turning, those precious indurated
jewels his eyes he fixes on the
stylite crags. He smelled the cistus;
Crete the fondled tigress slipped
and spread throughout his vitals’ sounding
darkness. Heavy cares, desires
proud and manly, drum his breast,
the bee-swarm buzzes in flowering thyme, and
Vrondíssi belovèd enters his mind.
Ablaze, Psiloríti steams;
icy waters pound the marble
fountain; bridge raised high, the tingling
rebec wails its lively reels.
The sea brine on his lips, he still
can hear—O hidden treasure—the deacon-
ascetic at Rastro’s harbor before
he sailed, his agèd master’s double
admonition: “Kyriákos,
anointed you were with flame of prophecy,
do not fall in affluence’s
pit, a pot-licker in regal
courts. Blaze untried trails and advance!”
O proud capricious heart, when crafty
hope was offering sweet and slavish
dreams, why did you hide and fail to
lash me with a furious heel
to make us leave? Back, heart! Back home!
He spoke. His soul cavorted like a
leopard. Isolation rose—a
fortress. God blazed starlike at his
brows; following, he turned to flee.
A virifying mantinádha
came to tip the scales of his will:
A JOB BEFORE YOU, LUFF AND DO NOT FEAR,
PAY OUT YOUR YOUTH TO IT WITH NEVER A TEAR.
I shed tears for my youth? Not I!
Patience is stifling me. I’ve had enough!
We, O heart, were made to violently
open freedom’s unalloyèd
wings and be consumed on upper
roads! A sword we hold in our hands: the
light! Turn sunward to Crete, freedom
to find, and holy isolation!
Speedily, he turns to the right,
toward his father’s house at the distant
haven. Psiloríti’s proudful
summit flapped kerchief-like above
his mind; Messára plain stretched wide
and verdant with its genial orchards.
But suddenly he springs to his feet;
two frightening hands have seized him. Wings,
the roaring of wings he hears, and—Oh,
the great effulgence!—his eyes brim over
with stars. Flames incorporeal,
green and gold, fleetingly lick
his scalp, and brimstone, lightning, scorching
gusts. An archangel leaps upon him,
a warm south wind, his wings redolent
of cistus; clasps the youth to his burly
breast, kicks the ground, straight upward
zooms, and hurtles through the azurean
depths. The youth is pale in the fierce
torrential light. He firmly binds his
Cretan kerchief, and black eyes open,
lips stoutly clenched, beholds in the
torrid sun, earth’s lower level
melt. A carcass in the solar
glare the mausoleum, ants the
builders scouring it. Highlands whistle,
roads meander; bent at the angelic
prow he reaps the light, desire’s
summit Earth’s invisible stature
rose. His inner-archangel’s breast had
thrust him on the virgin crests, on
savage freedom’s single hope,
this world’s most exalted garret,
Upper Crete, the secret homeland!
I wandered all day through Toledo’s narrow lanes. I sniffed brimstone in the air, as though a thunderbolt had fallen. The wind still smelled of wild beast more than three centuries after your passage, as though a lion had come this way. How frightening and joyful it is to walk and feel a great soul furiously beating its wings above you!
At night when I went to bed, grandfather, and my entrails were filled with your breath, sleep came and took me away. Was it sleep, or a three-masted schooner with hoisted sails? I boarded it, and just as I was about to turn and ask the captain where we were going, we had anchored at Megalo Kastro, in Crete. The stone of the winged Venetian lions was turning rose in the afternoon sun, Saint Mark’s banner was waving over the great tower, the wharf smelled of wine, olive oil, lemons, and oranges. Next to the harbor gate Geronimo’s tavern was buzzing, filled with drunken Venetian and Genoese sailors, and with the brazen women who frequent the waterfront. We sat down behind a barrel, the two of us, off to one side. Grilled oysters and crabs were brought us as mezé; we emptied and refilled our glasses repeatedly, without speaking, each gazing into the other’s eyes.
