The church twinkled like the starry sky and smelled of candles and incense. It was warm. There was a humming, as in a hive, of angels, saints and human beings. There was not room enough for all the Christians many were standing in the narthex, others in the aisles. The stout Metropolitan stood by his throne with his gigantic body and snow-white beard, with the golden crosier and the kingly miter, like some terrifying beast from Heaven, come down to earth to haul men home and scare them.
At the gate of the iconostasis, Pope Manoles had taken his place, with solemn countenance and caparisoned in gold, and was intoning the Gospel for the day as Kajabes opened his door to proceed to church with his wife. Their wedding had been last Sunday, and, as custom required, the young couple must for eight days pray in their wedding garments to Saint Menas, protector of the country, and bring him a large cake made with cinnamon, mastic and sugar.
Their little house was near the harbor, just where the Jewish quarter began, in a welter of narrow, winding alleys plagued alike by sultry winds and cutting sea air. Garufalia took her husband by the arm and hung upon him. They walked slowly and proudly, and both greeted with friendliness the newly wedded world. How the myrtle-decked streets shone and gave out sweet scent! How the cliffs smiled! How the world, beyond all hope, had advanced to the married state! Yes, some thorn bushes in one of the garden hedges had brought forth white blossoms. Was this Megalokastro, enslaved by the he alleys of the poor quarter and the “of refuse? Was that the Cretan Sea, savage and far from tender toward men? Garufalia stealthily raised her sleepy eyes and gazed at her husband. “God, what is all this talk put out by the popes? Paradise is here, my good man. God, give me no other paradise!”
They had now reached the market place and were about to turn into the street leading to the church. Kajabes turned and looked at his wife. His heart was joyful. Suddenly it seemed to him as if the world was no more, and hi the chaos nothing was left except this living creature at his side, warm and perfumed, delightfully swathed in blouse and petticoats and skirts, with lots of buttons and laces, and her mouth fragrant in a sweet, warm, human way… . He had been put out, ever since the evening before last, when he had heard that he was bidden to Captain Michales’. He would have had just eight days with his wife. His blood grew hot. He stopped still in the market place. What was the Kastrian AiMenas, with his local customs, to him, the wild man from Sfakia? And why should he waste his tune hi church, instead of going back home as quickly as possible? We’re newly married, God forgive us… . He had only a little time left. Captain Michales, that ferocious beast, was certainly in his cellar already, waiting.
“Shall we not go home, wife, to our little house?” he asked, and his breathing stopped with longing.
The woman blushed scarlet, her eyelids grew heavy. “As you decide, my little Jannis,” she murmured, her eyes shut.
They turned back as though someone were after them. Quickly they crossed the market place, passed the plane tree and pasha’s palace, entered the narrow alleys and reached the harbor. Kajabes opened the door with a kick, they went in, bolted the door and flung themselves on the bed.
Meanwhile Captain Michales sat in his cellar, having gone down to it at dawn. On his right stood three casks of wine on two stout boards, on his left, two jugs, one of il and the other of flour. Suspended in rows above his head were figs, pomegranates, quinces and canary-yellow winter melons with green veins. On the wall hung bundles of potherbs, sage and marjoram. The cellar smelled of wine and quinces. Soon the hot chickens, cuttlefish and sausages would overlay this smell.
He sat on a high stool and leaned his heavy head, bound tightly in its dark cloth, against the wall. His eyes stared at the low door opposite him and saw nothing. He thought of nothing. He sat without moving. Only from time to time his claw of a hand pressed the edge of the table in front of him and made the wood bend.
His mind was inert and heavy, but his heart was simmering. Life had been kind to him, he lacked nothing; he was a strong, healthy man, with a good wife and a family, and the world took him seriously. His son was like him he too had no fear of death. As soon as he died his son would step into his footsteps. His son, too, had a birthmark on his neck; thick, bushy eyebrows, also, like his, and eyes, like his, small and pitch black. What the devil was the matter with his heart, then, to make it boil so? He could feel no pleasure, force no smile, bring no joke or friendly word to his hops to relieve him. He was always reserved, taciturn, tierce.
One evening his wife’s brother, kindhearted Manolakis the tailor, had come to his house and had said something and laughed. Captain Michales had frowned, and poor Manolakis was as though paralyzed, and soon got up and left.
