CHAPTER VI
THE SONG FROM THE DARKNESS
When Constantine looked at one of the casks of fermenting wine on thefourth day, he saw that the crust of skins, stalks, and stones hadrisen to within six inches of the top, like coffee on the boil, andwas thickly covered with a pink, sour-smelling froth. The fermentationwas at its height, and it was time to mix up the crust with the fluidagain to excite it even further. In one cask, into which the ripestfruit from the more sun-baked corner of the vineyard had been put, thiscrust had risen even higher, and threatened to overflow. The ordinarycustom in Greece at this time was for a naked man to get into the caskand stir it up again, a remnant, no doubt, of some now insignificantsuperstition; but Constantine, though he still put the grapes of onevine in a bowl for the birds to eat, did not think it necessary to makethis further concession, but only stirred up the frothing mass with aninstrument like a wooden pavier. The crust was already growing thickand compacted, and it was ten minutes' work to get it thoroughly mixedup again with the fluid in each case, and from the seething, bubblingsurface there rose thickly the sour fumes of the decomposing matter,heavily laden with carbonic-acid gas. One cask leaked slightly roundthe tap at the bottom and was dripping on the floor. A little redstream had trickled down to the edge of the veranda, and he noticedthat it was full of small bubbles, like water that had stood in thesun, showing that the fermentation was not yet over. He caulked this upwith a lump of resin, and then moved all the casks out of the shade foran hour or two, so that the heat might hasten the second fermentation,which naturally was slower and less violent than the first. The caskand a half of fine wine, however, he did not touch; there it was betterthat the fermentation should go on slowly and naturally.
That evening Mitsos went out fishing, as the work of wine-making wasover for the present. In four or five days he would have to go over toEpidaurus to get the resin from the pine-trees, but just now there wasnothing more to be done. Later on the vines would have to be cut back,but Constantine preferred delaying this till the leaves fell and thesap had sunk back again into the roots and main stem.
Though the day was one of early autumn, and in most years the serenityof summer would continue into the middle or end of October, the topof the hills above the farther side of the gulf had been shrouded allday in thick storm-boding clouds, and as sunset drew near these spreadeastward, making a sullen sky. The sun, as it dropped behind them,illumined their edges, turning them to a dark translucent amber, andthe afterglow, which spread slowly across the heavens, cast a strangelurid light through the half opaque floor of cloud. The night wouldsoon fall dark, perhaps with storm. It was very hot, and the landbreeze was but a languid air, and blew as if weary with its travel overthe broiling plain, but there was quite enough of it, with Mitsos'economical methods, to send the boat along at a good pace. He sailedalmost before it out seaward for two miles or so, meaning to fishfrom the island, but then changed his mind, and went back on tedioustacks to the head of the bay, the water seeming to him a thick thing,and the boat going but heavily. Dark fell, dense and premature, andwhen an hour later he put the boat about on the last tack he had tokeep two eyes open as he neared the land; but as there were no otherboats abroad, he did not think it necessary to light his lantern atthe bows. Against the dark sky and the dark water it would hardly havebeen possible to see the brown-sailed craft from more than forty yardsdistant, and even then, if the thin white line of broken water at theforefoot had not caught the eye, or the stealthy, subdued hiss as itcut through the sea fallen on the ear, it might have passed close andunnoticed. Then, with a curious suddenness, he saw faintly the whiteglimmer of the sea-wall of Abdul Achmet's house straight in front ofhim, and knew that in the dead darkness he had taken too starboard acourse. However, by running up as close as possible to this, one tackmore would certainly take him across to the fishing bay where he wasbound, and sitting rudder in hand, he waited till the last possiblemoment before putting about. He had, however, forgotten that the wallwould take the wind from him, and when he was about fifty yards off,the sail flapped once and fell dead against the mast, and the boomswung straight, the line of white water faded from under the forefoot,and the hiss of the motion was quenched. He got up for an oar, so asto pull her round again, when quite suddenly he heard the sound of awoman's voice from the terrace singing. For a moment or so he stoodstill, and then his ear focussed itself to the sounds. She was singinga song Mitsos knew well, a song which the vine-tenders sing as they aredigging the vines in the spring of the year, and she sang in Greek:
"Dig we deep around the vines, Give the sweet spring showers a home, Else the fairest sun that shines Sends no sparkle to our wines, Lights no lustre in the foam."
