The Fratricides

by Nikos Kazantzakis

  “But I’m beginning to see, comrade,” the guerrilla replied. “I can’t make everything out clearly yet, but I’m beginning to see. You’ll see one of these days, too; what’s your name?”

  “Vassos—carpenter from Samos.”

  “Mine’s Yanni, I’m from Volos.”

  “You have any sisters?”

  “No, thank God! I’m an only son and an only child; my father died of drink, and my mother did housework to raise me. She washed clothes in the wealthy homes; now her body’s stiff—she can’t move at all. Every day she has a relative write me a letter for her, and my heart tears when I read her words. ‘Patience, patience, Mother,’ I keep answering. ‘I think of you every mo-ment, and I’ll be home very soon.’ ” He sighed.

  “When,” he murmured, continuing, “when? I may never see her again; why, just today, by a hair’s breadth, you’d have killed me, Vassos.”

  The soldier turned crimson; he tried to speak, but what could he say? How could he say it? His mind clouded; he could see the boy’s mother, old and paralyzed; he saw his own four spinster sisters; he saw the two pairs of calloused hands, worn from labor that brought no profit; he groaned, a wild anger seized him, and hardly aware of what he was doing, he jumped up, put on his heavy shoes, bent over his prisoner, and untied his hands.

  “Go to the devil,” he shouted. “Go on!”

  “Free?”

  “Go on, I tell you!”

  A glow came over the young man’s face; he offered his hand to the soldier. “Vassos,” he said, “my brother …”

  But the other man did not let him finish. “I said go!” he growled, as though he were in a hurry to get rid of him before he changed his mind.

  “Will you give me my rifle?” the guerrilla asked reluctantly.

  Vassos hesitated; the other man had stretched out his hand anxiously and waited. “Well?” he asked again.

  “Take it!”

  The young man grabbed the rifle, slung it over his shoulder, turned, and strode toward the hill.

  Vassos watched the bent, gasping figure climb the hill—he seemed to be in pain; he noticed his back covered with blood.

  “Wait!” he called to the guerrilla. He pulled out a strip of bandage from inside his vest and walked up to the wounded man. Gently he removed his jacket, then his shirt, and bandaged the wound.

  “Go on now,” he told him, “but hurry before the devil straddles me again!”

  Night came, separating the people again; the jackals could be heard in the distance.

  Exhausted and out of breath, Father Yánaros reached the stone ledge outside the church and fell in a heap upon it; his heart, his lips, his mind, were filled with poison.

  “Lord,” he murmured, “I can’t go on any longer; I tell You truthfully, I can’t! For months and months I’ve been calling You —why don’t You answer me? You have but to spread out Your hand over them, and they will be pacified; why don’t You do it? Whatever happens in this world happens because You want it to; why do You want our destruction?”

  But no one replied to Father Yánaros’ questions. Peace and quiet!—only once in a while came a few sighs and weeping from the homes whose men had been killed; and once in a while the sound of the jackals in the distance that were eating them. Father Yánaros raised his eyes to the sky; silently, for a long while, he watched the stars. The aurora borealis flowed like a river of milk from one end of the sky to the other. This is the real Sash of the Virgin, he thought, all sweetness and silence. Oh, if only the sash would come down to earth and encircle it!

  Father Yánaros could not sleep a wink all night; he kept ask-ing God the same questions, and he waited for a reply until it was dawn. At daybreak, an old woman knocked on his door. “Get up, Father,” she whimpered. “Get up! Barba Tassos’ son is dying; come and give him communion.”

  He had been wounded yesterday on the hill; Father Yánaros

  himself had asked two villagers to bring him back to the village. He loved this boy because he was a handsome, soft-spoken lad whose heart carried a deep compassion for the poor. Many times he would secretly steal bread from his father’s house and divide it among the hungry. His name was Socrates, and he came to Father Yánaros’ cell often, to learn how to paint; he longed to find an escape from his father’s shouts and from the village that smothered and bored him. Slowly, he learned to play with the brush, and soon he was painting saints, or pretty girls that he saw in his dreams—for the only girls he saw when he was awake were dried up from work and poverty.

