Bitter Lemons of Cyprus

by Lawrence Durrell

  (g) “Enosis and only Enosis.” I was able to test my theory of Greek character again tonight. Returning late I was hissed at from a dark doorway. “Don’t go up now. Manoli is drunk and might do you harm. He is waiting up there.” It sounded alarming but I pressed on up the dark road. Manoli was standing in the rosy glow from the tavern door, swaying a bit and twirl ing his moustache. “Ah,” he says as he catches sight of me, “Ah! Here is the foreigner.” His wits are all awry and he looks vaguely reproachful, that is all. I catch hold of his arm and whisper in his ear: “Never say that Greece and England drew the sword upon each other.” He suddenly seemed to come to himself. “Never,” he repeated indistinctly. “Never, my friend! Never!” Crossing himself. And before he can muster enough national feeling to change his mind I slip past him into my own front door. Though they have written Enosis on every wall in the village, so far nobody had touched the walls of the house, three of which are on a public highway. I point this out to Andreas. “Of course,” he says. “That would be unneighborly. And another thing. You know we all love the English. There is nothing anti-English in Enosis.”

  (h) H.L. on St. Hilarion, whose identity appears to be in some doubt. A pity, because the site demands a saint with a biography. He is, however, supposed to have retired to the castle and died there. His body was taken to the Syrian desert by a disciple and placed in a monastery he had founded. Neophytus Rhodinos says it was stolen by “certain ascetics,” while Makhairas hints that the body found in the castle was a later one. Where is it now? It is hard to say. Manoli has two fables of buried treasure, and a Princess asleep in a rock which he associates with the castle. H.L. quoted De Mandeville, however, and I looked him up: “And in the castell of amoure lyth the body of Seynt Hyllarie and men kepen it right worshipfully.” Estienne de Lusignan, just to bewilder us, says the castle was originally built for Cupid; that demons and unclean spirits, his satellites, dwell there. St. Hilarions virtue drove them out, and his cult replaced that of the Love God. I prefer the Crusader name of Dieudamor.

  (i) To Larnaca through an extraordinary landscape reminding one of Plato’s God “geometrizing”: low hills, almost perfect cones with leveled tops suggesting the Euclidean objects found in art studios. Wind erosion? But the panel of geometrical mounds seems handmade. And the valleys tapestried with fat-tailed sheep, plots of verdure, and here and there a camel train and palm tree. A strange mixture of flavors, the Bible, Anatolia, and Greece.

  (j) The Mesaoria combines every extreme of beauty and ugliness; barren, sand-bedeviled, empty, and under moonlight a haunted waste; then in spring bursting with the shallow splendors of anemone and poppy, and cross-hatched with silk-soft vegetation. “Only here you realize that things pushed to extremes become their opposites; the ugly barren Mesaoria and the verdant one are so extreme that one wonders whether the beauty or the ugliness has not the greater power.”

  (k) Ownership of trees. To Zeus belongs the oak. Knowledge was “the eating of the acorn.” Hermes owned the palm, and later Apollo both palm and laurel. Demeter the fig tree—the sacred phallus of Bacchus was made from the wood. The sycamore was the Tree of Life for the Egyptians. The pine tree belonged to Cybele. Black poplars and willows are especially connected with the winter solstice, therefore with Pluto and Persephone; but the white poplar claims Hercules who brought it up from the shades. I can find nothing about the mulber ries and tangerines.…

  (l) Above doorways a talisman of goat’s horns, like horseshoes in an English village smithy. Frangos says this prevents the evil eye. The tall snake-boots worn by the men illustrate their respect and fear for the viper—of which they describe one “fatal” variety: a short, fat-bellied, bile-and-sputum colored reptile with a large head. When killed the “bone of the head” is put in spirit and kept. The liquid is supposed to be a specific against snake or tarantula poison, and has the added power of curing impotence. Other customs, I have forgotten; but snake-lore here would be worth investigating. Snake an ancient symbol of knowledge (“Their ears have been licked by serpents”). H.L. on a medieval monastery where a breed of giant cat was cultivated specially to attack the snakes which infested the promontory.

