Sea of Many Returns

by Arnold Zable

  In the year of his final return my father lowered his knapsack and extracted jars of black caviar, an Armenian bracelet, and reams of silks for Erasmia, my mother. He presented me with a pistol, and promised to show me how to stalk hare and quail. ‘We have made a great profit,’ he boasted. ‘We sold our wheat in Zakynthos at three times the price we paid for it.’

  The celebrations continued late into the night. I fell asleep to familiar voices, and awoke, hours later, to the sight of the mountain. I could see the upper slopes through the window. I lay in bed full of the mystery of my father’s return. I was close to the constellations and the half moon gliding over the summit, closer to the skies than those who lived in the lower hamlets. And my father was home.

  In the months of his final return my father woke me late one night. We crept out of the house and descended the mule path to Frikes Bay. To quicken our journey we scrambled between zigzag bends, grabbing hold of shrubs to break our fall. My father clowned like a child and challenged me to a race over the final metres to the bay. The crewmen were squatting on the waterfront. They smoked and chatted as dawn broke. The day was still unfolding as we lifted anchor and sailed south.

  By mid afternoon we had dropped anchor off the town of Zakynthos. In the evening we strolled through arcaded streets to the opera house. A sun that had risen over Ithaca was now sinking over Zakynthos Bay. My father walked like an aristocrat in his one and only suit. From his waistcoat there hung a fob watch on a gold chain. We milled in the foyer surrounded by perfumed ladies in evening gowns and men in tailcoats and top hats. ‘For a night we join the Venetian aristocracy,’ my father joked.

  A touring Italian opera-company performed The Barber of Seville. Members of the audience hissed when they detected a false note, and shouted bravo when an aria moved them. Within hours of the final curtain we were back at sea, sailing north. We dropped anchor in Frikes Bay one full day after we left, and trudged the final flight of steps into the village as the first rays of the sun lit the dome of St Marina’s. It was to become one of the few memories of my father.

  Carpets of spring flowers began to appear on the upper slopes. My father stretched his arms, rubbed the winter from his eyes, and I knew the time had come. That final year I was old enough to help. For days I worked with the crew to repair and ready the boat. When the repairs were done, we dragged the brig into the water and loaded it with wine, oil and currants. We hauled slabs of limestone from Kioni on horse-drawn carts, and lowered them into the hold to serve as ballast.

  ‘What choice do I have?’ my father said on the day he left, but in my twelve-year-old eyes he seemed as excited to be leaving as he would have been, months later, to return. My rage increased as the brig inched out of sight. I wanted to leap from the quay and force the crew to take me. As soon as the boat disappeared my vigil began. I returned to the summit and came to know what sky and ocean share in common: transparent flight paths and sea lanes, one belonging to migratory birds, the other to sailors and traders.

  When boats appeared on the horizon my heart tightened. Each vessel was a potential return. There was always a boat en route ferrying unknown crew and cargo. I charted the ship’s slow progress until, just as it seemed that it would always remain within sight, it would be gone. I longed to penetrate the mystery. Where did journeys end? Did they ever end? What lay beyond the beyond? What was my father doing at this moment?

  I returned to the house lost in wild imaginings. My mother sat in the kitchen with her friends. I stood in the doorway and listened as they talked. They did not speak of their absent husbands. They did not speculate on where they may be, or where they were headed. They discussed their crops and laid plans for the harvest. They exchanged remedies for the ailments of their children and livestock. Only once did I hear my father mentioned. ‘When he is gone,’ Erasmia said, ‘I feel dead inside.’ She shrugged her shoulders and returned to work.

  That year my father did not return. A sudden heart attack claimed him. It was a common enough tale. He was dead by the time the brig reached the nearest port. The bells of St Marina marked his passing. The villagers were accustomed to such news. By nightfall the house was crowded. They came to ensure that Erasmia and I were not alone long enough to fall prey to our thoughts, and they came night after night for weeks on end.

  The kitchen was thick with smoke and talk. The women brewed coffee, poured brandy, delivered food, shrugged their shoulders and intoned, ‘Ti na kanoume. Ti na kanoume. What can we do? What can we do?’ The men clicked their worry beads and muttered, ‘Ola ine tikhe, ola ine tikhe. All is luck, all is fate.’ The younger women fought to restrain their thoughts from turning to their men at sea. The children, accustomed to absent fathers, soon forgot the reason for the gathering and ran wild, while the older men and women turned to their grandchildren and murmured, ‘zoie se sas,’ life to you.

