To depict a monotony is a difficult and precarious art, and needs for
its justification a grand ulterior aim. Such an aim would be out of
place in these simple papers. I merely wish to make the reader see, as
well as I can, how the glory of war throws a certain sombre shadow over
the lives of some obscure seafarers――a shadow in which little save the
unregarded virtues of patience and vigilance can grow.
But even in such conditions there are gleams in the dark. Even to
phlegmatic Britishers the astonishing phantasmagoria of Balkan life
presents occasional phases of comedy and interest. As for example:
Before going aboard I decide to have another drink. At first I think of
going into Floca’s. Floca’s is the Ritz-Carlton of Salonika; but it is
not Salonika. It is merely a small replica of Walker’s at Alexandria,
the Eastern Exchange at Port Said, the Verdi at Genoa, or Florian’s
at Venice. The British officer has popularized Floca’s, and so has
made Floca, if such a person exist, rich. The uniforms of five nations
mingle at the marble-topped tables. It is the only place where you
can get tea in a city which never drinks tea. Here the nurses and the
subalterns can eat chocolate éclairs and Sally Lunns under the very
noses of brigadiers. Floca’s reeks of wealth and Occidental refinement.
I stand in the Place de la Liberté and contemplate the glittering
throng within the great doors. And I turn away. I decide against
Floca’s. I know a less reputable place where it will be quiet, and
where the beer is a penny a litre cheaper. _Allons donc._
It is round the corner, on the sea front, between the market and an
unfortunate alley where mendicants eat fish with their fingers and
quarrel over stray _lepta_. It is what is known as a _café-chantant_, a
large lofty barn of a room, with a plush balcony for customers, a small
stage, and a piano. This sort of establishment does its profitable
business at night, when I am in bed. Nevertheless, I imagine that it
can never be more amusing than when I see it, its harsh decrepitude
revealed in the clear dancing sunlight reflected from the sea, and the
gloom of its corners alive with bizarre forms.
I order my beer from a Greek gentleman who reluctantly leaves a
political conversation to attend to me. Although I am almost the only
customer, there are quite a dozen people engaged round the piano and in
front of a camera. For this is rehearsal-time for the artists who grace
the stage in the evening. A weary pianist in Greek khaki strums the air
of a song, and a rouged and jewelled lady leans over him, singing and
beating time with her hands and feet. Another young lady sits near me,
_her_ feet on the table in front of her, showing much stocking, humming
a song, and pretending to study the sheet of music she holds before
her. Her hat is on one side. So, for that matter, is her nose. Suddenly
she rises and begins to walk aimlessly among the tables, still humming
her song. I don’t think it is a very good song, to judge by the hum.
Suddenly she emits a squall, which is answered by another squall behind
the curtains of the little stage, and a bony female, in green silk
and spangles, thrusts her frizzled head and stringy neck through the
opening. They talk, and when each has elicited from the other a wild
gust of laughter, the spangled one vanishes, only to appear immediately
at the side.
My attention is now attracted to a dark corner where strangely
garbed forms are writhing in an apparently interminable embrace. The
photographer, an itinerant of the streets, fusses methodically with his
prehistoric camera. Several Jewesses, their eyes flashing on either
side of large powdered noses, sit round, drinking vermouth and gin,
and watching the dim performance with tolerant smiles. At length,
by moving several tables nearer, I can make out a couple of acrobats
engaged in tying themselves into a sort of human clove-hitch. They seem
to me to be attempting the impossible. Perhaps they are. Perhaps they
are idealists, like the brothers in the Goncourts’ novel, “Les Frères
Zemganno.” I am, in this matter, _par excellence_ a detached spectator.
One is short and thick, the other slim and athletic. I see the face of
the latter peering up from between the legs of his colleague――a thin,
distorted face, with strained, unseeing, yet strangely watchful-looking
eyes, the cheeks smeared with rivulets of perspiration, the brow damp
and pallid. Suddenly they collapse and fall apart. Another failure.
They hold their wrists, regarding each other with expressions of pain
and malevolence. The photographer continues to potter about, ignoring
their futile antics until he is given the word.
They elect to take a breathing spell, and the spangled lady assumes
her position on the carpet, keeping up all the while a torrent of
conversation with the student of song, who is now seated on a table
near by. Another figure emerges from the wings of the stage, a dreadful
travesty of a hero, a hero with bandy legs, yellow whiskers, and a
false nose of heroic dimensions. He is dressed in yellow and red. He
and the spangled lady strike a love-attitude, he registering dignity,
she hopeless passion. The photographer bestirs himself, dives under
his black cloth, and waves a mesmerizing hand back and forth, to
lend emphasis to his own muffled commands. With an abrupt gesture he
snatches the cap from the lens, beats time in the air slowly――one,
two, three――claps it on again, and the group smile foolishly at each
other.
