THE UNEARTHLY MARRIAGE OF THE MAN OF IPEK--FIRST NIGHT IN A NATIVE
ALBANIAN HOUSE.
There was a moment of contemplative silence. Beyond the circle of
firelight the goats still tore and worried the dried leaves from the
oak branches. A woman came leisurely forward and put an iron pan on
the coals. When it was hot she brought scraps of pork and laid them in
it. Rexh, the little Mohammedan, turned his head so that he should not
smell that unclean meat. Frances said to Perolli, in a ravenous voice,
“How much longer will it be before we can eat?”
He looked at her reprovingly. “In Albania it is not polite to care
about food.”
“But it’s past midnight and we’ve had nothing to eat since noon!”
Frances mourned.
“Slowly, slowly, little by little,” said Perolli, soothingly. For
myself, I curled more comfortably among the blankets, too contented to
ask for anything at all. It was as though I had returned to a place
that I knew long ago and found myself at home there. I had forgotten
that these people are living still in the childhood of the Aryan race
and that I am the daughter of a century that is, to them, in the far
and unknown future. Twenty-five centuries had vanished, for me, as
though they had never been.
“That lady ora was no doubt betrothed to one of her own people,” said a
man who had not previously spoken. “Now in my lost country of Ipek--may
the Serbs who are murdering her feel our teeth in their throats!--I
know a man who was married to an ora.”
A woman, barefooted, wearing a skirt of heavy black and white wool, a
wide, silver-studded leather belt and a blouse of sheer white, her two
thick black braids of hair falling from beneath a crimson headkerchief
almost to her knees, came out of the shadows beyond the fire and
lowered from her shoulder a beautifully shaped wooden jar of water. She
held it braced against her hip, and, stooping, poured a thin stream
over our outstretched hands. We laved them, the water sinking into the
ashes around the fire, and another woman handed us each a towel of
hand-woven red-and-white-plaided linen. Then we sat expectantly, but
only a wooden bowl of cheese was set on the floor before us.
It was goat’s-milk cheese, rather like the cottage cheese of home,
except that it was hard, cut in cubes, and of an acrid, sourish flavor.
We each took a piece, nibbled it.
“Oh, Perolli, can’t you tell them we’re starving? It’s almost one
o’clock in the morning!” cried Frances, pathetically.
“Be patient,” said Perolli. “How many times must I say that it isn’t
polite in Albania to be so greedy?”
“But it’s eleven hours since any of us had a bite!” Frances protested.
“Don’t tell me Cheremi and our other men aren’t starving.”
“Albanians don’t care so much about food,” said Perolli. “I’m not
hungry.” He lit another cigarette, and, seeing the circle of politely
incurious but keen eyes fixed on us, I said, “Tell them that we are
very much interested in the story about the ora, and that we want to
hear about the man who married one.” And I surreptitiously prodded
Alex, who, sitting bolt upright with her eyes open, was obviously
asleep with fatigue.
The man who had spoken of that unearthly marriage rolled and licked
a cigarette, offered it to Alex with his hand on his heart, rolled
himself another, lighted both with a blazing twig, settled comfortably
on his heels, and began.
“This man was my friend, well known to me and to all the families of
Ipek. A strong man, a good fighter, and respected by all. But his life
was not complete, for the girl his father had chosen for him had died,
and he was not married. There were many girls he might have had, girls
of Montenegro and even of Shala and Shoshi and Kossova, but he said
that he did not wish to marry. He came to his thirty-seventh year and
was not married.
“One night he was sitting alone in his house, making a cup of coffee
in the ashes of the fire, when the door opened. He looked, and there
was a woman who had come out of the darkness. She was no woman of our
tribe, nor of any other tribe of man, though she was dressed like our
women. My friend looked at her and said to himself that he had never
known women could be so beautiful. Men could be as beautiful as that,
yes, but not women. And he knew, though he did not know how he knew,
that she was not of our kind.
“He said to her, ‘Long life to you!’ and she replied, ‘And to you long
life!’ She came and sat by his fire, and he gave her the cup of coffee
one gives a guest. She drank it and returned the cup to him, saying,
‘Good trails to your feet!’ Then they looked at each other for some
time without speaking.
“Then she said to him, ‘Am I not beautiful?’ And he said, ‘Yes.’ She
said to him, ‘Have you ever seen a woman more beautiful?’ And he said,
‘No.’ And after she had been silent for a long time she said to him,
‘Will you marry me?’ And he said, ‘No.’
