was now clear from what he was recounting. The gist of his discourse was that this new rebellion in Albania was quite unlike any that had preceded it. Now, for the first time, several of the tribes that had traditionally been deadly enemies had joined together to fight the suzerainty of Turkey. Christians and Muslims were fighting side by side and what is more, they had somehow managed to obtain a supply of up-to-date guns as well as apparently limitless ammunition. Many people had been speculating where this came from, especially as the rebels had no funds. The money must have been given to them, but by whom? To Tamas the answer was obvious: it could only be Nikita, the King of Montenegro. One amazing fact led only to this conclusion. Since the anti-Turk movement had begun small bands of the insurgents had taken refuge from time to time across the Montenegrin border; and had swiftly come back. This had never happened before. If any Albanian had dared to set so much as a foot across the frontier into the border district of Chernagora, they were immediately slaughtered by the Chernagorians, while the Albanians did the same to anyone coming in the opposite direction. If this ancient tribal hatred had been abruptly changed to friendship, only one man could possibly have managed it, and that was the wily old Nikita. Therefore it must be he who was providing the ammunition and guns. But where did he get it all from? Well, a year before he had told the correspondent of the French newspaper La Gloire that Montenegro obtained her armaments not only from Serbia but also from the great international firm of Schneider-Creuzot. The question was, where did Nikita get his money from, for it was well-known that the Montenegrin treasury was empty? Here again the answer was obvious to anyone with eyes to see: it must be Russia. It must be the Tsar who paid for Nikita’s guns and therefore also for those of the Albanian rebels. There was something very sinister going on in the Balkans. It was significant that when Nikita, then merely Prince of Montenegro, proclaimed himself King, Russian grand-dukes were present at the celebrations along with the kings of Serbia and Bulgaria. This in itself was strange since a couple of years before the last two were hardly on speaking terms and were known to detest each other.
The final proof of all this was that Torkut Pasha had been doing all he could to close the Montenegrin border! It was this last move which had meant that the only route left open was to the north through the lands of the Miridiots.
‘Wouldn’t it be better from the South?’
‘Perhaps, but one has to pass the Malissor territory above Elbasa …’
At this the whole group burst into a storm of laughter for ‘elbasa’ in Hungarian means nothing less than ‘Fuck off!’
From time to time one of his listeners, bolder than the others, had ventured some mocking pun if only to make fun of the newcomer. The general restraint did not last long. Each time Tamas used some outlandish foreign name they did not know, someone would seize upon it, mispronounce it, and turn it into an obscene joke. And after the last remark they were almost falling out of their chairs with laughter, the same men who, a few moments earlier, had been making abstruse political arguments with such deadly seriousness that they were ready to fight one another to prove a point. The sad truth was that all of them found anything that did not concern their own country fit only for mockery and laughter. To them such matters were as remote from reality as if they had been happening on Mars; and therefore fit only for schoolboy puns and witty riposte.
Laczok looked round angrily and was about to castigate his audience when the door opened and a waiter came in.
‘Dinner is served, gentlemen. The ladies are already on their way to the supper-room.’
Everyone started to get up and the discussion was over. Most of those present hurried to the door for they were hungry after all that talk and laughter, and no one wanted to keep his wife waiting. For a brief moment Stanislo Gyeroffy stayed behind