MOUNTAIN ALBANIANS IN MARKET, PODGORITZA.MOUNTAIN ALBANIANS IN MARKET, PODGORITZA.
I have trusted the Albanian somewhat recklessly, I have been told; I have given him plenty of chances of robbing me, and several of making away with me altogether; but he has always treated me with a fine courtesy, and has never taken a mean advantage. He is a brave man, and he is an intelligent man. When he gets the chance, he learns quickly and picks up foreign languages speedily. And when he succeeds in leaving his native land and escaping the awful blight of the Ottoman, he often shows great business capacity, and a surprising power of adapting himself to circumstances.
The ordinary Christian Albanian of the town is very different from the up-country savage, and is a pathetically childish person. He tries very hard to be civilised, but his ideas on the subject are vague. How far he is from understanding the prejudices of the twentieth century the following conversation will show. It is one of many similar. I was walking up the steep, cobble-stony bazaar-street of Antivari late one afternoon in the summer of 1902. The shop owners stood at their doors to see me pass. Presently a man came forward, a tall, fair, grey-eyed fellow. He spoke very politely in a mishmash of Servian and Italian. "I have never seen a foreign woman before," he said, "will you come into my shop and talk to me?" I followed him into his shop. As I was unmistakably from the West, he gave me a tiny box to sit on, and then squatted neatly on the ground himself, called for coffee, and started conversation. He was amazed at my nationality, and showed me some cotton labelled "Best hard yarn" among his goods. Otherwise "England" conveyed no idea to him. England, having no designs on Albania, does not count much as a Power with the ordinary Albanian, but is merely something distant and harmless that does not matter, whereas an eye is kept on Austria and on Italy, and Russia is regarded with extreme suspicion.
"And you have come all this journey to see us!" he cried. "It is wonderful! I am a Christian Albanian. I am Catholic." Here he crossed himself vigorously to show that he really was, for in these lands your position in this world and the next depends mainly upon how this is done. "Ah, but you should see Skodra!" I told him I knew it well, and he beamed with pleasure. We discussed its charms and the unsurpassed magnificence of its shops. "And it is in the hands of those devils the Turks. Ah, the devils! I came here eighteen years ago with my father, because this is a free land. Here all is safe, but it is a poor country. When I was a boy I was bad. I went to the school of the Frati, but I would not learn. Now I know nothing, and I speak Italian, oh, so badly!" He rocked himself sadly to and fro with his big account-book on his knees. Son of the race with the worst reputation in Europe and born in one of Europe's worst governed corners, he lamented (as which of us has not done?) the lost chances of his youth and his lack of book-learning. To comfort him, I told him his people in Skodra had been very good to me. He cheered up. "Why do you come here?" he asked. "Why do you not travel in my country?" I said that I was told that it was a bad time and the country very dangerous. He considered the question earnestly, and looked me all over. Then he said seriously, "No; my people are very good to women, they will not hurt you. But there is no government, so the bad people do what they like. There are some bad people; Turks, all Turks. But there is no fear. Truly they will take all your money, but they will not hurt you. That," he said simply, "would not be honest. My people are all honest. You must not shoot a woman, for she cannot shoot you. Now with a man it is different; you must shoot him, or he will shoot you first. Also you cannot take his money if you do not shoot him first." To all of which points I agreed.
"Truly it is a misfortune," he continued, "that there is no government. If we had only a king!" "Do you think you will have one?" I asked. He chuckled mysteriously. The air just then was thick with rumours of a Castriot descendant of the Skender Beg family who at that very moment was reported to be awaiting an opportunity for landing in Albania. Reports of his fabulous wealth were arousing much excitement in the breasts of his prospective subjects, but I fancy a rumour of their custom of "shooting first" must have reached his ears; for, so far, this middle-aged gentleman, whose life has been passed in Italian palazzos, has shown no hurry to take up his inheritance. My friend's ideas were vague and formless, and he could get no farther than "a king for Albania and death to those devils the Turks." After a little more talk, I got up to say good-bye. But he insisted upon my having more coffee first. "It is true that I am poor," he said, "but I am not too poor to give two cups of coffee to one who has come so far to see us. Some day in your country you will see some poor devil from Skodra, and you will be good to him because his people are your friends." Nothing could exceed the grace with which he proffered hospitality to a stranger guest, but he saw no objection to robbery with murder if committed according to rule; and he prided himself on his Christianity. He shook hands with me very heartily. "A pleasant journey," he said. "Remember me when you meet a Skodra-Albanian in London. I shall never see you again—never, never." The sun was setting rather dismally, and with "nikad, nikad" (never) ringing in my ears and the gaunt ruins of the dead city before me, I felt quite as depressed as the Albanian. Truly the Albanian outlook is not a cheerful one.
In the larger towns, where Turkish troops are quartered and there are plenty of Mohammedan officials, the Christians are in the minority, and their cowed manner makes it fairly obvious that they have a poor time. But the Christians of the mountains very much hold their own. The Mirdite tribe in the heights between the Drin and the coast is entirely Christian and one of the most fiercely independent. The town Christian who has picked up a smattering of education from the foreign Frati, has had a peep at the outside world and vaguely realises the blessings of life in a well-ordered land, sighs for some form of civilised government. Some have even told me that they wish to be "taken" by somebody—"by Austria, or Italy, or you, or anybody. It could not be worse than it is now." But the mass of the people resent most fiercely the idea of any foreign interference, and cling fast to their wild and traditional manner of life. Whether Christian or Mussulman, the Albanian is intensely Albanian. A Christian will introduce you to a Mohammedan and say, "He is a Turk, but not a bad Turk; he is good like me; he is Albanian." The Christian that the Albanian Mussulman persecutes is, as a rule, the Christian of another race. Between Christian and Mohammedan Albanian there is plenty of quarrelling, but then so there is between Christian and Christian, Mohammedan and Mohammedan. It is of the blood-feud, intertribal kind, played according to rule; for even in Albania it is possible, if the rules be not observed, for killing a man to be murder. When a common enemy threatens, a "bessa" (truce with one another) is proclaimed, and they unite against him. The chief tribes in Northernmost Albania are the Hotti along by the Montenegrin frontier and by the lake; the Shoshi and the men of Shialla and of Skreli in the mountains above the plain of Skodra; the Mirdites in the mountains between the Drin and the coast; and the Klementi on the Montenegrin frontiers by Mokra and Andrijevitza.
The Turks from time to time, when the Albanians have been more than usually lively, by various means (including treachery) have contrived to give the chieftains of one and another "appointments" in remote corners of Asia Minor, but with no results so far, except that the people, deprived of the only man who had any authority over them, became yet more unmanageable. Even the mildest of the town Christians takes a delight in pointing out in the bazaar the tobacco which has paid no duty and saying, "We pay no tax for tobacco; we are Albanian, and we do not like to." The Turks have been unable to enforce this tax, and have to content themselves by searching the baggage that leaves the country and opening the hand-bags of tourists to prevent tobacco from leaving untaxed.
The Albanians seldom do anything they "do not like," and they are quick to object to any interference. Just now they have been objecting to "reformation" on Austro-Russian lines. The so-called reforms were the laughing-stock of everybody—Servian, Montenegrin, and Albanian—when I was out there last summer. For the Albanian's "unreformedness" has always been his chief attraction in Turkish eyes, and in order to give him every opportunity to behave in an "unreformed" manner, when the spirit moved him, the Turk in recognition of his services in the last war supplied the Albanian lavishly with weapons. Christians throughout the Turkish dominions have always been forbidden to carry arms. The Christian Albanian alone has this privilege. Every mountain man has firearms of some sort, many of them fairly modern rifles. It is one thing to give a man a gun and quite another to take it away from him. When the weapons were merely used upon the wretched unarmed Servian peasants in the plains of Old Servia, not a soul in any part of Europe save Russia paid the smallest attention; but when Stcherbina, the Russian Consul, fell a victim, it was a different matter, and the Turks found themselves in the unpleasant position of having either to offend Russia or to quarrel with their best allies. They proceeded to "reform" Albania on truly Turkish lines. They chased the Albanians out of the territory they had had no business to have swooped upon, and they arrested a few leaders as a matter of form. The Albanians were astonished and rather aggrieved, for they had done very little more than they had always been given to understand they might do. Further interference might have alienated the Albanians altogether, but as for the sake of appearances and the "reform scheme" some non-Mohammedan officials had to be appointed, the Turks sent an Armenian and a Jew, called respectively Isaac and Jacob, to Skodra. Isaac and Jacob were shot in the main street in the day-time, and as far as I have heard their situations are still vacant. The affair caused some little amount of excitement, nevertheless the Albanians did not wish to resort to violence so long as the "Government" did not make itself disagreeable. There is an old tomb in Skodra, the last resting-place of some minor Mohammedan saint. Shortly after the deaths of Isaac and Jacob some mysterious writing was found upon the tomb. Though written in very ordinary charcoal, it was obviously of more or less divine origin, and the people anxiously waited the deciphering of the message. It proved to be merely a piece of a verse from the Koran conferring a vague blessing upon somebody. "Allah be praised!" said an old hodja, greatly relieved, "it has not told us to go and shoot any more reformers!"
