NF (1995) The Pillars of Hercules

by Paul Theroux

  “I retire in a few years,” he said. “I would like to overwinter here, or in Benidorm.”

  “What’s the attraction here?”

  Janwillem countered with a question of his own. “You’ve been to Holland?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “Very flat. Very expensive,” he said. “But here”—and he gestured—“is cheap! You can eat at one of those places with wobbly tables, very old and nice, dinner for two, with wine—twenty guilders!”

  “So you’re moving here?”

  “Maybe if I find a flat on the top of a house, with balcony, nice view of the sea.”

  Still, Janwillem seemed doubtful. Was he?

  “I think it is very isolated in the winter,” he said. “There is a Dutch group of people in Benidorm, in Spain. You have been there?”

  “Yes,” and I wanted to add I hated it, but why demoralize this Flying Dutchman in his hopes for a happy retirement?

  “If you are bored in Benidorm, it is so easy to get the bus back to Holland,” he said. “Here is harder. A ferry to Piraeus, then the train or the bus to Patras. Ferry to Italy. Another train to Rome. Train to Paris. What? Two or three days—maybe four!”

  I had met Janwillem by chance, walking the backstreets of Ierápetra, as he was looking for a likely dwelling in which to spend his retirement. By the end of this conversation he had convinced himself that retirement in Greece would be an enormous mistake.

  Mounting my motorcycle, I rode back to Ágios Nikólaos, admiring the mountains and the blue bays, sideswiped by cars and trucks, as I made my way through the goat-chewed, sheep-nibbled landscape of sharp rocks and olive trees and cracked white houses, all of it screamingly signposted: For Rent! For Sale! Buy Me! Try Me! Rent Me! Eat Me! Drink Me!

  Mike the Greek was still sitting at his motorbike rental agency, still reading the porno magazine he had been leafing through that morning.

  “How do you say porno in Greek?”

  “Porno!” he cried. “Same!”

  Back on the Seabourn, I met Jack Greenwald, who said that he had spent the afternoon in the Jacuzzi on the upper deck with Ambassador Tan.

  “We talked about what stressful lives we had led,” he said. “I was lying but I think he was telling the truth. We were drinking and sitting there in the Jacuzzi in the sunshine. It was very pleasant. He tells me he’s on his way to Bangladesh, to help poor people.”

  “Was Reggie in the tub?” I asked, using the name we had assigned to one of the British passengers.

  Jack wagged his finger at me and said, “No, no. Never trust an Englishman who doesn’t shine his shoes.”

  After Warm Purple Cauliflower with Olives in White Truffle Vinaigrette, Chilled Plum Bisque, and Marinated Breast of Guinea Fowl with Juniper Gravy—or did I salve my conscience with the Vegetable Gratin?—I bumped into Mrs. Betty Levy and asked why she had been missing at dinner.

  “I’m feeling a bit precious today,” Mrs. Levy said. “I had some consommé in my suite. I don’t want to get anything. They’ve all got something.”

  Now, well into our second week of this Mediterranean cruise on this glittering ship, we had learned a little about history (toilets were called Vespasians in ancient Rome, Pericles had enormous ears, Athenians ate porridge for breakfast), and found out a lot about each other. In many ways it was like being an old-time resident of an exclusive hotel. Passengers knew each other, and their families, and their ailments, and were confident and hearty.

  “How’s that lovely wife of yours, Buddy?”

  “Say, is your mother any better?”

  “Lovely day. How’s the leg?”

  The only stress was occasioned by the visits ashore—not that it was unpleasant being reverentially led through the ground plans of ancient sites, and down the forking paths of incomprehensible ruins, many of them no larger than a man’s hand (“Try to imagine that in its day, this structure was actually larger than the Parthenon”). It was rather that every daily disembarkation for a tour was like a rehearsal for the final disembarkation, the day when we would leave the comfort of the Seabourn, and that was too awful to contemplate.

