Doxania appeared on the threshold. As Idomeneas had his back to her, she made a sign to the schoolmaster, who was very willing to eat now, as he had eaten nothing all day.
“A hungry bear doesn’t dance,” he said to Idomeneas. “You speak of great ideas, but my mind is revolving round food.”
“I haven’t had anything to eat either,” said Idomeneas. “What harm does that do? Nourishment too is a louse.”
“But the lioness would die,” said the schoolmaster with a laugh, “if that louse were missing.”
Idomeneas clapped his hands. Doxania came running up, delighted.
“The schoolmaster’s hungry, nurse,” he said. “Bring him a tray.”
“With pleasure,” exclaimed Doxania, hurrying off.
“We’ll eat together, won’t we?” said the schoolmaster. “I can’t eat alone. You can endure fasting; but now you must also show that you can endure eating. Fasting, bad living and asceticismthese are lice, too, I think.” The two friends laughed, cheered by the mixture of joking and great thoughts.
The full tray came, and Doxania’s wrinkled face was lighted up with good humor. The hungry Idomeneas had decided he was not breaking his vow, as he now enter tained his friend, and besides, the sun had gone down. And so they tucked in the food with a good appetite and drank old wine from a cask that had long been in the house.
“To freedom!” they cried, clinking glasses.
When it had grown quite dark outside, the schoolmaster’s thoughts returned shuddering to his home.
“Why are you depressed?” his friend asked him. But the schoolmaster did not answer.
“How do you like your new existence? Is it easy to live with a woman?”
The schoolmaster went over to the window. “It’s night. I must go.”
The waxing moon under which Tityros had married had already waned, and the fourteen days of mourning for Manusakas were also nearing their end. Manusakas’ firstborn son Thodores had spent them in violent agita tion. His uncle, Captain Michales, had insulted himhe had treated him like a boy not yet capable of using a knife and killing Turks. . “How old are you?”
“Seventeen.”
“Stay in your nest!”
Did seventeen years seem to Captain Michales too few? He was a grown man, he could manage the plough with their ox Russos, and till their field. He was a match, oo, for Hussein, Nuri’s nephew, the young Turkish palikar-leader in Petrokefalo. When they wrestled, he could throw himand he could easily plunge his knife into his neck.
“Uncle insulted me,” he told his mother who, dressed in black, had gone to her husband’s grave as usual and there, with her face pressed to the ground, had keened for the dead. Tomorrow was the fourteenth day. She had come like that each day and had called him, scratching at the earth with her nails.
“You’re still too young, Thodores,” his mother replied. “Leave the revenge to your uncle.”
“But when? When, Mother? Tomorrow is Father’s fourteenth day, and we still eat and drink and sleep and the deed remains undone. Doesn’t Father appear to you in your sleep? Doesn’t he complain to you? Every evening he reproaches me.”
He bound the black headband round his head and looked across to the foot of the mountain, where the head village, Petrokefalo, shone bathed in sunshine. The sun had burned the young man’s powerful body brown. Thick down was sprouting on his cheeks; his chest too already had a pelt. He lived in the mountains with his father’s sheep, and seldom came to the village. But since last year his lonely existence had begun to lie heavy on him, and now every Sunday he went to the village church, to come in contact with women. The blood was beginning to drive him. Since the day of the murder he had not returned to the mountains. His brother Konstantes, the next in age, stayed there as herdsman. Thodores had donned his father’s boots, jacket and headband, had adopted also his tobacco box and hazel staff, and had left the big oak to be in Ai-Janni. He often went into Petrokefalo, always sullen and silent.
“I’m going,” he now said, taking the hazel staff. “Where, Thodores, my child?”
“To Petrokefalo. Didn’t you say you wanted pomegranate kernels tomorrow to strew over the funeral ake? There are some hanging in the loft at Grandfather’s.”
Out of his black belt stuck his father’s knife, with the dried blood still on it. His mother had wanted to clean it, but he would not let her. “Blood isn’t washed away with water, Mother, but with blood.” He always had that knife about him. By night he placed it under his pillow.
