MIRKO AND MARKO
Mirkoand Marko were two gay little Montenegrin pigs. They had the freedom of the Ivanovitch kitchen, where they lived in peace and plenty, and as they were plump and handsome, every one admired them. Zorka alone did not think of them in terms of bacon and sausage. To her they were playfellows.
Zorka’s father worked in the sawmill, her grandmother kept the house, and Zorka kept the pigs. The length of their life was one bright summer, spent for the most part with Zorka under spreading beech trees or along roadways thick with tufted clover.
One evening, as they came home through the shady village, an old blind man sat in the square singing as he strummed on a one-stringed fiddle. He was a wandering minstrel orgouslar, and he sang the deeds of heroes and the triumph of courage over loss and suffering.
ZORKA WITH HER PET PIGSZORKA WITH HER PET PIGS
ZORKA WITH HER PET PIGS
ZORKA WITH HER PET PIGS
The song was as wild and sad as the hills that are dark with firs, but the villagers crowded about the singer, for they loved the brave tales of their people, who had never lost their strip of bare mountain or their freedom. Zorka tiptoed closer and gazed at the old man.He had only one eye, but that was as keen as a hawk’s. A flat skullcap slanted over his gray hair. He wore a long, dark green coat edged with silver braid, blue knee breeches and a crimson waistcoat, faded but heavy with rich embroidery.
Fascinated, Zorka hovered on the edge of the circle, listening to his shrill chant. The pigs trotted on contentedly toward home.
On the way their greed led them into a wild adventure. A plank bridged the swift mill-race, which skirted the road and led to the watermill on the opposite side.
The pigs had passed this plank every day of their lives, and had always longed to cross it, for they could smell the fresh meal from afar; but if they so much as pointed their greedy, pink noses in that direction someone appeared in the doorway brandishing a stick and Zorka jerked them anxiously back by their tails. Now Zorka was not with them and there was no one in the doorway. It stood open, and the sunlight fell on a silvery heap of meal on the floor under the mill stone. Its fragrance floated to them. Their stiff little hoofs tapped across the gangway and they plunged up to their ears in the soft, delicious mess. Then, as they wallowed blissfully, there came a suddenwhack,whack, on their plumpbacks, and the angry voice of the miller’s wife drowned their terrified squeals. In a cloud of flying meal they scurried back over the plank out of reach of the cudgel, making a bee line for the safety of their own kitchen.
But the miller’s wife had other ways of reaching them than with a stick. She stopped Zorka’s father as he was going home to supper. ‘The next time,’ she cried angrily, ‘I’ll cut their throats and hang their hams in the chimney!’
The threat troubled Zorka’s father, who feared that he might have to pay for the spoiled meal. He went home with a deep frown between his brows. ‘That settles it,’ he said, ‘those pigs must go to market to-morrow. They are as fat as young geese now, and should bring a good price, but another scrape like to-day’s would wipe out all the profit.’
Zorka, crossing the threshold, heard the fatal words, and her heart stood still. The five minutes that she had spent in listening to thegouslarhad perhaps cost the lives of her playmates. She took her place at the table speechless with dismay. There was a nice mutton stew, with beans and gravy, but Zorka could swallow hardly a mouthful. Her gaze was fixed on two sleek forms sleeping in the shadow of a bench by the door, their sides rising and falling peacefully.
Her father made plans quickly. He himself could not go to market, for his work at the sawmill kept him, and the grandmother was too old for the hard journey. Zorka’s aunt was going, but she had two donkeys laden with firewood, and a third on which her baby in one saddlebag would balance a young kid and some turnips in the other. She could not be expected to look after two frisky pigs. Zorka must go with her and take Mirko and Marko safely to the market at Podgoritza.
This filled Zorka’s heart with tumult. The journey was an event. She had made it only once in her life, and that once so long ago that she could hardly remember it. The market town lay almost at the other end of Montenegro. It would take two days on foot to reach it. They would have to go down, down from the wooded valley where the village of Kolashin lay, through bare, rocky gorges, crossing and recrossing a wild river many times, with the gray walls of the mountains towering high above them.
There would be many people going from the village, and others would join them on the road, coming from high places in the hills and deep places in the blue valleys. They would eat their meals along the way—meals of leeks and milk-white cheese, with black bread, and sometimes they would stop at a tavern or a friend’shouse to drink thick, sweet Turkish coffee from little brass cups.
There would be gossip and music and laughter all the way down to Podgoritza, but Mirko and Marko would not return from the fair. Their blithe life spent in hunting for the best fodder along the brook would be over.
So the next morning big tears stood on Zorka’s cheeks as she tied a yellow handkerchief over her head and bound her sandals. She let Mirko and Marko out of their comfortable pen, fed them an exquisite breakfast of boiled potatoes and milk, then washed and dried them before she joined her Aunt Basilika on the edge of the village. There a group of people were loading their donkeys under the beech trees. As most of the wood for building and burning in Montenegro comes from the Valley of Kolashin and the mountains behind it, many people were carrying firewood or charcoal for sale. Others had potatoes or walnuts, eggs and cheese or great sacks of wool. There were droves of sheep and goats, and a few cows. The cattle had to be driven slowly in order not to run all their fat off before they reached the market.
