Singing Waters

by Ann Bridge

  “Why?” asked Colonel Robinson, ignoring the pious hope.

  “Well”—Miss Glanfield hesitated. “I think it’s really important to her to come, in some way that I don’t quite understand myself. But her whole heart was set on seeing Torosh at Whitsun.”

  “How on earth had she heard of it?”

  “Someone whose opinion she values—and I value too—told her to.”

  “Good Gad, don’t tell me you and she have any friends in common!” ejaculated the Colonel.

  “Now Dick, don’t be petty! Yes, we have—one! But look, darlings, I do apologise enormously,” said Miss Glanfield, leaning from the black pony to lay her hand on his arm. “I wouldn’t have done it if it hadn’t seemed really important to. She’s had a rotten time, losing that terribly nice husband—who I should say was the one respectable influence she’s ever had in her trivial little life. Look on it as a work of mercy,” said Miss Glanfield earnestly.

  “You’d talk round the devil himself, Susan,” the Colonel grunted.

  “Susan dear, you mustn’t stroke him here,” said Robina tranquilly; “it will shock these people.”

  “Will it now? How enchanting,” said Miss Glanfield again, quite unperturbed, removing her hand from the Colonel’s arm.

  Ahead of them, the subject of their conversation rode into the wood. The air here struck damp and cool, and had a toadstool-y smell—small oaks sprang from knobby mossy roots. And here the nightingales began—that were to be for Gloire Thurston one of the abiding things about this expedition. From every side came their bubbling reiterated voices, so that the whole shady place rang with sound, of an astonishing volume. Even as Larsen had foretold. A dreamy calm expression came over her delicate face, a sense of peace and fulfilment filled her. Lovely. Here was lost Joy again at last! How right the Swede had been, she thought, for the first time with full conviction.

  Beyond the wood the path emerged onto the flat stony margin of the river; the shallow rippling water stretched away for a hundred yards or more to the further bank, which was masked in willow scrub; beyond its silvery green rose the high blue of hills. Here the rest of the caravan had paused; the foal was seizing the opportunity for a snack. When Colonel Robinson emerged from the wood, a little ceremony took place. The Lieutenant from down the valley and his two men stepped forward, and made a formal farewell; they recited in unison something that sounded like verse, and ended by giving the Albanian salute—bringing the right hand stiffly to rest over the heart, and then cutting it away smartly. Colonel Robinson gave the same salute in return, and they marched briskly off through the wood.

  The whole cavalcade now plunged into the stream; the water was up to their knees. Colonel Robinson hallooed to his wife to send her pony back for him; the Ndërfanden Lieutenant was carried over on the back of one of his men, and Gloire’s little fellow hoisted Fran on his back and brought him across in triumph. There was a lot of shouting, splashing, and laughter over the crossing; everyone seemed to feel that fording rivers and getting wet to the knees was fine fun. This mood chimed with Gloire’s; she felt that if she lived out here in the country, she might come to like the Albanians as much as Mrs. Robinson did. These wild-faced laughing men were much more engaging than the politicians in the top-hats at Tirana.

  While they waited for Colonel Robinson Miss Glanfield dismounted and began to gather flowers along the river-bank. Suddenly she raised a doleful cry.

  “Oh, goodness, what an idiot I am!”

  “What’s amiss?” Mrs. Robinson enquired.

  “I’ve left my vasculum behind. How could I be such a fool?”

  Gloire had no idea what a vasculum was. Nor, it seemed, was Mrs. Robinson any better informed.

  “Your what, Susan?”

  “My flower-tin. Now all these will fade before I can press them.”

  “If you can wait till lunch, I can give you the cake-tin,” said the resourceful Robina. “We can eat the cake, or put it in something else.”

  “Oh, marvellous, Robina.”

  When Colonel Robinson arrived they continued on their way; first across a flat valley floor, where the soil was dark and rich—there was however little cultivation except a few strips; it was mostly pasture, and rather rushy at that. Miss Glanfield observed that it wanted draining.

  “Yes,” Colonel Robinson agreed with a sort of groan.

  “But why don’t they do it, Dick? It’s such a waste of this good ground.”

