handkerchief around the wound on his arm to stop its bleeding; and
he was continually staunching the wound on his cheek with the sleeve
he had torn off his shirt. It was his opportunity now. He had won
the confidence of the men. They were willing. He had been sent as
a demonstrator and he was demonstrating. He was demonstrating the
harvesting machine.
Robu rode after him, and Ileana put her arms around him to get him off
the seat of the machine. He would not leave. The wound did not matter.
But they did not understand. Ileana was deeply concerned about the
wounds he had received. She put her hands on his arm and her fingers
trembled as she touched him. His whole body trembled in response. But
he drove on to finish the other row.
On returning to where the idle machine stood, with the oxen still yoked
to the pole, he motioned to Robu to sit down on the seat and set it in
movement. The two machines rode side by side, with the peasants jumping
from one to the other, looking and giving soft cries of wonderment at
the regularity with which the sheaves were bound and dropped steadily,
steadily. At the end of the row stood Ileana with a pail of water. And
this time she put her arms firmly around the stranger and almost lifted
him off the seat. She washed his wounds.
Jim was happy. Not a muscle of his face moved as she cleaned the gaping
flesh of the deep knife wound in the upper part of his arm. Jim was
happy. For one of the younger peasants, who had watched the machine
while it had been pulled twice the length of the field, had now jumped
on the seat in his place and was driving forward, onward, with the
peasants and their wives running after it as the golden sheaves fell
and fell to the ground. They were all with their backs toward Jim and
Ileana.
And then Jim in great joy jumped to his feet and, without knowing
exactly what he was doing, he threw his arms about the girl’s neck and
drew her to him and kissed her long upon the lips. She encircled his
waist with her arms and pressed him to herself.
The following day Jim Allison wrote to the manager of his company:
We are cutting four hundred acres of wheat with two machines Boyar
Robu bought last year. Please send immediately six pieces X-34 and 8
L-56.
I shall, however, remain a little longer here than I expected at
first, as I am marrying Boyar Robu’s sister.
Yours,
James Allison.
SAVA
There were twenty men in Sava’s band: twenty resolute, black-bearded,
lean, hard men, each one capable of doing whatever was demanded of him
under any circumstances. Each one could ride a horse until the animal
fell down exhausted; each one could negotiate twenty miles of hills
and mountains in torrential rain or heavy snowstorm, and swim across a
river with a gun so fastened on the back of the head that the powder
in the barrels remained dry. Twenty men who could stand their ground
against forty, against fifty, against a hundred, and disappear in the
batting of an eye at a given signal, in as many different directions,
and know where and when to meet again in the crevice of a rock in the
mountains, or in the abandoned dugout of a she bear!
For years Sava and his men had been peacefully smuggling silks from
the Hungarian side of the Carpathians over into Roumania, and tobacco
and linens from Roumania into Hungary. They carried the contraband on
their backs or strapped the packs on the saddles of the small Moldavian
ponies they rode. Customs guards and gendarmes on both sides had
watched them closely for years without ever catching them.
Big Sava, the leader, was only thirty. And although his gait was as
young as that of a man of twenty, the steadiness of his eye and the
slowness of his speech gave his lean, dark, smooth face a much older
stamp. He could outdo his men at anything, although they were the pick
of the gypsy manhood of Roumania.
Sava was the only unmarried man of his band. He danced with all the
maidens on Sunday at the inn when he was at home. He laughed and danced
and joked and sang with all of them. Many a time when the older men had
gone to sleep and the younger ones were yet too full of the joy of life
to go home or to leave the circle of dancers, Sava would remain with
two of the most beautiful girls of his tribe, one at his right and the
other at his left, and amuse himself watching the two women trying to
outdo each other in the game of husband catching.
When the game had lasted long enough, he would tap his open palms and
tell them to run to their homes ere misfortune overtook them. For it
would be misfortune to marry a man who did not love them. The women
gone, Sava would sit alone somewhere under a tree and wonder when he
would feel what love really was like. He would pass in review all the
girls of his tribe. They were all beautiful, but there was not one he
preferred to another one--not one he longed to see when he was away,
not one whose nearness made him want to stay....
His own men watched and hoped every spring. They loved him and desired
to see him happy with a woman of their tribe.
