“What was my grandfather like?” I asked my mother.
“Like your father. Darker.”
“What was his job?”
“Fighting.”
“And what did he do in peacetime?”
“He smoked a long chibouk and gazed at the mountains.”
Being pious when I was young, I asked still another question: “Did he go to church?”
“No. But on the first of every month he brought a priest home with him and had him pray that Crete would take up arms again. Your grandfather fretted, naturally, when he had nothing to do. Once when he was arming himself again I asked him, ‘Aren’t you afraid to die, Father?’ But he neither answered nor even turned to look at me.”
When I grew older, I wanted to ask my mother: Did he ever love a woman? I was ashamed to, however, and never found out. But he surely must have loved many women, because when he was killed and the family opened his coffer, a cushion was found there, stuffed with black and brown tresses.
3
THE MOTHER
MY MOTHER was a saintly woman. How was she able to feel the lion’s heavy inhalations and suspirations at her side for fifty years without suffering a broken heart? She had the patience, endurance, and sweetness of the earth itself. All my forebears on my mother’s side were peasants—bent over the soil, glued to the soil, their hands, feet, and minds filled with soil. They loved the land and placed all their hopes in it; over the generations they and it had become one. In time of drought they grew sickly black from thirst along with it. When the first autumn rains began to rage, their bones creaked and swelled like reeds. And when they ploughed deep furrorws into its womb with the share, in their breasts and thighs they re-experienced the first night they slept with their wives.
Twice a year, at Easter and Christmas, my grandfather set out from his distant village and came to Megalo Kastro in order to see his daughter and grandchildren. Always calculating carefully, he came and knocked on the door at an hour when he knew for sure that his wild beast of a son-in-law would not be at home. He was a juicy, vigorous old man, with unbarbered white hair, laughing blue eyes, and great heavy hands covered with calluses—my skin was flayed when he reached out to caress me. He always wore black boots, his Sunday foufoúla, which was deep indigo in color, and a white kerchief with blue spots. And in his hand he always held the same gift: a suckling pig roasted in the oven and wrapped in lemon leaves. When he laughingly uncovered it, the entire house filled with fragrance. So completely has my grandfather blended and become one with the roast pig and the lemon leaves, that ever since those days I have never been able to smell roast pork or step into a lemon orchard without having him rise into my mind, gay and undying, the roast suckling pig in his hands. And I am glad, because although no one else in the world remembers him now, he will live inside me as long as I live. We shall die together. This grandfather was the first to make me wish not to die—so that the dead within me should not die. Since then, many departed dear ones have sunk, not into the grave, but into my memory, and I know now that as long as I live they shall live too.
As I recall him, my heart is fortified with the realization that it can conquer death. Never in my life have I met a man whose face was circuited by such a kindly, tranquil resplendence, as though from a watch lamp. I cried out the first time I saw him enter the house. Dressed as he was in his wide vrakes and red cummerbund, with his luminous moonface and merry manner, he seemed to me like a water sprite, or like an earth spirit who at that very moment had emerged from the orchards smelling of wet grass.
Removing a leather tobacco pouch from beneath his shirt, he rolled a cigarette, reached for the flint and punk, lighted the cigarette, and smoked, gazing contentedly at his daughter, his grandchildren, and the house. At rare intervals he opened his mouth and spoke about his mare that had dropped a colt, about rain and hail, about the overprolific rabbits who were ruining his vegetable garden. I, perched on his knees, threw an arm around his neck and listened. An unknown world unfurled in my mind—fields, rainfalls, rabbits—and I too became a rabbit, slipped out stealthily to my grandfather’s yard, and devoured his cabbage.
My mother would ask about this one and that one in the village—how were they getting along, were they still alive?—and grandfather sometimes replied that they were alive, having children, flourishing; sometimes that they had died—another one gone, long life to you! He spoke about death just as he spoke about birth—calmly, in the same voice, just as he spoke about the vegetables and rabbits. “He’s gone too, Daughter,” he would say. “We buried him. And we gave him an orange to hold in his hand for Charon, also some messages for our relatives in Hades. Everything was done according to order, praised be God.” Then he puffed on his cigarette, blew smoke out through his nostrils, and smiled.
His wife was among the departed; she had died many years before. Every time my grandfather came to our house, he mentioned her and his eyes filled with tears. He loved her more than his fields, more than his mare. And he also respected her. Though poor when he married, he had persevered. “Poverty and nakedness are nothing, provided you have a good wife,” he used to say. In those days it was the long-established custom in Cretan villages for the wife to have warm water ready for the husband when he returned from the fields in the evening, and for her to bend down and wash his feet. One evening my grandfather returned from work completely exhausted. He sat down in the yard, and his wife came to him with a basin of warm water, knelt in front of him, and reached out in order to wash his dusty feet. Looking at her with compassion, my grandfather saw her hands that had been corroded by the daily household chores, her hair that had begun to turn gray. She’s old now, poor thing, he thought to himself; her hair has turned gray in my hands. Feeling sorry for her, he lifted his foot and kicked away the basin of water, upsetting it. “Starting today, Wife,” he said, “you’re not going to wash my feet any more. After all, you’re not my slave, you’re my wife and ‘lady.’”
