LITTLE BLUE BOOK NO. =1492=
Edited by E. Haldeman-Julius
Stories of Gypsy Life
Konrad Bercovici
HALDEMAN-JULIUS PUBLICATIONS
GIRARD, KANSAS
Copyright, 1929,
Doubleday, Doran Co.
Published by Arrangement
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
CONTENTS
Page
The Mill on the River 5
Ripe Wheat 20
Sava 42
STORIES OF GYPSY LIFE
THE MILL ON THE RIVER
It was an old mill, Dimitru’s mill on the Bistritza River. It had been
run by the family of Dimitru long before any other mills had ever been
put on either side of the river, all through the Moldavia country.
The dykes and the water wheels were of old oak, cut from trees in the
forest when the country paid yearly tribute to Turkey and was ruled by
the Fanariots of Stamboul.
Within the mill were fifty pairs of millstones which, grinding wheat
and corn, had themselves been ground so thin that they had no weight to
mill any more the hard grain growing in that part of Roumania. These
old millstones were the pride of the family, for not another mill in
the country could show so many.
When anybody said anything about Dimitru’s mill or the manner in which
he milled, the tall, black-bearded, wide-chested, brown-eyed miller
would stretch to his full height, and pounding the left side of his
chest with his right hand, he would cry:
“Look at these stones! Fifty pair of stones have ground flour in this
mill. I myself have used five pair. This is the sixth one on the shaft.”
Those millstones were like arms of the escutcheon of a nobleman, which
no man was allowed to impugn.
At the inn Dimitru was looked upon with respect by the peasants. He
was one of the oldest inhabitants of the village. Indeed, the village
itself, clustered as it was about the mill, was known as Dimitru’s Mill
Village. For not only did they mill flour there, but they cut logs that
were let down from the heights of the Carpathians early every spring,
and they pressed oil out of pumpkin seeds, and carded wool, and even
worked things out at a lathe which Dimitru himself had installed there;
at first merely to satisfy a whim he had had after he had first seen a
lathe work in another village, and then, as he grew more proficient, to
make furniture for most of the people in the village. Back of the mill
there was a shop in which carts and wheels were made, and chairs and
tables; and even small husking machines, patterned after one that had
been bought in Austria. The water wheel provided the power for all the
work.
The inn, the church, the school, the mayor’s office, the situation
of every building was reckoned by its distance from the mill. During
the winter, when there was only little work to do, the elders of the
village would assemble in the mill, and watching the still in which the
mash of plums and pears, grown in the neighborhood, was distilled into
spirits, watching the drops fall into the receptacle that sat under the
long copper worm, they would tell the tales they had heard from their
mothers and grandmothers, who in turn had heard them from their parents
and grandparents--stories of visitations of wolves; tales of sorceries,
of witches which had risen up riding in the air on broomsticks,
and of horses that could run so fast they disappeared from sight in
less time than it takes to blink an eye. They recalled the different
battles--battles with the Turks, battles with the Russians, battles
with the Hungarians; births of five-legged calves and two-headed
chickens, and the reappearances of deceased men whose ghosts were
forever roaming about this, that and the other place.
Dimitru repeated an old tale of his own family, of how the stones of
his mill had stopped once by themselves while some corn was being
ground. From behind the stones groaned a voice which was recognized as
being the voice of Vasili, Vasili Yoan Stefans, who had died only a few
months before.
“Mill not this corn,” the voice had called. “It has been stolen from my
granary by Panait, the Greek. Give it back to my wife lest my children
starve this winter.”
The millstones refused to budge or turn until every grain of flour
which had already been ground was swept out clean and returned to the
bag from which the corn had been taken. And even then the stones would
not move, although the water wheels turned and everything else was in
motion. The wool was being carded, the logs were being sawn; only the
millstones refused to turn. Not until the widow had been called and
the corn belonging to her had been returned, and not until Panait had
confessed to stealing the grain, had the stones turned again.
And there were many tales, similar to that one, centered about the
mill. For the mill had also refused to grind grain when the Russians
had invaded the country a century ago, and had refused to grind when
the Turks had come. It was the mill on the Bistritza that ground wheat
and corn and pressed oil and sawed logs and turned the lathe only for
those belonging to the land. And Dimitru was the owner of that mill.
Dimitru had a son, and a daughter whom he had married off when very
young. The son, like all the sons back in the family, was preparing
himself to take over the mill of his father when the time should come.
For even if he were to take a wife while his father was yet alive,
there was enough room for him and his wife in the house. And even if
he were to raise a family, there was enough room and enough field for
him to pasture his dowry of cows and sheep, and to raise enough fodder
for them. He had indeed already taken off a good deal of the burden of
his father, for while the old man busied himself with his cart shop,
preferring the lathe to the mill, George was in complete charge of the
stones. And he was as good a miller as his father.
But although he joked and played around with most of the young girls
who came to the mill, although he danced with all of them at the inn,
teasing, singing, joking with them, there was not one who could say
that he was giving her preference over the others. Tall, dark, with
big brown eyes, the lashes of which were always covered with a thin
white powder, the dark, tufty brows looking like those of an old man
because of a fine flour powder always on them, he was a good dancer,
and his voice rose above the voices of the others when any singing was
being done at the inn. At the wrestling matches on Sunday there were
few youngsters who dared to match him. And he was gay and always happy.
