by Rebecca West
There were other visitors to the museum, so presently Sava and my husband and I found ourselves alone in a little room that had been the boudoir of one of the princesses. It was furnished chiefly with an ornate upright piano and a tapestry picture of Verdi wearing white spats, and it looked on the palace gardens, which are now a public park but were nevertheless being used at the moment as a drying-ground for somebody’s sheets. I found myself thinking of the thousands of men with fezes and women with veils that I had seen in the streets of Sarajevo, turning away in desolation because the representatives of the New Turkey had looked on them coldly and had told them that the old Turkey, which had been their mother, was dead and buried. I asked Sava, ‘Is that man not very unhappy now that the old Turkey has gone?’ ‘Yes, indeed,’ answered Sava, ‘and that was very noticeable when a party of Turkish journalists visited us recently. This poor fellow looked forward to their coming with the greatest expectations, for the Moslems here never realize, you know, how completely they have been cut off by the Turks of Turkey. They like to think it is the Yugoslavian Government which prevents them from communicating with their co-religionists. So for days before this poor fellow talked of nothing else, and made endless plans for welcoming them. But when they arrived here they were not at all keen to come and see him out of his turn, and he had already been awaiting them for some hours when they arrived. It was obvious that the sight of them was a shock to him, for our Moslems cannot realize that the Turks of Turkey dress like Christians; and then when he had made his little speech to them they did not answer at once, but first said, “We think it a pity you wear a fez. The Ataturk does not wish us to wear fezes and it is he we follow nowadays.” But when they had got over that point he took them to see the collection, and began to show them the plaster cast of the Pasha’s head, as something that should make them feel very sorry, because the poor man had been a good servant to the Sultan and to Mohammed, and the Montenegrins cut off his head and brought it here, and took this mask of it so that they might gloat over it. But the Turkish journalists would hear nothing of that; they said, “We will rather not think of such things. He was one of our soldiers and his head was cut off. But it was we who brought into Europe the sort of civilization that cuts off heads, and the Ataturk has taught us not to be proud of it.” The visit here was not a success, and the poor curator thought it was not a successful banquet that we gave that night to the Turkish journalists in the hotel here. For we have a delicious kind of raw ham here in Montenegro and they ate a great deal of it. That the curator could not bear to see. He is a very pious Moslem, and not only does he put down his rug and pray at all the prescribed times, but he observes all prohibitions, so you can imagine what it was for him to see the Turks eating pig, the most unclean of all unclean things according to the Prophet. Nor does he drink wine, and these journalists drank much rakia. But he is a very polite man, he rose and said that he must go home because he was feeling ill; and they were polite also, for they said that they regretted it and hoped he would soon be better. And, indeed, their hopes were needed, for he looked like a sick man for days.’
I pressed my face against the window-pane. In the gardens below a woman knelt beside the sheets and fingered them to see if they were still wet; she must have put them out at dawn if she expected them to be dry by now. Behind two romping children lagged a sad-faced girl, probably a German or an Italian governess. It would be better to be a drudge or an exile than to suffer what this Turk was suffering: to find suddenly that the beliefs which one had learned from one’s parents and at school, and which had been the basis of all one’s dealings with one’s fellow-men, had been abandoned by everybody except oneself. That must be a beggary as bad as lack of bread, for it would take away one’s appetite, since to live out tomorrow would be a puzzle without an answer. I told myself, ‘This must always happen if a national faith is not valid. Of course the Turkish faith was not valid. Ferocity and voluptuousness, though they travel with superior companions, with courage and beauty, are apparently insufficient. Death must be allowed to carry out the dead, and if a civilization cannot stand it must fall.’
After a moment when I believed I was thinking of nothing, only watching the woman pick up her sheets and the girl call her pupils and heavily quicken her steps when they paid no heed, my heart turned over. I must, in fact, have been thinking of many things, all of them disagreeable. I said to myself, ‘My civilization must not die. It need not die. My national faith is valid, as the Ottoman faith was not. I know that the English are as unhealthy as lepers compared with perfect health. They do not give themselves up to feeling or to work as they should, they lack readiness to sacrifice their individual rights for the sake of the corporate good, they do not bid the right welcome to the other man’s soul. But they are on the side of life, they love justice, they hate violence, and they respect the truth. It is not always so when they deal with India or Burma; but that is not their fault, it is the fault of Empire, which makes a man own things outside his power to control. But among themselves, in dealing with things within their reach, they have learned some part of the Christian lesson that it is our disposition to crucify what is good, and that we must therefore circumvent our barbarity. This measure of wisdom makes it right that my civilization should not perish.’
