Chapter I: Part 1

LITTLE BLUE BOOK NO. =1492=
Edited by E. Haldeman-Julius

Stories of Gypsy Life

Konrad Bercovici

HALDEMAN-JULIUS PUBLICATIONS
GIRARD, KANSAS

Copyright, 1929,
Doubleday, Doran Co.
Published by Arrangement

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

CONTENTS

Page

The Mill on the River 5

Ripe Wheat 20

Sava 42

STORIES OF GYPSY LIFE

THE MILL ON THE RIVER

It was an old mill, Dimitru’s mill on the Bistritza River. It had been run by the family of Dimitru long before any other mills had ever been put on either side of the river, all through the Moldavia country. The dykes and the water wheels were of old oak, cut from trees in the forest when the country paid yearly tribute to Turkey and was ruled by the Fanariots of Stamboul.

Within the mill were fifty pairs of millstones which, grinding wheat and corn, had themselves been ground so thin that they had no weight to mill any more the hard grain growing in that part of Roumania. These old millstones were the pride of the family, for not another mill in the country could show so many.

When anybody said anything about Dimitru’s mill or the manner in which he milled, the tall, black-bearded, wide-chested, brown-eyed miller would stretch to his full height, and pounding the left side of his chest with his right hand, he would cry:

“Look at these stones! Fifty pair of stones have ground flour in this mill. I myself have used five pair. This is the sixth one on the shaft.”

Those millstones were like arms of the escutcheon of a nobleman, which no man was allowed to impugn.

At the inn Dimitru was looked upon with respect by the peasants. He was one of the oldest inhabitants of the village. Indeed, the village itself, clustered as it was about the mill, was known as Dimitru’s Mill Village. For not only did they mill flour there, but they cut logs that were let down from the heights of the Carpathians early every spring, and they pressed oil out of pumpkin seeds, and carded wool, and even worked things out at a lathe which Dimitru himself had installed there; at first merely to satisfy a whim he had had after he had first seen a lathe work in another village, and then, as he grew more proficient, to make furniture for most of the people in the village. Back of the mill there was a shop in which carts and wheels were made, and chairs and tables; and even small husking machines, patterned after one that had been bought in Austria. The water wheel provided the power for all the work.

The inn, the church, the school, the mayor’s office, the situation of every building was reckoned by its distance from the mill. During the winter, when there was only little work to do, the elders of the village would assemble in the mill, and watching the still in which the mash of plums and pears, grown in the neighborhood, was distilled into spirits, watching the drops fall into the receptacle that sat under the long copper worm, they would tell the tales they had heard from their mothers and grandmothers, who in turn had heard them from their parents and grandparents--stories of visitations of wolves; tales of sorceries, of witches which had risen up riding in the air on broomsticks, and of horses that could run so fast they disappeared from sight in less time than it takes to blink an eye. They recalled the different battles--battles with the Turks, battles with the Russians, battles with the Hungarians; births of five-legged calves and two-headed chickens, and the reappearances of deceased men whose ghosts were forever roaming about this, that and the other place.

Dimitru repeated an old tale of his own family, of how the stones of his mill had stopped once by themselves while some corn was being ground. From behind the stones groaned a voice which was recognized as being the voice of Vasili, Vasili Yoan Stefans, who had died only a few months before.

“Mill not this corn,” the voice had called. “It has been stolen from my granary by Panait, the Greek. Give it back to my wife lest my children starve this winter.”

The millstones refused to budge or turn until every grain of flour which had already been ground was swept out clean and returned to the bag from which the corn had been taken. And even then the stones would not move, although the water wheels turned and everything else was in motion. The wool was being carded, the logs were being sawn; only the millstones refused to turn. Not until the widow had been called and the corn belonging to her had been returned, and not until Panait had confessed to stealing the grain, had the stones turned again.

And there were many tales, similar to that one, centered about the mill. For the mill had also refused to grind grain when the Russians had invaded the country a century ago, and had refused to grind when the Turks had come. It was the mill on the Bistritza that ground wheat and corn and pressed oil and sawed logs and turned the lathe only for those belonging to the land. And Dimitru was the owner of that mill.

Dimitru had a son, and a daughter whom he had married off when very young. The son, like all the sons back in the family, was preparing himself to take over the mill of his father when the time should come. For even if he were to take a wife while his father was yet alive, there was enough room for him and his wife in the house. And even if he were to raise a family, there was enough room and enough field for him to pasture his dowry of cows and sheep, and to raise enough fodder for them. He had indeed already taken off a good deal of the burden of his father, for while the old man busied himself with his cart shop, preferring the lathe to the mill, George was in complete charge of the stones. And he was as good a miller as his father.

