The Fratricides

The Fratricides Page 11

by Nikos Kazantzakis

  in the spring sun of Attica, looking far out to the sea, reciting the immortal lines.

  We never tired of it—remember? We could not stop reciting the old man’s lines; we watched them flowing, like rivers into the sea. Dear one, life can be so beautiful! So simple and good! And look what we’ve done with it! I, who stood beside you that unforgettable day, my heart overflowing with love for even the humblest worm. Now look at me, here in the hills of Epirus, a rifle in my hand, killing men! No, no, we have no right to call ourselves human beings; we should be called apemen. We started off as apes, to become men, but we are still halfway. And yet my heart aches with love; it thinks of you, Maria, and it blossoms like the almond tree; it thinks of Homer, and it knows the meaning of man and immortality.

  FEBRUARY 2: I woke up this morning, and the almond tree still blossomed within me; my blood flowed in a rhythm, full of joy and sadness and nostalgia; and your name, my Maria, swayed gently to and fro within me, like the seagull on the waves. How I wish that I had time—time and the strength—to set words to that rhythm and make it poetry! A song marched on my lips, and I kept saying, “If they would only leave us alone today, so that I could take pencil and paper.”

  But the bugle sounded the alarm, and we grabbed our rifles; the rebels were creeping out from Mount Etoraki, where they had been hiding all these months and from where we could not budge them. And again we had to kill and be killed! Now as I’m writing you, it is night; we’ve just returned, exhausted, bloodied, a lot of us on both sides killed again, and we’ve accomplished nothing—neither we nor they—all that blood spilled in vain.

  We feel a great sense of exultation when we read in Homer how men move in battle, how the Achaeans and Trojans are wounded and how they die. Our thoughts take wing, our hearts feel joy to see how this great writer took war and slaughter and turned them into song. It was as though these were not men being killed, but clouds in human form that felt no pain; as though they were fighting playfully in the immortal wind; as though the blood they shed was nothing but the sweet red

  color of the sunset. In poetry, men and clouds, death and immortality are one. But when war breaks out, here on earth, and the warrior is a tangible body—flesh and bone and hair and soul—what terror, what horror war is, my darling! You go out to fight saying, “I won’t degrade myself. I’ll remain human even during the slaughter; I don’t hate anyone.” And I go off to battle with compassion in my heart. But the moment you realize that your life is in danger, that they want to kill you, a dark, hairy thing suddenly leaps from the depths of your inner being—an ancestor that was hidden inside of you whom you did not suspect, and the human face you had disappears, and you seem to have sprouted sharp, pointy teeth, like a gorilla; and your brain becomes a jumble of blood and hair. You scream, “Forward! Attack, men! We’ve got ‘em!” And the cries that come from your lips are not your own; they can’t be yours; they’re not human cries; and even the apeman disappears, frightened away; and from within you leaps not your father, but your grandfather, the gorilla. Sometimes I am overcome by the de-sire to kill myself—to save the man within me, to save myself from the beast. But you keep me alive, Maria, and I wait. “Hold on,” I say, “one day soon this brother-killing is bound to end.” I’ll cast off this gorilla skin—the khaki, the boots, the rifle— and I’ll take you by the hand, my darling, and we’ll go to Sounio together, and we will speak again Homer’s immortal lines.

  FEBRUARY 11: It’s been snowing all day—bitter cold—we’re half frozen, and there is no wood for kindling. And at night— every single night—the rebels never let us rest. We watch day break in fear, and we watch night fall in fear. The rifle never leaves our hands; our ears and eyes are on guard every moment —a stone rolls, an animal moves, and we jump up in the darkness and shoot. We are haggard from lack of sleep and from fear. If at least we could be certain that we’re fighting for a great ideal!

  Our captain’s a fierce man, always angry, sour by nature. A dark fate hangs over him; it hates him and pushes him toward the precipice, to his destruction. He senses this and becomes even more fierce; he wants to resist, but he cannot, and he goes on, cursing, toward the unseen abyss. Our captain is like the

  hero of an ancient tragedy, and I watch him with fear and compassion, as we watch Agamemnon entering his bath, or Oedipus when, frantic and blinded by his fate, he searches for the truth.

