Dimitrakis threw himself not only into work but into study as well. It was true that he made the former his priority, but he did not neglect the latter. Work was absolutely necessary for his existence, but study was equally so for his spirit. He dedicated all the year’s working days to the one and his rest days and winter evenings to the other. The good thing was that he managed to remain untyrannized by either, and would glide from the one to the other with equal pleasure. Whether it was a book or an axe that he held in his hand, he was in the right place.
“They both have their purpose—their noble and holy purpose. Isn’t that right?” he would ask Elpida every so often.
Sometimes in the shade on the terrace and sometimes by the fireside, the two lovers would sit and read the old manuscripts together. Occasionally, Dimitrakis would read and Elpida would listen as she wound her distaff. But most often it was the girl who read and the young man who listened. He would listen and hang on her words. The phrases flowed clear, lively, and melodiously, like gurgling water from the lips of a natural spring. And he drank them in—he would drink thirstily and greedily and experience indescribable joy. The words and deeds of his ancestors fortified his soul and steeled his nerves. Sometimes they brought tears to his eyes; at others they graced his lips with a smile. Sometimes they cast clouds over his brow; at others they spread joy over his face. Every sentence and line from the manuscripts sprouted within him and swiftly produced leaves and fruit.
“But this is a fairy tale!” he suddenly interrupted Elpida one evening as they were reading Herodotus.[1]
“A fairy tale—well, what did you expect?” she asked him, perplexed. “And Homer, who we were reading earlier, is a long klephtic ballad,[2] and Theocritus’s works are shepherd songs.”[3]
“You’re making fun of me.”
“No, I’m not, for goodness’ sake. Look here: you see Hesiod? Do you know what’s in him?”[4]
“No . . .”
“He speaks in verse about how and when our ancestors were supposed to plant and reap.”
“So they planted, too?” asked the youth, with childlike naïveté.
The girl looked him in the eye to see if he was being serious.
“You’re right,” she said after a moment, nodding her head. “I’m amazed that you’re not also asking whether or not they ate. What’s happened to you is just like what’s happened to people on Earth with the moon. You always look at just one side of Eumorphopoulos history: the bright one. That’s what all that schooling has done to you.
“Why?”
“Here’s why. It fed your imagination and killed your will to action. It showed you an ancient Greece that was an endless idler’s paradise. But that’s not how it really was: take my word for it, that’s not how it was. It was a workshop, an enormous workshop for all of life’s arts.”
“Bah! . . .” he said, his eyes widening.
“Right. Well, if you don’t believe me, just listen.”
She took out a small manuscript and began to read, slowly and loudly:
“In other cities, everyone makes a living however they can. Some are farmers, others sailors, others merchants, and still others live by their crafts.”[5]
“And that’s something our ancestors said?”
“Look, don’t you see? It’s Xenophon who says these things,” she said as she laid the manuscript before his eyes.
Dimitrakis put his head in his hands and remained sunk in thought for quite a while. Not even he was capable of expressing just what he was feeling. Inside his head, worlds were crumbling and worlds were rising again with astonishing speed. At last, he raised his eyes and looked at the girl with clear disappointment.
“You know what I’m thinking about?” he asked her.
“What?”
“All those years that I lost . . . Everything you’ve read to me, I read, too—I remember it—when I was a child. But you know what I thought of it then? I thought . . . how can I put it? . . . Just books!”
From the next day, he started making regular visits to the Archeologist’s study. The realm of the books was driving him straight to the realm of the marbles. Before, he had regarded them as no more than a pile of rocks—huge and astounding masses. They had provoked nothing but bemusement in him. He would be bemused, and often wonder what kind of diabolical tools his ancestors had used just to move them! And that was how he had formed his ideas about how big and strong they had been. All of them like Heracles and Briareus![6] Now, however, the marbles were giving rise to another feeling. Just one little stone was enough to bring art, true and living art, before him. And that, in turn, was enough to show him his ancestral spirit in motion. So much so that, all on his own, he ended up merging the soul of the books with the marbles’ soul—and the result was a life that was wholly joyous, full of courage, and bathed in glory.
