Part 15 (1/2)
Jones had a far better time, for his specialty was not studied tragedy but spontaneous farce. He seemed to enjoy enormously the complete fooling of all around him, the planning of a new fantasy and the head-over-heels performance of it, without being restrained by convention or ridicule, or a sense of the normal.
Cheerful lunacy, in fact, is great fun. Even in my own minor a.s.sumptions of a state of unreason I had found it very stimulating and amusing. A mental holiday from logic, custom, the consideration of public opinion and other irksome boundaries of artificial stability is glorious. Itself untrammelled, the mind can watch from a spectator's point of view the patch-work restraints and littlenesses of civilization, and take delight in tilting at them.
Often I envied Jones, with his fez, his golden beard and his role of Ahmed Hamdi Effendi, as he talked to a group of Turkish officers. They would laugh at him openly; but secretly he would laugh much more heartily at them.
Few things in our roomful of nine British officers were not farcical.
Only one of us--old W., with his wounded arm--had any real claim to be in hospital. R., with a healed wound scar dating back to the Gallipoli campaign; C., with sciatica and late middle-age; and Ms., with a weak knee dating back to before the war, were trying to build up a case for release as exchanged prisoners of war. Jones and Hill, by means of magnificent acting, had made everybody believe in their a.s.sumed madness, and were also hoping to be sent home in consequence.
”Wormy”--formerly aide-de-camp to General Townsend--wanted to remain a hospital patient because he had friends and amus.e.m.e.nts in Constantinople, and achieved this wish by means of mythical _hemorrhages_.
For my part, I still gave false evidence of nervous disorders, although such efforts were dwarfed by the exploits of Jones and Hill. In any case, it was to my interest to show only mild symptoms, such as fits of trembling during an air-raid, or whenever a gun was fired. Had I been more violent, I should not have been allowed into the city on Sundays, at a time when I had made useful acquaintances and was plotting an escape.
So the strange days pa.s.sed. Hill and Jones, spurred by reports of a near-future exchange of prisoners, gave constant and enlivening performances. M. and R. cultivated effective limps. Wormy amused himself. White and I discussed our plans while strolling in the garden.
Each morning the doctor walked once round the ward, said to each patient: ”_Bonjour, ca va bien?_” signed the diet sheets, and left us.
Of other medical attendance there was none, except when W's arm was operated on, or when Jones complained to the chief doctor about our desire to murder him.
How the madmen were included in the first batch of British prisoners to be exchanged from Turkey, how they were led on board the Red Cross s.h.i.+p that the Turks had allowed to the Gulf of Smyrna, how Ahmed Hamdi Jones protested against being handed over to his enemies the British, and how he and the Bible-reader miraculously recovered their sanity as soon as the British vessel had left Turkish waters, all that is a story in itself.
CHAPTER IX
INTRODUCING THEODORE THE GREEK, JOHN WILLIE THE BOSNIAN, AND DAVID LLOYD GEORGE'S SECOND COUSIN
The Maritza is a little restaurant near Stamboul station. Coming toward it from the bridge across the Golden Horn one pa.s.sed along a side street so narrow that the bodies of pa.s.sengers clinging to the rails of the swaying and much-loaded tram-cars often collided with pedestrians.
With a guard at our heels, we would disappear through a doorway, and find ourselves in a low room that reeked of sausages and intrigue.
Whenever the captive officers at Psamatia came to Stamboul they lunched at the Maritza, where they could hear the latest rumours from the bazaars. On Sundays they were joined there by not-too-sick officers from our hospital and that of Haidar Pasha.
Theodore, the Greek waiter, looked exactly what he was--a born conspirator who had strayed from melodrama into real life. In the whole of Turkey there was no greater expert in the science of throwing dust into the eyes of soldiers and gendarmes. He not only lived by plotting, but, next to money, seemed to like it better than anything in the world.
He was also a first-rate gossip. Having seated the guards in a corner where they could see but not hear us, the little Greek, with his bent shoulders and blue-gla.s.sed spectacles, would sidle up to our table, and producing a menu-card, say:
”_Bonjour!_ What would you like, gentlemen?” Then, running his finger down the list as if suggesting something to eat, he would continue: ”I heard to-day that the Grand Vizier had quarrelled once more with the Sultan”; or, ”Enver Pasha was shot at in Galata yesterday, and is wounded in the chest. It is said that he will not recover.” He never failed to produce at least one such rumour as these. Most often he would announce that Bulgaria was about to make a separate peace, which possibility was reported in Constantinople at least a dozen times before it really happened.
I always found him trustworthy, for his hatred of the Turks was stronger even than his greed for money, and no sum could have tempted him to become a spy in the service of the Turkish police--a position once offered to him. In any case, he was always convinced that the British would win the war; and, therefore, knowing which side his bread was b.u.t.tered, would never have dared to betray the Britishers who employed him.
As an intermediary for correspondence he was reliable but expensive, his charge being twenty piastres for each letter delivered.
”Theodore, my friend,” one would say, ”I want you to go to Pera for me.”
”Good. If you have not written the letter I will engage the guards while you prepare it.”
He would then stroll across to the guards' table with the news that the British officers would be pleased to buy them whatever they wanted to eat; and the prisoner scribbled his note, a slip of paper resting on his lap and the body of Theodore screening him from the guards in the far corner. Later the letter would be handed to Theodore, in the middle of the banknotes with which one paid the bill.
If a reply were brought, Theodore delivered it under cover of a menu-card, always with a whispered reminder, ”Twenty piastres.” During the last six months of the war the Greek waiter must have been the messenger for scores of secret communications.
It was early in July when we heard of the arrival in Haidar Pasha Hospital--across the Sea of Marmora--of Captain Yeats-Brown and Captain Sir Robert Paul. Yeats-Brown was demanding attention for his nose and Paul for his ear. With vivid memories of conversations in Afion, I had sympathy for neither the nose nor the ear, but a great deal for the schemes of escape which I knew them to be planning. I sent Yeats-Brown a note, through the agency of Theodore, suggesting an appointment for lunch on the following Sunday.
As a matter of fact, I met him before lunch-time. With the rest of the congregation we were leaving for the little English church off the Grande Rue de Pera, when the pair approached the vestry door with guards at their heels. Since I last saw them both had grown moustaches, and an appearance of dishevelled untidiness was given to Paul by a short, stubby tuft of beard. At the time I was talking to Miss Whittaker, and I took the opportunity of introducing the new arrivals.