A JUDICIAL ADVENTURE. BY JAN GORDON (AND CORA J. GORDON). "So," said the Justice of the Peace, the fête is off." 66 ferring was a monastery festival attended by villagers, both Mohammedan and Christian, for Albania is on the whole undoubtedly the least bigoted religious community in the world. The Christians will attend Mohammedan worship, the Mohammedans go to the Christian church, and in some villages they wear the two sets of religions at once, with alternative first names to fit. In the matter of this particular fête the authorities of P He was a man young to hold such a position-his age, twenty-six. Educated at a commercial school in Athens, he had wished to study the law, but the Albanian authorities had said, "No; you may be judge instead. We have too many lawyers, but too few judges." For after the last revolution all the Liberal judges on the bench had been chased out as soon as the Conservatives had captured had shown a certain Eastern power. This judge hadn't nonchalance. An expedition wanted to be a judge. He would much rather have been a bank clerk, which would have been less risky; but Albania has no banks as yet. . . . In ... the interim he judges. Imagine Rudyard Kipling at twenty-seven-plumper a little in the cheeks, sharper a little in the nose, and without the spectacles, and you have Monsieur le Juge. £12 a month salary and no long vacation sums up his circumstances, with holidays of half a day on Friday and half a day on Sunday, and on other such feasts Christian or Mohammedan sufficiently important. A subscription to 'Le Matin,' which arrives a week late, keeps him in touch with the world. The fête to which he was re to it had been planned, but they had neglected to inform themselves or us until the day before the start that their country was suffering from a conflict of calendars, and that the Church, with its timehonoured conservatism, had refused to rearrange its saints' days at so short a notice. There was thus thirteen days discrepancy. But the judge had an alternative to propose. "Have you heard of this wounding affair in the mountains? 'We saw the doctor setting off by lorry," we answered. will go myself. Two villagers Italy. Made by military engineers, they plunge straight at the hills, up which they lift themselves in long zigzags. We clattered and roared spasmodically up the slope, tottering on the edges of embankments, which made one hope that the brakes were more reliable than the rest of the machinery. Once the judge did gather himself together for a leap overboard. We celebrated the top with a tyre burst, but there were chestnuttrees in bloom to sit under while we watched the efforts of the driver and his. gypsy assistant with some complacency. At eleven on the following day, glad indeed that the fête had collapsed in favour of this more unorthodox expedition, we climbed into the motorlorry, which was already packed with travellers. Two Albanian merchants had long ago reserved the front seats, but in courtesy to the judge and to my wife, surrendered them at once. Another, who had brought a pillow for himself, thrust it beneath me in spite of my protests. You will rarely lack such politeness while travelling in Albania, for the Albanian almost reverences foreigners. The country has a few practicable roads. From the lake of Ochrida to the coast goes a main thoroughfare, zigzagging across the mountains, swerving down to the Greek frontier, clambering in dizzy loops to the top of the Griva pass, thence plunging down to Valona, a hair-raising judge, sauntered before us, road to travel in ramshackle Jorries with half-trained, often reckless drivers. These roads were not built for the convenience of the Albanian citizen: they are war legacies from Austria or from The scheduled time for the whole run was two hours, but we who descended before the half-way at a convenient tyre burst had already been three hours on the road before we took to our legs. The other passengers were seven hours covering a distance that a good walker reckons to do in six and a half. We left the motorists grilling in the sun and struck off, between corn and maize fields, towards a line of barren and baked hills which tended away to the south. The two gendarmes, carrying my rucksack and a vivid and hairy scarlet rug belonging to the singing, in curiously pitched head notes, strange laments from the Kossovo plain. "Whenever I must make such expeditions," said the judge as judge as we trudged along, "I always use those two fel a lows. They are an admirable for it was a Friday, the headpair. The one is so handsome, man and the local policeman the other so witty. And they came hurrying in deferential are always gay. Yet, you haste. The headman was know, they haven't really much lank graceful farmer of some to be gay about. They come forty years; twenty-two years' from Kossovo; that is to say, growth of carefully cultivated they have been chased out of moustache drooped on either their own land by the Serbs; side of his bestubbled chin. political conditions and anti- A Mussulman, he would have Albanian laws have made it ignored Jo, but the judge gave impossible for them to remain her a Western precedence. The at home. Why, they've been myftard covered what must bandits for five years. Killed have been the most extreme no end of people. Once with astonishment with excellent fifty other men or so they tact, and shook hands, for looted a whole town, and got the first time in his life proboff scot-free, with all the money ably, with a woman. The in the bank. The sharp-nosed myftard's orchard was at our fellow tells the yarn excel- disposal, and with a host of lently. So, of course, when compliments we were brought this President Ahmet Zogu to our feet, the scarlet rug came in they were quite ready was folded up, and we followed to engage under him as at the headman's heels towards policemen." his house. A narrow and dried riverbed brought us to a primitive mill, and then the valley opening out showed us a fair-sized village, though the houses