One day I heard him say, “She never failed me in anything . . . except once. May God have mercy on her soul.”
Sighing, he fell silent. But after a moment: “Every evening, naturally, she stood in the doorway and waited for me to return from the fields. She used to run and relieve me by taking the tools from my shoulder; then we entered the house together. But one evening she forgot. She didn’t run to me, and it broke my heart.”
He crossed himself.
“God is great,” he whispered. “I place my hopes in Him. He will forgive her.”
His eyes shiny again, he looked at my mother and smiled.
On another occasion I asked him, “Grandfather, don’t you hate to kill the little pigs, don’t you feel sorry when we eat them?”
“I do, my boy, God knows I do,” he answered, bursting into laughter, “but they’re delicious, the little rascals!”
Every time I recall this rosy-cheeked old peasant, my faith in the soil and in man’s labor upon the soil increases. He was one of the pillars who support the world upon their shoulders and keep it from falling.
My father was the only one who did not want him. He felt displeased when he entered his house and talked to his son, as though afraid my blood might be polluted. And when the feast was laid out at Christmas and Easter, he did not help himself to any of the roast suckling pig. Nauseated by its odor, he left the table as quickly as possible and began to smoke in order to dispel the stench. He never said anything, except once when he knitted his brows after grandfather had left, and murmured scornfully, “Pfff, blue eyes!”
I learned afterwards that my father despised blue eyes more than anything else in the world. “The devil has blue eyes and red hair,” he used to say.
What peace when my father was not at home! How happily and quickly time passed in the little garden inside our walled courtyard. The vine arbor over the well, the tall fragrant acacia in the corner, the pots of basil, marigolds, and Arabian jasmine around the edges . . . My mother sat in front of the window knitting socks
, cleaning vegetables, combing my little sister’s hair, or helping her to toddle; and I, squatting on a stool, watched her. As I listened to the people pass by outside the closed door and inhaled the odor of jasmine and wet soil, the bones of my head creaked and opened wide in order to contain the world which was entering my body.
The hours I spent with my mother were full of mystery. We used to sit facing each other—she on a chair next to the window, I on my stool—and I felt my breast being filled to satisfaction amid the silence, as though the air between us were milk and I was nursing.
Above our heads rose the acacia; when it flowered, the courtyard filled with perfume. How very much I loved its sweet-smelling yellow blossoms! My mother put them in our coffers, our underwear, our sheets. My entire childhood smelled of acacia.
We talked, had many quiet conversations together. Sometimes my mother told about her father and the village where she was born; sometimes I recounted to her the saints’ lives I had read, embellishing them in my imagination. The martyrs’ ordeals were not enough for me. I added new ones of my own until my mother began to weep. Then, pitying her, I sat on her knees, stroked her hair and consoled her.
“They went to paradise, Mother. Don’t be sad. Now they take walks beneath flowering trees and talk with angels, and they’ve forgotten all about their tortures. And every Sunday they put on clothes all of gold, and red caps with pompons, and go to visit God.”
My mother used to wipe away her tears and look at me with a smile, as though to ask, Is it really true? And the canary in its cage used to hear us, stretch forth its throat, and chirp away with drunken contentment, as if it had descended from paradise, left the saints for a few moments, and come to earth in order to gladden men’s hearts.
My mother, the acacia, and the canary have blended in my mind inseparably, immortally. I cannot smell an acacia or hear a canary without feeling my mother rise from her grave—from my vitals—and unite with this fragrance and the canary’s song.
I had never seen my mother laugh; she simply smiled and regarded everyone with deep-set eyes filled with patience and kindness. She came and went in the house like a kindly sprite, anticipating our every need without noise or effort, as though her hands possessed some magical, beneficent power which exercised a benevolent rule over everyday needs. As I sat silently watching her, I reflected that she might be the Nereid mentioned in the fairy tales, and imagination set to work in my childhood mind: My father had glimpsed her dancing beneath the moon one night as he passed the river. He pounced, caught hold of her kerchief, and that was when he brought her home and made her his wife. Now my mother came and went all day long in the house, searching for the kerchief so that she could throw it over her hair, become a Nereid again, and depart. I used to watch her coming and going, opening the wardrobes and coffers, uncovering the jugs, stooping to look under the beds, and I trembled lest she chance to find her magic kerchief and become invisible. This fear lasted many years, deeply wounding my newborn soul. It remains within me even today, still more indescribably. It is with anguish that I observe all the people or ideas that I love, because I know they are searching for their kerchiefs in order to depart.
I remember only one occasion when my mother’s eyes gleamed with a strange light and she laughed and enjoyed herself as in the days of her engagement, or when she was a free, unmarried girl. It was the first of May and we had gone to Phódhele, a village full of water and orange orchards, so that my father could sponsor a child in baptism. Whereupon, a violent downpour suddenly broke out. The heavens turned to water and emptied onto the earth, which opened chucklingly and received the male waters deep into its breast. The village notables were gathered with their wives and daughters in a large room in the godchild’s house. The rain and lightning entered through the windows, through the cracks in the door; the air smelled of oranges and soil. In and out came the handsels, the wine, the raki, the mezédhes. It began to grow dark, the lamps were lighted, the men grew merry, the women lifted their normally downcast eyes and began to cackle like partridges. Outside the house God was still roaring. The thunder increased, the village’s narrow lanes had been transformed into rivers, the stones tumbled down them, laughing wildly. God had become a torrent; He was embracing, watering, fructifying the earth.
