Prospero's Cell: A Guide to the Landscape and Manners of the Island of Corfu (9 page)

Hadjiavatis is the Turkish town crier and is associated with all Karaghiosis’s rascalities—in which he
usually suffers instead of their author. Next in importance come Sir Gnio-Gnio and Captain Nikolis. Gnio-Gnio
is an idiotic, lisping imbecile in a top hat and tailcoat with a long pointed beard. He represents Zante, and speaks with the curdling sing-song accents of the island. This of course is from our point of view. It is presumed that when in Zante he represents Corcyra with a changed but still sing-song voice. Captain Nikolis is a makeweight
whose atmospheric value lies in his baggy breeches and his Aegean fez.

And now we move from character to myth; for Alexander the Great
survives still in the Karaghiosis cycle of plays as a huge warrior dressed in full armor. He even kills the dragon
in certain plays, and obviously owes something to St. George. Next comes Morphonios
though exactly what he is one cannot decide. A hideous mommet with a vast lolling cranium, he speaks with a frantic affectation of voice, and dresses in conventional European clothes. He is sometimes played off against Stavrakas
an extremely nasty specimen of Piraeus bravo clad in exaggerated modern dress and felt hat—which, in the course of his lengthy conversations, he is in the habit of cocking over one eye. His self-assurance is the comic vein in him, and this Karaghiosis exploits to the full.

To bring up the tail-end of this procession one could list The Lord or The Frank
tailcoated representatives of European culture, as well as Abraham, Moses, Isaac, etc., an endless series of Salonika Jews, uniform in size, dress and accent. Female figures seem very unimportant in the plays, and besides Karaghiosis’s wife they include an occasional Vizier’s daughter, a princess, and a wife of Barba Giorgos.

The puppets themselves are the result of curious workmanship; since their dimensions of operation are so limited, and since the light which illuminates them comes from behind the screen, it is necessary to do as much filigree-work as possible to enliven the bare outlines of the figures. Great ingenuity is shown in their manufacture, and the use of a kind of many-colored gelatin material enables their clothes to be as brightly colored as those of the island peasants themselves.

10.18.37

Three days of squall and rain. The wind moans on the promontory, and all day long the threshing of sea sounds on the white rock outside the house. In the interval as the undertow draws back you hear the dull patient throb of the hand-loom in the magazine, and the cough of the old billygoat. Trees lean and whirl where the wind pours through the vents and boulder-strewn crevices of Pantocrator. The roof has been sprung in several places, but this is the first taste of winter, and it is good that we should be proven wind-and-water-tight before the real thunderstorms of December. Theodore has unearthed another charm against accident;
it is for fair-weather sailors on moonlit nights. “It is widely believed that the figure of a woman rising from the sea beside the boat calls out in wild accents, ‘How is it with Alexander?’
. The correct answer for those who do not want their craft overturned by her rage and grief is ‘He lives and reigns still’
. I do not know whether this charm will be of any practical assistance to you, but since you say you always run out to the Bay of Fauns at the full moon, it would be better on the whole to memorize it. One can never tell.”

I ask Anastasius about the belief. He denies it with rather an uncomfortable look. He likes to consider himself superior in intelligence to the ordinary peasants, but I can tell from his manner that he has heard of it. “Does old Nicholas believe it?” I ask, and he turns his black eyes out of the window for a full minute before shrugging his shoulders and replying “How can I tell what these old men believe? He cannot read and write, Father Nicholas is not an heir to our common European culture!