IT was natural that I should bring Nashan to Djimlah, and that she should become the fourth of our group. Mechmet and his brother Shaadi also often came to spend the day at Djimlah’s, and joined in our games.
Djimlah’s grandmother was desirous that we four girls should have some of our lessons together, and my mother, from the distance, could only acquiesce in this. Thus I saw them daily; and the more frequent contact brought forth more frequent causes for warfare between us. When they were all together, the fact of their being Turks became more emphasized, and within me there burned the desire to dazzle them with what the Greeks really had been in the world.
The way to do this came to me one night when sleep deserted me, and in its stead Inspiration sat by my pillow. Since they knew absolutely nothing of Greek History, I would tell it to them as a story. Feverishly I sketched it all out in my head. I would begin at the very beginning, showing them how Prometheus stole the divine fire to create the Greeks. The Turks shouldcome into the tale under the name of Pelasgians—yes, I would call them Pelasgians, while the Greeks should be called Prometheans. I could tell a story very well, at the time, and I hugged my pillow fervently at the thought of my three companions breathlessly listening to the recital of the great deeds of the Greeks—and loathing the Turks for all their misdoings. And when I had them properly moved, I should explain to them that this was not a story, but real history: that the Prometheans were the Greeks, and the Pelasgians were the Turks. And I should conclude: “You may call yourselves the proud Osmanlis, and you may think that you are the chosen people of Allah, but this is what history thinks of you—that’s what you are to the world.”
I was so excited to begin my work that I slept no more that night. Yet on the very next day I learned that my most inconsiderate parents had decided to go for a few months to the Bosphorus. It always struck me as the worst side of grown-ups that they never considered the plans of the little ones. They will teach you, “It is not polite to interrupt papa or mamma with your affairs when they are busy”—while papa or mamma are only talking silly, uninteresting stuff which might very well be interrupted. Yet how often, when I was intently watching a cloud teaching me his art of transforming himself from a chariot to an immense forest or from a tiger to abevy of birds, mamma would interrupt without even apologizing; and were I to say to her, “Just wait a minute,” as mamma thousands of times said to me, I should be called a rude little girl.
Thus it happened that, when my life’s work was unfolded before my eyes by an inspiration, I was snatched away to that outlandish place, the Bosphorus.
And there, about a quarter of a mile from the house we took, with nothing between us but fields and gardens, lived a Turkish general and his family. I do not recall his name, for every one spoke of him as the Damlaly Pasha, which means “the pasha who has had a stroke.”
His was a modest house, surrounded by a garden, the wall of which had tumbled down in one place, offering a possible means of ingress to a small child of my activity. Some day I meant to avoid the vigilance of the elders and to penetrate into the heart of that unknown garden; for the opening was for ever beckoning to me. But, though I had not yet been able to do so, I had already managed to peep into it; and had seen a young woman who seemed to me the embodiment of a fairy queen picking flowers there.
Every Friday morning the general went over to Constantinople, to ride in the Sultan’s procession, as I afterwards learned. He wore his best uniform, and his breast was covered with medals. A eunuch and a little girl always accompaniedhim to the landing, and their way led past our house.
Being lonely at the time, I took a great interest in the happenings on our road, and I learned to wait every Friday morning for the queer trio: the gorgeously uniformed and bemedalled old general, painfully trailing his left foot; the old, bent eunuch, in a frock coat as old and worn-out as himself, and the fresh little girl, with all her skirts stuffed into a tight-fitting pair of trousers.
I thought her quite pretty, in spite of the ridiculous trousers. Her hair was light, as is the colour of ripe wheat, and her eyes were as blue as if God had made them from a bit of his blue sky. I nicknamed her Sitanthy, and used to make up stories about her, and was always wondering what her relationship was to the old general. Once I heard her call him father, but I felt sure he could not be that. To my way of thinking a father was a tall, slim, good-looking person. The other species of men were either uncles, or grandfathers, or, worse yet, bore no relationship to little girls, but were just so many stray men.
I never contemplated talking to the little girl—she was to me almost a fictitious character, like one of the people I knew and consorted with in our Greek Mythology—until fate brought us together.
One wonderful, mysterious, summer evening thousands of fireflies were peopling the atmosphere. I had never seen so many before, and wanted to stay up and play with them. But the tyranny of the elders decreed that I should be put to bed at the customary hour, as if it had been any ordinary night.