There were a great many more soldiers in Skodra than before. I asked several people the reason of this, in order to see what they would say. They one and all said, with a smile, "The Turks want to reform Albania, but they are obliged to send the soldiers to the towns, because the people in the country do not like them!" The town swarmed with soldiers. An officer rushed at my old guide, whom I was employing to interpret for me in the bazaar, and abused him in a loud voice till I interfered; a soldier seized and beat very severely a wretched little boy who begged of me, and my efforts on his behalf were of no avail; and these were all the results of the reforms that I saw or heard of in Skodra.
But the idea seems gaining ground that the Albanian in the event of a war may cease to support a dying cause and elect to play a game of his own. When, as must inevitably be shortly the case, Macedonia is under a Christian governor, Albania will be yet more separated from the present seat of government (Constantinople), and the situation will become acute. I heard a good deal about "the king that is to be." Many Serbs even expressed their opinion that the Albanians would be a great deal better if their independence were recognised; saying that at present they are responsible to no one; the Turk incites them to commit atrocities, and washes his hands of all they do; and that left to themselves the Albanians would develop into a fine people. That they have the makings of a fine people is probably true. That they are now capable of self-government is quite another thing. Unlike the other Balkan peoples, they have no past, no former empire. Their history is all "years that the locusts have eaten." What is to become of the Albanians? is one of the hardest of all the Eastern questions. Austria desires to have the answering of it.
Skodra is the capital of North Albania. In our maps it is usually called Scutari—a name which causes it to be confused with the other and far better known Scutari on the Bosporus. In a French paper I once read an account of "the Prince of Montenegro's palace on the Bosporus" which described the Princes country place at Podgoritza, near the lake of Scutari. But the French seldom shine as geographers.
Skodra can be reached from the port of St. Giovanni di Medua, at which a line of Lloyd steamers calls regularly. From thence a ride of nine hours, if you can find a horse, will take you by a very bad road to the town. But even from the Turks, who take acouleur-de-roseview of the resources of their land, I failed to learn that the route offered any attractions. It can also be reached by a steamer which, when there is enough water in the river, ascends the Bojana as far as Obotti, whence a barge will wobble you up to the town in an hour or thereabouts.
By far the prettiest and pleasantest route is that from Cetinje by the lake. TheDanitza, the chief vessel of the Montenegrin squadron according to the engineer, runs twice a week from Rijeka. It is a clean, tidy little boat built in Glasgow, and is very fairly punctual as to time. The sluggish stream meanders slowly in and out the hills; the channel of deep water serpentines through acres of water-lilies, white and yellow, whose leaves form a dense mat on the surface and a happy hunting-ground for the water birds—duck, moorhens, herons, spoonbills, and pelicans. It is a færie river, with the magic of the hills upon it, all silent save for the flap of the herons that rise as the boat glides past. Half choked with reeds and weeds which grow rankly luxuriant and rot in tangles, it tells of the making of the fertile lands of Montenegro, for the plains are all ancient lake beds from which the water has retreated. One hears without surprise that fever haunts the river in autumn, but, judging by the healthy appearance of the folk of the neighbourhood, it cannot be of a very virulent type, and at no time of the year have I met with any mosquitoes.
At the rivers mouth stand wretched shanties of rock and brushwood, the dwellings of the fisher-folk who reap, in the late autumn, a plenteous harvest. Vast shoals of small fish called "scoranze" rush up the lake from the sea, and are netted in such thousands that, dried and salted, they form one of Montenegro's chief exports.
STREET IN BAZAAR SKODRA.STREET IN BAZAAR SKODRA.
We pass the island of Vranina and glide out into the great green lake, leave the heights of Montenegro behind us, and see at the farther end the "Accursed Mountains" of Albania purple in the distance. The waters of the lake, according to the Albanians, are endowed with marvellous curative properties. You must drink of them for a month, and then, no matter what is your disease, you "throw it all up," or else you die!—a severe kill—or—cure remedy upon which I have never experimented. We stop at Plavnitza and at Virbazar to pick up passengers, who come out in big canoes with long, upturned, pointed prows, and the deck is soon crowded with gay baggage and its strange owners, all of whom are usually anxious to make friends. You have only to show an interest in the women's babies and the men's weapons to secure entertainment for the rest of the voyage. "Show the lady your new gun," said a tall Albanian to a youth. He passed over a Russian repeating rifle. A woman who was standing near hastily got out of the way. The Albanian expressed contempt. "It might go off," said the woman. "Well, what if it did?" laughed the Albanian. "Look at me. I've been shot twice. It's nothing. Once I was hit here," he touched his shoulder; "and the doctor cut out the ball with a knife," he added with great satisfaction. "My brother died," said the woman briefly.
So on, in leisurely fashion, till at the end of the lake we see the Crescent flying from an antiquated warship—the red flag and the dying moon that we falsely call the "crescent," for it will never wax again. I confess that I never see it on the borders without a curious thrill. I was brought up to consider the Turk a virtuous and much injured individual. Now I never cross his frontier without hoping soon to be able to witness his departure from Europe.
A shattered fortress frowns on the hill, a row of ramshackle buildings lines the shore, a filthy crowd fills the custom-house steps. Scutari—Albanese, Skodra at last. Time rolls back from the invisible boundary against which the centuries have beaten in vain, and before us lies the land of a prehistoric people and the life of past ages. Canoes big and little come paddling out in a scrambling hugger-mugger; Montenegro becomes, for the time being, a type of all that is most civilised in West Europe, and we leave it behind us on the steamboat.
The custom-house is a dark den, in which everyone shouts at once and tumbles over everyone else. Smuggle your dictionary, if you have one, in an under pocket; there is no knowing, says the Turk, what a book in a foreign language may contain, so away with them all. There are few things more deadly. Passports are, or are not, asked for according to the amount of political tension. I have heard of two individuals who "rushed" that frontier by the aid of receipted bills, the stamps on which gave them a pleasingly official air, and have twice myself crossed the Turkish frontier "when I hadn't ought." Anyone with an ounce of wits can, I believe. And really there is something to be said for a passport system that is warranted to exclude no one but the fools. The Persian who inspects the passports, on this occasion, merely asked for our names, which were too much for him. We gave him our visiting cards; he copied our Christian names letter by letter, then, exhausted by the effort, he added London as sufficient address, and the ceremony was complete. He is a humble youth, will accept twopence as bakshish, and be your dog for a florin. Like most Turkish officials, he exists, I presume, on the pickings of his office. And the nation he loves the best in all Europe varies according to the nationality of the individual he is addressing.
One gets used to arriving at Skodra as one does to most other things, but the first visit is an amazement. It will be some time before I forget that day when we emerged for the first time from that custom-house. The captain of the steamer ruthlessly whacked off all the would-be porters except one small boy, and bade him take us to the carriage stand. Off sped the boy like a hare, threading the mazes of the bazaar, dodging round corners and plunging down dark airless passages, his bare feet gripping the pavement, we following hard on his heels, dazzled by sun-spots, blinded in the darkness, confused by the unwonted sights, and slithering on the slippery cobblestones which slope down to the gutter in the middle where the pack-asses walk and the muck accumulates. Finally, after a ten minutes' chase, he halted us breathless on an open space on the farther side of the bazaar, stowed us into the remains of a peagreen fly, and accepted sixpence with gratitude. Off we rumbled down a lane that, but for its wayfarers, might be English, so familiar are its hedges, ditches, bramble and clematis, and we reached the residential part of the town and a decent hostelry in about twenty minutes.
