Captain Michales went up to him. The schoolmaster raised his eyes and at once lowered them again.
“Schoolmaster,” said Captain Michales, “look me in the face!”
Tityros raised his head. Frightened eyes flickered behind his glasses.
“You killed him,” whispered Captain Michales. “It was you!”
“I?”
“Yes! If a man had killed him, it would have been done with a knife. But you’ve done it with poison, like a coward.”
“I couldn’t bear it any longer.”
“I don’t blame you for killing him, but I do blame you for killing with poison, woman fashion.”
“I couldn’t bear it any longer,” the schoolmaster repeated. “I couldn’t have done it any other way. He was the stronger.”
“Does your wife know?”
“She may. She doesn’t speak to me, and when I go upstairs, she pushes me away. I’m sitting here and waiting.”
“What for?”
“Nothing. I’m waiting.”
Captain Michales went out into the yard. The sound of Vangelio’s lamentations was monotonous, like running water. He re-entered the house.
“Why are you waiting?” he asked again.
Tityros became suddenly more cheerful. “Come what will! Come what will! I’m not afraid any more.”
“But your wife may denounce you.” “Let her do what she will. I’ve done what I wanted. Now it’s up to her.”
“Stand up. Keep calm. If she does denounce you, tell the truth, even if it means prison for life. If she doesn’t denounce you, say nothing! And don’t let the dead man weigh on your conscience. Are you listening? A proper man kills when it is necessary! Stand up!”
He helped his brother up and said, “Let’s go and arrange for the funeral.”
Next morning, when the mourners came to view the body, no one could see the dead man’s face. It was covered with flowers. Vangelio had pillaged her small garden. The neighbors’ wives too had sent armfuls of rosemary, basil and roses. Only Captain Polyxigis pushed the flowers aside to look. At the sight of the swollen face, he hastily covered it up again and cast a dark look at Tityros.
When Vangelio saw the pope enter, she came down from her bedroom, and with her hair loosened, threw herself upon the corpse. She lay stretched out over her brother’s body motionless, soundless, as though asleep. But when the four bearers came to take him away she offered no resistance. She stood up and cut off her tresses near the roots. She wound them into two thick braids and knotted these around the dead man’s hands. Then peacefully she let him be carried out and at the threshold raised her hand as though to bid him farewell. Going back into the house, she brought out her brother’s clothes, heaped them in the yard and set fire to them. Then she cleaned the house, made herself tidy, and sat down in the yard, her staring eyes fixed on the flames.
After the interment her uncle came and sat down beside her. He took her by the hand and asked her ft anyone suspected murder. She looked at him without answering. She merely shook her head and pressed her lips together defiantly.
Tityros was afraid to sleep either in his own house or in his brother’s. He spent the night talking with his friend Idomeneas about death and the immortality of the soul.
Three days went by. Vangelio paid no attention to Tityros when he passed her as he moved like a shadow in the house. She bolted herself in her brother’s room, lighted the lamp of the dead, and placed near it a glass of pure water, in case his soul should be thirsty. She knew that a dead man’s soul roamed the house for fourteen days. She could feel its presence on her hair and on her neck and on her shriveled hands. At night it fluttered like a butterfly over her lips. The world had never given her anything more beautiful.
For three days she did not speak and her gaze remained fixed and tearless. She wore black; only the ribbon that she bound about her hair was yellow.
Her aunt Chrysanthe begged her to come to her small country house by the sea in the hope that it would make some slight change for her, but she shook her head and remained bolted in her brother’s room. She did not go to the grave. Quietly she rummaged in her trunk among her scant possessions. Then she cleared the house, as though she were going on a journey.
On the third evening she said to old Marjora:
“Lay the table. Get out the white embroidered cloth, and the good dishes and knives and forks, and tell your master that I will eat with him this evening. Don’t light the lamps, except the two lamps for the death watch.”
The schoolmaster was ready to faint with fear when he saw the burning death lamps. He sat on the edge of his chair and dared not look his wife in the eyes. She sat opposite him, pale and stiff as a corpse, barely tasting the food. She said not a word. A thick coating of powder lay like chalk on her skin. She had put on her white wedding dress and had stuck the faded lemon blossoms in her hair.
