When the Going Was Good

by Evelyn Waugh

  I had sometimes thought it an odd thing that Western Christianity, alone of all the religions of the world, exposes its mysteries to every observer, but I was so accustomed to this openness that I had never before questioned whether it was an essential and natural feature of the Christian system. Indeed, so saturated are we in this spirit that many people regard the growth of the Church as a process of elaboration – even of obfuscation; they visualize the Church of the first century as a little cluster of pious people reading the Gospels together, praying and admonishing each other with a simplicity to which the high ceremonies and subtle theology of later years would have been bewildering and unrecognizable. At Debra Lebanos I suddenly saw the classic basilica and open altar as a great positive achievement, a triumph of light over darkness consciously accomplished, and I saw theology as the science of simplification by which nebulous and elusive ideas are formalized and made intelligible and exact. I saw the Church of the first century as a dark and hidden thing; as dark and hidden as the seed germinating in the womb; legionaries off duty slipping furtively out of barracks, greeting each other by signs and passwords in a locked upper room in the side street of some Mediterranean seaport; slaves at dawn creeping from the grey twilight into the candle-lit, smoky chapels of the catacombs. The priests hid their office, practising trades; their identity was known only to initiates; they were criminals against the law of their country. And the pure nucleus of the truth lay in the minds of the people, encumbered with superstitions, gross survivals of the paganism in which they had been brought up; hazy and obscene nonsense seeping through from the other esoteric cults of the Near East, magical infections from the conquered barbarian. And I began to see how these obscure sanctuaries had grown, with the clarity of the Western reason, into the great open altars of Catholic Europe, where Mass is said in a flood of light, high in the sight of all, while tourists can clatter round with their Baedekers, incurious of the mystery.

  By the time Mass was over, our chauffeur had succeeded in the remarkable and hazardous feat of backing the car up the path. We said good-bye to the abuna and climbed the ravine, attended by a troop of small deacons. When we at last reached the top the professor took from his pocket a handful of half-piastre pieces with which he had secretly provided himself. He ordered the children to line up, and our boy cuffed and jostled them into some kind of order. Then he presented them with a coin apiece. They had clearly not expected any such donation, but they quickly got the hang of the business, and, as soon as they were paid, queued up again at the back. Our boy detected this simple deception and drove away the second-comers. When each had received his half-piastre, and some had grabbed two, there were still a number of coins left over. ‘Do you think,’ asked the professor rather timdily, ‘that it would be very vulgar and tripperish to make them scramble for them?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said.

  ‘Of course it would,’ said the professor decidedly. ‘Quite out of the question.’

  The deacons, however, continued to caper round us, crying for more and clinging to the car, so that it became impossible to start without endangering several lives. ‘Ça n’a pas d’importance,’ said the chauffeur inevitably, cranking up the engine. The professor, however, preferred a more humane release. ‘Perhaps, after all …’ he said, and threw his handful of money among the children. The last we saw of Debra Lebanos was a scrambling heap of naked black limbs and a cloud of dust. It was interesting to be in at the birth of a tradition. Whoever in future goes to Debra Lebanos will, without doubt, find himself beset by these rapacious children; Professor W. had taught them the first easy lesson of civilization.

  Our journey back for the first three hours was uneventful. We made good time on the downs, and darkness found us at the beginning of the plain. From then onwards progress was slow and uncertain. Four or five times we lost the track and continued out of our way until a patch of bush or marsh brought us up short. Twice we got stuck and had to push our way out; two or three times we were nearly overturned by sudden subsidences into the watercourses. It was these channels that enabled us to find our way, for they all ran at right angles to our route. When we reached one the Armenian and the boy would take opposite sides and follow the bank down until one of them reached the crossing; there would then be whistles and signals and we resumed the right road.

  At each check, the professor made up his mind to stop. ‘It is quite impossible. We shall never find the road until daylight. We may be going miles out of our way. It is dangerous and futile. We had far better spend the night here and go back at dawn.’

  Then the driver would return with news of success. ‘J’ai décidé; nous arrêtons ici,’ the professor would say.

  ‘Ah,’ came the invariable response, ‘Vous savez, monsieur, ça n’a pas d’importance.’

  Throughout the journey the boy sat on the mudguard in front, picking out the rare stones and hoof-marks which directed us. Once, however, the Armenian despaired. We had all walked round and round for half an hour in widening circles, searching the completely blank earth with electric torches. We came back defeated. It was now about ten o’clock and bitterly cold. We were just discussing how we could possibly keep ourselves warm during the coming eight hours, when the boy saw lights ahead. We drove on and ran straight into a caravan bivouacked round a camp-fire. Our arrival caused great consternation in the camp. Men and women ran out of the tents or sprang out of the ground from huddled heaps of blankets; the animals sprang up and strained at their tethers or tumbled about with hobbled legs. Rifles were levelled at us. The Armenian strode into their midst, however, and, after distributing minute sums of money as a sign of goodwill, elicited directions.

