My father sat down in his accustomed place on the sofa, in the corner near the courtyard window. Mother stood in front of him waiting. She knew that he was about to give orders. He took out his tobacco pouch and rolled a cigarette slowly, leisurely. Then, without lifting his eyes, he said, “No one is to set foot out of the house.”
He turned to me with a frown. “Are you afraid?”
“No,” I replied.
“And what if the Turks break down the door? What if they come inside and slaughter you?”
I shuddered. I could feel the blade at my throat. I wanted to cry, Yes, I’m afraid, I’m afraid! but my father’s eyes were fixed on me and I was too ashamed. Suddenly my breast swelled out. I had felt my heart being filled with manly valor.
“Even if they slaughter me,” I said, “I won’t be afraid!”
“Good,” said my father, and he lit his cigarette.
That past summer when I went to our village to see my grandfather die, I slept with one of my uncles in a melon field. Suddenly, just as I was about to fall asleep, I heard a crr! crr! crr! all around me: the creaking of some strange objects. Frightened, I drew close to my uncle. “What’s making that creaking noise?” I asked. “I’m afraid.” My uncle turned his back to me, irritated because I had awakened him. “Go to sleep, city boy,” he said. “Is this the first time you’ve heard that noise? It’s the watermelons growing bigger.” Similarly on this day, my father’s eyes fixed upon me as they were, I felt my heart growing bigger and creaking.
Megalo Kastro had four fortified gates. The Turks locked them each day at sunset and opened them when the sun came up again. No one could either enter or leave the city all night long, and thus the few Christians inside fell into the rat trap. The Turks could carry out a massacre at night, as long as the gates were locked and bolted, because they were in a majority inside the city and also had the Turkish garrison.
This was when I experienced my first massacre. A few days later, for the first time, my childish mind saw life’s true face behind the beautiful mask of sea, verdant fields, fruit-laden vines, wheaten bread, and a mother’s smile. Life’s true face: the skull.
It was at this time, also, that the seed dropped secretly into my bowels, the seed which was destined, much later, to flower and Dear as its fruit my third eye, the inner one: limpid, open day and night, knowing neither fear nor hope.
My mother, my sister, and I sat glued to one another, barricaded within our house. We heard the frenzied Turks in the street outside, cursing, threatening, breaking down doors, and slaughtering Christians. We heard dogs barking, the cries and death ráles of the wounded, and a droning in the air as though an earthquake were in progress. My father stood in wait behind the door, his musket loaded. In his hand, I remember, he held an oblong stone which he called a whetstone. He was sharpening a long black-handled knife on it. We waited. “If the Turks break down the door and enter,” he had told us, “I plan to slaughter you myself, before you fall into their hands.” My mother, sister, and I had all agreed. Now we were waiting.
I believe I would have seen my soul maturing during those hours if the invisible had become visible. I sensed that in the space of just a few hours I had begun to change abruptly from a child into a man.
Thus the night went by. Morning came, the droning subsided, death retired to a distance. Carefully opening our door, we put our heads outside. Several of the neighboring housewives had timidly, stealthily opened their windows. They were examining the street. At that moment the Turkish koulouri man came by, the one with the small high-pitched voice and no beard on his face. He was hawking in a singsong the cinnamon and sesame rolls he carried on a huge tin tray upon his head. What a pleasure that was! Everything seemed reborn; for the first time, it seemed, we were seeing sky, clouds, and a tin tray laden with fragrant kouloúria. My mother bought me one. I chewed it with indescribable delight.
“Did the massacre go away, Mother?” I asked.
This frightened her.
“Quiet, quiet, my child. Don’t mention its name! It might hear you and return.”
I wrote the word massacre just now and the hairs of my head stood on end, because when I was a child this word was not simply eight letters of the alphabet pasted one next to the other, it was a great droning, and feet kicking down doors, horrible faces with knives between their teeth, women shrieking everywhere in the vicinity, and men loading muskets as they knelt behind their doors. For us who lived as children in Crete in that era, there are also several other words which drip copiously with blood and tears, words upon which an entire people was crucified: freedom, Saint Minas, Christ, revolution.
