MRS KRISTAL
El compañero de piso perfecto
Traducido del inglés por Paloma Vega Centeno
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Edición en español: enero 2023
Sienna
Tras un trayecto de casi nueve horas desde Ellsworth, un pequeño pueblo a las afueras de Helena, la capital de Montana, pasando por Chicago en dirección a Lincoln, Illinois, llego a mi nuevo hogar, bien entrada la tarde. Es probable que caiga rendida en la cama. Cuando al fin entre en mi nuevo apartamento, estaré agotada —mejor dicho— muerta de cansancio.
El autobús se detiene en la parada de Lincoln Campus, así que bajo y cojo mis cosas: una maleta y una mochila, aparte del bolso que ya llevo en la mano. Me he pasado el día viajando, surcando el cielo y, más tarde, la carretera, para llegar a lo que ahora será mi hogar. Mis padres me llevaron al aeropuerto de Helena, desde donde volé a Chicago y allí cogí un autobús hasta Lincoln.
Me muero de ganas de empezar la carrera. Llevo todo el verano soñando con que llegue septiembre y pueda, al fin, vivir en el campus. Es una nueva etapa en mi vida. Ahora soy una universitaria que vive en otro estado, y pronto seré una compañera de piso más en un apartamento compartido. La residencia en la que pretendía quedarme me envió una carta en la que confirmaban que no había habitaciones disponibles en el complejo residencial que me gustaba. Sin embargo, me ofrecieron una habitación en un apartamento que la universidad alquila. Al parecer, la inquilina anterior se ha mudado después de graduarse.
Al principio, tenía ciertas dudas, porque me había hecho a la idea de vivir en una residencia universitaria en el mismo campus. Ir a clase habría sido mucho más rápido y sencillo, porque podría haber ido andando. Sin embargo, para llegar al apartamento, necesitaría un bono de transporte para varias zonas, pero las otras alternativas al piso estaban aún más lejos y eran aún más caras, así que acabé aceptando. Mi nueva compañera de piso se llama Denver Jones y está ya en último curso. Si, por lo que sea, no nos llevamos bien, se mudará dentro de un año y medio. Así que, llegado el momento, tal vez pueda encontrar a alguien por mi cuenta.
Con suerte, haré nuevos amigos. Eso es lo que más miedo me da: estar sola todos estos años que me quedan. Pero no tiene por qué ser así. Estoy segura de que Denver y yo nos llevaremos muy bien y seremos amigas.
Agarro el asa de mi equipaje y me coloco la mochila en el hombro. Estoy lista para dirigirme al complejo de apartamentos. Desde que subí al autobús en Chicago, he estado absorbiendo todo lo que me rodea como una esponja. Todo es nuevo para mí. En las próximas semanas, habré memorizado las calles, los números de las casas y los edificios. Sin embargo, ahora mismo, siento que nunca seré capaz de recordarlo todo. Sigo las indicaciones del navegador de mi iPhone, que me susurra el camino que seguir a través de mis AirPods.
Giro la esquina y llego a Abbey Street. A lo lejos, veo el edificio de apartamentos de la universidad. Delante hay un cartel blanco y enorme; es imposible no verlo. En el centro, destaca el escudo del Lincoln College y un aviso que indica que el complejo es de su propiedad, así como de la ciudad de Lincoln. Hay un par de frases en letra más pequeña que resumen las normas de convivencia, y en la esquina inferior derecha, están los datos de contacto de los administradores de la residencia, en caso de emergencia.
Bueno, aquí estoy. Después de tantas horas de viaje, al fin he llegado a mi nuevo hogar. El corazón me late con fuerza y estoy impaciente por conocer lo que me espera al cruzar la puerta.
«Ha llegado a su destino» —dice la voz de la asistente de Google Maps. Cierro la aplicación y me voy la vuelta para mirar la bonita fachada beis. Las ventanas del segundo piso están perfectamente alineadas, mientras que las de los pisos superiores son en voladizo. Mi apartamento está en la segunda planta.
—¡Vamos allá! —digo—. Aquí empieza tu vida universitaria, Sienna Gardner.
Saco la llave del bolsillo de mi chaqueta y me dirijo a la puerta principal. No es fácil apañárselas con una maleta y el pedazo de mochila que llevo a cuestas. Bueno, y con mi bolso. Afortunadamente, la puerta se abre y una chica rubia sale para ayudarme. Aliviada, vuelvo a guardar la llave en el bolsillo.
—Te sujeto la puerta —me dice con una sonrisa, y yo asiento mientras hago mil maniobras para pasar con la maleta a través de la puerta.
—Gracias.
—No es nada, mujer —responde.
Entonces la miro. Al igual que yo, tiene el pelo largo y rubio, una figura esbelta y una sonrisa amable.
—¿Eres nueva por aquí? —pregunta.
—Sí —murmuro nerviosa, porque se ha dado cuenta de que soy una novata.
Una estudiante que hubiera pasado las vacaciones en casa tendría, sin duda, menos equipaje que yo. Y eso que mis padres traerán la mayoría de mis cosas en su furgoneta dentro de dos semanas.
Mi habitación está amueblada, porque la anterior inquilina dejó allí muchos de sus muebles. En mi mochila y mi maleta tengo lo básico para un mes: ropa, material para ciertas ocasiones y algunos artículos de limpieza. Sí, lo sé, podría haberlo comprado todo en la ciudad, pero quería estar preparada.
—¿Es tan obvio? —le pregunto de todos modos, con una sonrisa.
—Pareces un poco perdida y llevas mucho equipaje.
—Ah, claro… —respondo—. Sí, me has pillado. Lo soy. ¿Y tú?
—Yo estoy en segundo —responde, con una amplia sonrisa—. ¿Vas a vivir aquí? —dice, mientras señala con el dedo índice el pasillo del edificio y yo asiento con la cabeza.
—Sí… ¿Y tú? ¿Vives aquí?
—Yo estoy en una de las habitaciones de la resi del campus, pero mi hermano vive aquí.
—Ah, vale —digo—. Me llamo Sienna.
—Yo soy Phoenix —responde ella, sonriente—. Encantada de conocerte. ¿Qué estudias?
—Economía. ¿Y tú?
—¡Yo también! ¡Qué guay! — contesta, algo emocionada, ya que ambas estamos en la misma carrera.
Me dedica otra agradable sonrisa. Luego, Phoenix se despide de mí.
—Me tengo que ir. Ha sido un placer conocerte, Sienna. Nos vemos pronto.
Antes de que pueda responderle, se da la vuelta y sale corriendo. Se despide de nuevo con un gesto y luego desaparece de mi vista. Yo le
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respondo con el mismo gesto y me dispongo a subir las escaleras que llevan a mi nuevo apartamento.
