The Woman of Andros

The earth sighed as it turned in its course; the shadow of night crept gradually along the Mediterranean, and Asia was left in darkness. The great cliff that was one day to be called Gibraltar held for a long time a gleam of red and orange, while across from it the mountains of Atlas showed deep blue pockets in their shining sides. The caves that surround the Neapolitan gulf fell into a profounder shade, each giving forth from the darkness its chiming or its booming sound. Triumph had passed from Greece and wisdom from Egypt, but with the coming on of night they seemed to regain their lost honors, and the land that was soon to be called Holy prepared in the dark its wonderful burden. The sea was large enough to hold a varied weather: a storm played about Sicily and its smoking mountains, but at the mouth of the Nile the water lay like a wet pavement. A fair tripping breeze ruffled the Aegean and all the islands of Greece felt a new freshness at the close of day.

The happiest, and one of the least famous of the islands, Brynos, welcomed the breeze. The evening was long.

Simo turned to the old woman who was hiding in the shadow by the door. “You wanted to speak to me?” he asked roughly.

Between fright and suspense—for she had been waiting there for the greater part of two hours—Mysis was barely able to find her voice. “My mistress wishes to speak to you, sir,—Chrysis, the Andrian,” and she pointed with both hands towards the waterfront.

Simo grunted. Looking up he saw the beautiful woman leaning against the parapet at the water’s edge fifteen paces away. Her head and body were wrapped in veils, and she waited calmly and impersonally in the moonlight as though two hours were but a moment in her serenity. Below her in the little protected harbor the boats knocked against one another in friendly fashion, but all else was still under the melancholy and peace of the moon. Simo approached her without deference and said: “Well?”

“I am—” she began.

“I know who you are.”

She paused and began again. “I am in an extremity. I am driven to ask a service of you.” Simo pushed his lips forward, raised his eyebrows, and lowered his eyes wearily. She continued in an even voice without anxiety or suppliance: “A friend of mine is very ill on the island of Andros from which I come. Twice I have sent this friend money by the hands of various sea-captains going between the islands. I know now that the captains are dishonest and that my money never reaches him. All that I ask is that you put your frank upon the package of money and it will reach him.”

Chrysis’s view of human experience expressed itself, as we have seen, in fables, in quotations from literature, in proverbs and in mottoes. Herself she summed up in a word: she regarded herself as having “died.” Dead then as she was, the inconveniences of her profession, the sneers of the villagers, the ingratitude of her dependents, no longer had the power to disturb her. The only thing that troubled her in her grave was the recurrence, even in her professional associations, of a wild tenderness for this or that passerby, brief and humiliating approaches to love. These experiences and any others that were able to depress her, she now dismissed as weakness, as pride, as an old, rebellious and unwhipped vanity. The morning after the conversation with Simo at the water’s edge she awoke strangely troubled; but she resolved not to examine the new dejection. It floated all day above her head,—a voice repeating: “I am alone. Why have I never seen that before? I am alone.” Indeed the profession she followed was one of those that emphasize the dim notion that lies at the back of many minds: the notion that we are not necessary to anyone, that attachments weave and unweave at the mercy of separation, satiety and experience. The loneliest associations are those that pretend to intimacy.

But she had discovered two ways of mitigating this unresponsiveness and instability in the world she lived in. The first was the development she brought to the institution of the hetaira’s banquet.

Brynos rose with the dawn, and it was not many hours later that the morning’s work was over. Several days after the conversation recorded above, Pamphilus, having helped his father in the warehouse and being in no mood for exercising in the field, started out to walk to the highest point on the island. It was early Spring. A strong wind had blown every cloud from the sky and the sea lay covered with flying white-tipped waves. His garments leapt and billowed about him and his very hair tugged at his head. The gulls themselves, leaning upon the gusts, were caught unawares from time to time and blown with ruffled feathers and scandalized cries towards the violet-blue zenith. Pamphilus led his life with much worry and self-examination and all the exhilaration of wind and sun could not drive from his mind the anxious affection with which he now turned over his thoughts of Chrysis and Philumena and of the four members of his family. He was straying among the rocks and the lizards and the neglected dwarfed olive trees, when his attention was suddenly caught by an incident on the hillside to his left. A group of boys from the town was engaged in tormenting a young girl. She was retreating backwards up the slope through a disused orchard, shouting haughtily back at her pursuers. The boys’ malice had turned to anger; they were retorting hotly and letting fly about her a few harmless stones.

That night Chrysis was awakened from a light and feverish sleep by the instinctive knowledge that someone was near her. She raised herself on one elbow and peered towards the faint glimmer of the door.

“Who is it? Who is there?” she said.

A figure seemed suddenly to rise from the threshhold. “It’s I, Chrysis. It’s Glycerium.”

“Is something the matter? Is someone ill?”

“No ... it’s only....”

“Light a lamp, my child. What do you want?”

“Chrysis, are you angry with me for waking you up? I couldn’t sleep, Chrysis, and I had to come into your room.”

“But why are you crying, my dear, my dove? Come now and sit on the edge of the bed. Of course I’m not angry with you.” Glycerium sank upon the floor beside her. “No, no,—the floor is cold. Come sit up here. Your hair is wet! Tell me now, what is making you unhappy?”

“Nothing.”

“What? Then you have something to tell me?”

“No ... I don’t know what ... I just want you to talk to me.”