Dimitrakis was suddenly overcome with a strange sense of unease. His nerves quivered like a compass needle when a magnet draws near it. In the yard outside there appeared a girl’s head, half-hidden in the leaves of a chestnut tree. Her black hair cascaded in glossy waves. Her olive-toned face, adorned with close-set black brows and shadowy eyelashes, reflected a calmed sea. Two large eyes cast gleams furtive and deep like passionate embraces. And two lips, red and slightly plump, churned, thirsting for an unknown delight. As the girl stood there at the green hedge, you would have thought her a witch’s gift sent to beguile the boy.
“Elpida, what are you doing here?” he asked, his voice shaking.
The girl fixed her eyes on him and smiled.
“I came to find you,” she said. “You didn’t think I would?”
“It’s true! I’m such a fool! How could I look to the east and not think you’d be the first thing I’d see?”[1]
And, with youthful innocence, he at once began to pluck blossoms from the roses that climbed the wall and impetuously throw them, one after another, all over her.
“Elpida! Elpidey! I’ll bury you with my rosebuds!”
“With your own hands, and rosebuds? What finer burial could there be?” she replied with a sparkling laugh.
“I’ll bury you so I can bring you back even prettier.”
“I already told you—to have an undertaker like you I’d happily die a thousand times . . . Tell me something—” she immediately added, serious now. “The scholars—are they here?”
“They’re here, drowned in their books.”
“Aristodemus, too?”
“Aristodemus, too. Why do you ask?”
“I don’t want them to see me, silly. I know they’re not bad people—but I’m afraid of them. How could a peasant like me get by under their spectacles!”
She didn’t manage to finish her thought but let out a fearful “Ah!” She then ducked her little head behind the hedge with a laugh muffled and clipped like the wing flap of a small bird.
Indignantly, Dimitrakis turned around to find Aristodemus right in front of him.
“Is that Elpis?” he asked dryly.[2]
“Who’s Elpis, you scoundrel? Now you even want to change her on me, too? Your face chased her from the hedge, and that word chased her from my heart. She’s not Elpis. Her name is Elpida. Elpida, and I’m going to find her!”
And without grabbing his cap he hurried to the steps, bounded down them, and disappeared into the garden. In no time at all he appeared beneath an apple tree that was laden with fruit. He held the girl in his arms and lifted her up high so that she could reach the apples. She let out cries and laughs, some from joy, others from fear, and stretched her arms upward in a clear effort to reach the ripest fruit. Sunbeams pierced through the tree’s foliage and caressed her hair, encircling her with a gleam.
The girl’s cries and laughs carried into the study like the sounds of tender music. The scholars became anxious. Something like a warm wave had rolled in and was beginning to thaw them out. A deep and unfamiliar emotion took hold in their hearts. They spontaneously turned and eyed one another with embarrassment. They laid their spectacles down on the manuscripts, as if wanting to signal that they were useless for this aspect of their research. Alamanos got up from his seat and rushed over to the window.
“Ah!” he said, as soon as he looked down. “I see the goddess Demeter, Demeter herself lavishing abundant fruits on her favorite.”
The others came over and jostled for the best view into the garden.
“A fine site they have here,” said Genevezos, poking his head out.
“I feel like I’m looking at a Mycenaean vase painting,”[3] said Perachoras, his sore eyes blinking.
Aristodemus hung back, completely pale with anger. To him, the sight seemed at once immoral and vulgar. A Eumorphopoulos son, spending so much time mixed up with a girl so common! He regarded it as a stain of dishonor upon his entire family. He listened to the scholars’ expressions of wonder and became convinced that they had no purpose but to mock his family for their downfall.
“What a sweet, adorable, delightful girl!” murmured Alamanos, not wanting to take his eyes off the garden.
“And just who is she, who is she, Mr. Aristodemus?” Genevezos turned and asked him.
“A girl from the village,” he replied with disdain. “Her name is Elpida.”
“A relative of yours?” exclaimed Perachoras, looking at the girl more intently.
“No; I mean, yes, she’s a relative,” Aristodemus sputtered. “But we don’t have anything to do with her.”
“Why not, if she is your relative?” asked Alamanos.
“A distant relative. Our blood, but bastardized.”
“I know, I know,” Perachoras interrupted. “A Khan dishonored her mother.”
“Well,” Aristodemus was forced to admit, “a woman named Archonto was a distant relative of my grandfather’s. One night, Khan went out with his men, killed her parents, and violated her. Eventually, Elpida was born. Our family didn’t want to acknowledge her as blood. Khan handed her off to a poor couple—Mr. and Mrs. Malamatenios—to raise. But, like I told you, we have no relationship with her. That’s why I don’t get along with my brother, who will do anything to bring her into our home. He won’t pull it off, though, you can be sure of it. As long as I live, he won’t pull it off . . .”
