Report to Grego (6 page)

I remember only one occasion when my mother's eyes gleamed with a strange light and she laughed and enjoyed herself as in the days of her engagement, or when she was a free, unmarried girl. It was the first of May and we had gone to Phódhele, a village full of water and orange orchards, so that my father could sponsor a child in baptism. Whereupon, a violent downpour suddenly broke out.
The heavens turned to water and emptied onto the earth, which opened chucklingly and received the male waters deep into its breast. The village notables were gathered with their wives and daughters in a large room in the godchild's house. The rain and lightning entered through the windows, through the cracks in the door; the air smelled of oranges and soil. In and out came the handsels, the wine, the raki, the mezédhes. It began to grow dark, the lamps were lighted, the men grew merry, the women lifted their normally downcast eyes and began to cackle like partridges. Outside the house God was still roaring. The thunder increased, the village's narrow lanes had been transformed into rivers, the stones tumbled down them, laughing wildly. God had become a torrent; He was embracing, watering, fructifying the earth.

My father turned to my mother. It was the first time I ever saw him look at her with tenderness, the first time I heard sweetness in his voice.

“Sing Marghí,” he said to her.

He was giving her permission to sing, giving it in front of all the other men. I became angry, though I don't know why. Rising all in a ferment, I started to run to my mother as though wishing to protect her, but my father touched my shoulder with his finger and made me sit down. My mother seemed unrecognizable; her face gleamed as if all the rain and lightning were embracing it. She threw back her head. I remember that her long raven-black hair suddenly became undone and fell over her shoulders, reaching to her hips. She began . . . What a voice that was: deep, sweet, with a shade of throatiness, full of passion. Turning her half-closed eyes upon my father, she sang a mantinadha which I shall never forget. I did not understand at the time why she uttered it, or for whom. Later, when I grew up, I understood. Looking at my father, her sweet voice filled with restrained passion, she sang:

I'm amazed the streets don't blossom when you stroll,

And you don't become an eagle with wings of gold.

I
looked the other way to avoid seeing my father, to avoid seeing my mother. Going to the window, I pressed my forehead against the pane and watched the rain fall and eat away the soil.

The deluge lasted the entire day. The night had borne down
upon us; the world outside grew dark, heaven blended with earth, and the two turned to mud. More lamps were lighted. Everyone moved toward the walls. Tables and stools were moved aside to make room; youngsters and oldsters alike were going to dance. Installing himself on a high stool in the middle of the room, the rebecist grasped his bow as though it were a sword, mumbled a couplet beneath his mustache, and began to play. Feet tingled, bodies fluttered their wings, men and women looked at each other and jumped to their feet. The first to step out was a pale, slender woman, about forty years old, her lips tinted orange because she had rubbed them with walnut leaves, her jet-black hair anointed with laurel oil and glistening sleekly. I was frightened when I turned and saw her, because her eyes were circled by two somber blue rings, and the dark, dark pupils shone from deep within; no, did not shine, burned. I imagined for a moment that she glanced at me. I clutched my mother's apron, feeling that this woman wanted to seize my arm and take me away with her.

“Bravo, Sourmelína!” shouted a robust old man with a goatee. Jumping out in front of her, he removed his black kerchief, gave one corner to the woman, took the other himself, and the two of them—transported, their heads held high, their bodies as slender and straight as candles—gave themselves over to the dance.

The woman was wearing wooden clogs; she beat them against the floorboards, beat them down forcefully, and the whole house shook. Her white wimple came undone, revealing the gold florins decorating her neck. Her nostrils flared, sniffed the air; the masculine exhalations all around her were steaming. She bent her knees, pivoted, was about to fall against the man before her, but then all at once with a twist of her hips she vanished from in front of him. The elderly dance-lover neighed like a horse, grasped her in midair, held her tightly; but she escaped again. They played, they pursued each other, thunder and rain vanished, the world sank away, and nothing remained above the abyss except this woman, Sourmelína, who was dancing. Unable to remain on his stool any longer, the rebecist jumped to his feet. The bow went wild, gave up trying to stay in command, and began to follow Sourmelina's feet now, sighing and bellowing like a human being.