“Give the knife here, my child,” his mother had begged him. “As long as it lies under your pillow, your father comes and torments you in your sleep.”
“That’s just what I want, Mother,” the son had replied. “I want him to torment me.” And he crossed himself. Now he left her, striking the stones with the hazel staff. “Be careful, Thodores,” his mother called after him, as she watched him kick the stones aside with powerful strides. “My blessing go with you!” But her son was already out of sight.
A hare ran through the heather. Thodores hurled the staff after it and caught the animal’s paws, knocking it over. He picked it up and hit it against a stone, smashing the head. “I’ll take it to Grandfather as a present,” he said. “A good sign, the hare will bring me luck. That’s how I’ll pick up Hussein and hit his head to pulp against the cliff. But he’s no hare. It’ll mean a hard fight.”
Two days before, he had challenged him to a fight, in frpnt of the threshing floor. At Thodores’ whistle, Hus-sefn had come out to him.
“Hey, Hussein,” he called to him, “the day after tomorrow ends the fourteen days for my father, who was murdered by your Uncle Nuri.”
“Pitch and sulphur on his corpse,” said Hussein with a short laugh.
The gall rose to Thodores’ eyes. He trembled with rage and could not speak.
“What are you goggling at me for, giaour? Why did you whistle for me?” Hussein asked. “Have you gone blind? Didn’t you see I was busy winnowing?”
“If you are a palikar, come and fight with me. I’ll die a Turk if that back of yours doesn’t rub the ground!”
“My back, you infidel? When and where?”
“At the same place where my father was murderedat the big oak. The day after tomorrow, his fourteenth day. Early in the morning, so that nobody catches us.”
“Do we bring knives?”
“Yes!”
They had separated. Hussein had gone back to his winnowing, while Thodores returned home. He knelt down on the threshold and took the knife out of his belt, to sharpen it. Then he remembered that he wanted the blood to remain on it, and put it back unsharpened. Later he went to the great oak and leaned against its trunk.
Now, at the entrance to Petrokefalo, near the well, he saw a girl, and went fiery red. She was holding a jug by the handle, to lift it onto her shoulder, but when, from a distance, she saw Thodores coming, she stood still, waiting for him. What a’ radiant girl! Her body was taut, yet supple in its lines. Above her gleaming almond eyes the brows bent like curved blades. She was like an animal that had caught a scent and now sniffed it tensely.
Thodores eyed her from afar. “Everything’s turning to good, today,” he muttered, Ms heart leaping. “There’s Frosaki!”
He looked about him: nobody. The other girls had gone some distance away from the well with their jugs. The peasants on the threshing floor were flailing, winnowing and piling the corn. In the whole world there was lonly Frosaki. And above her head, like a crown, the sun.
He felt a delicious weakening at his knees. He stopped at the well.
“Good day,” he said in a trembling voice. He lowered | his gaze. The girl’s slender, bare ankles gleamed as the ‘sun poured over them.
The girl surveyed him boldly and laughed at him mock-fingly.
“Why are you carrying a hare, Captain Thodores? Are ‘ou hunting hares?”
“I’m hunting Turks,” replied the young man, raising lis eyes. “I’ve been practicing on the
hare.”
For a moment their looks crossed like daggers, then in agitation the young man again lowered his head.
The girl corked her jug with a wooden peg. Then she looked hastily about her. There was no one to be seen. “Are you thirsty, Thodores?” she said.
“Yes, I’m thirsty, Frosaki. But who’ll give me water to quench my thirst?”
The girl looked down and remained silent, but her neck and ears went a deep red.
Thodores whispered, “Tomorrow is my father’s fourteenth day. Come to our house and help my mother with the funeral cake. The other girls of the village are coming too.”
“If my mother’ll let me, I’ll come,” said the girl. And immediately afterward: “Even if she won’t let me, I’ll come, because you’ve invited me. Captain Thodores is someone to whom we don’t refuse any wish.”
She said it with mocking laughter, to hide her emotion. She looked at him, she devoured him with her eyes. She spent her nights awake, thinking about him. She would have liked to be earth, to spread herself beneath his feet. But now that she saw him in the flesh, she teased and provoked himyes, she would have liked to scratch him, to hurt him.
