Part 26 (1/2)
CHAPTER X
WINTER--OUR ”SELF-MADE” ORCHESTRA
_February 1st, 1917._--Four months have gone. As I write the earth is white with feet of snow. It is a white world, the roofs no longer brown, the trees no longer green, for even those few trees, like pines that have not shed their verdure, have donned the white raiment of winter's carnival. Snow! This pure and G.o.dly element, silent and secretive, the _avant-courrier_ of the Ultimate, of Things doomed, one day to be reclaimed by the once again triumphant elements when, from the dome of the universe, the last white great snow sheets shall fall, fall, fall--and this universe, once again locked in the ice-grip of the Snow G.o.d, shall drive forward mysteriously on its lonely way--lonely for it shall have been separated from Life, and the Spirit, Man, will have gone.
As I look out on the undulating expanse terraced down to me from the mountain horizon to the northward, I am for a minute tempted to believe that the Great Snow Deluge has really come, and I alone am awake to behold it. But looking still closer I see tiny windows peeping out from their white frames, and I know the bees within that human hive are having their winter sleep. With an effort I trace among the smothered definition of the buildings, the snowed-up roads and alleys, and rising above it all I see, scattered over the town, the white upright minarets of the mosques. Kastamuni in wintertime is a picturesque Turkish town, and has a character all its own. The streets are deserted, but on the hill-path white-mottled figures move slowly upwards. It is the hour of prayer, and the _muezzin_ has just begun to swell out in icy circles from the minarets, reaching out to the hearts of the prayerful, and calling them to communion with Allah. _La illaha, illa la._ There is but one G.o.d, and that is G.o.d. From how many thousands of mosques, and for how many millions of the followers of the prophet does the _muezzin_ cry at this hour?
And so I, too, find my silence unlocked after all these months and am at last persuaded to throw off the coma that has been stealing over us body and soul, that has buried beneath its snow-drift our intentions one by one, and I am tempted to jot down a few more notes to my reminiscences.
Sometimes, as the other day, we are allowed to take down the bob-sleighs we have made to a hill about a mile away, and pretend we are schoolboys again. After s...o...b..lling the starters and getting s...o...b..lled ourselves, we shot down the slope or over the bank, as the case occurred, and once or twice we collided, but no one got seriously hurt. The hard toiling uphill again, pulling the sleigh, proved how unfit we were. On the way home we religiously s...o...b..lled every fowl we pa.s.sed, and the roads are full of them. The days are dreadfully dreary, and it is only these events that seem to lighten the monotonous gloom. Firewood is very scarce and expensive, and only on rare occasions do we have a fire worth anything. If we do by chance have wood it is often wet, and the wretched tin stoves choke the place with smoke.
I half decided to have a stove in my bedroom, but, besides that being fearfully small, the trouble is to get wood, which comes in tiny donkey loads at fict.i.tious prices. So we lie in bed under the clothes, and with the intense cold sleep steals over us. There is the same difficulty in getting kerosene, now five s.h.i.+llings a bottle, and what one gets either goes out, or splutters until you kick it out. We hibernate, therefore. Once or twice it has been so cold that I have gone down to the kitchen and sat by the smoke heap there. This is very popular these days.
Letters are turning up more regularly. I am delighted to have at last heard from home and several friends all over the world, including the brilliant author of ”Problems of Philosophy.” He has very kindly sent me some books and recommends me to see Schiller on ”Grumps.” I also heard from Wallace, from whom I have not heard for years and years, and to whom I wrote in Kut along with people in the neglected recesses of my memory, but the letter, of course, was never sent. It must be eleven years since he and I sat on the golden sand of a green-vestured island in that silvery sea around Auckland--smoking our pipes as we lay on our backs, and filling in with a wish what we wanted to complete the scene. I remember wanting the suitable girl, but he wanted books and debate. In between are my world travels, and Cambridge, and Germany, and now I've been running about in a war, and he, since a professor in Princetown, writes to condole with me at being out of the war so early!
He ought to congratulate me on my luck in staying in it so long. But then, of course, he can't know anything about Kut yet.
It seems I have been reported dead in Kut, and again on the trek, and in England they are only just hearing to the contrary. What an unnecessary suspense for one's people!
Mine have been magnificent, even throughout the long period of tragic rumour.
About my other friends at Cambridge, and in the regiment, and in France, I never hear a word.
Parcels have arrived, thank Heaven, from several friends.
Sir Thomas Mackenzie has been a perfect trump, and the most wonderful and thoughtful parcels from a very kind heart in Australia. The first three or four have arrived. My dear old friends, the Pallisers, remember me faithfully. And Lord Grey, not forgetting the lonely subaltern in the middle of Asia who once held forth on Imperial affairs sketched out by the cloistered lawns of the Cam, has sent me kind messages and a fortnightly parcel. One's emotions of thankfulness and grat.i.tude are infinite. I feel it is my duty to buck up every ounce possible when one of the busiest and most over-worked men in England, in indifferent health, too, finds time to think of a worthless subaltern like me. My Camberley friends also have sent me some parcels, and some wonderful letters. These momentous things happen only once in a while, but when they do they tell us that somewhere beyond these snow-bound mountains are English hearts that are glad we are come through so far, which means they know we have tried and are chiefly sorry we are chained because we can't try again.
