“All that is yours. My people have gathered it all for you to make your journey pleasant and easy! The Sons of the Wind ought to take a couple of dozen passengers and not one for such a price…”
“Your people are making us such a present,” exclaimed Cavius, “what for?”
“Because you are good people, because you are brave men, because you have performed so many deeds of valour and because you are my friends and helped me return home,” chanted Kidogo, trying to appear imperturbable. “But wait a minute, that isn’t all!” The Negro stepped to one side, thrust his hand down between the baskets and picked up a bag of strong leather as big as a man’s head.
“Take this,” said Kidogo, handing the bag to Cavius.
The Etruscan held out his hands palm upwards and almost dropped the bag as his arms bent under the weight of it. The Negro roared with laughter and danced a few steps as a sign of pleasure. The loud laughter of the youths outside was like an echo.
“What is it?” asked Cavius, clutching the heavy bag to his breast.
“How can you, a wise old soldier, ask such a question?” said Kidogo in the merriest of tones. “As though you don’t know that there’s only one thing in the world that is as heavy as that.”
“Gold!” exclaimed the Etruscan in his own language, but the Negro understood him.
“Yes, gold,” he said.
“Where did you get so much?” put in Pandion, pinching the tightly packed bag.
“Instead of hunting we went to the plateau where gold is found. For eight days we dug the sand there and washed it in water…” The Negro paused for a moment and then added: “The Sons of the Wind won’t take you to your homes. When you reach your own seas, your roads will be different, and everybody will have to make his own way home. Divide the gold and hide it carefully so that the Sons of the Wind won’t see it.”
‘“Who else went on that ‘hunt’ with you?” asked Cavius.
“All these people,” said Kidogo, pointing to the young men crowding round the door.
Deeply touched and filled with joy, the friends hurried to thank the Negroes. The latter, confused by this display of gratitude, shifted from one foot to the other and one by one drifted away to their houses.
The friends left the storeroom and pushed the stone back in front of the door. Kidogo had suddenly become silent, his gaiety had gone. Pandion drew his black friend towards him, but Kidogo immediately slipped out of his embrace, placed his hand on the Hellene’s shoulder and stared deep into his golden eyes.
“How can I leave you!” exclaimed Pandion.
The Negro’s fingers dug into his shoulder.
“The God of Lightning be my witness,” said Kidogo in a dull voice, “I would give all the gold on the plateau, I would give everything I have, down to the last spear, if you would remain here with me for ever…” There was an expression of pain on the Negro’s face and he covered his eyes with his hands. “But I do not even ask that of you.” Kidogo’s voice trembled and broke off. “I learned the meaning of home when I was in captivity… I realize that you cannot stay… and I, as you see, am doing everything to help you go…” The Negro suddenly released his hold of Pandion and ran away to his own house.
The young Hellene stared after his friend and tears made a haze before his eyes. The Etruscan heaved a heavy sigh behind Pandion’s back.
“The time will come when you and I must part,” he said softly and sorrowfully.
“Our homes are not very far apart and ships sail between them very often,” said Pandion, turning round to him. “But Kidogo… he will remain here on the outer edge of Oicumene.”
The Etruscan did not say another word.
Now that Pandion was sure of the future he gave himself up wholeheartedly to his art. He was in a hurry; the magnificence of friendship, cemented in the struggle for freedom, was a tremendous inspiration that compelled him to hurry. He could already see the details of his cameo.
The three men must stand embracing each other against the background of the sea towards which they had struggled, the sea that promised them return to their homes.
On the larger flat side of the stone Pandion had decided to depict the three friends, Kidogo, Cavius and himself, in the sparkling, transparent light of the expanses of the sea which the bluish-green stone represented as nothing else could.
The young sculptor made a few sketches on thin pieces of ivory such as the women of the tribe used to grind and mix some sort of ointment. The discovery that he had made necessitated his having a living figure constantly before his eyes. This, however, presented no difficulty since the Etruscan was with him the whole time, and Kidogo, feeling that the ships would soon be coming, left his own work to spend as much time as possible with his friends.
Pandion often asked the Etruscan and the Negro to stand in front of him with their arms round each other’s shoulders, which they, laughing at him, always did.
The friends often sat talking together for a long time, confiding to each other their most secret thoughts, their worries and their plans, and deep down in each of them the realization that they must part dug into his heart like a thorn.
While Pandion talked he did not waste time but worked persistently on his hard stone. At times the sculptor would sit in silence; his glance would become sharp and penetrating — he was trying to catch some detail in the features of his friends that was important to him.
The three embracing figures began to stand out in ever greater relief, all the time becoming more lifelike. The central figure was that of the huge Negro, Kidogo; to the right, turned slightly towards the blank space on the stone stood Pandion, and on the left Cavius, both with spears in their hands. Cavius and Kidogo thought that their images were very lifelike, but insisted that Pandion had drawn his own portrait poorly. The sculptor laughed and said that that was not important.
The figures of the friends, despite their diminutive size, were extremely lifelike and there was real virtuosity in every line of them. There was strong, impetuous movement in their bodies, but at the same time there was elegant restraint in them. In Kidogo’s arms, thrown around the shoulders of the Etruscan and the Hellene, Pandion had managed to express a movement of protection and fraternal tenderness. Cavius and Pandion stood with heads inclined warily, almost menacingly, with the tense vigilance of mighty warriors ready at any moment to repel the attack of any foe. The group as a whole gave this impression of might and confidence, and Pandion made every effort to express in his carving all the best that was in those who had become his dearest friends on the long road from slavery to his native land. The sculptor realized that at last he had succeeded in creating a work of art. Kidogo and Cavius stopped making fun of Pandion. For hours they sat with bated breath watching the movements of the magic chisel, their new attitude towards Pandion being the expression of a vague sort of adoration. Their young friend, bold, merry and even childish, — at times amusing in his admiration of women, had proved himself a great artist! This was a fact that both pleased and astonished Kidogo and Cavius.
Pandion put all his love for his friends into that burst of creative enthusiasm. His original idea — that of carving Thessa on the stone — did not have any further appeal. Thessa, Iruma and Nyora, women from different peoples, were sisters in their beauty; in all of them he felt the same power of attraction… Whether they were sisters in all other respects Pandion did not know. Could Thessa form as firm a friendship for Nyora as he had for Kidogo? In Pandion’s friendship with Cavius and Kidogo, in their comradeship with the other fugitive slaves — but few of whom were left together now — there was a fraternity of identical thoughts and efforts, cemented more firmly than stone by loyalty and courage. They were real brothers although one of them had been born here under the strange trees of Africa of a mother as black as himself; the second had lain in his cradle in a hut that trembled in the bitter storms of the northern lands at a time when the third was already a warrior fighting against the fierce horsemen of the distant steppes on the shores of a dark sea… Their hearts, tested hundreds of times in adversity, were joined by strong sinews and… of how little importance now were differences of country, faces, bodies and religion!