The Road to Ithaca

by Ben Pastor

  Bora closed his eyes. Two nights spent awake had begun to weigh on him, and he couldn’t afford weariness at this point. He forced himself to think, to keep his mind vigilant, to make something of this forced interval. I keep going back to it. If I think of the reason why we fought as boys, Waldo and I, I’ll be one step closer to understanding – not just him, or myself, because we became men regardless of that row. One step closer to understanding in general, as if that episode were a vital part in a larger image, like the plaster fragment with the fierce eye of a bull.

  Places were pointers. He’d grown up among the privileged signs and pointers of his family homes. He’d island-hopped among them, keeping each wholly separate from the others, recognizable, memorized, as if the space intervening were no more differentiated than the ocean’s surface. Thus, his parents’ place in Leipzig-Lindenau was a port in the archipelago, and the Borna family seat another. And so our place in East Prussia, each as minutely known as a boy could know any place, with nothing in between. In a way he still was island-hopping, with hints left in every harbour for him to sail to the next. Just as the chalk masks (“Shepherd girl, Gonies?”) led unwittingly to mesa pharangi and to the ivory-skinned girl looking out of the window, and this to the one-eyed goatherd, and this to the Catalans, and to Agias Irini and to here. This place too has to lead to something, although it may not be what I expect, not yet. But this forced time in the hole has a meaning, is a place marked on the indistinct immensity of the earth, and it may be that it makes me remember what it was that Waldo and I argued about, surely something more meaningful than I thought, or perhaps both of us realize. No place is without meaning, no time is without meaning. You only have to find it.

  Tedium (or weariness) overtook fatalism in him. What if the men above were not just drying their clothes or having a smoke? They could be waiting for others to join them, and it could take hours. Feeling less cramped, less uncomfortable only meant the coming of drowsiness. Bora fought it at first, but it was a losing battle. He eventually drew up his knees and rested his back against the wall of his unlikely shelter.

  My world as a boy was that archipelago of known places, in which I moved protected and safe. I was aware, however, that there were others who existed in dense peripheral worlds. Waldo lived in one of them, Herr Hitler in another; Pastor Wüsteritz had lived and died in another yet. If I consider our boyhood fight as a focus I might discover what brought it about, because it is clearly a marker that directed us both here, where Preger’s men are accused of having killed in cold blood and I’ve been ordered to prove they did not. Or did.

  If he could – by thinking – connect like dots on a map, or tiles in a mosaic, the broken recollections about that summer long ago and his row with Waldo Preger… The tiles scattered, dots danced round like sparks or fireflies. Falling asleep was easier than thinking.

  …I am twelve. I am twelve, pure in mind and body. I am twelve and for some reason have a row with Waldo Preger behind the abandoned factory. That’s where it was, the factory with the doves, where Pastor Wüsteritz hanged himself. And there we are, Waldo and I. We go from arguing to shoving each other, less and less in control of our boyish tempers.

  Why am I so angry?

  I can’t recall the words we shout; what this means to both of us we won’t know for years to come, though he’ll know before I do.

  The need to draw blood is not part of my childhood. Or hasn’t been until now. I hardly recognize myself; anger turns the familiar place around me into a fog. We fight but hardly see each other; each one of us becomes his own anger, larger than himself.

  Why am I so angry? Is it because—?

  I am twelve, and I save money to buy the first volume of Herr Hitler’s Mein Kampf, hot off the press. Shortly thereafter, the story of the forbidden book comes up in confession.

  Monsignor Hohmann makes me hand it over to my stepfather. The Leica camera is taken from me as a punishment regarding Herr Hitler’s book: I will not be allowed to use it again until the following year.

  I am twelve and I hate my stepfather (and Monsignor Hohmann). I am confirmed at St Mary’s church, Plagwitz-Lindenau, but I lied about feeling sorry about Herr Hitler’s book, so if I die, I’ll go to hell. Peter offers me the use of his camera on the sly, but I refuse: I will suffer the indignity to the last.

  I am twelve and have a row with Waldo Preger behind the abandoned factory…

  It was a woman’s voice that startled him into awakening. Dream images collapsed, deflated, had to be preciously stored for later. Bora recognized Frances Allen though she spoke Greek, and was instantly lucid and aware. By his watch he’d slept only minutes, enough for her to join those who had until now occupied the ledge. He looked through the spyhole. So, it’s Sidheraki’s band. Damn her, I was so close to understanding why Preger and I fought. She’s going to get me killed yet.

