I shall never really understand them, thought Kate, tapping at the door.
A girl came and promised that the cheese should be left at the house early in the morning. Beyond her Kate could see the room, the candles, the ikon on its bier, and the silent people assembled there. One face turned towards her for a moment. It was Selwyn, sitting between two old men. He had found companions at last. She did not think that he recognized her. He was fathoms deep, entirely surrendered to sorrow.
As she stole away the song rose again, carried on the light breeze away over the sea towards the morning. The moonlit shimmer was gone, and in the east the darkness had changed its hue.
3
An hour before sunrise she knocked at Dr Challoner’s door since he had signified his intention of attending the morning’s ceremony. He came downstairs lamenting the fact that he had no thick overcoat. The morning air was chilly and he would certainly catch cold. Eugenia, as if she understood what he was saying, came forward with an odd-looking hooded cloak.
‘Freddie’s,’ explained Kate. ‘He always used to wear it. It’s quite true, you’ll need it.’
It was better than nothing, though he did not much like the look of it. He muffled himself up in it and they set out.
The whole island was astir. People were coming along the track from the waterfall and down the path from the home farm. There were groups ahead of them trudging eastward. Sleepy children tugged at their mothers’ hands. None had been left behind; even the youngest babies came. A very old man travelled pickaback, on the shoulders of the young, who took it in turns to carry him. Weary with their night of weeping, unusually silent, they flowed on as thought drawn to their goal rather than making for it.
‘They’ve all got guns!’ marvelled Dr Challoner. ‘Why?’
His voice, in that hushed throng, sounded harsh and alien. Kate made no answer, nor were there any bows or greetings as they joined the assembly. Freddie’s cloak got a few glances of recognition. He writhed to think of the absurd figure which he must cut in it and added another mark to his score against Keritha. He now hated the place with the venom usually reserved for those who had worsted him in an argument on his own subject. Presently he broke the silence again:
‘There’s Potter! Carrying that old man.’
Kate clenched her teeth against the temptation to say: Shut up!
In a perfectly clear sky, day imperceptibly conquered night. No rosy clouds in the zenith heralded the hidden sun; light from some unrevealed source was distilled, drop by drop, into the air. Colour deepened in a world which had, as yet, no shadows. The smell of spring, the flowers of Keritha, grew stronger. Down below the rim of the world the bright horses, new harnessed, were rearing and plunging, eager for their day’s journey. He was coming. He was mounting his chariot, haled on by Old Time, who would never allow him to be a single minute late. He was coming.
On a little headland, the eastern spur of the island, the people of Keritha stood waiting in front of a narrow crack in some rocks. There was some stir inside. Dr Challoner, by now a little subdued, asked in a breathy whisper who was hiding in there.
‘The old man,’ whispered Kate. ‘The oldest man on the island.’
Nobody else looked that way. All stood motionless, gazing out to sea. A baby cried, mewing faintly, and was hushed. Keritha waited. The flat sea floor waited. The whole world waited.
It happened very suddenly.
A spark, a long beam, and the sun leapt out of the sea as an old, thin, far-away voice shouted the message down the years:
‘Christos anesti!’
BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! went a score of guns as a thunderclap of joy broke over Keritha. Alithos anesti! He is truly risen! The news was shouted again, and again, until everybody had told it to everybody else, and the echoes of it hummed between the mountain and the sea.
BANG! BANG! … ang … ang … ‘He is truly risen,’ cried Eugenia, falling on Kate’s neck.
‘Ke tou chronou! And next year too …’
‘Risen!’ squealed the children.
‘And next year too,’ bellowed a huge rustic, seizing Dr Challoner and kissing him on both cheeks.
BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! Behold we live and take joy in living. He is so good that He is stronger than death, BANG! BANG! … ang … ang … e-esti… chronou … ang …
It was incredible that so few people could make so much noise for so long. The sun was clear of the horizon and sailing upwards, a dazzling disc, before the last shot was fired and the tumult died away in laughter and embraces. A general movement began back towards the house. Some of the men had already gone on to kill the lambs.
