Peaks of Shala

by Rose Wilder Lane

The son of the house, Kol Marku, husband of the younger woman, was an exile from his home. His wife had been brought to his house only a week before the night when he killed his cousin, Pjeter Gjon. He had not meant to do it. With a number of other men they had been sitting by his fire, their rifles on their knees, as usual. They were cold and tired and had been talking of crops, when suddenly Kol’s rifle spoke and Pjeter fell back and died. Kol swore that he had not touched the trigger, but when the body was carried to the house of Pjeter, Pjeter’s family said that Kol had killed him in order to become the head of the family and move with his bride into Pjeter’s rich house. They claimed blood vengeance, by the Law of Lec.

It was a killing within the tribe, a matter for the chiefs to settle. They had conferred, and decided that Kol’s family should pay to the family of Pjeter twelve thousand kronen, or that value in goods. The family of Pjeter had refused to accept this. Again the chiefs met. Twelve hundred kronen had been blood payment within a tribe before the Balkan war, but everything was higher now, and the chiefs offered fifteen hundred kronen. But the old mother of Pjeter was bitter, and the family said that no money would pay for the blood of her only son. They demanded blood for blood, life for life; only the death of Kol or one of his brothers would pay the debt. Kol fled from the mountains and his brothers walked in fear.

Without their men the family could not live. The land was poor, was too hard for the women to work. The irrigation ditches were down, and they could not lift the rocks to rebuild them. And the lives of the men, hunted without rest, became no longer good to them, so that they became morose and sat always by the fire talking of death. Then the women went to Padre Marjan, to ask of him the last ultimate effort.

The good padre granted their plea. Wearing his holy robes and attended by twenty-four chiefs walking in silence, he took the crucifix itself from the church, and went to the house of Pjeter in upper Thethis. For twelve hours he stood, holding the crucifix before the eyes of that family and telling them as God’s messenger that they must forgive Kol. For twelve hours the twenty-four chiefs stood beside him, waiting. But the old mother was bitter, and upheld the spirits of her nephews, so that they refused.

Never before in all the mountains had anyone refused forgiveness asked by the crucifix itself. It had been carried back to the church above twenty-five bowed heads, and the people of Thethis knelt before it in shame. And Kol could not come home, the men could not work in the fields. The family was always hungry, and the young wife had wept till her eyes were dry of tears.

“We could not again ask Padre Marjan to take the crucifix,” said the old woman, looking at us with eyes that begged that we would do so. But the young woman’s eyes were somber and hopeless. The violence of the rain had lessened; below us we saw the green valley, the many little houses linked by tiny fields and a network of overflowing irrigation ditches, and the wounded church which had no steeple. But a column of smoke from the chimney showed that Padre Marjan was there. The women lifted their packs, bent forward under them, and slowly went out of sight down the trail.

Before we reached the level of the valley Padre Marjan had seen us, and came across the flat fields to escort us again to his door. He met us at the edge of a gorge in whose depths a waterfall turned the wheel of a mill beside a tiny house. Smoke seeped from the house roof to mix with the spray of the waterfall, and as Padre Marjan greeted us, up from that misty gorge leaped a figure that seemed risen from an incantation. She was less a child than a sprite, bare of arm and leg, clad in a scrap of sheepskin, with wildly tangled hair and bright, wild eyes. Even as she leaped she addressed us in passionate words.

Padre Marjan’s response was clear without translation. He told her to be still and to go away; he spoke in distress and shame, but the sternness of his tone was hollow. The child stood her ground, she gulped and avoided the padre’s eye, but determination shook all her little body, and she spoke again with vehemence. She was like one crying out against some monstrous injustice.

“What on earth does she say?”

“Well”—Perolli was reluctant, and also avoided the padre’s eye—“did you give her brother a handkerchief? She says it is not just, because he also has new trousers, and she has neither handkerchief nor trousers. Absurd! What would she do with trousers?” And he also looked at her accusingly.