"From where are you my lad?"
"From Megaloupolis."
"Ah, you do not see flags there, do you?"
"At Easter, and on the twenty-fifth of March,[2] there was always a
flag put up at the Town Hall but no one took his hat off."
"Well, in Athens you will learn many things," said the old man walking
away. Aleko looked after him.
"I do not think," he muttered, "that he knew why. How many people
do not know things when you ask them." Then he ran up the steps of
the Hotel Grande Bretagne where one of the head servants, standing
on the verandah, had beckoned to him to clean his boots.
"Make them shine well," said the man, putting his foot on the little
inclined rest of the box.
"Be easy," answered Aleko, "you will see your face in them."
He scraped, and rubbed, and polished vigorously; then when one foot
was changed for the other, he suddenly asked without looking up:--
"What does 'Know thyself' mean?"
"Where did you pick up that fine phrase?"
"One man who was passing said it to another, and he said it was a
very difficult thing. What does it mean?"
"If it be difficult how should I know it?" answered the head
servant. "Do poor folk have time to go beyond the municipal classes
at school?"
"Does he know?" and Aleko with a backward jerk of his thumb indicated
another servant, stout and gray-haired, standing within the portal
of the hotel.
"He! He can scarcely read the newspaper!"
"Then who knows?"
"Do you not go to the Parnassos School every night?"
"Of course I go."
"Well, ask your schoolmaster."
"Oh, he has no time; we are many boys. You see I thought as you
stand here so often doing nothing, if you knew you would have time
to tell me."
The man scowled.
"Enough words! There are your ten lepta. Go about your business and
leave me to mine."
Aleko slung his box over his shoulder and descended the hotel steps
slowly. He was beginning to feel sore all over and his head ached. He
decided that he would go home and have a sleep. Home meant the
cellar which he shared with the other boy, Andoni, and with the older
shoeblack, "the big one" who had brought them over from Megaloupolis,
and for whom they worked, till such time as they should have earned
enough to set up for themselves.
Bells were ringing for noon, and after that no one would be out in
the sun-blaze of the streets to want boots cleaned; there would be
no work again until the sales of the evening newspapers began.
He trudged rather wearily up the steep streets towards the Square of
the Kolonaki, near which he lived; and as he went, he wondered once
more why so many people did not know things when you asked them.
There were so many things he wanted to find out.
Who lived in the Academy with the two statues on the tall columns,
which he passed two or three times a day, and what did people do
inside it? What was in the red books which the foreigners held in their
hands when they looked up at the old temples? What was that statue in
the Zappion Gardens where a woman was putting a crown of leaves on a
man's head? And most of all, what made automobiles go without horses
when the driver turned that round wheel? The whole town was one great
"Why" to him.
When he reached the street behind the Kolonaki Square, and went down
the steps to the cellar, he found it empty. From a shelf in one corner
he took down the half of a loaf of bread, and a piece of white cheese
wrapped in a sheet of paper. His mother was renowned in Megaloupolis
as one of the tidiest housewives of the place, and it was from her
that he had learned not to leave food about uncovered; this was also
probably the reason why his face and hands were generally less grimy
than those of most of the other shoeblacks.
Nearly all the boys he knew were shoeblacks, or newspaper sellers and
messenger boys, or they combined the three trades; and nearly all came
from Megaloupolis in the charge of an older boy of eighteen or twenty
years old, "the big one," as they called him. He paid them a yearly
wage and, except what was necessary for food, all their earnings went
to him. Aleko was paid one hundred and fifty drachmæ a year; next year
he was to have two hundred. Later on, he would work for himself, and
doubtless when he was old enough he would in his turn employ smaller
boys. He had no father, and the money was required to help his mother
and the two small sisters in Megaloupolis. How could they live else?
After he had eaten, he sat down and pulled out his morning's earnings
from the breast of his tunic. The copper coins and nickels amounted to
one drachma and thirty-five lepta; of these, he put aside thirty lepta
for his supper, and screwing up the rest in a piece of old newspaper
pushed it underneath a painted wooden chest to give to "the big one"
when accounts were made in the evening. Then he threw himself on his
mattress, doubled his arm under his head, and slept till the loud
barking of a dog on the pavement outside awoke him with a start.
He rushed up the cellar steps which led to the pavement of the narrow
street, banging the door behind him, and nearly fell headlong over a
fox-terrier busily occupied with the rubbish tin of the next house. The
little dog yelped sharply as Aleko stumbled over him, and abandoning
the rubbish tin, trotted quickly off towards the square.
"Solon!" called Aleko. "Here Solon! Why do you run away? It is only I."
Solon stopped short, listened for a moment with uplifted paw, and
then with a series of little joyful barks ran back towards the boy.
Aleko stooped, and catching him up by the middle of his well-fed,
white little body tucked him under his arm.
"You little rascal! What do you mean by rooting in the rubbish? Have
you not enough to eat in your house? I should be glad to have your
luck."
Two little ears were cocked on one side of Aleko's arm and a short
tail wagged frantically on the other.
"I wonder how it happens that you are out alone? Has Anneza lost you?"
Just then, coming out on the Kolonaki Square, Aleko descried a young
woman carrying a basket, who was looking all around her and peering
under the bushes of the enclosure seemingly in great distress. He
put his fingers to his mouth and whistled sharply.
"Anneza! Eh! Here is your dog! It is I who have him!"
The young woman wheeled around and came rapidly towards him. She was
pretty, with black hair and a big white apron crossed over a pink
cotton frock.
"Do you not feed him enough?" Aleko asked her as he put down the
dog. "I found him in my street with his nose in the rubbish tin."
"Feed him, indeed?" snorted the young woman, "he has of the best. If
all poor people fared as he does, it would be well. The master is
so fond of him he fears lest the wind should blow or the rain should
drop on his body. He often comes himself into the kitchen to see what
I give him to eat. But all the same the dirty dog is always grubbing
in the rubbish tins. When I take him out he is always straying and
making me go cold with fright for fear the 'boya'[3] should catch him."
"The 'boya' only takes dogs who belong to no one. He would not take
yours," said Aleko, turning Solon over on his back with his foot as
he spoke.
"Do I know? Now, in this hot weather when dogs go mad, they say that
the 'boya' gets paid one drachma for every dog he catches; and all
he can lay hand on are thrown into his cart. If I had my way the dog
should never stir out, but the master says he must have exercise,
and if he sees me out without Solon, bad luck for me!"
"Take your dog now," said the boy, "I must go for my newspapers."
"Listen, Aleko."
"What?"
"Come to the house in the morning; there are some curtains to beat."
"I will come." Then, as he turned to go, he added, "Keep the dog by
you! Do not let him stray again."
"I have no strap," answered Anneza.