Pran of Albania/Chapter 13

Before twelve witnesses—twelve mountaineers—Pran took her vow. Each man who heard was surety for her and was in honor bound to see she kept that vow. Said one to her, “Should Ndrek try to marry you to another, not only will he call down on himself vengeance of your betrothed’s family, but likewise vengeance from each of us. Let him remember that.”

“He will not try,” said Pran. “My mother sews even now on the man’s clothes for me, and Ndrek has bought my rifle in Skodra only last week. Fear not that this thing will embroil you—any of you. My vow will be well kept.”

“Mir,” said the man, and slung his rifle over his shoulder.

It was not hard for Pran to get used to her new costume. She found it easier to move in than the heavy stiff skirt she had worn. Only her rifle seemed strange to her at first. “But I have carried heavier loads than this,” she said to Dil, and smiled.

​Stranger to her was the new place she held. Often when she was visiting the men made room for her to eat with them.

“You eat with them?” said Nik, half amused. Pran and Dil and the boys sat talking by the fire.

“Of course,” said Pran, “I can do so if I choose. They say, ‘You wear breeches just as we do, and you carry arms. Sit down’; and then I do.”

“But you are still a woman,” insisted Nik.

“True,” Pran answered, “but know that you and Gjon, when you inherit Ndrek’s land from him, will by decision of our council pay to me so much a year in corn or other stuff. That is my right.”

Dil said, “It is. Where I was born vowed virgins like yourself hold lands and herds. After all, one cannot live half a life. Since you cannot have all a woman’s life, then you have part of a man’s. That is the law.”

But under these new honors Pran’s heart was not proud, nor happy even. Always in her mind the thought of Nush lingered—and there was in her a longing to see him—still unsatisfied. Often she felt a peculiar loneliness.

The winter passed. Spring came. Although Pran busied herself as always with the women’s work she felt a restlessness; and sometimes, taking her rifle on ​her straight young back, she would go out along the trails alone and walk great distances, thinking her thoughts.

“I seek,” she told herself, “I always seek. Some day I will find out what it is I am seeking.”

In her heart she knew, without admitting it, that she sought always for a sight of Nush. But she had turned her mind from thoughts of him. “When the last strand is woven, then the cloth is done,” she told herself.

It was a day in early spring. The mountain streams were full. Snow lay in scattered patches on the high necks of the mountains. The sky was clear blue. The sun was warm but not too warm for comfort. Pran, in the tight white clothing of a man, her rifle on her back, walked slowly on the narrow trail toward home. She never sang now as she walked, but somehow to-day a song was in her heart. “I am getting used to this life,” she thought, and hummed her song softly.

The trail made a turn round a spur of the hill, and then Pran saw it stretching like a wavy ribbon far ahead, no one in sight.

“So is my life,” she thought. “I make a turn—change from the old life as a girl—and now the path of living lies clear before me. No one approaches.”

​As she looked along the trodden way, noting its emptiness, she saw that to one side of it a little farther on there sat on a rock the figure of a man.

Something in the pose of that still form smote her with memory. She laughed a little bitterly to herself. “So much were my thoughts taken up with him in those old days that now, seeing the shape of a man, I take it for his likeness.”

But as she walked on she could not turn her eyes away. How much that sitting figure looked like Nush! It was the image of him as she had seen him in the Maltsor clothes, walking from victory that day so long ago.

As she approached, her heart beat faster, half in fear that it was he and half in dread that it was not. She saw the man was young and tall, and that he sat, crouched there, his elbows on his bent knees, his chin in his two hands, and gazing out over the valley, unmoving, like a statue.

Her eyes scanned him from top to toe. Her breath came shorter. Yes, this was Nush—or someone who looked too much as he would look not to be Nush.

