SCUTARI
After a wash we went into the streets. It was the Orient, just as
Eastern as Colombo or Port Said. The little fruit and jewellers' shops
with square lanterns, the tailors sitting cross-legged in their windows,
the strange medley of costumes--even the long lean dogs looked as if
they had been kicked from the doors of a thousand mosques.
We left the shops for further explorations. Scutari has always been
described as such a beautiful town. The adjective does not seem
picturesque: yes, quaint, strange decidedly. One's second impression
after the shops is this:--
[Illustration]
Miles and miles of walls with great doors. The main streets branch out
into thousands of impasses each ending in a locked door. There are
hardly any connecting streets, for somebody's walled garden is between.
The Mahommedans hide in seclusion on one side of the town, while their
hated enemies the Christians live on the other. Each house, Turk or
Christian, has the same air of defiant privacy, the only difference
being that the Turk's windows are blocked with painted lattice. The
Mahommedan women's faces are covered with several thicknesses of
chiffon, generally black, while the Christian peasant women walk about
with an eye and a half peering from the shrouding folds of a cotton head
shawl which they hold tightly under their noses.
With difficulty we found the English consul's house, as the Albanians
speak no Serb and Montenegrins were not to be found at every street
corner. At last we found it appropriately enough in the Rue du Consulat
d'Angleterre. A gorgeous old butler resembling a wolf ushered us from
the blank walled street into a beautiful square garden filled with
flowering shrubs and creepers. Not to be outdone by the colours of the
flowers, the butler was clad in a red waistcoat, embroidered with gold,
a green cloth coat, blue baggy trousers, and a red fez with a tassel
nearly a yard long, while a connoisseur's mouth would have watered at
the sight of his antique silver watch-chain with its exquisitely worked
hanging blobs.
The interior of the house gave an impression of vast roominess. Wide
stairs, a huge upper landing like a reception-room, a panelled
drawing-room large enough to lose one's self in, ornamented by primitive
frescoes on the walls above the panels.
The English consul was an old Albanian gentleman with delightful
manners. For a long time he had been suffering from an illness which had
started from a wound in the head, received during the siege of Scutari.
After the inevitable coffee and cigarettes his son wandered out with us
and showed us the interesting parts of the town. Out of a big doorway
came two women in gorgeous clothes. They had been paying a morning call,
and bade farewell to their hostess. Doubtless they were mother and
daughter.
One was faded and beautiful; the younger was of the plump cream and
roses variety with modestly downcast eyes. Both wore enormous white lace
Mary Queen of Scots' veils, great baggy trousers made of stiff shiny
black stuff, which was gathered into hard gold embroidered pipes which
encased the ankles and upwards. These pipes were so stiff that they had
to walk with straight knees and feet far apart. Their full cavalier
coats were thickly covered with many kilometres of black braid sewn on
in curly patterns, and the girl wore at least a hundred golden coins
hung in semicircles on her chest.
They left the third woman at the door and walked back a few steps down
the road, then turned, and laying hand on breast, bowed ceremoniously,
first the mother, then the daughter, who never lifted her eyes; another
twenty steps and again the same performance; still once more, after
which they slowly waddled round the corner. Suma told us they wore the
costume of the _haute bourgeoisie_, and probably the girl had been taken
to see her future mother-in-law.
The next vision that met our eyes was the doctor in his best clothes,
frock-coat, white spats, gloves, and a minute pork-pie cap perched on
the top of his spherical countenance.
"In Scutari it is necessary that I should be _en tenue_," was his
explanation.
Suma parted with us, promising to take us to the bazaar the next day,
and we spent the afternoon sketching and avoiding a dumb idiot who tried
to amuse us by standing on his head in front of whatever object we chose
to sketch, and at intervals thrust into our hands a letter which he
thought was a money producing talisman. It said in English, "Kick this
chap if he bothers you."
There are other traces of the English soldiery here. Little children
with outstretched hands flock round, saying in coaxing tones "Garn," or
"Git away you," under the impression that they are saying "please."
At a street corner we saw a professional beggar, a shattered man of
drooping misery, his rags vieing with the colour of the road. Jo began
to sketch, but he promptly sat up, twirled his long moustaches, and from
a worm became a lion. One may be a beggar in Albania, but as long as one
has moustaches one is at least a man.
The bazaar next day filled our wildest dreams. Queerly clad peasants of
all tribes came down from the mountains bearing rugs, rubbish, white
cloths, cheese, honey, poultry, pigs, and they sat on the ground behind
their wares in the blazing heat, while all the rest of Northern Albania
came to purchase. The little shops set out their pottery, silver-ware
and brightly striped veils. Jo lifted up a woman's leather belt covered
with silver, thinking how nice it would look on a modern skirt; but she
dropped it with a crash, for the leather was a quarter of an inch thick,
and the silver equally weighty.
