Alice Munros Best

killed a man of this
kula.
He had done that because the man he had killed had killed a man of his
kula.
This would go on, it had been going on for a long time now, there were always more sons being born. They think they have more sons than other people in the world, and it is to serve this necessity.
    “Well, it is terrible,” the Franciscan concluded. “But it is for their honor, the honor of their family. They are always ready to die for their honor.”
    She said that her guide did not seem to be so ready, if he had fled to Crna Gora.
    “But it did not make any difference, did it?” said the Franciscan. “Even if he had gone to America, it would not have made any difference.”
    AT TRIESTE SHE had boarded a steamer, to travel down the Dalmatian Coast. She was with her friends Mr. and Mrs. Cozzens, whom she had met in Italy, and their friend Dr. Lamb, who had joined them from England. They put in at the little port of Bar, which the Italians call Antivari, and stayed the night at the European Hotel. After dinner they walked on the terrace, but Mrs. Cozzens was afraid of a chill, so they went indoors and played cards. There was rain in the night. She woke up and listened to the rain and was full of disappointment, which gave rise to a loathing for these middle-aged people, particularly for Dr. Lamb, whom she believed the Cozzenses had summoned from England to meet her. They probably thought she was rich. A transatlantic heiress whose accent they could almost forgive. These people ate too much and then they had to take pills. And they worried about being in strange places – what had they come for? In the morning she would have to get back on the boat with them or they would make a fuss. She would never take the road over the mountains to Cetinge, Montenegro’s capital city – they had been told that it was not wise. She would never see the bell tower where the heads of Turks used to hang, or the plane tree under which the Poet-Prince held audience with the people. She could not get back to sleep, so she decided to go downstairs with the first light, and, even if it was still raining, to go a little way up the road behindthe town, just to see the ruins that she knew were there, among the olive trees, and the Austrian fortress on its rock and the dark face of Mount Lovchen.
    The weather obliged her, and so did the man at the hotel desk, producing almost at once a tattered but cheerful guide and his underfed horse. They set out – she on the horse, the man walking ahead. The road was steep and twisting and full of boulders, the sun increasingly hot and the intervening shade cold and black. She became hungry and thought she must turn back soon. She would have breakfast with her companions, who got up late.
    No doubt there was some sort of search for her, after the guide’s body was found. The authorities must have been notified – whoever the authorities were. The boat must have sailed on time, her friends must have gone with it. The hotel had not taken their passports. Nobody back in Canada would think of investigating. She was not writing regularly to anyone, she had had a falling-out with her brother, her parents were dead. You won’t come home till all your inheritance is spent, her brother had said, and then who will look after you?
    When she was being carried through the pine forest, she awoke and found herself suspended, lulled – in spite of the pain and perhaps because of the
raki
– into a disbelieving surrender. She fastened her eyes on the bundle that was hanging from the saddle of the man ahead of her and knocking against the horse’s back. It was something about the size of a cabbage, wrapped in a stiff and rusty-looking cloth.
    I HEARD THIS STORY in the old St. Joseph’s Hospital in Victoria from Charlotte, who was the sort of friend I had in my early days there. My friendships then seemed both intimate and uncertain. I never knew why people told me things, or what they meant me to believe.
    I had come to the hospital with flowers and chocolates. Charlotte lifted her head, with its clipped and feathery white hair, toward the roses. “Bah!” she said. “They have no smell! Not to me, anyway. They are beautiful, of course.
    “You must eat the chocolates yourself,” she said. “Everything tasteslike tar to me. I don’t know how I know what tar tastes like, but this is what I think.”
    She was feverish. Her hand, when I held it, felt hot and puffy. Her hair had all been cut off, and