Father Yánaros stopped in front of the smoking ruins of a house; he covered his nose with the palm of his hand as he looked at the rubble. Its owners, old Manoli and Kyra Kallio, his wife, lay underneath the charred remains. The priest knew the old couple well and loved them both. They were paralyzed and so not able to escape when the redhoods entered the village a few days ago. Kind, God-fearing people they were; they had no children and were devoted to each other in their old age. They were the only ones in the village who had a pot of basil in their courtyard, and on summer evenings they would sit on their thresholdthis very spot where the priest now stood and greet the passers-by with a smile. Now there was nothing left of them but the stench.
The priest shook his head. What is the body of man but stench and filth, he thought. How can the soul, which is eternal, stoop to living inside a pit of manure? To hell with the flesh! When you’re rid of that, you’re rid of the stenchthat’s why I’m not afraid to die! With a leap, he jumped out of the burning ruins.
“My Lord,” he murmured, “what shall I do? Answer me! Help me! Every day I make my report to You; every day I tell You the condition of my villagethat we have nothing to eat now, that we are slowly dying; every day at least one soldier deserts and takes to the hills. That cursed son of mine, the redhoods’ captain, keeps sending messages from Mt. Etoraki. ‘Surrender! Surrender! Otherwise you will see only fire and the
sword!’ What can we do? What can I do? Did You hear Kyra Areti back there cursing? I tell You we can’t go on any longer! How can we save the children from starving to death? Tell me what to do, Lord. Guide me, help me! Should I climb the hill and surrender the village peacefully to the rebels to save it from destruction? Or should I just sit back and wait for Your mercy? Alas, we’re only human, my Lord; we can’t wait any longer; Your mercy is long in coming; most of the times it comes after death, in the other life; but I want it now, in this one!”
He paused a moment, then suddenly, as though coming to a decision, he cried, “Whatever will be, will be!” and he quickened his pace.
He paused a few yards from the church in front of a small house where the tubercular village schoolmaster lay dying. He had been crippled from jails and the whiplash. Father Yánaros loved him because he would bow to no one.
Yánaros had invited him to his cell for a cup of coffee, one Sunday after liturgy, when the schoolmaster was still able to walk. At first he was stiff and silent; he did not like conversations with priests; but slowly, gradually, he gained his confidence and began to speak of Christ as a beloved man, as though he still walked on earth, poor and tubercular, too; traveling through towns and cities, as though His Disciples were scattered about, in factories, or in the earth’s bowels digging out coal, or as students or teachers.
“Do you ever see Him? Do you see Him, friend,” the priest asked, roused by his words. “How is it that you speak as though you know Him?”
“I do see Him, at times,” the schoolmaster replied, smiling.
Father Yánaros made the sign of the cross. “Mercy my Lord,” he said, “I don’t understand this.”
Only after the schoolmaster left, did the priest understand, did he realize that he was speaking of Lenin.
Father Yánaros paused in front of the low shabby door; should he knock? Or should he go away?
Inside, the schoolmaster lay on his bed, watching his wife bend over the fireplace to light the fire; he watched his small son Dimitri, who sat by the hearth with his alphabet book on his lap, spelling words. The child’s eyes bulged, and his feet had
begun to swell. A black tomcat with orange spots, scrawny and full of sores, had curled beside the fire and purred contentedly. Outside, the dogs barked, doors opened and closed, and from a distance came the sound of boots pounding on the stones. But inside the house there was peace and quiet.
The schoolmaster closed his eyes; this serenity frightened him; he knew that his remaining days were few. He choked back his cough to avoid frightening his wife and secretly spat up blood into a red handkerchief.
He was ill, deathly ill, and he knew this. But this peace was like happiness, and it frightened him. It can’t be, he thought, some great tragedy hangs over my home. He looked at his wife, with the black kerchief on her head, silent, sad, old before her time. For years now she had fought poverty and fear and illness. He turned, glued his eyes on his only child, whose feet were swelling from hunger, and the schoolmaster’s heart ached. We older ones are condemned, he thought, but will our children, at least, get a chance in life? We fill the ravines and pits with our bodies, to bridge the way for our sons; will they be able to walk over this bridge? Will young Dimitri ever finish reading his alphabet book? Will they let him? Every day they kill women and children in Castello, in Castello and in Greece, in Greece and in all the world. This is the end of the old world; this is the beginning of the new one; and our generation is caught by the two millstones; they grind usflesh, bones, souls! We are weighed down by that old Chinese curse: “They are damned who live in great epochs!” And what is our duty but to turn this curse into a blessing? It’s difficult, very difficult! Oh, proud virtues of manpurity, obstinacy, couragehelp us!