  Andonis was there, too. Frances spoke and as far as Bora could see the men stirred themselves, but gave no sign of readiness to march on. The couple came briefly into view through the spyhole. The way her husband held her close, one hand spread on her buttock – Bora recognized the possessive touch. The group, he thought, hadn’t simply separated in the storm: the two had taken time away from the others. What was it? They’d found a shelter somewhere to make love? Why not. In a hurry, furiously, whether she was bleeding or not. “In Crete you eat, you make love, you die.”

  And you lead the pack after me, Mrs Sidheraki, or so you think. The men can hardly appreciate your making them wait in the rain, and now your presumption to guide them. Bora tried to disregard the possibility that she or her husband – the archaeologist and the freedom fighter – might be curious to look down the steps into his hole. He held his breath and hoped against hope for a disagreement among the Greeks. This morning he’d counted thirteen in Sidheraki’s band; with her, all told, they came to six or seven now. Two he’d fired on; the rest must have fallen to the Catalans in the shoot-out – he’d seen in Spain how deadly a republican marksman could be. Along with the taking of his wife, losing half of his men would enrage Sidheraki into seeking German blood. Seeking blood, buscar sangre – Bora hadn’t thought of the expression since Spain. And she, too, the Texan adolescent outraged – not squeamish – before a lynching. Does she want me dead? She’ll do nothing to stop him from killing me, at any rate. Bora furtively buckled his rucksack. But the men might not welcome more risk over a single German.

  His reduced field of vision limited his understanding. Was there more than southern vehemence to the exchange? Óchi, which meant no, was thrown back and forth. The men still sat. He could only hear Frances now, not see her. At one point she switched to English, no doubt to exclude the others from what she told her husband. And though only some words came clearly to Bora’s ears, he grasped that she was angry and disappointed and insisted that they continue the hunt. The men, it stood to reason, saw no point in doing so. Sidheraki – also invisible and speaking broken English – sounded ambivalent, and unhappy about it. His contrariness showed in his altered voice. Bora heard Frances say out loud, “You’ve got to choose,” and him shout back, “I don’t have to choose, I decide.”

  There was hope after all. He can’t be seen giving in to his wife before his men, but he doesn’t want to frustrate her. In Spain, in a similar situation, volunteers would have irritably gone off, because a single enemy or a woman aren’t worth fighting over. Sidheraki’s dilemma is nothing to mine, but Frances Allen has to do with both.

  The discussion continued in Cretan dialect. Eventually the men picked up their weapons and stood facing the slope with the waterproofs draped over their shoulders. A tight-lipped Frances flitted in and out of sight; still, Bora could understand that she’d won the argument at a price, or her husband was annoyed with her, or both.

  Curiously, for the first time since they’d met he felt close to her, in an adversarial way. Something tied them, an imaginary rubber band or rope or length of yarn that forced them to look out for each other now,
as they had when she was to all intents and purposes his prisoner. Bora found that he almost liked her for her obstinacy, and even if he had no intention of letting her have the upper hand, still he recognized the tie.

  Soon, with Sidheraki in the lead, she and the others abandoned the ledge. Silence trailed them. When Bora emerged into the brightness of a clear, lonely day, far to his left the unaware Greeks trudged away from the ledge across the mountainside. She knows I’ll be seeking the valley, and he’ll tell them to string along so they’ll catch me as I head downhill. For now, they think I’m still too far inland to risk it, and will keep after me at this level. How close to the coast will they push before turning back? It was the welcome sight of a foil-like trembling sheen, a long shimmering line on the northern horizon, that made his heart leap.

  There it is, the sea: how lovely, even if you’re not a Greek. That’s where I’m going. In the sun, Bora’s wet clothes began to steam. Out came his sunglasses, and the world became tenderly green. Now that I know where the north is, I need to know where Krousonas is, nothing else. Frances and her man expect everything but that I will be following them.

  NEAR KROUSONAS, 12.30 P.M.

