by Ann Bridge
But Gloire was more interested, for once, in the women. Out here in the brilliant light she could see them properly, note the exquisite detail of their brilliant woven silk aprons, and the fringed shawls or scarves which bound these round their waists, below the sombre richness of their velvet jackets. Some of the younger ones were heavily hung with ornaments, strings of gold or silver coins round their necks, heavy bracelets on their wrists. But what impressed her most of all was the effect—quite unsought—of their attitudes and grouping: the hierophantic gravity of that great cluster of white tunics, like the bells of vast campanulas, in the shadow of the church wall, and the stern fall of their black-fringed head-dresses. No ballet—and Gloire, who loved ballet, had seen many—had ever equalled this mountain congregation, talking pleasantly outside the church door on a feast-day, for formal grace and severe beauty. She noticed especially how still they stood—the bells of the campanulas hardly moved, the hands very little, though the faces and voices were now vivid with animation.
Presently there was a general movement outwards onto the great gravel square, where everyone stood looking up the hillside. Gloire looked too, and saw the caravan winding down the zig-zags; in a few moments she was joined by Mrs. Robinson and Miss Glanfield. They exchanged questions and answers—yes, she had been in time; yes, the service had been fine. (Gloire had neither the desire nor the capacity to express what the service had been like.) They walked about, admiring the dresses; Mrs. Robinson talked to some of the women. Presently Colonel Robinson joined them.
“Well, it’s all fixed, so far,” he said, taking off his felt hat and mopping his forehead. “Lek-Gionaj’s gone home, but he left word that he wished us to lunch with him. And the Abbot wants us to take coffee with him, so we’d better go round to the Presbytery now. I could do with some coffee, I must say. Phew!—it is hot.” He turned to Gloire. “Well, how did you get on? I gather you walked two of my chaps pretty well off their legs.”
“We got on fine,” said Gloire. “I think your chaps are sweet. They gave me coffee and played the accordion to me, and sang.”
“Did they, by Jove! Where was all this?”
“Up there in the hut.”
“My splendid Post! She calls it ‘the hut’!” said Colonel Robinson, who was in high good-humour. “Whatever time did you get here, then?”
“About five to ten.”
“Good God! And you didn’t leave Shpali till half-past seven! Well, that beats all records,” said the Colonel.
A young priest was waiting at the door of the Abbot’s lodging, and led them through bare whitewashed passages into his reception-room. This was a large apartment, but little less bare than the passages—the Abbot sat in an armchair behind a large plain deal table, with two kitchen chairs, one on each side of him, for his assistant priests; the guests sat on a row of kitchen chairs opposite. On the wall behind the Abbot was tacked a large square of plain cheap black stuff, in the centre of which hung a small piece of bright rug or carpet, making a background for a large crucifix; on the table stood a carafe of water and a bowl of flowers. There was nothing else in the room at all—the roughly-boarded floor was bare. Gloire, who was familiar with the holy parlours of ecclesiastical dignitaries in Italy, was rather painfully struck by the poverty and austerity of this one.
However the Abbot took his poverty lightly, and was not in the least austere himself. He was a big cheerful ugly man, wearing that expression of discreet wisdom and tempered geniality which the Roman Church so usually impresses on the faces of her more responsible sons; he also looked, and was, highly intelligent and serenely practical. Coffee was served almost at once, more of the sweet thick Turkish stuff, accompanied by glasses of cold water. The conversation began in Albanian, but presently at Miss Glanfield’s instance switched to Italian, which she and Gloire could both understand. It was all about the district—the two administrators, the civil and the ecclesiastical, discussed affairs of importance to both. Yes, Tirana was still remitting the taxes up here; that was essential, the Abbot said; the poverty was bitter, though the harvest prospects were better than last year. The attendance at the schools was on the whole encouraging; the Colonel would have heard that they had had two pupils accepted by the college in Scutari. There had been quite a good attendance at the weaving classes organised by that English lady—(all who know Albania will know to whom the Abbot referred)—and the articles they had made last year had brought in a helpful little amount of extra money to the district. Ah, the Government should give her more support, the Abbot said; that was the sort of thing the country needed, to turn the native skill of the women to account in producing for export articles which they could make in their own homes, without neglecting their families. But the Government of course had many other preoccupations. “Ah well,” said the Abbot, with a fine smile and an accepting gesture of the hands—“she will have her reward. As we say here: ‘Do a good deed and plunge it in the sea; if the fish don’t recognise it, God will.’”