  Our worst check was within sight of Addis, on the top of Entoto. This part of the journey had seemed perilous enough by daylight, but by now we were so stiff and cold as to be indifferent to any other consideration. Twice we pulled up within a few feet of the precipice, the boy having fallen asleep on the mudguard where he sat. We got stuck again with two wheels in the air and two in a deep gully, but eventually we found the road and at that moment ran out of petrol. Two minutes earlier this disaster would have been insuperable. From now on, however, it was all downhill and we ran into the town without the engine. When at last we reached the professor’s hotel we were too tired to say good night. He silently picked up his bottles of holy water and, with a little nod, went up to his room, and I had fallen asleep before he was out of sight. A sulky night-porter found us a can of petrol and we drove on to the Hôtel de France. The manager was sitting up for me with a boiling kettle and a bottle of rum. I slept well that night.

  In London, full of ingenuous eagerness to get aboard, I had booked my ticket through to Zanzibar, between which island and Djibouti the Messageries Maritimes maintain a fortnightly service. Now, with everyone else going home, I began rather to regret the arrangement and think wistfully of an Irish Christmas. The next ship, the General Voyson, was not due for ten days and the prospect of spending the time either at Addis Ababa or Djibouti was unattractive. I was on the point of forfeiting my ticket and joining the Italian ship by which Irene was sailing north, when Mr Plowman, the British consul at Harar, who with his family was visiting the capital for the coronation, very kindly suggested that I should return with him and break my journey at his home for a few days. No suggestion could have been more delightful. There was glamour in all the associations of Harar, the Arab city-state which stood first among the fruits of Ethiopian imperialism, the scene of Sir Richard Burton’s First Steps in Africa, the market where the caravans met between coast and highlands; where Galla, Somali, and Arab interbred to produce women whose beauty was renowned throughout East Africa. There is talk of a motor-road that is to connect it with the railway, but at present it must still be approached by the tortuous hill-pass and small track along which Arthur Rimbaud had sent rifles to Menelik.

  On the morning of November 15th, we left by the last of the special trains. The departures took place with far less formality than th
e arrivals. There was no band, but the platform was crowded with the whole European population. Even our Armenian chauffeur came to see us off; the carriage in which I travelled was filled with little bunches of flowers hung there by the servants of one of the British officials who was going home on leave. Mr Hall was there with eye-glass and top hat.

  Next day at dawn we arrived at Dirre-Dowa, and the Plow-mans and I took leave of our fellow passengers. We had all spent a practically sleepless night, and for the greater part of that hot Sunday we remained in our rooms at Bollolakos’ hotel. I went to Mass at a church full of odious French children, washed in a sandy bath, slept.

  We dined that evening in a pleasant little party consisting of the Plowmans and their governess, the Cypriot manager of the local bank, Mr Hall’s brother, who was in business at Dirre-Dowa, and his wife, an English lady who wore a large enamelled brooch made in commemoration of the opening of Epping Forest to the public and presented to her father who was, at the time, an alderman of the City of London. We sat in the open under an orange-tree and drank chianti and gossiped about the coronation, while many hundreds of small red ants overran the table and fell on to our heads from above.

  The Plowmans’ horses had not arrived that day, so that their start would have to be delayed until Tuesday morning and their arrival at Harar until Thursday. The director of the railway had wired to the station-master at Dirre-Dowa to reserve mules and servants for me, and I decided to avail myself of them next day and reach Harar a day ahead of my hosts. I felt that it was, in a way, more suitable to enter the town alone and unofficially.

  Accordingly, I set out early next morning, riding a lethargic grey mule, accompanied by a mounted Abyssinian guide who spoke French, an aged groom who attached himself to me against my express orders, and a Galla porter, of singularly villainous expression, to carry my luggage. We had not been going long before this man, easily outdistancing our beasts, disappeared into the hills with great lurching strides, the bag containing my passport, letter of credit, and all of my essential clothes balanced negligently on his head. I became apprehensive, and the guide was anything but reassuring. All Gallas were dishonest, he explained, and this one was a particularly dirty type. He disclaimed all responsibility for engaging him; that had been done by the station-master; he himself would never have chosen a man of such obvious criminal characteristics. It was not unusual for porters to desert with the luggage; there was no catching them once they got over the hills among their own people; they had murdered an Indian not long ago in circumstances of peculiar atrocity. But it was possible, he added, that the man had merely hurried on to take his khat.

  This was, in fact, what had happened. We came upon him again some hours later, squatting by the roadside with his lap full of the leaves and his teeth and mouth green with chewing; his expression had softened considerably under the influence of the drug, and for the rest of the journey he was docile enough trailing along behind us in a slightly bemused condition.

  For the first few miles we followed the river-bed, a broad stretch of sand which for a few hours in the year is flooded from bank to bank with a turgid mountain torrent, which sweeps down timber and boulders and carries away the accumulated refuse of the town. It was now nearing the end of the dry season and the way was soft and powdery; it was heavy going until we reached the foot of the caravan route. There is a short cut over the hills which is used by foot passengers and riders who are much pressed for time; on the guide’s advice we chose the longer more leisurely road which winds in a detour round the spur and joins the rock path at the summit. It is about four hours from the hotel to the uplands by this road. The mules took things easily; it was necessary to beat them more or less continually to keep them moving at all. At the top we paused for a rest.

