I
It is a great thing to be a Zamana, and of the right branch, too. At
least that is what little Pavlo Zamana had always been told.
Was it not his own great-grandfather who had fought at the siege of
Missolonghi?[1] Was it not he who had suggested the famous message to
the Turks: "If you want our town, come and take it!" though it was
the sender who got the credit for it? Was not he one of the leaders
of the last heroic sortie, on the never-to-be-forgotten tenth of
April? And did not Botzari say of him, "Without my right hand, I can
do something, without Zamana, nothing"?
All this was most gratifying when Pavlo was at school; especially
when new boys arrived, for the old ones had heard the story pretty
often. And of course it was always a proud moment when the history
master came to the siege of Missolonghi, and rolled out the names of
Botzari,[2] Palama, Tricoupi, Pappalouka, Razikotsika, Kapsali, Zamana,
to be able to whisper very audibly, "That was my great-grandfather!"
But it was less interesting at home, when he could never cry in peace
over a barked knee, or howl if there were a splinter to be dug out
which had gone in deeply, or feel very sad when a visit to the dentist
was projected, without being always told:--
"Shame! Shame! And you a Zamana!"
And the fact remained, whether it was that the blood had weakened
by the time it had come down to Pavlo, or whether some of his other
grandfathers or grandmothers had been built in a less heroic mould,
that when he had to go up into a dark attic to look for a book for
his uncle, or to face an aggressive band of schoolboys waiting with
stones in their hands round a street corner, he did not feel at all
as a Zamana should; oh, but not at all!
There had been a great many Zamanas, but they had all died, some at
home and some abroad, and only two were left now; a middle-aged doctor,
and a little boy.
The doctor was Pavlo's uncle, and he lived in a gloomy house in Solon
Street, in Athens, and when he was at home he was always very busy
writing, and had to be called again and again when dinner or supper
was ready.
"I have come; I have come!" he would answer impatiently, but he never
came till the pilaf[3] was all sodden, or the "keftedes"[4] had stuck
to the dish in little rounds of cold fat.
The little boy was Pavlo, and he lived with his uncle.
The house in Solon Street was not an interesting house to live in
one bit. It was tall and narrow, jammed in between another tall
narrow house on one side, and a green grocer's shop on the other,
and one could only see the Acropolis,[5] and Phalerum and the sea
if one got up to the terrace on the roof, where they hung out the
clothes to dry; and even from there it looked very far off. There
was not a scrap of garden, only a small paved courtyard at the back,
generally littered with empty cases which had come from abroad with new
instruments and new books for the doctor. Pavlo sometimes attempted
to play house or shop in the biggest of these, but Marina, the cook,
used to get very cross if he brought in damp straw on his shoes over
her freshly scrubbed kitchen, and the other maid, Aphrodite, would
screw up her ugly brown face, and bring her thick black eyebrows
together, and threaten that the next time he got another big tear
in his clothes from those great long packing nails for her to mend,
if she did not tell his uncle, they need never call her "Aphrodite"
again! His uncle heard her once, and said laughingly that they need
never have called her "Aphrodite" at all, but Pavlo got his scolding
all the same, for causing unnecessary work, so that the packing cases
had to be abandoned.
In winter it was better. After his preparation for next day's school
was over, and before the long delayed supper, he would stay in the
little dining room, and lying flat on the floor in the warmth of the
big white Viennese stove, he would colour the pictures in the odd
numbers of an English illustrated medical journal, which his uncle had
given to be thrown away. There were very rarely what Pavlo considered
real pictures in them, and he got rather tired of colouring "thoracic
aortas" in bright orange, and "abdominal aortas" in pale green, and
"tracheæ" in stripes of purple and yellow; but now and then he would
come across some funny groups of little insects, and once there was
a picture of an operation in a hospital, where there were any amount
of doctors and nurses to be coloured, each one differently. That
picture lasted him three whole evenings, and would have been even
more successful than it was, if only the very best and softest of his
chalks, the crimson one, had not somehow got broken inside the wood,
so that it all came away in little pieces when he tried to sharpen it,
till at last there was nothing left but a little stump of chalk without
any wood, and anyone who has tried, knows how hard it is to colour
a whole dress with a little bit of chalk that one cannot hold properly.
