White Eagles Over Serbia

by Lawrence Durrell

  “All right. All right.”

  “Passport section will give you all the information you need about him. They’ve fixed up his passport to fit you.”

  They had done more than this; they had obliged him with a Yugoslav ration card, an identity card, and a sheaf of points which would, all things being equal, enable him to purchase enough textiles for two shirts in Belgrade. It was quick work. Methuen retired to an empty office and put in a toll call to Ravenswood, the little country pub in which he spent all his holidays. Septimus answered almost at once with his great growling voice of welcome. “But of course, Colonel Methuen; of course we’ve room. Pity it’s only for a night though—can’t you make it longer?”

  “I wish I could,” said Methuen.

  “Never mind,” said Septimus. “I’ll see that there’s something worth eating for dinner. What time will you be in?”

  “About seven-thirty.”

  “I’ll send the pony trap.”

  “Don’t worry. I’ll walk through the fields.”

  Septimus groaned; nobody over eighteen stone can bear to hear the word “walk”.

  “I’d rather you than me,” he said.

  That night Methuen left the little station of Ravenswood and walked across the wet fields to The Parson’s Nose, already preoccupied with the problems of his mission. Septimus and his buxom wife greeted and made much of him and he found that they had given him the best bedroom.

  He spent a happy hour playing darts in the tap-room with his village acquaintances before confronting the kind of dinner for which Septimus was famous. Then he read for a while before turning in, full of an unhurried contentment. The book was Walden which he never tired of; a little India-paper edition which he always carried when he was out in the wilds and out of which he had evolved a laborious private code for keeping in touch with Dombey. Indeed he had first selected the book as a code-book, only to fall under its spell after many re-readings in solitary places.

  He lay for a long time that night in the darkness, listening to the deep stillness of the English countryside and gathering himself together for the new mission which he knew would tax his resources to the utmost. Somewhere a nightingale sang softly, with a magical lazy clarity. The scent of honeysuckle came in at the open windows, and he could hear the soft whisper of rain in the leaves outside the window-sill. Ah! the familiar luxury of England! Why was one such a fool, to trade it against the chances of a nameless grave in an Asiatic swamp or on a Bosnian mountain?

  For a wild moment he thought of ringing Dombey up and telling him: “I’ve changed my mind. I’m going on to the retired list for good. I’ll stay right here in Ravenswood until I die.” The longing was so great that he even rose on one elbow in the dark and reached out towards the telephone by his bed; but he knew in his heart of hearts that he would never lift the receiver off its hook. He must go on this new mission. Yet to assuage the thought of telephoning he got out of bed and rang up Boris. The wig-maker’s voice sounded remote and crackly, and was half-submerged in a buzz of talk. “I have some friends here,” he explained. “But your fancy dress is delivered this morning. I hope it fits you. Sbogom, my dear fellow.”

  “Sbogom,” said Methuen and the word (“Go with God”) took him back once more to those remote mountain fastnesses where the golden eagle brooded and where the deep swift rivers rushed between wooded banks on their way to the sea. Smiling, he fell asleep.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  The Journey Begins

  London in the grey early morning looked unbelievably lovely. From the window of his loitering taxi Methuen let his eye rest briefly and lovingly on the familiar landmarks etched from the grey morning mist and felt once more the nostalgic tug of England which always afflicted him most when he was about to leave her. Passing St. James’s Park he cried: “Stop a moment,” and for a few minutes walked on the green grass beside the road. There was a heavy dew, even for early June, and as he stood looking around him Big Ben struck imperiously from the misty confines of the river.

  When he reached Victoria he found he had some time in hand and swallowed a dreadful cup of tea in the buffet as he read an early morning edition. An item caught his eye for a moment among the general welter of type. “Yugoslav exiles to buy submarine.” It was an item barely four lines in length which stated that the exiled Royalists in Paris had completed negotiations for the purchase of a submarine from Argentina. There did not seem to be any particular significance in it. A submarine would be of little use to an exiled government which owned neither Army or Navy. Did they blithely imagine that they were going to sail about the Mediterranean potting at Communist shipping in the Adriatic?

