"Amersa's dream" "THE MURDERESS" "Based on the novel by Alexandros Papadiamantis" "Mother!" "What is it now?" "At this late hour?" "Mother, is my girl dead?" "No, asleep." "What a notion!" "I dreamt that she died!" "And what if she did die?" "Eh, moonstruck you..." "How stupid of you to come at this hour." "I couldn't find peace, mother." "What about Krinio?" "If she wakes and not see you there she'll start yielling!" "You want me to stay here and go to the house yourself?" "Get some rest." "No." "Now this night's gone, too." "We'll see about tomorrow night." "Her mother was mean blasphemous and envious" "When she grew up to be 17 her mother forced her to wed a man called Yannis Frangos" "When she saw her mother's persistence to avoid endowing her she searched and found mother's nest egg and untied it" "She never confessed her action to her mother while mother was alive" "Her son Mourtos was wild since childhood" "Tonight Amersa had a bad dream and was worried about her sick child" "Mother, what's with her?" "Only natural... for a baby to cry." "How could she not?" "Come..." "Rest now." "Mother." "What is it now?" "At this late hour?" " Is my girl dead?" " No, asleep." "What a notion!" "I dreamt that she died." "And what if she did die?" "You want me to stay here and go to the house yourself?" "Get some rest." "No." "Now this night's gone, too." "We'll see about tomorrow night." "Mother." "The child." "The child died, did she?" "Kostantis..." "Go call Amersa." "Now really..." "Such a pity." "A good thing we had her baptized already." "Do I call Amersa alone or Krinio comes too?" "Eh, mother-in-law!" "What do you think?" "Let come... whoever comes." "Where the hell are my slippers?" "And what if she did die?" "It came to this world in sickness." "A good thing we had her baptized already." "Thus it comes upon man..." "As soon as girlies are born... to smother them dead." "Make things right, St John!" "Please make a note on me." "So that peace comes upon my soul and heart." "Now go fetch us a thing to eat." "Lacks of strength..." "In came that darned one, too." "How's about falling in there, Xenioula!" "You'd give freedom to your mother." "How's about falling in there, Xenioula!" "...to your mother..." "Her mother was mean, blasphemous and envious." "She was one of the shrews in her times" "She knew of spells." "Two or three times the Thieves had chased her down" "Men of Karatasos and Gatsos and of the other chief Captains of Macedonia." "They did that as a revenge for she had put a spell on them and their works did not go well." "They were... playing here since early morning" "and their hullabaloo gave me dicomfort..." "At midday..." "I sent my daughter to fetch some food the children were ... speaking out loud" "I felt I was suffering and poor woman methought" "I 'd go home and eat there with all of them..." "On coming back... it was still midday the children were gone and I said to Krinio go on, be good enough draw water from the well and let's rinse them clean now and finish this." "And she starts to scream" "Mother, mother, come see..." "I run... and what do I see?" "Little Xenoula... inside the well..." "And what if she did die?" "It came to this world in sickness." "A good thing we had her baptized already." "Not Death, nor is it a rock..." "Each family... has some two, three, four and even five girlies in it..." "All too many girlies..." "You..." "You know my troubles, Marouso." "And you know mine, auntie Hadoula." "When I were a child..." "I served on my parents." "When married, I was a slave to my husband." "I bore children and became a slave to my children." "When my children bore theirs..." "I became a worker to my grandchildren." "My mother was a shrew." "She found me a husband... and gave me a sterile piece of land as dower." "Later..." "I bore Stathis... and Delcharo..." "Giallis, Mihalis, Amersa..." "Mourtos... and finally Krinio." "Stathis emigrated to America..." "Giallis and Mihalis sailed away, too... and were never heard of again." "Mourtos also left me." "I wish him well..." "They locked him up in jail..." "Amersa, wish her well too, was left unwed." "If only God would grant Krinio never to wed either..." "What was Delcharo's gain of it?" "She bears children only to have them suffer and us suffer because of them." "Thus it comes upon man..." "As soon as girlies are born... to smother them dead." "Or you spend your life saving up for their dower..." "I worked in houses..." "I became a weaver, a midwife, a curer, a herbalist..." "I grew hostile to neighbours..." "I was heavily taxed, paid fines..." "I had barley bread made of my sweaty labours' salt..." "Because if you have no dowry..." "Better keep your daughters and be proud of them." "Put them on a shelf." "Lock them in the locker." "Amersa!" "You came, mother?" "Going down to Delcharo's to spend the night by the baby girl" "Are you not tired?" "I could sit in for you this time." "You know not of such things." "Baby is with sickness." "I'll make a potion for her and she may come around." "And what if she did die?" "A girlie she was..." "Daughter..." "What's this doing?" "Where's your mother?" "At home." "Which home?" "Here or at the village?" "Mozer's not