ToEdith Heald
EVERY few years, gathering his small savings together, he left intolerable Salonika and went to Athens where he dreamed away a month of spring on the Acropolis, in the great weed-overgrown cemetery where remnants of ancient beauty lie broken and marred, and in the Temple of Jupiter in which he imagined he could hear faint music, and where, of a surety, he witnessed dim processional rites unseen by others. And always a few days were spent in Eleusis—fever-stricken Eleusis, so foul to-day, so fair yesterday: Eleusis that still holds its Mysteries known only to the gods: Eleusis where, each morning at dawn, he issued from the muddy, sordid inn and, slipping off his white tunic, bathed in the Ægean, singing to himself and gazing long and long into the clear waters.
Athens to him was a White Paradise, and he would have left Salonika years since to make his home there had not his bedridden mother clung with increasing fretfulness to the gaudy city where her forefathers had lived ever since the great exodus of Jews from Spain, centuries ago. To her son, Salonika was hateful, for it was ever in conflict with his dreams, and dreams were his life. They kept his soul winging. Whereas Athens threw him into a quiet ecstasy. The present slipped into nothingness, and the past lived....
There was a certain marble figure in the museum which seemed to him to hold all Ancient Greece in its limbs and face.... A green lizard clinging, sun-smitten, to a white wall seemed to belong to a remote age; and a valley full of white butterflies—butterflies so thickly clustered that they looked like dancing snow—was even now haunted by Pan. And at night the moon on the marble of the Parthenon made him giddy with the piercing realness of life....
But this evening he was at home, standing at his shop-door at the corner of the Place de la Liberté. He gazed with shy eagerness up Venizelos Street, that ill-paved gutter of a street where Birmingham and Hamburg jewelry compete with one another for Jewish gold. Here, every evening, he was to be seen, and, when no customer was in his shop bargaining for a cast of Venus or for some piece of ivory carved by the Dreamer’s sensitive hands, he would stand there in the daytime also, his rather tired eyes full of hunger. For—but it was not likely—she might come by day, though a years-old intuition insisted that the time of her arrival would be some evening between sunset and dark.
Many people knew him and saluted him as they passed by: to these salutes he responded gravely, and a little dignified gesture of his hands spoke in duet with his voice: “God be with you! I pray you, do not speak to me.” Hands so beautiful might well have made him vain, but he never thought of himself. And though he lived so intensely, he was very rarely conscious of his happiness except each night when, having closed the street-door, he sought his bed with strange relief.
Venizelos Street was never beautiful, or even picturesque, till the great fire of August 1917 came like a giant and, in a few hours, twisted it to fantastic shapes. And the Dreamer loathed it, though he made himself spend many hours of each day in gazing upon its squalidness, his eyes ranging from the Place de la Liberté up to the point where the street narrows and the Arcade and the Bazaars begin. But he had one of the secrets of happiness: he could look at things and not see them: better, far better, he could see things that were not there. Stein’s steel-walled shop did not exist: Orosdi Back had never been there with his wine and pickles: Tiring was only the faint echo of a name. Salonika’s life-blood moved sluggishly in that main artery; but the slowness was a predatory slowness—the cautious movement of men and women for ever on the prowl. Sometimes his eyes would rest for a moment on the discontented rich as they sat on their little chairs outside Floca’s, drinking syrups and haggling over prices. They were nearly as unreal to him as Jesus Christ is to the Christian.
He rarely glanced towards the sea, for he was sure she would not come that way. The mountains were her home. She would come drifting like a wraith, and, leaving the mountains, place her tiny feet on the plain, flutter past Lembet and Karaissi, enter the town, and, turning to the left down Rue Egnatia, reach this ugly street that sloped to and ended in the tideless sea. Surely, crocuses and anemones would bloom on the pavement when she came, and with her would come the stirring of a breeze. It must be so: he had pictured it so often. She had radiant eyes, he knew. She had always been young, ever since the beginning of the world. Youth was hers for ever. And her hair ... his heart leapt, for it seemed to him that her hand was about his heart: his heart cupped in her hand: a hand cool and, in some curious way, conscious of itself. Her hair was in his eyes, blinding them. A great light shone about her.
When she came, she would not speak to him: but, all the same, she would know. That was what he was waiting for, living for: that she should know.
A complaining voice came from the room just above his head. Turning swiftly, he passed through the shop where a few pieces of statuary gleamed white against the walls and shelves painted black, and quickly mounted the staircase.
“God be with you, mamma!” he breathed, as he bent over a little curled-up figure that lay on a bed near the window. The paralysed woman murmured a little something he could not hear.
“I am here,” he said. “Feel me.”
And he placed a lean cheek against one of her hands.
A devastating weakness overcame her and she cried a little, but her weeping, suffocated by exhaustion, soon ceased. She lay still and seemingly asleep, and the Dreamer, kneeling by her side, felt pity rising like a fountain in his heart. Her sallow face was like his own, aristocratic, broad-brewed, patient. The eyes were still full of Jewish ardour. He worshipped her always as a devotee worships the Madonna. It was she who had quickened his love for the Beauty that lies behind beautiful things, who had taught him that all life was a Seeming, who had added glamour and twilight and witchery to his entire environment.
“Great little mamma!” he whispered.
She smiled wanly and opened her eyes for a brief instant.
“Were you watching?” she asked.
At this he started guiltily, for he had told no one, not even his mother, why he stood nightly at the street-door.
“Yes,” he said simply.
“My poor son!” she murmured, her face tense with anxiety. “What you wait for will never come.”
“No?... But if she did, and I were not there? You see how it is, mamma. Imustbe there.”
“Yes, yes. One must always be there, waiting.”
Her face composed itself, and, after waiting a few minutes, and thinking she slept, he tiptoed away, his heart rushing before him to welcome the lady of his dreams.
