The Fratricides

The Fratricides Page 14

by Nikos Kazantzakis

  “Father,” she called, “Father!”

  And the old man stood up and walked into the sea; his bare feet were cooled by the waves.

  “Eleni,” he called, “my daughter!” And he opened his arms.

  And Helen, virgin, eternally young, eternally rejuvenated, walked into the open arms of immortality.

  My beloved, I wonder if I will ever get the chance to compose this ode to Helen? Will I live? Will I survive these hills? Will I ever return to your side? There are days when my heart is filled with dark whisperings; but I have placed my hopes in you, for love conquers death.

  APRIL 13: Today, my beloved, I received a letter from my uncle Velissarios, the professor who recently retired from the army. The letter forced me to do a lot of thinking, it also angered me. I am rewriting it to you so that you can see, too, what happens to those who read too much, who preach too much, who overexhaust ideas.

  You know my uncle—you saw him one day when we went to

  his home and found him bent over an open book, smoking his pipe. He talked to us of great problems, of civilization, of God, of war, and as he talked, he cut out paper dolls from a manu-script he had before him—little roosters, sailboats, and clowns —and stood them in a line in front of him and laughed. You remember how wise his words seemed to us, and how they swept us away? Yet, while he talked with such emotion, suddenly he would complete a paper doll and burst into laughter. And we were at a loss—we did not know whether what he spoke was the truth, out of the depths of his wisdom and his pain, or whether he was just mocking us.

  That’s how I imagine the highest man of every civilization is; he sees everything from such a height that all men look like dirty insects—beetles and ladybugs—and the earth is a mere walnut shell which is tossed and turned by the waves. And from this height, he calmly looks upon the storms of men, and sometimes he laughs, sometimes he nods his head with compassion. But it is a cold, inhuman compassion, which does not condescend to offer its hand to save the walnut shell from sinking.

  Many times, when I talked to him of all the things they taught us at the university, he would look at me and smile with a satanic irony. And when I would ask him why he looked at me that way, he would reply, “When you grow up, perhaps you will understand; if I told you now, it would be too soon, you would understand nothing, my words would be futile; but then again you may never understand. I, my young man (that’s how he al-ways refers to me mockingly, as “my young man”), I, my young man, see civilizations as a poet sees the clouds rise and swell and fill with rain and wind and lightning; and then a breeze blows, and they change shape, they merge, they part, they redden at sunset. Then a stronger breeze blows, and they disappear. Will you ever be able to see civilizations and people and gods in this way? I doubt it—but try, struggle, reach as far as you can; go forth, my young man, courage!”

  Whenever I begin to talk about this uncle of mine (my mother’s brother), I can never stop; but this time I will stop to let him speak. He knew what he was talking about when he wrote this letter—look with what humor he tosses men and ideas about; but see, also, how, gradually he becomes enraged!

  My dear nephew Leonidas—greetings, you pseudo-Spar- tan!

  Your last letter revealed that our young genius is infected with an understandable itch, the well-known intellectual restlessness of youth, and you go on creating problems and then struggle to solve them; but you cannot, and you be-come discouraged, and you blame God and the devil and the mind of man. Then you let out mournful cries, asking me for help. What help can I give you, you poor four-eyed baby lamb from Athens. Attack the problems, my brave fighter, onward! Shout “Aera” as you do when you confront the rebels; lunge against these horrible thorny hedgehogs —the eternal questions; smash your face like all the others have, bleed from the needles, and finally, when you realize that it’s not their blood you are tasting in ecstasy, but your own, then, and only then, sign an unconditional surrender and rest. Surrender to a great hedgehog—to a great ideal; there are many, many you know—country, religion, science, art, glory, communism, fascism, equality, brotherhood— you’ve reached the point of selling yourselves out, my young friends, choose and take! Today there are dozens of great ideals, and yet there are none, because as I’ve already said, you’ve reached the point where you are selling yourselves; it’s late, the party’s over, the prices have dropped, today you can buy a great ideal for peanuts.

