The village was perhaps fifteen houses, clustered on flat land at the foot of the cliffs. Beyond it, a creamy blue flood swollen by the rains, the Lumi Shala ran straight between the mountain ranges. A score of little streams, stone walled and crossed by tiny stone bridges, ran through the village, and all the land on which it stood was cut into odd-shaped pieces by many stone fences and raised channels of stone for irrigation water. Dropping down into that village was rather like being a very small gnat descending on a piece of half-made honeycomb.
All the earth was sodden with water; we sank over shoe tops in it, and, wading the streams, walking on fences, crossing the tiny bridges, we came to the house selected for us by the man we had sent ahead, were greeted with shouts and a volley of shots and ushered into the smoky, warm dusk where the house fire glimmered like a red eye.
Although this was our second night in a native house in the heart of the Albanian mountains, I cannot tell you how natural it seemed to us. It was as though we had always come home from the vast chill mountain twilight to a dark warm room where a fire smoldered on an earthen floor and the night was shut out by unbroken walls. It was as though we had always said, “Long may you live!” to our hosts and crouched comfortably, in steaming garments, beside the flames.
We drank the offered cups of sweet thick coffee, the large glasses of rakejia; Cheremi washed our feet; the dripping-wet goats and sheep were herded in through the open door and fell to munching dried leaves; the women nursed their babies, stooping above the painted gay cradles where the infants lay bound. It was all quite commonplace to us, and when, after an hour or so, Alex spoke of the stairway, she seemed for a moment to be a stranger coming from strange, unknown experiences.
“That stairway,” said Alex, “is about eighth century. I saw one like it in Norway, preserved by the historical society. It was in a house like this, too,” she added, in a tone of surprise, as though she saw the house for the first time.
It was slightly different from the house of Marke Gjonni. The end where the goats were eating was shut off from the rest by a latticework of woven willow boughs, and high against the wall where we sat by the fire an inclosed platform of the same latticework hung like a huge bird’s nest. It was reached by the stairway Alex had remarked—simply a slanting log, notched roughly into steps. Above the fire itself was another square of the interlaced branches, hung from the ceiling; the smoke rose and curled against it and made long velvety fringes of soot, and all around its edges were wooden pegs on which our coats were hung to dry and haunches of goat’s meat were hung to smoke. From one of the pegs swung the basket of wrought iron holding slivers of blazing pitch pine; this was the lamp.
“Eighth century,” I repeated, vaguely. “So we are living in the eighth century.”
“Or earlier. Oh yes, surely earlier, for the house I saw must have been one of the last of its kind in Norway,” said Alex. But we said no more about it, for centuries seemed unimportant then, and, indeed, we did not remember very clearly any newer ways of living; we were too comfortable where we were, like people coming home after a very short journey.
Perhaps ten men of the village had come in to see us; several older and more dignified ones whom we took to be chiefs, and some young ones, and half a dozen boys, all moving gracefully as panthers, their white garments ghostly in the gloom, and each swinging his rifle from his shoulder and hanging it on a peg near the door before he settled himself near the fire, where the quivering light flickered over silver chains, bright sashes, and colored turbans. Their large brown eyes regarded us with serious friendliness; when they turned their heads their profiles were sharp and fine against the darkness; and their hands were slender, firmly molded, aristocratic.
A small kid was brought for our inspection; we were to eat it for dinner. It looked at us mildly, contented in the arm that held it comfortably; its fur was soft as sealskin. One of the children rose and smilingly kissed its delicate muzzle, with a gesture of charming affection. Then they took it out and killed it, bringing back its skin, which they hung on a peg. After a time the mother goat came over and nuzzled that skin thoughtfully.