He could not see the singer; all he saw was the circle of black night,the faint lines of his boat a shade blacker against it, and just aheadthe white glimmer of the wall. The voice, low and sweet, came outof the darkness like a bird flying through a desert--a living thingamid death. Mitsos stood perfectly still, strangely and bewilderinglyexcited. Then he took up his oar and turned the boat's head round,rowed a few strokes out, and waited again. But the voice had ceased.
He felt somehow unaccountably shy, as if he had intruded into another'sprivacy; but having intruded, he was determined to make his presenceknown. So just as the sail caught the wind again he stood up in thestern, and in his boyish voice answered the unseen singer with thesecond verse:
"Dig we deep, the summer's here; Saw we not among the eaves Summer's messenger appear, Swallows flitting here and there, Through the budding almond leaves?"
The boat bent over to the wind, the white line streaked the water, andhe hissed off into the night again.
He sat down, let go of the tiller, and let the boat run on by itself.He had never known that that common country song was beautiful tillhe had heard a voice out of the darkness sing it--a voice low, sweet,soft, which might have been the darkness itself made audible. Who wasthis woman? How did she, a Greek, come to be in the house of a Turk?Then with a flash of awakened memory he brought to mind the eveningwhen he and Nicholas had sailed home after fishing; how a man came upand struck a woman who was leaning on the sea-wall; how she had criedout and said, in Greek, "What was that for?"
The flapping of the sail in the last breath of the wind roused himand he looked up; the breeze had died out, and he was floating in themiddle of a shell of blackness. He had no idea where he was until hesaw the lights of Nauplia, where he least expected them, on the leftof the boat instead of behind him, dim, and far away. For his craft,left to itself, had of course run straight before the land-breeze outinto the mouth of the gulf, and now the breeze had died out and he wasmiles from the land. That did not trouble him much; fishing was a minorconsideration, and spending the night in the boat was paid for by ashrug of the shoulders. He wanted one thing only--to get back to thewhite glimmering wall, to the voice from the darkness.
A puff of hot air wandered by the boat, the sails shivered for a momentand were still again. A veiled flash of lightning gleamed through theclouds over the Tripoli hills and was reflected sombrely across thesky, and a peal of thunder droned a tardy answer. A faint rim of light,like the raising of tired eyelids, opened over the sea, and he saw theropes of his boat stand out sharp against it. Then, suddenly, therecame from the hills a sound he knew, and knew to be dangerous--theshrill scream of a mountain squall from the highlands to the west ofthe gulf. He sprang to the ropes and had the sail down just before itstruck him, but in less than a minute the bows were driven round, andthe white tops of little waves began to fleck the bay. He felt the saltspray on his face and hands, and laughed exultantly. This was what hewanted.
With a joy in the danger of the thing he hoisted the sail, strugglingand pulling to be free, and in a moment he was tearing back straight tothe head of the gulf, with the rudder pushed hard a-port.
At the pace he was going the boat was quite steady, cutting throughthe waves instead of rising to them, and now and then one
was flungover the bows like a white rag. The wind screamed, the white snakesof foam flew by, and, bareheaded, Mitsos clung with both hands to hisrudder, controlling the course of the boat like the rider of a restivehorse, laughing to himself for some secret glee, and every now and thenshouting out a verse of the vine-diggers' song. Before long the wallappeared again, and he took in his sail; the water was already rough,and was dashing up against it; but he let the boat drift on till he waswithin thirty yards of it. The rim of light over the sea had widened,and he could see the edge of the top of the wall quite distinctly, and,behind, the tall sombre cypresses in rows. But there was no one there.
