Chapter XXXIV

As he lay blinking at the lone candle in the glass case over the door of the car, Jaffer rehearsed the events of the day. Invaluable as the Bosnian’s information had been, it was not so significant as the advice. Dr. Yukitch was anxious that Jaffer should not go to Belgrad at all, and anxious that, if he went, he should not be there before July. Therefore Jaffer would get to Belgrad at the earliest possible moment, and leave Belgrad before July. Only Allah knew where he would go from there, but Allah would provide a Mecca. Jaffer fell asleep.

He travelled three nights and two days, to the Caspian Sea. He crossed that in thirteen hours. He sniffed the petroleum and the magnolias of Baku, and boarded the train of which Yukitch had told him.

He had packed his new suit, and as he lay curled up in his old one he looked about as tough as he had looked on reaching Bokhara. But what did he care? He was going to Belgrad—to Darol-i-Jihad, “the home of war.” He would need his wits there, and nothing mattered till then.

Across the plains of southern Russia—where so many millions object to being called Russians—he studied the book which Yukitch had lent him. It contained not a word about the history of the Southern Slavs, but was amazingly learned in philology. It suited the bored Jaffer well enough. He really preferred the Slavs in a lump, and their ancient gods to their modern gods.

“Bogu,” the universal Slavic word for God, was clearly the Sanskrit “Bhaga” and Persian “Baga,” meaning good. One Slavonic god was “Svetotit,” but Jaffer could think of no parallel. Doubtless all these gods were living still under the guise of Christian saints—living and interfering with scientific medicine.

At Vienna, on the morning of Tuesday, May 26, he obtained at last the luxury of a good Turkish bath, and beguiled his half-hour in the hot-room with the daily papers. He found nothing whatever about events in India or America, but he learned that a great automobile race was about to occur, and that the Austrian Crown Prince was to receive a visit from the German Emperor on the twelfth of June. After his bath, he wandered round the city, looked at the outside of the buildings where Trench had studied, heard a band in the park playing some “Merry Widow” music, bought a Baedeker, and caught the oriental express for Belgrad. He rested badly on that train. At Budapest he would have been thankfully glad to transfer to the Danube steamer, but that would please Dr. Yukitch too much.

It was an undeniably dazed Jaffer who, after more than a month of steady travel, got off the train at Semlin. Presently he found himself on the deck of the ferry boat, crossing from Semlin to Belgrad. The yellow Save made him dizzy. There before him rose the ancient fortress—which had been captured by Celt, Roman, Hun, Sarmatian, Goth, Gepid, Frank, Greek, Bulgarian, Hungarian, Austrian, Servian. Belgrad meant white castle; well, it was stained a dark red now, as if with coagulate gore. He cared not a curse who owned it. Heavens, how tired he was!

Jaffer leaned against the rail, tall, languid, handsome in his best Bokhara clothes. He slowly extracted a box of cigarettes from his cummerbund, and was opening it with limp fingers, when a passing elbow sent it flying.

The offender saw it strike the yellow flood, and turned with words that were curtly apologetic. He was a military officer, a compact, energetic figure, with a hard-bitten face and a relentless eye. Jaffer had seen a similar expression, he thought, on the face of fanatics in his own country—men who, with a hundred followers, attack an army, or stand against an army till cut down.

“Il n’y a pas de quoi, monsieur,” said Jaffer, with a lordly accent born of fatigue.

“Mais non!” snapped the officer, drawing something from his pocket. “Monsieur will accept these.”

“Monsieur will do nothing of the sort,” responded Jaffer.

“Alors—” the officer changed his tone and stepped forward, and Jaffer noticed that his close cropped hair was naturally curly—“I address perhaps monsieur le prince. But I am at least a major. See, I command an operation!”—With a pleasant smile he tucked the packet into Jaffer’s cummerbund, and saluted.

Jaffer returned the salute. “As a surgeon,” he said, “I sometimes see the necessity of a major operation.” And with this the incident was closed.

Amenities having been exchanged, Jaffer thought better of Belgrad, and at the wharf surrendered his passport without complaint.

He had hardly opened his Baedeker, and he had no desire to be seen gaping at it on the street, but before leaving his luggage he took a look at the map. To the west lay the fortress, and he felt too tired to climb. To the east lay some gardens. He would go over there and stretch out for a while. The street in front of the gardens was named “Widow Dan,” which recalled the “Merry Widow” music he had heard in Vienna—music which, by the way, is forbidden in Servia, because it ridicules a prince of Montenegro. He left the Baedeker with his luggage at the wharf, and sauntered east, over the stoniest streets he had ever trod. He found the gardens, discovered a long seat, tightened his cummerbund so that his money-belt could not be reached without his knowledge, and lay down at full length. In Berlin the thing would have been impossible; here it passed unnoticed. He drowsed off with merry widow music singing faintly in his brain.

When he awoke, a fine old gentleman in a frock coat stood looking at him—as indeed any one well might. Habibullah or the Gaekwar of Baroda would not have looked half so picturesque.

