Report to Grego (15 page)

“Yes, yes,” I murmured. I had raised my head and was listening avidly.

“This very moment, my child, your life is at stake. If you say yes, you are saved; if you say no, you are lost. What will you become if you remain here? What does your father do?”

“He's a merchant.”

“Very well, you'll become a merchant too, at the very most a lawyer or doctor. In other words, nothing. Greece is a province. Come out of the provinces, my child. I've been told a great deal about you; I'd hate to see you perish.”

My heart was thumping loudly. Once again two roads were opening before me. Which was I to choose? To whom could I run for help? Père Laurent would push me one way, Père Lelièvre the other. Which road was correct? And what if I asked my father?

Recalling my father, I was terror-stricken. He had just then returned from Crete, stained with gunpowder and seriously wounded in the arm. The muskets were silent now. After so many centuries and so much blood, freedom had placed her gory feet on Cretan soil. Soon Prince George of the Hellenes would arrive and offer the engagement ring, earnest of the time when Crete and Greece would be united forever.

My father had come to see me immediately upon his return from Crete. At first I did not recognize him. His skin was even blacker than before and a smile (the first I had seen) brightened his lips. “How goes it? Did they convert you?” he asked me with a laugh. I turned purple. He placed his huge palm on my head. “I'm only joking. I have confidence in you.”

As I recalled my father now in the cardinal's presence, I must have grown livid, for the prelate placed his plump hand tenderly on my hair and asked, “What are you thinking about?”

“What my father would say,” I murmured.

“He doesn't have to know; no one has to know. We'll leave secretly, at night.”

“And what about my mother? She'll start crying.”

“‘He who denies not his father and his mother cannot follow me.' Those are Christ's words.”

I remained silent. The face of Christ had fascinated me indescribably ever since my childhood. I had followed Him on the icons as He was born, reached His twelfth year, stood in a rowboat and raised His hand to make the sea grow calm; then as He was scourged and crucified, and as He called out upon the cross, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” After that, as one fine morning He rose from the tomb and ascended to heaven, clasping a white pennon in His hand. Seeing Him, I too was scourged, I too was crucified and resurrected. And when I read the Bible, the ancient tales came to life: man's soul seemed a savage, slumbering beast bellowing in its sleep. Suddenly the heavens opened and Christ descended. He kissed this beast, whereupon it sighed sweetly, awakened, and became what it had always been: a superbly beautiful princess.

“All right,” I said to the cardinal, kissing his hand, “I shall forsake my father and mother.”

“This exact moment, my son, I saw the Holy Spirit descend over your head. You are saved.” Saying this, he held out the amethyst he was wearing so that I could kiss it.

We were to depart three days later. I wanted to see my parents and bid them an inner farewell without divulging the secret to them, but the cardinal refused.

“The true man,” he said, “is he who leaves his loved ones without saying goodbye.”

Desiring to be a true man, I hardened my heart and remained silent. Had I not read in the legends time after time that the ascetics did just this when they departed for the desert? They did not look back to see their mothers; they did not wave goodbye. I was going to do the same.

I was given various weighty books, all bound in gold. I read about eternal Rome and about the Holy Father, the Pope. I grew drunk as I looked at the illustrations: Saint Peter's, the Vatican, the paintings, the statues.

Everything was going well. In my imagination I had already departed, crossed the sea, reached the Holy City, and finished my studies. I was wearing a broad scarlet biretta with a silk fringe, and
as I looked at the middle finger of my right hand, I spied the mystic amethyst glimmering in the darkness. . . . At that point, however, destiny suddenly stirred, reached out its hand, and blocked my way. Someone whispered in my father's ear, “The Catholics are taking your son!” It was at night. The fierce Cretan jumped out of bed and roused several boatmen and fishermen he knew. Lighting torches and taking along a can of gasoline, as well as crowbars and pickaxes, they ascended the road to the citadel. There they began to beat on the school door, howling that they would set the place on fire. The monks were panic-stricken. Père Laurent, wearing his nightcap, stuck his head out of the window and shouted and implored, half in French, half in Greek.