And it was known that although he was allowed to take one-tenth of the
flour he milled, in payment for milling it, from everybody, he took
only half that amount, and sometimes not even that from the poor and
the widows of the country. Indeed, many a widow had brought half a bag
of corn and returned home with a full bag of corn flour, George yelling
at the top of his voice, when the widow claimed there had been some
mistake, that he was an honest miller.
“You have brought one bag of corn and not two, widow of Jorga,” he
would silence the protesting woman, not giving her any chance or time
to explain herself.
“You have brought one bag, and I know you have brought only one bag! Am
I a miller, or a thief, or what?” he would shout, and show great anger,
as he would push her out of the mill.
One winter night, while the wind was howling, and the water wheel,
raised from the frozen river, was squeaking and groaning, and the storm
was beating savagely against the windows and doors of the mill, one of
the villagers sitting about the walled-in stove, in the ashes of which
the potatoes were being baked, asked:
“George, whom are you going to marry?”
Dimitru gave his son no time to answer. “He will marry the one who will
bring him a good enough dowry,” he answered, instead of his son.
One by one they passed in review all the marriageable daughters of the
village. They knew all of them. And when Dimitru had shaken his head to
the last one, the _staroste_--the elder of the village--trembling and
with shaking fists, thundered into the face of the man:
“Is it, then, the death of one of the married men that you are waiting
for, to marry your son?”
George had been making fun of all that was said. He had taken it all as
a joke. But to the thundering voice of the _staroste_ he replied:
“I wish everyone long life in this village, and in every other one.
When I am ready to marry, I shall make my own choice.”
“Indeed, my son wants to get married to some pauper. I have given six
pair of oxen as dowry to my daughter, six pair of oxen and one hundred
gold pieces. But he may want to marry some pauper!”
“A time will come,” George answered. “My time will come. But it shall
be of my own choice, not of anybody else’s.”
“Well said,” spoke the gray-bearded _staroste_.
Old Dimitru remained silent.
Then they all sat down to sample the new prune juice that was dripping
from the copper worm. It was better that such discussion end in joy, so
they sang their saddest songs.
Finally George remarked, on looking toward the idle stones, “It is a
pity they should be idle so long.”
George was never happy but when the stones turned around.
“This is a water mill,” his father answered. “When the Bistritza
freezes, the mill freezes.”
“I know, Father.” He was a miller and lived only when the mill lived.
“But it is a pity that the stones should not be turning when the
Bistritza freezes.”
“If it were a windmill, you would be saying half the time the same
thing,” another man of the group mused.
“If it were a horse mill, the mill would not be turning at night,”
another man said in jest.
Whereupon one of the men, who had served in the army, and had been far
away in a large city, began to speak about a large, steam-power mill
which he had seen on his travels. A steam mill. One prepared logs to
fire the engine during the summer, and then in winter one had the mill
go whether the river was frozen or not.
George mused impatiently, “What a pity the Bistritza freezes!”
During the first month of the winter, after the river had frozen, he
had had some work to do. He had sharpened every tooth and smoothed out
the grain of the stones, until the teeth were as sharp as steel edges.
He had cleaned and adjusted and readjusted everything. He had made it
all ready to go, and now he was anxious to hear the whirl and turn of
the mill, grinding and crunching all that was shoved into it.
“What a pity the Bistritza freezes!”
His father looked at him and then replied: “It is a thing I am going
to put into my will, that this is a water mill and it shall remain so.
This mill has ground fifty pair of stones.”
George was tired of always hearing the same thing. He left the company
to go to his own room above the shaft.
Soon after, the peasants tightened their wolf-fur coats about them and
returned to their homes, after wishing one another good luck. It was
snowing and storming. Wolves were prowling on the road.
Dimitru still pottered about in the cart shop, working on a new
corn-husking machine he was trying to perfect; then, tired, he, too,
went to his room, where he lay wondering what was to become of the mill
after he was no longer there. Was it to be desecrated? Was it to be
forever forgotten as the water mill on the Bistritza? Was all the pride
of generations to be sacrificed to that new thing of which the returned
soldier had spoken? Outside the wind was howling, the lugubrious plaint
of the hungry wolves was coming near and nearer, the wheel was creaking
on its axle, straining the ropes that held it to the thick iron staples
embedded in the stone of the walls. Whom was that son of his to marry
if he wanted to marry of his own choice? It had not been so with him.
His father had chosen him a bride, decided on the dowry, and married
him off. Yet he had been happy! George should do as he had done. He
was the father, the master.... With these thoughts the old man fell
asleep.
Early that spring, after the river had broken, and the logs began to
descend to the mill, and the wheel had begun again to turn, George,
very busy and very happy, forgot all about the frozen months.
At the inn Dan, Petru’s son, whose farm was across the river and who
was reputed to be very wealthy, came to meet Dimitru, the miller, to
talk over matters of matrimony between his daughter Veta and George.
After the bottle of wine was between them, Dan opened the conversation.
“There is no other man would offer the dowry I offer. What say you?”