  This ship was now more than home—it had become the apotheosis of the Mediterranean, a magnificent vantage point in the sea which allowed us to view the great harbors and mountains and cliffs and forts in luxury. At sundown we were always back on board, away from the uncertainty and the stinks of the port cities, and the predatory souvenir-sellers. We were on our floating villa which, in its way, contained the best of the Mediterranean. We drank the wines of the Midi and the Mezzogiorno, our dishes were better than anything we saw in the harborside restaurants, and rather than risk the detritus of the beaches, we had our own marina on the stern. Even with his billions, Aristotle Onassis had felt there was no greater joy on earth than cruising these sunny islands, and his honeymoon trip with his new wife, Jacqueline, was the very journey we were embarked on, sailing—it must be said—in our vastly superior ship.

  From Crete, we sailed through the islands called the Sporadhes, living up to their name as sporadic—isolated and scattered—and onward past the Greek island of Kos, to the coast to Turkey, the port of Bodrum, with its crusader castle and its crumbling city wall and its market, which contained both treasures and tourist junk.

  It was immediately apparent, even in the swift one-day passage from Greece to Turkey, that we were in a different country. I compared them, because as old enemies they were constantly comparing each other. Turkey was both more ramshackle and more real. Travelers tended to avoid Turkey, which was not a member of the European Community (thanks in part to Greece’s opposition), so Turkey had not depended on tourists for its income and had had to become self-sufficient, with the steel industry and the manufacturing that Greece lacked. Turks were calmer, more polite, less passionate, somewhat dour—even lugubrious; less in awe of tourists, and so they were more hospitable and helpful. Greeks were antagonistic towards each other, which made them hard for foreigners to rub along with; Turks, more formal, had rules of engagement, and also seemed to like each other better. Turkey had a bigger hinterland and shared a border with seven countries, yet Turks were less paranoid and certainly less xenophobic, less vocal, less blaming, perhaps more fatalistic.

  We had crossed from Europe to Asia. Turkey is the superficially westernized edge of the Orient, Greece is the degraded fringe of Europe, basically a peasant society, fortunate in its ruins and (with most of the Mediterranean) its selective memory. But it was wrong to compare Greece with Turkey, since their geography and their size were so different. Greece’s landscape was more similar to Albania, and if Greece was a successful version of Albania, Turkey was a happier version of Iran—perhaps the only moderate Muslim country in the world.

  After the assault by touts at Greek ports it was restful to walk down the quay in Bodrum and not have Turks flying at us. That restraint was an Asiatic virtue. Turks also had Asian contempt, and were famously cruel, both knowing they were so and believing that most people in the world were just the same. If you abused Turkish hospitality (as I did frequently) and asked Turks whether they tortured their prisoners, they spat and said, “Everyone tortures their prisoners!”

  It was raining in Bodrum. Half the Seabourn passengers did not bother to go ashore. But even in the rain the harbor looked alive, an effect perhaps of being full of beautiful wooden sailboats in port for a regatta. The crusader castle was intact, except for the occasional mark of an infidel’s aggression. There were pious Latin inscriptions over the battlements and gateways (“No victory is possible without your help, O Lord”), a nice reminder that Christianity had kept its faith robust with its own jihads—holy wars that had lasted for centuries.

  Walking past a carpet shop—an unmistakable sign that we were in Asia—I saw Jack Greenwald being harangued by the carpet dealer.

  “This is not a carpet! This is a piece of art!” he cried. “I am selling art!”

  Jack beckoned me in, introduced me to the dealer, Mr. Arcyet
, as “my millionaire friend,” and soon carpets were being unrolled and were flopping one on another. It was another Greenwald tease to abandon me to the hysteria of a Turkish carpet dealer who believed he had an American tycoon captive in his shop, on a rainy day in Bodrum.

  His hysteria was short-lived, interrupted by a more dramatic event. Outside the shop, a huge Turkish woman had collapsed on the street, and she lay in the rain, her skirt hiked up, while a Turkish man slapped her face in a violent attempt to revive her, and other Turks sauntered by to stare. Soon there was a crowd of murmuring Turks, watching the supine woman, and when a taxi came to take her away, it required four of them to haul her into the backseat.

  That unscheduled event was the only drama in Bodrum that day. It was too rainy to go anywhere. The phones would not work without a Turkish phone card, and there were no cards for sale anywhere in the town (“You come back next week”). I looked at the old mausoleum and the new casino and the suburbs of bungalows and condominiums of the sort that were being retailed elsewhere in the Mediterranean as holiday homes for Europeans in less congenial climates. The prices of this Turkish real estate ranged from $30,000 to $60,000—cheaper than, but just as hideous as, the ones in Spain, Malta and Greece.

