Freedom or Death

by Nikos Kazantzakis

  “Let the men of old alone, Hadjisavas, they’re dead and done with. We’re talking about the living. At the moment,” Captain Elias went on, “the big agas are having a conference with the pasha. God alone knows what the dogs are up to now. Let’s be on our guard. What do you think, my lord?”

  “I too have heard of Captain Michales’ new exploit,” said the Metropolitan. “I’m sorry for the palikar, sorry for the man. Wine will be his ruin.”

  “He’ll be the ruin of us! We must curb him. Otherwise …”

  “In God’s name, no rising!” said Hadjisavas. “We’ve much work to do in Crete. Our soil is blessed, it hides great treasuresstatues, inscriptions, royal palaces. How can one carry on excavation in the middle of a rising? Therefore we must–”

  “Leave the men of old alone, I tell you,” Captain Elias interrupted. “Devil take them, let them leave us in peace! Speak, Mavrudes. My poor brain is blunt. Yours is an ax and cuts. Cut away!”

  Old Rose Bug was pleased, and laughed.

  “If you will allow, my lord,” he said.

  “In Heaven’s name, what are you thinking of, that you laugh?” asked the Metropolitan. “Your brain’s like a woman’s. The welfare of Christendom is now in labor.”

  “Alleluia is a short psalm,” replied old Mavrudes. “Now, this minute, rise up, my lord, and go to see the pasha. He’s a kindly man, an Anatolian, good-natured. He doesn’t like trouble. Tell him whatever truth and lies God inspires you with; soothe him, say that he must forgive us for Captain Michales’ having been drunk, that we will call him to order and that he won’t do it again. Take him some sort of present, too,let’s say a fine tobacco box, or a big piece of amber for his long pipe. The bishopric has precious things for difficult times. Give him something: he’s a dog, throw him a bone to gnaw. Then he won’t bark. And our renowned fighter here will have a talk with Captain Michales, and may God protect him as he does so!”

  “At the deaf man’s door you can knock for a long while,” said the captain, wagging his scarred head. “He listens to no one, he’s like a wall. All the same I’ll speak with him. I’m an old man, fought in the 1821 rising: perhaps he’ll listen to me. Apart from that, my lord, I think our respected councilor is talking sense. Take your crosier and go to the pasha. Quick, though! Before the blow falls!”

  The round salver came with coffee, cakes, conserve. The elders fell silent. Through the window came the scent of the lemon tree in blossom. A bee flew in, circled round the four heads, saw that they were not trees in blossom, and made off. The three spokesmen drank their coffee in great gulps and smacked their lips. They had dispatched the business quickly, and had easily hit on what was to be done. The cream and the sesame cakes too came at the right moment. Hadjisavas asked the Metropolitan for permission to roll a cigarette. The other two did the same. They half shut their eyes, and clouds of smoke rose and veiled the Patriarch, the Czar and Hagia Sophia.

  The Metropolitan stretched out his hand and opened a drawer. “My children,” he said, “I’m going to show you a remarkable picture. Don’t be carried away. You know our friend Murzuflos. It’s his work. He is Godfearing, but a visionary. He sees things that we don’t seenot because they are not there, but because God has put blinkers over our eyes, as we do to horses, so that they may not be distracted but may remain fixed straight upon their work. But Godwho knows for what secret purpose? has taken the blinkers off the visionaries.”

  He took out of the drawer a picture wrapped in a piece of white linen. He unwrapped it and held it out to the Jhree spokesmen.

  Captain Elias took it, placed it on his knee and stared at it with his one eye.

  “That’s the Crucifixion,” he said, “the Crucifixion. But I can’t quite make it out.”

  Mavrudes bent over it, looked at it, and gave a cry. “God forgive me, my eyes are flickering. But should … ?” “Extraordinary,” cried Hadjisavas, who had taken a magnifying glass out of his pocket and was eyeing the picture with it. “A wonderful idea! Bless those hands of yours, Murzuflos! It is the Crucifixion. By my honor, I tell you, if I were a bishop, I’d hang this icon up on the iconostasis in the church.”

  The Metropolitan gave a bitter laugh and shook his kindly lion head.

  “But,” said old Mavrudes, “that’s not Christ on the cross. I am a sinner, my God, it’s a woman, wearing car-‘ tridges and silver pistols.”