“I say that my son George must receive as much as I have given my
daughter as dowry. Six pair of great oxen, one hundred gold pieces, and
all the other things.”
Dan, red-haired and easily excited, rose from his chair. “Is my Veta a
cripple?”
Dimitru answered calmly: “She is not ... but George is a better man
than the one who married my daughter.”
They both sat down again. It was not fitting they should be heard
quarreling by the others.
“Am I a miller to be able to give such dowry?” Dan remonstrated. Then,
as an afterthought, he added, “One should be able to accumulate wealth
by building a mill the other side of the river so people won’t have to
lose time rowing back and forth.”
“The mill is on this side,” Dimitru answered. “It is on this side.”
“Since millers ask such dowry, it may come to pass that there will be a
mill on the other side also.”
Upon that the two men left the inn.
On reaching the mill Dimitru asked his son, “What say you about Veta,
Dan’s daughter?”
George was busy cleaning the flour funnels. He was as if snow-clad. He
wiped his face with his sleeve and answered: “It is long since I have
seen her. They have their own inn on the other side. I remember her
well, however, beautiful and strong.”
“You will marry her,” Dimitru announced briefly.
“Who says I will?” yelled George. He was furious.
“I say so. I have talked to her father about dowry and things.”
“Marry her, then, yourself. I shall do my own choosing when I am ready.”
“You will do what I say, George.”
“In the mill, because the mill is yours.”
“And do you know what will happen if you don’t marry Veta? Dan will put
up a mill on the other side and starve our stones. Do you understand?”
George paled. But the next instant he stopped the whirr of the mill to
be better heard and said to his father:
“Even though she be the fairest on earth, I say ‘no.’ I am not a horse
or an ox to be marketed that way. Let him build ten mills.”
Upon that he returned to his work, while the old man muttered, “You
will do as I say,” and went to his shop.
A few days later, bricks were being brought in big carts and deposited
on the other side of the river. Bricks and beams and lumber, and
gypsies came to dig the foundation of a large building.
Dimitru’s heart stopped beating when he saw that Dan really intended to
build a mill. He sent word he wanted to speak to him, but Veta’s father
refused to come. The old miller could not sleep nights, nor could he
work at his lathe. The noise of the work across the river maddened him.
Another mill was rising. Another mill, and his son seemed not to care.
He asked George to go to the dance across the river and get better
acquainted with Veta.... The mill had to be stopped. George refused. He
would not be traded away. He would take a wife of his own choice, mill
or no mill. Veta was out of the question.
When the foundation had risen above a man’s height from the ground,
Dimitru, compelling his son to come along, rowed across the Bistritza
to have a talk with Dan. He found the man busily engaged in giving
orders, flushed by the activity about him.
“What is it you are doing, Dan, Petru’s son?” Dimitru asked, as if he
did not know.
“As you see, my neighbor across the water--putting up a mill for the
people on this side of the river, so that they shall not have to row
across to your mill.”
“But a good half of my milling comes from your side of the river,”
Dimitru answered.
“That is just why I am putting up the mill,” Dan replied sarcastically.
“But that is impossible! My mill has been there for over a hundred
years,” remonstrated Dimitru. “Are you going to starve the stones?”
“To each one his own way of doing,” replied the would-be miller. “But
young men demand such dowries, nowadays, they can only be made by
milling and not by farming.”
“But we have been millers for hundreds of years,” Dimitru insisted.
“I hope my grandchildren will be able to say the same thing about this
mill,” Dan retorted. “Perhaps things will change, and people will begin
to row from your side of the river to this mill, for I shall mill
cheaper than you do.”
“So that is what you want to do,” cried Dimitru. “Starve me out!”
“You see,” Dan retorted, “I have only daughters in my house. And the
young men about this place want big dowries, which only millers can
give to their daughters.”
While the two men were speaking, Veta, Dan’s daughter, came riding upon
a small horse. George raised his fur cap as he saw her, and approached
to help her from the saddle. Instantly the two older men looked at each
other with a look of understanding. Perhaps the problem was nearer a
solution than they had just thought. The conversation between them lost
its acridity as they saw the two youngsters together, Dimitru saying:
“It is not a mill that I should like for my son as dowry. He already
has one.”
To which Dan answered, “I have not offered the mill as dowry, have I?”
They tried conversation on other subjects, but it always reverted to
what one had to offer as dowry, and what the other one would be willing
to accept for his son. In the midst of that, Dimitru, having remarked a
too great interest in his son for the girl, abruptly decided to leave
for the other shore.
“Go on and work your mill, son. This is no time to idle. Come.”
“Come dance at our inn,” George urged Veta, as he jumped into the boat.
“There is a big dance at our inn tomorrow, Sunday,” the girl answered.
Then the oars splashed in the water, and the boat was rowed across with
vigorous strokes by father and son.
Late that night, as the two men were anchoring the water wheel over
Sunday, the father said to his son:
“I shall ask as dowry that he stop working on his mill.”
Instantly George rose to his full height and looked his father straight
in the eye.
“You might have asked me,” George remonstrated, “for I happen not to
wish to marry Veta.”