My father turned to my mother. It was the first time I ever saw him look at her with tenderness, the first time I heard sweetness in his voice.
“Sing Marghí,” he said to her.
He was giving her permission to sing, giving it in front of all the other men. I became angry, though I don’t know why. Rising all in a ferment, I started to run to my mother as though wishing to protect her, but my father touched my shoulder with his finger and made me sit down. My mother seemed unrecognizable; her face gleamed as if all the rain and lightning were embracing it. She threw back her head. I remember that her long raven-black hair suddenly became undone and fell over her shoulders, reaching to her hips. She began . . . What a voice that was: deep, sweet, with a shade of throatiness, full of passion. Turning her half-closed eyes upon my father, she sang a mantinadha which I shall never forget. I did not understand at the time why she uttered it, or for whom. Later, when I grew up, I understood. Looking at my father, her sweet voice filled with restrained passion, she sang:
I’m amazed the streets don’t blossom when you stroll,
And you don’t become an eagle with wings of gold.
I looked the other way to avoid seeing my father, to avoid seeing my mother. Going to the window, I pressed my forehead against the pane and watched the rain fall and eat away the soil.
The deluge lasted the entire day. The night had borne down upon us; the world outside grew dark, heaven blended with earth, and the two turned to mud. More lamps were lighted. Everyone moved toward the walls. Tables and stools were moved aside to make room; youngsters and oldsters alike were going to dance. Installing himself on a high stool in the middle of the room, the rebecist grasped his bow as though it were a sword, mumbled a couplet beneath his mustache, and began to play. Feet tingled, bodies fluttered their wings, men and women looked at each other and jumped to their feet. The first to step out was a pale, slender woman, about forty years old, her lips tinted orange because she had rubbed them with walnut leaves, her jet-black hair anointed with laurel oil and glistening sleekly. I was frightened when I turned and saw her, because her eyes were circled by two somber blue rings, and the dark, dark pupils shone from deep within; no, did not shine, burned. I imagined for a moment that she glanced at me. I clutched my mother’s apron, feeling that this woman wanted to seize my arm and take me away with her.
“Bravo, Sourmelína!” shouted a robust old man with a goatee. Jumping out in front of her, he removed his black kerchief, gave one corner to the woman, took the other himself, and the two of them—transported, their heads held high, their bodies as slender and straight as candles—gave themselves over to the dance.
The woman was wearing wooden clogs; she beat them against the floorboards, beat them down forcefully, and the whole house shook. Her white wimple came undone, revealing the gold florins decorating her neck. Her nostrils flared, sniffed the air; the masculine exhalations all around her were steaming. She bent her knees, pivoted, was about to fall against the man before her, but then all at once with a twist of her hips she vanished from in front of him. The elderly dance-lover neighed like a horse, grasped her in midair, held her tightly; but she escaped again. They played, they pursued each other, thunder and rain vanished, the world sank away, and nothing remained above the abyss except this woman, Sourmelína, who was dancing. Unable to remain on his stool any longer, the rebecist jumped to his feet. The bow went wild, gave up trying to stay in command, and began to follow Sourmelina’s feet now, sighing and bellowing like a human being.
The old man’s face had turned savage. Blushing deeply, he eyed the woman, his lips quivering. I felt that he was about to pounce on her and tear her to bits. The rebecist must have had the same foreboding, for his
bow stopped abruptly.’ The dance came to a standstill; the two dance-lovers remained motionless, one foot in the air, the sweat gushing off them. The men ran to the old dancer, took him to one side, and massaged him with raki; the women surrounded Sourmelína to keep the men from seeing her. I worked my way in among them; I wasn’t a man yet, and they did not stop me. Opening her bodice, they sprinkled orange-flower water over her throat, armpits, and temples. She had closed her eyes and was smiling.
It was then that the dance, Sourmelína, and fear—the dance, woman, and death—blended within me and became one. Forty years later, on the high terrace of the Hotel Orient in Tiflis, an Indian woman got up to dance. The stars shone above her. The roof was unlit; some dozen men stood around her, and you saw nothing but the tiny red lights from their cigarettes. Loaded with bracelets, jewels, earrings, and golden ankle bands, the woman danced slowly, with a mysterious fear, as though performing at the brink of the abyss, or of God, and playing with Him. She approached, retreated, provoked Him, while trembling from head to foot lest she fall. At times her body remained stationary while her arms wrapped and unwrapped themselves around each other like two snakes and coupled erotically in the air. The tiny red lights died out; nothing remained in the whole of the vast night except this dancing woman and the stars above her. Immobile, they danced too. We all held our breath. Suddenly I was terror-stricken. Was this a woman dancing at the brink of the abyss? No, it was our very souls flirting and playing with death.