Strange, isn’t it?
Except for his talking too much, Gregory wasn’t a bad fellow. He was a marvelous cook. Once he made us some apple tarts, so delicious we licked the platter clean. And he could sew, too. He used to sew on all our buttons, patch our clothes, darn our socks, iron our ties, wash our clothes…
How the devil could you kill such a friend?
Even though his name was Gregory and some people on his side had killed scores of ours, even though we had left wives and children to go to war against him and his kind - but how can I explain? He was our friend. He actually liked us! A few days before, hadn’t he killed with his own bare hands a scorpion that was climbing up my leg? He could have let it send me to hell!
“Thanks, Gregory!” I said then, “Thank God who made you…”
When the order came, it was like a thunderbolt. Gregory was to be shot, it said, and hanged from a telegraph pole as an exemplary punishment.
We got together inside the barracks. We sent Gregory to wash some underwear for us.
“It ain’t right.”
“What is right?”
“Our duty!”
“Shit!”
“If you dare, don’t do it! They’ll drag you to courtmartial and then bang-bang…”
Well, of course. The right thing is to save your skin. That’s only logical. It’s either your skin or his. His, of course, even if it was Gregory, the fellow you’ve been sharing the same plate with, eating with your fingers, and who was washing your clothes that very minute.
What could I do? That’s war. We had seen worse things.
So we set the hour.
We didn’t tell him anything when he came back from the washing.
He slept peacefully. He snored for the last time. In the morning, he heard the news over the loudspeaker and he saw that we looked gloomy and he began to suspect that something was up. He tried talking to us, but he got no answers and then he stopped talking.
He just stood there and looked at us, stunned and lost…
Now, I’ll squeeze the trigger. A tiny bullet will rip through his chest. Maybe I’ll lose my sleep tonight but in the morning I’ll wake up alive.
Gregory seems to guess my thoughts. He puts out his hand and asks, “You’re kidding, friend! Aren’t you kidding?”
What a jackass! Doesn’t he deserve to be cut to pieces? What a thing to ask at such a time. Your heart is about to burst and he’s asking if you’re kidding. How can a body be kidding about such a thing? Idiot! This is no time for jokes. And you, if you’re such a fine friend, why don’t you make things easier for us? Help us kill you with fewer qualms? If you would get angry - curse our Virgin, our God - if you’d try to escape it would be much easier for us and for you.
So it is now.
Now, Mr. Gregory, you are going to pay for your stupidities wholesale. Because you didn’t escape the day the sentry fell asleep; because you didn’t escape yesterday when we sent you all alone to the laundry we did it on purpose, you idiot! Why didn’t you let me die from the sting of the scorpion?
So now don’t complain. It’s all your fault, nitwit.
Eh? What’s happening to him now?
Gregory is crying. Tears flood his eyes and trickle down over his clean-shaven cheeks. He is turning his face and pressing his forehead against the wall His back is shaking as he sobs. His hands cling, rigid and helpless, to the wall.
Now is my best chance, now that he knows there is no other solution and turns his face from us.
I squeeze the trigger.
Gregory jerks. His back stops shaking up and down.
I think I’ve finished him! How easy it is… But suddenly he starts crying out loud, his hands claw at the wall and try to pull it down. He screams, “No, no…”
I turn to the others. I expect them to nod, “That’s enough.”
They nod, “What are you waiting for?”
I squeeze the trigger again.
The bullet smashes at his neck. A thick spray of blood spurts out.
Gregory turns. His eyes are all red. He lunges at me at starts punching me with his fists.
“I hate you, hate you…” he screams.
I emptied the barrel. He fell and grabbed my leg as if he wanted to hold on.
He died with a terrible spasm. His mouth was full of blood and so were my boots and socks.
We stood quietly, looking at him.
When we came to, we stooped and picked him up. His hands were frozen and wouldn’t let my legs go.
I still have their imprints, red and deep, as if made by a hot knife.
“We will hang him tonight,” the men said.
“Tonight or now?” they said.
I turned and looked at them one by one.
“Is that what you all want?” I asked.
They gave me no answer.
“Dig a grave,” I said.
Headquarters did not ask for a report the next day or the day after.
The top brass were sure that we had obeyed them and had left him swinging from a pole.
They didn’t care to know what happened to that Gregory, alive or dead.
From the collection:
In Ethereal Cyprus, Fexis Publications, Athens 1964
Translated by Byron and Catherine Raizis
Beehives
The three images succeeded each other predictably. Fullfigure, before a beach strewn with fossilized cetaceans, the first. The fingers on the strings, the second. The classical profile bent over the guitar, the third.
The song told of a tropical bird which feeds on the entrails of fish.
He soon lost all interest. The beautiful head bore no relation to the contents of the song. A fatal false note. Apollo, with Olympian tranquility, producing cannibalistic sounds!
And then, four years ago, when they had invited him to television for that one sole interview, he had happened to be preceded by a song recital. An artist less gifted than this evening’s. But he had had the good sense to sing pieces which suited his ill-formed figure. Songs about unloved people. The result had been evocative.
