Captain Polyxigis’s eyes flashed. “Eminel Hanum,” he muttered, and moved away from the wall. He came closer. His pale face suddenly flushed. For a long time he had yearned to see the wild Circassian. And there she lay before him what did he care for the earthquake? with her hair down and her feet naked, just as he wished her to be.
Eagerly he bent over her, but the Moorish woman seized him furiously and pushed him away.
“That’s Nuri Bey’s hanum,” she shouted menacingly. “Don’t you come near!” Then she pulled hard at her mistress’ scarf, to cover her face.
“If I don’t give her lavender water to smell, the poor thing will die,” said-Captain Polyxigis, and he pulled out of his waistcoat pocket a small bottle of perfume which he Always carried on him. He opened it and, kneeling, held it to the Circassian’s nose.
The earth was now firm again, the heart of Megalokastro was beginning once more to beat in its proper rhythm. The dogs, too, took courage again and barked at the earthquake.
The Circassian took a deep breath and opened her eyes. She saw an unknown man bending over her. She gave a cry and with both hands covered her unprotected mouth.
“Go away!” said the Moorish woman to the man, “go away if you value your life. Nuri Bey will be out in a moment.”
But Captain Polyxigis was gazing at the Circassian’s eyes. How could he decide either to live or to die?
At first the black sparkling eyes were fierce and scornful. But the Circassian slowly softened, as she let the man’s tumultuous breathing and provocative smell flow over her. She turned to her maid. “Who is the giaour?”
“Captain Polyxigis,” he himself replied. “Thy slave, mistress. Keep the perfume to remember me by.”
But the Circassian threw the bottle in his face and stood up. Her eyes were furious again.
“I’m going,” said Captain Polyxigis, and sighed. “Don’t be angry.”
At that the Circassian tittered contemptuously. “Are you afraid?” she asked.
“I? Of whom?”
“Of Nuri Bey.”
“You are the one and only person I’m afraid of, my mistress. If you tell me now to kill myself, as truly as I’m a man, I’ll kill myself and never come near you again.”
But he was scared at his own words and took them back.
“If there’s a God in Heaven, I shall come near you one day, Emine Hanum,” he said defiantly, “one day I shall come near you, perish the whole world!”
The Circassian measured him with half-closed, angry eyes, as if she were reckoning up his value, as if she wanted to reckon up his value and buy him. And Captain Polyxigis stood stiffly, with his right hand on his silken sash, and waited.
“My God,” said the Circassian at last, slowly covering her face with her scarf, “thinks Greeks are loathsome.”
“My God,” replied the man, “loves Circassian women and is almighty.”
He heard voices and turned. Two Turks were approaching from the corner. Doors were opening. The Moorish woman seized her mistress around the waist and hurried her into the house. The green door slammed behind them.
Captain Polyxigis wanted to leave, but his knees were paralyzed. “I’m lost, I’m lost,” he muttered. “It’s as if I’d never kissed, never had any fun, never touched a woman.”
He looked about him. He felt giddy. The streets were changed, people’s faces were changed, Megalokastro undulated beneath his feet like some mottled net for snaring partridges on which houses and minarets and gardens and seas were painted.
He walked forward over the net. Anxiously he went home. As soon as he reached the entrance, his fat, spongy sister fell into his arms and cried, “The earthquake!” With all her quivering mass of flesh she longed to hear a kind word from her brother.
But he pushed her aside and flung his fez onto the divan. The house was too small for him.
Meanwhile the party in the cellar had progressed. At the beginning of the afternoon, Renio had looked stealthily through the peephole, to see in what waters her father’s foolish guests were swimming.
Furogatos had taken his boots off his soles were burning, and he danced alone, thoroughly drunk and possessed. At each big leap his head hit against the ceiling. Blood was already trickling over his ears and neck, but he went happily on with his leaping dance. Efendina had forgotten all shame, and had undone his turban so that his scab showed white. He was leaning against the middle cask. Kajabes was leaning over him, adorning his skull with artichoke leaves. There were still some eggs left in the clay dish, and Vendusos was nerving himself heroically to consume them, shells and all. He coughed, and his eyes filled with tears from the effort of swallowing the shells. Poor Bertodulos had taken up his position in the corner behind the jugs, with his thin legs braced and his cloak thrown back to avoid soiling it, and was now cautiously shoving his finger down his throat to make himself vomit. After each flood he turned to his companions and bowed.