Then Captain Michales had turned to his son. “He’s got no pride,” he had said contemptuously, “he laughs!”
When Crete is set free, he sometimes thought, my heart too will be free. When Crete is set free, I shall laugh.
And yet, not long ago, he had had an extremely lifelike dream: Because Crete was set free the bells were ringing; the streets were strewn with myrtle and laurel, a white warship had anchored in the harbor, and the King’s son from Athens sprang onto the mole, bowed own and kissed the soil of Crete; and on the mole he himself, Captain Michales, was standing, holding the keys jot Megalokastro on a silver platter, to hand them to the King’s son. Crete was set free but his heart was not relieved. “What the devil’s the matter with me,” he growled angrily hi his dream. “What the devil do I lack? I shall come a cropper yet!” His blood came in waves, his brain seemed to grow too large, his eyes became bloodshot. Crete rose and fell within him it was no longer an island, it was a wild beast gazing out to sea. It was the Gorgon, the sister of Alexander the Great, lamenting and slashing with her fish tail and stirring up the sea. As Captain Michales heard her lament, she again changed her aspect, and a shudder went through his brain. Crete struck root hi him like a plane tree and began to feed on his vitals. From its branches there dangled gray-haired, barefoot forefathers; their heads looked bluish and they bit their tongues. A powerful wind moaned. As Captain Michales stretched out his arms to pray to them, all vanished. His mind was empty. There remained only a lantern with red “and green glass, and under it Nuri and the lemon raki and the cooked partridge. Suddenly there was a tittering two Circassian women… . Captain Michales leaped up, and struck the wall heavily with his fist so that the house trembled. He raised his eyes to the low doorway and suddenly began to curse furiously because his boon companions were late.
At the moment when Captain Michales was striking the wall with his fist, the boon companions were setting out from the four ends of Megalokastro. The first to get up had been Vendusos the tavern-keeper. He crossed himself, stood in front of the icon-shrine with the ever burning lamp, and prayed his protectress, the Holy Virgin of the Vineyard, to give him the strength to hold out. He was setting out for the great tournament: eight days it would last, from Sunday to Sunday, and eight nights, and if the Virgin did not help, they, would be wasted. Some years ago he had commissioned the monk Nikodemos to make for him a Virgin, not as the painters depict her, like mother, but as he himself had seen her in a dream: a woman like the grape-pickers in August, mad for men, thick-lipped, with a white Cretan headband around her head, and in her arms, instead of a child, a bunch of grapes. The monk had been unwilling at first. Nothing of the kind existed, he said, there was nothing of the kind in the Scriptures, it would be a sin. She must hold Christ hi her arms, not a bunch of grapes. But Vendusos gave him a bottle of raki and several pounds of cod as payment, and the monk was pacified. He crossed himself, took up his brush and painted the Holy Mother of the Vine Tendril.
And now Vendusos stood in his stockings, without shoes, before her and entreated her: “My lady of the Vineyard, who protects taverns and tavern-keepers, I greet thee. I am going, I am going off to Captain Michales’ cellar. Thou knowest what that will mean I need thy help! As thou knowest, I gave money and cod and raki to have thee painted. Help me! Help me to hold ou
t and not to get drunk and not to be sick this time, and make a mess of the walls. And enlighten, O Maiden, that unruly beast of a Captain Michales, so he lets us go quickly. Eight days and eight nights are a lot, Holy Virgin, a lot, really they are!”
He washed and dressed, took down his lyre from before the icon-shrine, went out into the yard and took leave of his wife Marusio and his two daughters. He bade them come every two days and see what was happening. He left the money to buy their food for the whole week, and told his elder daughter, who, being a schoolteacher, was good at writing, to write down for him on a piece of paper a notice that his tavern would be closed, and this he put in his pocket. He looked around him at the whole house as though he were saying farewell, crossed himself and stepped over the threshold.
First he went to the tavern, pulled out the piece of paper and stuck it on the door so that people might see it: “The proprietor is obliged to be absent for eight days on private business.” This satisfied him somewhat, and he hurried off toward Captain Michales’ house. He was late. The dragon would make no remark, but would frown, and that was enough.
