couldn’t spell it right. The peace wom an fed me sometimes
and let me sleep there sometimes and she talked to me so I
learned some words I could use with her but I didn’t tell her
most things because I didn’t know how and she had an
apartment and w asn’t conversant with how things were for
me and I didn’t want to say but also I couldn’t and also there
was no reason to try, because it is as it is. I’m me, not her in her
apartment. Y ou always have your regular life. She’d say she
could see I was tired and did I want to sleep and I’d say no and
she’d insist and I never understood how she could tell but I was
so tired. I had a room I always stayed in. It was small but it was
warm and there were blankets and there was a door that closed
and she’d be there and she didn’t let anyone come in after me.
M aybe she would have let me stay there more if I had known
how to say some true things about day to day but I didn’t ask
anything from anyone and I never would because I couldn’t
even be sure they would understand, even her. And what I
told her when she made me talk to her was how once you went
to jail they started sticking things up you. T hey kept putting
their fingers and big parts o f their whole hand up you, up your
vagina and up your rectum; they searched you inside and
stayed inside you and kept touching you inside and they
searched inside your mouth with their fingers and inside your
ears and nose and they made you squat in front o f the guards to
see i f anything fell out o f you and stand under a cold shower
and make different poses and stances to see if anything fell out
o f you and then they had someone w ho they said was a nurse
put her hands up you again and search your vagina again and
search your rectum again and I asked her w hy do you do this,
why, you don’t have to do this, and she said she was looking
for heroin, and then the next day they took me to the doctors
and there were two o f them and one kept pressing me all over
down on my stomach and under where m y stomach is and all
down near between my legs and he kept hurting me and
asking me if I hurt and I said yes and every time I said yes he did
it harder and I thought he was trying to find out if I was sick
because he was a doctor and I was in so much pain I must be
very sick like having an appendicitis all over down there but
then I stopped saying anything because I saw he liked pressing
harder and making it hurt more and so I didn’t answer him but
I had some tears in m y eyes because he kept pressing anyway
but I wouldn’t let him see them as best as it was possible to turn
m y head from where he could see and they made jokes, the
doctors, about having sex and having girls and then the big
one who had been watching and laughing took the speculum
which I didn’t know what it was because I had never seen one
or had anyone do these awful things to me and it was a big,
cold, metal thing and he put it in me and he kept twisting it and
turning it and he kept tearing me to pieces which is literal
because I was ripped up inside and the inside o f me was bruised
like fists had beaten me all over but from within me or
someone had taken my uterus and turned it inside out and hit it
and cut it and then I was taken back to m y cell and I got on m y
knees and I tried to cry and I tried to pray and I couldn’t cry and
I couldn’t pray. I was in G od ’s world, His world that He made
H im self on purpose, on my knees, blood coming down m y
legs; and I hated Him; and there were no tears in me to come as
if I was one o f G o d ’s children all filled with sorrow and
mourning in a world with His mercy. M y father came to get
me weeks later when the bleeding wouldn’t stop. I had called
and begged and he came at night though I had shamed them
and he wouldn’t look at me or speak to me. I was afraid to tell
the woman about the blood. At first when she made me talk I
said I had m y period but when the bleeding didn’t stop I didn’t
tell her because a peace boy said I had a disease from sex and I
was bleeding because o f that and he didn’t want me around
because I was dirty and sick and I thought she’d throw me
aw ay too so I said I had called m y parents. I f you tell people in
apartments that you called your parents they think you are fine
then. M y mother said I should be locked up like an animal for
being a disgrace because o f jail and she would lock me up like
the animal I was. I ran aw ay for good from all this place—
home, Amerika, I can’t think o f no good name for it. I went far
away to where they don’t talk English and I never had to talk
or listen or understand. N o one talked so I had to answer. N o
one knew m y name. It was a cocoon surrounded by
cacophony. I liked not knowing anything. I was quiet outside,
never trying. There was no talking anyw ay that could say I
was raped more now and was broke for good. If it ain’t broke
don’t fix it and if it is broke just leave it alone and someday it’ll
die. Here, Andreus is a m an’s name. Andrea doesn’t exist at
all, m y m om m a’s name, not at all, not one bit. It is monstrous
to betray your child, bitch.
F IV E
In June 1966
(Age 19)
M y name is Andrea but here in nightclubs they say ma chere.
M y dear but more romantic. Sometimes they say it in a sullen
way, sometimes they are dismissive, sometimes it has a rough
edge or a cool indifference to it, a sexual callousness; sometimes they say it like they are talking to a pet dog, except that the Greeks don’t keep pets. Here on Crete they shoot cats.