It is amusing, yet I see a good deal of pathos in these poor strolling
players. They are doing their best. No doubt, in the evening, when the
tables are thronged, and the music strives with the babel of voices and
the clink of glass, they have their reward.
I confess, however, to a sporting interest in the acrobats who are
unable to attain the position in which they desire to be photographed.
I order a fresh beer. Several shoe-blacks, paper-boys, peanut-vendors,
and itinerant chocolate-merchants have come in, and regard me with
chastened expectancy. I am _persona non grata_ to these infernal
pests of the Levant. By instinct, when I turn to look at them, they
recognize my antipathy. Each in his turn examines my expression
with shrewd skill, and fades away into the dazzling clangour of the
street. At length our protagonists, emerging from a thicket of stacked
chairs where they have been secluded during the last scene, take
their stand once more upon the dingy carpet and look around with a
_morituri-te-salutamus_ expression. They grasp hands. The tall one
pulls sharply. The short one makes a miraculous ascent into the air.
For an instant his curved body and bent limbs are poised in unstable
equilibrium, and one might imagine him but that moment descended from
above. For me he is foreshortened. I see him as one sees the angel
who is hurling the thunderbolt in Tintoretto’s never-to-be-forgotten
masterpiece. The piano is hushed. Now he is poised on the other’s
hands, on one hand. _Enfin!_ In tense silence the photographer removes
his lens-cap; there is a quiver of the outflung hand and the tall
athlete flutters his eyelids as he looks up with awful anxiety――_pouf_!
It is finished, and we all breathe again as the short athlete comes
down with a jump. I feel very glad indeed that they have succeeded. I
like to see human beings succeed.
Over at the piano, however, I can detect nothing that resembles
success. The peripatetic student of song and the musical reservist are
not having a very happy time. She has not even a vaudeville voice. From
the manner in which the accompanist slaps the music and snarls over
his shoulder at her, I gather that she has not yet mastered the notes.
Every minute or so she turns her back on him and feigns a passionate
withdrawal. He, poor wight, with a Balkan winter in the trenches in
front of him, pays not the slightest attention to her tantrums. Then,
after a perfectly furious altercation, they find a basis of agreement.
She is to go on the stage and sing the song without words. _Bon!_ She
skips up, showing a great deal of stocking as she adjusts her garters
and pulls down her cheap little jacket. But it appears that she cannot
sing the song, even without words. She begins:
La-la, la-la la-la-h-lah!
La-la....
and stops, looking at me, of all people, with profound suspicion, as
though I had stolen the rest of her _lahs_.
A Jewess interjects a sentence, and both the accompanist and the young
lady, to my astonishment, shriek with laughter. I laugh, too. It is
infectious if bewildering. I realize how hopeless it would be for me
to try to comprehend their intricate psychology. I am a mere spectator
from an alien planet, watching for a brief instant the antics of
inexplicable shadows on a screen. I drink my beer and drift out into
the noise and dazzle. I must go aboard.
I skip across the road, dodging a trolley-car, an ambulance wagon, a
donkey with silver-plated harness and a raw red chasm on his rump, a
mad boy on a pink bicycle, and a cart drawn by two enormous oxen, their
heads bowed beneath a massive yoke. I gain the sea wall and follow
it until I reach the kiosks that flank the dirty marble steps of the
Venizelos landing. A boy in a boat immediately waves his arms and
beckons to me as if I were the one person in Salonika who could rescue
him from life-long indigence. A _lustros_, the cynical name given to
the home-grown shoe-shine boy, flings himself at my feet and endeavours
gently to lift one of them to his box.
I resist this infamous proposal. I ignore the demented youth in the
boat. I walk out on the marble jetty and look calmly about for our own
dinghy. It occasionally happens that I am in time to join the captain
as he returns. I do not think that he likes the idea very much, but he
makes no audible protest when an engineer sits beside him. However,
there is no sign of either skipper or dinghy, so I turn again to the
youth in the boat. He rows hastily to the steps, and motions me to get
in and recline on his scarlet cushions. But I am not to be cozened.