As he passed the house of his elder brother, the wholesaler, he quickened his pace. He mustn’t see me, he thought, he’ll suspect where I’m going, and I shall get another scolding. To hell with the old ass! He rubbed his cucumber nose which drooped every month a bit more and was already nearly touching his mouth. “Ah! to hell with him!” he muttered. “He’d like to give me lessons, would he? But the day before yesterday I gave as good as I got! I knew what was the matter with me, damn it, and was pitching and edging along by the walls, when here comes our fat father of a family and sticks his mug out of that damned fine house of his. ‘You ruined lyre-player!’ he says to me, ‘haven’t you done yet, always drinking and drinking?’ Then I stood up straight as a candle close to the wall and opened my little mouth. ‘You wholesaler!’ I said. ‘Haven’t you done yet with not drinking and not drinking and not drinking?’ One or two people, who were just passing, stopped and laughed loudly. And the old as she vanished, he vanished.”
Talking to himself, Vendusos went on his way. “It was God’s will, since I was born on Good Friday, and my father was a pope, for me too to be made into a pope even perhaps one day (the Devil has such a lot of legs) into a bishop. But how was I to be kept always at school, how was I to put my neck under the yoke? From the time I was a small child I was always playing the lyre, and the stones listened and danced. Wherever there were festivities and fun, there was I, and there I stayed; I was not to be torn away. Gradually I got used to drinking freely and couldn’t live any longer without the whiff of wine. So I started a tavern. And I ordered my own Holy Virgin, who suits me, and no one else in Christendom has one like her. When I call her she comes, and never minds running up and down for all sorts of odd things. When I need her she doesn’t leave me in the lurch. She belongs only to me, and I’m not lending her to any silly idiot.
Last year mat blasphemer Captain Polyxigis wanted her from me, so as to order one like her for himself. But how could I give her to him? ‘Would you give me your mare, Captain Polyxigis?’ I asked him. ‘Noso I won’t give you my Virgin either.’”
At this point in his monologue he suddenly ran into Furogatos and Bertodulos by Idomeneas’ Fountain. They too were on their way, breathlessly, to the -dragon’s den. They were all in such a hurry that Vendusos’ lyre missed by a hair’s breadth being smashed in the collision, and Bertodulos’ cloak fell off and Ms hat almost toppled.
“Hey, Vendusos,” cried Furogatos, “why are you running so hard into the lion’s jaws? Stop! Let’s roll a cigarette to give us courage.”
They sat down on the marble steps of the fountain and pulled out their tobacco boxes. Furogatos sat throned and towering in the middle; he had grown stout in his old age. He had a giant’s long legs when they went out to dance, the soil of Crete rejoiced. If he had not had those legs, nobody would have bidden him good day, for you do not bid good day to a man who beats his wife. He had bushy eyebrows and a bristling mustache that stuck straight out, so that he really did look like a furious cat (Furogatos).
He bent affectionately over his comrade Bertodulos and wrapped him again in his cloak. He also arranged his small, stiff, decayed nobleman’s hat firmly on his long gray hak.
Bertodulos was a blameless, friendly little old man with a thin, prim mouth, a jutting, freshly shaved chin and two short side whiskers reeking of pomade. He was the first man in Megalokastro, perhaps in the whole of Crete, to defy God and Manand shave off his mustache. At first the Cretans had supposed that smooth skin natural and were not angry. But when they realized that he shaved, they became furious. It was not possible! He was destroying the order of things! He was mixing up women and men. Some threw stones and lemon peel at him, others, more enlightened, ceased to greet him.
“Such freaks won’t do for Cretans’ Barba Jannis shouted at him one day, twirling his mustache. “Here in Crete, Bertodulos, there are two kinds of human being, not three men and women. We won’t have men-women!”
One Sunday, as Bertodulos went past the Three Vaults, elegant, light-stepping and smiling, with his guitar, the drunken Furogatos caught hold of him and tried to pull his breeches off in front of everyone, to see, so he said, whether there was a Bertodulos inside them or a Bertodulina. But one or two sober people came between them, and Furogatos burst into tears. He embraced Bertodulos, clasped him to him, caressed and kissed him. Bertodulos cried out, “You’re cracking my ribs! Let me go!” and gave him a powerful kick. Since then the two had been inseparable friends.
