Richard F. Burton - "The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 7"

Lyda Farrington Krausé - "We Ten"

Sven Anders Hedin - "From Pole to Pole"

W. D. Howells - "Through the Eye of the Needle"

Annual Bibliography of Commonwealth Literature 2007
This paper argues that discourses of love in Ghanaian market literature for youth offer a view into complex negotiations of agency and empowerment. Drawing on Deborah Durham's notion of youth as "social `shifters'" and Francis Nyamnjoh's conception of the "interconnectedness" of agency, I take Ghanaian market literature as one specific case of how African literature for youth foregrounds questions of continuity and change as African societies enter into increasingly complex global relations. In this literature for youth, received notions of love, often constructed out of impressions from American pop and hip hop music, carry new notions of agency that compete with existing "domesticated" forms. Authors like Ike Tandoh and Evelyn Tay employ discourses of love to offer youth alternative avenues for empowerment in a context of socio-economic disenfranchizement. In a creative process of "straddling", this writing both reveals and reproduces the contradictions that obtain in youth configurations of agency.

The Call of the Blood

R >> Robert Smythe Hichens >> The Call of the Blood




He hurried up the stony path. He did not feel the sun upon him. The sweat
poured down over his face, his body. He did not know it. His heart was
set hard, and he felt villanous, but he felt quite sure what he was going
to do, quite sure that he was going to the fair despite that letter.

When he reached the priest's house he felt exhausted. Without knowing it
he had come up the mountain at a racing pace. But he was not tired merely
because of that. He sank down in a chair in the sitting-room. Lucrezia
came and peeped at him.

"Where is Gaspare?" he asked, putting his hand instinctively over the
pocket in which were the letters.

"He is still out after the birds, signore. He has shot five already."

"Poor little wretches! And he's still out?"

"Si, signore. He has gone on to Don Peppino's terreno now. There are many
birds there. How hot you are, signorino! Shall I--"

"No, no. Nothing, Lucrezia! Leave me alone!"

She disappeared.

Then Maurice drew the letters from his pocket and slowly spread out
Hermione's in his lap. He had not read it through yet. He had only
glanced at it and seen what he had feared to see. Now he read it word by
word, very slowly and carefully. When he had come to the end he kept it
on his knee and sat for some time quite still.

In the letter Hermione asked him to go to the Hotel Regina Margherita at
Marechiaro, and engage two good rooms facing the sea for Artois, a
bedroom and a sitting-room. They were to be ready for the eleventh. She
wrote with her usual splendid frankness. Her soul was made of sincerity
as a sovereign is made of gold.

"I know"--these were her words--"I know you will try and make Emile's
coming to Sicily a little festa. Don't think I imagine you are personally
delighted at his coming, though I am sure you are delighted at his
recovery. He is my old friend, not yours, and I am not such a fool as to
suppose that you can care for him at all as I do, who have known him
intimately and proved his loyalty and his nobility of nature. But I
think, I am certain, Maurice, that you will make his coming a festa for
my sake. He has suffered very much. He is as weak almost as a child
still. There's something tremendously pathetic in the weakness of body of
a man so brilliant in mind, so powerful of soul. It goes right to my
heart as I think it would go to yours. Let us make his return to life
beautiful and blessed. Sha'n't we? Put flowers in the rooms for me, won't
you? Make them look homey. Put some books about. But I needn't tell you.
We are one, you and I, and I needn't tell you any more. It would be like
telling things to myself--as unnecessary as teaching an organ-grinder how
to turn the handle of his organ! Oh, Maurice, I can laugh to-day! I could
almost--_I_--get up and dance the tarantella all alone here in my little,
bare room with no books and scarcely any flowers. And at the station show
Emile he is welcome. He is a little diffident at coming. He fancies
perhaps he will be in the way. But one look of yours, one grasp of your
hand will drive it all out of him! God bless you, my dearest. How he has
blessed me in giving you to me!"