“You do not?” Dimitru asked furiously. “But I do want you to marry her,
and marry her you will. I shall not live to see the stones of my mill
idle when they should be milling--live to see how the corn is rowed
across the river to be milled in the other mill, led by ungodly German
wheels turning of themselves. For it is a steam mill he is putting up.”
“This is certain,” George answered, “you cannot make me marry her.”
Then he left his father and went to his room. He was furious. Because
his father had spoken so compellingly, Veta, of whom he had thought
rather agreeably, had lost her favor in his eyes. He was going to marry
whom he pleased, and not because of fifty pair of dead stones that lay
around there, requesting him to do otherwise.
The following day, Sunday, he went to the inn on his side of the river,
in his best clothes, looking around for any likely girl whom he had
not previously remarked, so that he could make love to her, knowing
full well that his father was watching his every movement. In the midst
of the dance Veta arrived. She was fairer than most of them, and she
had put on her best garb. Upon her bare, full neck she wore the gold
necklace, her white silk shawl hung down from the comb in her hair, and
her high, well-modeled boots, that reached to her knees, were decorated
with veins of red and green leather.
The old man smiled to himself when he saw her, sure that George could
not resist her: she was so beautiful. He was also certain that she
had come to dance with his son, sent probably by Dan, her father, who
already regretted what he had done. Ah! He was not going to let Dan off
so easily if he saw Veta loving his son.
But the girl seemed to pay no attention to George after a perfunctory
greeting. At the dance she locked her arm into the arm of the son of
the blacksmith and danced with him in the second, and third, and fourth
dances, avoiding dancing with George. It enraged the old man. Seating
himself near his son, who was resting between dances, he said:
“That shrew is trying to play with you.”
“Nobody can play with me,” George answered.
“She thinks that if she can make you love her, her father will get off
with less dowry than he should pay.”
“Who says I want her?” George answered.
At the end of the fourth dance Veta beckoned to George to come outside;
she wanted to talk to him. He followed her out quickly.
Once outside, the girl told him rapidly:
“My father wants to compel me to marry you. I don’t want to.”
“And mine wants to compel me to marry you, and I don’t want to,” George
answered.
“Then it is understood,” Veta replied, after looking the boy straight
in the face. “Are we cattle to be married against our will? We do not
want it. I always knew you to be a man, George.”
“No, we do not want it.” And they shook hands on that.
They reentered the inn as unobtrusively as they had gone out. George
watched her walk ahead of him and thought:
“What a spirited girl! And that fool of a father thinks he can compel
her to marry somebody she does not want to!”
RIPE WHEAT
The wheat blades, heavy with the large berry nests, swayed golden in
the light of the setting sun. The bells of the little church tolled
the call to prayers. God had been good to the peasants of the Dobrudja
land. There had been rain in time, and the locusts had kept away from
the marshlands of Tcherna. The peasants, accompanied by their wives
and children, all in their Sunday clothes--the embroidered waists with
the red-and-green skirts and the high boots with the vamps of colored
leather--crowded the road leading to the house of God.
They had been going to that church every evening while their
wheatfields ripened. They were praying that no calamity overtake them;
for they had already suffered enough the previous three years. Two
years of drought had robbed them of all their labor, and on the third
clouds of buzzing locusts had suddenly settled upon their fields and
devoured all, leaving only dry stalks, before moving on, flying lower,
because heavier, to other fields to do the same work of destruction.
But now all seemed past danger. They offered thanks to the Lord and
promised gifts of candles and oil for the lamps under the icons of the
church. On the morrow, they were to begin harvest. Returning from the
church, talking softly among themselves, still awed by the sacred
ritual, they looked over the scythes to see if they were sharp enough
and the curved handles strong enough.
It was only after the evening was over that gaiety entered the square,
thatched mud huts of the Roumanian peasants. A lone gypsy fiddler
had appeared at the inn. It was One-Eyed Naie, who traveled from one
village to another without ever remaining anywhere more than a night.
Some people said it was because of an oath he had taken. Others said
that he was continually running away from a curse which followed him
for a sinful deed in his youth. But it did not matter. Naie was a good
fiddler. Already the villagers were assembling at the inn.
Tomorrow they were going out to harvest their fields. Many brought
their curved long-handled scythes to the inn to show them to one
another, and to whet them still sharper with the oilstones they carried
in their belts while talking to friends. They had had their first meal
in more than two weeks; for they had kept “post”--had abstained from
eating meat while they were praying God’s mercy.
Now Naie was playing. The young men and the girls were ready for the
dance. Two of the older men, Stan and the blacksmith Gavril, sat down
near Naie to beat the rhythm with their palms while he was playing the
dance tunes. There were song and dance and loud laughter before the
night was very old. Arms were locked in arms--the sinewy brown, hairy
ones of the young men on the velvet-white, delicately veined ones of
the girls.
Gay scarfs flashed in the air as they were turning round and round the
fiddler sitting on top of an overturned barrel. Heels were thumping the
ground so hard the windows shook and the rafters of the low ceiling
trembled. And they laughed and sang and yodeled.
In the midst of all the gaiety appeared Boyar Robu. The youngsters
continued to dance at his approach, but the older men became silent.
