Singing Waters

by Ann Bridge

  Chapter Ten

  The cold waked Gloire at half-past three. It was, or seemed, extreme, and after some time spent in hopeful snugglings, she got up to look for something more to put on her bed. Being up, she decided to take one of those little nocturnal walks; there were some bushes down on a slope beyond the grove to which she had walked with Miss Glanfield and Mrs. Robinson the night before.

  Dawn was barely breaking as she stepped out of the tent—she could just make out a magpie group of huddled forms round the embers of the camp-fires. The grass was damp and cool under her bare feet; the nightingales were still singing like mad—she found time to wonder when they stopped to eat, for they seemed to sing the clock round. The bushes, in the dim light, loomed large and ghostly; as she returned, a movement at the top of the slope caught her eye. Their body-guard, the two gendarmes, were standing stiffly at the salute for the passage of the lady in her nightgown. Gloire giggled as she went back to bed.

  Although Fran called them to time at 5.30, had breakfast ready sharp at six, and began taking down the tents the moment they were out of them, the start was late. The loads were recalcitrant, and though the men tugged and hauled, or stood, their fine bony faces puzzled, intent, and eager, load after load slipped lopsidedly. Gloire was in a frenzy. At length Colonel Robinson said resignedly that he would see to it, and the women had better start. Gloire’s hopes rose, though it was already twenty minutes past seven, but they were soon dashed again. As they started down the track towards the river it became clear that Mrs. Robinson, who insisted on walking because of the sick pony, was still tired, and she went very slowly indeed. If that was how she walked downhill, Gloire fumed to herself, what would she be like on the pull up which Colonel Robinson had foretold?

  “We’re going to be late,” she murmured desperately to Miss Glanfield.

  “I’m afraid so.”

  “Well, I shall go on ahead,” said Gloire, determinedly.

  “Yes, do; why not?” said Miss Glanfield tranquilly.

  Gloire edged away from the party, and round a corner, bore ahead with her splendid stride. She looked at her watch again. It was 7.30. She would probably be late if High Mass was at 10.30; and supposing it was at 10? Well, she would make it, whatever the others did, she thought, setting her mouth; she didn’t know the way, but she would manage somehow. She swung on down to the bridge.

  This was a charming erection, though Gloire did not pause to admire it. Two dry-stone ramps and a central pier carried the wooden superstructure high above the sparkling water, the floor was of wooden planking five feet wide; there were no handrails. Gloire’s hasty feet sounded hollow on the planks as she crossed, and strode off along the further bank.

  But she had reckoned without the vigilance of the gendarmerie. Soon, pattering with peasant lightness, even in their heavy soldierly boots, the body-guard from Shpali overhauled her. She could not understand a word they said, but the two neat figures kept at her side. Presently however they began to stop, at ever more frequent intervals, to point behind them, and to address her with increasing urgency—the word Coronelle emerged clearly and constantly from the stream of unfamiliar syllables. Gloire could not imagine what a Coronelle was; she smiled and walked on. But this would not do—they plucked, very respectfully, at her sleeve, saying “Coronelle” again, and pointing first backwards, and then at themselves. Gloire at length guessed that they wished to return to the Coronelle—it might be the caravan, she supposed, which was now in sight and looking quite wreathlike as it wound down the path to the bridge. She indicated to them by signs that they should return. No, that would not do either; they shook their heads respectfully but violently at the suggestion. Oh, damn the men, and their scruples! She was wasting precious minutes over this nonsense. She reverted, in this extremity, to her Pogoritza technique. She took one gendarme by the shoulders, turned him round, and pushed him back along the path by which they had come, firmly repeating “Coronelle”, since that seemed to be the operative word; then she returned to the other, tucked her arm through his, pointed forward and said “Torosh!” This worked. They hesitated for a moment, then nodded and broke into laughter—one went back towards the caravan and Gloire with her single escort resumed her march at a round pace.

  The track followed the river, which flowed as usual in a stony bed twice its own breadth; the hills were now practically bare, like the top of the Malsi ridge, and pock-marked with some dark shrubby vegetation which gave off a strong aromatic scent as the sun got higher and the heat increased. But presently there was a fresh delay. They came to another of the neat buildings with the metal shield and the flag-pole, and Gloire’s heart sank, for outside it, saluting, stood two fresh gendarmes, evidently waiting to take over the party for the next lap. However, her little bodyguard was quick and helpful. She heard the words “Coronelle” and “Torosh” in a spate of talk, and then with commendable speed one of the fresh escort stepped out beside her, while the other stood at the salute. And on they went.

