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Title: Stories of gypsy life
Author: Konrad Bercovici
Editor: E. Haldeman-Julius
Release date: April 2, 2026 [eBook #78341]
Language: English
Original publication: Girard: Haldeman-Julius Publications, 1929
Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/78341
Credits: Tim Miller, Finkler and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK STORIES OF GYPSY LIFE ***
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.
They found Jim peacefully starting the second row. He had tied a
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.”
Mincu turned around and looked at his daughter, who shook her head
negatively.
“That is not half enough. I would willingly take it if it were my
daughter’s will. It would be worth the difference between that and a
thousand for me for the happiness of my daughter. But she is unwilling,
Sava.”
Sava moved away from the chief and sat down near Tira. Never before had
he been so electrified as he was by the nearness of that woman beside
him.
“And so you urge your father to refuse five hundred gold pieces that
you become my wife,” he asked, looking into her eyes.
“I would tell him to refuse a thousand,” Tira answered calmly. “You
should have spoken to me first,” she added.
Sava left her and went to talk with his men. The night was long. If her
father was a trader, he, too, was one. No one should be able to say,
“Mincu has bested Sava in a bargain!” He knew that his people would ply
Mincu with wine to soften him into a better bargain.
Late that night Tira was still dangling her feet from the rear end of
the wagon. She was talking to her father. Sava could not hear what she
said to him, but he heard Mincu argue with her heatedly.
It looked as though his men had brought Mincu to reason. He regretted
he had offered five hundred gold pieces for the girl. Perhaps if he had
stopped at four hundred! Or even three hundred! It was not only the
money, but to be beaten in a bargain by another man!
Mincu was half drunk now. He put his two hands on Sava’s shoulders and
said:
“I talked to Tira. She says she won’t have you, that I should not sell
her to you. And I so much want to have you for my son, Sava. But she
won’t have you. Oh, women! Who can ever tell what is in their hearts.
Who can? Fill my glass, men; fill it.”
“What kind of a father are you?” Sava questioned.
“Yes, what kind of a father are you that you cannot tell her what to
do?” Sava’s people shouted. “Tell us! Are you her slave or her master?”
“It is not only that,” Mincu rejoined. “But if it is to get her a
husband she does not want I can turn around and get the thousand gold
pieces the Cherkess has offered, or the two horses I wanted so much.”
He had sobered up the moment he was again bargaining. Drunk or sober,
he was a trader.
“I have offered you five hundred. I am offering six hundred now,” Sava
called out.
Mincu’s eyes brightened, but he still shook his head.
“Seven hundred,” called out Sava, after a brief moment. “It is all I
have!”
“Then wait a few more years,” Mincu answered jestingly. “Don’t give
away all you have!”
Sava sank into himself. It really was all he possessed. He would
willingly have offered more. What did money count against the
possession of such a woman as Tira? Her pale, round face shamed the
moon. Her eyes gave more warmth than the fire that was burning and
crackling.
Blind Jorga edged up to Sava. “When I last saw thee thou wert no higher
than my knees. But I know thee and have listened to thy voice during
all the years. Take this.” And he put his purse into Sava’s hands. “It
is all I have. Offer that also for the woman thou lovest.”
Sava’s friends saw Jorga put his purse into their chief’s hands and
were now ready to give all they possessed that he buy himself the woman
he loved.
“Silence!” blind Jorga called. “He has offered seven hundred. He can
now offer a hundred more gold pieces. And by my beard, he will not
offer more! Mincu! Where is Mincu!”
“If it is to marry her to a man she does not want why should I take
eight hundred when a thousand has been offered to me?” Mincu answered.
Another gypsy put his purse into Sava’s hands. “It is fifty gold
pieces. All I have.”
And those fifty were offered to Mincu.
Then one after another the other men gave, each one everything he
possessed, until the full sum of a thousand gold pieces was reached.
“There is a thousand,” Jorga called out joyfully, for he was conducting
the deal.