Skodra is not merely an interesting spot to visit from Cetinje; it also belongs rightly and properly to Servian history. From a very early period (it is said the seventh century) it formed part of the Servian territories, and it remained unconquered after the fatal battle of Kosovo. It was the capital of George Balsha, Prince of the Zeta, and was resigned by him into the hands not of the Turks, but the Venetians, traces of whose architecture yet remain in the town. Though more than once attacked, it was not taken by the Turks until 1479, and then only after a siege of six months. Now the Turk holds Skodra, the Albanian calls it his, and the Montenegrin has never forgotten that it once formed part of the great Servian Empire. According to the Albanian, it is the finest city in Europe, and when he tells you so he is proudly speaking what he believes to be the literal truth. To him it is an ideal spot, the model of what a capital should be, and the centre of his universe.
The Albanian may be caught young, and tamed; he may wander into far countries; he does a good trade in Rome; he may even live years in England; but for him a glory always hangs over the capital of his country. He is rare in London; there are only two or three of him, and he was hard to find. I tracked him to a far suburb, and when he learnt whence I had come his enthusiasm was unbounded. The greatness and magnificence of his country made it not at all surprising that the whole of Europe coveted it, and he gloried in the fact. "Not that Russia, nor them Austria, nor nobody," he said, "was going to have it! English mans silly mans; no understand my people. My people all one week like that"; here he whirled his arms wildly round his head; "next week go back work. Olright. War with Turks? No, ain't going to be none." "Isn't the Turkish government a hard one?" I asked. "There ain't no government," said he gleefully. "What about the taxes?" "Oo pay?" said the Tame Albanian; "you tell me that." Money, he admitted, had to be raised at intervals, but you always lived in hope that it would be raised in some other district, and if you displayed a proper amount of spirit it was. In the days of his youth he had fought for the Turks. "I Bashi-bazouk," he said with pride; "reg'lar army all them Mohammedans. I Catholic. I good Christian. I Bashi-bazouk." To us Bashi-bazoukdom and Christianity are odd yoke-fellows. To him, quite right and proper.
Head of a flourishing business in London, and clad in a smart overcoat and a billycock hat, he sat down cross-legged on the floor, and his eyes sparkled as he thought of the good old Bashi-bazouk days. To London he came because, as everyone knows, "there is lot of money in London." He knew no word of English and but little Italian; had scarcely any money; his entire stock in trade consisted of some native costumes and some silver filigree work. Failure would seem to have been inevitable, but the pluck and enterprise of the ex-Bashi-bazouk overcame all difficulties. "You think my country wild country," said he; "now I tell you—London; it big bad place. Five million peoples in London. My God, what a lot of criminals! In my country no man starve. He knock at door. 'What you want?' 'I hungry.' 'Olright, you come in.' He give him bread, he give him wine. In London you say, 'You git 'long, or I call a p'leece.'" Wherever a Christian Albanian requires help, he has but to knock at the door of another Christian Albanian and say so. No payment is ever thought of. "How should we live," said a man to me, "if we did not help one another?" Compared with Albania, London, even now in the eyes of the ex-Bashi-bazouk, is a vast and uncivilised wilderness. Perhaps he is right. Nevertheless, he has found it an excellent place to get on in. His wife—"my Albanian missus," as he called her—had, he confessed, a very poor time. Knowing no language but Albanian, and sighing always for the sun and the shores of the lake of Skodra, she was near weeping when she heard that I had just come from the beloved spot. She wore a red cap with coins round it, and a medal dangled in the centre of her forehead. She seemed singularly out of place in a London back-shop. "By God," said her husband casually, "I'm sorry for that pore fem'le!" And he had a certain sympathy for her, in spite of his cheerful tone.
"Earth hunger," the fierce desire for a particular plot of ground, a plot which reason may point out to be barren, arid, lonesome, and in every way unlovable, but which is the cradle of the race, is and perhaps will always be one of the most unconquerable of human passions. The Tame Albanian says he means to end his days in "the finest city in Europe, Skodra."
It is not a salubrious spot. It is suffocating in summer and flooded in winter. It suffers from heavy rains, and lies low. Its one virtue is that it does not possess mosquitoes, but it makes up for this by being full of tuberculosis. Nevertheless, it grips one's imagination, it arouses the sleeping spirit of first one and then another long dead ancestor who lived in the squalid, glittering Middle Ages and before, and they point the way and they whisper, "Such and such we did, and this also—do you not remember?" and strange things that one has not seen before seem oddly familiar; three or four hundred years ago, they or something very like them were part of one's daily life.
In the bazaar down by the river, with its maze of narrow crooked streets, its crazy wooden booths and its vile pavement, life goes on much as it did with us ages ago. Each trade has its own quarter, as in all Eastern bazaars. And narrow ways, called Mercery Street, Butchers' Row, Goldsmiths' Alley, in many an English town, still tell of the time when so it was in England, in days when timber was as cheap, streets as crooked and narrow, and pavement as bad as they are now in Skodra. And then in England, as now in Skodra, people wore colours—red, blue, green, yellow—and those that could afford it were brave with embroideries. Their wants were few, luxuries there were few to be purchased, and they showed all their worldly goods upon their persons in a blaze of gold and finery on high days and holidays. Skodra does so still, and so does every peasant and many a nobleman in the old-world Balkan peninsula of to-day. Gorgeous garments solidly made they are, for they will not go out of fashion next season, nor the season after, never indeed until Albania is "civilised," and when will that be? So the finery is made to last, and is worn and worn till it descends to "Petticoat Lane" and is bought by the very poor. And when the stitchery is all rubbed off by the friction of years, still the garment hangs together, and is worn until it finally drops off piecemeal in squalid rags. All these garments, however gorgeous without, are lined with coarse materials, often pieces that do not match patched together, for the Albanian ideas of dressmaking are old-world. The modern modiste has invented cotton and linen costumes lined with silk or satin. Her ancestress, however, acted on the Albanian plan, and the beautiful silk and brocade costumes that have come down to us from Elizabeths and Charles I.'s time are finished within with coarse and unsightly canvas.
Near the entrance of the bazaar are the workshops of the carpenters, who make and carve great chests to hold the clothes, gaudy things painted peagreen and picked out with scarlet and gold, degenerate descendants of the beautifully carved and coloured chests in which all Europe kept its clothing in Gothic and Renaissance days. The makers of the chests fashion, too, wonderful cradles, coloured in the same gay manner, and in them the babies are packed and slung on pack-saddles or on women's backs. In a land of rough travelling, a strong box in which to pack the baby is a necessity, and doubtless our ancestors used the solid oak cradles we know so well in a like manner. Any day in the bazaar is interesting, for the shopmen nearly all make their own goods. The gunsmiths fill cartridges all day long, for they are an article much in demand, repair rifles and revolvers, and fit fine old silver butts, gorgeous with turquoise or cornelian, on to modern weapons. The silversmith squats cross-legged on the floor with a tray of burning charcoal, some tweezers, a roll of silver wire, and a little box full of silver globules. He works silently, deliberately, with long, nimble fingers picking up the tiny globules and arranging them, snipping and twisting the little bits of wire, building up and soldering with great dexterity the most effective designs—designs with sides that match, but are never quite symmetrical, like Natures own work, satisfying the eye in a way that no machine-made article ever will. However rough his workmanship, his idea is almost always good, and he produces daring effects with glass rubies and emeralds of the largest size. In work of this sort the Albanian excels. When he comes to larger constructions, his trick of working by eye and getting balance by instinct is not so successful; his rooms are all crooked, his houses out of the square. Perhaps this is the inevitable out-come of his odd-shaped mind. It is rumoured that three-sided rooms may be found in Skodra, for the simple reason that somehow the builders, owing to a nice confusion of angles, could not squeeze in a fourth wall.