I believe few of the elders retain the powers of childhood—which see far beyond the confines of the seen world—else why should they have insisted on my leaving this romantic world outside, which was beckoning me to join its revels?
However, they did put me to bed, and as usual told me to shut my eyes tight and go to sleep. But shutting one’s eyes does not make one go to sleep. On the contrary one sees many more things than before. The beauty of the night had intoxicated me. I was a part of nature, and she was claiming me for her own. There was a pond in our garden where frogs lived. They, too, must have felt the power of to-night’s beauty; for they were far more loquacious than usual. I listened to them for a long time—and presently I understood that they were talking to me.
“Get up, little girl!” they were saying. “Get up, little girl!”
For hours and hours they kept this up, now softly and insinuatingly, then swelling into loud command.
They ended by persuading me. I crept frommy bed, put on my slippers, threw over my nighty the pink little wrap with its silk-lined hood, and went out on the balcony outside of my window. From there I slid down one of the columns, and, before I knew it, was on the ground.
Supreme moment of happiness! I was free—free to revel in the wonders of the night, free from vigilance and from orders. Clasping my wrap closely around me, I first went to the pond, and told the frogs that I was up.
“That’s right, little girl!” they answered me. “That’s right, little girl!” But that was all they had to say to me, so I left them and gave myself up to the deliciousness of being out of bed at an hour when all well-regulated children should be in bed—according to the laws of the elders.
The fireflies laughed and danced with me, twinkling in and out of the darkness. They seemed like thousands of little stars, who, tired of contemplating the world from heights above, like me had escaped vigilance, and, deserting the firmament, had slid down to the earth to play.
What a lot they had to say to me, these cheerful little sparks. On and on we wandered together. They always surrounded me—almost lifting me from the ground; and occasionally I succeeded in catching one and sticking it on my forehead, till I had quite a cluster, so close together that I must have looked likea cyclops, with one fiery eye in the middle of my forehead.
We came into the fields where the daisies and poppies were sleeping together, and passing through still another field, we arrived at the place where the Damlaly Pasha lived. Then I knew that the opening in the wall and the goddess had invited me to call on them that night.
Climbing over the opening was not an easy task, for my bedroom slippers were soft, and the stones of the tumble-down wall were hard and sharp; but I accomplished it. As for the fireflies, they had no difficulty: they flew over the wall as if it were not there at all.
Inside, the sense of real exploration came over me. The garden was old-fashioned, where the flowers grew in disorder, as they generally do in Turkish gardens. How delicious was the perfume of the flowers. I felt sure that, like me and the fireflies and the frogs and the nightingales, the flowers here were awake—and not like the daisies and poppies, who are sleepy-heads. But in vain did I look for my goddess. She was not there.
Presently another little form came moving along through the bushes. We met in the shrubbery. I pushed aside the branches, put my face through, and in Turkish I said:
“Hullo, Sitanthy!”
“Hullo!” she answered, “What did you call me?”
“Sitanthy,” I replied. “That’s your name. I gave it to you. It is the blue flower in the wheat—because you look like one of them.”
“That’s pretty,” Sitanthy commented. “And what isyourname?”
I told her.
“I know who you are,” she went on. “You are the solitary child, who lives on the road to the landing, and who never plays.”
“I do play!” I cried.
“How can you? You are always sitting still.”
“I play most when I am most still.”
“Yours must be a funny game,” she observed “for whenIsit still I go to sleep.”
Across the bushes we leaned and kissed each other. With her fingers Sitanthy took hold of my cheeks and told me that she loved me.
“I have lovedyouever since we came to live here,” I said, “because you are so pretty.”
“Are you pretty?” she inquired politely. “You have the largest eyes of anyone in the world.”
“They are not really so large,” I corrected her. “They only look so, because my face is little. I know it for a fact, because one day I measured with a thread those of my father, and they were every bit as large as mine.”
We linked arms and walked about the garden. She still wore her ridiculous trousers.
“Didn’t they put you to bed?” I asked.
“No. I didn’t want to go—and I don’t go unless I want to.”
I stared at her in amazement. “And do the elders let you?”
She nodded.
“They putmeto bed every night—at the same hour,” I confided, with great pity for myself.
She put her arm around me and kissed me, and though she said nothing I knew that she felt the tragedy of this.