The schoolmaster closed his eyes and sank in his thoughts. How many times his heart had filled, how many times it had drained of hope and suffering! Years and years of struggle; years and years of hope; how much longer? He opened his eyes and looked at his son, his wife; he looked at the village and at Greece; his mind spread out and encircled the worldwhat hopes and agonies were everywhere! Was man always like this, or did his pain increase now, now that the world was crumbling?
He recalled an ancient buried city; the world is exactly like that todaylike a buried city; and the schoolmaster shuddered,
and felt joy at the same time, as he thought of how the civilized people eat, how they get fat and insolent, how civilizations crumble.
The cellars of Pompeii were full; the women were shameless, sweet-smelling, and barren. The men were merchants and men of lettersshrewd, ironical, tired! All the gods, the whole worth-less bunchGreeks, Africans, Asianshad become one band, gathered in ungoverned and confused misery; faithless, greedy cowards that divided among themselves the consecrated bread and the souls of men as they slyly smiled. The whole city lay at the foot of Vesuvius and laughed, without a care.
The whole world is a Pompeii today, a Pompeii on the verge of eruption. What is the purpose of such a world, with its wretched women and faithless men, with its deceits and its sicknesses? Why should all these sly merchants live? Why should all these coddled children grow up and sit where their parents sat, in the taverns, the theaters, the houses of prostitution? All this dissipation stifled the intellect. Whatever culture those generations had they used up creating a great civilizationideas, painting, music, science, deeds; but now it has been exhausted; and they are in their last phaseto disappear. Let the barbarians come and open a new path to culture.
The woman rose from the hearth and turned to her husband; every time she saw him engrossed in deep thought, she tried to draw him into conversation. “They tell me that the day be-fore yesterday a monk from Mount Athos came to the village and brought the Sash of the Virgin in a silver case; Aunt Lena next door told me.”
The schoolmaster was furious. “Quiet, wife, don’t set my blood boiling! Oh, those thieves, those sacrilegious scoundrels! How long is man going to be so blind?”
He broke into a coughing spell, spat on the red handkerchief, and fell back on his pillow again.
“Wife,” he said, “we’d better not talk any more, I’m tired.” His breathing came in gasps, but in a little while he rallied and sat up in bed.
Eh, comrade Ben Yehounda, he thought. Eh, comrade Ben Yehounda, help!
The schoolmaster closed his eyes; a figure shriveled from
hunger and illness and wisdom appeared before his eyes; with thick lips, a humped nose, whiskers growing sparsely on his chin, it motioned slowly in the dark; it would not d
isappear. It was the obstinate Ben Yehounda, the humble Jew. Every time the schoolmaster lost faith, this impoverished teacher from a small village in the Ukraine came to give him courage. He, too, was poor and tubercular, and dying; but a great idea had entered his mind and hinged itself there: to resurrect the dead language of the Old Testamentthe Hebrew languageand to make it the spoken language of all Jews throughout the world. So he began to preach this idea; but the villagers drove him away; he left for Poland, where millions of Jews lived. He had no money, so he walked. He walked and he walked; he stumbled and fell along the way, rose and walked againfor days and nights on end. By the time he reached the Polish border, he could stand on his feet no longer; he fell to the ground, dying. They found him there and rushed him to the hospital; the doctor who examined him shook his head. “You have only two days to live,” he said, “three, at the most. If you have any last request, make out your will; you’re a teacher, you should know how to do it.”
The sick man laughed. “How can I die,” he said, “I, who have such an idea?”
