"When you fight with thieves you must use thieves' tricks. You did right to come to me. Now I will secure fitting garments for you, my sister's son, and for your Amerikansky friend, Jakka. For him also I will brew1 a dye of walnut2 bark and chestnut3 leaves that will make him as dark as our people, so that men will not turn and stare at him on the road.
"After that I think we had best go away from this place as soon as possible. You have traveled rapidly and shaken off your enemies' pursuit. It is well to take every advantage of an opportunity. Moreover, we must go across the Rhodopes to the place where the tribe have hidden some horses we got from a Roumanian boyar. We will collect the horses, together with some of my young men who can handle a knife, and go on to Stamboul. All men go to Stamboul, and who will notice a Tzigane band?"
"But it was not my thought that you should abandon the affairs of the tribe, and come and fight with me," remonstrated4 Nikka.
"Are you not the son of my sister?" rejoined the old Gypsy. "If you had not elected to go to Buda with your violin would you not be chief of the band? Do I not stand in your place? Well, then, light of my eyes, we will do for you all that we may."
And he produced a battered5 silver tobacco box, and rolled himself a cigarette, sitting back on his haunches with the lithe6 grace of a cat. Nikka flung me a proud glance as he translated the pledge.
"It's all right," I admitted with due humility7. "And I was all wrong, but I didn't know the Middle Ages were still with us."
Nikka laughingly repeated my remark, and his uncle's twinkling eyes and mocking smile conveyed his retort before it was translated:
"Say to my young friend Jakka that if a tribe cannot stand by their own then these days are worse than the old times."
With that he left us, and Nikka and I secured another hour's sleep. When he returned he was accompanied by a younger edition of himself, who carried two bundles which were disclosed as complete suits of Tzigane dress. He, himself, carried a pot of warm, brown liquid, and he proceeded to apply the stain to me with a small paintbrush. Hair, mustache, face and body were darkened to a mellow8 brown. The stuff dried quickly, and I was soon able to pull on the strange garments, which Nikka showed me how to adjust and fasten.
I could not help laughing at my reflection in the mirror of the cheap French bureau de toilette. The tight trousers, the short jacket and the big turban increased my height, and the gaudy10 colors of turban and waist-sash gave me a bizarre appearance that was startlingly unfamiliar11. I felt uncomfortable, as though I had dressed for a fancy-dress ball, and overdone12 the part. But there was none of this effect in Nikka's get-up. With the donning of his Gypsy costume he discarded his last visible link with the West. He looked the Gypsy, the Oriental, a kingly vagabond.
"You belong," I said. "But I feel like an imposter."
"You'll grow used to it," he answered, folding in the ends of his sash. "Did they give you a knife?" I exhibited the horn-handled, eight-inch blade, with its sheath hooked to a leather belt that encircled my waist beneath the sash. "Good! Got your automatic and spare clips?"
"And these clothes?"
"Kostabidjian will send them on to Constantinople in a few days." He sighed. "Personally, Jack9, I don't care if I never wear them again. I can earn a thousand dollars an hour with my fiddle15, but what's it worth compared with this? Rawhide16 on your feet that flexes17 with your soles; clothing that covers you, but doesn't bind18; and the open road ahead! Civilization is a fraud, Jack. I was a fool ever to quit the Gypsy life.'
"Well, you're back in it again," I replied, "and perhaps you'll be feeling you were a fool to return to it. I know I feel like a fool. Let's go."
It was still dark when we left the house. Kostabidjian and his servant were awaiting us in the courtyard. They had saddled two horses, and a mule20 was loaded with bulky packs, food, and blankets, tarpaulins21 and several cooking utensils22. The Armenian kept himself in the background. He seemed in deadly fear of Wasso Mikali, who treated him as though he was a cur to be kicked into the gutter23 if he interfered24. And indeed, there was something singularly imposing25 about the old Tzigane, who strode around with the air of one used to taking as he desired and giving as he pleased.
But just as we were leaving, the dumb servant having swung open the outer door, Kostabidjian mustered26 sufficient courage to press to Nikka's side.
