Free Esprit de Corps by Lawrence Durrell Page A

subsided in the ooze. It was not a great distance—perhaps ten feet. But owing to the solid resistance such a large raft set up in the main current the pull was definitely outward. But as yet nobody was alarmed; indeed most of the members of the Corps thought it was part of a planned entertainment. I suppose most of the passengers on the Titanic turned in the night before the iceberg with just the same comfortable sense of well-being.
    â€œPolk-Mowbray himself was concerned, it is true, though he did not lose composure. ‘Can’t some of you secretaries get out and push it back to the bank?’ he asked; but the water was already too deep. For a long minute the lighted raft hung like a water-fly on the smooth surface of the river and then slowly began to move downstream in the calm night air, the candles fluttering softly, the band playing, and the Corps dancing or smoking or gossiping, thoroughly at peace with itself. There was at this stage some hope that at the next bend of the river the whole thing would run aground on the bank, and a few of us made preparations to grab hold of the log pontoons or the overhanging willows and halt our progress. But by ill luck an eddy carried us just too far into the centre of the river and we were carried past the spit of land, vainly groping at the tips of bushes.
    â€œBy now our situation deserved serious thought. There was literally no stop now until we reached Belgrade and here—the sweat started out on me as I thought of it—the Danube joins the Sava and causes something like a tidal bore, a permanent whirlpool. While the Sava is comparatively sluggish the Danube comes down from Rumania at about fourteen knots—impossible to swim in or ford. The point of junction is just below the fortress of Belgrade, a picturesque enough spot for those on dry land.…
    â€œIt was about five minutes before the full significance of our position began to dawn upon the Corps and by this time we were moving in stately fashion down the centre of the fairway, all lit up like a Christmas tree. Expostulations, suggestions, counter-suggestions poured from the lips of the diplomats and their wives in a dozen tongues.
    â€œUnknown to us, too, other factors were being introduced which were to make this a memorable night for us all. Yugoslavia, as you know, was hemmed in at this time by extremely angry Communist states which kept her in a perpetual state of alarm by moving troops about on her borders, or by floating recriminatory and sometimes pornographic literature down the rivers which intersected the country—in an attempt, one imagines, to unman Serbian Womanhood, if such a thing be possible. At any rate, spy-mania was at meridian and the Yugoslav forces lived in a permanent state of alertness. There were frequent rumours of armed incursions from Hungary and Czechoslovakia....
    â€œIt was in this context that some wretched Serbian infantryman at an observation post along the river saw what he took to be a large armed man-of-war full of Czech paratroops in dinner jackets and ball-dresses sailing upon Belgrade, the capital. He did not wait to verify this first impression. Glaucous-eyed, he galloped into Belgrade castle a quarter of an hour later on a foam-flecked mule with the news that the city was about to be invested. The tocsin was sounded, while we, blissfully unaware of this, sailed softly down the dark water to our doom.
    â€œIt was lucky that there was only one gun in Belgrade castle. This was manned by Comrade Popovic and a scratch team of Albanian Shiptars clad in skull caps of white wool and goatskin breeches. (Fearsome to look at because of his huge moustache and shapeless physique the Shiptar is really a peaceable animal, about as quarrelsome as a Labrador and with the personality of a goldfish.) Usually it took the team about a week to load the Gun, which was a relic left behind them by the departing Visigoths or Ostrogoths—I forget which. Strictly