  He was extremely touched to find Dombey waiting for him at the barrier, looking more than ever like an owl and wrapped in a huge vague overcoat. “I wanted to see you off,” he said. “I am really touched, Dombey,” said Methuen. “I know what it must have cost you to get up as early as this.” And he meant it.

  He found his reserved seat and they walked up and down the platform for a while, arm in arm. “All your fancy dress is in the diplomatic bag,” said Dombey. “I just wanted to see how much like an accountant you looked. Actually it is not bad.” Methuen had dressed in a plain business-suit with a dark overcoat; his brief-case, umbrella, brown-paper parcel full of sandwiches proclaimed an inhabitant of the City of London. He had trimmed his moustache slightly and was wearing horn-rimmed spectacles which gave him a timid and urbane look. A pen and pencil were clipped into his vest pocket from which a neat triangle of handkerchief protruded.

  “Why are they buying a submarine?” he asked.

  “Heaven knows,” said Dombey with the resignation of a man for whom the Balkan mentality is a closed book. “The thing is an old American one, stripped of all armament, and twice condemned. I doubt if one could take it to sea. It’s been lying in a French dockyard under repair for ages.”

  A whistle blew and Methuen clambered aboard. “Look after yourself,” said Dombey and Methuen told him not to fear anything on that score. The platform began to slide away with its coloured posters, for all the world as if a giant scene-shifter were at work. They ran out into the misty morning towards the grey Channel. Methuen felt his spirits rise as the train gathered way and the monotonous clicking of the wheels slithered and blurred into a rumble of speed.

  Paris in the late afternoon was bright with sunlight, though there was hardly time to do more than glance at it. A blithe French taxi galloped Mr. Judson across the capital to the station where the Orient Express was lying, waiting for its passengers. Sunlight on the river and the animation of crowds which sauntered along its banks awoke many old memories. There were people he would have liked to see, but none of them were friends of Mr. Judson, so he forebore to telephone them. Mr. Judson was too timid to risk more than a glancing encounter with this capital of fun and good food—and so much vice. He found his wagon-lit, attended to his luggage, and disposed himself in gloomy silence to eat the bread and butter he had brought with him. Later, greatly daring, he bought a bottle of Vichy water, counting his change with a suspicious air, and waving away the proffered bottle of red wine which the man tried to press on him.

  In the dining-car that night he was able to size up his fellow-passengers. There were two Italian families travelling part of the way, a few nondescript business men, and three surly-looking Yugoslavs obviously returning from some trade mission in western Europe. They talked all the time with animation but in low tones, while all their ordering was done by one member of the party who spoke a few words of French. They wore cheap overcoats of hideous cut and heavy boots, but seemed inordinately proud of the cheap wrist-watches they all wore on their right arms. Mr. Judson dined opposite them and while he could not hear the subject of their conversation he overheard enough to decide that they were all peasants who had found themselves elected officials under the new dispensation. Two at least were Serbian, while the one who spoke French was either a Croat or a Slovene.

  At the Itali
an frontier they ran into heavy rain, and by the time the train reached Venice it had hardened into a storm which looked as if it might last for ever. A strong south wind whipped the shallow lagoons to a tawny yellowish froth and the clouds hung low over the city. Here there was a long wait. The train disgorged its passengers, and the polite and intelligent sleeping-car attendants packed their suitcases and took their leave. They were replaced by a couple of unshaven-looking rascals, smelling strongly of plum-brandy and dressed in soiled brown uniforms. Neither spoke any language but his own, and the few remaining passengers were reduced to express their wants in dumb-show. One small fragment of conversation gave Mr. Judson a valuable clue as to how one was expected to behave in Yugoslavia. One of the Yugoslavs aboard the train said, in the course of a long and unintelligible conversation: “I knew at once he was an anti-Titoist because he said ‘Sbogom’ instead of ‘Zdravo’.” This puzzled Judson for a moment until he remembered that the first greeting carries the name of God with it, and to the good Marxist the name of God is anathema.