Mirko and Marko joined the procession in high spirits. The smell of garden stuff and grain was enticingto them, and Zorka had to put them on a string to keep them from racing ahead under the feet of the donkeys. Long after the sun had risen for the rest of the world, the path that the market-goers followed lay in twilight, for eastward the mountains rose in a sheer wall that seemed to touch the sky.
In half an hour they had left the cool, green valley hung like a hammock between wooded mountains, and were winding their way through a stony land where there was no sprig of grass, but where the wild pomegranate bushes springing from crevices splashed their flame-like blossoms over the rocks. The mountain-sides were so steep that no soil clung to them, or if any did the first rushing rain washed it away. Here and there were what are called pot-holes, where long ago some whirling stream had kept a stone spinning round and round until it had ground a hollow in the rock. The stream had dried up or found a new course, but the hollow remained, like a stone bowl. Such soil as caught there was not washed away, as on the slope. People living near such pockets brought baskets and aprons full of earth and made precious little gardens of the hollows. Zorka could look down from the road and count the number of cabbages and potatoes growing in them.
Sometimes the travelers stopped at a spring to rest.Then Zorka would take Mirko and Marko by turns in her lap. The little pigs slept soundly, tired out by the rough trot over a rocky road instead of over the sod that they were used to.
When night came Aunt Basilika knocked at the door of a friend who lived near the road. A woman came out, throwing her arms wide in welcome. She kissed Zorka and Basilika on both cheeks and pulled the baby joyfully from the saddlebag.
There was room for the donkeys and the pigs in the sheepfold, which was a snug cave in the side of the hill. Shepherd boys brought straw and corn and water, and when the beasts were comfortable the family went into the house.
Zorka looked at it in amazement, for it was very different from her own home. That was built of wood with a shingled roof and a border of carving below the eaves. This valley house was of the rough stones of the hillside without mortar or plaster. The thatched roof was held in place by logs and stones. There were no windows and there was no chimney, but the smoke from the hearth, which was in the middle of the floor, found its way through the loose weave of the thatch.
The boys built a wood fire and their mother put over it a pot of soup. They were very poor people, but eagerto share everything they had with their friends. They gave them their mattresses, spreading Zorka’s near the fire; they themselves slept on the ground.
The next night the market-goers camped on the edge of the town of Podgoritza. Zorka fell asleep to the stamping and grunting of animals and the jingling of bridles. At dawn every one was up, preparing coffee and putting on holiday clothes. Aunt Basilika took a long black skirt and white linen blouse from her saddlebags. Over them she wore a long sleeveless coat of robin’s-egg blue with a border of pale gold balls. She tied a dark handkerchief over her head, and on it set a tiny skullcap of black silk. Most of the women wore bright blue coats that had been a part of their wedding outfit. Their finery was shabby and faded, for no one had had new clothes since the war. As for the children who had outgrown their good garments, they were dressed for the most part in gunny sacks sewed together with ravelings.
Zorka was better off. She wore a gray homespun dress and had an orange-colored handkerchief over her head, and sandals of cowhide on her feet. The journey from Kolashin had been so gay that she had forgotten the purpose of it. Now it came over her with fright.
Mirko and Marko were restless and hungry. Theyrooted about, seeking the juicy clover of home in the sparse grass and weeds of the market place. Zorka watched them with an aching heart. If she saw a business-like man approaching, she stood in front of the little pigs to hide them or gathered them into her lap drawing her skirt over their heads, determined not to sell them. But as the day wore on and no one offered a price for them, she grew indignant. Were they not the most beautiful pigs in the market? How could anyone pass them unnoticed?
As evening drew on she began to wonder what her father would say if she had to take Mirko and Marko back with her. She knew that he was counting on the money that they would bring. This was probably the last chance before spring to sell them. How could they be fed during the long winter?
Aunt Basilika had only a few fagots left. When those were sold she would pack her bags with the winter store that she had purchased, and she and Zorka would climb into the wooden saddles and begin the long homeward journey that very night. How would the short fat legs of Mirko and Marko make the uphill grade?
Twilight was already flooding the Plain of Podgoritza when a man rode up looking for firewood. Seeing Basilika’s fagots he went toward her, and then, peeringthrough the dusk, exclaimed, ‘Why, it’s Basilika Ivanova!’
He was an old friend of Zorka’s father, a well-to-do merchant of Podgoritza. ‘And so this is Ivan’s daughter,’ he said, smiling at Zorka; ‘but what fine pigs you have! Are they for sale?’
Zorka began to cry. ‘They’re not just pigs,’ she said. ‘They’re Mirko and Marko, and I don’t want them killed.’
‘Oh, I don’t kill such wee piggies,’ said the merchant. ‘They will grow to be grandfathers if you sell them to me; and I promise you they will live in a fine pen.’
Zorka dried her eyes, and under her breath named the price that her father had told her to ask. The merchant counted out silver and copper coins in her hand. She stowed them carefully away in the pocket of her petticoat, and then going down on her knees she hugged each little pig and kissed him on the top of his silly head before their new owner dropped them into his big saddlebags. They squealed wildly at first, but when Zorka patted them they settled down quietly on the straw with which the bags were lined.
The merchant took an orange and a shilling from his pocket. ‘Zorka Ivanova,’ he said gently, ‘you have taken good care of your pigs, and made them worth a fineprice.’ With that he rode off in one direction, and soon Zorka and her aunt had packed their possessions and were turning in the other. Basilika went lightly, having sold her wares, but Zorka climbed the mountain with a pocketful of money, an orange, and a heartache.