(Yet how was it that, having reached the doorway and having darted a glance up the street, an expression of immeasurable relief lit his face when he had satisfied himself that she was not coming down that way?)
Darkness was beginning, and demireps issued from side streets to thePlace. Greek women, flat-footed and unbeautiful, waddled by, virtuous and miserable in their virtue. They carried virtue with them like a shroud. The demireps, haughty and impudent, were like flowers in the dusk. Lights appeared in the shop windows and the street traffic ebbed. Plashing of waves against the quay almost level with the water less than a hundred yards away, could faintly be heard. The Dreamer, looking towards the sea for a robbed minute, saw divine Olympus, purple and august, glowing and dying in the glowing and dying sky. So all beauty faded and died, to be reborn richer for its ancestry, more wonderful for its age.
He sighed, and his hungry eyes sought his lady. His brain was washed clean of life: nothing dwelt in his mind but his dream. And unconsciously he clenched his hands to convince himself for a moment of his ecstasy, and to make that ecstasy more intense....
Those gracious, tender figures on the Acropolis! How chastely their garments hung! They had only life thatwaslife, and perchance even now—oh, yes,now, for a faint slip of moon was gliding down the sky—they were walking, hand in hand, silently, in the Parthenon. They mysteriously were she, his lady, his lady who must never speak to him, but who one day, or one evening like this, would appear among this depravity, and, looking on him, know and for ever remember....
The thought of Olympus dying away in the South came to him, and he stole another glance at the mountain’s almost dead glory. Its summit was white. A small boat heaped up with fruit was at the quay’s edge. Golden oranges were massed together.... Yes: she would wear golden sandals, and on her wrists would be gold, and gold would be on her hair.... His impressions mingled confusedly; thought lay dead.
I do not think that in all Salonika, and perhaps in all the world, there was so happy a man that night as the Dreamer in his hours of watching and longing.
He lingered in his doorway until the streets became silent. She was not coming. Not to-night. She was not coming with her everlasting youth, bringing with her also his own renewed youth. For many years he had waited, but every night she had disappointed him.
The night was now full-starred, for the moon had gone. A dog, shapeless in the dark, nosed in the gutter. Two whispering old men passed close by.
At length, exhausted by his vigil, the Dreamer turned and re-entered his shop. His happiness, his sense of relief, was too great for expression. As he closed the door quickly behind him, it was as though he were shutting out the Dreadful One. He stood dazed in the darkness. The oblong room in which he stood was perfumed and sweet. The white pieces of statuary standing against the walls made themselves just visible; they seemed made of mist, intangible; their outlines were blurred. Rubbing his eyes, he stared at the statuary and smiled. Then he stretched his arms to their utmost above his head and, bending his head back, turned his face to the ceiling. In utmost weariness he stretched himself and yawned.
And then, uttering a cry of delight, he rushed upstairs to his mother. He fumbled with a lamp and lit it. Then he went to his mother’s bedside.
“Oh, mamma, mamma,” he said, “she has not come. It has not happened. My dream has not come true. Oh, I am so happy, so very happy!”
He kissed her cheek. Her eyes, opened wide, searched him through and through, as they had done on so many occasions.
“Oh, my son, my son!” she exclaimed, pityingly.
But he smiled with serene happiness, and taking a wisp of her meagre hair between his finger and thumb gently rubbed it.
“The gods be with you,” he said, “as they are with me.”
ToTrevor Johns
THERE are only two people in this story: Zuleika, a large, indeed massive, Jewess from Bucharest, and a rather elderly English diamond merchant with a slight body and a white moustache.
For some odd reason—largely, I think, because he was both infinitely courteous and gaily reckless—he attracted me, and, because I had been some considerable time in Salonika and he had only just arrived, he requested me to “show him round.” Before proceeding to do so, I asked him what were the three things in the world he loved most of all. He replied at once: “Animation, colour, and women.”
“Then,” said I, “my task is easy. Come with me.”
So we stepped into agharry(we were staying at a farm a little off the road to Hortiach), and bumped down the Lembet Road, past the funny old cemetery on our right, and stopped importantly in the middle of that disastrously sordid square in which the Rue Egnatia and the road from Lembet meet.
“And that’s that,” remarked Twelves as, having stepped from thegharry, we watched it waggle away.
It was May 1913. The afternoon was late, and a cool breeze swept along the sun-strewn street. My friend had (which I have not) the carriage of a soldier, and, though I could give him at least three inches, I am confident that, in the eyes of the women we met, he appeared to tower above me. I think he was conscious of this, though he seemed to try to hide it. To him, fresh from a tedious voyage from Bahia, Venizelos Street was Paradise, and when we came to the Place de la Liberté, he stood and looked at the gay crowd outside Floca’s with a slow, beguiling smile about his mouth.
“I am beginning to sit up and take notice,” he remarked; “this, if I am not mistaken, is indubitably IT.”
If “IT” meant laughter, light, and delicate linen discreetly displayed, he was right. People from all the countries of Europe were there. The ladies, being large and languid, and the early afternoon having been insufferably hot, wore as little as possible. This, Twelves pointed out with unnecessary particularity, was precisely as it should be.
But I am not going to tell you about Floca’s, for the tragedy did not begin there; indeed, nothing really began until well on in the evening when, as we were starting dinner at the White Tower, the sound of music came to us from the adjoining room.
“It is Debussy’s ‘Les Poissons d’or,’”said Twelves, swallowing whitebait, “and this is just the right atmosphere for it.”
Then, placing his napkin upon the table, he rose from his seat.
“In a minute I shall return,” he said, excusing himself and hastening from the room. But ten minutes passed before he rejoined me, and a single glance at him revealed that something of importance had happened to him in the meantime.
“I’ve just seen Jezebel, or Cleopatra, or Zola’s Nana in that room,” he said, excitedly, jerking his head in the direction from which the music was proceeding. “She’s stunning. The restaurant people tell me they have dancing in there after dinner—dancing and music. Shall we go?”