As Maurice sat there, under his skin, burned deep brown by the sun, there
rose a hot flush of red! Yes, he reddened at the thought of what he was
going to do, but still he meant to do it. He could not forego his
pleasure. He could not. There was something wild and imperious within him
that defied his better self at this moment. But the better self was not
dead. It was even startlingly alive, enough alive to stand almost aghast
at that which was going, it knew, to dominate it--to dominate it for a
time, but only for a time. On that he was resolved, as he was resolved to
have this one pleasure to which he had looked forward, to which he was
looking forward now. Men often mentally put a period to their sinning.
Maurice put a period to his sinning as he sat staring at the letter on
his knees. And the period which he put was the day of the fair at San
Felice. After that day this book of his wild youth was to be closed
forever.

After the day of the fair he would live rightly, sincerely, meeting as it
deserved to be met the utter sincerity of his wife. He would be, after
that date, entirely straight with her. He loved her. As he looked at her
letter he felt that he did love, must love, such love as hers. He was not
a bad man, but he was a wilful man. The wild heart of youth in him was
wilful. Well, after San Felice, he would control that wilfulness of his
heart, he would discipline it. He would do more, he would forget that it
existed. After San Felice!

With a sigh, like that of a burdened man, he got up, took the letter in
his hand, and went out up the mountain-side. There he tore the letter and
its envelope into fragments, and hid the fragments in a heap of stones
hot with the sun.

When Gaspare came in that evening with a string of little birds in his
hand and asked Maurice if there were any letter from Africa to say when
the signora would arrive, Maurice answered "No."

"Then the signora will not be here for the fair, signorino?" said the
boy.

"I don't suppose--no, Gaspare, she will not be here for the fair."

"She would have written by now if she were coming.

"Yes, if she were coming she would certainly have written by now."



XVI

"Signorino! Signorino! Are you ready?"

It was Gaspare's voice shouting vivaciously from the sunny terrace, where
Tito and another donkey, gayly caparisoned and decorated with flowers and
little streamers of colored ribbon, were waiting before the steps.

"Si, si! I'm coming in a moment!" replied Maurice's voice from the
bedroom.

Lucrezia stood by the wall looking very dismal. She longed to go to the
fair, and that made her sad. But there was also another reason for her
depression. Sebastiano was still away, and for many days he had not
written to her. This was bad enough. But there was something worse. News
had come to Marechiaro from a sailor of Messina, a friend of
Sebastiano's, that Sebastiano was lingering in the Lipari Isles because
he had found a girl there, a pretty girl called Teodora Amalfi, to whom
he was paying attentions. And although Lucrezia laughed at the story, and
pretended to disbelieve it, her heart was rent by jealousy and despair,
and a longing to travel away, to cross the sea, to tear her lover from
temptation, to--to speak for a few moments quietly--oh, very
quietly--with this Teodora. Even now, while she stared at the donkeys,
and at Gaspare in his festa suit, with two large, pink roses above his
ears, she put up her hands instinctively to her own ears, as if to pluck
the ear-rings out of them, as the Sicilian women of the lower classes do,
deliberately, sternly, before they begin to fight their rivals, women who
have taken their lovers or their husbands from them.

Ah, if she were only in the Lipari Isles she would speak with Teodora
Amalfi, speak with her till the blood flowed! She set her teeth, and her
face looked almost old in the sunshine.

"Coraggio, Lucrezia!" laughed Gaspare. "He will come back some day
when--when he has sold enough to the people of the isles! But where is
the padrone, Dio mio? Signorino! Signorino!"

Maurice appeared at the sitting-room door and came slowly down the steps.

Gaspare stared. "Eccomi!"

"Why, signorino, what is the matter? What has happened?"

"Happened? Nothing!"

"Then why do you look so black?"

"I! It's the shadow of the awning on my face."

He smiled. He kept on smiling.

"I say, Gasparino, how splendid the donkeys are! And you, too!"

He took hold of the boy by the shoulders and turned him round.

"Per Bacco! We shall make a fine show at the fair! I've got money, lot's
of money, to spend!"

He showed his portfolio, full of dirty notes. Gaspare's eyes began to
sparkle.

"Wait, signorino!"

He lifted his hands to Maurice's striped flannel jacket and thrust two
large bunches of flowers and ferns into the two button-holes, to right
and left.

"Bravo! Now, then."

"No, no, signorino! Wait!"

"More flowers! But where--what, over my ears, too!"

