“Long life to you!” she said.
“And to you long life!” we replied, and, seeing her glance fall covetously on my cigarette—only the swiftest flicker of a glance, it was—I offered her one. She took it, thanked me, lighted it from mine.
“A bold woman,” said Perolli.
“Why?”
“In these mountains the women smoke, but not before men; that is a man’s privilege, and it is unwomanly to smoke in their presence. Are you a woman?” he asked her, in Albanian.
“A woman of Pultit, married in Shala. A widow with two children, demanding justice from my tribe,” she said.
I looked about. There was nothing but snow and wet earth to sit on. Well, she must have been standing for hours, watching the goats. I leaned on my staff. “What justice?” said I.
She told us with a calm precision; none of her people’s rhetorical flourishes. Even through the barrier of language I could see that she was stating her case as a lawyer might who was not addressing a jury.
She had been married five years; she was twenty-one years old. She had two children—boys. While she was married her husband had built a house. It was a large house; two rooms. She had helped her husband build that house. With her own hands she had laid the slate on the roof. She liked that house. She had lived in it four years. Now her husband had been killed by the Serbs and she wanted to keep that house. She wanted to live in it, alone, with her two children.
“But it is impossible!” said Perolli. “A large house, with two rooms, for one woman?”