Me ha llegado la llave del piso por correo, lo que me parece un poco raro, pero qué se le va a hacer. Desde luego, no me habría hecho ilusión tener que recogerla hoy o ir en coche a buscarla a Lincoln.
Tengo aún más ganas de ver el apartamento por dentro. De momento, solo lo he visto en fotos. Algún propietario, y no me extrañaría que fuera algún miembro de la administración del complejo, publicó unas fotos del piso hace años, y desde entonces, no han añadido ninguna más. Existe la posibilidad de que el apartamento en el que tengo que vivir durante los próximos años sea todo un zulo.
Cuando llego al segundo piso, lucho por recuperar el oxígeno que he perdido al subir. Si no hubiera subido con el equipaje a cuestas... ¡Pero qué coño! Ya que estamos… Además, ya sé que estoy en muy mala forma. Odio tanto el ejercicio que mi nota de educación física me bajó la media final en el instituto. Entre jadeos, vuelvo a sacar la llave y abro la puerta. Junto a ella, hay un pequeño cartel en el que pone Denver Jones. Es aquí. Al entrar en el apartamento, noto mi pulso acelerado en la garganta, una vez más. Arrastro la maleta y, tras recorrer unos metros, la dejo caer al suelo.
—¡Lo he conseguido! —digo, jadeante, mientras miro a mi alrededor.
Estoy en un gran salón, la estancia principal del apartamento. Aquí es donde descansaré por las tardes, después de clase. Puede que Denver se anime a una noche de pelis. Si es que a ella le van esos planes. Lo que tengo claro es que el orden no es lo suyo. Hay un par de camisetas esparcidas por el sofá, junto con una caja de pizza vacía y un tercio de cerveza. Frunzo los labios. Espero que no deje sus cosas por todas partes y que esto sea cosa de una sola vez. Si no, me da que acabaré limpiando lo que ella ensucie. Respiro hondo para detener los pensamientos negativos y me quito la chaqueta para colgarla en el perchero. Entonces, me doy cuenta de que Denver debe de ser bastante alta y corpulenta. Sus chaquetas son enormes. Además, muchas de ellas son del equipo universitario de fútbol americano, los Lincoln Tigers. He leído algunas cosas sobre ellos en Internet, pero no me he molestado en seguir investigando. Por supuesto, sé que el fútbol es algo cultural y que los jugadores no solo son los reyes de la universidad, sino también bastante guapos. Muchas chicas perderían los papeles por salir con uno de ellos. Pero yo estoy aquí para aprender, no para acabar en la
cama de un quarterback1 . Estoy aquí para estudiar una carrera. Y está claro que un jugador de fútbol no me va a ayudar con eso.
Dejo atrás el perchero y continúo hacia el salón. La decoración parece bastante fortuita y no creo que le preocupe la apariencia del apartamento. Además de un enorme sofá y un sillón, hay un enorme televisor de pantalla plana en el salón. Cada vez me siento más y más incómoda con mi compañera de piso. Llegué a Lincoln con una imagen clara de ella. En mi cabeza, era una chica un poco tímida, ordenada y curiosa, y se tomaba sus estudios tan en serio como yo. No era una chica fiestera ni una persona a la que no le importase dejarlo todo por en medio. Tampoco me entusiasman las chaquetas del equipo de fútbol de un tamaño excesivo, que podrían ser de su novio. No quiero que ese chico esté siempre por aquí rondando. ¿Y si el baño no tiene pestillo y me pilla duchándome?
Sacudo la cabeza. Es demasiado pronto para pensar en el novio de mi compañera irrumpiendo en el baño. Ni siquiera sé si tiene uno. A lo mejor alguien se ha olvidado la chaqueta.
El chasquido de una puerta me hace dar un respingo, y antes de que pueda averiguar de dónde viene el sonido, oigo a mis espaldas:
—¿Quién eres? —dice una voz, que no parece femenina en absoluto, lo que me hace sobresaltarme—. ¿Y qué haces en mi casa?
Me doy la vuelta y pego un grito al ver al chaval que tengo enfrente. Es alto; me saca por lo menos veinte centímetros. Tiene los hombros anchos y unos brazos y piernas bien musculosos. Su tableta de chocolate tampoco se queda corta. Y solo lleva una toalla alrededor de la cintura. Hasta que no le echo un segundo vistazo, no me doy cuenta de que tiene el pelo rubio y corto, humedecido, y de que unas gotitas de agua caen desde su pecho hacia los abdominales y cruzan la toalla que lleva atada, donde asoma una fina capa de pelo rubio. Por Dios, ¿quién ha esculpido a este hombre? Aparto la mirada de su torso y vuelvo a mirarle, esta vez a los ojos.
Con cierto recelo, arquea las cejas y cruza los brazos sobre el pecho. Esto hace que parezcan aún más musculosos. Estoy segura de que la temperatura de la habitación ha subido considerablemente en los últimos minutos.
—Yo... Bueno, yo... O sea... —farfullo, aunque he perdido toda capacidad de hablar. —Soy Sienna.
—Vale responde, aún con cierta desconfianza. —¿Y qué haces en mi apartamento, Sienna?
—Pero… ¿Este es tu apartamento?
Miro a mi alrededor con impotencia, pero aparte de las cajas de pizza y la botella de cerveza en la mesa, no hay nada que pueda indicarme si este es o no su apartamento. Luego me acuerdo de las chaquetas del perchero, que creía que serían del novio de Denver. El pánico se apodera de mí al darme cuenta de que son sus chaquetas y de que el novio de Denver no existe. ¿Me habré confundido de puerta? No, es imposible. El cartel de al lado del timbre tenía claramente escrito Denver Jones, en letras grandes y llamativas, y la llave encajaba en la cerradura.
—Pero … En el cartel ponía Denver Jones…
—¿Ya, y? —pregunta él—. Yo soy Denver.
—¿Qué?
Mi voz se quiebra de nuevo y suena mucho más chillona de lo que realmente es. El corazón me late con fuerza y noto cómo se me forma un nudo en el estómago. En un principio, Denver no reacciona, pero me recorre con la mirada. Poco a poco, me voy sintiendo algo incómoda, así que me doy la vuelta y me ocupo de mi equipaje. Denver me sigue. Ni siquiera se aguanta la toalla, que apenas está sujeta en sus caderas. ¿No se le ocurre por un segundo que el nudo podría soltarse y yo podría verle la polla? No me creo que esto esté pasando.
Cojo el bolso y busco los papeles de la residencia. Sé que es perder el tiempo, pero me cuesta asimilar que él sea Denver. Esperaba a una chica como yo, no al Adonis del campus. ¡Este chico está buenísimo!
Además, no puedo creer que la administración de la residencia ofrezca apartamentos mixtos. Con los nervios a flor de piel, saco los papeles del bolso y los leo. Pero, una vez más, solo confirmo que estoy en el apartamento que toca.