  Behind us, as far as we could see, the country was utterly desolate; the hillside up which we had climbed was covered with colourless sand and rock, and beyond, on the other side of the valley, rose other hills equally bare of dwelling or cultivation. The only sign of life was a caravan of camels, roped nose to tail, following us a mile or so below. In front of us everything was changed. This was Galla country, full of little villages and roughly demarcated arable plots. The road in places was bordered with cactus and flowering euphorbia-trees; the air was fresh and vital.

  Another three hours brought us to a native inn, where the boys hoped to get some food. The landlord, however, told us that the local governor had recently cancelled his licence, an injustice which he attributed to the rivalry of the Greek who kept the rest house at Haramaya. He provided them with a tin can full of talla, which the two Christians drank, the Mohammedan religiously contenting himself with another handful of khat. Then we went on. In another hour we were in sight of the lake of Haramaya, a welcoming sheet of light between two green hills. It was here that we proposed to break the journey for a night, for the gates of the city are shut at sundown and it is difficult to obtain admission after that time. I was tired out, and at the sight of water the mules for the first time showed some sign of interest. Indeed, it became impossible to keep them to the path, so I left the boys to water them and walked the last mile round the lake to the rest house.

  The accommodation was very simple; there was, of course, no bath or sanitation and no glass in the windows. There was, however, a most delightfully amiable young Greek in charge of it, who got me a meal and talked incessantly in very obscure English. It was now about three o’clock. Seeing that I was tired, he said he would make me a cocktail. He took a large glass and poured into it whisky, crème de menthe, and Fernet Branca, and filled up with soda-water. He made himself a glass of the same mixture, clinked glasses, and said, ‘Cheerioh, damned sorry no ice.’ After luncheon I went to my room and slept until late in the evening.

  We dined together on tinned spaghetti and exceedingly tough fried chicken. He prattled on about his home in Alexandria and his sister who was taking a secretarial course and his rich uncle who lived at Dirre-Dowa and had set him up in the inn. I asked what the uncle did, and he said he had a ‘monopole’; this seemed to be a perfectly adequate description of almost all commercial ventures in Abyssinia. I could not gather what he monopolized; whatever it was seemed extremely profitable and involved frequent excursions to Aden. The nephew hoped to succeed to the business on his uncle’s retirement.

  While we were dining, two heavily armed soldiers appeared with a message for my host. He seemed mildly put out by their arrival, explaining with great simplicity that he was involved in a love-affair with an elderly Abyssinian lady of high birth; she was not very attractive, but what choice had he in a remote place like this? She was generous, but very exacting. Only that afternoon he had been with her and here were her retainers come to fetch him again. He gave them each a cigarette and told them to wait. When they had finished smoking, they returned; he offered them more cigarettes, but they refused; apparently their mistress was impatient; the young man shrugged and, excusing himself with the phrase ‘You won’t allow me, won’t you?’ went away with them into the darkness. I returned to my bed and slept.

  Next morning we rode into Harar. The way was full of traffic, caravans of camels, mules and asses, horsemen, and teams of women bent double under prodigious loads of wood. There were no carts of any kind; indeed, I think that they are quite unknown in Abyssinia, and that the railway engine was the first wheeled vehicle to appear there. After three hours’ gentle ride we came in sight of the town. Approached from Haramaya it presents a quite different aspect from the drawing in Burton’s First Steps in Africa; there it appears as he saw it coming from the Somali coast, perched on a commanding hill; we found it lying below us, an irregular brown patch at the foot of the hills. In the distance rose the flat-topped mountain which the Abyssinians have chosen for their refuge in the event of the country rising against them; there is a lake of fresh water at the summit, and a naturally fortified camp which they hope to hold against the Galla until relief arrives from their own highlands. No one may visit the
place without a permit from the local dedejmatch.

  A few buildings – the British consulate, Lej Yasu’s deserted palace, a Capuchin leper settlement, a church, and the villas of one or two Indian merchants – have spread beyond the walls; outside the main gate a few women squatting beside little heaps of grain and peppers constituted a market; there was a temporary and rather unstable arch of triumph presented to the town by the firm of Mohammed-Ali in honour of the coronation. A guard was posted at the gate; there was also an octroi, where we had to leave the luggage until the officer should return from his luncheon some hours later.

  As in most medieval towns, there was no direct street in Harar leading from the gates to the central square. A very narrow lane ran under the walls round numerous corners before it turned inwards and broadened into the main street. On either side of this passage stood ruined houses, desolate heaps of stone and rubble, some of them empty, others patched up with tin to accommodate goats or poultry. The town, like the numerous lepers who inhabit it, seemed to be dying at its extremities; the interior, however, was full of vitality and animation.