Then they brought us a lamb, all woolly white with youth, and we praised that, and they took it out and killed it. Its skin hung beside that of the kid. And after that they showed us a fat hen, and it also was so used to the companionship of humans that it uttered no faintest squawk when the woman who held it nonchalantly wrung its neck, just beyond the circle of firelight.
After that our host handed over the making of coffee to one of the village men and went out to help his wife cook the dinner; there was a built-up place of stone outside where the cooking fire was made. All this time we had been talking, making the courteous speeches that accompany coffee drinking, and exchanging cigarettes.
One of the empty cigarette boxes—the little, ten-cigarette, tin-foil-lined ones—I handed to a little boy, perhaps four years old. He took it gravely, thanking me like a man, and retired to look at it. But hardly had he opened the flap when I saw the hand of a chief come over the boy’s shoulder and quietly take the box. The boy gave it up, not even a shade of discontent on his face, and it passed slowly from hand to hand, was inspected, marveled at, discussed. The cunningness of the folding, the beautiful design of printing and picture, the delicacy of the tissue paper that had been around the cigarettes, the pliability of the tin foil, of metal, and yet so thin, engrossed them all. When they had satisfied their curiosity and admiration, it went back to the boy, who took it with his hand on his heart, bowed, and sat for a long time looking at it.
“Have you ever seen such perfect courtesy?” said, I, marveling. “And from such a baby!”
Perolli looked at me in amazement. “Why, what’s strange about it?” he asked.
Undoubtedly we were among the most courteous people in the world, I thought, but the next moment that idea was completely upset, for out of the darkness walked that rebel woman who believes in private property.
She came quite calmly into the circle of the firelight, her beautiful hands low on her thighs, below the wide, silver-shining marriage belt, the blue beads twinkling at the ends of the long black braids of her hair, her chin up, and a light of battle in her eyes.
“May you live long!” said she to the circle, and, “To you long life!” we responded. But the chiefs looked at her sidewise from narrowed eyes and then again at the fire, and hostility came from them like a chill air. The children looked at her with wide, attentive eyes, chins on their hands; the sprawling, graceful, handsome youths seemed amused. Beyond the firelight, the women of the household went about their tasks; one came in and lowered from her shoulders a large, kidney-shaped wooden keg of water.
“When am I going to get my house?” said the woman. She stood there superb, holding that question like a bone above a mob of starving dogs, and they rose at it.
I have never seen such pandemonium. Three chiefs spoke at once, snarling; they were on their feet; all the men were on their feet; it was like a picture by Jan Steen changed into the wildest of futurist canvases. I expected them to fly at one another’s throats, after the words that they hurled at one another like spears. I expected them to strike the woman, so violently they thrust their faces close to hers, clenching quivering fists on the hilts of the knives in their sashes. She stamped her foot; her lips curled back like a dog’s from her fine, gleaming teeth, and she stood her ground, flashing back at them words that seemed poisoned by the venom in her eyes. “My house!” she repeated, and, “I want my house!” These words, the only ones I recognized, were like a motif in the clamor; Rexh and Perolli were both too much absorbed to translate, and we added to the turmoil by frantic appeals to them.