  And lately, he’s not even human! He’s a beast. Just recently his wife left him and took to the hills to join the rebels. She had come here at Christmas from Yánnina. What a woman! To us, here on these wild rocks, she was like a miracle; as though it were night and it had suddenly dawned. Here we were, lost in these hills, sleepless, dirty, unshaven, not having seen a woman for so long; she seemed like a Nereid with her blond hair, the beauty mark on her cheek, her slim body, her light walk. And above all, her smell—powder and lavender—that drifted in the air as she passed by!

  The captain smiled for the first time, those days, and looked at us as though we were human beings, too. His face had changed; he shaved every day, he dressed better, and his boots were always polished. Even his voice and his walk changed. But she never smiled; every day her face became cloudier, and when she looked our way, her eyes seemed hard and cold and full of hate. And one night she opened the door and took to the hills.

  Stratis brought us the news, and that bowlegged fox was bursting with laughter. He came in singing and went around the barracks twittering, “Gone, oh gone is my little bird! And it will never return!” “We’re lost!” murmured my friend Vassos. “Now he’ll never rest until he gets us all killed! He’ll have us in battle day and night.” He paused thoughtfully and then turned and whispered to me, so that no one else could hear, “Dying doesn’t really bother me, Lenny, I swear it doesn’t! As long as I know why I’m dying and for whom I’m dying. But I really don’t know. Do you?”

  What could I answer him, my dearest, how would I know? That’s the great tragedy of it all.

  FEBRUARY 12: The alarm sounded at dawn; we surrounded the village so that no one could escape; an order was issued to take hostages all those who had relatives with the rebels—parents, brothers, sisters, wives—and herd them into a deep pit surrounded with barbed wire, on the outskirts of the village.

  We entered the houses early in the morning and grabbed the old men and women, the wives and sisters. A lament sprang from all the homes; they grabbed on to the doors, the windows, the rims of the wells, and would not let go—they refused to be moved. We struck their hands with our rifle butts, we ripped their shirts and their coats as we tried to pry them loose; a few were wounded until we got them in line and into the pit. At first my heart ached for them; I felt like crying; I couldn’t bear to hear their cries and to see the injustice. The older women, the mothers, raised their hands, cursing me. I dragged them by force when all the time I wanted to lean against their withered breasts and cry along with them.

  “What did we do?” they cried. “Why are they putting us be-hind barbed wire? How are we to blame?”

  “You’re not, you’re not to blame,” I’d reply. “Come on, let’s go.”

  But slowly, gradually—how strange is this dangerous, dirty animal we call man—slowly I grew ugly. In making the angry gestures, I became angry, too. I beat their hands as they clutched the doors; I grabbed women by the hair and trampled the children with my boots.

  FEBRUARY 14: It’s been snowing and snowing; the hills are all white, and the houses are huddled under the snow; all the uglinesses of the village are covered, and they have turned into exotic fairy-tale beauties. A snow-covered rag hanging on a line —what beauty! A dead pony completely buried in the snow— such graceful lines! Gentle colors—rose hue at morning, pale blue at noon, purple at dusk! What moonlit calm—what won-der is this world of snow! Oh, Maria my beloved, what joy there would be if there were no war! The two of us would walk over these snow-covered hills, with our heavy boots and heavy sweaters, with woolen caps that cover our ears, and we would come back to a
little house at night, where a hot bath would be ready, and a table set with deep bowls of steaming soup, beside a lighted fireplace!

  Who was that great world conquerer who, on the hour of his death, sighed and said, “I longed for only three things in my life—a small house, a wife, and a pot of curly-leafed basil; but I

  never attained them.” Life is so strange, my beloved, man actually needs very little to be happy! But he gets lost in his search for false glories and destroys himself. How many times I’ve longed to throw away my rifle, to get up and leave! To leave and come straight to the door of the small room where you study, my Maria. To touch your hand and feel its warmth in my palm, and not say a word. I think there is no greater happiness than in the touch of a loving hand.