Veiled women bargained and chaffered with the rest, some dressed in
white with black chiffon covering their faces, and others still more
bizarre, wore flowered chiffon, one large flower perhaps covering the
area of one cheek and nose.
More fanatic in religion than their men, they objected to being
sketched, crouching to the ground and covering themselves completely
with draperies, so we had to desist.
There can be no arguments about beauty in these lands. It goes by
"volume."
Put the ladies on the scales, and in case of a tie, measure them round
the hips.
Vendors pressed gold-embroidered zouaves, antique arms and filigree
silver-ware upon us; but we ever looked elsewhere, and Jo suddenly
pounced on a handkerchief, or rather a conglomeration of bits sewn
together, each being a remnant of brilliant coloured patterned stuff.
"But that has no value," said Suma, smiling.
"Never mind, I shall wear it as a hat," said Jo; and Suma, somewhat
perplexed, lowered his dignity and bargained for it.
We next saw a brilliantly striped rug hanging on the wall behind an old
woman, red, green, yellow, black and white, just what we wanted. She
consented to take thirteen silver cronen for it, but no Montenegrin
paper. She explained she was poor. She had brought up the sheep, spun
and dyed the wool, and had woven the beautiful thing, and now she wanted
silver because outside Scutari, in which the Montenegrins forced
acceptance of their notes by corporal punishment, paper was worth
nothing. To get the silver we went into a general store and sold a
sovereign.
[Illustration: JO AND MR. SUMA IN THE SCUTARI BAZAAR.]
While we were waiting for the money-changer, two Miridite women came in.
They had short hair dyed black, white coarse linen chemises with
large sleeves, embroidered zouaves, white skirts with front and back
aprons lavishly embroidered, striped trousers, and stockings knitted on
great diagonal patterns.
One of them told Suma that their village was in possession of Essad
Pacha, that all their husbands had fled, and were still fighting in the
hills.
Suma, for a joke, asked her what she thought of Jo. Passing her eyes
over Jo's uninflated frame, she hesitated, but was urged to speak the
truth.
"I think she is forty," she remarked; and then somehow Jo was not quite
pleased.
The midday heat being overwhelming we took a cab and drove back along
two kilometres of dusty road. A veiled woman stopped the coachman,
asking him to give her tired little girl a lift. Jehu refused, through
awe of us; but we insisted on taking her, and begged the woman to come
in too. Jo held out her hands, but the woman shrank back horrified,
though obviously worn out with the heat.
"That is a pity," laughed Suma. "I hoped she would do it. It would have
been a new experience for me."
Jo confided to him her burning desire to enter a harem, but as he had no
Mahommedan friends he thought the possibility remote.
Two more bourgeois women passed. Jan photographed them, but not before
they hid their faces with umbrellas. Even the Christian men are
intensely jealous, and their women have some Turkish ideals. We spent
the afternoon sketching outside a barber's shop, coffee being brought to
us on a hanging tray with a little fire on it to keep the coffee warm.
Opposite was a shop which combined the trades of blacksmith and
fishmonger. It seemed the strangest mixture.
We dined with the Frenchman. He was a queer fellow, seeming only
interested in economies, his digestion and his old age; and he discussed
the possible places where an old man might live in comfort. Egypt, he
dismissed: too hot, and an old man does not want to travel. The Greek
islands had earthquakes. Corfu, he had heard, was depressing; while in
the Canaries there was sometimes a wind and one might catch cold. We
suggested "heaven," and he looked hurt. He had been in Scutari in
December. He told us that after dark it was impossible to walk down the
great main street, which divides Christian from Turk, without carrying a
lighted lantern to signal that you were not on nefarious intent, or you
might be shot.
[Illustration: CHRISTIAN WOMEN HIDING FROM THE PHOTOGRAPHER.]
[Illustration: SCUTARI--BAZAAR AND OLD VENETIAN FORTRESS.]
Mr. Suma came along the next day in good time and gave Jan a letter for
the Count de Salis. We bade him a most cordial farewell, assuring him
prophetically that we should revisit Scutari--little did we dream in
what circumstances,--and he said we would then see the "Maison Pigit," a
show castle which he had, in vain, urged us to visit. Paget was an
Englishman who seems to have spent ten or twelve years dreaming away
life in Scutari, and collecting ancient weapons. With the outbreak of
the South African war he disappeared. He was then heard of fighting for
the Turk against the Italian, and later for the Turk against the Balkan
alliance. He has never returned.
