Report to Grego (14 page)

Within the commanding Naxiot citadel which had been inhabited for centuries now by the Frankish conquerors was the celebrated French school run by Catholic priests. My father and I had climbed to it one day. He gazed at it for some time, then shook his head.

“A boy can get a fine education here, but the teachers are Catholic priests, the devil take them! You might turn Catholic.”

Though he did not mention the school again, I was aware that the idea was pricking him and that he did not know what decision
to make. After supper on the same day that Stella had alerted me, my father took me with him for a walk in the orchard. The moon had risen; everything was tranquil and fragrant.

For quite some time he did not speak. Finally, when it was the hour for us to return to the house, he halted and said, “The revolution in Crete will be a long one. I'm going back there; I can't let my fellow Christians fight while I stroll in orchards. Every night I see your grandfather in my sleep, and he scolds me. I have to go. But meanwhile you mustn't lose any time. I want you to become a man.”

He fell silent again, took a few steps, then halted once more.

“Do you understand?” he asked me. “A man—that means useful to your homeland. Too bad you were born for studies and not for arms, but unfortunately there's nothing to be done about it. That's your road; follow it. Understand? Educate yourself in order to help Crete gain her freedom. Let that be your goal. Otherwise, to the devil with education! I don't want you to become a teacher, monk, or a wise Solomon. Get that clear! I've made up my mind, now you make up yours. If you can't help Crete either through arms or letters, you'd do better to lie down and die.”

“I'm afraid of the Catholic fathers,” I said.

“So am I. The true man fears, but conquers his fear. I have faith in you.”

He reflected for a moment, then corrected himself. “No, I don't have faith in you, I have faith in the blood which flows in your veins—the blood of Crete. Ready now, cross yourself, clench your fists, and on Monday, God willing, we'll go to register you with the Catholics.”

It was raining on the day my father and I began the climb to the citadel—a sparse autumn drizzle which dimmed the streets. Behind us the sea was sighing. A gentle breeze kept shanking the leaves from the trees; they fell one by one, yellow and brown, and adorned the wet ascent. The clouds raced over our heads, pursued by a strong wind which must have been blowing up above. I raised my head and gazed insatiably as they ran, joined, separated, and as some let down long gray fringes in an effort to touch the earth. Ever since my childhood I had loved to lie on my back in our yard and watch the clouds. Every so often a bird winged by, a crow, swallow, or dove, and I identified with it so completely that I
felt the warmth of its breast in my open palm. “Marghí, I think your son's going to become a dreamer and visionary,” our neighbor Madame Penelope said one day to my mother. “He's always looking at the clouds.”

“Don't worry, Penelope,” my mother answered her, “life will come along and make him lower his gaze.”

But it still had not come, and on this day I kept admiring the clouds as I climbed to the citadel. I stumbled and slipped constantly. My father gripped my shoulder as though wishing to steady me.

“Forget the clouds. Keep your eyes on the stones beneath you if you don't want to fall and kill yourself.”

A young, withered-looking girl emerged from the vaulted doorway of a large half-crumbling house. She too gazed at the sky. Extremely pale and emaciated, with a face characterized by great nobility, she was tightly wrapped in a ragged shawl and shivering. Afterwards I learned that she belonged to one of the celebrated Catholic families of ruined nobility, all dukes and countesses, who centuries before had conquered Naxos and built this citadel to be their seat—built it at the city's highest point, whence they could look down and watch the Orthodox plebeians toiling for their benefit along the harborfront and in the plain beyond. But now they had fallen into decline, were paupers, their palaces in ruins; and their noble great-great-granddaughters starved and grew pale. These girls were unable to find husbands because the men of their class had lost their vigor; they either lacked all desire to marry or were unable to support a wife and children. To marry into humble Orthodox stock, on the other hand, was something these noble ladies would never deign to do. They held their pride forever high, for pride was all they had. . . . The girl looked at the sky for a moment, shook her head, stepped inside again.

I remember everything, absolutely everything that happened as I climbed the citadel that day in order to enter the Catholic school. I can still see the cat sitting on a doorstep in the rain; it was white with orange patches. Also a young barefooted girl holding a brazier of burning coals and running, her face bright red from the reflections.

