Black Lamb and Grey Falcon

by Rebecca West

  After we had crossed the bridge we heard no more of the monastery of Obod, and we wandered among pleasantness of a sort I had never imagined, never heard described. Beyond the bridge the river widened out into a curd of yellow water-lilies, edged with a streak of mirror at each bank, in which willow trees, standing above their exact reflections, amazed us by their shrill green and cat-o‘-thousand-tails form; they were like static fireworks. Handsome boys in uniform from a naval station rowed about, their arched boats cutting the golden cream of waterlilies with the action of an icebreaker. Beyond the river mouth Lake Scutari was more solid still than it had been in the fiord on the other side, and more bewildering: beneath hills covered with delicious woodland, emerald water-meadows met at an invisible line of marshes apparently only a shade less firm than themselves, which were impressed with a heavy and faulty image of the woodlands, like an unsuccessful colour photograph. About such shining viscous lochs we followed wandering lanes that took us past a quarry choked with honeysuckle; a quince orchard rising in terrace upon terrace of coarse clean blossom; a farmhouse with closed shutters of ardent blue, standing in lands trim as a stage, yet desolate and unpeopled as if they were tilled by phantoms. From that silence we looked up at a mountainside which from here was a sheer grey wall surmounted with a parapet of snow, flushed now from the west; there Constantine had told his tale and given the cakes to the little princes and princesses, who would still be keeping their sheep among the scrub, for their day is long. ’Time to go up to Tsetinye,‘ said Dragutin. ’Yes, yes,‘ said Constantine sadly; but he recovered his spirits on the way back to Riyeka when he started playing with the automobile radio and tuned in to Milan, for that station was broadcasting a particularly palpitant opera, and he discovered that if he turned it on at the right moments it was an effective substitute for a hooter. Astonished peasants taking home their calves or their pack-horses were hurled out of our way by soprano invocations of amore which were cut off before the obvious tryst could be kept with the tenor. ’For this,‘ said Constantine unjustly, ’has Italian music been made.‘

  We climbed the sheer mountainside and dropped over the crest, and found Tsetinye. It lies in a stony crater like a town set inside the brainpan of an enormous skull. Its square stone houses, laid out in broad streets, are typically Montenegrin in a Puritanism that suffers no decoration save an occasional great tree; and all its horizons are edged with a breaking wave of rock, which at this hour was the colour of chill itself. A division of the Sokols, the Hawks, the patriotic gymnastic societies, was holding a congress here, and as we entered this town that looked like a Golgotha we heard the sound of several bands and had to drive slowly through crowds of beautiful young men and women in various kinds of peasant dress and uniform. For some time we could not reach the front door of our hotel because the people standing in front of it had suddenly taken it into their heads to form a great circle and dance the kolo. A moon, caught in the foliage of a great tree behind them, shone back from the windows of a large house beside the hotel, giving it an air of being no sort of habitation for the living. ‘That,’ said Constantine, ‘was the boarding school for young ladies which was financed by the Tsarina of Russia.’ There the little dears of Dalmatia and Croatia and Bosnia, imported here to be imbued with the principles of absolutism, learned to read Stepniak and Kropotkin and Gorki. I was receiving a last demonstration of the Balkan habit of making life fully visible, of gathering up diffused events into an apprehensible symbol. The bleached town, set on aridity, was the scene of innumerable futilities committed by Imperial Russia. The moon had continued to shine on it, the people had continued to dance.

  After the Montenegrin vespers, when the Martinovitch brothers had purged their people of the spreading Moslem taint, Peter the Great conceived an admiration for these people. He had an eye for the quality of the South Slavs, it was to Kotor he had sent a party of his young nobles to learn seamanship. He treated Montenegro with special favour, proclaiming the Prince-Bishop Danilo as his ally ‘to conquer the Turk and glorify the Slav faith and name,’ and sending him money and gifts calculated to foster the Orthodox religion, such as missals, vestments, and icons. This tradition was maintained by his successors until it was interrupted by a priggish and doctrinaire attitude of bureaucrats towards a people fighting for its life in primitive conditions. In 1760 a Russian envoy was sent to inquire into the disposition the then Prince-Bishop Sava was making of the subsidy. This envoy was scandalized when he found that the Prince-Bishop was using his nephew, Bishop Vasili, an able politician, to dole out the money to the different tribes in such a way as to cement their loyalty to the central government; the loyal were rewarded, the troublesome had to go without. The Russian bureaucrat had an idea that the money ought to have been distributed equally among the tribes in the name of Russia, and he coldly withdrew, leaving out of account the excellent resistance the Montenegrins were making against the Turks, and advised the Empress to send them no more subsidies or gifts. Vasili went to St. Petersburg to beg for a reversal of the decision, and there he died. He was taken ill and had not a penny for his ordinary necessities or medical attention. Because he was a Bishop the Russians gave him a gorgeous funeral in St. Alexander Nevsky.