  Gloire in her brief mountaineering days had gained the reputation of being “a mover” among Tony Thurston’s climbing friends, whatever else they might have had to say about her; but never in her life had she moved to such purpose as she did on that Whitsunday morning on the road to Torosh. After another mile or so along the valley the track started to climb the shoulder of one of the pock-marked hills, first diagonally, then in a series of zig-zags; the sun was hot on their tracks, the rough surface of the track was hot under their feet; the gendarme was soon streaming with perspiration, Gloire’s heart was pounding and her face almost purple; but her lungs held good, and she could still rejoice in the strong lift of her muscles at each stride. She could do it—even this appalling “pull up”. Once or twice the gendarme suggested that she should stop and rest, but she shook her head; finally, to convince him, she held out her wrist-watch, pointed to the hour of ten, and said “Torosh!” very firmly, crossing herself as she did so. The gendarme looked puzzled but nodded and went on. However, the idea which Gloire had tried to suggest germinated gradually in his mind. Almost at the top of the hill up which they had climbed from the valley they came to a spring, by which a stunted pine cast a patch of shade—here the gendarme stopped, politely took Gloire’s wrist, pointed to 10.30 on her watch, said “Torosh” and crossed himself in his turn. Then he pointed to the spring.

  “Good-oh,” said Gloire. It was now a quarter to ten. In that case she would have a drink. “Asht ujë mire?” she asked, pronouncing the words carefully.

  The Albanian was delighted at this sign of intelligence, and when they had both drunk, and were sitting for a moment in the shade, he went on trying to make conversation.

  “Fresc,” he said, pointing vaguely at the ground—Gloire didn’t quite get it. Then he pointed at the open-work toes of her canvas shoes and said “Fresc” again, and now Gloire realised that fresc meant cool, and agreed that yes, her shoes and the shade were both fresc.

  It is a fact, and a rather curious one, that on great enterprises undertaken for some serious purpose, such as pilgrimages, the small and trivial incidents of the way build up into an essential part of the whole experience, especially in retrospect, but also at the time. And on this journey of Gloire Thurston’s to Torosh—which was really a pilgrimage, however little she realised it—all the delays and difficulties, this fierce climb, these absurd attempts to communicate with her guide became, ultimately, inextricably interwoven in her mind and memory with what she did eventually find at Torosh. Indeed, though it was long before she realised it, they typified with a peculiar aptness her rather fumbling search for she did not quite know what—knowing only that it was something important, and that she needed it.

  The Abbey Church at Torosh stands on a shelf above a narrow ravine, among those pale black-spotted hills; up the small valley behind it, where the ground is less steep, lie terraced gardens and plots of cultivation, and above these again the slopes of the main range, pines and pasture, rise higher and higher till they culmin
ate in the long bare pinnacled ridge of Mali Shënjt, the Mountain of the Saint. It is a wild landscape, bare and rather harsh, but without the austerity of Spain—various, individual, free, and above all full of light: light flung back from the pale desiccated lower slopes, from the sparse pastures, and from the bare silvery rock of the mountain summits. Climbing up out of the valley, as Gloire had done, the whole panorama breaks upon the traveller at once, as he tops the ridge—the broad irregular trough in the hills running for several miles up to the col at its head, with the white ridge of Mali Shënjt overlooking it on one side, and the more wooded mountains above Mati on the other; while after a few steps more, almost beneath his feet, his astonished gaze is arrested by the sudden and wholly unawaited spectacle of the great Church, standing massive and imposing on a flat gravelled space, with its rococo belfry towering above the loggiaed porch, and the ecclesiastical buildings spreading away, tall, square-set, and severe, from its eastern end. It is so large, so florid, so wholly unexpected in those wild surroundings that it creates a quite startling impression. Where, one asks, is the congregation to fill such a building?—for except for a few small houses among the terraces the great valley spreads away, apparently empty save for rough pasture, forest, and bare high-lying scree and rock. But a congregation there is, as Gloire Thurston was soon to see, come on foot by narrow stony tracks from the hills and valleys for miles around, where their modest dwellings are tucked away out of sight in the gulleys and ravines, near water and what little fertile soil the land affords.

  And both church and congregation are at once the work and the monument of a very wonderful body of men, the Franciscans of High Albania. Throughout the dark and discouraging period of Turkish rule, the Franciscan Order took the Albanian mountaineers under its wing, and saw to it, decade after decade, century after century, that in these remote, lonely, and uncomfortable fastnesses the faithful, such as they were, should be ministered to, converts made, and the tide of Islamism stemmed. Many, perhaps most of these devoted priests were of Albanian blood, members of the Albanian colonies in Calabria and Apulia, whose forbears fled there at the advent of the Turks. It is one of the most romantic and least-known stories in the long, romantic, and gallant history of Roman Catholicism, this of the Franciscans in Albania. They shared the fortunes and misfortunes of their wild flocks; like Lek Dukhagin and many others they sought, and like them failed, to check the ever-prevalent blood-feuds; they adhered—being of like blood—so far as their faith permitted to the customs of their splendid if primitive parishioners, to whom they had to act not only as priests and pastors, but as doctors, official scribes, and private letter-writers,—since they alone, under Turkish auspices, had the privilege of literacy. Whether they approved or disapproved, they faithfully recorded the strange and traditional decisions of the Clan Council, the Pleknija— decisions much more often based on Adet, or Custom, than on Catholic doctrine. And there to this day they still are, working, praying, celebrating Mass, exhorting, healing, teaching, in an unimaginable spiritual and intellectual isolation, but wholly patient, wholly devoted, wholly absorbed in their lonely task.

