Part 35 (1/2)
This is final notice before shooting. Let the special one note._”
I was voted the special one in my house.
We heard a rumour that the party while trying to avoid the bandits in making for the coast had actually struck the main band, and after getting away, tried to pa.s.s off as Germans.
They were discovered. I have no wonder--and a letter written by an officer, amateur at Turkish, was taken.
Clumsy as the start was, they have done well, and we all wish them the very best of luck.
So the days dragged on and the nights stood still. Once more summer was over. Once more it seemed we were entering the long stretch of autumn that led into the terrors of winter, with its cold, and scarcity of food that our slender means could not negotiate. But through the nights and days always, always, there was the same range of hills dividing us from the sea. In the first days of September there suddenly appeared in Kastamuni a tall Turkish Mir Ali (full colonel), named Zia Bey, the inspecting officer of the Government.
He came to hear our complaints. His visit last year had been hailed with great glee, but we had since learned that these events were shorn of possibilities of increase of liberty.
He came, no doubt, to inquire about the escape. We were still heavily under ”bund,” and so he visited each house.
He had a pleasant appearance, was very quiet, and extraordinarily polite, but he did nothing. We stood around his chair while our spokesman told of our petty troubles, the large ones we knew it useless to recount, so we asked for fresh air and money and leave for our British servants to go to the pump without a posta as they were few and we were often thirsty. He noted our points, but promised nothing except one or two.
I heard him ask which was I, and I could see I was still under heavy suspicion about escaping, although my eyelids were so swollen that I could not see at all out of one eye, and only indifferently out of the other. But I was not so blind that I could not see that Zia was the polite type of lazy Turk that in the heart of him has fear. I said nothing of the scheme that evolved itself as we all sat together. It was fatal to hand over one's emba.s.sy to another. When he had gone I wrote a letter to him.
My a.s.sets were that I had really been very ill from the effects of a sh.e.l.l contusion in my spine for a very long time.
Of this I could show nothing except in two places, the vertebrae were parted and irregular, and one had since grown nearer. If one could refer to anything so d.a.m.nable as captivity being blighted, I might say that bruise has blighted mine. Of the untold hours that I lie awake waiting, waiting, for the roof, sky, and earth to stop pulsating to the pulsation in my spine, no one can ever know. But the eye trouble, originally strain from sh.e.l.l-shock and from grit, is now only bad conjunctivitis, although it looks awfully serious. As first violin of our band my bandaged eye, and, later, my absence, had been conspicuous enough to the Turks. Moreover, I had recently received word from the late Lord Grey and a letter from some friends at the Foreign Office. In one letter a kind inquiry existed about my health, noting the special treatment our enemy prisoners were getting in cases like mine in London, and saying medicine and gla.s.ses were being sent me to save my eyes in the meantime. On this I made my case without threatening the Turk, but indicating that they had become aware of my case in London. That I had been so neglected my eyes were imperilled, and that whatever had happened in the past the inspecting officer, at all events, now had the opportunity of giving me in Stamboul the treatment that the Turks got in our best hospitals.
I terrified my interpreter into giving this application to Zia Bey himself, as I could not trust Sheriff Bey. This I did by showing him another letter to be delivered by another source that night to Zia Bey, showing that as had happened in previous cases applications were not allowed to reach him.
Ananias, as we called him, took my letter to Zia Bey. The next morning I was summoned to the office. They led me down. Several fat Turks stuck oily thumbs into my eyes.
The local doctor had to say what my complaint was, and although they admitted that under him my eyes had got worse, and he would not accept further responsibility, they allowed him to say what the trouble was. It developed into a hot discussion. I refused, point blank, to be diagnosed by a doctor who wasn't a specialist. Had they no specialists?
Finally they produced a file of letters to me and extracts and bad reports on ”qatcheor” (escaping). They asked me if I was willing to go to Angora for examination. Now I loathed this place above all, but it was _en route_ to Constantinople. Here I made the most important move of my captivity. Lieutenant Greenwood, with a smashed shoulder from football, aggravated by an old wound in Kut, was a dead certainty to go. I refused unless I could go with him. They agreed.
On my return the whole camp was discussing ”Mousley.”
How the devil had he worked it! What a fool he was to go to Angora! Others said I was going to escape _en route_ or at Constantinople. I was told I was leaving the next day.
Oh, the delicious whirl of life again as I felt the first unloosening of the chains. Only three officers at long intervals have gone over the mountains from our camp to Constantinople.
Here in this basin by the Black Sea, buried from the world, and far away from the great issue, one has been left alone with one's inactivity, one's interrupted career, the unaccepted portion of one's sacrifice, and has too much time for morbidity. But now, to-day, the sun s.h.i.+nes on Kastamuni as it never did. The postas are more than kind. The castle alone is green. I may be off to an indifferent fate, but I am off. Munro our lightning carpenter has justified his reputation.
”A box, righto! This cupboard just it. Oh yes, about twenty minutes.” So he did. He kicked the lid off, closed the sides, braced the back, and altered the hinges, and as we looked there appeared the box good and strong. I have packed a heavy acc.u.mulation of stores as belated parcels have recently started to arrive in exciting quant.i.ties.
I have given away all my spare kit to my former companions.
In fact, with my good joy, I couldn't auction anything.
Every one has been very kind and given me odds and ends for the journey, and the doctor has sent up special packages of emergencies _en route_. I am told I am to leave at dawn, but we are still under _bund_, and I can neither visit the other houses nor see Greenwood to make a _bandobast_ for the journey. It will mean our carrying two of some things and nothing of others. The Round Table gave me a very lively dinner. My box is ready with all my worldly possessions, including my ma.n.u.script packed in below. I tried to get a false bottom made to my box, but with the wood this is not possible in time, although I expect a search, but rely on their previous permission given to me to work at these.