  As the Russian Government had thus destroyed the mechanism by which order was maintained, the country was plunged into riot, which the Prince-Bishop Sava could not control now that he had lost Vasili. The day was saved by the emergence of a new and gifted leader, a monk named Stephen the Little, who claimed that he was Tsar Peter III, Catherine the Great’s husband, although that sad nonentity had been safely murdered by Orloff some years before. It is difficult to suppose that Stephen the Little’s claim was believed in by the people who accepted it in anything like the strict sense of the word ‘believe.’ A monk cannot well appear in a monastery from nowhere, and indeed it is said that many recognized him as a member of a well-known Dalmatian family. Like many impostors he probably put forward his story as a symbolic expression of his inborn right to power, and though his followers would have denied that they regarded it in such a light, they showed very clearly that they were not going to abandon him if it were proved untrue.

  Stephen the Little very soon showed unusual ability by restoring order among the tribes and bringing them into a united front against the Turks. But Catherine the Great was inspired to send a suite of thirty officers under Prince Dolgoruki to Montenegro on the double and inharmonious mission of denouncing Stephen the Little as a fraud and enlisting Montenegrin volunteers to fight against the Turks with the Russian Army. They had an unenjoyable visit. When they arrived to stay with the Prince-Bishop they were appalled by the amount of rakia they were expected to drink with the monks, and by the irregularity and frugality of the meals. Then the heads of the tribes came to pay their respects, and when they were all assembled they were joined by Stephen the Little and an enthusiastic band of followers. It should be understood that Stephen the Little must have realized that Prince Dolgoruki would denounce him if he presented himself. When the denunciation was made the Montenegrins refused to shoot Stephen the Little, as the Russians suggested, but they consented to imprison him, and locked him up in a room above the quarters occupied by Prince Dolgoruki.

  The troubles of the mission then began. During the next few days the Turkish forces made preparations for a fresh attack, and the Patriarch of Petch and one of his Bishops arrived at Tsetinye to beg for help against tyranny in their district; and spies came in with the news that the Turks had been delighted by the imprisonment of Stephen the Little. The Montenegrins then gathered round and pointed out how regrettable it was that they now had a Prince-Bishop, a visiting Patriarch and Bishop, a Russian prince and thirty Russian officers, and no leader. They went on to point out that Prince Dolgoruki had allowed them to imprison Stephen the Little in a room above his own, and that this was a proof that he knew the monk was of a rank superior to his own.

  Incredible as it may seem, this remark has been recorded by historian after hist
orian as a sign of Montenegrin simplicity and ignorance. Actually this was a convention respected both at Versailles and at the court of the Romanoffs. For this reason the rooms above the suites of the French King and the Tsar always were left vacant. Prince Dolgoruki and his thirty officers then hastily fled down the face of Mount Lovchen to Kotor, and sailed away, leaving Stephen to share power over Montenegro with the Prince-Bishop for the next eight years, till 1774. He might have reigned much longer, for he was an excellent governor, teaching the tribes to respect life and property as never before, had he not been murdered by a barber who was sent to his monastery by the Pasha of Scutari. This crime looks as if it could be counted against the Turks, but the Pashalik of Scutari was a hereditary office held by a family of renegade Serbs; and it cannot even be counted against Islam, for the records of the Venetian Inquisition candidly disclose that the Inquisition sent a certain count to Montenegro with instructions to kill Stephen the Little and equipped him with a bottle of poison.

  The order created by this great impostor survived him. The country was still well disciplined when the Prince-Bishop Sava died in 1782 and it was taken over by his brilliant nephew, Prince-Bishop Peter I. This man was almost as much of a prodigy as Stephen the Little, for he was as fine a soldier and as dexterous in the political work of civilizing and unifying the tribes, and he had a legal mind of a high order; he codified the law and inaugurated a judicial system. He had also the advantage of longevity, which made him able to carry his ideas into effect during a reign of forty-eight years, and win one of his most spectacular victories against the Turks at the age of seventy-three. He appealed powerfully to the imaginative mind of the Tsar Alexander I, who subsidized him handsomely in return for the use of his troops. They must have been the most disconcerting allies. There exists the horrified testimony of a Russian naval officer, who had fought beside them, a Monsieur Broniewsky. ‘When, at the attack of Clobuk, a little detachment of our troops was obliged to retreat, one of our officers, a man of stout habit, no longer young’—one sees him as a subsidiary character in Evgenye Onegin—‘fell to the ground from exhaustion. A Montenegrin perceived it and ran immediately to him and drew his yataghan, saying, “You are very brave, and must wish that I should cut off your head rather than that you should fall into the hands of the enemy. So say a prayer and make the sign of the cross.” ’

  I could understand the feelings of that officer after we had spent the evening with Constantine’s friend, Sava Militchevitch, who came out and claimed us, as we stood watching the kolo sway and pause and beat out a rhythm and pause again, dusted like the ground it danced on with the fine white powder of the moonlight. Sava was cast in the handsome Montenegrin mould, and his character was plainly as noble as his appearance, but I could not dismiss a suspicion that in certain circumstances he might invite me to say a prayer and make the sign of the cross in order that he might cut my head off, and that he would be inspired by such exalted sentiments it would be unthinkable to resist them. Over dinner he conversed in French and Italian, and revealed himself as spiritual brother to the nicest kind of don; he would have fitted very well into Oxford or Princeton. But he was heroic, he was classical. He offered to step into our modern and minor world, since he knew we were at ease there, but his heart was hardly able to carry his offer.