The old man's face had turned savage. Blushing deeply, he eyed the woman, his lips quivering. I felt that he was about to pounce
on her and tear her to bits. The rebecist must have had the same foreboding, for his bow stopped abruptly.' The dance came to a standstill; the two dance-lovers remained motionless, one foot in the air, the sweat gushing off them. The men ran to the old dancer, took him to one side, and massaged him with raki; the women surrounded Sourmelína to keep the men from seeing her. I worked my way in among them; I wasn't a man yet, and they did not stop me. Opening her bodice, they sprinkled orange-flower water over her throat, armpits, and temples. She had closed her eyes and was smiling.

It was then that the dance, Sourmelína, and fear—the dance, woman, and death—blended within me and became one. Forty years later, on the high terrace of the Hotel Orient in Tiflis, an Indian woman got up to dance. The stars shone above her. The roof was unlit; some dozen men stood around her, and you saw nothing but the tiny red lights from their cigarettes. Loaded with bracelets, jewels, earrings, and golden ankle bands, the woman danced slowly, with a mysterious fear, as though performing at the brink of the abyss, or of God, and playing with Him. She approached, retreated, provoked Him, while trembling from head to foot lest she fall. At times her body remained stationary while her arms wrapped and unwrapped themselves around each other like two snakes and coupled erotically in the air. The tiny red lights died out; nothing remained in the whole of the vast night except this dancing woman and the stars above her. Immobile, they danced too. We all held our breath. Suddenly I was terror-stricken. Was this a woman dancing at the brink of the abyss? No, it was our very souls flirting and playing with death.

W
HATEVER
fell into my childhood mind was imprinted there with such depth and received by me with such avidity that even now in my old age I never grow tired of recalling and reliving it. With unerring accuracy I remember my very first acquaintance with the sea, with fire, with woman, and with the odors of the world.

The earliest memory of my life is this: Still unable to stand, I crept on all fours to the threshold and fearfully, longingly, extended my tender head into the open air of the courtyard. Until then I had looked through the windowpane but had seen nothing. Now I not only looked, I actually saw the world for the very first time. And what an astonishing sight that was! Our little courtyard-garden seemed without limits. There was buzzing from thousands of invisible bees, an intoxicating aroma, a warm sun as thick as honey. The air flashed as though armed with swords, and, between the swords, erect, angel-like insects with colorful, motionless wings. advanced straight for me. I screamed from fright, my eyes filled with tears, and the world vanished.

On another day, I remember, a man with a thorny beard took me in his arms and brought me down to the harbor. As we approached, I heard a wild beast sighing and roaring as if wounded or uttering threats. Frightened, I jumped erect in the man's arms and shrieked like a bird; I wanted to go away. Suddenly—the bitter odor of carob beans, tar, and rotten citrons. My creaking vitals opened to receive it. I kept jumping and pitching about in the hairy arms that held me, until at a turn in the street—dark indigo, seething, all cries and smells (what a beast that was! what freshness! what a boundless sigh!)—the entire sea poured into me frothingly. My tender temples collapsed, and my head filled with laughter, salt, and fear.

Next I remember a woman, Anníka, a neighbor of ours, newly married, recently a mother, plump and fair, with long blond hair and huge eyes. That evening I was playing in the yard; I must have been about three years old. The little garden smelled of summer. The woman leaned over, placed me in her lap, hugged me. I, closing my eyes, fell against her exposed bosom and smelled her body: the warm, dense perfume, the acid scent of milk and sweat. The newly married body was steaming. I inhaled the vapor in an erotic torpor, hanging from her high bosom. Suddenly I felt overcome by dizziness and fainted. Blushing terribly, the frightened neighbor put me down, depositing me between two pots of basil. After that she never placed me on her lap again. She just looked at me very tenderly with her large eyes and smiled.

One summer night I was sitting in our yard again, on my little stool. I remember lifting my eyes and seeing the stars for the first time. Jumping to my feet, I cried out in fear, “Sparks! Sparks!” The sky seemed a vast conflagration to me; my little body was on fire.

