Mercy (24 page)

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

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,

dressed from head to toe in black. One day she burns her hands

using an iron that you fill with hot coals to use. I have never

seen such an accident or such an iron. The only running water

is outside. There is a pump. M ’s fam ily is rich but he lives a

vagabond life. He was a Com m unist w ho left the party. His

fam ily has a trucking business. He went to university for tw o

years but there are so many books he hasn’t read, so many

books you can’t get here. He was the first one on the island to

wear bell-bottom pants, he showed up in them one day all

puffed up with pride but he has never read Freud. He w orks

behind the bar because he likes it and sometimes he carries

bags for tourists down at the harbor. O r maybe it is political, I

don’t know. Crete is a hotbed o f plots and plans. I never know

i f he will come back but not because I am afraid o f him leaving

me. He will never leave me. M aybe he flirts but he couldn’t

leave me; it’d kill him, I truly think. I’m afraid for him. I know

there is intrigue and danger but I can’t follow it or understand

it or appraise it. I put m y fears aside by saying to m yself that he

is vain, which he is; beautiful, smart, vain; he likes carrying the

bags o f the tourists; his beauty is riveting and he loves to see

the effect, the tremor, the shock. He loves the millions o f

flirtations. In the summer there are wom en from everywhere.

In the winter there are rich men from France w ho come on