“She said to him, ‘Do you think you will find a woman more beautiful
than I?’ He looked at her between the eyes and said, ‘I know that I
shall never see a woman so beautiful.’ She said, ‘Then will you marry
me?’ And he said, ‘No.’
“‘Why will you not marry me?’ she asked, and he said, ‘I do not wish
to marry.’ So for a time they sat silent, and then she said, ‘Do not
forget me,’ and went away.
“He told me these things, and I said to him, ‘She was an ora.’ He said,
‘Yes, I know.’ I said, ‘Was she a gypsy ora?’ For, as you know, there
are two kinds of ora, and if she were a gypsy ora I would have been
troubled for my friend. He said, ‘No, she was a lady ora.’ We spoke no
more about it.
“Three years went by, to a day, and again it happened that my friend
was sitting alone in his house, making a cup of coffee in the ashes of
the fire, when again the door opened.”
The man of Ipek stopped speaking, opened his silver tobacco box, and
put a pinch of the long, fine, golden tobacco on a cigarette paper. He
spread it carefully, twisted it into the cone shape of the Albanian
cigarette, glanced at us to see that none of our cigarette holders were
empty, and placed the white slender cone between his lips. He lighted
it and drew several deliberate puffs. No one spoke. There was the red
circle of firelight, the graceful black and white and colored figures
huddled close to it, around us the shadows of the house, and beyond
them the vast, murmurous blackness of the night and the mountains; the
chill and mystery of them seemed to be pressing against the stone walls
that kept them out, and the sound of the waterfall was like the sighing
breaths of strange, wild things.
“My friend was sitting by his fire, like this, but he was alone. It
was the third coming of that day of the year on which the ora had come
out of the darkness, and when again the door opened he knew, without
turning to see, who it was.
“She came in, and he turned and said, ‘Long life to you!’ Then he saw
that with her was a manservant, and that manservant was of her own
kind. She said to my friend, ‘And to you long life!’ She sat by the
fire, and he gave her coffee, and she drank, and the manservant stood
in the shadows behind them.
“‘Have you forgotten me?’ she said, and my friend said, ‘No.’ They
looked at each other, and she said, ‘Am I not beautiful?’ And he said,
‘Yes.’ Then she leaned close to him and said, ‘Will you marry me?’ And
he said, ‘No.’
“When he said that she rose, and she was more beautiful angry than she
had been before. She said: ‘Come with me. My father wishes to see you.’
“He said, ‘What have I to do with your father?’
“She said, ‘Come with me.’
“My friend did not know why he went, or how he went, or where he went.
They came to a place in the mountains, but it was a strange place, and
strange mountains--my friend could not describe that place. It was a
place in our mountains, but such a place as no man had ever seen. There
were trees that were alive; it was all my friend could say. There were
many souls of trees about him, and they were ora, and among them was
their king, who is the king of the ora. He stood before the king of the
ora.
“The king looked at him and said, ‘Will you marry my daughter?’ And he
said, ‘No.’
“The king said to him:‘My daughter has seen you. My daughter wishes to
be your wife. She will be a good wife to you. She will bring you great
happiness. She is my daughter, a lady ora.’
“My friend said: ‘I thank you. Your daughter is very beautiful and very
good. But I do not wish to marry.’
“The king of the ora said, ‘If you will marry my daughter you will have
all the heart desires. I will make you rich in the things that men call
riches in the Land of the Eagle.’
“My friend said: ‘I am a poor man. I am not a bey of the south, of the
land of the Toshk, but I am a Gheg, a man of the mountains. All that I
need I earn with my hands, and that is enough. I do not wish to marry.’
“Then the king of the ora rose, and he was not angry, but he was very
terrible. He said, ‘Marry my daughter.’
“And my friend married his lady daughter.”
The man of Ipek seemed to think that the story was ended. But I, who
had been scribbling all this down in my notebook, hidden in the shadow
of Rexh, as Perolli translated it to me paragraph by paragraph, did not
agree with him at all. “What happened?” I wanted to know.
“Nothing happened. His family came into the empty house and he was
gone, leaving his gun on the wall and the empty coffee cup by the dead
ashes of the fire. They were very much afraid. My friend had not told
any man but me about the visit of the ora three years before, and I
said nothing. Some days went over the tops of the mountains, and no one
knew where he had gone. Then he came back, and brought with him his
wife, the ora.”
The rest I got by questions.