“Verzeiung!” began Jaffer, feeling confusedly that he owed somebody an apology.

“Bitte!” smiled the old gentleman, and the way was open for German.

“I do not speak Servian,” said Jaffer, rising. “My usual language is English, and in English we have a word ‘widow.’ Can you tell me, sir, why this street has that name?”

The old gentleman suppressed his amusement. “The word is Vidov. It means St. Vitus.”

“Himmel!” ejaculated Jaffer. “Is there so much chorea in Belgrad?”

The old gentleman gave a deep chuckle. “I sometimes think so. They are talking of changing this street to Kumanovo.”

“A very good idea, sir. I’d change it to anything. What, pray, is Kumanovo?”

“It is the name of their great recent battle, my dear young sir. At Kumanovo they were revenged on the Turk. You are evidently not an Osmanli.”

“No, sir. Far from it. I come from Kabul.”

“Ah! And are you pleased with your suzerain?”

“No, sir,” said Jaffer. He said it with a defiant sense that neither time nor society is so constructed as to permit complete veracity.

“You interest me,” said the old gentleman, taking a card from his pocket.

“I am without cards, Baron,” said Jaffer, “but I am addressed as Dr. Abdul. You behold me profoundly ignorant of all things Slavonic. A mere sight-seer.”

“Perhaps we may show you something worth seeing. Our German club ought not to be impenetrable by a physician from Kabul.”

“You do me infinite honour. I shall give myself the pleasure of calling on you before I leave. May I ask you one or two questions, such as a child might ask?”

The old gentleman sat down. “_Also_, Herr Doktor!”

“I hardly know where to begin, Baron, because I have everything to learn. Yesterday I was checking up the ancient Slavic gods, when I ought to have been reading history. I find a Sanskrit parallel for Bog, but none for Svetotit.”

The Baron smiled. “If that is your first childish question, I can’t imagine what the second will be like. Svetotit was a sky-god—a very important person, I believe, and he doubtless passed over into Sveti Vid—St. Vitus. The Servians make much of Sveti Vid since Kosovo. They even call it the festival of Christ on the Cross.”

“And what was Kosovo?”

“Merely the most famous date in Servian history—June 28, 1389, when the nation was destroyed by the Turks. It was Vid’s Day. In Servian, Vidov Dan.”

There was a click in Jaffer’s brain as the mechanism shunted certain facts together. The last two letters of Mohammed Beg’s cable were V.D. And Dr. Yukitch wished Jaffer not to be in Belgrad before July.

“Do they have a celebration, or a funeral service, or what, on that day?”

“It will be a great celebration this year, I fancy. The battle of Kumanovo is fresh in mind, and it is the five hundred and twenty-fifth anniversary of Kosovo. If you are here on the twenty-eighth, you will be able to see for yourself.”

“I must see it, by all means. And now one last question, Baron. I have just arrived from Vienna. Be good enough to recommend a hotel.”

The Baron rose. “The Moskwa is as good as any—at the head of Balanska Street.”

“I will go there.”

“And I,” said the old man, shaking hands, “shall be delighted to send some younger man to call on you.”

Jaffer sat down again, and dipped into the major’s box for a cigarette. His eye caught the name of the brand, “Stepanie!” He remembered Saadi’s little sister! He shuddered and put the cigarette back.

He wandered around town awhile, and bought a cheap suit of European clothes and a Turkish fez. He returned to the wharf, claimed his luggage, and drove to the Moskwa. It was a place where he could easily spend more money than he could afford. In his room he spread out Dr. Yukitch’s manuscript on the table, and applied himself to his Baedeker.

That evening at dinner he exchanged a few German words with the waiter. The hotel, he remarked, seemed very cosmopolitan. The waiter shrugged his shoulders and said that all the hotels of Belgrad were cosmopolitan. “All?” queried Jaffer. “All except such places as the Green Wreath,” answered the waiter. “Zeleni Vienaz is a place where no gentleman should go, especially a gentleman from Stamboul.”

There was another click in Jaffer’s brain. Zeleni Vienaz was the name of the coffee-house where Yukitch had found Saadi in 1910.

Accordingly, immediately after dinner that Wednesday evening, the “gentleman from Stamboul” had made it a point to find Zeleni Vienaz and was drinking café Turc in the midst of it. It was an amazing contrast to the formal glories of the Moskwa. The long, reeking room swarmed with costumes more stained and worn than the one he had discarded. Close cropped heads with high cheek bones and narrow eyes were bent forward over games of cards. A ragged Montenegrin full of plum brandy was singing a wild song to a considerable group of hearers. University students were eating and gesticulating, or eating and playing cards at the same time.

Jaffer sat in a central part of the room for the better part of an hour. Covert glances were cast at him, but no one spoke to him. He heard any amount of talk, and not one word of it did he understand.

Consequently, on the way back to the Moskwa he hunted for a bookshop, and at last found one still open, and bought a phrase-book of Croatian and English. The Cyrillic letters of Servian proper were too hard for him to read, but Croatian was essentially the same language, and printed in Roman type.