"Everything was satisfactory?" he inquired timidly. "I have served—"
"Well enough," returned Nikka, swinging into the saddle of one of the horses, "except that you talk too much. Guard your tongue if you would keep it. Your servant there—"
He shrugged27 significantly. Even by the starlight I could see the pallor that blanched28 the Armenian's face. He took the threat in sober earnest.
"You shall have no cause to blame! All shall be as you wish. I will remit29 the charges for the last distribution. Take your horse, Monseigneur, both horses—the mule! Take all!"
"Heidi, Jakka!" called Wasso Mikali.
"Mount, Jack," added Nikka. "The other horse is for you. We must hasten. My uncle does not like to be seen entering or leaving the town."
We rode out in single-file, first Wasso Mikali, then Nikka, then myself, last the young Tzigane, leading the pack-mule. The Gypsies set a pace that made the horses trot31 to keep up with them, a long, slack-kneed shamble, ungainly in appearance, but tremendously effective. By sunrise we had left the town behind the first mountain-ridge32, and were heading north towards the waste of mountains that fringed the Bulgarian frontier. Hour after hour we plodded33 along. More than once I suggested a rest, for I knew our escorts had been afoot all night. But they would not hear of it. Neither would they consent to sharing the horses with us turn-about, and in this Nikka upheld them.
"Our feet are soft," he pointed out. "We could never maintain such a speed, and it is best to put as long a distance as possible between us and Seres, lest our trailers should pick up the scent34."
During the early part of the day we passed frequent villages, melancholy35 collections of hovels that had been scorched36 by the awful visitation of wars the Balkans had known for a decade. But in the afternoon we departed from the main road, and struck off across the hills. Occasionally we saw farmhouses37 or sheepfolds, but when night came we made camp in a lonely ravine with the stars for roof. There was not a light on the horizon, not even the barking of dogs to indicate a human habitation.
The next day it was practically the same. The trail we followed was a mere38 trace that sometimes disappeared. Toward evening we entered a vast forest, and finally halted on the banks of a stream where a campfire blazed. Against the flames showed gaunt, turbanned figures.
"Are these our friends?" I asked.
"They are Pomaks," said Nikka.
"What—"
"Moslems! Swine!"
While Wasso Mikali and the young Tzigane, whose name was Sacha, made the fire under a bowlder, Nikka and I led our tired animals down to the stream to drink. Several of the Pomaks, dirty, shifty-eyed fellows in the same gaudy raiment that the Tziganes affected40, lounged up to us. One of them stepped in Nikka's path, and Nikka promptly41 kicked him. The man turned like a flash, his knife out, and Nikka dropped the bridle42 he was holding, and closed with him. Two of the Pomaks jumped for me, knives wheeling.
I did what I had done in the fight in the Gunroom, hit out with my fists. The first man I knocked into the water, and the second yelled for help, circling me cautiously the while. Nikka, after one click of blades, stabbed his man in the shoulder, and we stood back to back, half a dozen Pomaks pelting43 up from their fire.
"Wait," said Nikka, as I drew my automatic.
There was a scurry44 in the shadows, and Wasso Mikali thrust his way into the group surrounding us. He said nothing, but stood there where they could see him in the firelight, and they muttered together and slunk away, the man Nikka had wounded clutching his bloody45 arm.
"What is your uncle? A justice of the peace?" I inquired facetiously46.
"He is Wasso Mikali," answered Nikka, wiping his knife-blade on the grass. "Now I feel better, Jack. It is still the same. The Pomak curs crawl to heel when the Gypsy speaks. I wondered if it could be just as in my boyhood, after all that has happened in the world."
"If you ask me," I returned, "I don't believe anything has happened in this world of yours."
"Much has happened. But the Gypsy is always the same—and so likewise, it seems, is the Pomak. God, but it felt good to kick that pig!"
I regarded my friend with a recurrence47 of that amazement48 which he had stirred in me several times before. The quiet, self-contained musician, the artist, the efficient subaltern of the Foreign Legion, the cultured man-about-town had been replaced by an arrogant49 forest princeling, savagely50 contemptuous of all but his own kind.
