Mermaids and Ikons Read online

  When and if I ever write about Greece I thought, I will pass over briefly, and with shame, the infamous exploits of Lord Elgin…I will subtly forget to mention how he got permission from the Turks to haul away the famous marbles from the Acropolis, including one of the karyatid figures, and later sold the whole lot to the British government. I will openly omit his offer to finance repairs for the Erechtheum. (Anyway, his offer was declined, due to the fact that the Turks feared that the ‘infidels’ who would set up the scaffolding would cast heathen eyes upon the gorgeous harem which had taken up quarters within the venerable walls.)

  When and if I ever write about Greece, I thought, I will begin with the dark Gypsies in the square in Kipseli, wearing carnival masks and selling little plastic pictures of saints to the coffee-drinkers in the outdoor cafés. I will proceed from the lovely tzigana who approached me with a baby at her breast, its head covered with horrid red scabs. I gave her all my silver, and thought it was not enough, and people told me after that it was a hundred times more than I should have given. ‘These ghi f ti,’ they said, (using the derogatory word for ‘Gypsies’), ‘You don’t ever know who’s the real mother. This woman you saw, she will pass on the child to a different woman to parade around in another place, another square.’

  And I had wondered what difference that made — who paraded the little thing around. Scabs were scabs, money was money, and food was food. What particular systems the Gypsy women worked out among themselves didn’t really interest me. What had caught my attention was the fact that although that particular tzigana had lowered her voice in a kind of whine to ask for my help, her head, nevertheless, had been held very high.

  At first I found the attitude of the Greeks towards Gypsies terribly indifferent, and it disturbed me. But then, I thought, I carried money with me at all times, and not everybody did, or could. Greek generosity for the most part centres around the home; it is widely extended to anyone within the particular social or family circuit, and it is lavishly extended towards foreigners, as everywhere in the East. But the Gypsy is neither family nor foreigner; he is a known entity, neither inside nor completely outside the social or family circuit. To the Greeks, I think, he is a dim reminder of the almost indescribable hungers and tribulations which they themselves suffered countless times at the hands of conquerors and occupiers of their land. Those Greeks who now enjoy a relative prosperity in the big cities are very often the same people, or descendants of same, who knew fearful hunger during the German occupation of Greece, or whose forefathers knew it still more during the years following the war of freedom from the Turks. Could I have given away my drachmas so easily to a needy person, had I been a woman from a remote village who had learned to save every ounce of soup for her children? Would I invent ridiculous tales of the Gypsies’ deception if every single coin I owned in my life was there to serve my immediate family? Would I even have the time to ponder over such matters, had I lived through the birth-pangs of a struggling new nation, the civil wars, the sheer horror of the last hundred years?

  I shall have to get above all this, I thought, as Dina switched the TV program to Mannix, with dubbed-in Greek soundtrack. That veritable American non-man began threatening gangsters at gun-point in the language of the gods. What am I doing here? I thought, as I glanced down to the sea where an American battleship was anchored, casting off what looked like inter-galactic signals in the purple dark.

  Blue- and yellow-eyed cats were scrounging the alleyways and garbage cans for scraps of meat. Scared to death at the sight of man, they fled into the charcoal dark whenever someone approached them. In Greece, the only thing to do with animals is eat them, ride them or abuse them. This is the result of too many years of deprivation, too much hunger. In the West, we’ve had time to consider our roles in the physical world, and we’ve come to certain belated, but important ecological conclusions. In countries like Greece there has simply not been enough time, peacetime, for people to consider such things as the overpopulation of the planet, the importance of Vitamin E in nutrition, and whether or not animals have souls. In recent centuries there has been no time for Greece to cast its eyes outward, to see what else is alive, and frightened, and in pain in the world.

  History has made beasts of us all. But that only makes sense when we consider that we beasts made history. As Seferis wrote, we shall have to rise a little higher — meaning, I think, we shall have to get things off the ground.

