Freedom or Death

by Nikos Kazantzakis

  Captain Michales burst out, “Come with me and keep quiet.”

  But Vendusos resisted. “D’you mean to leave your post? And suppose the Turks make a night attack?” “Shut up!”

  He picked out ten seasoned palikars. “Come with me! We’re going on a raid.”

  He turned to the others. “I’ll be back before dawn. Look after yourselves meanwhile.”

  It was past midnight. The exhausted Christians lay in deep sleep. Inside the monastery the fathers bowed their faces to the flagstones of the church and implored God to protect the monastery. The abbot had bandaged his wounds with oiled cloth, but remained at his post. Through the narrow loophole he could see the Turkish soldiers standing around the fires, and could catch the clink of their weapons. “The dogs aren’t asleep,” he thought. “They’re up to something.”

  The sky was clear, the stars shone gaily, a sharp breeze came from the mountains. A big star shot hi a long sweep. The abbot crossed himself.

  “A great disaster is approaching,” he murmured. “0 God, grant that it is not the monastery.”

  And while his eyes were still directed imploringly at the sky, suddenly trumpets and drums sounded and a loud shout of “Allah! Allah!” Dark waves of men struck gainst the monastery, and at the pass, up above, others rushed upon the sleeping Christians. The soldiers were already beginning to place ladders against the monastery walls.

  The abbot called his monks together. “Brothers, the monastery is lost. Listen to me. I am the one to blame. It’s me they want to take, to avenge their blood. So I’m giving myself up to them. Farewell!”

  “Reverend Abbot,” said Photios, the healer monk, “they’ll kill you.”

  “What else should they do with me, Father Photios? Of course they’ll kill me. But they’ll spare the monastery.”

  “They’ll kill you and not spare the monastery. The Turks are treacherous, Reverend Abbot!”

  “Let me do my duty. Let what will happen, happen. God is above, let Him do as He will.”

  He took his abbot’s staff, tied a white cloth to its tip, went out and climbed on the wall and waved the staff, shouting. A Cretan Turk bellowed up at him. “What d’you want, Devil’s monk?”

  “Who is your leader? Go and tell him that the abbot is giving himself up. He can grind me to powder. But he must give his word that the monastery will be spared.”

  The resounding voices were heard by both sides. They paused, and in the stillness the cocks began to crow from the monastery roofs. Morning had come.

  “Lay down your weapons and come outthe monastery will not be harmed,” came the voice of the leader, Hassan Bey.

  “Swear,” the abbot cried, and raised his hand toward heaven, already overspread by a rosy glow.

  “Yes, I swear by Mohammed.”

  The abbot climbed down from the wall. The monks surrounded him, and hugged his shoulders, bidding him good-by. The others also pressed around him and kissed his hands.

  “Farewell, great martyr, farewell!” He approached the church, fell on his face and kissed the threshold. “Lord Christ,” he whispered, “farewell!”

  Then he glanced over the courtyard, the church, the cells, the storehouses and bulwarks, and with raised hand he said, “Farewell!”

  As he stepped over the threshold of the outer gate, the Turks seized him, and he vanished in the crowd. At the same tune a horde broke in through the open gate and poured, bellowing, into the monastery.

  “They’ve set it on fire, the perjuring dogs!” Captain Polyxigis shouted. His head had been wounded by a scimitar cut and was now bandaged. With an effort he subdued the pain.

  “Where’s Captain Michales?” he roared, sprang on his mare and put spurs to her so that she flew down toward the monastery.

  But Captain Michales was not yet back. His standard-bearer Thodores took the lead, and they attacked the Turks from the flank. Flames were already darting from the monastery, and through the ravine more and more troops with red f ezzes pressed on.

  The younger monks swung themselves over the walls and ran with the retreating bands up into the mountain.

  “Where the devil is Captain Michales?” Captain Polyxigis asked Thodores when they had reached the top .of ^-the pass. His face, throat and chest were covered with blood.

  “I don’t know. In the middle of the night he went ofi n a raid.”

  “A raid? Where?”

  “I don’t know, I tell you.”