Even the two old men who had been beating the rhythm with their palms
ceased to do so. He was a tall man, Boyar Robu, and thin and wiry. A
curly black beard framed his strong brownish face. He was a man of
about thirty. He was dressed half peasant and half European.
He greeted everybody in a friendly manner, calling each one by name.
But the answers to his greeting were, though respectful, anything but
cordial or receptive on the part of the peasants. The priest, Popa
Stancu, was standing talking to a peasant.
“Good evening, Popa,” Boyar Robu called out, and kissed the extended
hand of the man of God, as he walked up to him. The priest followed
almost reluctantly the Boyar to the table.
“And do please serve everybody,” the Boyar called to the innkeeper.
“This has been a good year.”
The peasants were not much pleased by the Boyar’s generosity, and when
he noticed their refusal a wild rage overpowered him. Standing up he
smashed his empty glass on the floor.
Instantly Naie ceased playing. The Boyar stood and narrowed his eyes
until they looked more like two slits from under which shot dark fire,
as he called out:
“Am I a heathen that you refuse me? It is on my land that your wheat
has grown! On mine! And it has been so for generations and generations.
And while peasants were flogged daily, and beaten and robbed by
other boyars a few miles from here your fathers and grandfathers and
yourselves have lived freely on my land, long before the laws of the
country had given you freedom!”
“It is not that, Boyar,” Stan, the oldest of the peasants, spoke up,
after looking around to the other men. “But we do know what you want.
None of the men would put their oxen or drive your oxen to these
ungodly machines that you have brought from Nemtzia, or from other
countries, to do the work God made man to do.”
“We’ll talk about that afterward,” the Boyar called.
Instantly glasses clinked. Blessings and good wishes were proffered.
They were his friends; his peasants. He was their master. Their good
master. But those machines ... that was a different story ... those
things were the work of the devil.
The dance having stopped, some of the young people went out in couples
to speak of things more important to them than what was being discussed
at the inn. Naie hung his violin on the button under his coat, ready to
go to sleep in the barn of the inn. The Boyar stopped him and called to
the innkeeper.
“Give Naie food. I may want him to play tonight for us.”
The gypsy was served at the end of the room, while the peasants,
standing on their feet, assured the Boyar of their devotion. When they
had convinced him of that, they all sat down to talk. Gavril leaned
over with his two hands on the table, and sticking his bearded face
right under the eyes of the Boyar, said:
“We all love you. And your grandfather and father and you, yourself,
have always been the best of Boyars to us. The rent of your land
is cheaper than anywhere, and you have always been kind to us. But
we would not, any of us, come near to any of the machines you have
brought. This land here has been plowed with the plow pulled by oxen.
We have sown the wheat with our own hands. We have harvested it with
our scythes and threshed it on the threshing floor with our horses.
That is what peasants are born for. To do all this work. It has been so
since Adam. And if the Nemtzia Germans or the people from another part
of the world want to do otherwise, let them do it.”
“Have I spoken right?” Gavril turned around, looking at the other
peasants.
“He has spoken right,” they answered, nodding their heads. “He has
spoken our own hearts.”
The whole night long Boyar Robu tried to convince his men that the
binding machines he had from America, and which were rusting in the
shed, were not the work of the devil, but the work of man’s brains.
He explained to them how they worked, how the steel fingers of the
binding apparatus were catching the Manila thread, and bringing it
around the sheaf after it had been lifted from the cutting platform on
the rolling canvas.
But it was all in vain. Stolid, obstinate, the men refused to believe
it was so simple. The priest was silent, but the peasants knew he sided
with them. And even after the Boyar had explained that their poverty
was due to the fact that wheat and corn were sown and harvested in
other countries in different ways, they refused to understand. If it
was God’s will that they live in poverty it was God’s will.
Without the help of the peasants on his enormous wheatfields the
Boyar’s desire to expand by cultivating all the land he owned was an
empty dream. The peasants were tenants. They paid the rent for their
land by so many days of work in the Boyar’s fields. He could not ask
more days than was the custom for each acre. If one took more land he
needed more time for his own fields. If one cultivated only a little
land, he owed him fewer days.
Their own fields being comparatively small, it was easy for them to
harvest their wheat in a few days, and thresh it leisurely on their
threshing floors. But it was not so with his fields. The locusts not
having spared him, he, too, had had many bad years.
Attracted by the odor of ripe wheat, the locusts might arrive before
he had had a chance to harvest his 400 acres of wheat. He had sown so
much, hoping to recoup his losses of former years. He had bought the
machines to save himself from ruin. The only thing that could save
him was speedy work. And yet he could not ask the peasants to go in
with their scythes in his field before they had cut theirs. With the
machines the work could be done in a few days.
But they were unwilling, and even when in the stress of pleading with
them he, Robu, the son of the oldest of the Boyars in the neighborhood,
cried before them, they wept together with him, but would not do as he
asked them to.
“Why,” he said, “I’ll lend you my machines. They will cut your wheat,
all of yours, in two days without much trouble. I can thresh your wheat
and get half as much more out of the sheaves than you would get on the
threshing floors. You would get more time and more money. More wheat.”
But the peasants shook their stubborn heads. Machines were the work of
the devil. All the diseases and all the ills of the world were caused
by the machines with which men wanted to do more work than God had
ordained should be done.