  Darkness was falling as the train crawled into Trieste, and after a brief pause turned inland to climb the cliffs which separated them from the Yugoslavia which Methuen had once known so well but which Mr. Judson had never seen. At the frontier a horde of officials climbed aboard supervised by a couple of grim-looking young men in leather overcoats and top-boots, but dressed in plain clothes. Mr. Judson was interested in this first glance at the dreaded OZNA officials who held the country in a grip hardly less brutal than that of the Russian NKVD. They were obviously chosen for their powerful physique and not for their intelligence. They walked along the corridor holding the passports of the passengers and clumsily comparing the photographs which adorned these documents with the originals. They found that the likeness of Mr. Judson passed muster and handed him back his passport after taking the precaution of looking under the seats of the sleeping-carriage. The other officials treated them with great deference, and the swagger with which they walked proclaimed them a ruling caste. The diplomatic visa saved Mr. Judson from the indignity of having his baggage searched, though there was nothing incriminating in it.

  Almost empty, the train passed the last barrier and lurched forward into the darkness which covered Yugoslavia. Methuen stared eagerly out of the window to pick up remembered landmarks but the darkness defeated him; once or twice he caught a glimpse of a fairy-tale mountain fringed with fir trees, rearing up against the sky, and perhaps dotted with Hans Andersen houses, with hanging eaves. Once or twice the darkness fell away under his eyes and showed him the racing whiteness of a mountain torrent, the steady concussion of the water rising above even the roar of the wheels. But for the most part the land lay in darkness except for where a blaze of light lit up a riverside sawmill or a power factory.

  At Lunbliana the station was seething with human beings and almost before the train drew up a raging crowd of peasants burst into it, shouting incoherently and dragging after them shapeless parcels of all sizes.

  There was no attempt to keep order, and so great was the press that even the corridors of the train filled to bursting point with human beings, who overflowed into the reserved sleeping-coaches and were expelled with oaths by the attendants. Methuen had a vivid memory of the pre-war Slovene peasant with his spotless linen and he was shocked to see the ragged and dirty crowd which now besieged the train. Everywhere the shapeless cloth cap which was the badge of a new servitude. The women looked ghastly and haggard as they wrestled with their baskets, and the shrill voices with which they wrangled and argued had an edge of hysteria and fatigue. This was a new and startling phenomenon—the transformation of a Yugoslav crowd into a band of pariahs. Only the officials looked secure and well fed, each with his tall top-boots and black despatch case. The revolution had carried them to security above the common press of human beings.

  The way to the lavatory was now effectively blocked and Methuen took a stroll to the end of the corridor, reserved for the privileged foreigners, to gaze at the bee-like swarm of passengers in the next carriage. Once the train started they seemed to relax into attitudes of fatigued sleep, some leaning, some standing. As he advanced into the corridor a large mustachioed peasant emerged from the lavatory and greeted him. He was an elderly man with a good expanse of dirty waistcoat and a moth-eaten fur hat. He was obviously rather drunk and carried in his right hand, with elaborate care, a bottle whose pungent odour proclaimed its contents—plum brandy. His broad humorous face proclaimed him a Serb. “Ah,” he said, “a foreigner.”

  “Eh?” said Mr. Judson, peering at him.

  “Well may you stare at us,” said the Serb, describing an arc with his free hand. “Well may you see what they are doing to our country. Come, follow me.” This was too good to miss; still smiling uncomprehendingly Mr. Judson allowed the heavy arm to propel him into the crowded corridor. Apparently the old farmer had his seat in the first carriage reserved for him. He sat himself down unsteadily after a good deal of clawing at the arms and shoulders of those who blocked the entry. “Here is a foreigner,” he announced to the company at large. Rabbit-glances of uncertainty from all corners of the carriage greeted this statement. “I really must go,” said Mr. Judson, who seemed too timid to disengage himself from the burly peasant’s grasp. “He is seeing what they have done to our country,” said the old man, who felt he had got hold of a point and wanted nothing better than to stick to it. “Our country,” he added, taking a swig from the bottle.

