by E. H. Jones
In order to minimize the chance of error, the Spook expounded to the Pimple every bit of medical lore which Doc. O’Farrell had imparted to us, for he was less likely to go wrong if he knew what the doctors were driving at in their questions. Indeed, there were only three points on which we kept him in ignorance. These were (i) that there was no Spook and we were not ‘under control’ but acting; (ii) that O’Farrell was helping us, and (iii) that our object was ‘exchange’ and not ‘treasure’. The Spook warned him that it would be much harder to hoodwink the Constantinople doctors than it had been to deceive the local men.
‘Entre nous,’ it said, ‘O’Farrell and the doctors here know nothing about mental diseases. To deceive Major Osman and Captain Suhbi Fahri I made the mediums behave in the way an ignorant man thinks lunatics behave. But when we are up against the Constantinople doctors, and especially the Germans, it will be a different business. You will be surprised, mon vieux. My method will be to make the mediums appear quite sane to the lay eye, but they will have little lapses and little mannerisms which the specialists will note.’ The Spook ‘controlled’ us in turn to show Moïse what he meant by ‘mannerisms’. It first made Hill sit with a vacant stare of his face, twiddling his thumbs and pleating and unpleating the edge of his coat. Then it threw me into a trance where I picked imaginary threads and hairs off my own clothes or the clothes of the person I happened to be talking to, and twisted a button ceaselessly between finger and thumb.
‘All that,’ the Spook explained to Moïse, ‘appears quite sane to you. You will not recognize in it a sign of madness, nor should you put it down in your notes, but a doctor who knows his job will remark it at once. If he asks you, “Have you noticed that before?” be sure to say, “Oh yes, he is always doing that!” in a tone as if you did not know what was behind the question, or that such action had any significance.’
Again, as to the Pimple’s manner of telling his story, the Spook was very emphatic. ‘I want you to tell your story in such a way that you will appear not to know what is important. You might begin by saying you do not know what the doctors want to know about. Let them question you, as far as possible. Don’t recite it like a set piece, but get them interested. Speak so as to entice questions. Now, one word of explanation and warning: you will find that the mediums will deny a great many things you say they have done. That will be understood by the doctors as a madman’s cunning, and at the same time it will prove that you and the Commandant are not in league with the mediums. So do not be alarmed by their denials.’
One thing worried Moïse greatly, and at length he ventured to ask the board, ‘Won’t they think it funny that two officers go mad at the same time?’
‘Yes,’ said the Spook, ‘they will. If you say they “went mad at the same time” it will spoil everything. I have never said they went mad at the same time.’
‘That is true, Sir,’ Moïse agreed,’but what am I to think? ‘
‘They were discovered to be mad at the same time by the Yozgad doctors, but the important point is that for the last two years they have been gradually going mad quite separately and independently. It was the fact of their being regarded as peculiar by the other officers that threw them together, combined with their common interest in spiritualism and telepathy. What you should say is that, looking back in the light of what you have since learned from the doctors, it is your belief that the mediums have always been mad ever since you knew them, and you cannot account for their peculiarities in any other way. Recently their madness became more pronounced, which caused the Commandant to call in medical advice. This is why their past history is so important. Do you see?’
‘Yes, Sir,’ said Moïse meekly.
When at last by dint of ceaseless tuition Moïse had thoroughly grasped the situation, and the nature of the story he was to tell, the Spook held an examination and asked every conceivable question we and O’Farrell thought the Constantinople doctors might set. Moïse passed the test with great credit; and we felt we were ready for the road.
In addition to teaching the Pimple, the Spook had a good deal of ‘cleaning up’ to do. We wanted to leave our comrades as comfortably off as possible. Many officers had been complaining of the non-arrival of remittances from England, and we suspected that a good deal of the missing money had stuck to the palms of the Commandant on the way between Post Office and camp. By sheer good luck the Commandant asked the Spook whom he should send to the Post Office for the money whilst Moïse had gone. He complained that he could not trust any of the other officials to bring it to him. The Spook advised him to send a British officer from the camp, along with any one of the Turkish officials. Whether or not this was done after our departure we do not know.
The camp was crowded, and would be still more crowded when the Changri men arrived. We had long since decided to get more house-room for our comrades. Across the road were two small houses which we had planned to add to the camp. The fact that one of them was inhabited by the witch who read the cards for Kiazim in hours of stress merely made us additionally keen. For we objected to rivals. The Spook, therefore, turned her out of the house just before the Changri people arrived, and Hill and I went into it. The second house was already empty. The Commandant agreed to hand over these two houses to the camp after we were gone, but Colonel Maule, being ignorant of our plans, nearly spoiled everything by arranging for the disposal of the Changri prisoners in the accommodation already at his command. Kiazim at once converted the second house into a guard-room for the sentries, and it took a good deal of diplomacy to make him promise to hand over the one we were in to our fellow prisoners. However, we managed it.
