The Balkan Trail :: CHAPTER IV SOFIA AND THE BULGARIANS

CHAPTER IV SOFIA AND THE BULGARIANS

We drove back to Sofia in a small victoria drawn by four white ponies with blue beads around their necks and a diamond-shaped spot of henna on each forehead. Patriotism was running high in the country at the time, but the Bulgarian colours are red, white, and green. The decorations were in deference to the ‘Evil Eye.’

We came down the long valley to Sofia and entered the town at twilight, making our way to the Grand HÔtel de Bulgarie. The shops grew from peasant establishments where cheese and onions and odd shapes of bread were spread on open counters, to emporiums where French gloves and silk hats were on sale. Electric cars became numerous, double lines crossing each other at one corner. Here a sturdy gendarme raised his hand for us to stop; he was not as large as a London policeman, but he carried a sabre at his side. The chief of police explained to me later that the weapon was not for use, but simply to impress the other peasants, who would have no respect for the brown uniform alone.

At the head of the main street we came to a solid drab-coloured, rectangular building, surrounded by high, drab-coloured walls. The massive iron gates were wide open, and before each paced two sentinels. This was the palace of the Prince. Just beyond the palace was the hotel.

Several army officers in uniform were standing before the Bulgarie as we drove up, and one hailed me in this familiar manner:

‘Well, how goes it? I see you are from “the land of the free and the brave.”’

He knew who I was; strangers are conspicuous in Sofia, and their presence becomes known quickly. There was to be a military ball at the officers’ club that evening, and I was invited forthwith. The ‘American,’ as this officer was called, waited at the hotel until I had dressed, and, after dining with me, took me to the dance.

The scene was very like that at a military hop in any civilised country. The officers looked martial in their simple Russian uniforms, and the ladies were tastefully but modestly dressed. There is no wealth in Bulgaria—not a millionaire in pounds in all the land—and the officers of the army live on their pay. Many members of the Government and other state officials were at the ball, wearing ordinary evening dress with some few decorations.

It is said of the Bulgarians that they dislike foreigners, which is true to an extent. Their attention to me on this occasion is to be accounted for in the observation of an historian, that they are ‘a practical people and their gratitude is chiefly a sense of favours to come.’ I was the special correspondent of an important newspaper, and they were anxious that I should sympathise with their cause. They adopted no surreptitious means of making me do so; they went straight to the point and demanded my attitude. I intimated that I had come out to the Balkans to take nobody’s side; I had come ignorant even of the geography of South-Eastern Europe, and intended to withhold my judgment until I had seen the question from more sides than one. They granted that this was fair, and remarked that an honest man who was not a fool must perforce become a bitter partisan on the Balkan question.

The day before my departure from Sofia (on this first occasion) I excited the suspicions of a local journalist by declining to declare my sympathies. The reporter intimated that in his opinion a newspaper like mine would hardly send on such a mission a man who was quite as ignorant as I professed to be! They are bold, these Bulgars.

This journalist was my undoing. I did not see what he wrote about me until I returned to Sofia, a few weeks later, and found myself completely ignored by the very Bulgars who had been most attentive. Officers who had toasted me when I started for the frontier would not return my salute; newspaper men who had interviewed me now slunk by in the street, and statesmen and politicians barely nodded when I lifted my hat. This was undoubtedly deliberate; the Bulgarians could not have forgotten me so soon. I sought my friend the officer who spoke American, and inquired of him if he knew in what way I had offended his fellow-countrymen. He did not hesitate a minute. The Vitcherna Posta, he informed me, had shown me up. The paper had discovered that I had come out to the Balkans pledged to support the Turks, and my pretended ignorance was simply a bluff. The proprietor of my paper, who would probably condemn another man for accepting a monetary bribe, had been bought with a paltry decoration from his Sultanic Majesty. No news but such as was favourable to the Turk and hostile to the Bulgar would be published in my paper. In proof of this statement the ‘Vampire Post’ called attention to the fact that I had paid frequent visits to the Turkish Agency before my late departure.

The young officer did not tell me this in the offensive manner of a candid friend; he delivered the accusations straight from the shoulder, and on concluding offered me a native drink, as if I could have no mitigating argument; he was satisfied of my guilt, but when he was in America my countrymen had treated him well.

‘The Bulgarians are not very politic,’ I observed; to which the officer assented and signed to me to drink, implying by a gesture: this disagreeable explanation is over, but you are my guest.