She reached him. He did not look at first, and then, hearing her feet hesitate, he raised his eyes and his lips spoke the words of greeting to her, as one man ​speaks them to another man: “A ye burr si ye?” And then he saw her woman’s face. And she saw, after these long, long months, Nush, and Nush’s eyes, and the firm mouth that now was marked above with a mustache—a young man’s mustache.

He started—got to his feet. In the blue-gray eyes that met her own brown ones Pran could see a recognition and astonishment. His rifle that he had leaned against the rock clattered to the ground. He stood transfixed and staring. She, half smiling, stood before him, waiting for him to speak.

“Pran,” he said at last, “Pran, is it you?”

“It is I, Nush,” she answered, holding his eyes with hers.

He came up close to her and took her by one shoulder. She could feel the strong grip of his fingers through the heavy wool of her jacket.

“So,” he said. “You took the vow. I heard.” He let his hand drop and took a few steps back on the grass away from the trodden path. “Come, Pran, sit down—and talk.”

She moved to where he sat cross-legged on the ground and sat down near him. For a while neither spoke; only Pran’s heart hammered exultingly against her breast, and that sense of eternal seeking she had felt so long ebbed from her. Before she was ​aware of it she spoke. “I have found you,” she said. Her eyes did not leave his.

But he let his eyes roam over her, taking in her costume and her gun as if incredulous, shocked almost.

At last he said, “Why did you do this, Pran? Why are you dressed so? Why did you vow never to marry?”

Her face hardened a little, and she could feel some of that hardness creep into her voice. “I had to take the vow. There was no way but that. Ndrek betrothed me to a Merturi man—I know not who. I had not ever seen him. And at the thought of such a marriage something in me refused. I could not. So———” She stopped, and then her voice went on more gently, “Ndrek is good. He took my word in this, accepted it. Months now I have lived so.”

Nush’s eyes held a strange look in them. He stared at her as if he had not understood.

Something in her resented what she saw. She would defend herself, then. “Why should I not live so?” Her cheeks burned under his eyes. “Why not? Think you it is such happiness for a girl to go to a strange house and wed a man she knows not of—has never seen at all? I know that women do it. I would not.”

​She saw him frown, and his look was that of one who cannot fathom the mystery before him.

He said her own words after her slowly, as if caught up in a dream. “A man she knows not of—has never seen.” Why, Pran—” a light broke over his face and his voice took on reality again, yet questioned—“you knew me. Pran. You had seen me.”

“You?” said Pran vaguely, herself bewildered now.

“Yes, me,” Nush said with a fierce earnestness, “me—Nush, Prendnush, Son-of-Prenk, of Rai, Merturi. That is my name. Did you not know, Pran, it was I they had chosen as your man?”

“You?” Pran’s hands, that had been clasped, fell apart limply. In her mind a thousand thoughts surged up, choking each other. The name he had given as his own name rang in her ears. “You? You?”

The mystification that had shown in his face cleared away now, as the moisture dries from wet land after rain. His eyes were lit with a new light. His words stumbled over each other in a glad eagerness.

“God in his heaven bless you, Pran. I had thought all these long months that you refused marriage with me—with Nush—and now—and now—” he ​seized her two hands in his—“why, Pran, they never told you it was I. How could they?—for you—” he laughed brokenly—“you never knew my name. I had not told, had I? Always my nickname, Nush. You did not know. Oh, Pran!” He could say no more. His own gladness choked him. He sat holding her two limp hands with his own and gazing into her bewildered eyes. And Pran, her mind unbelieving, took the words he said and dug their meaning out.

“You were the man?”’ She could not understand.

“Pran, listen and learn. You have done this unknowing, and”—ruefully—“it is my fault—my fault. I never told. I could not tell; but now I can tell. Hear then how it is that Nush the Nameless is the son of Prenk of Rai, whom they betrothed you to. Have I your ears?”

A faint light glimmered in Pran’s brain. Yes, it was true Lukja had told the name, but—Lukja’s old words came back—“and I—I know his mother well.” The feast day and the coin—Gjyl’s strange behavior getting this thing from Nush! “I know his mother well.” “Gjyl? Gyyl?” said Pran.