A curious, half-insane gleam of desire was in his eyes; he looked as though he were on the point of attaining something for which he had been striving all his life. His hands shook a little and he moistened his dry lips with the tip of his tongue.
Now Salonika is the City of Evil Women, and not a few rapacious demireps prowl like sleek tigers, subtle and wise, through the garish rooms and prim gardens of the White Tower. They are wonderful to look upon; their voices are like soft music; their hands are fluttering white moths; their mouths are innocently crooked. Gorgeous works of art they are, and, as works of art, entirely commendable; but to speak to them is to be poisoned, and to embrace them is to place one’s arms around Death. I said as much to Twelves, but he did not appear to listen, and as he was at least fifteen years older than myself and a man of more worlds than one, I did not venture to make my words more insistent or pointed.
As we were eating ices and hot cherries, the music, which had hitherto been played by a master, became vulgar and tawdry. It was a vapid valse given with a lunging and immoderate accent on the first beat of every bar.
“That’s the sort of thing that makes cities loathsome,” remarked Twelves, referring to the music; “let’s go and stop it.”
We arose, and I looked regretfully at six fat red cherries which, against the yellow of my ice, appeared almost purple.
A minute later we had entered the great room with its stage, its smooth floor, its half-moon of boxes. As yet only a few people were there; they sat round small tables imbibing vicious drinks and gazing with half-contemptuous amusement at thepianiste. I saw at once that she was the woman who had so rapidly inflamed Twelves’ passion, for even her back was voluptuous, and her neck reminded me of certain passages in the Song of Solomon. She was sensuality incarnate—sensuality brainless, horrific, devastating.
Twelves walked up to her and, placing his hand firmly on one of her white shoulders, said:
“Stop playing! You are making yourself ridiculous. Listening to you is worse—infinitely worse—than being in Clapham. Come over here with my friend and me and tell us of some of the wicked things you have done.”
Her eyes swooped into his. They were large and lustrous, but, as they sank into his, they decreased until the pupils became mere points of light. Then her lips parted and she showed her little teeth in a broad smile. I noticed that her skin appeared as firm and healthy as that of a plum not wholly ripe. She ceased playing and, with a sharp gesture, banged her fist upon thetreble notes of the piano, placed one hand upon Twelves’ arm and the other on mine, and walked between us to an unoccupied table in the far corner of the room. As she did so she turned and smiled triumphantly at the other ladies of her profession, and her smile said: “See how easily I secure my prey! You, poor things, will have to scheme and ogle till midnight.”
Even before she was seated she clapped her hands to summon a waiter, and presently ordered a bottle of champagne.
“I always drink champagne with Englishmen,” she observed, “Beaume with the French, and with the Germans—beer!”
She looked at Twelves for his approval, and the smile he had ready for her was ample assurance that she had said a very witty thing.
“I come from Bucharest and my name is Zuleika,” she announced, inconsequently. Her self-satisfaction was that of a deliciously vain child. Then, with strange disconnectedness: “Would you like to see my coins?” she asked.
We expressed the greatest interest.
“From Cairo,” she said, as she patted her satchel of beads the colour of pigeons’ blood. She took therefrom a number of bright foreign coins and held them in the cup made by her hollowed hands.
But Twelves did not even glance at them.
His strong, lithe fingers were embedded in the white flesh of her arm, like manacles, and his eyes held hers.
“Well, well, well,” she laughed, “but you must be good and patient.”
She released her arm and touched him lightly on the cheek with the tips of her fingers, smiling at him all the time.
And then the waiter placed a silver bucket of ice on the table; in the middle of the ice wobbled a bottle of Moet and Chandon. Zuleika showed her teeth in a broad smile, and turned swiftly round to examine the faces of those who, in the meantime, had sat down at neighbouring tables. Her eyes gave a rapid signal to a silly-looking creature immediately behind her; he had a face of lard, a drooping moustache, and googly eyes.
“Ah, Maestro!” she exclaimed, clasping his hands with gipsy ardour.
She turned round to us just as Twelves was taking a 25-drachma note from his pocket-book. Her face immediately assumed a cunning expression, and she stretched out a plump arm, gripped the bottle by the neck, and poured out the wine.
“Another five drachmas,” she said softly, “that is the price in this room.” Then, without a second’s pause, and holding her glass within an inch of her ear in order to listen to the icy hiss: “I have been in Salonika three weeks,” she announced, “and I think it is very nice. And you?”
“We both leave to-morrow,” he said.
We clicked glasses and drank. The room was rapidly filling, and an orchestra of scarlet-coated musicians played the latest Austrian waltz. We talked about nothing, yet we were not bored by Zuleika’s brainlessness, for Twelveswas aflame with desire, and to me she was a new type of huntress. Full-bosomed ladies, absurdly conscious of the number and whiteness of their teeth, have always seemed to me much too grotesque to love.
It was not long before I began to perceive that Zuleika had no intention of succumbing either to Twelves’ masterfulness or his money. She knew I knew this, and was particularly charming to me in consequence. She desired neither him nor me: her mind was in Twelves’ pocket-book, counting his money: but she sought to make me her accomplice by securing my silence. Her design was the design of all hunters—to fasten her teeth on her prey and not lose hold while there was blood left to suck.
A watery-eyed waiter hovered near, like a bat. She plucked his sleeve.
“Another bottle!” she commanded imperiously, and, magically, it was on the table in twenty seconds, but this time the neck of the bottle emerged from a silver bucket filled with white roses. Evidently we were now customers worthy of special attention.
“C’est a vous,” she said, nodding and smiling in my direction, and evidently it was, for the bat, with folded wings, stood by my side.
It was while I was paying him in ten-drachma notes that an acquaintance squeezed his way past our table, stooped and murmured in my ear:
“Do you know how much she gets for each bottle you pay for?”
