THE SONG OF THE FLIGHT OF MARKE GJLOSHI—THE HUNTED MAN OF SHOSHI—THE WAY THROUGH THE WOOD OF THE ORA—A WOMAN WHO BELIEVES IN PRIVATE PROPERTY.
Four men of Marke Gjonni’s household went with us to carry the packs, so we left the stone house peaceful on the cliff below our upward-climbing path, not disturbing it with any parting volley when we paused for our last glimpse of it. A faint haze of blue smoke hung over it, seeping through the slates of the roof; there was no other sign of life about it, and only the smoke distinguished it from the natural rocks. Beside us the stream, which was the waterfall, roared and glittered in the sunlight as it fell into the depths; following with our gaze its narrowing ribbon of silver and searching for the blue smoke haze, we found the house, and I would have had Cheremi fling down to it the keen high call of farewell, ended by six times three shots, that we had sent back to the bishop.
But no; there were only women left in the house, and how could I be so crude as to imagine that one greeted women with rifle-shots?
We went on for a time over sunshiny uplands, and I remember that day as a succession of sun and shower, of small grassy plateaus and quick dips down cliffsides, and struggles up again, beside and through waterfalls that drenched the rocks with spray for yards around. Our muscles were now accustomed to the exercise; they complained hardly at all, and with occasional pauses for rest beneath the wooden crosses set at long intervals along the trail we went gayly, accompanied by the shrill songs of the men.
“Marke Gjloshi is putting on his jacket,” sang the leading man.
“Marke Gjloshi is putting on his jacket,” repeated Cheremi, for this was a song he knew well, a song of Shala made in the days of the Turks, and, repeating each line alternately, they sang:
“Marke Gjloshi is putting on his jacket.
He goes to the Pasha and makes complaint:
‘The Mohammedan has cursed the cross of my Christ!
He has cursed it, and I draw my pistol,
My death-spitting pistol, I draw it
And blow him to bits. He is scattered,
He is scattered like leaves on the rocks.’
The Pasha is angry, the Pasha is crazy,
The Pasha goes mad and the bugles blow
And the guns are out, the gendarmes are out!
Marke Gjloshi is away on the road,
Away on the road a long way,
All the long way through the six tribes.
The Arabian Sea stops him, the Arabs stop him,
Arabs of the sandy sea, black Arabs.
There he stands, there he fights with the gendarmes.
‘O Marke Gjloshi, what will you tell the nations?
What will you tell the Five Nations?’
‘I will tell the consuls the Sultan is to blame,
I will tell to God the Sultan is to blame.
But they will not free me,
But they will not let me go
Back to my tribe, back to my own tribe.
They tear me in pieces, they send me far away,
Far away to the other side of the sea.
My greetings, my greetings, to the lost six tribes!’”
So in the mountains they sing the tales of the men who have been driven from them, to become khedives of Egypt, pashas, themselves, of Turkey, political leaders in Italy, great surgeons of France. From all these countries men are coming back now to make the new free government of Albania, and here among the mountaineers we were walking with Perolli, an agent of this government, who dared not say who he was, for danger of death.
“I ask myself sometimes why God did not make me born in a happier land,” said Perolli, as we looked out over scores of miles of valleys inclosed by the sky-touching mountains, dotted meagerly with the tiny stone houses. “But then I think, He has made me an Albanian, and given me the most beautiful and the most unhappy land in all the world, for His own purposes.”
And he spoke of roads through these mountains, railroads, mines, great power plants, all feeding the people, giving them comforts and luxuries and knowledge. For all of Albania, beneath six feet of upper soil, belongs to the government, as well as all the water power, and we walked on, seeing even with our untrained eyes that the “white coal” of those thousand streams is enough to turn every wheel in a reorganized Europe, and dreaming—dreams that will never be realized.
Then we saw the men stopping on the trail ahead, stopping with quick hands on their rifles, and, remembering in a strange kind of panic that no one could be killed in the presence of a woman, I flung myself gasping up the slope, crying with my last half breath, “Long may you live!” to two strange men who appeared before us.
