Report to Grego

  The emotion I felt in walking over the ancient grounds of Knossos was so superabundantly rich, so embroiled with life and death, that I find myself unable to analyze it clearly. Instead of sorrow and death, instead of tranquility, stern commandments rose from the decomposed mouths. I felt the dead hanging in long chaplets from my feet—not to lower me into their cool darkness, but rather to take hold of something and rise into the light with me in order to recommence the battle. Unquenchable joy and thirst, together with the living bulls bellowing in the pastures of the world above, the sea salt and the perfume of grass, had penetrated the earth’s crust for thousands of years and prevented the dead from dying.

  I gazed at the bullfights painted on the walls: the woman’s agility and grace, the man’s unerring strength, how they played with the frenzied bull, confronting him with intrepid glances. They did not kill him out of love in order to unite with him, as in oriental religions, or because they were overcome with fear and dared not look at him. Instead, they played with him, obstinately, respectfully, without hate. Perhaps even with gratitude. For this sacred battle with the bull whetted the Cretan’s strength, cultivated his bodily agility and grace, the fiery yet coolheaded precision of movement, the discipline of will, the valor—so difficult to acquire—to measure his strength against the beast’s fearful power without being overcome by panic. Thus the Cretans transubstantiated horror, turning it into an exalted game in which man’s virtue, in direct contact with mindless omnipotence, received stimulation and conquered—conquered without annihilating the bull, because it considered him not an enemy but a fellow worker. Without him, the body would not have become so flexible and strong, the soul so valiant.

  Surely a person needs great training of both body and soul if he is to have the endurance to view the beast and play such a dangerous game. But once he is trained and acquires the feel of the game, every one of his movements becomes simple, certain, and leisurely; he looks upon fear with intrepidity.

  As I regarded the battle depicted on the walls, the age-old battle between man and bull (whom today we term God), I said to myself, Such was the Cretan Glance.

  And suddenly the answer invaded my mind, and not only my mind but also my heart and loins. This was what I had been seeking, what I wanted. I had to fill the eyes of my own Odysseus with this Cretan Glance. Our age was a ferocious one. The Bull—the dark subterranean powers—had been let loose; the earth’s crust was cracking. Courtesy, harmony, balance, happiness, life’s sweetness—all these were virtues and joys which we had to be brave enough to bid adieu; they belonged to other ages, past or future. Every age has its own countenance. The countenance of our age was ferocious, and delicate souls dared not look it straight in the eye.

  Odysseus, he who sailed upon the octameters I was writing, had to be made to view the abyss with such a Cretan Glanee—without hope and fear but also without insolence—as he stood proudly erect at the very brink of the precipice.

  My life changed from that day onward, the Day of the Cretan Glance, as I named it. My soul discovered where to stand and how to cast its gaze. The terrible problems tormenting me grew calm; they smiled, as though springtime had come and the wild perplexities, like vernal thorns, had been covered with flowers. It was a tardy, unforeseen juvenescence. Like the ancient Chinese sage, I seemed to have been born a hoary, decrepit old man with snow-white beard. As the years went by, the beard turned gray, then gradually blackened, then fell off, and in my old age a tender adolescent fuzz spread across my cheeks.

  My youth had been nothing but anxieties, nightmares, and questionings; my maturity nothing but lame answers. I looked toward the stars, toward men, toward ideas—what chaos! And what agony to hunt out God, the blue bird with the red talons, in their midst! I took one road, reached its end—an abyss. Frightened, I turned back and took another road; at its end the abyss once more. Retreat again, a new journey, and suddenly the same abyss yawned before me anew. All the routes of the mind led to the abyss. My youth and maturity had revolved in the air around the two poles of panic and hope, but now in my old age I stood before the abyss tranquilly, fearlessly. I no longer fled, no longer humiliated myself—no, not I, but the Odysseus I was fashioning. I created him to face the abyss calmly, and in creating him, I strove to resemble him. I myself was being created. I entrusted all my own yearnings to this Odysseus; he was the mold I was carving out so that the man of the future might flow in. Whatever I yearned for and was unable to attain, he would attain. He was the charm that would lure the tenebrous and luminous forces that create the future. Faith moves mountains; believe in him and he would come. Who would come? The Odysseus I had created. He was the Archetype.