We were both young, you twenty, I seventeen. Though we loved the same girl, we did not quarrel, for we were unqualified friends. At night we both sang beneath her closed window, relieving our heartache with mantinádhes, you carrying a lute, I a guitar. Our two voices blended, yours deep and virile, mine still immature, and we left the girl free to choose, behind her closed window. At dawn we parted, you to take up your brush without sleeping, and to paint colossal-winged angels who bounded out of their frames, as was your custom; while I, overcome with fatigue, went home to sleep and dream that the window opened and a red apple fell into my palm.
And now we gazed at each other in the tavern and did not speak, because you were going to depart the following day at dawn. We drank in order to forget the pain of separation.
It was nearly midnight when we rose to leave the tavern. We had been drinking tart Malevyzian wine, and our minds had opened, branched out, and invaded the entire world.
“The world is ours, brother Meneghí,” I said. “Let’s go.”
We clasped each other around the waist to keep from stumbling. I felt your breath on my cheek. For how long, I asked myself, for how long? Dawn would come in just a few hours, and the beloved breath would leave me, would never fall upon me again! But I was young. I endured the pain, and my eyes did not fill with tears.
We passed through the harbor gate, turned to the right, and mounted the Venetian walls which encircle the city. The moon hung sadly over us, fully round. Only the biggest stars had been able to resist its radiance; these flashed in the milky speechless sky, while the Cretan sea bellowed on our right.
You stopped, beloved companion, and extended your arm. “Look,” you said to me, “look at the water. It is charging to devour the walls and expel the Venetians. Can’t you see? Look well—those aren’t waves, Menegháki” (that was the teasing nickname you gave me), “they are horses, a terrifying cavalry brigade!”
I laughed. “They’re waves, Meneghi, they aren’t horses.”
You shrugged your shoulders. “You see with the eyes of clay, I with the others. You see the body, I the soul.”
“Perhaps that explains why we are such good friends and do not wish to part. Does the soul wish to part from its body?”
We were reminded of the separation and felt sick at heart.
“Come,” you said, squeezing my arm. “Don’t talk about parting.
We proceeded for quite some time, beneath the moon, but our minds rested on the separation. The two of us were toiling to find some way to divert our thoughts lest we fall prey to tears. We were ashamed to weep; we had both read the holy legends, had envied the saints’ steadfastness under pain—their eyes which remained dry even though they were parting forever from their dearest loved ones—and we had vowed to imitate them.
“What are you thinking about?” you asked me in order to conjure away the silence.
“Nothing,” I replied, trying to hide my feelings. “Well yes, how wild the Cretan sea is, that’s what I was thinking. And now that I have mentioned it, I feel like going down to the shore and fighting with the waves, even if I drown.”
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“Youth thinks itself immortal, that is why it challenges death,” you answered, and you clasped my hand as though wishing to restrain me from descending to the shore.
I was pleased; the pressure of your hand seemed very tender to me. Though my pain at losing you increased, I feigned disinterest and suggested that we bring our conversation down to everyday needs in order to forget for a moment that we were parting.
“How are you going to live there in foreign lands, Meneghi?” I asked. “You don’t know a soul, not a soul knows you, your star has not begun to shine yet. The ducats your brother Manousos gave you are not very many, and I know how openhanded you are. You’ll spend them in no time, and after that? Aren’t you afraid?”
“Don’t bother yourself about me, Menegháki,” you replied. “No matter how little I have, it is enough; no matter how much, it is not enough. Do you understand what I’m saying?”
“No.”
You laughed like a child. “Neither do I. Anyhow, that’s the way it is.”
But you saw that I was uneasy. Placing your hand on my shoulder, you said to comfort me, “Don’t worry, Meneghÿki, I won’t go under. I have great goals in my mind, great power in my hands. I shall contend with the most formidable of them out there in Europe where I’m going, in order to force my soul either to win or perish. You’ll see, you’ll see. And first of all I’m going to have it out (don’t be alarmed) with Michelangelo. The other day I saw a small copy of the Last Judgment he painted at Rome. I don’t like it.”
Your eyes in the moonlight were spitting flames; your voice had grown husky. Stooping, you picked up a rock and slung it down at the sea, as though you wished to indicate your strength by stoning the waves.