“Yes, Gjyl is mother to me,” answered Nush. “She and my grandfather and uncles went to your house a long time back, when first I was in blood, to make the betrothal pact with Ndrek. I know that ​now, though at the time I was not living in my own house. But let me start at the beginning, Pran. All mysteries will then be clear to you.”

Pran’s mind held itself back from piecing the strange puzzle together for herself. Let Nush explain. “Tell, then, Nush, the Nameless One, tell.” She smiled confidently up at him. “You have my ears.”

“Here, then, is Nush’s mystery made plain,” Nush said, holding her hands still, kneeling in front of her. “Listen, my little nun, and you shall hear. My father, Prenk, Son-of-Ded, was shot in a quarrel over the boundary of a cornfield. Men have died for less. He died for that. My uncle slew the slayer, clearing our house’s honor. But my life, I being Prenk’s only son, was desired by the avenger—even above my uncle’s life. Fearing this vengeance, then, they sent me off, my uncles, far from home. I lived in a stranger house in Plani. My uncles did not tell Gjyl where, fearing a mother’s love would betray that hiding place, for she would seek to see me often. So I went to a place Gjyl knew not of and took the name Nush, so that even tribal gossip could not give word of where I was. Before I went Gjyl gave me that gold coin and others like it, saying, ‘From time to time, if you are safe and well, send these to me as ​messages of that.’ Through you one message reached her. I, who was sworn to tell no one of who I was, could not tell you that coin was for my mother. You remember how you fulfilled the trust in ignorance of what it really meant?”

Pran shook her head, assenting. “Yes, I remember well. I puzzled often over who you were.”

“Well,” Nush went on, “I stayed at the stranger house—rarely went out. That first day I met you on the way from Skodra I had been recognized—in danger, even. In fact, I went a long way round to set a follower off the scent of where I lived. After that I dared not go again, save in disguise, once or twice. And I did that against advice.” He laughed, and his eyes sparkled. “I do not mind danger. That very day we met and saw the fires, while walking in the bazaar I’d brushed against the shoulder of the very man who sought my life. He did not know me. You did not either, Pran, remember that?”

A glow went over Pran. She laughed too. “Oh, I remember well. I knew that day you were in blood, of course, in hiding too, but I knew nothing else.”

“The rest you know, but do not know you know,” smiled Nush. “After that came the bessa and the war. The bessa freed me. I was called a man and joined my uncles in the border fight. I saw you there.” ​His eyes softened in memory. “I saw you!—wearing my necklace still.” He touched it now.

Pran’s hand went to it. She spoke now with a happy eagerness. “Your necklace. Yes, Nush—‘Every tooth of it a spear to guard you!’ Remember that?”

He moved his head sideways, “Po, bessa,” he replied, and Pran went on. “It is your turn to hear then, Nush Nameless. It was this necklace with its circle of spears that did protect me—saved my very life; and Ndrek’s too. I gave Ndrek one tooth. It’s missing still. He carried it at the border. He did not get a wound.” She told the story of the spies’ talk in the cave and how unknowingly she found her way back into safety. “All because of you,” she ended; and though she could smile into his gazing eyes she felt her throat choke with a little sob and tears for a moment stung her eyelids. “Go on, Nush. Tell the rest.”

Nush took up his tale again. “After the war my wound was long in healing, but it healed. For long I did not go on any trail. I was at home again in Rai, and Gjyl told me I was betrothed to you. They made it plain. I knew that it was you. I knew—” his eyes grew tender looking into hers—“I knew, and I was glad. I thanked the saints. Each time I took the little ​glass of rakia and gave praise to our Lord, as custom is with us, I gave that praise to Him as thanks for you—who should be mine one day.”