Then I collapsed, panting, on a grassy knoll, and dimly through my dizzy eyes I saw that the men, relaxing gladly, were sitting down around me and taking out their silver tobacco boxes.
“A Shoshi man,” said Perolli, “with one of Pultit. I don’t just get it; something to do with the blood feud. Let me listen.”
We sat on the grassy knoll that seemed to be the edge at the end of the world, so far below it the valleys lay, and listened while the men of the tribes that were “in blood” talked easily together of unimportant matters and offered one another cigarettes.
The Shoshi man had taken off his turban and wore on his handsome head only the tiny round white cap, hardly larger than the curved palm of a hand, that covered his scalp lock. Around its edges the hair was shaved clean to the skull, and with his weather-browned face and scarlet sash bristling with knives he looked altogether the savage.
He was an exile from his own tribe, we learned. A man of the tribe had killed this man’s brother in a quarrel over irrigation water; the chief men of the tribe had called a council and deplored the murder, condemning the murderer to pay ten thousand kronen to the murdered man’s family. This had been done, but the brother rebelled against the decision. Blood could be paid for only in blood, he declared; such was the ancient Law of Lec, and who were the men of these young centuries, that they should set aside that law? Therefore he had shot and killed the man who had killed his brother, and, sending his wife to the chiefs to return the ten thousand kronen, he had fled to the house of a friend in Pultit.
Now it is the law that when the chiefs of a tribe take council together and arrive at a decision, they must consult all the members of the tribe involved in that decision; when they all agree to it, it must be carried out. The honor of the chiefs is involved. If any party to the agreement breaks it, then all the chiefs, together and separately, with all masculine members of their families, must not rest until they kill that man and clear their honor. So seven chiefs of Shoshi, with all their sons and brothers, were hunting this Shoshi man.
“As it should be,” said one of our men, judicially, and quoted their proverb, “A goat is tied by the horns, a man by his word.”
“That may be,” said the Shoshi man, retorting with another, “but ‘where the tooth aches the tongue will go.’ This matter was a sore tooth to me, and I had no sleep until I killed that man who killed my brother. As to the money, I have returned it. Money will not buy my brother’s blood.”
The men fell silent, smoking. “But why hasn’t he been killed before now?” I demanded of Perolli, when their words had been translated to me.
“He is traveling with his friend, the man of Pultit,” said Perolli. “He is under that man’s protection. If the chiefs of Shoshi kill him, they will be in blood with the tribe of Pultit, whose hospitality they will have violated. Shoshi is already in blood with Shala, and——”
I exclaimed aloud. The endless complexities of the laws of these supposedly lawless people were too much for me. It was almost as bewildering as our own courts.
“Meantime,” said Perolli, “the chiefs have torn down this man’s house, and that would make it seem that they will reach some peaceful settlement.”
“Would it?” said I.
“Of course. For if they meant not to stop until they killed him they would not have destroyed his house. I think that they will hold another council and simply banish him from the tribe and from the mountains.”
“But if he does not go?”
“Oh, then, of course, they would really have to kill him. And of course they must kill him now, if they meet him. But as long as the man of Pultit is with him, they will try not to meet him.”
“So,” said I, “wherever there are laws there are ways of getting around them. And,” I continued, remembering, “these men of ours would have to be killing him now, if I were not here?”
“Certainly,” said Perolli. “Our Shala men would have to, because Shala is in blood with Shoshi, and this is a Shoshi man.”
“Even when his own chiefs are hunting him? Even if he were banished from the tribe?”
“Well, one doesn’t stop to ask that. He wears the Shoshi braiding on his trousers.”
“I see,” said I, and after we had rested and talked and smoked together for some time, the Shoshi man rose leisurely to go. The man of Pultit rose instantly, with him, and each cast a searching glance over the valley before them. Then they hitched more comfortably over their shoulders the woven woolen straps that held their rifles, ran an alert hand over the knives and pistols in their sashes, threw away the butts of their cigarettes.
