OFF TO MONTENEGRO
Back to Nish in the rain, and Jo was wearing a cotton frock. There may
be more dismal towns than this Nish, but I have yet to see them, and
this, although the great squares were packed with gaily coloured
peasants--some feast, we imagined--carts full of melons, melons on the
ground, melons framing the faces of the greedy--cerise green-rind moons
projecting from either cheek. The Montenegrin consul was not at home, so
off we went to the Foreign Office to give a letter to Mr. Grouitch, who
sent us to the Sanitary Department of the War Office (henceforth known
as S.D.W.O.). S.D.W.O. wouldn't move without a letter from "Sir Paget."
We got the letter from "Sir Paget" and back to the S.D.W.O., to find it
shut in our faces, and to learn that it did not reopen till four.
Then came the matter of Jo's tooth. This abscess had been nagging all
the time, it had vigorously tried to get between Jo and the scenery. We
had sought dentists in Salonika, rejecting one because his hall was too
dirty, a second because she (yes, a she) was practising on her father's
certificates, the third, a little Spaniard, had red-hot pokered the
gums thereof and only annoyed it. But we had heard there was a Russian
dentist in Nish, a very good one. The Russian dentist turned out to be a
girl, and tiny--she spoke no Serb, but Jo managed, by means of the
second cousinship of the language, to make out what she said in Russian.
[Illustration: PEASANT WOMEN IN GALA COSTUME--NISH.]
"The tooth must come out," squeaked the small dentist.
"Can't you save it?" prayed Jo; "it's the best one I've got, and the one
to which I send all the Serbian meat."
"It must come out," squeaked the Russ.
"Can't you save it?" prayed Jo.
"It must come out," reiterated the Russ.
"You're very small," said Jo, doubtfully.
This annoyed the dentist. She pushed unwilling Jo into a chair, produced
a pair of pincers, and, oh, woe! she wrenched to the north, she wrenched
to the south, she wrenched to the east, and there was the tooth, nearly
as big as the dentist herself.
"I never can eat Serbian meat again," murmured Jo as she mopped her
mouth.
After tea we returned to the S.D.W.O., and by means of our letter and
our Englishness we got in front of all the unfortunate people who had
been waiting for hours, and received our passes, etc., immediately.
Sir Ralph Paget's storekeeper wouldn't work on Sunday, so we had also
to rest, and we celebrated by staying in bed late and going for a walk
in the afternoon with an Englishman who was _en route_ for Sofia. We
came to a little village where every house was surrounded by high walls
made of wattle. The women soon crowded round, imagining Mr. B---- a
doctor. Jo pretended to translate, and gave advice for a girl with
consumption, and an old woman whose hand was stiff from typhus, and we
had to give the money for the latter's unguent. For the consumptive she
said, "Open the windows, rest, and don't spit"; but that isn't a
peasant's idea of doctoring: they want medicine or magic, one or the
other, which doesn't matter.
The train started "after eight" on Monday evening. The English boys at
the Rest house were very good to us, adding to our small stock of
necessities a "Tommy's treasure," two mackintosh capes, and some oxo
cubes. One youth said, "You won't want to travel a second time on a
Serbian luggage train"; then ruefully, "I've done it! The shunting,
phew!"
A Serbian railway station is a public meeting-place; along the platform,
but railed off from the train, is a restaurant which is one of the
favourite cafés of the town. It is such fun to the still childish
Serbian mind to sit sipping beer or wine and watch the trains run about,
and hear the whistles. We had our supper amongst the gay crowd, and
then pushed out into the darkened goods station to find our travelling
bedroom, for we were to sleep in the waggons--beds and mattresses having
been provided--and we had borrowed blankets from the Rest house.
We found our truck and climbed in. There were certainly beds enough, for
there were thirty light iron folding bedsteads piled up at one end. We
chose two, and, not satisfied with the stacking of the others, Jan
repiled them, with an eye on what our friend had said about Serbian
shunting. Even then Jo was not happy about them.
