Mercy (25 page)

yachts. I’ve seen the one he is with. I know he gets presents

from him. His best friend is a handsome Frenchman, a
pied

noir
, born in Algeria and he thinks it’s his, right-wing;

gunrunning from Crete for the outlawed O . A . S. I don’t

understand how they can be friends. O . A . S. is outright

fascist, imperialist, racist. But M says it is a tie beyond politics

and beyond betrayal. He is handsome and cold and keeps his

eyes away from me. I don’t know w hy I think N ikko looks

Russian because all the Russians in the harbor have been blond

and round-faced, bursting with good cheer. The Russians and

the Israelis seem to send blond sailors, ingenues; they are

blond and young and well-mannered and innocent, not

aggressive, eternal virgins with disarming shyness, an

ingenuity for having it seem always like the first time. I do

what I want, I go where I want, in bed with anyone who

catches my eye, a glimmer o f light or a soupcon o f romance.

I’m not inside time or language or rules or society. It’s minute

to minute with a sense o f being able to last forever like Crete

itself. In my mind I am doing what I want and it is private and I

don’t understand that everyone sees, everyone looks, everyone knows, because I am outside the accountability o f

language and family and convention; what I feel is the only

society I have or know; I don’t see the million eyes and more to

the point I don’t hear the million tongues. I think I am alone

living m y life as I want. I think that when I am with someone I

am with him. I don’t understand that everyone sees and tells M

he loves a whore but I would expect him to be above pettiness

and malice and small minds. I’ve met men from all over, N ew

Zealand, Australia, Israel, Nigeria, France, a Russian; only

one Amerikan, not military, a thin, gentle black man who

loved Nancy Wilson, the greatest jazz singer, he loved her and

loved her and loved her and I felt bad after. I’ve met Greeks in

Athens and in Piraeus and on Crete. It’s not a matter o f being

faithful; I don’t have the words or categories. It’s being too

alive to stop and living in the minute absolutely without' a

second thought because now is true. Everything I feel I feel

absolutely. I have no fear, no ambivalence, no yesterday, no

tom orrow; not even a name really. When I am with M there is

nothing else on earth than us, an embrace past anything

mortal, and when he is not with me I am still as alive, no less

so, a rapture with no reason to wait or deny m yself anything I

feel. There are lots o f Amerikans on Crete, military bases filled

with soldiers, the permanent ones for the bases and then the

ones sent here from Vietnam to rest and then sent back to

Vietnam. Sometimes they come to the cafes in the afternoons

to drink. I don’t go near them except to tell them not to go to

Vietnam. I say it quietly to tables full o f them in the blazing

sun that keeps them always a little blind so they hesitate and I

leave fast. The Cretans hate Amerikans; I guess most Greeks

do because the Am erikan government keeps interfering so

there w o n ’t be a left-wing government. The C . I. A. is a strong

and widely known presence. On Crete there are A ir Force

bases and the Amerikans treat the Cretans bad. The Cretans

know the arrogance o f occupying armies, the bilious arrogance. T hey recognize the condescension without speaking

the literal language o f the occupiers. M ost o f the Am erikans

are from the Deep South, white boys, and they call the Cretans

niggers. They laugh at them and shout at them and call them

cunts, treat them like dirt, even the old mountain men whose

faces surely would terrify anyone not a fool, the ones the Nazis

didn’t kill not because they were collaborators but because

they were resisters. The Amerikans are young, eighteen,

nineteen, twenty, and they have the arrogance o f Napoleon,

each and every one o f them; they are the kings o f the w orld all

flatulent with white wealth and the darkies are meant to serve

them. T hey make me ashamed. They hate anything not

Am erikan and anyone with dark skin. They are pale, anemic

boys with crew cuts; slight and tall and banal; filled with foul

language that they fire at the natives instead o f using guns. The

words were dirty when they said them; mean words. I didn’t

believe any words were dirty until I heard the white boys say

cunt. They live on the Amerikan bases and they keep

everything Amerikan as if they aren’t here but there. They

have Amerikan radio and newspapers and food wrapped in

plastic and frozen food and dishwashers and refrigerators and

ranch-type houses for officers and trailers and supermarkets

with Amerikan brands o f everything. The wives and children

never go o ff the bases; afraid o f the darkies, afraid o f food

without plastic wrap, they don’t see the ancient island, only

Amerikan concrete and fences. The Amerikan military is

always here; the bases are always manned and the culturally

impoverished wives and children are always on them; and it is

just convenient to let the Vietnam boys rest here for now, the

white ones. The wives and the children are in the ranch-type

houses and the trailers. They are in Greece, on the island o f

Crete, a place touched by whatever gods there ever were,

anyone can see that, in fact Zeus rests here, one mountain is his

profile, it is Crete, a place o f sublime beauty and ancient

heritage, unique in the world, older than anything they can

imagine including their own God; but the wives and the

children never see it because it is not Amerikan, not the

suburbs, not pale white. The women never leave the bases.

The men come o ff to drink ouzo and to say dirty words to the

Greeks and to call them dirty names and laugh. Every other

word is nigger or cunt or fucking and they pick fights. I know

about the bases because an Amerikan doctor took me to one

where he lived in a ranch-type house with an Amerikan

kitchen with Formica cabinets and General Electric appliances.

The Greeks barely have kitchens. On Crete the people in the

mountains, mostly peasants, use bunsen burners to cook their

food. A huge family will have one bunsen burner. Everything

goes into one pot and it cooks on the one bunsen burner for ten

hours or twelve hours until late night when everyone eats. -

They have olive oil from the olive trees that grow everywhere

and vegetables and fruit and small animals they kill and milk

from goats. The fam ily will sit at a w ood table in the dark with

one oil lamp or candle giving light but the natural light on

Crete doesn’t go aw ay when it becomes night. There is no