here." "And you two?" "You're here all alone?" "Fazer's here." "Where?" "Down zere." "Doing what?" "He has work." "What do they call you?" "Mousouda." "And your sister?" "Toula." "The girls fell inside the cistern!" "Alas." "You don't keep an eye, people?" "Is this how one leaves little children alone by the cistern?" "Full with water?" "A good thing I passed by." "God has sent me here." "Hang them upside down quick!" "Hang them and hit them with a stick so they throw up if they may..." "Thank God it's fresh water!" "Where is a rope?" "Where's your husband, woman?" "A good thing I passed by." "God has sent me here." "Coming from Anargyros, from Eliona." "A good thing the door was open." "As I walk in I hear... splash!" "I run and what do I see?" "Had not enough time... as I knew you were here..." "What a fright I had!" "..." "The fright that I had!" "Quickly hand them upside down!" "Where's your husband?" "Where?" "Yannis!" "Yannis!" "The girls fell inside the cistern!" "But where is he?" "In the field you said?" "What is he doing?" "Who's to go over there, woman?" "You're a sick woman!" "Yannis!" "Where are you, Yannis?" "Where are you, Yannis?" "Hurry Yannis..." "The girls drowned..." "Open up!" "In the name of the law, open!" "Where is this rebel?" "He sneaked out?" "Rappelled himself down." "You didn't scream?" "Nor catch him?" "I got bumped over." "Where's your brother off to, silly?" "Why stand still, girl?" "He hit you?" "Why did you scream?" "Did he stab you?" "My brother stab me?" "Why stay here?" "Are you sick?" "With fever." "Speak out, old woman." "Where's your sonny?" "See to your daughter." "Says she's sick." "She is." "How could she not be?" "She has a shudder from the doings of my wastrel of a son." "Listen now..." "If you happen to catch him don't torture him a lot..." "You saw him?" "Which way went he?" "From afar I saw him... he headed for the fields down towards the wells..." "Let 'em fools go to the wells!" "Who was the first to see the girls in the cistern?" "Sir Magistrate, I was near by the field howing the field, silly me..." "I heard shrieks, I ran, but it was too late, disaster had struck." "Now you tell us..." "First of all, how did you happen to be here?" "As I said, I was returning from Anargyros with my basket in hand." "I wanted to give Yannis here some herb for a potion" "I knew his wife was sick in bed." "A good thing that the door was open." "I walk in and I hear "splash"!" "The fright that I had!" "May they be absolved." "They were playing with the cane and "splash"!" "They fell inside the cistern." "It looks like... from what I could figure they had a row which of the two would hold the cane to make believe she catches a fish and by pushing one another they fell inside!" "The fright that I had!" "Aah, Christian man!" "Is this how one leaves little children alone by the cistern full with water?" "Do you remember quite a few years ago that son of hers, Mourtos?" "He stabbed Portaitis for no reason at all." "Really, where could this man be presently?" "A convict in Chalkida." "A real malefactor..." "Thieves have swarmed all over the place!" "And what is the Government doing about it?" "The Law is going to crash them." "As for the old woman" "I am certain she did them in." "Also the Magistrate, he's a wise man alright" "but he's going too far..." "Says he needs major evidence and such nonsense..." "When I saw her in Yannis' yard the other day" "I thought of arresting her, lock her in and get it over with." "But he didn't allow me, you see." "Mother!" " What?" " Come see." "What?" " I need take to the mountains, daughter." " Why mother?" "They want to imprison me." " You pushed the child down the well?" " No." "God's my witness, I didn't do that." "Is sin chasing you, mother?" "Have you gone crazy?" "Where's my stick?" "Go look for it!" "Listen..." "I'll take the other path for them not to see me." "You run to the house at once and call Amersa from outside, from the street" "Amersa!" "Amersa!" "How's mother?" "Any better?" "Has she got up yet?" "She's still on the matress?" "So that the dogs will believe I'm sick up in the house and do not come after me!" "Till we meet again." "Move on!" "Marouso!" "Are you upstairs?" "And now?" "Where can I go?" "When the master arrives it will be nightfall." "I'll hide you here tonight." "Now." "Before Anagostis arrives." "Where?" "Down at the little cellar." "You know." "Come with me." "When the lamb bleets at daybreak and when you feel like it, get up and go." "Wherever God sends you." "Let it be so." "On another night if you may not find any refuge come and throw a pebble on my window and I'll hide you here again." "Well." "But..." "Look again, is the policeman gone now?" "Where in the world are you, aunt Hadoula?" "God must have sent you!" "Don't you know, aunt?" "Know what, son?" "I haven't been to the village since last night." "I came to pick herbs from the streams." "Hear me, aunt." "Last week we had a new childbirth at the hut." "A birth?" "The third girlie we had in the last five years." "We only have girlies, alas." "Only girlies." "May she live!" "Wish your family the first 40 days of fortune." "Hear me now." "She came out sick and she won't suckle." "Her