by Ann Bridge
‘Yes – we looked pretty good fools when they showed up,’ said Nicholas. And they laughed at themselves, in a sort of warm relaxation from that earlier tension, comparing notes as to how the fear of the unknown had taken them. Both had felt silly all the time; but both had remembered that they were miles from anywhere, in a place of which Dr Halther had said that once up on the plateau, one left Europe and the twentieth century behind, and went back three hundred years into what was really an Asiatic world. To share fear is to share a new form of intimacy; but while Lady Kilmichael, though she treated them with civilised lightness, spoke honestly of her own sensations, Nicholas did not. In those moments when he sat on the top of the wall, eating food he could not taste and discussing beer, he had met fear in a new form. He had visualised danger, not only to himself, but to the woman beside him; his imagination, running ahead to meet the unknown and give it shape, had shown her to him in possible peril from which he could not shield her. And the sharpness of that thought had opened his eyes. A full realisation had not come yet; but as they sat together under the wall, relaxed and easy, he looked at her, up and down, from head to foot, with a sort of bewildered wonder. It was as if he had never seen her before; as if he had never really noticed this face, which was in fact so familiar, which he had even painted – the delicate indeterminate profile, the gentle mouth, the fine soft shadowing round the eyes and modelling round the lips, which give so much quality to a face which has left the unemphasised freshness of youth behind. And as he looked a new feeling, a sort of error which was yet delight, stirred in him – and once when she turned with some laughing remark, he who had so often embarrassed her by his staring lowered his eyes and looked away.
Presently they went on to explore, leaving the knapsack with the remains of the lunch cached in the ruin against their return. A faintly marked stony track led away into the plateau, and they followed this. The absence of soil was what struck them most; the scrub grew in fissures in the living rock, which was broken up into curious shapes, but of earth, properly speaking, there was hardly any to be seen, till they passed a small round hollow in the rocks, some fifty yards across, whose level floor was of soil, and bore a crop of vegetables – one of the dolines which are such an odd feature of this country. Later on they came to more dolines, but still they saw no house, no village. The track bore round to the east, and high above them on the shoulder of a hill a train came puffing, trailing a sulphurous yellow cloud of smoke – it puffed off into the distance, filling that great space surprisingly with its noise, and disappeared. That must be the line to Trebinje, Nicholas said.
When they had been walking for nearly two hours, Grace suggested a return. Clouds were piling up threateningly among the mountains to the south-east, and they had left their jackets with the lunch. ‘Oh, let’s go on!’ Nicholas begged. ‘We ought to see a village, now we’ve come all this way. Look, there’s a road.’
Sure enough, just ahead of them a road lay, winding round among the broken slopes; they went down to it and followed it. Now in one of the dolines they saw a donkey tethered, browsing on real grass, which Nicholas took as a sign that there must be a village close by. ‘If there is, I hope there’s a kafana [café] in it,’ said Grace. ‘I am thirsty.’
Nicholas was right. A quarter of a mile further on the road topped a small rise – in the hollow just beyond were several houses, with stone walls and roofs roughly thatched with turf and branches, held in place by stones. They were more like low huts than houses, not built in any order, but each lying tucked into a fold of the ground, from which the roofs alone projected, like the backs of sleeping animals. There was no sign of a kafana. On the road just in front of them an old man appeared, dressed in the baggy indigo-blue breeches, sleeveless jacket and little round black cap, perched precariously on one side of his skull, of the Illyrian peasant. ‘Everyone up here seems to be in fancy dress,’ Nicholas muttered.
‘Let’s ask him where we can get coffee,’ said Grace, and approaching the old man, ‘Kafana?’ she said enquiringly.
He shook his head, and waved up towards the railway line above them, saying words they could not understand – it was clear, however, that the kafana, if anywhere, was by the railway.
Grace tried again. ‘Kafana, kafa,’ she said urgently, and made the motions of drinking.