  (m) H.L. on Cypriot character. Anatolia has touched it with sleep. They are gentler, less strident than the metropolitan Greeks, and far more honest. The ancients coined the phrase “Cypriot ox” because of their sleepiness. I find they have fine old-fashioned manners, unhurried and graceful. Samuel Brown in 1879 wrote of them: “The Christian inhabitants, though Greek by language and religion, possess little of the intelligence, enterprise and restlessness of the Greek character, nor physiologically are they of Greek type. They, as well as their Mohammedan neighbors, are naturally indolent and unambitious, self-willed and obstinate, but peaceable, domestic, fairly honest and very easily governed.… Life and property are probably not more secure in any part of Her Majesty’s dominions. How far the prevailing stupidity and apathy result from the system under which the inhabitants have lived for many generations is an interesting subject of inquiry. The education of the priests and laity is of the lowest standard. As the children appear bright and docile a system of sound elementary secular education would produce the happiest results.”

  Artemisia thought poorly of them; but then she was a somewhat frightening woman, if I remember rightly, who pounded the bones of Mauselos her husband in a mortar and drank the powdered results in wine “to give her strength.” An early form of bluestocking.

  (n) To Famagusta with Marie and Pearce and an amusing friend who is bitterly critical of the administration. “What good is it to have brought order and justice so-called if we have brought unparalleled ugliness? We have allowed the two walled towns which could have rivaled Carcassonne to be destroyed under our noses when a little town-planning would have saved them and earned millions from tourists. And look as you will you cannot find a single building, from a village pump to a town hall, put up by us which would not brand us as lazy vandals in civilized eyes.” I must say there is truth in this. But A.H. says it is the same all over the Commonwealth, unending ugliness, and the projection of England as Wimbledon. What is the truth about our administration? It is hard to say. Sanitation and public health seem well found, to judge by this village; the building laws take account of them, though they seem rather out-of-date. Flies and anopheles are certainly kept down by the municipal health-people with commendable energy. And it is rather endearing to find scribbled on a mosque or church the last date of DDT’ing among the other graffiti. But there is one significant thing: in all the long harangues about the Government and its deficiencies there has never been any mention so far of dishonesty—only stupidity, arrogance, and ignorance. I have never once heard the word “dishonesty” or “bribe” and these would be the first charges to spring to the lips of indignant Greeks if there were a shadow of real belief in them. As for ugliness, if we have built nothing good (and certainly there is one place outside Famagusta of an ugliness so soul-wrenching as to deserve a Royal Commission) we have done excellent work in preserving monuments. I am told this is entirely due to a quite exceptional archaeological officer, Peter Megaw, who is a friend of Pearce’s and whom I shall meet. But all this must be measured against funds. I have not seen a copy of the budget.

  (o) My mother has arrived for a holiday, full of energy and malapropisms, and totally convinced that yet another of the family follies is in full swing. But the beauty of the house contents her, and she is able to establish something like a regular domestic routine with the help of Xenu, the huge porpoise of a maid from the village of Carmi, whom we call “the Kyria Eleison” from her most repeated exclamation of surprise. Everything surprises and dismays her; she is asthmatic and somewhat hysterical and blows and whistles like a grampus.

  This arrival is timely for another reason. I have been getting somewhat low in funds and will have to turn aside to find work if the grandiose projects designed for the top floor of the house are to be completed this year. Unsupervised all would end in liq
uor and fairy-tales; and while my mother is gregarious her knowledge of Greek is limited and keeps her somewhat tongue-tied, despite the quantities of excellent country wine supplied to the house by Clito at sixpence a liter.