Sava said to me, ‘Over there is a coach-house which I would like you to notice. For years it was crammed with trunks containing valuable articles of clothing and jewellery, the personal property of Nicholas and his family, who left them behind in the haste of their flight to Scutari. Poor as our people are, and accustomed to looting as an actual part of military technique, nobody touched these things. They thought it beneath their dignity to take what had belonged to their unworthy king.’ It was an impressive story, but his tone and his profile evoked the monotonous white colonnade of Montenegrin heroism, its tedious temple of victory. I felt a distaste I had better stop feeling, if I were not to find myself in the same plight as the Turk. If I wanted my civilization to survive under attack—and I would have learned from this journey that it was going to be attacked, even had I started in ignorance—I had to be willing to fight for it. This necessity did not lessen because fighting meant the sacrifice of most of the subtle variations that it has been the happy business of the intellect to impose on the instinctive life. I had to be willing to fight for it even though my own cause could not fail to be repulsive to me, since the essence of civilization was disinclination for violence, and when I defended it habit would make me fear that I was betraying it.
‘But surely, surely,’ said Sava, ‘Constantine must have got here by now.’ And when we got downstairs there was the automobile with Dragutin at the wheel and Constantine inside, ominously in the same attitude, each with his arms folded and his chin sunk on his chest. ‘Dear God,’ said Sava, under his breath, ‘what has this madman from Belgrade been doing now?’ My husband went forward and asked Constantine, ‘Have you found out what has been happening in Albania?’ ‘No,’ said Constantine, ‘I got through to Belgrade and talked to my ministry and they knew nothing.’ ‘That conversation has taken a long time,’ said Sava. Constantine shot off his seat like a jack-in-the-box. ‘It has not! It did not take twenty minutes; no, it took not fifteen minutes! I wonder at you that you compromise our telephone system before foreigners! But since then I had much to do. Much to do,’ he repeated with a murderous look at Dragutin’s shoulders. ‘Listen,’ said Dragutin, ‘only listen. There is no petrol in Tsetinye. None at all. It is because of the Sokol Congress yesterday. But I have enough petrol to take us up Mount Lovchen, and down to Kotor and Budva, where I can get as much more as I want. But we must not think of that. Oh, no! Instead we must go to every bug-ridden inn and every hencoop that calls itself a garage, and beg them for whatever horse’s water they may have chanced to catch in a petrol-tin, until we have enough to go down to the sea and back. So the morning has gone.’ ‘He does not understand,’ said Constantine haughtily. ‘I have much experience of travel, I know all roads i
n Yugoslavia, and in Switzerland and France. I have driven very much also, and I will always take what petrol is necessary to go and come, because I know.’
I knew that as he spoke his own words sounded infinitely foolish to him, and that he had driven about Tsetinye because he wanted to strike out at something, no matter what, and nothing but Dragutin’s will presented itself. ‘But certainly there would have been petrol at Kotor or Budva,’ said Sava. He also was on edge, and he felt a desire to hurt and insult one of the Serb officials who represented the Yugoslavian authority which had been imposed on Montenegro. ‘So you say,’ said Constantine, ‘but how do you know? I tell you, I have vast experience of travel, and I am not so sure.’ They repeated slight variations on these remarks several times, and there seemed no reason why the conversation should ever stop, so I said, ‘And now are we going straight to Mount Lovchen?’ This distraction was not so successful as I had hoped. For Sava looked along the road and said in a voice sharp as broken glass with anger, ‘Look what has happened while you have been running round and round Tsetinye because you think there is no petrol on the Adriatic.’