“We need so much help here,” he said, turning to Miss Glanfield, who had interjected a question now and then. “We need European help, ideas, education. We have been in subjection to Asiatics for so long that we have Asiatic standards ourselves, in all but morals. But they are good people, these; they have great potentialities. I am glad—” he bowed, and it was like a pontifical pronouncement, so great was the dignity of the office superimposed on the natural dignity of the man—“I am glad that you are come among us. I hope you like my people.”
“Father, I like them enormously,” said Miss Glanfield, with her spontaneous earnestness and that blue glance.
“I hear you are going to Lek-Gionaj,” the Abbot pursued, now to the Colonel. “Ah yes—the daughter-in-law is ill, I learn; her child is newly born, and something has turned amiss.”
“We’re only going to lunch,” said the Colonel.
“So? I thought you were to stay.”
When they had left the Abbot, and were setting off again—“So that’s why it’s only lunch,” Colonel Robinson said to his wife.
“Yes, he must hate not putting us up,” said Robina.
“Why should he hate it? We’re such a mass,” said Gloire.
“They’re fantastically hospitable, these people,” replied the Colonel. “They can’t bear to fail in hospitality, because to fail in hospitality is to fail in honour. There are innumerable stories—true ones—of people at feud with another lot, and their enemy coming, all unwitting, to their house at night, and being recognised, and yet entertained with perfect courtesy.”
“My goodness, we have got something to learn from them,” said Miss Glanfield, “whatever the Abbot may say about their needing to learn from us.”
“We have indeed. There’s one particularly typical story,” the Colonel went on, “of a mountaineer who was found guilty of murder and sentenced—by the Turks—to be hanged. The Turkish officer said to him, after the verdict—‘Have you ever before been in such a terrible situation as you are today?’ The Albanian thought for a bit, and then he said—‘Yes—I was once.’ ‘When was that?’ ‘When strangers knocked at my door, expecting hospitality, and I had nothing to give them. Then I was indeed shamed.’”
“Oh, lovely!” exclaimed Miss Glanfield. “And when you think of our careful cutlet-counting, and the nicely-adjusted invitations of calculating dowagers! By comparison, we’re revolting.”
“I think cutler-counters are revolting by any standards,” said the Colonel.
The residence—for house is hardly the word—of Gjergj Lek-Gionaj, hereditary Kapidan or Prince of his clan, stood boldly on one of the projecting spurs running down from Mali Shënjt, commanding the valley below and the track up to the pass at its head; the slopes round it were of that characteristic formation of decomposing rock, flecked with a sparse dark growth of stunted pines and juniper. The house had recently been added to and in part rebuilt, and its flattish spreading tiled roof and gleaming white-wash concealed the massiveness of the structure and
gave it, from a distance,’ a deceptive resemblance to a large country villa in Southern Italy. But this was no villa. On all sides but one, where the ground dropped steeply to the valley, the upper slope was revetted into a wall of mortared stone at least twelve feet high, surmounted by a stockade of oak palings the size and thickness of railway sleepers; the only approach was by a sloping ramp, leading up to a solid oak gate in this stockade. The house itself, whose walls were four or five feet thick, was built round three sides of a square, forming a sort of courtyard—the fourth side was partially closed by a slatted wooden building, isolated from the rest. In this courtyard, into which the caravan filed with its usual deliberation, there was a feature which at once caught Miss Glanfield’s eye. On the courtyard walls of ancient houses and castles in England the mellow stone or brick often holds rings, fastened by staples driven deep into the masonry, to which the horses of travellers used to be tied—in this Albanian courtyard the masonry held in great numbers, not rings but iron hooks, whose use immediately became apparent, for the gendarmes and the pony-men at once hung their rifles on them by the slings! Miss Glanfield, naturally, was charmed by this.
