Stories by English Authors: Africa (Selected by Scribners)

“Who are you?”

“It is Ahmed,” his wife answered, gently, placing her trembling hand upon his shoulder; “he too has children.”

Gregorio scowled and muttered, “An Arab,” and in that murmur none of the loathing was hidden that the pseudo-West bears for the East.

“The child is starving,” said Ahmed. “I have saved the child; maybe some day I shall save the father.” And Ahmed slipped away before Gregorio could answer him.

For a while neither he nor his wife spoke; they stood silent in the moonlight. At last Gregorio asked huskily, “Have you had food?”

“Not to-day,” was the answer; and the sweet voice was almost discordant in its pathos as it continued, “nor drink, and but for Ahmed the boy had died.”

Gregorio could not answer; there was a lump in his throat that blocked words, opening the gate for sobs. But he choked down his emotion with an effort and busied himself about the room. Xantippe sat watching him anxiously, smoothly with nervous fingers the covering of her son’s bed.

As the night advanced the heat increased, and all that disturbed the silence of the room was the echo of the streets. Gregorio walked to the window and looked out. Below him he saw the jostling crowd of men and women. These people, he thought, were happy, and two miserables only dwelt in the city – his wife and himself. And whenever he asked himself what was the cause of his misery, the answer was ever the same – poverty. He glanced at his son, tossing uneasily in his bed; he looked at his wife, pale and haggard in the moonlight; he remembered his own sufferings all day long in the hot cruel streets, and he spoke unsteadily:

“Xantippe?”

“Yes.”

“I have thought over things.”

“And I too.”

“We are starving, – you are starving, and I am starving, – and all day long I tramp these cursed streets, but gain nothing. So it will go on, day in, day out. Not only we ourselves, but our son too must die. We must save him.”

“Yes,” said Xantippe, quietly, repeating her husband’s words as she kissed the forehead of her child, “we must save him.”

“There is only one way.”

“Only one way,” repeated Xantippe, dreamily. There was a pause, and then, as though the words had grown to have a meaning to her that she could not fathom, she queried, “What way, Gregorio?”

“That,” he said, roughly, as he caught her by the wrist, and, dragging her to the window, pointed to the women in the street beneath.

Xantippe hid her face on her husband’s breast and cried softly, while she murmured, “No, no; I will never consent.”

“Then the child will die,” answered the Greek, curtly, flinging her from him.

And the poor woman cast herself upon the bed beside her boy, and when her tears ceased for a moment stammered, “When?”

“To-morrow,” was the answer, cruel and peremptory. And as Gregorio closed the lattice, shutting out the noise of song and laughter, the room echoed with the mighty sobbing of a woman who was betrayed, and who repeated hysterically, while kissing the face of her child, “To-morrow, to-morrow there will be food for you.”

And Gregorio slept peacefully, for the danger of starvation was over; he would yet live to see his son become rich.

And the woman?

He kissed her before he slept, and women always cry.

IV – CONCERNING TWO WOMEN

Gregorio felt a little bit ashamed of himself next morning. The excitement had passed, and the full meaning of his words came back to him and made him shudder. The sun, already risen, sent shafts of light between the lips of the wooden lattice. A faint sound of life and movement stole upward from the street below. But Xantippe and the boy still slumbered, though the woman’s form shook convulsively at times, for she sobbed in her sleep.

Gregorio looked at the two for a minute and then raised himself with an oath. The woman’s heavy breathing irritated him, for, after all, he argued, it was her duty as well as his to sacrifice herself for the lad. Moreover, the Jew must be paid, and to-day was that appointed by Amos for the settling of their account. There was no money to pay it with, and they must lose their furniture, so much at least was certain. But Amos would not have the best of the bargain, thought the Greek as he looked round the room with a grin, and the certainty that he had got the better of Amos for the moment cheered his spirits. Then, too, after to-day there would be plenty to eat, for his wife could manage to earn money; nor was the man so mean in his villainy as to shirk any effort to earn money himself. After first looking at his wife critically and with a satisfied smile, he touched her on the shoulder to wake her.

“I am going out for work,” he said, as Xantippe opened her eyes.

“All right.”

“Good-bye.”

But Xantippe answered not. She turned her face to the wall wearily as Gregorio left her.