  I retreated to the summit. For weeks I scanned the horizon as if expecting my father’s return. I knew it was a futile quest, but the windy heights swept away errant thoughts and lifted me above the lament. It was Old Niko who brought me back to earth. I was returning to the village when, without warning, he was beside me.

  ‘I have something to show you,’ he said. I did not resist. I no longer cared. For the first time his vagrant smell did not disturb me. I followed him to his hovel. We sat outside, I on a rock, and Niko on a wicker chair. He leaned back, closed his eyes and burped away the previous night’s drinking.

  ‘I sailed with Dimitri, your father, many times,’ he remarked. ‘He was a skilled seaman, a cunning trader.’ Niko laid out two glasses and filled them with wine. ‘Exo ta vasana!’ he exclaimed, lifting his glass. ‘Out with our troubles! And to your father, an honourable man.’

  Niko swept his free arm in an expansive arc over the houses scattered about us. ‘Built in retreat from pirates,’ he said. ‘Exogi was founded centuries before you and I were dreamt of. The islands were a temptation for passing corsairs. We withdrew to the heights and kept an eye on the seas.

  ‘Mind you, we were marauders when we had the chance. More than once our ancestors hid by the shores and allowed the pirates to advance inland to plunder. While the pirates were gone they stole their boats, and waited. And when they returned flushed with their loot, the pirates were ambushed and killed to the last man. Life on the Ionian was retreat and attack, raid or be raided.

  ‘One day soon that time will return,’ Niko declared. ‘The blood will flow again in torrents. I can smell it. We are a village born of fear, but it brought us close to the skies.’

  Old Niko spoke slowly at first, in a drawl that I can hear to this day. Or perhaps this is how I imagine it. It doesn’t matter. There comes a time when memories and imaginings are inextricably entwined.

  ‘When the threat receded we ventured back,’ he continued. ‘The lower villages were our new offspring, and the lower slopes, a chance to carve new terraces. We reclaimed our bays, restored our boats, and returned to sea. It was the surest way of making a living on this rock-infested isle. No matter how many terraces we clawed out of the mountain, there was never enough to sustain us.’

  The evening chill was descending. Niko invited me inside. He lit a lantern and held it over a sea-trunk, his one sturdy piece of furniture. The trunk was filled with nautical charts, maps and atlases. ‘It is the fate of Ithacans to be governed by maps,’ he said, as he unfurled one over the table.

  ‘And first among them is this map of Ithaca. From afar it is a mass of limestone that juts out from, and plummets back into, the sea. See how it is made up of two fat landmasses, one to the north, the other south. See how the masses narrow to an isthmus slim as a heron’s neck. One day, an earthquake will cut the island in two,’ Niko laughed.

  He refilled his glass and toasted St Nicholas, patron of harbours and sailors, and his ancient predecessor, Poseidon, jealous god of the seas. He toasted Zeus, the cloud gatherer, and Aeolus, lord of the winds. He toasted seamen past and present, and wished them all well. Each toast o
f mine was restricted to one mouthful, in case he was accused of getting a twelve-year-old drunk. Finally he toasted the two of us, by which time we were both as unsteady on our legs as if making our way from the island over angry swells.

  ‘Now that we are on our way,’ said Niko, ‘and before we lose sight of Ithaca, let us start as all good tales should. Arkhe tou paramythiou. Kalispera sas. The fairytale begins. Good evening to you.’ In that moment, despite the smell of damp, the hovel filled with warmth. Niko’s tale became mine and as I recount it, many years later, I no longer know which fragments I owe to Niko, and which to others I have met who undertook the same journey.

  ‘Your father joined his father who had once joined his father on the annual voyage to the Black Sea, driven by a hunger for wheat,’ Niko began. ‘I was a member of his crew many times. We sailed south, and rounded the Peloponnisos to Kavos Maleas. Each sea had its hazards, and in the Aegean it is the Meltemi winds. They sneak up on you in clear weather, and we had to fight to prevent them hurling us off course.