  There is something vastly unreal about the Acropolis lit by night; it is the same unreality that surrounds two other ‘high places’ I have seen which have become the victims of the hellish son et lumière shows — the fortress of Saladin in Cairo and the great pyramids in Giza. Huxley maintained in The Doors of Perception that modern artificial lighting allows us to appreciate ancient architecture and sculpture in new and thrilling ways. For me, however, those huge waves of unreal light create a nightmarish quality I can do without. When the Parthenon was built, nobody anticipated that one day hundreds of viewers would sit entranced before its holy pillars, half blinded not by the light of God but by that of Edison. Some things can only be understood in pure sunlight or in the discreet illumination of torches.

  I didn’t really want to get into a long conversation with the girls about why I hated the sight of the Acropolis by night, so I turned away from the window and imagined I could hear the strident notes from the bouzoukia of Plaka — lthe night-spots which form a weird, winding network of music and laughter along the lower slopes of the mountain of the Acropolis. Above, in the Parthenon, the freaky stillness of history. Below, a maze of streets full of cafés, boîtes, tavernas, each competing with the other for the right to do permanent damage to the human ear. And yet, often, hidden away in a dark corner under a roof of lattice-work and grapevines, the surprise: the lone santouri player caressing the countless strings of his instrument upon the table.

  I suppose I was enjoying the knitting party. Maria had left with her little boy. Irini was falling asleep under the icon of Saint Nikolaus. The television was now presenting a young Greek singer wandering through rows of papier-maché Doric columns and looking for his inevitable agape. ‘My love, my love,’ he sang.

  I suppose I was enjoying the knitting party while it lasted, because I knew the next day I would have to go downtown and obtain some paper or permit which would allow me to go somewhere or do something. The government offices like something out of Kafka, the office clerks brandishing their ball-point pens like swords. Pictures of Jesus Christ and Papadoupoulos smiling enigmatically from behind the filing cabinets and desks. Two, three, sometimes four hours of waiting. Wondering if Christ with His upraised hand had the papers. Wondering what the papers were for. The posters all over Greece praising the government, the army, the children, and God…

  I dozed over my knitting. I dreamed of the Roman agora and a drinking trough for ancient horses, the water still trickling from a secret source in the rock and forming a stagnant pool full of hornets and bugs and turtles. The Greek agora, and the path among the bitter daphnes past the great stoa. The fallen marble slabs and semi-walls which had been offices and courts of law. (Red tape, red stone.) The three giant statues who are snake-men and fish-men and beautifully unholy there against the glaring sky. Climbing the steps to the Thesion, and the air alive with cicadas. Graffiti from the 18th Century on the temple walls, and not a dirty word to be found.

  A deep well where I looked down into the darkness and almost found myself …

  My handbag fell on the floor and the mad macaroni of my knitting emerged. No one noticed, and I grabbed it up. I made small talk, whatever that is, to avoid blurting out the tale of my archeological discoveries at an unexcavated wall at Keramikos. I’d found bits of real Roman glass and black shards; I’d dug them out with my bare hands and stuffed them into my pockets.

  But Dina and Irini and Christina and Sophis would have laughed at the tale. These women had no need to collect tokens of history; they
knew how to knit past and future into the gaudy and complex patterns of the living present. In their devotion to the present, they create history. Not me, I thought. I’ll never learn to knit. Like the time I triumphantly showed my hostess an enormous piece of an archaic amphora which I’d acquired from a fisherman who’d dragged it out of the sea. Seeing the hideous black salt-encrusted thing, she let out a little cry and said, ‘My God, what broke?’

  I laughed and laughed at that. How marvellously right on was her reaction — the reaction of someone whole and unbroken, with little need to dwell upon the shards of the past. I on the other hand had spent hours puzzling over certain things in the Athens Museum, assuming I could somehow impose an order on those relics, a continuity of meaning which would suit me. Trying to bridge the gap between the stiff and disagreeable kouroi figures to the stunning bronze Poseidon who stands on a pedestal in what is perhaps the most exquisitely-balanced stance ever achieved in sculpture. Not being able, though, to understand how a mere few hundred years could have brought about such a development in style. Fishing around for soothing explanations, and finding none. The truth, of course, being hopelessly simple, which is why I don’t have a clue as to what it might be.