But although he joked and played around with most of the young girls who came to the mill, although he danced with all of them at the inn, teasing, singing, joking with them, there was not one who could say that he was giving her preference over the others. Tall, dark, with big brown eyes, the lashes of which were always covered with a thin white powder, the dark, tufty brows looking like those of an old man because of a fine flour powder always on them, he was a good dancer, and his voice rose above the voices of the others when any singing was being done at the inn. At the wrestling matches on Sunday there were few youngsters who dared to match him. And he was gay and always happy. And it was known that although he was allowed to take one-tenth of the flour he milled, in payment for milling it, from everybody, he took only half that amount, and sometimes not even that from the poor and the widows of the country. Indeed, many a widow had brought half a bag of corn and returned home with a full bag of corn flour, George yelling at the top of his voice, when the widow claimed there had been some mistake, that he was an honest miller.

“You have brought one bag of corn and not two, widow of Jorga,” he would silence the protesting woman, not giving her any chance or time to explain herself.

“You have brought one bag, and I know you have brought only one bag! Am I a miller, or a thief, or what?” he would shout, and show great anger, as he would push her out of the mill.

One winter night, while the wind was howling, and the water wheel, raised from the frozen river, was squeaking and groaning, and the storm was beating savagely against the windows and doors of the mill, one of the villagers sitting about the walled-in stove, in the ashes of which the potatoes were being baked, asked:

“George, whom are you going to marry?”

Dimitru gave his son no time to answer. “He will marry the one who will bring him a good enough dowry,” he answered, instead of his son.

One by one they passed in review all the marriageable daughters of the village. They knew all of them. And when Dimitru had shaken his head to the last one, the _staroste_--the elder of the village--trembling and with shaking fists, thundered into the face of the man:

“Is it, then, the death of one of the married men that you are waiting for, to marry your son?”

George had been making fun of all that was said. He had taken it all as a joke. But to the thundering voice of the _staroste_ he replied:

“I wish everyone long life in this village, and in every other one. When I am ready to marry, I shall make my own choice.”

“Indeed, my son wants to get married to some pauper. I have given six pair of oxen as dowry to my daughter, six pair of oxen and one hundred gold pieces. But he may want to marry some pauper!”

“A time will come,” George answered. “My time will come. But it shall be of my own choice, not of anybody else’s.”

“Well said,” spoke the gray-bearded _staroste_.

Old Dimitru remained silent.

Then they all sat down to sample the new prune juice that was dripping from the copper worm. It was better that such discussion end in joy, so they sang their saddest songs.

Finally George remarked, on looking toward the idle stones, “It is a pity they should be idle so long.”

George was never happy but when the stones turned around.

“This is a water mill,” his father answered. “When the Bistritza freezes, the mill freezes.”

“I know, Father.” He was a miller and lived only when the mill lived. “But it is a pity that the stones should not be turning when the Bistritza freezes.”

“If it were a windmill, you would be saying half the time the same thing,” another man of the group mused.

“If it were a horse mill, the mill would not be turning at night,” another man said in jest.

Whereupon one of the men, who had served in the army, and had been far away in a large city, began to speak about a large, steam-power mill which he had seen on his travels. A steam mill. One prepared logs to fire the engine during the summer, and then in winter one had the mill go whether the river was frozen or not.

George mused impatiently, “What a pity the Bistritza freezes!”

During the first month of the winter, after the river had frozen, he had had some work to do. He had sharpened every tooth and smoothed out the grain of the stones, until the teeth were as sharp as steel edges. He had cleaned and adjusted and readjusted everything. He had made it all ready to go, and now he was anxious to hear the whirl and turn of the mill, grinding and crunching all that was shoved into it.

“What a pity the Bistritza freezes!”

His father looked at him and then replied: “It is a thing I am going to put into my will, that this is a water mill and it shall remain so. This mill has ground fifty pair of stones.”

George was tired of always hearing the same thing. He left the company to go to his own room above the shaft.

Soon after, the peasants tightened their wolf-fur coats about them and returned to their homes, after wishing one another good luck. It was snowing and storming. Wolves were prowling on the road.

Dimitru still pottered about in the cart shop, working on a new corn-husking machine he was trying to perfect; then, tired, he, too, went to his room, where he lay wondering what was to become of the mill after he was no longer there. Was it to be desecrated? Was it to be forever forgotten as the water mill on the Bistritza? Was all the pride of generations to be sacrificed to that new thing of which the returned soldier had spoken? Outside the wind was howling, the lugubrious plaint of the hungry wolves was coming near and nearer, the wheel was creaking on its axle, straining the ropes that held it to the thick iron staples embedded in the stone of the walls. Whom was that son of his to marry if he wanted to marry of his own choice? It had not been so with him. His father had chosen him a bride, decided on the dowry, and married him off. Yet he had been happy! George should do as he had done. He was the father, the master.... With these thoughts the old man fell asleep.

Early that spring, after the river had broken, and the logs began to descend to the mill, and the wheel had begun again to turn, George, very busy and very happy, forgot all about the frozen months.

At the inn Dan, Petru’s son, whose farm was across the river and who was reputed to be very wealthy, came to meet Dimitru, the miller, to talk over matters of matrimony between his daughter Veta and George. After the bottle of wine was between them, Dan opened the conversation.