“Long life to you,” they said, politely.
“And to you long life,” we responded. “Go on a smooth trail.”
In a moment the last glimpse of their heads had disappeared as they made their way down the steep path. The forest was very still, the sunlight on the wet rocks very golden, and for a hundred miles the mountains stretched into the distance, frozen waves of a sea of purple and gray and green and bronze brown, with foam of smoke-colored clouds floating on them. It was all very peaceful and beautiful, and we sang as we took the trail again, but for a long time, whenever the sharp bark of a rifle was answered by a hundred cliffs, I wondered. It was nothing, probably; some one firing his gun at the sky in sheer exuberance of spirit. It happens all the time, in these mountains.
It was on this day that we passed the Wood of the Ora, and, even though I had not heard the stories of them, I should have felt an uncanny sensation while going through that narrow, dark defile between gray cliffs. The trees stood thickly there, climbing the bowlder-strewn slope; they were cut, like all the trees of the mountains, to mere limbless stumps, and they were very old. They seemed for centuries to have writhed under the blows of the shepherds’ axes; they were contorted as if in pain; their few half-amputated branches were like mutilated arms. Beyond them rose rocks, perhaps five hundred feet high, evil-looking cliffs contorted like the trees, and these faced, above our heads, a smooth, sheer wall of tilted gray limestone that overhung the trail.
Our men stopped singing and Cheremi’s mirth-wrinkled face became solemn; his eyes were awed and listening. “The Wood of the Ora,” he said, in a hushed voice.
“Of course,” said Alex, cheerfully, in an everyday voice that was like a ray of daylight in a cave, “it’s simple enough. These cliffs repeat far-away echoes, and that’s how the superstition started.”
“One can explain everything,” said Frances.
“And then explain the explanations,” said I.
“And still most of the learning of every age seems to consist in proving most of the learning of the other ages wrong,” said Frances.
“Do you mean you actually believe that there are ora?” said Alex. “All these stories of people who have seen people who have seen them—I’d like to see one myself.”
“And if you see one, it doesn’t prove that it exists,” said I. “We see a great many things that don’t exist—and don’t see a great many that do.
“How can you prove that anything exists? Only by common belief. I once had a letter from a man in an insane asylum, who wrote to ask if Art Smith, an aviator I knew, saw in the upper air the shapes that he did. Art Smith never had; I didn’t even bother to ask him. But if Art Smith had seen them, and all other aviators had seen them, we would believe that they existed; they would exist, and the man would be sane, because he would believe as all the rest of us did. How do we know there are air currents five thousand feet from the earth? Because everyone who has been there has felt them. How do we know there are subtler currents that carry wireless messages? Because everyone who uses a wireless uses them. How do we know that there are ora in the Albanian mountains? Because all the Albanians who live here have heard them, and many have seen them. If we say there are no ora we will be crazy, by the standards of these men. Or simply foolishly ignorant. What do we think of an Albanian when he tells us that the power in a waterfall cannot be carried invisibly on a wire?”
“Do you believe there are ora?” said Alex.
“No,” I said, “I don’t. But human beings began life on this planet among spirits and demons; they knew they were there, they saw them and heard them and arranged their lives by them; therefore, by any measurement we know, spirits and demons existed. Here in the Albanian mountains they still exist. We live among electric currents and ether waves and X-rays and radium; we see them or use them; they exist. They exist for us and not for the Albanians; spirits and demons exist for the Albanians and not for us. And none of us can explain any of them; it is all mystery. Listen!”
We listened. All around us the trees seemed to be listening, too. From far away on a distant peak we heard the shrill, clear, infinitely fine sounds of a conversation, a conversation carried on from mountain to mountain, swinging like thin wires over the wide valley of the Lumi Shala. All around us the woods were perfectly silent, the cliffs were still; against that background of profound silence we heard a water drop falling from a rock, the delicate sound of our breathing and of the blood in our ears.
