Freedom or Death

by Nikos Kazantzakis

  “Get out! Get out!” he shouted, as though possessed. “Get out!” He wrenched the door open. “Get out!”

  Kajabes was first: he sprang over the threshold with one bound and ran across the yard to the street door. He remind him of the affairs of his house. But when he turned and she saw his face, her voice failed her.

  “What do you want?” he asked hoarsely and angrily.

  “Should I make you some coffee?” his wife asked.

  “I’m going to the coffeehouse, I’ll have some there. Get in.”

  Alarmed, Katerina went back into the kitchen. Renio had lighted the fire and made coffee.

  “He’s going.” said her mother. “He’s saddled the mare and is going to ride through the Turkish quarter. He’s a wild beast, he is, a wild beast. He has no feelings.”

  Reno laughed. “He’s going to ride into the Turkish coffeehouses again,” she said proudly.

  Both were silent as they listened. They heard the mare trample over the threshold, then whinny in the street outside. “May God hold His hand over him,” murmured the mother, crossing herself.

  “Did you see the way the fools ran for it?” asked Renio, laughing. “I was looking out of the window upstairs. One after the other, screaming and reeling. And Father standing there, sober and scornful with his whip raised, brandishing it in the air. Why are you sighing, Mother? Would you like to have Bertodulos or Vendusos as your husband? You ought to be rejoicing over your luck, Mother!”

  ,“It’s possible to be a decent husband and a good earner without needing to behave like a fool.”

  “Yes it’s possible,” Renio answered,, pouting. “But I don’t like either earners or fools. I like captains.”

  Captain Polyxigis strode past Idomeneas’ fountain, and Ali Aga followed him with the heavy basket on his back. He was bringing the wedding presents to his niece Vangelio in good time.

  Since the day before yesterday Captain Polyxigis had been out of order, as if the earthquake had upset his mind. He kept running about the streets, would neither eat nor drink, and from time to tune he groaned like a sick buffalo. His wanderings always brought him before a green door. There he would stop, measure the high wall with a glance, stand on tiptoe as though he meant to fly over it, go away, again make his rounds and come back. To remove the suspicions of the neighbors (he was afraid of the Hags, with their wicked tongues), he visited a Turkish coppersmith in the quarter and bought first a pan, another time a hand basin and a coffeepot, and again bowls, and coffee cups. At first he could not think what to do with them; then it occurred to him that his niece was getting married. He filled a basket with the copper, loaded it onto Ali Aga’s back, and set off for Captain Michales’ quarter, where Vangelio’s house lay.

  As he passed Idomeneas’ Fountain, Captain Michales appeared, riding his mare, with his whip hanging from his wrist and the tassel of his headband hiding his eyes.

  Captain Polyxigis stood still in astonishment, for he knew that on Sunday morning Captain Michales had begun another of his weeks of swilling. Yet here he was again on horseback, and it was only Tuesday. Evidently he had broken away from his drinking party and was now making for the Turkish quarter, running straight into the cannon’s mouth. Captain Polyxigis shook his head. One of these days, he thought, he’ll pay for his audacity with his life, and one of the pillars of Christendom in Megalokastro will come crashing down. But who can restrain him? Neither God, nor the devil. A man who’s not afraid of death even God is afraid of him.

  Captain Michales drew nearer. He caught sight of Captain Polyxigis and spurred his mare on. He wanted no conversation with him. Polyxigis’ foppishness got on his nerves, along with his silly jokes and his frivolous way of living. He was one of those men who whistle and sing every morning when they wake up. Captain Michales had no taste for such men. Yet they were honorable comrades when trouble came, when the Christians rebelled and picked a quarrel with the Turks. Then both captains were leaders; both of them felt themselves responsible. But as soon as times grew calm, they ran apart, in opposite directions.

  He’s like a wild boar, thought Captain Polyxigis, I don’t like him.

  He’s a barber, thought Captain Michales, not to my taste and he urged the mare on.

  At the sight of that darkened face, Captain Polyxigis guessed that he was up to no good and that nothing but trouble for the Christians would come out of it. So he whipped up his courage and called out:

  “Where are you off to so early, Captain Michales?” With that he stretched out his arm, as though to bar the way.