We plucked dew-soaked flowers together, talking all the time of those things which belong to childhood alone; for children are nearer to the world from which they have come, and when they meet, they naturally talk of the things they remember, which the elders have forgotten—and because they have forgotten, call unreal.
We caught some fireflies for her forehead, too, and thus we were two cyclopses instead of one. I had to tell Sitanthy about them, for she being a Turkish child knew nothing of them. Then I inquired about the goddess of the garden; but Sitanthy only said that there was no young woman in their house except theirhalaïc.
When I was ready to go, she let me out of the gate, and I started back to my home. I was a little cold. A heavy dew was falling, and mynighty was wet, and so was the flimsy pink wrapper. As for my slippers, they became so soaked through that I discarded them in one of the fields.
I meant to return to my bed as quietly as I had come out, but on reaching our garden I knew that my escape had been discovered. A light was burning in my bedroom, and other lights were moving to and fro in the house, and there were lanterns in the garden.
I walked up to the nearest lantern. Happily it was in the hands of my father.
To scare him I imitated the croak of a frog.
“Oh, baby!” he cried. “Oh, baby, where have you been?”
I confided my whole adventure to him, because of all the elders I have known—except my brother, who was one of the immortals of Olympus—my father seemed, if not to remember, at least to understand.
That night I was not scolded. The wet clothes were replaced by warm ones, and I was only made to drink a disagreeabletisane. And since, in spite of thetisane, I did catch cold and for two days was feverish, I escaped even a remonstrance.
Yet my escapade had one lasting good result. It led to my friendship with Sitanthy—and finally to the goddess of the garden.
On the following Friday, although I was stillnot quite well, I begged to be permitted to sit by the window.
The trio for whom I was waiting came, but sooner than their customary hour. From afar Sitanthy waved her little hand to me. Then instead of passing by, as usual, all three came up to our house, and the old general ceremoniously delivered a letter addressed to my father, who at once came out, and accompanied them to the gate.
When my father returned, he said that on her way back the little girl was to stay and play with me.
On this first visit, Sitanthy told me her history. She was the only child of the only son of the old general and hishanoum. Her father was killed in one of those wars, unrecorded by history, which the sultan wages against his unruly subjects in remote, unmapped corners of Asia. But, if these wars are not recorded by history, their record is written with indelible ink in the hearts of the Turkish women; for every one means the loss of brothers, fathers, husbands, and sons, whose deaths are reported, if at all, long after they have been laid away in unknown graves.
Sitanthy’s mother died from a broken heart, and thus my little friend was all that remained to the old couple.
“I wear those trousers,” she explained, “to afford pleasure to my grandparents. You seeI’m only a girl, and it must break their hearts to have a boyless home, so I saved all my pennies and bought these trousers to give the household an air of possessing a boy.”
I hugged her, and never again thought of her trousers as ridiculous.
In the simple way Turkish children have, she also told me the affairs of her home. The household consisted of her grandfather, her grandmother, the old eunuch, a cook older than the eunuch, and a young slave—thehalaïc.
Ahalaïcis a slave who is plain, and consequently cannot be given in marriage to a rich husband; nor is she clever enough to become a teacher; nor does she possess that grace and suppleness which might make of her a dancing girl. Having thus neither mental nor physical attributes, she becomes a menial.
She does all the coarsest work; and after seven years of servitude, if she belongs to a generous master, she is either freed, with a minimum dowry of two hundred and fifty dollars, or is given in marriage, with a larger dowry, to one of the men servants in the retinue of the household.
It is said that sometimes, if her master be either poor or cruel, he sells her before her time expires, and thus she passes from house to house—a beast of burden, because Allah has given her neither cleverness, nor bodily beautynor grace; and men cheat her of her freedom and youth.
Thus, knowing exactly what ahalaïcwas, I laughed at Sitanthy when, in answer to my question about the goddess of her garden, she replied: “It must be ourhalaïc—she is the only young woman in our household.”
After I was entirely well again, I was permitted to go with Sitanthy to play in her garden. I went with great expectations; for I hoped that by daylight and with all the afternoon before me I could find out something about my goddess.
On entering the garden, the first person I encountered was she—and what I saw stabbed my heart. My goddess was harnessed to the old-fashioned wooden water-wheel at the well, and with eyes shut was walking round and round it, drawing up water.
We had a similar arrangement in our own garden, but it was a blindfolded donkey who did the work—not a goddess.