  The archaic figures from the Cyclades astonished me. They are white, highly-stylized pieces showing only the merest suggestion of the human form. One of them, a statuette of a musician dating back to about 2300 B.C. is so lyrical in line, curving and looping about in unexpected directions, and so utterly whimsical that I wanted to laugh out loud when I first saw it. It has been suggested that Cycladic artists could not portray the human form accurately — a notion which I’m sure is rubbish. They portrayed animals with incredible accuracy, and it seems that they had fun with human anatomy, almost in the same way a modern artist might. In any case, they knew exactly what they were doing.

  The transition from the Greek to the Roman galleries in the Museum was depressing. Here we are, I thought. Here is the birth of Western Man. A whole new breed of human being. Gone is the subtle Greek smile, the inner knowledge — and in its place the hard, ironic features of the new masters of the world with their vacant yet disturbing eyes. The new worldliness and cynicism around the mouths. The conquerors, whose brittle power was won at the expense of something infinitely more powerful and delicate. The loss is there on all the Roman faces. The bewilderment. The dark, the bitter knowledge that the future was theirs, yet it meant nothing.

  I shook myself out of my reveries. I realized that I had knat a whole row of something which held together in a feeble sort of way, and Sophia cried, ‘Kalitera, Gwendolyn !’ I was getting better.

  A fervent involvement with the present moment is one of the things that makes the Greeks so Greek. An almost ferocious attention given to whatever one is doing at any given time. The intensity of emotion which is a result of this can be often overwhelming and exhausting. You find yourself getting momentarily, but deeply involved with store-owners and cab-drivers when discussing some minor affair or problem. Small talk is fraught with heavy emotional overtones, and the simplest point must often be gotten across with hands and arms gesticulating all over the place. You start punctuating your spoken sentences with dramatic gestures and facial expressions you never knew you possessed. But what is more important, and just as directly related to the involvement with the present moment — is that you find yourself constantly called upon, in almost every situation, to rise above yourself. To do more, to be more, as I have said before. The Greeks live in a state of tension which to others may resemble madness. At the very least, it is bewildering. Or glorious. It depends on who you are, and how real you like your reality.

  One of the most intense people I ever met in Greece was a little hunchbacked girl who came to my table in the café in Omonia Square, holding a box to collect money. I went through the usual spasms of pity — (embarrassment in disguise) — until I noticed that she had one of the liveliest faces I’d ever seen. She said she really enjoyed meeting all the wonderful people in the cafés at night. She also collected match-boxes from all over the world, and would I please send her one with a beaver or a maple-leaf from Canada. Spiritually, she was one of the healthiest people I’ve seen. No one had ever destroyed her youthfulness by suggesting that begging was a sin or shame.

  The poor and the ill carry no social stigmata in Greece. They are people with a different set of circumstances. They do not beg; they ask for assistance, and generally they get it. The word ‘neurosis’, which ironically stems from the Greek, has little or no meaning in Greece itself. Nerves, yes. Neurosis, no.

  Neurosis will come when the tentacles of the American octopus slither into every dark corner of the East. At the moment there’s just the big fat head of the beast lurking in the Mediterranean waiting. The Big Powers play chess with the so-called ‘emerging nations’, and Spiro Agnew manages to sputter a feeble ‘efkharisto poli’ (thank you very much), to the Greek people. Sometimes, though, a single pawn in a chess game decides the match, and Greece holds a pawn which the new Romans have not even thought of.

  A Fred Astaire film came on television, and Christina went out into the garden to feed the doves in their big wire cage. Despite the blare of the TV, a quietness had come over the night and I went out into the garden to breathe the blossomy air. The smell reminded me of the little church where I’d been only a few days before. The body of the poet George Seferis had lain there for a day, surrounded by flowers. I had wanted to meet him when I went to Athens, but he had died on me, and I stood in the church before the coffin, wondering why everything was so dark inside, while outside the Greek sun was flooding the streets with light.

