The Colossus of Maroussi (16 page)

The next morning I paid a visit to the museum where to my astonishment I encountered Mr. Tsoutsou in the company of the Nibelungen racketeers. He seemed highly embarrassed to be discovered in their presence but, as he explained to me later, Greece was still a neutral country and they had come armed with letters of introduction from men whom he once considered friends. I pretended to be absorbed in the examination of a Minoan chessboard. He pressed me to meet him in the café later in the day. As I was leaving the museum I got the jitterbugs so bad that I made caca in my pants. I thought of my French friend immediately. Fortunately I had in my little notebook a remedy against such ailments; it had been given me by an English traveler whom I met in a bar one night in Nice. I went back to the hotel, changed my clothes, wrapped the old ones in a bundle with the idea of throwing them in a ravine and, armed with the prescription of the English globetrotter, I made for the drug store.

I had to walk a considerable time before I could drop the bundle unobserved. By that time the jitterbugs had come on again. I made for the bottom of the moat near a dead horse swarming with bottle-flies.

The druggist spoke nothing but Greek. Diarrhoea is one of those words you never think to include in a rough and ready vocabulary—and good prescriptions are in Latin which every druggist should know but which Greek druggists are sometimes ignorant of. Fortunately a man came in who knew a little French. He asked me immediately if I were English and when I said yes he dashed out and in a few minutes returned with a jovial-looking Greek who turned out to be the proprietor of a café nearby. I explained the situation rapidly and, after a brief colloquy with the druggist, he informed me that the prescription couldn’t be filled but that the druggist had a better remedy to suggest. It was to abstain from food and drink and go on a diet of soggy rice with a little lemon juice in it. The druggist was of the opinion that it was nothing—it would pass in a few days—everybody gets it at first.

I went back to the café with the big fellow—Jim he called himself—and listened to a long story about his life in Montreal where he had amassed a fortune, as a restaurateur, and then lost it all in the stock market. He was delighted to speak English again. “Don’t touch the water here,” he said. “My water comes from a spring twenty miles away. That’s why I have such a big clientele.”

We sat there talking about the wonderful winters in Montreal. Jim had a special drink prepared for me which he said would do me good. I was wondering where to get a good bowl of thick soupy rice. Beside me was a man puffing away at a nargileh; he seemed to be in a stony trance. Suddenly I was back in Paris, listening to my occult friend Urbanski who had gone one winter’s night to a bordello in Montreal and when he emerged it was Spring. I have been to Montreal myself but somehow the image of it which I retain is not mine but Urbanski’s. I see myself standing in his shoes, waiting for a streetcar on the edge of the town. A rather elegant woman comes along bundled in furs. She’s also waiting for the streetcar. How did Krishnamurti’s name come up? And then she’s speaking of Topeka, Kansas, and it seems as if I had lived there all my life. The hot toddy also came in quite naturally. We’re at the door of a big house that has the air of a deserted mansion. A colored woman opens the door. It’s her place, just as she described it. A warm, cosy place too. Now and then the doorbell rings. There’s the sound of muffled laughter, of glasses clinking, of slippered feet slapping through the hall.

I had listened to this story so intently that it had become a part of my own life. I could feel the soft chains she had slipped around him, the too comfortable bed, the delicious, drowsy indolence of the pasha who had retired from the world during a season of snow and ice. In the Spring he had made his escape but I, I had remained and sometimes, like now, when I forget myself, I’m there in a hotbed of roses trying to make clear to her the mystery of Arjuna’s decision.

Towards evening I went round to the café to meet Mr. Tsoutsou. He insisted that I accompany him to his studio where he had planned to present me to the little circle of literati. I was wondering about the bowl of rice and how to get it.

The retreat was hidden away in the loft of a dilapidated building which reminded me forcibly of Giono’s Biblical birthplace in Manosque. It was the sort of den which St. Jerome might have created for himself during his exile in a foreign land. Outside, in the volcanic hinterland of Herakleion, Augustine ruled; here, amidst the musty books, the paintings, the music, was Jerome’s world. Beyond, in Europe proper, another world was going to ruin. Soon one would have to come to a place like Crete to recover the evidences of a civilization which had disappeared. In this little den of Tsoutsou’s there was a cross-cut of everything which had gone to make the culture of Europe. This room would live on as the monks lived on during the Dark Ages.

