Eastern Nights - and Flights Part 14

I jumped out of bed, opened the door, seized Ibrahim round the middle, and flung him into the corridor, while he yelled with surprise. Next I sat down on the bed, and began tearing the sheets into long strips. The corporal of the guard, with another Turkish soldier, half opened the door, cautiously, and looked inside. I stared at them blankly, then got into bed and lay down quietly, facing the wall.

Ibrahim returned presently with the doctor of the day, who entered with a surprised and quizzical "_Qu' est-ce qu'il y'a?_"

"Doctor," I said, "I fail to remember what I've been doing during the last five minutes. But I feel I've been through a crisis. Even now my head swims. I suffer from acute _vertige_."

Followed a long explanation in Turkish, with gestures, from Ibrahim.

The doctor felt my pulse, which fortunately had accelerated during the calculated excitement of heaving the orderly out of the room.

"_Calmez-vous, donc_," said the doctor. "_Tout sera bien apres quelques semaines._" I liked the suggestion of "some weeks," for anything might happen in that time.

Before leaving me the doctor prescribed some sort of a bromide mixture, with calming qualities. The first performance, I felt, had been rather a success. As for the bromide mixture, I poured it out of the window during the night. The bottle was filled again in the morning.

Next day was a fitless one; and by the evening I felt that something must be done to maintain my reputation. Still knowing little of how a man with my complaints must act, I thought--wrongly, as I discovered later--that somnambulism would fit in with the general scheme of abnormality.

I stayed awake until two A.M.; and then, wearing a nightshirt, walked woodenly into the pa.s.sage, with arms outstretched and head upheld. The guard was dozing on a bench that faced the door, and when I pa.s.sed he took not the least notice. Feeling hurt at such disregard, I turned and pa.s.sed him again, this time taking care to nudge his knee. He rubbed his eyes, shrilled an exclamation, and began running in the opposite direction. When he returned with the sergeant of the guard, a quarter of an hour later, I was in bed and apparently asleep.

During the week that followed I gave several minor performances. Soon, however, I was ousted from my single-bedded blessedness by a more worthy madman. A Turkish soldier pa.s.sed into a violent delirium, and ran down the corridor on all fours, calling out that he was a horse.

This was far more striking than anything I had imagined or attempted.

The delirious Turk was therefore confined apart in my little room while I shared a ward with four Turkish officers.

I chose melancholia for the first demonstration in the new quarters.

All day I stared at the ceiling, and answered questions with a rough "_oui_" or "_non_" without looking at the questioner. Then, at three A.M., when the four Turks were asleep, I picked up a medicine bottle, half filled with the bromide medicine, and flung it at the wall. It struck, tinkled, and scattered in fragments; while three of the Turkish officers woke and sat up in bed.

"Air-raid?" suggested one of them--for at that time British bombers from Mudros were visiting Constantinople on most moonlit nights.

"No, a bottle," said another, switching on a light and pointing to the splintered gla.s.s.

He proceeded to protest angrily in Turkish, and I caught the words "mad Englishman." He turned off the light, and all lay down again. When the night orderly arrived he found everything quiet, and dared ask no questions for fear of disturbing the Turkish officers.

Next morning, however, the senior officer in the ward protested to the chief doctor against being submitted to disturbance and possible violence from a mentally afflicted Englishman. I was then moved into a large room where were W., R., Ms., and other officer prisoners.

To sham violence before fellow-Britishers was almost impossible, I found, even though they cooperated in casting dust into Turkish eyes. I modified the fits into starts and twitchings whenever a sudden noise coincided with the presence of a doctor. The melancholia and loss of memory I retained, for these were easy of accomplishment.

In any case I should have been obliged to become normal enough for walks outside the hospital, if my hopes were to become realities.

Staying in Constantinople when the rest of the party had returned to Anatolia was all very well, but it availed nothing unless I could get into touch with people who might help me to plan an escape.