—¿Y bien? —dice, aclarándose la garganta antes de que consiga girarme —¿Has encontrado lo que buscabas?
Sé que se está riendo de mí, pero no dejo que me afecte. Esto tiene que ser un malentendido. Es imposible que comparta piso con este tío. ¿He mencionado lo bueno que está? Y si yo pienso que está bueno, es evidente que otras chicas también lo pensarán. Chicas que no tienen tanta autoestima
como yo y a las que les encantará que él se fije en ellas. Dios, me da vueltas la cabeza solo de pensar en él follando en la habitación de al lado.
—¿Eres Denver Jones?— vuelvo a preguntar, para estar segura.
—Sí, soy Denver Jones —dice, imperturbable—. Y tú eres Sienna... ¿Qué más?
—Gardner —respondo—. Sienna Gardner. La... administración de la residencia me ha asignado la habitación vacía del piso.
—¿Qué? —pregunta, intentando coger los papeles que tengo en las manos—. ¿Me dejas echarles un vistazo?
Asiento y le doy los papeles. Cuando su mano toca la mía, me estremezco y le miro. Denver también me mira. Está lo suficientemente cerca como para que pueda oler su aftershave2 . Sus ojos azules me miran fijamente y sus labios se curvan en una sonrisa.
—Gracias —dice mientras coge los papeles.
Empieza a leerlos y resopla.
—Serán inútiles... Denver es un nombre que no tiene género. Han debido pensar que era una chica. Pero es evidente que no lo soy.
Denver me mira y sonríe. Luego desliza los ojos por su musculoso cuerpo y yo le imito. Sigo el rastro de su mirada como un polluelo sigue a su madre.
—No, está claro que no eres una chica —confirmo—. No lo eres, no. Se ríe y me devuelve los papeles para que los meta en una funda y los guarde en el bolso.
—¿Y ahora qué? —le pregunto—. Yo... Bueno, no pienso quedarme aquí...
—¿Por qué no? —pregunta, desconcertado—. Quiero decir, yo también habría preferido un chico, pero...
—Vaya, qué bien… Bueno es saberlo.
—¡Pero si me has dicho que no querías quedarte aquí!
—¡Es que estás casi desnudo! —exclamo mientras contemplo su cuerpo.
Denver arquea las cejas y se ríe suavemente. Luego, se relame los labios.
—Hombre, si tú quisieras, podría quitarme la toalla…
—Ni se te ocurra —digo, mientras levanto el dedo índice con aire amenazante para señalar su cuerpo semidesnudo—. No vas a quitarte nada. Vamos a calmarnos. Hoy estoy muy cansada, pero mañana lidiaremos con todo este asunto.
No puedo vivir aquí. Es un hombre, y no necesito ver la prueba más evidente para confirmarlo. Creo que no nos llevaríamos muy bien. Solo con ver lo desordenado que es... Está claro que acabaría relegándome a ser la mujer de la limpieza, porque sí, necesita que alguien ponga fin a este caos.
—¿A qué te refieres exactamente con «lidiar con todo este asunto»? —pregunta, mientras se gira sobre sus talones y se dirige al baño—. Ahora vuelvo.
Desaparece a través de la puerta de en medio de las tres habitaciones de enfrente y yo intento hacerme a la idea de lo que está sucediendo. Esto solo podía pasarme a mí, ¿verdad? Denver Jones, mi simpática y amable compañera de piso, se ha convertido en un chico increíblemente sexy, divertido y atractivo en muchos sentidos. No puedo vivir con él. No va a funcionar. Denver y yo no estamos hechos el uno para el otro.
—Ya estoy aquí.
Levanto la vista y veo que se ha puesto unos pantalones cortos y una camiseta.
—Volviendo a lo de antes —continúa él—. No encontrarás otra habitación. A estas alturas, todo está a rebosar. Y lo que queda libre, da puto asco.
Miro a mi alrededor y él rechista, algo molesto.
—Ayer vinieron unos amigos —dice, con la intención de recoger —. Iba a ducharme y luego a limpiarlo todo. Pero has llegado muy pronto.
Las comisuras de los labios de Denver se levantan con picardía.
—¿¡Cómo no se me ha pasado por la cabeza!? No debería haber llegado tan pronto, ¿verdad? —respondo con sarcasmo, y él sonríe aún más.
—Exacto —dice—. Y como he dicho, no siempre está todo tan hecho mierda. Suelo limpiar.
—Ya es por la tarde —señalo, pero Denver se limita a encogerse de hombros.
—Sí, ¿y qué? Ayer se nos hicieron las tantas. Bueno, Sienna, ¿cómo crees que vamos a llevarnos tú y yo los próximos meses?
—Seguro que puedo aclarar el malentendido con la administración de la residencia y...
Denver levanta las cejas y yo suelto un gemido de desesperación.
—Venga... Al menos déjame tener algo de esperanza.
—¡Claro que sí, Sienna! —dice, sonriente, y me guiña un ojo—. Mañana encontrarás una nueva habitación, a ser posible en el mismo campus, donde no disfrutarás en absoluto de tu vida de estudiante, sino que pasarás los próximos años sumergida entre tus libros y clases. O puedes quedarte aquí conmigo y vivir una experiencia full3 universitaria.
—¿Me estás troleando? —pregunto, y él no puede evitar sonreír de nuevo.
—Solo te digo cómo son las cosas —responde, encogiéndose de hombros—. Te puedo confirmar que no te van a dar otra habitación. No tengo ni idea de qué ha podido pasar, pero a estas alturas, creo que será mejor que nos apañemos con lo que tenemos.
Este chaval me está empezando a poner nerviosita.
—¿No te molesta que yo sea tu nueva compañera de piso?
—No —dice Denver, mientras recoge las cajas de pizza de la mesa del salón—. Solo me queda año y medio aquí. Me la suda quién viva conmigo estos últimos meses. Mientras nos llevemos bien, claro. Además, no suelo pasar mucho por aquí.
—Bueno, la verdad es que no me encanta que digas que «te la suda» si tu compi es una chica limpia o un guarro… Pero bueno, qué más da. En fin, ¿y dónde sueles estar, entonces?
Es evidente que me interesa esa parte.
—En los entrenos, en alguna que otra quedada, a veces en clase y, sobre todo, por ahí con mis colegas del equipo.
—¿Qué equipo? —pregunto, y me mira sorprendido.
—¿No has leído nada sobre la universidad?
—Claro que sí. Si no, no estaría aquí.