  But I can never leave—I would never do that. I’ll stay here, with this rifle in my hand, and I’ll fight until they tell me to go. Why? Because I’m afraid; afraid and ashamed; and even if I were not afraid, I still would not leave. Those great terrible words: duty, country, heroism, desertion, dishonor, have bound and paralyzed my small, warm, fleshy soul.

  FEBRUARY 16: There’s only one thing I want to know, my darling, so that I may be able to endure after all that I see and do here; only one thing—why am I fighting? For whom am I fighting? They say we fight to save Greece, we, the Royal Army, the blackhoods as they call us; and that our enemies in the hills—the redhoods—fight to divide and sell Greece. Oh, if I could only be sure! If I only knew! Then all this would be justified—all our atrocities and all the tragedy we spread— killing, burning, leaving people homeless, humiliating them. I would give my life to know. I don’t say I would give it gladly— never gladly, because of you, my darling—but with an accept-ance, a willingness. I would say, Let me become bones, like my ancestors, since it is written that freedom comes from the bones of its people, as our national anthem proclaims.

  I had grabbed a young mother by the neck and kicked her to get her in line; she was the wife of a rebel, and she held a baby in her arms. She turned and looked at me, and never, never as long as I live, will I forget the look in her eyes. No matter what good I ever manage to do in the future, my heart will never find peace again. She did not open her mouth; but I heard a loud cry within me: “Leonidas, aren’t you ashamed? How low can you stoop? How low have you stooped!” And my hands were paralyzed at that moment. I spoke softly to her. “I’m ashamed,” I whispered. “I’m ashamed, woman, but I’m a

  soldier, I’ve lost my freedom, too; I’m not human any more, forgive me!” But the woman did not reply; she raised her head high, her arms tightened around the baby, and she took her place in line. And I thought to myself, If that woman could, she would set fire to the barracks and burn us all. That baby’s no longer going to suck milk from its mother’s breast; it’s going to suck hatred and scorn and revenge; and when it grows up, it, too, will take to the hills—a rebel; and he will finish off whatever his mother and father left undone; we will pay heavily and rightfully for this injustice.

  And do you believe it, my darling, somehow this thought comforts me. I’ve come to the conclusion that the cruelties and injustices we commit will not be in vain—for they wake the soul of the one who has been wronged, they rouse it and set it on fire. All these Castellians could have passed their lives in slavery and stupor; but our beastliness is a good thing; we won’t let them rot with patience and cowardice; the slaves that we kick around will rise one day, and all the hills will fall and crush the valleys; and their captain will be—God willing—this baby, held in the arms of this silent, proud mother today.

  FEBRUARY 17: War—war and snow! Cold, hunger, vultures! An uneasy silence, then cold again, and hunger and vultures! Patrolling the snow at night, in shifts; one of our men did not return, and we set out to find him; we take hounds and begin the search. Finally we found him, in a crevice, frozen to death, his eyes pecked out—vultures eat the eyes first, you know. And all along the mountain paths are the dead mules and dead horses, killed by cannon, by hunger, by the cold. Vassos said to me today, “I don’t pity the men who are killed, we deserve that. It’s the poor mules and horses I pity.”

  FEBRUARY 22: Why am I fighting? For whom am I fighting? Every day my doubts grow and with them, my torment. I’ve come to the point—though I shudder to admit it—when the only bearable moments in my life here are those inhuman moments when I carry the rifle and hunt men, to kill! Because then I don’t have the time or the strength to think of anything; I only fight, like the beasts, to kill so I may not be killed. But

  the minute that horrible sound dies down, the terrifying question rises before me, like a serpent with a swollen neck. Is it possible that I am fighting to support lies and injustice, to enslave Greece, to save the dishonorable? Is it possible that we are the traitors, the ones who are selling Greece, and can the so-called traitors in the hills be the armed mountaineers and the rebels of 1821? How can I tell justice from injustice, and decide with whom to go, and to which side I should give my life? There is no greater torment, to a fighter, than this doubt.