  “Let him go,” said a timid-looking girl. “Don’t bother him, he is a foreigner and doesn’t understand.”

  The old man gave another grandiloquent flourish of his arm: “He will understand one day,” he said. “When the white eagles come again. Now they are far, far.” He raised his fingers to the ceiling and screwed up his eyes as if trying to spot a distant object in an empty sky. “But one day they will come.” This little effort produced a quite extraordinary effect of alarm in the carriage. Three people, including a policeman, obviously returning from leave, immediately pretended to fall fast asleep and snore. A young soldier, and two women got up hastily and left the carriage, after casting a frightened glance at each other. A man in plain clothes who had been reading a newspaper, dropped it. “Far, far,” repeated the old man.

  A tall young militiaman who had been standing in the corridor stuck his head in and shouted: “Enough of your nonsense or we shall put you off the train.” He pushed the old man’s arm off Judson’s and stood back to let him pass, saying: “If you please,” with great politeness. Reluctantly Mr. Judson relinquished his new-found acquaintance and made his way back to his own compartment. He decided to hunt out a book from his suitcase and discovered that it had been clumsily searched, no doubt in his absence. He ordered his bed to be made up and settled himself to read. Whatever else happened, he reflected, nobody could deny that this was going to be a most interesting journey.

  They did not reach Zagreb until after midnight, and here once more a sleepy Methuen stared out upon a platform seething with ragged serfs. Huge socialist-realist posters stabbed the ill-lit gloom with their invocations to the God of Marxist progress. Everywhere too were slogans written in dazzling capitals on the walls, and picture upon picture of Tito, flanked by Stalin and Lenin, or flanked by members of his own inner cabinet, the Politburo. The contrast between the promises held out by those flaring posters and the bitter reality of life under Communism seemed fantastic to the sleepy watcher at the window. It was as if he were entering a new country, so little did these scenes correspond to his own memories of a joyous, confused but essentially happy country. To be sure the trains and stations had been crowded before; to be sure people had been rather careful what they said in front of the police; but what had changed now was not the situation so much as the human being. These ragged creatures seemed to have lost all self-respect in the struggle to make ends meet. They had become submerged in the rising tide of an anonymous, faceless, characterless mass. It was rather frightening. And everywher
e, walking with authority and arrogance, he saw the officials of the ruling caste—either blue-clad militia or the ubiquitous gentlemen in leather overcoats whose function was to hold the ring for the Communist party.

  He slept now, and in his dreams saw the great plains unrolling like a chart on either side of the train, traversed by dense swift rivers. The train gathered speed and clanked onwards towards Belgrade, occasionally emitting a drowsy shriek, or spewing forth a handful of burning clinkers which set fire to the dry sedges beside the railway. The monotonous lulling chant of the wheels took possession of him and he did not wake until he heard the roar of the train passing over the last bridge which spans the Sava river and leads directly into the heart of the capital.

  He was met at the station by a junior accountant, a spotty and respectful young man who obviously had no clue that the identity of the Mr. Judson he was expecting was being used as a mask. Methuen thought it wiser not to enlighten him. He loaded his luggage into the car and sitting beside the young man, jogged and sprawled his way up towards the Embassy. “Major Carter is going to put you up in his villa, sir,” said the young man, not without a touch of envy. “Better than the hotels here.”

  “I hear”, said Methuen, “that you have lost your M.A.”

  The young man lowered both his head and his voice. “It’s been a great shock, sir. We’ve just sent the body back to London, sir. A great shock. And you know, sir, they say he wasn’t only shot; he looked as if he had been crushed. All bruised.”

  Methuen said nothing for a moment, watching the shabby battered streets of the capital flicker past outside the windows of the car. “He may have had a bad fall,” he said. “He used to go off on fishing trips, didn’t he?”

  The young man put on an arch and knowing air. “If you ask me,” he said, “he was up to something else. However,” he went on, pursing his lips, “it is none of our business. It’s not our side of the work. We must mind our own business.” Methuen agreed gravely and let the matter rest.