  Resolute about staying ashore, I had a Turkish lunch of eggplant, fava beans, stuffed peppers and a gooey dessert, and afterwards, back on the ship, realized that the people who had stayed on board had had a better lunch, a drier time of it, and still enjoyed the thrill of seeing the castle and the sailboats and the shapely Turkish mountains.

  At dinner, the Seabourn was sailing north to Lesbos, and Jack Greenwald was in unusually high spirits in anticipation of dessert—one of his own recipes, Fraises au poivre, Strawberries with Black Pepper. Greenwald’s high spirits took the form of teasing, and as we were at a larger than usual table, he was able to range over it, poking fun. To the Panamanian, he said: “Noriega was a very patriotic man, above all, don’t you think?” To a woman wrinkling her nose: “That is how Eskimos say no. They say yes by lifting their eyebrows—here, do you think you can manage that, too?” To a rationalist at the head of the table: “Of course I believe in ghosts, and our prime minister, Mackenzie King, believed in ghosts, too.”

  This chatter was no more absurd than that of the other passengers.

  “—Harry and I were at the Barbara Sinatra benefit for abused children,” a woman was saying. “Tom Arnold was one of the speakers. He talked about the man who had abused him—”

  “—figured, if you’re in Turkey you’ve got to get a Turkish carpet. I measured the spot in the house and I’ve got the measurements with me. We’re looking for something floral—my wife loves flowers. We don’t want anything geometric—”

  “—a couple of icons. They swore they were genuine—”

  “—stayed for a whole week in the Sea Shells—they’re islands in the Indian Ocean.”

  “—next time up the Amazon.”

  “—get to Rio J. DeNiro, during Carnaval.”

  At last, the waiter rolled a trolley towards Jack Greenwald with several bowls, and the strawberries, and in bottles and saucers various other ingredients for his dessert. Jack supervised and narrated the preparation.

  “Nine plump fresh strawberries—good,” he said. “Now, take that pepper mill and grind twelve twists of pepper,” and he counted as the black pepper fell upon the crimson strawberries. “Take a tablespoon of Pernod and macerate them, yes, like that. And a tablespoon of Cointreau. Macerate. Lift them, let it reach all the berries. Now a tablespoon of Armagnac. Macerate, macerate.”

  “Yes?” The waiter showed Jack the bowl of slick speckled berries.

  “A few pinches of sugar and three-quarters of a tablespoon of fresh crème,” Jack said. “Mix carefully, just coat them with the crème. You notice how I pronounce that word ‘clem’—that’s because I’m from Montreal.”

  There was a bit more business with the Fraises au poivre. The plates were wrong. No, not soup bowls—but flat plates were needed for the serving, and the sauce had to be dripped just so.

  “What do you think?” he asked, after I had sampled some.

  It was hard to describe the taste, which was both a slow sweet burn, and peppery and syrupy and alcoholic and fruity; and I did not want to tell him that no taste could compete with the pleasure of watching this dessert being concocted by him and the deferential waiter.

  To add to my pleasure, Jack immediately ordered a helping of Cherries Jubilee, another Greenwald variation, flambéed, with ice cream, and tucking in, he said, “Doesn’t this go down nicely after the strawberries?”

  Afterwards, he said that he had joined the cruise—he was going on to Haifa after Istanbul—in order to lose forty pounds, “but I’m having my doubts.”

  • • •

  Morning in Lesbos, dreary in a drizzling rain, but there were floods elsewhere. FLOODS! CATASTROPHE! the Lesbian headlines cried. DEATH IN CRETE! Torrential rains were general all over the Peloponnese: cars washed into the sea, stranded tourists, cliffs broken by erosion, roofs collapsed.

  Because so little vegetation existed in Greece, whether mainland or islands, the soil did not hold the rain. Lesbos was a study in erosion, the gravelly hills sluicing down their own gullies and washing into the street; dirt, mud, stones, silt, sand traveling fast in streams and pouring into the sea, reducing the island, making it starker and stonier.

  Had Greece always looked like this? I began to think that there had to have been a time when it was forested, and that the loss of trees had given it this crumbly and lined appearance. It had perhaps been quite a different landscape in ancient times, not the white wasteland of hot pockmarked stone and blazing sand, but a cooler place of shade trees and forests.

