“And do you know those songs?”
No, he said regretfully. He had heard some of them when he was very little—when he lived with his people in the mountains. But when the Montenegrins came and killed all his family that had not died in the fighting, and burned his village, then he had had to go all the way to Scutari, hiding from the Montenegrins. “You know, they came all the way to Scutari, too, Mrs. Lane. And I had to hide from them, because I was so little. I took a gun from a dead man, and it was a good gun, too, but it was so heavy I could not carry it, so I could not fight. I was only six years old. So I had to hide, and when I came to Scutari I found the first of my children, and then little by little I found the others, and so I was very busy all these years. And learning English and Arabic, and working with Miss Hardy, and all, I have forgotten to sing. I’m sorry I do not remember the songs.
“How did I find my children? They were just there, in the streets, Mrs. Lane, and I saw them. I took the first one because he was littler than me—than I—and he had cut his foot on a rock, and I knew by his clothes he was of my tribe. And I had found a dry place to sleep, so I took him there. And then the others just came, little by little. Some when the Serbians came through in 1914, and some when the Austrians came, and Glosh came from Gruda last fall when the Montenegrins were killing up there. I hope they are all well and clean,” he added, anxiously. “I told them to wash themselves and their clothes and their blankets every week while I was gone. I made them give a besa to do it, and there is anyway plenty of water in the river and probably it is not raining in Scutari, so it will be all right. But if it is raining, then they will have to wash their clothes because they gave a besa, and it perhaps can be that they will take cold.”
The rain had become so breath-taking that we said no more, rapidly following the trail which ran easily through a small deformed wood, among the ten-foot cones of dried branches which were last fall’s store of winter fodder. The path came soon to the edge of a cliff, dipped over it, and ran along the wall of rock, high above the Lumi Shala. Here, sheltered in a smoke-blackened shallow cave, we found Cheremi and four strange men sitting by a tiny fire and smoking cigarettes. Bundles of dried boughs which two of them had been carrying were stacked behind them, and Padre Marjan’s little horse was munching a handful of leaves and gazing out at the rain.
CHAPTER XII
THE SONG OF THE LAST GREAT WAR WITH THE DRAGON—AN UNEXPECTED BANDIT—HOW AHMET, CHIEF OF THE MATI, WENT BY NIGHT TO VALONA—THE RAISING OF SCANDERBEG’s FLAG—AN ALBANIAN LOVE SONG.
They made places for us, laid another handful of dry twigs on the fire, and rolled fresh cigarettes. The Lumi Shala was rising higher than they had ever known it to do, they said, and the Drin was overflowing in the Merdite country. And learning that we were from Scutari, they asked us what we knew of the Tirana government, of which they had heard. Was it true that the Land of the Eagle was free?
Leaving discussion of politics to Perolli, we sat cross-legged, looking into the straight lines of rain that covered the mouth of the cave like a curtain. Faintly through them we could see a blueness of mountains and a greenness of fields beyond the narrow rust-red ledge of the trail. Time passed, with a murmur of talk and a crunching of leaves, until Rexh touched my elbow.
“Here is a man, Mrs. Lane, who knows the end of one of those songs. He does not know it all, but he can sing about the eating, after the war was ended. He will sing it for you, if you want him to.”
He was a grimy man, barefooted, ragged, and incredibly whiskered. But he carried besides his rifle on his back an old beautifully made musical instrument somewhat resembling a mandolin, with a long neck ending in a carved ram’s head. It was strung with fine wire, and he handled it proudly; the wire, he said, had come from Scutari. In his father’s day it had been strung with horsehair and played with a bow, but at the time of his own marriage he had sent to Scutari for the wire, and he now played it with a finger nail. Fresh cigarettes were rolled and adjusted in holders, knees were crossed comfortably, and the song began.