SOME PICTURES AND A RECITATION
Curtis was confined to his room four days with the foot, which time he
devoted assiduously to the method.
On the fifth day he was able, with the aid of a rustic crutch, to get
down to the demarch's café. Michali assisted him as he hobbled down
the stony street, his lame foot clumsily bundled in rags and swinging
in the air. Lindbohm strode on ahead, instinctively making sword-like
passes with the rattan cane. The latter's appearance had been much
dignified by the assumption of a swashbuckling pair of yellow boots.
He had been repeatedly offered a Cretan fez, but he clung with
inexplicable affection to the shapeless and uneasy straw, still
tethered to his buttonhole.
"Behold!" cried Michali, as they reached a turn in the street whence
the view was unobstructed over the tops of the houses. "Yonder is the
ravine where we came up, and there is the sea. You will hardly find a
village in all Greece from which the sea is not visible."
The village, on this fragrant and dewy spring morning, was peaceful and
idyllic. Curtis drew a long breath, and, closing his eyes, imagined
himself in ancient Arkadia. On the balconies of the neatly whitewashed
houses pots of basil and begonia had been set out, and formed green
patches against the white. Here and there an almond tree in full bloom
dispensed wide sweetness, or shook its snowy petals to the breeze. The
site of the town was so uneven that it seemed possible to step from the
threshold of some of the dwellings on to the red-tiled roofs of others.
There was water everywhere. Sometimes it ran through wooden troughs
and sometimes it darted down clear byways worn in the blue rock. They
walked beside a wall, on which was an aqueduct, and they heard the
water gurgling above their heads.
The wall was overgrown with vines and a long line of poppies had leaped
atop. Slightly bowed by the wind they seemed stooping to drink. At
the end of the wall the rivulet poured into a round stone basin, sunk
into the ground for the convenience of animals. A plane tree waited
patiently at the basin that the sheep and goats might drink in the
shade. A wandering peddler with his donkey came down a tributary
street. The animal was sandwiched between two boxes, each as large as
himself. The street was so steep that he seemed to be walking on his
front legs.
The demarch was standing in the door of his café. A single grape vine,
spreading out on a frame, supported by two posts and the wall, made a
canopy above his head. The leaves were new, and were as pale green as
young frogs. Kyrios Nikolaki was an imposing figure, and doubtless
felt his position in the community, combining as he did in one person
the important functions of mayor, grocer, saloon keeper and banker. He
stood now, with his hairy hands crossed over his semi-spherical
stomach, watching the advent of his guests and smiling benignly. As
Curtis glanced at the tall yellow boots, the voluminous breeches, the
double-breasted vest with woolen balls for buttons, and the rakish fez,
he thought for the first time since landing in Crete of his camera.
That had gone down with the "Holy Mary." The demarch was clean-shaven,
with the exception of his gray mustache, and his shirtsleeves were
fresh from the iron. His cheeks were florid with good living, and he
would have been a comely man save for the fact that his lower lids had
fallen a little, disclosing a red and raw looking spot under each eye.
"Welcome! welcome!" he cried, as the party arrived. "How is Mr. Stork
and the Lieutenant? And Kyr' Michali? And where is the Church this
morning? Why did you not bring him along, that he might take a drink
of cognac with the State?"
"I am very well," replied Curtis in Greek. "We did not bring the
Church, because we did not see him."
Curtis had made great progress in Panayota's language. He had found
the girl very willing to talk with him and not a little interested in
his efforts to acquire fluency in her native tongue. He had also made
this discovery, which pleased him greatly, that the Greek of these
sturdy mountaineers was easier for him than that of Athens, as it
possessed a more archaic flavor.
"Marvelous! marvelous!" shouted the demarch. "Your progress is
wonderful. I observe it every day."
"Ah, this is comfortable," said Curtis, sitting on a bench with his
back against the plane tree. "Are all the Cretan villages as pretty as
this?"
"Some are much more beautiful," cried Michali. "That is, those which
the Turks have not destroyed. But this village is not so easy for them
to reach. You see how hard it is from the sea to come. And behold, we
have all around us a circle of mountains."
"An enemy couldn't get in at all," said Lindbohm, casting an
experienced eye about. He was striding nervously to and fro, fencing
with an imaginary opponent.
"Yes, one way. There is, what you call it--a cut in the hill--"
"A ravine," suggested Curtis.
"Yes, I think so. A ravine, very deep and very crooked. But the
shepherds watch him all the time."
The conversation did not progress rapidly, because Greek politeness
demanded that Michali translate every word for the demarch, whose own
remarks, moreover, it was necessary to turn into English.
"Would you like to see the inside of my store?" asked the latter, a
lull in the conversation making him feel that he must do something for
the entertainment of his guests. Michali had again described the
shipwreck, the English had been denounced as barbarians, worse than the
Turks, and the demarch had told a story of a famous battle in which
thirty Cretans slew two hundred Mohammedans, on which occasion he
himself had led the victorious party. There seemed to be nothing more
to talk about.