  Krousonas perched below, to the north in a convulsed bubbling up of hills. Looking tame but demonized because they said the devil holed up there, or because it really meant great danger, it was one in a handful of unidentified little burgs. From where Bora stood, every hill, bare or sparsely treed, appeared to be crowned by a solitary farmhouse or a reduced village, what his Scots grandmother termed “a blinking sort o’ place” (quoting Thomas Hardy: she said it of Trakehnen, too). In between, dark oaks grew close to the ground like a pelt, pale opuntia bushes sent up their flukes, trails ran thinner than pencil marks. The half-seen white thread far below, which Bora called for want of better words the valley road, did not run on flat land at all: it only wormed among lower ranges and single knolls. And he’d heard Kostaridis call it basilikos dromos, the high road or royal way! Sarchos must be the whitewashed hamlet beyond Krousonas, and Agios Mironas beyond that, or Kato Asites. Diminutive churches, bleached like mosques – former mosques, maybe – sat under oppressive tile roofs. Above everything, the midday heat was stifling after the rain; cicadas crowded it with endless noise. Distances trembled as moisture went up from shrinking puddles and all the storm had soaked to the bone.

  Anxious to reach a place where he could risk leaving the mountain, Bora kept trailing the Greeks, careful to keep out of sight but never losing the last man. He now had the impression they were slowing down in search of a spot for mess time. It meant he’d have to halt as well, whether he liked it or not.

  Ahead, a single dead tree marked the wind-beaten incline, next to the remnants of a dry wall. Bora saw it from afar and it was ominous, with those few naked branches, one of which stretched out like a gibbet. Eaten by landslides all around, the slope was unsafe, the passage near the tree clearly unavoidable: the Greeks filed through and continued in a single line. Bora let a minute go by, studying the ruinous state of the trail. Yes, one could continue northward only by toeing a margin narrow as a gymnast’s beam, further reduced to a ribbon of stony soil between the tree and the dry wall. If I make it past, Bora told himself, if I make it past unharmed, I will reach a different place from the one travelled thus far. Perhaps safer, perhaps not: but different.

  Well, nothing happened to him in the passage. Once he was beyond the tree, whose outstretched branch forced him to bow his head, he found himself on a ragged slope identical to the previous one. Yet the sense of having crossed a threshold stayed with him.

  The place Sidheraki’s men made for was a dilapidated, flat-roofed stone house, guarded by a leafy fig tree and overlooking the valley. Bora watched them stealthily go in with weapons at the ready and come out again, reassured. Still they chose to camp in the open, 200 feet below on a shelf of pastureland. While his men ate, Sidheraki stood surveying the valley. Frances Allen stood next to him, earnestly, if Bora was able to judge from where he was, even anxiously entreating him. She implacably pointed the way to follow, playing Ariadne as she never had with her German captor. As soon as they are past Krousonas, now that the countryside is less wild she’ll clamber left and right to ask this and that farmer or shepherd, and adjust her course accordingly. If I keep to the heights, sooner or later she’ll meet someone who’ll tell her he’s sighted the likes of me, even though I may never even have noticed him. I’m the Minotaur in her labyrinth, but unlike the Minotaur I can move and fight freely outside of the maze.

  Daringly, Bora gained on the group until he was level with it, only higher. Picking his steps, keeping low, he crawled to the house the Greeks had discarded, and slipped in through a breach in the wall. The passing of time, not the hand of man, had wrecked it beyond use. What the hand of man did was steal door and window frames, yanking out the bricks laid out as floor tiles. Tender shoots of the fig tree fingered upward from the ground and sought the bright clefts in the ceiling. All furniture had been removed except for a broken-down table. In a corner, a rope with a long frayed end coiled like a snake. A clay jug, once fitted with two handles, lay forlorn in a rich growth of nettles. Through a storm of crickets and small flies Bora ventured across the ground floor in search of steps or a ladder to the roof.

  What he found was a masonry ramp bereft of stepping stones. Once upstairs, the tumbledown planking of the flat roof was a disappointment: the potential observation point would never hold a man’s weight.

  Within reach, however, the richly leaved fig tree offered an alternative. Only a little unbalanced by the rucksack, Bora jumped from the edge of the roof, easily swung to the fork in the trunk, and straddled it. The trunk squeaked and moaned under him. He knew from boyhood how easy fig trees were to get up, but you couldn’t trust their grey limbs, rough like elephant skin, because they could snap under you. Not that he’d hurt himself falling from this gnarled specimen, nine feet at most from the ground. What mattered was its sheltered vantage point.