They hate them. The men take rifIes and shoot them o ff the
roofs and in the alleys. The cats are skeletal, starving; the
Cretans act as if the cats are cruel predators and slimy crawling
things at the same time. N o one would dare befriend one here.
E very time I see a cat skulking across a roof, its bony, meager
body twisted for camouflage, I think I am seeing the Jew s in
the ghettos o f Eastern Europe sliding out o f hiding to find
food. M y chere. Doesn’t it mean expensive? I don’t know
French except for the few words I have had to pick up in the
bars. The high-class Greek men speak French, the peasants
only Greek, and it is very low -brow to speak English, vulgar.
N o one asks m y name or remembers it if I say it. In Europe
only boys are named it. It means manhood or courage. If they
hear m y name they laugh; you’re not a boy, they say. I don’t
need a name, it’s a burden o f memory, a useless burden for a
woman. It doesn’t seem to mean anything to anyone. There is
an Andreus here, a hero who was the captain o f a ship that was
part o f the resistance when the Nazis occupied the island. He
brought in guns and food and supplies and got people o ff the
island who needed to escape and brought people to Crete who
needed to hide. He killed Nazis when he could; he killed some,
&
nbsp; for certain. N o occupier has ever conquered the mountains
here, rock made out o f African desert and dust. Andreus is old
and cunning and rich. He owns olive fields and is the official
consul for the country o f N orw ay; I don’t know what that
means but he has stationery and a seal and an office. He owns
land. He is dirty and sweaty and fat. He drinks and says dirty
things to women but one overlooks them. He says dirty
words in English and makes up dirty limericks in broken
English. He likes me because I am in love; he admires love. I
am in love in a language I don’t know. He likes this love
because it is a rare kind to see. It has the fascination o f fire; you
can’t stop looking. We’re so much joined in the flesh that
strangers feel the pain if we stop touching. Andreus is a failed
old sensualist now but he is excited by passion, the life-and-
death kind, the passion you have to have to wage a guerrilla
war from the sea on an island occupied by Nazis; being near
us, you feel the sea. I’m the sea for him now and he’s waiting to
see if his friend will drown. M venerates him for his role in the
resistance. Andreus is maybe sixty, an old sixty, gritty, oiled,
lined. M is thirty, old to me, an older man if I force m yself to
think o f it but I never think, no category means anything, I
can’t think exactly or the thought gets cut short by the
immense excitement o f his presence or a m emory o f anything
about him, any second o f remembering him and I’m flushed
and fevered; in delirium there’s no thought. At night the bars
are cool after the heat o f the African sun; the men are young
and hungry, lithe, they dance together frenetically, their arms
stretched across each other’s bodies as they make virile chorus
lines or drunken circles. M is the bartender. I sit in a dark
corner, a cool and pampered observer, drinking vermouth on
ice, red vermouth, and watching; watching M , watching the
men dance. Then sometimes he dances and they all leave the
floor to watch because he is the great dancer o f Crete, the
magnificent dancer, a legend o f grace and balance and speed.
Usually the young men sing in Greek along with the records
and dance showing off; before I was in love they sent over
drinks but now no one would dare. A great tension falls over
the room when sometimes one o f them tries. There have been
fist fights but I haven’t understood until after what they were
about. There was a tall blond boy, younger than M. M is short
and dark. I couldn’t keep my eyes o ff him and he took my
breath away. I feel what I feel and I do what I want and
everything shows in the heat coming o ff m y skin. There are no
lies in me; no language to be accountable in and also no lies. I
am always in action being alive even if I am sitting quietly in a
dark corner watching men dance. This room is not where I
live but it is my home at night. We usually leave a few hours
before dawn. The nightclub is a dark, square room. There is a
bar, some tables, records; almost never any women, occasional
tourists only. It is called The Dionysus. It is o ff a
small, square-like park in the center o f the city. The park is
overwhelm ingly green in the parched city and the vegetation
casts shadows even in the night so that if I come here alone it is
very dark and once a boy came up behind me and put his hand
between m y legs so fast that I barely understood what he had
done. Then he ran. M and the owner o f the club, N ikko, and
some other man ran out when they saw me standing there, not
coming in. I was so confused. They ran after him but didn’t
find him. I was relieved for him because they would have hit
him. Women don’t go out here but I do. Ma chere goes out.