* * * * *
Just then the rain began hissing into the sea like shot, and for a fewminutes turning the whole surface milky white. Mitsos, frowning andpeering awhile into the darkness, put up his collar, and with somedifficulty proceeded to put about. The wind was blowing hard ashore,and he had to take down the sail altogether and row. Even then heseemed hardly to be making way against the maddened air, and it wasa quarter of an hour's hard work to get far enough from the shore tosail again. Then he fetched a long tack towards Nauplia, and fromthere managed to handle the boat back opposite the shore where hishouse stood. The surf was breaking nastily on the rock-ridden beach,and he had to get through a narrow channel, both sides of which wereshoal water, not sufficiently deep to allow the boat to pass. But hehad the light from his own house and that from the cafe opposite tosteer by, and he knew that he could run in when they were in a line. Ashe neared the shore he could see it was impossible to bring the boatround sharply enough, and while there was yet time he beat out againfor a quarter of a mile and approached it more directly. This time hewas successful, and the boat skimmed past the tumbled water on eachside--and as he passed he saw sharp-toothed rocks foaming and gnashingat him--safe into the smoother water of his anchorage. Constantine waswaiting up for him, and when his tall figure appeared in the doorway,he looked up with relief.
"Mitsos, you shouldn't sail on nights like these," he said; "the bestseamen in the world might not be able to handle a boat in such asquall. How did you get in?"
"It's easy enough when you get the lights from the house and the cafein a line," said Mitsos; "besides, I was six miles out in the bay whenthe squall came down."
"Six miles out? You have not been long getting back," said his father,marvelling at the lad's knowledge.
Mitsos walked to the door to close it, turning his back on Constantine.
"No, there was a fine wind to sail on," he said, and whistled thevine-diggers' song beneath his breath.
Constantine did not ask any more questions, and Mitsos went to makehimself some hot coffee and get out of his wet clothes, for he wasdrenched from head to foot.
Two days after this the ordinary wine had cleared completely, and itwas racked into fresh casks, for if it stood too long on the lees incontact with the skins and stalks it would become bitter. The crustitself Constantine removed from all the barrels and put into the stillfor the making of spirits. This only required one man to look after,and on the day Mitsos went to Epidaurus to get the resin he employedhimself with it.
The apparatus was of the simplest. He placed all the crusts from thebarrels in a big iron pot, under which he lit a slow charcoal fire;into a hole in the lid of this, which screwed on to the body, heinserted a bent iron pipe, on to which he screwed another pipe madein spirals. A big wooden tub filled with water, through the bottom ofwhich passed a third pipe fitting at one end into the spirals whichlay in the water, and communicating at the other with the glazed jarinto which the spirit was to be stored, completed the apparatus. Thefire drove off the alcohol from the fermented crust in a vapor, whichdistilled itself into spirit as it passed through the tube that lay inthe cold water, and dripped out at the farther end into the jar.
He finished the day's work by soon after five, and, having businessin Nauplia, set off there at once; so that Mitsos, returning a littlelater from Epidaurus with the resin, found him out, and, withoutwaiting to get any food, he set off again at once down to the bay.
It was drawing near that moment when all the beauty of the day in sea,land, and sky is gathered into the ten minutes of sunset. The sun,declining to its setting, was dropping slowly above a low pass in thehills, shining with an exceeding clearness, and it was still half anhour above the horizon when Mitsos got into the boat. The land-breezewas blowing temperate and firm, and his boat dipped to it gently, andglided steadily on the outward tack. Between him and the Argive hillshung a palpable haze of thinnest blue; but the whole plain slept ina garment of gold, woven by the level rays. The surface of the water,unruffled under the shadow of the land, was green and burnished like aplate of patinated bronze, and the ripple from the bows broke creamilyand flowed out behind the boat in long, feather-like lines. As the sunneared its setting, the golden mist grew more intense in color, andthe higher slopes of the mountains turned pink behind their veil ofblue. The sky was cloudless from rim to rim, except where, low in thewest, there floated a few thin skeins of vapor, visible against theincredible blue only because they were touched with red. Just as Mitsosneared the wall on his second tack the sun's edge was cut by the raggedoutline of the mountain, and in ten minutes more it would have set.