The Pomaks gave us a wide birth, and early as we were afoot in the morning, they were off before us; but we heard from them again. We were threading a forest defile51, where the pine-trees grew thick to the cliff edges, when we heard a shout overhead, I looked up at a stocky man in a brown uniform, with a round fur cap, emblazoned with a rampant52 lion. He held a rifle in his hands.
"A Bulgarian forester," muttered Nikka.
Wasso Mikali climbed up to the forester's perch53, and held a brief conversation with him, at the conclusion of which he dug something bright out of his sash and dropped it in the forester's hand. Then he slid down into the ravine again, and we resumed our journey. The Pomaks had complained to the forester that we were smuggling54 rose-water essence, but he readily admitted that we were going the wrong way to be handling such a traffic. The lefa piece in his hand was to salve his conscience for not reporting the stabbing of the Pomak by Nikka.
As we progressed that day the mountains became wilder and more barren. Once we saw a lumber-camp on the lower slope of a ridge we traversed. Again, in the early afternoon, I saw what I took to be a castle perched atop of a huge crag miles away across a tumbled mass of peaks. But Nikka explained that it was one of those fortified55 monasteries56 which kept the fires of learning alight during the gloomy centuries when the Turk's rule ran as far as the Danube.
The path we followed was eccentric in the extreme. In fact, there was no path. We climbed a succession of gullies and ravines opening out of one another, and at dusk emerged upon a sheltered valley, buried deep between precipitous slopes draped in a virgin57 covering of conifers, chestnut and beech58. A little rivulet59 foamed60 down the middle, dammed at the foot by a crude barrier of rocks. Horses and mules61 and a few sheep and goats grazed on the banks. Against the mountain-wall on either side were built a number of rough log-shelters, part houses, part caves. Children, naked for the most part, played about. Women were washing in the brook62 or tending several open fires. A dozen men were lying or sitting on the ground.
"They don't seem surprised to see us," I commented to Nikka, whose brooding eyes were drinking in the picture.
"They know we must be friends," he answered. "Else the lookouts63 down the path would have signaled them we were coming—and we should not have come," he added with a flitting smile.
"Do you know this place?"
"As well as—how shall I put it?—As well as Hugh knows Castle Chesby. No, I was not born here. My mother lay on the floor-boards of a caravan-cart in the Bukowina. My father was looking for likely ponies64 to trade with Bulgarian officers. But they brought me back here, and here I grew to boyhood. Do you see that first hovel on this bank? That was where I was taught to fiddle. And there—"
Wasso Mikali, striding in front of us, raised his voice in a great shout, and the men by the houses jumped to their feet and crowded toward us. The old Gypsy added something in which Nikka's name was repeated two or three times, and they cried out in astonishment65. In the next moment they were swarming66 around us, and sinewy67 hands were clasping ours, rows of white teeth were gleaming in welcoming smiles, and Nikka was being greeted with a heart-warming mixture of affection and respect.
Once they discovered I could not talk their language they let me alone, but Nikka they plied19 with questions until the women summoned us to the fires for the evening meal. Their attitude toward him was extraordinary. He was one of themselves—several were his cousins, most of them were related to him in some remote degree of consanguinity68; he had lived amongst them for years. Yet to them, as to the rest of the world, he was also the great master, the violinist who could charm multitudes, upon whose bounty69, too, they and others like them had been sustained in periods of want.
While the women served us with stew70 and bread, Nikka introduced me to them, and they promptly manifested a naïve interest in my person and career. They all called me Jakka. They were amazed to learn that I made my living by drawing plans of houses for people. Who, they inquired with frank disbelief, needed to have somebody draw for him the plan of his house? It was absurd. You simply took logs and boards or bricks and stone, if you were in a city, and you put them together. They even insisted upon dragging me away from the fire to the nearest house to illustrate71 what they meant. They were determined72 to convince me how superfluous73 was my profession.
