Chapter VII: The Albanian Family

And now we will let the rumor of great deeds rest a while; we will close our eyes to the wars that followed upon the siege of Janina; we will shut our ears against the echoes of the names of a Ulysses, Tepelenti, a Kolokotrini, those heroes who shook the throne of the Sultan, and all of whom the Pasha of Janina called his very dear friends. While these bloody wars are raging we will turn into the grove of Dodona, where formerly the ambiguous utterances of sacred prophecies were always resounding in the ears of contemplative dreamers. Let us go back eighty years! Let us seek out that quiet little glen whither neither good report nor evil report ever comes flying, whose inhabitants know of nothing but what happens amongst their own fir-trees; why, even the tax-collecting Spahi only light down amongst them to levy contributions once in a century!

The house of Halil Patrona's consort no longer stands beside the rippling stream. Nobody even knows the tomb in which the beautiful, the elfin Gül-Bejáze now lies; Gül-Bejáze, the White Rose,[9] blooms no longer anywhere in that valley. Nobody knows the name even; only the oldest old grandmother in the circle of the spinning maidens can tell them tales, which she also has heard from her mother or her grandmother, of a mad lady who used to dwell in this valley and lay a table every evening and prepare a couch every night for an invisible spirit, whom she called her husband, and whom nobody saw but herself.

[Footnote 9: The heroine of another Turkish tale of Jókai's, _A feher rózsa_ (_The White Rose_).]

This old woman had a son called Behram, a brave, honest, worthy youth; many a time with his comrades he would pursue the Epirot bandits, who swooped down upon their valley and carried off their cattle.

Near to him dwelt the widow Khamko, whose husband had been shot at Tepelen, and who, with her son, little Ali, in her bosom, had sought refuge amongst these mountains.

Formerly Khamko was a gentle creature, but when they began to talk to her about the mad lady she also grew as crazy as ever the other was. She was ready to destroy the whole world, and over and over again she would utter the wildest things; she would like, she said, to see the whole four corners of the world set on fire so that the flames might shoot up on all four sides of it, and every living man within it, good as well as bad, might be burned. Listen not to such words. O Allah!

Behram was a very quiet fellow, not more than six and twenty years old; little Ali was scarce sixteen. But this wild, restless lad was already wont to wander for days together amongst the glens and mountains, and whenever he came home he invariably brought his mother money or jewels. And nobody knew whence he got them save Behram, to whom the youth confessed everything, for he loved him dearly.

Ali joined the company of the Epirot adventurers and with them he would go sacking villages, waylaying rich merchants, and shared with them the easily gotten booty.

And whenever he returned home without money, his mother. Khamko, would rail upon and chide him, and let him have no peace until he had engaged in fresh and more lucrative robberies.

Behram looked askance at the perilous ways of his young comrade, and as often as he was alone with him did his best to fill his mind with honest, noble ideas, which also seemed to make some impression on Ali, for he gradually began to abandon his marauding ways, and in order that he might still be able to get money for his mother, he fell to selling his sheep and his goats, and even parted with his long, silver-mounted musket. At last he had nothing left but his sword. Dame Khamko, meanwhile, scolded Ali unmercifully. If he wanted to eat, let him go seek his bread, she said. And the lad wandered through the woods and thickets, and lived for a long time on the berries of the forest. At last, one day, when he was wellnigh famished and in the depths of misery, he came upon an Armenian inn-keeper standing in the doorway of his lonely little tavern. Ali rushed upon him, sword in hand, like a wolf perishing with hunger. The Armenian was a worthy old fellow, and when he saw Ali he said to him:

"What dost thou want, my son?"

The honest, open look of the old man shamed Ali, and casting down his eyes, he replied: "I want to give thee this sword." Yet the moment before he had determined to slay him with it.

The Armenian took the sword from him, and gave him ten sequins in exchange for it, besides meat and drink. So Ali returned home without his sword.

When Dame Khamko saw her son return home disarmed she was greatly incensed and exclaimed:

"What hast thou done with thy sword?"

"I have sold it," answered Ali, resolutely.

At this the mother flew into a violent rage, and catching up a bludgeon, belabored Ali with it until she was tired. The big, muscular lad allowed himself to be beaten, and neither wept nor said a word, nor even tried to defend himself.

"And now dost see that spindle?" cried Dame Khamko. "Learn to spin the thread and turn the bobbins quickly; thou shalt not eat idle bread at home, I can tell thee. A man who can sell his sword is fit for nothing but to sit beside a distaff."

So Ali sat down to spin.

For a couple of days he endured the insults which his mother heaped upon him, and on the third day he returned to the Armenian, to whom he had sold his sword, robbed him of and slew of him with it, plundered and burned down his house, and from thenceforth became such a famous robber that the whole countryside lived in mortal terror of him.

Dame Khamko lived a long time after this event, and ruined her son's soul altogether by urging him to kill and slay without mercy, till one fine day her son murdered her likewise, and thus added her blood also to the blood of those whom, at his mother's instigation, he had cruelly murdered.

And this lad became the Pasha of Janina. Ali Tepelenti!

Through what an ocean of treachery, perjury, robbery, and homicide he had to wade before he attained to that eminence! How often was he not so reduced as to have nothing left but his sword and his crafty brain? But many a time, in the midst of his most brilliant successes, in the very plenitude of his power, he would bethink him of the two quiet little huts where he and Behram had been wont to dwell. He never heard of Behram now, but he used frequently to think in those days and wonder what would have become of himself if he had listened to Behram's words and lived a quiet, contented life. 'Tis true he would not have been so mighty a man as he was now, but would he not have been a much happier one?

Once, when he was a very great potentate, he had visited the little village in the glen in which they had hidden away together. But nobody would tell him anything of Behram. He had disappeared none knew whither. Perhaps he had died since then!