  His mother sat beside the boy, whose heavy breathing came hoarsely now—he was dying. She did not weep; she was used to death, she had seen other children of hers die, too, and nephews and brothers. Death was a frequent visitor to her house, a friend of the family; he came in, chose, took what he wanted, and left; after a little while, he came again. And the old woman watched one by one of them leave, and her home slowly emptying; she had crossed her hands and waited her turn. “Take me,” she begged him once, “but don’t take Socrates from me.” She did not know that Death cannot hear—that he is deaf!

  She sat now, watching her son slip away; she held a handkerchief in her hands and waved it over him to chase the flies away. She bent over him and talked to him; she told him what great numbers of men had been killed on the hill so far; she said that he was not to worry, for Father Yánaros would soon arrive to give him communion. She even gave him instructions on what to say to their departed village friends, now that he would go down to Hades and they would gather around him to make inquiries. And the old woman began to remind him which villagers had gotten married, how many children they had born, how the sheep were going to the devil this year and not one was left—the redhoods had eaten them up, God damn them! And that old Mandras had sold Pelagia’s house because the poor woman owed him money, and now the unfortunate soul was in the streets. “But don’t tell them she came to our door and fell at your father’s feet begging him to let her sleep in the stable, or that your father kicked her and put her out. Don’t tell them that, my boy.”

  The dying soldier was gasping now; his eyes were open, but

  they had begun to get glassy; he could not see. He could not see, he could not hear, but his mother still kept talking as she bent over him, talking so he would know what to say to the departed villagers who would soon gather round to ask many questions.

  At this moment, Father Yánaros appeared, and the old woman became silent; she withdrew to a corner, crossed her hands, and watched. Every so often she wiped her long nose on the edge of her sleeve to stop its dripping. Father Yánaros tried to administer communion to the unfortunate soldier, but his throat heaved and sighed, and the body and blood of Jesus, mixed with Socrates’ own blood, was vomited up from the wounded lips. The priest stood over him and began to chant from the Funeral Psalm: “With the souls of the departed righteous, O Lord, give rest to the soul of thy servant …”

  Father Yánaros, too, had become used to death; his eyes were dry, and his voice did not tremble; but he could never forgive Death for selecting the young ones. When the mother saw that it was all over, she made the sign of the cross, kissed the priest’s hand, and sat back down beside her son. Suddenly her nostrils caught the smell of food from the kitchen. They must have found mushrooms, she thought, and they’re frying them; I’d better go see. She got up and went into the kitchen; Stella, her older daughter, was indeed frying mushrooms; the old woman took a handful, cut herself a piece of bread, and hurried back to her son. She was hungry and sat down beside the body and be-gan to chew, slowly, slowly.

  When the hoarse breathing finally stopped, Father Yánaros bent over and put his hand on the boy’s heart; it had stopped beating; he rose and spoke quietly. “He’s resting now.”

  Spitting on her two fingers, the mother knelt and touched the earth, rose, and closed the dead boy’s eyes. His older sister came in; she took a stone, scratched on it three Greek letters—“Jesus Christ prevails”—and stuffed it in her brother’s fist.
r />   “Good-bye,” she told him, “good-bye, my Socrates, give my regards to the dead.”

  “A speedy reunion, my boy,” the old woman said; she let out a loud cry and wiped her eyes.

  It was night when Father Yánaros returned, weary, from the cemetery; another young man buried, turning to soil and water

  again. His father, Barba Tassos, the wealthy elder, refused to bring out a bottle of wine and some bread and olives, as was the custom, to pass among the friends and relatives who had attended the funeral. “Isn’t the pain of losing my son enough?” he said in reply to his wife’s reprimands, “without wasting wine and bread and olives, too? One grief is enough for me!”

