What a great joy to depart for a difficult objective surrounded by ardent and honest colleagues. We left the Greek coast behind us; one morning Constantinople came palely into view on the shadowy horizon.
A gentle rain was falling; the white minarets and black cypresses pierced the fog like masts from a sunken city. Saint Sophia, the palaces, and the half-crumbled imperial walls were lost in the silent, despairing rain. Crowding all together at the ship’s bow we struggled to make our gaze bore through the thick mist in order to see.
One of my companions cursed. “Damn her, the whore! Sleeping with Turks!” His eyes filled with tears.
“Over the years, in time, she’ll be ours once more,” murmured another.
But my heart remained unmoved. Had I traversed these mythical waters on another occasion, my mind would have blazed up luxuriantly with fairy tales and folk songs, with violent desires, and I would have felt large warm tears from the icon of the Blessed Virgin upon my palms. On this day, however, the entire legendary city seemed like an extremely distant, extremely improbable reflection of desire, like a creature made of mist and fancy.
For two days we gazed at Constantinople from a distance, waiting for the sea to grow calm so that we could depart. I was glad the rain kept me from seeing her, glad the huge Turkish guards who came on board did not permit us to disembark and set foot on the holy Turkified soil. All this accorded very well with my soul’s bitter, headstrong disposition, and with my pretentious idiot of a heart that did not wish to reveal its pain.
More rain. Constantinople kept continually sinking. But then the sea turned bright green, the waves gradually decreased, and finally, on the morning of the third day, we departed. We went through the Bosporus. The dense orchards grew increasingly more sporadic, the houses decreased, the coasts of Europe on our left and Asia on our right took on a more savage aspect. We entered the terrible Black Sea. A strong wind again; the salty sea odor. The waves dashed forward, arching their backs frothily and whinnying like the white steeds of Homer. Gathered together in my cabin, we talked of Greece—immortal, much-buffeted Greece of the thousand wounds—and of our responsibility not to disgrace her in the distant parts where we were going.
I am not going to report here the vicissitudes of our mission. My companions and I spent a month visiting the cities and villages where Greek souls were scattered. We passed through Georgia and entered Armenia. Those very days the Kurds had captured some Greeks again, three this time, and had shoed them like mules. They had reached the vicinity of Kars; we heard their cannons night and day.
“One of us,” I said, “must remain in Kars to assemble all the Greeks—men, women, and children, plus their livestock and implements—and act as leader to bring them to Batum harbor. I have already sent in my report requesting boats to come with cargoes of foodstuffs, clothing, and medicine. They’ll take the mass of people back on the return trip. Who wants to stay in Kars? Let there be no mistake—his mission will be dangerous.”
The Greek notables of Kars were gathered around us and listening, hanging on our lips.
All ten of my companions jumped forward; they all wanted to stay. I chose the most striking in appearance, a dearly beloved former classmate of mine who had been wounded in past wars. He was a stalwart, all insouciance and gusto, and he enjoyed playing jokes with danger.
“You stay, Heracles,” I said. “And may the God of Greece be with you!”
“You must all forgive me if I kick the bucket,” he replied with a laugh. “And may God forgive you!”
We shook his hand and left him. A few weeks later he appeared at Batum covered with dust, black as coal, his clothes ripped to shreds. He was marching in the lead, and behind him in a great troop came the Greeks of Kars with their oxen, horses, and implements, and in their midst the priest with the silver-bound Gospels from the church, and the elders hugging the holy icons in their arms. They had pulled up roots and were at last headed for free Greece to throw down new ones.
We, in the meantime, had assembled all the Greeks of Georgia. One morning I heard cries, shouts of joy, rifleshots. I ran to the harbor. The first Greek ships had appeared to take the people away.
It was a difficult struggle. We were emaciated from fatigue, worry, sleepless nights. Sometimes I threw quick, furtive glances at the wild, legendary mountains, the tranquil plains, gorgeous stock of people here with their large oriental eyes, indomitable sweetness, and carefree laughter-loving souls. They drank and danced, kissed and killed one another with thrice-noble grace, like colorful insects.