Each Sunday morning such British officers as were not confined to bed attended service at the Crimean Memorial Church, off the Grande Rue de Pera. I wished to make use of this fact in my search for helpers.

Besides the clergyman himself there were still a few British civilians free in Constantinople, and most of them visited the church on Sunday mornings. Above all, there would be the chance of asking advice from Miss Whittaker, a very plucky and n.o.ble lady who had taken great risks upon herself in helping prisoners. Already she had managed to visit us at Gumuch Souyou, in the company of a Dutch diplomat's wife who came with official sanction.

A fortnight of fairly mild behaviour gained me permission to attend divine service. With guards keeping a yard or so behind us we walked through the Grande Rue de Pera, with its crowd of evident sympathizers, and so to the church at the bottom of a winding side street. Then, for an hour, I was in England. Even to such a constant absentee from church services as myself all England was suggested by the pretty little building, with its floor smoothly flagged in squares, its simply compact altar, its well-ordered pews, its consciously reverent congregation, its rippling organ, and--yes, by the great truths and dogmatic commonplaces that were plat.i.tudinized from its pulpit. The very sermon--dull, undistinguished, and full of the obvious levelness that one hears in any of a thousand small churches on any Sunday--brought joy unspeakable because of its a.s.sociations.

The guards, who had been standing at the back of the church with hat on head, refused to let us remain near the door when the congregation dispersed. It was inadvisable to bribe them in public; so with a friendly wave from Miss Whittaker, and sympathetic looks from unknown British civilians, we left at once. We crossed the Golden Horn to Stamboul, and lunched at our usual restaurant, where I met Pappas Effendi again.

Presently, in strolled another old acquaintance--Colonel Prince Constantine Avaloff, the Georgian. He had just arrived at Psamatia from Afion-kara-Hissar, and brought with him the latest news from that camp--the arrival of a new commandant who seemed quite pleasant, the success of the latest concert, the delivery of a batch of parcels, the increase in price of _arak_, and other of the small happenings that filled the deadly life of a prisoner of war in Turkey. For me the most interesting item of news was that Captain Tom White was to be sent to a Constantinople hospital. Although he had said nothing about escaping, I rather thought he intended to try it. If he came to Gumuch Souyou he would be a useful companion, for I knew him to be both ingenious and unafraid. Meanwhile, I revealed my own hopes to the prince, who promised to help in any way possible. He was likely to be of use, for as a result of Georgia's submission to Germany, he was now free to move about the city without a guard. I walked back to Pera light-heartedly, with an instinctive knowledge that opportunity was in the offing.

A tousled scarecrow of a man was sitting up in a hitherto empty bed as we reentered the prisoners' ward of the hospital. His long, untrimmed hair hung over an unwashed neck, his cheeks were sunken, his hands were clasped over the bedclothes that covered his shins. He never looked at us, but with an expression of the most unswerving austerity continued to read a book that lay open on his knees. As I pa.s.sed I saw, from the ruling and paragraphing of the pages, that it must be a copy of the Bible.

I looked round for enlightenment, only to find myself face to face with an even stranger figure. In a bed opposite the scarecrow sat a man whose face was unnaturally white. The young forehead was divided and sub-divided by deep wrinkles; a golden beard tufted from the chin; the head was covered by a too-large fez made of white linen. He grinned and waved an arm toward the Turkish orderly; but when we looked at him, he shrank back in apparent affright, then hid under the bedclothes.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Captain T. W. White, Australian Flying Corps, who accompanied Captain Alan Bott in the 1,000 mile Odyssey to Freedom, starting from Constantinople. The clothes are the disguise worn by Captain White in Constantinople.]

"English officers," said the orderly, "come from Haidar Pasha Hospital.

Both mad."

"I am not English," protested in Turkish the strange befezzed head as it shot from under the bedclothes. "I am a good Turk. The English are my enemies. I wrote to His Excellency Enver Pasha, telling him I wished to become a Turkish officer."