“No one could see her except my friend,” said the man of Ipek. “No
one but he ever saw her. He built himself a beautiful house; there
were rugs in it, and tables of carved wood, and bowls of copper and
silver--all things that are beautiful. Cigarette holders of amber and
silver with jeweled bowls, and sashes and turbans of silk, and cushions
of silk, and beautiful jars for bringing water from the springs. All
kinds of rich and beautiful things, and always great quantities of
delicate and rich foods. The men of Ipek remember that house well.
“Yes, my friend is dead now. He lived in happiness with his wife for
twenty years, and they had children whom he loved. But only he could
see them, for to others they were invisible, like his wife. I have been
in his house many times when she was there, but I never saw her. Others
say they have seen strange things in that house; they have seen things
moved by hands they could not see. But I never saw that. Only I know
that my friend was happy with his wife and children. She was a lady
ora, and kept his house well. The gypsy ora are dirty folk, but the
lady ora love cleanliness and order. Everyone respected my friend and
his lady wife. Whenever he entered a village, all guns were fired in
his honor, for men said, ‘The man who married a lady ora is coming into
the village.’ Oh, it was all very well known in Ipek, among the people
of my tribe who are now slaves to the cursed Serbs.
“When he died, no doubt she went back to her own people, taking their
children with her. His family came to take back his house, and they
found all manner of beautiful things, but no money. No money anywhere.”
“What do you think of it?” I said to Frances. “Do you believe----Great
Scott! Of course it isn’t true! I don’t know what’s wrong with my mind.
Men don’t marry tree spirits. It’s absurd.”
But, frankly, my conviction was that of the man who whistles cheerfully
while passing a graveyard at night, because, of course, he does not
believe in ghosts.
“There’s some natural explanation,” said Alex. “The man went away for
some reason--perhaps he actually had found some of the treasure they
say is buried in these mountains--and when he came back he invented the
story to account for it.”
“But he had told this man about seeing the ora three years earlier.”
“Well, they’re a very patient people. Perhaps he waited three years
after he found the treasure before he dug it up.”
“I should say they’re patient!” cried Frances. “Perolli, if you don’t
tell them we are simply dying of hunger, I will! It’s almost two
o’clock in the morning. Do they think we are made of--cast iron? I want
something to eat, and I want to go to sleep. Do they intend to talk
until morning?”
“It is the custom, when strangers come, to talk to them,” said
Perolli, severely. “Their only way of hearing news, and their only
entertainment, is talking to guests. If you want to be rude about
eating and sleeping, go ahead; I won’t.”
“Oh, all right,” Frances relented, sadly. “Perolli, do you believe in
ora?”
“Well--do you believe in heaven and hell, and God and the devil? There
are lots of things in the world that you don’t see or touch. I don’t
know----” He said, briskly, “Of course I don’t believe in ora!” He
wavered again. “But when you know so many people who have seen them
and talked with them--I mean, who think they have----Everyone used to
believe such things, long ago, and perhaps, here in these mountains,
where the people have changed so little through all the centuries,
there may still be things--spirits, phantoms, whatever you like to
call them. Understand, I don’t believe it. But there may be something
in that myth that’s part of every religion, that there was a time when
there were other beings on earth besides men. And if there were once,
why then, if we could still see them, they must still be----But of
course it must be all imagination.”
“And there was that sound we heard. I never heard anything like it
before. Perolli, you said it was an ora.”
He looked badgered. “I meant, whatever it was, it is what these people
call an ora.”
“Do the ora ever come into this village?” I demanded at large.
“We hear them in the village at night,” said the coffee maker, quite
casually, as he measured a spoonful of brown powder into the tiny pot.
“No, we never see them. They call to us, and when we answer they talk,
but we cannot understand their language. Always when we speak to them
they answer in their own tongue.”
“But, Cheremi, you heard them talking about your cousin’s death,” I
said.
“We hear them talking together sometimes, yes,” said the coffee maker.
“If you go through the Wood of the Ora at twilight you will often hear
them talking in some language you will understand--in Persian or Arabic
or Greek or Albanian. Then if you listen perhaps you will hear them
speak of you or of some one you know. But if you speak to them, they
will be silent, and then they will go on talking together in their own
language, which no man understands. It is no doubt the old language of
the trees.”
“But you cut the trees,” said Alex.
“Yes,” I cried, struck by it. “You cut all the branches off the trees.
Doesn’t it cripple or hurt the ora?”