She was dressed in a loose, many-coloured bright garment, held in at the waist by a wide brass belt. A yellow veil was thrown over her head; her bare arms were crossed on her breast, and bathed in the light of that summer day, with eyes closed, she was doing this dreadful work, without apparent shame, without mortification.
On the contrary, she seemed unaware of the degradation of her work. She could not havelooked more majestic or more beautiful had she been a queen in the act of receiving a foreign ambassador. But I, who loved her and called her my goddess, felt the shame and tears of rage sprang to my eyes.
Saturated as I was with Greek mythology, there came to my mind the thought of Danaë, daughter of Acrisius, King of Argos, and mother of Perseus. Because she refused to listen to the love-words of the king who received her, after her father exiled her, she was condemned to similar work.
A great excitement seized me. I thought that the story I had read did not belong to the past—that it was being enacted in that very place, at that very hour, and before my own eyes. Nay, more!Iwas a Greek runner, ordered by the gods of Olympus to announce to her the return of her son.
Possessed by the conviction, I rushed up to her, and stopped her in her work.
“Hail to thee, Danaë!” I cried. “Perseus, your son, is coming, bringing the head of Medusa, and with it he will turn into stone those who are ill-treating you.”
She opened her eyes and gazed at me with a puzzled expression.
I repeated my words, my enthusiasm a trifle damped by her reception of them.
When I had explained everything to her, and had given her every detail of Danaë’s life and herson’s achievements a smile broke over her face. Of all our visible signs, the soul comes nearest to speaking in the smile. When thehalaïcsmiled it was as if God were peeping through the clouds.
“You adorable baby! You adorable Greek baby!” she laughed.
She unharnessed herself, and took me in her arms, holding me there as a nest must hold a little bird. How comfy, how motherly her arms were. She sat down on a stump and cuddled me in her lap; and I, pushing aside her dress at the throat, kissed her where she was the prettiest.
“Why are you ahalaïc?” I moaned. “Why do you have to be a donkey—you who are beautiful as a Greek nymph?”
Her face softened, her eyes became misty, and her lips quivered, yet remained wreathed in smiles. Silently she patted me, and I spoke again of the cruelty of her position.
“Well, well,yavroum, you see the old people are very poor. They have no money this month to engage a donkey, and the men on this place are too old for such hard work. I am young and strong, so I do it.”
“But why are you ahalaïc?” I repeated.
She laughed. “I am not exactly ahalaïc, for I am a free woman. I may go if I please—only I please to stay. The oldhanoumbrought me up. I love her. She is old and poor. She needs me, and I stay.”
Just then Sitanthy came out of the house, and claimed a part of the lap that I was occupying, and there we both sat for awhile. But thehalaïchad much to do, and presently we were sent off to play.
I questioned Sitanthy about her.
“She will pine away some day and die,” Sitanthy said.
My eyes grew larger. “Never!” I cried. “She is immortal.”
Sitanthy shook her head. “Oh, yes, she will; for her ailment is incurable. Her heart is buried in a grave.”
In vain I begged for more explanations. With maddening precision Sitanthy reiterated the same words. She had heard her grandmother say this, and being a child of her race she accepted it as final. Her mind received without stimulating her imagination. But I was a Greek child, with a mind as alert, an imagination as fertile as hers were placid and apathetic.
Thehalaïcbecame the heroine of my daydreams. There was not a tale which my brain remembered or concocted in which she did not figure. My soul thirsted for knowledge of her affairs. They beckoned to me as forcibly as had the tumble-down wall, and I meant some day to penetrate her secrets.
She had said that the oldhanoumhad brought her up, and that the oldhanoumwas very poor.That was one more reason why she should have been given a great marriage. Any rich Turk would have been willing to pay a fortune for such as she. In the East, we talk of these things openly, as common occurrences; and since my intimacy with Djimlah I had unconsciously learned a great deal about Turkish customs.
The affairs of thehalaïcquite absorbed me. I watched her carefully. She never looked sad, or even tired. She performed her menial duties as if they were pleasant tasks, like arranging flowers in vases. She did everything, from being the donkey of the well to beating the rugs, washing the linen, and scrubbing the floors.
In the early fall, toward sunset one day, I met her for the first time outside the garden wall. I was being taken home to supper, and she was mounting a hill leading to the forest of Belgrade. She passed me without seeing me, her eyes on the horizon, a mysterious smile on her lips.