“Ah!” he would exclaim often, squinting his eyes as if they were dazzled by the light.
Elpida, who was vigilantly monitoring his new line of thought, started to grow worried. “Watch out, pace yourself!” she told him with seriousness one day. “He who looks too often at the sun stumbles on his path.”
“Don’t worry, my dear girl, don’t worry,” he reassured her. “I’ve got two eyes, two eyes to see with. One for what’s up high and the other for what’s down low . . . don’t worry.”
“Your brother had two eyes, too.”
“But he didn’t have the good luck charm with him.”[7]
“What good luck charm?”
“You, my darling . . .”
And so came the day of the wedding. Two days before, piles of gifts had started to arrive. The scattered tenant farmers had been excited when they had learned of the match. Those who worked on nearby estates sent along their gift baskets and informed the couple that they would be attending the ceremony in person. Those who worked farther away sent grander gifts and greater good wishes. But the present that gratified the couple the most was the one from Alamanos. It arrived in the evening by post. Dimitrakis eagerly broke the seals, cut the strings, tore open the wrapping, and began to shout.
“Elpida—Elpida! Come and have a look at this!”
“What is it? What’s going on?” she asked him as she climbed the stairs.
“Alamanos has sent us his book! Look, here it is! Sheesh, the rascal! When on earth did he manage this?”
And he showed the girl an enormous tome, an octavo of two thousand pages.
“ ‘The Enduring and Unchanged Eumorphopoulos Spirit,’ ” he read aloud, looking straight at her.
“Well done him!” said Elpida enthusiastically.
She leaned against Dimitrakis’s shoulder and they started cutting the book’s pages and devouring them with their eyes.[8] It was truly a work of profound learning. It began with Byzantium, moved on to the time of their family’s subjugation, and finished with Andreas Eumorphopoulos—Andreas the Liberator, as Alamanos called him. It wasn’t so much a book as a mirror. Every Eumorphopoulos was there within it, enduring and unchanged—just as he had been in the era in which he had lived. A casual observer would say that they were all distinct and dissimilar. Yet, over the course of the book’s prologue and chapters, Alamanos had demonstrated with his acute critical judgment that they were all united by the same sensibility and the same outlook on life, by common hopes and common beliefs. The difference was merely external: on the inside there was none.
Amid their joy, Aristodemus appeared on the staircase. He was in bad shape. His cap was wrinkled, his clothes were dirty, and his necktie was undone. He even had a scrape on his nose.
“What’s happened to you?” asked Elpida, anxiously running up to him.
“Nothing, it’s nothing. But what a world, I tell you, what a world! . . . To not want to hear what’s in your own best interest!”
“What happened?” Dimitrakis asked from his seat.
“Look, it was that scoundrel Kurdocephalus. You know, for a week now I’ve been sitting at our fence watching how he works the land. And just what has he done? Made a mess of it, that’s what. Trees, trees, trees. He’s covered the place in trees again. And how? Helter-skelter, no rhyme or reason. So today I just couldn’t take it anymore! To hell with him, I said—I’ll go give him some advice. What difference does it make if he’s taken my land? Tomorrow I’ll take it back.”
“That’s right,” Dimitrakis muttered gravely.
“So I went and started to give him advice: don’t do this, don’t do that; do this like this and that like that. But he paid no attention; he didn’t want to listen to me . . .”
“You wouldn’t just let him do what he wants?” asked Elpida.
“What he wants? How could I just let him do whatever he wants! So I go and take an apple tree he’d planted next to a walnut tree—I uproot it and place it farther down. ‘Look, you bastard,’ I say to him. ‘This is where it should go.’ And he got all angry. He grabs the apple tree out of my hand and gives me a shove. So that’s how I fell and got dirty . . . What a messed-up world! What a messed-up world!”
“Why did you want to go and get mixed up in that?” said Dimitrakis.