Unable to convince them, although he had used the arguments that had
been made to him at the time he had bought the machines at the capital
of the country, Boyar Robu called Naie to him.
“Go to your homes. Leave me alone here with Naie.”
In the dim light of the oil lamp hanging from the low-beamed ceiling,
the air heavy with the odors of boots and quarters of meat and blankets
and chains and plowshares, the Boyar and the gypsy remained the whole
night long.
The peasants were already going out into the fields singing the harvest
song, holding the glittering blue steel of the scythes to the sun, with
the girls beating the bottoms of empty pots and throwing water, from
the pails they were carrying, at one another, when the Boyar and the
gipsy went up the road toward his _curte_ at the end of the village.
Boyar Robu still repeated:
“Fools! Fools! You don’t want to work with my machines!”
Later, Boyar Robu rode out on his horse to see how the harvesting
in the peasants’ fields was going on. The work was being done very
rapidly. Everybody from every hut had turned out. Backs bent roundly
as the swishing scythes rose and fell and left broad paths of gold on
the ground. The smell of the wheat and the song of sharp steel against
dried blades mingled with the chant of the men and the cuckoo calls
from the forest.
Everywhere there was song. And everywhere Boyar Robu was greeted, “We
shall get into your field tomorrow morning, Boyar. We’ll cut it ere the
locusts will come, never fear!”
For they all loved him, though they regretted that he wanted to do
what nobody had ever done before. It was all because of John Petrianu,
the cruel Petrianu, whose fields were a few miles away. He had bought
machines and compelled his men to work them at the point of a pistol.
The Boyar nodded his head, accepting their generosity and their
mirthfulness. Yet, as he looked at the fields, he thought how easily
the whole thing could be done with his two machines.
Having made the rounds, he returned to the shed to look at the rusting
monsters on which the name of the harvesting company was lettered with
gold upon red boards. It amused him to read the words in English and
their translation below into Roumanian, “Harvesting Machine Company,”
and, underneath, “Chicago, Illinois.”
He mused about the country they came from as he looked at them. He
had seen such machines work in the fields of Petrianu, his neighbor.
How pretty it was to see them run through and cut and bind and drop
the sheaves of equal thickness, file by file, one after the other.
How had Petrianu succeeded to get his men to work them? He was a hard
man, Petrianu was.... He had ordered and it was done. Boyar Robu had
heard tales of brutalities he did not believe ... yet.... It was all so
simple! Why should these fools think there was any ungodly thing that
made this iron and steel work?
Early the following morning, as soon as the heat of the sun had dried
up the dew of the night on the fields, the peasants came singing
down the road. Ranging themselves up on the outside of Boyar Robu’s
wheatfield, they crossed themselves; then, bending their backs, their
hundred or more glistening hard-steel scythes came down obliquely in
one large movement into the wheatfield.
“Heigh! Ho! Heigh! Ho!” they sang loudly, marking the rhythm of the
first strokes as they advanced breast deep into the gold. The women,
their skirts held upon the side by the narrow red sash, followed in
their bare feet, to glean and bind into sheaves what fell behind their
men.
Boyar Robu arrived on horseback. The devotion of his peasants moved him
deeply. His ancestral worship of field work stirred within him. There
were several scythes lying idle at the edge of the field, prepared in
case one should break or some mishap should happen to a handle. He
threw off his black coat, the only garb that distinguished him from the
peasants, and, taking one of the scythes after passing the oilstone
over its edge, he went to work amongst his men.
They kept on working until late after sundown. Then they measured what
they had done. It would take from eight to ten days to complete the
harvest.
On arriving home, Boyar Robu, who was living alone with his sister and
several house servants, found a slim young man sitting on his porch
peacefully smoking a short pipe. The man was dressed in European garb,
and because his face was cleanly shaven, a thing never seen in that
part of the country, Boyar Robu was uncertain as to the age or the
business of the man.
Ileana, Boyar Robu’s sister, twenty, full-bosomed and long-limbed,
with big brown eyes and long black straight hair, rushed out to meet
her brother.
“He came hours ago,” she told him, “this man there. And he asked about
you in a language I do not understand, but which I think is English. He
sits there and waits and waits.”
He smiled and remembered the “Ta Ra Ra, Boom De Ay” song, with “Oh,
yes, Oh, yes.” These were the only English words, except “Mister,” he
had ever heard. He approached, the man stood up, very much at his ease,
and offered his hand saying, “James Allison.”
The two shook hands. Boyar Robu asked, “Oh, yes? Oh, yes?”
“You speak English?” James Allison wondered, hearing the two words.
“Oh, yes. Oh, yes,” Boyar Robu answered, and laughed broadly.
The clean-shaven man smiled at him and patted him patronizingly on the
shoulder, and then launched into a long, loud speech, which the other
did not understand, to explain that he was the demonstrator of the
machines Boyar Robu had bought the year before.
The Boyar listened politely to the end and then raised his hands over
his head and bowed as a sign that he had not understood a word. But he
did manage to ask Mr. James Allison whether he was hungry and thirsty.
James Allison understood. He was famished, having arrived hours before,
after a long journey from the Constanza branch of the company, to find
out why they had never heard from the Boyar after he had bought the
machines.