poor mother's not well either." "She's down and all mourning, poor one." "Come by the hut now that I came across you." "Do some phoney medicine, if you wish." "But now it's almost nightfall." "You can sleep in my hut, aunt, wish your soul well." "May the Allmighty help you!" "You'll do the poor woman some good." "Your medicine will drive all evil out." "One and all." "Hush, my son." "Hush, for the love of Christ!" "Here come constables!" "Constables?" "Don't tell them you met me!" "Don't tell on me!" "If I escape them, I'll come to your hut tonight!" "You saw that malicious woman, Frangoyiannou?" "No." "You're lying!" "I saw her with my own eyes running up there." "Like a cat." "You brought us the constables up here in the mountains?" "They're after me, son." "What do they have against you?" "They say that" "I drowned some girlies." "Did you drown them or not?" "Troubled that life is..." "You drowned them?" "What's your name, aunt?" "Frangoyannou." "You're Mourtos' mother?" "And who are you?" "I'm the son of Dimitris Stavrakas." "You're alive, son?" "You're alive!" "Who is it?" "It is me." "Yannis sent me to practice medicine for the new mother." "At this time?" "I couldn't come earlier." "Where did you see him?" "Down there... by the stream." "Don't wake her now." "We'll give it to her later." "Another girlie, this one too..." "Your son in law told me" "You've two more girlies, do you?" "What a pest..." "To poor folk... it's always girlies that come, blast'em." "A woman is slave to this wreck of a house." "I believe you understand me." "When I was young I served on my parents." "When I grew they wedded me to Frangos." "God forgive him." "Serving on Frangos and the children." "I lowered my head to collect the dower for my daughters..." "And before I was through with them here's grandchildren, more and even more of them..." "Starting all over again." "A neverending thing." "I believe you understand me." "That's life, dearie." "May it be blessed by God Allmighty." "Only they come out sick sometimes..." "That's life, dearie." "Trouble is meant for folk, too." "Woman and patience, they're a match." "Courage, my girl." "What brought you here?" "God sent me." "Good thing you're here." "Have a try with it." "It draws?" "Suckles?" "Old woman!" "Old woman?" "Give me a hand!" "The help hand's not here yet." "One cannot do this alone." "I don't have four arms, either." "Where's mother gone?" "She'll be back." "You get some sleep, now..." "What are you up to?" "Nothing..." "I wanted ... to calm it down." "I'll leave now..." "It's dawn." "Give the medicine to the new mother when she wakes." "Catch her!" "Catch her!" "She murdered!" "Yannis!" "Yannis!" "What is it, aunt?" " Poor Yannis, your wife is in pain, she's not well." " Pains?" " She has one more child in her!" " Another baby?" "As I said!" "Run to the village for a midwife." "How can this be?" "Is your mind ill?" "Of course it can be!" "Double ones do not always fall out together!" "The weaker one may take hours or days to fall out!" "I've heard of such a thing." "Looks like the second child was conceived after the first one." "Now run and call a midwife!" "I'll go fetch a priest to read your wife a blessing." "Catch her!" "Get her!" "Her mother was mean." "Blasphemous and envious." "She was one of the shrews of her times." "She knew of spells." "Two or three times the Thieves had chased her down" "Men of Karatasos and Gatsos and of the other chief Captains of Macedonia." "They did that as a revenge for she had put a spell on them and their works did not go well." "Hadoula, wife of Frangos although very young had been born by that time and she remembered all those which her mother was relating later on." "Then, when she grew up to be 17 years old and things were more peaceful during the years of the Governor her parents wedded her and gave her Yannis Frangos for a husband." "When she saw her parents' persistence to avoid giving her enough dower she searched and found the nest egg and untied it." "She did not have time to count it she only took 8 or 9 coins of five." "Hastily she tied the nest egg again and put it back in its place." "She never confessed this to her mother while she was alive." "Truth is that she was considering and decided to tell her during her last living moments." "But unluckily the old woman before dying happened to become mute and deaf and remain senseless like an object." "So a chance was not given her to confess her lapse." "Yannis' wife knew she could not expect a constable's mercy." "The man was doing his duty." "She would rather be spared the treatment she would receive if fallen into their grasp and if she was to be named Mother of the Cross." "In time she took notice during the trouble she went through because of her son Mourtos," "that this kind of people get more angry when the wanted one fights back or cheeks unto them." "Even more when he runs away and they have to chase after him till they pant their souls out." "Therefore, Frangoyannou by running and making them run too did not expect any mercy of them." "They have approached." "The constables are here." "Either by treason or by tracing they had found her out." "Subs by never4ever for KG / Aug 2014"