CHAPTER II

NISH AND SALONIKA


To our dismay a rare thing happened--our train was punctual, and we
arrived in Nish at four o'clock. It was cold and misty. The station was
desolate and the town asleep. Around us in the courtyard ragged soldiers
were lying with their heads pillowed on brightly striped bags. A nice
old woman who had asked Jo how old she was, what relation Jan was to
her, whether they had children, and where she had learnt Serbian,
suddenly lost all her interest in us and hurried off with voluble
friends whose enormous plaits around their flat red caps betokened the
respectable middle-class women.

Piccadilly weepers vanished and a depressed little quartet was left on
the platform--our two selves, a lean schoolmaster, and an egg-shaped man
who never spoke a word. We found a clerk sitting in an office. He said
we could not leave our bags in his room, but as we made him own that we
could not put them anywhere else he looked the other way while we
dropped them in the corner.

In the faint mist of the early morning the great overgrown village of
one-storied houses seemed like a real town buried up to its attics in
fog. We found a café which was shut, and sat waiting on green chairs
outside. Around us old men were talking of the news in the papers. They
said that Bulgaria was making territorial demands, and as the Balkan
governments covet land above all things they felt pessimistic as to