I’ve never been afraid o f anything and I do what I want; I’m a
free human being, w hy would I apologize? I argue with m yself
about my rights because who else would listen. The few
foreign women who come here to live are all considered
whores because they go out and because they take men as
lovers, one, some, more. This means nothing to me. I’ve
always lived on m y own, in freedom, not bound by people’s
narrow minds or prejudices. It’s not different now. The Greek
women never go out and the Greek men don’t go home until
they are. very old men and ready to die. I would like to be with
a woman but a foreign woman is a mortal enemy here.
Sometimes in the bar M and I dance together. T hey play
Amerikan music for slow dancing— “ House o f the Rising
Sun , ” “ Heartbreak H otel. ” The songs make me want to cry
and we hold each other the w ay fire holds what it burns; and
everyone looks because you don’t often see people who have
to touch each other or they will die. It’s true with us; a simple
fact. I have no sense o f being a spectacle; only a sense o f being
the absolute center o f the world and what I feel is all the feeling
the world has in it, all o f it concentrated in me. Later we drive
into the country to a restaurant for dinner and to dance more,
heart to heart, earth scorched by wind, the African wind that
touches every rock and hidden place on this island. There are
two main streets in this old city. One goes down a steep old
hill to the sea, a sea that seems painted in light and color,
purple and aqua and a shining silver, mercury all bubbling in
an irridescent sunlight, and there is a bright, bright green in
the sea that cools down as night comes becoming somber,
stony, a hard, gem -like surface, m oving jade. The old Nazi
headquarters are down this old hill close to the sea. They keep
the building empty; it is considered foul, obscene. It is all
chained up, the great wrought iron doors with the great
swastika rusting and rotting and inside it is rubble. Piss on you
it says to the Nazis. The other main street crosses the hill at the
top. It crosses the whole city. The other streets in the city are
dirt paths or alleys made o f stones. N ikko owns the club. He
and M are friends. M is lit up from inside, radiant with light;
he is the sea’s only rival for radiance; is it Raphael who could
paint the sensuality o f his face, or is it Titian? The painter o f
this island is El Greco, born here, but there is no nightmare in
M ’s face, only a miracle o f perfect beauty, too much beauty so
that it can hurt to look at him and hurt more to turn away.
Nikko is taller than anyone else on Crete and they tease him in
the bar by saying he cannot be Cretan because he is so tall. The
jokes are told to me by pointing and extravagant hand gestures
and silly faces and laughing and broken syllables o f English.
Y ou can say a lot without words and make many jokes. N ikko
is dark with black hair and black eyes shaped a little like
almonds, an Oriental cast to his face, and a black mustache that
is big and wide and bushy; and his face is like an old
photograph, a sculpted Russian face staring out o f the
&nbs
p; nineteenth century, a young Dostoevsky in Siberia, an exotic
Russian saint, without the suffering but with many secrets. I
often wonder if he is a spy but I don’t know why I think that or
who he would spy for. I am sometimes afraid that M is not safe
with him. M is a radical and these are dangerous times here.
There are riots in Athens and on Crete the government is not
popular. Cretans are famous for resistance and insurrection.
The mountains have sheltered native fighters from Nazis,
from Turks, but also from other Greeks. There was a civil war
here;
Greek communists
and leftists
were purged,
slaughtered; in the mountains o f Crete, fascists have never
won. The mountains mean freedom to the Cretans; as
Kazantzakis said, freedom or death. The government is afraid
o f Crete. These mountains have seen blood and death,
slaughter and fear, but also urgent and stubborn resistance, the
human who will not give in. It is the pride o f people here not to
give in. But N ikko is M ’s friend and he drives us to the
country the nights we go or to my room the nights we go right
there. M y room is a tiny shack with a single bed, low,
decrepit, old, and a table and a chair. I have a typewriter at the
table and I write there. I’m writing a novel against the War and
poems and theater pieces that are very avant-garde, more than
Genet. I also have Greek grammar books and in the afternoons
I sit and copy the letters and try to learn the words. I love
drawing the alphabet. The toilet is outside behind the chicken
coops. The chickens are kept by an old man, Pappous, it
means grandpa. There is m y room, thin w ood walls, unfinished wood, big sticks, and a concrete floor, no w indow ,
then the landlady’s room, an old woman, then the old man’s
room, then the chickens, then the toilet. There is one mean,
scrawny, angry rooster who sits on the toilet all the time. The
old woman is a peasant who came to the city after all the men
and boys in her village were lined up and shot by the Nazis.
T w o sons died. She is big and old and in mourning still,
Mercy Page 10