“He’s insane,” the doctors said, and released him from the hospital. Once more he started on his journey. He decided to walk to Jerusalem; to cross all of Europe into Constantinople, to pass through Asia Minor, to enter Syria, to reach Palestine on foot. He went on; he begged from village to village; wherever he found Jews, he would enter the synagogue and preach his idea; they would only jeer at him, and he would leave again.
Finally, months later, he reached Jerusalem. He knelt on the ground and worshiped; then he entered the Holy City. He found a place to sleepa cellarand, losing no time, began to preach. “We must resurrect the sacred language of our fathers; we must speak to God in the tongue of Moses, so that our lips may be blessed as we bring to life the sacred words.” But those who heard him only became infuriated; they cursed him and denounced him; they called him traitor, rebel, sacrilegious fool, because he dared to suggest bringing the holy, sacred words of
the Old Testament of God into common use, to be tainted by impure mouths. So they drove him away from the synagogues and anathematized anyone who approached him or listened to his words.
But Ben Yehounda, the stubborn, obstinate one, never lost his courage; he shouted, he shouted in the wilderness! He held on to life by the teeth; he would not release his soul before he had completed his task. So he founded a school, married one of his studentsa young Jewish girlso he could have children and teach them to speak their mother tongue, the ancient He-brew. And then he had a sonbut the child was born dumb! “Good for you,” they cried, “God is punishing you; this is God’s curse; Jehovah has tried you, found you guilty, and condemned you!” But Ben Yehounda would not relent.
“Faith can move mountains!” he cried. “I shall move them!” One day when his son was five years old, a goat chased after the boy; the child was so frightened that his tongue became untied; he ran to his father shouting, “Father, father, a goat, a goat!” And the words were in the sacred language of the Old Testament.
News of the miracle spread far and wide; his followers increased; the idea entered their hearts and settled there; every so often in the streets one could hear the ancient words being resurrected. Years later, through perseverance and courage, the idea finally triumphed. And if you go to Palestine today, you may hear the Jews speaking, haggling, arguing, romancing, lec-turing, printing books and newspapers in that ancient resurrected tongue. Ben Yehounda lived forty years from the day the doctors decided he had two or three days to live. And only when he saw the great idea circulating in the streets, like a liv-ing man, only then did Ben Yehounda release his soul and al-low it to leave his body.
The schoolmaster opened his eyes; his face had a look of serenity. That’s what it is to believe! he thought, and if a foolish idea like Yehounda’s can finally triumph, imagine what will happen to ours! I can just hear the foundations of earth rumbling. He sighed. Will I live long enough to see this redemption? Will I ever see justice on earth? His whole life passed in a flash before his eyes. As a teacher at Yánnina, they had arrested him
and thrown him into prison; hunger, dampness, torture, had crippled his body. He left the prison a wreck of a man and returned to his village to die. Every day, as he fought with death, he remembered Ben Yehounda, and he, too, held his soul by the teeth; he, too, refused to die. And when his friends looked at his pallor, with grave concern, he remembered Ben Yehounda again and would say to them, smiling, “How can I die when I possess such a noble idea? Do not be afraid!”
Suddenly the schoolmaster cocked his ears; someone had stopped outside his door. His wife jumped up, frightened; who could it be? She slipped out, barefoot, into the courtyard, peeked through the crack in the gate, and saw the robe, the beard, and knew who it was; she returned to the house.
“It’s Father Yánaros,” she said softly. “Shall I let him in?”
“Don’t let him in,” the schoolmaster replied. “He’ll begin talking about God again, and I’m tired of that.”
They held their breaths and waited; in a few moments they heard the sound of Father Yánaros’ heavy boots fading away.
“What a shame about that man,” the schoolteacher mused. “Another good one gone to waste.”
He dug his hand under his pillow and brought out a small crumpled notebook which Stratis, the young soldier, had brought him secretly last night. “Leonidas trusted me with this,” the young soldier told him. “He told me to give it to you and that you would know who is to have it.” Stratis’ eyes filled with tears, and he turned, embarrassed, and walked away.