My heart leaped at the radiance of her appearance. She was like the embodiment of all the Greek heroines of myth and history. The wondrous expression on her face so moved me that I had to sit down to keep my heart from leaping from my breast.
“Come now, mademoiselle,” said the elder who was with me, “you know you are already late for your supper.”
On any other occasion I should have kicked mygoverness, but the face of thehalaïchad sobered me. Obediently I walked home, but I did not eat much supper.
The next time I saw Sitanthy, I told her of my meeting with thehalaïc.
Sitanthy nodded. “She was going to her hour of happiness. She lives for that hour. She has it from time to time.”
In vain I begged for more particulars. Sitanthy was the most Asiatic of all the Turkish children I have known. She could tell me stories of her world; but her world appeared to her as matter-of-fact and unromantic as the world of the elders.
Whenever I saw thehalaïcshe was lovely to me. She smothered me with kisses, and she scolded me kindly whenever I needed it, which was pretty often. But there was a patrician reserve about her which kept me from questioning her.
She was tender, but at times cruel. She would laugh at things which choked my throat with a big lump. Damlaly Pasha’s household was poor. They lived on his pension, which was generally in arrears; for the Oriental knows no fixed time, and the Turkish government is the most oriental factor in their oriental lives.
There came days when the exchequer of the household was reduced to small coins, which the hanoum kept tied in a knot in one of the corners of her indoor veil. She always gave us a penny,when I visited there; and Sitanthy and I would call thesimitzi, passing by with his wares on his head, and we would buy four of his delectablesimit, big enough to wear as bracelets—until we had eaten them.
Then came afternoons when we were given only a halfpenny, and each of us had only onesimit; and then there was a time when thehanoumhad not even a halfpenny, and she wept because she could not buy ussimit. That was the day that thehalaïcwas cruel. She laughed at the sorrow of her mistress, and derided her; and the oldhanoumwas so mortified that she stopped crying at once.
It happened that one day I was taken suddenly ill while playing with Sitanthy; and the oldhanoumsent word to my home, begging leave to keep me in her house, in order that I should not be moved, and imploring to be trusted.
It was thehalaïcwho took care of me. She made up two little beds, and slept herself between them. The oldhanoumbrought a brazier into the room, filled with lighted charcoal, and on it she heated olive oil in a tin saucer. When it was very hot they took off my nightgown, sprinkled dried camomiles all over me; and thehalaïc, dipping her hands into the scorching oil, began to rub me. She rubbed and rubbed, till I screamed, and was limp as a rag. But I fell into refreshing slumber immediately afterwards.
When I awoke, dripping with perspiration, thehalaïcwas changing my nightgown. Then she put me into the other little bed, which was warm and dry.
Some hours later, I again awoke, and saw thehalaïcmoving about the room on tiptoe. She threw a cloak over her shoulders, and, with the caution of a cat about to lap forbidden milk, stole out of the room.
I sat up in my bed and wondered what she was doing. Then I arose and went to the window. The last quarter of the moon lighted the garden, and distinctly I saw thehalaïcdisappearing into a group of cypresses.
In an instant I wrapped a shawl around me, and went down after her. When I next caught sight of her she did not move like a cat any more. She held in each hand a lighted candle, home-made and aromatic, and she was going in and out among the trees, as if she were playing a game, and all the time mumbling something that seemed to be a rhyme.
Then she crouched low on the ground and exhorted Allah to be merciful and forgive her her—. It was a word I did not understand, and the next day I had forgotten it.
After a time she rose, put the ends of the lighted candles between her lips, went to the well, and drew water from it with a small tin cup tied to a string.
She watered all the trees of this clump, counting the drops as they fell: “Bir, iki, utch, dort, besh, alti, yedi.” On the seventh she always stopped, and went on to the next tree. She did all the counting without dropping the lighted candles from her mouth—which was very hard, for I tried it a few days later.
After the watering was ended, she blew out the candles, fell prone on the earth, and begged Allah, the Powerful, Allah, the Almighty, to forgive her. She wailed and wept, and told Allah over and over that she was doing everything according to his bidding, for the sake of his forgiveness.
Hidden in the shrubbery close by, I wondered what could be the crime of that radiant creature, who had enthralled and captivated my imagination.