The man who writes has an oppressive and unhappy fate. This is because the nature of his work obliges him to use words; that is, to convert his inner surge into immobility. Every word is an adamantine shell which encloses a great explosive force. To discover its meaning you must let it burst inside you like a bomb and in this way liberate the soul which it imprisons.
Once there was a rabbi who always made his will and tearfully bade farewell to his wife and children before he went to the synagogue to pray, for he never knew if he would emerge from the prayer alive. As he used to say, “When I pronounce a word, for instance Lord, this word shatters my heart. I am terror-stricken and do not know if I shall be able to make the leap to the following words: have pity on me”
O for the person able to read a poem in this way, or the word massacre, or a letter from the woman he loves—or this Report by a man who struggled much in his life and yet managed to accomplish so very little!
Early the next morning my father took me by the hand.
“Come,” he said.
My mother became frightened. “Where are you taking the boy? Not a single Christian has left his house yet.”
“Come,” my father repeated. He opened the door and we went outside.
“Where are we going?” I asked. My hand was trembling inside his massive palm.
I looked up and down the street. It was deserted except for two Turkish women at the corner who were washing at the tap. The water had turned red.
“Are you afraid?”
“Yes.”
“That doesn’t matter. You’ll get used to it.”
Turning the corner, we headed toward the harbor gate. We passed a house that was still smoking and many others with broken doors, blood still on the thresholds. When we reached the main square with its lion-sculptured fountain and the huge old plane tree at the edge, my father stopped.
“Look!” he said, pointing with his hand.
I looked up toward the plane tree and uttered a cry. Three hanged men were swinging there, one next to the other. They were barefooted, dressed only in their nightshirts, and deep green tongues were hanging out of their mouths. Unable to endure the sight, I turned my head away and clung to my father’s knees. But he grasped my head with his hand and rotated it toward the plane tree.
“Look!” he ordered me again.
My eyes filled with hanged men.
“As long as you live—do you hear—may these hanged men never be out of your sight!”
“Who killed them?”
“Liberty, God bless it!”
I did not understand. Goggle-eyed, I stared and stared at the three bodies that were slowly swaying among the yellowing leaves of the plane tree.
My father swept his glance around him and pricked up his ears. The streets were deserted. He turned to me.
“Can you touch them?”
“No!” I answered, terrified.
“You can! . . . Come!”
We went close; my father crossed himself hurriedly, repeatedly.
“Touch their feet!” he commanded.
He took my hand. I felt their cold, crusty skin against the tips of my fingers. The night dew was still upon them.
“Kiss them! Do obeisance!” my father now commanded. Seeing me try to make a break and get away, he seized me beneath the arms, lifted me, bent my head downward, and forcefully gl
ued my mouth to the rigid feet.
He put me down. My knees could not support me. He leaned over and looked at me.
“That was to help you get used to it,” he said.
Once more he took me by the hand. We returned home. My mother was standing behind the door waiting anxiously.
“Where in God’s name did you go?” she asked, seizing me avidly and kissing me.
“We went to do obeisance,” answered my father, and he gave me a trustful look.
The fortified gates remained closed for three days; on the fourth they were opened. But the Turks prowled about the streets, filled the cafés, gathered in the mosques; the seething within them still had not subsided, their eyes were still full of murder. Crete was ready to burst into flames—only a single spark was needed. All the Christians who had children boarded steamships and caiques to depart for free Greece. All who did not have children left Megalo Kastro and took to the mountains.
We were among those who went to the harbor in order to leave. My father led the way, my mother and sister followed him, and I brought up the rear.
“We men must protect the women,” my father had said to me (I was not even eight years old). “I’ll go in front, you stay behind. And look sharp!”
We passed through neighborhoods which had been burned. Some of the victims still had not been removed; the corpses had already begun to stink. My father bent down at one of the doorways and picked up a stone all splattered with blood.
“Keep it,” he said to me.