He began to laugh.

"But--"

"Si, signore, si! To-day you must be a real Siciliano!"

"Va bene!"

He bent down his head to be decorated.

"Pouf! They tickle! There, then! Now let's be off!"

He leaped onto Tito's back. Gaspare sprang up on the other donkey.

"Addio, Lucrezia!"

Maurice turned to her.

"Don't leave the house to-day."

"No, signore," said poor Lucrezia, in a deplorable voice.

"Mind, now! Don't go down to Marechiaro this afternoon."

There was an odd sound, almost of pleading, in his voice.

"No, signore."

"I trust you to be here--remember."

"Va bene, signorino!"

"Ah--a--a--ah!" shouted Gaspare.

They were off.

"Signorino," said Gaspare, presently, when they were in the shadow of the
ravine, "why did you say all that to Lucrezia?"

"All what?"

"All that about not leaving the house to-day?"

"Oh--why--it's better to have some one there."

"Si, signore. But why to-day specially?"

"I don't know. There's no particular reason."

"I thought there was."

"No, of course not. How could there be?"

"Non lo so."

"If Lucrezia goes down to the village they'll be filling her ears with
that stupid gossip about Sebastiano and that girl--Teodora."

"It was for Lucrezia then, signorino?"

"Yes, for Lucrezia. She's miserable enough already. I don't want her to
be a spectacle when--when the signora returns."

"I wonder when she is coming? I wonder why she has not written all these
days?"

"Oh, she'll soon come. We shall--we shall very soon have her here with
us."

He tried to speak naturally, but found the effort difficult, knowing what
he knew, that in the evening of that day Hermione would arrive at the
house of the priest and find no preparations made for her return, no one
to welcome her but Lucrezia--if, indeed, Lucrezia obeyed his orders and
refrained from descending to the village on the chance of hearing some
fresh news of her fickle lover. And Artois! There were no rooms engaged
for him at the Hotel Regina Margherita. There were no flowers, no books.
Maurice tingled--his whole body tingled for a moment--and he felt like a
man guilty of some mean crime and arraigned before all the world. Then he
struck Tito with his switch, and began to gallop down the steep path at a
breakneck pace, sticking his feet far out upon either side. He would
forget. He would put away these thoughts that were tormenting him. He
would enjoy this day of pleasure for which he had sacrificed so much, for
which he had trampled down his self-respect in the dust.

When they reached the road by Isola Bella, Salvatore's boat was just
coming round the point, vigorously propelled by the fisherman's strong
arms over the radiant sea. It was a magnificent day, very hot but not
sultry, free from sirocco. The sky was deep blue, a passionate, exciting
blue that seemed vocal, as if it were saying thrilling things to the
world that lay beneath it. The waveless sea was purple, a sea, indeed, of
legend, a wine-dark, lustrous, silken sea. Into it, just here along this
magic coast, was surely gathered all the wonder of color of all the
southern seas. They must be blanched to make this marvel of glory, this
immense jewel of God. And the lemon groves were thick along the sea. And
the orange-trees stood in their decorative squadrons drinking in the
rays of the sun with an ecstatic submission. And Etna, snowless Etna,
rose to heaven out of this morning world, with its base in the purple
glory and its feather of smoke in the calling blue, child of the sea-god
and of the god that looks down from the height, majestically calm in the
riot of splendor that set the feet of June dancing in a great tarantella.

As Maurice saw the wonder of sea and sky, the boat coming in over the
sea, with Maddalena in the stern holding a bouquet of flowers, his heart
leaped up and he forgot for a moment the shadow in himself, the shadow of
his own unworthiness. He sprang off the donkey.

"I'll go down to meet them!" he cried. "Catch hold of Tito, Gaspare!"

