Part 8 (2/2)
My leaving Pirot was very different from my arriving. Now they said it was a pity I was going. The stationmaster thanked me for trusting a Balkan state, and I promised to look in next time I was in the neighbourhood.
CHAPTER XIV
EAST SERVIA
At Nish the hotel received me on my return with much friendliness, but, though evidently anxious to oblige, was quite unable to give me any information as to East Servia, and prayed me to return to Belgrade by train. This not suiting my ideas at all, I started from Nish at 5 a.m.
for Zaichar, and trusted the unravelling of the route to luck and my driver, one Marko, a stolid and friendly being.
Servia is an amazing land. The more I saw of it the more struck was I with its great fertility and its great capabilities, its rich and breezy uplands and its warm well-watered valleys. Corn, vines, tobacco, green crops, and every variety of fruit grow luxuriantly even with the present most primitive methods of cultivation. With knowledge and a little capital Servia should be a rich land. Unluckily both are wanting; the lamentable political differences which tear the kingdom make both almost impossible of attainment, and the small minority of plucky and intelligent men are struggling against almost impossible odds.
Nish had suspected me vaguely, but the farther I got up country the more forcibly did I realise that Servia was a raw quivering ma.s.s of politics, and that a change of some sort was imminent. Being provided with no letters of introduction, no one knew to which party I belonged, and I was cross-questioned and re-questioned with a persistency that, to put it mildly, was fatiguing. Before I had realised the extreme state of political tension, I rashly revealed, in reply to a straight question, that I had come direct from Cetinje, and was at once supposed to be supporting the possible succession of Prince Mirko to the Servian throne.
”If you say such things,” said a man to me, ”you must expect to be suspected, because we have no heir to the throne.”
”But what is that to me? I have no wish to occupy your throne.”
”Why have you come here?”
”To see Servia.”
”Why do you wish to see Servia? Have you ever spoken to Prince Mirko?”
and so on and so on, a long string of questions directed towards finding out which of the possible successors to that rickety seat I favoured.
I replied, ”I am English, and naturally I prefer the Prince of Wales,”
and laughed so much that to my no little relief everyone else did so too, and the examination came to an end. By and by people began to confide in me, and I got used to ”I tell you this that you may know the truth and tell it abroad. You are English, and I trust you not to say that I told you, nor that you heard it in this town.” It was pointed out to me that had I come provided with introductions I should have been spared much annoyance. That is true. But I should not in that case have ”seen Servia,” nor--for my tormentors always ended by being amiable--should I have learnt how kind the Servian can be to a friendless stranger.
I drove through this beautiful and sunny land much hara.s.sed by the pity of it all. Marko was a cheerful companion, and did his best to amuse me.
He pointed out that there were always at least three women to one man working in the fields and that the ”man” was usually a boy. Men, he explained, did not like working in fields. Moreover, the women did it so well that he seemed to think that it would be a pity to dissuade them.
And so long as there was enough to eat, why trouble? For a man it is much better to be a ”pandur” (policeman), especially in a large town.
Then you do nothing in the streets, and are paid for it; also you wear a revolver and a uniform. Even this delightful career has its drawbacks, for it means a lot of standing and walking about. Best of all is to be a ”gazda” (head of a large household or family community), then you tell all the others what to do, and you spend your leisure elegantly in a kafana. A coachman's lot was very hard and ill-paid. Thus Marko, and his astonishment was intense and genuine when I walked up all the hills. I think he ascribed this act of folly to the fact that I was a woman, for he pointed out that the women in the fields had to tramp long distances to work. They have a hard time of it, poor things, for they carry their tools and their babies with them; and babies rolled in shawls and slung up hammockwise dangle like gigantic chrysalids from the branches of the trees round the fields where their mothers toil. ”Hush-a-bye, baby, on the tree-top; when the wind blows, the cradle will rock,” is true in Servia. Probably our own nursery rhyme dates from days when field labour in England was in just such a primitive state.
We made no long pause save at Kniazhevatz (= ”Prince's Place”), a little town that was formerly almost on the frontier, and was burnt to the ground no less than three times in the nineteenth century by the Turks, the last time in 1876. It consists mainly of wooden frame houses with mud walls and big eaves and balconies, and the streets are straggly and irregular. This makes it quite the most picturesque town on that side of Servia. What the Serb likes is a perfectly straight street in which all the houses are as much alike as possible. This is, however, also the modern Parisian's idea, and some people admire Paris, so perhaps the Serb is right.