Aristodemus accompanied his words with wild gesticulations and winces of disgust. But he was only telling half the truth. It wasn’t just his brother, but also his mother, who had often tried to reconcile them. His mother had realized that Archonto was fighting fiercely alongside her husband in his struggle. Certainly, Andreas had toiled hard. But Archonto, with all her stoutheartedness, was the one who had given him the critical momentum. She had been the whetstone that sharpened his blade. She had been the whetstone, the hand, and the blade all at once.[4] That’s why Mrs. Panoria would repeatedly tell her children that their father had been ungrateful. When he’d had no further need for Archonto, he’d had no further thought for her, either. But the children, Mrs. Panoria would say, shouldn’t repeat their father’s mistakes. Elpida was their own blood, and blood is thicker than water. Let them keep that well in mind. And if, in the future, they should come to reprise their struggle, they’d have need of her once more. She possessed nerve and determination and strength and they would do well not to scorn her.
When Aristodemus heard his mother say such things, he would lose his mind.
“Our blood, she says? Our blood? I never want to hear you say that again! She’s as much our blood as the cuckoo is the blood of the doves whose nest it happens to share. We owe her, she says? What could some rag-scrap rug ever give to us? We got everything because we are true Eumorphopouloses!”
When Mrs. Panoria saw him like this she would fall silent. She didn’t want to upset him. But neither could she agree with what he said. She visited Elpida’s house often. In fact, she used to take Dimitrakis with her, when he was young, and the two children would play together. But, as he grew older, he became poisoned by his brother’s words. He no longer went to see her. He didn’t want anything to do with her. Fortune, however, worked her magic. One day, when he was running with friends trying to catch a woodpecker, he came upon Elpida’s garden. Whether he arrived on his own or the woodpecker brought him there, not even he could say. Regardless, he leapt over the wall, entered the garden, and burst into the reed bed where the woodpeckers liked to hide. At just that moment, he saw Elpida emerge with the bird in her hand.
“It’s mine!” he cried at her, without thinking first.
“If it’s yours, then why’s it taking you so long to catch it?”
Dimitrakis stood speechless and tongue tied. Indeed, why was it taking him so long to catch? The girl, seeing his agitation, laughed good-naturedly and placed the woodpecker in his hand.
“Take it,” she said. “And in the future know this: if ever a bird gets away from you, come and look for it here. Birds small and large come and make their nests in my garden.”
Dimitrakis, beet red, took it and dashed off. Afterward, though, he kept thinking of her kindness, her smile, her beauty, and was angry at his own behavior. He was the one who had been uncouth, not she. No doubt about it. His brother didn’t know what he was talking about. How could such a fair maid be vulgar and common? Again and again he returned to her house. He had heard her sing and had been enchanted by it. He had seen her weave, wind thread, and embroider and had been dazzled by her. Little by little, he gave up playing games and abandoned his friends. He became friends with Elpida. After his mother, she was his main concern. As soon as he took up with her, all the joys that he had relished with her in his childhood came back to life inside him. The parched deer returns to his native watering hole and drinks insatiably of the pure water. Whenever Dimitrakis failed to turn up at her house, she would go out to join him. They both shared the same sense of yearning. They coursed through the mountains and valleys like wild animals. They jumped barefoot into crystal clear waters, climbed trees, leapt over fences and ditches, and scurried up cliffs like badgers. They ventured out into the pastures and befriended the shepherds. They competed at throwing stones, they played ditties on the shepherd’s pipe, they herded the flocks: “yip! . . . yip!” From there, they would head down to the fields with the plowmen where they’d jump in among the workers for the harvest and the vintage. They exchanged tunes with the maids and lads. Often, they would go into the village and visit up and down the houses, amid joy and grief, for weddings and feasts, festivals, even quarrels. Everyone knew Elpida and everyone welcomed her. Young and old adored her. Each day her name was on the lips of rich and poor alike.