“My boy,” called my father, waving the lighted torch, “my boy, you papist dogs, or else it's fire and the axe!”

They woke me up. I dressed as fast as I could, they lowered me from the window in a basket, and I fell into my father's arms. He seized me by the nape of the neck and banged me against the ground three times. Then he turned to his companions. “Out with the torches. Let's go!”

It was three days before my father spoke to me. He saw to it that I was bathed, dressed in clean clothes, and that my head was anointed with oil from the Virgin's watch lamp. He had the priest come to sprinkle me with holy water and perform an exorcism to rid me of the Catholic filth. Then he turned to look at me.

“Judas!” he growled between his teeth, and he spat three times into the air.

But God was kind, and a few weeks later came the good news: Prince George of the Hellenes was on his way to Crete to take possession. My father jumped up, prostrated himself three times so that he touched the soil, crossed himself, and headed straight for the barber's. He had never applied a razor to his cheek, but had let his beard flood down over his breast because he was in mourning, in mourning for Crete, which was enslaved. This was also why he never laughed, and why it angered him to see any Christian laugh. In his mind, laughter had degenerated into an unpatriotic act. But now, thank God, Crete was free. He headed straight for the barber's, therefore, and when he returned home, his shaven, rejuvenated face beamed and the whole house was
perfumed by the lavender which the barber had poured over his hair.

Then, turning to my mother, he pointed to me and smiled.

“Crete is free, the past forgotten. Let's forgive even Judas!”

A few days later we embarked for Crete. What a triumphant journey that was, and how the sun on that autumn day penetrated to the very depths of our hearts! But oh, how long the ship took to cross the Aegean! Dawn found my father leaning over the bow and gazing toward the south, and if the eyes of man had been able to move mountains, we would have seen Crete like a frigate bearing down upon us.

M
Y EYES
, even now after so many years, still overflow with tears when I recall that day: the day Prince George of the Hellenes, in other words Liberty, set foot on Cretan soil. Mankind's struggle is truly an uninterrupted sacrament. What is this terrestrial crust—so shoddy, unstable, and fissured—that men, those parasites all covered with mud and gore, should crawl upon it seeking their freedom? How moving it is to see Greeks in the vanguard—Greeks!—climbing the unending ascent and opening the way whether with the chlamys and lance, the evzone skirts and muskets of '21, or with their Cretan vrakes!

I remember a certain Cretan captain, a shepherd who reeked of dung and billy goats. He had just returned from the wars, where he had fought like a lion. I happened to be in his sheepfold one afternoon when he received a citation, inscribed on parchment in large red and black letters, from the “Cretan Brotherhood” of Athens. It congratulated him on his acts of bravery and declared him a hero.

“What is this paper?” he asked the messenger with irritation. “Did my sheep get into somebody's wheatfield again? Do I have to pay damages?”

The messenger unrolled the citation joyfully and read it aloud.

“Put it in ordinary language so I can understand. What does it mean?”

“It means you're a hero. Your nation sends you this citation so you can frame it for your children.”

The captain extended his huge paw.

“Give it here!”

Seizing the parchment, he ripped it in shreds and threw it into the fire beneath a caldron of boiling milk.

“Go tell them I didn't fight to receive a piece of paper. I fought to make history!”

To make history! The uncultivated shepherd sensed very well what he wanted to say, but did not know how to say it. Or did he perhaps say it in the finest way possible?

The messenger was saddened to see the shredded parchment in the fire. The captain rose. He filled a small basin with milk, cut off half a cheese, brought two barley rolls, then turned to the other and said, “Come here, brother; don't get excited. Eat, drink, and to the devil with citations! Tell them—do you hear?—tell them I don't want payment. I fight because I like it. Tell them that. . . . Do what I say: eat!”

