The Dark Moment

by Ann Bridge

  Féridé’s heart did fail her a little when she read this, and realised that there was definitely no hope of either Ahmet or Orhan coming to escort them on their journey. Sitting on the hard divan by the window, looking out on the blue waters which dashed coldly on the rocks below, she let a few tears fall. She had only the vaguest idea of how far it was to Ankara, or how long the journey would take—in the hurry of their departure from the yali she had not consulted the map. However, she pulled herself together, washed in cold water on that hideous dressing-table, and got tidy; when a tap on the door again announced Hassan’s advent she was ready, and went out to him. In the chilly passage she told him what Orhan had written, and gave him the letters for Réfiyé Hanim and the Kaimakam—“Could you, do you think, get someone to take it there? We ought to start as soon as possible.”

  “I will take it myself,” the young man said—“It will be safer. There are so many travellers, and much confusion. Are you all right? Have you what you need?”

  “Oh yes, for one night we can manage, thank you.”

  She watched him hobble away, then went in search of the chambermaid, and demanded candles and more candlesticks, and told her to have a table and another chair sent. The woman grumbled, but did as she was told. Féridé was actually beginning to take a sort of queer pleasure in using her powers in this new and unfamiliar way. Fanny, she was sure, would do it all much better—Fanny who used to travel alone in the train to school when she was only fourteen! You could not imagine Fanny being beaten by any difficulties, and she, Féridé, was not going to be beaten either.

  When she had done all she could for the moment, she read Orhan’s letter again. One sentence puzzled her very much—the reference to “difficulties with the population, who are being misled.” What could that mean? Since Orhan’s departure she had heard little or no talk of the political situation, except such major happenings as the occupation of the capital; she and her father studiously avoided the subject of politics, and she saw no one else. So she was unaware of the new movement that had begun, and was becoming daily more menacing to the Nationalist cause. The Allies could not get at Mustafa Kemal up in Anatolia; but the Sultan and his government could, by using the Turks themselves against the man who was fighting for his country’s independence. Among a people wholly without political experience, and far more swayed by emotion than by anything else, reaction is always a factor to be reckoned with; and a reaction from the first great upsurge of patriotic feeling, which had launched the Nationalist movement a few months before, had begun to set in among this war-weary nation. By payments, promises, and skilful propaganda the Sultan’s agents were fostering it with all their might, and wherever they could; anti-Nationalist bands were being formed, Mustafa Kemal’s recruiting agents were being maltreated—and even tortured in some regions; in fact there were already the beginnings of civil war on a small scale.

  Féridé, ignorant of all this, sat puzzling and worrying over her hus bands letter in that dreary room in the hotel at Inebolu, while the heat from the small brazier grew less and less, and a chill began to creep into the room, along with the bluish shadows that dusk brings beside the sea. Presently Nilüfer roused up; Féridé opened the picnic-basket and made tea.

  It was almost quite dark before Hassan returned and tapped at thè door—Féridé went and opened to him.

  “Voyons, come in,” she said—“This is in fact our salon! Let us not stand on ceremony; come and take a cup of tea.” Gratefully the young man came in and sat down. “Mais comme vous êtes bien instalées,” he said holding out his hands to the dying brazier. Féridé let him drink his tea in peace; then—“Have you been able to arrange something with the Kaimakam?” she asked.

  “Yes. A carriage will be here for you early tomorrow morning. The horses are quite good, and I have spoken personally with the driver; he seems a decent sensible fellow. He will take you the whole way to Ankara.”

  “Ah, that is excellent! How we thank you. And you?”

  “I have hired a horse,” Hassan said. “I cannot walk like all the rest.”

  Chapter Ten

  The long cross-country trek on which Féridé and Nilüfer set out a day later will doubtless go down to history by the name which Turks use for it today, in pride and affection—The Road of the Revolution. They started a day late because the carriage promised by the Kaimakam, characteristically, was only forthcoming then, and this applied equally to Hassan’s horse; so all three endured another twenty-four hours of cold, discomfort, frustration and bad food in the hotel. But at last they started—and whatever the delays and discomforts endured, happy those who then took that road, for they carry a memory of one of the great national revivals of our time.