The Sofia journal had mistaken me; I was not the correspondent of the paper whose proprietor had been decorated by the Sultan. Nor were the numerous visits I had paid to the Turkish Commissioner due to any but legitimate reasons. The Sultan’s representative, indeed, accused me of making a suspicious number of calls on Bulgarian officials and of receiving too many revolutionists at my hotel; and when I applied to him for permission to proceed to Macedonia I found many visits and much persuasion all of no avail. He had an antidote prepared for me, an immediate trip to Constantinople, where the diplomatic atmosphere is sympathetic with the Sultan. Thus, by trying to maintain the friendship of both Bulgar and Turk, I had incurred, at the very outset of my mission, the hostility of both.

The Bulgarians are suspicious people. They excuse this trait in their character by explaining that they lived under the Mohamedan for five hundred years. This is their favourite excuse for all their sins. But they have also acquired at least one of the Turk’s good points; they are dignified and can control themselves; they seldom lose their tempers and generally act cautiously. They are somewhat obstinate, which is a Slav characteristic, and this, with a childlike sensitiveness due to their youth as a nation, makes for pride.

An Englishman who spends any length of time among the Bulgarians generally likes them. The strong strain of barbarism in the Bulgar finds sympathy in the breast of the Britisher, and the Bulgar’s respect for the ultra-civilised chord in the other man also wins its reward. The Bulgar never approaches an Englishman, who, he knows, resents approach; he never becomes friendly, fearing a rebuff; and he maintains for ever a dignity and distance in the presence of the stony one. Now, the Bulgar doesn’t know it, but this is exactly the way to gain the esteem of the Englishman, who recognises a diamond in the man who can cut him.

The Bulgarians are most anxious for the favour of Great Britain. They aspire to become a great nation and to annex the conquerable territory to their south. They see that their friends, if they have any, are the Western Powers, and not Austria and Russia; and ‘their gratitude is chiefly a sense of favours to come.’

When a voivoda is killed in Macedonia a high mass for the repose of his soul is celebrated the next Sunday or fÊte day at the cathedral in Sofia. Small boys, hired by the revolutionary committee, hold crayon portraits of the dead heroes, draped in mourning, for the people to see as they enter church. After mass the congregation gathers in the vast open space before the cathedral to hear addresses by members of the revolutionary committee, who sometimes speak from the cathedral steps. The speeches are generally quite sane, often contain advice to foster British friendship, but never suggest the release of Russia’s hand.

THE CATHEDRAL, SOFIA.

THE BRITISH AGENCY, SOFIA: A DEMONSTRATION.

At the conclusion of one of these meetings I accompanied a crowd to the British Agency. On their way they passed the Italian Agency, halted, and gave three cheers. In front of the Lion and the Unicorn the shouts were loud and prolonged. A silence followed, and they waited for an acknowledgment. But, of course, his Majesty’s representative could not acknowledge a demonstration hostile to Turkey, a State with which the British Government was at peace. The Bulgarians finally moved off, and made for the residence of the Russian. There, the crowd seemed undecided; some were for cheering and passing on, others were bent on seeing M. Bakhmetieff. The Russian, unlike the English agent, responded promptly, and spoke from his terrace in his own tongue—which is sufficiently like Bulgarian to be understood by a Bulgarian crowd. He told them that Bulgaria must bide Russia’s time, that Russia was the friend of all Slavs, and Russia would eventually come to their aid.

Bulgarians of intelligence and education put little faith in the promises of the present Russian Government. But Russia holds a fast grip on the masses of the people; the peasants are grateful for their deliverance, and many of the politicians are open to bribery.

But the model of the Bulgarians is by no means the great Slav country. They can boast of having attained in a quarter of a century a liberty which the Russians have not yet secured. The institutions of Bulgaria are liberal in principle, and often in practice; the constitution is democratic. The suffrage is extended to every male adult, as a result whereof seven Turks represent the Mohamedan districts of the Danube and Turkish border in the SobranjÉ, and sit among the other deputies without removing their fezzes.

The Bulgarians are anxious to be classed with people of the West, and they strive hard for civilisation, though a streak of Eastern origin sometimes displays itself. Once I was asked a significant question by a boy who had spent several years at an American mission school.