This kind of life changed Dimitrakis dramatically. The girl with her simple words awakened new thoughts in him. He no longer saw the world the same way as before. Neither the world, nor people. Now, whenever he recalled the promise he used to make to his mother, he would turn as red as a poppy. His vanity about his ancestry fell away like a cast-off garment. At first, of course, this surprised him. He felt like he was stark naked. He was embarrassed to show his face like that in the village. But Elpida’s words cloaked him in patience and self-confidence. In fact, he was ashamed that he had been ashamed. “Better off naked than in someone else’s clothes, even if they are my father’s,” he thought. Naked until he could weave a new piece of cloth with his own two hands. He was well aware that, to weave that cloth, he would have to sit at a different loom—not the one where his brother was seated. His brother was so old-fashioned. It wasn’t clothing he was turning out but a shroud. And yet, he couldn’t do things any differently. So, seeing as the weaver’s seat was in fact occupied by Aristodemus, Dimitrakis limited himself to spending time with the girl and attempting, together with Mrs. Panoria, to get his brother to acknowledge her as kin. But Aristodemus acted brutishly and foamed and barked like a sheepdog as soon as the topic came up. They frequently came to blows. Once or twice they’d have murdered each other with knives off the table if their mother hadn’t been there to separate them.
“My house is a temple, and I won’t let that pigskin-shoe wearer set foot inside it!”[5] Aristodemus now quipped, looking haughtily at his wise companions.
“But I thought that a pigskin-shoe wearer built your house,” Alamanos said without thinking. “Forgive me,” he added at once, not desiring to upset him. “I don’t want to interfere in your private matters. But I will venture to say that your brother is not in the wrong. Elpida’s clothes may be shabby but, under those clothes, look how firm and fit her body seems to be. Within such a body, there undoubtedly dwells an immortal soul.”
“Look, they’re leaving,” said Genevezos sorrowfully.
Elpida had gotten down from Dimitrakis’s shoulders and was walking ahead, holding a branch of a flowering lemon tree. She was smiling and cheerful as she went, as if she had conquered the world. The fine figure of her body enhanced the space like just the right hue in a painting. The trees rustled as if they felt a mystical breeze cooling them and waved their blossoms and leaves over her. Below, the green grass with its snow-white chamomile flowers caressed her melodious feet. So benevolent was her step that it caused them to give off a perfume. A faraway nightingale sent out its playful call like a march for the departure of a divine regiment. And the girl walked ahead with the branch of a blossoming lemon tree in her hand, smiling and joyful like a bride newly returned from her honeymoon.[6] Behind her went Dimitrakis, immersed in his dream and his task like a wrestler certain of victory.
“Marvelous!” cried Genevezos, lifting his gaze outward, as if he saw their path reflected there.
“Now they can restore the Parthenon’s metope with absolute certainty. I feel as though I have just seen a section of the Panathenaic procession passing before us,” Perachoras slowly murmured.[7]
“How charmless the garden is now!” Alamanos said with sadness. “I am going to view her up close—are you coming?”
“Of course,” said the scholars, grabbing their caps. “Are you not coming, too, Mr. Aristodemus? We have worked enough for today. Shall we go and take a bit of air?”
“Forgive me,” he said, accompanying them to the door. “But I shall stay and work some more.”
He hadn’t yet sat down to his work when he heard the voices of the young couple loudly singing:
I was born for you and you for me
Someday speech and pen shall brothers be—[8]
The voices carried like the most delicate of crystal and shattered at the door of the study. You would think they had shattered from sorrow and despair that the door hadn’t opened for them. But Aristodemus was disgusted and scowled in disbelief. That’s all we needed—let him go be his mother’s pride and joy!
He rushed over and barred the window to the garden. He didn’t want to hear voices. Laughter displeased him; good cheer irritated him. He was convinced that the outside world did nothing but beguile a person. When he had the windows open, all the life outside would dash at him like the devil and scatter his ego here and there along with the dust from the table. And then he would feel he was nothing, hollow like a vial emptied of its perfume. And that is why, as soon as he wanted to get down to work, he would latch the windows shut to force his soul to stay put inside him. He had just closed them and was still muttering about the young people’s singing when the door of the neighboring room creaked and his mother appeared. Statuesque and plainly dressed, she evoked the noble ladies of old, or the ill-fated queens of fairy tales. Everything about her suggested that she was descended from aristocracy and had been exceedingly beautiful in her youth. It also suggested that she had suffered much and had drunk many bitter draughts.
“You’re angry again?” she asked her son kindly.
“No, Mother. I’m not angry,” said Aristodemus, forcing a smile. “Now, there’s the son I’ve been telling you about—he can’t settle down one bit. All games and running around.”
“Ah, he’s still a child,” said Mrs. Panoria. “The day will come when he, too, will sit down and think.”
“Child? Now he’s back to being a child? He’s a twenty-two-year-old man and you’re going to tell me he’s a child?”
“Oh, come now, what’s this nonsense about twenty-two? In forty days he’ll be turning twenty. You’re practically making him into an old man already.”
