Report to Grego (12 page)

Such were the flames in which I spent my childhood. The many vicissitudes of the saints and heroes struck me as man's simplest, most realistic course. But these flames joined with still others, greater ones, that were burning Megalo Kastro and Crete in that era of slavery.

Megalo Kastro in those olden heroic times was not a band of houses, shops and alleyways huddled together along a Cretan shore line in front of an incessantly angry sea. Its inhabitants were not a disorderly, headless (or multiheaded) troop of men, women, and children who dissipated all their efforts in the daily concerns: food, children, women. A strict unwritten order governed them. No one lifted a rebellious hand against the harsh law above him. Someone over his head gave the orders. The entire city was a garrison, each inhabitant himself a garrison eternally besieged, and as his captain he had a saint, Saint Minas, the defender of Megalo Kastro. Astride a gray horse, holding a red lance pointed at the sky, the saint remained motionless all day in his diminutive church, upon his icon—fierce-eyed, sunburned, with a short curly beard. All day long, weighed down by the silver ex-votos—hands, feet, eyes, hearts—which the Kastrians had attached to him so that his grace might heal them, he remained immobile, pretending to be only a picture: paint on a piece of board. But as soon as night fell and the Christians gathered in their homes and the lights began going out one by one, he pushed aside paints and silver offerings with a sweep of his hand, spurred his horse, and went out for a ride through the Greek quarters, went out on patrol. He closed whatever doors the Christians had forgetfully left open, he whistled to night owls to return to their homes, he stood outside the doorway and listened absorbedly, with satisfaction, whenever he heard singing. A wedding must be taking place, he murmured. A blessing on the happy couple, and may they bear children to swell the ranks of Christendom. Afterwards he made a tour of the ramparts which
gird Megalo Kastro, and at cockcrow, before daybreak, spurred his horse, entered the church with a bound, and climbed onto his icon. Once more he put on a show of indifference. But his mount had perspired, its mouth and flanks were covered with froth, and when Mr. Haralámbis, the verger, came first thing in the morning to dust and polish the candlesticks, he saw Saint Minas's horse drenched in sweat. This did not surprise him, however, for he knew (everyone knew) that the saint patrolled the streets the entire night. Whenever the Turks sharpened their knives and prepared to fall upon the Christians, Saint Minas sprang from his icon once more in order to protect the citizens of Megalo Kastro. The Turks did not see him, but they heard his horse whinnying, recognized the sound, saw the sparks thrown by the horseshoes as they struck the cobbles, and burrowed panic-stricken into their homes.

A few years before, however, they had actually seen him with their eyes. They were preparing another massacre, but Saint Minas had charged toward the Turkish quarter upon his horse. Just as he rounded a street corner he was observed by the half-insane hodja-Moustafás, who took to his heels and began screaming, “Allah! Allah! Saint Minas is descending upon us!” The Turks opened their doors a crack and peeped out. As they spied the saint with his golden armor, his curly gray beard, his red lance, their knees gave way beneath them and they resheathed their knives.

For the Kastrians, Saint Minas was not simply holy, he was their captain. They called him Captain Minas and secretly brought him their arms to be blessed. Even my father lighted candles for him. God only knows what he must have said to him and what reproaches he heaped upon him for delaying so long to liberate Crete.

He was Christendom's captain. Hassan Bey, the Christians' bloodthirsty antagonist, was his neighbor; his sanctum butted against the church. One night he heard knocking on the wall just above his bed. He understood. It was Saint Minas, threatening him because on that very day he had beaten a Christian almost to death. Captain Minas had grown angry on this account and was knocking now against his wall. Raising his fist, Hassan Bey began to strike the wall in his own right. “Hey there, neighbor,” he shouted, “you're right. Yes, by my faith, you're right. But stop knocking down my wall and I'll bring you two goatskins of oil for
your watch lamp and twenty okes of wax each year to appease you. We're neighbors; let's not quarrel!” And ever since then Hassan Bey (the dog!) sent his servant each year on Saint Minas's name day, the eleventh of November, and had him unload two goatskins of oil and twenty okes of wax in the churchyard. Saint Minas never knocked on his wall again.