Me he pasado semanas comparando universidades y leyendo todo, creedme, todo— sobre el Lincoln College. En especial, aquello que fuera relevante para mi grado. He de reconocer que todo lo que pase en la uni más allá de eso, me importa bastante poco. Había pensado apuntarme a
alguna extracurricular o a algún club. Tal vez hacer nuevos amigos y pasar algún tiempo con ellos. Pero para qué le voy a hablar de eso a Denver…
—¿Y no sabes quién soy? —responde.
Luego, levanta las cejas y me mira con incredulidad. Yo hago lo mismo, porque su pregunta me parece absurda. No tengo ni idea de quién es y, la verdad es que me la pela.
—No —respondo a su pregunta—. Pero estoy segura de que me lo vas a decir.
—Soy Denver Jones y...
—Ah, Denver Jones, menos mal que me lo has dicho...
—Soy el quarterback del equipo de fútbol, Sienna —dice, mientras una sonrisa brillante se forma en su cara.
Es una de esas sonrisas preciosas pero perversas, que hacen que a todas las chicas les tiemblen las piernas.
—La gente sabe quién soy —dice él.
—¿Que eres… qué? —digo, abriendo la mandíbula por la sorpresa que ha causado en mí su respuesta.
Es el puto quarterback. El chaval al que todos idolatran. Todos quieren ser él. Hostia puta…
Denver se ríe y se lleva la mano al pecho. Tengo que admitir que tiene unas manos enormes. Si no, no podría sostener esos balones gigantescos con forma de huevo. Sin dejar de sonreír, levanta las cejas.
—¿Ese gesto es bueno o malo?
—Aún no lo sé —suspiro—. ¿Dónde está mi habitación?
Cambio de tema para evitar pensar en el hecho de que voy a compartir piso con el quarterback de la uni desde este momento.
—Espera un momento —dice, mientras aún sostiene las cajas de pizza—. Deja que lleve todo esto a la cocina y luego te la enseño.
—Oh, vale… —digo, mirando a mi alrededor— Gracias…
Denver entra en la cocina, donde todavía no he estado, y yo le sigo con la mirada. Tengo que encontrar la forma de que todo esto encaje. Una vocecilla en mi interior me dice que estoy en el lugar adecuado para disfrutar de la universidad.
Siempre he querido distanciarme de mis padres y probar algo nuevo por mi cuenta. Aunque no pensaba tener por compañero de piso al
quarterback del equipo de fútbol. Bueno, no está tan mal. Desde luego, es un gran cambio en comparación con lo que viví en Montana.
¿Quién sabe? A lo mejor hasta nos hacemos amigos.
1 N. de la T Se llama quarterback a la figura del pasador en el fútbol americano. Se trata del líder del equipo ofensivo, que es quien decide la jugada.
2 N. de la T. Loción para después del afeitado.
3 N. de la T. En un registro propio de adolescentes y veinteañeros, full o a full significa «a tope de» o «completamente».
Exploring the Variety of Random Documents with Different Content
For some unexplained reason the mere presence of the Spider was an offence to the lowering boys who laired in this court. His grownup air of being capably in charge of two female forestieri stank in their resentful nostrils, but Spider was an insect of his hands, landing those hands resoundingly upon the cheeks of his buffeters and hustlers until an enraged mother took the part of one of her discomfited offspring, and under her fierce cuffings the Spider melted into outraged tears.
Peripatetica had already discovered that angry English had a demoralizing effect upon the natives. Its crisp consonants seemed as daunting as blows to the vowelled Sicilian; armed with which, and a parasol, the Spider was rescued and borne half way to the fountain of Arethusa before he could control his sniffles and his protesting fingers, upon which he offered passionate illustration that even Hercules could not overcome the odds of ten to one, and that tears under the circumstances left no smirch upon nascent manhood.
Jane, with her usual large grasp of financial questions, applied a lire to the wounded heart with the happiest results, and it was a once more united and cheerful trio which leaned over Arethusa’s inadequate little fount with its green scum and its frowzy papyrus plants. Poor Nymph! She of the rainbow, and the “couch of snows”— she whose “footsteps were paved with green.” Flying from the gross wooing of Alpheus she comes all the way from Elis under the sea to take refuge with moon-crowned Artemis—Artemis “the protectress”—and for safety is turned into a sparkling pool which feeds all Syracuse with its sweet waters. Now Artemis is dead. Her cool groves have given way to acres of arid stone convents; earthquakes have cracked Arethusa’s basin, letting the sea in and the sweet water out; modern bad taste has walled her vulgarly about, and the poor old nymph can only gurgle reiterantly, “I was once a beauty; long ago, long ago!” with not the smallest hope that any tourist will believe it.
The Spider has retired to his web. Pranzohas been discussed, and Jane and Peripatetica, refreshed, are taking another nibble at the vast mouthful of Syracuse’s past.
It was a thrilling pranzo. Not because of the food, nor of its partakers. The food was the same old stereotyped menu. Gnocchi with cheese. Vegetables, divorced from the meats—they cannot apparently occupy the same course in any part of Italy. More cheese —a jardinière of pomegranates, oranges, dates, and almonds. Wine under a new name, but with the same delicate perfumed savour of all the other wines they have drunk.
No more did the guests offer any startling variety. The same tall condescending English woman; elderly, manacled with bracelets, clanking with chains; domineering a plain, red cheek-boned, flatchested daughter obviously needing a lot of marrying off on Mamma’s part; dominating also a nervous, impetuous husband—the travelling Englishman being much given to nervous impetuosity. A few fat, greasy Italians with napkin corners planted deeply into their collars, and scintillating the gross joys of gluttony. Two dark-faced melancholy-eyed foreigners, not easily placed as to nationality. All types of feminine Americans. If it were possible to see only their eyes they would be recognizable as Americans from their glance of bold, alert self-confidence and cheerfulness, very noticeable by contrast with the European eye. Also if one could see only that inevitable ready-made silk bodice the wearers would be recognizable as fellow countrywomen. The man who manufactures that type of bodice at home must be rich beyond the dreams of avarice.
No; the thrill of the pranzowas due to invisible causes.
Behind the door from which the hopelessly estranged meat and vegetables emerged there arose a clash and murmur as of some domestic storm, and the waiters passed the spinach course with an air so tense and distrait that the crunching horde felt their forks strain with curiosity in their hands. Even the fat Italians paused in their gorging to stare. Even the foreigners’ melancholy dark eyes grew interested.
After the spinach course ensued a long interval; the waiters lingering about with empty platters and furtive pretences of occupation, plainly not daring to enter that door, behind which ever waxed the loud rumour of domestic war.
The interval increased in length. The clamour rose and rose, and someone went in search of the Padrone.
Ours was a splendid Padrone; clothed upon with a redingote and an historic and romantic dignity. For had not Guy de Maupassant mentioned him with respectful affection in “La Vie Errante”? The memory of which artistic appreciation still surrounded him with an aura. The Padrone entered that fateful door with calm, stern purpose, while the guests crumbled their bread in patient hope.