They are an honest, civil lot, these Skodra tradesmen; and though your money will probably fly from hand to hand and disappear round the corner, the change always comes back correctly in the end, and you pass the interval drinking coffee with the shop owner. If your purchases are many, he will kindly send out to buy a piece of common muslin in which to wrap them; for Skodra does not supply paper, and when you have bought a thing, conveying it away is your own affair. We in London are used to having paper included lavishly with the goods, but an old lady once told me that in her young days the fashionable drapers of London would lend linen wrappers to those who bought largely, and the said wrappers had to be returned next day. In this particular Skodra is not more than eighty or ninety years behind London.
To see the bazaar in all its glory one must go on a Wednesday; that is "bazaar day," and all the folk of the surrounding country flock thither. "Which is bazaar day in London?" I have been asked any number of times by Serb, Montenegrin, and Albanian. And "Every day is bazaar day in London" is the one thing that gives them any idea of London's size. The five million inhabitants, railway trains, electric lights, and so forth, are all quite beyond their ken; but "bazaar every day" stuns and dazzles them, and at once calls up a picture of vast crowds and illimitable wealth. On "bazaar day" Skodra is thronged with strange types—costumes bizarre, grotesque, wild and wonderful, and the road from an early hour is crowded with flocks, pack-animals and their owners. Flocks as strange as their drivers, for the ram of the pattering drove of sheep is often dyed a bright crimson, and his horns instead of curling neatly round by the sides of his head are trained to stand up like those of an antelope with their tight twist pulled out to long spiral His fashion is an even older one than that of his masters, for we find the ram with the same head-dress in early Egyptian frescoes. For some of these people it is three, even four days' tramp down to the market from their mountain homes, and over the rough tracks the women carry incredibly heavy burdens; not only the bundles of faggots or hides that are for sale, but the baby in a big wooden cradle is tied on the top. The men march in front with their rifles and look after the flocks. Firearms have to be left outside the bazaar. It is true that a good number of people are still privileged to carry them, but I have haunted the bazaar quite alone so often that I have ceased to believe in the many blood-curdling tales about its murderous possibilities with which travellers are usually favoured. Nor, when you once know your way, do I think any guide or kavass necessary. It is very dull with a kavass, for no one comes to play with you. I tried it once for an hour or so, and never again. But though you see no murders, you may see cases where apparently vengeance has been satisfied with mutilation, and meet a man whose nose has been cut off so lately that a bloodstained rag covers the vacancy. And the mountain-man swaggers up to the cartridge shop and fills the many spaces that have occurred in his belt since last he came to market.
SKODRA.SKODRA.
I have no space to describe the dresses of the various tribes; the women with stiff, straight, narrow skirts boldly striped with black that recall forcibly the dresses upon the earliest Greek vases; the great leathern iron-studded belts; the women with cowries in their hair; the wild men from the mountains in huge sheepskin coats with the wool outside; town Christian women blazing in scarlet and white, masses of gilt coins, silver buttons and embroidery; Mohammedan ladies shapeless in garments which may be correctly termed "bags," or to be still more accurate, "undivided trousers," of brilliant flowered material, not only thickly veiled but with blue and gold cloth cloaks clasped over the head as well, shrouding the figure and allowing only a tiny peephole through which to see; poor women, veiled down to the knees in white, looking like ghosts in the dark entrances; Turks in turbans, long frock-coats and coloured sashes; little girls their hair dyed a fierce red and their eyebrows blackened. They all unite in one dazzling and confused mass which one only disentangles by degrees, and when I plunged for the first time into that unforgettable picture, saw the blaze of sunlight, the dark rich shadows, the gorgeousness, the squalor, the glitter, the filth, the colour, the new-flayed hides sizzling in the sun and blackened with flies, the thousand and one tawdry twopenny articles for sale on all hands, I thought with a pang of the poor Albanian "fem'le" who was passing weary, colourless hours in a grey London suburb, and understood the sickness of her soul.
Of all the old-world things in the town—older than the neatly cut flints for the flintlocks that are still in use, older than the tight mediæval leg-gear—the loose tunic bound round the waist by a sash and the full drawers tied round the ankle, as worn by the common Mohammedan men and boys of the town (a very ordinary dress throughout the East) is the oldest. It is the dress of the men on the early Greek vases; of the Dacians on Trajan's column; of the captive Gauls in the Louvre; the dress, in short, of all the "barbarians," the "braccati" of the Romans. The Romans and the toga and the chlamys are all gone, and here, in the same old place, the barbarians are cutting their skirts and trousers on the same old pattern, and are very fairly barbarous still. But they have learned to shave their heads and to wear a white fez, and with this modification we at once recognise them as our old friend Pierrot, whose history points to the fact that he really did come from the Near East. Venice held all the Dalmatian coast and part of Albania. Venice was the home of masques and pantomimes, and among the existing prints of the pantomime characters is one "Zanne" in the familiar "Pierrot" dress. What more likely than that the fool of the piece should be represented as a boor from a conquered province? To this day, in so-called civilised towns, an unhappy foreigner is still apt to be considered a fair butt by the lower classes. Zanne came to England, and figures among the sketches for one of Ben Jonson's masques.
Skirts with us are purely feminine garments, but the skirt of the barbarian has grown in Albania into a vast unwieldy kilt, and the Mohammedan Bey swaggers about in a cumbrous fustanella which reaches down to his ankle and sticks out like an old-fashioned ballet-girl's skirt. He cannot work because he wears the fustanella, and it is said that he wears the fustanella in order to be unable to work. Forty 1 metres of material go to this colossal and ridiculous garment. The greater part of the fulness is worn in front, and sways clumsily from side to side as the wearer walks. The Greeks adopted it in a modified form, but it must be seen on an Albanian to realise its possibilities. The Albanians have rarely, as yet, succeeded in doing anything in moderation. After seeing what the men were capable of in the skirt line, I was not surprised that the shepherd-folk out on the plains began by asking my guide with great interest if I were a man or a woman.
But we must leave the bazaar, though many days do not exhaust its interests; leave the butchers' quarter, a harmony in pinks and blood-red, where the dogs lap red puddles, the butcher wipes a wet knife across his thigh, and the people run about with little gobbets of mutton for dinner, a fiercely picturesque place sicklied with the smell of blood; leave the "Petticoat Lane" of Skodra, where the cast-off finery of Albanian ladies and the trappings of beauty are displayed alongside heaps of the most hopeless rags. Aged crones as antique as their wares squat upon the ground. The sunlight blazes on the gold stitchery till it sparkles with its pristine splendour; the hag in charge of it, Atropos-like, points out its beauties with a large pair of shears, while Lachesis spins a woollen thread alongside. I vow they are the Fates themselves selling the garments of their victims.
By the afternoon the crowds of country-folk are already reloading the pack-animals, decked with blue bead headstalls and amulets to keep off the evil eye, that await them at the entrance of the bazaar, where the gipsy smiths and tinkers work, half stripped, a-ripple with tough muscle, under little shanties made of sticks and flattened-out petroleum cans. How the land got on before the petroleum can was introduced it is hard to imagine. In the hands of the gipsies it is the raw material from which almost everything is made.
The peasants load their beasts—they are adepts at pack-saddling and you rarely see a sore back—and trail slowly across the plains towards their mountain homes. The bazaar is shut up, darkness comes on fast, and belated foot passengers pick their way with lanterns.
Night in Skodra is uncanny. The half-dozen tiny oil lamps do not light it at all. When there is no moon, the darkness is impenetrable and absolute, save perhaps for a long streak of light from the door-chink of the next shop and the lighted windows of the mosque opposite. The black silhouettes of praying figures rise and fall within them, but the mosque itself is swallowed up in the surrounding blackness. A spark appears on the roadway, someone passes with a lantern and disappears. The street is dead still till a sword clanks and the patrol marches past. The lights are extinguished in the mosque. The darkness is dense and dead, and there is no sound. It is only nine o'clock, but all Skodra seems asleep.
