XVIII -- [April 13, 1903] 

THROUGH MACEDONIA

A KAIMAKAM AT HOME

PEEPING TOMS

In every nook of the rambling, shaky, half-wooden building where dwells the ruler of Raslog district, there are watchful eyes, every hour of the day and night. Just now, perhaps, they may be unusually watchful, for a Macedonian suspected of complicity with the komitadjis, who are prowling out there among the mountains, is "interned" in one of its chambers; while the foreign Correspondent, to whom the Macedonian is dragoman, is the Kaimakam's guest. Why does the foreigner get up before sunrise? And wander about the passages? To hold converse with the Giaour conspirator may be. Why does he stop at windows and examine things with a binocular glass? So I interpreted the movements of the soldiers, gendarmes, and retainers of sorts, inside and outside his Excellency's residence. The sentry who sits drowsily in the courtyard below, with his coat collar about his ears and his rifle between his knees, pulls himself together, walks off, says something to number two; who looks up; and the three commune, all because they have spied his Excellency's guest (when like a rational being he ought to have been a-bed) in the act of contemplating the streaming of the dawn, in her pink and light blue, over the white ridges, upon one of the finest landscapes in Macedonia.

The half-soldier-half-domestic who comes in and rolls up my bed looks suspiciously about him, because I have kept him waiting outside, while I undo the wooden bolt into which I had fastened a pocket knife in place of the pin which should have been there, but was not. Sauntering along the corridors I come upon the gendarme who keeps watch and ward of Mr. Stephanoff's door. His rifle is placed against the wall, while he himself, squatting on his heels, is engaged in making his morning coffee over the glowing embers in a brass tray. As I stop and look back, the zaptieh who has been following me noiselessly, in his thick-soled stockings, also stops. He stops again at the ledge by the corner of a dark passage--where I turn its other corner. But I am not alone. A little way ahead, somebody, also in thick-soled stockings, with cartridge belt round his waist, and a sword bayonet, is leaning cross-legged against the stair railings. I turn back. The man follows, silently as any cat of the establishment. He stops, when he catches sight of the man on the ledge, whose is still there, as if rooted to the spot, gazing upon nothing in particular. I feel like the Inspector-General of Peeping Toms, and act accordingly. I make my round of the place, inspecting this man's "yataghanerie," that man's belts and buttons, the other's cooking utensils, and find everything to my satisfaction--particularly in the silence of the night, when the konak is asleep, and only those stealthy figures are awake.

Enter the Kaimakam, with his ruddy face, and a breezy "good morning." News of the daskol Angelos? The Kaimakam hitched his shoulders, and waved his hand in the direction of Mount Pirin, as if to say, "There's where he's gone to." His Excellency muttered something to the effect that the daskol's flight only left Bansko with one "brigand" the less. In the mountains four hundred komitadjis were on the move; the daskol made the four hundred and first. Angelos was perhaps the only native Macedonian in Raslog to turn komitadji. For all the komitadjis came from that hotbed of liars and plotters, Bulgaria.

EXPLANATION NEEDED

I would have been glad if his Excellency could have explained to me how, if the Macedonian population were on the side of the Turkish Government in its hatred of the revolutionists, the last named were successfully defying them both. "Let us have some tea," said his Excellency; and forthwith he began rummaging in the cupboard of the cosy room where I had slept, and where we had dined, the evening before, with the Majors and the Cadi. "Japanese tea," he remarked, opening up a paper parcel and raising it to his appreciative nostrils. "Afzul!" (I think that was the name). And Afzul, opening the door on the outside of which he was posted, stood bolt upright of "attention," and saluted. "The teapot!" Right about face Afzul, who quickly returned with the teapot. But our fire is out. And dropping down on his knees his Excellency stuffed bits of wood into the small iron stove, which stood in the middle of the room, and from which an iron tube, passing overhead, carried the smoke into the open air. Nor did he disdain to administer, like a domestic Boreas, a puff or two from his gubernatorial cheeks, so that they flushed in sympathy with the crackling pine splinters. He had learnt these useful arts at College --the Imperial Institute, at Constantinople, of which, not long since, he had been a student. There, if here, was a free and easy, charmingly unconventional host.

"But now, Bey, let us settled this little affair of my friend Mr. Stephanoff." "No harm," said he, "will come to Mr. Stephanoff. He may be sent back to his village, Bansko, for two or three days, pending an inquiry. After that he will be free, and you will see him shortly in Sofia." But unless he was satisfied as to my friend's innocence, how could he promise that he would be free? If he was satisfied, why detain him now? I was entitled to put that question, because Mr. Stephanoff had come with me as my dragoman, and was known as such to the Vali. "Yes," said the Bey, taking up his former argument, "but Mr. Stephanoff is also a Turkish subject, and he has compromised himself. He is the associate of suspected persons in Bansko. Bansko is Bulgarian, and disaffected."

It was (a) waste of words to contend that Mr. Stephanoff, an absentee of ten years, was not responsible for the political character of Bansko, that if the act of merely looking at photographs of the "Komitadjis" "compromised" a man the Bey himself was compromised, for he had examined them minutely, and he had them at that moment in his pocket; and that for the conveyance of the photographs to la Maison Stephanoff, young Monsieur Angelos, since then a full-blown Komitadji, was along answerable. Freedom, as understood in the West, does not exist in Turkey. There is no security of life; no personal liberty protected by equal laws; government in Macedonia practically means the arbitrary will of local despots. Any petty tyrant may arrest anybody on the ghost of a shadow of a suspicion, send him to a filthy prison, detain him there for weeks, for months, even for years, leaving him for support to the charity of his friends.

With quiet obstinacy the Kaimakam took his stand upon such terms as "Ottoman subject," "suspect," "compromised," and, gradually, as he uttered them, his demeanor changed. Most people have some peculiarity of manner or of gesture. The Kaimakam has his. We he is turning over a shrewd idea, or fencing with an argument, or on the trail of a cunning device, his left eye closes, his lips crumple together, his shoulders hitch themselves upwards, his facial expression hardens. Were I villager of Raslog, commanded to surrender "pushka" (rifles) which I did not possess, and the Kaimakam sat by--as he used to do during the "black month"--I should give up all hope the moment I detected those gestures and that expression.