As for me, I rejoiced inwardly because I was transgressing the law, because I was liberating myself from archimandrites and those bugaboos the Ten Commandments, because I was following the firm, sure steps of my hairy forebear.
I had started on the downgrade and I liked it! It was my final year in the gymnasium. I eyed the archimandrite with hatred as he smiled serenely, entrenched in his virtue. Sure about this life and the next, this sheep regarded us, the wolves, with compassion. This I could not stand. I had to disturb his peace, raise a tempest in his blood, erase that moronic smile which suffused his face. One morning, therefore, I did something very wicked. I sent him a short note: “Your mother is gravely ill. She is dying. Hurry to her so that she may give you her blessing.” I dispatched it, then proceeded nonchalantly to school and waited. That day the archimandrite did not appear in class. Nor the next, nor the third. Five days later he returned, unrecognizable. His face was bloated and disfigured by an eczema which reached to his throat and armpits. He scratched himself continually, turned fiery red, was unable to speak, and left before the bell rang. For three months he remained bedridden. Then one morning he returned to us, no longer swollen. But he was exhausted, and vestiges of scabs still covered his face. He looked at us tenderly. The smile had suffused his entire face once more, and his first words were “Praise the Lord, my children. He prodded the hand which wrote me the note saying that my mother was gravely ill, and thus he gave me the opportunity to pay humanity’s tribute in my turn—to suffer.” These words made me wince. Was it therefore so very difficult to triumph over virtue? For a moment I felt like standing up and shouting, Forgive me for I have sinned! But another voice rose immediately within me, a voice full of sarcasm and malice: You are a dog, an archimandrite-dog. You are whipped and you lick the hand that is whipping you. . . . No, what I did was right. I should not repent!
The next day I summoned the members of the Friendly Society. Now that our own minds were enlightened, I told them, it was our duty to enlighten the minds of everyone else. This must be the Friendly Society’s great mission. Wherever we traveled, wherever we halted, each of our words and deeds must have a single, sole purpose—to enlighten.
Whereupon, the enlightening commenced. We had finished the gymnasium and were free. My father, who wanted me to enter politics, sent me to a village to sponsor a child in baptism. I took my two friends with me; here was the perfect opportunity for us to enlighten an entire village. When we sat down at table immediately after the baptism, and the festivities started, my bosom friend, working up steam, began to preach to the villagers and enlighten them. And before all else he spoke to them of the origin of man, declaring that our progenitor was the monkey and that we must not be so conceited to believe in our supposed status as privileged beings created by God.
All the while my friend was delivering his oration, the village priest kept gazing at him with protruding eyes. He did not speak. When the enlightening drew to a close, however, he shook his head with compassion and said, “Excuse me, my boy, for staring at you all the time you were speaking. It’s possible, as you say, that all men are descended from the monkey. As for yourself, however, forgive me for saying so, but you are a lineal descendant of the ass.”
A shiver ran through my body. I looked at my friend; it was as though I were seeing him for the very first time. With his massive drooping jaw, large cauliflower ears, and peaceful velvety eyes he really did resemble an ass. How had I failed to notice it before? A thread within me snapped. After that day I never sent him another letter and I ceased to envy him.
We endured much in our effort to enlighten mankind on the succeeding days as we roamed through Megalo Kastro or toured the villages. We were called atheists, Freemasons, hirelings. Little by little we began to be hooted and barraged with lemon peels wherever we went, but we held ourselves proudly erect and pressed on through the insults and peels, content in the knowlege that we were witnessing and enduring martyrdom for the sake of Truth. Was this not the way it always happened, we said to one another to console ourselves. What a joy to die for a great idea!
On another occasion the three of us went on an excursion to a market town two hours from Kastro. Famous for its vineyards, this town was spread out at the foot of Yioúchtas, the sacred mountain where (so it was said) Zeus, the father of gods and men, had been interred. But beneath the stones where he reposed, the dead god had still possessed the strength to refashion the mountain above him, and he had altered the position of the rocks, giving them the shape of a gigantic overturned head. One could plainly distinguish the brow, nose, and the long beard which, composed of ilexes, carobs, and olive trees, extended clear down to the plain.