  “It is Crete, it is Crete,” said the Metropolitan in a voice stifled by emotion. “The cross is raised upon a heap of skulls and bones. The sky is full of dark clouds, and a flash of lightning reveals a monastery in the background to the right. Look at its bell tower, the windmills in front of it, the domes, the walls with towers all around: that is Arkadi. And Crete is nailed to the cross in the form of a tortured mother in black, whose blood runs down on the remains for her children. And below the cross, one on each side, stand two captains, one gray-haired and the other a young man with a broad fez….”

  “There’s a scroll coming out of his mouth,” said old Mavrudes. “It says …”

  “What does it say?” asked Captain Elias, and bent forward, but could not read it.

  Hadjisavas moved his magnifying glass slowly along and read: “Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani….”

  “My God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken me?” the Metropolitan translated.

  For a long while nobody spoke. The four men gazed at the new Crucifixion and sighed. At last Mavrudes opened his mouth. “Isn’t that a sin, my lord? Crete as Christ?”

  “It is, it is,” replied the Metropolitan with a sigh. “But …” “But what?”

  “But she is worth it,” murmured the Metropolitan, gazing at the crucified woman, at Crete.

  The way Murzuflos had painted her! The suffering that lay over her face! Her cheeks were furrowed, her huge, tormented, deep black eyes were overflowing. And her thin, half-open, twisted lips could be heard sighing. Her naked feet were sprinkled with shining blood, and at the bottom of the picture hung a pair of cream-colored boots. Suddenly, with a fierce jerk, as though making a great decision, Captain Elias threw his black fez aside, seized the icon and pressed his lips to it for a long time, as though he could not tear them away. His broad chest rose nd fell violently. At last old Mavrudes could hold out no longer. With tears streaming from his eyes, he snatched the icon out of the hands of the gray-headed warrior, bowed over it and kissed it, weeping. Hadjisavas wiped his eyes, stood up and looked out of the window at the blossoming lemon tree.

  The Metropolitan took the picture and crossed himself. “We worship thy sufferings,” he murmured, and kissed the blood-spattered feet of Crete. And all together they yielded themselves up without restraint to their sorrow.

  The Metropolitan recovered Gist. He wrapped the icon in its white linen, pushed it to the back of the drawer and stood up.

  “Go with my blessing,” he said. “May God stretch out His hand over you.”

  “We must stretch ours out first, Bishop,” said Captain Eh’as. “If God sees no human hand, He doesn’t stretch His out either. Remember that!”

  “Quite right, quite right, Captain Elias! I’m going to see the pasha at once. God grant I find him in a good mood!”

  They bowed and kissed the Metropolitan’s plump, white hand. They entered the churchyard. The captain shook his head. He saw, strewn all over the yard, marble han&s and feet, severed heads, and dishes with unintelligible inscriptions.

  “The men of old,” he muttered angrily, “the men of old.”

  Hadjisavas bent down and began reading from the stones.

  “Let’s go,” Captain Elias said to Mavrudes. “Leave him there. There are seventy-seven sorts of folly. I’ll go and look for Captain Michales. And as for you, you’ve Turkish friends. Selim Aga especially. Have a word with them at once. God grant we don’t have another rising before it’s time. Crete has already had too many losses… .”

  At the Metropolitan’s street door Barba Jannis stood waiting for them. He had placed on the ground his
basket ith the snow wrapped in straw and the copper can filled with sherbet. From time to time, if anyone came past, he would cry his wares: “Cold as snow, cold as ice! Buy the drink of Paradise!”

  His piercing falsetto voice tore people’s ears. Turks and Christians considered him daft, because he feared neither and openly said what he thought. He cursed and blasphemed, now against Christ, now against Mohammed, now against the Sultan. One Easter, some years ago, he had stood in front of the bloodstained Mustapha Pasha and had prepared a sherbet with plenty of snow for his refreshment; and at that moment his spirit had become embroiled, and he had begun to bewail the Christians killed at Arkadi and to leap into the air as though tormented by flame. The pasha and the effendis sitting beside him in the kiosk by the Three Vaults had smoked their long pipes and enjoyed the diversion. People had heard the wailing and they ran up, Turks and Christians together, and this excited him still more. He had bent down, picked a blade of grass and brandished it about him in the air, like one possessed. He wanted to provoke the pasha, to tear his eyes from his head, to menace him. Suddenly he began singing shrilly: “O my supple, gleaming saber, oh you’ll slaughter the Turks….”

