Page:Balkan Short Stories.djvu/56

44 The banquet begins.

Two serving maids and the nephew of the head of the house enter with huge, four cornered bottles; one little drink and a dried fig open the meal. That is the custom evidently to banish the taste of cigarettes which are always in evidence. Then wine is poured into glasses—the heavy, thick, inkblack wine of Lissa—and each one selects his favorite morsel from the plates. Before the sugared eggs are passed around the wine takes effect—only a few clean out their plates with rye bread—and next comes the minestra, then baked macaroni with hashée made from the entrails of young lambs; fowl roasted in sugar, small barboni baked in oil, baked ink-fish with citron, pullets cooked with fresh vegetables and beef and served upon huge platters. First one and then another of the guests hands over to the attendants first the silver pistols and then the knives; then they unfasten the heavy leathern girdles and loosen their neckbands. Louder and more boisterous rises the laughter, redder the faces, even the face of my little companion grows rosy when I insist that she translate for me some of the witticisms.

Now, fritolli are brought in, round sweet cakes