  When I, too, was young, I remember that an Italian charlatan had come to our island. His name was Carolito; he wore a stovepipe hat and claimed that he could cure all ills. He would stand erect in a cart that was drawn by a patient innocent jackass which he called, for reasons unknown to me, Carolina. And he would hold up his hands filled with bottles and powders and ointments. He cured whatever ailed you; he even extracted teeth and inserted glass eyes; and he also sold wooden hands with hooks, for one-armed people; and wooden legs with springs in them, for one-legged people; and elastic belts for those with abdominal problems. He had magic potions, too, for the lovesick, and a white mouse which selected, with its snout, a little piece of paper which told fortunes in written verse.

  The mind of man is just another Carolito, my dear nephew; tell it your illness and it will surely find a remedy to cure it; and as I suspect from your other letter, there is a remedy for your illness, and it is indeed miraculous. You ask from where we come and where we are going, and what is the purpose of life, and what and how and why? A great illness! But Carolito will give you the answer so you can rest; I know this answer, too, because I am a Carolito, more or less; your remedy then, is—Maria. She will give you a definite answer to all your questions and thus silence you; take at least two or three drops of Maria—as many as you can stand (the more the better)—at night before you go to sleep, and you will rest.

  You think I’m joking as I am in the habit of doing, and that I do not condescend to enter into serious discussions with you? You are wrong, my young man! I have never been more serious; this is the superior fruit of all my wis-dom. I have no faith in human endurance and in the great ideals which torture young men like the acne of youth. Their blood boils, they are incensed and excited about the beginning and the end of the cosmos, about the purpose of life; and whether the chicken or the egg came first; it’s only a skin disease, my young man, nothing else. One morning, as they walk restlessly, engulfed in their great thoughts, they meet a hip-swinging young woman, a round-faced peasant girl, or an anemic Athenian lady, dark or blond or red-haired (there’s one for each taste), and they stand with open mouths. And this is the answer—they marry her and calm down.

  This, my beloved nephew, is what I have to say in reply to your great idealistic letter. As I told you, I have no faith in men, or in what disturbs them or in their great ideas and ideals. I’m fed up. When I hear a priest preaching love and goodness, I want to vomit; when I hear a politician speak of country and honor and justice, I want to vomit; they have cheapened everything and everyone knows it—those who speak and those who listen; and yet no one dares to rise and spit on them.

  I started this letter laughingly, but as I write and recall all that I have seen and heard, I am overcome with disgust

  and anger. Don’t be angry at my lack of faith in your great problems, my young man, forgive me, but they’re just a lot of hot air. I am sorry for you, so I send you this prescription; read it whenever you get that intellectual itch, and it will stop, you’ll see. They had given me a different remedy, and it failed; so my illness took a turn for the worse, and there is no cure for it now. My soul has become like Carolina, the little jackass—it pulls my mind, the charlatan; and my soul is unconsolable because it knows well the charlatan’s tricks and manipulations and it has no faith in him; but nevertheless Carolina continues to pull him, continues to listen to him as he heralds his remedies, and she shakes her naďve head with patience and disgust. Yet I prefer my incurable illness to your cure; I do not condescend to escape, to find security in some great ideal; I walk hatless through the deserte
d roads, through the winds and the rains and in the terrible storm that has broken out; hatless—neither a black hood nor a red one! Hatless, barefooted, hopeless, and unbending, like King Lear; but not because my daughters deserted me, but because I deserted them. And when I fall in the middle of the road, I would like to die, like Strozzi, my beloved condottieri, who died on July 20, 1558 —a holy day. A god-fearing friend of his knelt beside him and clasped his hands pleadingly. “Repent, great sinner,” he shouted to him, “repent for all that you have done in your life; you will appear before the Lord soon; make the sign of the cross and invoke the name of Christ.”

  “What Christ,” Strozzi moaned with his dying breath, “what Christ, damn it? I refuse! My holiday has ended.”

  I would write a lot more, but you are young, and you cannot take it; even what I have written here is too much for you. Good-bye and good health to you! Kill as many of your brothers as you can, you poor fool—it’s a dirty job, but you’re not to blame. Try, at least, to return home alive, so you can complete your full cycle of life: childish joys, youthful intellectual itches, marriage, suffering, children death. Good night!