The schoolmaster shook his head. “Another young man gone,” he murmured. “What a pity that such a youth could not at least have died for a great idea.” Leonidas was a distant relative of his, on his mother’s side; she came from the Isle of Naxos. He often came secretly to the house and talked with him. An inexperienced boy, he was in love with a young girl, and he blushed when he spoke of her. She was a student, too, and the first day they met, they ran together through the coun-tryside, jumping about like two newborn kids; the soft, tender blades of grass, and the stones, too, smelled sweetly; the al-mond trees were in blossom, and the first swallows had arrived. It was noon, the heat of day, and the girl opened her blouse at the throat; a soft breeze blew and between two ancient columns appeared, eternal, the cool sea! How mysterious are these charming sistersyouth, love, and the sea! From the moment he looked between those columns to the sea, holding the hand of this girl who, until yesterday, had been a stranger to him, Leonidas felt his heart and the sea and the grass and eternity join and become one! His life took on new meaning; he looked around him and saw an exciting new world; the butterflies had grown wider than his palm; the earth smelled like warm flesh, and the hills gleamed enticingly, like a woman’s loins.
The teacher leafed through the crumbled notebook and his hand trembled as though he were lifting the tombstone of a fresh grave. The handwriting in the notebook was delicate, written on some pages with pen, on others with pencil; here and there the letters were smeared or half erased, as though tears had fallen on them; several pages were spotted with blood.
The schoolmaster raised his head. “Wife,” he said, “no matter who knocks on the door, don’t open it.”
7
JANUARY 23: This morning we discovered the frozen bodies of three of our men in a ravine. Their feet were sticking out of the snow, and that’s how we came across them. A rebel’s body lay beside the soldiers, frozen, too; he was wearing sum-mer khaki, no sweater, and his feet were bare. He had been wounded in the legs and had dragged himself over to the soldiers; the four of them were huddled together, their arms around each other, to keep warm.
JANUARY 29: My dearest, last night I had the strangest, most irrational dream I’ve ever seen in my life. I don’t know its meaning, but I do know it upset me very much; as though I were that little fish that was calling out.
It seems that I was far out at sea, and I could hear a little fish shouting
angrily at God. I watched it open and close its mouth; I could hear no sound, but I knew what it was saying, just as one understands the mutes. The angry words burst inside my head; the little fish had raised its jagged, helpless fins and cried out resentfully to God, “You should give strength to those who are in the right, and not to those who are unjust! That’s the true meaning of God!” Some larger fish must have wronged the small one, and she had raised her head to God, complaining. And God replied to her, but again I could not hear the words, nor even the voice; all I could see, from time to time, were the foaming waters churning and whirling over the little fish while
she tossed and turned, dazed, in the sea. But during the calm, the fish raised her head again, and I could hear the same words beating inside my head: “You should give strength to those who are in the right, and not to those who are unjust! That’s the true meaning of God!”
My beloved Maria, if I stay in these wild hills much longer, I’m afraid I’m going to lose my mind. The only way I keep my sanity is by thinking of you every moment, day and night.
FEBRUARY 1: All day today I was with you, my dearest, all day I sensed your soft, sweet smell, as though an almond tree had blossomed inside of me. Do you remember a year ago to-day? When I first met you? We went on an outing to Sounio to see the Temple of Poseidon; we took bread and oranges, and Homer, with us. The almond trees were in bloom, the ground was covered with soft grass, the newborn kids leaped over the warm earth, and the pine trees smelled like honeyremember? And the sun stood over us and warmed us; he watched with pride as we walked over the rocks like two small, happy insects.
You were wearing a rose-colored blouse and a white velvet beret, and beneath it your hair fell into two long curls that waved like banners in the wind. We walked so quicklyhow young we wereit was a virgin world then; how green were the trees, how blue was the sky, filled with love. How old I’ve grown since then! There was no killing in my life; now the bodies lie in heaps, and I sit on them and my heart has become stone. Remember how we spoke of Homer, and how we were swept up like waves by those immortal verses! What happiness we had; Homerthat sacred textthe Old Testament of our people had suddenly come to life within us. And we could feel the great song entering our hearts, laughing and echoing like the sea. The silver-footed Thetis rose from the depths of the sacred Mediterranean, holding in her hands the new armor for her son; it gleamed, all bronze and gold, with exquisite embellishmentsas though it had just come from the hands of God. What designs the lame God had carved on it, in His wise artistry! We held hands and stood there, underneath the pines,
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