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:—
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.
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.
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.
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.
