All morning she was at work in the fields whilst her wifeless father sat drinking cognac in the village. She herself loved wine, but when with Orosdi drank only mavrodaphne, the “black holly” that makes lovers more ardent and leaves no sting behind. The plain, covered with vineyards and mustard and poppies, blazed hotly. Banked roadways, infrequently used, were covered with multitudinous flowers, flowers that were warm to the touch and almost sickly with the sun’s day-long kiss. Stephanie, stooping over her work, wiped away with the back of her hand the drops of perspiration that stood gleaming on her forehead. The heat did not trouble her: she loved it, for her strength was that of an animal. The sun, the flowers, and the call of cuckoos made Heaven for her, and she praised her Heaven to the utmost height of sublimity whenever she looked at Langaza, white among green poplars, where her lover lived.
“How white it is!” she said to herself; and then something in her brain whispered: “How white they will be. How white they will be to-night, in so few hours!”
She caught her breath and bit her under-lip. Her cheeks paled. “What do I mean? What do I mean?” she asked herself, hurriedly. But only too well did she know what she meant. Her brain was thinking of her dead lover’s bones, which to-night would lie in her hands—bones that, washed in wine a year ago, had been placed back in his shallow grave at Ajvatli, and which were as white as the cambric that comes from England. Her religion, her loyalty, her dead love—everything that demanded her acquiescence in the customs of her race—meant nothing to her: but the opinion of her neighbours meant everything. People in small villages can be very cruel. “Oh, yes,” said Stephanie, pitying herself, “they would be cruel. Father most of all.”
With a resolute gesture she turned from Langaza, and bent over her work. How wonderfully decisive and final is the thrust with which the diabolically selfish can rid themselves of uncomfortable thoughts! With an: “Oh! I’ll go through with it!” she put the little grave aside, forgetting the dead youth’s dear kisses that, how brief a time ago, used to run from her brow to her eyes, from her eyes to her mouth, and from her mouth to her breasts where they used to cling and turn her girlhood to maidenhood.
At midday she stopped her work and, seated on a high bank, ate bread and olives and drank a little of the wine of Samos. I think I can show her to you. The bank is covered with high grass and tall flowers—such flowers as you will see in England any real June. So, of course, she is half hidden in a little swimming mist of colour of blue and yellow and green. Her skirt is pulled above her knees and you can see the thick woollen stockings that do not mar the beauty of her long ankles. Her dark face is sallow and red, her hair black; her bosom—you can see it, for her blouse is opened two buttons at the neck—whiter than the paper on which this little history is printed. She wears no hat, and her blouse is a dusky red, the colour of her cheeks. Her eyes are pits of darkness in each of which a flame burns brightly, almost fervently. An animal, of course. But a beautiful animal, with a beauty that not one woman in a thousand Greek women possesses. But is she Greek? She says so. But is she? Some lusty Bulgar, perchance, raped her grandmother, or a Turk, insinuating and cruel, crept to the bed of some maternal ancestor. These things happen there in Macedonia, as elsewhere.
You will not like the way she eats, for her lips are not closed and her right cheek bulges. And her hands, face, neck, and breasts are wet with perspiration. A woman to be loved and feared, I think: more feared than loved....
But she has finished her little meal....
She lay on her back, the sun smiting her, the sun of Greece that two thousand years ago smote men to greatness, that burned men and melted them and recast them as poets, orators, sculptors, writers of dramas. She turned over on her side and murmured something, pressing her lips to the ground, and smiling....
* * *
Orosdi was drinking at Langaza. He was sleek and lazy, but his brain was bright, and he was now busy purchasing two mules from his father. For Orosdi had a farm of his own, and prospered as all physically lazy men may prosper if their brains are deep and cunning and if they retain the accumulated traditions of their ancestors.