  The creator’s responsibility is a great one; he opens a road that may entice the future and force it to make up its mind.

  I looked at the Cretan sea, at the waves that towered proudly, flashed for a moment in the sun, and sped to give up the ghost with a chuckle upon the pebbles of the beach. I felt my blood following their rhythm as it left my heart and spread to my fingertips and the very roots of my hair. I was becoming a sea, an endless voyage full of distant adventures, a proud despairing poem sailing with black and red sails over the abyss. And at the poem’s summit was a seaman’s cap, beneath the cap a rough sunburned forehead, two black eyes and a mouth frosted with salt spray, and lower down two huge, callused paws that gripped the helm.

  He could not—we could not—fit any longer within the constricting homeland. Choosing the island’s most unsubmissive souls, we seized what we could from our homes, boarded a ship, and departed. Where to? The wind would blow and show us our route. Southward! To Helen, who was pining away on the banks of the Eurotas, constricted just like ourselves by security, virtue, and the comfortable life. To the great archisland of Crete, which was withering because potency had departed the loins of its rulers; raising her arms in the middle of the sea, she was calling the barbarians so that she might have children by them. To Africa, to the ends of the earth, to the everlasting snows, to death!

  At first the blue bird with the red talons went in the lead, but it quickly tired and we left it behind us, remaining free in the empty air, without a guide bird. From time to time great immortal souls dug their claws into our ship’s rigging and warbled in an effort to entice us, but we burst into laughter, and they became frightened and left. Sometimes we heard a terrible cry spurt up from the sea’s bottom: “Stop! Where are you going? Enough!” and we leaned over the gunwale and shouted back at it, “No, not enough, not enough! Keep still!” And one evening Death came and curled up on the prow. He was dressed like us, in fox pelts, with a pointed blue cap crowned by a red pompon; he had a snow-white beard, and his face, chest, arms, and thighs were furrowed with cicatrized wounds. He smiled at us tenderly. We understood. We were finally approaching the end of our voyage.

  Stretching out supine on the boat’s deck, we closed our eyes and saw: above the continents and seas we had traversed, above the men we had encountered, the women we had kissed, above earth, water, fire, and flesh was another voyage where the boat was made of clouds, and the continents, seas, and people of silken threads which had emanated from our entrails. And still higher, on the highest level of all, our cloud boat scattered, our silken threads dissolved. The world’s apparitions vanished, and nothing remained on this highest level but a mute, blind, stationary sun, blacker than blackness. It’s probably God, we said to ourselves, who knows, it is probably God. . . . We tried to raise our hands in order to greet Him, but we could not.

  While I was writing this Odyssey on my Cretan shore line, the infernal powers were preparing the second great war. A wind of insanity blew over the human race, the earth’s foundations creaked, and I, bending over my paper and listening to the clamor made by waves, people, and infernal powers, held on to my soul for dear life in order to keep panic from overcoming me. I strove to divine—and to entice with well-ordered, harmonious words—the man who lay beyond the massacres and tears, beyond today’s ape man. Though he
remained a specter hanging in mid-air, I felt as I leaned over and wrote, that I was transfusing my own blood into him. I was being emptied, he being filled, and his body began to solidify little by little, to move, and come.

  I had entered a deep dream. Truth’s lower level had vanished, the solid one whose entire area rests against the earth; and tonguing upward high in the air, like a fire blown by a strong wind, was the most elevated level of truth, the soul of man.

  I worked all day, slept all night. Never in my life have I been able to work at night; I am like a solar clock. Sine sole sileo—without the sun I am silent. The night, with its dreams, its silence, with the dark doors it opens in me, prepares my work for the following day.

  The supreme benefit for me at this point is time. When I see people going for strolls or lolling about aimlessly or squandering time in vain discussions, I feel like going to the street corner and extending my hand like a beggar in order to entreat, “Alms, good Christians, grant me a little of the time you are losing—one hour, two hours, whatever you prefer.”