  From the pass the Christians looked down at the monastery. The flames were shooting up, and the edge of the smoke cloud obscured the sun.

  Captain Polyxigis stood there in dark perplexity. He had forgotten his pain, he no longer bothered to wipe the blood away. His eyes were wet.

  “Let’s withdraw, Captain,” said one of the palikars. “You’re wounded. Don’t stay here looking at the monastery. It’s done for. God willed it so. We’ve done our duty.”

  “If only Captain Michales had been with us,” the captain sighed.

  They dragged him away almost by force and started off toward Kasteli. The other band with Captain Michales’ flag made for Petrokefalo. The bitter tidings preceded them, and as they arrived they could hear the wailing for the dead.

  A scout, who had been left on the pass to observe the Turkish troops, caught up with Captain Polxyigis’ band at midday. The captain lay stretched out in a dried-up river bed under a plane tree, resting in the shade while Photios, the healer monk, cleaned his wounds.

  He gazed at the scout. “What’s the news, Jakumis?”

  Jakumis, a sunburned pygmy with grasshopper legs and lynx eyes, came forward. His eyes had seen so many violent deaths and enjoyed so many feasts and so often watched the world stand on its head that nothing could make them shrink or shine. “The world’s a wheel,” he was in the habit of saying, ” a revolving wheel.”

  “And who turns it, Jakumis?” people would ask him.

  “Sometimes God, sometimes the devil,” he would answer. “The two are in league. One destroys, the other builds up. They’re neither of them ever out of work.”

  “Mry your wounds heal quickly,” Jakumis said now. “Don’t be disheartened. We’ve come downanother time we shall go up. Don’t worry. The wheel turns.”

  “What’s happened to the monastery?”

  “What do you expect, Captain? The devil’s got it…”

  “Wither that tongue of yours, you blasphemer,” cried Father Photios, crossing himself.

  “I only meant that it’s become what it was before it was built. Dust.”

  “And the dogs?”

  “They have taken the abbot off with them. You mark my words. They’ll make tobacco boxes of his head.”

  And in fact, while the scout was talking about it so bluntly, Turkish soldiers were driving the abbot of Christ the Lord with their bayonets toward Megalokastro. They formed a ring around him to prevent the native

  Mussulmans from killing him in their rage for vengeance. Their orders were to bring him alive to the pasha.

  The sun was still high as they entered Megalokastro with trumpets and drums. Beaming with joy, the pasha appeared on his balcony to greet them. The abbot was placed before him.

  “Bow, you giaour priest!” the pasha shouted.

  Dark, thick blood was dripping from the abbot’s beard, but his eyes were undimmed. He gazed at the pasha, at the howling Turks all round him, the cky and the slowly setting sun. He felt a strange lightheartedness, and his shoulders prickled as if wings were trying to break out for the crossing to the beyond.

  “Have you no fear?” the pasha cried. “Why is your face all shining? Where are you in your thoughts?”

  “In Paradise,” the abbot answered.

  The pasha was furious. It was not the first time his knife had glanced off a Cretan rock as he struck it.

  “You’re not in Paradise, you devil’s monk,” he roared, “but facing the plane tree!”

  “It’s the same thing,” said the abbot.

  “To the pl
ane tree with the giaour,” ordered the pasha, foaming at the mouth.

  The Arab and some of the soldiers seized the abbot and “dragged him out of the courtyard. Outside in the streets a mob howled. The plane tree was only a little way from the pasha’s porte, near the Venetian fountain with the marble lion.

  As always, just before sundown, there was a swarm of birds in the plane tree. They were twittering gaily as they settled down for the night’s slumber.

  A bench was brought and the abbot placed on it. The soldiers called for a Turkish barber. He appeared, with razor and scissors and bronze basin. When he saw the abbot, he laughed. “You’re a brave palikar,” he said, “I’ll shave you without lather.”

  He grasped him by the beard and began to shear it off. The abbot bit his lips, so that he would not cry out. The Turks shouted with laughter. Suleiman had meanwhile etched the rope and was greasing it. Several Christians, hidden behind shutters on the opposite side, watched the preparations with bated breath. The pasha too sank into a chair within view of the abbot.

