I stood off to one side and listened. Wars, assaults, massacres. Megalo Kastro vanished, the mountains of Crete towered before me. The air filled with roaring; roaring from Christians, roaring from Turks. Silver-handled pistols flashed before my eyes. It was Crete and Turkey battling. “Freedom!” cried the one. “Death!” answered the other, and my mind filled with blood.
One day the old captain squinted his eyes at me and weighed me in his glance.
“Crows don’t hatch doves!” he said. “Do you understand, my little pallikári?”
I blushed.
“No, Captain,” I replied.
“Your father is a pallikári. Like it or not, you’ll be a pállikari too.”
Like it or not! Those heavy words hammered themselves home in my mind. Crete was speaking through the old captain’s mouth. I did not understand his words at the time; only much later did I realize that I had a superior force in me, a force not my own, and that this force was governing me. Though I was ready to give up many times, this force did not let me. What force? Crete!
Indeed, even as a child I managed to conquer fear—out of self-respect: the idea that I was a Cretan. Also because I was afraid of my father. At first I dared not venture into our yard at night. A tiny, glittery-eyed devil was stealthily spying on me in every corner, behind every vase, and at the brim of the well. But my father used to give me a rap, thrust me into the yard, and bolt the door behind me.
The sole fear I had not succeeded in conquering up to that point was the fear of earthquakes. Megalo Kastro often shook to its very foundations. A rumble sounded below in the world’s cellars, the earth’s crust creaked, and the poor people above went out of their minds. Whenever the wind subsided abruptly, not a leaf moved, and a hair-raising hush settled over everything, the inhabitants of Kastro rushed out of their homes or shops and glanced first at the sky, then at the ground. They did not say a word lest the evil hear and come, but to themselves they thought fearfully, There’s going to be an earthquake, and they made the sign of the cross.
One day our teacher, old Paterópoulos, tried to set our minds at ease. “There is nothing to an earthquake, really,” he explained. “Don’t be afraid of it. It’s just a bull beneath the ground. He bellows, butts the earth with his horns, and the ground shakes. The ancient Cretans called him the Minotaur. There’s really nothing to it at all.”
But after being consoled in this way by our teacher, we found that our terror had increased all the more. The earthquake was a living thing in other words, a beast with horns; it bellowed and shook beneath our feet, and it ate people.
“Why doesn’t Saint Minas kill him?” asked chubby little Stratís, the sexton’s son.
But the teacher became angry. “Don’t talk nonsense!” he shouted, whereupon he left his desk and twisted Stratis’s ear to make him keep quiet.
One day, however, as I was racing through the Turkish quarter at top speed because the smell the Turks exuded disgusted me, the earth began to shake again, the windows and doors rattled, and I heard a great clatter, as though from collapsing houses. I stood petrified with fear in the middle of the narrow lane, my eyes riveted to the ground. I was waiting for it to crack and the bull to emerge and eat me, when suddenly a vaulted door swung open, revealing a garden, and out darted three young Turkish girls, barefooted and unkempt, their faces uncovered. Quaking with fear, they scattered in all directions, uttering shrill cries like swallows. The entire lane smelled of musk. Ever since that moment earthquakes began to display a different face for me, one which endured my entire life. It was no longer the fierce face of the bull. They stopped bellowing and began to chirp like birds. Earthquakes and the little Turks became one. This was the first time I saw a dark force merge with the light and become luminous.
Many times in my life, sometimes voluntarily, sometimes involuntarily, I placed an expedient mask over terrors in this same way—over love, over virtue, over illness. This is how I made life bearable.
8
SAINTS’ LEGENDS
FREEDOM was my first great desire. The second, which remains hidden within me to this day, tormenting me, was the desire for sanctity. Hero together with saint: such is mankind’s supreme model. Even in my childhood I had fixed this model firmly above me in the azure sky.