  Today again the captain picked out five young men—five strong, handsome Greeks—and had them shot because they refused to join the national army. Can an ideal that gives birth to such courage, that pays such little heed to death, possibly be a false ideal? This is what I have been asking myself all day. But I can find no answer, for I know very well that I saw this same courage in our own blackhoods when they were brought be-fore the rebels. They had said to our men, when they captured them, “Will you join us and come to the hills?” “No, we will not!” “Then you will be shot!” “Then shoot us! We were born Greeks, we will die Greeks!” So they killed them. And as the shots rang out, the condemned shouted, “Long live Greece! Long live freedom!”

  So courage and faith is not the infallible test; but, then, how can I separate the truth from the lies? How many heroes and martyrs have sacrificed themselves for some damned ideal; God has his pure heroes and martyrs; Satan has his pure heroes and martyrs; how can I tell them apart?

  MARCH 1: Earth and sky are all one today; you can’t distinguish a thing because of the clouds that have gathered and the snow that falls in continuous thick mats. We’ve been shoveling all morning to clear the paths. There’s no war today—the redhoods have not come down, and we are not going up after them; God has come between us today, and we will rest awhile.

  Stratis came by around noon; we were all sitting huddled in a corner of the barracks—Vassos the faithful friend, Panos the simple shepherd, and Levy the Jew. Stratis motioned to us, and we got up. “Come here,” he said, “I want to talk to you.”

  He led the way as we walked outside in a straight line, each

  one stepping in the snow prints of the man ahead, sinking knee-deep in the snow. He pushed open a door and entered. The house was deserted; we had come here several days ago, and had taken away the old couple who lived here. They were put inside the barbed-wire enclosure—they had two sons that were renowned for their heroism, both of them with the rebels.

  We took an ax and chopped up the bunk in the corner of the room for kindling and started a fire. Then we broke up a small couch, and the fire glowed, dancing on the hearth; we huddled around it, close together, spreading out our hands, and drew in the warmth. Our hands and feet thawed, the blood circulated again, our faces shone. We looked at one another— what few things man needs, the poor soul, to make him happy. We spread out our hands toward the fire as though we were praying; as though this fire were the first and most beloved goddess, the great benefactress of man; and the fire seemed to bring us together, like brothers, with her warmth spreading over us like a mother hen.

  There were five of us; each one had a different ideal, a different job, a different aim in life; five different worlds: Stratis, a typesetter; Panos, a shepherd; Vassos, a carpenter; Levy, a merchant; and I, a student. And yet, at that moment, embraced by the warmth of that fire, we merged, we became one. Our veins swelled, our hearts swelled; a great, sweet joy filled us— it rose from our feet, th
ere by the hearth, and reached our knees, our stomachs, our hearts, our minds. Panos closed his eyes, drowsily, and fell asleep. Envying him, I lowered my head to sleep, too—I hadn’t slept in so many nights—but Stratis nudged me angrily.

  “I didn’t bring you out here to sleep; open your eyes, you weaklings. I have something important to read to you.” He took a letter out of his pocket.

  “Men,” he said, “I swear to you I don’t know how this letter got into my pocket; someone here is a traitor, and he’s selling us out. See? It’s either the communist newspaper, or red proc-lamations, or letters. Anyway, I found this in my pocket this morning. I read it and reread it; I don’t know what to make of it, so I called you here, you fools, so we could read it together and discuss what it says; unless, of course, we’re not men but

  sheep, who remain silent as they’re being led to slaughter. They bleat—baa, baa, baa—which means “Slaughter me, master, so I may be sanctified!”

  Levy laughed teasingly and winked his eye at Stratis. “You trickster,” he said, “you trying to fool me? A Greek fears only one man in intelligence—the Jew! The Jew fears only one man —the Armenian; you’re no Armenian, so you don’t fool me that easily. That letter is yours! Watch him men …”

 

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