After we were all over, the men clasped their ears, sent an exuberant call out through the twilight, were answered from the far distances, fired all their guns several times in joyous unison, and then, slinging them back on their shoulders, went on blithely.
They went on blithely into such a rain as I had never supposed could be. Around the shoulder of the mountain we walked into it, as one walks into a shower bath—scattering drops on the fringes of it so few that they did not break the shock of its impact. Water fell upon us suddenly; our piteous gasps and small cries of protesting misery were muffled by the sound of its pouring on the rocks. In an instant rivulets of chilly water were wandering over shrinking skin from soggy mufflers to filling shoes, and there was no longer gayety in the world. Even the Albanians were gloomy, occupied with the task of keeping the slipping horses on the trail. In a few moments we had left their struggles behind us.
We climbed doggedly, in silence. Only the swishing of the relentless rain and the clicking of our staffs on the rocks made little noises against the distant roaring of waterfalls. By some trick of light reflected from peak or cloud, the trail and the valley below it were visible in a green-gray ghost of daylight, which made us seem unreal even to ourselves. And we climbed, interminably, forever, putting one foot before the other with the patient deep attentiveness of trudging animals, while rain dripped unheeded from forehead to cheek to chin. We climbed, absorbed in detail of slippery shale and stubborn bowlder, till Perolli’s exclamation shocked us as though a rock had spoken.
We must wait for our men, he said, and we dropped where we stood and sat soddenly. To light a cigarette was as impossible to us in that rain as to a swimmer under water. We sat and looked at one another, and laughed aloud, and were silent again. The horses came past us at last, each held by halter and by tail, and slowly they struggled over the crest of the mountain and disappeared. We should go on, Perolli said, and we murmured assent, but still we sat. When a stranger appeared on the trail against the gray sky we moved only our eyes to look at him.
He was a young man, dark eyed and handsome, but haggard. Besides the rifle on his back was strapped a small baby. The little head, uncovered, streaming with water, appeared above the thick woolen-fringed collar of the man’s black jacket. The baby’s mouth was open, drawn into a square of misery, but no sound came from it. The man’s jacket had been darned and darned again, till no thread of the original weaving was visible; his white homespun woolen trousers, hung low on the hips, were worn so thin that the darns no longer held together, and tatters fell around his bare ankles, above feet wrapped in rags. The remnants of black braiding on his trousers were of a pattern I had not seen before; I could not guess his tribe. Behind him a shapeless bundle of household goods moved slowly on the tiny hoofs of a donkey, and the little beast’s drooping ears and nose almost touched the trail.
“Long may you live!” And when he had returned the greeting we continued the courteous formula. “How could you get here?”
“Slowly, slowly, little by little.”
“Are you a man?”
“I am a man of Kossova, of the district of Ipek,” he answered, and it was not necessary to say more, for the Serbs hold Ipek. The memory of their taking it moved like a darkening shadow over his face, and it is best to ignore such memories.
Yet there was a little hope in his vague voice. He was going, he said, in search of a farm on which he could live. He had tried to live in the Shala country, but it was impossible there. There was too little land for the tribe of Shala, and the making of land is slow among mountains where stone walls must be built to catch the little earth that remains when rain melts limestone. He had heard that in the valley of Scutari there was soil, as there had been in Kossova, and his voice sank into silence as though it were a burden too heavy to lift.