I had at last begun to understand why my father behaved in this ferocious way. He did not apply the methods of New Pedagogy; he followed the age-old, merciless method which is alone capable of preserving the race. This is how the wolf trains its favorite cub, the firstborn—it teaches it to hunt and kill, and by means of trickery or valor to escape from traps. To my father’s ferocious pedagogy I owe the endurance and obstinacy which have always stood by me in times of difficulty. To this ferocity I also owe all the indomitable thoughts which govern me now at the end of my life and which do not condescend to accept comforting from either God or the devil.
“Let’s go up to your room and decide,” my father said to me before we left home.
He halted in the middle of the room and pointed to the large map of Greece which hung on the wall.
“I don’t want either Piraeus or Athens; that’s where everyone will congregate. Then they’ll start whining that they don’t have anything to eat, and they’ll beg for help. None of that disgusting business for me! Choose some island.”
“Whichever I want?”
“Yes, whichever you want.”
Climbing onto a chair, I took all the Aegean islands in with a glance: green dots on the blue sea. Then, starting at Santorini, I promenaded my finger to Melos, Siphnos, Mykonos and Paros. At Naxos I stopped.
“Naxos!” I said. I liked its shape and name. How could I ever foresee at that moment what a decisive effect that accidental, fatal choice was to have on my entire life!
“Naxos!” I repeated, looking at my father.
“Fine,” he replied. “Let’s go to Naxos.”
11
NAXOS
THIS ISLAND possessed great sweetness and tranquility. Everywhere huge piles of melons, peaches, and figs, surrounded by a calm sea. I looked at the inhabitants. Their faces were kindly; they had never been frightened by Turks or earthquakes, and their eyes were not on fire. Liberty here had extinguished the yearning for liberty. Life extended like a sheet of contented, slumbering water which, though turbulent at times, never raised a true tempest. As I walked about Naxos, security was the island’s first gift that I became aware of. Security and, a few days later, boredom. We had made the acquaintance of a Mr. Lazaros, a wealthy Naxiot who had a splendid orchard at Engarés, one hour from the main town. He invited us there, and we stayed two weeks. What abundance, what fruit-laden trees, what beatitude! Crete became a fairy tale, a menacing cloud far in the distance with never an alarm, nor shedding of blood, nor struggle for liberation. All this melted away and vanished in the drowsy Naxiot well-being.
I found a pile of books in one of the cupboards of the country mansion. They were yellowed with age. I took them, and each day I sat beneath an olive tree and leafed through them avidly. I gazed at the old, faded illustrations of warriors and ladies, wild beasts and banana jungles. In another book, frozen seas, icebound ships, bear cubs rolling in the snow like tufts of cotton. In another, distant cities with high chimneys, workers, and huge fires.
My mind broadened; the world broadened with it. My imagination was filled with gigantic trees, strange animals, black and yellow people. Several of the phrases I read threw my heart into a ferment. In one of these yellowed books I came across the words, “Happy the man who views the most seas and the most continents.” And in another, “Better a bull for a day than an ox for a year.” This latter I did not understand very well, but I knew one thing: I did not want to be an ox. Closing the book, I inhaled the warm fragrant air, my eyes fixed upon the fruit-laden apricot and peach trees. I was an insect with still-undeveloped wings, kicking at the soil with its little feet in an effort to fly, even though its heart trembled. Would it succeed or fail? Better be patient, just a little while longer.
I was patient. Without even suspecting this, I was secretly, inwardly preparing for the day when my wings would be ready and I would leave.
But Mr. Lazaros’s niece, a twelve-year-old tomboy named Stella, had suspended a swing from the olive tree next to mine. She swung in the air and sang, the movement lifting her dress so that her snow-white, exquisitely round knees glittered in the sunlight. I could not stand to hear her song or look at her knees, and one day in a furor I banged my books down on the ground. She just looked at me and burst out laughing, chewing away on her gum. Very often too she taunted me with mocking songs. I have forgotten all of them except one:
Lower those sable eyes regarding me,
Lower them, my jewel; they are flogging me.
“Stella,” I cried angrily, jumping to my feet, “either you leave or I do!”