  ‘We moved east as far as Lesbos, turned north by the lighthouse of Sigrion, and sailed into seas where Greeks are still lorded over by Turks. We berthed in Lesbos and sensed the uneasy truce between the conquered and cursed. We followed the coast of Asia-Minor, and dropped anchor off the island of Tenedos, where we sheltered from gales blowing from Anatolia.’

  Old Niko unfurled a second map. ‘British admiralty maps,’ he stressed. ‘Whatever is said about the English we can trust their nautical charts. See how the sea contracts when we enter the Dardenelles.’ I followed Niko’s index finger as it traced the route from the Aegean to the Narrows. ‘On the western shores rise the rocky slopes of Gallipoli,’ he pointed out. ‘See how it juts into the Aegean. Just inside the entrance, stands the fort of Kilitbahir, and on the opposite shore, the town of Canakkale.

  ‘Kilitbahir means lock of the sea,’ Niko explained. ‘And that is how it is: once a boat leaves the Aegean and enters the Narrows, it is locked in. Whenever we approached the entrance I thought of the blood that has been spilt here. Xerxes, millennia ago, led his Persian army from Asia Minor to Europe to strike at the heart of Greece. He marched his troops over the water via a pontoon formed of boats. Odysseus and the armies of Agamemnon and Menelaus, battled for years to capture nearby Troy. Empires have fought, and will continue to fight, to control this wretched strait.

  ‘Even the currents were against us. Beneath the surface current runs a dense counter-current, conveying the warmer waters of the Aegean, but above it, and against us, flowed the cold waters of the Black Sea.’

  Niko paused. Outside the wind was rising, beating against the walls. Inside, within the hovel, we were becalmed. The minutes stretched at their leisure as Niko poured himself another glass. He stood up and paced the room. His pace quickened, and with it, the tempo of his tale.

  ‘At night the Strait swarmed with boats that did not possess lights. The sea has its share of wankers who create havoc. Our spirits lifted when we moved beyond the Narrows into the Sea of Marmara. We sailed towards the Bosporus lured by the sight of minarets sharp as fishmongers’ tongues. I held my breath each time we veered from the Bosporus into the Golden Horn. Even giaours, infidel dogs like us, admire the city’s beauty. We may hate the Ottomans, but we are smitten by Constantinople and remain captive to the megali ithea, our wretched longing for the return of the city to its Byzantine days.

  ‘We dropped anchor among skiffs and barges, coal-powered steamships, and lighters. We moored between every type of boat known to man: caiques and gondolas, yachts piloted by aristocrats, Russian mail-boats, high-masted schooners, armour-plated frigates, corvettes, ocean liners, and our own Ionian trehadiri and brigs.’ Niko cupped his hands over his ears. ‘I can still hear it: the sighing of oars, the crack of the sails, the chant of the Muezzin from minaret galleries, the cry of navigators nervously steering their vessels in the teeming port.’

  Niko’s love of knowledge seemed to groan within him like the sigh of the hovel’s rotting beams. It was Niko who induced in me a love of languages. He proposed toasts to individual words, but Niko would use any pretext for a drink.

  ‘Dissect a word and you will extract its essence,’ he said. ‘Take the word port, from the Latin portus, meaning door. We see it in our Italo-Ionian porta. A port is a doorway to other worlds and the two-pronged Golden Horn is a perfect port, an amphitheatre as beautiful as our Vathy. The entire sublime-stinking drama called life unfolded before our eyes when we stepped through this door. The stench of a thousand farts mingled with bittersweet spices and perfumes. And everyone, even those of us who could only spare a day or two in port, swarmed through the arched entrance to the Great Bazaar.

  ‘I would go there with your father. We stepped into a labyrinth of squares and fountains, crossways and alleys. We strolled beneath leaded cupolas and arcades of chequered stone. We jostled alongside plodding camels, ladies in sedans, merchants on horseback, and inspected entire streets devoted to one object: camel saddles, discarded weaponry, Turkish slippers, mountains of prayer mats and gilded Korans.’

  Niko was on his feet, dancing about the hovel. The walls emitted the accumulated stench of spirits and cigarettes, the latest of which Niko clenched between his lips. ‘Listen,’ he said, again cupping his hands to his ears. ‘Listen to the voices of merchants climbing over each other like ants scrambling for air. Cosmos is the most beautiful of words. Cosmos is a straining for perfection out of chaos. Cosmos means harmony, but first we must enter the chaos and withstand the howling of wild dogs.