The railway line ran along the sea, between road and beach. He had to
cross it. In doing so one of his feet struck the metal rail, which gave
out a dry sound. He looked down, suddenly recalled to a reality other
than the splendor of the morning, the rapture of this careless festa day.
And again he was conscious of the shadow. Along this line, in a few
hours, would come the train bearing Hermione and Artois. Hermione would
be at the window, eagerly looking out, full of happy anticipation,
leaning to catch the first sight of his face, to receive and return his
smile of welcome. What would her face be like when--? But Salvatore was
hailing him from the sea. Maddalena was waving her hand. The thing was
done. The die was cast. He had chosen his lot. Fiercely he put away from
him the thought of Hermione, lifted his voice in an answering hail, his
hand in a salutation which he tried to make carelessly joyous. The boat
glided in between the flat rocks. And then--then he was able to forget.
For Maddalena's long eyes were looking into his, with the joyousness of a
child's, and yet with something of the expectation of a woman's, too. And
her brown face was alive with a new and delicious self-consciousness,
asking him to praise her for the surprise she had prepared, in his honor
surely, specially for him, and not for her comrades and the public of the
fair.

"Maddalena!" he exclaimed.

He put out his hands to help her out. She stood on the gunwale of the
boat and jumped lightly down, with a little laugh, onto the beach.

"Maddalena! Per Dio! Ma che bellezza!"

She laughed again, and stood there on the stones before him smiling and
watching him, with her head a little on one side, and the hand that held
the tight bouquet of roses and ferns, round as a ring and red as dawn, up
to her lips, as if a sudden impulse prompted her now to conceal something
of her pleasure.

"Le piace?"

It came to him softly over the roses.

Maurice said nothing, but took her hand and looked at her. Salvatore was
fastening up the boat and putting the oars into their places, and getting
his jacket and hat.

What a transformation it was, making an almost new Maddalena! This
festival dress was really quite wonderful. He felt inclined to touch it
here and there, to turn Maddalena round for new aspects, as a child turns
round a marvellous doll.

Maddalena wore a tudischina, a bodice of blue cotton velvet, ornamented
with yellow silken fringes, and opening over the breast to show a section
of snowy white edged with little buttons of sparkling steel. Her
petticoat--the sinava--was of pea-green silk and thread, and was
partially covered by an apron, a real coquette of an apron, white and
green, with little pockets and puckers, and a green rosette where the
strings met round the supple waist. Her sleeves were of white muslin,
bound with yellow silk ribbons, and her stockings were blue, the color of
the bodice. On her feet were shining shoes of black leather, neatly tied
with small, black ribbons, and over her shoulders was a lovely shawl of
blue and white with a pattern of flowers. She wore nothing on her head,
but in her ears were heavy ear-rings, and round her neck was a thin
silver chain with bright-blue stones threaded on it here and there.

"Maddalena!" Maurice said, at last. "You are a queen to-day!"

He stopped, then he added:

"No, you are a siren to-day, the siren I once fancied you might be."

"A siren, signorino? What is that?"

"An enchantress of the sea with a voice that makes men--that makes men
feel they cannot go, they cannot leave it."

Maddalena lifted the roses a little higher to hide her face, but Maurice
saw that her eyes were still smiling, and it seemed to him that she
looked even more radiantly happy than when she had taken his hands to
spring down to the beach.

Now Salvatore came up in his glory of a dark-blue suit, with a gay shirt
of pink-and-white striped cotton, fastened at the throat with long, pink
strings that had tasselled ends, a scarlet bow-tie with a brass anchor
and the Italian flag thrust through it, yellow shoes, and a black hat,
placed well over the left ear. Upon the forefinger of his left hand he
displayed a thick snake-ring of tarnished metal, and he had a large,
overblown rose in his button-hole. His mustaches had been carefully
waxed, his hair cropped, and his hawklike, subtle, and yet violent face
well washed for the great occasion. With bold familiarity he seized
Maurice's hand.

"Buon giorno, signore. Come sta lei?"

"Benissimo."

"And Maddalena, signore? What do you think of Maddalena?"

He looked at his girl with a certain pride, and then back at Maurice
searchingly.

"Maddalena is beautiful to-day," Maurice answered, quickly. He did not
want to discuss her with her father, whom he longed to be rid of, whom he
meant to get rid of if possible at the fair. Surely it would be easy to
give him the slip there. He would be drinking with his companions, other
fishermen and contadini, or playing cards, or--yes, that was an idea!

"Salvatore!" Maurice exclaimed, catching hold of the fisherman's arm.

"Signore?"

"There'll be donkeys at the fair, eh?"