  “Get out of the way, if you don’t want the mare to trample on you, Captain Polyxigis,” growled Captain Michales.

  Captain Polyxigis stood in the middle of the street with arms outstretched and did not budge.

  “In Christ’s name, brother,” he said, “Don’t throw away your strength. You’re a pillar of Christendom. Crete needs you. Your life doesn’t belong to you, it belongs to Crete. She may soon want to use you.”

  But Captain Michales had never felt such a disgust for this capitanio as now. Yesterday Furogatos had escaped from the cellar for a moment to get a breath of air; he had stood at the street door and there had exchanged a fewwords with their neighbor, Krasojorgis’ wife. In this way he had heard of Captain Polyxigis’ new prank in the Turkish quarter. Furogatos had gone back to the cellar and had poured the story into Captain Michales’ ear. Captain Michales had pretended scarcely to listen, but it had been like a blow to his heart.

  And now he could hear it no longer. He bent down from the mare. His lips were bursting with wrath.

  “Go and seduce those women of yours! Leave me to ride head first at the Turkish coffeehouses.”

  Captain Polyxigis went scarlet. “When we’re at peace,” he retorted defiantly, “I seduce hanums. When we’re at war, I kill agas. That’s what I call being a man.”

  He turned to Ali Aga. “Go ahead to Vangelio’s house and unload there,” he said, and drove him away. Then he took a step nearer and laid his hand on the mare’s hot neck.

  “Captain Michales,” he said, lowering his voice, “as true as you’re a baptized Christain, speak out; what have you got against me? I don’t like that look of yours today, it bores through me as though I were a Turk.”

  “Get out of the way if you don’t want the mare to trample on you,” growled Captain Michales again, turning away.

  “Tell me, what have you against me?” Captain Polyxigis asked again. “Why do you turn your head away?”

  “Get out of the way if you don’t want the mare to trample on you,” growled Captain Michales for the third time.

  “No one can talk with you, there’s no knowing how to approach you!”

  “Very clever, Captain Hanum,” roared Captain Michales, furiously. He put spurs to his mare, and she reared high. By a hair’s breadth she missed knocking Captain Polyxigis down.

  “What can I do against him? After all, he’s a Christian and a palikar,” Captain Polyxigis muttered, biting at his mustache. “If not, I’d know, you madman, how to handle you!” He spat three times, as if to get rid of the evil meeting, and pushed on to the house of his niece.

  Vangelio was sitting at her loom. She was just finishing work on the last double width of nubby cloth from which were to be made breeches for the bridegroom and nightdresses for the bride that would never wear out. She sped the shuttle through in haste. She was in a hurry, for the wedding was getting near. It stood over her like a great dark animal. And Vangelio herself was crouching like an animal to defend herself against it, against that repulsive animal for so this marriage seemed to her to be with this half-helping of a bridegroom, with his glasses, his soft priest’s voice and his disgusting sheep like gentleness. Was it then for this bit of a man that she had been born? Was it for his pleasure that she had fattened for so many ears, till her breasts and hips grew full and her hair reached to her knees? All this for Tityros? “Marry him,” Uncle Polyxigis had whispered in her ear, “say yes, Vangelio, a
husband’s a downy cushion and keeps you warm.” Ah, where was God, that her voice might pierce through the seven heavens and cry to Him: “I won’t have him, I won’t have him”? For how many years had she seen in her sleep a heroic youth with a woolen cloak about his shoulders, a slim-hipped buck loving wine, women and strife, throwing his money about superbly somebody matchless like her brother Diamandes! Ah, how often indeed every time she lighted the lamps in front of the icon-shrines her parents had dedicated to them had she begged Saint Nicholas, who looks after orphan girls, and Saint Famurios, who supplies bridegrooms, to send her a husband like her brother! Like her brother, not like her Uncle Polyxigis, that little, dark babbler; and not like Captain Michales either, whose breath reeked of sulphur and before whom even the dogs of the neighborhood trembled. He should just be like her brother Diamandes: a body like a cypress, hips like a boxer’s, chest like a fortress. Otherwise she would rather stay unmarried, a thousand times rather grow old living witty her brother. He too should not marry a wife would ruin all the sweetness for them. If only they could die at the same time and be buried together; and over their grave two cypresses should grow one a manly one, slender as a candle, and the other a womanly one with spreading branches. And under the earth their roots should intertwine.

