“Heaven knows. But aren’t they strong and beautiful when they do!”
“It’s all right,” said Perolli, aside. “They’re talking about the French—whether France will become enough afraid of Jugo-Slavia to side with Italy down here. They aren’t for or against the Tirana government; they don’t exactly understand it, but they’re waiting to find out. They don’t know who I am. Don’t be worried.”
And at last dinner appeared. It was exactly half past two in the morning.
Most of the children—they had had no supper at all, so far as we could determine—were going to sleep, collapsing in soft little heaps where they sat beside the fire. Various women of the household lifted them tenderly, carried them to the farther corner of the house, near the goats, and laid them in a row on the floor. There, covered head and foot with heavy, tucked-in blankets, they continued to sleep.
Meantime the table was brought for us. It was a large round piece of wood, raised on little legs perhaps five inches from the floor. We sat about it, comfortably cross-legged on our blankets, and before each of us was laid a large chunk of corn bread broken from the flat loaf. In the center of the table was set a wooden bowl filled with pieces of pork.
“Don’t!” said Perolli, quickly, restraining our famished gestures. “In Albania it is not good manners to be eager to eat.” So we sat wretched for some moments, savoring the delicious odor of food that we must not touch, and politely making conversation with our hosts, who still sprawled in graceful attitudes about the fire. Then, with slow and indifferent movements, we fished out bits of the meat with our fingers, and ate.
It was delicious, the lean meat, stripped of every scrap of fat and broiled on sticks over a wood fire. We ate eagerly, biting first the meat, then a morsel of corn bread, coarse, made without leavening, but sweet and nutty. The smallest crumb of it must not be scattered on table or floor; when one fell, Perolli instructed us to pick it up and kiss it. We should also have made the sign of the cross, for bread is sacred in these mountains. Since we were not Catholics, that omission might be overlooked. But we must pick up the crumb and kiss it; to have ignored it would have been scandal.
“In Albania,” said Perolli, “it is etiquette to leave a great deal of the food.” And while we were still starving, after fourteen hours of hunger, he ordered the dish away.
After that, another wooden bowl filled with cubes of the fat pork, fried crisp. Rexh, sitting a little apart, soberly ate his piece of corn bread, for not even in the next village had the messenger been able to find eggs or goat’s meat.
When this second course was removed, fresh water was again brought to wash our hands, while the table was removed to a little distance. Then I saw why it was courteous to leave food, for all the villagers who had come in to see us gathered around this second table. And when they had finished and all had washed their hands—it was now past three in the morning—the table was again moved, and the family ate, men and women together, chatting and daintily dipping into the common dish.