Singing Waters Read online

  “I shouldn’t call that an education at all,” Gloire observed.

  “It really boils down to this, does it, that education here has consisted in a sort of personal edition of domestic science, and folklore, and in character-training?” Miss Glanfield asked.

  “That’s right,” said Dr. Crowninshield.

  But Colonel Robinson did not agree.

  “Not character-training in the sense that most of us use the word, Dr. Emmeline, surely?” he objected. “I’ve never heard an Albanian so much as use the word ‘character’. I don’t think they consider it. Tradition, yes; character in our sense, no. They say a person is or isn’t honest, but that’s about as far as it goes—and if he is honest, they tend to think he won’t get very far, because he’ll be outwitted!”

  Dr. Crowninshield laughed.

  “Why, in a sense you’re right, Colonel—yes,” she admitted. “But I’m talking about the mountain people, who are after all in a great majority; you’re thinking about the towns. There’s plenty of corruption there.” She turned to Miss Glanfield. “They tell a story here, and declare it really happened, and fairly recently at that. A Ministerial post fell vacant and candidates who applied were asked three questions:

  Have you ever been in prison?

  How many people have you killed?

  How much money have you laid by?

  If the answers were ‘never’ or ‘none’, there just wasn’t a chance of the candidate being considered for the post.”

  Miss Glanfield laughed.

  “But that’s really a heritage from the Turks, surely?” Mrs. Robinson put in.

  “Of course it is. Turkish corruption—before Mustapha Kemal Atatürk—was an international byword,” said Dr. Crowninshield; “and it infected these people here. And then there’s the cruel poverty, and the pressure of debt. Do you know”—again she turned to Miss Glanfield—“what the normal rate on loans is today in this country? Twenty per cent!”

  “Plus bribes to officials to get anything done,” Colonel Robinson contributed. “No wonder they think that money is happiness.”

  Miss Glanfield was horrified and said so.

  “What is the solution?” she asked at length.

  “An incorruptible administration is the first need,” the Colonel answered her, without the least hesitation. “And for that they’ll really need foreign help.”

  “British help,” Dr. Crowninshield interjected; “the Italians are no use; they’re corrupt themselves.”

  “Thank you, Ma’am. Actually,” the Colonel pursued, turning to Miss Glanfield, “I believe Dr. Crowninshield is right. Why our little show has been rather a success is simply because we really have kept it pretty clean. If we hear of a man in the gendarmerie taking even the smallest bribe he gets fired at once. The people have come to realise that, and they appreciate it very much.”

  “What do you consider the ideal form of government for Albania?” Miss Glanfield asked, looking from Dr. Crowninshield to Colonel Robinson.

  “A Constitutional Monarchy,” came from the Englishman and the American woman simultaneously.

  Miss Glanfield was surprised by this, and so was Gloire. But it was the writer who spoke.

  “Will you tell me why?”

  Colonel Robinson answered her.

  “The whole Albanian outlook places so much emphasis on the individual personality that in their political life, as it develops, personalities, for a long time, will count for much more than any ideological theories of government. They’re most blessedly free here from ideologies at present. For Albania a monarchy is by far the most suitable form of government, provided they get the right monarch. But he must be a real Bairaktar.”

  “Do you agree?” Miss Glanfield asked Dr. Crowninshield.

  “I certainly do.”

  “You don’t want them to be a Republic?”

  “I certainly do not.” The old woman spoke with considerable emphasis.

  “Maybe I’d better explain,” she went on. “In theory, as an American, I believe in Republics; but for Europe I definitely feel that monarchies are best. I’ve lived in Europe quite a while—since 1900—and I feel I know what I’m talking about.”

  “I don’t feel that it’s by any means proved that monarchy isn’t the best form of government anyhow,” said Miss Glanfield, thoughtfully, lighting another cigarette, and taking a fresh glass of raki from Valentino. “After all, the monarchical system has worn pretty well. It’s been going on now for about four thousand years, and some of the finest flowers of the human spirit have been produced under it.’”