“There is no other man would offer the dowry I offer. What say you?”

“I say that my son George must receive as much as I have given my daughter as dowry. Six pair of great oxen, one hundred gold pieces, and all the other things.”

Dan, red-haired and easily excited, rose from his chair. “Is my Veta a cripple?”

Dimitru answered calmly: “She is not ... but George is a better man than the one who married my daughter.”

They both sat down again. It was not fitting they should be heard quarreling by the others.

“Am I a miller to be able to give such dowry?” Dan remonstrated. Then, as an afterthought, he added, “One should be able to accumulate wealth by building a mill the other side of the river so people won’t have to lose time rowing back and forth.”

“The mill is on this side,” Dimitru answered. “It is on this side.”

“Since millers ask such dowry, it may come to pass that there will be a mill on the other side also.”

Upon that the two men left the inn.

On reaching the mill Dimitru asked his son, “What say you about Veta, Dan’s daughter?”

George was busy cleaning the flour funnels. He was as if snow-clad. He wiped his face with his sleeve and answered: “It is long since I have seen her. They have their own inn on the other side. I remember her well, however, beautiful and strong.”

“You will marry her,” Dimitru announced briefly.

“Who says I will?” yelled George. He was furious.

“I say so. I have talked to her father about dowry and things.”

“Marry her, then, yourself. I shall do my own choosing when I am ready.”

“You will do what I say, George.”

“In the mill, because the mill is yours.”

“And do you know what will happen if you don’t marry Veta? Dan will put up a mill on the other side and starve our stones. Do you understand?”

George paled. But the next instant he stopped the whirr of the mill to be better heard and said to his father:

“Even though she be the fairest on earth, I say ‘no.’ I am not a horse or an ox to be marketed that way. Let him build ten mills.”

Upon that he returned to his work, while the old man muttered, “You will do as I say,” and went to his shop.

A few days later, bricks were being brought in big carts and deposited on the other side of the river. Bricks and beams and lumber, and gypsies came to dig the foundation of a large building.

Dimitru’s heart stopped beating when he saw that Dan really intended to build a mill. He sent word he wanted to speak to him, but Veta’s father refused to come. The old miller could not sleep nights, nor could he work at his lathe. The noise of the work across the river maddened him. Another mill was rising. Another mill, and his son seemed not to care. He asked George to go to the dance across the river and get better acquainted with Veta.... The mill had to be stopped. George refused. He would not be traded away. He would take a wife of his own choice, mill or no mill. Veta was out of the question.

When the foundation had risen above a man’s height from the ground, Dimitru, compelling his son to come along, rowed across the Bistritza to have a talk with Dan. He found the man busily engaged in giving orders, flushed by the activity about him.

“What is it you are doing, Dan, Petru’s son?” Dimitru asked, as if he did not know.

“As you see, my neighbor across the water--putting up a mill for the people on this side of the river, so that they shall not have to row across to your mill.”

“But a good half of my milling comes from your side of the river,” Dimitru answered.

“That is just why I am putting up the mill,” Dan replied sarcastically.

“But that is impossible! My mill has been there for over a hundred years,” remonstrated Dimitru. “Are you going to starve the stones?”

“To each one his own way of doing,” replied the would-be miller. “But young men demand such dowries, nowadays, they can only be made by milling and not by farming.”

“But we have been millers for hundreds of years,” Dimitru insisted.

“I hope my grandchildren will be able to say the same thing about this mill,” Dan retorted. “Perhaps things will change, and people will begin to row from your side of the river to this mill, for I shall mill cheaper than you do.”

“So that is what you want to do,” cried Dimitru. “Starve me out!”

“You see,” Dan retorted, “I have only daughters in my house. And the young men about this place want big dowries, which only millers can give to their daughters.”

While the two men were speaking, Veta, Dan’s daughter, came riding upon a small horse. George raised his fur cap as he saw her, and approached to help her from the saddle. Instantly the two older men looked at each other with a look of understanding. Perhaps the problem was nearer a solution than they had just thought. The conversation between them lost its acridity as they saw the two youngsters together, Dimitru saying:

“It is not a mill that I should like for my son as dowry. He already has one.”

To which Dan answered, “I have not offered the mill as dowry, have I?”

They tried conversation on other subjects, but it always reverted to what one had to offer as dowry, and what the other one would be willing to accept for his son. In the midst of that, Dimitru, having remarked a too great interest in his son for the girl, abruptly decided to leave for the other shore.

“Go on and work your mill, son. This is no time to idle. Come.”

“Come dance at our inn,” George urged Veta, as he jumped into the boat.

“There is a big dance at our inn tomorrow, Sunday,” the girl answered.

Then the oars splashed in the water, and the boat was rowed across with vigorous strokes by father and son.

Late that night, as the two men were anchoring the water wheel over Sunday, the father said to his son:

“I shall ask as dowry that he stop working on his mill.”

Instantly George rose to his full height and looked his father straight in the eye.

“You might have asked me,” George remonstrated, “for I happen not to wish to marry Veta.”

