THE FIRST OF MAY
All the morning of April thirtieth Curtis saw nothing of Panayota. She
was gone into the fields and upon the hillsides with the other women
and the children of the village to gather flowers for the May-day
festival. Late in the afternoon the whole town set out for
Hepta-Miloi, or Seven-Mills, the place in the mountains where, year
after year, they were accustomed to hold this innocent and beautiful
celebration, one of the most fragrant and lovely of all the
inheritances from the days of the aesthetic old gods. Laughing,
singing, shouting merry sallies and replies, the procession scrambled
up the stony, winding street of the village, laden with baskets and
gayly colored bags filled with provisions. Everybody, too, carried
flowers--flowers in baskets, in aprons, in the hands. There were
donkeys and dogs innumerable. Some of the donkeys carried tables
strapped to their backs, with the four legs sticking up into the air,
and giving the impression that, if one of the animals should keel a
somerset into a ravine, he would be sure to light upon one or the other
of his two sets of feet. Upon others of these nodding, shambling
little animals rode such of the villagers as could not make so arduous
a journey on foot: a picturesque old man in holiday costume,
resplendent in bright, new fez, ruffled shirt and gaudy sash; here and
there an old woman who had made the same journey every year for the
last forty years; and several strings of small children, four and five
on a donkey's backbone, like monkeys on a limb or kidneys on a spit.
The demarch, in accordance with the dignity of his office, rode at the
head of the procession, side by side, when the road was not too narrow,
with Papa-Maleko, whose animal was nearly covered by his flowing black
robe, and who held an umbrella over his tall hat. Lindbohm had refused
the luxury of a mount and strode sturdily along with his hand upon
Curtis' saddle. Up and up they climbed beyond the last plumed outposts
of olive groves into the kingdom of the pines. At times they walked by
the side of a deep chasm at whose bottom swirled, darted and leapt a
stream of molten silver or of ink, according as it flashed in the
setting sun or crept beneath the shadow of dank ferns or deep green
trees. At such times Curtis' moth-eaten, blue-gray beast walked upon
the ticklish, imminent edge of destruction, loosening rocks and bits of
earth that went scurrying into the waters far below. Entreaty,
threats, blows upon the side of the head with the rope that did service
as a bridle, were of no effect to make him walk elsewhere.
"Look here, Lindbohm," cried Curtis, "I've told you my address. If I
plunge down yonder giddy height, write to my governor, will you? And
don't trouble to pick up the pieces."
"What's the matter?" shouted the demarch, looking back.
"This donkey will surely fall with me."
"Bah! Let him have his head. He knows his business. No donkey ever
falls."
"What if he does? Cannot a stork fly?" asked a black-eyed, roguish
maiden, who possibly thought that the American could learn good Greek
from more than one pair of lips. This sally evoked such an inordinate
peal of good-natured laughter that Curtis was unable to think of an
appropriate reply, and contented himself with pulling a rose from the
basket hanging at his saddle and throwing it at the saucy girl.
In the purple twilight they came in sight of the first of the seven
mills. A tall, slanting barrel of masonry received the water that
turned the stone wheel that lay upon its face in a small building
covered with reddish brown tiles. The miller and his wife, dusty as
moths, came out to greet the merry throng that poured into his little
plateau with much shouting and singing and strumming of guitars. Two
or three shock-headed youngsters peeped from behind the building, and a
girl, probably three years old, clothed only in a flour sack that
reached to the middle of her stomach, ran, like a frightened chicken,
to cover in the folds of her mother's dress. The child was glowing
with health and beautiful as an infant Dionysus from the broken arm of
a Hermes carved by Praxiteles himself. And now they were come into a
region of rank, water-loving trees, great ferns and streams of water
that slipped smoothly and silently through square sluices of white
masonry. The mills were close together. At the fourth in number they
stopped and found that brave preparation had already been made. The
plateau before the mill-house was here larger than ordinary and in its
midst grew a wide-spreading oak from a lower branch of which hung a
powerful lamp, protected from the wind by a glass cage. At the foot of
a shielding wall of rock, several lambs were fragrantly roasting upon
long wooden spits, and by each an old man squatted, so intent upon
turning the carcass that he scarcely looked up to welcome the gay and
noisy villagers.