“Haven’t the remotest,” said I, “about how much?”
“Just a matter of ten drachmas. I hope she’ll prove worth it. But that, I suppose, remains to be seen.”
He went, and, turning round to the table, I saw much to my astonishment that there were now four clean glasses on the tray the waiter had brought. Zuleika was filling them all to the brim.
“Maestro! Maestro!” she called, without turning her head. From the table behind came the man with the googly eyes. He smiled familiarly yet guardedly at us as he took the glass of champagne which Zuleika handed him. He would have spoken to us if he had not seen the hostility in Twelves’ and my eyes; but, without the slightest indication of embarrassment, our uninvited guest tossed the contents of the glass into his mouth, let them dwell there a moment, and then swallowed them with an audible gulp.
“He is my brother,” explained Zuleika, enthusiastically.
“That may be so,” said Twelves, “nevertheless, he is an extremely disagreeable person.”
And his long hand darted out like a hawk and again plunged into the flesh of her arm. He looked at her meaningly; indeed, his gaze was like a shout saying, “I want you! I want you! I want you!” She turned away from him impatiently.
“Very well, then,” she said, “but you must wait a little. When the green roses come. These are white, but round the fifth bottle there will be green.” And she spread her hands over the white roses surrounding the champagne bottle.
“Oh, damn the green roses!” growled Twelves. “Here, waiter, another bottle, quick!”
She glanced at him from the tail of her eye, and then immediately became absorbed in the performance of a tall angular girl who, with exquisite art, was singing a rapid French song full of diablerie. She had no looks, no voice, and no figure; but she had personality, genius. Silence had fallen upon the drinkers, and every one listened and watched; only the waiters, more than ever like bats, moved swiftly about, bearing absinthe and vermouth on purple trays. The singer exhaled a charm that diffused itself about the room; suddenly, she ceased singing, made a faint gesture, threw a kiss to the audience, and vanished. Immediately there was a great shouting and a stamping of feet.
“It is always like that,” complained Zuleika, pouting. “The men love her. Why? She is ugly and she is all bones and skin: Ugh! It makes me sick to see so ugly a woman driving the men mad.”
But the third bottle of champagne caught her eye, and she burst into a laugh.
“See,”she said, pointing to the roses, now pink, that surrounded the bottle, “see my passion is—what do you call it?—rising—yes, rising!”
In proof thereof, she threw her arm lightly round Twelves’ neck and kissed him behind the ear. He paled with desire. As for me, I turned a little to one side and made a pretence of studying the audience. The next thing I was aware of, they were both leaning over the table, their heads together, whispering. She was smiling, cunning and triumphant, whilst his face wore an expression of irritation and baffled desire.
“Come on, waiter, damn you!” he called, “another bottle and another. Yes—two! Blood-roses round the first, and round the second green. And that,” he added, “makes five.”
“Yes, five. One, two, three, four, five,” she counted on her fingers. “It is enough.”
And in due course the two fresh bottles appeared. The bucket containing the blood-red roses was placed in front of Zuleika: that containing the green before Twelves. When the waiter had opened both bottles, Zuleika ordered him to take one to the neighbouring table for “the Maestro.”
“You seem to be very fond of your brother,” observed Twelves, “but it is strange he should be willing to drink a whole bottle of wine paid for by a complete stranger.”
She looked at him darkly.
“You wish to quarrel with me,” she said, “very well then, I am quite content.”
“Sothat’syour game, is it?” exclaimed Twelves, with unexpected ferocity. “You drink champagne with me for a couple of hours and then think you can do what you like. The green roses have come and you must pay for them.”
He pulled out his pocket-book in order to pay for the wine, but before he had handed the waiter the money, she held out her hand, palm upwards, and placed it on the table.
“One hundred and twenty-five drachmæ for me,” she whispered; and, without a moment’s hesitation, he handed her five 25-drachmæ notes.
Then an amazing thing happened. Quite openly, she swung round in her chair and handed the five notes to the man she called “the Maestro.” He took them and placed them carefully in his pocket; but, as he did so, he kept his eyes fixed on Twelves. Twelves returned his gaze steadily. In the eyes of the stranger I saw a look of amusement and half-veiled contempt. And certainly Twelves was appearing in a contemptible light. Even physically he was contemptible, for he looked very diminutive by Zuleika’s side, and it was only his firm jaws and clear eyes that redeemed him from futility.
“Before we go we will drink this last bottle,” she said.
They sat side by side without a word, drinking their champagne. As I was, so to speak, out of it, I turned my head and gazed at the scene of mad revelry that met my eyes, wondering and trying to discover precisely what it was that made the frantic abandonment of the night different from similar evenings I had spent in Paris, Marseilles, Cairo, and Athens. I came to the conclusion that the difference was chiefly in the women. They had no tenderness, no passion, no sense of adventure, no enjoyment. They were simply rapacious. They did not walk: they prowled. They did not sit: they couched....
During the last half-hour the chairs and tables in the middle of the room had been removed and a few couples had started a bizarre form of tango. A woman with bared breasts and arms, a broad crimson sash wound three times round her body her only clothing, focused the onlookers’ attention. She was tall and graceful, and her body imitated the movements of a snake. It was horrible, but it was fascinating, and the beast that is in most of us leapt to the faces of the men who looked on and made them seem inhuman. Here was another huntress, but I felt that her potential victims were as rapacious as she, and that soon she would be their prey.
From the tail of my eye I saw Twelves and Zuleika rise and move from our table. It was as I had guessed. She would not repulse him here, but in the spacious hall outside, for even in the White Tower “scenes” are not tolerated.
I followed at a discreet distance, feeling a sudden nausea at the vice around me and longing for the northern mountains of Greece where I had spent the winter. There was a sickly smell of heliotrope, and the air was misty with tobacco smoke.
When they had reached the hall, Twelves and Zuleika stopped in earnest conversation, but I moved on to the cloakroom to get our hats and sticks. This occupied me for only a minute, but when I had returned I found my companions in the midst of a furious, though subdued, quarrel.
Twelves hardly spoke, but when he did so, he jerked out a sentence in a whisper so passionate that it sounded more urgent than a scream. Fragments of the conversation reached me.
“But it’s impossible,” exclaimed Zuleika, “to-morrow. Not now.... My husband is here. Yes, yes, yes! I have told you already. The Maestro is my husband. He would kill me.... Howdareyou! But you Englishmen are all pigs. I go back to the room. And you ... you clear out!”
She stretched out her arm with a superb gesture and pointed to the door. But Twelves stood resolute.
“You red fiend!” he whispered, “but I will have you yet.”
Two waiters had stopped to watch. One of them, a lascivious Greek, broke into a giggle.
“You are coming with me and you are coming now,” said Twelves, “if you don’t, I shall have no mercy on you.”
Then she laughed and threw her beaded satchel over Twelves’ head to one of the waiter’s behind her. He caught it, and she folded her arms.
“I could laugh at you,” she said, “but if I once began I should never stop. What is it you say in England—‘No fool like an old fool,’ isn’t it? And a fool always threatens what he can’t do.You will have no mercy on me!Boo!”
And, swift as lightning, she thrust out her arms and caught him by the shoulders. For a few seconds her massive frame towered above him and she shook him violently. The waiter renewed his high falsetto giggling. Then, placing one foot behind her, she lunged her body forward, and her muscular arms shot out like two piston-rods. Twelves fell backwards, his head striking a heavy chair four paces behind him. As he did not move, I rushed forward to his help, but, as I rushed, the waiters ran also, and we arrived at Twelves’ prone body at the same moment.
Twelves, though badly injured, was perfectly conscious.
“Take me out,” he said, “I feel bloody sick.”
And that is all that happened.
At the beginning of this story I called it a tragedy, but perhaps you think that “comedy” describes it better. Well, on the whole, so do I.
I only hope Twelves does too.
ToJulius Harrison
PAUL had finished his day’s work at the quay-side of Thessalonica unloading a cargo of timber, and now sat watching two young men, followers of Christ and dear friends of his own, who, naked to the waist, were washing the day’s sweat and dirt from their arms and faces. They were Greeks—handsome, athletic, and full of gaiety.
“Art thou tired, Master?” asked the younger of the two, walking up to the great traveller and preacher and offering him a wet cloth for his face.
“What—with this kind of work?” said Paul, smiling. “Thou thinkest I am old and weak, I know,” he added, taking the cloth from his young friend and pressing it gratefully against his bared throat.
“No, dear Father, I don’t.... I will sit by thy side until Aristarchus has finished cleansing himself.... Father, I want to ask thee something.”
“Well, my son: ask.”
But the young man stared across the sea to Olympus and would not speak. Paul, divining the mood that was upon him, touched his arm gently.
“Ask me any time, my son.” Then he added eagerly and with some passion: “Hast thou told Aristarchus thou wishest to marry?”
“Marry?”
The young man laughed nervously and self-consciously.
“Father, I might have known thou wouldst guess,” he said. “No, I have not told Aristarchus. I have told no one: not even her.”
“And it is about her thou wishest to speak with me?”
“Yes, Father, it is,” answered Lycastus.
But again he sat silent, not being able to speak one single word; and presently Aristarchus came over to them, his bronzed face wet, his neck and arms bare.
“Jason will be expecting thee,” he said to Paul.
“Yes,” assented Paul. “And thou, Aristarchus? Whither artthougoing?”
“I am going home to my wife and little son to talk of Jesus Christ. But I will walk some way with thee, Master,” he said. “Come, Jason will have his food spread for thee, and, I doubt not, some wine for thy tired body.”
“Aristarchus, thou knowest I am not tired,” said Paul, reproachfully, “it is only here that I am weary,” he added, placing his hand against his heart. “Come, Lycastus and Aristarchus, we will walk together.”
But though Paul had protested that he was not weary, he walked half a pace behind the young men and placed a heavy hand on the shoulder of Aristarchus. They walked in a westerly direction, towards the marshy mouth of the great river, and when they were clear of the city walls, they slackened their pace. Already the air was cooler, for the evening was coming and the sun was now sliced across by the horizon. Olympus, in a delicate mist, burned milkily like an opal.
“Aristarchus,” said Paul a little absently, “Lycastus has something to tell thee.”
But Lycastus, hanging his head, did not speak.
“Lycastus, what is it?” asked Aristarchus. “But I see how it is with thee. Thou art shy. Thou art in love and thou wishest to marry.”
He laughed a little.
Lycastus placed his arm for a moment on the arm of his friend.
“Thouknowest also? Who told thee?”
“Thyself. Has he not told us, Master? Thou hast been very happy these last weeks, Lycastus, and sometimes thou hast been sunk deeply in moods of the sweetest misery. And sometimes the blood has come quickly to thy cheeks for no reason that I could see, and has gone as quickly as it came. It is only a maid who does that to a man. What is her name?”
“Her name is Drusilla.”
“And she loves thee?” asked Aristarchus, encouragingly.
“I think she does. I have prayed that she may.”
They walked on in silence for a little while, Paul’s eyes bent on the ground.
“What dost thou say of it, dear Father?” asked Lycastus, timidly.
“If thou hast been praying to Jesus Christ and He has helped thee, what can I say? Those who must marry must marry. But I shall lose thee as I have lost Aristarchus.”
“Oh, Master: thou knowest well thou hast not lost me!” exclaimed Aristarchus, reproachfully. “We love and serve the same God. It was you, Master, who gave Jesus to me and I still have Jesus.”
“Nevertheless, thou hast gone from me. I feel thou hast. Thy wife has—stolen thee.”