“You do not?” Dimitru asked furiously. “But I do want you to marry her, and marry her you will. I shall not live to see the stones of my mill idle when they should be milling--live to see how the corn is rowed across the river to be milled in the other mill, led by ungodly German wheels turning of themselves. For it is a steam mill he is putting up.”

“This is certain,” George answered, “you cannot make me marry her.”

Then he left his father and went to his room. He was furious. Because his father had spoken so compellingly, Veta, of whom he had thought rather agreeably, had lost her favor in his eyes. He was going to marry whom he pleased, and not because of fifty pair of dead stones that lay around there, requesting him to do otherwise.

The following day, Sunday, he went to the inn on his side of the river, in his best clothes, looking around for any likely girl whom he had not previously remarked, so that he could make love to her, knowing full well that his father was watching his every movement. In the midst of the dance Veta arrived. She was fairer than most of them, and she had put on her best garb. Upon her bare, full neck she wore the gold necklace, her white silk shawl hung down from the comb in her hair, and her high, well-modeled boots, that reached to her knees, were decorated with veins of red and green leather.

The old man smiled to himself when he saw her, sure that George could not resist her: she was so beautiful. He was also certain that she had come to dance with his son, sent probably by Dan, her father, who already regretted what he had done. Ah! He was not going to let Dan off so easily if he saw Veta loving his son.

But the girl seemed to pay no attention to George after a perfunctory greeting. At the dance she locked her arm into the arm of the son of the blacksmith and danced with him in the second, and third, and fourth dances, avoiding dancing with George. It enraged the old man. Seating himself near his son, who was resting between dances, he said:

“That shrew is trying to play with you.”

“Nobody can play with me,” George answered.

“She thinks that if she can make you love her, her father will get off with less dowry than he should pay.”

“Who says I want her?” George answered.

At the end of the fourth dance Veta beckoned to George to come outside; she wanted to talk to him. He followed her out quickly.

Once outside, the girl told him rapidly:

“My father wants to compel me to marry you. I don’t want to.”

“And mine wants to compel me to marry you, and I don’t want to,” George answered.

“Then it is understood,” Veta replied, after looking the boy straight in the face. “Are we cattle to be married against our will? We do not want it. I always knew you to be a man, George.”

“No, we do not want it.” And they shook hands on that.

They reentered the inn as unobtrusively as they had gone out. George watched her walk ahead of him and thought:

“What a spirited girl! And that fool of a father thinks he can compel her to marry somebody she does not want to!”

RIPE WHEAT

The wheat blades, heavy with the large berry nests, swayed golden in the light of the setting sun. The bells of the little church tolled the call to prayers. God had been good to the peasants of the Dobrudja land. There had been rain in time, and the locusts had kept away from the marshlands of Tcherna. The peasants, accompanied by their wives and children, all in their Sunday clothes--the embroidered waists with the red-and-green skirts and the high boots with the vamps of colored leather--crowded the road leading to the house of God.

They had been going to that church every evening while their wheatfields ripened. They were praying that no calamity overtake them; for they had already suffered enough the previous three years. Two years of drought had robbed them of all their labor, and on the third clouds of buzzing locusts had suddenly settled upon their fields and devoured all, leaving only dry stalks, before moving on, flying lower, because heavier, to other fields to do the same work of destruction.

But now all seemed past danger. They offered thanks to the Lord and promised gifts of candles and oil for the lamps under the icons of the church. On the morrow, they were to begin harvest. Returning from the church, talking softly among themselves, still awed by the sacred ritual, they looked over the scythes to see if they were sharp enough and the curved handles strong enough.

It was only after the evening was over that gaiety entered the square, thatched mud huts of the Roumanian peasants. A lone gypsy fiddler had appeared at the inn. It was One-Eyed Naie, who traveled from one village to another without ever remaining anywhere more than a night. Some people said it was because of an oath he had taken. Others said that he was continually running away from a curse which followed him for a sinful deed in his youth. But it did not matter. Naie was a good fiddler. Already the villagers were assembling at the inn.

Tomorrow they were going out to harvest their fields. Many brought their curved long-handled scythes to the inn to show them to one another, and to whet them still sharper with the oilstones they carried in their belts while talking to friends. They had had their first meal in more than two weeks; for they had kept “post”--had abstained from eating meat while they were praying God’s mercy.

Now Naie was playing. The young men and the girls were ready for the dance. Two of the older men, Stan and the blacksmith Gavril, sat down near Naie to beat the rhythm with their palms while he was playing the dance tunes. There were song and dance and loud laughter before the night was very old. Arms were locked in arms--the sinewy brown, hairy ones of the young men on the velvet-white, delicately veined ones of the girls.

Gay scarfs flashed in the air as they were turning round and round the fiddler sitting on top of an overturned barrel. Heels were thumping the ground so hard the windows shook and the rafters of the low ceiling trembled. And they laughed and sang and yodeled.