In those days everybody in Megalo Kastro had roots deeply sunk in both earth and heaven. That was why, after I had learned to read syllables and form words, the first thing I had my mother buy for me was a legend, the Holy Epistle. “God’s manifestation is a marvelous miracle! A stone fell out of heaven . . .” and this stone broke, and written inside was found: “Woe to him who uses oil or drinks wine on Wednesdays and Fridays!” Clutching the Holy Epistle and holding it high above me like a flag, I knocked on our neighbors’ doors each Wednesday and Friday—on Madame Penelope’s, Madame Victoria’s, on old lady Katerina Delivasilaina’s. Beside myself with fervor, I bounded into their houses, made a beeline for the kitchen, smelled what was being cooked, and alas the day I caught the scent of meat or fish. I waved the Holy Epistle menacingly and shouted, “Woe to you, woe to you!” whereupon the terror-stricken neighbors caressed me and implored me to be still. And one day when I questioned my mother and learned that I had nursed on Wednesdays and Fridays when I was an infant, and had therefore drunk milk on those holy days, I broke into wailing and lamentation.
Selling all my toys to my friends, I purchased the lives of the saints in popular, pamphlet-sized editions. Each evening I sat on my little stool amid the basil and marigolds of our courtyard and read out loud all the various ordeals the saints had endured in order to save their souls. The neighbors congregated around me with their sewing or work—some knitted socks, others ground coffee or cleaned mustard stalks. They listened, and little by little our courtyard began to ring with lamentations for the saints’ sufferings and torments. When the canary, suspended beneath the acacia, heard the reading and lamentations, it threw its head back drunkenly and began to warble. With its spices and the trellis overhead, the little garden—so sequestered, warm, and fragrant-seemed like an epitáphios surrounded by women’s keening: like Christ’s flower-canopied tomb. Passers-by hesitated and said to themselves, Someone has died in there. They went to my father to bring him the sad news, but he shook his head and told them, “It’s nothing. Just my son trying to convert the neighbors.”
Distant seas unfolded in my childish imagination, boats cast off furtively, monasteries glittered amid rocky crags, lions carried water to the ascetics. My mind brimmed with date trees and camels, strumpets fought to enter the church, fiery chariots rose into the sky, the deserts warbled with women’s clogs and laughter, the Tempter came like a kindly Santa Claus and brought gifts of food, gold, and females to the eremites. But they had their eyes riveted on God, and the Tempter vanished.
Be hard, be patient, scorn happiness, have no fear of death, look beyond this world to the supreme good: such was the insuppressible voice which rose from these popular editions and instructed my childish heart. And together with this came a vehement thirst for furtive departures and distant voyages, for wanderings filled with martyrdom.
I read the saints’ legends, listened to fairy tales, overheard conversations, and inside me all this was transformed—deformed—into dazzling lies. Assembling my schoolmates or the children of the neighborhood, I passed these lies off as my own adventures. I told them I had just returned from the desert. I had a lion there, and I’d loaded two jugs on his back and we had gone together to the fountain to fetch water; or that outside our door the other day I had seen an angel who plucked out one of his plumes and gave it to me. I even had the plume in my hand ready to show them (we had killed a white rooster at home the other day and I had removed a long white feather). I said in addition that I planned to make the feather into a pen and write.
“Write? Write what?”
“Lives of the saints. My granddad’s life.”
“Was your granddad a saint? Didn’t you tell us he fought the Turks?”
“Isn’t that the same thing?” I answered, sharpening the tip of the feather with my clasp knife in order to make it into a pen.
One day in school we read in our primer that a child fell down a well and found himself in a fabulous city with gilded churches, flowering orchards, and shops full of cakes, candies, and toy muskets. My mind caught fire. Running home, I tossed my satchel in the yard and threw myself upon the brim of the well so that I could fall inside and enter the fabulous city. My mother was sitting by the courtyard window combing my little sister’s hair. Catching sight of me, she uttered a cry, ran, and seized me by the smock just as I was kicking the ground in order to hurl myself headforemost into the well.