“Which proves nothing, of course. The sound wasn’t in the right direction; the echoes didn’t work,” said Alex.
“Yes,” I said. “But I wish they had. It would have given us such delightfully shivery sensations.”
So we came up out of the wood, and over the next mountain, and there on a slope, where the dead grass was splotched with patches of rotting snow and the soft earth trodden by the sharp hoofs of goats, we came back with a jolt to problems of unquestioned reality. For we met a woman, herding the goats, who believes in private property.
She was a tall, dark-eyed woman, handsome, but not beautiful. Her face, as we say, was full of character; and there was independence, even a shade of defiance, in her bearing as she stood watching us approach, her chin up, her eyes cool and steady, one hand grasping a peeled branch as a staff, her ragged skirt strained against her by the wind that blew down from the mountain pass. Her thick, dark hair hung forward over her shoulders in two braids, and from each dangled a charm of bright blue beads, defense against any demon she might meet in the mountains.
“Long life to you!” she said.
“And to you long life!” we replied, and, seeing her glance fall covetously on my cigarette—only the swiftest flicker of a glance, it was—I offered her one. She took it, thanked me, lighted it from mine.
“A bold woman,” said Perolli.
“Why?”
“In these mountains the women smoke, but not before men; that is a man’s privilege, and it is unwomanly to smoke in their presence. Are you a woman?” he asked her, in Albanian.
“A woman of Pultit, married in Shala. A widow with two children, demanding justice from my tribe,” she said.
I looked about. There was nothing but snow and wet earth to sit on. Well, she must have been standing for hours, watching the goats. I leaned on my staff. “What justice?” said I.
She told us with a calm precision; none of her people’s rhetorical flourishes. Even through the barrier of language I could see that she was stating her case as a lawyer might who was not addressing a jury.
She had been married five years; she was twenty-one years old. She had two children—boys. While she was married her husband had built a house. It was a large house; two rooms. She had helped her husband build that house. With her own hands she had laid the slate on the roof. She liked that house. She had lived in it four years. Now her husband had been killed by the Serbs and she wanted to keep that house. She wanted to live in it, alone, with her two children.
“But it is impossible!” said Perolli. “A large house, with two rooms, for one woman?”
By the Virgin Mary, she said, yes! She wanted that house; it was her house. She was going to have that house. She was not going to stop talking till she got that house.
“By Jove! I like her spirit!” said Frances. The woman stood looking from one to the other of us, defiant, superb.
“Well, but what’s become of the house?” Alex demanded.
Her husband’s brother, head of the family now, had taken it. He was living in it with his wife and children and brothers and cousins and—I forget exactly; seventeen of them in all. The family, which comprised all the village at the foot of the slope on which we stood, had decided that the house should be used for them. She and her children could live with them. But she would not do it. She wanted that house all for herself; she said again that it was her house. Until she got that house nothing would content her or keep her silent. Her sons she had sent to the priest’s house in Plani—to the same “macaroni” who had refused us shelter. He had taken them in and promised to educate them for the priesthood. For herself, she remained in this village, clamoring for that house. If she got it before her sons were grown and married she would bring them back to live with her. She might do so, even when they were married. That did not matter; what she wanted was the house, her house, all for herself.
“Well,” said Perolli, “I pity the chiefs of that village.”
“But where do you suppose she got the idea?”
“Heavens knows. Who can tell what women will think of?” said Perolli.
We left her standing on the cliff edge, still superb and still defiant, the cigarette in her hand and the blue beads twinkling at the ends of her braids. A bright scarlet handkerchief was twisted around her head, and her wide belt, thickly studded with silver nails, shone like armor. A picture of revolt, and I thought what a catastrophe she must be in the peaceful village to which, clinging and dropping from bowlder to bowlder, we were descending.
“Will we see her again?” I asked.
“Oh, she’ll probably drop in during the evening. She looks like a woman who would,” said Perolli.
