HE rain fell in Mitrovitza and thinned the streets of women and little girls, and it was as though it washed the color from the world, for the women of Mitrovitza wear trousers of orange and vests of green, while their head-dresses are saffron and pale yellow. No women in all Serbia are as brilliantly dressed as the Jewish women of Mitrovitza. They look equivocally at the men from their long eyes, for the town is a sink where the races and tribes of the Balkans meet. Here they eddy and swirl about one another; then they stream out over the roads through Albania to Montenegro. They go south to Uskub and north over the mountainous paths of the Great Retreat. Here come the Albanians from the hills in their white homespun clothes, braided boldly in black with the slash of their red sashes around their waists, while the soldiers of France and England meet those of Serbia in all the streets. Some come to Mitrovitza and see in it a great and wicked city and drink of its wickedness; and some see in it a lost and vicious little hole, a town part Turkish, part Albanian, and part Serb. For here begins the welter of the irreconcilable hates of Macedonia.
I walked past the shop where the Albanians were weaving rugs; past the bazaars, outside of which hung kerchiefs of scarlet and green and white and lemon and orange; and over the bridge, looking for bread for my journey. Turkish women, black even to their veils, hurried past me in hasty stealth. A cart drawn by water-buffalo waggled by. I stopped at the bread-shop, where the old Turk, in a well-wound turban, white stockings on his feet, sat cross-legged beside his piles of round, flat loaves.
A coal-black "madagash"—a French Colonial—his red fez on his black head, asked, in Serbian, "How much the bread, Turko?"
At a little distance a little boy stood watching me. He was dressed in rags, but so is half of Serbia. His gaze, uninsistent, speculative, and suffering, did not leave me, so I went to him and asked him if he were hungry, at which he shook his head, settled himself closer within his rags, and slopped off, the mud clinging to his big opankas.
I passed him again as I turned my back on the town, its strolling soldiers, its swarming boys, its tortuous byways ankle-deep in mud, and its white minarets.
The station, like all those of Turkish towns, was distant from the city and isolated as a pest-house, for the Turk feared and mistrusted the railway and kept the abomination as far away as he could.
No train was ready; no engine was in sight; nothing indicated the departure of the Uskub train but the groups of soldiers standing patiently in the rain by the track, which stopped with finality near some ruins. Some were in ragged overcoats laden with equipment-packs holding out their overcoats like bustles. Some were in mustard khaki—cloth bought from the English. Some in horizon blue, bought from the French—a nondescript, rag-tag army, bronzed, lean, formidable, and composed of gentle, innocent men.
Time passed; the slate-colored rain fell as the little engine puffed up oisily, as though to look at us, and puffed away, Groups of people laden with bundles and boxes came down the hill. They were wet and forlorn, and gradually they filled up the station-agent's room. I sat on my duffle-bag; the woman from Madnavo sat on her valise, her head in her hands, and the Turk from Mitrovitza huddled in the doorway.
The soldiers began to talk to pass the time.
"Where do you come from?"
"From Belgrade."
"On foot?"
"How else?"
"I go to Nish—"
"I have not seen my family for eight years—"
"I go to Salonique—"
A light feeling of friendship moved among us—a fresh breeze that cleansed the air, stagnant with waiting. They began to laugh. A soldier in horizon blue came up to me.
"Have you any one to carry your bags, sestra? No? Then I charge myself
with them."
The Turk from Mitrovitza sat on his bundle and sang. The air smelled of wet clothes, of garlic, of packages of food.
The engine puffed up again; some of the soldiers climbed into the wagons. We still waited. The ragged boy I had seen in town stood on the platform. Presently he began to cry. He cried without violence, but as though the hopelessness of life had made his tears well over. The soldiers gathered around him, kind in their curiosity. "Why do you cry, mali?" they asked. He cried on disconsolately, without answering.
Then his story dripped out slowly, like rain falling. He raised his head and looked at the soldiers and talked without emphasis, with the manner of recounting the inevitable. There was no protest and no hope in his voice.