“It’s worse than preposterous,” he declared, “it’s grotesque. Look at him. He resembles old Vidin some and may be a relative. In any case, he is certainly Montenegrin. Look at him. Six feet tall, a jaw like a rock, an eagle’s beak for a nose, a brow to take any storm. In ten centuries the Turks could never make him whine. Even under the despotism of Black George he kept his head up as a man. But Communist despotism has done for him. Twenty years ago two strangers who had damaged his haystack would have been called to account; today, having espied us in trespass on his property, he tells his wife to stay indoors and shuts himself in the barn with his goats and chickens. Do you know how Tennyson addressed Tsernagora — the Black Mountain?”
“No.”
“The last three lines of a sonnet:
“Great Tsernagora, never since thine own
Black ridges drew the cloud and broke the storm
Has breathed a race of mightier mountaineers.”
He scowled in the direction of the mighty mountaineer standing at the barn door. “Pfui! Give me a thousand dinars.”
While I was getting the roll from my pocket — procured for us by Telesio in Bari — I didn’t need to figure how much I was shelling out because I already had it filed that a thousand dinars was $3.33. Wolfe took it and approached our host. His line as later reported:
“We pay you for the damage to your haystack, which you can repair in five minutes. We also pay you for food. Have you any oranges?”
He looked startled, suspicious, wary, and sullen, all at once. He shook his head. “No.”