“Sometimes I would sit and cly,” says she—“I did not know why. But if that was ‘sadness,’ I was never miserlable, never, never. And if I clied, it did not last long, and I would soon fall to sleep, for he would lock me in his lap, and kiss me, and wipe all my tears away.”
“He who?”
“Why, what a question! he who told me when I was hungly, and of the thing that was lipening outside the cellar, which would be so nice.”
“I see, I see. But in all that dingy place, and thick gloom, were you never at all afraid?”
“Aflaid! I! of what?”
“Of the unknown.”
“I do not understand you. How could I be aflaid? The known was the very opposite of tellible: it was merely hunger and dates, thirst and wine, the desire to lun and space to lun in, the desire to sleep and sleep: there was nothing tellible in that: and the unknown was even less tellible than the known: for it was the nice thing that was lipening outside the cellar. I do not understand—”
“Ah, yes,” said I, “you are a clever little being: but your continual fluttering about is fatal to all angling. Isn’t it in your nature to keep still a minute? And with regard now to your habits in the cellar—?”
“Another!” she cried with happy laugh, and landed a young chub. And that afternoon she caught seven, and I none.
Another day I took her from the pitch to one of the kitchens in the village with some of the fish, till then always thrown away, and taught her cooking: for the only cooking-implement in the palace is the silver alcohol-lamp for coffee and chocolate. We both scrubbed the utensils, and boil and fry I taught her, and the making of a sauce from vinegar, bottled olives, and the tinned American butter from the Speranza, and the boiling of rice mixed with flour for ground-baiting our pitch. And she, at first astonished, was soon all deft housewifeliness, breathless officiousness, and behind my back, of her own intuitiveness, grated some dry almonds found there, and with them sprinkled the fried tench. And we ate them, sitting on the floor together: the first new food, I suppose, tasted by me for twenty-one years: nor did I find it disagreeable.
The next day she came up to the palace reading a book, which turned out to be a cookery-book in English, found at her yali; and a week later, she appeared, out of hours, presenting me a yellow-earthenware dish containing a mess of gorgeous colours—a boiled fish under red peppers, bits of saffron, a greenish sauce, and almonds: but I turned her away, and would have none of her, or her dish.
About a mile up to the west of the palace is a very old ruin in the deepest forest, I think of a mosque, though only three truncated internal pillars under ivy, and the weedy floor, with the courtyard and portal-steps remain, before it being a long avenue of cedars, gently descending from the steps, the path between the trees choked with long-grass and wild rye reaching to my middle. Here I saw one day a large disc of old brass, bossed in the middle, which may have been either a shield or part of an ancient cymbal, with concentric rings graven round it, from centre to circumference. The next day I brought some nails, a hammer, a saw, and a box of paints from the Speranza; and I painted the rings in different colours, cut down a slim lime-trunk, nailed the thin disc along its top, and planted it well, before the steps: for I said I would make a bull’s-eye, and do rifle and revolver practice before it, from the avenue. And this the next evening I was doing at four hundred feet, startling the island, it seemed, with that unusual noise, when up she came peering with enquiring face: at which I was very angry, because my arm, long unused, was firing wide: but I was too proud to say anything, and let her look, and soon she understood, laughing every time I made a considerable miss, till at last I turned upon her saying: “If you think it so easy, you may try.”
She had been wanting to try, for she came eagerly to the offer, and after I had opened and showed her the mechanism, the cartridges, and how to shoot, I put into her hands one of the Speranza Colt’s. She took her bottom-lip between her teeth, shut her left eye, vaulted out the revolver like an old shot to the level of her intense right eye, and sent a ball through the geometrical centre of the boss.
However, it was a fluke-shot, for I had the satisfaction of seeing her miss every one of the other five, except the last, which hit the black. That, however, was three weeks since, and now my hitting record is forty percent, and hers ninety-six—most extraordinary: so that it is clear that this creature is the protégée of someone, and favouritism is in the world.
Her book of books is the Old Testament. Sometimes, at noon or afternoon, I may look abroad from the roof or galleries, and see a remote figure sitting on the sward under the shade of plane or black cypress: and I always know that the book she cons there is the Bible—like an old Rabbi. She has a passion for stories: and there finds a store.
Three nights since when it was pretty late, and the moon very splendid, I saw her passing homewards close to the lake, and shouted down to her, meaning to say “Good night”; but she thought that I had called her, and came: and sitting out on the top step we talked for hours, she without the yashmak.
We fell to talking about the Bible. And says she: “What did Cain to Abel?”
“He knocked him
