Lawrence Durrell - White Eagles Over Serbia

He busied himself with setting his temporary home to rights, burying the scraps left over from his meal in the soft earth outside and scouring the utensils he had dirtied the night before. By the time he had done this his water was boiling and he made himself a mug of tea, standing outside to drink it, watching the pale tones of the dawn light creep up from the east. To-day was to be devoted to a patrol of the railway to north and south of the valley, and with this in mind he set off in full fancy dress well before sunrise, crossing the river at the nearest point, and walking swiftly into the forest-clad depression which lay opposite him. He skirted the monastery this time and gazed for a while at the old sawmill by the café where he had once sat and played chess against all comers. It seemed iust the same. There was a light burning in one of the windows of the tavern and he could imagine a party of lumbermen downing their plum brandies before setting forth on the day’s work.

It took him an hour to reach the point where the main valley intersected that formed by the Studenitsa and here he paused to eat some plums and blackberries which he found in a deserted orchard and to wash his face in a pool. Then he set off in the deep woods which crowned the summit, keeping the valley to his left and pausing from time to time to sweep the river and railway with his glasses. There was no untoward sign of movement save for a couple of lorries full of blue-coated policemen reinforced by a sprinkling of leather-men. They were travelling north at some speed and he judged that they were bound for some collective farm where trouble had broken out, and where they would administer summary socialist justice with their truncheons and handcuffs.

The air on this mountain was light and pure, and though he walked fast he felt full of energy; in fact it was all he could do to keep himself from singing as he walked. He examined the fortress he had seen the day before and calculated that not more than a company of soldiers were based there; the tunnels of the railway, however, which lay some three hundred feet below the eagle’s nest, were all heavily guarded and he was careful to use his cover skilfully lest he should be picked up from the opposite canyon by someone using glasses as powerful as his own.

But the farther he walked the more astonishingly peaceful became the landscape. Here and there were men ploughing, and once he saw a caravan of mules setting off down the mountain, but in general there was nothing to indicate the presence of alarms or dangers. Once he ran into an old woman gathering firewood and passed the time of day with her, stopping only to ask her if she had any milk for sale; but her hopeless gesture — raising both hands to the sky — told him more eloquently than words could do how impoverished the peasantry in these parts was. He asked her a few questions which, while they were useful to him, were the kind that any passer-by might ask; and told her that he was walking to Rashka to see his family. “Why don’t you walk on the road?” she asked. “It is easier.” Methuen gave her a knowing wink and said: “Mother, the road is full of official cars and very dusty.”

By midday he had covered several miles without seeing anything to arouse his interest and he lay up for a rest in a patch of maize. He had managed to locate the point where he had jumped out of the car yesterday and also the tree which overhung the road, and out of which he was to toss his report to Porson — unless he chose to wait by the milestone and get a lift back to Belgrade. He calculated that the rendezvous was exactly an hour’s walking distance from the cave he had chosen as his hideout.

He set off back to the cave in the late afternoon, but this time he gathered some corn-cobs for his evening meal and almost entirely filled one of his large poacher’s pockets with stolen almonds and dwarf-pears. Made bolder by the general peacefulness of the scene he several times left cover to take a promising footpath through those scented fields, and it was while he was crossing a stream by a little wooden footbridge that he came upon a man leading a mule laden with small sacks. Methuen stood aside to let him pass and saluted him gruffly and the man replied in a surly tone. He was a huge ugly brute, dressed in patched and greasy clothes and canvas leggings. A torn straw hat was on his head. Having negotiated the stream he turned to face Methuen and said: “Who are you? You don’t belong to us!”

Methuen repeated his story only instead of mentioning Rashka, which lay in the direction from which he had already come, he named another village higher up the mountain. The man’s eyes narrowed and he looked furtively about him. “Are you alone?” he said and seemed reassured when Methuen said that he was.

“I have some tobacco for sale,” he said in an ingratiating whine.

“Good?”

“The best.”

“I have no money.”

“What have you?”

“A needle and thread.”

The man’s eyes widened and a smile came over his face. “A needle!” he repeated and laughed with surprise. “From America,” said Methuen sticking to the brief Boris had given him. “I get a parcel every month.” The man undid his donkey and from a sack took a great twist — several pounds of contraband tobacco — and pressed it on Methuen saying: “In our whole village there is only one needle, passed from house to house.”

This incident seemed to thaw him out and he was disposed to stop and chatter but Methuen was anxious to be on his way. As they parted he called after Methuen: “Be careful up there! There are bad people!” and then he winked and gave a horrid leer. “Is it possible”, asked Methuen of himself, “that he takes me for a White Eagle?”

He cut across an orchard and down the slope behind the monastery; altogether he had travelled about seven miles, along the four sides of a square. The body of the old monk still lay under the tree by the river and for a moment Methuen felt a pang of conscience: he should, he supposed, dig a grave for it. But there was no time and no energy over, and a diversion from his central plan might prove fatal. He retired into the cave, where the snake once more sat on duty, and shedding his boots, lit a candle and commenced his brief report for Dombey.

His excursion had given him much more confidence and that evening he permitted himself a rapturous hour of fishing in the dusk before returning to the cave. The trout showed little interest in a Pale Olive Dun but rose nicely to a Winged Standard, though once hooked they showed little disposition to fight so that in half an hour he had caught enough to feed a dinner-party of eight. He tried two of the flies which the Ambassador had tied himself, but without conspicuous success, and he abandoned them regretfully as possibly too highly coloured for their purpose.

The snake too showed the first signs of domestication, for it no longer hissed when he appeared in the cave-mouth, and he was able to walk about with more confidence though he did not dare to shed his boots unless he was actually sitting up beyond its reach on the stone bed he had chosen. His dinner that night was more ambitious, consisting of a grilled trout, two corn-cobs, and some nuts and blackberries: and he ate it beside a roaring fire which lit up the cave with a rosy glare and dispelled the evening damps rising from the river.

It did not take him long to write a brief description of the day’s exploration, and to add that he intended to stay on — he did not add for how long. With his report he added a note for transmission to Dombey saying that he was well and that the fishing was excellent. Then, turning aside from these tedious chores, he cleaned his pistol, and after tidying his equipment treated himself to half an hour of Walden, revelling in the smooth oracular prose which never wearied him, and which seemed to contain a message which tantalized him without ever satisfying.