Every Sunday when I went to church, I saw an icon (placed low on the iconostasis) which showed Christ rising from the grave and hovering in the air, a white banner in His hand. On the bottom His guards were fallen on their backs and staring at Him in terror. I had heard many stories about Cretan uprisings and about wars, I’d been told that my paternal grandfather was a great military leader, and as I gazed at the icon, I gradually convinced myself that Christ was indeed my grandfather. I collected my friends around the icon, therefore, and said to them, “Look at my grandfather. He’s holding the banner and going to war. And see there on the bottom? The Turks, sprawled on their backs.”
What I said was neither true nor false; it overstepped the limits of logic and ethics in order to hover in a lighter, freer air. If someone had accused me of telling lies, I would have wept from shame. The feather in my hands had ceased to be a rooster’s; the angel had given it to me. I was not telling lies. I had an unshakable faith that the Christ with the banner was my grandfather and the terror-stricken guards below were the Turks.
Much, much later, when I started writing poems and novels, I came to understand that this secret elaboration is termed “creation.”
One day while reading the legend of Saint John of the Hut, I jumped to my feet and made a decision: “I shall go to Mount Athos to become a saint!” Without turning to look at my mother (Saint John of the Hut had not turned to look at his mother), I strode over the threshold and out into the street. Taking the most outlying lanes and running all the way for fear that one of my uncles might see me and take me hack home, I reached the harbor, where I approached a caique, the one which was ready to weigh anchor first. A sun-roasted seaman was leaning over the iron bitt and struggling to undo the cable. Trembling with emotion, I went up to him.
“Can you take me with you, Captain?”
“Where do you want to go?”
“Mount Athos.”
“Where? Mount Athos? To do what”’
“Become a saint.”
The skipper shook with laughter. Clapping his hands as though shooing away a hen, he shouted, “Home! Home!”
I ran home in disgrace, crawled under the sofa, and never breathed a word to anyone. Today is the first time I admit it: my initial attempt to become a saint miscarried.
My misery lasted for years, perhaps even to this day. I was born, after all, on Friday the eighteenth of February, the day of souls, a very holy day indeed, and the old midwife clutched me in her hands, brought me close to the light, and looked at me with great care. She seemed to see some kind of mystic signs on me. Lifting me high, she said, “Mark my words, one day this child will become a bishop.”
When in the course of time I learned of the midwife’s prophecy, I believed it, so well did it match my own most secret yearnings. A great responsibility fell upon me then, and I no longer wished to do anything that a bishop would not have done. Much later, when I saw what bishops actually do, I changed my mind. Thenceforth, in order to deserve the sainthood I so craved, I wished to avoid all things that bishops do.
9
LONGING FOR FLIGHT
THE DAYS were slow-moving and monotonous in that era. People did not read newspapers; the radio, telephone, and cinema were still unborn, and life rolled along noiselessly—serious and sparing of words. Each person was a closed world, each house both locked and bolted. The goodmen within grew older day by day. They caroused in whispers lest they be overheard, or they quarreled secretly, or fell mutely ill and died. Then the door opened for the remains to emerge, and the four walls momentarily revealed their secret. But the door closed again immediately, and life began noiselessly to grind away once more.
On the annual holidays—Christ’s birth, death, or resurrection-all the people dressed, donned their jewelry, and forsook their houses to pour out of every lane. They were headed for the cathedral, which awaited them with gaping doors. Its great candlesticks and chandeliers had been lighted, and the knight and master of the house, Saint Minas, stood on the threshold to receive his dear friends the residents of Megalo Kastro. Hearts opened, misfortunes were put out of mind, names forgotten; all became one. They were slaves no longer. Disputes and Turks did not exist, nor did death. Inside the church, with the mounted Captain Minas as leader, everyone felt part of an immortal army.
Life was deep and stationary in those years. Laughter was minimal then in Megalo Kastro, tears ample, and the undivulged heartaches more ample still. The solid citizens were serious, always looking after their own affairs, the rabble docile: they rose with respect whenever a rich man passed. But all were united by a single shared passion which made them forget their cares and privations and brought them together in brotherhood. They did not divulge this passion, however, because they feared the Turk.
