While we gorged upon pieces of miraculously tender roasted lamb, fished from a heaping platter, he said that any definite frontier, however unjust, would be better than the prolonged uncertainty which daily encouraged further Serbian invasions.
While we chose morsels of stewed chicken, he said that the greater danger was not from Serbia, which fought with artillery, but from Italy, now driven to intrigue. Italy, having been promised southern Albania and much of the eastern Adriatic coast in return for joining the Allies in the Great War, had now been cheated of payment, driven from Albania by the Albanians, and refused Fiume. However, Italy had authority from the League of Nations to occupy Albania again if the Albanians could not maintain a stable government. Italy would, therefore, do two things; first she would spend money and munitions in trying to stir rebellion within Albania and in encouraging the already savage discontent of Montenegro, Bosnia, and Croatia; then she would develop an aggressive foreign policy, drop all pretense of accord with France or England, and fight it out with Jugo-Slavia. When this occurred, of course both Serbia and Italy would fall on Albania; any trouble in the Balkans was a signal for that.
The chicken being taken away, we were given a bowl of little cakes, light as whipped cream, cooked in brown butter and served with honey. Sadiri Luka said that the only hope of peace in the Balkans was a Balkan federation; nothing less, he said, would persuade the European Powers and Turkey to leave the Balkans alone. It was true that for fifteen centuries the Slavs had been attacking Albania and tearing territory from her; it was true that more than a million Albanians were suffering under Serbian and Greek rule to-day; it was true that Albanians had won the Greek war of independence, and the Young Turk revolution, and their own revolution, only to see their country mutilated by their neighbors and by European diplomacy. But if it were possible for free Albania to live, he believed she would be the leader in a movement for a Balkan federation, and he pointed out that, with frontiers free and military expenses pooled, all the Balkan peoples could develop lands and mines, water power and industries, and in time readjust their boundaries by purchase, which would be cheaper than war.
This solution was so logical that I suspected it to be in the realm of pure fantasy, for I have long observed that human affairs and logic have little in common. But we listened with great interest to these opinions of Sadiri Luka, which came strangely from an Albanian mountaineer whose trousers proclaimed in black braiding his descent from a tribe older than history.
The feast continued for a long time; there were bowls of kos, which is sweet milk made solid in texture, but not sour, a joy on the tongue, and there were platters of fluffy rice with gravy and giblets, and many kinds of cheese, and little individual spits of broiled lamb, onions and potatoes, and a cream made of powdered rice, milk, and honey, and breast of chicken baked in sour cream, and crisp cakes of whipped white of egg browned in butter and smothered in beaten raw eggs and sugar—which is strange in words, but unexpectedly good to eat—and many other things which we tasted absent-mindedly. For the setting sun had briefly conquered the clouds, the rain had stopped, and we thought of the trail to Thethis.
It was good to be out in the rain-sweet air, and the waterfalls were music in the evening quiet. Sunshine gleamed on the peaks of snow, blue and purple shadows filled the valleys, and bells of flocks came tinkling down the trails. When we had said farewell to Sadiri Luka and the chiefs of upper Thethis, by the arching glass-clear torrent to which they had accompanied us, we went on light-heartedly, humming to ourselves. And Perolli sang a song of the mountaineers which is more sound than words, being a song of evening with rippling water in it, and sleepy birds, and the bells of the flocks answering one another across ravines and from far mountain slopes.
“Yes,” he said, “I am happy. I am happy, for Sadiri Luka is a true Albanian, and when I go back to the plains I shall see that he is released from the price on his head which has been offered in Scutari.”
“What!” we cried. Yes, he said, in a matter-of-fact tone, ten thousand kronen were officially offered for the head of Sadiri Luka.
“And he doesn’t even carry a gun?”
“Why should he? He is among his own people. It is no shame to go unarmed among his own people. He would carry a rifle, certainly, if he had to go to Scutari.”