The domestic storm drew breath for one terrible moment, then suddenly rose to the fury of a cyclone, and the Padrone was shot convulsively forth into our midst, the romantic aura hanging in tragic tatters about him. Holding to the wall he swallowed hard several times, seeking composure, then passed, with knees wabbling nervously beneath the stately redingote, to the office, where could be witnessed his passionately protesting gestures and whispers poured into the sympathetic bosom of the concierge.
The cyclone had expended itself; the courses resumed their course, but what had taken place behind that closed door was never known. It remained another Syracusan mystery.
The Museo at Syracuse, though small, is the best in Europe, for here, as on an open page, is written the whole history of the island of Sicily—not a gap or a break in the story of more than three thousand years; of perhaps five thousand years, for it antedates all the certain dates of history. Here are cases full of the stone and obsidian tools and weapons of the autochthonous Sikels; their crude pottery, their rough burial urns, their bone ornaments, and feathery wisps of their woven stuffs. These are all curiously like the relics of the Mound-builders of America, now in the Smithsonian Institution.
Apparently the Stone Age was as deadeningly similar everywhere as is our own Age of Steel.
Follows the rude metal working of the Siculians, who, having some knowledge of the use of iron, can build boats, and come across the narrow strait at Messina and drive out the Sikels. So long ago as that the old process of “assimilation” begins. The Siculians begin to work in colour, to ornament their pottery, to dye their stuffs, to mark their silver and iron with rough chisel patterns—patterns and colours again astonishingly like those of our own Pueblo Indians.
There are fragments of Phœnician work here and there—the traders from Tyre and Sidon are beginning to cruise along the coast and barter their superior wares with the inhabitants.
All at once the arts make a great spring upward. The Greeks have appeared. Rude, archaic, Dorian, these arts at first, but strong, and showing a new spirit. The potteries have a glaze, the patterns grow more intricate, the reliefs show a plastic striving for grace and life, the ornaments are of gold as well as silver and bronze, and steel has appeared. Follows a splendid flowering; an apogee of beauty is reached. Vases of exquisite contours covered with spirited paintings, pictures of life and death, of war and love. Coins that are unrivaled in numismatic beauty; struck frequently with the quadriga to celebrate the winning of the chariot race at the Olympic games; a triumph valued as greatly by the Greeks of Sicily as is the winning of the Derby by English horsemen. Tools, jewels, arms, all adorned with infinite taste and skill. Statues of such subtle grace and loveliness as this famous “Nymph,” the long-buried marble now grown to tints of blond pearl. Figurines of baked clay, reproducing the costumes, the ornaments, the physiology of the passing generations—faces arch, lovely, full of gay humour. Splendid sarcophagi, and burial urns still holding ashes and calcined bones, and tiny clay reproductions of the death masks of the departed, full of tender human individuality, or else heads of the gods, such as that enchanting tinted and crowned Artemis, that still lies in one of the great sarcophagi amid a handful of burned bones.
Punic and Roman remains begin to show themselves, recording that tremendous struggle between Europe and Africa for dominion in the midland sea, under the impact of which the Greek civilization is to be crushed. Byzantine ornament appears. Africa makes another struggle and is for a while triumphant, leaving record of the Moorish domination in damascened arms, in deep-tinted tiles.
The Goths and Normans fuse with the Saracen arts at first, but soon dominate the Eastern influence and shake it off, developing an art inferior only to the Greek. The Spanish follow, baroque, sumptuous, pseudo-classical. All the story of all the conquerors is here.
“Oh!” sighs Peripatetica. “What an illustrated history; I could go on turning its pages for days.”
“Well, you’ll turn them alone!” snapped Jane, clutching frantically at her side, and adding in a dreadful whisper: “There are fleas hopping all over these historical pages. Come away this instant.”
But they linger a moment on the way out to look again at the famous headless Venus Landolina.
“There is only one real Venus,” commented Peripatetica contemptuously. “The Melian. All the rest are only plump ladies about to step into their baths. I detest these fat women with insufficient clothing who sprawl all over Europe calling themselves the goddesses of love. Goddesses indeed! They look more like soft white chestnut worms. That great dominating, irresistible lady of the Louvre is a deity, if you like—Our Lady of Beauty—besides, this little person’s calf is flat on the inner side.”
“Iss it not righd dat her calve should be vlat on de inside?” queried an elderly Swiss, also looking, and showing all her handsome porcelain teeth in a smile of anxious uncertainty. “I dink dat must be righd, because Baedeker marks her wid a ztar.”
“Don’t allow your opinions to be unsettled by this lady’s,” consoled Jane sweetly. “She isn’t really an authority. It would be wiser perhaps and more comfortable to be guided by Baedeker.”
“Bud she has no head,” grieved the Swiss. “How can Baedeker mark her wid a ztar w’en she has no head?”
How indeed? But then, there is such a lot of body!...
It is some days later. They have “done” the river Amapus; have been rowed among the towering feathery papyrus plants, the original roots of which were sent to Heiro I. by Ptolemy, and which still flourish in Sicily though all the parent plants have vanished out of Egypt.
They have looked down into the clear depths of La Pisma’s spring. Jane says it is less beautiful than the Silver Spring in Florida out which the Ocklawaha river rises, but that fountain of a tropical forest —transparent as air, and held in a great argent bowl—has no history, while La Pisma was the playmate of fair Persephone, and on seeing her ravished away by fiery Pluto melted quite away into a flood of bright tears. And it was she who, having caught up Persephone’s dropped veil, floated it to the feet of Demeter, and told her where to look for the lost daughter. La Pisma and Anapus her lover were, too, the real guardians of Syracuse, for as one after another of the armies of invading enemies camped on their oozy plain they sapped the invaders’ strength, and blighted their courage with fevers from the miasmatic breaths exhaled upon the foes as they slept.
Jane and Peripatetica have found another mystery. Syracuse, it appears, is full of mysteries. This last is known as the Castle of Euryalus, and they must take horse and drive to it, six miles from the hotel, though still within the walls of the original city, once twenty-two miles about; shrunk in these later days to less than three. This six miles of pilgrimage gives ample time to search the guide-books for information as to this thing they have come out for to see. But the guide-books palter, and shuffle and evade, as they are prone to do about anything really interesting. Euryalus, solid enough to their eyes and to their sense of touch, seems as illusive in history as the cloudy towers of the Fata Morgana—now you see it, and now you don’t. It seems to come from nowhere. No one can tell when or by whom it was built, but it always turns up in the history
of Syracuse in moments of stress—much like those Christian patronsaints who used suddenly to descend in shining armour to turn the tide of battle. One hears of Dionysius strengthening it when news comes that the dread Himilcon is on his way from Carthage with two hundred triremes accompanied by rafts, galleys, and transports innumerable. Dionysius makes Euryalus the key of a surprise he prepares for the Carthagenians, for when the latter come sailing into the harbour—“A forest of black masts and dark sails, with transports filled with elephants trumpeting at the smell of land,” and from the West “comes trampling across the plain by the Helorian road and the banks of the Anapus, the Punic army 300,000 strong, with 3,000 horse led by Himilcon in person,”—there stands waiting for them one of the most amazing works ever wrought by the will of a single man.