The peasant by way of answer sat down on a rock by the roadside, and proceeded to address what was evidently a series of questions to them. Nicholas was wearing shorts; the old man poked his bare knees with a gnarled finger that was like the stump of a juniper bush, and extended his own leg, stoutly clothed in a home-made stocking of dark brown sheep’s-wool, by way of admonition or comparison, they could not tell which. Grace grew rather impatient – a cold wind was blowing those threatening clouds right over them now, and a spatter of chill raindrops was borne on the wind. ‘We really ought to get under cover,’ she said, and ‘Kafa?’ she repeated to the peasant, urgently. She felt that curious mixture of vexation and powerlessness which comes from the inability to communicate with other human beings.
In reply, the man rose rather reluctantly, and led them down a by-path to what proved to be his own dwelling – two low huts of unmortared stone on either side of a sort of yard which had a goat stall at one end and a shelter full of dried brushwood at the other. In response to his shouts two women appeared, one clearly his wife, the other a rather beautiful girl – both wearing dark stuff dresses, pale aprons, white kerchiefs and heavy silver-gilt earrings. After a long pattering speech in which they caught the words ‘izba’ [hut] and ‘kafa,’ the woman, with much more amiability than the man, led them into one of the huts, indicated that they were to remain there, and disappeared.
Left to themselves, Nicholas and Lady Kilmichael gazed round them with interest. The hut had no window, and such light as there was entered by the door. The floor was of beaten earth, most of it occupied by a sort of shallow box of planks roughly fastened together and piled with strong-smelling blankets of goats’ hair, chocolate-brown in colour and nearly half an inch thick – the bed. There was no other furniture of any sort; a kind of ledge along the edge of the bed afforded the only seat, and strings fastened across from wall to wall, hung with a variety of garments, evidently served the purpose of a wardrobe. Piled in a corner against the stone wall, whose larger interstices were roughly stopped with turf, stood the only objects of any interest or beauty – three or four wooden distaffs whose tops were very richly and carefully carved in rather arabesque patterns. It was a singularly primitive dwelling, comfortless and chilly – the rain, now falling heavily outside, splashed in over the stone door-sill, showing how easily this bedroom floor might be reduced to mud.
Nicholas soon became restless, and in spite of the rain, went out. Lady Kilmichael had embarked on a more careful examination of the carved patterns on the distaffs, in the hope of coming on something related to her West Highland designs, when a call from Nicholas interrupted her – ‘Lady K.! Do come over here and watch them – it’s rather fun.’
Thus summoned, Grace poked her head out. Nicholas was standing in the door of the hut opposite, and she stepped quickly through the drenching rain and joined him. This second building was evidently the kitchen and living room; like the other it was windowless, floored with earth, and wholly innocent of furniture. At one end was the hearth, a stone slab three feet across – on either side of it the floor was raised about fifteen inches into two low platforms, whose use was indicated by the fact that the old peasant was sitting on one of them; in the darkness of the further end more garments could just be made out, hung from more strings. The woman was stirring the embers; then she flung on a pile of dry brushwood, and kindled it to a blaze with a very ornate pair of bellows. ‘I believe we are to have some coffee,’ Nicholas murmured to Grace, who had sat down on the platform opposite the old peasant – ‘the girl has gone to milk the goats.’
It soon became evident that he was right. From a hole in the wall, rather like an aumbry, the wo
man presently produced two cooking utensils – one of those tall slender copper saucepans, narrowed at the top, in which pseudo-Turkish coffee is brewed in French restaurants, and a Gold Flake tin with a piece of wire twisted round it to form a handle; from another hole she drew forth a small metal box and a very old-fashioned ornamental Mazawattee tea canister covered with flowered pictures. Coffee and soft sugar were carefully measured out of these into the copper saucepan, which she then filled with water and stood in the hot ashes. The pretty girl now returned with a crock of goats’ milk, from which the Gold Flake tin was filled and similarly placed on the hearth. While the girl watched the saucepans the woman reached down a large brightly coloured handkerchief off one of the strings, and spread it on the floor before Lady Kilmichael and Nicholas – from other holes in the wall she fetched two little Turkish coffee cups in tall copper stands, a round flat loaf of bread nearly as dark in colour as the blankets, and about half of a flat and pallid cheese. All these she set out on her improvised tablecloth with the utmost neatness, and when the coffee and milk were ready she poured them into the cups with careful exactitude; then with a singularly gracious gesture she bade her guests fall to, and stood by to watch them eat. The ceremony and care with which the whole thing was done made Grace and Nicholas realise at last what a rarity coffee was to these people, and the extent of their poverty; they felt guilty at having so recklessly provoked this lavish hospitality. However, there was nothing to be done now but to accept it with gratitude, and fall to.