"_Mulazim Heel_," continued the Turk, pointing toward the scarecrow.

Then, as he swung his hand in the direction of the man who had written to Enver Pasha, "_Mulazim Jaw-nes_."

"My name is not Jones," the Fantastic shouted, still speaking in Turkish, "I am Ahmed Hamdi Effendi."

Yet he was indeed Jones, just as much as the scarecrow opposite him was Hill. We had heard stories of their extravagant doings, but this was our first sight of the famous lunatics whose reputation had spread through every prison-camp in Turkey. The Turks believed them to be mad, and although there were sceptics, so did many of the British prisoners.

When, after watching the pair for several hours, we went into the garden that evening and discussed them, we agreed that they were either real lunatics or brilliant actors.

It had all begun months earlier at Yozgad. To pa.s.s the weary time Jones and Hill dabbled in and experimented with hypnotism and telepathy. By making ingenuity and the conjuror's artifice (at which Hill was an expert) adjuncts of their seances, they nonplussed fellow-prisoners and Turks alike; for it was impossible to tell whether trickery or something inexplicable was the basis of their astonishing demonstrations. By means of the Spirit of Music (a hidden lamp with the wick turned too high), the Buried Treasure Guarded by Arms (some coins and an old pistol that were first placed in position and then "revealed" by digging), the Miraculous Photographs (taken with a secret camera designed and constructed by themselves), and other devices, they reduced the camp commandant and his staff to a state of bewildered fear. When they had hoodwinked the commandant into the belief that they could exchange mind-messages with local civilians, he confined them in a small room, and allowed no communication with other prisoners.

From this time onward, moreover, Jones and Hill showed apparent dread of their fellow-prisoners. The British officers at Yozgad wanted to destroy them, they informed the Turkish commandant, adding a plea for protection. Meanwhile, their hair and beards grew longer and more untrimmed, their general appearance stranger and wilder. Perhaps their most impressive exploit at Yozgad was when a guard found them hanging side by side on ropes that were suspended from a beam, the chairs that supported their weight having been kicked away just before he entered the room. He cut down the dangling bodies, and his tale confirmed the commandant in the belief that the spiritualistic prisoners were altogether insane. A few days later they went under escort to Constantinople, and were admitted to Haidar Pasha Hospital.

From this hospital their reputation spread all over Constantinople.

Long before they were transferred to Gumuch Souyou I had heard how Hill read the Bible all day, and uttered never a word except when he prayed aloud; and how Jones, having in two months learned to talk Turkish perfectly, proclaimed himself a Turk, and would speak no other language. His name, he insisted time and again, was Ahmed Hamdi Effendi. He disregarded all Britishers in Haidar Pasha Hospital unless it were to tell the Turkish doctor that Jones was mad, and therefore, as the afflicted of Allah, not to be blamed.

Once he threw himself into the pond in the garden. Once, having received the usual Red Cross monthly remittance from an official of the Dutch Legation, he tore the bank-notes in two, threw the sc.r.a.ps of paper across the room, and declared that he wanted no English money.

During an air-raid over Constantinople he ran into the open and demanded a gun, so that he might shoot down the British aeroplanes.

At about sundown on his first evening with us Hill closed the Bible, stepped out of bed, and knelt down, facing the east. Then, without a pause, he recited prayers in a loud voice for twenty minutes. Several Turks came in to listen, while Jones, tapping his befezzed head, explained to them that the kneeling figure was mad.

Each morning and each evening Hill knelt on the floor and prayed aloud.

Sometimes during the night he would walk to another bedside, wake up its occupant, and exhort him to prayer. For the rest he spoke never a word other than "Yes" or "No," or "I don't know," in answer to questions. All day he sat in bed, with eyes riveted on the Bible by unswerving concentration, or clasped his head and appeared lost in meditation. When the doctor examined him he paid not the slightest attention, but when an effort was made to take away the Bible, he clutched it desperately, and was evidently ready to use violence. His hair and beard grew longer and more tousled, until he was forcibly shaved; whereupon, with his hollowed cheeks and sunken, glowing eyes, he looked more of a scarecrow than ever.