The amphitheatre of rock which encloses the town was now surmounted by a high parapet of fog. ‘Now,’ said Sava, very straightnosed, ‘they will never see the view from Mount Lovchen, which is the most beautiful in the world, which is something you have not got anything like in Serbia. Now they will never see the tomb of the poet Prince-Bishop Peter. Now they will never see Nyegush, which is the cradle of our royal dynasty.’ ‘That may be,’ said my husband, ‘but it will not be because we are late in starting, for that mist has been there all morning.’ Sava looked at him distrustfully; but he was such an intellectual that it was easy to persuade him. ‘I am sure of it,’ continued my husband, ‘for I noticed it when I was shaving in front of my window at seven.’ When Dragutin gathered from the others what he was saying he looked at him with no sort of doubt at all. Later he told me it was a pity that my husband was a banker and that I wrote books, for we could have done very well at selling things. ‘And now,’ said my husband, ‘let Dragutin drive wherever the mist is thinnest and we will see what we can.’
Budva
We stood on a mountainside in a circular cell which held ourselves, Constantine and Sava, an obelisk, and a curved balustrade. This cell was cut out of a dense fog by some magic and arbitrary force which permitted everything within five feet of the spectator to be clearly seen and nothing whatsoever beyond. The automobile on the road was a shadow hardly to be identified save when Dragutin impatiently tooted on the horn. Some time before, Sava had sadly told us, ‘I can assure you that the view from this obelisk is usually very fine, very fine indeed,’ and there had followed between him and Constantine one of those conversations which came so easily to those two, without any visible exit.
‘I tell you,’ said Constantine, ‘that we should go straight down to the sea. I know very well all that is to do with mist. I lived a very long time in Geneva, and I have often observed the mists that come down the Rhone Valley, and I know that when the mist is so it does not lift. It would be quite useless to take them up to Mount Lovchen. They would see nothing, nothing at all.’ ‘But what has Switzerland to do with Montenegro?’ asked Sava. ‘Switzerland is a country far north of this, and in the centre of the Continent. The conditions are not at all the same. It is here as it is in the Abruzzi, which I know very well, and it is perfectly possible that such a mist as this might lift at any moment, and then they would see what is really the finest sight in the whole of Yugoslavia.’ ‘But it is no use going up to the mountain, they would see nothing, nothing at all,’ said Constantine; ‘this is something I understand, for in Switzerland it is not as you think, the mists which come down the Rhone Valley are like all mists, by them you can exactly judge all mists, and I tell you I have studied them for years and years.’ ‘But they should take every chance of seeing the view from Lovchen for there is nothing more beautiful,’ said Sava. ‘I must point out that the conditions here would naturally be more like those in Italy than those in Switzerland, and there such a mist as this would lift.’ As they spoke Constantine seemed to get shorter and shorter, and Sava taller and taller.
My husband and I moved away, and after a few steps we stood alone in our own cell. ‘We are perhaps characters in Ethel Smyth’s The Wreckers,’ he said. ‘Or we are travelling on the old Underground as it used to be when I was a child,’ I said, ‘in which case we will end up by visiting Whiteley’s Menagerie.’ There sounded above us a soft clop-clop of hooves, Dragutin’s horn tooted, there was a scurry and an admonishing cry, and there suddenly strode into visibility a peasant and a pack-horse loaded with wood, which were accompanied by a cloud of fragrance. ‘Look,’ said my husband, ‘he is carrying a huge bunch of narcissus!’ So we followed him a little way down the road, as far as would make it certain that Sava and Constantine should not hear my bad Serbian, and then greeted him and asked him to sell us some. He answered, ‘That I will be glad to do, but I cannot give you all, for I must take some home to my little boy.’ He was a giant with slaughter written on his brows, and it might have been supposed that his child would have played only with hand grenades.
We were standing in great contentment, each with a nose in a handful of cool flowers, when we heard cries of agitation above us. ‘Holla! Holla!’ shouted Constantine, and broke off to exclaim, ‘Ah, but those two will for ever be doing something extra!’ We sent out reassuring calls, and went towards them with some reluctance, for as soon as our friends were satisfied of our safety, they continued to compare Switzerland and the Abruzzi. But they stopped when they saw the narcissus. ‘Where did you get them?’ laughed Constantine, anxious to be mystified. ‘It is not what I supposed about English bankers, that if you let one wander off in a fog on a barren mountainside he would come back with his hands full of flowers.’ ‘It is the banker’s wife,’ said Sava. The compliment was not completely filled in, but the handsome intention was obvious. ‘Fancy talking so much that you didn’t smell that narcissus going by,’ jeered Dragutin. ‘I sniffed in all I could, it was as good as incense in church. And now look over your shoulders! Don’t start talking again and miss that!’