“Even the gods die,” said my third friend, the one who hoped to become an inventor in order to enrich the Friendly Society.
“The gods die,” I answered, “but divinity is immortal.”
“What do you mean?” asked the others. “We don’t understand.”
“I don’t understand very well myself,” I answered, laughing. Although I felt that I was right, I was unable to make my thought clear. I fell back on laughter, which has always served as my door of escape in times of danger.
We reached the village. The air smelled of raki and must. The villagers had completed the vintage, placed the must in barrels and extracted the raki from the residuum of skins. Now they were seated in the café or outside on their stone oven-platforms or beneath the poplar trees, drinking raki, playing cards, and relaxing.
Several of them rose to greet us. Placing us at their table, they treated us to three glasses of cherry juice. We struck up a conversation. The three of us had come to an understanding earlier, and little by little we subtly brought the conversation around to the miracles performed by science.
“Can your minds conceive how paper is made and newspapers printed?” we asked. “What a great miracle! A forest is chopped down, the logs are transported to machines that crush them into pulp, and the pulp is turned into paper which goes into the printer’s through one door and comes out a newspaper through the other.”
The villagers listened with cocked ears; those at adjacent tables rose and sat down at ours. We’re doing fine with them, they’re being enlightened, we said to ourselves. But at that point a hulking gallows bird came by with a donkeyload of wood. He stopped to hear what was being said.
“Hey, Dimitrós, where are you taking that wood?” someone called to him.
“To make a newspaper!”
Instantaneously, all the villagers, who until then had restrained themselves out of politeness, doubled over with laughter. The whole village rocked with their guffaws.
“I think we’d better leave,” I whispered to my friends. “I feel the lemon peels coming.”
“Where are you going, boys?” cried the villagers, splitting their sides. “Stay a while and tell us more—we want to laugh.” Then they began to follow behind us, shouting:
“Say, which came first, the chicken or the egg?”
“And why does God make tiles stay up without nails?”
“And was wise Solomon a man or a woman? Show your stuff, boys!”
“And why does the spotted goat laugh—can you tell us that?”. . .
But we had taken to our heels.
By this time we had grown weary of enlightening mankind by word of mouth. One day we decided to print a manifesto for the masses, a document in which we would clearly and dispassionately state our goal and prescribe the nature of man’s duty. Each of us chipped in his savings. We went to the printer Markoulís, who was also known as Mr. Proletariat because he too issued manifestoes meant to rouse and unite the poor—with the purpose of making them a great force which would elect him to the Boule. We went, therefore, and found him. He was middle-aged, with curly gray hair, spectacles, a broad barrel-chested torso, and tiny little bowed legs. A greasy red kerchief was tied around his neck. Taking our manuscript, he began to declaim it aloud with bombastic exaggeration, and the more he read, the more en
thusiastic we became. How excellently it was written, how luminously, with what strength! The three of us craned our necks triumphantly, like young cocks about to crow.
“Well done, boys!” declared Markoulís, folding the manuscript. “Mark my words, one day you’ll be elected to the Boule and will save our people. Why not join forces, then? I issue manifestoes too. Shake on it!”
But I resisted. “You care only about the poor,” I said to him. “We care about everyone. Our goal is bigger.”
“But your brains are smaller,” retorted the printer, piqued. “You think you’re going to convert the rich also, do you? To wash a nigger is a waste of soap. Listen to me: the rich man is well set up; he doesn’t want to change anything, neither God, country, nor his prosperous life. So knock as much as you like on the deaf man’s door. You’ve got to start with the poor, my young cocks, with those who are not well set up, with the oppressed. Otherwise, go find another printer. I’m known as Mr. Proletariat!”
The three of us withdrew to the door to hold council. In no time we reached a unanimous decision. My friend turned to the printer.
“No, we refuse to accept your proposal. We won’t make a single concession. Unlike you, we don’t distinguish between rich and poor. All must be enlightened!”