  It was only a few minutes after Gloire and her guide left the cool, the fresc shade of the pine-tree by the little spring that they came over the crest of the hill and saw first the great stretch of the valley and the high grey peaks above it, glittering, dark pines and all, under the strong sun, and then, immediately below them, the imposing architectural mass of the great church. Gloire was for going down at once, but her guide would not have this; he led her, rather unwilling, to another of those little cabins of the gendarmerie, where a corporal and two of his men insisted on giving her Turkish coffee in minute cups, and cigarettes which they rolled for her themselves out of their fine hairy tobacco, licking the paper along the join with a flick of the tongue as neat as a cat’s, and twisting up the ends. Gloire was learning things; she disliked the idea of putting what the corporal had licked into her own reddened mouth, but she smoked several of his cigarettes with a perfectly good grace, and gave them her own State Express. They brought out an accordion from the cupboard in which they kept their files, and begged her to play it; Gloire could not play the accordion, but her guide could, and did, and the men sang some wild song; they indicated that she should sing, and Gloire obliged. But she had her eye on her watch, and presently she broke up this ingenuous party and set off down the steep zig-zags. It was Whitsunday, and after all, after everything, she was about to hear High Mass in the Abbey Church at Torosh. She was still very hot; her clothes stuck to her everywhere, but she, who cared so intensely for her own comfort, for once did not mind. More remarkable still, she had not even powdered her nose in the gendarmerie post, nor did she do so now; as damp and shiny as any of the congregation, she passed with her guide through the doors into the cool dimness within, and knelt down. They were quite at the back; she knelt on the left, among the women; her gendarme joined the throng of men on the right.

  It was indeed a throng. The great church was full. There were no seats; the worshippers knelt on the uneven stone floor; and the space left between the two sexes was not a straight line, but serpentined up towards the High Altar. As her eyes grew accustomed to the dim light after the blazing sunshine outside she began to look about her. Mass had begun, and up at the far end, among the lights and incense, several splendidly-robed figures moved to and fro; there was chanting. Gloire was more interested in the congregation. When they stood, she saw a charming thing. All the small children were ranged at the chancel rails, like a long particoloured wreath in which white predominated:—little white tunics for the boys, little coloured tunics for the girls, little white trousers for both. The women around her were all dressed in the full white trousers and white tunics reaching almost to the ankle, with velvet jackets in dark reds and plummy purples and deep greens, and aprons of brilliant many-coloured silks, their heads for the most part tied in black fringed shawls. So much she could see—not more, for the church was very dark where she stood, down by the door. And the smell was almost overpowering. (That she was accustomed to in Italy.) But as the service proceeded she became aware of something more impressive even than the splendour and strangeness of this galaxy of magnificent costumes and of vivid, severe, and handsome faces, nearly all stamped with a sort of haughty dignity. This was not at all like a fashionable congregation in St. Peter’s, attending some famous religious ceremony, with its rather off-hand conforming to ecclesiastical convention by kneelings, risings, and crossings—all carried out almost mechanically in the intervals of shrewd observation of one’s neighbours and whispered comments. There was none of that here—except among the children at the altar rail, who shoved and nudged as children will, at all times and in all places. Nor was there any of the rather self-conscious devoutness and concentrated piety of a well-trained Anglican congregation in London. Here was something much bigger, more primitive and yet more fundamental, more compelling. The congregation was chanting in unison, but the men answering the women and the women the men, in an immense antiphonal volume of sound that carried a profound assurance. And more than this—something in that whole concourse of mountain people was being drawn, irresistibly, towards one part of the great church—towards the altar and the Celebrant; and was being held there in a tension like that which holds a chord in music—inevitable, inescapable, profound. There was no outward sign of this at all—the splendid faces remained aloof, impassive, withdrawn—but it was there, and Gloire Thurston, the dissatisfied spoiled ultra-modern product of two continents and many capitals was aware of it, and could not escape it. It was so immense, and to her somehow so frightening in its immensity that she was almost relieved when the service ended, the organ crashed, and the congregation, she and her gendarme among them, streamed out again into the intense blazing sunshine, which was more normal, more bearable than that invisible blazing intensity within.

  Outside, the sexes still kept apart, at first. The women remained in the porch, or gathered in the shade just outsid
e it, on the north side of the church; the men grouped themselves on the steps at the foot of the tower, sat on the low wall overhanging the ravine, or spread about over the open space; the children chattered and ran, gay and free, but the little boys kept with the men, the little girls with the women. It was evidently a social occasion—the women talked with great liveliness, the men, their rifles on their knees, chewed the meat of weightier discourse with shrewd grins but without laughter. Old and young, they were alike fine to look at, the men; not tall, slightly and sparely built, with dark faces, much weathered; fine in the bone, expressive even in repose; their loose flowing trousers gave a sort of magnificence, as of regal robes, to their easy attitudes.