"Donkeys--per Dio! Why, last year there were over sixty, and--"

"And isn't there a donkey auction sometimes, towards the end of the day,
when they go cheap?"

"Si, signore! Si, signore!"

The fisherman's greedy little eyes were fixed on Maurice with keen
interrogation.

"Don't let us forget that," Maurice said, returning his gaze. "You're a
good judge of a donkey?"

Salvatore laughed.

"Per Bacco! There won't be a man at San Felice that can beat me at that!"

"Then perhaps you can do something for me. Perhaps you can buy me a
donkey. Didn't I speak of it before?"

"Si, signore. For the signora to ride when she comes back from Africa?"

He smiled.

"For a lady to ride," Maurice answered, looking at Maddalena.

Salvatore made a clicking noise with his tongue, a noise that suggested
eating. Then he spat vigorously and took from his jacket-pocket a long,
black cigar. This was evidently going to be a great day for him.

"Avanti, signorino! Avanti!"

Gaspare was shouting and waving his hat frantically from the road.

"Come along, Maddalena!"

They left the beach and climbed the bank, Maddalena walking carefully in
the shining shoes, and holding her green skirt well away from the bushes
with both hands. Maurice hurried across the railway line without looking
at it. He wanted to forget it. He was determined to forget it, and what
it was bringing to Cattaro that afternoon. They reached the group of four
donkeys which were standing patiently in the dusty white road.

"Mamma mia!" ejaculated Gaspare, as Maddalena came full into his sight.
"Madre mia! But you are like a burgisa dressed for the wedding-day, Donna
Maddalena!"

He wagged his head at her till the big roses above his ears shook like
flowers in a wind.

"Ora basta, ch' e tardu: jamu ad accumpagnari li Zitti!" he continued,
pronouncing the time-honored sentence which, at a rustic wedding, gives
the signal to the musicians to stop their playing, and to the assembled
company the hint that the moment has come to escort the bride to the new
home which her bridegroom has prepared for her.

Maddalena laughed and blushed all over her face, and Salvatore shouted
out a verse of a marriage song in high favor at Sicilian weddings:

"E cu saluti a li Zituzzi novi!
Chi bellu 'nguaggiamentu furtunatu!
Firma la menti, custanti lu cori,
E si cci arriva a lu jornu biatu--"

Meanwhile, Maurice helped Maddalena onto her donkey, and paid and
dismissed the boy who had brought it and Salvatore's beast from
Marechiaro. Then he took out his watch.

"A quarter-past ten," he said. "Off we go! Now, Gaspare--uno! due! tre!"

They leaped simultaneously onto their donkeys, Salvatore clambered up on
his, and the little cavalcade started off on the long, white road that
ran close along the sea, Maddalena and Maurice in the van, Salvatore and
Gaspare behind. Just at first they all kept close together, but Sicilians
are very careful of their festa clothes, and soon Salvatore and Gaspare
dropped farther behind to avoid the clouds of dust stirred up by the
tripping feet of the donkeys in front. Their chattering voices died away,
and when Maurice looked back he saw them at a distance which rendered his
privacy with Maddalena more complete than anything he had dared to hope
for so early in the day. Yet now that they were thus alone he felt as if
he had nothing to say to her. He did not feel exactly constrained, but it
seemed to him that, to-day, he could not talk the familiar commonplaces
to her, or pay her obvious compliments. They might, they would please
her, but something in himself would resent them. This was to be such a
great day. He had wanted it with such ardor, he had been so afraid of
missing it, he had gained it at the cost of so much self-respect, that it
ought to be extraordinary from dawn to dark, and he and Maddalena to be
unusual, intense--something, at least, more eager, more happy, more
intimate than usual in it.

And then, too, as he looked at her riding along by the sea, with her
young head held rather high and a smile of innocent pride in her eyes, he
remembered that this day was their good-bye. Maddalena did not know that.
Probably she did not think about the future. But he knew it. They might
meet again. They would doubtless meet again. But it would all be
different. He would be a serious married man, who could no longer frolic
as if he were still a boy like Gaspare. This was the last day of his
intimate friendship with Maddalena.