One by one his friends came, poets most of them. French was the common language. Again there came up the names of Eliot, Breton, Rimbaud. They spoke of Joyce as a Surrealist. They thought America was experiencing a cultural renascence. We clashed. I can’t stand this idea, which is rooted in the minds of little peoples, that America is the hope of the world. I brought up the names of their own writers, the contemporary poets and novelists of Greece. They were divided as to the merits of this one and that one. They were not sure of their own artists. I deplored that.

Food was served, and wine, and beautiful grapes, all of which I had to refuse. “I thought you liked to eat and drink,” said Tsoutsou. I told him I was indisposed. “Oh, come, you can eat a little cold fish,” he insisted. “And this wine—you
must
taste it—I ordered it especially for you.” The law of hospitality bade me to accept. I raised the glass and drank a toast to the future of Greece. Somebody insisted that I try the wonderful olives—and the famous goat cheese. Not a grain of rice in sight. I saw myself dashing for the bottom of the moat again beside the dead horse with the poisonous fat green flies.

“And what about Sinclair Lewis—surely he was one of America’s great writers?”

When I said no they all seemed to be highly dubious of my critical faculties. Who was a great American writer, then, they demanded. I said: “Walt Whitman. He’s the only great writer we ever had.”

“And Mark Twain?”

“For adolescents,” I answered.

They laughed, as the troglodytes had laughed at me the other morning.

“So you think Rimbaud is greater than all the American poets put together?” said one young man challengingly.

“Yes, I do. I think he’s greater than all the
French
poets put together too.”

This was like throwing a bomb in their midst. As always, the greatest defenders of French tradition are to be found outside France. Tsoutsou was of the opinion that they ought to listen to me at length; he thought my attitude was typical, representative of the American spirit. He applauded as one would applaud a trained seal after it has given a performance with the cymbals. I was somewhat depressed by this atmosphere of futile discussion. I made a long speech in bad French in which I admitted that I was no critic, that I was always passionate and prejudiced, that I had no reverence for anything except what I liked. I told them that I was an ignoramus, which they tried to deny vigorously. I said I would rather tell them stories. I began—about a bum who had tried to hit me up for a dime one evening as I was walking towards the Brooklyn Bridge. I explained how I had said No to the man automatically and then, after I had walked a few yards it suddenly came to me that a man had asked me for something and I ran back and spoke to him. But instead of giving him a dime or a quarter, which I could easily have done, I told him that I was broke, that I had wanted to let him know that, that was all. And the man had said to me—“Do you mean that, buddy? Why, if that’s the way it is, I’ll be glad to give you a dime myself.” And I let him give it to me, and I thanked him warmly, and walked off.

They thought it a very interesting story. So that’s how it was in America? Strange country…anything could happen there.

“Yes,” I said, “a very strange country,” and I thought to myself that it was wonderful not to be there any more and God willing I’d never return to it.

“And what is it about Greece that makes you like it so much?” asked someone.

I smiled. “The light and the poverty,” I said. “You’re a romantic,” said the man.

“Yes,” I said, “I’m crazy enough to believe that the happiest man on earth is the man with the fewest needs. And I also believe that if you have light, such as you have here, all ugliness is obliterated. Since I’ve come to your country I know that light is holy: Greece is a holy land to me.”

“But have you seen how poor the people are, how wretchedly they live?”

“I’ve seen worse wretchedness in America,” I said. “Poverty alone doesn’t make people wretched.”

“You can say that because you have sufficient…”

“I can say it because I’ve been poor all my life,” I retorted. “I’m poor now,” I added. “I have just enough to get back to Athens. When I get to Athens I’ll have to think how to get more. It isn’t money that sustains me—it’s the faith I have in myself, in my own powers. In spirit I’m a millionaire—maybe that’s the best thing about America, that you believe you’ll rise again.”