  When the barber had done his work, the scars from the scimitar wounds on the abbot’s furrowed face came into view. The Turk now took the scissors and cut off his hair near the roots.

  “Hey, you giaour priest,” the pasha shouted at him, “the rope’s ready and greased, the Arab’s standing over you. Acknowledge Mohammed, and you’ll save your life.”

  The abbot stepped off the bench, seized the rope from the Arab’s hands, made a noose and slipped it over his neck.

  “Answer!” bellowed the pasha, jumping up. “I have answered,” said the abbot, pointing at the noose round his neck.

  “Curses on you Cretans!” shouted the pasha, blue with rage. “Hang Mm!”

  The abbot stepped up on the bench again. The Arab made the rope fast to a thick bough of the plane tree.

  The abbot crossed himself, looked about him and saw in the air a troop of ancient popes, gray-headed fallen warriors who, like Christ, had worn a crown of thorns and now greeted him with open eyes.

  The abbot uttered a cry of joy. He kicked the bench away and hung in the air.

  When Captain Michales came back to the monastery toward noon, to resume the fight beside his companions, he found neither monastery nor companions.

  The Christ the Lord was ablaze. The cupola of the church had fallen in, the ancient decorated iconostasis was smoldering, the vestments, psalters, icons already lay in ashes. In thick clouds the smoke rose into the still air and hung over the ravine.

  Captain Michales tugged at his beard and stared. He could not turn his eyes away from the devouring flames.

  “How could I go away? How could I go away?” he groaned, and tore the hairs from his beard.

  Last night passed through his mind. The breathless chase, his comrades panting after him on foot, then later, at dawn, the wide, dry river bed and above it, between the white chalk cliffs, the twenty Turks driving before them a. mare, on which there sat a muffled woman….

  They closed, they went for one another with knives, they bellowedfor how long? An hour? Two hours? It seemed to him to pass as quickly as a flash. The valley whirled about him, became a threshing floor. In the middle of the threshing floor stood an acacia, and under it was the muffled woman. With head erect, sitting motionless on the marc, she waited for the victor. She had turned her face away from the men.

  Suddenly the beaten Turks began to flee from the threshing floor, throwing down their pistols and knives and making for Megalokastro. Captain Michales turned his head away, to avoid looking at the musk-fragrant woman, and beckoned Vendusos to him.

  “Take this woman and bring her to my old aunt Kalio, at Korakjes. Tell her she’s to give her food and drink till we see what happens.”

  /‘Shouldn’t I take her back to Kasteli?” asked Vendusos. “Poor Captain Polyxigis will kill himself.” “Let him kill himself.”

  As he gripped the reins, for a moment his soul staggered. Whither was he to turn? He came to a decision. He spurred the mare and stormed down to Christ the Lord Monastery once more. And now here he was, staring at he flames.

  “I should not have gone away,” he groaned again, and tore hair after hair from his beard.

  His dismounted, and picked up a handful of hot ashes. His impulse was to smear them into his beard and hair and rub them into his face. But he controlled himself. He opened his fist, and the ashes dropped.

  “Let the one who’s to blame burn and perish like that!” he muttered, and leaped on the mare. He spurred her so that her belly bled.

  Now Crete was afire from end to end. The mountains, the ravines, the crossroads rang with shots and hoarse voices, and the men had turned into bellowing, biting, murdering beasts. The grizzled champions thought of their youth and took to the mountains, some armed to take part in the fighting, others, weakened by their years and old wounds, to impart advice to the new captains. They taught them the stratagems of the earlier leadershow to send out spies, trick and encircle the Turks, break into the Turkish villages by night.

  Captain Elias came riding out on his old mule. He rode from mountain to mountain and hid in the various captains’ nests in turn. “Old age is crippling, children.” He sighed. “I can’t fight any longer with weaponsI shall make war with my head, until that too drops to the earth and turns into earth!”

  Today he had reached Vrisses, the green village rich in springs, and was sitting under an ancient, hollow plane tree. Children, women and old men were sitting around him, listening openmouthed.