The Boyar, his sister, and the stranger sat down at the table to eat.
They ate in silence, the Boyar being too polite to talk to his sister
in a language the other man did not understand. Finally Boyar Robu
asked James Allison, “Français?”
The other man shook his head. “American.”
That single word shed considerable light on the situation. “Harvesting
Machine Company, Chicago?” Robu Boyar questioned, mispronouncing every
word.
“Yes,” James Allison answered gaily. “Harvesting Machine Company.”
Then they looked at one another and the three burst out in loud
laughter. They sat on the veranda, laughing, smiling, with the tacit
mutual understanding that the morrow was to bring some explanation
between them.
Peasants passed back and forth, seemingly to say good evening or to
report something to the Boyar, but in reality to have a look at this
strange man of whose appearance they had heard at the inn.
When the village had quieted, the Boyar looked at his guest and looked
at Ileana.
With sign language, he then turned to his guest and asked him whether
he was ready to sleep. Allison picked up his big brown bag he had left
outside the door and nodded his head. He was ready. He was shown to his
room. Ileana remained on the veranda, thinking of the distant land from
where that man came; a land where men sheared off the glory of their
faces. And yet that face had clean lines of chin and nose, and the lips
were firm.
How did he compare with John Petrianu? She was waiting for him. She
expected him. He had been coming to see her almost daily and would tell
her of the lands he had been in and the countries he had visited all
over the continent. He had seen much. He knew much, Petrianu did.
John Petrianu was of a different kind from Boyar Robu. The Petrianus
were not of peasant stock as the Robus were. Therefore, they did
not have the same attitude toward the peasants. For generations the
peasants had been serfs. Ordinarily they had been treated little better
than cattle and, regarded as such, they were expected to do the bidding
of a Boyar. It was one of the things Ileana held against Petrianu. He
never spoke with love of his people.
Presently Ileana heard the gallop of his horse. It stopped in front of
the house, and he came down to sit near her.
“John,” Ileana said, as soon as the greetings were over, “there is a
man upstairs with a clean-shaven face who comes from America, from the
land where they make the machines that are rusting in our shed. He
does not understand our language. We do not understand his. We do not
know what to make of the reason for his coming. Do talk to him in the
morning, if you have time to come here.”
John was anxious to have occasion to prove his superiority. He knew a
little English, having lived in England a short while.
“I shall come over in the morning,” John assured Ileana, “and I shall
help that brother of yours come to his senses. There is no other way of
dealing with peasants than forcing them to do what you want. Afterward
they understand. Look at your farm! With three times as much ground
as I cultivate, you do not produce half the amount. Just because Robu
wants to be good to the peasants.”
They talked long into the night. John was explaining how one should
deal with peasants in order to gain ascendancy over them. And as he
talked and Ileana defended her people he slowly gained over her.
His strength, his purpose, his decision were compelling. While he,
realizing how he grew in her eyes, became stronger and more decided. It
was not that he loved her so much. He needed someone of the other sex
on whom to exercise his superiority. She became dearer to him when he
felt he was convincing her.
When Boyar Robu arose the following morning he found James Allison in
a pair of overalls and a cap which he wore with the visor on his neck.
He had already found out the shed in which the two harvesting machines
were housed and was pottering around them.
The two men greeted one another, each in his language. They smiled in
understanding. Meanwhile, the peasants passed them by, going out to
the distant fields. The scythes were hanging from their shoulders. And
as he saw them, Boyar Robu raged that he shouldn’t be able to use the
machines.
At that moment John Petrianu, dressed in his best riding garb, with
waxed mustache, freshly shaven face, and oiled hair, came trotting down
on his proudest horse. Ileana had heard him and was herself presently
down among the three men. James Allison was so happy to find someone
who understood him, he shook John Petrianu’s hand with both of his.
“Finally someone I can talk to,” he repeated over and over again. “Now
tell me what is the trouble here. Why don’t they use these machines?”
“It is because his peasants refuse to handle them,” Petrianu answered.
“I have some on my farm from your company, and they work well. I have
had my troubles with them, but it is all over now.”
“Why,” Allison said, “all we have to do is to prove to them that they
are easy to handle and more economical.”
He was a demonstrator, James Allison, and he had come down to
demonstrate. Should he succeed in changing the opinion of the peasants,
hundreds and hundreds of machines could be sold in that territory.
Petrianu, Ileana and James Allison looked at one another. Suddenly
Petrianu spoke to Robu.
“You have been too soft with your men. It is why they would not listen
to you. Go back to your room. Let them not see you at all. Let me deal
with them.”
He stretched to his full height and looked for approval on Ileana’s
side. He knew by the gesture of Robu that he had won him over. She
looked admiringly at John. Yet, after a few moments, she paused to say:
“On condition, John Petrianu, that you should not be brutal to them. We
have been hearing of the way you deal with your people occasionally.”
“It takes a strong hand; it takes a strong hand to handle them,” he
answered, still flushed and drunk by his anticipation of being able to
show his power over men.
Allison had been measuring up Ileana. In spite of the proffered
assistance from Petrianu there was something about the man he did not
like; a harshness of tone that went against the American’s grain.