At length she rose, and danced a weird dance to the mouse-eaten looking moon, in turn beseeching her:
“Queen of the Night, Guardian of Womanly Secrets, Mother of Silent Hours—intercede for me—help me!”
She danced on and on, till she was quite worn out, and fell on the ground weeping.
I could endure no more; besides my teeth were chattering, and all the aches that were so especially my own took possession of my frail body again. I came out of my hiding-place to where thehalaïclay.
She looked up at me bewildered. Then she rose on her knees, and touched me with her fingers, as if to ascertain that I were a living child. She peered into my face through the tears in her eyes—and I, quite afraid now, said not a word.
At length she broke the silence.
“Is that you, Greek baby?”
“Yes,” I answered.
“Who sent you here?”
“Nobody. I came.”
She extended her palms upward. Her face took on one of her mystic smiles.
“Allah,” she said softly. “Allah, thou forgivest me, the unworthy.”
For a long time she prayed to that power whom she called Allah, and I knew to be God. When her prayers were at an end, she gathered me to her heart, and kissed me with love and fervent exaltation; and thus carried me into the house.
Again she rubbed me with hot oil, and in order to warm me better she took me into her bed, and I slept, held fast in her arms.
The next day I must have been quite ill, and she never left me; for every time I opened my eyes she was there, crouching by me, wearing her radiant smile, which would have coaxed any truant soul to return to earth. At any rate it coaxed mine, which came again, though reluctantly, to inhabit my poor little body.
On the first day that I really felt better andcould sit up, I took advantage of her devoted attendance to question her.
“What have you done so monstrous and wicked, which Allah must forgive you?”
After a moment’s thought, she answered me, simply and directly.
“I gave not myself to a man, as Allah ordains that every woman should do, and I have given no children to multiply the world.”
For hours I puzzled over these words; but in the end I did get at their meaning. New vistas, new horizons opened to my brain. What she meant, of course, was that she was not married.
In the middle of that night I awoke—and I woke her too. I sat up in bed, determined to ask, till all was told to me.
“Then why don’t you marry?” I demanded peremptorily.
“Now,yavroum, you go to sleep. You are only a baby, and you cannot understand.”
“I’m not a baby!” I cried. “I know heaps and heaps of things, and if you don’t tell me, I shall not go to sleep—and what is more I shall uncover myself and catch my death of cold. So please tell me why you don’t marry.”
“I don’t want to.”
“Why not?”
“Because he whose children I should have been happy to bear is for ever buried, beyond that hill, in the forest of Belgrade.”
“That cannot be,” I said sceptically, “there is no cemetery there.”
“No,yavroum,” she said softly, “but he lies there; for I buried him.”
Through the curtainless windows the stars were lending us light. The face of thehalaïcshone sweet and tender, full of womanly charm and loveliness. My little hand slipped into hers. Who shall deny that we have lived before, that each little girl has been a woman before? Else why should I, a mere child, have understood this grown-up woman; and why should she, a woman, have thus spoken to me?
There we sat, our mattresses on the floor, as near to each other as possible, holding each other’s hands while the stars were helping us to see—and perhaps to understand.
“Like you, he was a Greek, and like you he said things about nymphs and goddesses. He said that I was one of them, and he loved me. Some day soon I was to be his. But in our household then there was another man who vowed that no infidel should possess me. We were living at the time over the hill, in the outskirts of the forest of Belgrade. One night when the moon was at its waning, like the night you saw me in the garden, that man killed my lover. I buried him myself—in the forest of Belgrade—and, have tended his grave for these seven years. I do everything to please Allah, and I never complain.To avert the punishment which is allotted in the other world to the women who have not done his will, I exhort him, according to the prescribed magics. It is said that if during these rites, some time, a child should come, it is Allah himself who sends it, to show that he understands and forgives—and you came,yavroum, the other night.”
She bent over and kissed me gratefully.
“I shall work all my life for nothing, doing everything to help others, in the hope that when I die, I shall be made very young and very beautiful and shall be given to the lord, my lover. And maybe,yavroum,” she added, almost in a whisper, “I may have a baby like you—for you are a Greek baby, and he was a Greek.”
I cuddled very close to her and kissed her, my arms wound around her neck, and went to sleep.
After that I no longer minded her being ahalaïc, and even at times being the donkey. For wherever I saw her, and in whatever occupation, her background was always the Elysian fields. There she walked in the glory of her beauty, and in company with her Greek lover.