That winter Sava and his men had been detained on the Hungarian side of
the Carpathians by a terrific snowstorm that lasted two weeks. During
those two weeks they stayed at “Marga’s,” the inn of a young widow who
kept the only place of its kind in fifty miles around.
When the storm had abated, the gendarmes learned that Sava and his men
were at Marga’s. They drew a cordon around them, firmly decided to
catch the gypsies red-handed in the act of smuggling. Sava resolved to
outpatience the gendarmes. He did not explain anything to his men. He
just remained there and slept and drank and danced and sang as he had
never done before.
Somehow Marga, and even Sava’s own men, interpreted his actions
according to their own lights. Marga was convinced he remained there
because of her. As she was very much in love with the young gypsy she
began to cover him with little attentions and whisper in his willing
ears all the little gossip she could find out about the gendarmes. At
first there were twenty. Then she reported a hundred. In a few days
she reported the forest was full of them, two behind every tree. Sava
listened quietly and smiled at her.
Besides Sava and his men, there were twenty other men staying at the
inn. There were heavy-bearded shepherds with sheepskin coats reaching
to their soles, itinerant peddlers with feet wrapped in red rags, and
two gypsy fiddlers who had stumbled into the inn early one morning,
stiff and frozen, as if they had ridden on top of the storm to Marga’s
door.
After the storm abated, the guests began to depart one by one.
Ultimately only Sava and his men remained with the two gypsy musicians,
the gendarmes still watching.
Daily Sava’s men awaited orders from their chief. But Sava seemed to
have forgotten their existence and forgotten everything about the
gendarmes watching him. With the two musicians at his side, with the
buxom blue-eyed widow looking into his eyes as she filled his cup of
wine, he was oblivious of everything. Never before had he felt so warm
inside and out. He had no love for Marga, and he knew that. But he knew
that she felt for him what he had once felt for another woman, whom
he had been compelled to forget. He gloated in that bitter-sweet of
being loved without loving, as if he were avenging his soul for what
had happened once, many years before. He could order Marga around as he
wished without fear of losing her. He was master of her soul because he
was master of his own.
His men came in and watched the spectacle. The glowing, full-bosomed,
round-armed young widow was holding a foaming pitcher to his empty
glass, while leaning her cheek against his.
The younger gypsies proposed that they overcome the gendarmes and bind
them and tie up the widow or take her along with them, if Sava must
have her near him. They were long overdue at home. Their wives and
their children were weeping for them. Who knew but that Mara and Pania
and Fanutza had already married former lovers or other men!
It was the beginning of March. Soon the melting of the snows would not
only make the underground passages impossible but even the paths in the
woods. The wolves and the bears were traveling in enormous packs. And
the gendarmes now entered the inn daily.
One day Sava ordered the gypsy fiddlers to play in the center of
the room instead of playing right near him. The gendarmes, half
intoxicated, mingled freely with his men, talking and laughing. The
carbines of the men of the law were stacked in a corner.
Suddenly Sava snapped his fingers. In a leap, each of his men possessed
himself of one of the weapons and at the same time directed it against
one of the gendarmes. Sava’s hands were the only ones free of any
weapons. While his men held the gendarmes at the points of the guns,
Sava paid his bill to Marga, whispering a few love words to her. And
then, turning around to the gendarmes, he said:
“If you stay here quietly for an hour, one hour by my watch, you will
find all your guns stacked up at the foot of the mountain near the big
white boulder. And no one will know anything about it. If you come
after us, we’ll have to use the carbines, and you’ll lose them--and
lose other things besides. Remember, there are wives and children
waiting for you at home, but there are also wives and children waiting
for my men.”
They placed the carbines near the white boulder as promised, then they
disappeared from the surface into a secret tunnel a hundred feet away
from the place where the gendarmes had camped without knowing that it
led through the mountains to the other side.
There were loud huzzahs and hurrahs when Sava and his men returned
early one morning to their village. They had been overdue two months.
Pania was already allowing Yorga to come much nearer to her tent.
Fanutza and Mara were being considered young widows.
And now Sava and his men were back, the men looking up at him with even
greater love and devotion than they had ever done before. It had to
be celebrated--with the best wine, the loudest shouting, the wildest
dancing.