“In that case go to the devil, you little fops!” roared Markoulis, and he hurled the manuscrípt in our faces.
14
THE IRISH LASS
I WAS still not entirely satisfied, however. I liked the road I had taken but felt I had to reach its furthest limits. That year an Irish girl had arrived in Kastro. She gave English lessons. The thirst for learning was aflame in me as always; I engaged her to tutor me. I wanted to learn the language and write manifestoes in English in order to enlighten those who lived outside Greece. Why should we let them remain in darkness? So I threw myself heart and soul into English, that strange magical world. What joy when I began to saunter through English lyric poetry with this Irish girl! The language, its vowels and consonants, had become so many warbling birds. I stayed at her house until late at night. We talked about music, read poetry, and the air between us caught fire. As I leaned over her shoulder following the lines of Keats and Byron, I breathed in the warm acrid smell of her armpits, my mind grew turbid, Keats and Byron disappeared, and two uneasy animals remained in the tiny room, one clothed in trousers, the other in a dress.
Now that I had finished the gymnasium, I was preparing to go to Athens to register at the university. Who could tell if I would ever see her again, this blue-eyed, slightly stooped but fluffily plump daughter of an Irish pastor. As our separation approached, I grew increasingly more uneasy. Just as when we view a ripe fig oozing with sweet syrup, and being hungry and thirsty we avidly stretch forth our hand to strip its rind, and as we strip it our mouth waters; so in the same way I cast furtive glances at this ripe Irish girl and stripped her in my imagination—like a fig.
One day in September I made my decision.
“Would you like to climb Psiloriti with me?” I asked her. “The whole of Crete is visible from the top, and there’s a little chapel at the summit where we can spend the night and I can say goodbye to you.”
Her ears turned crimson, but she accepted. What deep mystery that excursion involved, what sweetness and anxious anticipation—just like a honeymoon! We set out at night. The moon above our heads was truly dripping with honey; never again in my life did I see such a moon. That face, which had always seemed so sorrowful to me, laughed now and eyed us roguishly while advancing with us from east to west and descending by way of our opened blouses to our throats, and then down as far as our breasts and bellies.
We kept silent, afraid that words might destroy the perfect, tacit understanding achieved by our bodies as they walked one next to the other. Sometimes our thighs touched as we proceeded along a narrow path, but then each of us suddenly, abruptly, drew away from the other. It seemed that we did not wish to expend our unbearable desire in petty pleasures. We were keeping it intact for the great moment, and we marched hurriedly and with bated breath, not, so it seemed, like two friends, but like two implacable enemies: we were racing to the arena where we would come to grips, breast to breast.
Though we had uttered not a single amorous word before this time, though now, on this excursion, we had agreed on nothing, both of us knew full well where we were going and why. We were anxious to arrive—she, I felt, even more than I.
Daybreak found us in a village at the foot of Psiloriti. We were tired, and we went to lodge at the house of the village priest. I told him that my companion was the daughter of a pastor on a distant, verdant island, and that she desired to see the whole of Crete from the mountain’s top. The priest’s wife, the papadhiá, came to set the table. We ate. Then, sitting on the sofa, we engaged in small talk. First we discussed the Great Powers—England, France, America, Muscovy. Then vines and olives. Afterwards the priest spoke of Christ, who he said was Orthodox and would never turn Protestant no matter what was done to him. And he wagered that if the girl’s father had been with us, he would have converted him to Orthodoxy in one night. But the blue eyes were sleepy, and the priest nodded to his wife.
“Fix her a bed so she can get some sleep. She’s a woman, after all, and she’s tired.
“But as for you,” he continued, turning in my direction, “you’re a man, a stalwart Cretan, and it’s disgraceful for a Cretan to sleep during the day. Come, let me show you my vineyards. There are still some unpicked grapes. We can eat them.”