  Today, again, Father Yánaros’ soul had been filled with Death. He spent the nights of this Holy Week walking beside Christ, leading Him one step closer to the grave each time; he spent the days with the people. Oh, if I could only lie down and close my eyes, too, he thought as he walked to his home. If I could only remove the cares of man from my soul, as we remove a soiled shirt! To worry only for the old jackass called Father Yánaros—to feed it all I can so it will have strength, poor thing. But the blessed thing is heavy, very heavy, and the jackass can-not carry the load, it is sure to drop the saddle. Careful now, Father Yánaros—slowly!

  He talked to himself as he walked along. Every village door was locked; everywhere there was a deep, heavy silence; the people were tired of crying; they were silent. From the barracks came the sound of the bugle; the sun was setting, the hill had turned purple, but the stars had not appeared yet. A cool breeze blew from the hilltop and, for a moment, Father Yánaros was happy as he felt it on his sweating brow.

  But as he approached his house, he stopped abruptly. A small child, withered from hunger, with a swollen green belly lay face down in the middle of the road; it was digging the earth and eating the soil. The priest stood horrified; his eyes filled; he bent toward the child and took it by the hand.

  “Get up, my child,” he said. “Are you hungry?”

  “No. I just finished eating.”

  “What did you eat?”

  The child stretched out its hand and showed him the soil. “Dirt.”

  Father Yánaros’ blood rushed to his head; he groaned softly, as though a knife turned inside him.

  The world is rotten, he thought, rotten and unjust. My God, how can You hold it in Your arms without hurling it down and smashing it into a thousand pieces? So it can become mud

  again, so You can shape a new world—a better one! Don’t You see that this child is hungry? Can’t You see it’s eating dirt?

  He bowed his head, ashamed at his outburst, and continued. “No, my Lord, it’s not Your fault,” he murmured. “I’m to blame, we are all guilty for this child who eats dirt.”

  With aching heart he remembered a time he had gone to Istanbul to pay homage to his new Patriarch. An old rabbi friend of his had invited him to visit his home—provided the Christian priest did not consider it a sin. It was the Jewish New Year, and several Jewish actors were to present a short play in conjunction with the great holiday. The rabbi sat beside Father Yánaros, in-terpreting, and from all that he saw and heard, certain phrases so pierced Father Yánaros’ mind that to this day his memory drew forth dripping blood. They had set up a temporary stage in the rabbi’s bedroom; the curtain was pulled back, and a pale, skeleton-like man appeared, dragging a child by the hand. From behind the curtain came the sounds of singing and laughter— the holiday tables had been set, and the people were eating, drinking and making merry. Several wealthy, fat-bellied men who sat in the depth of the stage rose to their feet. “The tables are set,” they said, “let us go and eat!”

  They left, and the pale man with the child remained alone.

  “Daddy, let’s go home,” the child pleaded.

  “Why, child? What will we do there?”

  “I’m hungry. Let’s go home and eat!”

  “All right, all right, but listen, my Davey, we have nothing to eat at home.”

  “Just a little piece of bread.”

  “Not even a crust, my Davey.”

  The child became silent. The father stroked its head and leaned over. “Davey, my child, do you know what holiday this is?”

  “Yes.”

  “Tell me, Davey, what did we do today?”

  “We prayed, Father.”

  “Yes; and what did God do, blessed be His name?”

  “He forgave us our sins.”

  “Then since God forgave us our sins, we must be joyful, mustn’t we, Davey?”

  The child remained silent.

  “My little Davey, last year when your mother was alive, we sang a little song at the table; it was a new melody—do you remember it?”

  “No.”

  “Let me remind you—but you’ll have to sing along with me.”

  And the man began to sing in an anguished voice a sad, despairing chant that tore at one’s heart. The child sang along with him, and wept.

  Father Yánaros wiped his eyes with indignation. He looked around to see if anyone was watching. He controlled himself, but even after all these years, the melody still ripped his heart out. It was as though the thin membrane that covers man’s entrails snapped—that tissue formed from the daily cares and the con-venient cowardices of men—and this same tortured song broke out, free and uncontrollable. It freed all the terrors drifting within the dark corners of his being—terrors which he had not dared bring out into the light to face. Father Yánaros looked at his guts and the guts of the world and was sickened.

  He went back and took the child by the hand again.