We felt something ought to be done to Kiazim as a punishment for his cowardice over the affair of X. The Spook therefore informed him that the time had come for him to go ‘on diet’, and although we did not reduce his food to our own starvation rations, we gave him a pretty thin time. Whether on account of this, or for some other reason, Kiazim had a recurrence of his biliary colic. He asked the Spook for a remedy – indeed, he suspected the Spook of bringing on the attack! In reply the Spook offered to call up the shade of Lord Lister for a consultation. The Commandant was so delighted with Lister’s advice, that we felt much tempted to make the Spook demand a hundred guinea fee.
The Commandant’s wife had been boasting round Yozgad of a coming access of wealth, and this in spite of a previous warning by the Spook. Kiazim was therefore made to give her a thoroughly good scolding, and forbidden to speak to her for a fortnight.
Then there was the Cook. Orders had come from Constantinople to demobilize men of fifty years and over. The Cook fell within that class, but the Commandant was unwilling to ‘demob’ him without the permission of the Spook. After some delay, the Spook graciously granted permission to Kiazim to free the Cook from all military duties, but insisted that he should continue to attend to the domestic wants of the mediums. For this both the Cook and the Commandant thanked the Spook, while Hill and I listened with grave faces.
A matter which rankled a little was that the Commandant was still in possession of the two Turkish gold liras, which we had dug up with the clues. The Spook accordingly ordered a hacksaw and a small vice. These were borrowed by the Turks from a goldsmith in the town. The Spook then made Hill cut each coin into three equal parts, and gave Hill and myself the parts of the coins bearing the dates, while the Cook and Pimple each got a section, and the remaining two portions went to the Commandant, one for himself and one for his wife. ‘These portions,’ said the Spook, ‘bind you all together in my brotherhood, to be faithful and true to my behests. That is one function. The other function is to deceive AAA; for these are the exact duplicates of the original tokens. You must wear these tokens as the originals were worn – round your necks. I prefer not to explain yet how they will be used to deceive AAA, because that is still a long way off, but you must always wear the tokens to be ready.’
The Turks readily obeyed, and so far as I know they are still wearing their tokens
. They did not realize our object. It was to render comparatively useless the only thing of value the Spook had ‘discovered’, and at the same time to provide us with an additional proof of Kiazim’s confederacy with us. Should the occasion arise for us to denounce him it would cause him some trouble to explain how we all came to be wearing portions of the same coin if we were not in some sort of league together.
The Pimple was justly unpopular with the camp. Everybody knew he took toll of our parcels before they were delivered to us, and in addition to his thieving he had an objectionable habit of coming round the recipients of parcels after delivery, and begging here some tea and there some chocolate, and so on. It was unwise to refuse, because if you did he would see to it that the next package of books that arrived would be sent back to Constantinople for re-censoring, and books were very precious to us prisoners. Had he chosen he could have done much to render our imprisonment less irksome, but he knew he was top dog for the time being, and took advantage of his position.
The Spook therefore set about permanently ridding the camp of their pet aversion, and it did so by fanning the flame of ambition that was consuming the poor fool. ‘You are wasting time in Yozgad,’ it said; ‘nothing comes to him who does not ask. You are clever! Strike out for your betterment. Throw modesty to the winds.’ (Heaven knows he had little to spare!) ‘You are a good lad. Make other people realize it. Do not stagnate in Yozgad while great careers are being made elsewhere. Why don’t you try to get to the heart of things?’ (Moïse pleaded the cost of living at Constantinople, and the Spook went on); ‘A crust of bread where there are big men to watch you earn it is better than rich meats in a wilderness. I am taking you to Constantinople. I have arranged for a man in your place here. Mind you stay there.’
Moïse thanked the Spook warmly for its advice and begged for instructions as to how he could stay at the capital. He was ordered on arrival at Constantinople to go to the War Office, say he knew Turkey was being hard pressed by its enemies and demand to be sent to the fighting line. This, the Spook assured him, would obtain him his commission. The unhappy Pimple was horror-struck at the idea of having to fight, but the Spook promised that he would be quite safe, and as soon as he got to Constantinople the little ass did as we desired. The Turkish War Office was so astonished at obtaining a volunteer at this stage in the war that they gave him a commission straight off, granted him a month’s leave to wind up his affairs and then clapped him into the officers’ training school, where he was fed on skilly and drilled for eight hours a day. He utilized his first afternoon off duty to come to me in the mad ward of Haidar Pasha hospital, where he literally wept out his sufferings into my unsympathetic ear and implored the Spook to get him better treatment. The Spook reminded him he had offered to share the starvation of the mediums and informed him that he was now ‘doing his bit’, and it is fair to the Pimple to record that when he heard the verdict he dried his tears, held his head high, and announced that he was proud to do his duty by our great cause; henceforward, he said, he would endure the torments of bad food, bad lodging and hard physical exercise without a moan. He never complained again, but he sometimes referred with regret to the luxuries of his old post at Yozgad – and we felt the camp was avenged.