They sat there, neither of them making a sound. From time to time Tityros would open his mouth, but the words remained stuck in his throat. Sweat poured over him.
Through the open window facing the courtyard the night breeze came in gusts, making the two plumes flicker.
Suddenly the woman stretched out her hand and filled the two glasses to the brim with wine. The wine was a red throat-scraper from Kissamos, a wedding present from the blessed Manusakas.
She raised her glass and with a violent blow smashed Tityros’ glass. “I drink to your health, you murderer!” she said in a deep, almost masculine voice.
She left the room, stepped out into the yard for a short while, and once again locked herself hi her brother’s room. In the morning they found her hanging from a clothesline attached to the roof beam.
Early in the morning the news reached Captain Polyxigis as he lay in Emine’s bedroom. The widow was ready to be christened, but had decided to wait patiently till Crete was calm again, in order not to provoke the agas. She was delighted at the thought of becoming a Christian and going into the streets without a veil. She looked forward to being able to gaze about her in church, and to being seen. Air and sun would play about her freely, she would wear Greek blouses and niched skirts, and would show her raven-black hair for the world’s pleasure. Christ for her was a door which she could open, through which she could walk, without a veil, into the streets.
While she mused, stretched out on her bed beside Captain Polxyigis, about all these advantages of Grecian life, her black nurse entered, disheveled and breathless. She had run across, first thing, to the Hags, to learn the day’s news; and now she was back.
“Captain,” she stammered, “your niece Vangelio has hanged herself.”
Captain Polyxigis let go of Emine’s hand. He stood up.
“Hanged? When? Who told you?”
“The Hags. Last night, in her house. With the clothesline.”
Meanwhile Emine’ had pulled out her little round mirror from under the pillow and was examining tongue, teeth and eyebrows.
“Hoo! my tongue’s not red today. Where’s my mastic, Maria?”
“She’s left her husband, they say, to follow her brother,” the Moorish woman went on, while she searched for the mastic.
“How my race has fallenand I have no children,” thought Captain Polyxigis, sighing.
He bent over Emine, who, without a care, was admiring her beauty hi a mirror, and caressed her body tenderly.
“Our son will be half Cretan, half Circassian. That means he will be immortal!”
As if he had realized this for the first time, his breast filled with confidence. He had been about to leave, but his knees were trembling, and he sank back into the bed. That he should produce a wild son, drunk with Circassian blood, who would ride horses before he could spit!
He had long ago ruled that brother-and-sister pair out of the book of his race. They had been degenerate: the one a good-for-nothing and swiller, the other a sour, aging, infertile maid. He had no other nephews and nieces. The line was near extinction. But from this Circassian who chewed
mastic in front of her mirror and whose mouth smelled of musk his sonthe immortal roanwould come, to glorify the seed of the Polyxigises to all eternity.
Then he remembered the Moorish woman’s tidings and felt ashamed. He murmured, “Emine’, my child, I must go,” stood up, put on his belt and donned his fez.
Emine raised her naked arms and stretched. “Go,” she said peevishly, and looked at him out of half-closed sickle-curved eyes. She yawned.
During the three days between the death of Diamandes and the suicide of Vangelio, events hi Crete grew more turbulent. In the villages the Christians killed several agas and the Turks in Megalokast~o retaliated accordingly.
For one man killed in the country two Greeks fell that same night in the alleys of the town. The reins had slipped from the pasha’s hands. All he had left was his telescope, with which, from the window of his seraglio, he searched the sea for Turkish frigates.
On the third day, suddenly, at noon, the fortress gates were closed. No one could go in or out.
And with that day began Ramadan. The Turks touched neither bread nor water nor cigarettes all day. But as soon as night came and the first star shone, they made up for everything. A big drum stood in front of each wealthy aga’s konak. Dully and heavily it sounded, like a signal for war. The Christians, gathered hi their houses, trembled at it, lest the agas after their evening feast should rush into the streets and beat the Christian doors in…
All his neighbors came to Captain Michales in the evenings, hoping for protection. Since it was summer, the men lay in the yard and on the veranda, while the women stretched themselves in the bedroom. Captain Michales kept watch in his little room, with his gun above his head.
