Gregorio’s dreams, when he did sleep, were none of the pleasantest,
and when he woke up, from time to time, he heard his wife weeping. In
wondering what he should say to comfort her he fell asleep again, and
sleeping was worse than lying awake. For in his dreams he saw Xantippe
and his child starving and crying for food, and he was unable to help
them in any way. He lived over again the long day he had spent tramping
the streets of Alexandria searching for work. He saw the few tourists
still left in the town fat and happy; he saw the porters of the hotels
who had smiled on him pityingly and yet contemptuously; and he woke,
after each representation of the crude comedy, hot and yet cold with
perspiration, to feel the bed on which he lay shaking under the sobs of
his wife.
When at last day dawned Gregorio raised himself with an oath, and swore
to find food for his family and work for himself. The terrible debt he
owed to Amos he swore should not trouble him, laughing at his wife’s
remonstrances. With the bright daylight had come a new courage, and,
hungry as he was, he felt able not only to satisfy their hunger, but so
skilfully to arrange matters that they would never feel hungry again.
Yet is was a terrible ordeal, that half-hour when the family should have
sat down to a table laden with food. The poor wife cried, and he had
to comfort her tears with promises, unsubstantial nutriment indeed,
and they could not satisfy the child, who failed dismally to understand
them. Through the green blinds came the noise of life and health and
merriment; curses too, sometimes, but only the curses of the well fed,
and therefore meaningless. Already the sun fell hot and indomitable on
the room, and the atmosphere at their touch became stifling. Gregorio,
swallowing his tears, tore out into the street, shouting up the narrow
stairway hysterical words of hope.
How long and shadowless the street seemed! Every house had its green
blinds closely shut; the wind that stirred the dust of the pavements was
hot and biting. Gregorio clinched his hands and strode rapidly onward.
What mattered it to him that behind those green blinds women and men
slumbered in comparative comfort? He had a work to do, and by sunset
must carry good tidings to his little world. For a time his heart was
brave as the dry wind scorched the tear upon his cheek. “Surely,” he
thought, weaving his thoughts into a fine marching rhythm, “the great
God will help me now, will help me now.”
At midday, after he had tried, with that strange Greek pertinacity that
understands no refusals, all the hotels and tourist agencies he had
called at the day before, he became weary and disconsolate. The march
had become a dirge; no longer it suggested happiness to be, but failure.
An Englishman threw him a piastre, and he turned into a cafe. Calling
for a glass of wine, he flung himself down on the wooden bench and tried
to think. But really logical thinking was impossible. For in spite of
the sorrow at his heart, the same bright dreams of wealth and happiness
came back to mock him. The piastre he played with became gold, and he
felt the cafe contained no luxuries that he might not command to be
brought before him. But as the effects of the red wine of Lebanon
evaporated he began to take a soberer though still cheerful view of his
position. It was only when the waiter carried off his piastre that he
suddenly woke to fact and knew himself once more a man with a wife and
child starving in Alexandria, an alien city for all its wealthy colony
of Greeks. A wave of pity swept over him; not so much for the woman was
he sorry, though he loved her too, but for the baby whose future he had
planned. He scowled savagely at the inmates of the cafe, who only smiled
quietly, for they were used to poor Greeks who had drunk away their last
coin, and pushed past them into the street.
There it was hotter than ever, and he met scarcely any one. Every
one who could be was at home, or in the cool cafes; only Gregorio was
abroad. He determined to make for the quay. He knew that many ships put
into the Alexandrian waters, and there was often employment found
for those not too proud to work at lading and unloading. Quickly, and
burning as the kempsin, he hurried through the Rue des Soeurs, not
daring to look up at the house wherein he dwelt. The muffled sounds
of voices and guitars from the far-away interiors seemed to mock his
footsteps as he passed the wine-shops; and all the other houses were
silent and asleep. At last he arrived on the quay, and the black lines
of the P. and O. stood out firmly before him against the pitiless blue
of sea and sky. He wandered over the hot stone causeway, but found no
one. The revenue officers were away, and not a labourer, not a sailor,
was visible. Beyond the breakwater little tufts of silvery foam flashed
on the rollers, and a solitary steamer steered steadily for the horizon.