I demand a tariff. According to the guide-book he may charge me one
drachma (about twenty cents) for a trip, without luggage, to the outer
harbour. I am prepared to give two, since it is war-time and bread is
dear. We begin to haggle. It is a phase of human folly very distasteful
to an Englishman, this stupid enthronement of cunning and knavish
bluff in the forefront of all levantine transactions. The Anglo-Saxon
is torn with the conflict of disparate desires. He wishes to show his
unutterable scorn for the whole performance by flinging a triple fare
in the huckster’s face, and he has also a profound moral conviction
that he ought “on principle” to pay the exact legal demand. I have done
both. There is a certain amount of pleasure in each. I weigh their
merits as I stand on Venizelos Steps and haggle with the boatman. Thus:
* * * * *
_Boatman._――Boat! Boat! You want boat? All right.
_Fare._――How much to beef-ship?
_Boatman._――T’ree shillin’, yes. You want boat!
_Fare._――Yes, I want a boat, but only for hire to go to the beef-ship.
How much?
_Boatman._――T’ree shillin’.
_Fare._――Too much.
[_He turns away and fills his pipe with great care, and, sitting on the
marble parapet, contemplates the harbour. This is very disconcerting to
the Boatman. He ties up and steps ashore, to follow the matter up. He
approaches the Fare, who smokes stolidly._]
_Boatman._――You want boat?
_Fare._――Ah! How much to the beef-ship?
_Boatman._――How mooch? T’ree shillin’.
_Fare._――No. Two francs.
_Boatman._――Come on. T’ree francs, eh? Yaas.
_Fare_ [_stolidly_].――I will give you two francs.
_Boatman._――Yaas. All raight. ’Alf-a-crown, eh?
_Fare._――Half-a-crown is three francs. I will give you _two_.
_Boatman._――Two shillin’?
_Fare_ [_patiently_].――No. You see, it’s this way: if you take me to
the beef-ship, I will give you two francs. Do you get that right? Two!
One and one. Two.
_Boatman._――All raight. Come on.
[_He goes down the steps._]
_Fare._――You understand then: two francs. No more.
_Boatman_ [_blankly_].――No more?
_Fare_ [_blandly_].――No more. What did you think?
_Boatman._――T’ree shillin’.
_Fare_ [_getting into the boat and taking the tiller lines_].――I
shouldn’t be surprised if some Englishman killed you for saying “three
shillings,” my friend.
* * * * *
If he were not so dirty he would be a nice-looking lad of the 1917
class. He is dressed in the usual composite rags of the Greek
proletariat, part khaki, part European, part Turkish. He does not look
as if he belonged to a conquering race. Neither, I suppose, do I; but
the cases are not similar. My young boatman does not regard Janina as
I regard the capture of Quebec, for example. Goodness only knows what
he does regard, or how. He may be one of the conquered race. I ask
him with large gestures to illustrate my meaning, if he is going to
enlist, soldier――fight――gun――bang!――beat Bulgar――eh? He is puzzled, and
perseveres with his oars. I reflect that he may be an anti-Venizelist.
Presently, as we clear the inside shipping, he asks, as every Greek
boatman asks:
“When your ship go away, eh?”
And I tell him a deliberate, cold-blooded lie! We do not inform Greek
boatmen when our ships are going away.
About this time my attention is held by the appearance of the sky. It
is a sky I have learned to regard with a certain amount of interest.
As my young boatman steps his mast and hoists his sail, I observe,
high above the rolling banks and islets of cumulous vapour in the bowl
of the Gulf, a film of transparent dapple-gray clouds assembling. The
whole of the upper air is mottled with their confusing texture. A
delightful sky in peace-times, a sky veiling the sun and making high
noon agreeable. A sky to watch through the open window in springtime. A
sky to paint, with a foreground of yellow crocuses and green grass and
brown girls. A sky to look up at, from where one lies on the heather,
and dream a boy’s strange and delicate dreams.
One of the advantages of war is the deeper and more intense
interpretation one learns to give to the common phenomena. This gay,
romantic sky used to be nothing more than gay and romantic. Now I watch
it with an experienced apprehension. And as I pass a man-of-war, I
observe that the anti-aircraft crew are at drill. There is something
curiously affectionate in the aspect of an anti-aircraft crew at work.
The gunner is seated and his assistants are all grouped about him,
heads together, as though whispering to each other the most delightful
secrets. Perhaps they are.
We come leisurely alongside. Standing on the grating at the foot of the
accommodation ladder, I pay my young friend his two francs with a bonus
of twopence. For a single moment he stands, from life-long habit, in
an attitude eloquent of despair. I go up the ladder, smiling blandly
at his outflung hands and upraised indignant eyes. Then he recovers
himself, makes a gesture consigning the whole race of Englishmen to
perdition, pockets the money, and rows away. Once more I am on board,
and it is nearly two o’clock.