“Excuse me, most noble captains,” he kept saying in his singsong voice, “excuse me.”
Renio was delighted to see how all these toadies demeaned themselves to amuse her father. She looked toward the far end of the cellar for Captain Michales.
With his head thrown back, he was leaning in silence against the wall and staring into emptiness. The wine had not affected him. He was neither drunk nor talking, nor was he gay. Only his upper lip quivered slightly, and between the raven hairs of his mustache his teeth flashed.
Renio smiled. She liked her father. She was proud of his fierceness, his silence, his pride. If I were a man, she thought, I’d be like him. If I take a husband, I want one like him!
The sun sank. Megalokastro forgot that it lived over an abyss, and glowed, rosy and happy, under the farewell beams.
The Three Vaults were full of people. As after a rain the ants come out in swarms into the sun, so men and women came out onto the streets, to see and be seen. They had escaped from a great danger. For a moment the grave had opened under their feet, but it had closed again. God be thanked, they were still alive and could behold the upper world. They came out with the families for a walk. They greeted one another, raising the hats or heartily shaking hands. A sudden love united them this evening. They observed one another tenderly. They gazed, too, at the sea as if they had never seen it before. A honeysuckle creeper had blossomed on the pasha’s kiosk in the middle of the square. All stopped and sniffed the air, as though stupefied by so much sweetness.
“What’s that, friend?”
“Honeysuckle.”
“Lord bless me!”
Tired of walking to and fro, they gradually sat down at the big coffeehouse of Leonidas Babalaros and clapped their hands. Wasp-lean, barefoot waiters came. People ordered cherry syrup and soda water, lenten pastries and grape tarts. Turkish children with pumpkin pies and jasmine came by. Ruheni too, that gleaming black mare of a Moorish woman, appeared, with her broad drooping ived. The Armenians ground coffee in large stone mortars and then sold it. The Turks were porters and laborers by the day.
The four friends began to move more cautiously. They kept close to the walls, in single file, led by Thrasaki with the whistle. Suddenly he stopped. At the door of her house stood the cheerful, lush Pervola with a red ribbon in her fair hair. She was chewing mastic.
Thrasaki turned to his companions. “Watch out! There she is!” he whispered. “I’ll whistle and rush in first There’s nobody coming.”
They advanced a little farther. The full-blooming Pervola now towered in front of them, still and enormous. She had her face turned away from them and was watching two cats which were having a noisy fight on the wall above her.
The four boys pressed against the wall and held their breath. Thrasaki glanced up and down the street not a soul. He clapped the whistle between his lips, blew it, and rushed at the girl. Behind him the other three screeched like cats. Thrasaki caught hold of her on one side, Nikolas on the other, Andrikos by the feet, while Manolios held her mouth to prevent her from crying out. She did not str
uggle. Gasping laboriously for she was heavy-the four lifted her up and did not know what to do with her.
“Into the Pervola!” Thrasaki ordered. “Hold her fast, so she doesn’t escape us! Come on!”
They stumbled through the broken gate and a few steps beyond. Soon they had not strength left and threw her down on the grass. Then they stood round her and looked at her. The red ribbon had come untied and her hail was falling over her shoulders. Her dress was torn to above the knee. Her plump breasts rose and fell frantically under the revealing bodice. At first the girl had been frightened. Now, when she saw who had made off with her, she began to giggle. Stretched on the grass she looked at the children with half-closed, teasing eyes, and waited.
“What shall we do with her now?” asked Nikolas, examining the outstretched “Pervola” curiously from head to foot and unable to make up his mind.
“Let’s spit on her,” proposed Manolios.
They all began spitting on her. Yet that did not relieve them. That was nothing. Discouraged, they left off, and stared at her. They must do something else, something else, but what?