_Angora._--We arrived here last night on foot in a battered, lame, halting and blind condition in the dark. I must set down how our gay cavalcade that left Kastamuni early on September 3rd dwindled away to this. After my last entry I did not leave the following morning, but waited in terrible tension lest they should cancel the arrangement. But the delay was the worst. One horse had just had a foal, and a subst.i.tute could not be found. Another horse had gone sick and had no shoes. The arabana or wagon was to cost us twenty liras. This we refused to pay out of our funds, but told them to cut it out of our pay. As a matter of fact, and by a miracle, we got off paying, as, of course, we ought. They found an old vehicle in some yard and put the commandant's bodyguard on to it. They nailed up the wheels, put on a cover, and in the early dawn Ananias, the interpreter, burst into my room screaming ”Haidee.” This was the day after my last entry. Sergeant Britain, our very estimable N.C.O., and another took my box and kettles downhill to the commandant.
Here I was made to sign my pay sheet. Then, suddenly, Sheriff Bey entered the room, closed the door and demanded to see all in my pockets. I had to produce them.
He took from me my private papers, including addresses, dates of remittances received, numbers of cheques cashed, and private accounts. Also my ma.n.u.script music in part. Then, tragedy of tragedies, he demanded on my word of honour if I had anything else written. One was by this time fairly sick of giving one's word on nothing, but there was no way out. I told him, however, that I had had permission to work on my book, and on a law study, that I had given much time and thought to this, that they knew in England I was working at it, and that I would show him all I had if he promised to give it me back on my a.s.surance that it contained nothing against the Turk or of military or political importance. His glee on receiving a large book of ma.n.u.script was unbounded. The interpreter read parts of this to him, anecdotes of captivity, of the campaign and other selections on problems of the new International State or Society. He a.s.sured me on his sworn word of honour I should have them back at once after the censor had seen them if they contained no plans of Turkish Forts, and in any case on the signing of peace. (I subsequently heard my book was found torn up in his office.) In vain I begged for them. He felt that at last he had me at a disadvantage. I appealed to Zia Bey. He was all politeness, and gave orders my name should be carefully and legibly written on the book.
But my heart sank as I thought of the fate of such things on former occasions, and of the many many hours I had worked at it.
Our kit was put on board the wagon, a place made with our rugs for Greenwood to rest his broken shoulder, and an orderly named Mathews, who was being sent back to Angora for breaking barracks repeatedly, was to do servant for us.
This was untold luxury compared with our trip to Kastamuni eighteen months before, but I was terribly depressed over my book and parts of this diary. Valuable or worthless, it stood in any case for a part of my life, and I felt as though something very close to me had been s.n.a.t.c.hed away. For many months here and there I had written this. It was a history written among dying men, not of them, but of many things, and such that I can never reproduce. On many a night in winter, by a black smoky oil light bought with money saved from my tobacco or mastik money, I had worked with the flickering wick near my bandaged eyes, my two worn blankets wrapped around my legs and feet, stockings around my head and neck to keep out the paralysing cold. Outside was three feet of snow, and sleet and wind from the Russian waste blew icily over the Black Sea straight to my window. Ours was the highest and coldest house in camp, and faced the north high on the bluff above the town. And so I wrote and re-wrote until often only my writing hand remained unfrozen.
Before leaving Kastamuni we had to wait two or three hours for the gendarmes that were to accompany us. I was not allowed to visit the two shops to rectify my accounts, so carefully did they watch any one leaving lest any communication should be set up for those left behind. I went to the Lower House to say good-bye to some friends, including Square Peg, at work on law. His friend, whom we called the Count (Horwood), was most sympathetic over my book, and took me to the bar to have a last bottle of beer (so-called) that had arrived. This beer, to me so long estranged, was so good that I bucked up to a degree, and decided, as I have always tried to do since in moments of catastrophe, to merely suspend judgment and my grief. At the time it is too much deliberately not to care or to try to diminish the size of the catastrophe.
At last we were rushed off, crowds of people following us, and small boys wanting tips, and many peasants whose faces one knew were honestly grieved to lose us, and possibly our money as well. Last of all Sonia, our Sonia, who had on occasion had quite an amount to do with me, and had danced to my fiddle and carried notes for me, and decoyed the postas from my rendezvous in the castle, followed us for miles with her basket, crying bitterly. She was a case-hardened daughter of Eve, a wild little untamed savage, but pretty and entrancing and very daring. She waved to me, and threw many kisses with lightning rapidity when the gendarmes were not looking, then followed the river bank to her destiny, and we rounded a bend towards ours.
The first time in one and a half years of restriction, that seemed one and a half centuries, we wound up the eastern road back on to the plateau, and the brown roofs of ”Kastamuni the Terrible” fell beneath the brow.
It was a beautifully soft morning. Our cavalcade scattered themselves out on the flanks to scour for brigands. Besides the _arabanchi_ (driver), there was our excellent sentry Mustapha and his _choush_, a sergeant, from the Lower House, who was reported rather treacherous, also a wretched little officer cadet fellow named Ali, and about three or four _askars_ and eight gendarmes mounted. We halted for lunch among some trees in a delightful glade between two hamlets. In the evening we walked to get over the jolting of the springless cart, which b.u.mped and bounced over every rut. My travelling companion had a bad time on occasions with his fracture, although it was better than we had hoped. We reached the region of pines and ravines, and in the dusk pulled up at a grimy and dirty Serai a few miles short of the old saw-mill where we had stopped on our way out.
We were bundled into a tiny room filled with smoke and all sorts of travellers. We emptied this room after much argument, and allowed in two or three of our postas only.