His face grew dark now, and he dropped his eyes to Pran’s costume. Even his voice was sad, remembering sadness. “And then, not knowing you were in ignorance that Nush was Prendnush and your own betrothed, I heard that you refused to come to me, had set your mind against all marrying, and before twelve men-at-arms had sworn to live forever virgin, rather than wed with me.” He stopped. He dropped the hand he held and looked away, out over the hills that shut them all around.

He spoke then, musingly. “They said, ‘She will not come. She takes the virgin’s vow.’ I heard. I could not understand.” Silence—and he went on. “No one of course could know that we had met. I did not tell. I even hid the sorrow that I felt from everyone. Even Gjyl did not know. I bore that news of you bound round my heart like a great rock tied to the neck of a drowning sheep, a rock that drags and drags down—down—and never can be loosed.” Again he was still, remembering his pain.

Pran leaned to him, laid her hand on his knee, trying to get him to look back at her.

“Oh, Nush,” she murmured, “Nush. I did not ​know. How could I? You had kept your secret well, and since the bessa I had never seen you nor talked to you, remember that. I did not reject a marriage between us. It was—” her voice dropped even lower, and her eyes that had been seeking his looked at the ground—“it was—because of you—of you—that I refused to wed another man—as I thought, stranger to me.”

Nush turned to her again, taking her hand in his two hands and holding it warm within them. She did not look up, but she heard his voice gather gladness as he spoke. “That rock of sorrow, strangling my neck, is gone at those words, Pran—gone, vanished. You have loosed it, and it has sunk forever out of sight. My heart knows happiness now, knowing you took the vow—because of me.”

Pran felt tears gather in her eyes. Her voice was hardly loud enough for her own ears to hear. “Because of you—Po, bessa.”

She drew her hand away to wipe her tears and turned a little from him, looking out, as he had done before, over the hills. But he knelt silent, with his eyes on her. No, she could not meet them for a while—not now. She must not betray too freely all the joy she felt. The silence drew itself out. To Pran it seemed it never should be broken by word or sound, for it ​held them both close, even though their hands touched no longer. All the air stood still, and glimmered for her in a golden mist. Her rifle strap—for she had not unslung it—pressed on her breast. She passed her arm and shoulder out of it and let the rifle fall on the ground beside her.

Nush gave a little laugh. “Yes, take it off,” he said, “but there are twelve men who say it must be on. They must be satisfied. How will you satisfy them?”

Pran came back to reality and life. Her mind cleared, and her eyes met Nush’s eyes serenely. “What have they vowed?” she said. “Vowed to take blood if I should wed another man than you. Hearing I wed with you, they are released. Is it not so?”

“You have said,” Nush answered. “They will feel relief that you have given in to your father’s wish at last. Many such witnesses have taken blood and lost their lives in turn because a nun chooses, or is induced, to break her vow and weds unlawfully another man. If you wed me, then, how can blood be spilt? They take no vengeance on Ndrek for that, nor on me either. And it is sure I shall not take revenge for Ndrek’s marrying his girl to me. The law is with us and our hearts are with the law.”

They both stood up radiant now. Pran said, “I’ve ​heard before talk of a woman’s mind and how it turns here and there like a leaf in the wind. Well, mine has turned. I’ll tell Ndrek to-night.”

But Nush was serious. “One thing, my Pran, before you change the vow.”

“What thing?” Pran’s voice was anxious suddenly.

Nush said, “As you came down the trail a while ago you saw me sitting here lost in dark thoughts.”

“Yes, Nush. What thoughts were they?” Pran laid her hand on his arm.

His own hand covered hers, holding it there, but when he spoke he did not look at her.

“Dark thoughts,” he said again, and then more loud, “When you first met me I lived every day under the cloud of death. I told you that. That cloud was blown away because the tribes made a long truce to fight the Slavs, and then thereafter they renewed that truce.” He paused, went on: “To-day that truce threatens to be withdrawn. The bessa is to end. Even now at Abate council sits and men talk the thing out. They plan to end the bessa now. You know the men are anxious to take up again old blood debts. So many feuds have lain so long unsettled. And you know too, being a Maltsor, that though Lek’s Law compounds a feud with fines our men are such that, though they pay the fine, still they take blood. And ​so, to-day, when the council has done with talk, without doubt, word will go through all the mountains that feuds are alive again, the bessa ended.”