“The ora is a spirit,” said the man of Ipek. “You cannot hurt a pure
spirit that has no body. Ora are spirits of the forests, but they are
not part of the trees. I understand it, but I do not say it very well.
Even if you cut down a tree you do not kill the ora. An ora does not
live, an ora simply is.”
We were interrupted by Cheremi, who approached, knelt mysteriously by
Perolli’s side, and whispered. Perolli turned to us. “Our dinner is
delayed,” he said, “because they can find nothing to give to Rexh.
They have only pork in the house, and they have sent through all the
village and cannot find any eggs or goat’s meat. A boy has gone now,
over the mountains to the next village, to get something they can offer
a Mohammedan. You see, their flocks were destroyed when the Serbs
retreated through here, and if they kill one of the two sheep for us,
it means losing the lambs next year.”
“But, Miss Hardy, I can eat corn bread. That is all I need,” said Rexh,
earnestly.
“We can’t tell them that now. We should have thought of it sooner,”
said Perolli. “We must wait at least until the boy comes back.”
“Oh, my sainted grandmother!” cried poor Frances. “Aren’t we going to
have any dinner at all till breakfast time?”
“Is it because we are guests that our hosts are taking all this trouble
to give Rexh the food a Mohammedan can eat?” I asked. “They’re Roman
Catholics, aren’t they? Shouldn’t we have brought a Mohammedan into
their house?”
[Illustration: AN ALBANIAN HODJI OF THE MATI]
“Oh, that makes no difference,” said Perolli. “One religion or
another--all religions are the same in the sight of God. Mohammedan or
Catholic, we are all human, we all respect one another. No, our hosts
don’t mind the trouble; they’re only sorry that they have nothing but
pork in the house.”
“What would happen, Rexh, if you ate pork without knowing it?” said I.
“Nothing, Mrs. Lane. Nothing would happen even if I ate it, knowing I
was doing it. But for me it is wrong to eat pork, so I would never do
that. For these others,” he explained, carefully, looking very serious
and very twelve-year-old, “it is not wrong to eat pork. It is not the
pork itself that matters, Mrs. Lane. It is doing what is wrong that
matters. See”--he sat up, making his points gravely with straight
forefinger--“some things are wrong for the Catholics to do; they are
right for me. I can have nine wives, but the Catholics can have only
one. They can eat pork, but that is wrong for me. There are many things
like that. Each must do what he thinks is right. It does not matter
what it is. Men think differently. But God knows whether they do what
seems right to them. And in the end we all go to the same heaven, if we
have been good.”
“Good_ness_, Rexh!” I murmured, feebly. I ask you, is that the talk
you would expect between Mohammedan and Catholic in the Near East? What
about massacres, and holy wars, and all that?
“What about them?” said Perolli, when I asked him. “They may be in Asia
Minor--though, myself, I think religion hasn’t much to do with the
fighting between Christian and Turk. But we don’t have them in Albania.
We are all Albanians, first. And second, the Virgin Mary is the mother
of all good people, Mohammedan or Catholic. Why should we fight each
other?”
And he told of Italy’s attempt to block Albania’s entry into the League
of Nations by asserting that the people were Mohammedan, and of the
Albanian Mohammedans’ quiet retort in sending to Geneva a delegation
led by an archbishop followed by I forget how many bishops. Then he
told about the people in Kossova, who are both Catholic and Mohammedan,
going to the mosque by day and attending mass by night; that is because
they were conquered by the Turks, who told them they must become
followers of Mohammed. “Very well,” they said, since it made little
difference to them. But then the priests told them that they must not
forsake the Church. “Very well,” they said again. And they are called
in Albania a word which means, “half-and-half.”
“All that is not important,” said Perolli, his attention wandering,
for the group around the fire began to talk Albanian politics. Behind
his casually cheerful brown eyes I saw many things stirring, and I lay
back, staring up at the smoke beneath the roof and wondering what was
in all the hidden minds around me. Did our hosts suspect that Perolli
was part of the new, distrusted Tirana government? Why, really, was he
in these mountains? Was it truly only a vacation, and was he taking
his life in his hands and wandering along the edge of the Serbian
armies’ lines merely for pleasure? What were the real thoughts of these
barbaric-looking men, these men with shaved heads and scalp locks
hidden beneath their turbans, as question and answer and argument went
back and forth across the fire?