In the midst of all the gaiety appeared Boyar Robu. The youngsters continued to dance at his approach, but the older men became silent. Even the two old men who had been beating the rhythm with their palms ceased to do so. He was a tall man, Boyar Robu, and thin and wiry. A curly black beard framed his strong brownish face. He was a man of about thirty. He was dressed half peasant and half European.

He greeted everybody in a friendly manner, calling each one by name. But the answers to his greeting were, though respectful, anything but cordial or receptive on the part of the peasants. The priest, Popa Stancu, was standing talking to a peasant.

“Good evening, Popa,” Boyar Robu called out, and kissed the extended hand of the man of God, as he walked up to him. The priest followed almost reluctantly the Boyar to the table.

“And do please serve everybody,” the Boyar called to the innkeeper. “This has been a good year.”

The peasants were not much pleased by the Boyar’s generosity, and when he noticed their refusal a wild rage overpowered him. Standing up he smashed his empty glass on the floor.

Instantly Naie ceased playing. The Boyar stood and narrowed his eyes until they looked more like two slits from under which shot dark fire, as he called out:

“Am I a heathen that you refuse me? It is on my land that your wheat has grown! On mine! And it has been so for generations and generations. And while peasants were flogged daily, and beaten and robbed by other boyars a few miles from here your fathers and grandfathers and yourselves have lived freely on my land, long before the laws of the country had given you freedom!”

“It is not that, Boyar,” Stan, the oldest of the peasants, spoke up, after looking around to the other men. “But we do know what you want. None of the men would put their oxen or drive your oxen to these ungodly machines that you have brought from Nemtzia, or from other countries, to do the work God made man to do.”

“We’ll talk about that afterward,” the Boyar called.

Instantly glasses clinked. Blessings and good wishes were proffered. They were his friends; his peasants. He was their master. Their good master. But those machines ... that was a different story ... those things were the work of the devil.

The dance having stopped, some of the young people went out in couples to speak of things more important to them than what was being discussed at the inn. Naie hung his violin on the button under his coat, ready to go to sleep in the barn of the inn. The Boyar stopped him and called to the innkeeper.

“Give Naie food. I may want him to play tonight for us.”

The gypsy was served at the end of the room, while the peasants, standing on their feet, assured the Boyar of their devotion. When they had convinced him of that, they all sat down to talk. Gavril leaned over with his two hands on the table, and sticking his bearded face right under the eyes of the Boyar, said:

“We all love you. And your grandfather and father and you, yourself, have always been the best of Boyars to us. The rent of your land is cheaper than anywhere, and you have always been kind to us. But we would not, any of us, come near to any of the machines you have brought. This land here has been plowed with the plow pulled by oxen. We have sown the wheat with our own hands. We have harvested it with our scythes and threshed it on the threshing floor with our horses. That is what peasants are born for. To do all this work. It has been so since Adam. And if the Nemtzia Germans or the people from another part of the world want to do otherwise, let them do it.”

“Have I spoken right?” Gavril turned around, looking at the other peasants.

“He has spoken right,” they answered, nodding their heads. “He has spoken our own hearts.”

The whole night long Boyar Robu tried to convince his men that the binding machines he had from America, and which were rusting in the shed, were not the work of the devil, but the work of man’s brains. He explained to them how they worked, how the steel fingers of the binding apparatus were catching the Manila thread, and bringing it around the sheaf after it had been lifted from the cutting platform on the rolling canvas.

But it was all in vain. Stolid, obstinate, the men refused to believe it was so simple. The priest was silent, but the peasants knew he sided with them. And even after the Boyar had explained that their poverty was due to the fact that wheat and corn were sown and harvested in other countries in different ways, they refused to understand. If it was God’s will that they live in poverty it was God’s will.

Without the help of the peasants on his enormous wheatfields the Boyar’s desire to expand by cultivating all the land he owned was an empty dream. The peasants were tenants. They paid the rent for their land by so many days of work in the Boyar’s fields. He could not ask more days than was the custom for each acre. If one took more land he needed more time for his own fields. If one cultivated only a little land, he owed him fewer days.

Their own fields being comparatively small, it was easy for them to harvest their wheat in a few days, and thresh it leisurely on their threshing floors. But it was not so with his fields. The locusts not having spared him, he, too, had had many bad years.

Attracted by the odor of ripe wheat, the locusts might arrive before he had had a chance to harvest his 400 acres of wheat. He had sown so much, hoping to recoup his losses of former years. He had bought the machines to save himself from ruin. The only thing that could save him was speedy work. And yet he could not ask the peasants to go in with their scythes in his field before they had cut theirs. With the machines the work could be done in a few days.

But they were unwilling, and even when in the stress of pleading with them he, Robu, the son of the oldest of the Boyars in the neighborhood, cried before them, they wept together with him, but would not do as he asked them to.

“Why,” he said, “I’ll lend you my machines. They will cut your wheat, all of yours, in two days without much trouble. I can thresh your wheat and get half as much more out of the sheaves than you would get on the threshing floors. You would get more time and more money. More wheat.”