It was Bertodulos’ fate not to be a Cretan. It was his fate to be from Zante and to be a count. He himself no longer remembered how he had got to Megalokastro among the wild beasts, and how he had there become a teacher of the guitar. His name was not Bertodulos, but Count Mangiavino; but now, because he shivered all through whiter and spring, wrapped himself in a thick green cloak or “berta,” was shriveled and bowlegged, said odd, “comical things, and was easily frightened, the Kastrians called him Bertodulos. The name stuck.
With each year the number of his pupils diminished. What should Kastrians do with a guitar? And those asses’ voices of theirs were not suited to the love songs of Zante. Poor Bertodulos went hungry. He would go to the coffeehouses and tell, with touching charm, of his life, of his sometime brilliance, of the distinguished ladies and the serenades and mandolin concerts in Zante. He would take his instrument on his knee and hum some old melody. Then the owner of the coffeehouse would feel ashamed and treat him to a cup of coffee and a biscuit, sometimes with Turkish Delight or sugared orange peel as well; thus the count charmed his hunger away. Sometimes he even obtained permission to wrap the Turkish Delight n a clean piece of paper and take it away with him. He was ashamed to revel in sweetmeats alone, and as he was fond of his gray-haired landlady, a woman old as the hills, he would share them with her. He knew how much the poor thing loved Turkish Delight, because you needed no teeth for that.
He’ll do for my cellar, thought Captain Michales one day, as he heard him recount truth and fable in Trialonis’ coffeehouse. That day Bertodulos was speaking of Zante, the Flower of the East, which no Turkish foot had ever trodden, where, too, the poet of the Greek spring song had been born. Captain Michales called him over. “Listen, Mr. Bertodulos,” he said, “you’re a superior person. It’s a disgrace to Megalokastro that it can’t give you a living. So I’ll pay you a monthly salary, and you shan’t suffer. But you will come to my cellar every time I send for you.”
“With pleasure, sir,” answered the count, doffing hi& hat to the floor. “Thy slave, renowned Captain Michales.”
Furogatos wrapped the little old man up like a baby. Bertodulos giggled gratefully, as though he were being tickled.
“Courage, my Bertodulos,” said Vendusos. “We’re bound straight for a great storm, my poor friend. In that cellar Greek freedom will be born.”
“Don’t worry, Signer Vendusos. For better, for worse,
I’ve taken my precautions!” he said proudly, and pulled out from his cloak a parcel he was carrying under his arm.
“What have you got there, Signer Bertodulos?” asked Vendusos, fingering the parcel.
“A change of shirt,” answered the clean little man, and blushed.
“Eh, that’s enough,” cried Furogatos, throwing his cigarette end away. “We’ve had a breather. Now up, children! On into the labyrinth! With God’s help, forward!”
All three linked arms, Bertodulos in the middle, and off they went to Captain Michales’ door.
Middle-aged, with a thick, fair beard, wild goggle-eyes round as eggs, and with his head swathed in the many windings of a broad, white Turkish turban, which he had also earmarked as his winding sheet and now regularly wrapped around his head, so as always to be ready to enter Paradise in it such was Efendina. Years ago he had been to Mecca, and ever since those holy, agonizing days, his brain had reeled with their heat, thirst, dirt and God-filled delirium. His mind had been filled with flames and terror. He had returned to Megalokastro and spent all his time in the teke where one of his forebears had become a saint. For a time several Turkish children came, and he taught them to read and write. Sometimes he hit them, sometimes they hit him, until one day young Braima, Nuri’s nephew, broke his head for him, and the school came to an end.
The teke was near the church of Ai-Menasan oblong, flat yard overgrown with cabbages. At the far end were three small dilapidated vaults and in the middle of the courtyard the saint’s tomb: the wooden coffin with an upright marble slab topped by a green turban. The gold lettering had been worn away by rain and sun. Around the tomb stood large and small benches where the faithful took their places each Friday, gazed at the saint and talked, smoking narghiles meanwhile and drinking coffee, which the exorcist, Hamide Mula, Efendina’s mother, prepared for them. The turban was hollow inside. The faithful threw small coins into it to secure the saint’s help for their affairs in this world and the next. They did not ask for such a variety of things as the Christians did: good food, good women and good courage, in this world as in the other, were enough. So they threw into the turban presents for the saintly intercessor.
Freedom or Death Page 9