  “How often,” he said, brushing the darkly luminous foliage with his withered arms, “this plane tree has sheltered doughty captains in its shade. Whoever saw them thought they must be immortal. And yet they too died. Who would have believed it? They have turned into the soil of Crete, and we tread on it.”

  He sighed again. His heart was oppressed today. The evil news of the burning of the Christ the Lord was flying like a raven, croaking, from village to village. It had reached Vrisses shortly before noon. Around Captain Elias sat many old man, wagging their heads and muttering, and many weeping women.

  Captain Elias pretended not to see or hear: he was trying to deflect their thoughts from the great misfortune by reminding them of worse disasters in the past. Swift hoofbeats were heard, and all turned to look. T

  Among the olive and plane trees they made outsometimes obscured, sometimes appearing in the sunlighta horseman with a black headband.

  “Captain Michales!” they cried, in violent agitation. Captain Elias scratched the ground with the end of his stick.

  “He’s coming back alone,” screamed one woman who had just given her child suck, hastily buttoning up her bodice. “Where are our husbands? Where’s my husband? The wild boar took them off on his neck!”

  “He left the monastery when it was in danger, they say. He ought to be burned!” cried another, and turned to go away so that she might not see him.

  “Don’t spare him, Captain Elias,” said an old man. “Nobody leaves his post like that. Rub his nose in it! You’re the eldest and the most respected. We’re under his orders and can’t show him our tongues. You can!”

  Captain Elias raised his stick. “Enough!” he cried angrily. “I don’t need your advice.”

  They bunched together, opening the circle that they had formed around Captain Elias.

  Captain Michales approached, sweat-soaked and somber. His eyebrows hid his eyes. Mare and rider were steaming in the early afternoon sun.

  As he recognized Captain Elias under the plane tree, he wanted to turn, but it was too late. He would have to bite the bitter apple. He dismounted.

  “Good day, Captain Elias,” he said, stretching out his and.

  The grizzled captain pretended not to see the outstretched hand, and scratched the ground again.

  “Let’s call it a good day, Captain Michales, even if it isn’t one,” he replied.

  Captain Michales’ blood boiled. He gripped the mare’s reins and looked as if he meant to mount a
gain and ride away. He was not used to having stones thrown at his feet. He observed the faces around him. They know already, he thought, and his face grew more savage still.

  He tore some leaves from the plane tree and threw them down.

  “It’s the way things happen hi war, Captain Elias,” he said. “You know that well. How often in your time Christians were smoked out. Think of Arkadi.”

  “Don’t dare speak of Arkadi!” shouted the old captain, and both his eyesthe glass one as well as the goodsent out sparks. “Were we, at Arkadi, smoked out, or turned into gods? But at the Christ the Lordforgive me for saying so”

  He broke off and turned to the women and old men. “Leave us alone. Go to your homes.”

  All stood up. As they went past Captain Michales the old men threw oblique glances at him,~and the women cursed softly and gave him a wide berth. Only the young mother who had just given suck to her child stopped fearlessly in front of him.

  “What’s become of our husbands?” she asked, looking him straight in the eyes. “Answer for them before God!”

  “Get away from here!” shouted Captain Elias. “Silence!”

  When they were alone, he leaned on his stick, gave a heave and stood up.

  “Captain,” he said, “when you arrived, you offered me your hand. I refused it. You have disgraced your name, Captain Michales.”

  “Even if you are the older,” Captain Michales retorted, “even if you are a fighter from 1821, I’ve something to say to you. And you mark what I say! Whoever speaks to me must weigh his words, Captain Elias!”

  “I too have something to say to you.”

  The gall rose in Captain Michales’ eyes. But the man before him was old, old as the hills, a relic of 1821, a fragment from the ruins of Arkadihe could not touch him. He turned away and stood under the plane tree.

  “Why did you ride away in the night and leave the monastery in the lurch?You don’t answer? Where did you go? Didn’t you know that the Turks would attack as soon as they found out you had left your post? And they did find out, the dogs. I don’t know who betrayed it to them, but that’s how the monastery was lost. And you’re the one who’s to blame!”