that
forgotten village of the plain, under that patriarchal tree, audible in
the clucking of the fowls under one's feet, and in the gurgle of the
water the girls hauled up from the dank darkness of the old well. I
recall one moment, after our meal in the late afternoon, as we sat on
the little balcony above the cafe, smoking cigarettes and drinking
coffee and mastic. A drowsy stillness had come over the place, as though
it had been secretly enchanted. Over the way an old gentleman reposed in
a chair outside his shop, asleep, a yellow cat in his arms. On the curb
of the well a young girl sat swinging one leg as she peered down
thoughtfully into the water. A pigeon cooed in the cot under the eaves
near by. There was a low murmur of conversation from a neighbouring room
where Pollyni was talking to her aunt, a large shy person, preoccupied
with household cares. And gradually I seemed to lose my grip of reality
altogether and passed into a kind of passionless ecstasy of existence,
where everything which puzzles us in ordinary life presented a perfectly
simple and amiable solution. One of the commonplaces of enchantment, I
suppose. I became aware of Artemisia saying dreamily: 'That was a loud
one. I shouldn't have thought we could hear them over here.' And I
nodded, remembering a distant and heavy detonation. It was slowly
dawning on my mind as I sat and smoked and murmured, that it was really
quite impossible for the quarry-charges to be heard so far. 'But what
could it be?' she asked, rousing. 'A gun perhaps. Sometimes ships come
from the Bosphorus and fired shots in the Gulf. A long way off, of
course. Perhaps a ship had come.' I told her what her father had said
the night before, that a war might come soon. She nodded and was silent
a moment before saying: 'I've heard that. Mrs. Sarafov said it might and
she was sorry because nobody was ever any better off. They fight because
the taxes are so heavy, and after the war the taxes are worse than ever,
to pay for the war. She told me how the soldiers came home to Sofia
after winning a war with the next country--I forget which--and there was
a grand triumphal march through the streets, and then the soldiers
discovered there was nothing for them to eat and they broke loose.
Everybody locked themselves up in their houses while the shooting went
on in the streets.'

"'I believe,' I said, 'your father stands to make a lot of money out of
this trouble when it comes.'

"She turne