One other thing we did for the camp. On the 24th the Changri prisoners arrived. We knew from the Turks that the reason for their coming to Yozgad was their refusal to give parole not to escape. Several of them – Le Patourel, Lowndes, Anderson, Johnstone, and Cochrane (of 450 Miles to Freedom fame) came to see us and told us that practically the whole party intended to escape. We were invited to join but our transport was already ordered by the Spook and it was too late to alter our plans had we wished it. Then we learned from the Pimple that the Changri Commandant (who accompanied the new prisoners to Yozgad) had warned Kiazim that they were a set of desperate characters who were undoubtedly planning to escape. Kiazim had therefore made up his mind to lock up the camp again under the conditions which had prevailed when we first arrived at Yozgad; but before doing so he wished to consult the Spook. Would we grant him one last séance before leaving Yozgad? We did. Our last séance in Yozgad was held on the night of the 24th April, 1918, and almost the last question with which the Spook dealt (I quote the record) was:
‘The Commandant presents his compliments to the Control and wishes to know if any of the Changri prisoners have the idea of escaping.’
‘Certainly,’ was the reply. ‘Every man would escape if he thought it possible, but Yozgad is as nearly impossible as any place can be, and they are not fools. Their opinion is that escape is too difficult to justify them in bringing the rest into trouble.’
The Spook went on to point out that the more hours out of every twenty-four the camp was on parole the less time would there be for escape; for this reason alone it was advisable to grant as many extra liberties as possible to those who were willing to give parole not to escape while actually enjoying these extra liberties. The Commandant might be perfectly confident that every such parole would be kept. But if close confinement were again imposed there would certainly be escapes.
‘Let the Sup. tell them they are welcome to try to escape except when on “extra liberties”, but they have been warned of what will happen to the rest. I do not say nobody will try, but it is most unlikely, especially if they are kept contented.’
Just before we left Yozgad we learned (from Le Patourel, if I remember right) that the escape was planned for early June – six weeks ahead. The Spook immediately sent word to the Commandant that it guaranteed there would be no escape or attempt to escape for at least three months from the date of our departure from Yozgad. This gave the Changri men a free hand until the 26th July, by which date we felt sure they would have made the attempt.65
It is of course impossible to say what would have happened had Kiazim been left to his own resources. This much is certain: on the morning of the 24th April he intended to keep the whole camp, and especially the Changri men, in very strict confinement. On the morning of the 25th April, the day after the séance, when he called to bid us farewell, and brought us a basket of sweet biscuits for the journey, made by his wife’s own hands, he told us he would follow the Spook’s advice and keep the prisoners as contented as possible. I learn from the book I have just quoted that he kept his promise, and after we left Yozgad the camp was better off in the matter of facilities for exercise than it had ever been in our time. Two days a week there was hunting, once a week a picnic to the pine-woods, and, on the remaining four days, walks; also access to the bazaar was easier to obtain. We can justly claim that the ‘Black Sheep’ of Yozgad brought no harm to the rest of the flock.
Chapter XXIV
Of Our Mad Journey to Mardeen
Ever since Major Osman and Captain Suhbi Fahri had certified us insane we had feigned madness whenever any Turk was near, and in the presence of some of the visitors from the camp. We had found no great difficulty in maintaining our roles as occasion arose, and indeed it was rather amusing to be able to heave a brazier of charcoal at a sentry, or try to steal his rifle, without fear of punishment. For the strain of acting was only temporary. We contrived to give the special sentry who was detailed to prevent us doing harm to ourselves or others such a very hot time that he preferred to do his tour of duty outside our room. So for most of the hours of the twenty-four we were alone, and could be rational. But we realized that from the moment we left our sanctuary and started on our journey to Constantinople, our simulation must be kept up night and day. As soon as we reached Haidar Pasha our escort would probably be questioned about our behaviour en route, and it was well they should corroborate the Pimple’s report of our actions. We agreed there must be no half measures. Alone or together, in sickness or health, to friend and foe, at all times and under all circumstances we must appear mad. O’Farrell warned us that the strain would be terrible, but not even he, doctor as he was, guessed half what it really meant. Nothing but the hope of liberty justified the attempt, and there were
times in Constantinople when we doubted if liberty itself (which in those days was our idea of Heaven) was worth it. Pretend to be what you are not and the desire to be what you are grows in intensity until it becomes an agony of the mind. Your very soul cries out to you to be natural, to be your own ‘self’ if only for five minutes. Then comes a stage of fear when you wonder if you are not what you seem – if you can ever be yourself again – if this creature that weeps mournfully when it should be gay, or gabbles wildly about its own grandeur, is not the real Hill, the real Jones. You believe you are all right, but you want to try so as to be sure – and yet trial is impossible; it would spoil everything. For a brief period in Haidar Pasha hospital a former patient came back and wanted the bed Hill happened to be in, so Hill was put in the bed next mine. It seems a little thing, that we should lie there three feet apart instead of ten, but it meant much. That was, for us, the easiest period of our long misery. We did not attempt to talk – we were too closely watched for that – but at night, under cover of darkness, sometimes he and sometimes I would stretch out an arm, and for a brief moment grip the other’s hand. The firm strong pressure of my comrade’s fingers used to put everything right. It was the one sane action in our insane day.