I did not have time, but neither did I wish, to direct my train of thought away from the grave duty which had brought me here. I saw hungry, desperate men, women, and small children herded together around me and gazing into my eyes. They were waiting for me to bring them salvation. How could I betray them? “Don’t be afraid, brothers,” I kept telling them. “We’re all in this together; I’ll be saved or lost with you!” Sometimes I spoke to them about our tormented race which had been besieged for centuries by barbarians, hunger, poverty, earthquakes, and discord. These forces wanted to put an end to her, but she was immortal. Behold how she had lived and flourished for thousands of years! . . . Thus, having Greece in their minds, these poor souls managed to persevere.
There was only one evening when I came within a hairsbreadth of betraying them. I remember it with shame: an evening by the sea in Batum, in an intimate garden strewn with coarse white pebbles and surrounded by rattans which had sprouted sinuous crimson-colored flowers. Those days I was tormented by unbearable anxiety. There was still no sign of additional boats. Would they come or wouldn’t they? Would all these souls hanging around my neck be saved? A few days earlier I had been introduced to Georgiana Barbara Nikolaevna, and this evening she invited me to this intimate garden because she saw how deeply troubled I was and felt sorry for me. She was the most beautiful woman I had ever met. No, not beautiful; something else which cannot be contained in words—eyes green and dangerously bewitching, like a snake’s; voice a shade husky, all promise, denial, and sweetness. When I looked at her, my mind grew turbid; prehuman grunts rose from my loins; deep black caverns opened inside me and disgorged primeval shaggy ancestors, who bellowed as they set eyes on Barbara Nikolaevna.
I set eyes on her as well, thinking to myself, This moment will never come again; this woman will never be found again. Countless ventures, coincidences, accidents, and fates worked for millions of years for this woman and man to be born and for them to couple on a Caucasian seashore, inside this garden with its blossoming rattans. Were we going to let this divine instant escape us?
The woman turned, half closing her eyes. “Nikolai Mikhailovich, have you come to take me away?”
I was terror-stricken. The woman had dared to say what I longed to say but dared not.
“Take you away? Where to?”
“Far from here. I’m tired of my husband. I’m suffocating here, wilting. I pity my body, Nikolai Mikhailovich, I pity my body. Come, take me away.”
I clung tightly to the chair on which I was sitting. A caique had cast anchor in front of us, and I was afraid I might leap up, seize her by the middle, and bring her on board so that we could flee. I battled to resist.
“And what about my duty, Barbara Nikolaevna, the thousands of souls waiting for me to save them?”
With a swift movement the woman undid the silk ribbon around her head; her bluish hair poured down over her shoulders. Puckering her lips with irritation, she exclaimed sarcastically, “Duty! There is only one duty, let me tell you! Only one: not to let happiness escape you—to seize it by the hair. Seize me by the hair, Nikolai Mikhailovich! No one is looking.”
I gazed at the sea. Inside me all the devils were wrestling, not a single angel. Fate stood in front of me waiting. A long moment passed. Suddenly the woman jumped up, livid.
“Too late!” she said. “You failed to accept at once, failed to seize me by the hair. You weighed the profit and loss. Too late! Now, even if yo
u accept, I won’t! Your health, Nikolai Mikhailovich! Bravo! You’re an henest little crumb, what’s known as a real pillar of society. Here’s to your health and happiness.”
Saying this, she emptied her glass of tart Armenian wine.
Now, thousands of years later in my miserable old age, I close my eyes and the rattans sprout up again, the Black Sea pounds my temples, Barbara Nikolaevna comes and sits down opposite me, not in a chair this time, but cross-legged on the white pebbles. I look at her and ask myself, Was I wrong in not seizing the divine moment by the hair?
I sigh and answer, No, and I don’t regret it.