The Prince and Princess—it is the nearest English equivalent for their position—met their guests in the courtyard; Lek-Gionaj greeted them first, and then with Colonel Robinson proceeded to deal with the disposal of the baggage and the men and animals of the caravan, including the gendarmerie escort; his wife, who had stood with folded hands and in perfect silence, now stepped forward and did her part, the welcoming of the women guests. Mrs. Robinson translated her little speech. She said:
“You are welcome, very welcome. The house and everything in it is yours. But here we are in the mountains, and I fear that you will suffer—indeed I fear that you will suffer much.”
Mrs. Robinson having made some suitable response, Mme. Lek-Gionaj led them indoors, and up a broad stone staircase to a vast room, as large as two billiard-rooms, in which a long table was set for a meal—a welcome sight, for it was now 1.30, and they had breakfasted at 5.30. Besides the table the room contained immense numbers of small high-backed wooden chairs of cheap modern make, a huge brass samovar, a wireless-set which did not go, a brass bedstead in one corner, and some bright Kelim rugs; on the walls were two pictures, an oleograph of the Holy Family and an enlarged and expressionless photograph of Lek-Gionaj’s father. The three windows were set so high and deep in the thickness of the wall that it was impossible to see out of them; they were heavily barred with iron scroll-work.
“Can we wash?” Gloire asked at once.
Yes, this could be arranged. Out on the landing at the head of the stairs, a large china basin was set on a chest, and filled with cold water from a copper jug; there was also produced a small pink-and-white bath-towel in that raised pattern which became fashionable about 1925, and, reposing in a cut-glass ash-tray, a cake, of all things, of Morny soap. With these rather primitive arrangements they managed to wash. Their hostess had left them for the moment, but a tall manservant in particularly splendid costume, with spectacular narrow moustachios curled round and as it were appliquéd on his tanned cheeks, attended them throughout, and when the washing was over, with a low bow flung open the door of another useful apartment.
Miss Glanfield went first, and came out as usual full of learned comment.
“But it’s a garde-robe, pure and simple!” she said delightedly to Mrs. Robinson, as Gloire passed in. “And at last I understand why garde-robes in mediaeval castles are always in a turret—to get two windows and a cross-draught, to carry off the smell. Not that it does carry it off much; but still I see the idea. This doesn’t seem to be in a turret; it’s just in an angle of the wall, I fancy—I must look at it from outside. But it has the two windows.”
Gloire, who knew nothing and couldn’t have cared less about mediaeval garde-robes, was distinctly disimpressed by the sanitary arrangements of the Lek-Gionaj home. A hole in a stone floor and two small unglazed windows was not her idea of plumbing at all—the only thing which amused her was being bowed in and bowed out again by, practically, Rudolf Valentino in person. She said so to Miss Glanfield, who laughed.
“It’s very good for you,” she said. “We’re all much too fussy about smells. Smells don’t do people any harm—only real sewer gas. Bad plumbing is death; no plumbing just smells, but it’s perfectly healthy.”
“It’s incredible,” said Gloire with finality.
The sufferings foretold by Mme. Lek-Gionaj now began. The travellers returned to the enormous room, where they were soon joined by Colonel Robinson and Lek-Gionaj; they were all extremely hungry, and the laid table raised eager hopes of food. But the Albanian tradition of hospitality includes no idea of time, so a long pause often ensues. (Also during this interval the meal is very often, in fact usually, being caught, killed, and cooked—all of which takes time.)