Thodores rested his chin on his staff and, gazing at the ground, reflected that tomorrow he would have to fight with Hussein.
“Ah, Frosaki,” he said, “if anything happened to me, would you weep for me?”
Then the girl could control herself no longer. Tears flowed over her cheeks, as she whispered:
“I’ve nobody but you in the world, Thodores!” “Well then,” cried the young man joyously, raising his head from off his staff, “you mark my words, Frosaki: nothing bad can happen to me!”
Two girls with pitchers appeared. Frosaki quickly wiped her eyes, bowed her shoulder under her pitcher and pretended to be looking into the distance. But she could not restrain the throbbing of her heart. Thodores ran into he village, whistling loudly and swinging the dead hare in his hand.
Next daya Sundaywhen the liturgy was over and the memorial service for Manusakas began, Gregores the pope stepped on the platform in the forecourt. Beside him stood a black-bearded shepherd boy holding, on a heavy dish, the funeral cake with its thick icing, its almonds and pomegranate kernels. Manusakas’ name, traced in cinnamon, was inscribed there. One peasant after another walked up and stretched out his palm, which the pope filled. Each one murmured: “God be ‘ merciful to your soul,” and, as he moved on, buried his face in his paws to eat greedily and adorn his own mustache with cinnamon and icing.
Because the fourteen days had gone by the virtues of Manusakas were receiving particularly loud praise. He had actually appeared to old Katerinio, mother of the watchman of the pen, the night before. Her dog, too, had seen him, and his hair had stood on end. He had tried to bark at him, but his muzzle had remained open, and it could not yet be shut.
“The man we’ve lost walks about as a ghost,” said one of the graybeards, crossing himself, “He was killed at the height of his strength and still walks. He won’t die.”
“He wants blood,” said another. “Why does Captain Michales hesitate such a long time?” ->
While they were still chatting, Kokolios, the watchman of the pen, burst into the forecourt with his tongue hanging out. In his trembling hand he held his horn. The distribution of the funeral cake had just ended, and the pope was descending from the platform while, on their knees, the shepherd boys were licking the dish.
The pope came over to the watchman, while the congregation crowded around them both.
“Hey, Kokolios, get your breath! Have you got bad news? God have mercy on us!”
“Hussein, Nuri’s nephew, has been found dead!”
“Where?”
“Under the feig oak.”
“Who…?”
“God knows. Petrokefalo is in an uproar. The gates have been shut. The Christians are arming. They’ve laid the body in the courtyard of the mosque, and one Turk after another bows down in front of it, firing his pistol meanwhile. And they’re threatening to burn down Ai-Janni.”
“What can we do?”
“Someone from Ai-Janni is the murderer, they say. Someone of Manusakas’ family. They’re demanding Thodores as a victim.”
“Someone go to the widow and tell her the news!” the pope ordered. “Thodores must escape to the mountains! Quick!”
But Thodores had already taken possession of his father’s musket and pair of silver pistols. Also he filled his sack with cartridges and shot and, opening his father’s trunk, took from under its double bottom the Greek flag. He quickly folded it together and fled to the mountains. He passed by the pen and gave instructions to his brother Konstantes. Remembering that he had not taken leave of his mother, he left a message for her that all was well with him and she should please give him her blessing. He put a lump of cheese into the sack and set out to climb Selena, the highest of the Lasithi mountains. There would be shepherds there from whom he had often stolen sheep, as they had from him. This had made them fast friends. I’ll sleep in their pens, Thodores had decided, and if soldiers come hunting me, I’ll raise the flag, place myself at the head of the shepherds, and we’ll fight and shout: “For the union with Greece!”
Toward evening two armed agas came to the widow Christinia’s door. They knocked. Not a soul! They knocked again, making the house ring. Nobody!
An old Turk, who had gone up to the mountain in search of wood, was coming back with his load. “Welcome, sirs,” he said. “You’re looking for Thodores? The bird has flown. He’s made for the mountain.”
“Be careful what you say, old Braimis. Did you see him with your own eyes?”