One night there was a secret gathering of the spokesmen and leading people in the Metropolitan’s residence. Captain Michales was there, and so was that bear of the sea, Stefanes. He had put on his sea boots, as though he were going on a voyage. The Metropolitan spoke briefly and cautiously. Crete was once more passing through dark and uncertain days. Christendom was in danger.
The Rose Bug again had a suggestion: “Go, my lord, to Athens, seek out the king. They must send us supplies and munitions. If not, we are lost. But go yourself. The face of a man is a sword.”
The Metropolitan shook his head.
“I do not leave my lambs when the wolf breaks in. Let Captain Elias go.”
But Captain Elias said angrily, “My dice still roll, Bishop. I’m not an old man. I can still command in war. I’m not going. Let the quill-driver Hadjisavas go.” His ushy eyebrows still twitching with wrath, he turned to Hadjisavas.
“Let us not drag our poor, unhappy Mother Greece into this with us. It will only hurt her,” said the Metropolitan. “Let us trust in the great powers, above all in Russia, which is of the true faith.”
“Let’s trust in the small powersin our own strength,” said Captain Micbales. “That is my opinion.”
“Mine too!” shouted Captain Elias. “Why has the wolf a strong neck? So that he can seize his prey by himself!” “Let’s each of us throw a stone into Suda Bay,” suggested Mr. Idomeneas. But nobody was listening to him. They separated at about midnight without arriving at any decision.
Day and night alternated, each with its terrors. All day the hungry and excited Turks ran out of the mosques inflamed by the muezzin’s harangues, and rushed about with the glassy eyes of the blind. At night they reeled, well fed and drunk, into the coffeehouses, then swirled into the Greek part of the town and fired shots into the air, terrifying those who crouched behind closed doors.
Each night, when the agas were still at table, Ali Aga slid along the walls to Captain Michales’ house and brought the news… . This is what the imam said today in the mosque … those are the words uttered hi the coffeehouse … the muezzin demanded violence, but this or that bey opposed himall the news was scalding hot, evening after evening.
One night there were three soft knocks on Captain Michales’ door. In came Ah’ Aga, very depressed. He sat down on his stool near the water trough, and all the neighbors gathered around him.
“That damned telegraph!” said Ali Aga with a sigh. “It’s a dog with its head hi Crete and its tail hi Constantinople. Someone pulls its tail hi Constantinople and an hour later it barks hi Crete and causes trouble.”
“Trouble, Ali Aga? Speak plainly! What do you mean?” asked Rrasojorgis anxiously. “The pasha received a telegram today, saying that tomorrow soldiers will arrive in Megalokastro! With cannon, they say, and cavalry, and the green flag of the Prophet!”
“O my Demetros, what hole will he creep into, so the soldiers don’t catch him?” screamed Penelope, flinging herself down on her swollen knees.
Ali Aga then described the jubilation in the coffeehouses. There it had been decided to go down armed to the harbor next day and pay homage to the flag of the Prophet. The longer Ali Aga spoke, the more his depression disappearedhe was carried away by his news. He was no longer the humble old man in the corner to whom nobody paid attention; he had become a person of consequence.
“I shan’t set foot outside, tomorrow,” said Mastrapas, whose kindly eyes looked frightened.
“Neither shall I,” said Chrysanthe. “Not even to evening service, God forgive me.” She had placed herself under Captain Michales’ protection, like the other women, since her brother now spent every night with Emine’. Instead of making her a Christian, he has turned Turk, God forgive me, she thought, but never said it aloud.
The neighbors slept that night like hares; they hardly shut their eyes and pondered how they could force the bars of their prison and get out.
