Lawrence Durrell - White Eagles Over Serbia

“ Sbogom ,” said Methuen and the word (“Go with God”) took him back once more to those remote mountain fastnesses where the golden eagle brooded and where the deep swift rivers rushed between wooded banks on their way to the sea. Smiling, he fell asleep.

London in the grey early morning looked unbelievably lovely. From the window of his loitering taxi Methuen let his eye rest briefly and lovingly on the familiar landmarks etched from the grey morning mist and felt once more the nostalgic tug of England which always afflicted him most when he was about to leave her. Passing St. James’s Park he cried: “Stop a moment,” and for a few minutes walked on the green grass beside the road. There was a heavy dew, even for early June, and as he stood looking around him Big Ben struck imperiously from the misty confines of the river.

When he reached Victoria he found he had some time in hand and swallowed a dreadful cup of tea in the buffet as he read an early morning edition. An item caught his eye for a moment among the general welter of type. “Yugoslav exiles to buy submarine.” It was an item barely four lines in length which stated that the exiled Royalists in Paris had completed negotiations for the purchase of a submarine from Argentina. There did not seem to be any particular significance in it. A submarine would be of little use to an exiled government which owned neither Army or Navy. Did they blithely imagine that they were going to sail about the Mediterranean potting at Communist shipping in the Adriatic?

He was extremely touched to find Dombey waiting for him at the barrier, looking more than ever like an owl and wrapped in a huge vague overcoat. “I wanted to see you off,” he said. “I am really touched, Dombey,” said Methuen. “I know what it must have cost you to get up as early as this.” And he meant it.

He found his reserved seat and they walked up and down the platform for a while, arm in arm. “All your fancy dress is in the diplomatic bag,” said Dombey. “I just wanted to see how much like an accountant you looked. Actually it is not bad.” Methuen had dressed in a plain business-suit with a dark overcoat; his brief-case, umbrella, brown-paper parcel full of sandwiches proclaimed an inhabitant of the City of London. He had trimmed his moustache slightly and was wearing horn-rimmed spectacles which gave him a timid and urbane look. A pen and pencil were clipped into his vest pocket from which a neat triangle of handkerchief protruded.

“Why are they buying a submarine?” he asked.

“Heaven knows,” said Dombey with the resignation of a man for whom the Balkan mentality is a closed book. “The thing is an old American one, stripped of all armament, and twice condemned. I doubt if one could take it to sea. It’s been lying in a French dockyard under repair for ages.”

A whistle blew and Methuen clambered aboard. “Look after yourself,” said Dombey and Methuen told him not to fear anything on that score. The platform began to slide away with its coloured posters, for all the world as if a giant scene-shifter were at work. They ran out into the misty morning towards the grey Channel. Methuen felt his spirits rise as the train gathered way and the monotonous clicking of the wheels slithered and blurred into a rumble of speed.

Paris in the late afternoon was bright with sunlight, though there was hardly time to do more than glance at it. A blithe French taxi galloped Mr. Judson across the capital to the station where the Orient Express was lying, waiting for its passengers. Sunlight on the river and the animation of crowds which sauntered along its banks awoke many old memories. There were people he would have liked to see, but none of them were friends of Mr. Judson, so he forebore to telephone them. Mr. Judson was too timid to risk more than a glancing encounter with this capital of fun and good food — and so much vice. He found his wagon-lit, attended to his luggage, and disposed himself in gloomy silence to eat the bread and butter he had brought with him. Later, greatly daring, he bought a bottle of Vichy water, counting his change with a suspicious air, and waving away the proffered bottle of red wine which the man tried to press on him.

In the dining-car that night he was able to size up his fellow-passengers. There were two Italian families travelling part of the way, a few nondescript business men, and three surly-looking Yugoslavs obviously returning from some trade mission in western Europe. They talked all the time with animation but in low tones, while all their ordering was done by one member of the party who spoke a few words of French. They wore cheap overcoats of hideous cut and heavy boots, but seemed inordinately proud of the cheap wrist-watches they all wore on their right arms. Mr. Judson dined opposite them and while he could not hear the subject of their conversation he overheard enough to decide that they were all peasants who had found themselves elected officials under the new dispensation. Two at least were Serbian, while the one who spoke French was either a Croat or a Slovene.

At the Italian frontier they ran into heavy rain, and by the time the train reached Venice it had hardened into a storm which looked as if it might last for ever. A strong south wind whipped the shallow lagoons to a tawny yellowish froth and the clouds hung low over the city. Here there was a long wait. The train disgorged its passengers, and the polite and intelligent sleeping-car attendants packed their suitcases and took their leave. They were replaced by a couple of unshaven-looking rascals, smelling strongly of plum-brandy and dressed in soiled brown uniforms. Neither spoke any language but his own, and the few remaining passengers were reduced to express their wants in dumb-show. One small fragment of conversation gave Mr. Judson a valuable clue as to how one was expected to behave in Yugoslavia. One of the Yugoslavs aboard the train said, in the course of a long and unintelligible conversation: “I knew at once he was an anti-Titoist because he said ‘Sbogom’ instead of ‘Zdravo’.” This puzzled Judson for a moment until he remembered that the first greeting carries the name of God with it, and to the good Marxist the name of God is anathema.

Darkness was falling as the train crawled into Trieste, and after a brief pause turned inland to climb the cliffs which separated them from the Yugoslavia which Methuen had once known so well but which Mr. Judson had never seen. At the frontier a horde of officials climbed aboard supervised by a couple of grim-looking young men in leather overcoats and top-boots, but dressed in plain clothes. Mr. Judson was interested in this first glance at the dreaded OZNA officials who held the country in a grip hardly less brutal than that of the Russian NKVD. They were obviously chosen for their powerful physique and not for their intelligence. They walked along the corridor holding the passports of the passengers and clumsily comparing the photographs which adorned these documents with the originals. They found that the likeness of Mr. Judson passed muster and handed him back his passport after taking the precaution of looking under the seats of the sleeping-carriage. The other officials treated them with great deference, and the swagger with which they walked proclaimed them a ruling caste. The diplomatic visa saved Mr. Judson from the indignity of having his baggage searched, though there was nothing incriminating in it.

Almost empty, the train passed the last barrier and lurched forward into the darkness which covered Yugoslavia. Methuen stared eagerly out of the window to pick up remembered landmarks but the darkness defeated him; once or twice he caught a glimpse of a fairy-tale mountain fringed with fir trees, rearing up against the sky, and perhaps dotted with Hans Andersen houses, with hanging eaves. Once or twice the darkness fell away under his eyes and showed him the racing whiteness of a mountain torrent, the steady concussion of the water rising above even the roar of the wheels. But for the most part the land lay in darkness except for where a blaze of light lit up a riverside sawmill or a power factory.