‘Let’s wait here a little,’ suggested Kate. ‘Let them all go on ahead. Eugenia has gone. She’ll see to everything. I don’t want to get back till that messy business is over.’
Dr Challoner sat down on a boulder and straightened his tie, which had been pulled round to the back of his neck. He was quite dazed by all the kissing and man-handling to which he had been subjected. Kate sat beside him. The very old man was carried off on the back of a great-grandson.
‘They say he’s over a hundred,’ she reported. ‘They remind me of some old people I’ve seen on a vase somewhere. An old man carried by a young man. Who would they be?’
‘Anchises and Aeneas probably.’
‘Oh yes. Aeneas carried his father out of burning Troy. They do manage, somehow, to look like people on a vase, don’t they?’
‘I can’t say that I see it. The people on vases suggest a much higher level of civilization.’
A little girl ran up to them, flung her arms round Kate, and said breathlessly:
‘Alithos anesti!’
‘Efharisto, poullaki mou. Ke tou chronou!’
Kate hugged the little creature close for a moment. Her affection for children seldom took the form of caresses or demonstrations of tenderness. To see them happy and thriving was enough for her; if they wished to be hugged, she obliged them, for their satisfaction rather than her own. Now the weight and warmth of the child in her arms soothed a hunger which had come upon her during that uprush of life which all had shared a few minutes earlier.
‘What did you say?’ said Challoner.
‘I said: Thank you, darling! And next year too.’
The child, when released, flung herself upon him, disarranging his tie again, and assuring him that Christ was truly risen.
‘Go on,’ exhorted Kate. ‘Thank her!’
‘Efharisto!’ growled the spokesman of civilization. ‘Is that how you spell it?’
‘No. It’s the way it’s pronounced.’
His outlandish cloak was evidently familiar to the child. She put a small fat finger on it and looked doubtfully at the strange face inside the hood.
‘Milorthos Frethi gave us eggs,’ she suggested.
‘There will be eggs,’ promised Kate.
Reassured that nothing was going to be changed, the little creature bowed to them and trotted off.
A Stay-at-Home, thought Kate. When she grows up she won’t leave the island.
The crowd was thinning rapidly. In a few minutes the two foreigners were left sitting solitary by the sunlit sea. Fumes of gunpowder now drowned the scent of hyacinths.
‘How far,’ asked Dr Challoner, ‘does this go on in other parts of Greece?’
‘I’ve never been anywhere else at Easter. On Zagros they fire off guns. But they have it at midnight, not at sunrise. And I believe they kill the lambs on Saturday, and cook them in some special way, instead of this barbecue. Nicer, I should think. Here the meat is almost raw.’
‘I was thinking of cooking. I mean as a religious observance.’
‘Oh, where there’s a church the priest comes out, and calls, like the old man did.’
‘Then, if they had a church, all this business would be quite commonplace?’
She assented, a little doubtfully. By her the last half hour could never have been described as commonplace. The moment of sunrise had move
d her deeply on all the Easters which she had spent on Keritha.
‘Not worth attention, really,’ he decided. ‘I can’t see anything on this island which calls for the slightest attention.’
Smiling a little, she conceded the point. She did not really want him to think Keritha worth attention. He had much better go away and tell other people, people like himself, how dull it was, and then nobody would ever deem it worth exploitation. Eugenia, ending her days in the gracious empty house, would guard the memory of those two who had loved the island. The seasons would pass. The harvests would be gathered – food enough for the klisouriasmeni, and the mallows would wither in the garden. The north winds would blow. The spring flowers would blossom again, and the fruit trees, almond first, and then the plum and the peach. The people would weep, as all men must, rejoice as all men will, and nothing would ever be changed.
She rose and suggested that they might now return since the lambs would be roasting on their spits.
‘How long does this beano go on?’ he asked.
‘All day and all night.’
