Under Greek Skies. Ioulia D. Dragoume
were still filled with the blue morning shadows, but she had just left the shady path, slippery with pine needles, for the stony ledge along the hillside, and it was hot already. There was not a ruffle on the water, even on the open sea beyond the strip of the Narrow Beach which joined the wooded part of the island to the village part. Mattina decided that she would put the child on her back in the afternoon and carry him to a little crescent-shaped beach of which she knew on the Monastery road,2 and let him kick his little legs in the water. Kyra Sophoula had told her that sea water was good for him and would make his legs strong.
Who would take the trouble to carry him to the sea-shore when she was away? And she was leaving him and the island and everyone she knew, the next day!
This was how it happened.
More than a year ago her father had died of general paralysis, which is what often happens to sponge-divers3 when they stay too long down in deep water. Her mother had been ill long before her father had been brought home dying, from Tripoli in Barbary, and after his death she got worse and worse, and had died just before Easter. The only relations Mattina and little baby Zacharia had left were an uncle, their mother’s brother, who was a baker in Athens, and Kyra Kanella here in Poros, the wife of old Yoryi the boatman; and she was not really their aunt, but only their mother’s cousin, and had a great many children of her own.
Mattina and Zacharia really had another uncle too, a younger brother of their father’s, but he did not count; he had left for America on an emigrant ship when he was quite a youth, and only wrote letters home once or twice a year. Mattina remembered that when her father was away with the sponge-divers, Kyr Vangheli, the schoolmaster, would read these letters to her mother, and in them it was always written that her uncle Petro was so pleased in America that he did not mean to come back for many years.
So the two orphans had stayed with Kyra Kanella at first, because there was nowhere else for them to stay, and now she was still going to keep Zacharia; he was such a little one, and as she told Yoryi her husband, what the babe ate, nobody could miss it; it was not more than a sparrow would eat. But Mattina was different; Mattina was a big strong girl of more than eleven years of age, and she was going to Athens to be a servant. It had all been arranged some time ago. Her mother had said to her:—
“When I am dead, you must go to Athens, and your uncle Anastasi there, and his wife, who is a good woman, will find a house in which you may serve and earn money. Afterwards when you can, you will come back to Poros and take care of Zacharia; he is not a strong child; how should he be, the unfortunate one! But you are a strong girl and you must be a good sister and look after him.”
She had said this the night before she died, when for a moment they were alone in the house, and when her eyes looked so big.
There was a tiny bit of land which had belonged to the children’s father, and which was theirs now, but it had given nothing that year; the crop of olives had been very poor indeed, the rains had come out of season, and the wind had blown every single almond off the trees; so that even the poor bits of clothes that Mattina was to take with her to town in her bundle had been cut down from some old things of her mother’s, and Kyra Sophoula who was a neighbour, had taken them to her house to stitch them.
By this time to-morrow, thought Mattina, who had got down to the Narrow Beach and was passing before the open gates of the Naval School,4 it would be nearly time for the steamer to leave; her uncle would take her in his boat and she would climb up the little ladder at the side of the steamer up to the deck. She herself, she, Mattina, would be one of those people whom she had so often watched from the shore, one of those who were going away to strange parts, who were leaving the island.
She stopped to shift her load of branches higher on her back, and a sailor who was standing by the gates took a step forward and held it up for her while she took a firmer grasp of the thin rope which kept it together.
“God give you many years,” she said to him, looking down. She did not like speaking to strangers, but she remembered what her mother always used to say to anyone who helped her, and since she was alone now it was for her to say it.
The man laughed.
“The load is bigger than the maid who bears it,” he said; then looking down at her curiously, “Whose are you?”
“I am Aristoteli Dorri’s.”
“What does he do?”
“He was a sponge-diver, but he died last year.”
“Bah! The unfortunate one! And you carry wood for your mother’s oven, eh?”
“My mother died also on the Thursday of the Great Week.”5
“Bah! The poor child! Here!” he cried, as Mattina was starting off again, “stop a moment!” and from the bottom of his pocket, he pulled out a little twist of pink muslin into which were tied five or six sugared almonds.
“Take these! They are from a christening, … you can eat them on the way.”
Mattina had no pocket, but after she had thanked the sailor, she tied the almonds into one corner of her kerchief, and trudged on.
When she reached the first houses of the village, she turned away from the sea and began climbing up a steep little street, threading her way between the small houses, disturbing flocks of gray and white pigeons who fluttered up and settled on the ledges of the low terraces, between pitchers of water and pots of sweet basil. She stepped carefully over the ropes of tethered goats, passing by the open doors of the big church, and stopping for a moment to admire a length of pink and white cotton stuff which hung outside Kyr Nicola’s shop. If only, she thought, her new dress might have been made of that! But the brown dress which her mother used to wear on holidays, before her father died, was still quite good, and it would have been a sin to waste it; Kyra Sophoula had said so. Moreover she had made it too wide for Mattina, and with three tucks in it, so that it might last her for some time to come.
Before one arrived at Yoryi’s house, there was a whole street of low broad steps which Mattina descended slowly one by one, for her back was beginning to ache. When she reached the little blue-washed house she dumped down her load of sticks beside the oven in the courtyard with a great sigh of relief.
She found Zacharia whimpering before a half-eaten “koulouri”—a sort of doughnut with a hole in the middle—which someone had amused himself by tying to a nail in the wall, so that it dangled just out of reach of the child’s little arms.
“ ’Attina! ’Attina!” he cried as soon as he saw her; “My koulou’i! My koulou’i!”
She broke the string violently, and thrust the half-eaten koulouri into the child’s outstretched hands, then turning angrily to three big girls who were seated laughing, on the wooden steps leading to the flat roof, she cried out:—
“What has the child done to you that you are forever tormenting him? A bad year to you!”
But they only laughed the louder, and one of them called out:—
“Drink a little vinegar, it will calm your rage!”
Mattina did not answer; she shouldered the water pitcher, took Zacharia by the hand, and went out again, out through the dark arch to the Market Square for water.
“ ’Attina!” and there was still a little sob in poor Zacharia’s voice.
“Yes, my little bird.”
“My koulou’i is nearly finished.”
“Eat it slowly then,” advised the big sister. “And if you only knew what a good thing I have for you to-morrow!”
But to-morrow meant nothing to Zacharia.
“What, ’Attina? What? Give it to me!”
“Not now. To-morrow. Come then! Come and see all the little boats!”
When they reached the square, Mattina sat down to rest for a moment on the deep stone trough built round the fountain under the old eucalyptus tree. Most