“Fine, so he’s twenty. Nowadays fifteen-year-old children quit being children. They raise families. He doesn’t even know the three evils of his destiny yet!”[9]
“No—don’t say it,” said the old woman. “Don’t say it, he doesn’t know. But sowing, planting, picking grapes, and harvesting crops—all that he’s learned how to do. He’s learned every kind of work in the world.”
“There’s no need for that. It doesn’t suit his position. Look, this is his work right here: to get a book, read, edify himself. To learn how our people used to be.”
“It would be better, I think, to learn about how we are today. What use will come from what’s past? If your father had been like this, we wouldn’t have this little house. And one more thing,” she continued, now more tenderly. “It’s good that you’re here with the books. But let the boy choose his own path. We can’t all be scholars!”
“All right, Mother, all right,” said Aristodemus, shrugging his shoulders with indifference. “Let him be whatever you like. Make him a plowman, a stable hand, a cobbler even. A fine thing indeed—a Eumorphopoulos mending shoes.”
Mrs. Panoria knitted her brows gravely and looked him in the eye. His smirk seemed unbearable.
“And a skilled cobbler, my boy,” she said slowly and seriously, “can honor his family name just as much as a scholar. Dishonor doesn’t mean plying a humble trade. It means not knowing how to ply your trade . . . But enough of all this,” she clipped with a wince of displeasure. “You are your father’s heir, and you can make anything happen. I came to talk to you about a different matter, and we’ve ended up somewhere else.”
“Go ahead, Mother, I’m listening. But first I want you to swear on my father’s soul: you won’t say anything about that good-for-nothing Theomisitos. Dimitrakis came by earlier and drove me nuts about it. He went on and on and nearly made that swineherd sound like a hero. I don’t want to hear any more about it.”
“All right, I won’t say anything about him,” the old woman said patiently. “Our tenant farmers came by and want to speak to you about the fields. It was always around this time of year that your father used to divide them up for the farmers to work. Koutroubis says there was plenty of rain and we’ll have good yields this year.”
“Oof! Now him, too,” said Aristodemus. “He won’t leave me alone after all! What do fields and yields have to do with me? I don’t want to know about anything but my books. Do you hear me? Nothing but my books.”
Mrs. Panoria nodded her head despondently. She, too, had unwittingly begun to worry about the path that her firstborn was taking. Since the day her husband died, she hadn’t seen any progress made on their endeavor. In fact, things were only going worse. Aristodemus had nothing but words: he’ll do this, he’ll do that. And curses: that miscreant Khan, the scoundrel, the bloodsucker. He’ll kick him out, he’ll send him right back to the Red Apple Tree, he’ll drink his blood![10] But when it came to actually working toward his purpose, to breaking a sweat, to making preparations—nothing. Mrs. Panoria got up to leave.
“Wait, Mother, why are you leaving?” he asked, worried.
“What should I do, my boy?” she responded with melancholy. “I came to speak to you about our work and you just talk to me about books. The fields, you say, have nothing to do with you. Well, fine—leave the lands untilled! I can’t take them with me, can I? They’re yours. But I’m just sorry that your poor late father toiled to wrest them from the wolf’s mouth and cultivate them. Now they’ll just fall back into disuse. Instead of gaining more, we’ll lose these ones, too . . .”
Two tears quavered in Mrs. Panoria’s eyes. Aristodemus saw the negative effect that his words were having and wanted to moderate them.
“There there, Mother, don’t cry. I didn’t say we’ll abandon the lands. We’ll work them. I have the same aim, too. The same hopes. Aren’t I my father’s son? We’ll work the fields, but we’ll work them differently. That was then, this is now. That’s why I’m following a different path. This year, I’m not going to plow the fields, I’m going to dig them up.”
“You’ll plant grapevines?” Mrs. Panoria interrupted.
“No. I’m going to uproot what little there is. The garden. The orchard, the fields—I’m going to have all of it excavated.”
“What are you saying, my son?”
“Don’t be afraid, Mother, and don’t be sad. Don’t you be like those half-wits, and like my brother, too. Our rightful fortune isn’t on the earth—it’s inside of it. And she has guarded it for ages and ages so that we could be the ones to find it. And what joy, Mother, what glory we’ll have if it returns to the light of the sun! The foreigners will be so astounded that they’ll decide all on their own to restore our ancestral inheritance!”
“Oh! This is terrible!” Mrs. Panoria cried loudly.
And, grabbing her head in both hands, she ran to the door and left the room, yelling at the top of her voice as if searching for help:
“Dimitrakis! Dimitrakis! We’re done for!”