We sat on our beds, reading or staring out of our open door at the
twinkle of the station lights, the moving flares of the engines, and the
fountains of sparks which rushed from their chimneys; listening to the
chains of bumps which denoted a shunting train. We heard another chain
of bumps, which rattled rapidly towards us and suddenly--a most awful
CRASH. The candle went out, and we were flung from bed on to the floor.
Our truck hurtled down the line at about thirty miles an hour, and
suddenly struck some solid object. Another wild crash, and the whole
twenty-eight beds flung themselves upon the place where we had been, and
smashed our couches to the ground.
We have read stories of the Spanish Inquisition about rooms which grow
smaller, and at last crush the unfortunate victim to a jelly: we can
now appreciate the feeling of the unfortunate victim aforesaid. There
were piles of packing-cases at either end of the van, and for the next
hour, as we were hurtled up and down by the Serbian engine-driver, at
each crash these packing-cases crept nearer and nearer. The beds had
fallen across the door, so it was impossible to escape. When the lower
cases had reached the beds they halted, but the upper ones still crept
on towards us. In the short, wild intervals of peace Jan tried to push
the cases back and restore momentary stability. In addition to
diminishing room, we were flung about with every crash, landing on the
corner of a packing-case, on the edge of an iron bedstead, and with each
crash the light went out. We will give not one jot of advantage to your
prisoner in the Spanish Inquisition, save that we escaped whereas he did
not.
The engine-driver tired of the sport just in time to save our limbs, if
not lives, and he dragged the train out of the station into the dark.
At Krusevatch we halted for the next day. After a discussion with the
station-master, who asked us to come down first at six p.m., then at
four, then at one, and lastly in two hours, at nine a.m. we strolled up
towards the town. There was an old beggar on the road, and he was
cuddling a "goosla," or Serbian one-stringed fiddle, which sounds not
unlike a hive of bees in summer-time, and is played not with the tips of
the fingers, as a violin, but with the fat part of the first phalanx. As
soon as he heard our footsteps he began to howl, and to saw at his
miserable instrument; and as soon as he had received our contribution he
stopped suddenly. We were worth no more effort; but we admired his
frankness.
Krusevatz market-place is like the setting of a Serbian opera. The
houses are the kind of houses that occupy the back scenery of opera, and
in the middle is an abominable statue commemorating something, which is
just in the bad taste which would mar an opera setting. There was an old
man wandering about with two knapsacks, one on his back and one on his
chest, and from the orifice of each peered out innumerable ducks' heads.
We returned to the station at nine, but were told that nothing could be
done till one. So we went up to the churchyard, spread our mackintoshes,
and got a much-needed sleep. The church is very old, but isn't much to
look at, and we, being no archæologists, would sooner look at that of
Trsternick, though it is modern.
We returned to the station to unload our trucks, for at this point the
broad-gauge line ceases, and there is but a narrow-gauge into the
mountains. A band of Austrian prisoners were detailed to help us, and
they at once recognized us, and knew that we came from Vrntze. They were
in a wretched condition: their clothes were torn, they said that they
had no change of underclothes, and were swarming with vermin, nor could
they be cleaned, for they worked even on Sundays, and had no time to
wash their clothes. They begged us for soap, and asked us to send them a
change of raiment from Vrntze. We explained sadly that we were not going
back just yet, but we could oblige them with the soap, for a case had
been broken open, and the waggon was strewn with bars. We also gave some
to the engine-driver, as a bribe to shunt us gently.
We imagined that the soap had burst because of the shunting, but in our
second truck discovered that this same shunting had been strangely
selective. It had, for instance, opened a case of brandy, it had burst a
box of tinned tongue, and even opened some of the tins which were strewn
in the truck. And yet the truck had been sealed, both doors. Several
cases of biscuits, too, had been abstracted, and all this must have
happened under the very noses of the Englishmen who had supervised the
loading. Some of the prisoners said that they were starving, so we
distributed our spare crusts amongst them, and they ate them greedily
enough.
