A GLITTERING ESPLANADE
Europeanism, that bubbles up in the tailor shops of Regent Street, and
pours its thin coating of dull color on the heels of the ever advancing
British musket, has not yet washed over the island of Crete. The
Akoond of Swat has donned a sack-coated suit of blue serge and a straw
hat; the cousins of native princes go down to the government offices
with brown linen on their backs and Buddha in their hearts; Fuzzy-Wuzzy
is cutting his hair--his Samson locks--and buying cork helmets. And
the missionary is picking his way through the corpses left in the trail
of the machine gun, bringing Christ and calico to the survivors. They
are putting pantaloons on the bronze statues of the desert, and are
sending the piquant apples of the Tree of Knowledge wrapped up in
bundles of mother hubbards, to the naked maidens of the South Sea Isles.
But Crete, beautiful Crete, is the one corner of the globe which the
dull, tame wave of European fashion has not yet touched and commonized.
The esplanade of Canea to-day, fronting the harbor, is the most
picturesque, fantastic, kaleidoscopic spot on earth. Here commingle,
swarm, interweave, huddle, scatter, pass and repass, costumes from the
Greek islands, from the provinces of Asia Minor, from the oases and
nomad tents of Africa, from Persia and the farthest East. The
traveler's first view of Canea, from the rowboat that takes him ashore,
is a half moon of white houses, splashed with red, terra cotta, yellow
and striped awnings, and beneath, a squirming, ever-changing mass of
bright turbans and sashes, fluttering black and yellow robes, naked
limbs and chests--and donkeys; moth-eaten donkeys laden with sacks,
goatskins of honey and cheese, huge panniers of green vegetables.
There on the right, in letters that can be read a mile away, is the
name of a café dedicated "Au Concert Européen." This is a bait for the
foreigners attached to the half-dozen steel hulks floating out yonder
in the sea, pointing ever shoreward their great guns that seem to
whisper:
"Be good. Don't kill each other, or we'll kill you all."
All Europeans are supposed to speak French. Several of the cafés
announce their business in more than one tongue: Greek, Turkish,
English, Italian. Under the awning of one sits a group of elderly
Mohammedans, smoking their bubbling narghiles and reading the tiny
local sheet; these are stout gentlemen in fezzes, pillars of Islam,
faithful husbands of harems. They have kindly faces and are really
good-hearted men whom no provocation, save that of religion, could
induce to cut your throat. You sit down and a bare-legged waiter,
whose fez and braid-trimmed jacket are sadly faded, "zigzags" among the
chairs, like a fly through raindrops, and stands at your side, the very
incarnation of silent and respectful inquiry. You are tired and you
say:
"Some cognac and brown soda." The waiter looks distressed, puzzled.
"Cognac," you repeat, "cognac and cold water, then."
He casts his eye over the group of pillars, and one of them, the
fattest and most benevolent appearing, carefully wipes the mouthpiece
of his narghile and hands the tube to his nearest neighbor. The latter
accepts the trust with a grave bow; it is his duty now to give the pipe
an occasional pull, that it may not go out during his friend's absence.
The proprietor of the café, for it is he, approaches you. He bends
low, with a sign as though pressing his hand upon the earth, then,
straightening, he touches his heart, his lips, his forehead. It is a
most graceful and courteous salutation; it is the greeting of the very
heart of the East--the salaam.
"We have no cognac nor any intoxicating liquor," he explains in
tolerable French. "This is a Mohammedan café. You can get spirituous
drinks yonder at the Greek café."
"Ah, but we have no desire to change. We are thirsty. Surely he has
something to quench thirst?"
"Certainly, many things, as for instance, cherry water, lemonade,
almond water. A cup of Turkish coffee or a piece of _loukoumi_ with a
glass of cold spring water, are also good things to quench the thirst."
You decide upon cherry water, an excellent drink made from stirring a
quantity of preserved sour cherries into a glass of cold water, and
mine host returns to his narghile.
The kaleidoscope keeps turning, presenting new combinations, new
colors, new effects. At times the whole square is crowded, and again
the mass of humanity breaks up and drifts away, as sometimes happens to
a dense cloud. Then some grotesque or sublime figure or group of
figures is sure to straggle across the rift. You sip your cooling
drink and look up. There go two Greek priests, in flowing dark robes
and high, black hats. They are tall men with red, swarthy cheeks and
luxuriant beards. They wear their hair long, neatly done up in Psyche
knots. They walk with dignified strides, their hands crossed upon
their stomachs and hidden in voluminous sleeves. They both carry
strings of large beads of polished wood. The crowd closes in behind
them, to open out again good-naturedly, as a Cretan in soft red fez,
shirt sleeves, blue breeches with a seat that drags upon the ground and
high, yellow boots, swings a long crook to right and left and shouts
frantically to his flock of scurrying turkeys. The birds dart in and
out among the throng with an action that reminds one of a woman lifting
her skirts and stepping through the mud. He is assisted by a boy of
ten, an exact reproduction of himself in miniature.
A priest of Islam passes; he, too, in a graceful robe that falls to the
ground from his shoulders. A thick turban encircles his brow. He is
tall and slender one moment, corpulent the next, according as the wind
inflates his robe or escapes and allows it to collapse.
