Next day, when I took Cuthbert to the station for news, no reply had come. Nor was there any message on the third morning. Ten o'clock of the morning became known as "commandant time," so that on the fourth day the guards took the visit as a matter of course, Cuthbert showing his watch by way of reminder. The bimbashi, worried by our importunities, took to dodging from his office when he saw us coming; but always we waited until he returned, and talked insistently until he promised to send yet another telegram. He showed surface politeness, and never uttered threats; which in any case would have been more or less futile, for the fighting force of the village comprised but one police lieutenant and four gendarmes.
We had arrived hungry, and we continued hungry. The law of supply and demand, as applied to eggs, together with the local brand of profiteer, was the cause. On the first morning a bearded peasant visited the hut with a basket of hard-boiled eggs, which he sold at the current rate of two and a half piastres each. Next day, when it became known in the village that the prisoners were buying eggs, the rate was four piastres each. Afterward it leaped to five, and next to seven and a half piastres. Finally, the supply of eggs all but gave out. It was then possible to buy only one apiece every morning, whereat we became more hungry than ever, for eggs were our mainstay.
The commandant had given reluctant permission for each prisoner to buy one small loaf of bread a day at the military rate of two and a half piastres a loaf. For the rest, we managed to supplement the bread and eggs with an occasional supply of figs or raisins bought in the village bazaar as I returned from my importuning of the military commandant.
These fruits were shown in open baskets on crazy little stalls, side by side with stale bread, bad sausages and meat, nuts, cotton materials, primitive haberdashery, rock-salt, rank butter, dusty milk, and the thousand and one other articles that jostle each other in the village bazaars of Anatolia. It being summer, myriads of flies buzzed around and settled on the dried fruits. The figs and raisins, therefore, could not be eaten unless washed carefully or boiled. Fortunately we possessed a cooking pot, given by the Tommies at Bosanti; and a ruffian who lived below us sold charcoal at the rate of ten piastres for a quantity just sufficient to burn for half an hour.
At its best, the crowded room was so stuffy as to be oppressive. When charcoal fumes were added to the summer closeness the atmosphere became unbearable. Another drawback that prevented much cooking was the scarcity of water. We were given just enough to drink; but any surplus, for washing or boiling purposes, had to be bought. Usually one bottle of water sufficed for the morning toilet of two of us. Cuthbert and Alfonso remained unworried by the shortage. They never washed.
Nerve-edging irritation will ever link itself to an enforced companionship from which there is no escape, however temporary; and when repulsive surroundings are the milieu for such propinquity the irritation is akin to madness. The reek, the vermin, the heat, the hunger, the confined space, the dirt, and the depression combined to stab our sensibilities, so that by the third day we almost hated each other, individually and collectively.
We could obtain no brush, no soap, no broom. The little den grew dirtier and dirtier, the floor became more and more littered, the guards were smellier and smellier. Cramped and intensely ennuied, we paced in criss-cross fashion around the twelve square yards of floor-space, getting in each other's way and brooding bitterly. Of outdoor exercise there was only the daily visit to the commandant; and but one other man was allowed to walk to the station with me each morning.
A word, a suggestion, or a nudge was enough to provoke loud disputes. Every now and then heated words only stopped short of blows because all realized that the anger had been sired, not by bad feeling, but by disgusting circumstances, and that a fight would be utterly futile. Worst of all, as most prisoners in Turkey must have realized, was the galling subjection to men such as Cuthbert and Alfonso—semi-civilized, altogether unintelligent, and regulating their actions by the crudest of instincts and axioms.
Only one of us, old W., remained reasonable; and he had the greatest cause for irritation. His wounded arm, which had not received proper treatment in the Turkish hospital at Nazareth, became badly inflamed as a result of the terrible conditions. Yet he never once complained, nor did he take part in the constant quarrels. Looking back, I can realize that his fine example was the sole redeeming feature of those miserable days in the mud village.
On one point only did we all agree. "Wish some of the pretty boys who sport their staff tabs in Cairo could be here," said H., and there followed a chorus of hearty assent.