Stories of gypsy life

It was an old mill, Dimitru’s mill on the Bistritza River. It had been run by the family of Dimitru long before any other mills had ever been put on either side of the river, all through the Moldavia country. The dykes and the water wheels were of old oak, cut from trees in the forest when the country paid yearly tribute to Turkey and was ruled by the Fanariots of Stamboul.

Within the mill were fifty pairs of millstones which, grinding wheat and corn, had themselves been ground so thin that they had no weight to mill any more the hard grain growing in that part of Roumania. These old millstones were the pride of the family, for not another mill in the country could show so many.

When anybody said anything about Dimitru’s mill or the manner in which he milled, the tall, black-bearded, wide-chested, brown-eyed miller would stretch to his full height, and pounding the left side of his chest with his right hand, he would cry:

“Look at these stones! Fifty pair of stones have ground flour in this mill. I myself have used five pair. This is the sixth one on the shaft.”

Those millstones were like arms of the escutcheon of a nobleman, which no man was allowed to impugn.

At the inn Dimitru was looked upon with respect by the peasants. He was one of the oldest inhabitants of the village. Indeed, the village itself, clustered as it was about the mill, was known as Dimitru’s Mill Village. For not only did they mill flour there, but they cut logs that were let down from the heights of the Carpathians early every spring, and they pressed oil out of pumpkin seeds, and carded wool, and even worked things out at a lathe which Dimitru himself had installed there; at first merely to satisfy a whim he had had after he had first seen a lathe work in another village, and then, as he grew more proficient, to make furniture for most of the people in the village. Back of the mill there was a shop in which carts and wheels were made, and chairs and tables; and even small husking machines, patterned after one that had been bought in Austria. The water wheel provided the power for all the work.

The inn, the church, the school, the mayor’s office, the situation of every building was reckoned by its distance from the mill. During the winter, when there was only little work to do, the elders of the village would assemble in the mill, and watching the still in which the mash of plums and pears, grown in the neighborhood, was distilled into spirits, watching the drops fall into the receptacle that sat under the long copper worm, they would tell the tales they had heard from their mothers and grandmothers, who in turn had heard them from their parents and grandparents--stories of visitations of wolves; tales of sorceries, of witches which had risen up riding in the air on broomsticks, and of horses that could run so fast they disappeared from sight in less time than it takes to blink an eye. They recalled the different battles--battles with the Turks, battles with the Russians, battles with the Hungarians; births of five-legged calves and two-headed chickens, and the reappearances of deceased men whose ghosts were forever roaming about this, that and the other place.

Dimitru repeated an old tale of his own family, of how the stones of his mill had stopped once by themselves while some corn was being ground. From behind the stones groaned a voice which was recognized as being the voice of Vasili, Vasili Yoan Stefans, who had died only a few months before.

“Mill not this corn,” the voice had called. “It has been stolen from my granary by Panait, the Greek. Give it back to my wife lest my children starve this winter.”

The millstones refused to budge or turn until every grain of flour which had already been ground was swept out clean and returned to the bag from which the corn had been taken. And even then the stones would not move, although the water wheels turned and everything else was in motion. The wool was being carded, the logs were being sawn; only the millstones refused to turn. Not until the widow had been called and the corn belonging to her had been returned, and not until Panait had confessed to stealing the grain, had the stones turned again.

And there were many tales, similar to that one, centered about the mill. For the mill had also refused to grind grain when the Russians had invaded the country a century ago, and had refused to grind when the Turks had come. It was the mill on the Bistritza that ground wheat and corn and pressed oil and sawed logs and turned the lathe only for those belonging to the land. And Dimitru was the owner of that mill.

Dimitru had a son, and a daughter whom he had married off when very young. The son, like all the sons back in the family, was preparing himself to take over the mill of his father when the time should come. For even if he were to take a wife while his father was yet alive, there was enough room for him and his wife in the house. And even if he were to raise a family, there was enough room and enough field for him to pasture his dowry of cows and sheep, and to raise enough fodder for them. He had indeed already taken off a good deal of the burden of his father, for while the old man busied himself with his cart shop, preferring the lathe to the mill, George was in complete charge of the stones. And he was as good a miller as his father.

