Friends in strange garments

by Anna Milo Upjohn

The pigs had passed this plank every day of their lives, and had always longed to cross it, for they could smell the fresh meal from afar; but if they so much as pointed their greedy, pink noses in that direction someone appeared in the doorway brandishing a stick and Zorka jerked them anxiously back by their tails. Now Zorka was not with them and there was no one in the doorway. It stood open, and the sunlight fell on a silvery heap of meal on the floor under the mill stone. Its fragrance floated to them. Their stiff little hoofs tapped across the gangway and they plunged up to their ears in the soft, delicious mess. Then, as they wallowed blissfully, there came a sudden whack, whack, on their plump backs, and the angry voice of the miller’s wife drowned their terrified squeals. In a cloud of flying meal they scurried back over the plank out of reach of the cudgel, making a bee line for the safety of their own kitchen.

But the miller’s wife had other ways of reaching them than with a stick. She stopped Zorka’s father as he was going home to supper. ‘The next time,’ she cried angrily, ‘I’ll cut their throats and hang their hams in the chimney!’

The threat troubled Zorka’s father, who feared that he might have to pay for the spoiled meal. He went home with a deep frown between his brows. ‘That settles it,’ he said, ‘those pigs must go to market to-morrow. They are as fat as young geese now, and should bring a good price, but another scrape like to-day’s would wipe out all the profit.’

Zorka, crossing the threshold, heard the fatal words, and her heart stood still. The five minutes that she had spent in listening to the gouslar had perhaps cost the lives of her playmates. She took her place at the table speechless with dismay. There was a nice mutton stew, with beans and gravy, but Zorka could swallow hardly a mouthful. Her gaze was fixed on two sleek forms sleeping in the shadow of a bench by the door, their sides rising and falling peacefully.

Her father made plans quickly. He himself could not go to market, for his work at the sawmill kept him, and the grandmother was too old for the hard journey. Zorka’s aunt was going, but she had two donkeys laden with firewood, and a third on which her baby in one saddlebag would balance a young kid and some turnips in the other. She could not be expected to look after two frisky pigs. Zorka must go with her and take Mirko and Marko safely to the market at Podgoritza.

This filled Zorka’s heart with tumult. The journey was an event. She had made it only once in her life, and that once so long ago that she could hardly remember it. The market town lay almost at the other end of Montenegro. It would take two days on foot to reach it. They would have to go down, down from the wooded valley where the village of Kolashin lay, through bare, rocky gorges, crossing and recrossing a wild river many times, with the gray walls of the mountains towering high above them.

There would be many people going from the village, and others would join them on the road, coming from high places in the hills and deep places in the blue valleys. They would eat their meals along the way—meals of leeks and milk-white cheese, with black bread, and sometimes they would stop at a tavern or a friend’s house to drink thick, sweet Turkish coffee from little brass cups.

There would be gossip and music and laughter all the way down to Podgoritza, but Mirko and Marko would not return from the fair. Their blithe life spent in hunting for the best fodder along the brook would be over.

So the next morning big tears stood on Zorka’s cheeks as she tied a yellow handkerchief over her head and bound her sandals. She let Mirko and Marko out of their comfortable pen, fed them an exquisite breakfast of boiled potatoes and milk, then washed and dried them before she joined her Aunt Basilika on the edge of the village. There a group of people were loading their donkeys under the beech trees. As most of the wood for building and burning in Montenegro comes from the Valley of Kolashin and the mountains behind it, many people were carrying firewood or charcoal for sale. Others had potatoes or walnuts, eggs and cheese or great sacks of wool. There were droves of sheep and goats, and a few cows. The cattle had to be driven slowly in order not to run all their fat off before they reached the market.

Mirko and Marko joined the procession in high spirits. The smell of garden stuff and grain was enticing to them, and Zorka had to put them on a string to keep them from racing ahead under the feet of the donkeys. Long after the sun had risen for the rest of the world, the path that the market-goers followed lay in twilight, for eastward the mountains rose in a sheer wall that seemed to touch the sky.