“Yes, by Mohammed, with my own eyes. The giaour was running as though he was a horse. I fell to the ground in terror. When I looked again, he’d vanished.”
The agas cursed and stabbed the door twice with their knives. On their way back they met, in the ravine which divided the two villages, old Katerinio, to whom the ghost of Manusakas had appeared. She had been collecting wild lettuce and asparagus, and had filled her small sack. Now she was going contentedly home to prepare supper for her son.
The two agas rushed upon her and murdered her cruelly.
In the neighboring villages Turks and Christians now collided. The killings began. One time the corpse of a Christian would be found in the middle of the street, another time a dead Turk, hidden in his garden or in a dried-up well. The tidings flew about like sparks and set village after village on fire. And so too they reached Megalokastro.
One midday Suleiman, the pasha’s Arab, was drunk. Not of his own accord. He had been pumped full of raki by the agas and then sent out into the Greek quarter. “Do your best, Suleiman, to find Captain “Michales and finish him off, if you’re a man,” they had urged. He drew the dagger which the pasha had given him at last year’s Bairam festival, and rushed bellowing through the Greek streets. As the Christian women heard him they snatched their children out of the streets and shut their houses.
“The Arab! The Arab!” they shrieked, banging their doors and bolting them.
Those Christians who met the Arab as they were going home to the midday meal dived for the first door that would open for them.
“Crete, abandoned by all, is catching fire again!” they told one another, some with fear, others with rage. From the cases where they had hidden them they pulled out heir rusted muzzle-loaders, and began to clean them.
At Idomeneas’ Fountain the Arab stopped. He was heated by raki and by the midday heat, and his brow, neck and legs trickled with sweat. He shoved his head under the fountain to cool himself, bellowing like a buffalo. The whole quarter trembled. He saw Captain Michales approaching from the far end of the street. With a wild shout he grasped his dagger and made a rush for him.
Captain Michales stood still. For a moment he thought of turning back, but was ashamed. To his right a door opened, and Krasojorgis’ wife put out her head. “For God’s sake, Captain Michales, why are you standing there? Come i
n!”
But he had now taken his broad handkerchief from his hip and wrapped it about his fist.
The door of Captain Michales’ house also opened, and Katerina rushed out.
“Michales, Captain Michales, have pity on your children,” she cried, and ran to his side.
She saw a monster facing her husband, with flashing teeth and rolling eyes.
“Now I’m going to gobble you up, Captain Giaour!” the Arab yelled, his dagger raised.
The woman started to come between the two men. Before she could do so, Captain Michales, with all his strength, planted his fist in the Arab’s belly. With a roar he fell. Captain Michales wrenched the dagger from his clenched fingers. As he turned, he saw his wife.
“Your place is in the house,” he said. “Go!”
Captain Michales, with his wife behind him, went in. She brought him a fresh shirt. As he changed, his body cooled down, and he smiled under his mustache. He gazed at the sharp dagger.
“Wife,” he said, “give Thrasaki that dagger, to sharpen his pencils with.”
That same evening two young Turks, the sons of the muezzin, beat up the harmless Bertodulos in the Pervola and trampled on his straw hat. They were about to tear is cloak too, but he cried out, and they ran. Early next -morning, the muezzin was found tied to the great plane tree, frozen blue and stark naked. His mouth had been bound with his green turban cloth, to prevent him from I crying out. He was set free, his legs were rubbed, and he [ was given a hot infusion to drink. As soon as he could speak again, he described how two Christians, one of them with a wild mustache like a mountain goat, the other a lame man, had taken him prisoner, stripped him and tied him to the plane tree with the gallows rope. They had meant to cut off his beard too, but had forgotten the shears. So they merely spat on him and ran off toward the harbor.
The pasha was beside himself. He ordered all the lame in Megalokastro arrested and thrown into prison. A search was also made for Captain Stefanes, but he was not to be found. The police put the lame men in the stocks and dosed them with castor oil. But they all behaved like palikars and revealed nothing. After three days the pasha tired of feeding them and plying them with castor oil (there were some thirty of them), and he let them go. But he had Suleiman the Arab put in irons when he heard of his failure.
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