But there were signs that we were near Central Europe. It was a sign we were out of Central Europe, for in a German and Austrian town where the people were twice as well-off as these they would have perpetually complained. But they looked gallant, and nobody spoke of poverty, nobody begged. This meant desperate, pinching poverty, for the manufactured goods in the shops are marked at nearly Western prices. They all spoke some German, so we were able to ask the prices of what they sold and we could have bought a sackful of fruit and vegetables, all of the finest, for the equivalent of two shillings-a fifth of what it would have fetched in a Western city. This costume was evolved by women who could stride along if they were eight months gone with child, and who would dance in the mud if they felt like it, no matter what any oaf said.
They gave the sense of the very opposite of what we mean by the word ‘peasant’ when we use it in a derogatory sense, thinking of women made doltish by repeated pregnancies and a lifetime spent in the service of oafs in villages that swim in mud to the thresholds every winter. The women wore two broad aprons, one covering the front part of the body and one the back, overlapping at the sides, and underneath showed very brave red woolen stockings.
Under red and white umbrellas in the market place of Zagreb the peasants stood sturdy and square on their feet.
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