  This attitude was pervasive; it touched the whole of life, yet sprang strong and undeflected from the small confines of his people’s customs. It appeared at once when he handed us our mail, and I found in my packet a letter from my mother-in-law over which I groaned, for the reason that her handwriting has every good quality except legibility. Sava was visibly shocked, and was not really soothed when I explained that I was groaning because of my impatience to read the letter which was sure to be sensible and humorous. He would have liked it better if I had begun my married life by extravagant rites of prostration before my mother-in-law which would have taught me to regard her as a representative of Demeter and to take what she gave me in the way of handwriting or anything else. Later, when he heard that I had received the Order of St Sava for lecturing in Yugoslavia, he said to my husband, ‘And you, did you not get anything? Here in Montenegro we men would not be content if our wives were given something and we did not have it too.’ Though he laughed at himself, it was obvious that he felt that there was really something a little ridiculous about a husband whose wife had a distinction he had not, even if his own distinctions were far greater. A man should have everything, because he is a hero, because he is half divine in his courage, and because there must be a predestined attraction between him and the fruits of the earth if his lot is not to be intolerably uncertain. The theory would be invalidated if women were allowed to draw to themselves a single fruit, for though women may be heroic it is only as amateurs, they are never dedicated, full-time professionals. But as compensation the bountiful male will accord the female the last degree of respect and protection, and Sava spoke of the Montenegrin women as if they were so many saints, for all of whom and each of whom he would have given his life.

  This was not merely talk. It could be taken for granted that this man had no timidity, as it can be taken for granted that most of us Westerners have much of it. This, of course, was not to the point, for what women want is not individual protection but a high standard of civil order, and the two things are not completely harmonious. That we realized when my husband asked whether Montenegrin peasant costume, with its wealth of gold and silver and silk braid, was expensive, and Sava told him that it represented a heavy tax on a poverty-stricken people, for the suit alone cost thirty pounds, and there were many accessories, including a rifle. ‘Does one have to take out a licence to carry a rifle?’ asked my husband. ‘Yes,’ answered Sava, ‘of course one has to take out a licence if one is going to carry a rifle, as in any other civilized state, but not if one is wearing our national costume.’ ‘Surely that defeats the whole idea of a gun licence,’ said my husband. ‘But we are a military people,’ said Sava, ‘how could we have a national costume that did not include a rifle?’

  Among my husband’s mail was a telegram asking him to be in Budapest three days earlier than we had planned, and we were discussing the changes this involved when Constantine suddenly said, ‘Is that not the German Minister from Albania sitting over there?’ ‘Yes,’ said Sava, ‘he arrived this afternoon.’ ‘Why is that?’ asked Constantine. ‘I have no idea,’ said Sava, ‘perhaps he is on his way home for a holiday.’ ‘Has anything happened in Albania?’ asked Constantine. ‘I haven’t heard so,’ said Sava, ‘and certainly there is nothing in the papers.’ ‘But there must be something happening in Albania!’ exclaimed Constantine, and he pushed his plate away from him, and held his forehead between his hands. He told Sava about the German agents we had seen at Sveti Naum and Petch and Podgoritsa, and Sava groaned. ‘I cannot believe that has happened to the Italians, whom I learned to love when I was a student in Rome. That they should do such things, and that they should be in league with the Germans, that is an offence against nature.’

  They sat in uneasy silence for an instant and Constantine said, ‘You do not see anybody else here who has come from Albania?’ Sava looked round the room and shook his head. ‘Then you must ask the German Minister what has happened,’ said Constantine. ‘That I cannot do!’ exclaimed Sava indignantly. ‘You can do it very easily,’ said Constantine; ‘you are an official here, you can easily present yourself to him and ask if there is anything you can do for him. And then, quite easily, as you turn away, you can say, “By the way, there are rumours that there is”—oh, anything will do!—“a revolution in Albania.”’ ‘No, that I cannot do,’ said Sava. ‘But why not?’ asked Constantine. ‘He might refuse to tell me,’ said Sava. ‘And what would that matter?’ said Constantine, growing red. ‘Then we are no worse off than we were before.’ ‘And I,’ said Sava, growing white, ‘am I not worse off, if I ask a man a question and he humiliates me by not answering?’ ‘No, you are not, not by a dinar,’ said Constantine. The tw
o men glared at each other, and Constantine gave a shrug of resignation. ‘Very well, we shall not know till tomorrow what it is, this threat to our country,’ he said, and we fell to talking of our plans for the next day. We resolved to see what we could of Tsetinye in the morning, go down for lunch and a bathe at the sea-coast town of Budva below us, catch a boat at Kotor in the afternoon, and land at Dubrovnik late at night.