The presenter’s bulk filled the screen. A dead person, with the only sign of life two contact lenses where the studio lights stagnated.
“And now, dear friends, the surprise that we promised you for this evening. The sisters Lina and Lena.”
The camera followed his gaze. Pavlina on the right, Eleni on the left. In evening gowns and impeccably coiffured. The presenter returned to the screen and the camera scrutinized them with him.
Pavlina! The fleshy sensual lips could not even now, with all that had intervened, cast off the haughty grimace which had disfigured them every time she had looked at him. Her eyes sprang from their well-brushed lashes and fixed upon him glassily. ‘Only in the darkness can I feel you close to me. In the light you are inaccessible’. Once he had been so foolish as to believe that he had subjugated those lips…
The camera was now scrutinizing Eleni, his wife. How childlike that fair face appeared! The make-up and the lighting flattered it. At close range the skin appeared to be covered with thousands of shallow little wrinkles. He often ran his hand over her skin, to feel them. Impossible. It was like fine crystal. The cracks were to be found deeper down.
“Yes, Eleni, Lena!” Her voice startled him. “Thank you.”
Eleni!
“Exactly!” she replied to the questions of the unseen presenter. “Me on the piano and Lina on the cello… The past three years… Even I don’t know how I managed it. I’ve always loved music, but even four years ago if someone had told me that I’d make a career of it I would have laughed… Oh, it’s a long story…”
“Would you like to relate it to us?”
“With pleasure. Though I don’t believe that you’ll find it interesting.”
He crushed out his cigarette. ‘Of course it is interesting my dear! A talent obtained by fraud is always something original. Of course such things are not said, you’ll say that you had…’
; “…an innate predisposition. Just like my sister.”
Just like her sister!… Yes, in that she was right. With all their differences, they had the same terrible predisposition. And a unique methodicalness! Now he could see just how alike they had always been! The two aspects of Eve. Eleni denying herself for the sake of herself! Pavlina extolling herself for the sake of herself! What a difficult choice for a man!
“The kouros and the maidens! Charmed by the fair modesty of the first. Enchanted by the dark and ostentatious femininity of the other!” he had written then, in imitation of some surrealist poet, in his diary.
He had wavered a little but finally, acting wisely like most kouroi, he had preferred the security offered by Eleni. For two reasons: because a legal erotic bond would not expose to danger his diffidence and irresoluteness and because it would in any case bring with it the disappointments and unsatisfied desires which he found necessary for his creative work. He knew it well; his verses owed their success to his success in channeling his subjugated erotic vitality into art.
She, too, felt that marriage would create the conditions for the incubation of his talent, starting however from a false assumption; she believed that poetic inspiration would be the result of erotic satiation. A few months afterwards she began to express different opinions: ‘I’m afraid this life is not for you. If it distracts you from your course, you will hate me.’ And a year later: ‘I always knew that for you love and sex takes second place. It is just a change after your writing. Aren’t I right? It annoys me, of course, now and then, but I loved you too much to refuse.’
Was he really cold or did she perhaps place on him the burden of her own indifference? He tried to confront the dilemma, but he succeeded only in becoming immobilized in a lot of complexes - which turned out to be ‘wonderful strings to the bow of his art.’
“The new period he is traversing” a well-known critic had written about his poetry, of that time “coincides with a steep increase in that quality which places him in the group of damned poets.”
Pavlina looked at him from the screen. The little locks of hair around her ears shone with perspiration, as though his breath had just now passed over them…
“Yes, Lina… Of course!… At first we played for our own enjoyment… later a musician heard us, yes he was a television producer. He persuaded us to appear on his program… Exactly! On ‘new talent’… I think everyone judged us leniently… Personally, I know how nervous we were! I don’t think we managed to vindicate him in our two performances on television. Oh, thank you, you’re too kind… Yes, we’ve given about thirty recitals so far… The most unforgettable? Undoubtedly the one organized by the Nature Lovers’ Society at the amphitheatre of Salamis. We were both in excellent form. We felt the public was with us from the very first moment. Imagine our disappointment when it started to drizzle. We hadn’t expected such bad luck. I turned to the tiers of seats, sure that I would see them emptying, but no one left. Everyone covered their heads as best they could, with scarves, cushions, whatever they could lay their hands on, and they stayed in their seats. That evening, although we froze, we played better than ever before…”
“Don’t you agree, dear fiends, that it’s a wonderful story? Miss Lina, thank you! And now perhaps you would be good enough, for the sake of our viewers, to confide to us what made you turn to music?”
I did, fool!
“The cello itself. It was given to our father as a gift from a musician, a Polish refugee, and…”
‘Monkeys! Who grind your teeth on flesh!’ And that foolish Apollo sang about carnivorous birds… It was given to daddy by the Polish refugee, her ex-husband, whom she had dispatched six months after their wedding because she could not stand his passion for the cello… It was so monolithic! And the only thing that she asked him to leave her, ‘so as not to forget him’, was the cello! ‘To remind her how stupidly I behaved’, Andrei had told him contritely at the airport.