  “Not interested,” he said. “It’s very hard to make them take any serious interest in agriculture.”

  “But why not?”

  “It just isn’t in their tradition—partly because much of the soil is so poor, I suppose. They’re a bit more enterprising in the South. They like stock-raising well enough—you’ll see some splendid sheep and goats up at Lek-Gionaj’s, or over in Kossovo, if you go there; but of course in sheep they go in for milk rather than wool.”

  Their path left the valley and climbed an easy slope on the further side, bare and open; the sun was now fairly hot, and Mrs. Robinson’s mouse-coloured pony began to show signs of distress. The good-natured woman got off to relieve it, and walked; Gloire and Miss Glanfield presently got off and walked too, less for their ponies’ sake than for their own—neither had ridden for some months, and the small saddles were making them very sore. Here and there they came on patches of cultivation, little more than scratchings in the earth; Miss Glanfield was struck by the contrast between this country and Bulgaria, where, as she pointed out to Colonel Robinson, the tillage was both intensive and skilful. He agreed that, yes, the Bulgars were like that—“though their soil is better than this. But they’re born gardeners; gardeners and chocolatiers’, those are their two forms of national genius.”

  “What’s the national genius of the Albanians?” Gloire enquired. She had no tactless intention, but her flat careless drawl made her question sound ironic to Colonel Robinson’s hostile and sensitive ear.

  “It’s rather early days to say that yet,” he said defensively. “When a country has only been free from foreign despotism for twenty-four years, one hardly knows what they may become.”

  “Weaving is one of their skills—and embroidery,” said Mrs. Robinson. “All the clothes these men wear”—she gestured ahead at the caravan—“are hand-woven. And some of the lawn they weave is exquisitely fine. The women weave their own silk, too, for their best shirts and tunics. You’ll see them at Torosh.”

  “Like Gandhi,” said Gloire. “But it can’t compete nowadays, can it?”

  Nobody answered her. Perhaps it couldn’t compete. Or perhaps that native skill could be turned to a use at once commercial and artistic, as in the hereditary weaving families of Lyons and Broussa. That was what Colonel Robinson, who spent much of his time pondering this particular problem, was thinking—but he was not going to say so to the “damn girl”.

  Towards noon, when fatigue and heat were beginning to gain on the party, mulberry-trees and more cultivation betokened the presence of a larger village, and presently they came to the first houses of Ndërfanden. At a crossways in the centre was a pleasant spot—a pool under a great rock, lapping on one side against the wall of a house, and overhung by a large poplar-tree; water splashed from a spout. Here they halted for lunch.

  “Can we drink this?” Miss Glanfield asked, pointing to the spout. She was thirsty.

  “Not without asking—never without asking,” Robina replied. “I’ll find out.” She spoke to Fran, who enquired of a passing woman, and then turned and nodded. “Yes, this is good water.”

  “How does one ask if it’s good in Albanian?” Miss Glanfield enquired.

  “Asht ujë mirë—Is this water good,” Mrs. Robinson responded.

  “Which word is which?”

  “Asht—is, ujë—water, mirë—good.”

  “Asht ooiy miray—asht ooiy miray.” Miss Glanfield mouthed the alien syllables over, memorising them. Suddenly she turned with a startled expression to Mrs. Robinson, who wa
s unpacking the lunch with Fran’s help.

  “Robina!”

  “Yes, what?”

  “But that’s quite extraordinary!”

  “What’s extraordinary?”

  “Ooiy. Look—you have some Gaelic, or had. Uisge—water in Gaelic; Ooiy, water in Albanian. It must be the same root.”

  “So it must,” said Mrs. Robinson tranquilly, giving Fran the tin-opener. “How very funny—in all these years I never thought of that.”

  “Never thought of what?” said Colonel Robinson, coming up.

  He was told.

  “Yes, I daresay that is it,” he said. “After all the Celts left the kilt and the plaid here too, and these people have lots of traits in common with the Highlanders. Look at the clan system, here in High Albania itself.”

  “Oh yes, Dick, I wanted to ask you about that. Tell us now, for goodness’ sake, while we’re sitting in comfort.”

