When the vintage was over, toward the end of September, I made ready to start for Cambridge. I was sorry to leave, because the merry season in Voyvodina is on when the vintage is over and the new wine has ceased fermenting. The golden crops are then all in, and the lazy pigs are fat and round, and ready to be served at wedding-feasts. In other lands it is the springtime when the young man’s fancy turns to thoughts of love; in the Serb Voyvodina it is the autumn season which has that mysterious power. It is in the autumn when marriage-bells never cease ringing, and the bagpipes with the merry songs of wedding-feasts stir up the hearts from one end of the Banat plains to the other. But my mother diverted my attention to more serious thoughts, and she assured me that she was even more happy preparing me for my journey to Cambridge than she was when, eleven years before, she was preparing me for my journey to Prague.
A few days prior to my departure the village worthies prepared a fish-supper in my honor. The Tamish fishermen cooked it in their traditional way over a wood fire burning under the open sky. The little supper-party reached the fishermen’s hut on the bank of the Tamish River just about sunset. The western sky was all aglow with the golden light of the parting day, and so was the surface of the tranquil Tamish River, made luminous by the image of the western sky. The rest of the landscape looked dark by contrast, excepting the glowing faces of the patient supper-party, who sat around the busy fires and watched the boiling kettles and the broiling pans. At some distance, and standing at the very end of a fisherman’s barge, was the dark silhouette of a tall young shepherd, who stood there lonely like some solitary dark spectre hovering over the golden surface of the Tamish River. It was just the spot for one who sought seclusion and longed for quiet meditation. No ripple in the water or in the air disturbed his dreams, if he had any, and I thought that he had. His sheep had been watered, and he had finished his frugal supper long ago, before the light of the day had retired below the distant horizon line of the Banat plains. The silence of the approaching night awakened emotions which only his tuneful flute could express, and suddenly he poured his soul into a melody which surely was not addressed to mere phantoms of the vacuous space. I felt that the quivering air was conveying through the evening silence a message of love to some maiden, who was perhaps just then spinning under some thatched roof of drowsy Idvor and thinking of him. The priest approached me to tell me that the fish was ready and that the feast would soon begin. I told him that my feast had already begun and called his attention to the heavenly melody. He said: “Oh, that’s Gabriel, the son of my neighbor Milutin. He entered the village school when you left Idvor, and he finished it long ago. He will be married on St. Michael’s day, and what you hear now is his sefdalia (song of sighs) for his future bride, who is over there in our drowsy village.” When he jokingly suggested that I might be looking forward to the enjoyment of the sweets of simple pastoral life which were in store for Gabriel, if I had not turned my back on Idvor eleven years before, I answered that perhaps it was not too late to correct the error. The priest looked astonished, and asked me whether I had crossed and recrossed the Atlantic in order to become a shepherd of Idvor. I said nothing, but I knew that Gabriel’s melody had disclosed to me another world in which the question “What is Light?” is by no means the most important question. There were other great questions of human life, the answers to which can perhaps be found in Idvor without a knowledge of Maxwell’s electrical theory.
VI
STUDIES AT THE UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE
A long-continued struggle with no let-up will wreck a feeble constitution. It produces in a strong and healthy constitution a tuning-up of continuously rising pitch under the tension of which even the strongest constitution may snap in two. My struggle had been going on for nine years when I was returning to Europe on my way to Idvor, hence my pitch was very high. Nervous tension resulting in a lack of poise was the diagnosis of my ailment, according to my English friend in Lucerne, who urged me to abandon the exploration of the beauties of the Alps and seek the solitude of my native village; otherwise, he said, not even all the guardian angels in heaven could prevent me from breaking my neck. A two months’ vacation in the soporific atmosphere of Idvor was a blessing; my pitch was lowered through several octaves, and I did not vibrate violently in response to every impulse that came along. I recognized, for instance, that the Serbs of the Voyvodina could wait a little longer for their political salvation, which I confidently expected from their adoption of the American point of view. I also recognized that to many human beings a knowledge of the modern theories of physics was not indispensable to happiness. There was not a single person in Idvor who cared two straws about these things, and yet most of these good people were happy, as, for instance, Gabriel, who was to be married on St. Michael’s day. Gabriel did not know much, I said to myself, but the little knowledge he had was very definite. He knew that he loved the girl he was about to marry, and he also knew that his life, following in the footsteps of his peasant ancestors, had a definite object in view which, as everybody in his village knew, was easily attainable. I knew more than Gabriel did, but my knowledge was not as definite as his. My aim in life was, I thought, much higher than his; but was it attainable? And, if attainable, was it worth the struggle? Two months earlier such a question could not have occurred to me even in a dream. But Gabriel’s melody and the dreamy atmosphere of Idvor suggested it.