Dionysius in twenty days has built a wall three miles long barring Himilcon’s ingress at the only weak point. Seventy thousand of the inhabitants of Syracuse had worked at this building. Forty thousand slaves had been in the Latomiæ cutting the blocks of easily hewn sandstone, which six thousand oxen carried to the wall, while other armies of men had been upon the slopes of Ætna ravaging the oak woods for huge beams. When Himilcon comes the wall is complete.
Then there are more appearings and disappearings through the years, and suddenly Euryalus fills the foreground again. Archimedes is helping Hieronymus to fortify it against Marcellus—is designing veiled sally ports, and oblique apertures from which his “scorpions” and other curious war engines may hurl stones, is placing there the burning glasses with which he will set the Roman galleys on fire by means of the sun’s heat. But though the Carthagenians were terrible the Roman is more terrible still, and in spite of Archimedes they get into Syracuse after a three years’ siege. While the furies of final capture are raging Archimedes sits calmly drawing figures upon the sand. A Roman soldier rushing by carelessly smears them with his foot. Archimedes is angry, and “uses language.” The soldier, angry in his turn—no doubt “language” in Greek sounded especially insulting —shortens his sword and stabs “the greatest man then living in the world.”
Marcellus sheds tears when he hears it, and buries the father of mathematics with splendid honours, marking the tombstone—as Archimedes had wished—with no name, with only a sphere and a cylinder. He spared Syracuse too; left her temples and splendours intact, and forbid the usual plundering and massacres. Marcellus was, it seems, in every way a very decent person, and Peripatetica grieved that those frigid Romans wouldn’t let him have a triumph when he went home, and Jane breathed a hope that he used more language to that murderous soldier....
Later comes Cicero to Syracuse, hunting evidence against Verres, who had, as pro-consul, robbed the city of all the treasures Marcellus had spared, and the great lawyer takes time from his examination of witnesses to look out Archimedes’ resting place. He finds it overgrown with thistles and brambles, but recognizes it by the sphere and cylinder, and sets it once more in order.
“So Tully paused, amid the wrecks of time,
On the rude stone to trace the truth sublime, Where at his feet in honoured dust disclosed The immortal Sage of Syracuse reposed.”
“You cribbed that from one of the guide-books,” jeered Jane.
“Of course I did,” admitted Peripatetica with calm unblushingness. “Do you imagine I go around with samples of formal Eighteenth Century Pope-ry concealed about my person?”
They are on their way to the theatre, passing by the ancient site of the Forum, which site is now a mere dusty, down-at-heels field where goats browse and donkeys graze, and where squads of awkward recruits are being trained to take cover behind a couple of grass blades, to fire their empty rifles with some pretence at unanimity.
The road winds between walled orange and lemon groves, in which contadini are drying and packing miles of pungent golden peel
for transportation to French and English confectioners. The air is redolent with it.
Themistocles—Jane doubts his sponsors in baptism having had any hand in this, but the grubby card he presented with so pleasant a glance, so fine a gesture at the time of striking a bargain for the day, bore it printed as plain as plain—Themistocles, then, dismounts before a small drinking shop lying at the foot of an elevation. With one broad sweep of his hand he signifies that he is making them free of history, and yields them to the care of a nobleman in gold and blue; a nobleman possessing a pleasing manner and one of those plangent, golden-strung voices which the lucky possessors always so enjoy using.
The two demand the Latomia Paradiso; the name having seduced their sentimental imaginations. The peer intimates that the name is misleading, but with gentle firmness they drop down the path which descends into the quarries from which Dionysius hurriedly snatched the material for his wall; material (almost as easy to cut as cheese, but hardening in the air) which has been dug, scooped, and riven away as fantastically as if sculptured by the capricious flow of water, leaving caverns, towers, massy columns, arches, a thousand freaked shapes. Now all this is draped with swaying curtains of ivy, with climbing roses heavy with unblown buds, with trailing geraniums hanging from crannies, with wild flowers innumerable. Lemon and fig trees grow upon the quarries’ floor, mosses and ferns carpet the shady places, black-green caroba trees huddle in neglected corners.
The nobleman, however, is impatient to show other wonders. He leads the way into caverns through whose openings shafts of sunlight steal, turning the dusk within to a blond gloom, caverns where rope-makers walk to and fro twisting long strands, twirling wheels, with a cheerful chatter that booms hollowly back to them from the vaulted darkness over their heads; where the birds who flit in and out hear their twitterings reflected enormously, with a curious effect; where even the sound of dripping moisture is magnified into a large solemnity.
He has saved the best for the last. Here an arch soars a hundred feet, giving entrance to a lofty narrow cave. Where the sides of the arch meet is a small channel of chiselled smoothness, ending in an orifice through which a glimpse of the sky shows like a tiny blue gem. It is the Ear of Dionysius. In this cave, so the story runs, the Tyrant confined suspected conspirators, for this is a natural whispering gallery, and the lowest of confidential talk within it would mount the walls, each lightest word would run along that smooth channel, as through the tube of an ear, and reach the listener at the orifice. For the uneasy Dictator knows that his turbulent Greek subjects, who cannot rule themselves, are equally unable to bear placidly the rule of another, and it would have been interesting, and at times exciting, to have been permitted to watch that stern, bent face as the rebellious protests climbed in whispers to the greedy ear a hundred feet above.
A wonderful echo lives in this cave. Now it is plain why the guide has such large and vibrant tones—he was chosen because of that natural gift.
“Addio!” he cries gaily. “Addio,” calls the darkness, a little sadly and wistfully. The guide sings a stave, and all the dusk is full of melodious chorus. He intones a sonorous verse, and golden words roll down to them through the gloom.
“Speak! speak!” the nobleman urges, and Jane and Peripatetica meekly breathe a few banalities in level American tones. Not a sound returns; their syllables are swallowed by the silence.
“Staccato! staccato!” remonstrates the guide, and when they comply, light laughing voices vouchsafe answers.
“I think,” says Peripatetica reflectively, as they leave the Latomia, “that one has to address life like that if one is to get a clear reply—to address it crisply, definitely, with quick inflections. Level, flat indefiniteness will awake no echoes.”
“‘How true’! as the ladies write on the margins of circulating library books,” comments Jane with unveiled sarcasm.