This was not so easily done, for as there were no plates, so there were also no knives, and neither of them carried one. Seeing this difficulty, the woman applied to a tall young man who had come in and stood watching the strangers; he produced from somewhere about his person a sort of dirk with an ornamental but very dirty blade, with which he cut off large lumps from both loaf and cheese. The bread was sour and saltless, the cheese thin and very sour too. Nicholas displayed his usual alarm at any unwonted food – Lady Kilmichael brusquely adjured him not to be a goose, but to eat it up and look polite.
‘It’s all very well, but there are most filthy marks from his thumb and his knife on this cheese,’ protested Nicholas dismally.
‘Rubbish! Everyone has to eat a peck of dirt in their life.’
‘What I should like is a good drink of that milk,’ he said, setting down his empty coffee cup.
‘Well, try to make them understand.’
This, after a good deal of dumb-show, he succeeded in doing; the girl rather shyly brought the milk crock, and held it to his lips. This time even Grace was appalled – the crock was encrusted with dirt, and successive dried rims inside it showed, like strata, the levels of previous milkings. However, Nicholas drank deeply from the filthy vessel, and said that he now felt better.
All this time their hostess was trying to carry on a conversation with her guests. Grace’s chief contribution to this was to touch various objects, hear their names in Serbo-Croat, and repeat them; her repetitions were greeted with laughter and applause. She thus learned that both the brown stockings of the two men, and the fine white ones of the girl, knitted with a broad openwork clock an inch wide up the outside of the leg, were of ovcavuna [sheep’s wool]; on the other hand the blankets, and a thick dark cloak with a hood, worn by a woman who presently came in and joined the party, were of dlakakozja [goats’ hair]. All the peasants except the old man displayed an artless friendliness, and even pleasure in this visitation; and by dumb-show – though in her case accompanied by a torrent of words – the woman managed to convey a surprising amount of information about herself and her family. The old man was her husband, the young one wished to marry her daughter; this she did not want; the girl was only thirteen (she counted the years on her fingers). Her gestures towards the two men indicated with dramatic vigour her views of the other sex – ‘Oh, men!’ But when she spoke of her daughter her whole face was illuminated with pride and delight, her harsh nasal tones softened to a warm tenderness, and when, with the utmost simplicity, she illustrated her feelings by drawing the girl’s head to her and holding it against her breast, Grace could not but realise that this bare, dirty and archaic hut sheltered a family affection as delicate and ardent as that to be found in any civilisation.
But while Lady Kilmichael was smiling at a mother and daughter in a peasant’s hut in Herzegovina, her own daughter, off Gibraltar, was writing a letter in the lurching lounge of the S.S. Mindora Star.
Well, here we are. I think it’s going to be even more frightful than I thought. I was madly sick in the Bay and so was Poppy, though he swears it’s only that he prefers to keep flat! A most crushing boatful – what I’ve seen of them, that is; a quite fearfully Anglo-British General with a red-haired daughter is really the nearest thing to a suitor on board. He’s utterly Mbonga – fires on the mob in Poona, way back in ’04, at every meal. I long to tell him that I was on safari at Frinton-on-Sea last summer – one day I shall, if this goes on. Still no news of Mums – Poppy has rather closed down on the subject. What I can’t understand is why Mums has hooshed off like this. I thought people only did it for a grand passion, or out of complete suicidalness. But tho’ Rose – she saw us off, by the way – was rather tiresomely en evidence, I shouldn’t have thought even Mums could have been so misguided as to feel suicidal about her and Poppy. And Mums just doesn’t go in for passions, grand or otherwise. She’s really a family woman.
The rain presently lessened, and Lady Kilmichael and Nicholas began to think of starting home. ‘I say, oughtn’t we to pay them something? They must be frightfully poor,’ said Nicholas.