Aristarchus, angry and resentful, moved a little away from Paul so that Paul’s hand slipped from his shoulder and his arm fell dead and limp.
“It is not true, Master,” he said.
“No, dear Father, it is not true,” urged Lycastus.
“Only I,” said Paul, “can know who are those who dwell in my heart, and thou, Aristarchus, are not one of them.... But here I leave thee. This road on our left is mine and, as thou hast reminded me, Jason will be waiting for me.”
The three men stopped at the cross-roads in the dusk. It was the short time of half-light. The sky in the east was the green of apples, and in the west it was like the red of the pomegranate’s fruit. All three men were disturbed and sad. Aristarchus, so loyal and patient, felt his anger melt suddenly: the something hard in his bosom softened and went.
“Come, Master,” he said, “come to my home. Come and speak with my wife. Thou dost not know her because thou wilt not.”
“But, Jason will be....” began Paul, the words dying on his lips.
“Go with him, dear Father,” urged Lycastus, “I will come with thee.”
So Paul turned without a word and went with his young friends, but the dark look on his face matched the dark shadow that, from the northern mountains, was swallowing up this land.
It was but a short way to the house of Aristarchus, and as they entered the little stone dwelling they found a woman awaiting them. Aristarchus saluted his wife with a kiss, placing his hands one on each shoulder.
“Master, this is my wife, and here, Philyra, is Paul of Tarsus of whom thou hast heard me tell so many times.”
“Welcome, Master,” she said, and she pressed herself against the doorway to let him pass.
Inside there was but little light. The son of Aristarchus and Philyra was asleep in a wooden cradle on the floor near the centre of the room. On a table near by were wine and food.
“Thou wilt sit and drink, Master?” asked Philyra.
But Paul waved her aside and remained standing.
The child woke and, seeing his father, said some little words. He was fair, like his tender, beautiful mother. As Aristarchus moved forward to greet his son, Lycastus pulled his garment, but Aristarchus, paying no heed, walked to the crude cradle he had made, and bent over his babe. He gave the child his finger to play with, and lingered by him a moment or two.
“Didst thou finish thy work?” inquired Philyra, abashed yet very eager.
“Yes. It was very hot. Our Master has come to talk with us, Philyra. Thou wilt sit, Master?”
“No,” answered Paul, “I came for but a minute. Jason awaits me. And I would be alone. Farewell!”
“Stay, Master, stay!” cried Philyra. “I have heard thee talk of Christ—many times I have heard thee in the market.”
She shrank a little after she had spoken, afraid that she had said what should have been left to others.
Paul looked at her kindly, but with no trust in his eyes.
“Thy son has been baptized?” he asked.
“Oh, yes. Indeed, yes,” she answered.
“And thou and Aristarchus are already followers of Christ! Why, then, should I linger? So many are unsaved.”
“I think,” said Lycastus, “some men and some women want support in their faith. When the light is withdrawn, there is darkness.”
“Put not thy faith in man, Lycastus,” said Paul, sternly. “Light proceeds from God, and God never withdraws Himself.”
“Then if thou art not the light,” said Philyra in a whisper, “thou art the lamp that shields the light, that keeps it burning—for us.”
But Paul’s dark face remained dark, and when the child in the cradle began again to speak little words, the great teacher turned to go. He withdrew very silently, saying only, “Farewell!” as he reached the door. As he disappeared, Lycastus asked Aristarchus a question with his eyebrows, and, in reply, Aristarchus gravely lowered his head.
So Lycastus followed Paul into the night which by now had come. He could see his Master outlined against the thick stars. Paul was walking slowly; his heavy frame was bent, and his robe trailed in the dust. Lycastus, fearing to incur his anger, walked some paces behind his Master, and his sandalled feet stepped warily.
He loved Paul dearly, and to-night his heart ached for him and his conscience smote him. But so full of tenderness is the heart of man, and so sweetly selfish is man’s love for woman, that in a very short time he had forgotten his Master and, in imagination, Drusilla walked by his side, her slender fingers in his, her head on his heart. For Lycastus was never alone. As soon as he was withdrawn from others, Drusilla was with him. To-night the stars were in her hair, and the little breeze was her breath. And he fell to thinking of the house they would share and of the babe that would be born to them, and in his heart of hearts he knew that what Paul had said was true. Paul had lost Aristarchus, and Lycastus soon would be lost to him also.
“It must be so! It is right it should be so!” said Lycastus to himself.
Yet he felt sad when he thought of Paul, and he sought in his mind for something he could say or do to comfort him.
Presently they were at the cross-roads. Paul stopped, turned, and saw his young friend approaching. But he would not return Lycastus’ greeting; instead, he stood firm and rigid, his thick neck and noble head immovable. The wild eyes had in them light that was not borrowed from the stars.
“Pass on!” he said. “Trouble me not!”
So Lycastus passed on to his home and, ere he had unloosened his robe, had forgotten Paul and was already dreaming of Drusilla and the glad days to come.
ToSamuel Langford
SOUR and always a little miserable, Vuk Karadjitch worked all day in the fields, feeling that life had brought him nothing. Life was as tasteless as water, as unmusical as the chink of money on a counter. He could not conceive why he had been born; existence was a casually organized series of accidents. Every thing that happened was accidental. Death was the only event that the gods had deliberately and elaborately planned: one saw death coming almost from the very moment that one was born.
Karadjitch had the lithe body of an aristocrat: the features also, and the poise of head. His neck had proud muscles, and his throat was shapely. But though he had the appearance and carriage of one highly born, his birth was lowly, and the education he had snatched, almost stolen, from life was not of the kind to increase his money-earning capacity.
His mind, a little marred at birth, had been almost ruined by knowledge. His brain fastened itself on the past—on mythology—the sweet legend of Hylas, and on the golden story of Helen of Troy. It is so easy to make the past more real than the present: it is so pleasant to do this, so fruitful of happiness. So Vuk Karadjitch lived in the days that were long before his birth.