The village was perhaps fifteen houses, clustered on flat land at the foot of the cliffs. Beyond it, a creamy blue flood swollen by the rains, the Lumi Shala ran straight between the mountain ranges. A score of little streams, stone walled and crossed by tiny stone bridges, ran through the village, and all the land on which it stood was cut into odd-shaped pieces by many stone fences and raised channels of stone for irrigation water. Dropping down into that village was rather like being a very small gnat descending on a piece of half-made honeycomb.
All the earth was sodden with water; we sank over shoe tops in it, and, wading the streams, walking on fences, crossing the tiny bridges, we came to the house selected for us by the man we had sent ahead, were greeted with shouts and a volley of shots and ushered into the smoky, warm dusk where the house fire glimmered like a red eye.
Although this was our second night in a native house in the heart of the Albanian mountains, I cannot tell you how natural it seemed to us. It was as though we had always come home from the vast chill mountain twilight to a dark warm room where a fire smoldered on an earthen floor and the night was shut out by unbroken walls. It was as though we had always said, “Long may you live!” to our hosts and crouched comfortably, in steaming garments, beside the flames.
We drank the offered cups of sweet thick coffee, the large glasses of rakejia; Cheremi washed our feet; the dripping-wet goats and sheep were herded in through the open door and fell to munching dried leaves; the women nursed their babies, stooping above the painted gay cradles where the infants lay bound. It was all quite commonplace to us, and when, after an hour or so, Alex spoke of the stairway, she seemed for a moment to be a stranger coming from strange, unknown experiences.
“That stairway,” said Alex, “is about eighth century. I saw one like it in Norway, preserved by the historical society. It was in a house like this, too,” she added, in a tone of surprise, as though she saw the house for the first time.
It was slightly different from the house of Marke Gjonni. The end where the goats were eating was shut off from the rest by a latticework of woven willow boughs, and high against the wall where we sat by the fire an inclosed platform of the same latticework hung like a huge bird’s nest. It was reached by the stairway Alex had remarked—simply a slanting log, notched roughly into steps. Above the fire itself was another square of the interlaced branches, hung from the ceiling; the smoke rose and curled against it and made long velvety fringes of soot, and all around its edges were wooden pegs on which our coats were hung to dry and haunches of goat’s meat were hung to smoke. From one of the pegs swung the basket of wrought iron holding slivers of blazing pitch pine; this was the lamp.
“Eighth century,” I repeated, vaguely. “So we are living in the eighth century.”
“Or earlier. Oh yes, surely earlier, for the house I saw must have been one of the last of its kind in Norway,” said Alex. But we said no more about it, for centuries seemed unimportant then, and, indeed, we did not remember very clearly any newer ways of living; we were too comfortable where we were, like people coming home after a very short journey.
Perhaps ten men of the village had come in to see us; several older and more dignified ones whom we took to be chiefs, and some young ones, and half a dozen boys, all moving gracefully as panthers, their white garments ghostly in the gloom, and each swinging his rifle from his shoulder and hanging it on a peg near the door before he settled himself near the fire, where the quivering light flickered over silver chains, bright sashes, and colored turbans. Their large brown eyes regarded us with serious friendliness; when they turned their heads their profiles were sharp and fine against the darkness; and their hands were slender, firmly molded, aristocratic.
A small kid was brought for our inspection; we were to eat it for dinner. It looked at us mildly, contented in the arm that held it comfortably; its fur was soft as sealskin. One of the children rose and smilingly kissed its delicate muzzle, with a gesture of charming affection. Then they took it out and killed it, bringing back its skin, which they hung on a peg. After a time the mother goat came over and nuzzled that skin thoughtfully.
Then they brought us a lamb, all woolly white with youth, and we praised that, and they took it out and killed it. Its skin hung beside that of the kid. And after that they showed us a fat hen, and it also was so used to the companionship of humans that it uttered no faintest squawk when the woman who held it nonchalantly wrung its neck, just beyond the circle of firelight.