In the fields by the railway were queer pallid green plants which
puzzled us. They were like tall cabbages, and shone with a curious
ghostly intensity in the gloaming.
We dangled our feet over the side of our waggon watching the flitting
scenery. At one point we passed a train in which were other English
people, who stared amazed at us and waved their hands as we disappeared.
Dusk was down when we passed Vrntze, and we reached the gorges of Ovchar
in the dark. We thundered through tunnels and out over hanging
precipices, the river beneath us a faint band of greyish light in the
blackness of the mountains.
Uzhitze in the morning at 4.30; it was cold and wet. Jan wanted to hurry
off to the hotel, but Jo sensibly refused, and we settled down till a
decent hour.
The hotel was a huge room with a smaller yard; on the one side of the
yard were the kitchens, etc., and on the other a string of bedrooms. We
then crossed the big square to the Nachanlik's (or mayor's) office.
Outside the mayor's office we found an old friend. He had been a patient
in our hospital, and gangrene, following typhus, had so poisoned his
legs that both were amputated. He had been discharged the day before,
and had travelled up from Vrntze, some eight hours, in an open truck.
The Serbian authorities had brought him from the station and had propped
him on a wooden bench outside the mayor's office, where he had remained
all night, and where we found him. He was a charming fellow, though very
silent. Once when Jo had remarked upon this silence he had answered,
"When a man has no longer any legs it is fitting that he should be
silent."
He was waiting for his father, who lived twelve hours away in the
mountains. The old man came with a donkey, and there was a most
affecting meeting between the old father and his poor mutilated son.
Tears flowed freely on either side, for Serbs are still simple enough to
be unashamed of emotion. The donkey had an ordinary saddle, on to which
our friend was hoisted. He balanced tentatively for a moment, then shook
his head. A pack-saddle was substituted.
"It is hard," he said, "young enough, and yet like a useless bale of
goods."
Twenty hours he had endured, and yet had twelve to go--thirty-two hours
for a man without legs. This will show of what some Serbs are made.
Within the office we found a professor whom we had met before, and who
was acting as assistant mayor. We took him to the station and estimated
that thirty-two waggons would deal with our stuff.
[Illustration: SERB CONVALESCENTS AT UZHITZE.]
Jo and Jan went for a stroll, Uzhitze, especially in the back
streets, is like a Dürer etching--that one of the Prodigal Son, for
instance, all tiny, peaky-roofed houses. We took a siesta in the
afternoon, but Jan was dragged out to talk to our professor, who
explained that it was impossible for the Serbian Government to find
thirty-two ox-carts at once, so the convoy must make two journeys. He
also said that horses would be provided for us, and that we would take
two or three days to do the trip, but that the ox-waggons would be at
least seven, which was death to our romantic dream of toiling
laboriously up almost inaccessible mountains at the head of straining
ox-carts, sleeping by the roadside, brigands, and all that.
We went down to the station, unloaded the truck and checked the numbers.
A few were missing, but not so many as we had expected.
A regiment of soldiers were called up; at a word of command they pounced
upon our packing-cases and hurried them off to a storehouse. The smaller
cases were left to go on donkeys, two on either side.
The professor dined with us. He is an Anglophile, and was determined
after the war to go to England in order to discover the secret of her
greatness. He had a theory that it lay in our educational laws, which he
wanted to transplant into Serbia wholesale. Jan thought not, and
suggested that it might lie even deeper than that.
Next day was a Prazhnik, or feast day, and the great square was crowded
with peasantry in their beautiful hand-woven clothes. There were
soldiers straight back from the lines chaffing and flirting with the
pretty girls, and presently a group began to dance the "Kola" about a
man who played a pipe. It is not difficult to dance the Kola. You join
hands till a ring is formed, and then shuffle round and round. If you
have aspirations to style you fling your legs about as much as space
will allow, and we noticed how much better the men danced than the
girls, who were almost all very clumsy.
We were to be called at six, so went to bed early, and in spite of the
odours from the yard slept soundly.
[Illustration]