Skodra the town, as distinguished from the bazaar, has not a great deal to show. It is a big town with some 40,000 inhabitants, and as all houses of any size stand in a large yard or garden, it covers much space. Here every man's house is his castle, and the high walls are not only for seclusion but for defence. Skodra, from time to time, receives a rumour that thousands of armed men are marching upon it. All the shops are shut, the guards are doubled on the bridges, and folk shut themselves in their houses. The phantom army does not appear, and in two or three days things are going on as before. "But it will come some day," said a man, when I laughed about a reported army of forty thousand that had never turned up.
The Mohammedan quarter has the air of being far more wealthy and high-class than the Christian. The houses that one gets a glimpse of through the gateways are large and solid. But the streets are lonesome and deserted. Now and then I met a couple of veiled ladies, who, if no man were in sight, usually strove hard to make my acquaintance, and partially unveiled for the purpose. But as I know neither Turkish nor Albanian, we never got farther than the fact that I was "a Frank" and a deal of smiling and nodding. Two in particular walked a long way with me, chattering all the time, and for the benefit of the inquisitive, I must say that they were both very pretty girls. In Skodra not only the Mohammedan but the town Roman Catholic women go veiled, though the country-folk do not, and until married are often kept in a seclusion which to our ideas is little short of imprisonment—facts which throw a strong light upon the unlovely state of society which has made them necessary; for the etiquettes of society are usually based upon raw and unpleasant truths. It is idle folly to ascribe Western and twentieth-century ideas to these primitive people, but the fact remains that the life of the average Albanian woman is an exceedingly hard one. That of the country-folk is a ceaseless round of excessive physical toil; that of the poorer town woman is, I am told, often spent at the loom from morning till night—labour that only ends when the Black Fate snips her thread.
MOSQUE, SKODRA.MOSQUE, SKODRA.
Though the Mohammedans far outnumber the Christians in the town, the mosques are all small plain buildings, only saved from ugliness by the elegance of their tall slim minarets, nor are there many of them. With a grotesque lack of a sense of the fitness of things, the Turkish army, when it has a washing-day, uses the largest graveyard as a drying-ground, and a shirt or a pair of drawers flaps on each tombstone. It was not until I saw this sight that I had any idea that the Turkish soldiers ever had a washing-day. A lean, unkempt, ragged lot of poor dirty devils with scowling faces, they look more as if returning from a disastrous campaign than as if quartered in the barracks of the capital. And the sight of them is enough to make one have no difficulty in believing the tale that they not unfrequently help themselves to mutton from across the frontier when the "Government" is discreetly gazing in another direction. Their powers of endurance in war-time are not surprising when their life during "peace" is taken into consideration. A fight in which you may loot all you want must be a pleasant holiday by comparison.
The Christian quarter of Skodra looks less flourishing, and there are crosses on some of the doors, otherwise the two quarters are much the same. The Roman Catholic townsfolk wear a special costume. That of the men is odd; that of the ladies perhaps the most hideous that has been ever devised. Their gigantic trouser-petticoats of purple-black material, in multitudinous pleats, fall in an enormous bag that sticks out all round the ankles, and impedes the wearer to such an extent that she often has to hold it up with both hands in front in order to get along. With her face veiled and the upper part of her body covered with a scarlet, gold-embroidered cloak with a square flap that serves as a hood, she forms an unwieldy, pear-shaped lump—grotesque and gorgeous. The streets here are apt to be flooded in wet weather, and the side walks are high. Big blocks of stepping-stones, like those at Pompeii, afford a way over the road, nor do carts seem to find any difficulty in passing them.
SHOP IN BAZAAR, SKODRA.SHOP IN BAZAAR, SKODRA.
The cathedral of the Roman Catholics is a large brick building, some fifty years old, with a tall campanile, standing in grounds which are surrounded by a high wall. Its great blank interior, owing to lack of funds, has not suffered much from "decoration." At the gateway the women loosen their veils and go into God's house with uncovered faces—beautiful faces, with clean-cut, slightly aquiline noses, clear ivory skins, red lips, and dark eyes with long lashes. There are benches in the nave, but a large proportion of the congregation, especially the country-folk who crowd in on feast days, prefer to sit on the floor; they spread a little rug or handkerchief, kick off their shoes and squat cross-legged on it as in a mosque; women with their breasts covered with coins that glitter as they sway to and fro in prayer; mountain-men with their cartridge belts upon them ready for use against a brother Albanian. A fine barbaric blaze of colour, scarlet and scarlet and scarlet again. The service begins; harshly dissonant voices, loud and piercing, chant the responses; and the deep sonorous voice of the young Italian at the altar rings out like the voice of civilisation over the barbaric yowling of the congregation. As he mounts the scarlet and gold pulpit there is a hush of expectation. The sermon, in Albanian, is a long one, and the crowd hangs breathless on his words. His delivery and his action are simple and dignified, and I watch him sway his congregation with deep interest, though I can understand no word. He is working up to a climax, and he reaches it suddenly in a sentence that ends in the only non-Albanian word in the sermon, "Inferno." The word thunders down the church on a long-rolled "rrrr," and he stands quite silent, grasping the edge of the pulpit and staring over the heads of the people. There is a painful hush, that seems like minutes. Then he suddenly throws himself on his knees in the pulpit and prays. Violently moved, his flock prostrate themselves in a passion of entreaty, and those who sit on the ground bend double and touch the floor with their foreheads.
The barbaric gaudy congregation, the ascetic earnest young teacher, the raucous wailing voices that rang through the great bare church, made up a poignantly impressive, quite inexplicable whole. I gazed upon the praying crowd and wondered vainly what their idea of Christianity may be and what old-world pre-Christian beliefs are entangled with it. The Albanian clings to these through everything, and in spite of all their efforts the Frati have as yet made little or no headway against blood-feuds. The Albanian has never adapted himself to anything; he has adapted the thing to himself. He practises the Christianity upon which he prides himself, with the ferocity with which he does everything else. He fasts with great rigour, wears a cross as a talisman, and is most particular to make the sign of the cross after the Latin and not after the Orthodox manner. But his views are very material. "Have you got the Holy Ghost in your country?" I have been asked more than once. And an affirmative answer brought the enthusiastic remark, "Then England is just like Albania!" The life of Benvenuto Cellini is interesting reading after a tour in Albania, for it represents with remarkable fidelity the stage in religious evolution to which the wild Albanian of to-day has arrived.
Difference of religion is usually given as the reason for the fact that the Albanian has almost invariably sided with the enemies of the other Christian peoples of the Balkans. One suspects, however, that it is rather "the nature of the beast" than the particular form of belief that he has chosen to profess that has cut him off, his fierce independence rather than his religious creed, and the more one sees of him the more probable does this appear.
There are very few Orthodox Albanians in Skodra. Such as there are wear the same dress as the Mohammedans, but the women are not veiled.
Skodra, except in the way of customs, possesses few antiquities, save the ruins of the old citadel which crown the hill overlooking the town. These are said to be of Venetian origin and to have been fairly perfect till some thirty years ago, when the local Pasha, having heard of lightning conductors, determined to buy one for the better protection of the tower, which was used as a powder magazine. To this end he chose a handsome brass spike, and then found he was expected to pay extra for a lot of wire. Being economical, he took the spike only, had it fixed to the topmost tower, and anxiously awaited a storm. It soon came! The handsome brass spike at once attracted the lightning. Bang went the powder magazine, and the greater part of the citadel was shattered before his astonished gaze. The hill now is crowned with a heap of ruins, but as strangers are strictly forbidden to visit it, I presume the Turks have constructed something that they consider a fortress among them.
At the foot of this hill are the ruins of a small church. Big white crosses are painted upon it, and it is considered a very holy spot. Every Christian peasant stops as he passes it and crosses himself, and though all that is left are fragments of the walls, I have been told that a service is still occasionally held in it. The only other relic of past days in the neighbourhood is the fine stone bridge with pointed arches near Messi, about four and a half miles from Skodra across the plain. This is undoubtedly Venetian work. The stream it spans is a raging torrent in the wet season, and has wrought much damage in the town and devastated a large tract of the plain. The rest of this is covered with short turf and bracken fern, and grazed by flocks of sheep and goats. The herdsmen, shaggy in sheepskins and armed with rifles, the strings of country-people and pack-animals slowly tramping to or from market, and the blue range of rugged mountains make up a strange, wild scene. Nor, if you take an Albanian with you to do the talking,—for everyone "wants to know,"—does there appear to me to be any danger in wandering there.