But the peasants shook their stubborn heads. Machines were the work of the devil. All the diseases and all the ills of the world were caused by the machines with which men wanted to do more work than God had ordained should be done.

Unable to convince them, although he had used the arguments that had been made to him at the time he had bought the machines at the capital of the country, Boyar Robu called Naie to him.

“Go to your homes. Leave me alone here with Naie.”

In the dim light of the oil lamp hanging from the low-beamed ceiling, the air heavy with the odors of boots and quarters of meat and blankets and chains and plowshares, the Boyar and the gypsy remained the whole night long.

The peasants were already going out into the fields singing the harvest song, holding the glittering blue steel of the scythes to the sun, with the girls beating the bottoms of empty pots and throwing water, from the pails they were carrying, at one another, when the Boyar and the gipsy went up the road toward his _curte_ at the end of the village.

Boyar Robu still repeated:

“Fools! Fools! You don’t want to work with my machines!”

Later, Boyar Robu rode out on his horse to see how the harvesting in the peasants’ fields was going on. The work was being done very rapidly. Everybody from every hut had turned out. Backs bent roundly as the swishing scythes rose and fell and left broad paths of gold on the ground. The smell of the wheat and the song of sharp steel against dried blades mingled with the chant of the men and the cuckoo calls from the forest.

Everywhere there was song. And everywhere Boyar Robu was greeted, “We shall get into your field tomorrow morning, Boyar. We’ll cut it ere the locusts will come, never fear!”

For they all loved him, though they regretted that he wanted to do what nobody had ever done before. It was all because of John Petrianu, the cruel Petrianu, whose fields were a few miles away. He had bought machines and compelled his men to work them at the point of a pistol.

The Boyar nodded his head, accepting their generosity and their mirthfulness. Yet, as he looked at the fields, he thought how easily the whole thing could be done with his two machines.

Having made the rounds, he returned to the shed to look at the rusting monsters on which the name of the harvesting company was lettered with gold upon red boards. It amused him to read the words in English and their translation below into Roumanian, “Harvesting Machine Company,” and, underneath, “Chicago, Illinois.”

He mused about the country they came from as he looked at them. He had seen such machines work in the fields of Petrianu, his neighbor. How pretty it was to see them run through and cut and bind and drop the sheaves of equal thickness, file by file, one after the other. How had Petrianu succeeded to get his men to work them? He was a hard man, Petrianu was.... He had ordered and it was done. Boyar Robu had heard tales of brutalities he did not believe ... yet.... It was all so simple! Why should these fools think there was any ungodly thing that made this iron and steel work?

Early the following morning, as soon as the heat of the sun had dried up the dew of the night on the fields, the peasants came singing down the road. Ranging themselves up on the outside of Boyar Robu’s wheatfield, they crossed themselves; then, bending their backs, their hundred or more glistening hard-steel scythes came down obliquely in one large movement into the wheatfield.

“Heigh! Ho! Heigh! Ho!” they sang loudly, marking the rhythm of the first strokes as they advanced breast deep into the gold. The women, their skirts held upon the side by the narrow red sash, followed in their bare feet, to glean and bind into sheaves what fell behind their men.

Boyar Robu arrived on horseback. The devotion of his peasants moved him deeply. His ancestral worship of field work stirred within him. There were several scythes lying idle at the edge of the field, prepared in case one should break or some mishap should happen to a handle. He threw off his black coat, the only garb that distinguished him from the peasants, and, taking one of the scythes after passing the oilstone over its edge, he went to work amongst his men.

They kept on working until late after sundown. Then they measured what they had done. It would take from eight to ten days to complete the harvest.

On arriving home, Boyar Robu, who was living alone with his sister and several house servants, found a slim young man sitting on his porch peacefully smoking a short pipe. The man was dressed in European garb, and because his face was cleanly shaven, a thing never seen in that part of the country, Boyar Robu was uncertain as to the age or the business of the man.

Ileana, Boyar Robu’s sister, twenty, full-bosomed and long-limbed, with big brown eyes and long black straight hair, rushed out to meet her brother.

“He came hours ago,” she told him, “this man there. And he asked about you in a language I do not understand, but which I think is English. He sits there and waits and waits.”

He smiled and remembered the “Ta Ra Ra, Boom De Ay” song, with “Oh, yes, Oh, yes.” These were the only English words, except “Mister,” he had ever heard. He approached, the man stood up, very much at his ease, and offered his hand saying, “James Allison.”

The two shook hands. Boyar Robu asked, “Oh, yes? Oh, yes?”

“You speak English?” James Allison wondered, hearing the two words.

“Oh, yes. Oh, yes,” Boyar Robu answered, and laughed broadly.

The clean-shaven man smiled at him and patted him patronizingly on the shoulder, and then launched into a long, loud speech, which the other did not understand, to explain that he was the demonstrator of the machines Boyar Robu had bought the year before.