‘The English papers,’ he said, ‘often assert that we are not civilised. Will you tell me what constitutes a state of civilisation?’

I hesitated.

‘Is it a man’s education?’ he asked. ‘It is not our fault if we have not education; we are learning as fast as we can. It cannot be that clothes make the man. It may be the result of your religion; but I wonder if England is more religious on the whole than Bulgaria is. We hear of horrible social crimes there that never occur here. And our politics is no more corrupt than that of America, which sends us missionaries. We are accused of having national jealousies and ambitions. England is certainly not free from the former, and if she is no longer ambitious, it is simply because her aspirations are all achieved.’

I was unable to define civilisation.

When Bulgaria became independent, Sofia was a very dirty town, without a street paved with anything but cobble stones, and with but one house of any pretensions, the Turkish ‘konak.’ To-day, besides a palace and a parliamentary building, there are a national bank, a post office, a military academy, several vast barracks, and many other Government buildings. There are parks and public gardens where bands play on summer evenings; new streets and avenues have been laid out, and some of the narrow ones of Turkish times have been widened; substantial shops and hotels mark the business quarter, and modern homes the avenues. Still, Sofia reminds one of a lanky girl whose spindle shanks and lean arms have outgrown her pinafore. The dwellings, by setting far apart, try to reach out the long new avenues and cover the gawky child, but in places she is absolutely bare.

One day I drove out along one of the avenues to call on a Cabinet Minister. The coachman drew up at a modest cottage, whose greatest charm was an ample garden. I repeated the name of the Minister, and looked dubiously at the coachman.

‘Touka, touka’ (‘here, here’), he said, so I entered.

A little girl, the Minister’s daughter, responded to my rap and invited me in. The servant was cooking.

Not far from here were the humble homes of two painters and a sculptor, upon whom I often called. They were instructors at the National Institute of Art, of which Ivan Markvitchka is the head.

But the streets of Sofia have not altogether parted with the past; there are many touches of the old Turkish times left. Many of the shops are dark, low, and dingy, though the shopkeepers no longer block the pavements with their wares and sit cross-legged among them. An ancient Turkish bath and an old mosque stand side by side in front of the market place on the principal trading corner. The bath is not attractive in appearance, but the water is excellent—brought by pipe from a boiling mineral spring in the mountains a few kilometres distant. The place is closed to the public on Mondays, when the garrison of Sofia is scrubbed. Detachments of a hundred men arrive hourly, each with a towel and a bar of brown soap; three-quarters of an hour later they are turned out clean.

Compulsory service in the army has been a great training to the Bulgarian peasants. The natives of Macedonia bathe as they marry, only once or twice in a lifetime. A child is not washed when it is born for fear of its catching cold, nor when it is baptized, for oil is used at this ceremony.

An open letter from a Greek priest to the American missionaries concerning the use of oil instead of water at the baptismal office, demonstrates the Macedonian prejudice against water—except for internal use. The priest defended the use of oil on the score that, as a result of oiled christening, the Macedonian peasants, though they never wash, carry with them no foul odour, as do peasants baptized with water.

A VIEW OF SOFIA: VITOSH IN THE BACKGROUND.

Behind the mosque and the bath is an open space which resembles an empty lot, except on Fridays. Friday is both the sabbath of the Turks and the market day of the Bulgars, but the police are never called upon to prevent a clash between the two. Once a week the capital is crowded with peasants assembled from every village within a radius of twenty kilometres. Fellow-residents of the same broad, sunny plain in which Sofia lies come trooping in, clad in lighter clothes than those worn by the mountain men from Vitosh. They begin to gather on Thursday evening, and long before the next day breaks the space is covered with sacks of corn, strings of onions, bunches of chickens, baskets of eggs, buckets of cheese, bolts of homespun cloth, bleating lambs, and squealing pigs.

The peasants, young and old, men and women, walk to market. Only pigs and babies are carried. The carts and the pack-animals are too heavily laden to carry their owners; and, besides, every individual afoot can carry something more. One sympathises with a pretty girl dressed in holiday costume, a red rose in her hair, carrying a pig over one shoulder, over the other a dozen chickens strung up by the feet. One sympathises with the pig and the fowls also, for these poor things have been carried with their heads hanging for probably three hours. The pig is slung by one or both hind legs, with a lash tied so tightly that it entirely stops the circulation, and may cut through the flesh to the bone. The girls always laugh on their way to market, and the pigs always cry. Of course the pigs are laid down now and again along the route, when the happy girls take a rest, but they arrive in Sofia with their eyes popping out of the sockets. These pigs which the girls carry are little pigs, but huge hogs are hung in the same manner at the sides of laden ponies.