Entering the street he made straight for Amos’s house, and told the porter, who was still lying on the trestle before the door, that he could not pay the Jew’s bill. Then without waiting for an answer, he hurried off to the quay.

With better luck than on the previous day, he managed to obtain employment for some hours. The Greek mail-boat had arrived, and under the blazing sun he toiled good-humouredly and patiently. The work was hard, but it gave him no opportunity of thinking. He had to be continually dodging large bales of fruit and wine, and if he made a mistake the officer on duty would shout at him angrily, “Lazy dog! you would not have left Greece were you not an idle fellow.” Such words wounded his pride, and he determined to do so well that he should earn praise. But the little officer, his bright buttons flashing in the sunlight, who smoked quietly in the intervals of silence, never praised anybody; but he left off abusing Gregorio at last, and when work ceased for the day bade him come again on the morrow.

At sunset Gregorio pocketed his few hard-earned piastres and wandered cityward. He did not care to go back to his home, for he knew there would be miserable stories to tell of the Jew’s anger, and, moreover, he was terribly thirsty. So he went into a little cafe – known as the Penny-farthing Shop – opposite his house and called for a flask of kephisa. As he sipped the wine he glanced up nervously at his window and wondered whether his wife had already left home. Were he sure that she had, he would leave his wine untouched and hasten to look after his son and give him food. But until he knew Xantippe had gone he would not move. The sobs of yesterday still disturbed him, and he was more than once on the point of cancelling his resolves. But as the wine stirred his blood he became satisfied with what he had done and said. The little cafe at Benhur that was to make his fortune seemed nearly in his grasp. Had he not, he asked himself, worked all day without a murmur? It was right Xantippe should help him.

As he sat dreamily thinking over these things, and watching the shadows turn to a darker purple under the oil-lamps, a woman spoke to him.

“Well, Gregorio, are you asleep?”

“No,” said he, turning toward his questioner.

The woman laughed. She was a big woman, dressed in loose folds of red and blue. Her hair was dishevelled, and ornamented with brass pins fastened into it at random. Her sleeves were rolled up to her armpits, and she had her arms akimbo – fat, flabby arms that shook as she laughed. Her eyes were almost hidden, she screwed them up so closely, but her wide mouth opened and disclosed a row of gigantic, flawless teeth.

Gregorio frowned as he looked at her. He knew her well and had never liked her. But he dare not quarrel with her, for he owed her money, and “for the love of his black eyes,” as she told him, she had ever a bottle of wine ready for him when he wished.

“Well, my good woman,” he blurted out, surlily, “you seem to be amused.”

“I am, Gregorio. Tell me,” she continued, slyly, seating herself beside him and placing her elbows on the table, “how is she?”

“Who?”

“Xantippe. She came to me to-day, and I saw she had been crying. But I said nothing, because it is not always wise to ask questions. I thought she wept because she was hungry and because the baby was hungry. I offered her food and she took some, but so little, scarcely enough to cover a ten-piastre piece. ‘That is for the baby,’ I said; ‘now some for you.’ But she refused.”

“Perhaps she had food for herself,” said Gregorio, shifting uneasily in his chair.

“Perhaps,” said the woman, and laughed again, more loudly than ever, till the table shook. “But she asked me for something else,” she continued, when her merriment languished for want of breath; “she asked me to let her have an old dress of mine, a bright yellow-and-red dress, and she borrowed some ornaments. It is not right of you, Gregorio, to keep an old friend on the door-step when you have a fantasia.”

Gregorio scowled savagely. After a pause he said, “I don’t know why my wife wanted your dress and ornaments.”

“Oh yes, you do, friend Gregorio.” And she laughed again, this time a suppressed, chuckling laugh that threatened to choke her; and she supported her chin on her hands, while her eyes peered through the enveloping fat at the man who sat opposite to her. Suddenly she stood up, and taking Gregorio by the arm dragged him to the door.

“See, there she goes. My garments are cleverly altered and suit her finely, don’t they? Ah, well, my friend, a man who cannot support a wife should marry a woman who can support him.”

Gregorio did not stop to answer her, but pushed past her into the street. The woman watched him enter the house opposite, and then returned quietly to her work. But there was a smile hovering round her lips as she murmured to herself, “Ah, well, in time.”