  “But isn’t it getting rather out of date, in the twentieth century?” Gloire asked. “I mean, isn’t it rather obvious that Republics are the coming thing?”

  “Well, is it?” Miss Glanfield riposted. “Republics are still in the experimental stage, aren’t they?”

  “Experimental stage! What on earth do you mean?”

  “Simply that except for the brief episodes in Greece and Rome, there is only one Republic in the world which has passed its second century.”

  “Which is that?”

  “Switzerland. That has been a success, unquestionably. But looked at historically you can only call them an experiment as yet, I would say. And just see what has happened to the four European countries which scrapped their monarchies after the last war:—Germany, Russia, Portugal, Spain. Today three are Dictatorships, and the fourth is well on the way to becoming one, if all one hears is true.”

  “But that’s Europe,” Gloire objected.

  “My dear young lady,” Dr. Crowninshield put in, “will you oblige me by looking at our own hemisphere for a moment. We have to face facts, however patriotic we may feel! Please compare political life and the administration of justice in the U.S.A. with that in Britain, or Norway, or Sweden. I think you know the answer, but if you don’t, you would do well to learn it.”

  “Oh, I’m glad you say that!” Miss Glanfield exclaimed. “I so often think—where is the best expression of human freedom to be found, I mean the most complete combination of liberty and order, and purity of administration? And there seems no possible doubt about the answer—in the monarchical democracies of Europe: Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Belgium, Holland—not to mention England.”

  “I agree with you,” said Dr. Crowninshield. “The trouble is our people just don’t know the facts about those places.” She turned to Gloire. “I do know them—and the very words ‘racket’, ‘graft’, and ‘party bosses’ just don’t exist there, let alone the things they stand for. It isn’t an accident that all those words were coined across the Atlantic—and I guess it isn’t an accident either that the one country in Europe where they really fit is republican France!”

  Gloire was silent for a moment or two—she was digesting all this. At last—

  “Why should that be?” she asked. “I mean, I expect all you say must be true—you’ve been into it; but what has monarchy to do with it?”

  “I should say Miss Glanfield would explain that very well,” Dr. Crowninshield said, looking at the writer.

  Miss Glanfield was of course delighted to oblige.

  “I think the practical value of monarchy today consists chiefly of two things,” she said, more slowly than was her wont. “It gives a stability, a sense of continuity with the past, which is of value to a nation, as a sort of sheet-anchor; and then it gives a point, a focus, to that inescapable desire to serve or worship something greater than oneself. And now that in most countries (nearly all, except Poland and Hungary and Yugo-Slavia) religion has ceased to be a national concern and has become purely an individual one, there is a real need, hunger, for such a focus. People don’t talk about it—they may not even be conscious of it; but it’s there; and one proof that it is there is the highly conscious dictator-worship in the countries that have scrapped their monarchies.”

  “By Jove, I never thought of that. That’s quite an idea,” from the Colonel. “Carry on, Susan. I believe I’ve always thought
all this, without knowing it, if you follow me.”

  Miss Glanfield smiled at him.

  “You’re like myriads of your countrymen so, Dick. Then of course monarchy hitches onto, in fact is an integral part of the aristocratic principle, with all that that stands for.”

  “Just what does that stand for, would you say?” Gloire asked. She was thinking of Larsen’s words again.

  “Service—responsibility. And the king hitches on to that because the monarchy is, in the old phrase, ‘the fount of honour’. It’s not nothing to a nation’s outlook on life that its reward of service should be not wealth, but ‘an honour’. Words mean something still. The papers talk nowadays of ‘a barren honour’, meaning that there’s no cash attached. But how can honour ever be barren? Honour brings its own lunch!” the Englishwoman pronounced, with great finality.

  Dr. Crowninshield burst out laughing.