‘No, I’m sure one can’t give them money,’ Grace replied.
‘Why not?’
‘I’m certain they’d be terribly affronted – like Highlanders. The only thing would be to give them some thing, as a present, if we could. Have you got any object on you?’
Nicholas sought and considered. From the hip pocket of his shorts he finally produced a large clean linen handkerchief, with an ‘N’ embroidered in one corner.
‘That will do,’ said Grace. ‘I’ve got this—’ She had pulled out a tiny pocket comb in a little Venetian leather case. These things she presented with some formality, the handkerchief to the woman, the comb to the girl. Their delight was touching to see. The woman unfolded the handkerchief, felt its fineness knowingly, and rubbed it against her husband’s face that he might feel its softness, while the comb and its case were passed from hand to hand amid loud exclamations of admiration. The ‘N’ was examined with curiosity – ‘Nicolaj’, said Grace, pointing first to the monogram and then to Nicholas.
The woman beamed. ‘Nika!’ she said, tapping her own breast; and suddenly stepped forward, threw her arms round Nicholas, and gave him a hearty kiss. Nicholas, rather to Grace’s surprise, and very much to her satisfaction, responded with unembarrassed vigour.
‘I’d really rather it had been the girl!’ he said to her with a grin, as they left the hut and walked up to the road. ‘Lady K., though, what very nice people, weren’t they? I mean nice on any showing, not just as natives.’
‘Yes, they were,’ said Grace warmly. She had felt just the same, and rather expanded on the subject. But Nicholas was not very responsive; he soon fell silent – and silent he remained for the rest of the long, damp and chilly walk home. Now and then he turned his head and looked at her; but if she turned to him he looked away, and made only the briefest and most grudging replies to her remarks. Grace was puzzled; he was evidently out of temper, apparently with her, and she could think of no reason for it. Oh well, perhaps he was tired; and she gave up the attempt to talk and walked in silence. Only once more that afternoon did Nicholas volunteer a remark. It was when, at the ruin on the saddle, they picked up the knapsack with the remains of the lunch.
‘Pity we didn’t take this after all,’ he said sourly; ‘then we needn’t have fed in that place. If that meal doesn’t poison us, I don’t know what will.’
‘Nicholas, you rea
lly are absurd about your food,’ said Lady Kilmichael. And she really thought he was.
SEVENTEEN
Few people enter for the first time the house of someone whom they have met elsewhere without the expectation of getting some new light on the owner from the mere sight of his intimate surroundings; and Lady Kilmichael walked in through the front door of the villa, on the evening of her day on the plateau, with this sense of expectation well developed. It was strong enough to counterbalance a very considerable fatigue, and a slight and puzzled sense of discouragement about Nicholas. He had occasionally been sulky and unresponsive before, but usually for some ascertainable reason; for his gloomy irritability on the walk home she could not account, and though she told herself that it was absurd to pay any attention to it, she had found her attention, most tiresomely, paying itself to the subject while she dressed. However, it would be amusing to see what Dr Halther’s house was like; she vaguely expected it, like himself, to be rather bleak and grim.
She was wrong. The villa was as charming as the garden, which she had already seen, with the excellent armchairs on which men somehow always insist, a few good bits of marquetry, and several first-rate modern pictures. Maria’s food was Italianate but delicious, the temperature of the Rhine wine perfect; and after so many weeks in hotels it was delightfully strange to sit at table surrounded by the individual grace of family silver and good glass. Dr Halther, this evening, was as ungrim as his house; he made a very urbane host. They had coffee in the garden, under the ilex by the fountain; the Doctor settled Lady Kilmichael into one of those double swing seats made of canvas, with cushions at her back; he and Nicholas sat on the marble bench. After they had finished their coffee he asked if she liked the piano. ‘I usually play for an hour in the evenings – if you care for it?’ Lady Kilmichael said that she cared for it very much indeed, and made a movement to rise; the Doctor checked her – the windows were all open, she would hear perfectly, and it was pleasanter out of doors. So she and Nicholas stayed by the fountain, dropping musically in the shadows, and Dr Halther went indoors and played Debussy.