THE ALBANIAN FAMILY
And now we will let the rumor of great deeds rest a while; we will
close our eyes to the wars that followed upon the siege of Janina; we
will shut our ears against the echoes of the names of a Ulysses,
Tepelenti, a Kolokotrini, those heroes who shook the throne of the
Sultan, and all of whom the Pasha of Janina called his very dear
friends. While these bloody wars are raging we will turn into the
grove of Dodona, where formerly the ambiguous utterances of sacred
prophecies were always resounding in the ears of contemplative
dreamers. Let us go back eighty years! Let us seek out that quiet
little glen whither neither good report nor evil report ever comes
flying, whose inhabitants know of nothing but what happens amongst
their own fir-trees; why, even the tax-collecting Spahi only light
down amongst them to levy contributions once in a century!
The house of Halil Patrona's consort no longer stands beside the
rippling stream. Nobody even knows the tomb in which the beautiful,
the elfin Gül-Bejáze now lies; Gül-Bejáze, the White Rose,[9] blooms
no longer anywhere in that valley. Nobody knows the name even; only
the oldest old grandmother in the circle of the spinning maidens can
tell them tales, which she also has heard from her mother or her
grandmother, of a mad lady who used to dwell in this valley and lay a
table every evening and prepare a couch every night for an invisible
spirit, whom she called her husband, and whom nobody saw but herself.
[Footnote 9: The heroine of another Turkish tale of Jókai's, _A feher
rózsa_ (_The White Rose_).]
This old woman had a son called Behram, a brave, honest, worthy youth;
many a time with his comrades he would pursue the Epirot bandits, who
swooped down upon their valley and carried off their cattle.
Near to him dwelt the widow Khamko, whose husband had been shot at
Tepelen, and who, with her son, little Ali, in her bosom, had sought
refuge amongst these mountains.
Formerly Khamko was a gentle creature, but when they began to talk to
her about the mad lady she also grew as crazy as ever the other was.
She was ready to destroy the whole world, and over and over again she
would utter the wildest things; she would like, she said, to see the
whole four corners of the world set on fire so that the flames might
shoot up on all four sides of it, and every living man within it, good
as well as bad, might be burned. Listen not to such words. O Allah!
Behram was a very quiet fellow, not more than six and twenty years
old; little Ali was scarce sixteen. But this wild, restless lad was
already wont to wander for days together amongst the glens and
mountains, and whenever he came home he invariably brought his mother
money or jewels. And nobody knew whence he got them save Behram, to
whom the youth confessed everything, for he loved him dearly.
Ali joined the company of the Epirot adventurers and with them he
would go sacking villages, waylaying rich merchants, and shared with
them the easily gotten booty.
And whenever he returned home without money, his mother. Khamko, would
rail upon and chide him, and let him have no peace until he had
engaged in fresh and more lucrative robberies.
Behram looked askance at the perilous ways of his young comrade, and
as often as he was alone with him did his best to fill his mind with
honest, noble ideas, which also seemed to make some impression on Ali,
for he gradually began to abandon his marauding ways, and in order
that he might still be able to get money for his mother, he fell to
selling his sheep and his goats, and even parted with his long,
silver-mounted musket. At last he had nothing left but his sword. Dame
Khamko, meanwhile, scolded Ali unmercifully. If he wanted to eat, let
him go seek his bread, she said. And the lad wandered through the
woods and thickets, and lived for a long time on the berries of the
forest. At last, one day, when he was wellnigh famished and in the
depths of misery, he came upon an Armenian inn-keeper standing in the
doorway of his lonely little tavern. Ali rushed upon him, sword in
hand, like a wolf perishing with hunger. The Armenian was a worthy old
fellow, and when he saw Ali he said to him:
"What dost thou want, my son?"
The honest, open look of the old man shamed Ali, and casting down his
eyes, he replied: "I want to give thee this sword." Yet the moment
before he had determined to slay him with it.
The Armenian took the sword from him, and gave him ten sequins in
exchange for it, besides meat and drink. So Ali returned home without
his sword.
When Dame Khamko saw her son return home disarmed she was greatly
incensed and exclaimed:
"What hast thou done with thy sword?"
"I have sold it," answered Ali, resolutely.
At this the mother flew into a violent rage, and catching up a
bludgeon, belabored Ali with it until she was tired. The big, muscular
lad allowed himself to be beaten, and neither wept nor said a word,
nor even tried to defend himself.
"And now dost see that spindle?" cried Dame Khamko. "Learn to spin the
thread and turn the bobbins quickly; thou shalt not eat idle bread at
home, I can tell thee. A man who can sell his sword is fit for nothing
but to sit beside a distaff."
So Ali sat down to spin.
For a couple of days he endured the insults which his mother heaped
upon him, and on the third day he returned to the Armenian, to whom he
had sold his sword, robbed him of and slew of him with it, plundered
and burned down his house, and from thenceforth became such a famous
robber that the whole countryside lived in mortal terror of him.
Dame Khamko lived a long time after this event, and ruined her son's
soul altogether by urging him to kill and slay without mercy, till one
fine day her son murdered her likewise, and thus added her blood also
to the blood of those whom, at his mother's instigation, he had
cruelly murdered.
And this lad became the Pasha of Janina. Ali Tepelenti!
Through what an ocean of treachery, perjury, robbery, and homicide he
had to wade before he attained to that eminence! How often was he not
so reduced as to have nothing left but his sword and his crafty brain?
But many a time, in the midst of his most brilliant successes, in the
very plenitude of his power, he would bethink him of the two quiet
little huts where he and Behram had been wont to dwell. He never heard
of Behram now, but he used frequently to think in those days and
wonder what would have become of himself if he had listened to
Behram's words and lived a quiet, contented life. 'Tis true he would
not have been so mighty a man as he was now, but would he not have
been a much happier one?
Once, when he was a very great potentate, he had visited the little
village in the glen in which they had hidden away together. But nobody
would tell him anything of Behram. He had disappeared none knew
whither. Perhaps he had died since then!