On various occasions I pointed out this wanton cruelty to prominent Bulgarians whom I knew, and generally got some reply about the five hundred years the peasants had spent under the Turks. Where was the boy who asked me what the English word civilised meant?

ON THE MARKET PLACE, SOFIA.

The Bulgarians are careful of their draught animals. This, perhaps, they have learned in their term of subjection to the Mohamedan. It is a common sight in summer to see a girl in holiday attire, with a long-handled dipper throwing water from a puddle on to the backs of sweltering buffaloes as they move slowly past, dragging a heavy, creaking cart. In the winter each buffalo has his blanket.

The peasant girl weaves the cloth for her own clothes, spins the threads on her long marches to town, and saves her earnings for brass belt-buckles, bracelets, and other ornaments. Her bracelets often weigh over a pound, and her belt-buckle sometimes measures ten inches across. Her hair is far below her waist, but it generally changes in both texture and colour considerably above. The lower portion resembles horsehair. When such an appendage is spliced on to the maiden’s own locks, the proud possessor spends hours making the combination into a score of thin plaits, which she spreads out across her shoulders and loops together at the end.

The bazaars of other capitals in the Near East are filled with cheap German and Austrian imitations of native jewellery and dress, but Sofia is freer from this pollution.

There are few Jews in Bulgaria as compared with the number in the border State of Rumania; the Jews cannot thrive on the close-fisted Bulgars. The Jews who live among them are fairer in business transactions than their co-religionists anywhere else in the Balkans. I had an interesting experience with an old Israelite one day. He was selling key-rings, among other trinkets, on the market place, and I stopped and took one. I held up a franc by way of asking the price, and he said, ‘Franc,’ and held up one finger. The ring was a common affair and not worth so much, but I needed one badly, and, being unable to argue over the price, I gave up the franc and proceeded to adjust my keys to the ring. The old Jew was embarrassed. He had clearly expected me to bargain with him. He looked at the franc and then at me, undecided whether to do the honest thing or pocket the piece. As I started away he touched me on the arm, drew a greasy old purse from a deep pocket in a baggy pair of trousers, and finding a fifty-centime piece, pressed it upon me.

But while the Jew who has elected to remain among the Bulgars has had to surrender some of his principles of gold-getting, the Bulgar at horse-trading is a brother of the world fraternity of stock-dealers. One bright market day, when the streets were crowded with peasants and the European garb was almost obliterated, I went with a fellow-correspondent to buy a horse. We were not long in finding a satisfactory animal, but the bargaining was a tedious process. The owner of the horse was a simple old peasant, but he was assisted in the deal by the mayor of his village, an independent person of some thirty years, dressed like the other in homespuns and sheepskins.

The old peasant gripped the bridle of his horse as if someone were trying to rob him of the animal, and followed the very words of the deal as they passed from one man to the other. After a long wrangle a price was finally agreed upon, and the money was produced in the form of Bulgarian bank-notes.

A gleam of joy came over the old man’s face when the currency was first laid in his hands, but it died away almost instantly, giving place to one of hopeless bewilderment; he could not count so much money. He asked my friend if he was not swindling him, and then he asked the mayor, and again and again they each counted the notes over. It was pitiable. He said he had received many pieces of paper from Turkish ‘effendi,’ and they were never worth anything (the Turkish army has a way of giving paper promises for goods and labour).

‘You are no longer a Turkish subject,’ said the mayor.He finally loosened his grip on the bridle, but as he delivered over the animal a last pang of fear struck his heart, and he turned hastily about in search of something. Spying me at a little distance off, he came shuffling towards me as fast as his old legs would carry him. I had left the scene and gone over to inspect the buffaloes lying quietly covered with their masters’ coats of goats’ hair. The old peasant made his way among the beasts to where I was, and thrust the roll of bills at me, pleading something in Bulgarian. The mayor shouted to him that I did not understand Bulgarian; but I understood the old man, and tried to put his mind at ease as to whether he possessed three hundred good gold francs.

