then pointing with her finger where the sky was still of a dusky pink, she said, “There are no clouds there.”
The captain turned suddenly, and looked at the odd little figure in her white festooned apron that hung far below her frock, with her short black plaits tied round her head.
“That is what we say in my country.” Then stooping a little. “From where are you? Are you from Poros, perhaps?”
Mattina gulped down a lump in her throat.
“Yes, I am from Poros.”
“Whose are you?”
“Aristoteli Dorri’s, the sponge diver’s.”
“Ah, yes! The poor one! I heard that he had died. And did your mother send you here?”
“My mother wept much after my father died, and then she coughed more than she did before, and then she got worse, and then she died.” And Mattina turned her back on the men, and twisted and untwisted the end of the paper in which the sardines were wrapped.