  The day was finally declining. I crossed my arms, leaned my head back against the wall, and watched the setting sun. I felt neither joy, sorrow, nor fatigue. Just a sense of relief, as though my entrails had been emptied, as though I had shed all my blood, as though I was the hard transparent garment left by the cricket on the olive trunk when it hatches. A tiny skiff with a red sail was returning from fishing; I could discern the glittering fish on its deck. A tiny island opposite me had filled with violets. The diminutive, desolate chapel of the Crucified gleamed whitely at the mountain’s summit, like an egg; the light clung to its whitewashed walls and did not wish to leave.

  I heard the grating of pebbles on my right; someone was striding hastily over the shingle and approaching. I turned. A pointed cap flashed in the purple dusk and the acid smell of human sweat suffused the air. Moving to one side on the stone bench where I was seated, I made room for him to sit down near me.

  “Welcome,” I said. “I’ve been expecting you.”

  Bending over, he picked up some seaweed the surf had thrown up, and placed it between his lips.

  “Here I am,” he said. “I’m glad to see you.”

  The blue, fluffy night Was descending from the sky, ascending from the sea. Behind us, on land, the night birds took wing amidst the olive trees; the two great, deathless cries of love and hunger sounded in the black silence. The tiny beasties hiding deep in the squat bushes were hungry too, they too wanted love, and a great dirge rose from the ground.

  We remained silent; each could hear his heart beating reposefully. It seemed that all those hidden nocturnal yearnings, all those clashing voices were being harmonized in passing through our vitals.

  The joy and sweetness were so great that tears suddenly began to flow from my eyes; ancient, mystical words rose from my vitals and toddled over my lips:

  Death and birth are one, my lads,

  One the heartache and joy.

  One to land and sail away,

  One the hello and goodbye!

  I turned to the silent companion on my right.

  “Are we moving, Captain Odysseus?” I asked. “Have we arrived? Time, as though changed into eternity, seems to have stopped; space is rolled up in my palm like an ancient parchment charted with lands and seas. Deliverance—what we call deliverance and desperately extend our arms toward heaven to reach—has become a sprig of basil behind my ear. Don’t you smell its scent in the air?”

  My companion inhaled deeply and smiled.

  “You have been delivered from deliverance,” he said. His voice was crusty, hoarsened by the sea wind. “You have been delivered from deliverance—and that is man’s supreme feat. Your term in the service of hope and fear is over; you have leaned over the abyss, have seen the world’s apparition turned upside down, and have not been frightened. We have leaned together over the abyss, precious companion, and have not been frightened. Do you remember?”

  The terrible journey sprang into my mind, the sea thundered from one temple to the other; my memory swelled and I viewed, re-viewed, re-enjoyed how we wrenched ourselves away from son, wife, fatherland, the comfortable life, how we left virtue and truth behind us, how we passed between the Scylla and Charybdis of God without losing our ship, how we made for the open sea with bellying sails and valiantly shaped our course for the abyss.

  “It was a fine trip,” I said, heartfeltly touching my companion’s knee. “Now we have arrived.”

  “Arrived?” he asked in surprise. “What does that mean?”

  “I know. It means: now we are leaving.”

  “Yes, now we are leaving. Without a boat, without the sea, without a body.”

  “Free.”

  “No, freed from freedom. Beyond.”

  “Beyond? Where? My mind is incapable of containing that.”

  “Beyond freedom, my companion. Have courage!”

  “I am afraid to follow you. My strength reaches just so far; farther I cannot go.”

  “No matter, Father. You did your duty: you begot a son higher than you. You stay here as a buoy; I shall go farther.”

  Rising, he tightened his belt and glanced out beyond him into the darkness. A star spilled forth and rolled tearlike down night’s cheeks. A wind rose from the earth; the waves neighed in the silence like awakening horses. He offered me his hand.

  “Are you leaving?” I cried, as though my own soul were leaving.

  Bending over, he kissed my right shoulder, my left shoulder, then both my eyes. His lips covered me with brine. He smiled, and his voice issued with tenderness, playfully.