“Why, sir?” Aristodemus asked him angrily. “You don’t just have a brain for your own sake; you have it for other people’s, too.”
He took a cigar from his pocket, lit it, and looked at the young people with disdain.
“What are you reading?” he asked them.
“We only just got it; see for yourself,” Dimitrakis said as he handed him the book, curious to see his reaction.
He took it. But as soon as he read the title and the author’s name he gave it back.
“That fellow’s a trifler,” he said. “An ignoramus . . . That’s all we needed—for strangers to explain our own house to us . . . I’ve said it, I’m saying it, and I’ll keep saying it till I die: only a Eumorphopoulos could write on such a subject.”
Dimitrakis became enraged. He looked at him furiously and was ready to start an argument with him.
“Shh . . .” Elpida hissed in his ear, arching her shoulders. “Hey! Do you see what he writes in his letter? He says he’s coming to the wedding and that he’ll do the crowning if we want . . .”[9]
“If we want! Just listen to that—if we want!” Dimitrakis exclaimed happily, grabbing the letter out of her hands.
Aristodemus was pacing back and forth from one end of the terrace to the other, shaking his walking stick, and distractedly smoking his cigar.
“Tell me something—from the others you haven’t had anything?”
“What others?”
“You know—Perachoras . . . Genevezos . . .”
“No.”
“Strange! Very strange indeed . . . I took such good care of them and they don’t even send a letter!”
And he reprised his nervous wandering, chewing on his cigar, occasionally stumbling and repeatedly muttering: “Not even a letter! . . . Not even a letter! Strange!”
“They must be very busy,” Elpida limply attempted to console him.
“Ah, yes. You’re right. You’re absolutely right! They must be busy. Otherwise, they wouldn’t have forgotten us.”
And at once he calmed down. At that moment, the cat was walking out of his study and he called out “Ps ps ps” to her. He took her in his hands and began sweetly kissing and petting her and nuzzling her head with his face. She repaid him with the same affection and climbed up onto him with her eyes narrowed, taking slow steps as if she were about to pounce on something behind his head. But suddenly she howled with a loud “Yeow!” The Archeologist had grabbed her tail. And when he saw that she was in pain, he grabbed it harder so that she couldn’t escape. She meowed, she writhed, she dug her claws into his clothes. But he was calm, and with a cool smile he looked at her and yanked her ears, twisted her legs, and squeezed her head.
“What’s that animal done to you to make you torture it?” Dimitrakis asked from his spot.
But he paid no attention to him. The cat was suffering in his hands and meowing in despair.
“You’re a tyrant!” Elpida cried angrily, and wrested the animal away from him.
“ ‘More precious than Mother and Father and ev’ry other Ancestor,’ ” Aristodemus shouted, ignoring what she had said. “ ‘Naught is more ven’rable, sacred, nor held in loftier esteem . . . !’ ”
“Bravo!” the young people exclaimed, and they burst into applause.
What happened the day of the wedding is beyond description. It was an autumn day, blustery and cold. One by one, the leaves were slowly falling and carpeting the ground with red. The morning glories that climbed the walls shivered in their nakedness. Dimitrakis had taken the grapevine that once grew at Elpida’s house, and now it covered the yard. The weather had stripped it of its leaves, but its branches grew so wildly high and low that you would think they were impatient to embrace all that lay beyond. Dark waters gushed in the nearby stream, crashing and foaming. The spring in the yard continued to flow with a murmur, like the prattling mouth of an old woman reminiscing about happier days. And the little house, with its moss-covered walls and black roof, seemed sunk deep in thought. But then people arrived, and its appearance instantly transformed inside and out. A boom here, a bang there, shouts, commotion, laughter, pandemonium! Joy overflowed. The place was filled with crowds of tenant farmers, all immaculately dressed and of good cheer. They brought slaughtered animals; they brought breads; they came loaded with gallons of choice wine. Some drove oxen, bulls unyoked and intact; others drove stallions, still others goats with golden horns. Khan’s son came, sent by his father, and his presence made for quite the sight. He rode a gold-saddled mule and had a retinue of six tenant farmers who came on foot but were dressed in gold like princes. Behind them, another tenant farmer was leading an Arabian steed, saddled and bridled, for the groom. Mitros Glamis came with Vassilis Zarakas, and they brought twelve mules loaded with beans farmed from their lands. Around noon, Theomisitos turned up all alone, dressed in peasant clothes. But his gift bore no relation to his garb: it was a majestic stag with golden antlers and extraordinary coloring.[10]
Zarakas was irked when he saw such a fine gift and wanted to needle him.
