“Hard work cutting that railway,” said Methuen with mild professional interest; the river looked too strong for any swimmer. “It’s well guarded,” said Porson, “though one good burst in a tunnel.…”
They rolled onwards between the flickering crowns of the trees which reached up at the road from the river bank. Behind them the yellow cloud of dust volleyed away down the road reducing visibility to nothing. Yellowhammers and magpies frolicked in the trees, and here and there the stem rock-faces to their right stood back and fanned away into dome-like mountains, steeply clad with beech and fir, and showing small pockets of cultivation. A crumbling Frankish fortress dominated one height and Methuen caught the flicker of sunlight on something which might have been the barrel of a gun at the eastern corner. He had a small but powerful pair of glasses in his kit but there was no time to train them on this tempting target. “There’s a company of soldiers up in the fort,” said Porson. “They supply the pickets for the railway. Two machine-guns. Nothing heavier.”
He was gradually reducing speed and the great car rolled effortlessly along the beautiful river road, in and out of the shadows thrown by the trees. They turned a corner and the fort was swallowed; and here the trees grew in great clusters, chestnut and eucalyptus raising their dusty crowns to the sky. “We’re coming to it,” said Porson; round the next corner there was a white milestone by a ruined signalman’s hut which was their marker. “All set,” said Methuen quietly and gripped his bed-roll as he let down the massive window of the car. “Do you see it?” The milestone climbed out of the mauve shadows of the rock-face and came towards them like a pointing finger. “Let her go. Good luck!” cried Porson. Methuen gave a heave and tossed his bed-roll into the ditch; then opening the door he plunged out after it into the deep grass, slipping and sliding to the bottom as the great car gathered speed and covered him in a cloud of pungent dust. Porson gave a hoot on the klaxon which echoed like the wild cry of some solitary bird among the rocks.
CHAPTER NINE. The Lone Fisherman
Methuen lay against the steep bank, his face pressed to the moist grass for what seemed hours. The noise of the Mercedes died away gradually and was replaced by the roaring of the Ibar in its stony bed. The cloud of dust thinned gradually and began to settle, while out of a neighbouring tree came the clear fluting notes of bird-song. He felt his own heart beating against the moist cool grass. Would the police car never come? He strained his ears for the sound of its engines; his heavy duffle coat was warm. A cricket chirped in the grass beside him. Then, after what seemed an age, he heard the whistle of the Buick’s engine which gradually increased. “They’re taking it pretty easily,” he said to himself. The car swept round the corner and he heard its radio playing a Viennese waltz. Then he was engulfed once more in the impenetrable wall of white dust and taking advantage of it he climbed to his feet, gathered up his bed-roll and galloped for the cover of the trees.
Within a hundred yards of where he had jumped a narrow gorge opened at right-angles to the main river-gorge and here the swift and shallow Studenitsa river rolled and tumbled from a series of rock-balconies, covered with slippery moss, to join the larger river. The air was dense with spray, and the trees leaned out of the sheer cliff at all angles. The cover here was plentiful and good, and avoiding the mule-track, Methuen climbed deliberately up beside the river, slipping and sliding on the loose surface of leaf-mould, and pushing his way through the dense clusters of tree-ferns towards the summit, eight hundred feet above.
The going was hard but in the clear spray-drenched air of the valley he felt his spirits rise. From time to time he paused for a breather, gazing from some small clearing of greenery to where the road below him ran like a white scar beside the black river. At one point he came out on a spur overlooking the mule-track and saw a group of peasants driving two ox-carts loaded with wood down towards the valley. As far as his memory served him, there were only two small hamlets along the Studenitsa river, and the only human activity apart from land cultivation centred about a sawmill which flanked the monastery at the summit. Here he had camped once beside the smooth river and fished away the better part of a summer with a Serbian friend. In the evening they had walked up to the sawmill to drink plum-brandy with the monks and peasants and to share the fishing gossip of the community. Here too they had experimented with different ways of cooking trout, and he remembered clearly the taste of fish baked in the sour cream called kaimak which serves the peasant for butter.
But these memories did not cause him to relax his vigilance and he moved along in the shadow of the fir trees, keeping the river in sight but never venturing out into the open. In half an hour he had reached the summit and here the river broadened with the valley, while the hills opened into deeply indented upland valleys traversed by delicious footpaths which circled the squares of luxuriant maize and the dappled hayfields which lay open to the afternoon sunlight.
Here the oak forests ran down to the water’s edge and he could walk on grass richly studded with flowers. The world seemed empty of human beings. To the east a flock of sheep grazed without a shepherd who was doubtless fishing in the shadowy river below the sawmill. Here too he came upon orchards full of plum trees and hedges riotous with blackberries so large that in spite of himself he stopped to gather some. Away to the left, hidden by a shoulder of hill lay the monastery, and from this direction he could hear the whimper of a saw; but he gave it a wide berth and struck up the valley, guided by his memories of a summer he had believed forgotten. He himself was rather astonished by the accuracy of his memory, for in his enchanted valley nothing seemed to have changed. In the silence the river ran on with its gentle rattle of water stirring pebbles — a pearly shadow of sound against which the songs of the birds rose bright and poignant on the moist air. The hedges were thick with a variety of flowers, and his quick eye detected the presence of old friends, yellow snapdragon, sky-blue flax. Here the hills ran away in a series of verdant undulations to where, softly painted against the sky, the towering mountains of central Serbia rose, lilac and green and red; and in all this lovely country there were no signs of life, no mule-teams raising dust, no bands of armed men watching from the woods. It baffled him to imagine how Anson could have got himself into trouble here, the going was so easy, the points of visibility so many, the cover so good.
The sun was still high enough to be hot and he was still sweating profusely from the steep climb, so he bathed his face in the icy river, and allowed himself a five-minute rest in a copse while he examined the hills around him with his glasses. There was little enough to interest him. Against one remote skyline he caught sight of oxen ploughing, and to the east he picked up a peasant house with pointed gables, but for the rest the world looked newly born: unpopulated. Yet here and there were large areas of maize and barley growing which argued the presence of husbandmen, and the sheep tinkled their way across the pastures to the north of him. High up in the cloudless June sky an eagle hovered. The light skirmishing wind blew puff-balls and bits of straw across the river.
Around one wooded curve of the river he came upon a solitary monk fishing under a tree and was forced to climb the hill from the back in order not to pass him, but even he hardly communicated a sense of life to the landscape in which he sat so motionless, back against a tree, his rod propped between his knees. Perhaps he was sleeping. Methuen watched him for a while from a clump of maize-stalks hoping to see him hook a fish, but in vain. The river ran as smoothly under his line as the grass upon which he sat. From time to time a nut dropped off the tree into the water. “Dry fishing,” said Methuen to himself, “that’s the real ticket,” and scanned the dimpled waters to see what the fish were rising to: but this was the wildest self-indulgence and he pulled himself together.