  “Let’s go, child,” he said. “I have a piece of bread at home, I will give it to you!”

  The child jerked, trying to free its hand from the priest’s. “I’m not hungry! I told you, I ate.” And it began to cry.

  Father Yánaros turned angrily toward the church. “I’m off,” he shouted, “I’m off to damn the world before God!”

  Father Yánaros entered his home at the side of the church. It was not a house but a cell like the one he had been given at Mount Athos; a table, two stools, a narrow cot on which he slept, and on the wall above the cot, the icon of St. Constantine. He had painted the saint himself, just as he appeared in the icons which the firewalkers held in their arms when they walked over the lighted coals in that distant village near the Black Sea. In this icon, the saint did not wear a royal crown or red robes; his crown was a ring of flames; he was barefoot, and his feet were raised high as he danced on the burning coals.

  “St. Constantine was a firewalker,” Father Yánaros would say in reply to the startled questions. “Every saint is a firewalker. And so is every honest man in this hell we call life.”

  But the greatest adornment in the cell was another icon—

  there on the table beside the Holy Bible—the Second Coming, delicately carved in wood. It was given to Father Yánaros by Father Arsénios, the famous wood carver from the Monastery of St. Anna on Mount Athos, as salvation for his soul. Father Yánaros never tired of standing over it; every day he watched it thoughtfully, and as he looked at it, his heart swelled, he felt a turmoil within, and something inside of him shouted, “No! No!” Father Yánaros never understood who it was or why the voice shouted.

  In the center of the icon was Christ, the unsmiling Judge; His hands were outstretched—the right one raised in blessing, the other, with tightened fist, threatening. To His right were the just, thousands of them who had already entered Paradise; they were laughing. To the left, the sinners, thousands of them too; they were crying—what terror appeared on their faces! How their mouths had slanted from the lament! At Christ’s feet lay the Virgin Mary, her head raised, her hand outstretched, point-ing to the sinners. And Her mouth, half-open, seemed to be crying out, “Mercy, my Son, mercy!”

  Father Yánaros bowed and prayed to the Second Coming; and as he watched the Virgin tonight and heard her cry, his voice suddenly rang out: “Dear God, can the Virgin Mother’s cry be, in rea
lity, the heart of man crying out?”

  He sank on the cot; he did not want to part with the icon—he placed it on his knees and closed his eyes. Sleep was not what he wanted, although he was tired to the point of exhaustion. He closed his eyes to bring the beloved Father Arsénios near, and to feel the glow of that holy day of their first meeting.

  It was a sun-drenched winter day when Father Yánaros, a small bundle flung over his shoulder, passed by the grassy, pic-turesque Monastery of St. Anna. Among the dark green leaves of the orange trees sparkled reddish-purple fruit, all flame on the outside, all honey within. This is what the Will of God is like, he pondered, and his eyes filled with tears; like an orange tree, its fruit all flame and honey! What joy it was, what fragrance, what peace! And the sea, too, that sparkled blue-green, deserted, between the fruit-laden orange trees.

  He walked on, and when he came to the first cell, he entered. Inside were four bare white walls; a cluster of quinces hung

  from a beam on the ceiling; the fruit had begun to rot, and the cell smelled sweetly of quince and cypress wood. A pale, wrinkled monk sat on a stool, carving a piece of wood on his knees. His chest, his face, his soul, were glued upon the wood; the whole world had drowned in the chaos, and all that remained, in this Ark of God, was this monk and this piece of wood—as though God had commanded him to reshape the world.

  What softness appeared on his face as he bent, trembling, over his work; Father Yánaros took a step forward; he bent over the monk’s shoulder and as he looked, he stifled a cry at what he saw. What miracle was this, what dexterity, what patience, what confidence! There, carved on the cypress wood, was the Second Coming—so real, so alive—with crowds of people, some filled with terror, some with bliss. Christ was in the center, the Virgin at His feet, and an angel at each side sounding the trumpets of the Resurrection.

  “Your blessings, Father!” Father Yánaros greeted him loudly. But the monk, engrossed in his creative efforts, did not hear.