The Penny-farthing Shop was full of customers, and Madam Marx, the
fat woman who followed Gregorio to the bar, was for a long time busy
attending to her clients. Some English war-ships had entered the harbour
at sunset, and many of the sailors had lost no time in seeking out their
favourite haunt. Most of them knew Madam Marx well, as a good-natured
woman who gave them plenty to drink for their money, and secreted
them from the eyes of the police when the liquor overpowered them.
Consequently there was much laughter and shaking of hands, and many a
rough jest, which Madam Marx responded to in broken English. Gregorio
watched the sailors gloomily. He hated the English, for even their
sailors seemed to have plenty of money, and he recalled the rich
Englishman he had seen at the Cafe Paradiso, drinking champagne and
buying flowers for the Hungarian woman who played the fiddle. The scene
he had just left contrasted disagreeably with the fun and jollity that
surrounded him. But he felt unable to shake off his gloom and annoyance,
and Madam Marx’s attentions irritated him. He felt that her eyes
continually rested on him, that, however busy she might be, he was never
out of her thoughts. Every few minutes she would come toward him with a
bottle of wine and fill up his glass, saying, “Come, my friend; wine
is good and will drown your troubles.” And though he resented her
patronage, knowing he could not pay, he nevertheless drank steadily.
Every few minutes he heard the sound of horses’ hoofs on the hard
roadway, and through the windows he saw the military police pass slowly
on their rounds.
At last the strong drinks so amiably retailed by Madam Marx did their
work, and the men lay about the floor asleep and breathing heavily. The
silence succeeding the noise startled Gregorio from his sullen humour.
Madam Marx came and sat beside him, weary as she was with her long
labours, and talked volubly. The wine had mounted to his head, and he
answered her in rapid sentences, accompanying his words with gesture and
grimace. What he talked about he scarcely knew, but the woman laughed,
and he took an insane delight in hearing her. Just before daylight he
fell asleep, resting his head on his arms, that were spread across
the table. Madam Marx kissed him as he slept, murmuring to herself
contentedly, “Ah, well, in time.”
When Gregorio woke the sun was high in the heavens, blazing out of a
brazen sky. Clouds of dust swept past the door from time to time, and
cut his neck and face as he stood on the threshold smoking lazily. It
was too late to go down to the quay, for his place must have long ago
been filled by another. He was not sorry, since he by no means desired
to toil again under the hot sun; the heavy drinking of the night had
made him lethargic, and he was so thirsty the heat nearly choked him.
He called out to a water-carrier staggering along in the scanty shade on
the opposite side of the street, and took eagerly a draught of water.
He touched the pigskin with his hand, and it was hot. The water was
warm and made him sick; he spat it from his mouth hastily, and hearing a
laugh behind him, turned round and saw Madam Marx.
“See, here is some wine, my friend; leave the water for the Arabs.”
Gregorio gratefully seized the flagon and let the wine trickle down his
throat, while Madam Marx, with arms akimbo, stood patiently before him.
“I must go now,” he said, as he handed back the half-emptied flask.
“Why?”
“Because I must get some work.”
“It is not easy to get work in the summer.”
“I know, but I must get some. I owe money to Amos.”
“Yes, I know. But your wife is making money now.”
The man scowled at her. “How do you know that? Before God, I swear that
she is not.”
“Come, come, Gregorio. You were drunk last night, and your tongue wagged
pretty freely. It’s not a bit of use being angry with me, because I only
know what you’ve told me. Besides, I’m your friend, you know that.”
Gregorio flushed angrily at the woman’s words, but he knew quite well
it was no use replying to them, for she was speaking only the truth. But
the knowledge that he had betrayed his secret annoyed him. He had grown
used to the facts and could look at them easily enough, but he had not
reckoned on others also learning them.
He determined to go out and find work, or at any rate to tramp the
streets pretending to look for something to do. The woman became
intolerable to him, and the Penny-farthing Shop, reeking with the odour
of stale tobacco and spilled liquor, poisoned him. He took up his hat
brusquely and stepped into the street.