I, in my turn, was surprised by the idyllic74 security of this retired75 valley, and I asked them, through Nikka, if it had never been penetrated76 even in wartime. No, they replied, only once a party of Franks in pot-hats—by which, it seemed, they meant Germans—had come upon it by accident, and of the Franks not one had escaped. Of course, occasional attempts had been made to drive them out by other outlaw77 bands; but none had ever succeeded, in consequence of the vigilance of their watch and the tortuous78 approach through a network of defiles79.
Their community persisted in defiance80 of civilization, an anomalous81 relic82 of the stone age, of nomad83 barbarism; and they assured me that here and there all over the Balkans other similar Gypsy communities still held out, in spite of the havoc84 of destruction wrought85 by the War.
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1
brew
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| v.酿造，调制 | |
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walnut
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| n.胡桃，胡桃木，胡桃色，茶色 | |
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chestnut
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| n.栗树，栗子 | |
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remonstrated
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| v.抗议( remonstrate的过去式和过去分词 )；告诫 | |
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battered
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| adj.磨损的；v.连续猛击；磨损 | |
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lithe
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| adj.(指人、身体)柔软的，易弯的 | |
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humility
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| n.谦逊，谦恭 | |
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mellow
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| adj.柔和的；熟透的；v.变柔和；(使)成熟 | |
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jack
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| n.插座，千斤顶，男人；v.抬起，提醒，扛举；n.（Jake）杰克 | |
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gaudy
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| adj.华而不实的；俗丽的 | |
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unfamiliar
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| adj.陌生的，不熟悉的 | |
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overdone
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| v.做得过分( overdo的过去分词 )；太夸张；把…煮得太久；（工作等）过度 | |
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pointed
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| adj.尖的，直截了当的 | |
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civilized
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| a.有教养的，文雅的 | |
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fiddle
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| n.小提琴；vi.拉提琴；不停拨弄，乱动 | |
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rawhide
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| n.生牛皮 | |
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flexes
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| v.屈曲( flex的第三人称单数 )；弯曲；（为准备大干而）显示实力；摩拳擦掌 | |
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bind
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| vt.捆，包扎；装订；约束；使凝固；vi.变硬 | |
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plied
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| v.使用（工具）( ply的过去式和过去分词 )；经常供应（食物、饮料）；固定往来；经营生意 | |
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mule
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| n.骡子，杂种，执拗的人 | |
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tarpaulins
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| n.防水帆布，防水帆布罩( tarpaulin的名词复数 ) | |
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utensils
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| 器具，用具，器皿( utensil的名词复数 )； 器物 | |
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gutter
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| n.沟，街沟，水槽，檐槽，贫民窟 | |
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interfered
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| v.干预( interfere的过去式和过去分词 )；调停；妨碍；干涉 | |
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imposing
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| adj.使人难忘的，壮丽的，堂皇的，雄伟的 | |
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mustered
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| v.集合，召集，集结（尤指部队）( muster的过去式和过去分词 )；（自他人处）搜集某事物；聚集；激发 | |
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shrugged
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| vt.耸肩（shrug的过去式与过去分词形式） | |
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blanched
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| v.使变白( blanch的过去式 )；使（植物）不见阳光而变白；酸洗（金属）使有光泽；用沸水烫（杏仁等）以便去皮 | |
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remit
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| v.汇款，汇寄；豁免（债务），免除（处罚等） | |
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subsided
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| v.（土地）下陷（因在地下采矿）( subside的过去式和过去分词 )；减弱；下降至较低或正常水平；一下子坐在椅子等上 | |
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trot
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| n.疾走，慢跑；n.老太婆；现成译本；(复数）trots:腹泻（与the 连用）；v.小跑，快步走，赶紧 | |
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ridge
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| n.山脊；鼻梁；分水岭 | |
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plodded
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| v.沉重缓慢地走（路）( plod的过去式和过去分词 )；努力从事；沉闷地苦干；缓慢进行（尤指艰难枯燥的工作） | |
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scent
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| n.气味，香味，香水，线索，嗅觉；v.嗅，发觉 | |
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melancholy
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| n.忧郁，愁思；adj.令人感伤（沮丧）的，忧郁的 | |
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scorched
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| 烧焦，烤焦( scorch的过去式和过去分词 )； 使（植物）枯萎，把…晒枯； 高速行驶； 枯焦 | |
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farmhouses
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| n.农舍，农场的主要住房( farmhouse的名词复数 ) | |
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mere
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| adj.纯粹的；仅仅，只不过 | |
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spat
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| n.口角，掌击；v.发出呼噜呼噜声 | |
