Читать книгу An Englishwoman in Angora онлайн

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When I told my guide that from the deck of the Pierre Loti the town showed scarcely a sign of fire, he promptly led me—for eight hours—through the most horrible débris! Instructed to treat me with great respect, he marched steadily ahead with all the gravity of a funeral mute. He had been told, moreover, to reconstruct, as it were, the whole city for my information, and he was obviously determined to overlook no detail. He pointed out exactly how the fire had been planned, and why it had broken out too soon. Passing the Stores, he laid a finger upon the very spots marked by grenades that Greeks and Armenians had thrown. There was a grim disgust and disdain in his last comment: “And all this funniness is supposed to have been done by us!”—a strange use of the word funniness.

On another occasion, resting a moment among the ruins of what had once been an altar, watching the poor Turkish natives as they raked the débris for firewood, we were suddenly surrounded by a most dismal procession of limping cats and dogs, thin as boards, crying with hunger and pain, homeless, maimed, and with none to claim them or cherish their shrunken limbs. I suggested that we should buy a little ether and send them to their long sleep. My companion was shocked beyond words.