I was ready to drop from fatigue and lack of sleep, but what could I do? I was a Cretan and could not disgrace Crete. We went to the vineyards, ate the leftover grapes, then took a walk in the village. The retorts were boiling away in the courtyards, the liquor being removed. We drank more than enough raki, still warm, and returned home arm in arm, both staggering. It was evening already. The Irish girl had awakened, the papadhiá had killed a hen. We ate again.
“No talking tonight,” declared the priest. “Go to sleep. At midnight I’ll wake you up and give you my little shepherd as a guide, so you won’t get lost.”
Going out to the courtyard, he inspected the sky like an astronomer, then stepped back inside with a satisfied air. “You’re in luck,” he said. “Tomorrow will be gorgeous. Leave everything in God’s hands. Good night.”
Around midnight the priest seized me by the leg and awakened me. He also awakened the girl, by banging a copper roasting pan above her head. Awaiting us in the yard was a curly-haired shepherd boy with pointed ears and a fierce glance. He smelled of billy goats and cistus.
“Ready!” he said, raising his crook. “Quick march! We want to reach the summit in time for sunup.”
The moon was at the zenith, still happy, still full of sweetness. It was cold out; we wrapped ourselves in our overcoats. The Irish girl’s tiny nose had turned white, but her lips were richly red. I looked the other way in order not to see them.
It was a fierce mountain. Leaving the vineyards and olive groves behind us, then the oaks and wild cypresses, we reached bare rock. Our shoes lacked spikes; we kept slipping. The Irish girl fell two or three times but got up unaided. We were no longer cold; sweat drenched our bodies. Clenching our lips together to keep from gasping, we advanced in silence, the little shepherd boy leading, the Irish girl in the middle, and myself bringing up the rear.
The sky began to turn bluish white. The crags became visible; the first hawks hovered in the blue-black air in search of prey. And when at last we set foot on the summit, the east was gleaming rosy-red. But I could see nothing in the distance. A thick mist lay all around us, shrouding land and sea. Crete’s entire body was covered. Shivering from the frightful cold, we pushed open the chapel’s little door and went inside. The shepherd, meanwhile, began to search all about to find dry twigs in order to light a fire.
The chapel was built of stones laid up without cement. We remained alone inside, the Irish lass and myself. Christ and the Virgin gazed at us from the hum
ble iconostasis, but we did not gaze at them. Demons opposed to Christ and Virgin, antichrists, antivirgins, had risen within us. Extending my hand, I seized the Irish lass by the nape of the neck. She inclined submissively—this is what she had been waiting for—and the two of us rolled down together onto the flagstones.
A black trap door opened to swallow me, and I perished within. When I raised my lids, I discovered Christ eying me furiously from the iconostasis. The green sphere He held in his right hand was swaying, as though about to be hurled at me. I felt terrified, but the woman’s arms wrapped themselves around me and I plunged anew into chaos.
My knees were shaking when we opened the door to go outside; my hand trembled as it drew back the bolt. I had suddenly been possessed by an age-old fear: God would hurl a thunderbolt to reduce both of us, the Irish girl and myself—Adam and Eve—to ashes. To be sure, it is not with impunity that one defiles the house of the Lord directly in front of the Virgin’s eyes. . . . I gave the door a push and bounded outside. Whatever happens, I said to myself, may it happen quickly and let’s be done with it. But as I ran outside and saw: Oh, what immense joy, what a miracle this was that stretched before me! The sun had appeared, the mist had lifted, and the entire island of Crete from one end to the other gleamed white, green, and rose—fully naked—surrounded by her four seas. With her three high summits, the White Mountains, Psiloríti and Dhikti, Crete was a triple-masted schooner sailing in the foam. She was a sea monster, a gorgon with myriad breasts, stretched supine on the waves and sunning herself. In the morning sun I distinctly saw her face, hands, feet, tail, and erect breasts. . . . A goodly number of pleasures have fallen to my lot in the course of a lifetime; I have no reason to complain. But this, the sight of the entire island of Crete upon the billows, was one of the greatest. I turned to look, at the Irish girl. She was leaning against the little church, chewing a piece of chocolate and calmly, indifferently, licking her lips, which were covered with my bites.