  “Oh my dear, you’re grand! And you’re perfectly right. Do you remember the story in Herodotus, when Xerxes asked the Arcadian deserters, before the battle of Thermopylae, what the Greeks were doing? And got the answer—‘They are holding the Olympic games, watching the athletics and the chariot races.’ He asked what the prize was for which they contended, and was told it was a laurel wreath. And I guess you remember how mad Xerxes was when the son of Artabanus the Persian burst out—‘Good Heavens, Mardonius, what manner of men are these against whom thou hast brought us to fight, who contend, not for money, but for honour!’ I’ve always thought that a tremendous story. And I guess half France’s terrible moral sickness, and her fantastic concern with money and political power, the utter frivolity of her public men, is just because the principle of honour has been lost there. And I’m terribly afraid that to a great extent that goes for us too.”

  “Some nations can do without the dynastic principle, evidently,” Miss Glanfield said politely. “The Swiss obviously can, and time may show that the Americans can too. But many nations just as obviously need it and want it. It’s essential to the Yugo-Slavs, for instance—or really I should say the Serbs; and you tell me that it is for the Albanians too.”

  “Undoubtedly.”

  “But why,” Gloire was beginning, when the door opened, and the stocky figure of their host appeared. Gloire got up and sat on one of the chairs; Dr. Crowninshield slipped off to see her patient; there was a fresh outburst of cheese and raki on the part of Valentino. Time had passed rapidly in their discussion; now, thinking up remarks and exchanging them through an interpreter it rather hung again; they were aware afresh of the hardness of those merciless chairs. It was a quarter to eleven—Gloire registered the fact by a surreptitious glance at her watch—when supper at last appeared and they drew up to the tartan oil-cloth.

  Supper was rather a repetition of lunch. There was broth—with rice instead of noodles in it. There was the boiled lamb from lunch, cold; there was a freshly-roasted lamb hot—no doubt the one they had seen in the kitchen. A delicious novelty was wafer-like pastry with cheese in layers between—burek, the Robinsons said this was called. Miss Glanfield, dauntless as usual, thought up a number of questions for the Colonel to put to Lek-Gionaj; his answer to one of them she found extremely touching. “The Carruthers said they thought he talked German or Italian,” she said—“do ask him, Dick, if he really doesn’t? I should so much have liked to talk to him direct.”

  The Colonel passed this on, and a look of regretful resignation appeared on the Albanian’s square shrewd face as he answered.

  “He says—‘No—my Father left me as he found me’,” the Colonel translated.

  The meal was of course interminable; it went on till the guests were dropping with fatigue.

  “Dick, it’s half-past twelve; we really must go to bed,” even Miss Glanfield was at last moved to protest.

  “I don’t see how I can suggest making a move, Susan.”

  “You must. Tell him the women are weak, or something. I shall die if I have to sit on this chair much longer,” Miss Glanfield said firmly.

  The Colonel still havered, but Dr. Crowninshield intervened, and told their host that the women were weak, and had now been up and about for nineteen hours, which was more than they were accustomed to. Anyhow Lek-Gionaj rose, the red mattresses were brought in again, goodnights were exchanged, and he left his guests to themselves. The Colonel was excluded while the four women undressed, and was whistled in by his wife when they all lay under the red quilts.

  “God, these damn flies are still at it!” Gloire exclaimed.

  “They’ll stop when I put out the lamp,” said Colonel Robinson.

  He was right. Presently a faint smoky aroma of paraffin filled the room, and very soon guests, flies, and all were silent and still.

  Chapter Twelve

  Mrs. Thurston slept badly. Conflicting ideas surged to and fro in her mind, and she was just too sleepy either to sort them into order, or to banish them. Both Dr. Crowninshield and Miss Glanfield seemed to feel that the life lived by Mme. Lek-Gionaj and her household had merits, and even beauties; but most of it filled Gloire with repugnance—the flies, the lack of plumbing, that wretched little baby; Mme. Lek-Gionaj’s existence seemed strangely lacking in all that made feminine life as Gloire understood it agreeable. I can’t see it!—she kept on saying to herself, as she turned to and fro on the red mattress.