At the loud huzzas of the people, Tira joined the circle.
“It is a thousand gold pieces they have offered for you, Tira, and I
have accepted.”
Sava looked at her. He was happy, not only because he had bought
her for a thousand gold pieces, but also because his people had so
self-sacrificingly offered of their own free will the money they had
saved in long years of dangerous toil. He was proud of their love for
him. He felt stronger than he had ever felt before--as if all their
strength had joined his. He looked at them with tears in his eyes. He
looked at her. She was angry, defiant. She could not understand that if
she was worth a thousand gold pieces to him she was worth all the gold
in the world to his people, and they to him more than that.
Screaming at the top of her voice, Tira threw herself at her father’s
chest beating with her two fists.
“Oh! To have sold me to a man I do not want! Oh! Oh! Oh! Against my
will. Against my will. He should have spoken to me first. To me. To me.”
She tore her hair and clawed her breasts and face. That a daughter
should dare so to behave toward her father! But Sava’s whip will cow
her into a dutiful wife!
They looked at Sava, expecting to see the joy of the prospective taming
of such a woman. But he stood with his eyes closed, and his face became
sadder and sadder as Tira’s rage grew.
His mind climbed over the mountains to that other woman, to the young
widow whose love for him was so intense, who made him feel so sure of
himself. She was always waiting for him.
What sort of woman would be waiting for him on his return from a
dangerous journey if he were to marry Tira? True, he could beat Tira
into submission. But he could not force love from her; not the kind of
love the other woman had for him. And he weighed and measured. Was the
nearness of the one who loves you not dearer than the nearness of the
one who does not?
Meanwhile, Tira’s rage grew and grew. She clawed and cried and cursed.
Oh, it would be pleasant to tame her! The desire to tame her was
growing in him every second. He would have liked to begin right then
and there. But she was still Mincu’s daughter. She was not yet his
wife.
She did not love him. He could see that. What kind of woman would await
his return from the other side of the mountains? He would come to
her with a heart full of love, tired, hungry, wounded. How would she
receive him? Marga, the widow, would be waiting for him--expecting him.
The poet of the tribe, old Jorga, was chanting: “A thousand gold pieces
Sava pays for the woman he desires! That is the kind of men we have.
They pay everything they possess for the women they love. That is the
kind of men we are. When a man does not have all the money, all the
gold, we give it to him, that he purchase his heart’s desire.”
They had meanwhile dragged Tira to the wedding rug. She had suddenly
quieted down and was awaiting Sava in the center of the weave. She had
dried her tears and was straightening her hair while the men and women
shouted and laughed.
“Sava, give Mincu your purse that he give you the hand of his
daughter,” Jorga asked, fumbling for Sava’s hand.
Sava remained silent. His eyes had a far-away look.... Suddenly he
looked with searching eyes into the face of Tira.
“Bring me my horse,” he called to one of his men. “Let her marry the
man she loves. I am going to fetch here the woman who loves me!”
And, throwing the purse into Jorga’s hands, he turned to Mincu and
called: “It is a bad bargain you have driven, Mincu. A woman like her
is worth ten times a thousand gold pieces--to the man she loves. But
she will only be anguish and death to the man she does not love! If you
hate the Cherkess, sell her to him.”
And Sava sped his way across the mountains to the woman who was ever
waiting for him.
Transcriber’s Notes
Hyphenation has been retained as in the original publication.
p.28: “though” --> “thought” (he thought how).
p.28: “Petrinau” --> “Petrianu” (hard man, Petrianu was...).
p.42: “she bear” has been retained as in the original publication
(she bear).
p.47: “understod” --> “understood” (They let it be understood).
p.58: “loked” --> “looked” (turned around and looked).
p.59: “he” --> “be” (but to be beaten).
p.62: “Meanwhile.” --> “Meanwhile,” (Meanwhile, Tira’s rage).
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