The guide has lots more up his gold-braided sleeve. He opens a gate and displays to them with a flourish the largest altar in the world. Six hundred feet one way, sixty feet the other; cut partly from solid rock, made in part of masonry. Hiero II. thought he knew a trick of governing worth any amount of listening at doors. Those who are fed and amused are slack conspirators. So this huge altar to Zeus is built, and here every year he sacrifices 450 oxen to the ruler of heaven.
“It must have rather run into money for him,” says Jane thoughtfully, “but he probably considered it cheaper to sacrifice oxen than be sacrificed himself.”
“Yes,” says Peripatetica, who has just been consulting the guidebook. “It must have been rather like the barbecues the American politicians used to give to their constituents half a century ago, for only the choicest bits were burnt before the gods, sprinkled with oil and wine and sweet-smelling spices, and the populace, I suppose, carried home the rest. No doubt Hiero found it a paying investment.”
The theatre, when reached, is found, of course, to have a beautiful situation. All Greek theatres have. They were a people who liked to open all the doors of enjoyment at once, and when they filled this enormous semicircle (24,000 could sit there) cut from the living rock upon the hillside, they could not only listen to the rolling, organ-like Greek of the great poets, and have their souls shaken with the “pity and terror” of tragedy, or laugh at the gay mockery of comedy, but by merely lifting their eyes they could look out upon the blue Ionian sea, the smiling flowered land, and in the distance the purple hills dappled with flying shadows. In their time all the surrounding eminences were crowned with great temples, and behind them—this was a contrast very Greek—lay the Street of Tombs. For they had not a shuddering horror of death, hastening their departed into remote isolation from their own daily life. They liked to pass to their occupations and amusements among the beautiful receptacles made for the ashes of those they had loved.
In this theatre Syracuse saw not only the great dramas, but the great dramatists and poets. Æschylus, sitting beside Hiero I., saw all his plays produced here; “The Ætnaiai” and “The Persians” were written for this stage. Pindar was often here; so were Bacchylides and Simonides, and a host of lesser playwrights. Indeed, no theatre has ever known such famous auditors. Theocritus, Pythagoras, Sappho, Empedocles, Archimedes, Plato, Cicero, have all sat here.
Plato was long in Syracuse; called by Dionysius to train his son Dion, he labours with such poor success that Dion is driven from the power inherited from his father, by the citizens outraged at the grossness of his vices. Before this fall Plato has left him in disgust, Dion remarking with careless insolence:
“I fear you will not speak kindly of me in Athens.”
To which the philosopher, with still more insolent sarcasm, replies:
“We are little likely to be so in want of a topic in Athens as to speak of you at all.”
Yet it would seem as if no good effort was ever wholly lost, for when Dion, earning his bread in exile as an obscure schoolmaster, is sneeringly asked what he ever learned from Plato, his dignified answer is, “He taught me to bear misfortune with resignation.”
Themistocles has conducted them, with much cracking of his whip, much irrelevant conversation, quite to the other side of what once was Syracuse, and has deposited them before a little low gate that pierces a high wall. Inside this gate is a tiny garden cultivated by two monks who do the work by means of short-handled doubleended hoes; a laborious-looking Sicilian implement. The garden is full of pansies growing between low hedges of sweet-smelling thyme and rosemary. At the same moment there debarks a carriage load of touring Germans. Typical touring Germans; solid, rosy, set foursquare to the winds; all clinging to Baedekers encased in covers of red and yellow cross stitch of Berlin wool, all breathing a fixed intention of seeing everything worth seeing in the thorough-going
German fashion. The monks openly squabble as to the division of the parties who have come to see the church and the catacombs, and eventually the big, shaggy, red-haired one, who might be some ancient savage Gaul come to life, sullenly carries off the Teutons. It is somewhat of a shock to Jane and Peripatetica when their slim, supple, handsome Sicilian explains to them that this contest has its reason not in their personal charm, but is owing to a reluctance to guide the hated Tedeschi.
There is something inexplicable in this universal unpopularity of the Teuton in Italy. Germany has been dotingly sentimental about Italy for generations.
“Kennst du das Land” has hovered immanent on every lip from beyond the Rhine ever since the days of Goethe. They passionately study her language, her literature, her monuments, and her history. They make pilgrimages to worship at all her shrines, pouring in reverent Pan-Germanic hordes across the Alps to do it, and despite their extreme and skilful frugality they must necessarily leave in the Peninsula hundreds of thousands of their hard-earned, laboriously hoarded marks, which they have not grudged to spend in the service of beauty. Yet Italy seems possessed of a sullen repugnance to the entire race.
“Tedeschi!” hisses the monk. “Tutto ‘Ja!Ja!Wunderschön!’” with a deliriously funny imitation of their accent and gestures, as he steers swiftly around a corner to prevent the two parties fusing into one.
The church of San Giovanni is, of course, founded upon a Greek temple—most Sicilian churches are, and—of all places!—this one stands upon a ruin of a temple of Bacchus—the fragments of which poke up all through the tiny garden. The church, equally, of course, has been Eighteenth Centuried, but happily not wholly; remaining a great wheel window, and beautiful bits here and there of Twelfth Century Gothic in the outer walls, though the interior is in the usual dusty and neglected gaunt desuetude. The whole place is in decay, even the attendant monastery is crumbling, the number of monks
shrunk to a mere handful, despite the fact that this is a spot of special sanctity, for when they descend into the massive chapel of the crypt there is pointed out to them the little altar before which Saint Paul preached when he was in Syracuse.
“Of course, St. Paul was here,” said Jane. “Everybody who was anybody came to Syracuse sooner or later—including ourselves.”
The guide is firm as to the altar having stood in this very chapel when that remarkable Hebrew poured out to the Syracusans his strange new message of democracy, but this is clearly the usual fine monkish superiority to cramping probabilities, for such rib-vaultings as these were as yet undreamed of by the architects of Paul’s day.
The altar is Greek, and no doubt was standing in the fane of Bacchus when the Jew spoke by it. The Greeks were interested and tolerant about new religions, and the life and death which Paul described would hardly have seemed strange to them, spoken in that place. That birth and death, the blood turned to wine, the sacred flesh eaten in hope of regeneration, having so many and such curious resemblances to the legends, and to the worship of the Vine God celebrated on that very spot. “At Thebes alone,” had said Sophocles, speaking of the birth of Bacchus, “mortal women bear immortal gods.” The violent death, the descent into hell, the resurrection, were all familiar to them, and what a natural echo would be found in their hearts to the saying, “I am the true Vine.”...
The monk only smiles bitterly when it is demanded of him to explain why a spot of so reverent an association should be abandoned to dust and decay, and to the interest of curious tourists, when the mere apocryphal vision of an hysterical peasant girl should draw hordes of miracle-seeking pilgrims to Lourdes.