  External disturbances broke in on this internal conflict. Barely an hour after the lamp had been put out a thunderstorm rolled down the valley; fierce light flickered through the room, silhouetting the iron grilles sharply against squares of window suddenly a blinding blue, and bringing the samovar and the wireless-set into momentary gleaming prominence; thunder crashed overhead. And hardly had the storm passed and the moon again begun to cast scroll-marked squares of a more tranquil light on the floor than the barking of dogs began—at first faint and distant, but growing gradually nearer and louder as if some disturbing element were passing down the valley in the wake of the storm, rousing every homestead as it passed. Finally an absolute tornado of barking broke out quite close by; it was followed by a volley of shots, and then by a loud, desolate, and clamorous howling.

  Gloire sat bolt upright.

  “Goodness! What on earth is happening?”

  “Only wolves,” came briefly and tranquilly from the brass bedstead. “They’ll go off pretty soon. I should go to sleep if I were you.”

  The barking and howling did eventually die down round the house, and the remoter sounds, receding into the distance up the valley, marked the return journey of the wolves. Gloire grinned a little to herself as she turned over for the twentieth time—wolves around the house were fun, anyway. And at last she did fall asleep.

  Soon after six the party was aroused by the entry of Valentino with little cups of sweet coffee; then he brought in once more the china basin, the copper jar of cold water, the pink towel, and the Morny soap—Gloire watched between a yawn and a laugh as he set them on the floor of the hearth. She gulped down her coffee and attended to her face and hair; when Mrs. Robinson tactfully suggested to the Colonel that he should put his bandanna over his face while they dressed, she sprang up, washed, threw on her clothes, and set off downstairs. She felt fresh, restless, hungry, and greatly in need of the open air.

  The front door was open and she went out into the courtyard. Here her attention was attracted by two men who were staggering from the direction of the kitchen, bearing between them an immense vessel blackened outside with smoke, burnished copper within; they carried it into the small wooden building which, standing alone, closed the courtyard to some extent on the fourth side. Gloire followed, idly curious to see what they were about.

  The building was evidently the dairy, and on three sides was built entirely of narrow wooden slats like tile-battens, set an inch or so apart, so that the light entered freely; broad shelves ran right round the three open sides, and on them stood rows of very flat shallow vessels of some silvery metal which Gloire took to be pewter, but which was in fact copper wa
shed with silver. The cauldron full of steaming milk had been deposited in the middle of the floor; Mme. Lek-Gionaj, still wearing her magnificent costume of the day before, stood by it—seeing Gloire, she ordered one of the men to bring her a stool. On this Gloire seated herself, and watched the operations which the great woman now began. From the wall she reached down a gourd, round as a football, the stalk forming the handle; a small hole in the middle of the top was the only opening. With this, one would have thought, extremely awkward implement she proceeded to dip up the milk and pour it into the pans in a rather remarkable series of movements. Standing between the cauldron and the shelves she stooped, dipped, straightened up, and with a fully extended arm, by a bend of the hand and wrist tipped the milk into bowl after bowl—three, four, five; without spilling, without splashing. She only filled each bowl about half full, Gloire noticed; when nine or ten were done she moved a step, and stooped, dipped, rose, and poured as before. These movements had a deliberate and assured rhythm which impressed Gloire. Like all ski-runners, she knew about movement, its difficulty, its importance—as she sat there on the stool it struck her not only that Mme. Lek-Gionaj must have been doing this for years, in exactly the same series of motions, but that they were all part of a regular technique, as deliberate as the technique of Telemarks or Christys. Probably—it came to her with a sort of awe—others before her hostess had been doing this for centuries; the whole business was a traditional method of milk-pouring, carried out in the sequence and posture which endless experience had proved to be the best. No wonder she wore no apron, over all those glorious and unwashable clothes—she had no need of one, for she never seemed to spill a drop.