That seemed to him very strange. He had become accustomed to her society,
to her naive curiosity, her girlish, simple gayety, so accustomed to it
all that he could not imagine life without it, could scarcely realize
what life had been before he knew Maddalena. It seemed to him that he
must have always known Maddalena. And she--what did she feel about that?

"Maddalena!" he said.

"Si, signore."

She turned her head and glanced at him, smiling, as if she were sure of
hearing something pleasant. To-day, in her pretty festa dress, she looked
intended for happiness. Everything about her conveyed the suggestion that
she was expectant of joy. The expression in her eyes was a summons to the
world to be very kind and good to her, to give her only pleasant things,
things that could not harm her.

"Maddalena, do you feel as if you had known me long?"

She nodded her head.

"Si, signore."

"How long?"

She spread out one hand with the fingers held apart.

"Oh, signore--but always! I feel as if I had known you always."

"And yet it's only a few days."

"Si, signore."

She acquiesced calmly. The problem did not seem to puzzle her, the
problem of this feeling so ill-founded. It was so. Very well, then--so it
was.

"And," he went on, "do you feel as if you would always know me?"

"Si, signore. Of course."

"But I shall go away, I am going away."

For a moment her face clouded. But the influence of joy was very strong
upon her to-day, and the cloud passed.

"But you will come back, signorino. You will always come back."

"How do you know that?"

A pretty slyness crept into her face, showed in the curve of the young
lips, in the expression of the young eyes.

"Because you like to be here, because you like the Siciliani. Isn't it
true?"

"Yes," he said, almost passionately. "It's true! Ah, Maddalena--"

But at this moment a group of people from Marechiaro suddenly appeared
upon the road beside them, having descended from the village by a
mountain-path. There were exclamations, salutations. Maddalena's gown was
carefully examined by the women of the party. The men exchanged
compliments with Maurice. Then Salvatore and Gaspare, seeing friends,
came galloping up, shouting, in a cloud of dust. A cavalcade was formed,
and henceforth Maurice was unable to exchange any more confidences with
Maddalena. He felt vexed at first, but the boisterous merriment of all
these people, their glowing anticipation of pleasure, soon infected him.
His heart was lightened of its burden and the spirit of the careless boy
awoke in him. He would take no thought for the morrow, he would be able
to take no thought so long as he was in this jocund company. As they
trotted forward in a white mist along the shining sea Maurice was one of
the gayest among them. No laugh rang out more frequently than his, no
voice chatted more vivaciously. The conscious effort which at first he
had to make seemed to give him an impetus, to send him onward with a rush
so that he outdistanced his companions. Had any one observed him closely
during that ride to the fair he might well have thought that here was a
nature given over to happiness, a nature that was utterly sunny in the
sun.

They passed through the town of Cattaro, where was the station for
Marechiaro. For a moment Maurice felt a pang of self-contempt, and of
something more, of something that was tender, pitiful even, as he thought
of Hermione's expectation disappointed. But it died away, or he thrust
it away. The long street was full of people, either preparing to start
for the fair themselves or standing at their doors to watch their friends
start. Donkeys were being saddled and decorated with flowers. Tall,
painted carts were being harnessed to mules. Visions of men being
lathered and shaved, of women having their hair dressed or their hair
searched, Sicilian fashion, of youths trying to curl upward scarcely born
mustaches, of children being hastily attired in clothes which made them
wriggle and squint, came to the eyes from houses in which privacy was not
so much scorned as unthought of, utterly unknown. Turkeys strolled in and
out among the toilet-makers. Pigs accompanied their mistresses from
doorway to doorway as dogs accompany the women of other countries. And
the cavalcade of the people of Marechiaro was hailed from all sides with
pleasantries and promises to meet at the fair, with broad jokes or
respectful salutations. Many a "Benedicite!" or "C'ci basu li mano!"
greeted Maurice. Many a berretto was lifted from heads that he had never
seen to his knowledge before. He was made to feel by all that he was
among friends, and as he returned the smiles and salutations he
remembered the saying Hermione had repeated: "Every Sicilian, even if he
wears a long cap and sleeps in a hut with the pigs, is a gentleman," and
he thought it very true.

Copyright (c) 2007. topboookz.com. All rights reserved.