“It’s a big tree that’s being planted next to you today, my friend,” he said to Theomisitos spitefully. “Give it two years and it’ll be casting its shade over your orchard. I say you should start taking steps right now to see it doesn’t destroy your vines.”
“Eh, I have ’em protected and I’m not worried,” Theomisitos replied with indifference.
“And if it does destroy his vines, you don’t think we’ll be there to pull ’em out?” said Balaouras. “We want work, too.”
“I won’t be troubling you,” Theomisitos told him.
He didn’t want to give any sign that he was thinking about it at all, but the worm was gnawing away in his mind. He did not look kindly upon this marriage. For some time now, he had found Dimitrakis’s activity worrying. In the young man’s progress, he could see his own death clear as day. He saw it, just as Khan saw it, too. But they did not want to show it.
Aristodemus, on the other hand, started a huge argument with his brother on account of these last guests. He wanted to kick them out of the wedding, to refuse both them and their gifts.
“Oh come on, the only reason they came is to humiliate us,” he kept saying angrily.
“Settle down, settle down now, Brother. Why kick them out?” Dimitrakis asked. “They’ll have their come-uppance soon enough.”
Fortunately, just then Alamanos arrived and their quarrel was interrupted. The young scholar immediately rushed to shake everyone’s hands and make excuses for his tardiness.
“You have no idea,” he said, turning from one person to the other. “My journey was hindered in a thousand and one ways. Just imagine! When I crossed the Kamenitsa River,[11] I was swept up in it like a duck.”
“You must be soaking,” said Elpida as she eyed his clothes worriedly.
“No, I changed; I had clothes with me.”
“Look at you! You triumph over everything! You anticipate everything, and you triumph over it all!” Dimitrakis exclaimed with admiration.
“We would’ve been sorry if you hadn’t come,” Elpida added. “Dimitrakis and I were both worried.”
“And I as well, and I as well! But how could I not come for such a happy occasion!”
Aristodemus was moved by his kindness. How strange! He hadn’t expected this barbaric scholar to be capable of such emotion. Whereas the others—they hadn’t even sent a letter. Not even a letter! What did it mean? Even if they had entirely different ideas about things than Dimitrakis did, still they really ought to turn up for the wedding. But not even a letter!
“And I took such good care of them! I made so many sacrifices for their sakes! Ingrates,” he said with a bitter gulp.
He made straight for Alamanos. He shook his hand for a second time and then stood opposite him, poised to give a speech. He wanted to congratulate the young scholar for having the honor of being present at such a wedding—a Eumorphopoulos wedding!—and to denounce the others for their ungraciousness. He would really lay into them—just you wait.
But right then the priest appeared and the ceremony began. Aristodemus was forced to postpone his vengeance until the evening.
“This evening at the banquet will be even better,” he thought to himself, and was mollified.
The Dance of Isaiah had only just started, however, when Koutroubis hissed in his ear:[12]
“They’re here.”
“Who?”
“Perachoras and that other one . . . The wise men . . .”
“Really!” Aristodemus cried and bounded out the door.
He ran up to them, helped them dismount from their horses, asked them if they were tired, and sought in a hundred ways to make clear his joy at seeing them again.
“I kept saying it myself, I kept saying: they couldn’t forget their old friends!”
“Friends both old and new,” added Genevezos.
