USKUB
Uskub is a Smell on one side of which is built a prim little French town finished off with conventionally placed poplars in true Latin style; and on the other side lies a disreputable, rambling Turkish village culminating in a cone of rock upon which is the old fortress called the Grad.
The country about Uskub is a great cemetery, and on every hand rise little rounded hills bristling with gravestones like almonds in a tipsy-cake. Strange old streets there are in Uskub. One comes suddenly upon half-buried mosques with grass growing from their dilapidated domes, a refuge only for chickens; some deserted baths, and in the midst of all, its outer walls like a prison and with prison windows, the old caravanserai.
We crept to its gateway and through a crack saw visions of a romantic courtyard. The gate was locked, and we asked a little shoemaker—
"Who has the key?"
"It is now a leather tannery," he answered, and directed us to a shoemaker in another street. This was full of shoemakers, and we chased the key from shop to shop. It was like "Hunt the slipper." At last we ran it to earth in the second waistcoat of a negligent individual in a fez.
How happy the merchant of old must have felt when he entered the courtyard after a long journey! The court was big and square, with a fountain in the centre, the pillars were blue, and the arches red. Tiers upon tiers of little rooms were built around; the expensive ones had windows and the cheap ones none, and the door of each was marked by the smoke of a thousand fires which had been lit within. Underneath were cubby holes for the merchants' goods, and behind it all was a great dark stable for the animals. Once shut up in the caravanserai one was safe from robbers, revolutions, and the outside world. Lying in the doorway, as if cast there by some gigantic ogre in a fit of temper, were two immense marble vases, and two queer carved stone figures. Who made these figures? Mystery—for Turkey does not carve. The old caravanserai no longer gives protection to the harassed traveller, it only cures his boots, for it has fallen from sanctuary to shoemakers, and the leather workers of Uskub cure their hides therein. Hence, despite its beauty, we did not loiter long, for we have ever held a bad smell more powerful than a beautiful view.
Why don't towns look tragic when their bricks reek of tragedy? Why is industrial misery the only form in which the cry of the oppressed is allowed to take visible shape and to make the reputation of Realist artists? In Uskub is concentrated the whole problem of the Balkans and of Macedonia. Her brightly painted streets are filled with Serb, Bulgar, and Turk, each disliking the rule of the other, the Bulgar hating the Serb only worse than the Turk because the Serb is master. To the inquiring mind it is problematic how much of this hate is national, and how much political. Deprive these peasant populations of their jealous, land-grabbing propagandist rulers, and what rancour would remain between them? Intensive civilization, such as has been applied to these states—civilization which has swept one class to the twentieth century, while it leaves the others in its primitive simplicity—seems always to produce the worst results. Nations can only crawl to knowledge and to the possessions of riches, for politics to the simple are like "drinks" to the savage and equally deadly in effect.
Can the problem ever be resolved? Can Serbia with half her manhood wiped out stand against her jealous neighbours? The creation of a lot of small states on republican principles seems a far-fetched idea, and yet it seems the best, especially if the menace of Turkey were removed, for there is little doubt that Turkey, rearmed by the German, might make one more effort to regain her lost territory under conditions vastly different from those which ruled in the Balkan conflict. Macedonia, Albania, and what is now Turkey in Europe, each made self-governing under the shield of the Alliance—why not?—and Serbia as compensation allowed to expand towards the north into territories which are wholly Serb in nationality and in feeling.
We went through the pot market, whose orange earthenware was glowing in the sun, and came upon an old house with such a wonderful ultramarine courtyard that we went in to look. Over the door was written Old Serb Café Jansie Han. After sketching there we entered the inn for coffee, and sat at tables made of thick blocks of marble smoothed only at the top. The innkeeper said it was built in the days of the Czar Duchan. If this were true, one would say that never had the interior been whitewashed since then. But there was an air of cosiness about it, and we visited it several times after. Near by was a little church with a wonderful carved screen and a picture of Elijah going to heaven in a chariot drawn by a pink horse, with the charioteer bumping along on a separate cloud, which served as the box. We watched the sun set from one of the tipsy-cake hills, sitting on a gravestone with an old Turkish shepherd, who seemed to derive great comfort from our company.
The mountains around reflected the rosy lights of the sun in great flat masses.
The muezzin sounded from the many minarets, and twilight was on us. Uskub, romantic, dirty, unhealthy Uskub, was soon shrouded in mist; a vision of unusual beauty.
One thought of the awful winter it had passed through, when dead and dying had lain about the streets. Typhus, relapsing fever, and typhoid had gripped the town. Lady Paget's staff, while grappling with the trouble, had paid a heavy toll, as their hospital lay deep on the unhealthy part of the city. For a time the citadel was in the hands of an English unit. Before they were there it was a Serbian hospital, and the staff threw all the dirty, stained dressings over the cliff, down which they rolled to the road. The peasants used to collect these pestiferous morsels and made them into padded quilts. Little wonder that illness spread! In the summer Lady Paget's hospital withdrew to some great barracks on the hill. The paths were made of Turkish tombstones, which were always used in Uskub for road metal.
