Our conversation had a sudden ending. Two orderlies came to take the stretcher and bear it to a tent, the movement made the blanket slip, and once again the soldier raised himself instinctively--saw what was waiting for the surgeon’s knife, a mangled mass of splintered bones, torn tendons, rotting flesh, and fell back dead.
Perhaps it was better thus. A kindly providence had done what no man dared to do. That lithe and sinewy form, without its legs, might have contained a bitter heart, and added yet another drop to hatred’s overflowing cup.
In the Balkan Peninsula, monasteries are more than places of refuge for people with monastic minds, they minister to a wider public, and are at once hostels and shrines, centres of food supply and travellers’ gossip, where merchants market, while monks pray and sing. Their pious founders have left a saintly work behind them, theirs is an incense burnt in the furnace of affliction, mounting to heaven on waves of gratitude.
The Monastery of St. Joachim stands in a quiet valley, a mile or more from the main road which links Bulgarian Kjustendil with Turkish Uskub, or in Servian Skoplje. Down this main road the tide of war had swept, leaving a trail of empty granaries, of violated homes, and frightened, wailing children. The people bore these trials patiently, there was naught else to do, but when despair had overcome their hope, they one and all, Christians and infidels alike, sought consolation at the monastery set amid dark green trees. Thither there flocked a hungry, homeless crowd, seeking first food and shelter, then repose, and finding all in the great caravanserai, left standing by the tolerant Turks.
One evening, during the first Balkan War, a Servian officer and I arrived on horseback at the monastery gate. Close by there rose a spring covered with slabs of stone, the water tricking through an iron pipe into a rough-hewn trough. We paused to let our horses drink, and saw, lying upon the ground, a man, or what was left of one. His form was rigid, motionless, only the eyes moved, bright, black, beady eyes, which flitted restlessly from face to face, then turned towards the setting sun and stared, undazzled, at the flaming pageant, only to leave it soon, and throw quick glances here and there at objects nearer and more human.