The older peasants of Bulgaria are nearly all illiterate, but State schools teach the younger generations to read and write. Many of the older inhabitants understand the Turkish language; the younger Bulgars are learning French.

They are building a national opera-house in Sofia, and strangers are always taken to see the work. At present there is only one playhouse in the town, a Turkish theatre. One evening I was invited by Boris Sarafoff, the Macedonian leader, to be one of a box party to witness a performance at this place. It was during the war in the Far East, and the other guests of the insurgent were a Japanese and a Russian who happened to be in Sofia at the time. Gathered from the four corners of the earth, it was natural that no two of us thoroughly agreed on any one point, but each was tolerant of the others. As for Sarafoff, more anon; here, ‘the play’s the thing.’

Our box cost the sum of five francs; it was the best in the house with the exception of the royal box. There were seats to be had for twenty and standing room for ten centimes. The building was a rough wooden barn, rather rickety, whitewashed inside. From the single gallery hung hand-painted works of art only equalled by the mural decorations at Rilo. The pictures were grotesque and ludicrous. They portrayed the absurdities of the Turk, his peculiar way of doing things, and his chronic inclination to rest. The band, which vied with the pictures in keeping early arrivals in good humour until the curtain rose, was composed of a fair young lady who beat the drum, a bald bass violinist, a stout matron who blew the cornet, and two or three normal musicians—all led by a youth of not more than fifteen. The work of the band, however, was more artistic than that of the painter, which was well for it, because the music was not included in the price of admission. When the play began the beauty who beat the drum left her instrument to pass a plate among the audience in the same manner that a collection is taken in church. But this was not the only collection to be made. Between the acts the actresses appeared by turns in the house. After the band the leading lady had first draught on the audience. The lady who simply walked on got the last pull—and got what she deserved.

The plays presented at the Turkish theatre are all comedies. The language employed is Turkish; the principal characters are Turks; the actors are Armenians. The leading man is a splendid actor. His impersonation of a Turkish pasha, with all that functionary’s suspicion and corruption, was done with such extravagance, and yet such delicacy, that the Jap, the Russian, and myself, as well as Sarafoff, were highly amused.

The Turk is the subject of much of the Bulgarian’s humour as well as his wrath. He is to the Bulgar very much what the Irishman is to the Englishman, the funny as well as the exasperating man. The Bulgarian peasants are usually on the best of terms with the Turks in their land. They generally treat them with fairness and consideration. But on occasions insurgent bands which have met with defeat across the border have avenged themselves on Mohamedans in Bulgaria. But such slaughters happen with less and less frequency, and on an ever-diminishing scale. Except for individual slaughters, none has taken place for more than ten years. The Government is jealous of its case against the Turk, and has been most zealous in its efforts to prevent murders of Mohamedans ever since the day Prince Alexander, on ascending the new throne, visited the mosque of Sofia in token of respect for the religion of his Turkish subjects. On the whole, the Mohamedan in Bulgaria is better off than his brother in Turkey, who, except that he holds the position of the man with the gun, suffers under the Ottoman rule almost or quite as much as does the Christian. Nevertheless, there is a continuous exodus from Bulgaria of Turks and Pomaks (Bulgarians converted to Mohamedanism) to the land where the Mohamedan rules. And when these Turks pack their goods and chattels and start to trek, they do not stop until they have passed beyond the Bosphorus. They seem to think—as many men have thought for many years—that the day of Turkish power in Europe will soon be past.

The Prince of Bulgaria is a shrewd monarch, but he is not much loved. There are parties which think Prince Ferdinand too subservient to the Russian Government, and parties which think him too independent of the Czar; parties which think him ambitious, and say that he would be a king, and still others which say he cares too little for the man in the sheepskin coat to risk his princely crown in a military venture. I went down, by special invitation, on a private train, to see his Highness cut the ribbon that stretched across the newly finished port of Bourgas. After the cannon had signalled the fact that the harbour was open to the commerce of the world, Prince Ferdinand turned from the end of the pier and strode back towards the shore, shaking hands and chatting a moment, with, as I thought, everybody. When he came to me I extended my hand as I would to Mr. Roosevelt, but the Prince stood still and fixed me with a withering glare. Another correspondent acquainted with us both came to the rescue and presented me to the Prince. The Prince mustered his English, which he said he had not employed for many a year, and conversed with me in my own tongue for quite five minutes. But he did not apologise for his rudeness.

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