Skodra is the capital, but it has no decent road to its port. It is situated on the outlet of the lake, but though a little money and work would make the Bojana River navigable for small steamers, and all the shores of the lake would thus be put in direct communication with the sea, nothing is done, and this, which should be the chief trade route for North Albania and a large part of Montenegro, is of little use. Skodras exports are not enough for Skodra to worry about greatly. Hides, tobacco, some sumach root and bark for dyeing and tanning, some maize and fruit, and a number of tortoises, which the Albanian finds ready-made, form the bulk of the exports of the neighbourhood. Skodra is one of the few capitals which you can leave with the certainty of finding it exactly the same next year.
I have on one point, at any rate, a fellow-feeling with the Albanian. Skodra fascinates me. When I am not there—only then, mind you—I am almost prepared to swear with him that it is the finest city in the world, and a year after my first visit I found myself again on the steamer, hastening Skodra-wards, with the intention of riding thence to Dulcigno. Skodra greeted me warmly as an old friend. That exalted official the Persian beamed upon me and said that for Mademoiselle a passport was not necessary, the customs let me straight through, and I was soon settled comfortably in my old quarters. The Persian, because, so he said, of our long friendship, but really because he was aching with curiosity, called upon me at once in the crumpled and unclean white waistcoat in which he fancies himself, and chatted affably.
He comes, so he tells me, of a most exalted family; were he only in Tehran, instead of, unfortunately, in Skodra, he would be regarded with universal respect and veneration. As I have no idea of the standard required by Tehran, I condoled with him gravely, and accepted his statement. It was a great joy to Skodra, he informed me, that I should have come alone. No other lady had ever done so. Only une Anglaise would; for the English alone understand Turkey—are her dear friends. Here his enthusiasm was unbounded. Upon Turkish soil every English person was as safe as in England. This was owing to the excellence of the government. "There is," he said, "no government like ours." I told him the latter statement was universally believed, and pleased him greatly. He soared to higher flights. It was astonishing, he said, and most annoying, that false accounts of Turkey were published by foreign papers. He would go so far as saying that they never told the truth. It was even said that in parts of Turkey there had been considerable disturbances lately. Parole d'honneur, this was quite untrue. Never had the land been in a more tranquil or flourishing condition, and as a proof of his assertion he told me that his information was entirely derived from official sources.
Now at this time, "according to foreign papers," Russia, aided by Turkish troops, was vainly trying to force a Consul into Mitrovitza, encounters between troops and desperate villagers were reported almost daily from Macedonia, trains on the Salonika line had been more than once "held up," and the governor of the very district we were in had been shot at some months before. But he burbled on of the beauty of the British Government and of the support it always afforded in the hour of need. Everything desirable, including liberty and equality, flourished under the Crescent, he said. At this moment a poverty-stricken little gang of ragged men tramped past, bearing in turns upon their shoulders a long battered old coffin, from which the paint was almost worn away.
They stopped to shift it nearly opposite us. It was lidless, and the dead man's white face, his knees, and his great sheepskin stood above its edge. He lay in his clothes just as he died. The Persian, with ill-timed merriment, pointed to the corpse. "A dead sheep, Mademoiselle!" said he contemptuously. He addressed some remark in an unknown tongue to the mourners. The coffin-bearers passed sullenly. "A dead Christian," I said to him sharply. "Yes, yes, a Catholic," he admitted. I stared hard at his shifty eyes; he hastily dropped into politics again, and I thought about equality.
Not being desirous of emulating Miss Stone, and as the Persian for imaginativeness rivalled his fellow-countryman, Omar Khayyam, I collected advice from various quarters. Great as were the joys of Skodra, Dulcigno was my object; but I did not seem to get any nearer arriving there. Everybody combined to try to frighten me off the ride. Having played about Skodra for over a week, however, I persuaded myself that the Albanian was a friendly and much maligned being, took all the responsibility upon myself, and decided to carry out my plan. I fixed the matter up with a rush. Dutsi, the man who was to guide me, turned up early in the morning with a sturdy pony; I said farewell, and started through the town on foot. It was no use my mounting, said Dutsi mournfully, till we had passed the passport place; the Turks were very bad about passports—diavoli, in fact. This with a gentle air of resignation, as if it were highly possible it would not be worth while to mount at all. We walked along the banks of the Bojana till we came to its point of union with the Drin. Over the Drin is a big wooden bridge with a fantastic arch of wood across it, and on the bridge stood soldiers in the dirty rags that the Turks call a uniform. "Your passport," said Dutsi hurriedly. I produced it; but as none of the authorities could read anything but Turkish, it was useless. Dutsi looked anxious. "They want your name," he said, and looking at the passport-case, which is stamped "Mary E. Durham," he read out "Marie" with triumph. Everyone was satisfied. I entered Skodra as "Edith of London"; I left it as no less a person than "Mary of England." Great and obvious are the blessings of the passport system. I gave a twopenny bakshish, and we passed on to the bridge. Dutsi was a changed being; his spirits rose as soon as the Turks were left behind. He told me he was much attached to the English, and that now I might mount.
After an hour or so of enjoyment, the road got worse, and then rapidly worse still, and fuller and fuller of water. The Bojana was in flood, and the waters were out. My beast splashed through water almost up to his belly, and Dutsi took circuits through peoples maize fields. Then it got so bad that we left the track and laboured fetlock—deep through ploughed land, and saw ox-carts bogged to the axle in the sea of mud that was all that was left of the road. And after a little of this, the track was lost altogether, and we wandered round through tracts of mud and streams, forced a passage through an osier bed only to come to a swirling sheet of water, tried back, and finally made for a hovel and hallooed for help. The owner came out, took us over his own grounds, and started us again on something like a path, which soon disappeared. Dutsi, however, now knew the direction, and the pony was extraordinarily clever at climbing greasy banks, boring his way through the willows on top, and scrambling over the ditch the other side without even once "pecking." We came to some low hills, and got on to dry ground at last. Then Dutsi discovered to his distress that my umbrella, which he had tied to the back of the saddle, was gone. This was a sad loss, but it was evidently gone beyond recall. Dutsi in despair laid the blame entirely on those devils the Turks, who made such devils of roads, and were such devils to the good Christians that they were unable to improve the country. "Oh, the devils!" said Dutsi; "they have lost your devil of an umbrella." This relieved his feelings, and when I pointed out the inky clouds that were rapidly rising and said we had better hurry, he remarked piously, that though it looked like rain he believed that, in consideration of the loss of my umbrella, God would not permit it, for He does not like the Turks. Thus comforted, we proceeded, over low ground again, splashing over fields that, properly drained, should be magnificent water meadows, but were liquid slush in which great yellow spearwort flourished. At last we came to the river's edge and the ferryman's hut.
A great barge was dragged alongside the bank and the pony persuaded to enter it. I sat on the edge and curled up my toes, for the bottom was covered with water, and we were soon off. The boat was towed some distance up stream and let loose, and the force of the current combined with skilful steering swept it across. Dutsi was now happy; we should have a "buona strada" all the way! He began telling me of a noble and wealthy Englishman, one X. of the Foreign Office, to whom he had acted as guide in the spring in a shooting expedition, one of the best and kindest signors that existed, and we progressed slowly over the "buona strada," which was like a dry torrent bed, for we were now back among the limestone rocks again. Presently we arrived at a stream with a plank across it. "The frontier, the frontier!" cried Dutsi, and, as we set foot on the other side, he announced that we were in a free and Christian land, Montenegro! Now, he said, we would rest and eat some bread. So we sat down under a tree, and I discovered that the improvident creature had brought nothing more filling with him than a few cigarettes. As my chances of getting to Dulcigno depended entirely on him, I supplied him with two of my three eggs and three-quarters of my loaf, and we were just setting to work when we heard a loud "tom-tom-tomming." Out of the bushes came a gang of seven very black gipsies, four muzzled bears, and a loaded ass. Between them they carried five rifles and seven revolvers, and they certainly looked the "Devils Own." The pony snorted and stamped at the bears, and would have bolted had he not been tied fast; we hadn't a weapon between us, and Dutsi looked so green that I thought "all the fun of the fair" was about to begin. "Dobar dan," said I, through a mouthful of egg, for it is always as well to be civil. They made no answer, but scowled upon us and went surly by, single file, the boy who was in charge of the bears beating his tambourine rhythmically the while. As soon as the last of them had disappeared round the corner, Dutsi announced that they were very, very bad and all Turks (i.e. Moslems), and that now we must have a long rest. He was obviously afraid of catching them up.