And lo! One day the still waters began to move. A steamship all bedecked with flags was seen to enter the harbor one morning. Those Kastrians who happened to be at the waterfront stood with gaping jaws. What was this multicolored, multiplumed, flag-bedecked boat which had slipped between the two Venetian towers at the harbor’s mouth? It was coming close. Saints preserve us! This one said it was a flock of birds, that one, a group dressed for a masquerade, and still another, a floating garden, one of those that Sinbad the Sailor had viewed in warm faraway seas. At that point a huge wild voice cried from the harbor café, “Welcome to the pelerines!” The onlookers suddenly all took a deep breath; they had understood. The boat had come closer meanwhile. Now its cargo was clearly visible: gaudily dressed women, with hats, with plumes, with colorful pelerines, their cheeks dabbed with poppy-colored rouge. At the sight of them the older Cretans crossed themselves and murmured, “Get thee behind me, Satan,” spitting onto their chests. What business did the hussies have here? This was celebrated Megalo Kastro; it wasn’t going to stand for any such abominations!
An hour later scarlet programs had been pasted to all the walls and the city was informed that these people were a troupe of actors and actresses. It seems they had come to entertain the Kastrians.
To this day I still cannot understand how the miracle happened, but my father took me by the hand and said, “Let’s go to the theater and see what the devil this is.” Night had already fallen. He held me by the hand and we proceeded harborwards to a poor section which was unknown to me. There were huge sheepfolds and only a few houses. One of the sheepfolds was brightly illuminated. The sound of a clarinet and bass drum came from within. A ship’s sail hung over the entrance; you raised it to go inside. Entering, we found benches, stools, and chairs with seated men and women gazing at a curtain in front of them and waiting for it to open. A gentle breeze came from the sea, the air was fragrant, the men and women talking, laughing, and munching peanuts or pumpkin seeds.
“Which is the theater?” asked my father (he too was going to this kind of fête for the very first time). He was shown the curtain. We sat down as well, therefore, and pinned our eyes on this curtain. Written at the top of the canvas in large capitals was “Schiller’s The Brigands, a most entertaining play,” and just below, “No matter what you see, do not’be disturbed. It’s all imaginary.”
“What does ‘imaginary’ mean?” I asked my father.
“Hot air,” he answered.
My father had his own problems. He turned to ask his neighbor
who these brigands were, but too late. Three raps were heard, and the curtain opened. I stared in goggle-eyed amazement. A paradise had unfolded before me: male and female angels came and went, dressed in gaudy costumes, with plumes, with gold, their cheeks colored white and orange. They raised their voices and shouted, but I did not understand; they became angry, but I did not know why. Then two hulking giants suddenly made their entrance. It seems they were brothers, and they began to argue and hurl insults and pursue each other with intent to kill.
My father pricked up his ears and listened, grumbling with dissatisfaction. He squirmed on his chair; he was sitting on hot coals. Drawing out his handkerchief, he wiped away the sweat which had begun to flow from his brow. But when he finally realized that the two gangling beanstalks were brothers at odds, he jumped to his feet in a frenzy.
“What kind of buffoonery is this?” he said in a loud voice. “Let’s go home!”
He grabbed my arm and we left, overturning two or three chairs in our haste.
Putting his hand on my shoulder, he shook me. “Don’t ever set foot in a theater again, you wretch. Do you hear? Because if you do, I’ll tan your hide!”
That was my first acquaintance with the theater.
A warm breeze blew; my mind sprouted grass, my entrails filled with anemones. Spring came with her fiancé Saint George mounted on a white steed, it left, summer came, and the Blessed Virgin reclined upon the fruited earth, that she too might rest after bearing such a son. Saint Dimítris arrived on a sorrel horse in the middle of the rains, dragging autumn behind him crowned with ivy and shriveled vine leaves. Winter pressed down upon us. At home (when my father was absent) my mother, sister, and I lighted the brazier and sat around it roasting chestnuts or chickpeas on the embers. We were waiting for Christ to be born, so that my rosy-cheeked grandfather could come with the roast piglet wrapped in lemon leaves. This is exactly how we imagined winter: like my grandfather, with black boots, white mustachios, and holding a roast suckling pig in its hands.