The hospital staff was saddened by the recent death of Mr. Chichester, who had, like ourselves, just returned from a tour in the western mountains, where he caught paratyphoid and only lived a few days.
One of the doctors had been in Albania, on an inoculating expedition. At Durazzo he had been received by Essad Pacha, who was delighted to have his piano played, and to watch the hammers working inside. Like Helen's babies, "he wanted to see the wheels go wound." The piano and piles of music must have been a memento of the Prince and Princess of Wied and of their unhappy attempts at being Mpret and Mpretess—or is it Mpretitza, or Mpretina? The music was still marked with her name, and was certainly not a present to Essad.
The stamp of the English was on Uskub. Prices were high. One Turk offered us a rubbishy silver thing for fifteen dinars; and Jan laughed, saying that one could see the English had been there. Without blushing the man pointed to a twin article, saying he would let that go for five dinars.
What caused us to feel that we had wandered enough? Was it the awful cinematograph show which led us through an hour and a half of melodrama without our grasping the plot, or was it that the large copper tray we bought filled us with a sense of responsibility?
At this wavering moment Lady Paget held a meeting of her staff. We lunched there, and part of the truth leaked out after the meeting.
The Bulgars really were coming in against us, and in a day or two we were to see things.
That decided the matter. We went to the prefect's office for our pass. Firstly, we were ushered into a room occupied by a man in khaki, whose accent betrayed that he hailed from the States. He was "something sanitary," and belonged to the American commission, so we tried again. This time the porter took us up to a landing, said a few words into a doorway, and left us standing. As he was wandering in our vicinity, Jo tried one of her two talismans: it is the word "Preposterous" ejaculated explosively, and is safely calculated to stagger a foreign soul. The other is a well-known dodge. If a person bothers you, look at his boots with a pained expression. He will soon take himself off—boots and all.
The talisman worked, the pass was quickly managed, and we had but to spend our time among the shops again. We resisted the seductions of an old man with fifty knives in his belt, who reminded Jo of a horrible nightmare of her infancy.
In her dream a grandfather with a basket had come peddling. Suddenly his coat, blowing aside, revealed not a body, but a busy sewing-machine in excellent working order. In her agitation, Jo fell out of bed.
We sat consuming beer outside a café decked with pink flowered bushes in green boxes. One of the antique dames who cook sausages in the shadow of the cafés brought us a plate each—funny little hard things—and we bought cakes and nougat from perambulating Peter Piemen.
The station platform was like the last scene of a pantomime. Every one we had met on our journeys rushed up and shook us by the hand.
First a Belgian doctor, from Dr. Lilias Hamilton's unit in Podgoritza. He said Mrs. G. was also in the town, and that the others were all coming shortly. Then we met a young staff officer from Uzhitze, who was noted for his bravery. The train came in and we stumbled up to it in the dark. There was a crowd of women about the steps in difficulty with heavy bags. Jan ran forward to help one. She turned round. It was a sister from Dechani. The rest turned round. It was the whole Russian mission from Dechani.
We proceeded along the corridor, and ran into two men. We mutually began to apologize.
"Hello," we said, "how did you get here?" They were two Americans we had met in Salonika.
We got our seats and went out of the train by the other door. As we passed the compartment we saw a familiar face. It was the little French courier.
"Quel pays," he said, bounding up. "Et les Bulgars, quoi?"
"Good Lord," said Jan. "Let's go out and get some fresh air."
The only people lacking to complete the scene were the Sirdar and Dr. Clemow.
A doctor who had just arrived from Salonika asked us to look after four English orderlies who, new to the country, were travelling to the Red Cross mission at Vrntze. With them were two trim, short-skirted, heavy booted, Belgian nurses, who were going to a Serbian field hospital.
The train crawled. At times it was necessary to hold one's breath to see if we were moving at all. It was always possible that the Bulgars had blown up a bridge or so. One could imagine an anxious driver, his eyes fixed on the line in front, looking for Bulgarian comitaj.
The travellers were restless. Our little French courier stood in the corridor looking fiercely at the black night; his back view eloquently expressive of his opinion of the Balkans.
Later on we all slept. A frightful braying sound awoke us.
No, not Bulgars—only the band. Same band, same station, same hour, same awful incompetence.
So the princess had nothing to do with it!
Trainloads bristling with ragged soldiers passed us—open truck-loads of them, carriage tops covered with sleeping men, some were clinging to the steps and to the buffers.
Nish station had lost its sleepy air. Every one was energetically doing everything all wrong. The four orderlies and the two Belgian sisters were minus their passports. Some one had taken them away. These were run to earth in the station-master's office, and as the party had no idea where to go, we suggested they should come with us to the rest-house.
The first person we met there was Dr. Clemow.
"Have you got the Sirdar with you?" we asked.
He answered that he had brought Paul, the young Montenegrin interpreter, with him. The English units in Montenegro had been recalled, and he had come to Nish to try to rescind the order for his unit.