  Beyond the tangle of leaves that oozed a milky liquid as their stems broke, few landmarks were recognizable to him aside from Iraklion and its harbour. Týlissos, Ampelokastro and Sphingokephalo lay to the north-west behind the brow of the mountain, impossible to consider as destinations from here. If he did cut downhill, straight down across crumbling slopes and wooded ledges, it would be half an hour to Krousonas, and an hour more through unknown terrain to the valley road, such as it was.

  I haven’t much choice. I must outguess a woman who knows every inch of this island if I want to reach it. With Krousonas in the way, it’s foolish for me to break out here, but I must be back in Iraklion today. Whatever the risk. Frances thinks the same way: she wants to bag me today, whatever the risk. But her husband – he’s more logical, or more responsible. His war is bigger than Martin Bora. There’s one thing he knows I will not do unless I’m out of my mind – no, there are two: approaching Krousonas, and going back inland.

  It suddenly seemed so clear: the dangers involved were irrelevant. Bora climbed down, mindful not to shake the branches and call attention to the tree from below. He stole back inside the house to grab the coil of rope from the corner and the single-handled jug; he stuffed them in his rucksack, and left. Crawling at first and then placing one foot after the other on the narrow margin, he moved to his right, keeping low but without hesitation. He backtracked, headed south, away from his goal for the moment. There are three harbours in my interior map at this time: Iraklion, Moscow and East Prussia. I must get away from the three of them if I want to reach them – which is what Ulysses did time and again: came within sight of Ithaca only to be tossed back.

  Half a mile from the house, Bora faced the passage between the dead tree and dry wall. He took the rope out of his rucksack, uncoiled it, threw it twice over the gibbet branch to form a loop. The hanging ends, he tied around the jug so that today or tomorrow, when Sidheraki’s men filed through, they would find it dangling in front of their eyes. He then creased and ne
atly divided in two his diary’s blotting paper. On the cleaner half he scribbled the Greek verses from the Iliad, remembered when he flew over in the ambulance plane.

  A dawn will come, an evening, a midday / when someone will bereave me of life in battle / by the stroke of a spear or a bow’s arrow. Below, he added in English, But not now, Mrs Sidheraki, and his signature.

  He wrapped the paper around the shard with the magic eye, and slipped both inside the jug.

  From here to the valley, there were lengths of steep rocky soil, winding trails, huts reduced to stone heaps. Mastic trees stood incredibly green and fresh-looking; poppies and evergreens filled the hollows like red and green fires. Unnamed villages, lonely chapels, endless rubble walls reminiscent of Aragon dressed the tormented foot of the mountain. Bora could not see it beyond the shrubbery, but Krousonas squatted just north of here, he was sure.

  There was nothing obvious in what he was preparing to do; it was foolhardy to think that running headlong towards the valley would result in anything but a ruinous fall or a haphazard rifle shot. But it lingered in him, that idea of places like islands, each reachable in turn if you dare to take the risk, and if it is your destiny. He eyed the drop of the land as if an imaginary sinking and swelling line connected the spot where he stood to a single desired spot far below.

  Mountains, yes, but not high mountains. Perfect for fell running, as Peter and I learnt – more or less – in the Grampians from our Cargill cousins. Bora carefully put away his sunglasses, latched the pistol holder, fastened the straps of his rucksack. He took a few quick breaths like a sportsman before a race. This is no Ben Nevis, but going down is all I have to do.

  The moment he took off, it was as if he had wings on his heels. He jumped, straddled, cut across. Fences and stony brinks fled under him; he let himself slide and free fall, whenever sliding and free-falling were quicker than climbing down. Wherever the descent led, he went there, he sped up saddles and cliffs only to gain the next plunge. A red throb of sun and shadow went past him, zigzags of dusty roads, forlorn houses or empty barnyards. Under his mountain boots, rock, grass, pebbles, drying mud made no difference. He heard rifle shots as the running hare hears them, like a background noise left behind. Thorns, nettles, burs, spiky heads of thistles stuck to him or took their toll as he trod on them. Not that it mattered: not even as a boy had he run with such abandon, save perhaps when he had fled in terror from the house with eyes. Only there’s no family garden waiting to let me in at the end of the race. Or maybe there is, as a distant harbour beyond Iraklion. Beyond Villiger’s bloody room, Gorky Boulevard, East Prussia, the war – all of those I must go past to return home. If I ever return.