The Colossus of Maroussi (15 page)

Next morning I took the bus in the direction of Knossus. I had to walk a mile or so after leaving the bus to reach the ruins. I was so elated that it seemed as if I were walking on air. At last my dream was about to be realized. The sky was overcast and it sprinkled a bit as I hopped along. Again, as at Mycenae, I felt that I was being drawn to the spot. Finally, as I rounded a bend, I stopped dead in my tracks; I had the feeling that I was there. I looked about for traces of the ruins but there were none in sight. I stood for several minutes gazing intently at the contours of the smooth hills which barely grazed the electric blue sky. This must be the spot, I said to myself, I can’t be wrong. I retraced my steps and cut through the fields to the bottom of a gulch. Suddenly, to my left, I discovered a bald pavilion with columns painted in raw, bold colors—the palace of King Minos. I was at the back entrance of the ruins amidst a clump of buildings that looked as if they had been gutted by fire. I went round the hill to the main entrance and followed a little group of Greeks in the wake of a guide who spoke a boustrophedonous language which was sheer Pelasgian to me.

There has been much controversy about the aesthetics of Sir Arthur Evans’ work of restoration. I found myself unable to come to any conclusion about it; I accepted it as a fact. However Knossus may have looked in the past, however it may look in the future, this one which Evans has created is the only one I shall ever know. I am grateful to him for what he did, grateful that he had made it possible for me to descend the grand staircase, to sit on that marvelous throne chair the replica of which at the Hague Peace Tribunal is now almost as much of a relic of the past as the original.

Knossus in all its manifestations suggests the splendor and sanity and opulence of a powerful and peaceful people. It is gay—gay, healthful, sanitary, salubrious. The common people played a great role, that is evident. It has been said that throughout its long history every form of government known to man was tested out; in many ways it is far closer in spirit to modern times, to the twentieth century, I might say, than other later epochs of the Hellenic world. One feels the influence of Egypt, the homely human immediacy of the Etruscan world, the wise, communal organizing spirit of Inca days. I do not pretend to know, but I felt, as I have seldom felt before the ruins of the past, that here throughout long centuries there reigned an era of peace. There is something down to earth about Knossus, the sort of atmosphere which is evoked when one says Chinese or French. The religious note seems to be graciously diminished; women played an important, equal role in the affairs of this people; a spirit of play is markedly noticeable. In short, the prevailing note is one of joy. One feels that man lived to live, that he was not plagued by thoughts of a life beyond, that he was not smothered and restricted by undue reverence for the ancestral spirits, that he was religious in the only way which is becoming to man, by making the most of everything that comes to hand, by extracting the utmost of life from every passing minute. Knossus was worldly in the best sense of the word. The civilization which it epitomized went to pieces fifteen hundred years before the coming of the Saviour, having bequeathed to the Western world the greatest single contribution yet known to man—the alphabet. In another part of the Island, at Gortyna, this discovery is immortalized in huge blocks of stone which run over the countryside like a miniature Chinese wall. To-day the magic has gone out of the alphabet; it is a dead form to express dead thoughts.

Walking back to meet the bus I stopped at a little village to get a drink. The contrast between past and present was tremendous, as though the secret of life had been lost. The men who gathered around me took on the appearance of uncouth savages. They were friendly and hospitable, extraordinarily so, but by comparison with the Minoans they were like neglected domesticated animals. I am not thinking of the comforts which they lacked, for in point of comfort I make no great distinction between the life of a Greek peasant, a Chinese coolie and a migratory American jack-of-all-trades. I am thinking now of the lack of those essential elements of life which make possible a real society of human beings. The great fundamental lack, which is apparent everywhere in our civilized world, is the total absence of anything approaching a communal existence. We have become spiritual nomads; whatever pertains to the soul is derelict, tossed about by the winds like flotsam and jetsam. The village of Hagia Tri-ada, looked at from any point in time, stands out like a jewel of consistency, integrity, significance. When a miserable Greek village, such as the one I am speaking of, and the counterpart of which we have by the thousand in America, embellishes its meager, stultified life by the adoption of telephone, radio, automobile, tractor, et cetera, the meaning of the word communal becomes so fantastically distorted that one begins to wonder what is meant by the phrase “human society.” There is nothing human about these sporadic agglomerations of beings; they are beneath any known level of life which this globe has known. They are less in every way than the pygmies who are truly nomadic and who move in filthy freedom with delicious security.