She tumbled off her swing. “Let’s leave together!” she answered, no longer laughing. Then, lowering her voice, “Let’s leave together, my poor friend, because on Monday you’re going to be shut up in the Catholic school. I heard your father talking with my uncle.”
Within the commanding Naxiot citadel which had been inhabited for centuries now by the Frankish conquerors was the celebrated French school run by Catholic priests. My father and I had climbed to it one day. He gazed at it for some time, then shook his head.
“A boy can get a fine education here, but the teachers are Catholic priests, the devil take them! You might turn Catholic.”
Though he did not mention the school again, I was aware that the idea was pricking him and that he did not know what decision to make. After supper on the same day that Stella had alerted me, my father took me with him for a walk in the orchard. The moon had risen; everything was tranquil and fragrant.
For quite some time he did not speak. Finally, when it was the hour for us to return to the house, he halted and said, “The revolution in Crete will be a long one. I’m going back there; I can’t let my fellow Christians fight while I stroll in orchards. Every night I see your grandfather in my sleep, and he scolds me. I have to go. But meanwhile you mustn’t lose any time. I want you to become a man.”
He fell silent again, took a few steps, then halted once more.
“Do you understand?” he asked me. “A man—that means useful to your homeland. Too bad you were born for studies and not for arms, but unfortunately there’s nothing to be done about it. That’s your road; follow it. Understand? Educate yourself in order to help Crete gain her freedom. Let that be your goal. Otherwise, to the devil with education! I don’t want you to become a teacher, monk, or a wise Solomon. Get that clear! I’ve made up my mind, now you make up yours. If you can’t help Crete either through arms or letters, you’d do better to lie down and
die.”
“I’m afraid of the Catholic fathers,” I said.
“So am I. The true man fears, but conquers his fear. I have faith in you.”
He reflected for a moment, then corrected himself. “No, I don’t have faith in you, I have faith in the blood which flows in your veins—the blood of Crete. Ready now, cross yourself, clench your fists, and on Monday, God willing, we’ll go to register you with the Catholics.”
It was raining on the day my father and I began the climb to the citadel—a sparse autumn drizzle which dimmed the streets. Behind us the sea was sighing. A gentle breeze kept shanking the leaves from the trees; they fell one by one, yellow and brown, and adorned the wet ascent. The clouds raced over our heads, pursued by a strong wind which must have been blowing up above. I raised my head and gazed insatiably as they ran, joined, separated, and as some let down long gray fringes in an effort to touch the earth. Ever since my childhood I had loved to lie on my back in our yard and watch the clouds. Every so often a bird winged by, a crow, swallow, or dove, and I identified with it so completely that I felt the warmth of its breast in my open palm. “Marghí, I think your son’s going to become a dreamer and visionary,” our neighbor Madame Penelope said one day to my mother. “He’s always looking at the clouds.”
“Don’t worry, Penelope,” my mother answered her, “life will come along and make him lower his gaze.”
But it still had not come, and on this day I kept admiring the clouds as I climbed to the citadel. I stumbled and slipped constantly. My father gripped my shoulder as though wishing to steady me.
“Forget the clouds. Keep your eyes on the stones beneath you if you don’t want to fall and kill yourself.”
A young, withered-looking girl emerged from the vaulted doorway of a large half-crumbling house. She too gazed at the sky. Extremely pale and emaciated, with a face characterized by great nobility, she was tightly wrapped in a ragged shawl and shivering. Afterwards I learned that she belonged to one of the celebrated Catholic families of ruined nobility, all dukes and countesses, who centuries before had conquered Naxos and built this citadel to be their seat—built it at the city’s highest point, whence they could look down and watch the Orthodox plebeians toiling for their benefit along the harborfront and in the plain beyond. But now they had fallen into decline, were paupers, their palaces in ruins; and their noble great-great-granddaughters starved and grew pale. These girls were unable to find husbands because the men of their class had lost their vigor; they either lacked all desire to marry or were unable to support a wife and children. To marry into humble Orthodox stock, on the other hand, was something these noble ladies would never deign to do. They held their pride forever high, for pride was all they had. . . . The girl looked at the sky for a moment, shook her head, stepped inside again.