  I had gone up to the Acropolis after paying my respects to the dead poet. I was sweating like a horse after the steep climb, and Seferis’ words circled in my memory, as the light banged against the ancient pillars:

  a little further

  let us rise a little higher

  And there in a high white wind among the stones I imagined for a moment that I knew exactly what he had meant in those lines.

  When I went back indoors all the women were gone, taking their day’s work with them — shawls and socks and baby dresses, and God knows what. The knitting party was over.

  Mycenae

  THE GIANTS

  The windows of the night train revealed a landscape almost lunar in its starkness. The train hugged a wall of rock made steel blue by midnight; the mountainside had the consistency of quicksilver. When we passed over the bridge at the great canal of Corinth, we seemed to be suspended in a hunk of purple midnight space. Everything dwarfed us. We were on our way to Mycenae.

  The next morning, rainwater turned red as blood in the hollows of the stones in Corinth. Nikos and I stood in the ancient agora and gazed up at the mountain where holy whores once had their temple; a Byzantine castle now clings precariously to the summit. Everything’s so big in this country, I thought. What is it? Everything’s stretching and reaching and gasping for more and more space. The infamous light seems to yank things out of their contexts and present them naked and fullblown to the eye. Everything demands attention; there is nothing subtle about Greece.

  Mountain water still trickled through one of the great underground tunnels at the fountain of Pirene, reminding us of the fluidity of time. I wanted to go down the steps which led to a sacred spring, but the gate at the bottom was closed. I wanted to climb Parnassus, snow-capped in the distance, but it was too far away. I wanted everything; I wanted to be enormous and overwhelming, yawning and expansive like the light.

  We moved on to the town of Argos, ate, and got a ride into Naphlion where we intended to stay the night. As we drove along the lazy Argive plain — (I believe that’s what they say in travel books) — Nikos suddenly leaned out of the window, gave a cry of surprise, and told the driver to turn around.

  ‘What is it?’ I asked.

  ‘I think we should stop,’ said Nikos. ‘We’ve just hit Tiry
ns. I forgot it was here.’

  ‘We’ve just hit what!’ I cried, marvelling at the colossal coolness of his statement, for Tiryns was the second gigantic stronghold of the ancient Greeks, sister city to Mycenae. ‘Where is it? Why can’t I see it?’

  ‘It’s back a bit from the road,’ he said.

  The driver turned off onto a smaller road and the walls of the great fortress came into view It was late afternoon and the sky was turning greenish-grey, announcing rain.

  ‘My God,’ I said feebly as we got out of the car. ‘This place must have been built by giants.’

  ‘There are legends about that; Nikos said. ‘Some people still believe them.’

  Dark clouds were scuttling across the changing sky, and the huge walls of Tiryns looked darker and more menacing than I ever would have imagined. The fortress seemed to be a somber, mighty statement of sheer brute strength, of sheer size in the face of our littleness. The enormous stones seemed to smirk at us as we walked along the ancient pathways. We were puny, ridiculous; we had not built this place. And yet it had a kind of bulky, awesome beauty like a sound idea blown out of all proportion, like a symphony which is too long.

  I shivered. The sky was very dark now, and the first drops of rain struck the monstrous stones. We left at the first sound of thunder, and when we looked back, Tiryns was a great grey elephant asleep on the horizon. It rained all the way into Naphlion.

  I think it was Saturday when we went to Mycenae. I can’t be sure, but I’m going by the feeling that certain days have certain colours, and this was a blonde day — dusty blonde, to be more precise. The air smelled of ancient, unknown flowers, and all the cicadas were singing like mad in the groves in the hollows of the hills. The rise in the land was so gradual that we didn’t realize how high we were until we reached the ruins of the ancient city and heard the high dry wind whistling around the circular walls.