‘You mean we’ve got them on our hands for twenty-four hours?’
‘I’m afraid so. And they eat without stopping. They eat enough for a year.’
‘Then I must go on as best I can with trays in my room, I suppose.’
‘Oh no! You must eat with them. They’ll be shocked if you don’t.’
‘I can’t stand much more of it. The row when the sun rose …! My head is still going round. These people are nothing to me. I’m nothing to them. And … they smell.’
‘But, you see, they think of you as taking Freddie’s place. And you are their host.’
‘What? I’m paying for all this?’
‘Freddie always did. They’re very poor. They can just manage to live off the island. It’s so fertile they can get their own food and sell enough on the barer islands to buy the very few things they need to buy. But they couldn’t afford a feast like this out of their own pockets. Of course the ones who go away send home money.’
‘If they had a spark of ambition they’d all go. Why do they stay here to starve? I think you might have warned me.’
‘I’m sorry. It never entered my head.’
‘I shouldn’t have stayed over the weekend if I’d realized.’
‘Oh, you’d have had to stay. Think of all there is still to settle. You haven’t really decided yet about most of the furniture.’
‘I’ve decided to leave it here. Too much trouble to shift. Can that woman read?’
‘Eugenia? I think she can. Greek, of course.’
‘If I make any further decisions I’ll get someone to write a letter for me telling her what I want.’
It struck him that he had better perhaps accept his role of the new Lord of Keritha, and endeavour to look genial. These festivities might be a tedious, exhausting imposition, but some civility on his part might dispose Eugenia, later, to accept his orders should he decide to let the house. She need know nothing about Becker save as a friend and guest of the house. Investigations might thus be carried out with little trouble from wild bees. In which case the monstrous banquet now being held upon the terrace would be the last joke played by Keritha upon strangers.
The noise of it was audible a long way off, as the mixed smell of hyacinths and gunpowder gave way to that of roasting meat. Somebody was playing upon queer little bagpipes. Fifty people were talking at the very tops of their voices. The island soil had turned bright red; it was littered ankle deep in dyed egg-shells. The maids, hurrying from the spits to the tables, crunched over them and the children continually threw down more.
Boisterous shouts greeted the host. He was conducted to a place at the head of the longest table. Eggs were thrust at him by a dozen hands. One maid ran up with a plate of smoking meat and another with a fresh supply of wine from Freddie’s vineyard. The little bagpipes played, over and over again, a single phrase on four notes.
‘I think I know this tune, if you can call it a tune,’ he said to Kate.
‘I expect you do. It’s the first half of God Save the Queen, and it’s played in your honour. As for the other half, those are all the notes that pipe has.’
She dived under the table, snatched away a child who was eating Milorthos Persi’s shoelaces, and carried him back to Maroulla, his mother. He had been new born when she first came to Keritha. She had gone with Edith to visit Maroulla, and had got her first taste of Coca-Cola.
‘What a big boy he is,’ she said. ‘And now …’
She pointed to a swaddled parcel in Maroulla’s arms and would have said that his nose was out of joint had that not been too difficult in Greek.
‘Now, he is no longer the bebbie.’
‘And you are going away!’ said Maroulla. ‘We shall be sorry. Next Easter you won’t be there. But we’ll remember you.’
‘Yes. And I’ll remember you. I shall think of you all in Stockholm, next Easter.’
‘Stockholm? Is that a place in England then?’
‘No. I meant London. I shall be in London.’
‘That must be a fine sight, London, at Easter.’
‘How many people in London?’ put in another woman.
‘About eight million, I think.’
‘Ah-h-h-h!’
They sighed to think of the gorgeous noise made by eight million people upon learning that Christ had risen.
‘What do they eat?’ asked Maroulla.
‘Eggs,’ said Kate. ‘Often they are gold and silver! Chocolate, you know, covered with gold and silver paper.’
‘Ah-h-h! And they throw it down and dance on gold and silver? Look out, Anna! Your Kiki is going to be sick.’
