“I did not think,” said Lulash, “that any of our houses would be as fine as an American house.” He was so pleased that his hand quivered a little on the long handle of the tiny brass pot in which he was making the coffee. So I told them that only our finest houses are of stone, that my house was of wood, and much smaller than his. But all our houses had windows, I said.
“Yes,” said Lulash, wistfully. “Windows are very good; I always wish that all our houses had windows. But first we must have a besa of peace among all the tribes; it is not safe now to have windows, a man never knows when his tribe will be ‘in blood’ and enemies will shoot him through windows. You see that mine are so placed that it would be difficult to shoot through them, and I have heavy shutters for closing them at night, when the firelight makes it easier to see us from outside.”
But he was pleased that I praised his windows; he had gone through many other tribes and down into Scutari to bring up the glass of which he had heard, and made them with his own hands. They were on leather hinges so that they would open and let in the air; he said he had observed that sunshine and air were good things, and, if good outdoors, why not good in houses? “But it will be a long time before my people can have windows,” he said, sadly.
He did not think it was good to keep the sheep and goats with the family, either; all his flocks were driven at night into their own quarters, on the lower floor of the house.
Houses are the most endless subject in the world; all of humanity and its history is expressed in houses, and while the coffee cup was passed back and forth I told about American houses; about the log cabins of the pioneers, such a little time ago as crude as those of the Albanians; about the loophole glassless windows, and the pegs on which rifles were hung; and about farmers’ houses in New England, where the cattle live under the same roof, at the end of long sheds; and suburban houses with gardens, and apartment houses where whole tribes of people live, going up and down in movable rooms. And then I spoke about water power and said that it became electricity—Lulash asked me eagerly how it was done, but I did not know—and that brought us to the whole subject of machinery. I drew a picture of a spinning wheel for them and explained it, but they said it would not be practicable on the trails, where the women did most of the spinning; a woman could not carry her baby in its cradle and a spinning wheel, too; the spindle was better; and I agreed with them. But if men and women did not work so hard carrying water from the springs, they would have time to sit in the house and work a spinning wheel, and I said that water could come into houses in pipes, and Lulash and I discussed for some time how a hollowed-out log could bring part of the waterfall into his house. But he said regretfully that a log was so expensive; cutting a tree meant destroying so much pasture for the goats, and it took a long time for a tree to grow again. And I saw how princely had been his gift of a hundred trees to be burned to make the lime to make the mortar to make the schoolhouse, and the infinite labor of such a life made me realize the stupendous obstacles mankind has overcome in climbing out of it. And I thought that it was the long struggle to wrest from the unwilling earth the material necessities of human life that turned humanity’s terrific energy in the course it still follows, though the need for it is past, and that perhaps some day this energy, turned into other channels, will make the life of civilized man as rich in spiritual and emotional values as it now is in material things.
The gay Cheremi, bringing our breakfast of Turkish coffee next morning, spoke with proud nonchalance in English. “Padre gone,” said he. “When wake, no padre. He is went.”
The import of these words came slowly to us. Awakening in that chill room, to find ourselves between crimson sheets, beneath blankets of woven goat’s hair, and to see the scarlet-sashed, scalplocked Cheremi bearing the brass tray with its coffee cups, had always a quality of unreality. It was not so much an awakening from dreams as to them. In the transition from unconsciousness to consciousness we must traverse so many centuries to feel at home, that we arrived a little breathless.
But, “The padre gone?” Frances cried, after an instant. And we sat dumb, staring at Cheremi’s beaming. Any impossibility was probable; we did not question that the padre had disappeared in some strange fashion, and our minds, while we hurriedly dressed, were not concerned with the manner of his going so much as with what we should do without him. We were prepared to deal gallantly with the catastrophic emergency, as the walker up stairs in the dark is prepared for the last step, which is not there.
For when we found Perolli squatting by the kitchen fireplace, busy with long-handled coffee pot and spoon, he confirmed Cheremi’s report absent-mindedly. “Mmmhm. He went at dawn. Off to hear confessions in upper Thethis. Getting ready for Easter. More coffee?”
He seemed more abstracted than this anticlimax justified, and we drank coffee again, in silence. The kitchen was dismal, a poor and wretched place without Padre Marjan. Rain was pouring steadily outside, and the house was filled with roar of waterfalls as a shell is filled with sound of the sea. In those moments of cold gray light by the fire which was dying slowly under hissing raindrops, I realized the courage and endurance of Padre Marjan—of all the priests who, in these mountains, keep alight a warmth and gayety of spirit for their people.