I left the Caucasus two weeks later. The final days were extremely bitter. True enough, the ships had begun to leave with the mass of people. I saw my intervention in the realm of action bearing fruit; I could already picture these industrious Greeks throwing down roots in Macedonia and Thrace, our old lands that had been devastated under the barbarian heel. They would cover them with wheat, tobacco, and little Greeks. I should have been content. But a hidden worm was working my heart and gradually puncturing it. As yet I was unable to distinguish my new anxiety’s countenance with any clarity; I simply felt its bitterness.
Just as I was about to board ship, an old man from Pontus came up to me.
“I’m told you’re educated, boss. I’d like to ask you something if you don’t mind. The Lydians who fought in the Trojan war, were they Greeks?”
I was flabbergasted. I had never dreamed that this of all things could be a problem to torment the man.
“Greeks?” I replied. “Not at all. They were Lydians, from Asia Minor.”
The old man shook his head. “The others were right then when they told me you’d renounced our national traditions. Goodbye!”
That was the final voice I heard in the Caucasus.
Afterwards I often thought of this old man from Pontus. Gradually I began to understand that it does not matter very much what problem, whether big or small, is tormenting us; the only thing that matters is that we be tormented, that we find a ground for being tormented. In other words, that we exercise our minds in order to keep certainty from turning us into idiots, that we fight to open every closed door we find in front of us. “I cannot live without certainty,” says the person who is in a hurry to settle down, to find firm ground on which to stand, to eat without seeing the innumerable hungry, gaping mouths behind the food he devours. “I do not wish to live without uncertainty, nor can I,” cry others who do not eat with an easy conscience, do not sleep without nightmares, do not say, This world has no defects, may it remain the same forevermore! These others, God bless them, are the Lord’s salt; they keep the soul from rotting. I laughed and mocked when I heard the old man from Pontus with his comical anxiety. But now, my brother, my companion in struggle, if I could see you again I would fall into your arms!
The ship was filled with human beings uprooted from their land; I was on my way to transplant them in Greece. People, horses, oxen, kneading troughs, cradles, mattresses, holy icons, Bibles, picks, shovels—all were fleeing the Bolsheviks and Kurds and traveling toward free Greece. It is in no way shameful to say that I was deeply moved. I felt as though I were a centaur and that this ship with the great troop on it was my body from the neck down.
There was a light swell on the Black Sea; the dark indigo surge smelled like watermelon. To our left the coast and mountains of Pontus, which once upon a time had been ours; to our right, the vast sparkling sea. The Caucasus had faded into the light, but the old men sat at the stern with turned backs, unable to tear their eyes away from the beloved horizon. The Caucasus had vanished, they were a specter which had been dispelled; yet deep in the old men’s pupils they remained stationary and unsetting. It is difficult, exceedingly difficult for the soul to tear itself away from its homeland, from the mountains and seas, the beloved people, the poor little beloved house. The soul is an octopus and all these are its tentacles.
I sat at the bow on a coil of rope. Assembled around me were men and women, some from Kars, some from Sukhumi, and still other persecuted Greeks from Taigan. Their suffering had no end; each was impatient to relate it all and unburden himself. I listened, secretly admiring the endurance of the Greek race, for in the midst of their lamentations for loved ones who had perished, homes which had been burned, and the hunger and fright they had suffered, one of them would suddenly loose an indelicate joke, whereupon all the calamity would vanish, and heads would once again be lifted high. While a chubby young woman was bewailing her husband who had been killed, a colossus with a drooping coal-black mustache extended his immense paw and touched her on the shoulder.
“Stop crying. Marioritsa,” he said. “Even if only two people remained in the world—you and me, let’s say—the Greek land would fill up again with children!”
He swept his eyes over the deck.
“Do you know where the hope of the world lies, brothers? In the head, you’ll say? No, farther down! In the heart, you’ll say? No, no, farther down, brothers, farther down!”
He cast a rapid glance toward the woman.
“Eh, by God, if I wasn’t ashamed in front of the ladies, I’d show you, I would, where the hope of the world lies! . . . So stop your crying, will you!”
The women blushed; the men laughed.
“Thodoris, there’s no one comes near you,” they exclaimed. “Bless you for making us laugh.”