  Christians and Turks were dumfounded; they did not know how to take it, and gazed at the pasha to see what he would do. Surprisingly, the pasha had clapped his hands and burst into peals of laughter. What a piece of foolingthis human ruin who would menace Turkey with a glass blade!

  “Bravo, Captain Barba Jannis,” he had called out “Come here!”

  The effendis, too, burst out laughing, and the people joined in. And Barba Jannis danced and sang and howled on.

  “That’s enough, now,” the pasha had shouted. “Now you’ve done for us all: Turkey is lying on the ground! Come here, I tell you, you idiot palikar, I like you. I’m going to present you with a real saber, and pin a high , ecoration on your chest: the open hand, Mohammed’s seal. And now listen carefully: I give you the freedom, every Easter, to gird the saber on, wear your decoration and strut like a pasha through Megalokastro from the Kanea to the Hospital Gate, and from the New to the Harbor Gate. And you’ve the freedom, every day, to say whatever comes into that silly head of yours, and even to curse me. You’re a fool, your words are free of treason. For years, Barba Jannis, I haven’t laughed so much as today, and for that I give you thanks.”

  So it had come about that Barba Jannis was the only free man in Megalokastro. When there was unrest in the air, Barba Jannis was the first to scent it. And what the Christians had in mind but dared not yet express, he shouted out loud with the sherbet in summer and the salepi in winter, and brought relief to Christendom. When he went too far, he sometimes got a box on the ear, and the Turks threw lemon peel and rotten tomatoes at him, but this did not stop Barba Jannis from letting his tongue work on.

  Since yesterday he had smelled powder in the air. He had seen, too, the three elders going thoughtfully into the Metropolitan’s residence in the early morning. That had put a^flea in his ear. He took up his position by the street door of the residence and waited. He must find out what was going on. Easter was near. He would have to put on his saber and his tin decoration, and vent his rage outside the Three Vaults while the pasha and the effendis listened to the band. In that way he would give the underdogs, who might not say a word, some satisfaction.

  As he saw the two elders emerge, he picked up his snow-basket and can and approached them.

  “Good day, elders,” he said. “Wait a moment. I’ll make you a sherbet to cool you. It’s getting warm.”

  “Leave us in peace, Barba Jannis,” said Captain Elias. “We don’t want your sherbet.”

  “Don’t be so rude, Captain Elias. I’m not afraid of you. I’m a fool, you know, and I’m not afraid either of pasha or of sultan, while all you clever gentry and captains are pissing in your breeches. But Barba Jannis has his saber and his letter of freedom and his folly. What comes into his mind, that he says without fear.”

  “I wish you well, Barba Jannis,” old Rose Bug said gently. “Curb your tongue, the time hasn’t come yet.”

  “When will it come?” asked Barba Jannis. “I want to know.”

  Captain Elias raised his cudgel. Barba Jannis moved on.

  The Metropolitan hung round his neck the golden talismanone side of which represented, in many-colored enamel, the Crucifixion, and the other the Resurrection and put in his pocket an old silver tobacco box from the celebrated workshops of Jannina, whose Metropolitan was his friend and had given it to him. He picked up his crosier and went on foot, with the deacon following him, to the pasha’s entrance gate.

  Meanwhile the pasha slumbered, stretched out on soft cushions. He was having a dream. He had gone for a walk in the garden of his home town, Broussa. The trees stretched their branches over him, some laden with blossom, others with fruit. As he smoked his long pipe and wandered about, he thought he was in Paradise, and that at any moment Mohammed, with his little mirror, comb and phial of perfume in his red sash, might come out to bid him welcome.

  But as he turned for an instant, what should he see? A sturdy olive tree, scorched by lightning and twisted, without either leaves or blossoms. On its branches there hung fruit of a strange kind: guns and cartridges and daggers and black headbands. What sort of accursed olive tree was this, that bore weapons instead of fruit? cried the pasha in terror, and shrank back, to return again to his garden of blossom and fruit. But the garden had disappeared, and about him the pasha saw nothing but wild deserts and cliffs and, beyond these, bushes of muskets and silver pistols.