She, the nameless, ineffable she--and Mitsos never questioned thatthis was the sweet singer--was leaning on the edge of the wall lookingseawards. She saw Mitsos sitting in the stern of his boat, and guessedat once--for few boats passed so close--that it was he who had sungthe second verse of the vineyard song two nights ago, and that it washis boat which passed close under the wall last night, when the otherwomen of the harem were there with her. She had not known till she sawhim that she wished to see the owner of that half-formed boyish voice,which had come so pleasantly out of the darkness; and now, when she didsee him, she looked long. He, too, was looking, and her eyes made abridge over the golden air that lay between them and brought them closetogether.
The boat drew nearer, and she dropped her eyes and began playing witha spray of roses that trailed along the top of the wall. She pickeda couple of buds, smelled them, and then very softly she began thefirst verse of the vine-diggers' song.
"HALF CARELESSLY SHE THREW INTO THE BOAT THE ROSES SHEHAD PICKED"]
The boat had got under shelter of the wall, and drifted windlesslynear. Mitsos was still looking at her; her eyes were still cast down.She sang the first verse through, and the first two lines of the secondverse, and then apparently she recollected no more, for she stopped,and from the boat Mitsos sang very softly the two lines that followed.Still, without looking up, she sang them after him; he finished theverse, and she sang the whole through.
From the bay the sun had set, but the mountains on the east glowedrosier and rosier every moment. All that Mitsos saw was a girl'sslender figure wrapped in a loose white cloak, with a gold band roundthe waist--a hand that held two rosebuds, a face veiled up to the eyes,eyes down-dropped, and eyelashes that swept the cheek.
"There is a third verse," he said.
Then she looked up, and her eyes smiled at him, and they were as blackas shadows beneath the moon.
"I will learn that another night," she said, softly, "if it be you willteach me; and this is for your teaching. Go, now; others are coming."
Half carelessly she threw into the boat the roses she had picked, andturned away.
Mitsos waited a moment longer, and then, hearing voices in the gardenbehind the wall, rowed quickly away. His thoughts were a song; hismind, one sweet secret frenzy, that made the heart quick and the eyebright. All the common details of life were seen and taken in by himbut dimly, as sounds come dimly to a sleeper, and are but the materialout of which he weaves a golden vision; for the first splendor oflove, hackneyed as a theme, but as an experience from generation togeneration ever new, was dawning on him.
* * * * *
Maria was married next morning, and Mitsos went without emotion tothe wedding. The bride and bridegroom appeared to him to be admirab
lysuited to each other.
About four o'clock that afternoon the lad was just about to set offdown to the shore when his father appeared.
"We'll finish with the wine this evening," he said. "Come and begin atonce, Mitsos."
Mitsos paused a moment.
"I was just going sailing," he said. "Cannot it wait till to-morrow?"
"No; it had better be finished now. Besides, you can sail afterwards.Come, it won't take a couple of hours."
"Uncle Nicholas told me to sail every day," he began.
"And to obey me, Mitsos."
Mitsos stood for a moment irresolute, but soon his habit of obediencereasserted itself.
"Yes, father," he said; "I am sorry. I will come."
The casks in which the first fermentation had taken place had beenthoroughly scoured with boiling water, which had quite got ridof the sour-smelling fermented stuff, and they were to rack thecleared resinated wine back into them. They filled each cask againthree-quarters full, and into the remaining space they poured a portionof the fine wine, dividing it equally among all. To Mitsos the processseemed insufferably long and tedious. The sun had set before the caskswere filled, and it was dark before the work was over. Never before,it seemed to him, had the taps dribbled so dispiritingly. His fathernow and then addressed some remark to him, which he barely answered,and after a time they both lapsed into silence. Mitsos knew that he wasbehaving badly, and he thought he could not help it. Perhaps she wasthere; perhaps--bewildering thought--she was even wondering why he didnot come. How could he simulate the slightest interest in the wine ofgrapes when the wine of love was fermenting within him, driving him madwith those sweet, intoxicating fumes for which there is no amethyst?
At last it was over. No, he would not eat now; he would eat when hecame in, and ten minutes later he was on his way. Soon the wall beganto glimmer in front of him. Something, it looked only like a whiteshadow, was leaning on it, and as he drew nearer he heard again thevoice singing low in the darkness, singing the common country songwhich had become so beautiful.