  But then Uncle Polyxigis had come and said she must take Captain Michales’ brother Tityros and marry into an important family and have a man to keep her. For Diamandes had already spent the olive trees and vineyards which their parents had left them, so that this house was now all that remained to her, her only dowry. But in a few months her greedy little brother would guzzle and swill the house away too. And then?

  “It’s all the fault of Polyxigis,” she muttered resentfully as she went on weaving. “He has got me into this soup. It was he who persuaded me to say yes. But God is just. He will punish him. And if He doesn’t, then the unmarried man’s sighing will come upon Polyxigis like a flash of lightning. May it strike him and burn him up!”

  Captain Polyxigis kicked open the street door and entered. He turned to Ali Aga, who was waiting outside, and signaled to him to come in and unload.

  “Bless you, Ali Aga! Here, have a good time with this!” he said genially, throwing him a silver coin. Ali Aga caught it, held it tight in his fist as if it were a bird which might fly away, and bent down to kiss the lavish hand. But Polyxigis drew it back with a laugh. “I’m no pope or imam, Ali Aga!”

  He strode across the yard followed by Ali Aga. The dog jumped up in its corner, sniffed, recognized the newcomers and curled up again on the ground.

  Through the open door into the house Captain Polyxigis saw the loom that docile domestic creature with feet, legs, pedals, metal feathers, tongues and combs. Its delicate rigging of warp and woof was like that Žf a frigate under full sail.

  Vangelio turned. She saw her uncle and summoned all her strength to fetch up a smile of welcome. But from her lips, nose and chin there seemed to drip nothing but poison. She was now perpetually monosyllabic and sour. Some concealed worm was surely gnawing at her vitals. She was growing yellow, and her bosom had begun to turn flabby.

  Behind her uncle she noticed Ali Aga with the basket, and she understood. “You’ve been extravagant for my sake, Uncle George,” she said, with a stealthy glance at the basket. She made out the copper things and for a moment her face lighted up.

  “Everyone’s got to marry sometime. If the vineyard’s lost, it’s lost. People say, Vangelio, that there is no greater pleasure,” said Captain Polyxigis with a laugh, trying to set his niece’s blood in motion.

  “People say–” Vangelio burst out, and broke off.

  Captain Polyxigis sat down on the small sofa, took off his fez (for he was hot) and put it on the window sill. Vangelio went down on her knees and took the shining copper objects out of the basket, one by one. The house became filled with pans, dishes and jugs, and as Vangelio bent over them a reddish warmth gleamed for a moment from her yellow face.

  “Bless you, Uncle,” she said listlessly, “you take the place of a father.”

  “You say that half heartedly,‘Vangelio! You’re getting married and yet, my child, you’re on the verge of tears. Raise your eyes and let me look at them… . Here, smile just for once, let out a shout to make your breath come faster! When brides are weaving their last bit of cloth, they sing and make the house tremble why, the whole neighborhood trembles as in an earthquake! It’s called ‘bride’s time’! But you behave as if you were weaving a shroud.”

  Vangelio was furious. Such words in the mouth of a man who had all he wanted outraged her. She thought again of her fiance. Was she to sing for that pallid face? She felt a foul taste in her mouth. She was on the point of losing her control, but immediately hesitated. What should she say? It was all one. If one was happy, why should one cry out? and why cry out if one wasn’t? There was no help for it. So better keep quiet.

  But Captain Polyxigis could not bear this niece’s dumb complaining. The day of the wedding was drawing near; at Easter the crowning would take place. Before that he had to make something clear to her. He could feel that his niece, ever since he had fixed up her engagement, had looked at him with resentful eyes. He must let her know, before she married, that it had cost him something to induce the bridegroom to say yes. Up to the last moment Tityros had wavered. And so one day Captain Polyxigis had opened his money chest, taken out five gold pounds and given them to him. “Here, schoolmaster, take these as an extra dowry,” he had said. “No one need know neither Captain Michales, nor the bride, nor my sister.