  Your Uncle Velissarios Servus diabolicus Dei, or, Servus divinus diaboli (it’s the same thing).

  APRIL 15: Holy Week! The bell tolls mournfully; we went to church to hear the Passions of Christ. “See the Bridegroom cometh …” Father Yánaros gave a sermon; but he quickly became aroused, and, while he had begun by speaking of Christ, he gradually confused Christ with Greece. “It is Greece that suffers,” he cried, “Greece that is wounded, that is crucified, to save mankind.” We were moved to tears; this priest has a strength that is secret and wild; a deep pain, an unshaken faith, something that is wild and gentle; his eyes and his beard are like those of Moses, and he walks on, passing the desert, but we, the cowards, do not follow him. And as he talked on, we, too, confused the crucified Lord with Greece, with our homes, our lives, the people we love—all that is being lost. In each one’s mind Christ changed face and form; at times He became a virgin field and an unpruned vineyard; at other times He was a destroyed herd of sheep or an orphaned home or a bride or a child sucking its mother’s breast. Each mourned for that most valuable possession which he could not enjoy; Christ had, in reality, come down to earth and lay dead within us, and we all wept and waited for Him to be resurrected.

  I wept, too, my Maria, Because I thought of you; to me, Christ had taken on the image of your sweet face, and as I bent to worship Him, I could not hold back the tears.

  NOON OF HOLY MONDAY: My dearest, it is warmer today; the sun came out, and my heart fluttered when I saw the first swallow. Spring has reached even these wild hills, my Maria; Christ has risen, like the tender green grass, from the earth; the birds that had left us have returned; soon they will begin building their nests. Like the migrating birds, hope, too, departs, returns, searches, and finds its old nest—the heart of man—and there lays its eggs.

  Suddenly today, after all the agony of winter, I feel my heart filling with eggs too; all will go well, my beloved, do not worry; have faith, the buds will blossom, the eggs will hatch, our desires will take form—they will become the home and the son and the song of Helen.

  I have faith in the soul—it has wings; it can fly and see the future, much sooner than our eyes. My soul has taken wings tonight, my darling, and it has found you in a little house—our home—with a little human being in your arms who resembles us—our son; have faith, my beloved, all will go well!

  EVENING OF HOLY MONDAY:

  Death hovers over my mind today, And I am like the invalid who Ends his health again, As though I recovered from a great illness.

  Death hovers over my mind today, And it resembles the scent of flowers, And I seem to be floating above the storm.

  Death hovers over my mind today, And it resembles man’s longing for his home, After all the long years of imprisonment.

  Here, abruptly, Leonidas’ diary stopped. He was killed on Holy Tuesday.

  Slowly, the schoolmaster closed the bloodstained notebook; he bent and kissed it, as though he were kissing the dead body of the luckless young man. His eyes were dry, his heart had be-come stone; life, to him, seemed ill-fated, unjust, heartless, without logic, as though it went stumbling on the earth, not knowing where it was going.

  8

  GOOD FRIDAY: A group of villagers were gathered in the courtyard of the church exchanging heated words: Stelianos the weaver with the chewed-off ear; Andreas the coppersmith with his thick, dirty hands; Kyriákos the town crier with his long, unwashed hair; and Panágos the barber of the village, shoeless, mourning, wearing a black shirt. Scrawny old Mandras with the small, foxy eyes stood in the center; he was the well-known landowner and chiseler of the town.

  Hadjis, the oldest of the elders, sat on the ledge near the door, basking in the sun; his joints were swollen, and he moaned with pain. He had dragged himself to church to see Christ’s Bier and to take back home a handful of myrtle leaves and rosemary —these he would burn with the incense when his pains became unbearable, as his grandfathers did to find relief from their rheumatisms. Who needs doctors? They’re only the devil’s in-vention, damn them! The blessed leaves are more effective, and more practical, too.