They were talking in perhaps six languages; not everyone there
understood all those tongues, and subtle conversations beneath
conversations were going on; this man dropping into Italian for a
phrase, that one into a dialect of Samarkand or northern India. And
there was one man who persistently talked Serbian to Perolli--that
language, at least, I could recognize, and I could see him growing
restive under it, trying to take the talk into Albanian instead.
The children who were still awake sat soberly listening, not speaking,
but gathering it all into their minds, turning their eyes from speaker
to speaker as the languages changed, puzzled a little, trying to
understand. And I realized how Albanian children get their education.
“We’d be saying: ‘Run away and play, dear. This isn’t for children,’” I
commented.
“We wouldn’t,” said Frances. “They’d have been in bed six hours ago.
How on earth do they live to grow up?”
“Heaven knows. But aren’t they strong and beautiful when they do!”
“It’s all right,” said Perolli, aside. “They’re talking about the
French--whether France will become enough afraid of Jugo-Slavia to side
with Italy down here. They aren’t for or against the Tirana government;
they don’t exactly understand it, but they’re waiting to find out. They
don’t know who I am. Don’t be worried.”
And at last dinner appeared. It was exactly half past two in the
morning.
Most of the children--they had had no supper at all, so far as we could
determine--were going to sleep, collapsing in soft little heaps where
they sat beside the fire. Various women of the household lifted them
tenderly, carried them to the farther corner of the house, near the
goats, and laid them in a row on the floor. There, covered head and
foot with heavy, tucked-in blankets, they continued to sleep.
Meantime the table was brought for us. It was a large round piece of
wood, raised on little legs perhaps five inches from the floor. We sat
about it, comfortably cross-legged on our blankets, and before each of
us was laid a large chunk of corn bread broken from the flat loaf. In
the center of the table was set a wooden bowl filled with pieces of
pork.
“Don’t!” said Perolli, quickly, restraining our famished gestures. “In
Albania it is not good manners to be eager to eat.” So we sat wretched
for some moments, savoring the delicious odor of food that we must
not touch, and politely making conversation with our hosts, who still
sprawled in graceful attitudes about the fire. Then, with slow and
indifferent movements, we fished out bits of the meat with our fingers,
and ate.
It was delicious, the lean meat, stripped of every scrap of fat and
broiled on sticks over a wood fire. We ate eagerly, biting first the
meat, then a morsel of corn bread, coarse, made without leavening, but
sweet and nutty. The smallest crumb of it must not be scattered on
table or floor; when one fell, Perolli instructed us to pick it up and
kiss it. We should also have made the sign of the cross, for bread is
sacred in these mountains. Since we were not Catholics, that omission
might be overlooked. But we must pick up the crumb and kiss it; to have
ignored it would have been scandal.
“In Albania,” said Perolli, “it is etiquette to leave a great deal of
the food.” And while we were still starving, after fourteen hours of
hunger, he ordered the dish away.
After that, another wooden bowl filled with cubes of the fat pork,
fried crisp. Rexh, sitting a little apart, soberly ate his piece of
corn bread, for not even in the next village had the messenger been
able to find eggs or goat’s meat.
When this second course was removed, fresh water was again brought to
wash our hands, while the table was removed to a little distance. Then
I saw why it was courteous to leave food, for all the villagers who had
come in to see us gathered around this second table. And when they had
finished and all had washed their hands--it was now past three in the
morning--the table was again moved, and the family ate, men and women
together, chatting and daintily dipping into the common dish.
“Do you think, Perolli,” said Frances, “that we could go to bed now?”
And she looked enviously at Alex, who sat stony eyed, upright, and fast
asleep.
“Oh, surely!” said Perolli. “They’ll understand that you’re tired.” And
he explained this to our hosts, who nodded, smiling. So Cheremi and
Rexh spread our blankets more smoothly on the floor, and we lay down in
a row, our heads on our saddlebags, and pulled another blanket over us.
For a time the others sat by the fire and talked; one roasted coffee
over the coals in a long-handled pan, and then ground it in a cylinder
of brass. The warm brown smell of it and the sound of grinding kept
coming through my daze of fatigue. Then one by one they lay down,
covering their heads with blankets; the fire died to a fading glow of
coals; there was no sound except the incessant tinkling of the goats’
bells and the crunching and tearing of the dried oak branches which
they munched.
