The darkness of that night,
And the sea rolled in mountains around me,
And the land was nowhere in sight.
“Towards evening I returned home. My mother’s anxious face told me that she, too, had suffered during my absence; and out of a pot of lentil soup, which was simmering on the embers, she gave me a bowlful, and it refreshed me. To my dying day I shall never forget my father’s and brothers’ wrath. I had wilfully absented myself for a whole day from my work. I was called ‘a peacock,’ ‘a burnt man’ (equivalent to a fool), ‘no man at all,’ ‘;horns,’ and any bad name that occurred to them. For days and weeks after this I was the most miserable, down-trodden Greek alive, and all on account of a woman.” And here Nikola came to a stop, and ordered his wife to fetch him another glass of raki to moisten his throat. No Greek can talk or sing long without a glass of raki.
“About two months after these events,” began Nikola with renewed vigor, “my father ordered me to clear away a heap of stones which occupied a corner of a little terrace-vineyard we owned on a slope near the church of Episcopì.[23] We always thought the stones had been put there to support the earth from falling from the terrace above, but it lately had occurred to my father that it was only a heap of loose stones which had been cleared off the field and thrown there when the vineyard was made, and the removal of which would add several square feet to the small holding. Next morning I started about an hour before the Panagía (Madonna) had opened the gates of the East,[24] with a mule and panniers to remove the stones. I worked hard enough when I got there, for the morning was cold, and I was beginning to find that the harder I worked the less time I had for thought. Stone after stone was removed, pannier-load after pannier-load was emptied down the cliff, and fell rattling amongst the brushwood and rousing the partridges and crows as they fell. After a couple of hours’ work the mound was rapidly disappearing, when I came across something white projecting upwards. I looked at it closely; it was a marble foot. More stones were removed, and disclosed a marble leg, two legs, a body, an arm; a head and another arm, which had been broken off by the weight of the stones, lay close by. Though I was somewhat astonished at this discovery, yet I did not suppose it to be of any value. I had heard of things of this kind being found before. My father had an ugly bit of marble which came out of a neighboring tomb. However, I did not throw it over the cliff with the other stones, but I put it on one side and went on again with my work.
“All day long my thoughts kept reverting to this statue. It was so very life-like—so different from the stiff, ugly marble figures I had seen; and it was so much larger, too, standing nearly four feet high. Perhaps, thought I, the Panagía has put it here—perhaps it is a sacred miracle-working thing, such as the priests find in spots like this. And then suddenly I remembered how, when I was a boy, a great German effendi had visited Sikinos, and was reported to have dug up and carried away with him priceless treasures. Is this statue worth anything? was the question which haunted me all day, and which I would have given ten years of my young life to solve.
“When my day’s work was over, I put the statue on to my mule, and carefully covered it over, so that no one might see what I had found; for though I was hopelessly ignorant of what the value of my discovery might be, yet instinct prompted me to keep it to myself. It was dark when I reached the village, and I went straight to the store, sorely perplexed as to what to do with my treasure. There was no time to bury it, for I had met one of my brothers, who would tell them at home that I had returned; so in all haste I hid the cold white thing under the grain in the corner, trusting that no one would find it, and went home. I passed a wretched night, dreaming and restless by turns. Once I woke up in horror, and found it difficult to dispel the effects of a dream in which I had sold Kallirhoe to a prince, and married the statue by mistake. And next day my heart stood still when my father went down to the store with me, shoved his hand into the grain, and muttered that we must send it up to the mill to be ground. That very night I went out with a spade and buried my treasure deep in the ground under the straggling branches of our fig-tree, where I knew it would not be likely to be disturbed.”
Nikola paused here for a while, stirred the embers with the little brass tweezers, the only diminutive irons required for so lilliputian a fire, sang snatches of nasal Greek music, so distasteful to a western ear, and joined his wife in muttering “winter!” “snow!” “storm!” and other less elegant invectives against the weather, which these islanders use when winter comes upon them for two or three days, and makes them shiver in their wretched unprotected houses; and they make no effort to protect themselves from it, for they know that in a few days the sun will shine again and dry them, their mud roofs will cease to leak, and nature will smile once more.
If they do get mysterious illnesses they will attribute them to supernatural causes, saying a Nereid or a sprite has struck them, and never suspect the damp. Nature’s own pupils they are. Their only medical suggestion is that all illnesses are worms in the body, which have been distributed by God’s agents, the mysterious and invisible inhabitants of the air, to those whose sin requires chastising, or whose days are numbered. Such is the simple bacillus theory prevalent in the Greek islands. Who knows but what they are right?
“Never was a poor fellow in such perplexity as I was,” continued Nikola, “the possessor of a marble woman whose value I could not learn, and about whom I did not care one straw, whilst I yearned after a woman whose value I knew to be a thousand drachmas, and whom I could not buy. My hope, too, was rendered more acute by the vague idea that perhaps my treasure might prove to be as valuable as Kallirhoe, and I smiled to think of the folly of the man who would be likely to prefer the cold marble statue to my plump, warm Kallirhoe. But they tell me that you cold Northerners have hearts of marble, so I prayed to the Panagía and all the saints to send some one who would take the statue away, and give me enough money to buy Kallirhoe.