Reflections on a Marine Venus: A Companion to the Landscape of Rhodes

by Lawrence Durrell

  Writing poetry educates one into the nature of the game—which is humanity’s profoundest activity. In their star dances the savages try to unite their lives to those of the heavenly bodies—to mix their quotidian rhythms into those great currents which keep the wheels of the universe turning. Poetry attempts to provide much the same sort of link between the muddled inner man with his temporal preoccupations and the uniform flow of the universe outside. Of course everyone is conscious of these impulses; but poets are the only people who do not drive them off.

  Poems, like watercolors, should be left to dry properly before you alter them—six months or six hours according to the paints you use.

  These reflections are the fruit of an afternoon spent alone, reading under a cypress tree on Mount Phileremo. The valley of Maritsa lay below, its soft creamy limestone carved in a million places by the winter torrents, and overgrown with shrubs until each fissure looked like a mouth half covered in a golden beard. The gaunt burnt-out skeleton of the airdrome beneath with its charred aircraft was a reminder that one was, after all, in the world; for the air of Phileremo is so rare that one might be forgiven for imagining oneself in some more successful dimension where the hero had finally mastered himself, and where the act had somehow become connected once more with the concept of love. The Hellenic fountain breathed quietly, half asleep.

  Manoli sits on the sunny wharf all morning working at the tattered seines upon which he depends for a livelihood. His hands are like battered horns, blunt and dirty, yet the evolutions they perform among the heavy swathes of net are as finished and delicate as those of a lace maker. He sings as he works, in a voice of gravel, his lips pursed about the sail maker’s needle. He is clad in sailcloth breeches and a coarse woolen shirt. His tangle of silver hair has been pushed under a dirty cloth cap to which his daughter has fastened a rose with a pin. No morning would be complete without a chat with this fragrant old ruffian who carries in his voice, gesture, intonation, the whole flavor of the Aegean. Manoli’s feet are swollen by saltwater, and have obviously never been cramped by shoes. He holds his spare needles and wax between his toes. His finger joints, too, have been stretched and blown up by rheumatism until they look like sausages.

  His sixty-year-old body reminds me of some ancient boat, cankered and swollen at the seams from years of sea work; yet his heart is in repair still, and with it that marvelous natural intelligence which is only to be found among the semi-literate. His daughter reads the newspaper to him. His interest in world politics is a consuming passion and it is wonderful how clearly he reads between the lines of a conference or a speech to deduce at once its failure or success, its truth or intrinsic falsity. He is a much keener judge of affairs than his counterpart in England would be; yet a poorer judge of Greek matter than any child-domestic Rhodian affairs, that is.

  “Finland is waking up,” he says oracularly.

  “Do you think they will give in to Russia?”

  “Naturally.”

  “I don’t.”

  “You are English. They never see things before they happen. The English are very slow.”

  “And what about the Greeks?”

  “The Greeks are fast … piff … paff … They decide.”

  “But each one decides differently.”

  “That is individualism.”

  “But it leads to chaos.”

  “We like chaos.”

  “Manoli, what do you most like doing?”

  “Sitting about, drinking.”

  “What would you do if you became dictator of the world?”

  “I should say to everybody: ‘Stop. At once. We will change everything.”

  “And if they did not stop?”

  “Then I should cause a revolution.”

  He laughs harshly at the hopelessness of the situation—the human no less than his own personal situation as a dictator. And, since he is Greek, his immediate reaction is typical. “If I thought it hopeless I should take all the money I could steal from the Government and retire into private life.”

  “And then?”

  “And then the world would be exactly where it is now. At least I would not have made it any worse.”

  His laughter has no cynicism in it. But he has seen enough not to nourish delusive hopes. He is not at odds with his experience; he has been forced, so to speak, to swallow it, this great weight of bitterness, to accommodate and digest it; and the process of acceptance has given him a kind of joy—a watertight happiness which plays about his face and gestures, investing them with a strange kinetic beauty. Speaking of the EAM, for example, he said yesterday: “They come to deliver us from poverty. God knows, we need that. But they will end in enslaving us with other evils. God knows, we do not want that.” His style of expression is always gravitating towards the proverb—the only literary form with which he is familiar. “Take away my poverty but can you give me the happiness which I have in here?” touching that shaggy chest with his fist.