  “Crete! Crete!” yelled the pasha and sprang up.

  At that moment Suleiman the Arab opened the door. “Pasha Effendi,” he said, “the big pasha of the Greeks has come. He’s coming up the stairs.”

  “I’ve had a bad dream, Suleiman,” said the pasha, wiping the cold sweat from his forehead.

  “Shall I tell the great beast to take himself off?”

  The pasha reflected for a moment: “No, let him come in, you blockhead. These imams of the giaours are good interpreters of dreams. He’ll explain this one to me. Let him come.”

  The Metropolitan entered, and the two highest dignitaries of Megalokastro greeted each other. They were like two gray-headed kings in this community, and their kingdoms were the Turkish and the Greek qaurters. Cross and crescent were intertwined.

  They sat down side by side on the broad divan. The pasha lighted his long pipe; the Metropolitan pulled out his rosary and begain to tell its black ebony beads and to ponder how the conversation ought to begin. Through the open window were visible the buildings of the guard and the old plane tree with its young leaves. Near the plane tree could be seen the famous Venetian fountain with the marble lion. A warm wind was blowing.

  The pasha yawned and began:

  “Summer is here, Metropolitan Effendi. O Allah, how time passes! It is a wheel and never stops turning, and we turn with it. Summer comes and one says: ‘How hot it is! I’m stifling!’ and while one is saying so, the thunderstorms and the rains set in, and one wraps oneself in one’s cloak. What does your religion say to these mysterious things?”

  But before the Metropolitan could frame an answer, the pasha, in whose inside a worm was gnawing, asked him:

  “Do you believe in dreams, Metropolitan Effendi? Where do they come from? Who sends them to us?”

  “Some are sent by God,” replied the Metropolitan, “others by the Evil Spirit.”

  “And how can you tell the difference? Which are from God? Which from the Evil Spirit?”

  “You have surely had a dream, Pasha Effendi. It still lies on your eyelids, I can see it.”

  “Yes, that is why I am asking you.”

  “May it have been a good and blessed one, Pasha Effendi. Let me hear it.”

  “Do you understand something about dreams?”

  “God sometimes grants me enlightenment. Well?”

  The pasha sighed and recounted the dream. He added a little decoration to the olive tree. H
e said he had seen several heads hanging from its branches.

  The Metropolitan lowered his lion head thoughtfully. He was seeking to use this dream to his own purpose.

  “Well, is it from the Evil Spirit?” asked the pasha uneasily.

  “From God,” the Metropolitan answered. “But how can I interpret it, Pasha Effendi? Perhaps it disturbs you?”

  “I be disturbed?” exclaimed the pasha. “Don’t you know that a true Mussulman is never disturbed? For he knows that everything that happens in the world has already been written, and no one can strike it out. If at this moment the Sultan were to send me a firman demanding my head, I might well bewail, I certainly would bewail, but I would not be disturbed. It was written so. Shall I put my hand into God’s plan? So speak out without fear, Metropolitan Effendi. But beware of lies. Tell the whole truth!”

  The Metropolitan thought for a few moments, then said:

  “The garden which you saw in your dream is the good man’s heart. Your heart is a garden, Pasha Effendi: it is opened at night, to let you go in and walk about. What you saw in your sleep was what answers to your nature: to wander tranquilly and at peace beneath blossoming trees in Broussa, the town where you were born… . Your heart is a garden, but behold, for you it was written that you should become pasha and undertake this office here in Crete–”

  The pasha sighed. “What can I say to you, Metropolitan Effendi? It is true, as if you were reading my heart. But go on.”

  “When a man’s village lies before him, Pasha Effendi, he needs no guide to it. The olive tree hung with weapons that you saw is Crete. You stood under the lightning-scorched tree, and your face darkened. Here your destiny begins to be troubled. It is a great pity that you woke up and do not now know what followed. Perhaps God wrote for you, further on, that He gives, you freedom, from now on, to do as you will. The responsibility is yours.”

  “Yes, it may be as you say, Metropolitan Effendi,” said the good Anatolian. “By the sun which shines over us, Christians and Turks could live as brothers; the Greeks work, the Turks eat, and both lead a happy life.” “It lies in your hands!” the Metropolitan exclaimed, having now found the starting point he had been looking for. “It is in your power to bring love to the island. God sent you the dream at the right moment!”