"How go the lambs, Barba Yanne?"
"Is it tender, think you, Barba Spiro?"
"Are they nearly done, Kosta? Holy Virgin, what an appetite I've got!"
"And I!"
"And I!"
With a perfect babble of such exclamations, mingled with much laughter,
and many shouted orders and directions, Ambellaki took possession of
the place where it had elected to outwear the night with song and
feasting and to welcome the First of May. The tables were unstrapped
from the backs of the donkeys and set in line. Cloths were spread and
candles were lighted in candlesticks surmounted by protecting glass
globes. Chairs were taken down from others of the donkeys, and two or
three long benches were produced by the miller. A dozen pairs of
strong hands were extended to Curtis and he was assisted from the back
of his wilful beast to a comfortable seat.
"Whew! I'm glad to get down from there," he exclaimed to Lindbohm. "I
think I'll stay here till my foot gets well and walk back. Looks
jolly, doesn't it? And how good those lambs smell! I believe I could
eat one all by myself."
Plates, bottles containing oil floating upon vinegar, decanters of
wine, great piles of crisp salad, loaves of brown bread, sardellas
arranged upon plates like the spokes of a wheel, tiny snow drifts of
country cheese--began to appear upon the table. Lindbohm entered into
the spirit of the occasion with genial enthusiasm. Although he could
not speak a word of Greek, he blundered everywhere, eager to assist.
He lifted the children from the donkeys, pulled plates and provisions
from the baskets, and washed the long tender lettuce at a place where
the water leapt from one conduit to another. All this time the old men
were patiently turning the lambs. Every now and then one of them would
dip half a lemon into a plate of melted butter and rub it over the
brown, sizzling flesh. Beneath each of the lambs was a shallow bed of
ashes. The coals that glowed there were not visible, for, in roasting
meat _à la palikari_, the best effects are obtained if it be slowly
done. The proper roasting of a lamb is a matter of supreme importance.
Reputations are won thereby in a single day, and as easily lost. The
meat must be done clear through, evenly and just to a turn--not one
turn of the spit too many nor too few; it must be so tender that it is
just ready to drop from the bone, and have that delicious flavor which
is imparted from the coals of the fragrant wild thyme, but it must not
taste smoky. Verily a great art this, and the old men who sat squat at
the cranks of the spits had no time for social distractions.
Everything was ready now except the lambs, and a great silence fell
upon the company. One young fellow, who offered to lay a small wager
that Barba Yanne would be the first man ready, was sternly rebuked by
the priest:
"Silence! do you not know that this is the critical moment, and you may
spoil everything by distracting their attention?"
So they waited for a seeming eternity, sniffing the delicious aroma and
watching the appetizing contest with hungry eyes. At last the young
man of the wager broke the spell by crying:
"Na! I should have won." For Barba Yanne was indeed rising slowly to
his feet, painfully straightening out the hinges of his aged knees.
"Praise God!" shouted a chorus of voices.
"Do you not see that it is ready?" asked Barba Yanne reproachfully.
"O, yes!" exclaimed the demarch, "we must take it up. If it stays one
instant over time on the fire the delicate flavor will be ruined."
Half a dozen men sprang towards the fire, but Lindbohm, comprehending
the action, was before them all. Lifting the lamb by one end of the
spit, he advanced towards the tables, and looked inquiringly about.
"What shall I do with it?" he asked Michali. "There is no plate big
enough, and if I lay it on the table it will spoil the cloth."
Shouts of laughter greeted the Swede's evident perplexity, and even the
bare teeth of the spitted animal seemed grinning at him in derision.
"But you do not put it on the table," cried Michali running to his
assistance. "You stick the sharp end of the spit in the ground and
stand it up by the side of the tree. So--that's right. Head up."
The demarch now approached Lindbohm and laughingly offered him a Cretan
knife and a huge fork.
"He wants you to carve," explained Michali. "It is a great honor."
"No! no!" cried the Swede, pushing the demarch playfully back. "I do
not know how. Besides, I am too weak from hunger. Moreover, I haven't
the time." And he seated himself resolutely at the table. The demarch
therefore carved, and piled the meat upon plates which the girls held
for him. Before he had finished, Barba Spiro brought his lamb and
solemnly stuck it up by its partly carved mate.
"Shall I cut up this one, too?" asked Kyr' Nikolaki; he had finished
with number one. "Or shall we eat what we have first?"
"We will begin on this one," said the priest, "and I will carve the
second." After a playful struggle he dispossessed the mayor of the
knife and fork and led him to the head of the table. Then the good
priest reverently bent his head and made the sign of the cross, and all
of his flock followed his example. Even Lindbohm and Curtis, watching
carefully, did as the others. And now the feast was on in earnest,
silently at first, till the sharpest pangs of hunger were appeased,
with song and laughter later in its course. The three guests and the
older members of the community sat at the table. The others and the
children found seats upon the ground, in the doorway of the mill-house,
on the water troughs. Conversation began in full-mouthed remarks as to
the quality of the lamb.
"This is marvellous!"
"A masterpiece."
"Tasty."
"A miracle. Done just to a turn. Neither too much nor too little."
"Bravo, Barba Yanne," said the mayor, in judicial tones, raising his
glass meanwhile.
"Barba Yanne! Barba Yanne!" shouted the entire board, and there was a
great clinking of glasses. The old man swelled and flushed with
pleasure.
"I ought to know how to roast a lamb," he said. "I have done it this
thirty years."
A girl brought the head of Barba Spiro's lamb and laid it before the
demarch, who plucked out one of the eyes with a fork and passed the
morsel to Curtis, who took it and looked inquiringly at Michali.
"What am I to do with it?" he asked.
"Eat it. It is the most delicate tid-bit of the whole lamb--sweet,
juicy, delicious."
"I've no doubt it's juicy," replied Curtis, "but I couldn't eat it to
save my life. It looks as though it could see. Excuse me, Kyr'
Demarche," he continued in Greek, "I do not care for the eye. If you
will give me a little more of the meat, please--" and he passed his
plate.
"Not like the eye!" shouted everybody in astonishment. Lindbohm took
the succulent morsel from Curtis' hand, and swallowed it with a loud
sipping sound, as though it were an oyster.
"Kalo! kalo!" he exclaimed, smacking his lips.
And so the feast wore on. When it was not possible for anybody to eat
another mouthful, Turkish coffee was prepared over the miller's
_foufous_, two or three little portable stoves, circular and made of
sheet iron; and cigarettes were lighted. Under the soothing influence
of the mild Cretan tobacco silence fell again, disturbed only by the
soft splashing of waters. Through a rift in the branches of the giant
oak Curtis could see the bright, silver bow of the new moon, and, far
below, a glittering star, like the tip of an arrow shot athwart the
night. The girls were tumbling the flowers into a pile beneath the
lamp: bright red geraniums, clusters of the fragrant heliotrope, April
roses, small, red and very sweet; aromatic basil, myrtle with its
bridal green. Then they sat down about the heap and began to weave
garlands, using the myrtle as a background for the pied coloring of the
blossoms. A nightingale sang somewhere among the trees behind the old
mill, the waters never ceased to murmur and gurgle in the moonlight,
and a faint breeze from the far sea brought a message of cherry trees
in bloom. A young man sitting on the ground with his back against the
tree played a few chords upon a guitar, and sang, with much feeling,
one line of a couplet:
"My little angel, sugar sweet, angelic honey maiden"--
That he was not improvising was evident from the fact that all the
Greeks present joined him in the second line:
"Oh sweeter than cold water is, that angels drink in Eden!"
For several moments he strummed the strings softly and then sang:
"If I should die at last of love, my grave with basil
cover;"--
and again came the response,
"And when you water it perchance you'll weep for
your poor lover!"
The words even in Greek did not mean much, but they sounded very
beautiful to those simple peasants, for they were associated with many
such scenes as this; they carried the memories of some back to
childhood, of others perhaps to their wedding day. They made Panayota
think of the little cottage among the Sphakiote mountains, and of her
mother singing as she paddled the white clothes at the brook. The
words contained the untranslatable spirit of poetry, the power to move
the heart by association rather than by their meaning.
Some one proposed a dance; one by one the sturdy mountaineers took
their places in a line and soon, hands linked, they were bounding
beneath the flickering lamp in the wild Pyrrhic. Loud calls were made
for different members of the company, famous as leaders, and these led
the line in turn, vying with one another in difficulty of steps
executed. When Lindbohm arose from his seat and took his place at the
tail of the line, he was welcomed with shouts of "Bravo! bravo!" He
had observed the simpler steps of the minor performers carefully, and
acquitted himself with so much credit, that the girls, their hands full
of flowers and half-finished wreaths, arose and came forward, clapping
their palms and shrieking with delight. And when the handkerchief was
handed to him and he was motioned to the head of the line, he did not
refuse, but leapt into the air, whirled about under the arm of his
nearest neighbor, snapped his fingers in time to the music and cut
other terpsichorean pranks, to everybody's intense delight.
But dancing is hard work, and even youth will tire. The last capable
leader had done his part, and even the girls, with much laughter and
many feminine shrieks and protests, had been pulled to their feet and
given a turn, when Michali was asked to tell again the story of the
shipwreck, as many there present had only heard it at second hand. He
complied, and his vivid and picturesque narrative held his audience in
rapt attention. When he had finished many were fairly carried away
with excitement, and a loud-voiced and indignant clamor arose
concerning the state of Crete, the action of the powers and matters of
like import.
"Silence! silence!" cried the mayor, rising to his feet and hammering
on the table. "These are not matters for the May festival. Our
village, moreover, is in no danger from the Turks. We have always
dwelt quietly and peacefully behind our mountains, making our cheese,
harming no one, suffering no harm. However that may be, this is not a
suitable occasion to discuss war and politics."
"True! true!" shouted his faithful constituency.
"I am to blame," said Michali, "for the manner in which I told the
story. I will, therefore, make amends by singing a song, quite
suitable, I think, to the occasion. Spiro, play me the accompaniment."
After the applause had died, revived, and died away several times like
flames that are brought to life by vagrant gusts of wind, Spiro, the
owner of the guitar, offered to sing.
"Mind that it's perfectly proper for the ears of the ladies," cautioned
Papa-Maleko, as the young man seated himself in a chair and prepared to
play.
"He has a fine voice," said Curtis in Greek, when Spiro had finished.
"O, Spiro is one of our most famous singers," replied the demarch.
"And now, Kyr' Yanne, it's your turn."
"He means you," said Michali in English. "Yanne is the Greek for John.
He means to be very friendly, to show that you are one of us."
"I will sing you," replied Curtis, without the least hesitation, "a
Greek song that I have myself written," and turning to Michali, "I
can't quite explain that in Greek: it is an American college song that
I have translated into Greek. I have read it over two or three times
to Panayota and she says she understands it. Indeed, she has changed
it a little." And he sang in a baritone voice of indifferent timbre,
but with great spirit, the following words to the tune of "The Man Who
Drinks His Whiskey Clear":
[Illustration: Greek song]
"Tell them," said Lindbohm to Michali, "that I cannot sing in Greek,
but that I desire to do my share and, with their permission, I will
sing a little song in my own language, appropriate, I assure you, to
the occasion." Michali translated and there was no doubt as to the
reception of the proposition. Lindbohm had not gone farther than the
first line before smothered "Ahs!" of admiration were heard. He was a
singer. His voice was mellow, pleading, tender, rich. The song was
evidently something pathetic, for it brought tears to the eyes of the
impressionable Greeks. The last, deep, vibrating note died upon a
couch of silence. A long interval ensued, for to the Cretans it seemed
profane to reward such beautiful sound with a rude clatter of hands.
At length Panayota rose from her place, and walking straight up to
Lindbohm, laid a wreath of red roses and myrtle upon his brow.
They packed the mules and started home long before daylight. The
procession wound down a rocky path and into the gray town in the silver
dawn, with a chill breeze blowing from the sea, and one great, white
star glowing in the heavens like a drop of dew. The wreaths had been
threaded upon the roasting-spits, and the girls, two and two, carried
them. Before sunrise a fresh wreath was hanging over the door of every
house in Ambellaki.