Stories of gypsy life

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.

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The Mill on the River	5
Ripe Wheat	20
Sava	42

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 [Pg 7]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, [Pg 9]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:

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.”

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.”

“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.

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 [Pg 12]of the mill, grinding and crunching all that was shoved into it.

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 [Pg 13]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.

“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.”

“Since millers ask such dowry, it may come to pass that there will be a mill on the other side also.”

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.”

“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 [Pg 15]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.

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

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.

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:

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 [Pg 18]German wheels turning of themselves. For it is a steam mill he is putting up.”

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 [Pg 19]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:

“She thinks that if she can make you love her, her father will get off with less dowry than he should pay.”

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.

“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.”

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!”

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 [Pg 21]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 [Pg 23]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.”

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.

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.”

“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 [Pg 25]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 [Pg 26]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.

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 [Pg 27]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.

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 [Pg 29]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 [Pg 30]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 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?”

That single word shed considerable light on the situation. “Harvesting Machine Company, Chicago?” Robu Boyar questioned, mispronouncing every word.

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 [Pg 33]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 [Pg 34]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. [Pg 35]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.

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.

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 [Pg 37]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 [Pg 38]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.

“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.

He looked around to see Ileana. She was [Pg 39]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.

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 [Pg 41]the lips. She encircled his waist with her arms and pressed him to herself.

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, [Pg 43]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 [Pg 44]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 [Pg 45]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 [Pg 47]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 [Pg 48]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.

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.

“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!”

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 [Pg 51]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?”

“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 [Pg 52]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, [Pg 53]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.

“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.”

“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:

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:

Like a tiger Tira leaped into the center of the circle. Spinning like a top with her arms [Pg 55]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!”

“That we drink a glass of wine together, cumetru, father-in-law. Come where the wine is served.”

“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:

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.

“If you talk about silver you will drain the wine of the country before I say another word.”

“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?”

“Harness up. Another few hours we shall reach Ploesti and be received by our own people.”

“It was the man I refused and not the gold,” Tira answered angrily. “You should have come to me first.”

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 [Pg 58]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.”

And then, as Mincu still shook his head, Sava called out in quick succession: “Four hundred. Five hundred.”

“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!

“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.”

“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 [Pg 60]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.

“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 [Pg 61]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.”

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.

“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 [Pg 63]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.

*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK STORIES OF GYPSY LIFE ***

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The Project Gutenberg eBook of Stories of gypsy life

Stories of Gypsy Life

CONTENTS

STORIES OF GYPSY LIFE

THE MILL ON THE RIVER

RIPE WHEAT

SAVA

Transcriber’s Notes

THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG™ LICENSE