It was evident that she had married him in reaction to what all the family called the ‘happy settling down of Eleni’. His preference for her sister had humiliated her. Before she had done nothing but provoke him, but every time he had decided to be ‘led astray’ she had begun to flirt with his friends, to speak ironically to him and to ignore him. When she had finally made his choice easier, she felt humiliated. She withdrew into herself and did not open her mouth except to sneer and to hurt.
It was about then that they had called him for that interview. Immediately after his collection had won a prestigious award. He had been presented by the very same anchorman who this evening did not even exploit the opportunity to mention his name. Then, Lena and Lina did not yet exist. Then, there were two women who were known only by refection by those who were interested in him. And if he had not made the mistake of taking them with him to watch the interview in the studio, perhaps they would have remained to this day what they were then. After the program the producer, inviting him for a drink, had been obliged to invite them too. And some others. They began soberly with whisky at a club in Nicosia, and the merriment reached its climax at three in the morning with champagne and Napoleon brandy at a cabaret in Famagusta. He noticed that at both places of entertainment his presence made an impression. His name was well known, of course, from the press, the radio, television. But tonight’s interview had achieved a small miracle: it had added a specific face to the well known name. And what was more important, without the favourable impression being destroyed. His appearance underlined the authenticity of his art. It gave form to memory.
Although not an excellent dancer, he danced every set which began with a slow rhythm. He tormented Eleni and the announcer’s fiancée (she disagreed, assuring him that he danced very well). Pavlina had charmed the announcer and some young painter caller Chrysostomides, who had attached himself to the group at some point. Pavlina was an expert dancer, with a sense of rhythm, despite the fact that her movements had an explicit coarseness.
At four in the morning, when it had been decided that they would leave in a quarter of an hour, Pavlina did something which threw him into confusion. Leaning on the shoulder of the painter, she began to recite some unpublished verses of his. No one realized either who the poem was by, nor why she was reciting it.
“You broke into my desk,” he told her, when he had led her onto the dance-floor.
“It wasn’t the first time,” she replied.
With a clumsy manoeuvre he swept her into a corner, beside a creeper.
“Why?”
“I knew all your verses long before they were published…”
Unconsciously he clasped her to him. Her body was unyielding. They stayed motionless, gazing at one another questioningly. He was the first to lower his gaze. He regarded her lips. What was that expression? Provocation or irony? Then, suddenly, her long fingers parted and received his into the cold angles between them. As they squeezed him with impotent ferocity he transmitted to her his heat and unjustified perspiration.
The music galloped in fast rhythms but they were indifferent to it. They swayed right and left, forward and back, with their hands and legs tightly locked and the creeper touching their hair and the sides of their necks.
She recited his poems to him one after the other.
The group signalled that they were leaving. ‘We’ll catch you up.’ ‘Fine, we’ll wait for you at the villa for soup.’ ‘As soon as the set finishes we’ll come,’ Pavlina said to Eleni. ‘I’ll leave you my coat, so you don’t get cold,’ Eleni said to Pavlina.
When the others had left they remained completely motionless.
“Did I ever tell you that…?” he asked her.
“What?”
“Nothing… Let’s go.”
And he put the coat over her shoulders. ‘What?’ she insisted as they were leaving. But he did not reply. He led her down an alley to the deserted beach, which shivered with the expectation of the sun. The crabs scuttled to and fro impatiently and damply.
“What?”
“What?”
He turned and took hold of her. She was stiff and cold. She offered no resistance. He felt her lips moisten and soften on his mouth. Even her teeth became warm and malleable. All at once her whole body melted. One after the other the muscles slackened and tamely fastened to his body. Arms, breast, belly. Particularly the legs. They went limp and folded. He let her slide to the sand, with her shoes washed by the foam. He spread the coat beneath her back and lay beside her.
When in a little while he went to wrap her naked body in his wife’s fur coat, he noticed that the triumph which suffused her face was not free from a profound irony.
From then on he met her many times: at first secretly, far from Eleni; afterwards under her nose in his very home; with a well-fabricated justification they managed to persuade Eleni to give her a room temporarily in their apartment; the temporary stay became permanent; they were able to cultivate conjugal habits; but the irony never disappeared from her face. ‘It is a permanent radiance which only I provoke’ he had noted in his diary. ‘And nor have I heard her say one of my verses since that night! On the other hand, not even I was going to say…’
“Lena, could you tell us what made you choose the piano?” the presenter asked.
His wife’s head, with a strong shadow on her neck which made it appear decapitated, preserved on a transparent block of ice, looked in her husband’s direction abstractedly.
“When I discovered my inclination for music, I connected it immediately with the polyphonic instruments. At first I preferred the harp and the harmonium. But eventually I was compelled to compromise according to the size of my purse…”
Of her purse… When for the deposit on her piano he had been obliged to withdraw every penny he had in the bank…Without the slightest objection on her part.
Gregory Page 2