  The conveyance into which the two girls stowed themselves, their luggage, and Hassan’s suitcase was a sort of open victoria, very small, drawn by two sturdy little Anatolian horses—a cold sort of carriage to travel in for long. In their total ignorance of a journey of this sort neither of the young women had thought to bring a rug; this mistake Hassan remedied by cantering off to the market and returning with a hairy, rather smelly, goatshair blanket, which he folded round their knees before they bowled off through the narrow cobbled streets.

  They were soon slowed down: it was market-day in Inebolu, and dense crowds brought the carriage to a foot’s pace—crowds largely of women, dressed like the chambermaid in skirts and quilted jackets of a prevailing tone of plummy pink, with vivid aprons striped in indigo-blue and dull red. But it was their headdress which ravished the two girls. Instead of the dreary black çarşafs of Istanbul the heads, faces and shoulders of these Anatolian peasants were swathed in big white scarves bordered with a minute pattern of black, so that the narrow thronged streets seemed to be filled with clouds of enormous white butterflies—in the bright spring sunshine the effect was magical.

  Once clear of the market and the town they made a good pace again. For some distance the road followed the river in the main valley; then it branched off to the left, crossed a bridge, and began to climb steeply through cultivated land, now dank and sodden after the winter’s snow, but richly set along the edges of the fields with fig, chestnut, and mulberry-trees. Higher, these were replaced by immense cherry-trees, thirty feet or more high; higher still cultivation was left behind altogether, and they passed into the mountain woodlands, where through the beech-scrub spread a glossy dark undergrowth of that familiar English evergreen, Rhododendron ponticum, growing wild on its native heath. Patches of snow began to appear in the hollows and under the banks; the air grew cold, and the horses slowed to a walk on the steep, muddy, rutted road.

  Nilüfer and Féridé took little interest in trees or shrubs, either cultivated or wild; what arrested and held their attention, from the moment of crossing the bridge and beginning to climb the slopes above that side valley was the astonishing procession which was plodding up one side of the road. It was like a chain-gang, except that there were no chains —spaced about a metre and a half apart, in single file, walked an unending line of human beings, all bending forward under the weight of various burdens: bundles of rifles, boxes of ammunition, shells slung in loops of cord—all the things that Féridé had watched being transshipped so stealthily that last night off Istanbul. So this was how the cargo of their ship was being transported over the Kuré Dagh! Most astonishing of all, more than three-quarters of the carriers were women, some in the pink-skirted local dress, others in brightly-flowered cherry-coloured trousers; quite a number were carrying a baby in their arms as well as a shell bound on their backs, others were accompanied by two or three small children, who pattered beside them in the greasy mud. Up, up, up; steady, slow, unceasing; now and again one called to a straggling child, but for the most part they walked in silence, breathing heavily, with the weight of their loads and the steepness of the ascent. The road was getting very steep indeed, and soon they came altogether into the snow—dirty slushy stuff at first, but as they climbed even higher, the roadside banks and the slo
pes about them were pure unpacked white, under which the broad-leaved rhododendrons disappeared as heaped shapeless masses, while above the slender bare twigs of the beech-scrub, too thin to hold the snow, stood out in a delicate dark tracery. And still, against this wintry background, that unending file of figures trudged on, monotonous and statuesque as figures on a frieze—only no one has ever yet sculptured a frieze of women with veiled heads carrying heavy loads, and children running like calves at foot beside them.

  Féridé, of course, wanted to know all about this phenomenon, and since Hassan had disappeared she applied to Mehmet, their coachman, who sat silent and apparently rather sulky on the box, muffled up in a sheep-skin coat.

  “Mehmet, why are these packages carried by women?”

  “Because the men are at the war, Effendim,” replied the driver, without turning his head.

