Atdtda30: Boiling more potatoes, 838-840

[Paul Nightingale]

A few pages back Cyprian and Danilo were ambushed in the olive grove,
"thinking of settling for the night" (835). They proceed to the "nameless
black mountainside" (836); and now find themselves "allowed to winter"
(838). Several months pass and they settle into a repetitive daily routine,
one focused on survival, scavenging ("an all-day task in the best of weather
and usually extending over a night or two") and the jealous protection of
firewood, a "hoarded treasure" (838-839). Time is measured in boiled
potatoes (839); although, for Cyprian and Danilo, outsiders, time is
measured by the repair of Danilo's leg until he "get[s] about quite well on
a stick" (840).

The "very small [mountainside] village" is no more than a series of "rough
stairs and archways, snow-pierced tunnels, muddy courtyards" (838) and the
sense of community is underlined by the reading of woodsmoke, "an outward
sign of some family event kept otherwise inside shutters of silence" (839).
Cf. Lew's exclusion from community on 174-175, denied "a chance at some
domestic ease". Here, the village is "an accretion of stonework hanging from
the side of a mountain"; it began with "a single farm shed" and grew "over
centuries" (838). Cf. the description of Nochecita on 200: "... around the
railhead and its freight sheds and electrical and machine shops, the town
had grown ..." etc.

The healing of his leg encourages Danilo to "talk about Salonika, the city
of his youth" (839), a somewhat more personalised history than the one
offered on 828, "a history referred not to London ..." etc. On that occasion
"Cyprian listened patiently", waiting for an opportunity to confirm their
relationship: "We're supposed to bring you out". Here, he "blink[s]
politely" as Danilo sings the praises of both hometown and cousin Vesna, his
desire to return inseparable from the assumption that Cyprian should bear
witness: "I wish I could show it to you someday ..." etc (839).

Danilo's rambling, and by implication repetitive, discourse is eventually
replaced by Cyprian's introspection self-evaluation "surprised to find
emerging in his character previously unsuspected gifts" (839). At the end of
the previous section it was Cyprian silenced, "the wind taking his voice
away into its vast indifference" (838). On that occasion Cyprian had
"wished, terribly for no answer" to release him. Here, caring for Danilo is
juxtaposed to new-found cooking skills, which provide the setting for the
final dialogue on 840. The section ends with a specific reference to "one
day" (840), noteworthy because it finds Cyprian and Danilo disagreeing. As
the previous section closed, "Danilo was running a fever" (838);
retrospectively he gives credit to an omniscient supreme being, while
Cyprian fills the silence of the section break with chance.