And as he worked in the orchards that lie above Kirekoj—working at night to keep robbers away—he stared continually at the moon, the moon that was to him the oldest and most tired thing in all God’s universe. Ever since he had been a boy this wayward planet had excited him, and the coming of manhood had not lessened the strange sympathy, even longing, that he felt for the great globe of light wandering with such self-conscious pride among the stars....
His mother, a harassed, reserved woman, used years ago to put little Vuk to bed with fear whenever the moon shone through the high, shutterless window. She would cover his head so that he should not see the blue light on the wall.
“Go to sleep, child,” she would whisper as she bent over him; “do not walk to-night.”
But almost of a certainty he would rise in his sleep and walk to the room in which his mother sat, his eyes open and luminous, his little hands stretched palm upwards in front of him. Then she would tremblingly put down her work, go to him, and just touching him with the tips of her fingers, guide him back to bed.
If, as often happened, the boy’s father was in the house when Vuk walked, the gnarled old man would roughly seize him and shake him into terrified wakefulness.
“It’s a beating the lad wants,” the father would say; and, indeed, one night he raised his hand and his son staggered and shrieked under the blow he received.
Vuk’s father had reason, though he knew it not, to dislike the boy. Karadjitch was a cuckold, but so little suspicion had he of this, that he smiled with secret pleasure when neighbours remarked how like to him was his wife’s handsome boy.
One evening the mother arranged a curtain over the bedroom window so that the moon could not get at her son. But even on that night Vuk walked. And, a few evenings later, softly entering his room, his mother saw him standing on the back of a high chair at the window, his body precariously balanced, his dilated eyes fixed most questioningly on the molten moon....
She spoke nothing to her neighbours of all these things which, I must tell you, happened fifteen years ago in that most lovely of towns—Doiran so white and perfect standing by the blue, deep lake whose name is also Doiran.
Kirekoj has no lake like Doiran, yet Vuk, now a young man of twenty-three, loved this place cupped so gently in the mountains. He had only to walk up through the vineyards and orchards and drag himself to the top of the ridge to see Langaza which, though not so beautiful as Doiran, is perhaps more mysterious.
Just as, when a boy, he had been employed to scare away birds from the crops, so was he now paid to guard the fruit-burdened orchards from robbers....
One night in August his depression was so great that, as he sat with his back against a young pomegranate tree, he allowed his mind to become numb with wretchedness. There was no moon this night, and he had come to depend so much upon this far-off friend of his that a great loneliness oppressed him. A dog,snuffing in the undergrowth, came to him and put his nose in Vuk’s open hand. The young man made no response, but the dog licked and liked him and stayed with him. And every night the affectionate wild creature would come and sit by him. Never once did Vuk give him a caress or vouch him a word. Yet he never wished the dog to go away.
The man and woman in Kirekoj with whom Vuk lived were kind to him, though they thought him strange and often wondered what his thoughts were. When Vuk set out in the evening to his work, the woman would give him a little parcel of food—bread, a handful of olives, and a bottle of red wine, and Vuk would smile at her shyly and say some words of thanks. The young men of the village—mostly Bulgars—had long ago accepted him; at first, they had teased him a little, but as he always replied with a smile of good-nature, they had soon come to see that his oddness was not a thing to give them amusement.
Sometimes Vuk would try to throw himself into their company, forcing himself to be one of them. He was afraid of his own strangeness. But his abnormal shyness barred his way, and the sensitive distaste he had for life was too strong to be overcome. He envied his fellows. He envied their capacity for comradeship, their day-long happiness, the ease with which they laughed and talked. But he could never become like them. His self-distrust increased with the years, and he turned more passionately than ever to his dreams of the past and to his silent companion in the sky.
One afternoon, the man with whom he lived came in from his work in the fields and found Vuk reading a book.
“Will you drink wine with me?” the man asked.
“Thank you: I will,” answered Vuk, shrinking a little.
The man poured out two glasses, and, as the day was very hot, Vuk drained his at a single draught. The man silently refilled it, and in five minutes the glass was again empty.
His host, looking at him, smiled.
“Why don’t you go to the inn and drink with Stepan and the other lads?” he asked. “To get drunk sometimes is good for a man.”
Vuk, returning his gaze, smiled also.
“I will drink with you, if you like,” he returned, for the wine had excited him, and he did not feel as much afraid as usual.
So his host brought another bottle and yet another and, after some time, Vuk began to talk.
“Am I in your way living here?” he asked, his eyes looking wounded and beseeching.
“No. I like you to be here. My wife likes you to be here. We are all happy together—eh?”
“I am happy with you,” said Vuk. “I often want to say things to you, but I can’t. I am not stupid. I understand things, but—somehow—— ” His voice trailed off to a murmur. Then, clenching his fists and tightening all his body, he said with an effort: “I understand things, but I cannot speak about them. It seems as though you are all so far off that you wouldn’t grasp what I said. And I am always afraid that I might say something that would be strange to you.”
His host laughed tolerantly.
“We are all strange, eh? And what would it matter if we didn’t understand you? You must talk: it is good for every man to talk. Perhaps you are wise, and no one understands wise men.”
This comforted Vuk a little.
“Perhaps I am,” he said; “I do not know.” He paused for a moment. “Have you—have you ever noticed at night how, though it may be very silent, it is still more silent when the moon appears?”
His companion considered a moment.
“No, I don’t think I have,” he answered, shifting uneasily in his chair.
Vuk took another mouthful of wine.
“Well, you listen one night and you’ll hear. Especially when the moon is just rising—red and swollen on the horizon. Of course, she is angry then, and at those times I always think she is like some raging, drunken queen rising from her couch in the middle of the night.”
His companion stared at Vuk for a moment and then laughed. But by now Vuk was too exalted and excited to notice that his host was uncomfortable and perhaps a little contemptuous, and, putting his arms on the table and leaning forward, he began to talk volubly.