The Boyar listened politely to the end and then raised his hands over his head and bowed as a sign that he had not understood a word. But he did manage to ask Mr. James Allison whether he was hungry and thirsty. James Allison understood. He was famished, having arrived hours before, after a long journey from the Constanza branch of the company, to find out why they had never heard from the Boyar after he had bought the machines.

The Boyar, his sister, and the stranger sat down at the table to eat. They ate in silence, the Boyar being too polite to talk to his sister in a language the other man did not understand. Finally Boyar Robu asked James Allison, “Français?”

The other man shook his head. “American.”

That single word shed considerable light on the situation. “Harvesting Machine Company, Chicago?” Robu Boyar questioned, mispronouncing every word.

“Yes,” James Allison answered gaily. “Harvesting Machine Company.”

Then they looked at one another and the three burst out in loud laughter. They sat on the veranda, laughing, smiling, with the tacit mutual understanding that the morrow was to bring some explanation between them.

Peasants passed back and forth, seemingly to say good evening or to report something to the Boyar, but in reality to have a look at this strange man of whose appearance they had heard at the inn.

When the village had quieted, the Boyar looked at his guest and looked at Ileana.

With sign language, he then turned to his guest and asked him whether he was ready to sleep. Allison picked up his big brown bag he had left outside the door and nodded his head. He was ready. He was shown to his room. Ileana remained on the veranda, thinking of the distant land from where that man came; a land where men sheared off the glory of their faces. And yet that face had clean lines of chin and nose, and the lips were firm.

How did he compare with John Petrianu? She was waiting for him. She expected him. He had been coming to see her almost daily and would tell her of the lands he had been in and the countries he had visited all over the continent. He had seen much. He knew much, Petrianu did.

John Petrianu was of a different kind from Boyar Robu. The Petrianus were not of peasant stock as the Robus were. Therefore, they did not have the same attitude toward the peasants. For generations the peasants had been serfs. Ordinarily they had been treated little better than cattle and, regarded as such, they were expected to do the bidding of a Boyar. It was one of the things Ileana held against Petrianu. He never spoke with love of his people.

Presently Ileana heard the gallop of his horse. It stopped in front of the house, and he came down to sit near her.

“John,” Ileana said, as soon as the greetings were over, “there is a man upstairs with a clean-shaven face who comes from America, from the land where they make the machines that are rusting in our shed. He does not understand our language. We do not understand his. We do not know what to make of the reason for his coming. Do talk to him in the morning, if you have time to come here.”

John was anxious to have occasion to prove his superiority. He knew a little English, having lived in England a short while.

“I shall come over in the morning,” John assured Ileana, “and I shall help that brother of yours come to his senses. There is no other way of dealing with peasants than forcing them to do what you want. Afterward they understand. Look at your farm! With three times as much ground as I cultivate, you do not produce half the amount. Just because Robu wants to be good to the peasants.”

They talked long into the night. John was explaining how one should deal with peasants in order to gain ascendancy over them. And as he talked and Ileana defended her people he slowly gained over her. His strength, his purpose, his decision were compelling. While he, realizing how he grew in her eyes, became stronger and more decided. It was not that he loved her so much. He needed someone of the other sex on whom to exercise his superiority. She became dearer to him when he felt he was convincing her.

When Boyar Robu arose the following morning he found James Allison in a pair of overalls and a cap which he wore with the visor on his neck. He had already found out the shed in which the two harvesting machines were housed and was pottering around them.

The two men greeted one another, each in his language. They smiled in understanding. Meanwhile, the peasants passed them by, going out to the distant fields. The scythes were hanging from their shoulders. And as he saw them, Boyar Robu raged that he shouldn’t be able to use the machines.

At that moment John Petrianu, dressed in his best riding garb, with waxed mustache, freshly shaven face, and oiled hair, came trotting down on his proudest horse. Ileana had heard him and was herself presently down among the three men. James Allison was so happy to find someone who understood him, he shook John Petrianu’s hand with both of his.

“Finally someone I can talk to,” he repeated over and over again. “Now tell me what is the trouble here. Why don’t they use these machines?”

“It is because his peasants refuse to handle them,” Petrianu answered. “I have some on my farm from your company, and they work well. I have had my troubles with them, but it is all over now.”

“Why,” Allison said, “all we have to do is to prove to them that they are easy to handle and more economical.”

He was a demonstrator, James Allison, and he had come down to demonstrate. Should he succeed in changing the opinion of the peasants, hundreds and hundreds of machines could be sold in that territory.

Petrianu, Ileana and James Allison looked at one another. Suddenly Petrianu spoke to Robu.

“You have been too soft with your men. It is why they would not listen to you. Go back to your room. Let them not see you at all. Let me deal with them.”

He stretched to his full height and looked for approval on Ileana’s side. He knew by the gesture of Robu that he had won him over. She looked admiringly at John. Yet, after a few moments, she paused to say:

“On condition, John Petrianu, that you should not be brutal to them. We have been hearing of the way you deal with your people occasionally.”

“It takes a strong hand; it takes a strong hand to handle them,” he answered, still flushed and drunk by his anticipation of being able to show his power over men.