Gregorio meanwhile had run up to his room and entered it breathless with excitement. The first glance told him that Amos had seized all he could, for nothing remained save a wooden bench and one or two coarse, half-disabled cooking utensils.

Gregorio swore a little as he realised what had happened. Then he saw in a corner by the window his son and Ahmed.

“She has gone,” said Ahmed, as Gregorio’s gaze rested on him. But she might have gone merely to market, or to see a neighbour, for all the imperturbable Arab face disclosed. As soon as he had spoken the man bent over the child, laughing softly as the youngster played with his beard. For the Arab, as he is miscalled, is fond of children, and there are none to whom children take so readily as to the Egyptian fellahin.

Gregorio watched the two for a moment, and then placing his remaining piastres in the man’s hand bade him bring food and wine. As soon as he was left alone with his son, he flung himself down on the floor and kissed, “You shall be a great man, ay, a rich man, my son.”

He repeated the sentence over and over again, punctuating it with kisses, while the two-year-old regarded him wonderingly, until Ahmed returned.

When the meal was ended Gregorio took the boy in his arms and sang to him softly till at last the infant slept. Then he placed him gently on the floor, having first made of his coat a bed, and went to the window and flung back the shutters. He smoked quietly as the minutes went by, waiting impatiently for his wife to return. It seemed to him monstrous that the boy who was to inherit a fortune should be sleeping on the dirty floor wrapped in an old coat; that an Arab, a mere fellah, should amuse his son and play with him, when Greek nurses were to be hired in Alexandria had one only the money. Long after midnight he heard a step on the stairs, and a minute after the door opened. He recognised his wife’s footsteps, and he rose to meet her. As she came into the room she looked quickly round, and seeing her son went toward him and kissed him. Gregorio, half afraid, stood by the window watching her. She let her glance rest on him a minute, then she turned round and laid her cloak upon the floor.

“Xantippe!”

But she did not answer.

“Xantippe, I have fed our son. The good days are coming when we shall be rich and happy.”

But Xantippe was too busy folding out the creases of her cloak to notice him. The moonlight streamed on to her, and her face shone like an angel’s. Gregorio made one step toward her, ravished, for she had never appeared so beautiful to him. For the moment he forgot the whole hideous history of the last few days and the brief, horrible conversation of the night before. Fired with a desire to touch her, to kiss her, to whisper into her ear, in the soft Greek speech, all the endearments and tendernesses that had won her when he wooed her, he placed his hand upon her arm. As if stung by a venomous snake, the woman recoiled from his touch. With a quick movement she sprang back and flung at his face a handful of gold and silver coins.

“Take them; they’re yours,” she cried, huskily, and retreated into the farthest corner of the room.

With a savage curse Gregorio put his hand to his lips and wiped away the blood, for a heavy coin had cut him. Then he ran swiftly downstairs, and Xantippe, as she lay down wearily beside her boy, heard a woman laugh.

V – XANTIPPE LOOKS OUT OF THE WINDOW

The Penny-farthing Shop was full of customers, and Madam Marx, the fat woman who followed Gregorio to the bar, was for a long time busy attending to her clients. Some English war-ships had entered the harbour at sunset, and many of the sailors had lost no time in seeking out their favourite haunt. Most of them knew Madam Marx well, as a good-natured woman who gave them plenty to drink for their money, and secreted them from the eyes of the police when the liquor overpowered them. Consequently there was much laughter and shaking of hands, and many a rough jest, which Madam Marx responded to in broken English. Gregorio watched the sailors gloomily. He hated the English, for even their sailors seemed to have plenty of money, and he recalled the rich Englishman he had seen at the Cafe Paradiso, drinking champagne and buying flowers for the Hungarian woman who played the fiddle. The scene he had just left contrasted disagreeably with the fun and jollity that surrounded him. But he felt unable to shake off his gloom and annoyance, and Madam Marx’s attentions irritated him. He felt that her eyes continually rested on him, that, however busy she might be, he was never out of her thoughts. Every few minutes she would come toward him with a bottle of wine and fill up his glass, saying, “Come, my friend; wine is good and will drown your troubles.” And though he resented her patronage, knowing he could not pay, he nevertheless drank steadily.

Every few minutes he heard the sound of horses’ hoofs on the hard roadway, and through the windows he saw the military police pass slowly on their rounds.