“Let’s thrash her,” said Andrikos, and raised the birch he was holding. They all rushed at her and began beating her with the birch, with the rope, and Nikolas, the strong one, with his fist. Now the girl was frightened and cried out.
“Let’s stamp on her,” Thrasaki proposed, “to stop her screaming.”
“What about the cudgel?” asked Manolios. He took out from his belt the thick cudgel he was carrying.
“That comes later,” said Thrasaki.
They jumped on her back and on her stomach, while she rolled on the grass to escape their feet. At length she got up and tried to escape, but they fell on her again and dragged her to the ground.
They were now sweating and tired. Once more they paused and looked at the girl and were at a loss to devise other torments. What else should they do to the girl? They had expected to feel pleasure as they kidnapped and maltreated her. For a whole month they had been thinking over the plan. And now, when they saw the girl lying before them, they got no satisfaction. They gazed at her with hatred.
“We ought to have brought a pocketknife,” said Thrasaki, “a knife to stick into her and make her bleed. That’s it!”
“Shall I bite her?” suggested Nikolas. “I can tear off a bit of her flesh.”
“Yes, let’s take turns,” said Manolios.
“No, all together!” Thrasaki again ordered.
Nikolas unwound the rope, and they all threw themselves on the girl to tie her up. Manolios also pulled out
All looked up and stared out. But immediately they turned aside, furtive and embarrassed. Were they to get across that dogfish who, the day before yesterday, had given a cruel beating to an apprentice who had laughed at him? “You young louse,” he had bellowed, “would you snigger at me? Do you know, idiot, where I got this limp where, when and how? Very well then, find out, you snot-nose!” and struck at him with his stick. The master had not defended his apprentice. On the contrary he had even said, “You’re quite right, Captain Stefanes. You are Crete’s Miaulis(*A Greek Pirate Hero). Hit him again!”
So the cobblers’ boys kept their heads down, made not a sound, and let Captain Stefanes pass by.
“That’s a hard nut, children, by all that’s holy,” said one of the journeymen, when the captain had gone out of sight in the direction of the harbor. “A hard nut to crack!”
While he was still speaking Mr. Charilaos appeared that bowlegged dwarf with his slender stick, his little twirled and waved mustache and his triple soles. He swaggered past the shoe shops, striking the pavement with his stick. The masters raised their hands to their chests to wish him good day.
Every time the Kastrians saw Mr. Charilaos pass by they felt respect and dread, as though he were not a human being, but something between human and demon. The children would stop dead and stare at him in terror. He was a guardian of treasure, who kept gold hidden underground. He had command over dark forces. He had the evil eye, and if he looked at you for any length of time your skin might become green and swell as though a snake had bitten you. The story went that one day in Archondula’s garden he had stared at a blossoming lemon tree, and the blossoms had at once faded.
So the cobblers bowed their heads in silence and let him pass by.
“A bad beginning to the day, children! Nothing to laugh at today!” said the one who had spoken before. “Where’s Efendina got to? Where’s Barba Jannis? Are they dead?”
“Talk of the devil!” cried a journeyman from a shop opposite. “Here is Barba Jannis!”
They all leaned forward contentedly to watch him. Crying out his sherbet with a hoarse croaking, carrying the bronze can in his right hand and in his left the little basket with the snow hi it, Barba Jannis approached, hideous with his pointed head. Everyone at once got into position. The intention was to bellow and catcall systematically to drown Barba Jannis’ voice. Then they would pelt him with lemon peel, and make fun of him into the bargain. One of them would ask, “Hey, little wife, are all the children in my house mine? Tell me the truth. Think! I’m dying, dear wife.” And another from the opposite side of the road would answer in a high-pitched voice, “And suppose you don’t die, Barba Jannis?” and the whole of Broad Street would shake with laughter.
But now the journeyman stood up so that all should hear him, and called out. “Children, this time we’ll play him a new trick. We won’t make a sound, and when he goes past we’ll act as if we don’t see him at all. That’ll send him quite mad. That’ll be real fun!”