  No. His happiness is his own work, cultivated like the tiny pot of basil in the window of his house, by patience and the bitter harmony of experience. “But to remove poverty is something,” I say. He nods. “It is very much. But there are many selfish people in the world. Whichever donkey it is, they will always reach the saddle.”

  “But you could reach the saddle with better education, book learning.” Manoli lights a cigarette and exhales a long voluptuous streamer into the blue. He hops about like a crow among the nets for a moment. Then he takes off his cap, sniffs the rose, and replaces it. “Who can say what I should gain—and what I should lose?”

  Who indeed?

  How often have I not been into the little churchyard behind the Mosque of Murad Reis? Then how is it that only today I saw the house which I would like to live in? It is buried in overhanging trees, and hidden in a triple circle of oleanders and rhododendrons; it consists of a tiny studio, bedroom and bathroom. That is all. A colored table built round the trunk of a baobab tree makes a shady dining room. Outside the shrubbery the Turkish tombstones lie with the yellowish sickle-shaped eucalyptus leaves drifting over them. I stand listening to my own breathing in all that silence. The green foliage seems to blot out all the sound of passersby upon the main road which is quite near. It is simply a matchbox of a house, but its situation is more beautiful than anything I could have imagined possible so near to the ugly hotel. It is untenanted too, for its owner has been repatriated to Italy.

  “Rising Jupiter means luck in Springtime” says the horoscope which the great astrologer Moricand once cast for me in Paris. I know this is true now, for Martin, the lively and good natured South African major who is responsible for Rhodes, has told me that I can have the house provided the Mufti does not object to a Christian living on the edge of the Turkish churchyard. I call upon the dignitary one morning on my way to work, and find him in his little courtyard paved with white and grey sea pebbles, sipping coffee and—miracle of miracles—talking to Hoyle in Turkish. “I did not know you knew each other” I say. Hoyle introduces me. The Mufti is a meek-mannered man dressed in elastic-sided boots, who smokes his cigarette in an ebony cigarette holder. Typically enough he speaks not a word of Greek. I say “typically enough” because it seems to be a characteristic of Turkish communities outside Turkey. As a nation they are the most withdrawn and the most secretive of any I have met. This does not imply either lack of spontaneity or of goodwill—they have a great measure of both. But the centuries of religious difference have given each Moslem Turk the look of a walled city. In Rhodes they live like moles behind barred windows, inside walled gardens, full of orange trees; as a community they are not divided internally as the Greeks are by petty jealousies and schisms, nor externally by a multiplicity of political interests. If you wish to know what the Turkish community thinks on any given subject you have only to ask the Mufti—for it is he who thinks for them. Yet to judge by his face as he sits now, listening to Hoyle pleading for me in his best KC’s manner, you would think he had the greatest
difficulty in holding an idea in his head for two consecutive minutes. He wrinkles his face and pushes back his turban with the index finger of his right hand as the argument proceeds with its succession of single syllable puffs and grunts. As far as I can see Hoyle’s oratorical methods are flawless. At any rate the Mufti cannot think of a single objection to his new tenant. We shake hands warmly and I make him a little speech in Greek to which he replies in Turkish. Neither of us understands the other, but we are both prompted by a sense of social propriety in the matter of compliments. Our agreement is cemented by a visit to the grave of Hascmet, the Turkish satirical poet, who lies buried in a small walled enclosure in one corner of the courtyard. The tomb is chipped and stained by rain. A goat munches and scratches round it, tethered to a dwarf eucalyptus by the wall. I put my hand to the gravestone and feel the warmth of the sun upon it. Who was Hascmet,* and how did he come to be exiled here, to this forgotten graveyard full of the sedate tombs of Turkish civil servants? It is an after dinner problem for Gideon to solve. But meanwhile the house is mine.

