Читать книгу Eastern Nights - and Flights: A Record of Oriental Adventure - Alan Bott - Страница 6

Table of Contents

NAZARETH—AND THE CHRISTIAN CHARITY OF A JEW

"The Englishman!" he repeated, gripping my arm harder than ever. Then, after a puzzled pause: "Where have you been?"

"For a walk. I was upset by the air raid. My head has been very bad since the smash, and sometimes I don't know what I'm doing. But I'm better now, and I give my word of honour that I will stay quietly in bed. Only say nothing to the Turks."

This Austrian had always seemed a good fellow; and now, on hearing the word "Ehrenwort"—word of honour—he dropped his attitude of anxiety and suspicion, and became his usual friendly self. A wounded Turk came into the passage to see what was happening, but the orderly sent him away. He withdrew with a look of surprise at my disordered appearance.

"Good," replied the Austrian. "I shall say nothing to the Turks. But when the corporal comes I shall have to tell him, and he will tell the Herr Doktor. But I shall ask the corporal not to mention it to the others."

He led me back to the ward, and there noticed, for the first time, how a rolled-up blanket underneath the discoloured quilt made my bed seem as if it were occupied by a man.

"Na, Na," he said as he straightened the blanket. "This doesn't look as if you only went for a walk. Well, I have your word of honour that you will keep quiet, and the Herr Doktor must decide what is to be done."

Tired out, and so despairing as to care nothing of what might happen, I fell asleep. In the heat of mid-morning I was awakened by the corporal, who told me to come with him to the doctor's room. As I limped painfully along the corridor I was still tired and but half awake, so that while I remembered an unpleasant failure I could not define exactly what had happened.

"Herr Hauptmann" said the corporal with a grin, "your injured leg was not improved by the night walk"—and only then did I remember fully the bitter happenings of a few hours earlier.

Charming and decorative as ever, the blue-uniformed, much-medalled doctor rose from his chair, and shook hands with exaggerated ceremony. The priest stood, silent and bowed coldly, as if to imply that my misdeeds were exactly what one would expect from a friend of Másaryk.

"Night walks," said the doctor, "are bad for people with injured legs and faces. As your medical adviser, I should advise you to remain in bed for the future."

"I hope I shall be permitted to follow your advice, Herr Doktor."

"That being so, perhaps you will tell us exactly where you went, and why you did it."

Well knowing that with so many indications of an attempted escape anything but frankness would be futile, I admitted having tried to return to the British Army.

"So! And now, what do you expect?"

"If I may presume on your kindness, I ask that I may stay here until sent away in the normal course of events. I hope you will let me remain in hospital on the understanding that I give my word of honour to be good so long as I am in Tul-Keran."

"That will be difficult. I myself have no objection, and the word of honour is guarantee enough. But if the news of your escapade got beyond the hospital I should have to make a full report."

The doctor learned from the corporal that, apart from the four of us present, the one person who knew the story was the night orderly, who could be trusted to keep quiet. After a low-voiced discussion with the priest he gave instructions that nobody else must be told. He then promised not to make a report, unless the news leaked out and his hand were forced thereby. I thanked him and withdrew.

But the story did leak out. Either the orderly told it, or the Turkish patient who had seen me in the passage, after my return, formed his own conclusions and communicated them to other people. At any rate, several Turks came into the ward and discussed (according to the Syrian's whispered translations) my adventure of the early morning. One man even went so far as to say that I had gone out and signalled to the British aeroplanes.

The Syrian was greatly concerned about whether anybody knew he had been privy to the attempt; but I was able to reassure him.

Evidently the story became so widely known that the hospital authorities had to make their report. Late in the afternoon I was told to dress and collect my belongings, as the Turks were taking me from the hospital. Having obeyed, I was handed over to an escort of two Turkish soldiers with drawn bayonets.

"Adieu," said the Syrian. "I shall pray for you, and for happier times."

The doctor shook hands ceremoniously when I left; and the priest—affable once more—gave me a heavy stick to help support my thigh, saying that he hoped we should meet as friends after the war.

Bareheaded in the searing sun (for my friends had forgotten to include a hat in my kit) I was led through a gaping crowd to the railroad station.

There my guards joined forces with another Turk who had in his charge the dirtiest Arab I have ever seen. His sole dress was a pair of tattered trousers and a faded overcoat from the left side of which a filthy arm protruded, naked. His headdress, a much-torn strip of dingy rag, seemed to have lain for a long time in some stagnant pool. Clots of dirt dotted his face, his feet, and the lower part of his legs, which were bare. His moustache and straggling beard were powdered with sand and gravel; and on looking closely at his middle, where the trousers tops gave place to uncovered flesh, I saw two lice on the inner surface of the rough cloth.

The Arab and I looked at each other curiously, after the manner of fellow-prisoners seeing each other for the first time. Then an interrogation, interrupted by our arrival, was continued. This consisted of a Turkish officer shouting menaces at the Arab, who replied, whenever he was given a chance, with cringing explanations and pleading gestures.

Presently a German interpreter, who spoke Arabic well, joined the group. He also threatened the Arab, and I saw him place thumb and finger on his wind-pipe, as if to suggest strangling.

This badgering of the poor brute continued, until finally the Arab opened his hands and said something in a resigned tone; whereat a thrill of excitement passed through the gathering. The Turkish officer, before leaving us, wrote several lines on some official papers carried by the Arab's guard.

The Unteroffizier then turned his attention to me, and finding that I could speak German, talked of many things, from Hindenburg's advance in France to his own home in the former German colony at Jaffa.

"You have a pleasant companion," he said, nodding toward the Arab.

I asked who the pleasant companion might be and heard in reply a strange tale. The Arab, it appeared, had been found wandering in the rear of the Turkish trenches. The garment he wore was found to be a relic of what was once an overcoat of Turkish military pattern; so that he was arrested as a deserter, and possibly a spy. He told a rambling tale of how he had been a soldier in an Egyptian battalion fighting for the British, but, after being tortured by his officers, had escaped across the lines.

Even the Turks could not be convinced that British officers tortured their men; and the Arab having shown himself to be a liar, they were more than ever convinced that he was also a spy.

The Turkish officer, in the conversation I overheard, had threatened to hang him unless he confessed to being a spy. Finally the Arab (who, in my opinion, was not a spy, whatever he might be), terror-stricken at the threat that he could only save himself from hanging by a "confession," let himself be badgered into a declaration—true or false—that he was a spy. So they hanged him, as I learned afterward, at Damascus.

For several hours we remained on the platform, where the Arab and I were rival attractions for general curiosity. Then, late in the evening, we were hustled into a truck, marked in German: "12 horses or 40 men." As a matter of fact, more than fifty Turkish soldiers must have crowded into the truck before the train started.