They were not ready to tell the story of how Sava had taken them away
from among the gendarmes. They interrupted themselves in the middle of
a tale with: “Oh, that can never be told!”
It was a trick of theirs they had for effect, to tell one-half of the
tale. They let it be understood Sava was a supernatural being who could
do things no one else could do, things they could not even tell about.
They feasted and celebrated for a whole month. There were many dances.
And many were the women who turned about Sava, trying to captivate
him. Whenever Sava would be near one of the girls who had forced her
attentions upon him, he would be waiting for that pleasant glow which
he experienced when in the nearness of Marga, the widow innkeeper. She
was not as beautiful as many of the girls of his own tribe, but he did
not feel in their presence what he felt in hers. She loved him for
what he was, not what he did. He felt they were giving him counterfeit
instead of the clink of real gold.
When the wind and the sun had dried the roads a Turkish merchant,
coming from the other side of the Danube, brought them a load which
he wished carried across into Hungary. Sava and half of his men,
loaded with heavy packs, disappeared early one morning in different
directions. And though the place where they had to deliver the
merchandise was miles away from the inn of the widow, Sava found
himself quite involuntarily stepping in the direction of Marga’s inn.
He told himself repeatedly he did not love her, that he went there only
because he knew she was waiting for him--for him only....
His men thought it was useless audacity to go to Marga, with gendarmes
watching about her place. At one point of the road a riding gendarme
whizzed by. The gypsies looked at one another and looked at their
chief. He answered with a broad smile and a nod of his head. He knew
that gendarme was riding at top speed to warn the others of their
coming. But the merchandise had already been delivered.
They were all in the inn when he opened the door. He greeted them with
loud laughter. His running away had been a game. He and his men had
won. Sava offered them wine.
“Let us drink like friends. What has been has been. Wine, Marga.”
The gendarmes refused. Yet they were unwilling to pick a fight with the
gypsy, fearing that a far greater number than those who had come into
the inn were outside ready to pounce upon them if they should attack
Sava. They left the inn cursing and swearing.
When they had gone, Sava leaned over the counter and spoke to Marga:
“I have come to bid you good-morning. I had no time to bid you good-bye
last time. Let’s drink a glass together if you have forgiven me.”
“Oh, Sava!” the widow answered, happy to touch his hand. “Let me drink
from your glass. Sava! Sava!”
He looked deeply into her eyes as he held the glass to her lips, and
asked:
“And if I had told you to come along with me, would you have come?”
She raised her eyes to his and he read the answer: “To the end of the
world!”
He remained leaning over the counter, looking at her. The warmth
emanating from her was so pleasant! Why did he not love her? What was
it that prevented him from loving her as she loved him? She was young.
She was beautiful! He did not love her. Yet he liked to be near her.
Why?
Suddenly Marga awoke from her reverie. She bent Sava’s head to her lips
and whispered in his ear:
“They have found out the underground passage. They have hidden a number
of gendarmes within the tunnel.”
Sava looked at her gratefully, and called his men to him for a short
conversation. One by one they went out. Sava was the last one to leave.
He kissed the widow’s lips before going.
The gypsy smugglers disappeared in different directions. But they met
a few minutes later near the narrow opening of the underground tunnel
in which the gendarmes were hidden. One by one, they crawled in, under
the eyes of Sava, who remained the last. Then he, too, crawled in and
disappeared in the black hole.
Sava had hardly crawled in when gendarmes who had been hiding behind
trees followed the gypsies, crawling cautiously after them.
The gypsies did not remain underground very long. They climbed out from
a side entrance to the tunnel a hundred paces from the first. Then they
blocked it up. And while half of Sava’s men were running at top speed
over the forest to close up the other end of the subterranean passage,
Sava and the others were hastily rolling huge boulders and stones to
close up the entrance into which the gendarmes had just disappeared.
Leisurely, carrying the bags of contraband which had lain hidden in the
forest, the gypsies, headed by loud-singing Sava, marched single file
over the broad road across the border. The gendarmes were all safely
bottled up.
When they reached their village, Sava’s men were prouder of their
leader than they had ever been, and told how he had tricked the
gendarmes and extricated them from their clutches. There were dances
on the fresh green grass, while the fiddlers, sitting on empty barrels,
were playing until their strings snapped and were singing at the top of
their voices.