Allison had seldom before seen the kind of beauty Ileana possessed.
Strong, robust, kind, with brown eyes and a milky white face, the head
set perfectly on wide shoulders.
“We go to the field,” Petrianu said.
Then he called to one of the servitors of the house, who had come with
Ileana, to saddle two horses: one for the American and one for Ileana.
Had Robu asked his man for a similar service he would have added some
polite words. Petrianu’s words were shot out like crisp whip lashes.
When the horses had been brought out saddled, and they were mounted,
Petrianu again turned to the servitors.
“And let four oxen be yoked to each of the two machines in the shed,”
he ordered.
The two servitors crossed themselves and bowed deeply, but they made
no movement to execute the orders. They looked appealingly in the
direction where Robu had disappeared.
“Do not look there!” Petrianu thundered. “I am the master here now! Do
what I tell you!”
Ileana began to tremble. She looked with appealing eyes to James
Allison, who did not understand what she meant, except that he knew
that she was afraid something dreadful might take place. Petrianu was
standing before the men with his nervous hand upon the short handle of
the braided whip, forcing them to put the yokes on the necks of the
oxen.
James Allison was mad with rage. But he had been sent there as a
demonstrator. That man was helping him. If it needed a show of force to
convince the peasants, well, let it be used.
Trembling and crossing themselves over and over again, the two
servitors yoked the oxen. Still walking after them with his horse
broadwise, Petrianu pushed oxen and men to the machines.
“Drive on!” Petrianu ordered.
The spiked wheels of the machines began to clatter down the road, one
after the other, with Petrianu, Jim Allison, and Ileana riding back of
them. Occasionally Petrianu would drive alongside of the men and talk
to them harshly, twisting the lash of his whip as he talked.
Rumbling and clattering, the machines arrived at the wheatfield. The
two drivers had no sooner seen their people than they plunged amongst
them, crossing themselves and weeping. Instantly the song of the
scythe against the ripe wheat ceased. The gleaning women, the colored
beetles in the gold stubble, unbent their backs. There was silence.
Why was Petrianu, the cruel Petrianu, of whom they had all heard, and
this American, come with these machines now to the fields they were
harvesting? And where was Boyar Robu?
Petrianu advanced toward the two men, who had abandoned the machines.
Without a word his whip came down upon the shoulder of the first man,
an elderly white-bearded peasant.
The peasant screamed in horror and withdrew a few paces. Petrianu’s
whip had already come down upon the other man, and he raised it for the
third time. Ileana cried out in anguish.
Jim Allison forgot that he was there to demonstrate the working of his
machines. Suddenly, although the other man was much the heavier and
taller, he sprang upon him like a cat. With one well-directed blow he
sent him sprawling on the ground. Petrianu rolled over and, reaching
into his riding boot, he jumped up with an open drawn dagger in his
hand.
Jim Allison forgot everything. The sight of the weapon in the other
man’s hand drove him almost insane with fury. He felt the warm drip
of blood from a gash in his face; and, as they were fighting, he felt
blood dripping down from the upper part of his arm.
Ileana screamed. The unarmed man, the boy from the other seas,
faced the big and powerful Petrianu, who had a knife in his hand.
The peasants stood aside watching the contest, all siding with the
stranger, for they understood he had jumped to the rescue of one of
their men. And they wondered how so light a man should dare fight so
powerful a man who had a knife in his hand.
The two men were rolling over each other. Allison’s hands were not free
to hit, for he was holding the wrist of the other man’s dagger hand.
And as the fight went on an unspeakable hatred for Petrianu rose in
the hearts of the peasants. Allison had succeeded in taking the weapon
out of the other man’s hand. Petrianu lay there, bruised and beaten,
fumbling in his hip pocket. Taking their scythes in hand the peasants
advanced toward the man who was now slowly getting to his feet.
As readily as he had come to the rescue of the peasants, Jim,
throwing the knife at a distance over his head, interposed his body
in protection of the man he had beaten. And then Jim spoke to them in
feverish language, calling them brothers and asking them to be men and
understand. In his ardor he had forgotten they were people of another
language.
But the men listened. The women seemed to understand.
“Get up, you coward!” Jim turned around to Petrianu, who had risen to
his feet. “Get up, and on your horse!”
And when the men seemed appeased, Jim, with his bleeding arm and the
blood dripping from his cheek, put his arms around the necks of the two
men who had driven the oxen.
“Come. Come,” he urged them.
He looked around to see Ileana. She was gone. What mattered it? He
was a demonstrator. And the men were in a mood to do what he asked.
They turned around to the other peasants, who made a passage for the
machines. Jim seated himself on the seat of one while the man was
driving the oxen.
The machine started its grumbling movement. The cutters sheared the
wheat blades low. The peasants ran after the machine to watch how it
operated. See, there a sheaf was piled up, the cord was passed around
it by the two steel fingers. The needle passed across and twisted the
cord into a knot. Another sheaf and another sheaf. Five. And then they
were all dropped softly to the ground.
They had finished the first row when Boyar Robu arrived, riding near
his sister, who had gone to call him, afraid lest some mishap was to
befall Jim Allison.
“He has killed him! He has killed him!” she cried.