Such were my first contacts with earth, sea, woman, and the star-filled sky. Even now, in the most profound moments of my life, I experience these four terrifying elements with exactly the same ardor as in my infancy. Only then, when I succeed in re-experiencing them with the same astonishment, fright, and joy they gave me when I was an infant, do I feel—even today—that I am experiencing these four terrifying elements deeply, as deeply as my body and soul can plunge. Since these were the first forces which I consciously felt occupying my soul, the four joined indissolubly inside me and became one. They are like a single face which keeps changing masks. Looking at the star-filled sky, I sometimes imagine that it is a flowering garden, sometimes a dark, dangerous sea, sometimes a taciturn face flooded with tears.

Every one of my emotions, moreover, and every one of my ideas, even the most abstract, is made up of these four primary ingredients. Within me, even the most metaphysical problem takes on a warm physical body which smells of sea, soil, and human sweat. The Word, in order to touch me, must become warm flesh. Only then do I understand—when I can smell, see, and touch.

In addition to these first four contacts, my soul was also deeply influenced by a fortuitous event. Fortuitous? Such are the prudent, unmanly nebulosities with which the cowardly mind, which
quakes lest it utter some nonsense and wound its dignity, characterizes whatever it is incapable of interpreting. I must have been four years old. On New Year's Day my father gave me a canary and a revolving globe as a handsel, “a good hand,” as we say in Crete. Closing the doors and windows of my room, I used to open the cage and let the canary go free. It had developed the habit of sitting at the very top of the globe and singing for hours and hours, while I held my breath and listened.

This extremely simple event, I believe, influenced my life more than all the books and all the people I came to know afterwards. Wandering insatiably over the earth for years, greeting and taking leave of everything, I felt that my head was the globe and that a canary sat perched on the top of my mind, singing.

I
recount my childhood years in detail, not because the earliest memories have such a great fascination, but because during this period, as in dreams, a seemingly insignificant event exposes the true, unmascaraed face of the soul more than any psychoanalysis can do later. Since the means of expression in childhood or dreams are very simple, even the most intricate of inner wealth is delivered from all superfluity, so that only the essence remains.

The child's brain is soft, his flesh tender. Sun, moon, rain, wind, and silence all descend upon him. He is frothy batter and they knead him. The child gulps the world down greedily, receives it in his entrails, assimilates it, and turns it into child.

I remember frequently sitting on the doorstep of our home when the sun was blazing, the air on fire, grapes being trodden in a large house in the neighborhood, the world fragrant with must. Shutting my eyes contentedly, I used to hold out my palms and wait. God always came—as long as I remained a child, He never deceived me—He always came, a child just like myself, and deposited His toys in my hands: sun, moon, wind. “They're gifts,” He said, “they're gifts. Play with them. I have lots more.” I would open my eyes. God would vanish, but His toys would remain in my hands.

Though I did not know this (did not know it because I was experiencing it), I possessed the Lord's omnipotence: I created the world as I wanted it. I was soft dough; so was the world. I remember loving cherries more than any other fruit when I was
little. I used to fill a bucket at the well, toss them in—red or black, crunchily firm—lean over, and admiré how they swelled the moment they entered the water. But when I removed them, I saw to my great disappointment that they shrank. I closed my eyes, therefore, to avoid seeing them shrink, and thrust them—still monstrous, as I imagined—into my mouth.

This insignificant detail exposes in its entirety the method by which I confront reality, even now in my old age. I re-create it—brighter, better, more suitable to my purpose. The mind cries out, explains, demonstrates, protests; but inside me a voice rises and shouts at it, “Be quiet, mind; let us hear the heart.” What heart? Madness, the essence of life. And the heart begins to warble.

“Since we cannot change reality, let us change the eyes which see reality,” says one of my favorite Byzantine mystics. I did this when a child; I do it now as well in the most creative moments of my life.

Truly, what miracles are the child's mind, eyes, and ears! How insatiably they gobble down this world and fill themselves. The world is a bird with red, green, and yellow feathers. How the child hunts this bird and tries to catch it.