“Why look at me like that? Do you think I drank too much wine and became drunk? I am not drunk. No, I don’t like it. He resurrects the flesh; the world fills with bodies again. I’ll have none of them! I’ll paint another Last Judgment, I will. With two levels. Lower level: graves—they’re opening, and worms as large as a man’s body are coming out, anxiously, with lifted heads, as though smelling the air. Upper level: Christ. Christ, all alone. He leans over, blows on the worms, and the air fills with butterflies. That’s the meaning of resurrection—the worms must become butterflies, and not simply come back to us and be turned into immortal worms.”
Raising my eyes, I glanced at you in the moon’s magic light. The air around your flaming head had filled with butterflies.
I was opening my mouth to speak (this Last Judgment seemed excessively heretical to me), but you had worked up momentum and were anxious to tell me your secrets in time—daybreak was almost upon us, and we would soon be forced to part. I do not believe you were addressing me any more; you were soliloquizing as you went.
“They paint the Holy Spirit descending upon the Apostles’ heads in the form of a dove. For shame! Haven’t they ever felt the Holy Spirit burning them? Where did they find that innocent, edible bird? How can they present that to us as spirit? No, the Holy Spirit is not a dove, it is fire, a man-eating fire which clamps its talons into the very crown of saints, martyrs, and great struggles, reducing them to ashes. Abject souls are the ones who take the Holy Spirit for a dove which they imagine they can kill and eat.”
You laughed.
“Some day, God willing, I shall paint the Holy Spirit above the Apostles’ heads, and then you’ll see.”
Falling silent, you moved your arm swiftly up and down, as though painting the future Pentecost in the air.
“Can’t you turn the fire into light?” I asked. But I regretted my words immediately, for your face darkened.
“You and your mania for light!” you replied, knitting your brows—the way you glanced at me, for a moment I thought you were angry. “What’s your hurry? That is none of our business. This is the earth, not a cloud, and the earth is made of bodies with flesh, fat, and bones. Let us turn them into flame. So much we can do, more we cannot. That is enough! Fire sleeps even in a dead stump, and in the leaf of a tree, and in the most splendid and silken of royal cloaks—sleeps and waits for man to awaken it. Wake the fire! That is man’s duty! A flame penetrates stones, people, angels. That flame is what I want to paint. I don’t want to paint the ashes. I am an artist, not a theologian. The moment I want to paint is the moment when God’s creatures are burning, just before they turn to ashes. If only I arrive in time—I ask nothing more—if only I arrive in time. That is why you see me gasping and hurrying so; I want to arrive before they turn to ashes.”
“Quiet!” I exclaimed. I felt your body enveloped in flames. “Be still, my companion. I am afraid.”
“Do not be afraid, Menegháki. Fire is the Virgin Mother; it bears the immortal son. What son? Light. Life is purgatory; we burn. It is paradise’s job to take the flame we have prepared for it and to turn that flame into light. Let us allow paradise to do that.”
You fell silent again, but in a moment: “That, I want you to know, is how men collaborate with God. Certain people call me a heretic—let them. I have my own Holy Writ, and it says what the other either forgot or did not dare to say. I open it and read in Genesis: God made the world and rested on the seventh day. At that point He called his final creature, man, and said to him, ‘Listen to me, my son, if you want my blessing. I made the world, but I neglected to finish it. I left it in the middle. You continue the creation. Ignite the world, transform it into fire, and render it unto me. I shall turn it into light.’”
With the clear air and grave talk, we had begun to feel sober. We seated ourselves on a rock and gazed at the sea. Sunward, the skies had already started to whiten at the horizon’s hem. Below us, the sea was still dark and roaring. It seemed to me when I turned for an instant, Meneghi, that you were wrapped in flames.
“You are a merciless inquisitor,” I said. “You torture and kill the body in order to save the soul.”
“You call it soul, I call it flame,” you answered me.
“I love the body. The flesh seems holy to me, it too is from God. And don’t become angry if I tell you something else: the flesh has a glimmer from the soul, and the soul has a fleshly fuzz. They live together in harmonious balance like two young girls who are good friends and neighbors. You smash the sacred balance.”
“Balance means stagnation, and stagnation means death.”