As I sipped my glass of water, which had a strange taste, I listened to one of these glorified baboons reminisce about the glorious days he had spent in Herkimer, New York. He had run a candy store there and seemed grateful to America for having permitted him to save the few thousand dollars which he required to return to his native land and resume the degrading life of toil which he was accustomed to. He ran back to the house to fetch an American book which he had kept as a souvenir of the wonderful money-making days. It was a farmer’s almanac, badly thumb-marked, fly-bitten, louse-ridden. Here in the very cradle of our civilization a dirty baboon hands me a precious monstrosity of letters—the almanac.

The owner of the almanac and myself were seated at a table off the road in the center of a group of louts who were visibly impressed. I ordered cognac for the crowd and surrendered myself to the interlocutor. A man came over and put his big hairy finger on the photograph of a farm implement. The interlocutor said: “Good machine, he like this.” Another one took the book in his hands and went through it with a wet thumb, grunting now and then to signify his pleasure. Interlocutor said: “Very interesting book. He like American books.” Suddenly he espied a friend in the background. “Come here” he called. He presented him to me. “Nick! He work in Michigan. Big farm. He like America too.” I shook hands with Nick. Said Nick: “You New York? Me go New York once.” He made a motion with his hands to indicate the skyscrapers. Nick spoke animatedly to the others. Suddenly there was a silence and the interlocutor spoke up. “They want to know how you like Greece.” “It’s marvelous,” I answered. He laughed. “Greece very poor country, yes? No money. America rich. Everybody got money, yes?” I said yes to satisfy him. He turned to the others and explained that I had agreed—America was a very rich country, everybody rich, lots of money. “How long you stay in Greece?” he asked. “Maybe a year, maybe two years,” I answered. He laughed again, as though I were an idiot. “What your business?” I told him I had no business. “You millionaire?” I told him I was very poor. He laughed, more than ever. The others were listening intently. He spoke a few words to them rapidly. “What you have to drink?” he asked. “Cretan people like Americans. Cretan people good people. You like cognac, yes?” I nodded.

Just then the bus came along. I made as if to go. “No hurry,” said the interlocutor. “He no go yet. He make water here.” The others were smiling at me. What were they thinking? That I was a queer bird to come to a place like Crete? Again I was asked what my business was. I made the motion of writing with a pen. “Ah!” exclaimed the interlocutor. “Newspaper!” He clapped his hands and spoke excitedly to the innkeeper. A Greek newspaper was produced. He shoved it into my hands. “You read that?” I shook my head. He snatched the paper out of my hand. He read the headline aloud in Greek, the others listening gravely. As he was reading I noticed the date—the paper was a month old. The interlocutor translated for me. “He say President Roosevelt no want fight. Hitler bad man.” Then he got up and seizing a cane from one of the bystanders he put it to his shoulder and imitated a man firing point-blank. Bang-bang! he went, dancing around and aiming at one after the other. Bang-bang! Everybody laughed heartily. “Me,” he said, jerking his thumb towards his breast, “me good soldier. Me kill Turks…many Turks. Me kill, kill, kill,” and he made a ferocious, blood-thirsty grimace. “Cretan people good soldiers. Italians no good.” He went up to one of the men and seized him by the collar. He made as if he were slitting the man’s throat. “Italians, bah!” He spat on the ground. “Me kill Mussolini…like a that! Mussolini bad man. Greek no like Mussolini. We kill all Italians.” He sat down grinning and chuckling. “President Roosevelt, he help Greeks, yes?” I nodded. “Greek good fighter. He kill everybody. He no ’fraid of nobody. Look! Me, one man…” He pointed to the others. “Me one Greek.” He pointed to the others, snatching the cane again and brandishing it like a club. “Me kill everybody—German, Italian, Russian, Turk, French. Greek no ’fraid.” The others laughed and nodded their heads approvingly. It was convincing, to say the least.

The bus was getting ready to move. The whole village seemed to have gathered to see me off. I climbed aboard and waved good-bye. A little girl stepped forward and handed me a bunch of flowers. The interlocutor shouted Hooray! A gawky young lad yelled
All right!
and they all laughed.