  ‘I strolled the streets beside Dimitri and saw the mongrel in us all, the traces of every race on earth, and the lie to our vanities about pure blood and superior ways. Arabs, Persians, Circassians, Negroes and desert Bedouins, eunuchs from Abyssinia, merchants and travellers from every corner of God’s earth, or the devil’s earth if you prefer, collided in the alleys of the bazaar. Constantinople was host to every breed of human that has crawled on this wretched globe.

  ‘In front of their stalls stood the merchants, Turk and Armenian, Greek and Jew, entreating in competing tongues: “Please. Please. Signore. Caballero. Kyrie. Good sir. Please maestro, artista, connoisseur, dearest friend, come and look. I beg you, excellenza, my brother and treasured guest, may the Lord, praised be his name, be with you and your families, and with your ancestors and gods. Come! It cannot hurt. I am a humble merchant and my prices are better than my neighbours’ who are all thieves, may they burn in hell. Trust only me. Come, feel the material on your cheeks. Lift it to your nose. Inhale its fragrance. Taste it if you wish.

  ‘“All roads, sea routes and mule paths lead here, to this shop. All caravans and camels with flies gathered on their arses find their way to my emporium. See what they bring me—cashmeres from India, linens from Hindustan, carpets from Caramania, muslins from Bengal, shawls from Madras, tinted tissues from Cairo, porcelain crockery from England, black mastic from Chios. Chew it and forget where you are. Sit down. Take the load off your feet. Have a coffee spiced with cardamom, sweets from Smyrna, mint tea from Anatolia, a second cup. Take your time.

  ‘“Yes. Yes. I am speaking fast, but I cannot help but be proud of my wares: Oriental spices, pickles, powders and pomades. Tablets for every ailment, and potions that allow your penis to swell donkey-size and remain hard and erect until you have satisfied an entire harem, let alone your mistress or, if need be, your wife.”’

  The hovel was whirling, the dirt floor shaking and Niko was dancing his hop-like dance. ‘And the women,’ he said with a lecherous wink, ‘the glimpse of a face beneath a veil, or the thigh of a streetwalker gleaming white beside a gas-lamp late at night, would drive us mad. We knew where to find them, just as we knew where to find them in every port. Syphilis is the seaman’s most reliable export.

  ‘On the way, in our excitement, we tripped over litters of pariah pups cowering at the teats of their mangy mothers, and side-stepped dogs dozing and sniffing, rutting and howling in the orifices of a
rcades and alleys. We scattered pigeons perched on mosques, congregating in courtyards, clinging to rafters, and messenger pigeons bearing missives from far-flung strangers scrawled in unknown tongues.’

  Niko pirouetted towards his climax. ‘Your father loved Constantinople!’ he exclaimed, pointing at me. ‘He was a man of style, dressed in his best as he strolled the bazaar, a carnation in his lapel, his moustache waxed, oiled hair slicked back. He moved about the Greek quarter, sought out friends, sat with them in coffee houses, and smoked the narghile. Dimitri was a levendi, a palikari, an honourable man.

  ‘Enough. I am tired,’ said Niko, abruptly. ‘The night is old. The journey is long, but before we continue we need a good night’s sleep. I am going to bed. And tomorrow night the same.’

  I walked home my head pounding with possibilities I had never dreamt of. Above me the summit brooded, a black outline against the night. In the waters beyond the Marmakas fishermen were spreading their nets. Beyond them stretched sea-lanes on which I saw myself sailing with my father and generations of Thiaks.

  There are nights we remember for the rest of our lives, nights that tremble with mysteries. I thought of my father squeezing through the Narrows, vanishing over yet another swell. Lost at sea. Lost in the crowd. Lost in the skies. Lost in the cosmos.

  Niko bellows the word: Cosmos, cosmos, cosmos, and I am falling through space, from the cosmos to the summit, from summit to shore, moving out to sea, sailing in ravines cut like deep wounds between mountains. Armies march over the bloodied channel, and I am locked in. The mountains lean closer. I try to prise them apart, but they are made of rock, and I am nothing but sinew and tendon, vein and artery, windpipe, pulsating lungs. I gasp for breath and wake up choking, relieved to see the summit through the window, free-standing. Breathing. Breathing. Breathing me back from my dreams.