“But in that case life is ceaseless denial. You deny what succeeded in opposing dissolution by achieving a balance. You smash this, and seek the uncertain.”
“I seek the certain. I rip apart the masks, lift up the layers of flesh. I say to myself, Something immortal exists beneath the meat, it cannot be otherwise. This is what I am seeking, this is what I am going to paint. All the rest—masks, flesh, beauty—I gladly present to the Titians and Tintorettos, and I hope they enjoy them!”
“You want to surpass Titian and Tintoretto? Do not forget the Cretan mantinádha: ‘If you build your nest too high, the branch will break!’”
You shook your head.
“No, I do not want to surpass anyone. I am alone, isolated.”
“You are extraordinarily proud of yourself, Meneghí. Like Lucifer.”
“No, I am extraordinarily alone.”
“Take care, my dear friend! God punishes arrogance and isolation.”
Without replying, you cast a final glance at the bellowing sea and swept your gaze over the still-sleeping city. The first cocks crowed. You rose.
“Come,” you said. “It is dawn.”
You clasped me around the waist again, and we resumed our walk. You were mumbling some words, opening and closing your mouth. You obviously wished to disclose something to me, but felt hesitant. Finally you could not restrain yourself.
“What I am going to tell you is distressing, Menegháki. Forgive me. You can say I am drunk.”
I laughed. “Now that you’re drunk you have the perfect opportunity to say what you shrink from saying when you are sober. The Malevyzian wine is talking, not you. . . . Well?”
You
r voice resounded extremely deep and embittered in the pale dawn.
“One night I demanded of God, ‘Lord, when are You going to pardon Lucifer?’ and God answered, ‘When he pardons me.’ Do you understand, my young friend? Some day if you are asked who is God’s greatest collaborator, you should say Lucifer. If you are asked who is the most sorrowful of God’s creatures, you should say Lucifer. Lastly, if you are asked who is the prodigal son whose father waits for him with open arms, having killed the fatted calf, you should say Lucifer.
“I am revealing my most hidden secrets to you because I want you to know that if I am too late, or unable, to accomplish all I have in mind to accomplish, you must continue the struggle. Continue it without fear, never forgetting the savage injunction Cretan gives to Cretan: Pay out your youth to it with never a tear! That is what it means to be a man, to be truly brave: a pallikari. That is the holy flame’s ultimate desire.
“Do you give me your word? Can you do it? Your courage will not grow faint? You will not look behind you and say, ‘Prosperity is a fine thing, and so is a woman’s embrace, and so is glory’? . . . Why don’t you speak?”
“The charge you give me is a heavy one, Meneghí. Couldn’t man’s duty be made a little less bitter?”
“Yes, but not for you or me. There are three kinds of souls, three kinds of prayers. One: I am a bow in your hands, Lord. Draw me lest I rot. Two: Do not overdraw me, Lord. I shall break. Three: Overdraw me, and who cares if I break!
“Choose!”
I awoke. The bells of the neighborhood church, Santo Tomé, were tolling matins; day had begun. Cries echoed in the street, women’s heels clacked on the cobblestones, a young cock crowed raucously in the courtyard. Toledo was awakening. My dream still clung to my eyelashes; I could still hear the final, merciless word which had filled me with terror and shaken me out of my sleep. Choose!
Beloved grandfather, how much time—a flash or three centuries—has passed since that night when I slept in Toledo and you, scenting the arrival of a Cretan in your neighborhood, rose from your grave, turned into a dream, and came to find me? In the atmosphere of love, who can distinguish a flash from eternity? A life has slipped by since then. Black hair has whitened, temples have sunk, eyes grown dim. I was never able to determine in whose hands, God’s or the devil’s, the bow creaked. But I rejoiced at feeling a power, very much greater and purer than my own, continually arming me with arrows and shooting. All wood is from the true cross because all wood can be made into a cross. Similarly, all bodies are sacred because all bodies can be made into a bow. My entire lifetime I was a bow in merciless, insatiable hands. How often those invisible hands drew and overdrew the bow until I heard it creak at the breaking point! “Let it break,” I cried each time. After all, you had commanded me to choose, grandfather, and I chose.