Some few books have also arrived from time to time, but only old ones are allowed through, though sometimes we manage to conceal one or two. This, however, is very difficult, as all parcels have to be opened before the Turkish authorities.
We have formed a library, and the indefatigable librarian, Herepath, who catalogues the books and _s.h.i.+kars_ every one a moment overdue, caused us infinite delight months ago by placing in the library most of Kipling's works which he had miraculously brought through with him from Kut. We devour anything in the reading line, especially now, as bridge has fallen off.
None of the many books sent to me have turned up so far, and have probably been intercepted at Constantinople, whither even those that do arrive here have to be sent back for censors.h.i.+p.
No games outside except an occasional soccer match are played now as the ground is too hard. One highly interesting tournament was, however, recently completed. Eight soccer teams partic.i.p.ated, and we ran two bookies on the field. I have not played since Christmas Day when, in getting down to a forward rush, I had several giants on top of me and twisted my knee badly. Just before this, however, as left three-quarter in a match against the Lower House I scored one of the hardest tries since I was a boy. One can't run much these days, but I did it diving for the line as a nailed fist left four ruddy tracks from my neck down my back. Even then we lost the match by two goals to a goal and a try. I came to the conclusion that my conceit was excusable.
Christmas pa.s.sed quietly enough. We consumed a tremendous amount of cognac and mastik, and anything else going, regardless of price, and for a few hours we quite took charge of things. There was a concert of sorts with a few banjo items and a farce at the end which was more ridiculous than funny, but it served as well.
On Christmas Eve we eluded the postas, and about midnight, while trying to correct my bearings for the house, for I had somehow got downhill, I saw a figure of him we call the Admiral (a naval paymaster), who evidently having wearied of trying to discipline his legs had given it up and was crawling vigorously on all fours in the dark. The sight of this white figure crawling mysteriously along in the darkness, believing himself un.o.bserved, made me shout with laughter. The Admiral put on a huge spurt when he heard it!
But the feature of Christmas was the children's party we gave by special leave of the kaimakam. For days we had been cooking tartlets and cakes and macaroons. They knew it was on, and before breakfast a big crowd of children and mothers had acc.u.mulated near our alley-way. We took our long table and spread upon it ”our events,” as we called them, including apples and special quant.i.ties of milk and nuts.
The poor little wretches are half-starved. For weeks previously we had given them bits of bread, so that each one of us had an ”adopted” nipper. But besides our little pals--mostly Greek, but some Turks--dozens of youngsters from far and wide had turned up, some in their mothers' arms. Sam Mayo, an ex-sergeant-major, took charge and formed them into column of route, mothers and all. He did splendidly. There was much crying and yelling, but he got them in order and then made them file past. I don't think we had laughed so much for many months. Each one of us soon found himself administering milk to a monthling in one arm with half a dozen brats into one's pockets or wrestling with one's legs at the same time. Once there was a stampede set up by a ”Young Turk Party” (boys of eight and upwards), and we each had to grab all the mites by a leg or an arm and hold them up out of harm's way. One or two got a bit squashed as it was. The supreme joke was when Sam was proudly showing us how to coax a tiny infant to eat a macaroon; it got so enthusiastic as to bite a half inch of his thumb nearly off. ”The little devil nipped like a mongoose,” yelled Sam, upsetting his second youngster into the sweet rock that stuck _en bloc_ to its head. We enjoyed ourselves as much as they.
The postas, with one or two exceptions, helped us. The poor little wretches ate and drank as if they hadn't for a week at least. Then we had a scramble among the larger children for the nuts and surplus, and when the fights had subsided gave them some piastre notes. Altogether it was a great show and made us very happy.
The people, we hear, couldn't understand at first how war veterans could worry about children. But you require to be a prisoner of war with no privilege of speaking to any one, adult or child, to understand the meaning of children. The after result was that for days and days a huge swarm of youngsters followed us everywhere we went yelling ”Backsheesh”
and ”Ekmek” (bread) and ”Chocolate.”
Shortly after Christmas an Armenian turned up with a violin of sorts. I had been on the look-out for one for months.
He wanted a fict.i.tious price, and it wasn't a good one but fairly loud. The strings were on the wrong pegs, and such strings surely never existed before on any violin. The bow wanted some hair restorer badly. I tuned it up and powdered the few remaining hairs well on a lump of gummy resin, probably off a pine-tree, and then, by the smoking stove of a Turkish fire, I began to play--the first time for years and years. The room was empty but every one came up from below to see what on earth had happened. I found I had forgotten everything.
After a half-hour bits of Beethoven, Raff, Dvorak and Vieuxtemps came back to me, but they wanted waltzes and marches. The end of it was they persuaded me to buy the thing. I practised a.s.siduously for two or three hours a day for weeks and then the bow began to collapse and the strings gave out.