  “Oh well, there isn’t an enormous lot to tell,” said Colonel Robinson deprecatingly, taking a sandwich from a packet which Fran offered him. “Only people talk a pack of nonsense about it. The Germans, for instance, always write of Albanian Chiefs as ‘feudal’. They’re not feudal in the least, any more than Highland Chieftains were feudal. They didn’t, and don’t, hold land from the King in exchange for military services, or for dues in money or in kind, as feudal lords did, because to begin with till very recently there wasn’t a King to hold it from. And the lesser families don’t hold land from the chief; they own their own land. There are the hereditary great families, like the Lek-Gionajs, whom I hope you’ll see; but they have emerged in the course of time.”

  “When did they emerge? I mean how long have they been ruling families?”

  “Not ruling, Susan—great, I said. Well, that varies. Mirdita and Mati, where we’re going, is the one district which preserved its autonomy and its great family all through the Turkish occupation.”

  “Which family is that?”

  “The Lek-Gionajs.”

  Gloire pricked up her ears. Larsen had spoken of Lek-Gionaj. She listened with more attention than usual as Colonel Robinson went on—

  “It’s rather complicated, the whole tribal or clan system, but it boils down to something like this. The smallest unit is the fisse, or family—that is to say people having a common male ancestor, who mayn’t intermarry. They are grouped in bairaks—bairak means standard, really—and the bairaktar, or standard-bearer, is the hereditary chief and military leader of that group, which usually means a particular valley or district. Some of the very large tribes have several bairaks and bairaktars—Mirdita is divided into five bairaks. Each bairak is ruled by a council of elders presided over by the bairaktar—he’s half a magistrate and half a sort of hereditary mayor.”

  “Then is Lek-Gionaj a bairaktar?” enquired Gloire.

  “No—he’s much more than that. He’s the hereditary chief of the whole of Mirdita.”

  “A sort of prince, in fact?”

  “Well, you might say that he corresponds to a small German or Austrian princely family—the Fürst, who is never royal; but they don’t use that title here. A much closer parallel is with the Scottish hereditary chieftain who bears no title at all, like the Mackintosh or the Macleod—or the head of Clan Cameron, who is just called Lochiel.”

  “But Dick, you say the baktiar—”

  “Bairak,” from Colonel Robinson.

  “Oh yes—bairak. Well, you say it is ruled by a sort of council with the—I can’t get that word right!—it’s so like bactrian camel!”

  “Bairaktar,” said Colonel Robinson patiently, but amused.

  “Yes!—well, with him presiding. But what sort of law do they administer? Turkish law? Albanian law? Or the Code Napoléon, or what?”

  “My dear Susan, why on earth should they have the Code Napoléon?”

  “Well, they have gold francs and napoleons as coinage, so I thought they might have the Code Napoléon. Anyhow, everyone seems to have that when they start having modern laws at all. Why, the Turks have gone in for the Code Napoléon now,” said Miss Glanfield serenely.

  “Well, the Malissori—the mountain tribesmen—haven’t gone in for it yet,” said Colonel Robinson, laughing. “Up till quite recently, the only law they really recognised was one quite of their own, the law of Lek Dukhagin.”

  “What was that?”

  “You mean who was that, though you don’t know it. Lek was a member of the Dukhagin family; he lived in the fourteenth century, and was a sort of Solon.” He nodded at Gloire with a friendly grin. “I don’t mean in the American sense! Presumably Lek merely gathered up and arranged tribal law and custom as it existed in his day,” Colonel Robinson went on, “but his canon, as they call it, had and still has an extraordinary authority. There is no going against ‘Lek said it,’ which is forever quoted in the mountains; the Ten Commandments or Catholic law are simply non-starters if they conflict with the Canon of Lek—and so was Turkish Law, the Sheriat, in the days when it tried to compete. And yet, you know, it has never been written down—it was purely an oral tradition, and still is.”

  “It is fascinating,” said Miss Glanfield thoughtfully.

  “It is. It’s a whole mediaeval way of life, preserved, like an insect in amber, in the fantastic isolation in which these people have lived.”