At last the strong drinks so amiably retailed by Madam Marx did their work, and the men lay about the floor asleep and breathing heavily. The silence succeeding the noise startled Gregorio from his sullen humour. Madam Marx came and sat beside him, weary as she was with her long labours, and talked volubly. The wine had mounted to his head, and he answered her in rapid sentences, accompanying his words with gesture and grimace. What he talked about he scarcely knew, but the woman laughed, and he took an insane delight in hearing her. Just before daylight he fell asleep, resting his head on his arms, that were spread across the table. Madam Marx kissed him as he slept, murmuring to herself contentedly, “Ah, well, in time.”

When Gregorio woke the sun was high in the heavens, blazing out of a brazen sky. Clouds of dust swept past the door from time to time, and cut his neck and face as he stood on the threshold smoking lazily. It was too late to go down to the quay, for his place must have long ago been filled by another. He was not sorry, since he by no means desired to toil again under the hot sun; the heavy drinking of the night had made him lethargic, and he was so thirsty the heat nearly choked him. He called out to a water-carrier staggering along in the scanty shade on the opposite side of the street, and took eagerly a draught of water. He touched the pigskin with his hand, and it was hot. The water was warm and made him sick; he spat it from his mouth hastily, and hearing a laugh behind him, turned round and saw Madam Marx.

“See, here is some wine, my friend; leave the water for the Arabs.”

Gregorio gratefully seized the flagon and let the wine trickle down his throat, while Madam Marx, with arms akimbo, stood patiently before him.

“I must go now,” he said, as he handed back the half-emptied flask.

“Why?”

“Because I must get some work.”

“It is not easy to get work in the summer.”

“I know, but I must get some. I owe money to Amos.”

“Yes, I know. But your wife is making money now.”

The man scowled at her. “How do you know that? Before God, I swear that she is not.”

“Come, come, Gregorio. You were drunk last night, and your tongue wagged pretty freely. It’s not a bit of use being angry with me, because I only know what you’ve told me. Besides, I’m your friend, you know that.”

Gregorio flushed angrily at the woman’s words, but he knew quite well it was no use replying to them, for she was speaking only the truth. But the knowledge that he had betrayed his secret annoyed him. He had grown used to the facts and could look at them easily enough, but he had not reckoned on others also learning them.

He determined to go out and find work, or at any rate to tramp the streets pretending to look for something to do. The woman became intolerable to him, and the Penny-farthing Shop, reeking with the odour of stale tobacco and spilled liquor, poisoned him. He took up his hat brusquely and stepped into the street.

Madam Marx, standing at the door, laughed at him as she called out, “Good-bye, Gregorio; when will you come back?”

He did not answer, but the sound of her laughter followed him up the street, and he kicked angrily at the stones in his path.

At last he passed by the Ras-el-Tin barracks. He looked curiously at the English soldiers. Some were playing polo on the hard brown space to the left, and from the windows of the building men leaned out, their shirt-sleeves rolled up and their strong arms bared to the sun. They smoked short clay pipes, and innumerable little blue spiral clouds mounted skyward. Obviously the heat did not greatly inconvenience them, for they laughed and sang and drank oceans of beer.

The sight of them annoyed Gregorio. He looked at the pewter mugs shining in the sunlight. He eyed greedily the passage of one from hand to hand; and when one man, after taking a long pull, laughed and held it upside down to show him it was empty, he burst into an uncontrollable fit of anger, and shook his fist impotently at the soldiers, who chaffed him good-naturedly. As he went along by the stables, a friendly lancer, pitying him, probably, too, wearying of his own lonely watch, called to him, and offered him a drink out of a stone bottle. Gregorio drank again feverishly, and handed the bottle back to its owner with a grin, and passed on without a word. The soldier watched him curiously, but said nothing.

When he reached the lighthouse Gregorio flung himself on to the pebble-strewn sand and looked across the bay. The blue water, calm and unruffled as a sheet of glass, spread before him. The ships – Austrian Lloyd mail-boats, P. and O. liners, and grimy coal-hulks – lay motionless against the white side of the jetty.

