Chapter XXXVI

Next day Jaffer found himself in the hands of an expert. There was no time wasted. Ned’s friend, a pale Bosnian youth and born scholar, taught him exactly what he would need at Fotcha, and in the gorges and tablelands beyond. What was wanted was not the ordinary guidebook stuff, but Servian for such odd phrases as this: “I am called Jaffer, my lord, and I come asking a boon,” or “I am a friend of Saadi, my lord, and I bring news.” Day after day the teacher came before Jaffer was really awake, heard his recitations, assigned new tasks, and left, only to reappear at seven o’clock in the evening. Of the three friends who haunted the Green Wreath he had little to say. He knew that Trifko’s home was a few miles east of Serajevo, that Gavrilo came from the extreme west of Herzegovina, and that Ned was a big fellow who had a heart of gold, but who had been driven out of Serajevo for rash radical talk.

On the evening of Saturday, the thirtieth of May, a card was brought up. It bore a German name, but Jaffer declared himself not at home. He showed the card to his teacher, who seemed pleased when it was torn up and cast into the wastebasket. The lesson went on, and thereafter Jaffer received no more cards.

Each June day as he stood by the window conning his verbs, he studied the street to see if he was watched, and if so by what nation. But no sign of any spy, romantic or commonplace, appeared. Nor at meal times did any stranger pick an acquaintance with him, much less a quarrel. Belgrad might be the hotbed of intrigue, but it showed no signs of raising any poisonous plant for him. So Jaffer took walks, ran out to Topschider, and got well rested after his long hard trip.

On Wednesday, the seventeenth of June, he parted with the pale Bosnian, having paid him double the price asked, and given him some good medical advice into the bargain. It was a bit lordly to be handing out Trench’s money so freely, but he had never seen a man whom the little more would benefit so much.

Next morning at seven he took the train for the south, and vastly enjoyed the trip. He saw signs that the two Balkan wars had inflicted grievous hardships, but it pleased his democratic soul to mark the nature of Servian resources. These marvellous hills and vales might be famous chiefly for swine, but they would raise anything.

Jaffer tried his newly acquired talk on an Orthodox priest, or pope, who sat beside him in the train, and soon learned that his carefully spoken sentences could evoke more discourse than he could understand. But he gathered that few Servian farmers own more than ten acres, and he was assured on the honour of a priest that all Hungary is owned by forty men. Jaffer changed the conversation, saying that he was a Moslem—it was one of the first sentences he had learned—but that he had many dear friends among the Christians. No—he was not from Stamboul, but from the Far East, where Islam, he ventured to think, was purer. Whether because distance lends enchantment even to Islam, or whether Serbian priests are rather rationalistic, the bearded pope was pleased. He declared that it was not wise to be too national in religion—recognising only a Servian god in a Servian heaven, with Servian angels playing Servian music to him. There were Russian angels, he doubted not, and very likely angels from the Far East. The great thing in war or religion was to have brotherly love. He took his New Testament from his travelling bag and showed Jaffer the passage in Old Slavonic—“Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his brother.” The pope nudged him. “His brother—you understand—his pobratim!”

The westward carriage trip was lonely, but it led through a magical valley beside a wonderful river, and Jaffer drank his fill of beauty. Nor did the beauty fade when, on Saturday, he found himself in Bosnia. Every type of surface, from Alp to meadow, and every type of verdure, from shadowy pines to bannered fields of maize. Vista faded into vista ever more tenderly as he made his way through lawny hills toward Fotcha.

Here, pursuing instructions, he found a Moslem who agreed to carry him farther, to the castle of Kadri Beg Tshengitch—a relative of Stepan by marriage—and at noon on Sunday, the twenty-first, he found himself gazing at that rather weak stronghold. His driver left him there, standing on the bank of a small stream, and drove off.

Not knowing how else to manage, Jaffer took off his shoes and stockings, put them in his valise, and waded across. The temperature of the water made him hope that he should find nothing deeper. As he dried his feet by atmospheric means, he observed the tower—the “Kula”—above him. It ended in a pointed roof, apparently shingled. It was a good sixty feet high, square, with a few narrow windows on each side, arranged for purposes of defence.

Jaffer put on his shoes, climbed the hill, presented himself at the gate of the great square enclosure, and demanded to see Kadri Beg. The aged Kadri Beg came, turban on head and cigarette in hand, and Jaffer bowed low, touching with finger-tips his breast, lips, and forehead. The aged Kadri Beg sent a man to warn the women of the village that a visitor approached. The aged Kadri Beg invited Jaffer in, and took him to his own quarters in a shingled cottage.

Hardly a word was spoken. Jaffer was offered water to wash in, and then was seated on the floor beside a very low table, with Kadri Beg opposite him. Food was brought, and Jaffer ate with particularity, using only his right hand. He was evidently under inspection, and he imitated his host with great care. There were no knives or forks or cups or glasses. Jaffer had a spoon for his thick soup, but he managed everything else with his fingers, even the sticky “sukburet,” a sort of ragout. The vermicelli cooked in honey was stickier, but entirely to his taste. Kadri Beg had not said a word, nor had Jaffer, when at last another basin of water was brought, and soap! The servant presented them to Jaffer first, and Kadri Beg watched him. Jaffer went the whole length. He soaped out his mouth thoroughly, and though his gorge rose, his stock went up. Then came delicious coffee, and Jaffer found himself puffing at a tchibouk. The time had come for carefully chosen speech—Servian, helped out with Persian words.