With Dr. Ob we drove to the quay, on the road passing an old woman
staggering along beneath the weight of a complete iron and brass
bedstead.
As we got out of our carriage we noticed a rabble of Turks hurrying
towards us. In its midst was a brougham with windows tight shut and
veiled, from which we guessed that some light of the harem was to be a
fellow passenger. The carriage halted, and whatever was within was
hustled from the farthest door and in the midst of the dense mob of men
hurried down the quay. The side of the steamer was crowded with craft,
so we passed beneath the stern to embark on the far side, to find that
the Turkish lady and her escort had passed beneath the bows for a
similar purpose. We caused a flutter, the beauty was hastily lifted on
board like a bale of goods, and we caught a glimpse of magnificent pink
brocaded trousers and jewelled shoes beneath her red orange covering.
Two women--one a Christian--followed, and when she was seated, bent over
her as a sort of screen to hide even her clothes from the gaze of the
naughty infidel.
Governor Petrovitch came down to the quay to bid us good-bye. With him
came his daughter, who was returning with us. She had nothing
interesting to say about Scutari. The Frenchman had brought with him a
cook whom he had engaged to look after his digestion.
We found comfortable seats on a long box with a bale as a back rest, and
the governor sent two chairs for the ladies. As we steamed away we
pondered on the problem of Scutari.
There are in all, say, 300,000 Serbs, a high estimate, in all
Montenegro. The population of the Sanjak and its cities, Plevlie, Ipek,
Berane, and Jakovitza, are of course largely Mussulman or Albanian, and
already the balance of people in the little mountain kingdom is
wavering. If Montenegro adds to herself Scutari, a town in which the
Serb population is practically "nil," the scales swing over heavily
against the ruling classes, and either one will see Montenegro absorb
Scutari, to be in turn absorbed by Scutari itself; or we shall see
the crimes of Austro-Hungary repeated upon a smaller scale, and
Montenegro will be some day condemned before a tribunal of Europe for
continued injustice to the people entrusted to her. The Albanians loathe
the Serb even more than they hate the Turk, and at present, in spite of
the fact that they are on their best manners, the Montenegrin police and
soldiery have the appearance of a debt collector in the house of one who
has backed a friend's bill.
[Illustration: DISEMBARKATION OF A TURKISH BRIDE.]
[Illustration: GOVERNOR PETROVITCH AND HIS DAUGHTER IN THEIR STATE
BARGE.]
An Albanian noble said to Jan, "We are quiet now: the Powers have no
time to waste upon us, and we are not going to revolt and let ourselves
be murdered without redress. But, if after the war things are not
righted, monsieur, there will be a revolution every day."
We saw a pelican, and of course some one had to try and kill it; but
luckily the criminal was an average shot only. The pelican flew off
flapping its broad white wings. The Frenchman told us that the Turkish
lady round the corner is a gipsy bride to be. A light dawned upon us.
The bed, these boxes we were sitting upon: she was taking her furniture
with her. Jan peered round at her. She was sitting on a low stool, and
the two screens were standing at duty. They had chosen the most secluded
spot in the boat, which was next to the boilers. The day itself was very
hot, and the atmosphere within the poor bride's thick coverings must
have been awful, though when nobody was looking she was allowed to raise
for a second the many thicknesses of black chiffon which shrouded her
face, and to gasp a few chestfulls of fresh air.
Dr. Ob suddenly produced a large sheep's head which he dissected with
medical knowledge. He gouged out an eye which he offered to Jo; upon her
refusing the succulent morsel he gave a sigh of relief and wolfed it
himself. One of the men on board had a fiddle, and played us across the
lake. Some one said, "Give us the Merry Widow."
He shook his head.
"Come on," said his tempter, "there's no one here. Give it us." At last,
looking at Miss Petrovitch and us, the musician timidly started the
music, for the "Merry Widow" is "straffed" in Montenegro as one of the
characters is a caricature of Prince Danilo, hence everybody plays it
with gusto in private.
We came again to Plavnitza. A huge crowd of Turks were waiting for us;
one wild befezzed ruffian had a concertina and was capering to his own
strains.
We were suddenly disturbed, the box was wrested away, the bundles also,
the bed was carried off, also a tin dish too small for a bath, too big
for a basin, and a tin watering pot--the bride's trousseau. The bride
was seized by two men, her brothers we were told, and carried up the
stairs to a waiting brougham, the trousseau was piled upon a bullock
cart, and shouting and singing and dancing the _cortège_ moved out of
sight.