After that our host handed over the making of coffee to one of the village men and went out to help his wife cook the dinner; there was a built-up place of stone outside where the cooking fire was made. All this time we had been talking, making the courteous speeches that accompany coffee drinking, and exchanging cigarettes.
One of the empty cigarette boxes—the little, ten-cigarette, tin-foil-lined ones—I handed to a little boy, perhaps four years old. He took it gravely, thanking me like a man, and retired to look at it. But hardly had he opened the flap when I saw the hand of a chief come over the boy’s shoulder and quietly take the box. The boy gave it up, not even a shade of discontent on his face, and it passed slowly from hand to hand, was inspected, marveled at, discussed. The cunningness of the folding, the beautiful design of printing and picture, the delicacy of the tissue paper that had been around the cigarettes, the pliability of the tin foil, of metal, and yet so thin, engrossed them all. When they had satisfied their curiosity and admiration, it went back to the boy, who took it with his hand on his heart, bowed, and sat for a long time looking at it.
“Have you ever seen such perfect courtesy?” said, I, marveling. “And from such a baby!”
Perolli looked at me in amazement. “Why, what’s strange about it?” he asked.
Undoubtedly we were among the most courteous people in the world, I thought, but the next moment that idea was completely upset, for out of the darkness walked that rebel woman who believes in private property.
She came quite calmly into the circle of the firelight, her beautiful hands low on her thighs, below the wide, silver-shining marriage belt, the blue beads twinkling at the ends of the long black braids of her hair, her chin up, and a light of battle in her eyes.
“May you live long!” said she to the circle, and, “To you long life!” we responded. But the chiefs looked at her sidewise from narrowed eyes and then again at the fire, and hostility came from them like a chill air. The children looked at her with wide, attentive eyes, chins on their hands; the sprawling, graceful, handsome youths seemed amused. Beyond the firelight, the women of the household went about their tasks; one came in and lowered from her shoulders a large, kidney-shaped wooden keg of water.
“When am I going to get my house?” said the woman. She stood there superb, holding that question like a bone above a mob of starving dogs, and they rose at it.
I have never seen such pandemonium. Three chiefs spoke at once, snarling; they were on their feet; all the men were on their feet; it was like a picture by Jan Steen changed into the wildest of futurist canvases. I expected them to fly at one another’s throats, after the words that they hurled at one another like spears. I expected them to strike the woman, so violently they thrust their faces close to hers, clenching quivering fists on the hilts of the knives in their sashes. She stamped her foot; her lips curled back like a dog’s from her fine, gleaming teeth, and she stood her ground, flashing back at them words that seemed poisoned by the venom in her eyes. “My house!” she repeated, and, “I want my house!” These words, the only ones I recognized, were like a motif in the clamor; Rexh and Perolli were both too much absorbed to translate, and we added to the turmoil by frantic appeals to them.
Then, suddenly as the calm after an explosion, they were all quiet. They sat down; they rolled cigarettes; the coffee maker picked up his flung-away pot and went on making coffee. Only the eyes of the chiefs were still cold and bitter, and the woman, though silent, was not at all defeated. There was a pause.
“Ask them what she wants,” said I, quickly, to Perolli.
“Who can say what the avalanche desires?” replied the chief, contemptuously. “She would break our village into pieces. She has no respect for wisdom or custom. She says that a house is her house; she is a widow with two sons, and she demands the house in which she lived with her husband. She wishes to take a house from the tribe and keep it for herself. Have the mountains seen such a thing since a hundred hundred years before the Turks came? She is gogoli.”[2]
“I helped to build that house,” said the woman. “With my own hands I laid the roof upon it. It is my house. I will not give up my house.”
A GROUP OF MOUNTAIN FOLK
The woman of Pultit in the center.
Frances and I hugged each other in silent convulsions of delight. My pen spilled ink on my excited hands as I tried to capture their words in shorthand. I was seeing, actually seeing with my own eyes, the invention of private property!