That evening, as they were preparing the banquet, the two brothers began arguing once again. Aristodemus absolutely insisted on placing the statue of Glory in the dining room. That way, all the guests would be able to see it, and it would sit there like a nail in their eyes.
“They wanted to show off their wealth to us, so why don’t we show off our own?”
“You think they don’t yet know who we are?” Dimitrakis asked gently. “Everyone knows of our Glory.”
“It’s one thing for them to know about it, but they should see it again,” Aristodemus insisted. “It’s not the kind of masterpiece you view only once!”
Dimitrakis could not take it anymore.
“I am not going to let your quirks make me look ridiculous!” he said. “These people came for a celebration. They didn’t come for a lesson in art.”
“Fine, in that case I’m not going to sit at the table.”
Dimitrakis trembled with rage. He was ready to raise his hand and strike Aristodemus in the face. But at that moment Elpida entered wearing her wedding dress and utterly radiating joy and youth.
“What’s happened to you two?” she asked, smiling. “They can hear you out there. Shame on you!”
“Just listen for yourself!” Dimitrakis said, leaving them to it.
When Elpida heard what Aristodemus wanted, she stood there stunned. How humiliating! But she rapidly regained her composure, put her hand on his forearm, and whispered tenderly:
“Forget about him, he doesn’t know what he’s doing. You’re right; it’s a good thing you told him.”
“Praise be to God!” Aristodemus shouted gladly. “Finally, I’ve found someone who understands!”
“But wouldn’t it be better if we did one thing?”
“What?”
“After the meal, let’s serve the coffee in your study. That way they won’t just see Glory; they’ll see the other antiquities, too. Doesn’t that make more sense? Well? Don’t you think?”
“Of course,” Aristodemus conceded, appeased. “But it will happen—this isn’t a trick?”
“A trick? What are you saying? Look, I’d been saying myself that we should do something like this. I just didn’t know how. It’s a good thing you thought of it. I’ve always said you’ve got a good head on your shoulders, a good head! And just think how much it will irritate them!” she added, laughing and leading him, now quite content, to the banquet table.
“You did it? Well done!” Dimitrakis told her quietly.
“What can I tell you, when you’re speaking to children you have to speak like a child . . .”
The distinguished guests were seated one next to another at the table. Elpida had Alamanos to her right and Dimitrakis on her left. Aristodemus sat between Khan’s son and Theomisitos. The other places were occupied by Zarakas, Glamis, Perachoras, Genevezos, and others. Out on the terrace and down in the yard, the tenant farmers were dining, drinking, and singing songs in praise of the bride and groom. Every so often, their voices rose up like a thunderclap.
Mr. and Mrs. Malamatenios kept repeating their wishes for the bride and groom:
“Long live our children! Long may they live—and produce sons!”
“If only, Mother of God, if only! And here’s to your royal offspring.”
The old couple bustled among the groups of guests, giving and receiving good wishes, bringing them food, wine, and whatever else they asked for. They tried to see to it that nobody left feeling slighted. Every so often, the old man also had a little wine. The old woman would get angry and mutter:
“Drink up, then! Drink up—then we’ll really get to see your temper!”
“I most certainly will drink! I will drink! Why not? Today is my child’s wedding! My child’s!”
“Ah, so it’s your child’s! Well, have another drink then!”
“Get off my back, woman! Get off my back or I’ll shout! By God Almighty, I’ll shout!”
“And just what will you shout?”
“What? Well, look, I know why you’re angry!”
“Why is that?”
“This evening you’re jealous of the bride! That’s why!”
“To hell with you, you old hedgehog.”
When the banquet was nearly finished, Alamanos stood up to make a toast. With his glass in his hand, he spoke simply and briefly. He said that the day’s wedding was of historic significance. From here on out, a new life would begin for the Morphopoulos line. He praised the groom’s achievements; he praised the bride’s patience and beauty. At the end, he made artful reference to Kurdocephalus’s greed and to Elpida’s sacrifice.
“I do not wish to offend anyone,” he said. “But without that sacrifice, perhaps we would not have the honor of finding ourselves under such an illustrious roof today.”