Madam Marx, standing at the door, laughed at him as she called out,
“Good-bye, Gregorio; when will you come back?”
He did not answer, but the sound of her laughter followed him up the
street, and he kicked angrily at the stones in his path.
At last he passed by the Ras-el-Tin barracks. He looked curiously at the
English soldiers. Some were playing polo on the hard brown space to
the left, and from the windows of the building men leaned out, their
shirt-sleeves rolled up and their strong arms bared to the sun. They
smoked short clay pipes, and innumerable little blue spiral clouds
mounted skyward. Obviously the heat did not greatly inconvenience them,
for they laughed and sang and drank oceans of beer.
The sight of them annoyed Gregorio. He looked at the pewter mugs shining
in the sunlight. He eyed greedily the passage of one from hand to hand;
and when one man, after taking a long pull, laughed and held it upside
down to show him it was empty, he burst into an uncontrollable fit of
anger, and shook his fist impotently at the soldiers, who chaffed him
good-naturedly. As he went along by the stables, a friendly lancer,
pitying him, probably, too, wearying of his own lonely watch, called to
him, and offered him a drink out of a stone bottle. Gregorio drank again
feverishly, and handed the bottle back to its owner with a grin, and
passed on without a word. The soldier watched him curiously, but said
nothing.
When he reached the lighthouse Gregorio flung himself on to the
pebble-strewn sand and looked across the bay. The blue water, calm and
unruffled as a sheet of glass, spread before him. The ships--Austrian
Lloyd mail-boats, P. and O. liners, and grimy coal-hulks--lay motionless
against the white side of the jetty.
The khedive’s yacht was bright with bunting, and innumerable
fishing-boats near the breakwater made grateful oases in the glare
whereon his eyes might rest. But he heeded them not. Angrily he flung
lumps of stone and sand into the wavelets at his feet, and pushed back
his hat that his face might feel the full heat of the sun. Then he lit a
cigarette and began to think.
But what was the good of thinking? The thoughts always formed themselves
into the same chain and reached the same conclusion; and ever on the
glassy surface of the Levantine sea a woman poised herself and laughed
at him.
When the sun fell behind the horizon, and the breakwater, after dashing
up one flash of gold, became a blue blur, Gregorio rose to go. As
he walked back toward the Penny-farthing Shop he felt angry and
unsatisfied. The whole day was wasted. He had done nothing to relieve
his wife, nothing to pay off Amos. Madam met him at the door, a flask of
wine in her hand. Against his will Gregorio entered her cafe and smiled,
but his smile was sour and malevolent.
“You want cheering, my friend,” said madam, laughing.
“I have found nothing to do,” said Gregorio.
“Ah! I told you it would be hard. There are no tourists in Alexandria
now. And it is foolish of you to tramp the streets looking for work that
you will never find, when you have everything you can want here.”
“Except money, and that’s everything,” put in Gregorio, bluntly.
“Even money, my friend. I have enough for two.”
Madam Marx had played her trump card, and she watched anxiously the
effect of her words. For a moment the man did not speak, but trifled
with his cigarette tobacco, rolling it gently between his brown fingers.
Then he said:
“You know I am in debt now, and I want to pay off all I owe, and leave
here.”
“Yes, that’s true, but you won’t pay off your debts by tramping the
streets, and your little cafe at Benhur will be a long time building, I
fancy. Meanwhile there is money to be made at the Penny-farthing Shop.”
“What are your terms?” asked Gregorio, roughly.
The woman laughed, but did not answer. The stars were shining, and the
kempsin that had blown all day was dead. It was cool sitting outside the
door of the cafe under the little awning, and pleasant to watch the blue
cigarette smoke float upward in the still air. Gregorio sat for a while
silent, and the woman came and stood by him. “You know my terms,” she
whispered, and Gregorio smiled, took her hand, and kissed her. At that
moment the blind of the opposite house was flung back. Xantippe leaned
out of the window and saw them.