There have been two supreme days in my life. The first was the day Prince George set foot on Crete, the second was in Moscow many years later—the tenth-anniversary celebration of the Russian Revolution. On both of those days I felt that human partitions—bodies, brains, and souls—were capable of being demolished, and that humanity might return again, after frightfully bloody wandering, to its primeval, divine oneness. In this condition there is no such thing as “me,” “you,” and “he”; everything is a unity and this unity is a profound mystic intoxication in which death loses its scythe and ceases to exist. Separately, we die one by one, but all together we are immortal. Like prodigal sons, after so much hunger, thirst, and rebellion, we spread our arms and embrace our two parents: heaven and earth.

With flowing tears that drenched their martial beards, Cretan captains tossed their kerchiefs in the air; mothers raised their infants high so that they could see the blond giant, this fairy-tale prince who had heard Crete's lamentations centuries earlier and, mounted on a white horse like Saint George, had set out to liberate the island. Cretan eyes were glassily blank after so many centuries' watch over the sea. There he is! No, he still has not appeared, but he shall appear any minute. . . . Sometimes it was a springtime cloud or a white sail that misled them; sometimes, in the depths of night, a dream. But the cloud always scattered, the sail vanished, the dream expired, and once again the Cretans fixed their eyes northward upon Greece, upon Muscovy, upon the merciless, slow-moving Lord.

And now, lo! the whole of Crete quaked, its tombs opened, and a voice resounded from the summit of Psiloriti: “He is coming! He has arrived! Behold him!” Aged captains with deep wounds and silver pistols tumbled out of the mountains; youths came with
their black-handled daggers and tinkling rebecs; bells tolled from quivering campaniles. The city had been adorned everywhere with palm leaves and myrtles—and the fair-haired Saint George stood on a pier strewn with laurel, the whole of the Cretan sea glittering behind his shoulders.

The Cretans sang and danced in the taverns, they drank, they played the rebec, but still they did not find relief. Unable to fit any longer inside their bodies, they grasped knives and stabbed themselves in the arms and thighs so that blood would flow and they would be unburdened. In church the elderly Metropolitan stood with raised arms beneath the dome and gazed at the Pantocrator. He wanted to preach but his throat was blocked. Parting his lips, he cried, “Christ is risen, my children”—unable to utter anything else. “He is truly risen!” resounded from every breast, and the cathedral's great chandeliers shook as though from an earthquake.

I was young and inexperienced then; inside me the sacred intoxication did not wear off for an extremely long time—perhaps it has not worn off to this day. Even now in my most deeply joyful moments—when I view the sea, the star-filled sky or an almond tree in bloom, or when I relive my first experience of love—December 9, 1898, the day when Crete's betrothed the Prince of Greece set foot on Cretan soil, flashes undying within me and the whole of my inner breast is adorned, like all of Crete on that day, with myrtles and laurels.

My father took me by the hand in the early afternoon, while Megalo Kastro was still bellowing with joy. Stepping upon myrtles and laurels, we walked the length of the main street. Then we passed through the fortified gate and emerged into open fields. It was winter, but the day was pleasantly warm and an almond tree behind a hedge had produced its first flower. The fields had begun to turn green, deceived by the weather's sweetness, while far off to our left the Selena mountains sparkled with full caps of snow. Though the vines were still dry stumps, the almond's flower, striking out gallantly in the vanguard, had already begun to announce the coming of spring, and the stumps would open once again to liberate the white and black grapes inside them.

A huge man came by with a load of laurel branches. Seeing my father, he halted.

“Christ is risen, Captain Michael!” he exclaimed.

“Crete is risen!” replied my father, placing his palm over his heart.

We continued on our way. My father was in a hurry, and I had to run to keep up with him.

“Where are we going, Father?” I asked, gasping for breath.

“To see your grandfather. March!”

We reached the graveyard. My father gave the gate a push and opened it. Painted on the lintel was a skull over two bones crossed to form an X, the initial letter of
—Christ—who rose from the dead. We proceeded to the right, beneath cypresses, striding over abject graves with broken crosses and no watch lamps. I was afraid of the dead; I clutched my father's jacket and followed behind him, stumbling constantly.