“Here we are,” said my father. He raised his arm and knocked on the huge door.

This was the first and perhaps the most decisive leap in my intellectual life. A magic portal opened inside my mind and conducted me into an astonishing world. Until this time Crete and Greece had been the confined arena in which my struggling soul was jammed; now the world broadened, the divisions of humanity multiplied, and my adolescent breast creaked in an effort to contain them all. Before this moment I had divined but had never known with such positiveness that the world is extremely large and that suffering and toil are the companions and fellow warriors not only of the Cretan, but of every man. Above all, only now did I begin to have a presentiment of the great secret: that by means of poetry all this suffering and effort could be transformed into dream; no matter how much of the ephemeral existed, poetry could immortalize it by turning it into song. Only two or three primitive passions had governed me until this time: fear, the struggle to conquer fear, and the yearning for freedom. But now two new passions were kindled inside me: beauty and the thirst for learning. I wanted to read and learn, to see distant lands, to have personal experience of suffering and joy. The world was larger than Greece, the world's suffering was larger than our suffering, and the yearning for freedom was not the exclusive prerogative of the Cretan, it was the eternal struggle of all mankind. Crete did not vanish from my mind, however. Instead, the entire world unfurled within me to become one gigantic Crete which was oppressed by all sorts of Turks but continually leaping to its feet and seeking liberty. In this way, converting the entire world into Crete, I was able in the early years of adolescence to feel the suffering and pain of all mankind.

This French school had students gathered from the whole of Greece. Since I was a Cretan and Crete was at that time fighting the Turks, I considered it my duty not to disgrace my homeland. I had a responsibility to be first in my class. This conviction, which I believe sprang not from individual pride but from a sense of national obligation, increased my powers, and in no time I surpassed my classmates—no, not I, but Crete. Thus the months slipped by in what was for me a previously unheard-of intoxication, a drunken desire to learn and make progress, to pursue the bluebird which (as I afterwards discovered) is called Spirit.

So audacious did my mind become, that one day I made the
harum-scarum decision that next to every word in the French dictionary I would write the Greek equivalent. This labor took me months, requiring the aid of various other dictionaries, and when I finally finished and the entire French dictionary had been translated, I took it and proudly showed it to Père Laurent, the school's director. He was a learned Catholic priest, reticent, with gray eyes, a bitter smile, and a broad beard half white, half blond. Taking the dictionary, he leafed through it, looked at me with admiration, and placed his hand on my head as though wishing to bless me.

“What you've done, my young Cretan,” he said, “shows that one day you will become an important man. You are fortunate in having found your road while so young. Scholarship—that is your road. God bless you.”

Filled with pride, I ran as well to the assistant director, Père Lelièvre, a well-fed, fun-loving monk with playful eyes, who used to laugh, tell jokes, and play with us. Each weekend he took us on an excursion to one of the school's country orchards. There, freed from Père Laurent, we wrestled all together, laughed, ate fruit, rolled in the grass, and relieved ourselves of the week's burdens.

I ran, therefore, to find Père Lelièvre and show him my achievement. I found him in the courtyard watering a row of lilies. Taking the dictionary, he turned its pages over very, very slowly and looked at them. The more he looked the more inflamed his features became. Suddenly he lifted the dictionary and hurled it in my face.

“Shame on you!” he screamed. “Are you a boy or a doddering old graybeard? What is this old man's work you've wasted your time on? Instead of laughing, playing, and looking through the window at the girls who pass, you sit like a dotard and translate dictionaries! Away with you—out of my sight! Take it from me that if you follow this road, you'll never amount to anything—never! You'll become some miserable round-shouldered little teacher with spectacles. If you're really a Cretan, burn this damnable dictionary and bring me the ashes. Then I'll give you my blessing. Think it over and act. Away with you!”