What a feast of color! And you notice that somehow these changing
combinations always result in harmonies. One feels the same effect as
though he were listening to a clash of barbarous instruments in a
sweet, wild melody of the desert.
There goes a chocolate-colored Nubian, in a terra cotta tunic, carrying
a shining copper kettle under each arm. His glistening feet and legs
are bare.
That bronze-skinned Arab yonder in the white turban must be a very old
man, for his beard and hair are as white as the wool on a sheep that is
newly washed and ready for the shearer; yet he is straight and lithe as
a figure on a French clock, and his skin is exactly the same color. He
wears a bright red sash about his waist and walks with a staff as tall
as himself. Red fezzes everywhere and turbans of all bright hues.
But we must have another cherry water--_vicinada_--and move into the
shade.
Now, who are these somber-looking creatures, coming across the square?
If there were any such thing on earth they would be agents of the
Spanish Inquisition. But that horror does not exist even in Turkey.
Through the warm yellow sun they move, slowly, silently, muffled all in
black, with black umbrellas above their heads--shapeless, sepulchral
figures. On the black veil that covers each face are painted white
eyes, a nose and a mouth; or a palm tree or other device. They stroll
by us talking in whispers, but a silvery girlish laugh, stifled almost
in its birth, betrays them. Ah, sweet demons, we know you now! These
are nuns of love, houris of the harem. Who knows what sweet faces,
merry eyes, red lips, warm and yielding forms masquerade in those
forbidding garments? We know you now; not all the disguises ever
invented by fanaticism and jealousy can cover the roguish features of
love. That one little, stifled laugh conjured up more poetry and
romance than could be read in a summer's holiday--the Arabian Nights,
Don Juan, and the vision of Dudu; the song of the bulbul in old
gardens, dangerous trystings in the shadow of the cypress trees; Tom
Moore in a city office, dreaming of camel bells and the minarets of
Ispahan.
Donkeys. Out from under the low stone arches they come, or down the
straggling narrow street, slipping and staggering over the greasy
cobblestones, yet never falling. There is one driven by a Cretan boy,
another by a jet black Nubian, with thick lips and shell-white teeth,
another by a shuffling Greek monk in dirty robe. Each in his own
outlandish way curses and threatens his animal, but the stick falls
with the same rattling thwack on the bony ribs, whether wielded by
Christian or Turk. Look at the loads which the donkeys bear in their
immense, squeaking baskets, and you will gain some idea of the
fertility of this garden spot of the world, harried though it be by
oppression and bloodshed. We see borne by or arranged in heaps yonder
on the pavement, great quantities of cucumbers, artichokes, beans,
cauliflower, garlic, tomatoes, courgets, eggplant, medlars, apricots,
cherries, and those various wild greens which are so delicious, but
which cannot be bought in the cities of America for love or money. If
you ask the price of any of these crisp, tender vegetables or fruits
dewy fresh, you will find that one penny will go as far as twenty-five
would among the stale, withered and niggardly exhibits of Chicago--the
emporium of the great Mississippi valley and the hub of a hundred
railroads. But there is no cabbage trust in Crete, and the donkey
route has no board of directors to fix the price of freight.
It is evident that the sea is no less prodigal of her riches here than
the land, for ragged urchins dart by every few moments carrying fine
catches of fish, strung upon strands of tenacious reed; mullets that
gleam like gold in the sun, silvery mackerel, still quivering with life
and glittering with dripping brine, baskets of white-bait, leaping upon
a bed of green sea-grass; _echini_ and huge lobsters without claws.
But alas! this seeming plenty is naught more than the crumbs from
nature's table--harpy war has seized the feast. Above all the hum of
tongues, the braying of donkeys, the rattle of shod feet on the
cobbles, rings out at intervals the bugle's wakening call. Turkish
soldiers lounge about the streets, squat, greasy, ungroomed, cruel.
There is a slight smell of smoke in the air, as the wind drifts over
from the smouldering ruins of the Christian quarter, burned during the
latest outbreak. Possibly there is a charred body or two among the
cinders, but pshaw! you cannot smell that. It is only imagination.
And here comes a foreign military demonstration. They are Italians,
immaculate in brown linen, with tufts of long blue feathers rustling
spitefully in their Garibaldi hats. Down the street they swing at
double quick, and through the crowded quay they plunge, while the lazy
Orientals scramble out of the way. How these Italians glitter! There
is a bugle corps in front, with shining instruments, and an Adonis of
an officer at the side with flashing, drawn sword; a bayonet slants
skyward from every shoulder in the squad, dancing and blazing in the
tropic sun. They are gone and the throng closes in again, like water
in the wake of a ship.
Such is Canea, below its many colored awnings. Cast your eye above
them and you see the square white houses of a Greek town. Look higher
up, and there is the Grecian sky, the same sky that looked down upon
the birth of Jove and the giving of Cretan law, upon the flitting sail
that brought the yearly tribute of youths and maidens from Athens, upon
the knightly vengeance of Theseus, striding down the labyrinth, all
clad in ringing mail. Centuries of oppression may drag their slow
length along, the children of the desert may come and go as they will,
but that chaste sweet sky is patiently waiting above. And beneath it
is Greece.