He could see the Greek flag at her stern, and his eyes filled with
tears. Ah, how little his friends in Athens thought of the man who had
come to find fame and fortune in the far-off East! He sat down on the
parapet and watched the vessel until she became a tiny speck on the
horizon, and then he recommenced his search for work. His heart was
braver for a moment because of its pangs; he swore he would show these
countrymen of his who dwelt at home, and who in three days would see the
very ship he had been gazing at arrive in Grecian waters, that he was
worthy of his country and his kinsfolk.
But resolutions were useless, tenacity of purpose was useless. For two
long hours he wandered by the harbour, but met no one.
At last the sun fell behind the western waves, and the windows of the
khedive’s palace glowed like a hundred flaming eyes; the flags fell from
the masts of the vessels; on the city side was a sudden silence, save
for the melancholy voices of the muezzins; then the day died; the bright
stars, suddenly piercing the heavens, mocked him with their brilliance
and told him that his useless search for bread was over.
Gregorio went back slowly to his home. Already the Rue des Soeurs was
crowded. The long street rang with music and laughter, and instead
of blinds covering the windows merry women leaned upon the sills and
laughed at the crowds below.
Gregorio, when he reached his house, would have liked to go straight to
bed. But it was not to be, for as he entered the tiny room he heard his
wife trying to persuade the hungry infant into sleep, and his footsteps
disturbed her tears. He had to calm them as best he could, and as he
soothed her he noticed the child had a crust in his hand which he gnawed
half contentedly. At the same moment the dim blue figure of an Arab
passed by the opposite wall, and had almost gained the door ere Gregorio
found words.
“Who are you?”
“It is Ahmed,” his wife answered, gently, placing her trembling hand
upon his shoulder; “he too has children.”
Gregorio scowled and muttered, “An Arab,” and in that murmur none of the
loathing was hidden that the pseudo-West bears for the East.
“The child is starving,” said Ahmed. “I have saved the child; maybe some
day I shall save the father.” And Ahmed slipped away before Gregorio
could answer him.
For a while neither he nor his wife spoke; they stood silent in the
moonlight. At last Gregorio asked huskily, “Have you had food?”
“Not to-day,” was the answer; and the sweet voice was almost discordant
in its pathos as it continued, “nor drink, and but for Ahmed the boy had
died.”
Gregorio could not answer; there was a lump in his throat that blocked
words, opening the gate for sobs. But he choked down his emotion with
an effort and busied himself about the room. Xantippe sat watching him
anxiously, smoothly with nervous fingers the covering of her son’s bed.
As the night advanced the heat increased, and all that disturbed the
silence of the room was the echo of the streets. Gregorio walked to the
window and looked out. Below him he saw the jostling crowd of men and
women. These people, he thought, were happy, and two miserables only
dwelt in the city--his wife and himself. And whenever he asked himself
what was the cause of his misery, the answer was ever the same--poverty.
He glanced at his son, tossing uneasily in his bed; he looked at
his wife, pale and haggard in the moonlight; he remembered his
own sufferings all day long in the hot cruel streets, and he spoke
unsteadily:
“Xantippe?”
“Yes.”
“I have thought over things.”
“And I too.”
“We are starving,--you are starving, and I am starving,--and all day
long I tramp these cursed streets, but gain nothing. So it will go on,
day in, day out. Not only we ourselves, but our son too must die. We
must save him.”
“Yes,” said Xantippe, quietly, repeating her husband’s words as she
kissed the forehead of her child, “we must save him.”
“There is only one way.”
“Only one way,” repeated Xantippe, dreamily. There was a pause, and
then, as though the words had grown to have a meaning to her that she
could not fathom, she queried, “What way, Gregorio?”
“That,” he said, roughly, as he caught her by the wrist, and, dragging
her to the window, pointed to the women in the street beneath.
Xantippe hid her face on her husband’s breast and cried softly, while
she murmured, “No, no; I will never consent.”
“Then the child will die,” answered the Greek, curtly, flinging her from
him.
And the poor woman cast herself upon the bed beside her boy, and when
her tears ceased for a moment stammered, “When?”
“To-morrow,” was the answer, cruel and peremptory. And as Gregorio
closed the lattice, shutting out the noise of song and laughter, the
room echoed with the mighty sobbing of a woman who was betrayed, and who
repeated hysterically, while kissing the face of her child, “To-morrow,
to-morrow there will be food for you.”
And Gregorio slept peacefully, for the danger of starvation was over; he
would yet live to see his son become rich.
And the woman?
He kissed her before he slept, and women always cry.