  Hadjis was a sly one, having experienced much in his youth; he had been a world-traveler, reaching as far as Athens, even farther, as far as Beirut; and still farther, to the River Jordan. He had bathed in the holy waters and become a hadji. “It’s a useful thing,” he would say to himself, “to become a hadji; peo-ple respect you, and it’s much easier to fool them.” And sure enough, the very moment he had stepped out of the Jordan, a brilliant idea struck him. Up until now he had been forced to

  earn his living shining shoes, being a porter, a smuggler—constantly in danger, barely existing. But now that he had become a hadji, he saw the light. He took all the money he had in his possession, bought some burlap sacks, several lengths of rope, and some wooden poles, and journeyed through the villages and towns of Anatolia. Wherever he went, he set up his tent; he would hang out a sign, a piece of white cloth with thick letters which read, “The Mysteries of Marriage,” and then he would stand outside the tent, place two fingers in his mouth, and whistle. The people would gather round, and the sly hadji would make the sign of the cross, climb up on a stool, and begin to shout: “Here, ladies and gentlemen, in this tent, you will witness the mysteries of marriage, the frightening mysteries of marriage, for only one drachma; come now, what’s a drachma, ladies and gentlemen? And yet with that one measly little coin you will view the terrifying, horrible mysteries of marriage, and your hair will stand on end. And if it does not, I give you my word of honor as a hadji, a God-fearing man, that I will return your money! Easy now—eh, eh, one at a time now—don’t push, there’s room for everyone!”

  No one would move; Hadjis would whistle again, begin his pitch again, and finally someone would come forth; there was always someone—usually an unmarried man—who would dig into his pocket for that coin so that he, too, could see this great mystery. Hadjis would lift the burlap, and the man would enter; he would look around, rub his eyes, look again, but he would see nothing. Then Hadjis would take him by the arm and say in a sugary tone, “You see, my friend, you don’t see a thing, do you? Don’t stretch your neck in vain; you won’t see anything. But please don’t tell anyone when you go out, because you’ll be the fool. Tell them instead that you saw many terrible wonders and that from this day forth your life has changed, because now you understand the meaning of women, of marriage, of the world. This is what you must say, so the others can be fooled, too; and they won’t make fun of you. Understand? All right, go on your way now so the others can come in.”

  In this way, Hadjis made a bit of money, returned to Castello, his village, wearing a gold chain across his vest, and soon became an elder. But now he was old—the poor man had aged, he was

  deaf, half-blind, senile; and now he sat in the courtyard of the church, rubbing his swollen knees, as saliva ra
n from his toothless mouth.

  The others stood over the gravestones arguing. At first they had begun a discussion about last night’s vigil service when the Twelve Gospels were read. Old Mandras could not understand why Christ should oppose the Jewish law, since it was handed down by God Himself to Moses, on Mount Sinai. And Andreas insisted that he could not understand why, if Christ were almighty, He did not clap His hands and summon the angels to descend with their swords and slaughter the Jews.

  “If it were me,” he added, “that’s what I’d do—just clap my hands. After all, I’d be God, wouldn’t I? So I’d act like a lion, not like a lamb. What do you say, Kyriákos?”

  Kyriákos, who for years now had nurtured the desire to be-come a priest, cleared his throat and scratched his head. It’s my duty to speak, he thought, and enlighten them. He had had just a little education, and whenever Father Yánaros was not around, he took courage and expressed his opinions. So in his heavy chantlike voice, he began to speak about Christ; that He, like Kyriákos, was a humflle, innocent man with long hair who wanted to become a priest, to spread the word of truth. But the wealthy and the powerful persecuted Him, cursed Him, beat Him, pursued Him; and today, on Good Friday, they were preparing to kill Him.

  “You see,” old Mandras concluded, “that’s what happens to those who speak up!”

  Kyriákos looked around him in case Father Yánaros should suddenly appear and, not seeing him, took more courage. Just a few months ago he had found an explanation for Christ’s actions, and he felt he had no right to keep this to himself—we must not hide the light under a bushel—so he began to enlighten the villagers.

  “Now, for your information, to society, Christ was what we call an irregular verb.”

  “And what does that mean?” Panágos the barber asked. “Explain yourself, teacher.”

  “It means that all the people around Him, the Scribes and Pharisees, Anna, Kayafas, were regular verbs; it means that

 

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