The Balkan Trail

by Frederick Ferdinand Moore

At the time of our arrival the bishopric was garrisoned with Turkish troops. There were probably forty curly-bearded, hook-nosed, ragged, greasy Anatolians—the same fellows, as far as one could see, who had held us up one night at Salonica—quartered in the house. They had possession of the lower floor, and their mats were spread throughout the vast hall, and a large room at one side resembled an arsenal. The Asiatics lolled about the steps and slept in the hall, and barely moved for us to pass. We picked our way among the reclining forms, climbed the steep steps, and stalked through a broad bare corridor, where our footfalls sounded like thunderclaps, to a reception-room, of which the only furniture was several small round coffee-stools. The walls were hung with Turkish rugs, of an indifferent quality, behind the usual divans, which were part of the construction of the building. The Turks, as is their way, and the other occupants of the house because the bishop was taking a siesta, walked the bare boards shoeless. It was not necessary to inform him of our arrival. A tousled head poked itself out of a door ready to say something a bishop shouldn’t, but, spying us, jerked itself back. We were required to wait fifteen minutes for his holiness to don his robes.

Then he appeared in a flutter of excitement. Pouring out unintelligible apologies, he rushed up to my fat friend, being the elder, threw his arms around him, and smacked him twice on each round cheek. I saw I was to be treated likewise—there was no hope of escape—so I bent to the ordeal, to save the bishop the trouble of mounting a stool in all his robes. After he had finished with me the loving soul stooped and gave even the little dragoman four resounding kisses.

The Metropolitan was a man of about sixty years of age, with pronounced Hellenic features. His beard and hair were almost entirely grey, but both were full and abundant still. He wore no hat, and his long hair was drawn straight back and done in a knot, like a woman’s.

The bishop was alive to opportunities, and the unexpected arrival of two newspaper correspondents was a great chance for him. It quite caused him to lose his dignity for the time being in an effort to do the cause he espoused a service. He explained the presence of the soldiers below; he had received a letter from the insurgents telling him they would kill him unless he desisted from thwarting their diabolical propaganda. Then, as a preliminary to a lengthy discourse on Bulgarian atrocities, the bishop cautioned us to believe every word he said. Indeed, we could take his word as we could that of an English gentleman, and we could publish everything he said, even if the committajis slew him for it. The old man here paused, at our request, for the interpreter to translate his remarks, and while interrupted, he called several attendants and despatched them in different directions—two to the Greek school for ‘professors,’ another to the kitchen for coffee and jelly, and still a fourth on another mission—all for our enlightenment and material benefit. Then he resumed his lecture, during the course of which the professors began to arrive, and with them came also a member of the Greek community, who, the bishop proposed, should lodge us that night. The professors joined the bishop in blaspheming the Bulgars, but our host-to-be only substantiated accounts of atrocities at the appeal of the others. Three little girls, who had to be dressed, were sent into the room. They courtesied as they entered and kissed our hands. These were the orphans of a man who had been assassinated by the committajis because he refused to contribute to their revolutionary fund. These ‘brigands’ had murdered several priests in the district, mutilated their bodies in a shocking manner, and laid them in the high-roads or before their churches as a warning to their compatriots. No punishment, said the Metropolitan, was too severe for such fiends, and, questioned by us, he declared that he informed the authorities whenever he learnt that there was a band in the district.

We asked the bishop for some information of the affair at Armensko, but this was not in the line of his discourse, and he evidently did not care to complicate the Balkan question for our uninitiated minds. The great question was the Bulgarian propaganda. He dispensed with the massacre as a ‘mistake of the Turks; they should not have done what they did,’ and returned to the insurgent question.

We took notes of the Metropolitan’s remarks, but he was dissatisfied that we should permit any to go unrecorded. Finally, as we started to leave, the old man said, with a touch of resentment in his voice, ‘I wish I knew English; I would write letters to the Times and let the world know the truth.’

We went home with the Greek to whose tender mercy the bishop had consigned us for the night. A meal was already served when we arrived at his house, and his daughter, a pretty girl about twelve years of age, attired in her newest native frock, stood ready to wait on us, trembling at the honour. But the old man drove her from the room, closed and bolted the door, and cautiously approached our dragoman. ‘Tell the Englishmen,’ he said in a whisper, ‘that the bishop is a terrible liar!’

The interpreter was an English boy, whom we had picked up at Salonica, and the peasants were not afraid to talk to him, as they would have been to another native. It was obvious that the old man had more to say, but we put him off until we had eaten. Then, again carefully ejecting his gentle offspring, he proceeded to inform us that the father of the little orphans we had seen had joined an insurgent band, and then informed the bishop of the band’s plans; and the bishop had transmitted the information to the authorities. The traitor was discovered, hence his death. When the Metropolitan was in Armensko, the Greek said, he told the people that if the Turks came they should go out and meet them and tell them they were Greeks. The Turks came, the peasants went out to meet them, but the Turks did not give them time to announce their national persuasion.

ORTHODOX PRIESTS.