that my companion Pero was unhappy. He was silent and self contained, but whenever I was with him for any length of time I felt that something weighed heavily upon his soul.

Genres

Tags

peasant uprising · class conflict · tragic love · forbidden love · seduction · betrayal · guilt · ancestral heritage · land dispute · military conflict · Balkans · Danube

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Naja is listed on Textopian as a short story by Edna Worthley Underwood, dated 1919 CE.

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