The town was at its gayest. The cloud had not yet dimmed the market. Peasants poured in, knowing nothing of the Bulgars, little thinking that they would be flying, starving, dying, in a few weeks' time. A Chinese vendor of paper gauds had come into the town, and all the pretty girls were wearing his absurdities pinned on to their head kerchiefs. One girl was so fine and bejewelled that we photographed her, to the delight of her lover, who stood aside to let us have a good view.
A man was selling honey in the comb accompanied by his bees, which must have followed him for miles. They testified their displeasure at his selling their honey by stinging him and most of the buyers.
No one seemed to know when the train was leaving. Station-master, porters, all had a different tale. At last we decided to risk seven o'clock in the evening, and the four orderlies and ourselves, copper tray and all, bade farewell to the Belgian sisters, who had cut off their hair, and wandered across to the station. The train arrived two hours late and stood, ready to go out, guarded by tatterdemalions with guns.
"You can't get in yet," said one of them barring our way.
"Why?"
"Ne snam."
The freebooting instinct arose in us; we awaited our opportunity, dodged between two soldiers, and settled ourselves comfortably. Several officials looked in and said nothing; another came and forbade us to stay there, and passed on. An old woman came with a broom and cleaned up. We sat on our feet to get them out of the way, somebody squirted white disinfectant on the floor, and we were left in peace.
The train started at eleven, moved as far as a siding and stayed till four. We found the four Red Cross men had only nine shillings between them. Three had stood all the way from Salonika, as during an unfortunate moment of interest in the view their seats had been appropriated by a fat Serbian officer, his wife and daughter. The fourth, a porter from Folkestone, had settled down on the floor, saying "he wasn't going to concarn himself with no voos."
They had new uniforms, yellow mackintoshes, white kit bags, and beautiful cooking apparatus, which took to pieces and served a thousand purposes.
In the chilly morning we got out at Stalatch, just too late for the Vrntze train. Luckily the station café was open.
The four Englishmen ordered beefsteak, but were given long lean tasteless sausages. They asked for tea and were given black Turkish coffee in tiny cups half full of grounds. We asked about the trains, and were told we should catch the one next day. We argued, and extracted the promise of a luggage train, which would soon pass.
Why is it that in Serbia they always, on principle, say, "You can't," after which under pressure they own, "Somehow you can"? In Montenegro they say, "Certainly you can," after which they occasionally find that "Somehow you can't."
At last the luggage train came. We sat on the step dangling our legs and peering down at the country below us.
We were again held up at Krusevatz and bearded the officials. They promised to put on a special carriage for us when the next luggage-train should come in, some time that evening.
Nothing for it but to lunch and to kill time. We watched the mountain batteries pass on their way to the Bulgarian frontier. One or two big cannon trailed by, drawn by oxen. Many horses looked wretched and half-starved.
The Englishmen built a camp fire by the rail-road. Soon tea was brewing; we drank, and chewed walnuts, stared at by crowds of patient Serbian soldiers.
We travelled with the treasurer of the district, a charming man who revelled in stories of a mischievous boyhood spent in a Jesuit establishment. The fathers had stuck to him nobly until he had mixed red paint with the holy water, and one of the fathers, while administering the service, had suddenly beheld his whole congregation marked on the forehead with damnatory crosses like criminals of old time. That ended his school days. He introduced us to an officer, whose business it was to search for spies, a restless man who was always feeling under the seats with his feet. Perhaps it was only cramp! The four Englishmen, cheered at the thought that their long journey was nearing its end, burst into song. The Serbs stood round listening to the melodies that were so different to their own plaintive wailings, and presently asked us to translate. We don't know if the subtleties of "Didn't want to do it," or "The little grey home in the west," were very clear in the translations, as they seemed puzzled.
Arrived at Vrntze, we found no carriages to meet us. The station-master at Krusevatz had promised to telephone, but as usual had not done it. We had to break the news to our Englishmen, who, their songs over, had naturally fallen into tired depression, and had to tell them that a three-kilometre walk was before us, and one man had better stay to look after the baggage. Carriages were telephoned for, but they would be long in coming.
They were! We arrived at the village—no carriages. We agitated. The spy searcher came out of the café—to which he and the "Bad Boy's Diary" man had driven—and made people run about. They said the carriages had already gone. We denied it, so they woke up the coachman.
We took the three men to the hospital and went back to sit in the café with our new friends and met many old ones. The local chemist cheered and promised us a present of mackintosh cotton to celebrate our return. We had spent Easter morning in his shop eating purple eggs and drinking tea enlivened with brandy, while the choir came in and chanted beautiful Easter songs to us.
An hour rolled by, the café closed, our friends disappeared. We went to meet the carriages from the station; at last they arrived, with Mr. Owen half asleep amidst the kitbags.
It was far into the night when we arrived at our hospital burdened with our two bags and the copper tray.
The night nurse, a kitten, and a round woolly puppy welcomed us.