Pran’s heart beat in slow beats of dread. “And you, Prendnush?”

“I, Prendnush, Son-of-Prenk, will be in blood, be owing payment, owing my own life for that man’s blood my uncle slew before. Married or no, I shall be as I was, and I must live in hiding or, if I want my house and home—and you—then I must live each day expecting death.” His voice grew dull and hard. He moved away from her, though still he looked down into her raised eyes. He said, “Think, Pran, before you change your virgin’s vow, think what such life would mean. For me, I am a man. It is the law. I must live so, and what will be will be. But you—it is an evil thing for you to wed a man so circumstanced that each day when I come home alive to eat the bread you’ve baked for me to eat you need to offer prayers of thankfulness that I still live. And every morning that your eyes open on you are obliged to think, ‘Is this the day of death for him, my man?’ Think of this, Pran. A virgin’s life were better far than this.” He questioned furiously, “Is it not so?”

She stood before him, looking in his eyes. Her ​breath caught in her throat. Her heart beat fast. Should she then, having gained him, suddenly give him up and go back to her nun’s life without him?

“No!” The word burst from her angrily. “No, Nush.” She threw her head back, denying violently. “No other life is better than a life with you.” She stopped, amazed at her own passion of utterance. She dropped her voice, “Nush,” she said, “other women live as I must live with you. Do you think my heart, then, is less brave a heart than that of any woman of our tribes? Do you think, then, I would not gladly bear all I must bear in suffering and anguish, being your wife—for you?” She dropped her eyes, bending her head down.

“Pran,” he spoke with tenderness, unsteadily, “Pran, if you so choose, then we two stand as one to bear this thing together.” For a moment’s time she felt his hand touch her bent head, caressing. Then, turning, he picked up her rifle, hung it on her back, and said in a new strong voice, “Our fate is not settled yet. There is still hope. The council meets. You are a nun who eats and talks with men. Go to Abate. The chiefs are met in Rrok Kola’s house. Inquire where that is and go inside. Listen, and if you hear the side for blood waver toward further peace, then—speak, Pran, speak, for me, for ​us—our life and happiness!” Hope gave his voice fire, now. “You will do this?”

Pran heard, astounded. What was this daring thing he counseled her? To go into the men’s council, speak, as though a man? “Oh, Nush, how can I?” Breathlessly she spoke.

“How can you not, Pran, knowing what we know, that my life and your happiness in life rest on the bessa kept? Remember it is the last faggot of a too great load that breaks the saddle’s bands. Go—lay your faggot on the side of peace. Dressed so, you gain attention for your words. The Friar will stand with you. He is for peace always. Will you go, Pran?” With the last words he set one hand on her shoulder and with the other raised her chin up so that she looked into his eyes.

Seeing those eyes and the blue-gray depths of them, Pran’s hesitation fled. Her fear melted away, and where that fear had been rose strength of determination, of resolve. To speak for truce, for peace—for Nush’s life? What was so hard in that? To dare to speak—for him? That took no daring.

She trembled with a sudden glad eagerness. Her heart soared, and she laughed up into his serious face. “The tongue is woman’s weapon, you have heard. We have no need of rifles, having this. Is it not so? ​Then, let me go, Nameless One. My woman’s weapon longs to do battle for you.”

She turned so swiftly from him to be gone that, grasping her, he closed his fingers on the air. “Lumte mir!” she called back to him in farewell.

“Go on a smooth trail,” she heard him answer.

“Smooth peace be with you!”

Her feet raced on the trail. She knew the turn to take. There was no time to throw away. Where had such courage come from as filled her now?