There had appeared in the mist below us a silver shape, which might have been a scythe held in an invisible hand only a few yards away, or a vast and unnaturally tilted crescent moon. As we stared it grew greater, it could be recognized as the curved surf of a bay. We exclaimed in wonder, for we had all thought that what we saw was hanging high above the horizon. It faded and was lost, but in another place there appeared a medallion of blue sea stamped with a couchant island, which also defined itself and vanished, and elsewhere we saw the proud nose of a terraced cape dropping to the sun’s sparkling wake. Then the wall closed and we were in our cell again. ‘Hey, what’s the use of stopping up here?’ cried Dragutin. ‘Jump in! Jump in! There’s a fine day down there at Budva! Come along now, or we’ll have no time for a swim before lunch!’ We drove down the road into a theatrical brightness of sunshine. Beside the road was a gendarmerie that the Austrians had not quite finished building in 1914; through its sashless windows glittered the diamond waves. Below us we could see Budva, a walled town on a round peninsula, a little white tortoise against the blue sea. Golden broom made the sunshine more dazzling, streaming its whips from every crevice where the hoe had not harried it out of existence; for now we were back in an area of cultivation such as we had not seen for many days, of fertility such as made even the fields round Podgoritsa seem haggard in their handsomeness. Here were vineyards and olive groves strong as wine and dense as oil in their abundance, here were terraces insolent with their crop of springing wheat. Dalmatia is not in fact very rich land, even here in the South; but we were looking at it with eyes conditioned by Macedonia and Montenegro, which found a certain grossness in the spectacle of fields completely covered with earth, and that probably to a depth of several inches. The sea also astonished us by its tokens of freedom and wealth. Far out a steamer was l
ess visible than the straight line of its smoke, nearer a yacht lounged like a lazy albatross beside the glassy image of the island, some smaller boats took white sails out on the further crinkled waters. There were many people who did not have to keep their noses to the grindstone lest they should starve, who could travel for pleasure, there were some who could afford to buy expensive objects, costing more than many meals, and to have many of their kind to wait on them and render all sorts of services that are not strictly necessary, to build them boats, to row them about. In Serbia and Macedonia we had forgotten that there were such.
The Turks ruined the Balkans, with a ruin so great that it has not yet been repaired and may prove irreparable. Budva is one of the smaller Dalmatian towns, for it lay too far south and was too much exposed to naval attack to be valuable to Venice; yet we felt it very rich, curiously unassailed, very stable. There was a market, held where there have been markets, archaeologists believe, ever since this was a Greek colony. Under the lovely landward walls of the city, which are flecked with magenta wallflowers, two lines of tables are set in the shade of tall twisted plane trees, and peasants sit before them on low stone benches, in the black costumes of the country. Among these people I walked in rapture. They were poor and their wares would have been considered pitiful in any Western market; but they were not stringy with real physiological lack, none sat with only a little heap of beans before him.
The sight of such plenty, purely relative though it was, exhilarated us all. We hurried under the Lion of St Mark that held its open book over the city gateway, and took too few moments to admire the neat Chinese-box perfection of the town, which offered in a few yards a ninth-century church, shaped grimly by that fierce early piety, a garden wall hung with a fleece of red roses, stone steps sweeping from the shadow of a great plane tree up to the sunlit heights of a Venetian fortress. For we all dispersed to buy objects we hardly needed, for sheer joy in what seemed to us almost unrestricted merchandise. When we met again outside the shops my husband said, ‘Look, my dear, I have bought you a silver buckle of Albanian workmanship,’ and I said, ‘Look I have bought us all bathing dresses,’ and Constantine said, ‘Look, I have bought these two Turkish daggers for my little son, and the man has said he will make them blunt for me while we have lunch,’ and Dragutin said, ‘Look, I have bought a pair of silk stockings for my wife.’ And Sava came towards us, through the city gate, saying, ‘At the hotel over there I have ordered red mullet and palatschinken for lunch, and we will have it on the terrace among the roses, but you must hurry, you must hurry! You will not have time to bathe and have lunch and catch your boat at Kotor if you do not hurry!’ Yet we felt as if the world were bare and empty.