Perhaps there was something typical in that anguished Christ painted upon the great flat wooden crucifix that hung over the altar in the crypt; a Christ fading slowly into a mere grey shadow; the dim, hardly visible ghost of a once living agony....
The monk goes before, the flickering candle which he shades with his fingers throwing a fan of yellow rays around his tonsured head. These are the Catacombs of Syracuse.
“On every hand the roads begin.”
Roads underground, these, leading away endlessly into darkness. At long intervals they widen into lofty domed chapels rudely hewn, as is all this place, directly from the rock. Here and there a narrow shaft is cut upward through the earth, letting in faint gleams of sunshine through a fringe of grass and ferns, showing sometimes an oxalis drooping its pale little golden face to peer over the shaft’s edge into the gloom below. And in all these roads—miles and miles of roads, extending as far as Catania it is said; roads under roads three tiers deep—and in all these roads and chapels are only open graves. Graves in the floor beneath one’s feet; graves in every inch of the walls; graves over graves, graves behind graves. Great family graves cut ten feet back into the rock, containing narrow niches for half a dozen bodies—graves where four generations have slept side by side. Graves that are mere shallow scoopings hardly more than three spans in length, where newborn babies must have slept alone. Tombs innumerable beyond reckoning, all hewn from the solid rock, and each and all vacant. An incredibly vast city of the dead from which all the dead inhabitants have departed.
This is the crowning mystery of mysterious Syracuse. Who were this vast army of the buried? And where have their dead bodies gone?... Christians, everyone says.
“But why,” clamours Peripatetica, “should Christians have had these peculiar mole-like habits?”
The monk merely shrugs.
“Oh, I know,” she goes on quickly before Jane can get her mouth open. “Persecution is the explanation always given, but will you tell me how you can successfully persecute a population of this size? There must be half a million of graves, at least, in this place, and there would have to be a good many living to bury the dead, and
Syracuse in its best days hadn’t a million inhabitants. Now, you can’t successfully martyrize nine-tenths of the population, even if it is as meek and sheep-like as the early Christians pretended to be.”
“They didn’t all die at once,” suggests Jane helpfully. “This took years.”
“I should think it did! Years? It took generations, or else the Christians died like flies, and proved that piety was dreadfully undermining to the health. No wonder the pagans wouldn’t accept anything so fatal. But populations as large as this one must have been to furnish so many dead, don’t go on burrowing underground for generations. They come out and impose their beliefs upon the rest. And, besides, how can the stories of their worshipping and burying in secret be true when the mass of material taken out of these excavations would have to be put somewhere? And how could the presence or the removal of all that refuse stone escape attention? The persecuted Christian theory doesn’t explain the mystery.”
Even Peripatetica had to pause sometimes for breath, and then Jane got her innings.
“Equally mysterious, in my opinion,” she said, “is the rifling of all these graves. The monk tells me ‘the Saracens did it,’ but the Saracens were in Syracuse less than two hundred years, and of all these myriad graves only two or three have been found intact, and these two or three were graves beneath graves. Every other one for sixty miles, from the largest to the smallest, has been opened and entirely emptied. The Saracen population in Syracuse was never very large. It consisted in greater part of the ruling classes. The bulk of the people were natives and Christians, who would regard this grave-rifling as the horridest sacrilege, and if the Saracens undertook alone this enormous task they would have had, even in two hundred years, time for nothing else. The opening of the graves is as strange a puzzle as the making of them.”
“Perhaps some last trump was blown over Syracuse alone,” hazarded Peripatetica, “and all the dead here rose and left their graves behind them empty.”
“Come up into the air and sunlight,” said Jane. “Your mind shows the need of it.”
At the little gate sat one of the monastery dependents, whose perquisite was a permission to sell post-cards, and such coins and bits of pottery as he could retrieve by grubbing in the rubbish of the empty graves. He had a few tiny earthenware lamps, marked with a cross and still smoke-blackened, some so-called tear jugs, and one or two small clay masks which, from the closed eyelids and smooth sunken contours, must have been modelled in miniature from real death masks. Among these they found Arsinoë—or so they named her whose face was touched with that strange, secret archness, that sweet smiling scorn so often seen on faces one day dead. The broad brow with its drooping hair, the full tender lips so instinct with vivid personality, went with them, and became to them like the record of some one seen long ago and dimly remembered, though the lovely benignant original must have been mere dust of dust for more than a thousand years.
A nun in a faded blue gown has been showing them the relics of Santa Lucia. She has also been telling them how the Saint, when a young man admired her eyes, snatched them out of her head with her own hands and handed them to the young man on a plate.
“What a very rude and unpleasant thing to do!” comments Jane in English. “But invariably saints seem so lamentably deficient in amiability and social charm.”
The nun unlocks the gate of the Cappucini Latomia, and Jane and Peripatetica descend the long stair cut in the rocks. They are seeking the place where the remnant of that army Alcibiades so skilfully introduced into Catania, finally perished.
They have been reading tales of the Athenians’ long siege of Syracuse, of their final frightful despairing struggle, so full of anguish, terror, and fierce courage—“when Greek met Greek”—and they have come to look at the spot where those seven thousand unhappy prisoners finally found an end. When they were driven into this quarry they were all that remained of the tremendous expedition which Athens had drained her best blood to send. Alcibiades had fled long ago, and was in exile. Nicias and Demosthenes, who had surrendered them, were now dead; fallen on their own swords. The harbour of Syracuse was strewn with the charred wrecks of their fleet. The marshes of Anapus were rotting with their comrades, the fountain of Cyane choked with them. They themselves were wounded to a man, shuddering with fevers, starving, demoralised with long fighting and the horrible final débâcle when they were thrust all together into this Latomia; not as now a glorious garden with thyme and mint and rosemary beneath their feet, ivy-hung, full of groves and orchards, but raw, glaring, shaled with chipped stone, the staring yellow sides towering smoothly up for a hundred feet to the burning blue of the Sicilian sky. There in that waterless furnace for seventy days they died and died. Died of wounds, of thirst, of starvation; died of the poisonings of those already dead.
And the populace of Syracuse came day by day, holding lemons to their noses, to look down at them curiously, until there was not one movement, not one sound from any one of the seven thousand.
There is but one human gleam in the whole demoniacal story a touch characteristically Greek. Some of the prisoners had beguiled the tedium of dying by chanting the noble choruses of Euripides’ newest play, which Syracuse had not yet heard, and these had been at once drawn up from among their fellows and treated with every kindness. They were entreated to repeat as much as they could remember of the poet’s lines again and again, and were finally sent back to Athens with presents and much honour.
Not a trace of the tragedy remains. The only record of death now in those lovely wild, deep-sunken gardens is a banal monument to