“My first night in a native Albanian house,” I thought, and the next
instant, it seemed to me, I started awake. The room was full of
movement and talk. It was still dark, but in the farther corner a
gray, slanting block of light came through the open door; smoke curled
and twisted in it. The fire was blazing; near it a man knelt, making
coffee. All around him men stood, twisting tighter their long colored
sashes; the rifles on their backs stood upward at every angle. Then
I saw the goats and sheep going one by one through the block of gray
light; a boy followed them, rifle on back and staff in hand, and I
realized that it was morning.
I looked at my wrist watch, whose radium dial shone in the darkness.
Half past five. The man who was making coffee smiled at me. “Long may
you live!” said he, warmly, offering me the tiny cup with one hand, the
other on his heart. As in a nightmare I struggled to reach it, and made
my stiff lips say, “And to you long life!”
Perolli sat up quickly, wide awake as an aroused animal. “Good
morning!” said he, happily. “Time to get up!”
Rain was still sluicing down from a gray sky; every rock in the
interminable ranges of mountain peaks seemed to be the source of a
foaming stream. Frances, Alex, and I, with our toilet cases in our
hands, made our way along the side of a cliff to a waterfall, knelt
on the dripping rocks beside it, and washed and brushed our teeth. The
woman who accompanied us watched us with interest, and exclaimed, while
we showed her the tooth-paste tubes, the tooth brushes in their cases,
the cakes of soap, the jars of cold cream, the strange machine-made
Turkish toweling, and the white combs. Even to ourselves they seemed
exotic luxuries. How many curious things we have invented for the care
of our bodies, since the days when we lived as the mountain Albanians
still live.
“And at that,” I said, enviously, “I wish I had her complexion!” The
woman stood by the waterfall, as graceful as a cat, strong limbed,
clear eyed, fine skinned, and her bare feet in the cold water were joys
to the eye, slim, beautifully formed, arched, with almond nails and a
rose-marble color. True, her face and hands were grimy with wood smoke,
and ours, when we looked at one another, set us off into exhausting
laughter.
“My house is clean,” said the woman as she watched us scrubbing and
scrubbing again. “There are no lice in it.”
“Now I wonder where she got that idea?” said Alex. “I thought they
thought lice were healthy.”
Frances asked questions in Albanian. Yes, this house had kept for a
time a refugee child on his way from the American house in Scutari to
the lands of his tribe, and he had insisted on washing his bed and his
clothes; he had hated lice with an astonishing hatred; he said they
were small devils who would grow to be large devils, and the woman did
not think this was true, but she had washed all the beds, also all the
house, and now it was like an American house and had no lice.
“But that isn’t what she meant. She meant that she doesn’t see why we
are washing,” said Alex, lifting her dripping face above a pool and
rubbing it with one hand. It isn’t easy to wash in a waterfall, with no
place to lay the soap.
“We do this every morning,” Frances explained in Albanian. “It is
American custom.” The woman looked as though she thought it rather
foolish, still, if it were the custom----
“Also,” said Frances, “every morning we wash the children and the
babies, all over, from head to foot.”
“Yes?” said the woman, indifferently. “Here babies stay in their
cradles. Children go into the water when they are old enough to swim.
Then only in the summer, when it is not cold.”
Frances gave it up. We came back from the waterfall, on a path that
was like a terrace of heaven overlooking all the world of mountains
and valleys and swirling clouds. We were already wet to the skin with
rain, but that did not matter, for we had before us the day’s walking
in it, and our indifference to wet clothes and feet was already quite
Albanian. And the morning, and the mountain air, and the water-gushing
range after range of mountains, seemed to us glorious. We thought that
it would be fun to herd goats among these peaks and to live forever in
a stone house with a fire on the floor and a pan of corn bread baking
in the coals. No dusting, for there was no furniture; no making of
beds, for there were no beds; no curtains to keep fresh, for there were
no windows; no trouble with clothes, for centuries saw no change in
fashions; no work except hand weaving and embroidery and the washing of
linen in a brook. No haste, no worry, no struggle to invent new needs
that one must struggle to satisfy. All that simplicity and leisure our
ancestors traded for a rug on the floor, a trinket-covered dressing
table, for knives and forks and kitchen ranges, fountain pens and high
white collars and fashion books. It seemed to us, on that morning, a
trade in which we had been cheated.
And even now I wonder, sometimes, about the value of the centuries that
have given us civilization.
We had no doubt at all about their worthlessness that morning, when we
set out again--after a cup of Turkish coffee, each--to walk another
twenty miles over the Albanian mountains, through the Wood of the Ora
and the tribal lands of Plani and over the Chafa Bosheit to the next
village.