Everyone applauded at the end of the toast. They all began to drain their glasses and congratulate the bride for what she had done. But Aristodemus felt affronted. He took Alamanos’s closing words as a personal insult.
“You can be sure,” he said from his seat, “that even if it weren’t for Elpida, the Eumorphopoulos house would never have fallen into anyone else’s hands. That’s right, it wouldn’t have!”
“Possibly,” said Alamanos.
“Not possibly, certainly!” said Aristodemus, standing up. “As certain as I am speaking to you right now.”
“There’s no doubt about it,” said Mitros Glamis.
“If it’s you who says so, of course we believe it,” said Theomisitos.
“That’s right, I’m saying it because I’m me. That’s right, I’m a Eumorphopoulos!” Aristodemus shouted loudly. “And as to the Eumorphopouloses—know well that their dreams and their deeds were always one and the same. Like this, see, like this!” he said, interlocking his fingers tightly. “I knew it before, but the other day I also had a dream that confirmed it. Do you want to hear what it was?”
“Of course we do,” they all said in agreement.
“We’re curious,” added Theomisitos, smiling.
“Well, listen: Kurdocephalus comes and says to me, ‘It’s either your money or the house’—‘Neither the money nor the house,’ I respond to him civilly—‘I’ll fight you!’ he says to me. ‘So fight!’ I tell him. I immediately rally the tenant farmers, position them at the trench, and arm them with rifles. ‘Attack,’ I say. ‘Slaughter them! Slaughter them all! Don’t leave a single hair on their heads!’ And I get out five cannon and five bombards and position them on the steps. And there’s Kurdocephalus with his army. The hillsides teemed with men. Cannon in front, his cavalry in back. ‘Give me the house, so that no blood will be shed unjustly!’ he tells me again. ‘Come and get it!’ I answer, ‘Molon labe!’—that’s what our ancestors used to say.[13] And the cannon starts going off. The musket fire begins: bam! boom! whoosh . . . whoosh . . . bam! boom! . . . I’m standing in front of the cannon. Bullets rain down overhead. Whoosh . . . whoosh . . . bam! boom!”
One by one, Elpida and Alamanos began clearing away the plates, glasses, and the gas lamps with their glass chimneys. If by chance they met with one of his punches they would be smashed to smithereens. Dimitrakis remained motionless in his seat, white as wax and gazing upon his brother with sadness. He just looked at him while the others were biting their lips to keep from breaking out into laughter. But Aristodemus, as if all alone, continued to shadowbox and bombard his enemy.
“Bam! boom! whoosh . . . whoosh . . . bam! boom!”
All of a sudden, the others began to roar with laughter. Dimitrakis had guessed that they were suffering and was the first to start it. Swiftly everyone gave free rein to their desire. The tumbledown house bellowed like a noisy taverna. The Archeologist was startled and looked at them with bulging eyes as if he were asking the reason. But then he regained his composure and nodded his head.
“You’re laughing? You’re laughing?” he asked, seriously. “If only you’d been there, so I could see if you’d have been laughing then.”
And, with a gesture of disdain, he left the banquet and went to his study. It was there, however, that he remembered the plans that he had made with Elpida and was immediately placated. He lit the lamp and looked around. His ancestral relics were all in their places. Legs, arms, heads, and torsos sat so proudly upon their pedestals that you would think they had triumphed over Charos. On a few of them, you could still make out the paint that had been applied to them by the artist. Others scoffingly displayed wounds that had been inflicted on them by the barbarian occupier in years gone by. Still others retained the unaltered smiles and joy of their own era. In fact, some of the female heads had such calm faces and expressions that you would think they were modern-day brides. Beyond them, along the edges of the room, were his notebooks, yellowed and frayed like mummified kings in the crevices of a pyramid. Near him stood the bookshelves, and the house cat was sitting atop the middle one like a sphinx, still sunk in her secret dream. On the wall hung Elpida’s needlework, and here and there its golden threads glistened like diaphanous water in a valley’s black crags.