  (p) F.S. has left for Turkey with her calm, dispassionate voice and quiet personal view of things. I can’t help thinking her trip is somewhat dangerous—but then they have all been. H.L. has flown off round the world. Pearce and Marie have both vanished. Mark Sarafian. Otto Manheim. Grisvold. Saunders. My brother threatens to resurrect quite soon. This will put me in an embarrassing situation; I shall no longer be able to get free drinks on his magnificent stand at Thermopylae. Lalou is to be married. Her mother has given me wonderful material about the Cypriot wedding. The whole ceremony is conducted to appropriate songs and dances on the archaic pattern. We have been formally invited by the old mother who visited us to sprinkle our hands formally with rose water before handing us a smartly printed invitation to the wedding. It is only the first of many to come, but it is a welcome sign that our neighbors accept us, and when I express my gratitude Andreas says quietly: “After all, you come to us as a neighbor, not to make the ‘big gentleman’ with us.”

  (q) Another old friend, Maurice Cardiff, has returned to the island where he represents the British Council—surely an inspired choice, for he was part-editor and founder of the old Anglo-Hellenic review. He promises to find me some teaching to do. A close friend of the “Lapidios hermits,” he is a most welcome addition to the ranks of exiles; but more important, he has established firm links with the few Greek intellectuals on the island and is much beloved. Through him I met Nikos Kranidiotis the poet, who is the Archbishops secretary, and G. Pol Georgiou, the only Cypriot painter of his generation who is of European significance.

  (r) Among the grizzled muleteers who bring up loads of sand and gravel for the masons is one with a fine red jolly face whose son helps him in the work. Judge my surprise when yesterday I saw a copy of Eliot’s Quartets sticking out of the pocket of his torn jacket hanging on a nail. He is a young schoolmaster, seldom in the village except during the holidays; but he is a poet and timidly showed me some verses which proved to have promise enough to be printed in the Cyprus Review. When I told his old father that his son, unknown to him, was a writer and had had his first verses printed he raised his dusty cap high in the air and exclaimed: “Then praise be to the mother who bore him.”

  (s) The quietness, the sense of green beatitude which fills this village derives not only from the great Tree of Idleness but from the Abbey; it intrudes an overflowing peace upon every little corner of the place. As all the houses face true north there can hardly be a window in the place which does not frame a corner of it, some gable or grey arch—unselfish and candid in death as its founders must have tried to become in life. How strange that so little should be known about it, and that no saint or hermit found it a fitting place in which to embody a legend. Half the village houses are built from the stone blocks of the place, stolen over successive generations and built into the walls and ovens and privies of my neighbors. Kollis is right about its being alive. Every Sunday its bell rings with a fine tang and the villagers dressed in their Sunday best troop down to prayer.

  Meanwhile the work on the house went on unflaggingly under my mothers rather variable direction. She had a passion for folklore and ghost stories and I was rather glad she had never managed to learn Greek as all would be lost if she and Michaelis once got together. But she had taken to over-feeding the workmen in her large compassionate way, and now all sorts of delicacies were passed round on plates all day, together with innumerable cups of coffee, so that the lunch hour had begun to resemble a rather original sort of garden party.

  Together we shared some fascinating experiences—as when an English M.P. came in search of information and was induced to experiment with the white wine of Clito which bears the label “Swet White Dry.” Unknown to ourselves, who were sitting over this excellent wine on the terrace, Mr. Honey had begun a twenty-foot hole outside the front door to provide seepage for the village pump which was due to be installed that day. We bowed our guest out and almost into this pit before we saw it, and indeed had not my mother clutched the visitor’s coat tails all might have been lost. But she earned her spurs by a classical malapropism. Talking of life in Europe compared to life in England, and making common cause with our guest who was a much-traveled man, she beamed and said: “I’m delighted to find that we are both misplaced persons!” Or was it the wine? I shall never know.

  Then there was Mr. Honey’s wanderlust. The terrible cafard of the village, induced no doubt by frequent potations underground, convinced him one day that he should never return. He was by this time fifteen foot down, and quite invisible, in the cesspit which was designed to look after the kitchen drainage. All morning a thin wraith of song had risen from the darkness—the only sign of life apart from a feeble scraping. He usually took his small son, aged seven, down with him on these excursions into the infernal regions. The boy was a clumsy little fellow, always dropping spades on his father’s head. Today he rose to the surface, voided a basketful of black earth and said: “My father will not come up. He says he is going through to Australia. He is tired of life in Bellapaix.” We tried to interrogate the darkness of the pit but only a confused series of sounds emerged, composed of snatches of song, belches, and some unhappy oaths. “Honey,” I shouted, “it is evening. Come up.” He groaned dramatically and shouted: “Leave me to my darkness. I shall die here—or else emerge in Australia to start a new life. A new life!” he repeated in another key. “Think of it, a new life.” “The fool,” said Andreas, “he is drunk.” The little boy nodded. “He has had a bottle down there all day.”