"I have some very fine pictures inside," said the mayor. "Come,
Lieutenant, Mr. Stork, Michali."
"Where are the pictures?" asked Curtis, when they had entered, hoping
that his host possessed a collection of Byzantine, or perhaps Venetian,
works of art. Kyr' Nikolaki glanced about the room and waved his hand
majestically.
"They are hanging on the walls," he replied.
Borrowing Lindbohm's cane, he made the circuit of the room, pointing to
the wretched prints that were hung high up, close to the ceiling.
"This," he explained, "is Marko Botsares, a famous Greek patriot of the
war of independence. Have you ever heard of him?"
"Heard of him!" cried Curtis.
"At midnight in his guarded tent
The Turk lay dreaming of the hour,
When Greece, her knee in suppliance bent
Should tremble at his power!"
"And this is Ali Pasha, with his head in the lap of his favorite wife,"
continued the mayor. "He lived at Janina. He was finally killed, as
he deserved to be. He terrified Albania, Epirus and a part of
Macedonia, but the Suliotes he could not terrify. Their women
preferred to die rather than submit to Turks." Kyr' Nikolaki was
reciting, after the manner of a lecturer, one of those glorious
incidents in modern Greek history which all Greeks know by heart.
"Why do you go to Suli for an example of heroism?" cried Michali,
springing to his feet, his eyes blazing with excitement. "He will tell
you of the deeds of the brave Suliote women, and how they blew
themselves up with their own powder, or danced, singing, over the edge
of one cliff, to save their honor. Why shall he not tell rather of the
convent of Arkadia?"
"Ah, certainly, certainly, tell them of Arkadia," cried the demarch,
catching the name.
"It was Mustapha Pasha," continued Michali, speaking rapidly despite
his unfamiliarity with English. His fists were clenched, and he jerked
out the words by nervously smiting the air, as though beating on an
invisible table.
"He had come with very many Turks to Retimo. He kills, he burns. The
women, and the small children, they cannot climb over the hills and
sleep on the rocks. They take asylum in the monastery of Arkadia, on
south side of Mt. Ida. The old men go, too. Mustapha, he puts cannon
on mountains, all around and fires down from above. By and by, he
beats down the walls, and his army rush into the court. He say
'Yield.' The women, the old men, the friars, they say 'No, we die!'
and they shoot from the windows. O, they kill very many Turks. Then
Mustapha bring in his cannon, and he commence shoot at walls of
building. Pretty soon he will make a hole. Father Gabriel, the
Hegoumenos, he see this. He shout through the roar of the cannon:
'Shall we die, my children, or shall we yield?' They say all together
'We shall die!'"
Lindbohm was striding up and down before the speaker. The demarch
still held the rattan cane, but the Lieutenant was making home thrusts
with his closed fist.
"Father Gabriel he stretch out his arms. They all fall on their knees,
the women, the children, the old men. The Hegoumenos blesses them; he
say, 'Father, into thy hands I commit these souls!' Then he goes down
cellar. They know where he gone. The women hug their babies tight and
begin to sing the hymn of liberty, and the men join in. They are all
looking to the sky and chanting--" and Michali sang:
"From the bones of the Greeks upspringing,
Who died that we might be free,
And the strength of thy strong youth bringing--
Hail, Liberty, Hail to thee!
"Every moment a bullet comes through and kills somebody, but they know
nothing, now, except the song 'Hail, Liberty.' Then the wall falls and
in rush the Turks and begin to kill, when 'boom' the powder magazine
roars like one gun, and all are dead--Greeks, Turks, all dead--ah! all
dead together!--two hundred Turks!"
But the demarch, not understanding all this, was unable to enter fully
into the enthusiasm of the others. He was anxious to continue with his
picture gallery.
"This," he said, "is the Lordos Beeron, who, being descended from the
ancient Greeks, came over to this country to fight for his native land."
Curtis, despite his enthusiasm for Byron, did not rise. He had seen
that woodcut before, in Athens. It represented the youthful poet
wearing a brass cavalry helmet with a sublime plume. This is the Byron
honored among the uneducated classes in Greece, who know him as soldier
and not as poet. With nodding plume and warlike eye he frowns terribly
down from the dingy walls of a thousand _khans_ and wayside inns. In
this apotheosis he no longer holds high converse with Shelley and Tom
Moore; he hobnobs with Ypsilanti, Botsares and Admiral Miaoules.
"This," continued Kyr' Nikolaki, "is the most beautiful woman in the
world. I have never found any one who knew her name, but all agree
that she is a Greek--probably a Sphakiote."
Lindbohm and Michali gazed earnestly at the cheap engraving, but no
name was visible. Curtis arose, and, placing his hand on the mayor's
shoulder, hopped across the room.
"An American actress, by Jove!" he exclaimed. "She's a beauty, indeed,
but she's an American, old man." And in Greek to the mayor: "She's an
American--ah--I can't think of the word for 'actor.' Michali, tell him
her picture is to be found in every nook and cranny of the civilized
globe. I can't say 'nook' and 'cranny' in Greek."