Meanwhile the storm clouds were rapidly catching us up. We waited some ten minutes. I insisted upon starting then, and came upon the gipsies almost immediately, for they were making the bears dance in the yard of a lonely cottage on one side of the road. Dutsi caught the pony's head, led him round silently on the grass and behind some bushes, and we passed unseen, to his great relief. As he was very tired, I dismounted and gave him a ride. The free and Christian road was no better than the heathen one, but we got on very cheerfully for some way. Then the floodgates of the heavens opened, and, in spite of the loss of my umbrella, the rain came down in sheets. Dutsi most gallantly offered me his, but as I had a mackintosh I begged him to keep it for himself, and remounted and rode through the worst rain I was ever out in. Luckily we had just arrived at a decent road, and we took shelter under the first large tree. The whole landscape disappeared behind the grey torrent, and out of it suddenly rushed the wildest figure I have ever seen—an old, old woman, tall and lean, clad only in a long pair of cotton drawers tied under her armpits. Her lank wet hair streamed from her head like long black snakes, and she stood out in the rain and waved her arms madly round like mill sails, as she poured out a torrent of Albanian. "She wants us to go to her house," said Dutsi. "It is over there," as she pointed into the rain, "half an hour away! I tell her, 'No, thank you.'" Still the old woman gesticulated and shouted. "Falé miners" (thank you), repeated Dutsi over and over again in a deep sing-song. She made a last effort. "One million times in the name of God, she asks us to come," said Dutsi, with a smile. "She says she can do no more." Nor could she, apparently, for she disappeared again into the rain as suddenly as she had come. "It is better to sit here in the dry," said Dutsi. "How far is it to Dulcigno?" I asked. "Two hours at least," said Dutsi. I wondered miserably whether the saddle-bags were water-tight, and thought of my only change of clothes; and as there was no prospect of food, and I had only had one egg and a little bread since early morning, I attacked my Brand's beef lozenges and blessed the maker.
When the storm lifted, we started again, and through sun and storm arrived in a heavy shower in sight of Dulcigno just as that most melancholy sound, the clink of a loose shoe, caught my ear. I suggested the best inn to Dutsi. He said dismally, "There is only one," and we climbed the hill and entered the town,—a row of houses, a forge, a mosque, and some shops,—and to my dismay pulled up at a tiny Albanian drink-shop. "Ecco l'albergo," said Dutsi. I jumped off the pony and hurried in, out of the downpour. I was streaming, Dutsi was streaming, the pony had cast his shoe, and we had been nearly nine hours instead of five and a half on the way. It was a case of any port in a storm. The stripey-legged owner welcomed me effusively in broken Italian, and led me through into an earth-floored kitchen and up a few wooden steps to a "molto bella camera" over the shop, talking excitedly. It was a minute apartment, quite unfurnished, except that a trouser-legged lady was curled up fast asleep on a heap of mattresses on a sort of divan of packing-cases. "My wife," said he, giving her a poke, whereupon she jumped up like a jack-in-the-box, threw her arms round my neck, and kissed me three times. Dutsi appeared with the saddle-bags. He glanced round the room appreciatively, for it was the sort of place he felt at home in, and said it was "dosta dobra" (pretty good), also that the people were very good and all Christians. Then he very considerately suggested that I had better change my clothes and would perhaps prefer to be alone, and they left me. My "change," wrapped in a sheet of waterproof and in saddle-bags, was quite dry, and my mind relieved on this point was free to contemplate the possibilities of the establishment. One window had once had glass in it, the other never. Except the heap of bedding, there was nothing in the room but a rifle, a cartridge belt, and a picture of St. George. The rain was falling in sheets; seeking for other quarters would result in soaking my only dry clothes; moreover, I was tired. I decided to stay in shelter for the present, and descended to the "kitchen."
The floor was of earth and sloped up, for the house was built on the hillside. In one corner Dutsi, my host, and another striped gentleman were all squatting on their haunches round a splendid wood fire which blazed on a big slab of stone; Madame was making coffee, and Monsieur lemonade. A place was made for me at once, and I joined the squatting circle. They were most anxious about my health, felt me to see if I were really dry; and Madame, as she was unable to make me understand, kissed my hands and face. The fire had been lighted expressly for me, said Monsieur, and now they would all enjoy it. I appealed to Dutsi in an undertone about the possibility of better accommodation, but he was positive about this being the only inn. A room in a private house could be found perhaps by the sea, but that was half an hour away; moreover, these were most excellent people, and had lent him a coat and a pair of shoes. Their hearty friendliness filled me with trust from the first; the extreme primitiveness of the place attracted me. I said to myself, "You wanted to see the Albanians, and the Lord has delivered you into their hands. This is a unique opportunity," and I settled in and tried to behave like one of the family. Dutsi took a tender farewell of me, and begged me to give his love to X. of the Foreign Office, that bravest, noblest, and most admirable signor in the whole world, and to tell him that he (Dutsi) was praying God night and day to protect him and bring him back to Albania. Then the rest of the company, whose curiosity had been aroused, were told of the glories of X., and the fact that I was his compatriot counted greatly in my favour; for in these out-of-the-way corners the reputation of the Empire depends entirely on the conduct of the two or three individuals who happen to have represented it, and the responsibility upon them is heavy indeed.
Dutsi departed, and I felt a bit lonesome; but the company rejoiced over me like children over a new kitten. They patted and stroked me, and broke off little pieces of bread for me, and, as I could not understand Albanian, grunted and burbled over me like friendly guinea-pigs. The place was thick with pungent wood smoke, which escaped from a window near the roof. The rafters overhead were black and smoky, the walls rough stone; there was a heap of logs and brushwood in the farther corner, and a few pots hung on pegs. Otherwise there was nothing. In England, even in Anglo-Saxon times, my ancestors had tables and chairs. I sat cross-legged by the blazing logs with streaming eyes, and wondered which century I was in. And the firelight danced on the only up-to-date thing in the room, the barrels of a rifle and revolver and the brass tops of the cartridges in the belt of the man next me. For living, we can go on as before with the same old things, but when it comes to killing we really require something better. From time to time Monsieur retired to the bar to deal out rakija to customers, and the fame of my arrival soon spread. If the customers were of lowly standing, they were invited in to see me; if, on the contrary, they were great men, Montenegrin captains for instance, Monsieur asked me if I would be so good as to step out and speak to them. These were all huge, all courteous, all friendly, and all unable to speak anything but Servian. Rain still poured, but as everyone who came to see me took a glass of something, trade was good. One gentleman who spoke Italian was such a tremendous swell that I asked him if there were any better hotel in the place. This surprised him, and he replied that there was no other, and the cooking here was excellent. Having interviewed some half-dozen captains and a lot of shaven-headed up-country Albanians, I retired to the kitchen again, and began drying my wet under-garments one by one—an operation that interested Monsieur so deeply that he insisted upon helping, and singed them freely. In came, in a dripping overcoat, a strapping, cheerful, great Montenegrin, who hailed me joyfully in Italian, sat down, and, smiling gleefully, remarked in English, "a cat, a dog, a orse, a and, a man," and some dozen other words. Everyone looked on in admiration. I returned in Servian, to his delight, and he explained to me that he was kavass to the British and Foreign Bible Society in Constantinople, and was home for a holiday. His friendliness was unbounded; he insisted that I was to breakfast with him next morning, and demanded to know what I was going to have for supper. He knew all about the English, he said, and I must have roast beef. Monsieur retired to a corner and came back with the carcase of a lamb and a caldron. The kavass was greatly opposed to this; Monsieur was much excited; anything I required he was willing to try! A great debate ensued. They appealed to me, and I chose the lamb and the pot, for the mere idea of an Albanian culinary experiment alarmed me. So Madame fetched a hatchet, and the lamb was chopped in chunks on the hearthstone and put into the caldron with a sheaf of onions, and I reflected that I had at least secured mutton broth. The kavass was greatly disappointed, as he wished to show them how to make a real English dinner. I thanked him for his trouble, promised to breakfast with him, and he took his leave.