In the morning trumpets sounded from the harbor. The Turks stood there, fez to fez, covering the walls with red. Thrasaki, who had escaped from home, climbed up on the rocks at the harbor entrance and let his insatiable eye range far and wide. The rusty steamer lay at the quayside and disgorged from its entrails bristling Anatolians with pock-marked faces, cannons and horses. At the end came a swarm of clamoring dervishes wearing green skirts and pointed white hats, and with daggers in their belts. They clambered onto the mole, unrolled the green flag of the Prophet hi front of the Harbor Gate, and began dancing around it slowly, clapping their hands.
Thrasaki drew nearer. Suddenly the dance of the dervishes became wilder, as they spun like tops, and their obes stood out like bells. Their eyes began to redden. They drew thendaggers and wounded themselves, so that blood spurted out, and they howled. Gradually their wildness subsided, they stuck their daggers back in their belts and moved more calmly. Their bellowing became song, speech, then a whispering, a soft and tender moaning.
At noon Thrasaki came home in great excitement and told his astonished listeners what he had seen.
“Weren’t you frightened?” his father asked him, frowning.
“I wasn’t frightened of the soldiers.” “The dervishes?” “Not of them, either.” “Of what, then?”’ Thrasaki hesitated.
“Go on, say!” his father urged, tilting the child’s bent face up by the chin.
“Of the green flag, Father!”
Megalokastro sank into darkness. In the first days after the landing of the troops a disquieting stillness reigned. The Christian elders went in and out of the Metropolitan’s residence, the agas held secret councils, now at the pasha’s porte, now in the noise-filled barracks. For one hour a day the three fortress gates were opened, and hi came Turkish peasants with their hanums and worldly goods, excited and fearful. There was ~o more room for them hi the mosques and tekes. They broke open the doors of Christian houses, threw the Christians out, and took possession.
The Metropolitan sent Hadjisavas to Athens with letters in which he adjured the Greek brethren to send ships and save the Christian Cretans from the knives that had already been drawn by the Turks.
One evening the neighbors gathered early at Captain Michales’, to come to a decision. No one was missing. Even Captain Polyxigis, Idomeneas, Tulupanas the baker, the black-clad gravedigger Kolyva
s, and Dr. Kasapakes with his French wife, had put in an appearance. Only Archondula and her deaf-mute brother were absent. Archondula was under the pasha’s wing, and had no need of Captain Michales. Her brother had just done a portrait of the pasha in oils. He purposely kept the window on the street open, so that the passers-by might admire the pasha in the gold frame on the wall. It was an unsurpassable likeness. Nothing was missing. Not even the wart on his nose or the pig’s bristles in his ears.
The gathering was taking place in the house rather than in the yard, so that they would be secure from eavesdroppers. Captain Michales was sullen. It displeased him to see the Circassian-Turkish Captain Polyxigis in his house.
Thrasaki was among them. “You sit with us,” his father had told him. “You’re a man.”
All waited for Captain Michales to speak. Captain Polyxigis could bear it no longer.
“To what end have we come here this evening?” he asked, with an angry glance at his sister, who had dragged him along. “We are going to decide,” she had said, “what we should do to save ourselves from the Turks.” But he, after all, could decide nothing without Emine. What these people did here was no concern of his.
Captain Michales wanted to say: “Why are you here, Polyxigis Bey? Your friends live in the Turkish quarter, your home is at the green door.” But the man was a guest in his house. It was against good manners to provoke him like that. So he kept silence.
Tityros stepped in the breach. His strength and courage had grown since the death of his wife. He no longer felt inferior to other men. He had proved that he too could kill, and kill properly, so that the murdered man did not visit him at night. His dead wife too never troubled him in his sleep. The schoolchildren had been the first to perceive his new strength; he took no nonsense from them and beat them soundly. So now he spoke in place of his brother:
“Three courses lie before us. Either we stay quietly in our houses, and perhaps in that way prevent a massacre. Or we escape through the fortress gates and distribute ourselves among the villages. Or we wait to be taken away by the Greek ship that the Metropolitan has sent Hadjisavas to Athens to ask for. Let us therefore examine which of the three courses is the most hopeful. And then let us adopt it, and may God come to our aid!”
Freedom or Death Page 26