Now at last Barba Jannis reached them. He looked to right and left at the shoe shops, stopped still for a moment and waited Whats going on here? Lord, have mercy! Does nobody raise his head to look at him? Does nobody open his mouth to yell at him? Has he sunk so low? Is it all the same whether a dog or an ass or Barba Jannis passes by? Why don’t you make a noise, children? What’s become of the lemon peel? I am, after all, Barba Jannis. …
Silence. Bent over their leather without a word, they all hammered away, dyed laces, threaded needles, sewed. Barbara Jannis trembled. He rubbed his eyes. Was he dreaming? He put his can and snow-basket down on the ground.
“In God’s name,” he shouted, “say something, children! You’re driving me mad! No, no, I can’t bear it. Where’s the lemon peel?”
But no one looked up; no voice was heard. Barba Jannis again implored them. “Have pity on me, children! I’m a dying man, and you don’t spare me a look! Indeed, am I still alive? Or am I already dead? Say just one word!”
Nothing. The stillness of death. Barba Jannis was seized with dread. “Magic!” he muttered. “The world’s coming to an end, death is upon us! Either the cobblers are dead, or I am.” With a cry of “Help, feet!” he clutched violently at his can and basket and banged them against his feet.
And now Broad Street shook with roars of laughter. It could be heard as far as the Bishop’s Residence. The Metropolitan rose from his bed, where he lay with a cold. Murzuflos had just taken away the cupping glass and was now rubbing him with raid.
“What can that row be?” he asked, pricking up his ears. “Is there a storm approaching, or is it another earthquake?”
“It must be the cobblers, my lord. They’re having their fun with some poor unfortunate,” answered Murzuflos angrily. “They’re a shameful lot! The world’s going to the dogs, but they will bawl away. Curse them, they’ve interrupted our conversation, most reverend Bishop.”
The Metropolitan had been telling him about Russia about Kiev, where he had been archimandrite for many years, about the snowstorms, the golden cupolas on top of the churches and the subterranean monasteries filled with saints.
“As long as Russia survives,” he said, “have no fear, Murzuflos: the true Faith will live forever and reign. That is where Christ has now taken refuge. That is where I once saw Him with my own eyes, Murzuflos, in the depth of winter, at evening. He was striding through the snow
. He wore a long leather coat and high boots and thick gloves. He kept knocking at the doors, but no one would let Him in. I saw Him through the window and dashed downstairs to open to Him. ‘O my Christ,’ I cried, but He had vanished.”
Murzuflos made the sign of the Cross.
“I have never seen Him,” he said dolefully.
“Go to Russia and you will see Him,” answered the Metropolitan, and turned his face to the wall and dozed off.
The pasha too had waked up in a bad mood this morning, for he was not feeling well these days. Out of a clear sky there had suddenly descended on him the feeling that he was growing old.
The day before yesterday, near the Three Vaults, as he was smoking his, long pipe in the Pasha Kiosk and the soldiers were blowing their trumpets and beating their drums, he had noticed among the crowd of Greeks who were streaming idly past the band a girl with luxuriant hair and a voluptuous mouth, who delighted him. He had turned to his groom, the Arab, Suleiman, and asked: “Fellow, who’s the Greek girl over there hi the red dress?”
“Does she please you, Pasha Effendi? She’s no Kastrian. She comes from Kruson, the savage village. Last Sunday she married the grocer Kajabes, who’s such a good singer ou’ve heard him. In the devil’s name, let her go!”
“Is she a respectable woman? May she perish if she is!”
“Very respectable, Pasha Effendi, very respectable. And her husband’s from Sfakia.”
“A respectable woman, respectable woman,” uttered the pasha, wagging his bald head. “She’s respectable because I’m growing old. It’s coming to an end. What do you expect of life, when you can’t misbehave any more, when you can’t do away with a man when you want to, or kiss any woman you want to? What sort of a pasha am I? This damned growing old! Ah, what a time I had in other Greek places! I used to send my executioner along with an apple wrapped in a cloth for the bride and bridegroom. I would tell them that they choose. How could they be expected to choose the bullet? They always chose the apple, and that same evening the bride would come, all tearstained and dolled up, and would struggle as I like women to do, and then sit on my knee. But now I’ve grown old. The State, too, has grown old. And it’s the fault of this damned Crete!”
Freedom or Death Page 11