There is a kind of flame in Crete—let us call it “soul”—something more powerful than either life or death. There is pride, obstinacy, valor, and together with these something else inexpressible and imponderable, something which makes you rejoice that you are a human being, and at the same time tremble.

When I was a child, the Cretan air smelled of the Turk's exhalation, the breath of the wild beast. A Turkish yataghan hung suspended over every head. Many years later, when I saw “Toledo in the Storm,” I understood what kind of air I inhaled when a child and what angels hung like meteors over Crete.

A
ugust was the month I liked best in my childhood, the month I still like best. After all, it brings us grapes and figs, cantaloupes and watermelons. I christened it Saint August. Here is my protector, I told myself; to him I shall address my prayers. When I desire anything, I shall ask Saint August, and he will ask God, and God will give me what I want. Once I took some watercolors and painted him. He proved to be very much like my peasant grandfather—the same ruddy cheeks, the same broad smile—but he was barefooted in a wine press, treading grapes. His legs up to the knees, even as far as the thighs, I painted red with must; his head I crowned with vine leaves. Something was missing, however. What? Regarding him carefully, I placed two horns on his head amid the vine leaves, because the kerchief my grandfather used to wear had two large hornlike knots, one to the right and one to the left.

The moment I drew August and established his features, my confidence in him became established inside me, and each year I waited for him to come and vintage the vineyards of Crete, tread the harvest, and perform his miracle of extracting wine from grapes. For I remember being greatly tormented by this mystery. How could grapes become wine? Only Saint August had the power to perform such a miracle. Oh, if only I might meet him by chance one day in the vineyard we had outside of Megalo Kastro, and ask
him to tell me the secret; I could not understand this miracle. The unripe fruit turned into grapes, the grapes into wine, men drank the wine and became drunk. Why? Why did they become drunk? All these seemed frightening mysteries to me. Once when I asked my father, he knitted his brows and replied, “Mind your own business!”

It was in August also that the grapes were laid on the cloth-covered tracts to be dried by the sun and turned into raisins. One year we had gone to our vineyard and were staying in our little country cottage. The air was fragrant, the earth burning, the grasshoppers burning too. They seemed to be sitting on live coals.

It was August fifteenth, the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin, and the workers were on holiday. My father sat at the foot of an olive tree smoking. The nearby neighbors, who had laid out their grapes as well, sat next to him smoking in silence. They seemed worried. Everyone had riveted his eyes upon a tiny, darkly sinister cloud which had appeared mutely at the horizon and begun to advance. I was sitting near my father like the others, and I too watched the cloud. I liked it. Fluffy, colored a dull lead-gray, it grew continually bigger, all the while changing its face and body. Sometimes it resembled a full goatskin, sometimes a black-feathered vulture, sometimes the elephant I had seen in a picture; it swung its trunk back and forth, trying to find the earth below and touch it. A warm breeze blew; the leaves on the olive tree shuddered. One of the neighbors jumped to his feet and extended his arm toward the advancing cloud.

“Devil take it!” he grumbled. “Call me a liar if it doesn't bring us a downpour.”

“You'd better eat your words,” a pious old man said to him. “The Virgin won't permit it. This is her day.”

My father grunted but did not breathe a word. He believed in the Virgin but had doubts about her ability to command clouds.

While they were talking, the sky became completely overcast and the first large, warm drops began to fall. The clouds drew close to the ground; yellow lightning flashes tore mutely across the sky.

“Holy Virgin!” cried all the neighbors. “Help!”