When the gaiety was at its height a tribe of horse-dealing gypsies
joined the merriment. They were from the Dobrudja, from the other side
of the Danube, where they had earned much gold in trading horses.
The welcome to the guest tribe knew no bounds. The men threw their arms
about one another and patted one another’s shoulders. The women climbed
down from the tent wagons, helped by the women of Sava’s tribe, while
the young men watched them, and made comments as each one went down.
“Hey, you black-tressed, long-faced beauty! Where did you get your
earrings?”
“Hey, you! Did you steal your eyes from the night?”
“Oh, there another one climbs down backward from the wagon, as if she
were an old woman. Are your feet of glass or are your kneecaps of
porcelain?”
The young women of Sava’s tribe received their blood sisters with much
noise, fingered their dresses, looked at their jewels and inspected
their bracelets and anklets, their bejeweled fingers and necklaces.
They tugged at one another’s handkerchiefs and waved the fringes of the
shawls. The children of one tribe began to get acquainted with the
children of the other, vying with each other as to who could turn more
somersaults at a stretch. The dogs barked and nosed at the newcomers’
dogs, then went out side by side to inspect the camp, for the odor of
broiled meats was rising in the air, mingling with the odor of fried
oil and garlic in which the tenderer morsels were already being stewed.
Sava was standing near his men, occasionally smiling at a clever sally,
but never saying anything himself. When Tira, Chief Mincu’s daughter,
jumped down from the rear end of her father’s wagon there was a cry of
wonder from the throats of many men. She was no longer very young, as
gypsies go, perhaps twenty-five. Her face was round and full and quiet.
Her body, without being supple, was sinuous. Her movements were slow
and stately. Her big eyes looked the men over quietly and appraisingly
without any haste. Many a man lowered his head as she looked at him.
Her glance rested a little longer on Sava than it did upon the other
men. But it was only a fraction of a second that their eyes met.
The other young men looked at Sava to see the effect of the woman upon
him, and realizing he had singled her out of all the women, they went
about to take part in the general gaiety that was being staged. A
little later, while the smoke was rising from the fire, and the savour
of steam from the pots, the two tribes mingled freely, the young men
from Chief Mincu’s tribe were already on terms of friendship with
the girls from Sava’s tribe, while Sava’s young men were joking and
laughing with the women of Mincu’s tribe.
Sava approached the chief and, greeting, sat down near him, saying, “I
am Sava.”
“Oh, you are Sava?” Mincu answered, shaking his hand vigorously again.
“They have just told me how you bottled the gendarmes up.”
And the shrewd old gypsy trader shook with laughter as he thumped
Sava’s shoulder vigorously. Defeating the men of the law was great fun
for all gypsies.
“And your daughter, what is her name?” Sava asked.
“Tira,” Mincu answered. “And though there have been five hundred and
fifty men who have offered me wealth and riches that I should marry her
to them, she has so far chosen to remain alone.”
He waxed enthusiastic. “In the Dobrudja a Tatar chief wanted to buy
her from me, offering all his sheep, a thousand in number, for her. A
Cherkess in Russia offered me, not very long ago, two of his best blood
horses, for which I had offered him a thousand pieces of gold, that I
should give her to him in marriage. She refused.”
“A thousand pieces of gold!” Sava repeated incredulously.
“A thousand pieces of gold,” Mincu asserted without flinching.
“And are you her father or her slave?” Sava questioned, looking the
older man in the eyes.
“Her father,” Mincu answered. “But a woman like Tira should have her
word in the choice of a husband.”
Sava looked at him, shrugged his shoulders, and rose to his feet. The
dance had already begun. He walked slowly up to Tira and extended his
right arm for her left one, to join with her in the circle that was
already turning around to slow music, gathering speed for the whirl in
which it should end.
With all her plumpness, she was as light as a feather. And her feet
executed quick movements in the air before they were brought down
again to the earth, as they turned around and around while the men
were yelling “Hi! Hey!” from the fullness of their throats. At the
completion of the circle one of the women was called upon to step out
into the center of the circle to do a solo dance while the others
turned around and around and clapped their hands:
“Mara! Mara! Mara! Mara!”
And Mara stepped out and danced. When Mara had returned to join arms
with her partner another one was called. The young men and women of the
other tribe were given first call, so that they might show the mettle
of which they were made.