But although he joked and played around with most of the young girls who came to the mill, although he danced with all of them at the inn, teasing, singing, joking with them, there was not one who could say that he was giving her preference over the others. Tall, dark, with big brown eyes, the lashes of which were always covered with a thin white powder, the dark, tufty brows looking like those of an old man because of a fine flour powder always on them, he was a good dancer, and his voice rose above the voices of the others when any singing was being done at the inn. At the wrestling matches on Sunday there were few youngsters who dared to match him. And he was gay and always happy. And it was known that although he was allowed to take one-tenth of the flour he milled, in payment for milling it, from everybody, he took only half that amount, and sometimes not even that from the poor and the widows of the country. Indeed, many a widow had brought half a bag of corn and returned home with a full bag of corn flour, George yelling at the top of his voice, when the widow claimed there had been some mistake, that he was an honest miller.

“You have brought one bag of corn and not two, widow of Jorga,” he would silence the protesting woman, not giving her any chance or time to explain herself.

“You have brought one bag, and I know you have brought only one bag! Am I a miller, or a thief, or what?” he would shout, and show great anger, as he would push her out of the mill.

One winter night, while the wind was howling, and the water wheel, raised from the frozen river, was squeaking and groaning, and the storm was beating savagely against the windows and doors of the mill, one of the villagers sitting about the walled-in stove, in the ashes of which the potatoes were being baked, asked:

“George, whom are you going to marry?”

Dimitru gave his son no time to answer. “He will marry the one who will bring him a good enough dowry,” he answered, instead of his son.

One by one they passed in review all the marriageable daughters of the village. They knew all of them. And when Dimitru had shaken his head to the last one, the _staroste_--the elder of the village--trembling and with shaking fists, thundered into the face of the man:

“Is it, then, the death of one of the married men that you are waiting for, to marry your son?”

George had been making fun of all that was said. He had taken it all as a joke. But to the thundering voice of the staroste he replied:

“I wish everyone long life in this village, and in every other one. When I am ready to marry, I shall make my own choice.”

“Indeed, my son wants to get married to some pauper. I have given six pair of oxen as dowry to my daughter, six pair of oxen and one hundred gold pieces. But he may want to marry some pauper!”

“A time will come,” George answered. “My time will come. But it shall be of my own choice, not of anybody else’s.”

“Well said,” spoke the gray-bearded staroste.

Old Dimitru remained silent.

Then they all sat down to sample the new prune juice that was dripping from the copper worm. It was better that such discussion end in joy, so they sang their saddest songs.

Finally George remarked, on looking toward the idle stones, “It is a pity they should be idle so long.”

George was never happy but when the stones turned around.

“This is a water mill,” his father answered. “When the Bistritza freezes, the mill freezes.”

“I know, Father.” He was a miller and lived only when the mill lived. “But it is a pity that the stones should not be turning when the Bistritza freezes.”

“If it were a windmill, you would be saying half the time the same thing,” another man of the group mused.

“If it were a horse mill, the mill would not be turning at night,” another man said in jest.

Whereupon one of the men, who had served in the army, and had been far away in a large city, began to speak about a large, steam-power mill which he had seen on his travels. A steam mill. One prepared logs to fire the engine during the summer, and then in winter one had the mill go whether the river was frozen or not.

George mused impatiently, “What a pity the Bistritza freezes!”

During the first month of the winter, after the river had frozen, he had had some work to do. He had sharpened every tooth and smoothed out the grain of the stones, until the teeth were as sharp as steel edges. He had cleaned and adjusted and readjusted everything. He had made it all ready to go, and now he was anxious to hear the whirl and turn of the mill, grinding and crunching all that was shoved into it.

“What a pity the Bistritza freezes!”

His father looked at him and then replied: “It is a thing I am going to put into my will, that this is a water mill and it shall remain so. This mill has ground fifty pair of stones.”

George was tired of always hearing the same thing. He left the company to go to his own room above the shaft.

Soon after, the peasants tightened their wolf-fur coats about them and returned to their homes, after wishing one another good luck. It was snowing and storming. Wolves were prowling on the road.