were for the most part hidden in trees, or were sheltering behind Moslem walls. In an open green space, beneath an appletree, the escort of two spread the scarlet rug on which we lay down; and while the beautiful gendarme hurried off to summon the authorities, the long-nosed one made a few respectful jokes to pass the time and keep up his reputation as a military wit. One small child with padded waistcoat lingered open-mouthed by the hedge. A wall surrounded it, the gates high and wide; within the gates a brother with longer moustaches welcomed us. Through the yard, noting first a fine piece of plaster ornament set over the house door, we came into a green orchard, where a third brother with even longer moustaches spread the rug and brought a pile of pillows from the house. What an odd thing is heredity. These three brothers had undoubtedly a genius for moustache-growing, no unenviable gift in a land where manhood has long been prima facie estimated by the productivity of the upper lip. Bowing over us the myftard, Roused from their siestas, with hand on bosom, presented cherry jam, which we licked from spoons; then we had sweet Turkish coffee in tiny cups; then glasses full of hot buffalo milk, which is here esteemed above cow's milk. The judge's quiet reminder, "the lady first," was accepted with no visible surprise, though clearly it must have been an astounding shock, a complete overturning of their established world of manners. The gendarmes, who had received a tardier and minimised hospitality-shorn of the jam,-were plucking the apples from the trees and eating them. That the apples were thoroughly unripe did not matter; here they don't distinguish. There is even no separate word for tree or for fruit, and most of the fruit is consumed while in the half-wooden state. In one town I refused to buy some fruit because, as I tried to explain, it was not ripe. An educated Albanian standing near interposed lad "The zotni won't take the fruit; his teeth aren't good enough." "Nonsense," I answered, amazed. "My teeth are quite good." "I know, I know," replied the boy, "but I have told him the only thing he can understand." At last three lean but sturdy beasts had been assembled. There were but pack-saddles to mount upon, but the judge's rug and blankets collected from the myftard were spread over to minimise the woodenness. Riding on a pack-saddle is likest to being perched on an old-fashioned baby's cradle overturned not only does the width stretch one unmercifully, but the crossings of various ropes and the angles of the rungs rungs become very painful under the slow plod-plod of the horse's movement. I can never understand why such progression is preferred to walking. However, for our very social position, we could not disdain the myftard's mounts; and so almost rent in two, and nagged beneath by varied ropes and angles, we jogged along behind the ever-steady mountain plod of our two armed guards. The myftard and his brothers accompanied us to the outskirts of the village, where they took a courteous and ceremonious farewell. The beauty and grace of their manners left us pondering over Melville's aphorism that many good things banished by the elect are conserved amongst the mob. Before us the landscape was mountainous, with a group of three odd conical hills amongst which we had to pass. Behind these a line of high rocky ridge shimmered in the sunlight. The Serbian frontier lay no more than a mile or so to our left. These attendants of ours, here guardians of the law, would be criminals two miles away. The air was full of perfume. Nowhere have we found the smell of wild flowers so sweet as in Albania. In more Eastern lands maybe you will find flowers more pungent, but for variety, for modulation, and for exquisite selection the hedgerow of Shqiperija has our preference over all others that we know of, even over the English. The road steepened, and in the heat one began to appreciate the horses, though our escort and the lad in charge of the beasts went slipping up the hillside, as though, no matter what the temperature might be, they rather preferred to go uphill than along the level. The path wound between the conical hills till after some hour and a half of mounting we had crested the top, and stood over a fertile valley enclosed between these hills and the more distant and higher ridge. Here in the hollow were rich corn-lands golden for harvest, and maize-fields still feathery. Half on the slope and half on the flat, the village was scattered around a little mosque with a clumsily built minaret. To us, thinking of an English village, the houses seemed very large, of two or three storeys, with wide yards enclosed in wattle, and dotted with odd wattle constructions roofed with straw, some circular, some square, storehouses. grey stone, or more generally of sun-dried bricks without mortar, the houses partook of the soil and rock, seeming excrescent there rather than built. The windows, which were often small, were in the upper storeys only, placed thus for fear of the enemies en Of gendered by old blood-feuds of the past. We made our way down by a path between wattle fences overhung with plum-trees, till we came to the little mosque, into the verandah of which we cast our overcoats, rucksacks, and the judge's scarlet rug. Now the horses must return in the charge of the lad. The myftard had refused payment for their use; he had protested that it would be an insult to the village. It would also have been an insult had we attempted to pay for his hospitality, but the laws of custom allow that a present shall be given to some minor member of the family generally indeed the present is expected,and so the judge had slipped a couple of crowns into a small daughter's hand. Now we would likewise have tipped the horse-boy, but he, thinking it covert payment, was at first furious. However, the magic word baksheesh quieted his conscience, and probably put him into possession of a larger sum of money than he had ever wholly possessed before. |