I went away completely confused. Who was right, what was I to do? Which of the two roads was correct? This question tortured me for years, and when I finally discovered which road was the correct one, my hair had turned gray. Like Buridan's ass, my soul
vacillated indecisively between Père Laurent and Père Lelièvre. I looked at the dictionary with the Greek words written ever so diminutively in the margin in red ink, and as I remembered Père Lelièvre's advice, my heart broke in two. No, I did not have the courage to burn it and bring him the ashes. Many years later, when I finally began to understand, I did throw it in the fire. But I did not collect the ashes, for Père Lelièvre had died long since.

Immediately after my father put me in school and saw me settled, he boarded a caique and departed secretly for Crete in order to fight. Once he sent me a succinct note on paper discolored by gunpowder:

I'm doing my duty, fighting the Turks. You fight too: stand your ground and don't let those Catholics put ideas into your head. They're dogs, just like the Turks. You're from Crete, don't forget. Your mind isn't your own, it belongs to Crete. Sharpen it as much as you can, so that one day you can use it to help liberate Crete. Since you can't help with arms, why not with your mind? It too is a musket. Do you understand what I'm asking of you? Say yes! That's all for today, tomorrow, and always. Do not disgrace me!

I
felt the whole of Crete upon my shoulders. If I failed to know my lessons perfectly, to understand a problem in arithmetic, to come out first in the examinations, Crete would be disgraced. I lacked boyhood's insouciance, freshness, and levity. When I saw my classmates laugh and play, I admired them. I should have liked to laugh and play also, but Crete was warring and in danger. Most terrible of all was the fact that teachers and students no longer addressed me by name; they called me “the Cretan,” and this was an incessant and even more oppressive reminder of my obligation.

As to turning Catholic, I had no fears. Not because I comprehended which religion was the truest, but because of another factor which, though it seems insignificant, influenced my youthful soul more deeply than any theological doctrine. Every morning we had compulsory mass in the Catholic chapel, a tiny bare room in the center of the school building, frightfully hot in summer, frightfully cold in winter, with two colored statues of plaster, one
depicting Christ and the other the Virgin. Abundant clusters of white lilies stood on the High Altar in tall glass vases. These were not attended to often enough. The lilies remained for days in the same water and became so slimy that when I entered the chapel each morning their smell nearly made me vomit. Once, I remember, I fainted. Thus little by little these rotted lilies and the Catholic Church joined in me indissolubly, and ever since, the thought of turning Catholic has made me nauseous.

Nevertheless, the moment arrived (even today I recall it with shame) when I was on the verge of betraying my faith. Why? What devil prodded me? How cunning, how patient this inner devil must be in order to lie in wait behind our virtues, himself assuming the features of virtue, and be certain that sooner or later, without fail, his hour will come!

And indeed, one day his hour did come. The cardinal who inspected Catholic schools in the Levant arrived one morning from Rome. He was wearing a black silk habit with scarlet lining, a broad-brimmed scarlet biretta, sheer scarlet stockings, and had on his finger a large ring set with a scarlet stone. The air around him beamed and filled with fragrance; the moment he made his appearance and stood before us, we were sure he was a monstrous exotic flower which had at that very instant issued from paradise. Lifting his chubby, pure white hand, the one with the gold ring, he blessed us. We all felt a mysterious force descend from the top of our heads down to our very heels, as though we had drunk vintage wine, and our brains became colored deep scarlet.

Père Laurent must have told him about me, because as he was leaving us, he signaled me to follow him. We went up to his room. He had me sit down on a stool at his feet.

“Would you like to come with me?” he inquired in a voice which seemed as sweet as honey.

“Where?” I asked in astonishment. “I'm a Cretan.”

The cardinal laughed. Opening a box, he took out a caramel and placed it in my mouth. His own mouth was small, round, and clean-shaven, with thick, bright red lips. Each time he moved his hand, the air smelled of lavender.

“I know, I know,” he said. “I know everything about you. You are Cretan, in other words a wild goat. But be patient and listen to me. We shall go to Rome, the Holy City. You will enter a large
school to pursue your studies in order to become great and important. Who knows—perhaps one day you'll wear this same cardinal's biretta I now wear. And don't forget that someone from your island, a Cretan, once became Pope—the leader of Christendom, greater than an emperor! Then you will be able to act, to liberate Crete. . . . Do you hear what I'm saying?”