The khedive’s yacht was bright with bunting, and innumerable fishing-boats near the breakwater made grateful oases in the glare whereon his eyes might rest. But he heeded them not. Angrily he flung lumps of stone and sand into the wavelets at his feet, and pushed back his hat that his face might feel the full heat of the sun. Then he lit a cigarette and began to think.

But what was the good of thinking? The thoughts always formed themselves into the same chain and reached the same conclusion; and ever on the glassy surface of the Levantine sea a woman poised herself and laughed at him.

When the sun fell behind the horizon, and the breakwater, after dashing up one flash of gold, became a blue blur, Gregorio rose to go. As he walked back toward the Penny-farthing Shop he felt angry and unsatisfied. The whole day was wasted. He had done nothing to relieve his wife, nothing to pay off Amos. Madam met him at the door, a flask of wine in her hand. Against his will Gregorio entered her cafe and smiled, but his smile was sour and malevolent.

“You want cheering, my friend,” said madam, laughing.

“I have found nothing to do,” said Gregorio.

“Ah! I told you it would be hard. There are no tourists in Alexandria now. And it is foolish of you to tramp the streets looking for work that you will never find, when you have everything you can want here.”

“Except money, and that’s everything,” put in Gregorio, bluntly.

“Even money, my friend. I have enough for two.”

Madam Marx had played her trump card, and she watched anxiously the effect of her words. For a moment the man did not speak, but trifled with his cigarette tobacco, rolling it gently between his brown fingers. Then he said:

“You know I am in debt now, and I want to pay off all I owe, and leave here.”

“Yes, that’s true, but you won’t pay off your debts by tramping the streets, and your little cafe at Benhur will be a long time building, I fancy. Meanwhile there is money to be made at the Penny-farthing Shop.”

“What are your terms?” asked Gregorio, roughly.

The woman laughed, but did not answer. The stars were shining, and the kempsin that had blown all day was dead. It was cool sitting outside the door of the cafe under the little awning, and pleasant to watch the blue cigarette smoke float upward in the still air. Gregorio sat for a while silent, and the woman came and stood by him. “You know my terms,” she whispered, and Gregorio smiled, took her hand, and kissed her. At that moment the blind of the opposite house was flung back. Xantippe leaned out of the window and saw them.

VI – BABY AND JEW

When the Penny-farthing Shop began to fill Gregorio disappeared quietly by the back door. He muttered a half-unintelligible answer to the men who were playing cards in the dim parlour through which he had to pass, who called to him to join them. Gaining the street, he wandered along till he reached the bazaars, intending to waste an hour or two until Xantippe should have left the house. Then he determined to go back and see the boy in whom all his hopes and ambitions were centered, who was the unconscious cause of his villainy and degradation.

There was a large crowd in the bazaars, for a Moolid was being celebrated. Jugglers, snake-charmers, mountebanks, gipsies, and dancing-girls attracted hundreds of spectators.

The old men sat in the shadows of their stalls, smoking and drinking coffee. They smiled gravely at the younger people, who jostled one another good-humouredly, laughing, singing, quarrelling like children. Across the roadway hung lamps of coloured glass and tiny red flags stamped with a white crescent and a star. Torches blazed at intervals, casting a flickering glow on the excited faces of the crowd.

Gregorio watched without much interest. He had seen a great many fantasias since he came to Egypt, and they were no longer a novelty to him. He was annoyed that a race of people whom he despised should be so merry when he himself had so many troubles to worry him. He would have liked to go into one of the booths where the girls danced, but he had no money, and he cursed at his stupidity in not asking the Marx woman for some. He no longer felt ashamed of himself, for he argued that he was the victim of circumstances. Still he wished Xantippe had not looked out of the window, though of course he could easily explain things to her. And Xantippe was really so angry the night before, explanations were better postponed for a time. “After all,” he thought, “it really does not much matter. Once we get over our present difficulties we shall forget all we have gone through.” This comfortable reflection had been doing duty pretty often the last day or two, and though Gregorio did not believe it a bit, he always felt it was a satisfactory conclusion, and one to be encouraged.

Meanwhile he would not meet Xantippe. That was a point upon which he had definitely made up his mind. As he strolled through the bazaars, putting into order his vagabond thoughts, in a tall figure a few yards in front of him he recognised Amos. Nervous, he halted, for he had no desire to be interviewed by the Jew, and yet no way of escape seemed possible.