“I wish I had money to buy jewels,” he said, “especially certain jewels like opals. I would like to hold many opals in the hollow of my hand: I would like to crush them together between my hands. You know that all fire is the sun. Did you know that? Yes. I’m telling you. Take coal. Coal is buried wood. And what is wood? Wood is trees. And it is the sun that makes trees grow. It pulls at the ground and draws them out; it warms them and feeds them. When you burn wood and coal, it is the sun that leaps out at you—a little bit of the sun that has been silently hiding for many years. A good deal of the sun is stored under the ground and a good deal of it is alive and burning there. Well, it is the same with the moon. Some precious stones absorb the moon. Opals do. That is why I want to hold many opals in my hand and crush them together. And I am sure that the moon gives herself to water, especially to large sheets of water like Lake Langaza.” He paused a few moments, his thoughts far away. “You can feel the moon, soft and sliding, on your limbs, if you bathe at night when the moon is high in the sky: but when the dawn comes, the light of the sun destroys all the moon that is in the water.”
He noticed, for the first time, that his companion’s eyes were shut and that his heavy breathing was developing into a snore.
“I am explaining this to you!” exclaimed Vuk, peremptorily.
But his host sank deeper into slumber, and for a little while Vuk talked quietly to himself until he, too, slept.
That evening at dusk Vuk, dazed with wine, made his way to the orchards above Kirekoj. For a long time he sat brooding among the trees, until the moon, full and splendid, went redly up the sky. He watched her so closely that he could see her moving. To-night she did not seem to glide: she moved with just perceptible jerks—“Like the hands of a very large clock,” said Vuk to himself, for he had wandered far and had lived in many big cities.
He watched the trees appearing out of the blackness: they seemed to be marching upon him, closing in upon him. So he arose and began to walk, and presently came to the edge of the orchard and looked up at the mountain at whose feet he stood. He began to climb, and soon, after leaving the vineyards behind him, he came upon large, bare rocks in the clefts of which grass and flowers grew. It was while he was climbing both with hands and feet that his dog-friend, excited but silent, joined him.
“Tchut! tchut!” said Vuk, beneath his breath.
The dog, honoured by human speech, became still more excited, and Vuk could see him dimly as, having rushed to the top of a high rock, he stood open-mouthed, wagging his tail.
Now, there was no one either in Langaza or Kirekoj who was more bound by conscience to his work than Vuk Karadjitch, and it was very strange that on this night he should, without effort, have left his master’s orchards to wander up the mountains. He did not know where he was going or, indeed, why he was “going” at all. But I have no doubt that something in his brain—one of the many selves that were Vuk—was urging him forward to some secret purpose of its own.
Stillness and the moon’s rays held the night, and though the moon falsified distance and misled even Vuk who was used to the moon’s deceit, he reached the top of the mountains sooner than he had expected. There, unseen, Langaza lay beneath him. Looking in Langaza’s direction, he suddenly became aware of his motive in coming thither. Turning to the dog, he muttered threateningly:
“Go away! Go away!”
But though he threw stones at the animal, it refused to leave him. So, muttering to himself, Vuk proceeded down the other side of the mountain, making his way to Langaza with impatient strides.
Langaza is a lake without banks, and even a careful investigator will find it difficult to determine where dry land ends and water begins. Rushes and grasses, tropically luxuriant, grow from dry earth, mud, and the lake’s bed. In hot weather the air is miasmatic, and millions of mosquitoes make with their wings high shrieksas they fly their way through the air.
When Vuk found himself on the edge of this poisoned richness, he was covered with sweat, and the fumes of the afternoon’s wine had left his brain. For a little time he stood looking at the moon—not at the moon in the sky, for that was too far away, and its very distance mocked him; but at the moon in the lake that was so near. Man cannot without wings soar into the sky, but his own weight will carry him to the bottom of the deepest abyss.
He walked into the rushes and grasses and, in a moment, was surrounded by them; they towered above his head, and soon his feet began to sink in the slime and mud of the lake’s true edge. The dog, with velvet paws, followed a pace behind him. Vuk had forgotten him, for Vuk’s mind was now full of the moon and inflamed by it.
In a very short time walking became laborious and slow, for Vuk’s feet sank into the mud until it covered his ankles, and it was with a great effort that he drew them out again. The sucking, explosive sound they made, and the Moon Man’s heavy breathing startled many large water-birds that, with flopping wings and raucous throats, announced their fear as they rushed away.
Guided by the moon, Vuk at length reached the inner edge of the rushes. In his journey he had fallen many times, and his clothes, his hands, and his face were thick with ooze; the spiky rushes had pierced his flesh, and hisface and neck were bleeding. The water now reached his thighs. He stood still while he undressed. His impatient hands feverishly unwound the long cloth that circled his stomach many times. When naked, he waded still further into the lake, and then, lifting his feet and pressing his chest against the water, he swam towards the moon lying in the lake. The dog, devoted and dumb, and seemingly driven by the same fate, followed him.
Vuk could swim well, but he was already exhausted before he had emerged from the forest of rushes and grasses. It was a long, long way to the moon in the lake, and in a little time his strokes became feeble and there was only just enough movement in his arms to keep him afloat. Turning himself on his back, he rested. All deep desire had gone from his mind. Weary, he wished for oblivion. The moon was at the bottom of the lake, waiting. He had only just to sink now where he was, and slowly, very slowly, but oh! how safely and inevitably, he would go to her.
He began to sink and to be smothered.... After a time he reappeared, feebly struggling. The dog snatched at and missed him. Vuk sank again. And after that Vuk’s body, remaining, for how long I know not, midway between the water’s surface and the lake’s bottom, was never again seen.
The dog swam in ever-widening circles round the spot where the Moon Man had disappeared until he, also, sank, perhaps joining the only friend he had ever known.