  “But why do they not use carts?”

  “The road is too bad, Effendim—with such loads carts would sink in the mud.”

  “Heavens! Shall we too sink in the mud?” Nilüfer exclaimed.

  “We may well do so, Effendim,” said Mehmet fatalistically; “or we may stick fast in the snow. This often happens on this road.”

  Féridé was not interested in the matter of sinking in snow or mud. “Where do these women and their children sleep?”

  “But by the side of the road, naturally,” the coachman replied. “Next day, they rise and walk forward.”

  “How do they eat?”

  “They get food in the villages, or at the hans, and eat it, and then go on. We shall soon come to the Solgan Han, the first one—we rest the horses there.”

  “How far do they go? All the way to Ankara?”

  “No, Effendim—only to Seydiler. From there onwards the road is better, and the loads can be taken on carts.”

  “This is wonderful!” Féridé said to Nilüfer. “What endurance! They are the caryatides of our time!” she exclaimed, again leaning out to study the faces of the plodding women, some of which were indeed contorted with the strain.

  “Yes—how strong they must be. But”—lowering her voice and speaking in French—“do you suppose that we shall really get stuck?”

  “Oh no, I don’t expect we shall. These seem to be very good horses, and we are not as heavy as shells!” said Féridé, laughing—the sun, the keen mountain air, and the snowy mountain landscape about them were filling her with a strange exhilaration, which was deepened by the sight of that silent line of figures on their right. “Look at that woman there—she is carrying twins!” she exclaimed. “Oh, really they are wonderful—” for indeed they were now passing a woman with two bundled babies, one in each arm, and a wooden box of ammunition strapped to her back; their light-footed little horses went just a trifle faster than the load-bearers, so that they kept seeing new ones all the time.

  The road, which had been zigzagging to and fro up the northern side of the valley, now turned and flattened out on a sharp narrow ridge, overlooking both the slope up which they had come and the main gorge; on this razor-back stood a small wooden structure, about which a crowd of cadets and ammunition-carriers were halted, eating bread and drinking coffee. Mehmet drove up to the door, and for once turning in his seat said—“This is the han; here I rest the horses for a space. The ladies can descend and take coffee.”

  He set the ladies an example by descending himself, fastening the horses to a post, and stumping into the inn. The two young women sat in the carriage, hesitating; when the door opened to admit the coachman they caught a glimpse of a low room full of men, eating and drinking at long trestle tables. It was not at all the sort of place they had ever expected to enter.

  “I think we should wait here, outside. I am not hungry—are you?” Féridé said.

  “No!” Nilüfer spoke with a shudder—“Do not let us, on any account, go in there. How could we?”

  So they stayed where they were. Féridé got out and walked about, peering over into the gulf of the valley to their right; but the snow was cold to her feet, and spectacular as the scenery was, she had just got into the carriage again and huddled down under Hassan’s blanket when she saw the woman with twins coming up the road, and paused, to see what she would do. First she laid the two bundled babies down on the snow; then, unslinging the heavy wooden box off her back she sat on it, picked the two infants up, and unfastening the front of her dress, proceeded to give them the breast. As her companions came up with her, and likewise slung down their loads—“Bring me out some bread, presently,” she called to them.

  The others nodded, and went into the han; one shortly reappeared with a cup of coffee, which she held to the mother’s lips—“Ah, that’s good,” the woman said. Another presently brought a hunk of bread and laid it in her lap, and when the babies had finished feeding she laid them across her knees, unconcernedly, and ate the bread, tearing it into large pieces and chewing them vigorously with her strong white teeth.

  Féridé watched this from the carriage, fascinated; now, since there was still no sign of Mehmet she could not resist getting out again, and going over to speak to the woman.

  “You do not get tired?” she asked.

  “Not I, no—by Allah’s goodness I am stout,” said the woman, laughing; she had thrown back her scarf to eat, and sat there unveiled, regardless of the men coming and going to the han, to Féridé’s amazement—the girl from the metropolis was not yet accustomed to the casualness of the Anatolian peasant-woman about the veil.

