“That is right,” they said kindly, speaking to her and then to each other. “When a Virgin belongs to the kula she gets a bit of land, usually, where she can live on her own. But this one doesn’t really belong to the kula, she has no father to give her anything. What will she do?”
Shortly after this — and in the middle of the day, when visitors never came — the Franciscan climbed the meadow, all alone.
“I don’t trust them,” he said. “I think they will try again to sell you to a Muslim. Even though you have been sworn. They will try to make some money out of you. If they could find you a Christian, it might not be so bad, but I am sure it will be an infidel.”
They sat on the grass and drank coffee. The Franciscan said, “Do you have any belongings to take with you? No. Soon we will start.”
“Who will milk the ewes?” said Lottar. Some of the ewes were already working their way down the slope; they would stand and wait for her.
“Leave them,” said the Franciscan.
In this way she left not only the sheep but her shelter, the meadow, the wild grape and the sumac and mountain ash and juniper bushes and scrub oak she had looked at all summer, the rabbit pelt she had used as a pillow and the pan she had boiled her coffee in, the heap of wood she had gathered only that morning, the stones around her fire — each one of them known to her by its particular shape and color. She understood that she was leaving, because the Franciscan was so stern, but she did not understand it in a way that would make her look around, to see everything for the last time. That was not necessary, anyway. She would never forget any of it.
As they entered the beech wood the Franciscan said, “Now we must be very quiet. I am going to take another path, which does not go so near the kula. If we hear anybody on the path, we will hide.”
Hours, then, of silent walking, between the beech trees with their smooth elephant bark, and the black-limbed oaks and the dry pines. Up and down, crossing the ridges, choosing paths that Lottar had not known existed. The Franciscan never hesitated and never spoke of a rest. When they came out of the trees at last, Lottar was very surprised to see that there was still so much light in the sky.
The Franciscan pulled a loaf of bread and a knife from some pocket in his garment, and they ate as they walked.
They came to a dry riverbed, paved with stones that were not flat and easily walkable but a torrent, a still torrent of stones between fields of corn and tobacco. They could hear dogs barking, and sometimes people’s voices. The corn and tobacco plants, still unharvested, were higher than their heads, and they walked along the dry river in this shelter, while the daylight entirely faded. When they could not walk anymore and the darkness would conceal them, they sat down on the white stones of the riverbed.
“Where are you taking me?” Lottar finally asked. At the start she had thought they must be going in the direction of the church and the priest’s house, but now she saw that this could not be so. They had come much too far.
“I am taking you to the Bishop’s house,” said the Franciscan. “He will know what to do with you.”
“Why not to your house?” said Lottar. “I could be a servant in your house.”
“It isn’t allowed — to have a woman servant in my house. Or in any priest’s house. This Bishop now will not allow even an old woman. And he is right, trouble comes from having a woman in the house.”
After the moon rose they went on. They walked and rested, walked and rested, but never fell asleep, or even looked for a comfortable place to lie down. Their feet were tough and their sandals well worn, and they did not get blisters. Both of them were used to walking long distances — the Franciscan in his far-flung parish and Lottar when she was following the sheep.
The Franciscan became less stern — perhaps less worried — after a while and talked to her almost as he had done in the first days of their acquaintance. He spoke Italian, though she was now fairly proficient in the language of the Ghegs.
“I was born in Italy,” he said. “My parents were Ghegs, but I lived in Italy when I was young, and that was where I became a priest. Once I went back for a visit, years ago, and I shaved off my mustache, I do not know why. Oh, yes, I do know — it was because they laughed at me in the village. Then when I got back I did not dare show my face in the madhe. A hairless man there is a disgrace. I sat in a room in Skodra until it grew again.”
“It is Skodra we are going to?” said Lottar.
“Yes, that is where the Bishop is. He will send a message that it was right to take you away, even if it is an act of stealing. They are barbarians, in the madhe. They will come up and pull on your sleeve in the middle of Mass and ask you to write a letter for them. Have you seen what they put up on the graves? The crosses? They make the cross into a very thin man with a rifle across his arms. Haven’t you seen that?” He laughed and shook his head and said, “I don’t know what to do with them. But they are good people all the same — they will never betray you.”
“But you thought they might sell me in spite of my oath.”
“Oh, yes. But to sell a woman is a way to get some money. And they are so poor.”
Lottar now realized that in Skodra she would be in an unfamiliar position — she would not be powerless. When they got there, she could run away from him. She could find someone who spoke English, she could find the British Consulate. Or, if not that, the French.
The grass was soaking wet before dawn and the night got very cold. But when the sun came up Lottar stopped shivering and within an hour she was hot. They walked on all day. They ate the rest of the bread and drank from any stream they found that had water in it. They had left the dry river and the mountains far behind. Lottar looked back and saw a wall of jagged rocks with a little green clinging around their bases. That green was the woods and meadows which she had thought so high. They followed paths through the hot fields and were never out of the sound of barking dogs. They met people on the paths.
At first the Franciscan said, “Do not speak to anybody — they will wonder who you are.” But he had to answer when greetings were spoken.
“Is this the way to Skodra? We are going to Skodra to the Bishop’s house. This is my servant with me, who has come from the mountains.
“It is all right, you look like a servant in these clothes,” he said to Lottar. “But do not speak — they will wonder, if you speak.”
I HAD PAINTED THE walls of my bookstore a clear, light yellow. Yellow stands for intellectual curiosity. Somebody must have told me that. I opened the store in March of 1964. This was in Victoria, in British Columbia.
I sat there at the desk, with my offerings spread out behind me. The publishers’ representatives had advised me to stock books about dogs and horses, sailing and gardening, bird books and flower books — they said that was all anybody in Victoria would buy. I flew against their advice and brought in novels and poetry and books that explained about Sufism and relativity and Linear B. And I had set out these books, when they came, so that Political Science could shade into Philosophy and Philosophy into Religion without a harsh break, so that compatible poets could nestle together, the arrangement of the shelves of books — I believed — reflecting a more or less natural ambling of the mind, in which treasures new and forgotten might be continually surfacing. I had taken all this care, and now what? Now I waited, and I felt like somebody who had got dramatically dressed up for a party, maybe even fetching jewels from the pawnshop or the family vault, only to discover that it was just a few neighbors playing cards. It was just meat loaf and mashed potatoes in the kitchen, and a glass of fizzy pink wine.