  “Extraordinary,” Miss Glanfield said. “It’s so wonderful, because it really gives us a chance to see the kind of way we lived ourselves in mediaeval times. Because that is implicit in what we are now—only we tend so to lose sight of it.”

  Gloire pricked up her ears again. Hadn’t the Swede said something like that, when he was defending aristocracy in the light of history?

  “Anyhow, what was Lek’s famous law like? By the way—Lek, Lex—is there any connection?” Miss Glanfield asked, her mind, thirsting as usual for information, darting in two directions at once.

  “I really don’t know. If it’s a coincidence, it’s certainly an odd one,” said Colonel Robinson. “Never thought of it myself, I must admit.”

  “Well, never mind,” Miss Glanfield said. “It just struck me. What was Lek’s law, or canon?”

  “Rather odd and primitive. It was immensely detailed—I couldn’t possibly tell you more than a fraction of it. But, in general, there were only two main punishments: fines, and the burning of property. There was no imprisonment, because there were no prisons. I imagine that Lek, who was evidently a most intelligent and highly practical person, realised that any attempt to enforce imprisonment would only have led to armed raids on prisons, and so to worse disorders than ever. And there was no death penalty.”

  “Really? How very advanced. The death penalty was so prevalent in the Middle Ages, even for trivial offences,” said Miss Glanfield. “Was there no death penalty even for murder?”

  “No. Murder was punished by a fine. Killing in defence of honour—blood-taking, it was called, was punished by having your house burnt out. It was nothing out of the way for a man to have been burnt out four times for shooting in defence of honour.”

  “But”—Gloire’s eyebrows were raised again—“surely killing is murder, whether it’s in defence of honour or not?”

  “Public opinion didn’t hold that view with regard to duelling, even in the most highly civilised European countries; and in France and Italy, doesn’t hold it today,” Colonel Robinson said rather coldly. Gloire subsided—nor it did; she knew Italy well enough to know that.

  “What was killing in defence of honour usually for?” Miss Glanfield asked.

  “A number of things. For adultery, as in the rest of Europe—or for abduction of a girl. Adultery was—is—very rare; Malissori are as rigidly chaste as the Irish. But Lek was really quite sound. Without any impartial authority, the death penalty would only have started a fresh blood-feud, and the Turks didn’t provide any such authority. Lek wanted to check feuds; he realised they were sapping the manhood of the country, just like the Corsican vendettas. He did invent the Besa,
by which all offences could be compounded by a fine except an injury to a stranger while under your roof. Only blood could wipe that out, and that’s why Albania is the safest place in Europe for travellers.”

  “But he didn’t succeed, did he? Surely feuds went on till quite recent times?”

  “No, he didn’t succeed. But—”

  Mrs. Robinson broke in at this point.

  “Dick dear, once you start on feuds, there’s no end to it. And we ought to be getting on soon, oughtn’t we? It’s a long way still to Shpali. Susan, will this do for your flowers?” She held out a large flat oval short-cake tin, still ornamented with tartan paper.

  “Oh yes, splendid!”

  “But how will you carry it?”

  “Oh, ah—yes; how can I?” Miss Glanfield was fishing her flowers out of the pool in which she had immersed them during lunch.

  “Fran could punch two holes in one side, and put a string through, I daresay,” said Mrs. Robinson.

  “Could he? That would be ideal, Robina.”

  Fran could and did, while they smoked a hasty cigarette; he returned with the tin, Miss Glanfield put her flowers in it, and on Colonel Robinson’s instructions gave it to her pony-boy. By the time all this was done the caravan had moved off again, and was already out of sight. The second stage of the day’s march had begun.

  Chapter Nine

  When the riding party got under way again Gloire and Miss Glanfield walked—Mrs. Robinson, after a short spell on the mouse-coloured pony, changed over to Miss Glanfield’s; her own mount was again showing signs of distress, panting, pausing, and stumbling.

  “What’s wrong with that animal?” Colonel Robinson asked, looking back—he was walking ahead with Gloire.

  Mrs. Robinson, who had been holding a lively conversation on the subject of the pony with Fran and the three pony-men, heaved herself into the black pony’s saddle before replying.

  “Poor Mirash—they say he has the breath weakness.”