‘Little stupid! You gobbled too fast. Now you’ve wasted all that lovely meat.’
‘Ah, there’s plenty more today. They can throw up as much as they like, the children, and there’ll be another plateful. Oh, listen. Kostas is going to sing The Tell Tale.’
Comparative silence fell as an old song was sung at the expense of couples supposed to be courting. It had but one verse, but in each repetition a new couple was named.
‘Lakis kissed Eleni,’ carolled Kostas, while everybody turned to laugh at the blushing pair.
‘Only the night saw them, and a star.
So how does everybody know about it this morning?
The star set into the sea and told the waves,
And the waves told an oar blade
And the oar blade told the sailor,
And the sailor came home and told everybody.’
‘That Lakis,’ commented Maroulla. ‘What I’d like to know is if there’s anybody he hasn’t kissed.’
‘Yannis kissed Despina …’
‘Mrs Benson!’
Kate became aware of an appeal from the host.
‘What’s that they’re singing?’
‘Just a folk song. The Koutsombolis.’
‘The rhythm! It’s got a rhythm … it reminds me … Meleager … Nux hiere kai luchne …’
At Kate’s shake of the head he offered a translation about holy night and a lamp, the only witnesses of two lovers’ vows.
‘Oh, it’s the same song, probably,’ said Kate, who was not paying much attention.
She tried to stand between him and Maroulla so that he should not be shocked by what was happening. That the swaddled newcomer should be suckled was natural, but the two-year-old, who had already feasted upon Dr Challoner’s shoelaces, was now getting the breast.
‘Vasilis kissed Anna …’
This simple joke lasted for a long time, while the assembly munched on, filling itself to the brim and shouting with its mouth full. Plates went back and forth to the spits, pitchers of wine were brought from the house, also many bottles of Coca-Cola, which most of the children preferred. The crates which came over with the goat had been specially ordered for this feast.
When everybody, according to The Tell Tale, has kissed everybody else, a new tune was struck up by the pipes, a
fiddle and a drum. A long line of girls danced across the terrace, their hands clasped and crossed, their hair flying, and their light feet crushing the egg-shells.
‘Gold and silver in London,’ sighed Maroulla. ‘In all the streets where they dance! How beautiful!’
Kate remembered a poem which Freddie had quoted, last Easter, or perhaps the Easter before. It was not in Greek, but he had insisted that it was not by an Englishman. It was about bagpipes, and a gold-and-silver wood, and queens dancing. He said that there is a ‘happy townland’, which we all believe to be somewhere, although we never find it. The people here, on Easter day, came perhaps as near to finding it as anyone ever does.
‘I wish I could see it,’ murmured Maroulla.
‘Next year I’ll send you some gold and silver eggs from Stock … I mean London.’
Again she had nearly said Stockholm. She had never been there and had no wish to go. She was tired, and she had been thinking too much about Selwyn’s children. He ought to take them back there, where he had friends, and he ought to make his beautiful bowls again.
These junketings were too much for her at her age. She was beginning to feel quite dizzy, and poor Dr Challoner looked as though he might fall to pieces at any moment. He was, she noticed with surprised approval, making some effort at civility. When people spoke to him he said thank you instead of begging their pardons. He now knew two words of Greek.
Taking pity on him, she whispered that soon, perhaps, they might both slip away.
‘Thank heaven for that. Will this really go on till dawn tomorrow?’
‘Yes, and then they’ll all troop off to work, just as usual. Now, aren’t those girls pretty, dancing? You must agree they’re like girls on a vase?’
‘They might be, if it wasn’t for the row and the mess and the egg-shells.’
‘Well, nobody would put all that on a vase. But I suppose it was always there, when girls danced, don’t you?’
‘What? Row and mess and egg-shells?’
‘Why, yes. What kind of girls were they, dancing on vases?’
He frowned. He had never supposed that girls dancing on vases were real girls at any time.
The Forgotten Smile Page 22