  “Have you done this before?”

  “Yes, six times; four before my children were born, and twice since.”

  “And do they not mind? I mean, do they thrive?” Féridé asked.

  “Yes—I thrive, so they thrive,” said the woman. “Let the Lady look at them”—and she unrolled the two bundles. Féridé peered cautiously at the tiny faces, which puckered up into howling images at this unexpected treatment. “Ah, be still! Can you not even do so much for your country?” the woman said, rolling them up again and giving each a cheerful slap on the back. She grinned up at Féridé. “The first words I shall teach them to say will be ‘Mustafa Kemal,’,” she said.

  “And your husband?” Féridé asked.

  “At the war. May Allah preserve him!”

  At this point Mehmet re-appeared, and untied the horses; Féridé got in again, and they drove off.

  “I wish now that we could have got something to eat,” she said to Nilüfer, tucking the blanket round her feet; “seeing that woman with her bread has made me hungry. I wonder where Hassan has got to? He could have got us something.”

  They drove on, still climbing through woodland, though now less steeply; the snow grew deeper and deeper about them, and the air was very cold. As they approached the top of the pass, which lies at 1800 metres, the road presently ran between deep vertical banks of snow through which a passage had been cut; on these snowy walls were scratched inscriptions, and the girls, surprised, leant out to read them.

  “Ismir [Smyrna] shall always be ours!” some read; “O Edirné, to us thou shalt always belong,” others; and “Not a foot of our soil shall be lost!” For several kilometres, as long as the snow was deep, these mute protestations kept them company all the way, clearly visible on one side, on the other partly obscured by that file of walking figures. The two sides of the road impressed Féridé deeply. This was how a nation was reborn, then—in this spirit, and with such a cheerful endurance of hardship as that woman with the twins had shown. She suddenly remembered what her father had said, on her wedding night, as reported to her by Fuad—“It seems that the women of Turkey must be heroic now, as well as the men.” But what had she done, or could she do, compared with these peasants who trudged along, stooping under their loads, their raw goat-skin moccasins, wet through with the snow, their ungloved hands red with the cold?—while she rode snugly in a carriage in a fur coat. Well, whatever she could do, she would, the girl resolved.

  At the top of the pass Mehmet paused for a moment to b
reathe the horses, and Nilüfer and Féridé looked ahead eagerlv to see what lay in front of them. The pass overlooked a deep valley, its sides clothed with beech forest clinging to the slopes; sheer grey limestone crags rose above, their faces too steep to hold the snow, and in the bottom ran a broad river, whose strong song came up to them where they sat. They could see the road at intervals winding away down the mountain-side through the leafless branches of the beech-trees, which threw a fine tracery of blue shadows on the gold-white of the sunlit snow—wherever they could see it, they saw also that ceaseless file of ammunition-carriers, and, here and there, groups of cadets, who were slithering and running downhill, singing and shouting as they went. After a few minutes’ pause the driver cracked his whip, and they started down. This mountain road was much steeper than anything they had encountered as yet; the ground fell dizzily away below them, the road itself was narrow and full of hairpin bends, round which the small carriage rocked and swayed alarmingly.

  “Could we not go more slowly?” Féridé called to the driver.

  “Effendim, if we are to eat at Çuha Dogrugu, and sleep at the Ecevit Han, we must hasten,” he replied, and whipped his horses up afresh.

  “Oh well, he knows the road—and I shall be ready for lunch, I confess,” Féridé said laughing and clutching Nilüfer as she was flung against her at a bend.

  “I wonder what this han will be like, where he says we sleep,” Nilüfer speculated. “I do hope it will be comfortable. I have never slept in a han.”

  “Nor have I. I believe Fanny used to sometimes, when she travelled with her Uncle,” Féridé said. “However, think of these women sleeping by the roadside.”

  “We are not as they,” said Nilüfer—which was incontrovertibly true.