They all jumped up and scattered in every direction, each racing toward his vineyard, where his entire year's supply of raisins was laid out. The air grew continually darker as they ran, black tresses suspended themselves from the clouds, and the squall broke out in
earnest. The drain ditches overflowed, the roads began to run like rivers. Mournful voices rose from every vineyard. Some cursed, others called upon the Virgin to take pity on them and intervene. Finally, from every vineyard, behind the olive trees, came cries of lamentation.

I slipped away from our cottage and began to run beneath the downpour, transported by a strange joy resembling intoxication. It was the first time I made the horrible discovery that as soon as great calamities occur, an inexplicable, inhuman joy takes possession of me. When I first saw a fire, the time my aunt Kalliópe's house burned down, I hopped and danced before the flames until someone caught me by the nape of the neck and tossed me out of the way. And when our teacher Krasákis died, I had to force myself not to laugh. It was as though my teacher and my aunt's house had been weights removed from around my neck, relieving me. Fire, deluge, and death struck me as extremely friendly ghosts. I felt I was a ghost from the same family. We were demons one and all, toiling to relieve the earth of its houses and population.

I reached the road, but it was a racing torrent and I could not go across. I just stood there and looked as the half-dried grapes—the whole year's labor—flowed away with the water by the armful, racing toward the sea to perish. The lamentations grew louder. Several women had plunged knee-deep in the water, where they struggled to preserve a few raisins. Others, their wimples removed, stood at the edge of the road pulling out their hair.

I was drenched to the bone. Fighting to hide my joy, I ran back to the house, anxious to see how my father had reacted. Would he be weeping? Would he be cursing or crying out? As I passed the drying area, I saw that all of our grapes were gone.

I found him standing motionless on the threshold biting his mustache. My mother stood behind him; she was weeping.

“Father,” I cried, “our grapes are gone!”

“We're not gone,” he answered. “Shut up!”

I never forgot that moment. I believe that it served as a great lesson in the crises of my life. I always remembered my father standing calmly, motionlessly on the threshold, neither cursing, entreating, nor weeping. Motionless, he stood watching the disaster and—alone among all the neighbors—preserved his human dignity.

M
ISFORTUNE
is welcome when it comes unaccompanied, we say in Crete, for in truth only rarely does it come unaccompanied. The following day the sky was completely clear. The day before it had had its fling and decimated mankind; today it was laughing. The proprietors toured their vineyards. All the grapes were lost; fistful after fistful could still be seen buried in the mud. At exactly noon my father returned in haste from Kastro. One of his friends had arrived early in the morning, whispered something in his ear, and left. Word had spread that Christians had killed some important aga in a certain village. The Turks were incensed, the Christians had armed themselves. We were going to have another uprising. The Turks were racing to Megalo Kastro to find safety behind the Venetian walls.

I was walking through our vineyard with my mother and sister, collecting the last grapes that still hung on the vines. The heat had reached its zenith, the air was seething. Suddenly we heard shouts and braying in the road. A great tumultuous crowd was passing. The donkeys were laden with kneading troughs, kettles, and Turkish women. Behind them the turbaned men sloshed hurriedly through the mud, some barefooted, some with boots lacking soles. Bellowing, not speaking, they raced toward Kastro.

“Turkish dogs!” growled my mother. Seizing us beneath the armpits, she took us inside.

I hugged her knees.

“Why are they running, Mother?” I asked. “What do they want? Why are you shivering?”

She stroked my hair.

“Oh Lord, what your eyes are about to see, my child! It's a terrible thing to be born a Cretan.”

We opened the window a crack and looked out. The horde
receded into the distance, then disappeared behind the olive trees. The road became quiet.

“Let's go,” said my father. “Quickly. We've got to arrive before sunset.”

My mother seized our hands. My father took his revolver from beneath his pillow. He examined it. It was loaded. Thrusting it in his pocket, he followed behind us.

The sun was about to set as we passed through the fortified gate. But in the lanes it seemed that night had already fallen. People were running hastily, doors being slammed, mothers appearing and calling their children to come in from the streets. Our Turkish neighbor Fatome saw us and did not say good evening.

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?”