One man only sat off to the side and did not talk. This man did not laugh, did not relate his sufferings; he seemed reluctant to unburden himself. He had a monstrous body, bull neck, and great long paws that must have reached to his knees. His opened shirt revealed a chest covered with hair. Never had I seen a man who so closely resembled a bear.
When the others had all scattered and lain down on their tatters to go to sleep, this man remained staring at the sea, his thick neck craned forward. I went up to him, aware that a disquieting power sprang from this unmoving human bulk.
“You didn’t talk,” I began, in order to open a conversation.
He turned to look at me, then extended his hand. His bones creaked.
“Talk? To say what? To describe my suffering and find relief? I don’t want to find relief.”
Falling silent, he rose as if wishing to go away, but then he sat down again. I felt him struggling inwardly. He did not want to talk, but his heart was overflowing. Besides, night had descended and we were alone. He softened a little.
“You saw the mountains and forests in the Caucasus, didn’t you? I roamed them, all alone, for years. I was called the wild boar because I kept company with no one. I never went to the café, never went to church. As I said, I roamed the mountains and forests all alone. I devoured the mountains stone by stone. I was a quarrier, lumberjack, and charcoal-maker—naked and poor, but I was young, strong as an ox, and had no need of anyone. One day, however, I felt my strength choking me as I was climbing a mountain, and to keep myself from bursting I began to hack away at the mountain, to hew beams from the biggest pines, and build a house. I built it next to a spring—doors, windows, everything. It was ready. Men and women came from the nearby village to see it. They brought wine and food. But I just sat on a stone and looked at it. A girl came and sat down by my side. She looked at it too. And while we were both looking at it, my head went dizzy. The next morning I found myself a married man.”
He sighed.
“I found myself a married man. The dizziness passed. My mind returned from the high mountains.
“‘What are we going to eat, wife?’ I said to her. ‘I can’t feed one, how am I going to feed two? And what about the children?’
“‘Don’t worry,’ she said. ‘Let’s go to church.’
“‘What do you expect me to do in church? I’m not going.’
“‘Let’s go, I tell you.’
“We went. We crossed ourselves, felt encouraged.
“‘Now let’t go and work our field,’ said my wife.
“‘Field? What field, you idiot? S
tones, you mean!’
“‘We’ll smash the stones, crush them, make soil.’
“We went. We smashed the stones, made soil, planted our crop.
“‘Now let’s go and prune the olive trees,’ my wife said to me this time.
“‘What olive trees? Those dry sticks?’
“‘Let’s go, I tell you.’
“We went. We pruned the dry sticks. We planted, pruned, filled ourselves with bread, lined our innards with olive oil. May God sanctify my grandfather’s bones. ‘No need to fear being poor and naked,’ he used to tell me, ‘provided you have a good wife.’”
Once more he fell silent. Seizing one end of the rope, he began to sleave it with his nails, like a wildcat. I could hear his teeth gnashing in the darkness.
“And after that, after that?” I asked him, troubled.
“Enough! You expect me to describe my suffering like all those others?”
“What about your wife?”
“Enough, I tell you!”
He wedged his head between his knees, and did not speak again.
“Human tears can turn all the world’s water mills, but God’s mill they do not turn.” I was once told this in a Macedonian village by a centenarian who had squatted on the doorstep of his poor shack in order to warm himself in the sun. Love and compassion are man’s daughters, not God’s. What unbearable suffering this boat was carrying and bringing to Greece! But time, all blessings upon it, takes pity on us. Time is a sponge, and it erases. The new crop of spring grass quickly covers the tombstones, and life pantingly resumes the ascent.
The heavens were filled with stars. My beloved constellation Scorpio, with its twisted tail and red eye, issued in fury from the sea. Around me was the suffering of man, and above me the star-filled sky, mute and inhuman, full of menace. Surely all those luminous spots must have a hidden meaning. Surely this thousand-eyed Argus guarded some terrible secret. But which? I did not know. The one thing I felt deep down within me was that this secret had not the slightest connection with man’s heart. It seemed that two separate kingdoms existed in the cosmos: the kingdom of man and the kingdom of God.