At Virbazar the steamer could not come to the quay, so the authorities
ran a five-inch rounded tree trunk from the boat to the mud. Many dared
the perilous crossing, and one nearly fell into the water. Dr. Ob was
furious, and at last a plank was substituted. Then we found that the
only way off the mud was by clambering round a corner of wall on some
shaky stepping stones. Dr. Ob fumed, his little round face grew rounder,
his moustache went up and down, he threatened everybody with instant
execution, like the Red Queen in "Alice." Then he found that no motor
was awaiting us. He rushed to the telephone while we had a belated
lunch. No motors; one was out taking the Serbian officers for a
joy-ride; Prince Peter had taken the other to Antivari. Montenegro
seemed to have no more. We soothed ourselves with "American" grapes.
This grape tastes not unlike strawberries and cream, but not having the
same sentimental associations, does not come off quite as well. We heard
a motor coming. Dr. Ob ran out to intercept it. It was crammed. Then
the telephone boy brought a message that Prince Peter's motor would not
return till to-morrow.
Miss Petrovitch wrung her hands.
"We cannot stay here the night," she said.
"Are the bugs awful?" we asked.
"It's not the bugs, it's those dreadful women," she answered. "We shall
all be murdered in our beds."
Now the women appeared to us most inoffensive.
Dr. Ob was purple with rage. He stamped his foot.
"But I am a minister," he kept repeating crescendo, till he shouted to
the villagers, "But I am a minister."
It is impossible to take Montenegro seriously. Situations occur at every
corner which remind one irresistibly of "the Rose and the Ring," and we
wondered what would happen next. There were other belated passengers who
had hoped for conveyance, and the Frenchman's carriage had not turned
up. Dr. Ob at last decided to commandeer a cocked hat boat rowed by four
women with which to navigate the river to Rieka, and thence by carriage
to Cettinje if carriages came. It was six p.m., we might reach Rieka by
ten.
We rowed out through the half-sunken trees. At the end of a spit of land
was a man gnawing a piece of raw beef. We shouted to him to ask what he
was doing; and he answered that he was curing his malaria. The two women
in the bow were very pretty, one was a mere child.
There were wisps of sunset cloud in the sky, and soon night came quite
down.
As it grew dark all sense of motion disappeared. The boat shrugged
uneasily with the movement of the oars, the rowlocks made of loops of
twisted osier creaked, but one could not perceive that one was going
forwards. The hills lost their solidity, becoming mere holes in the grey
blue of the sky, a bright planet made a light smudge on the ruffled
water in which the stars could not reflect. As we crept forwards into
the river and the mountains closed in, the water became more calm, and
the stars came out one by one beneath us, while in the ripple of our
wake the image of the planet ran up continuously in strings of little
golden balls like a juggling trick.
The Frenchman turned his head and made a noise like the rowlocks. "Il
faut chanter quand même," he explained, "pour encourager les autres." Jo
then started "Frère Jacques." Jan and Dr. Ob took it up till the
Frenchman burst in with an entirely different time and key. Then one of
the oar girls began a queer little melody on four notes only, and all
the four women joined, one end of the boat answering the other. They
sang through their noses, and high up in the falsetto. By shutting one's
eyes one could imagine a great ox waggon drawn uphill by four bullocks
and one of the wheels ungreased. Yet it was not unpleasing, this queer
shrill, recurrent rhythm, the monotonous creak and splash of the oars,
the mystery of feeling one's way in the blue gloom, through reed and
water-lily beds, up this cliff-bound river, and far away the faint
twitter--also recurrent and monotonous--of some nightjar....
The night grew bitterly cold on the water. One of our passengers, a
little Russian dressmaker, had malaria and shivered with ague. Jo gave
her her cloak. The Frenchman's cook was unsuitably dressed, for she had
on but a thin chiffon blouse. We ourselves had summer clothes, and we
were all mightily glad to see the glare of Rieka in the sky.
Our luck be praised, there were two old carriages with older horses, and
another for the Frenchman. We supped moderately at a restaurant kept by
an Austrian, and still shivering scrambled into the carriages. We had no
lights, but the road was visible by the stars.
We went up and up, up the same road down which we had come three days
before. Below one could see strange planes of different darknesses, but
not any shape, and soon one was too aware of physical discomfort to
notice the night. Besides, one had had enough of night. Miss Petrovitch
told the boy to hurry up the horses; he beat them; she then rebuked him
for beating them. After a while the boy grew tired of her contradictory
orders, and lying down on the box fell fast asleep. The poor old horses
plodded along. To right and left were immense precipices, but nobody
seemed to care.
We reached Cettinje about two a.m., found the hotel open, and a room
ready for us, and in spite of our frozen limbs were soon asleep.
[Illustration]