  I traipsed through the town of Mitilini, bought a newspaper, made a telephone call, visited a church, and watched a fisherman plucking tiny fish from the thick folds of his net. It continued to rain. Few places are gloomier than a tourist town in a rainstorm. The weather seemed to make the Greeks crabbier, too; the frowning chain-smoking men in the damp tavernas they had turned into men’s clubs.

  If I had arrived in Lesbos on my own, in a boat from Turkish Izmir, or on a Greek island-hopping ferry, with days on the island, I would have tried to make it work for me. I would have buttonholed a Lesbian, needled a landlady, glad-handed a Greek, and tried to create some rapport. But this was a one-day visit. I jumped puddles all morning, had lunch on the Seabourn and made another foray in the afternoon, all the time watching the clock. The food on board was excellent; there was friendship and good cheer and comfort. It was so easy for me to turn my back on the island and wait for the ship’s whistle to blow and for Lesbos to vanish astern.

  Most of the passengers were getting off the ship in Istanbul. A few were going on to Haifa. Mrs. Betty Levy was threatening to stay aboard for another month or more. Her dream, she told me, was to be at sea for weeks—no ports, no tours.

  This impending sense of departure gave our progress up the Dardanelles the following morning a gloomy air of abandonment, and the funereal pall was not lightened by the knowledge that we were passing Gallipoli, and the two hundred thousand graves of fallen soldiers. The Dardanelles is like a canal, no more than a mile wide in some places, linking the eastern basin of the Mediterranean to the Sea of Marmara, where another canal—the Bosporus—divides Istanbul, and so on, to the Black Sea.

  The Dardanelles is also the Hellespont of Leander, who swam back and forth to be with Hero; and of Lord Byron, in homage and in imitation. I had thought of swimming it myself—a mile was swimmable—but it looked uninviting in late October, with four- to five-foot breaking waves, and a heavy chop, with a cold wind blowing from Thrace on the north side.

  “Freeze the vodka,” Jack Greenwald was saying to the waiter in French, preparing him for the caviar course at tonight’s dinner. “Wrap the bottle in a wet towel, put an apple in it for taste and keep it so cold it gets syrupy. Do you follow me?”

  The bloody b
attlefield of Gallipoli was now the little Turkish village of Gelibolu, mainly fisherfolk, and where Xerxes and Alexander had marched their armies across on pontoon bridges, where Jason had sailed with his Argonauts in search of the Golden Fleece, there were rusty freighters, and more villages, and a town, Canakkale—some mosques and minarets visible, along with the factories and the clusters of houses. But it was wrong to expect anything dramatic. It was an old sea, of myths and half-truths and sound bites of history; its periods of prosperity and peace had been interrupted by even longer periods of disruption and pillaging. It was the center of many civilizations, but there had always been barbarians at the gates—and inside the gates.

  Yet so little was left of the Mediterranean past that it was possible to travel the sea, from port to port, and never be reminded of the ancients. Even the recent brutality of Gallipoli was buried on the featureless shore—just another cemetery. There were so many graves on the shores of this sea.

  Fog rolled in, dusk fell, blurred lights shone from the shore, some indicating the crests of hills. And then in this mist, a nocturne of misty light, there emerged and remained printed on the night a vision from the past, of a skyline that was purely minarets and towers, and mosque domes and bridges and obelisks, like a promise made in Byzantium that was being honored in the present. We had crossed the Golden Horn.

  Closer to the European shore, which is the site of the old city, their features were more distinct, first the squarer lines of the Topkapi Palace, then Agya Irene, and the fifteen-hundred-year-old Agya Sophia, every brick intact; and behind its minarets, the six minarets of the Blue Mosque, and on the crest of the hill Nur Osmanye—the Light of God—the thick Byzantine fire tower, Yeni Mosque beneath it, at the end of the Galata Bridge, and beyond the vast almost unearthly masterpiece of Sinan, the Süleyman Mosque, pale and glittering even in this shifting fog.

  Ferries were crossing the Bosporus, passing the Seabourn, hooting, their lights illuminating the sea and giving the scraps of hanging fog the shimmering and golden texture of an antique veil, a little tattered and brittle, perhaps, but still usable for conveying mystery.