But when the days grew longer and warmer the dining room was too hot
for comfort; the study, even when the doctor was out, was always kept
locked, and Pavlo's own bedroom on the third floor was even hotter
than the dining room. So he would end by taking his books or his
chalks into the hall, where at least there was a little coolness to
be had from the chink under the front door. There he would sit on the
stairs, or lie flat on the floor, kicking up his heels as he read or
painted, till he knew every stringy part of the long strip of gray,
red-edged carpet that crossed the middle of the passage, and every
place where the paint, which had peeled off the once-painted floor,
had left curiously shaped patches, which only needed the touch of
a pencil here and there to turn into all sorts of faces. The yellow
walls, imitating veined marble, offered terrible temptation of the same
kind, but it was too dangerous; pencil marks on the walls would have
been seen at once. There was one spot, indeed, where the criss-cross
of veins made such an exact head of Hermes,[6] winged cap and all, with
only the back of the head and one ear missing, that Pavlo absolutely
could not resist touching it up, one long hot afternoon. He rubbed
all the pencil marks very carefully off afterwards, with his piece of
india rubber, but this had got so mixed up in his pocket with odds and
ends of chalk and with half a "loucoumi" that the rubbing-away marks
were very red and sticky and showed worse than the pencil ones. So
Pavlo had been rather frightened, till he discovered that by pushing
the hat stand a little nearer the study door, the place was quite
hidden. However, he dared not make any more attempts on the wall,
and the afternoon dragged wearily.
Of course, no playing in the street was ever allowed, but sometimes
when Marina the cook slipped out late to buy a bowl of "yaourti"[7] for
supper, or some chicory for salad, she would take him with her, and he
would stand about while she bargained, envying the blue-pinafored boys
of the neighborhood tearing and whooping down the street or gathered
together over their marbles on the edge of the pavement. Pavlo played
marbles at his school near the National Library, when he managed to
get there ten minutes before lessons began; but the class-bell always
rang in the middle of the most interesting game, and the ten minutes
between each lesson were of no good because no play was allowed then,
at that school. Only the bigger classes could do as they liked, the
little boys were marshaled in order of size by one of the overlookers
and marched round and round the big courtyard, so that, as Pavlo
heard the director explaining to his uncle one day, "the little pupils
should have all the benefit of fresh air and exercise during this short
interval, without any danger of their minds being distracted from the
lesson they had just been taught!" But the "little pupils'" minds
were as a rule more occupied with the secret exchange of pen nibs,
the recognized school currency, than in pondering over the last lesson.
And then, when June had passed into July, when summer in town was
at its hottest and dustiest, when the examinations were just over,
and there was not even school to break the monotony of the long empty
days, a wonderful change came into Pavlo's life.
It happened like this.
One afternoon he had just got up from the enforced lying down with
a book, which he hated--especially as the book was not a new one,
but only Louki Laras[8] which he had read already four times, so that
even if one skipped the descriptions, the exciting parts were too
familiar--and was wandering about the house, a piece of bread in
one hand and a piece of chocolate in the other, when he came across
Aphrodite packing his uncle's valise. He was going away, she told
Pavlo, for some days. There was nothing extraordinary in that. People
were always sending for the doctor from one part and another of the
provinces, to come and cure them, and Pavlo was quite accustomed to
being alone in the house with the two maids, and having his dinner
and supper served on a tray at one end of the dining room table. The
only advantage of this was that Marina let him choose his dinners,
and that he could have pilaf or even "halva"[9] two days running, and
need never touch soup or boiled meat all the time his uncle was away.
But the extraordinary thing happened a few moments later, when his
uncle let himself into the house, and walked right up into the room
where the packing was going on.
"Is the valise full?" he inquired.
Aphrodite straightened herself up.
"It is full, Kyrie. I have put three soft shirts at the bottom and
the little black box which you gave me last night; the rest of your
things are in the middle, and there are two starched shirts under
the covering, and your traveling cap at the very top."
"Is it quite full?" he repeated.
"If there is any other small thing you have forgotten, I can slip it
in between the clothes."
"No, ..." and his eyes wandered round the room and rested on Pavlo
who was looking out of the window with great interest at two newspaper
boys having a fight. "No, ... I meant if you could perhaps get a few
things of the child's in with mine. I think that this time I shall
take him with me."
The street fight was forgotten, and a flushed, bewildered Pavlo with
wide open eyes caught hold of his uncle's hand.
"Me! Take me with you!"
"Yes. How does the idea seem to you? This time I am going to visit a
sick man in Poros, the deputy of the island; and in that same island
I have an old school friend who lives there all summer through with
his family, and who has asked me again and again to go to see him;
so, how would you like to come with me to Poros, and all day long,
while I am busy, to play on the hill and in the woods behind the
house with the children? There are three or four of them, I believe."
"This evening shall we go?"
"No," laughed his uncle, "early to-morrow morning."
Even Aphrodite was quite nice about it, and turned all the doctor's
things into a larger valise where there would be room for Pavlo's
clothes also, without any grumbling or bringing together of her
thick black eyebrows as she did when she was cross; and Marina sat
up quite late mixing some "kourabiedes"--cookies--for him to eat
on the way. She gave them to him herself wrapped up in two papers
so that his clothes should not get "all over fine sugar" when he
was starting for the station in the open carriage with his uncle,
at six o'clock the next morning.