After dinner that evening I took a walk to the edge of the town. It was like walking through the land of Ur. I was making for a brilliantly lit café in the distance. About a mile away, it seemed, I could hear the loudspeaker blasting out the war news—first in Greek, then in French, then in English. It seemed to be proclaiming the news throughout a wasteland. Europe speaking. Europe seemed remote, on some other continent. The noise was deafening. Suddenly another one started up from the opposite direction. I turned back towards the little park facing a cinema where a Western picture was being advertised. I passed what looked like an immense fortress surrounded by a dry moat. The sky seemed very low and filled with tattered clouds through which the moon sailed unsteadily. I felt out of the world, cut off, a total stranger in every sense of the word. The amplifiers increased this feeling of isolation: they seemed to have tuned up to the wildest pitch in order to carry far beyond me—to Abyssinia, Arabia, Persia, Beluchistan, China, Tibet. The waves were passing over my head; they were not intended for Crete, they had been picked up accidentally. I dove into the narrow winding streets which led to the open square. I walked right into a crowd which had gathered outside a tent in which freaks were being exhibited. A man squatting beside the tent was playing a weird melody on the flute, He held the flute up towards the moon which had grown larger and brighter in the interval. A belly-dancer came out of the tent, dragging a cretin by the hand. The crowd giggled. Just then I turned my head and to my astonishment I saw a woman with a vase on her shoulder descending a little bluff in bare feet. She had the poise and grace of a figure on an ancient frieze. Behind her came a donkey laden with jars. The flute was getting more weird, more insistent. Turbaned men with long white boots and black frock coats were pushing towards the open tent. The man beside me held two squawking chickens by the legs; he was rooted to the spot, as if hypnotized. To the right of me was evidently a barracks barred by a sentry box before which a soldier in white skirts paraded back and forth.

There was nothing more to the scene than this, but for me it held the enchantment of a world I was yet to glimpse. Even before I had sailed for Crete I had been thinking of Persia and Arabia and of more distant lands still. Crete is a jumping off place. Once a still, vital, fecund center, a navel of the world, it now resembles a dead crater. The aeroplane comes along, lifts you up by the seat of the pants, and spits you down in Baghdad, Samarkand, Beluchistan, Fez, Timbuktu, as far as your money will take you. All these once marvelous places whose very names cast a spell over you are now floating islets in the stormy sea of civilization. They mean homely commodities like rubber, tin, pepper, coffee, carborundum and so forth. The natives are derelicts exploited by the octopus whose tentacles stretch from London, Paris, Berlin, Tokio, New York, Chicago to the icy tips of Iceland and the wild reaches of Patagonia. The evidences of this so-called civilization are strewn and dumped higgledy-piggledy wherever the long, slimy tentacles reach out. Nobody is being civilized, nothing is being altered in any real sense. Some are using knives and forks who formerly ate with their fingers; some have electric lights in their hovels instead of the kerosene lamp or the wax taper; some have Sears-Roebuck catalogues and a Holy Bible on the shelf where once a rifle or a musket lay; some have gleaming automatic revolvers instead of clubs; some are using money instead of shells and cowries; some have straw hats which they don’t need; some have Jesus Christ and don’t know what to do with Him. But all of them, from the top to the bottom, are restless, dissatisfied, envious, and sick at heart. All of them suffer from cancer and leprosy, in their souls. The most ignorant and degenerate of them will be asked to shoulder a gun and fight for a civilization which has brought them nothing but misery and degradation. In a language which they cannot understand the loudspeaker blares out the disastrous news of victory and defeat. It’s a mad world and when you become slightly detached it seems even more mad than usual. The aeroplane brings death; the radio brings death; the machine gun brings death; the tinned goods bring death; the tractor brings death; the priest brings death; the schools bring death; the laws bring death, the electricity brings death; the plumbing brings death; the phonograph brings death; the knives and forks bring death; the books bring death; our very breath brings death, our very language, our very thought, our money, our love, our charity, our sanitation, our joy. No matter whether we are friends or enemies, no matter whether we call ourselves Jap, Turk, Russian, French, English, German or American, wherever we go, wherever we cast our shadow, wherever we breathe, we poison and destroy. Hooray! shouted the Greek. I too yell Hooray! Hooray for civilization!
Hooray! We will kill you all, everybody, everywhere. Hooray for Death! Hooray! Hooray!