SONG FROM THE DARKNESS
When Constantine looked at one of the casks of fermenting wine on the fourth day, he saw that the crust of skins, stalks, and stones had risen to within six inches of the top, like coffee on the boil, and was thickly covered with a pink, sour-smelling froth. The fermentation was at its height, and it was time to mix up the crust with the fluid again to excite it even further. In one cask, into which the ripest fruit from the more sun-baked corner of the vineyard had been put, this crust had risen even higher, and threatened to overflow. The ordinary custom in Greece at this time was for a naked man to get into the cask and stir it up again, a remnant, no doubt, of some now insignificant superstition; but Constantine, though he still put the grapes of one vine in a bowl for the birds to eat, did not think it necessary to make this further concession, but only stirred up the frothing mass with an instrument like a wooden pavier. The crust was already growing thick and compacted, and it was ten minutes' work to get it thoroughly mixed up again with the fluid in each case, and from the seething, bubbling surface there rose thickly the sour fumes of the decomposing matter, heavily laden with carbonic-acid gas. One cask leaked slightly round the tap at the bottom and was dripping on the floor. A little red stream had trickled down to the edge of the veranda, and he noticed that it was full of small bubbles, like water that had stood in the sun, showing that the fermentation was not yet over. He caulked this up with a lump of resin, and then moved all the casks out of the shade for an hour or two, so that the heat might hasten the second fermentation, which naturally was slower and less violent than the first. The cask and a half of fine wine, however, he did not touch; there it was better that the fermentation should go on slowly and naturally.
That evening Mitsos went out fishing, as the work of wine-making was over for the present. In four or five days he would have to go over to Epidaurus to get the resin from the pine-trees, but just now there was nothing more to be done. Later on the vines would have to be cut back, but Constantine preferred delaying this till the leaves fell and the sap had sunk back again into the roots and main stem.
Though the day was one of early autumn, and in most years the serenity of summer would continue into the middle or end of October, the top of the hills above the farther side of the gulf had been shrouded all day in thick storm-boding clouds, and as sunset drew near these spread eastward, making a sullen sky. The sun, as it dropped behind them, illumined their edges, turning them to a dark translucent amber, and the afterglow, which spread slowly across the heavens, cast a strange lurid light through the half opaque floor of cloud. The night would soon fall dark, perhaps with storm. It was very hot, and the land breeze was but a languid air, and blew as if weary with its travel over the broiling plain, but there was quite enough of it, with Mitsos' economical methods, to send the boat along at a good pace. He sailed almost before it out seaward for two miles or so, meaning to fish from the island, but then changed his mind, and went back on tedious tacks 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, and when an hour later he put the boat about on the last tack he had to keep two eyes open as he neared the land; but as there were no other boats abroad, he did not think it necessary to light his lantern at the bows. Against the dark sky and the dark water it would hardly have been possible to see the brown-sailed craft from more than forty yards distant, and even then, if the thin white line of broken water at the forefoot had not caught the eye, or the stealthy, subdued hiss as it cut through the sea fallen on the ear, it might have passed close and unnoticed. Then, with a curious suddenness, he saw faintly the white glimmer of the sea-wall of Abdul Achmet's house straight in front of him, and knew that in the dead darkness he had taken too starboard a course. However, by running up as close as possible to this, one tack more would certainly take him across to the fishing bay where he was bound, and sitting rudder in hand, he waited till the last possible moment before putting about. He had, however, forgotten that the wall would 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 boom swung 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 as to pull her round again, when quite suddenly he heard the sound of a woman's voice from the terrace singing. For a moment or so he stood still, and then his ear focussed itself to the sounds. She was singing a song Mitsos knew well, a song which the vine-tenders sing as they are digging 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 ahead the white glimmer of the wall. The voice, low and sweet, came out of the darkness like a bird flying through a desert – a living thing amid death. Mitsos stood perfectly still, strangely and bewilderingly excited. 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's privacy; but having intruded, he was determined to make his presence known. So just as the sail caught the wind again he stood up in the stern, and in his boyish voice answered the unseen singer with the second 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, and he 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 till he 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 was this 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 evening when he and Nicholas had sailed home after fishing; how a man came up and struck a woman who was leaning on the sea-wall; how she had cried out and said, in Greek, "What was that for?"
The flapping of the sail in the last breath of the wind roused him and he looked up; the breeze had died out, and he was floating in the middle of a shell of blackness. He had no idea where he was until he saw the lights of Nauplia, where he least expected them, on the left of 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 out into the mouth of the gulf, and now the breeze had died out and he was miles from the land. That did not trouble him much; fishing was a minor consideration, and spending the night in the boat was paid for by a shrug of the shoulders. He wanted one thing only – to get back to the white glimmering wall, to the voice from the darkness.
A puff of hot air wandered by the boat, the sails shivered for a moment and were still again. A veiled flash of lightning gleamed through the clouds over the Tripoli hills and was reflected sombrely across the sky, 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 the ropes of his boat stand out sharp against it. Then, suddenly, there came from the hills a sound he knew, and knew to be dangerous – the shrill scream of a mountain squall from the highlands to the west of the gulf. He sprang to the ropes and had the sail down just before it struck him, but in less than a minute the bows were driven round, and the white tops of little waves began to fleck the bay. He felt the salt spray on his face and hands, and laughed exultantly. This was what he wanted.
With a joy in the danger of the thing he hoisted the sail, struggling and pulling to be free, and in a moment he was tearing back straight to the head of the gulf, with the rudder pushed hard a-port.
At the pace he was going the boat was quite steady, cutting through