“What are they going to do about it?”
The question was not too tactful, nor too happily received, but they answered it. “They have already called a council of the whole village four times,” said Perolli. “They will do nothing about it. Houses belong to the tribe. It is a large house, and the people have decided that her dead husband’s brother shall have it for his household. She has been offered a place in it. If she does not want that, she can live wherever she likes in the tribe. No one will refuse shelter or food to her and her children. She has friends with whom she can live, since she quarrels with her husband’s brother. All this is absurd, and they will not call another council to satisfy a foolish woman.”
“I want my house,” said the woman.
Then the oldest man—one of the little boys was playing with the silver chains around his neck, and another hung heavily against his shoulder, but his dignity was undisturbed and he was obviously chief of the chiefs—appealed to me.
“In your country, what would you do with such a woman?” And I perceived that I was obliged to explain to this circle of eager listeners a system of social and economic life of which they had never dreamed, of which they knew as little as we know of the year 2900.
The woman sat impassive, as unmoved as a rock of her mountains; the younger men turned, propping their chins on their elbows and looking at me attentively, and the chiefs waited with expectation. The children, settled comfortably here and there in the mass of lounging bodies, stopped their quiet playing to listen.
“Go on,” said Alex, with friendly malice. “Just tell them what private property is.”
“I expect sympathy, not ribald mirth,” said I. “Well,” I said, carefully, “tell them, Perolli, that when I say ‘man’ I mean either a man or a woman. It isn’t quite true, of course, but I’ll have to say that. Now then. In my country, a man owns a house.”
“Po! Po!” they said, shaking their heads from side to side in the sign that in Albanian means, “Yes.” “It is so here. A man owns the house in which he lives.”
“No, it’s not that. In my country, a man can own a house in which he does not live.”
Then they were surprised. “You must have many houses in your tribe, if some are left vacant.”
(“Shades of the housing situation!” murmured Alex. “Shut up!” said I.)
“No,” I said. “You don’t understand. In my country a man owns a house. It is his very own house. He owns it always; he owns it after he is dead. He owns it when other people live in it.”
“In your country dead men own houses? Dead men live in houses?”
“No. Living in a house has nothing to do with owning a house. A man owns a house; it is his house; other people live in that house, and they pay him money to be allowed to live in his house.”
“We do not understand. In your country do men of the same tribe pay one another money for houses?”
“Yes.”
There was always a pause after I had spoken, while they pondered.
“Ah!” they said. “In your country a man can build a house all by himself. You have one man who makes all the houses for the village, and the others divide with him the money they earn outside the tribe.”
“No,” I said. “In my country many men must work to build a house.” And I tried to think how best to go on.
“But it is so here,” they said. “Many men of the tribe build a house, and then the house is a house of the tribe.”
“But it is different in my country,” I insisted. “In my country the house does not belong to the tribe. It belongs to the man who owns the land on which it is built, and he pays money to the men who build it for him, and then it is his house. Even if he lives somewhere else, it is still his house. Now in the case of this woman, the house would belong to her husband, and when he died he would give her the house, and then it would be her house. It would belong to her. The tribe would not own the house, but she would pay money to the tribe from time to time, because she had the house.”
(“Don’t tell me you’re going to explain taxation, too!” chortled the joyous Frances. “For the love of Michael, do this yourself, then!” said I.)
But the chiefs passed over the taxation idea; they stuck to the main point, though their eyes were clouded with bewilderment.
“How can a man own land?” said one, more in amazement than in question. And, “But how can a man pay another man for helping him to build a house, except by helping him as much in building another house? And when all have helped one another equally, then no man would have two houses unless every man had two houses, and that would be foolish, for half the houses would be empty,” reasoned another, slowly.
It was then that the remarkable intelligence of these people began to dawn on me. For, given the experience from which he was reasoning, I consider this one of the most intelligent and logical methods of meeting a new idea that I have known. A case of almost pure logic, given his starting point.