My mother observed that a change had occurred, but she was not alarmed. I spoke less often of my future plans, and was less anxious about my departure for Cambridge. The wedding celebrations in my native Banat were already ushered in by the gay autumn season, and the beautiful kolo dancers, whirling around the merry bagpipes, engaged my interest much more than when I had come to Idvor two months before. One evening my mother recalled an incident which happened in my early boyhood days and which I remembered well. She said something like this:
“Do you remember when Bukovala’s mill with its high conical roof was rethatched?” I said, “Yes,” and she continued: “You were then a little shaver, but you certainly remember still the shining tin star which the workmen had planted upon the top of the conical roof after they had finished their work of thatching. The children of Idvor thought that it was a real star from heaven; it looked so bright when the sunlight was shining upon it. One day the tin star disappeared, and everybody wondered how anybody could have climbed up that smooth and steep roof and taken the star away. Old Lyubomir, who loved you so dearly and delighted in making sheepskin coats for you, was sure that it was you, and he suggested that special prayers of thanksgiving be read in church for your miraculous escape. Old Lyubomir was right, as you know, and I always believed that God had saved you for a mission in life much higher than that of young Gabriel, whose happy lot you seem to envy. Blessed America has taught you how to climb a roof much steeper than that of Bukovala’s mill, and on its top and all the way up to it you will find many a real star from heaven. You are not far from the top and you cannot stop nor turn back now any more than you could when you saw the peak of Titlis in the distance, but felt too fatigued to finish your climb. Gabriel’s magic flute and his mellow sefdalia, song of sighs, have turned your thoughts to things which are now in everybody’s mind: to wedding-feasts and kolo dancing, and to other diversions which fill the hearts of Idvor’s youth during this merry autumn season. You are dreaming now some of the idle dreams of youth, but when you return to Cambridge you will wake up again and see that all this was a pleasant dream only, which you saw in your restful hours in drowsy Idvor. The real things are waiting for you at Cambridge.”
I confessed my weakness and pleaded extenuating circumstances. I tried to persuade her that her tender affection and watchful ministering to what she insisted should be my pleasures and comforts during that summer had transformed a hardy youth into a soft and pampered pet. She answered: “The blacksmith softens his steel before he forges it into a chain; you are just right for the blacksmiths of Cambridge.”
When I returned to Cambridge from drowsy little Idvor things looked different from what they had on my former visit two months before. Things which, in my feverish haste, I had scarcely noticed then filled me now with awe. The ancient college buildings inspired a feeling of wonder and of veneration. I saw in them just so many monumental records of the ancient traditions of English learning. I began to understand, I thought, how it happened that a little nation on a little island in the northern Atlantic became the leader in the world’s empire of intellect, and the cradle of a great civilization. This first impression made upon me by these ancient monuments was greatly amplified as soon as I caught even the first glimpses of the daily activity of Cambridge. The forenoons appeared serious and sombre to an outside observer; everybody wore a black cap and gown and everybody did apparently the same thing, going somewhere in search of sources of learning and inspiration. The intellect of Cambridge seemed to be in full action during the forenoons, and hence the solemn seriousness of the university town during the early half of the day. But the scene changed as if by magic when the midday had passed. The black caps and gowns disappeared, and in their places white flannel trousers and gaily colored blazers and caps adorned the college youths and many college dons. The same youths who in the forenoon, like sombre monks, were making a pilgrimage to some miracle-working fountains of wisdom joined in a gay procession in the afternoon, hastening to the sparkling fountains of athletic recreation. The intellectual activity of the forenoon was succeeded by the physical activity of Cambridge in the afternoon. To a stranger like myself, who knew practically nothing of the famous university town, the change of scene between morning and afternoon was bewildering. It looked to me as if I saw a monastic-looking procession of serious and thoughtful men suddenly changed into gay groups of lively youths whose only thoughts were on the games which awaited them. By counting the different colors of blazers and caps and the coats of arms which adorned the athletic youths one could easily count the number of different colleges in the old university. These colors and coats of arms had a meaning, I thought, and I asked myself whether they did not, like the ancient college buildings, record the ancient traditions of the venerable seat of learning. They certainly did; they were a part of the symbolic language which told the story of the university’s customs and traditions. It was clear to me that while at Cambridge my work was to be done in the morning and evening, and my playing in the afternoon, in accordance with the local customs. I stayed at a hotel for several days and watched these external pictures of Cambridge life before I called on Mr. Niven of Trinity and on Mr. Oscar Browning of King’s. I wished to get some picture of the daily activities at Cambridge before I presented myself to these learned men, and I got it.