“I am called Jaffer, my lord, and I come asking a boon.”

“It is granted.”

“I seek guidance to the Kula of Stepan Beg.”

“That is no mastery. Five hours on a pony, four hours on a Turkish horse.”

“Allah will reward my lord. I have heard of the fame of Tshengitch.”—The remark was true enough, for the muezzin at Fotcha had told him, that morning.

“Naturally, but you do not speak Turkish.”

“No, my lord, I come from the Far East. But I have heard. Tshengeri in Anatolia is the cradle of a family great these five centuries.”

“Thirty pashas and viziers,” said Kadri Beg, succinctly. “And to me all that is left is the village within these walls. Nevertheless, the Day will come.”

Jaffer knew well enough the dreams of Pan-Islam, and he despised them as he despised this rank pipe he was trying to manage. “Stepan Beg,” he said, at a venture, “cannot boast thirty pashas and viziers.”

Kadri Beg smiled, much as a bitter-hearted, blear-eyed old eagle might.

“In the oldest of the Medina suras there is a line that was meant for Stepan: ‘War is prescribed to you, but ye shrink.’ There is royal blood in Stepan, and had the courage of a flea, Moslem and Christian might rally to him now, as they will not rally to Nikolas or Peter. But you will find no royalty at Starigrad. You will find a farmer, a tanner, a bosom-companion of Christian kmets.”

Jaffer set aside the tchibouk, and searched for a cigarette. As usual, he first found the box of Stepanies, which he would neither smoke nor throw away, but presently he rummaged out another brand.

Kadri Beg spoke in a less scornful tone. “A strange man is Stepan—a strange man, who would not join his youth to my age when we fought the Christian three and thirty years ago. Therefore it was his kismet to fight me, and my brother Dervish Beg, likewise my brother Omar.”

“How then, O Kadri Beg, comes it to pass that the strange man still lives?”

“Again it was kismet. We ravaged his fields, we shut him up in his Kula. But who can storm the walls of Starigrad? And he had much grain stored. But that was not our kismet. Some Vila of the Zagorje, who comes by night to steal the hearts of maidens, fastened upon our Ila the love of young Stepan. Thus was the Vila revenged on all the Tshengitch, in that we had taken the better part of her name for the child. And now Ila is dead. Last summer she died, when scarcely Ramazan had passed. And her little daughter is dead these many years, and her son is a wanderer.”

There was silence. “You will not think me like a beggar of Stamboul, my lord, if I set out this very hour? For I have news of the son to carry to the father.”

“You shall go in peace. Horse and guide shall be ready on the minute, if not for the prophet’s sake, then for Saadi’s. There is a Tshengitch, proud and desperate, though from his father he learned to laugh. May Allah keep him long content in the East.”

A question sprang to Jaffer’s tongue, but did not pass the barrier of his teeth. Kadri Beg resumed.

“Will Jaffer again see Saadi in the East?”

“Such may be the will of Allah, my lord.”

“Say to him that Kadri Beg sent this message: _The son of the Haiduk is grown, and Haidar has forgotten how to shoot._”

Jaffer repeated the message, and hoped to thunder that it was the last piece of mystery he should have to remember. But the words set up a new anxiety within him, and it was worse than his anxiety about Saadi’s character.

It was evening, and the sun had set, when Jaffer and his escort drew rein at Starigrad. It had been a hard ride, over country very different from the smiling valleys near the Servian border. The karst had begun; the pastures and fields were infrequent. The bridle paths had seemed to lead up and down, not ahead.

A little bridge of stone, beautifully arched. Beneath it the narrow, curving river, with three feet of water swift as a millrace. To the left, shut in by mountains, a polje or hollow of many acres, seemingly the bottom of an ancient lake, richly cultivated. To the right, across the stream, a solid cliff of karst a hundred feet high, though, had the light been better, Jaffer might have seen that the topmost ten feet were masonry. The short sharp curve of the river more than half surrounded the castle above, where the great kula struck into the red evening like a javelin.

They crossed the little bridge, and Jaffer noted that the defile ahead of it was cleared of every rock which might serve as a hiding place. They mounted by a circuitous route to the tableland above. To the left now appeared the high stone wall and moat which, going straight across from cliff to cliff, isolated the castle on the impregnable promontory. In the centre of the wall was a great square gate-structure rising above it, and the doors of the Turkish arch were closed. But the draw-bridge was down—and evidently no longer used to be drawn up. They dismounted, and the guide pulled the bell-rope. It was five minutes before the guard appeared, recognised a friend, and let them in.

A few words of rapid speech and Jaffer was conducted to the master’s house near the tower. Lights were burning in the upper story of it, as if the master were going to bed. But when the guard had disappeared within, like a butler carrying a card, Stepan Beg returned with him.