Aristodemus looked pensively at the needlework for a long while. Should he take it down or leave it? What would the guests say if they saw it? Would it be a source of embarrassment for the Eumorphopouloses or bring them even more honor? His own inclination was to leave it. In fact, he found that it coordinated quite well. Set there beside each other, the antiquities and the needlework shared a certain grace that made them resemble each other like siblings. You would think they had emerged from a single, variegated source. But the foreigners? What would the foreigners say?
“Oh, rats!” he cried suddenly, smacking his forehead as if something disastrous had happened.
Glory wasn’t yet where she deserved to be. But now there wasn’t time. The others, wherever they were, would be coming in to have their coffee, and he absolutely had to get her into position. The important thing was for them not to see her atop her marble pedestal. He tried to drag the walnut-tree trunk close to his desk. But it was impossible. How could he move something so heavy! And it was almost time. Then he thought that he would lift the statue and set her atop the trunk. The trunk could stay where it was; it didn’t matter. Of course, next to the desk would be the best place for it. As soon as someone opened the door, they would be looking straight at it. But what could he do? It was too late now. So he wrapped his arms around the statue and tried to lift it. But it was heavy, too heavy for his arms. And yet, is there anything persistence cannot achieve? He heaved and hoed and managed to lift it in his arms. But as soon as he attempted to take a few steps, he began to stumble and reached out his hand to grab the wall. He grasped nothing, though, but the edge of the needlework. Right then, the monstrous statue spun to the left, broke one of the bookcases into splinters, and tumbled to the floor, bringing its devotee down with it.
The house shook to its foundations. The guests seated at the table leapt up, pale with fear. Dimitrakis and Alamanos were the first to run to the study.
“Ah . . . a cat, a cat!” the wise man shouted as he backed toward the door.
“It’s nothing, the cat on the bookshelf must’ve woken up,” said Dimitrakis. “Go on in!”
They found themselves in darkness. The lamp had fallen along with the desk and shattered on the ground.
“Aristodemus! Where are you, Aristodemus? Brother!” Dimitrakis cried, utterly terrified.
“Ah! There’s blood! . . . I’m stepping in blood!” Elpida said, shuddering.
“Light! A light!” Dimitrakis ordered Koutroubis. “Quickly!”
Alamanos ran to the window and punched open the shutters. In poured the twilight. A twilight red like fire. Everyone entered the room backward, their figures dim. The Archeologist was lying on the ground and barely breathing. Blood trickled from his mouth and ears, dyeing the floorboards red. A tremendous wound gaped on his forehead. On top of his right arm, as if resting on a pillow, lay the bodiless head of Glory. His left hand was up in the air, still clasping the edge of the needlework. On his chest, stomach, and legs lay a jumble of books and debris. Other pieces of rubble covered the floor from end to end like a river’s stream.
“How lamentable!” said Khan’s son with a shudder.
“A catastrophe! An enormous catastrophe!” Perachoras said sorrowfully.
“Stone on stone—and both of them shattered,” Theomisitos whispered in Zarakas’s ear.
“Shame on you!” Zarakas replied to him sternly.
Elpida and Dimitrakis, kneeling on either side of the Archeologist, wiped away the blood and wept softly. Alamanos considerately attempted to free him from the wreckage. At a certain point, Aristodemus opened his eyes and looked at them curiously.
“Why are you weeping?” he whispered. “This is a fine death, a very fine death! . . . It is life!”
And he closed his eyes again.
“Ah, the poor thing! The poor thing!” wailed the young couple with a heavy heart.
“Are they really crying?” Theomisitos asked the person next to him in bafflement.
“So it seems. Despite how he was, they cared about him. They have a saying: ‘Blood is thicker than water.’ ”
“I have a light!” said Koutroubis, entering the room with a lamp.
“There is no need,” Alamanos told him with a secret joy. “It is dawn once more.”
The Archeologist died—and they buried him.
And they all lived happily ever after.