After the fourth round, the youth of Sava’s tribe began to call on Tira
to step out and dance:
“Tira! Tira! Tira! Tira!”
Like a tiger Tira leaped into the center of the circle. Spinning like a
top with her arms extended in front of her, she came to a dead stop,
only to begin the same spin in the opposite direction. Her feet hardly
touched the ground, while her head turned this side and that, looking
at all of them provokingly, tantalizingly. When the music slowed up,
she clasped her hands at her back, bringing her shoulders forward,
and glided snakewise along the inner rim of the circle, measuring and
weighing with her eyes the men of the other tribe.
When she reached Sava, she looked at him longer than at the others, and
spinning around once more, she leaped as vigorously back to her place
as she had broken out of it. There was no fatigue in her eyes. They
were more luminous than before. Only the bosom rose and fell a little
faster and the veins of her throat thickened.
There was a loud cry of admiration. Even the older men and women,
forming an outer ring about the young people, were clapping their hands
and calling loudly her name: “Tira! Tira! Tira!”
When the dance was over Sava tugged at Tira’s father’s coat.
“That we drink a glass of wine together, _cumetru_, father-in-law. Come
where the wine is served.”
Mincu looked into Sava’s eyes as he rose to follow him.
“It is about Tira that I want to speak,” Sava said, after clinking
glasses.
“What can you tell me of her that I do not already know?” the girl’s
father laughed.
“You spoke of a thousand gold pieces, Mincu. But you meant silver
pieces, did you not?”
“I spoke of a thousand gold pieces, which I have refused,” Mincu
answered, putting down the empty glass.
“Maybe another glass of wine will teach you the difference between gold
and silver,” Sava replied, winking at his men as he poured more wine
for Mincu.
“The difference, my son, is the difference between you and me,” Mincu
rejoined, while the people called out with admiration:
“Hey, Mincu! That’s Mincu!”
The two tribes assembled about the two bargaining men. They forgot
even what the bargaining was about. It was just a contest of wits. The
two men were looking at each other silently, each one watching for the
other to make an opening.
“Where is blind Jorga, that he tell me a story?” Mincu called
mockingly, having lost patience.
“Leave blind Jorga out of that,” Sava answered in anger.
Mincu caught the eye of his daughter.
“If you talk about silver you will drain the wine of the country before
I say another word.”
“Gold! Gold!” called Mincu’s men.
“Then gold it shall be,” Sava answered, and taking from his belt a
heavy purse he tendered it to Mincu. “There are a hundred pieces of
gold here. What say you?”
In answer to Sava’s offer Mincu turned his back and spoke to his men.
“Harness up. Another few hours we shall reach Ploesti and be received
by our own people.”
Sava looked at Tira, who returned his glance without flinching.
“And so a thousand gold pieces were offered and you refused?”
“It was the man I refused and not the gold,” Tira answered angrily.
“You should have come to me first.”
She turned her back and left him.
Sava sat down on his heels and watched how Mincu and his men were
harnessing their horses. Sava’s men were happy to see him so interested
in a woman. They were anxious to see him settled with a family. It was
no good having a chief without a wife and not knowing where his eyes
might cast about for one.
Sava called the oldest men of his tribe and spoke to them softly. The
old men approached Mincu with great ceremony.
“Pass this night with us, pray. It is too late to reach Ploesti before
nightfall. There have been heavy rains in the mountains, and the ground
is still soggy. There is meat aplenty here, and wine, and the strings
of the fiddles have not all snapped.”
Mincu resisted, claiming that he could reach Ploesti with the kind of
horses he had, no matter what the roads were. But ultimately the old
men and the people of Sava’s tribe prevailed upon the guests to stay
overnight.
Mincu unbuttoned his coat in preparation for the new glass of wine.
Tira was sitting at the end of her wagon, her legs dangling.
“To show that I am grateful that you have remained here with us, Mincu,
I will offer you two hundred gold pieces,” Sava said.
Mincu shook his head and answered in reproachful accents, “I have
remained as a guest and not as a trader.”
“Three hundred,” Sava called out, to the amazement of his men.
And then, as Mincu still shook his head, Sava called out in quick
succession: “Four hundred. Five hundred.”