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affected
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| adj.不自然的，假装的 | |
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promptly
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| adv.及时地，敏捷地 | |
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42
bridle
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| n.笼头，束缚；vt.抑制，约束；动怒 | |
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43
pelting
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| 微不足道的，无价值的，盛怒的 | |
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44
scurry
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| vi.急匆匆地走；使急赶；催促；n.快步急跑，疾走；仓皇奔跑声；骤雨，骤雪；短距离赛马 | |
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45
bloody
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| adj.非常的的；流血的；残忍的；adv.很；vt.血染 | |
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46
facetiously
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| adv.爱开玩笑地；滑稽地，爱开玩笑地 | |
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47
recurrence
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| n.复发，反复，重现 | |
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48
amazement
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| n.惊奇，惊讶 | |
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arrogant
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| adj.傲慢的，自大的 | |
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50
savagely
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| adv. 野蛮地，残酷地 | |
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51
defile
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| v.弄污，弄脏；n.(山间)小道 | |
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52
rampant
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| adj.(植物)蔓生的；狂暴的，无约束的 | |
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53
perch
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| n.栖木，高位，杆；v.栖息，就位，位于 | |
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54
smuggling
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| n.走私 | |
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55
fortified
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| adj. 加强的 | |
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56
monasteries
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| 修道院( monastery的名词复数 ) | |
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virgin
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| n.处女，未婚女子；adj.未经使用的；未经开发的 | |
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beech
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| n.山毛榉；adj.山毛榉的 | |
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rivulet
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| n.小溪，小河 | |
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foamed
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| 泡沫的 | |
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mules
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| 骡( mule的名词复数 )； 拖鞋； 顽固的人； 越境运毒者 | |
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62
brook
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| n.小河，溪；v.忍受，容让 | |
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lookouts
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| n.寻找（ 某人/某物）( lookout的名词复数 )；是某人（自己）的问题；警戒；瞭望台 | |
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ponies
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| 矮种马，小型马( pony的名词复数 )； ￡25 25 英镑 | |
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astonishment
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| n.惊奇，惊异 | |
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66
swarming
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| 密集( swarm的现在分词 )； 云集； 成群地移动； 蜜蜂或其他飞行昆虫成群地飞来飞去 | |
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67
sinewy
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| adj.多腱的，强壮有力的 | |
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consanguinity
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| n.血缘；亲族 | |
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bounty
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| n.慷慨的赠予物，奖金；慷慨，大方；施与 | |
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70
stew
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| n.炖汤，焖，烦恼；v.炖汤，焖，忧虑 | |
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71
illustrate
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| v.举例说明，阐明；图解，加插图 | |
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determined
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| adj.坚定的；有决心的 | |
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superfluous
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| adj.过多的，过剩的，多余的 | |
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74
idyllic
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| adj.质朴宜人的，田园风光的 | |
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retired
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| adj.隐退的，退休的，退役的 | |
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penetrated
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| adj. 击穿的，鞭辟入里的 动词penetrate的过去式和过去分词形式 | |
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77
outlaw
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| n.歹徒，亡命之徒；vt.宣布…为不合法 | |
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tortuous
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| adj.弯弯曲曲的，蜿蜒的 | |
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79
defiles
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| v.玷污( defile的第三人称单数 )；污染；弄脏；纵列行进 | |
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defiance
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| n.挑战，挑衅，蔑视，违抗 | |
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anomalous
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| adj.反常的；不规则的 | |
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82
relic
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| n.神圣的遗物，遗迹，纪念物 | |
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nomad
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| n.游牧部落的人，流浪者，游牧民 | |
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84
havoc
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| n.大破坏，浩劫，大混乱，大杂乱 | |
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wrought
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| v.引起；以…原料制作；运转；adj.制造的 | |
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