  Mr. Honey belched feebly and shouted, “It’s a lie, by Saint Peter,” but his strength was obviously ebbing fast. My mother became perturbed. She had been reading all sorts of things about fire damp and carbon monoxide. He might suffocate. “He’ll reach Australia by morning,” said Michaelis ironically and suggested dropping a pannier of earth on him, but I persuaded him against it. Honey was rather feeble in body—as well as infirm of spirit. “I order you to come out,” I bellowed, trying the method of command, but the only result was some maidenly giggling. “If you could see how you looked up in the sky you’d say you were a balloon,” said Mr. Honey. “Anyway,” he added, “I hate the British and shall drive them into the sea single-handed, yea, alone.” I dimly saw a hand waving a bottle. “Come up you fool,” I said. “Hoity toity,” said Mr. Honey. It was rather difficult to know what to do. Andreas produced a drum of water which he claimed would instantly revive the traveler, but I bade him desist for Mr. Honey was something of a treasure and I wasn’t sure that he hadn’t invented a new form of tourism. “Let’s leave him,” I said, “until he is sober enough to come up. How, by the way, does he come up out of these pits?” The small boy indicated a makeshift windlass and a coil of rope; his task was to drag the baskets of earth to the surface and empty them. Occasionally a heavy one would crash down upon the gravedigger and a long spinsterish scream would come out of the pit, while all the workmen giggled and said: “Honey’s been beaned again.”

  We tried the method of silence now, and that worked better, for no sooner did Honey imagine himself abandoned than all the fight went out of him and he began calling for his rope in piteous accents. I wound it round the boy, instructed him to carry a loop round his father’s shoulders, and sent him down. Meanwhile I got one of the brawnier workmen to stand by with me for the resurrection.

  There now ensued a somewhat dangerous scene, for my mother, for some reason best known to herself (perhaps she thought the gravedigger was ill or suffocating) appeared with a large glass of black coffee and vaguely handed it to Mr. Honey as he surfaced. He for his part showed some reluctance to step on to terra firma. He seemed anxious to make a political speech—though this was hardly the appropriate platform for the rope turned round and round, and with it went the gravedigger with coffee in
one hand, a wine-bottle in the other, and all the implements of his trade, including his small son, lashed round his neck. He was talking well, however, and it seemed a pity to interrupt him; but the impatient Andreas kept pushing him ashore with a mop, aided by the grunting maid-of-all-work who herself was apostrophizing the more approachable saints. Now he began to make a series of brilliant stage-falls, teetering for agonizing moments on the well before falling backwards into it, only to be brought up with a jerk by the rope. He fell like a golliwog, arms and legs spread. The coffee disappeared with a crash, the bottle followed it. Honey smiled foolishly and scored another parliamentary point, marrying it to a suitable gesture. “My dear lady” he kept repeating with gracious vagueness, “so kind … so good.… Much regret ordering your execution.… Much regret British being pushed into sea … entirely their own fault … warned them years ago.…”

  But finally we caught him: it was like fishing for a spider in a bath-tub: caught him, and carried him to the tavern above which he lodged and there spread him out on the great stone windowsill where he spent his leisure hours. He was luxuriously relaxed now and smiling beatifically. But he was barely sentient, though when at his request I lit a cigarette and put it between his lips he opened his eyes for a moment and thanked me. Rather surprisingly he said: “I was with your brother at Thermopylae. What a fellow!” “Indeed?” I said, anxious to have an eye-witness description of his death, but Mr. Honey was fading into sleep now. The cigarette rolled from his lips into the road and lay there burning.