  “Who was the ascetic who sought God for forty years and could not find him? Some dark object loomed in the middle, hindering him. But one morning he saw: it was an old fur which he loved dearly and did not have the heart to discard. He threw it away, and all at once he saw God in front of him. . . . You, dear companion, are my old fur. Farewell!”

  I was terrified. His final words seemed to come from far, far away, from the other bank. I jumped to my feet and searched in the darkness. No one.

  EPILOGUE

  I KISS your hand, beloved grandfather. I kiss your right shoulder, I kiss your left shoulder. My confession is over; now you must judge. I did not recount the details of daily life. Rinds they were. You tossed them into the garbage of the abyss and I did the same. With its large and small sorrows, large and small joys, life sometimes wounded me, sometimes caressed me. These habitual everyday affairs left us, and we left them. It was not worth the trouble to turn back and haul them out of the abyss. The world will lose nothing if the people I knew remain in oblivion. Contact with my contemporaries had very little influence on my life. I did not love many men, either because I failed to understand them or because I looked upon them with contempt; perhaps, also, because I did not chance to meet many who deserved being loved. I did not hate anyone, however, even though I harmed several people without desiring to. They were sparrows and I wished to turn them into eagles. I set about to deliver them from mediocrity and routine, pushed them without taking their endurance into account, and they crashed to the ground. Only the immortal dead enticed me, the great Sirens Christ, Buddha, and Lenin. From my early years I sat at their feet and listened intently to their seductive love-filled song. I struggled all my life to save myself from each of these Sirens without denying any one of them, struggled to unite these three clashing voices and transform them into harmony.

  Women I loved. I was fortunate in chancing to meet extraordinary women along my route. No man ever did me so much good or aided my struggle so greatly as these women—and one above all, the last. But over this love-smitten body I throw the veil which the sons of Noah threw over their drunken father. I like our ancestors’ myth about Eros and Psyche; surely you liked it too, grandfather. It is both shameful and dangerous to light a lamp, dispel the darkness, and see two bodies locked in an embrace. You knew this, you who hid your beloved helpmate Jeronima de las Cuevas in love’s divine obsc
urity. I do the same with my Jeronima. Intrepid fellow athlete, cool fountain in our inhuman solitude, great comfort! Poverty and nakedness—yes, the Cretans are right in saying that poverty and nakedness are nothing, provided you have a good wife. We had good wives; yours was named Jeronima, mine Helen. What good fortune this was, grandfather! How many times did we not say to ourselves as we looked at them, Blessed the day we were born!

  But we did not allow women, even the dearest, to lead us astray. We did not follow their flower-strewn road, we took them with us. No, we did not take them, these dauntless companions followed our ascents of their own free will.

  One thing only we pursued all our lives: a harsh, carnivorous, indestructible vision—the essence. For its sake what venom we were given to drink by both gods and men, what tears we shed, what blood, how much sweat! Our whole lives, a devil (devil? or angel?) refused to leave us in peace. He leaned over, glued himself to us and hissed in our ears, “In vain! In vain! In vain!” He thought he would make us freeze in our tracks, but we repulsed him with a toss of our heads, clenched our teeth, and answered, “Just what we want! We’re not working for pay, we have no desire for a daily wage. We are warring in the empty air, beyond hope, beyond paradise!”

  This essence went by many names; it kept changing masks all the while we pursued it. Sometimes we called it supreme hope, sometimes supreme despair, sometimes summit of man’s soul, sometimes desert mirage, and sometimes blue bird and freedom. And sometimes, finally, it seemed to us like an integral circle with the human heart as center and immortality as circumference, a circle which we arbitrarily assigned a heavy name loaded with all the hopes and tears of the world: “God.”

  Every integral man has inside him, in his heart of hearts, a mystic center around which all else revolves. This mystic whirling lends unity to his thoughts and actions; it helps him find or invent the cosmic harmony. For some this center is love, for others kindness or beauty, others the thirst for knowledge or the longing for gold and power. They examine the relative value of all else and subordinate it to this central passion. Alas for the man who does not feel himself governed inside by an absolute monarch. His ungoverned, incoherent life is scattered to the four winds.