I was supposed to ”rest” at Kniazhevatz, but did nothing of the sort. I had not long swallowed my lunch when I was told that ”a gentleman who spoke German” wished to talk to me. He and his friends had previously interviewed Marko. He now offered to show me the town. I accepted, and we started. His idea of ”showing the town” turned out to be to walk me up and down the main street and let loose a perfect torrent of questions about me and my affairs. I grasped this fact, and ran my eyes over him.
He was youngish, fair, and far too stout for his years. A Teutonic ancestor somewhere, I thought. I replied cheerfully to his questions, and walked at a fair pace. When we arrived at the top of the street again, I did not turn back; I pursued bye streets and side streets, and walked on the sunny side of the way. I reckoned on his being in very bad condition, and he was; moreover, he had just dined solidly. The more personal his questions became, the faster I walked. Till a week or two ago I had been panting after tireless Montenegrins, now the situation was reversed; the perspiration stood on his brow, and he had not yet discovered what I was worth in pounds sterling. He asked if I did not find the sun too hot, and I replied that I liked it. He kept up manfully, and inquired the incomes of my father, my brothers, and my brothers-in-law. Baffled on these points, but still persuaded that I was a multi-millionaire, he suggested that I should remain permanently in Servia; this with n.o.ble disinterestedness, for he was already another's; but in the middle of the good old tale of how Someone-avich had married an English-wife-who-was-extremely-happy, he was forced for lack of breath to suggest that there was no need to walk fast. ”No,” said I, ”it is very foolish to walk fast, for then one can see nothing.” As there was rising ground before us and the ”going” was very bad, I forced the pace slightly, his questions died away, and I brought him back uphill to the hotel a limp and dripping thing, with the great problem still unsolved. He threw himself into a chair and called for beer. I jumped into my carriage, which was by this time ready, and drove off without enlightening him. ”That man,” said Marko, ”wanted to know everything, but I told him nothing.” As Marko knew nothing at all about me, I was not surprised.
We arrived at Zaichar late at night, after a fourteen hours' drive.
Zaichar had little to detain me. Beyond the motley crowd of Bulgarian and Roumanian peasants--for this is very much a borderland place--there is nothing to see. Some villages in the neighbourhood have scarce a Serb in them. Gold is found not far off at the Maidan Pek, and I was strongly urged to go and see the diggings. By way of an attraction, I was told that I should find specimens of every race in Europe there except English, and as by no means the best specimens of humanity haunt gold diggings, I thought that a herd of them loose upon the Servo-Bulgarian frontier might be more than I could grapple with single-handed. So I contented myself with looking at some small nuggets in a bottle. The mines, I was told, pay fairly well, and I enough alluvial gold is also found in the bed of the river Timok by the peasants to make the search worth while. The Timok forms the frontier for a considerable distance, and as a river is a clearly marked line that all can see, the frontier is a quiet one, and no ”mistakes” occur upon it.:
We started for Negotin as a heavy thunderstorm! cleared away and a big rainbow overarched the sky. ”When the old people see that green and red thing,” said Marko, pointing to it, ”they say, 'Now we shall have good wine and maize.' Red for wine and green for maize.” It was an uneventful drive over land that once produced Servia's best wine, and is now but slowly recovering from the phylloxera. As we approached Negotin, Marko became more and more uneasy. He told me repeatedly that the people of Zaichar had asked him all about me and he had told them nothing; merely that I was English; otherwise nothing at all! This he considered very meritorious. As he knew nothing more about me, I did not see the extreme virtue of his reticence. However, as he was dying for information and I was going to part with him in the evening, so should be no more bothered, I thought I would gratify him, and told him the number of my brothers and sisters, etc., all of which crave him infinite satisfaction. We arrived at Negotin the best of friends.
Negotin stands in a swamp; there are water-meadows and marshes full of frogs and reeds all round it, but I saw no mosquitoes, and the town did not look unhealthy. There are about 6000 inhabitants, a new and unlovely church, and a newly-erected bronze statue to Milosh Obrenovich, but the chief glory of Negotin is the monument to Hayduk Veljko,--Veljko, the popular hero, the story of whose career casts a fierce light on the condition of Servia less than a hundred years ago, and makes one wonder not that Servia should be, as some folk say, so backward, but that in so short a time she should have reached such a high point of civilisation.
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