“Yes, yes,” said Tsoutsou, clapping his hands, “that’s the wonderful thing about America: you don’t know what defeat is.” He filled the glasses again and rose to make a toast. “To America!” he said, “long may it live!”

“To Henry Miller!” said another, “because he believes in himself.”

I got back to the hotel in the nick of time. To-morrow I would surely start the rice diet. I lay in bed watching the men in shirt sleeves across the way. The scene reminded me of similar ones in dingy lofts in the vicinity of the Broadway Central Hotel, New York—Greene or Bleecker Street, for example. The intermediate zone between high finance and grovelling in the bowels of the earth. Paper box representatives…celluloid collars…twine…mousetraps. The moon was scudding through the clouds. Africa not far distant. At the other end of the island a place called Phaestos. As I was dozing off Mlle. Swedenborg knocked at the door to inform me that there had been a telephone call from the prefect of police. “What does he want?” I asked. She didn’t know. I was disturbed. The word police fills me with panic. I got up automatically to search my wallet for the
permis de séjour.
I examined it to make sure that I was
en règle.
What could that bastard want of me? Was he going to ask how much money I had on me? In out of the way places they always think of petty little things to harass you about. “
Vive la France!
” I muttered absent-mindedly. Another thought came to me. I slipped on my bathrobe and wandered from one floor to another to make sure that I could find the W. C. in a hurry if necessary. I felt thirsty. I rang and asked if they had any mineral water. The maid couldn’t understand what I meant. “Water, water,” I repeated, looking around in vain for a bottle to illustrate what I meant. She disappeared to return with a pitcher of iced water. I thanked her and turned out the lights. My tongue was parched. I got up and wet my lips, fearful lest a stray drop slip down my burning throat.

Next morning I remembered that I had forgotten to call at the vice consul’s office for the book he had promised me. I went to his office and waited for him to make his appearance. He arrived beaming with pleasure. He had already written an inscription in the book; he wanted me to be sure to let him know, immediately I had read the book, what I thought of it. I brought up the rice problem as delicately as I could, after he had tried to sell me the idea of visiting the leper colony somewhere on the island. Boiled rice? Nothing could be easier. His wife would fix it for me every day—it would be a pleasure. Somehow I was touched by his alacrity in aiding me. I tried to imagine a French functionary speaking this way—it was just impossible. On the contrary, the image that came to mind was that of the Frenchwoman who ran the
tabac
in a certain neighborhood where I had lived for several years and how one day, when I was short two sous, she had snatched the cigarettes from my hand and shouted to me in a panicky voice that they couldn’t possibly give credit to anyone, it would ruin them, and so forth. I thought of a scene in another
bistro
, where I was also a good customer, and how they had refused to lend me the two francs I needed to make the admission to a movie. I remembered how enraged I became when the woman pretended to me that she was not the proprietress but the cashier and how I had taken the change out of my pocket, just to prove to her that I had some money on me, and flinging it into the street I said—“
There
, that’s what I think of your lousy francs!” And the waiter had immediately run out into the street and begun searching for the dirty little coins.

A little later, strolling about the town, I stopped into a shop near the museum where they sold souvenirs and postcards. I looked over the cards leisurely; the ones I liked best were soiled and wrinkled. The man, who spoke French fluently, offered to make the cards presentable. He asked me to wait a few minutes while he ran over to the house and cleaned and ironed them. He said he would make them look like new. I was so dumbfounded that before I could say anything he had disappeared, leaving me in charge of the shop. After a few minutes his wife came in. I thought she looked strange for a Greek woman. After a few words had passed I realized that she was French and she, when she learned that I hailed from Paris, was overjoyed to speak with me. We got along beautifully until she began talking about Greece. She hated Crete, she said. It was too dry, too dusty, too hot, too bare. She missed the beautiful trees of Normandy, the gardens with the high walls, the orchards, and so on. Didn’t I agree with her? I said NO, flatly. “
Monsieur!
” she said, rising up in her pride and dignity, as if I had slapped her in the face.