What made me teach her to read was this: One afternoon, fourteen months or so ago, I from the roof-kiosk saw her down at the lake-rim, a book in hand; and as she had seen me looking steadily at books, so she was looking steadily at it, with pathetic sideward head: so that I burst into laughter, for I saw her clearly through the glass, and whether she is the simplest little fool, or the craftiest serpent that ever breathed, I am not yet sure. If I thought that she has the least design upon my honour, it would be ill for her.
I went to Gallipoli for two days in the month of May, and brought back a very pretty little caique, a perfect slender crescent of the colour of the moon, though I had two days’ labour in cutting through bush-thicket for the passage of the motor in bringing it up to the lake. It has pleased me to see her lie among the silk cushions of the middle, while I, paddling, taught her her first words and sentences between the hours of eight and ten in the evening, though later they became 10 a.m. to noon, when the reading began, we sitting on the palace-steps before the portal, her mouth invariably well covered with the yashmak, the lesson-book being a large-lettered old Bible found at her yali. Why she must needs wear the yashmak she has never once asked; and how much she divines, knows, or intends, I have no idea, continually questioning myself as to whether she is all simplicity, or all cunning.
That she is conscious of some profound difference in our organisation I cannot doubt: for that I have a long beard, and she none at all, is among the most patent of facts.
I have thought that a certain Western-ness—a growing modernity of tone—may be the result, as far as I am concerned, of her presence with me? I do not know. …
There is the gleam of a lake-end just visible in the north forest from the palace-top, and in it a good number of fish like carp, tench, roach, etc., so in May I searched for a tackle-shop in the Gallipoli Fatmeh-bazaar, and got four 12-foot rods, with reels, silk-line, quill-floats, a few yards of silkworm gut, with a packet of No. 7 and 8 hooks, and split-shot for sinkers; and since red-worms, maggots and gentles are common on the island, I felt sure of a great many more fish than the number I wanted, which was none at all. However, for the mere amusement, I fished several times, lying at my length in a patch of long-grass overwaved by an enormous cedar, where the bank is steep, and the water deep. And one mid-afternoon she was suddenly there with me, questioned me with her eyes, and when I consented, stayed: and presently I said I would teach her bottom-angling, and sent her flying up to the palace for another rod and tackle.
That day she did nothing, for after teaching her to thread the worm, and put the gentles on the smaller hooks, I sent her to hunt for worms to chop up for ground-baiting the pitch for the next afternoon; and when this was done it was dinnertime, and I sent her home, for by then I was giving the reading-lessons in the morning.
The next day I found her at the bank, taught her to take the sounding for adjusting the float, and she lay down not far from me, holding the rod. So I said to her:
“Well, this is better than living in a dark cellar twenty years, with nothing to do but walk up and down, sleep, and consume dates and Ismidt wine.”
“Yes!” says she.
“Twenty years!” said I: “How did you bear it?”
“I was not closs,” says she.
“Did you never suspect that there was a world outside that cellar?” said I.
“Never,” says she, “or lather, yes: but I did not suppose that it was this world, but another where he lived.”
“He who?”
“He who spoke with me.”
“Who was that?”
“Oh! a bite!” she screamed gladly.
I saw her float bob under, and started up, rushed to her, and taught her how to strike and play it, though it turned out when landed to be nothing but a tiny barbel: but she was in ecstasies, holding it on her palm, murmuring her fond coo.
She re-baited, and we lay again. I said:
“But what a life: no exit, no light, no prospect, no hope—”
“Plenty of hope!” says she.
“Good Heavens! hope of what?”
“I knew vely well that something was lipening over the cellar, or under, or alound it, and would come to pass at a certain fixed hour, and that I should see it, and feel it, and it would be vely nice.”
“Ah, well, you had to wait for it, at any rate. Didn’t those twenty years seem long?”
“No—at least sometimes—not often. I was always so occupied.”
“Occupied in doing what?”
“In eating, or dlinking, or lunning, or talking.”
“Talking to yourself?”
“Not myself.”
“To whom, then?”
“To the one who told me when I was hungly, and put the dates to satisfy my hunger.”
“I see. Don’t wriggle about in that way, or you will never catch any fish. The maxim of angling is: ‘Study to be quiet’—”
“O! another bite!” she called, and this time, all alone, very agilely landed a good-sized bream.
“But do you