  I’m gilding my niece and giving her to you.” That was how he had managed it. And now, if you please, Miss Bride makes a face as if she were drinking quinine. Her bridegroom stinks! She’d like a prince!

  Vangelio came out of the kitchen with a round tray on which were coffee, a glass of cold water and a spoonful of preserved cherries. She put the tray down on a chair in front of her uncle.

  “Listen to me, Vangelio,” he said with a glance at the door, “isn’t Diamandes back yet? Is that swilling brother of yours still gadding?”

  “He’s young,” replied Vangelio proudly, “he’s handsome. It’s right for him.”

  “Right for him? What? Was it right for him to rum you, Vangelio?”

  “Oh! He’s ruined me, has he? But if he hadn’t been there, I’d have died. What would I have had to live for? And let me tell you, Uncle: if I bow my neck now and accept the yoke you’ve found for me, I do it so that, even when I’m married, I shan’t be separated from my brother. Otherwise, the devil take Tityros!”

  Captain Polyxigis swallowed the glassful of water and suppressed his rage. He purposely took a long time munching the cherry conserve, to prevent himself from seizing his niece by the hair and swinging her against the wall.

  “Dammit,” he said finally, twirling his mustache. “He’s your brother, not your sweetheart. He too should marry and found a family and keep his mind away from taverns.”

  Vangelio straightened up. Her cheeks were glowing. “Pray God no such thing is written,” she screamed. “And if it is written, may He rub it out!”

  “What’s happened to you, Vangelio?” cried captain Polyxigis, shocked. “Do you love him more than your husband? But that’s disgraceful! And after all the efforts I’ve made”

  “You’ve sold me for a bit of bread.” Vangelio spat through her teeth.

  Captain Polyxigis could control himself no longer. “A piece of bread, dammit, that seems to you a trifle, does it, my princess? Very clever it sounds! And what, by God, should a bridegroom find to desire hi you? Youth? Beauty? Riches? You’re thirty-five, and shrunk to a dried currant, to an old maid with a mustache! And that hound of a brother has plundered you. A rag is all you are now! Who’s going to look at you now, who’s going to want you, you poor thing? God has struck Tityros with blindness to make him say yes.”

  Vangelio buried her face in her hands and began to cry, without moving. Captain Polyxigis’s heart contracted. How
could he have let such words out of his mouth What was he to do now? How could he console the poor girl?

  He laid a hand on her luxuriant hair. “There, there, Vangelio dear, don’t cry. With God’s help it’ll all come right. A good man has been found to look after you. You’ll see: Soon your cheeks will be plump and rosy again. You’ll grow young again! And then, if you have fine children …”

  “Bah! Little Tityroses!” said Vangelio scornfully, wiping the tears from her eyelids.

  “Perhaps they won’t just be little Tityroses. They’ll have our blood in them too. Perhaps your sons will be like your brother.”

  Vangelio was amazed. The blood rose in her faded bosom. “Be quiet!” she said, shuddering.

  Captain Polyxigis stood up. He stretched out his hand to caress his niece, but drew it back. “We’ll talk some other day, Vangelio,” he said. “I’m going before that swilling brother of yours comes back. I’ve no wish to see him here!”

  He crammed on his large fez and was about to cross the threshold when a heavy tread was heard and the street door burst open. Panting and worn out, with a yellowed sprig of basil behind one ear and a cigarette behind the other, the brother stood on the threshold, his woolen cloak thrown round his shoulders. He frowned and pursed his lips as he recognized his uncle in the doorway. Is he there again with his matchmaking? he thought. Devil take him! He jerked himself together, pulled off his cap and crossed the yard. He did not see the copper objects on the floor as he entered the house. He tripped over them and cursed.

  Captain Polyxigis turned his face away. The sight disgusted him.

  “Men drink wine,” he said contemptuously, “but don’t get drunk. Take me, for example. Men go hunting women, but don’t make fools of themselves. Take me, for example.”

  Diamandes, who could not bear his uncle and knew his vulnerable spots, gave a contemptuous snigger. His tongue was out of control. He stammered out: