Byron and the Beauty

by Muharem Bazdulj

  Isak turned to the boys and quickly translated Byron’s words. Both nodded their heads happily. Mahmut Pasha inquired how Byron liked Yannina, and Husein Beg was interested in knowing how big the country was over which Byron ruled. Byron gave cordial, brief answers.

  ‘It is very beautiful here,’ he said to Mahmut Pasha, ‘it is smaller than the country of your grandfather,’ he responded to Husein Beg. But the mutual affinity between Byron and the two was not a matter of words. After half an hour of more or less trivial conversation, Mahmut Pasha abruptly clapped his hands, and in a moment, a courtier appeared. Mahmut Pasha said something to him, and the summoned one disappeared again.

  ‘May I ask something of you?’ Mahmut Pasha inquired of Byron.

  ‘Anything at all,’ he replied.

  ‘Could you deliver a letter to my grandfather?’

  ‘It will be an honour to do so. ‘

  Mahmut Pasha produced a scroll and passed it to Byron, who interpreted this as sign of leave-taking, and he prepared himself to make another bow. But the second appearance of the courtier held him up: he was carrying a bundle that he gave to Mahmut Pasha, whose entire face was now beaming. He made a short statement in solemn tones, and Isak interpreted it quickly: ‘Mahmut Pasha has a gift for you.’ The boy then revealed the contents of the package to him: a set of Albanian ceremonial clothes. Byron was moved. ‘Thank them many times over for me,’ he said to Isak.

  Now the younger of the two boys got to his feet and bade Byron farewell in the same formal style he had employed at the outset. Mahmut Pasha then repeated the farewells in like manner, but did not immediately sit down again. Instead, he walked over to Byron and kissed him twice on each cheek. When he had sat back down, he said a few more words. Isak translated: ‘Mahmut Pasha hopes, my lord, that the two of you will meet again.’

  ‘I would also like that,’ said Byron, and then he and Isak withdrew.

  Hasan was waiting for them in the corridor. As they were walking to the horses, he and Isak talked quietly. Hasan looked over at Byron from time to time with a mixture of envy and respect. When they reached Hobhouse and the rest of the entourage, Hasan dismounted and bade farewell to Byron with a deep bow. Then he remounted and quickly rode away.

  ‘Here it is a great honour, my lord, to receive a gift from Mahmut Pasha,’ Isak said, ‘and an even greater one to be sent off with a kiss.’

  * * *

  Byron enjoyed being back in the saddle. The road was dry and fairly wide, and the weather was fair and, for autumn, quite warm. It felt good to be riding on this particular early afternoon. They left Yannina behind them, and the countryside showed fewer and fewer signs of human habitation. On both sides of the road there were sparse stands of deciduous trees with colourful canopies of leaves. The horsemen of the small squadron rode along in silence. Two Albanians rode at the very front, and a good twenty metres behind them, came Hobhouse, Isak, and Byron, and at the same distance behind them, followed Byron’s attendants. The only sounds were the thudding of hooves, which blended with bird song and the fluttering of the wings of crows and doves as they flew overhead every few minutes. Byron couldn’t help but think more about the two boys. Something about them fascinated him: it was their artlessness, which was well-nigh animalistic. More precisely, Byron was dumbfounded that their patently strict and careful raising, the studied court etiquette, the ceremonial forms they adopted, and the peculiar stiffness of their involuntary early adulthood had not killed off the boys’ curiosity, openness, sincerity, and childlike instincts. They are magnificent, Byron said to himself. Then a comment from Isak interrupted his meditation.

  ‘I think it would be best if we did not stop to rest until the evening meal, my lord. We had a substantial breakfast, so we can skip lunch. We lost quite a bit of time this morning.’ ‘You are right,’ said Byron.

  ‘And there’s one other consideration,’ Isak continued. ‘We should have been making use of every minute of these fair skies. I have the feeling that vile weather is headed our way.’ Byron looked up. The sky was completely sunny; there were just a few innocent white cloudlets playing on the western horizon like a flock of sheep.

  ‘I’m not so sure about that,’ he responded.

  Full of misgivings, Isak shook his head. ‘You are mistaken, my lord. Up in the mountains, autumn will bare its teeth, perhaps as soon as tomorrow – at the latest, the day after tomorrow. That’s why I want us to make haste...’

  ‘So let our horses feel our spurs!’ Byron declaimed.

  They rode quickly and in silence as the sun dropped toward the western horizon. The horses raised up dust that hung in the air for a short time like a swarm of tiny flies. Byron felt hot, and so Isak’s weather report still struck him as nonsense. But the new tempo suited him, and he did not protest. He wanted to see Ali Pasha as soon as possible and bring to a conclusion this unplanned stage of his pilgrimage through the Eastern part of the continent. When it grew dark, they reined in their horses somewhat, but they still did not stop. The moon was already shining down lustrously on the road when Isak indicated to Byron that they had found a place to spend the night. Byron agreed, and all the others breathed a sigh of relief. Their stopping place was a large, elongated clearing in the bend of a river. A number of tall trees grew on the bank, forming a natural barrier to the cold air from off the water.

  * * *

  Byron stared into the bluish tips of the flames of the fire they had built. Everyone had dined and were now gradually retiring in order to sleep. The two Albanians bedded down right on the trail: one of them slept as the other kept watch. Isak and the Englishmen placed themselves closer to the river. The night was considerably cooler than the day, and the sleeping bodies lay close to the fire. Soon, the only things disturbing the quiet of the night were the murmuring of the river, the light crackling of the fire, and gentle snores. Byron and Isak were the only ones still awake, but neither talked. They lay not too far from one another, and each noticed from his neighbor’s breathing that he was not yet asleep. Isak sat up abruptly.

  ‘Sleep won’t come to me, my lord,’ he said, barely loud enough to be heard. I’m going to take a walk.’

  Byron stood up in a flash. ‘I’m coming too,’ he said.

  Isak went over to the Albanian keeping watch and whispered something, and then he came back to Byron.

  ‘Let’s walk along the river,’ he said. ‘We were in the saddle for the whole day, and maybe walking a little now will make it easier to sleep.’

  They walked along slowly and without a word. The ground beneath their feet was hard, and the thin autumn grass was already wilted and yellowed. The light from the moon was lush and forceful; it seemed to get caught in the tree branches, already nearly bare and in the eddies of the river. Still they continued to walk side by side. Byron turned his head every few minutes and looked into Isak’s pensive face. Isak, his brow furrowed, was biting his lower lip. Once, just as Byron was looking at him, a leaf detached itself from a nearby tree. Reflexively, Isak tried to catch it, but it slid through his fingers.

  ‘Like silk,’ Byron said.

  ‘Like Zuleiha,’ Isak said.

  So Isak’s thinking about her too, Byron thought to himself, and for a moment he could not help but think about the girl from Sintra. But immediately a spasm travelled through the fibres of his body: Zuleiha! He asked Isak if he had seen her in the past few days.

  ‘No, my lord,’ Isak replied, ‘her name has not been uttered since the wedding. All those who’d been saying she would definitely appear are now as silent as can be. Such a story, however, cannot be invented. She is here somewhere, my lord; I can feel it; and I fear that we Iliad will miss her, that she will come to Yannina, and leave again, while I’m away.’

  Byron interrupted: ‘I cannot comprehend this Eastern predilection for mystification.’

  Isak understood not a whit of this, but Byron went on: ‘I do not understand all this secretiveness about where she might be. These stories – she’s here somewh
ere, but no one knows exactly where, but then again no one even knows why she would be here.’

  ‘What can a person ever know?’ Isak rejoined, ‘of what can he be completely certain? People here are careful, my lord, because there’s safety in silence. The seductiveness of conversation gives none of us any peace, perhaps for that exact reason. In any case, people here are garrulous despite their caution; they simply say little with their many words. Less frequently, far less frequently, the opposite turns out to be true: that they say a great deal with few words. But those are the conversations which one understands from the very beginning, and they are not typical.’ At this point Isak paused briefly. He looked at Byron and went on: ‘like our talks, my lord.’

  The two men stopped. They had walked too far, and the fire from their campsite was no longer visible.

  ‘We should go back,’ Byron said, and Isak turned around without a word. In silence they returned, and the two of them lay down and quickly fell asleep.

  Chapter Seven: October 12, 1809

  At dawn the grass was wet. Byron thought that it must have rained. The sky, however, was clear and the air was chilly, and he realized slowly that it must be dew. The two Albanians were sitting by the fire, drinking coffee and smoking. Byron, still supine, looked around. Everyone else was still asleep, except for Isak, who was nowhere to be seen. Byron nearly panicked at the thought that perhaps Isak had made his way back to Yannina already, on account of Zuleiha. Scarcely a moment later, though, he saw him coming back to the camp from the trees along the river. He was adjusting his trousers, and Byron understood what he must have been doing. Meanwhile, he felt the pressure in his own bladder. After Isak had joined the two men at the fire, Byron got to his feet and staggered drowsily over to the trees. His urine coloured the sparse, dewy grass dark yellow, like stale chamomile tea. He went back to join his freshly awakened entourage. Everyone was moving now: Isak was sitting alone at the fire drinking coffee, the Englishmen were slowly rising and stretching their limbs, and the two Albanians had gone over to the horses to untie them. Byron sat down next to Isak, who poured him some coffee.

  ‘Did you sleep well, my lord?’

  ‘Very well. Thanks for asking,’ Byron replied.

  Soon Hobhouse joined them, and all three began hastily eating their breakfast.

  ‘Yesterday,’ Isak said, ‘we lost a whole morning, so it’s best if we get started as quickly as possible. Also, the route now awaiting us is more difficult than yesterday’s.’

  And so they rode along for several hours, amidst desultory chatter, until the ascent began. At first it was barely perceptible, but the road turned quickly into a steep and twisting trail. This was no longer the kind of riding that one enjoys. The horses climbed slowly and carefully, and the horsemen had to stay focused every second. They were now moving along in a column, one behind the other, in complete silence. To their left rose the tall, sheer face of the mountain while to the right gaped an ever-deeper abyss. Byron didn’t like high places. He was pointedly afraid of them, but he could not stop his eyes from roaming again and again to the right. He couldn’t look at the back of Isak’s head or at the tail of his horse, which looked like a torn banner; or at the perpendicular white-brown side of the mountain.

  The path twisted around like the snake curled around the staff of Asclepius, and Byron’s head was swimming from the view into the abyss and the innumerable turns. And he again felt hungry. The ragged sunshine appeared to have dazed him. It was impossible, however, to make a stop: nowhere was there a wide spot, a flat stretch of road, big enough for the men and the animals to catch their breath. They had already been riding for hours. From the position of the sun, Byron knew that it was long past noon. He understood that the horses must also be tired, but it seemed as if they had reconciled themselves to the lack of rest. Eastern fatalism in an animal’s way, Byron thought; even in horses here you can see how greatly this country differs from England. As he was reflecting on this, he came face to face with a large curve in the road, beyond which arose the prospect of a nearly vertical ascent.

  Now the path grew wider and had no more twists and turns. Byron caught up to Isak, who told him: ‘Just this climb now, my lord, and then we will rest up at the top.’

  Ten minutes later a large plateau came into view. The squadron of riders stopped, although no one dismounted right away. One of the Albanians said something to Isak, who turned to face Byron.

  ‘It would be best, my lord, if we rested but briefly. If we hurry, we can make it to a village by nightfall, where we can spend a night fit for human beings.’

  Byron exchanged brief glances with Hobhouse and then he agreed. He let himself slide off his horse and dropped into the grass.

  * * *

  After several more hours of riding across level ground, the first traces of human habitation became apparent. First they came upon a herd of sheep; a whole sea of dirty white animals sweeping over the meadows on both sides of the road. The old shepherd, wearing a long fur coat, sat peacefully under an isolated tree. Byron looked at him with great curiosity, but the shepherd looked about disinterestedly, as if he saw at least five such groups of mounted men every day.

  ‘Nothing comes as a surprise to the people around here,’ said Isak, as though he were reading Byron’s thoughts. ‘To put it better: there are things that surprise them, but they never show it. Not to be amazed by anything,’ Isak continued ‘is the best prescription for how to live and survive here.’

  Byron mumbled something unintelligible. He was thinking that it was in this corner of the globe that philosophy had been born from that selfsame sense of amazement. Perhaps that is the natural sequence, from initial wonder to resignation and fatalism, Byron thought; just like in human life. If a child were sitting there in the place of that old shepherd, he would have been full of wonder and curiosity, as the orb of the sun crawled slowly but inexorably towards the west.

  Soon thereafter they encountered two priests in long black cowls, mounted on small mountain horses. As they neared the band of riders, they moved over to the very edge of the road and passed by with their heads lowered.

  ‘Orthodox priests,’ Isak explained, ‘Serbian monks, my lord. In the village where we will be spending the night, there is a large monastery.’

  ‘Why are they so submissive?’ Byron wanted to know.

  ‘Their religion demands it,’ Isak answered with a sarcastic laugh. ‘You should know as much, my lord. Here it’s wise to bow, or stand aside, and it’s even wiser to do both at the same time. Here people don’t hold sanctimonious folk of their own faith in very high regard, much less if they are from another religion. But at least the priests in these parts are hospitable, and they are also not poor. They’ll take good care of us,’ Isak concluded, ‘and we’ll be able to eat and sleep in their building.’

  Byron wondered how much of this was hospitality and how much was pure fear. He was not feeling especially chatty on this late afternoon that was melting away into dusk. The moon was already visible in the dark blue sky, although the sun had not completely set, when they saw the first scattered houses of the mountain village.

  ‘What’s the name of this place?’ asked Byron.

  ‘Zitza,’ Isak responded tersely.

  They rode along the dirty village road for a good ten minutes and then caught sight of the outlines of the monastery on the far side of the village. The building, of rustic beauty, was large. Built of hard white stone, and surrounded by a high grey wall, it looked, in the purple half-darkness of impending night, both secretive and warm at the same time. Soon Byron saw the open gate, and at the exact moment that they passed it, the bells boomed forth atmospherically. When they dismounted, the bells stopped as if on command, and a reverberating echo blended with the call of an owl. The wind alternately hid the moon behind the clouds and set it free. It all left a spooky impression, and Byron felt his skin crawling.

  ‘Eastern Gothic, my lord,’ whispered Isak, who appeared unnoticed at Byron’s side.<
br />
  From the direction of the main building an old priest made his way towards them, accompanied by two errand-boys. The priest addressed Isak, who in turn translated everything for Byron: ‘Fr. Maximilian bids us welcome.’

  The two boys led their horses over to the stalls, and Isak, Hobhouse, Byron, and their retinue followed the priest to the main monastery.

  * * *

  The dining hall was a narrow, elongated room with a high ceiling, and immediately upon entering the refectory they were served very hot bowls of soup. A great many candles had been lit, but the flames gave off only a sickly yellow glow. In the middle of the room stood a long, rectangular table at which approximately twenty priests were seated; with the guests taking their places at the end of the table nearest the door. By sheer chance, Byron ended up sitting across from the Abbot of the monastery, Fr. Maximilian. No one broke the silence, and the soup was quickly consumed. Then fish was brought out, river trout with red dots on its smooth, silvery skin, and with soft off-white flesh and delicate bones. The morsels turned into pure poetry in Byron’s mouth. He told Isak that never before had he eaten such a delicious fish, and his words were translated to the Abbot, who in turn mumbled an answer while chewing contentedly. When the fish had also been consumed, sweets were served: almonds, fruit and sherbet.

  ‘I take it the fish was to your liking, my lord?’ inquired Isak.

  ‘It was the finest I’ve ever eaten.’

  ‘Fish like this are only to be found here,’ Isak continued with an air of mystery, ‘and there’s also a story about them.’

  ‘A story?’ Byron looked at him quizzically. What kind of story?’

  Isak seemed to have been waiting for that question: ‘A long, very very long, time ago, my lord, before the Normans set sail from your island homeland, Byzantium ruled this entire country. This empire was not so different from today’s Ottoman Empire; they both had the same capital city, and, for the most part, the same territories. The difference was that the Byzantine emperor’s realm was not yet illuminated by the light of Islam. Instead, it was ruled by the religion in whose retreat we dined so deliciously this evening. And in the same way that some local notable or other is constantly rising up against the Sultan nowadays, people rebelled against the Byzantine Emperor back then. One of these strong mutineers, powerful but fly-by-night, and if I may be so bold…’ and at this point Isak’s voice trailed off to a whisper ‘…a contemporary Ali Pasha,’ and now his voice returned to its earlier volume ‘…was named Samuel. At least that’s how you Englishmen would call him. “God has heard me,” such is the meaning of this name. This Samuel wanted to be no more and no less than the Macedonian Alexander the Great. And one must admit that he started out rather well. He shook the throne of the Emperor and declared himself to be the ruler. The years went by and he ruled uncontested, but the power went to his head. In a decisive battle he tried his luck against the Emperor, but he was defeated, and his entire army was taken prisoner. Samuel himself was able to escape. Now hear me out, my lord. Listen to what the Emperor did to the prisoners, of whom there were thousands. He blinded them, all of them, my lord; he had their eyes gouged out.’