Translation:The High Mountains/31

Today two farmers came and brought some milk. There isn't very much as the ewes and the cows have now run dry, but it's a present from old Athanase.

They also brought them a milk pudding, prepared by Aphrodo with her own hands. Another present from old Athanase.

Finally old Athanase himself arrived.

He's wearing a white kilt, white breeches, a white cap; and even his beard and his hair are white. He is snow-covered in summer like winter; completely white. The Roumelle will have whitened the old man!

He's the main farmer in these mountains; he has never dropped below six thousand animals.

He's the grandfather of the family. He gave his daughters and grand-daughters houses in the surrounding areas. He had others who had married in the farther mountains which can't be seen from here. He gave them all a dowry without sparing his fortune.

He doesn't know how to read, he had however learnt to write his signature, slowly but surely, with a shepherd's crook at the end, like this: center|400px

With this signature he sells, buys, and knows where his assets are.

“I know sixteen letters” he said.

And it's true. Once he counted them, those which compose his signature, and there are sixteen. In all his life there wasn't ever seventeen.

What was lacking with his letters, old Athanase had in his head. Nobody cheated him, but he cheated no-one either. His word was his bond.

When he goes down to the town – because he does go to the town once a year, at Easter – he takes up all the road and people turn to look at him with his stick. Then they shake their heads and say:

How much milk, yoghurt and cottage cheese he must swallow!!

He's eighty years old but he doesn't lean on his stick. How many times has he seen the hornbeam and the beech blossom! How many winters have thrown down rain and hail upon him! And he still holds himself upright.

Wish we could have your fine great age, old Athanase.