As it had now ceased raining and was still light, Monsieur proposed that we should go for a walk. The town is a large one, the shops built of wood, many in Turkish style. We went into quite a number, not to buy anything, but just so that the people could really have a good look at me, and I shook hands with them all, Monsieur the while swelling with pride. Throughout the walk he expatiated on Montenegro and the joys of living under the government of the Prince; so good, so just. Here a man was free. They were saved from those devils the Turks. He was himself an Albanian of a Skodra family. "You are Catholic?" I said, for nearly all Skodra Christians are Catholics. "Oh no," he said, "now I am a Montenegrin, of the Church of Montenegro. Oh, what good people!" We got under shelter just in time, and he showed me his other means of gaining a living. He was an umbrella-mender, and also he embroidered the gold patterns on the tops of caps. "I am always at work," he said, "and this house is my own." Everything he possessed he admired and valued. As for his wife, he informed me she was one of the best women in the world, and he called upon me to admire everything she did. God had not given him a son, and this was, it was true, a grief to him, but then "I have so much else," he said cheerfully, "a house that is warm and dry, and a good wife and plenty of friends, and a good daughter." The daughter had last year delighted her father by making a most excellent marriage. She had married a Montenegrin, and lived in Podgoritza. His shop was a chilly open shed, his kitchen an English peasant would have considered an inferior coal-hole, and he was so pleased with them that I was ashamed of having doubted whether they were good enough for me.
I returned to Madame and helped stir the pot. Monsieur shut up and barred the outer shop, some other men appeared, and we sat down to supper. We each had a basin, a spoon and a fork, and used our own knives. We all stood up while they crossed themselves; then Madame uncovered the caldron, and we squatted round it and set to work. The broth, being the stewing of a lamb, was excellent, and as my friends greatly preferred the meat with all the goodness boiled out of it, there was plenty for me. On my account there were extra luxuries, and all were pleased. We dipped out of the caldron and offered one another the tit-bits. When the lamb's head was fished up, Monsieur was grieved that I should not have had it, and pulling out the eyes and tongue, offered me them in his hand. In order to make me understand exactly what the morsel was, they put out their own tongues and waggled them about. I said I had had quite enough and thanked him, and they divided the delicacies carefully between them, each taking a bite.
A discussion took place, and then Monsieur produced a little picture, an ordinary, crude colour-print of the Virgin. It seemed to bother them greatly. Monsieur evidently admired it, his friends doubted its orthodoxy. There was something written under it that alarmed them. "Ask the lady," said one of them in Servian. "Do you know Latin?" said Monsieur. "Oh yes," said I, for I am always willing to oblige, if possible. "She knows everything," they said, and the little picture was handed to me. Under it was written "Ave Maria, etc." "What language is that?" said the first man eagerly. "That is Latin," said I. "Latinski!" they cried in horror. Instantly, as though it were infectious, the poor little picture was whipped out of my hand and poked into the fire. Monsieur shoved it down with his foot. The Roman Catholic Madonna flamed up, and everyone breathed freely again. Monsieur made an apologetic explanation, but his friends were obviously shocked at finding such a thing in a respectable house. Oddly enough, in spite of my acquaintance with the wicked language, it did not seem to occur to anyone to doubt my orthodoxy.
Madame, however, had evidently something on her mind which she wanted to tell me, and held an Albanian debate with the company. Unable any longer to bear the cross-legged attitude, I had retreated, when I had eaten enough, to the bottom step of the little ladder that led to the upper room, and watched the strange scene. The smoke eddied in wreaths round the room and drifted out above; the farther corners were quite dark. The bizarre group squatted round the fire; the trouser-legged woman voluble and eager; the sandal-shod, mediævally-clad men, their clean-cut profiles silhouetted against the blaze, or outlined with red light, handed round a tiny pair of tongs with which they picked out fragments of burning wood and lighted their cigarettes. All were interested. I wondered what it was all about. Monsieur turned and explained. His wife, he said, liked me very much; their only daughter was married; they were lonely. Would I stay with them for always and be a daughter to them? Now I had seen what the house was like; they would all be very good to me, and we should all be "molto contento." Everyone waited anxiously for my reply. They were quite serious about it, and I replied in the same spirit, that I had a mother and that, naturally, I must return to her. They inquired her age and where she lived, and then agreed that it would be impossible for her to live alone, and that I was right, though they lamented the fact. Then they told me their ages and asked mine, and we were all equally astounded; for they had regarded me as a very young thing, and I had put them all down as at least twelve years older than they were. I have no doubt that they were speaking the truth, and that it was the roughness of their lives that had so aged them, and Monsieur was really not more than forty, and his wife forty-two.
About nine o'clock the company from outside all left, having first stood up and crossed themselves and wished each other good-night ceremoniously. Monsieur lit a tiny lantern, of which the glass was grimy, and led the way up the steps to the "molto bella camera." Here there were three heaps of bedding in a row. "This," said he cheerfully, "is yours, this is my wife's, and this is mine." I had been quite Albanian for some hours. Now the West arose in me and would not be gainsaid. I murmured something about the other room. It was my host's turn to be scandalised now. Horrified, he exclaimed, "The gentleman in there is not married!" and called for his wife. They talked it over, and then he kindly said that he and his wife could sleep with the other gentleman if I really preferred it; "but," he added, "you are not married, you will be all alone." Then he gathered up the bedding in a bundle, they wished me good-night, and left me with a sackful of dried maize husks on two packing-cases, and a wadded coverlet. He returned almost immediately to ask if I should like a key, which, he said, was quite unnecessary. I reflected that if he meant to burgle me he would do so, key or no key, so I thanked him and said I was sure it was not needed. This gave him great pleasure, and he told me repeatedly that his house and all he possessed were mine. Then he left me, and at once through the thin partition wall I heard three flops as the three lay down on their mattresses. I followed the Albanian plan, curled up on the packing-cases as I was, and slept for nearly nine hours without stirring.
When I woke, quite refreshed, the sun was streaming through the cracked shutters. I heard my neighbours shake themselves and issue forth, so I shook myself and issued forth too. Monsieur, Madame, and the gentleman-who-was-not-married were all flat on the floor blowing up the fire. They were enchanted to see me and hear I had had a good night, and shook hands enthusiastically. Except that their hair was a little rougher, they looked just as they had the night before, but by the bright morning-light I saw that Madame's dirty grey jacket was really purple silk with a silver pattern, and had once been very gorgeous. Washing was my chief idea, and I told Monsieur I should like some water. He replied the coffee would be ready in a minute. I said it was for my hands, so he fetched half a tumblerful and poured it over them. As they had not been washed for twenty-four hours, it made very little difference. I indicated a tiny tin basin. Madame understood at once, and filled it for me. I took it to my room, and she followed. Her delight and astonishment when she found I had taken the precaution of bringing soap with me were really beautiful, and the sponge was an article she had never seen before. She immediately called to her husband, and he and the gentleman-who-was-not-married hurried to see the sight. They danced with glee when they saw how the water ran out of the holes, and were all seized with a wild desire to try it. This I steadily refused to understand in any language. Owing, indeed, to the scarcity of water and the quantity of spectators, the wash was hardly satisfactory. They forgot the sponge in the joys of seeing me brush my teeth. A tooth-brush was a complete novelty. Monsieur, whose teeth were as white as a dog's, begged to be allowed to use it only for a moment, but just then the coffee opportunely boiled over, they rushed to the rescue, and I was saved.