Jones kept himself quite dapper in his own peculiar fashion. His curly golden beard and moustache seemed to be his especial pride. At first Ms. attempted conversations with him; but as he always turned away and showed fright, we left him alone. Yet twice he sought out the chief doctor, and complained that the British officers wanted to murder him.

Being a Turk, he continued, why was he kept in a room with Englishmen, who were his enemies and wanted to hurt him?

Beyond laughing and remarking how sad it was that our comrade should be so mad, the chief doctor took no notice. Thereupon Ahmed Hamdi sat down and wrote a letter of furious complaint to His Excellency Enver Pasha, Minister of War in the Young Turk government, and incidentally the most ruthless desperado in that all-desperado body, the Committee of Union and Progress.

I still remember every detail and movement of an absurd scene. Ms. lay asleep one hot afternoon, with a bare foot protruding through the bars at the bottom of the bed. R. crawled across the floor, intending to crouch beneath Ms.'s bedstead and tickle the sole of his foot with a feather. Jones, whose bed was next to that of Ms., shrank back and made a tentative move toward the door as R. glided nearer. R. looked up casually from his all-fours position and found the lunatic's face glaring at him with wide-open, rolling eyes. The pair stared at each other surprisedly for a few seconds, then Ahmed Hamdi Jones yelled, leaped from his bed, and ran out of the room.

If that was acting, we agreed, it was very wonderful acting. We inclined to the theory that Hill and Jones had in the beginning merely shammed lunacy, as a pa.s.sport for England, but that under the mental stress and nervous strain of living their abnormal roles they had really become insane. Another suggestion was that they lost their reason already at Yozgad, as a result of dabbling overmuch in spiritualism.

It was White who solved the mystery, although at the time he revealed it only to me. With a badly marked ankle (the result of a too-hot poultice) well in evidence, he arrived one day from Afion-kara-Hissar, and suggested to the doctors that the said ankle was tubercular. He was placed in the bed next to the scarecrow's.

Hill had let it be known that he was undertaking a forty-days' penance, during which he would eat nothing but bread. All other food offered him by the Turks he ignored. After a few days of semi-starvation his cheek-bones were more prominent than ever, his cheeks more hollowed, and the colour of his face was an unhealthy faint yellow.

In the middle of the night, when everybody else was asleep, White woke him and pa.s.sed over a note. In this, as a fellow-Australian, he offered any sort of a.s.sistance that might be acceptable. Then he handed Hill some chocolate and biscuits taken from a newly arrived parcel. These the scarecrow accepted, and, not daring to whisper in case somebody were listening, wrote a sanely worded message thanking White for the offer, which he accepted. It contained also a warning that, for safety's sake, the other Britishers must be led to believe that both he and Jones were mad.

Thereafter White fed him secretly each night. In the daytime he maintained his long fast, to the great astonishment of the Turks. White also helped by complaining that the madman woke him at night-time, and asked him to pray.

Later, having heard escape talk between White and me, Hill wrote down an address where we might hide in Constantinople, and let me into the secret that he was pretending lunacy, so as to be sent out of the country as a madman.

Now that I knew the scarecrow and Ahmed Hamdi Jones to be as sane as myself, I marvelled at their flawless presentation of different aspects of lunacy, and at the determination which allowed them to play their strange parts for months. Hill, in particular, had a difficult role, and I wondered that his mind never gave way under it. To sit up in bed for twelve hours a day, reading and rereading a Bible; to talk to n.o.body and look at n.o.body, and to show no sign of interest when vital subjects were being discussed by fellow-prisoners a few yards away; to pray aloud for nearly half an hour each morning and evening, in the presence of a dozen people; to maintain an expression of rigid melancholy, and not to let even the ghost of a smile touch one's features for many weeks--this must require almost inhuman concentration.