Allison had been measuring up Ileana. In spite of the proffered assistance from Petrianu there was something about the man he did not like; a harshness of tone that went against the American’s grain.

Allison had seldom before seen the kind of beauty Ileana possessed. Strong, robust, kind, with brown eyes and a milky white face, the head set perfectly on wide shoulders.

“We go to the field,” Petrianu said.

Then he called to one of the servitors of the house, who had come with Ileana, to saddle two horses: one for the American and one for Ileana. Had Robu asked his man for a similar service he would have added some polite words. Petrianu’s words were shot out like crisp whip lashes. When the horses had been brought out saddled, and they were mounted, Petrianu again turned to the servitors.

“And let four oxen be yoked to each of the two machines in the shed,” he ordered.

The two servitors crossed themselves and bowed deeply, but they made no movement to execute the orders. They looked appealingly in the direction where Robu had disappeared.

“Do not look there!” Petrianu thundered. “I am the master here now! Do what I tell you!”

Ileana began to tremble. She looked with appealing eyes to James Allison, who did not understand what she meant, except that he knew that she was afraid something dreadful might take place. Petrianu was standing before the men with his nervous hand upon the short handle of the braided whip, forcing them to put the yokes on the necks of the oxen.

James Allison was mad with rage. But he had been sent there as a demonstrator. That man was helping him. If it needed a show of force to convince the peasants, well, let it be used.

Trembling and crossing themselves over and over again, the two servitors yoked the oxen. Still walking after them with his horse broadwise, Petrianu pushed oxen and men to the machines.

“Drive on!” Petrianu ordered.

The spiked wheels of the machines began to clatter down the road, one after the other, with Petrianu, Jim Allison, and Ileana riding back of them. Occasionally Petrianu would drive alongside of the men and talk to them harshly, twisting the lash of his whip as he talked.

Rumbling and clattering, the machines arrived at the wheatfield. The two drivers had no sooner seen their people than they plunged amongst them, crossing themselves and weeping. Instantly the song of the scythe against the ripe wheat ceased. The gleaning women, the colored beetles in the gold stubble, unbent their backs. There was silence. Why was Petrianu, the cruel Petrianu, of whom they had all heard, and this American, come with these machines now to the fields they were harvesting? And where was Boyar Robu?

Petrianu advanced toward the two men, who had abandoned the machines. Without a word his whip came down upon the shoulder of the first man, an elderly white-bearded peasant.

The peasant screamed in horror and withdrew a few paces. Petrianu’s whip had already come down upon the other man, and he raised it for the third time. Ileana cried out in anguish.

Jim Allison forgot that he was there to demonstrate the working of his machines. Suddenly, although the other man was much the heavier and taller, he sprang upon him like a cat. With one well-directed blow he sent him sprawling on the ground. Petrianu rolled over and, reaching into his riding boot, he jumped up with an open drawn dagger in his hand.

Jim Allison forgot everything. The sight of the weapon in the other man’s hand drove him almost insane with fury. He felt the warm drip of blood from a gash in his face; and, as they were fighting, he felt blood dripping down from the upper part of his arm.

Ileana screamed. The unarmed man, the boy from the other seas, faced the big and powerful Petrianu, who had a knife in his hand. The peasants stood aside watching the contest, all siding with the stranger, for they understood he had jumped to the rescue of one of their men. And they wondered how so light a man should dare fight so powerful a man who had a knife in his hand.

The two men were rolling over each other. Allison’s hands were not free to hit, for he was holding the wrist of the other man’s dagger hand. And as the fight went on an unspeakable hatred for Petrianu rose in the hearts of the peasants. Allison had succeeded in taking the weapon out of the other man’s hand. Petrianu lay there, bruised and beaten, fumbling in his hip pocket. Taking their scythes in hand the peasants advanced toward the man who was now slowly getting to his feet.

As readily as he had come to the rescue of the peasants, Jim, throwing the knife at a distance over his head, interposed his body in protection of the man he had beaten. And then Jim spoke to them in feverish language, calling them brothers and asking them to be men and understand. In his ardor he had forgotten they were people of another language.

But the men listened. The women seemed to understand.

“Get up, you coward!” Jim turned around to Petrianu, who had risen to his feet. “Get up, and on your horse!”

And when the men seemed appeased, Jim, with his bleeding arm and the blood dripping from his cheek, put his arms around the necks of the two men who had driven the oxen.

“Come. Come,” he urged them.

He looked around to see Ileana. She was gone. What mattered it? He was a demonstrator. And the men were in a mood to do what he asked. They turned around to the other peasants, who made a passage for the machines. Jim seated himself on the seat of one while the man was driving the oxen.

The machine started its grumbling movement. The cutters sheared the wheat blades low. The peasants ran after the machine to watch how it operated. See, there a sheaf was piled up, the cord was passed around it by the two steel fingers. The needle passed across and twisted the cord into a knot. Another sheaf and another sheaf. Five. And then they were all dropped softly to the ground.