A long, a very long pause ensued on this occasion. Lek-Gionaj, attended by Pieter, his eldest son, sat on two of the upright wooden chairs opposite Colonel Robinson, and talked to him; Mme. Lek-Gionaj, attended by two of her daughters, a beautiful girl of seventeen called Lisa, and Marte, a gay little creature of about nine, sat opposite Mrs. Robinson, Miss Glanfield, and Gloire, and conversed with them; Rudolf Valentino handed round minute glasses of raki, the aniseed-flavoured liqueur of those regions, and a metal dish of flat squares of a rather hard sour white cheese. Each guest was supplied with a fork with which to spear the cheese; the dish was black with a thousand flies—spearing a piece, one blew on it to remove them before popping it hastily into one’s mouth. Gloire didn’t much like the cheese and thought the flies revolting, but she was so hungry that she took a piece whenever the dish came round, and so tired and thirsty that she emptied her little glass of raki as often as the servant filled it.
But the worst discomfort of that long wait was caused by the chairs. These, as has been said, were upright, with spoke backs and wooden seats of the most uncompromising sort. The three Englishwomen had spent some hours of the previous day in the saddle, for the first time in many months, and anyone who has ridden knows the effect of such unwonted exercise on that part of the human frame which sits on chairs. The hard wooden seats became a torture as time went on—the three foreigners sat forward, sat back, sat sideways, leaned their elbows on their knees, in their efforts to reduce the pain of their posteriors; but in vain.
And all the time, of course, they were perforce keeping up, through Mrs. Robinson, a polite conversation with their hostess. This was a rather one-sided affair—left to themselves, the ladies of the Lek-Gionaj household seemed to think it enough to sit in an attitude of polite attention, holding their hands out in front of them with the fingers interlaced, assiduously twiddling their thumbs. This ended by positively obsessing Gloire and Miss Glanfield. Mme. Lek-Gionaj twiddled her massive thumbs, Lisa twiddled hers, and Marte, as little as a doll, twiddled her tiny ones. Gloire, spying about, observed that in the men’s party, where the conversation was a good deal more animated, Lek-Gionaj sat twiddling his, faithfully copied by his son Pieter; and when not pouring out raki or handing cheese, Rudolf Valentino stood by the wall near the door, and twiddled as vigorously as his masters.
Conversation through an interpreter has its drawbacks. There can be no nuances, no grace-notes, no subtle turns of phrase—it is a matter of question and answer, statement, and agreement or disagreement, as bald and categorical as a telegram about a cargo of beans. Miss Glanfield, fecund in comment and enquiry, kept it up nobly; but even she was at last daunted by the barrenness of this form of intercourse, coupled with the discomfort of the chairs. “I wish you could ask her when we’re to have lunch,” she said wistfully to Robina; “but I suppose you can’t. Could you tell her that we had such a lovely walk, and started at six, do you think? Just casually?”
Robina laughed her fat laugh and told Mme. Lek-Gionaj that her guests were rather tired, as they were not used to walking.
“She says she knew you would suffer,” she said
in reply—“but you shall lie down after lunch.”
“Yes, but my God, when will after lunch be?” Gloire exploded. “It’s after half-past two now. I should like you to ask her why she doesn’t do something about these unspeakable flies,” she went on, blowing at another piece of cheese on her fork, and fanning the persistent insects off her face. “Couldn’t they Flit them, or something?”
Mrs. Robinson laughed again. “Flies are part of it,” she said, and after the manner of interpreters turned and told Mme. Lek-Gionaj how much her visitors admired the defunct wireless-set.
However a few minutes later Mme. Lek-Gionaj and her daughters rose and took their leave.
“That means lunch,” said Mrs. Robinson.
“You don’t mean to say she’s going to cook it?” said Gloire in despair.
“No no—it’s coming. That’s why she’s gone.”
“But won’t they have lunch?” Miss Glanfield enquired.
“Yes, but not with us. The women don’t eat with the men in Albania, as a rule—only in the very modern official circles.”
“Where do they eat then?”
“In their own rooms. By the way,” said Mrs. Robinson, with a rather nervous eye on Gloire, “we’re to spend a couple of nights here. It was a mistake in the message that we were only to lunch.”
“Oh, how perfect,” said Miss Glanfield with enthusiasm.