  We walk back now, the three of us, across the melancholy but beautiful churchyard, pausing from time to time in the shade of the tall flowing trees as Hoyle deciphers the lettering on a tomb, or offers the Mufti a chocolate from the little silver box he always carries about with him in his pocket. Our feet crunch the crisp sickles of eucalyptus leaf underfoot as we walk. The graveyard is in a sad state of disrepair. Many of the tombs have fallen to pieces, and in places the loose drift of leaves has half obscured others. The majority of those who lie buried here are Turkish civil servants. A few are political exiles. The gravestone records the sex of its tenant; with a heavy marble turban surmounting it, in the case of a man, and with a sort of marble pineapple in the case of a woman. The greater dignitaries have a small vault to themselves—a sort of stone sentry box with a domed roof and barred windows. But now with wind and weather many of the stone turbans have been blown off and lie about in the pathways like heads blown from statues. We skirt the final row of tombs and plunge into the dense thicket of oleander which hides the house. A path suddenly appears, and following it we come upon the Villa Cleobolus with its beds of tiger lilies and the great baobab tree which rubs its outer wall. Hoyle too has noticed the peculiar density of the silence here for he says: “Listen,” and raises his hand. We stand and listen to our own breathing. Remote, beyond the curtain of silence, the noise of quotidian traffic sounds from the road beyond. But so dense is the green that it is as if the house and garden were under a glass bell. The Mufti nods his head, as if in agreement, and blows the smoking dottle from his cigarette holder on to the path. “He says you will be happy here” says Hoyle.

  St. Constantine’s Day is a day of coronation for the fig and the pomegranate; the owner of the trees pays them a special visit and crowns them with wreaths of oleander and wild marjoram. The peasants call this “getting engaged,” and the object of the ceremony is to make the trees bear. If, adds the story, the owner omits this ceremony and does not visit his trees, they imagine him to have died and from sadness do not bear. Contemporary beliefs suggest that asphodels should not be picked, as this hinders the orchards from bearing.

  Four little Turkish children walking hand-in-hand. The eldest, a fat-faced boy of perhaps nine, is smoking a cigarette and laying down the law. They do not see us in the shade of the olive tree until we are practically face to face. Then they halt in confusion and turn tail. We greet them in Greek but they do not reply. We are infidels. The smallest turns her head and spits as she runs. In a moment all the horrors of Egypt rise to mind: the suffocating beastliness of Islam and all it stands for, bigotry, cruelty and ignorance. Yet here all the jagged edges of the faith have been filed away; the minarets rise above the marketplace with slender grace, the call of the muezzin sounds soft and musical in the dawn light. The patriarchal face of the Mufti in his scarlet fez and elastic-sided boots, moodily smoking a cigarette in the courtyard of the mosque and greeting the faithful. Rhodes has converted Islam and made it part of the island’s green and gentle self.

  Whitewash, some colored pottery, and a few pieces of bright curtain material have transformed the little Villa Cleobolus into as delightful a studio as one could wish for. For the last week E has been busy, diving into the Turkish quarter to buy these commodities as cheaply as possible. Now the work is done and I am at last allowed to see it. Bed, table and bookcase have been borrowed from the Custodian of Enemy Property. The pottery is a laral gift from Egon Huber. The curtains, the bright peasant rug, and the Turkish bedspread which depicts a billowy princess with eyebrows like watercolor brushes playing a lute under a peepul tree cost us in all ten pounds. I am absolutely speechless with happiness. So much so indeed that E thinks for a moment that I do not like it. “Is there something wrong?” she asks. No, there is nothing wrong. But the feeling of privacy and space round one after so many years of living from suitcases and sharing flats is something one will have to get used to again; we stretch out our arms in that tiny room—as if they were antennae, exploring the free space around ourselves, turning about: sitting now in this chair, now in that. Space, light and solitude will have to be rediscovered again here, in all their ramifications. The silence seems saturated with a thousand forgotten essences: contained and held, somehow, in the bright peasant carpet, the crude warm pottery of Rhodes on which Huber has traced so lovingly these dancing figures, this silver-green olive tree, this donkey trotting along a dusty road. It is much the same feeling as comes over one when a poem forms in the mind, its outlines misty, inchoate: until the white paper on which you have scribbled a dozen words and crossed them out, blazes in your face like a searchlight and paralyzes you by the multiplicity of possibilities it presents, by the silence it opposes to your inner tension.

  While we are still walking about the little room the door bursts open to admit Gideon and Hoyle and a cask of red wine with which, they say, they propose to “inaugurate” the house. It is a happy thought. We retire to the little clearing which is to be our dining room, and set ourselves down at the colored table which has been built around the baobab tree. This is to be the first of many such evenings I hope—evenings spent in idle gossip and content, until the night falls and the candles are lit, and in the rosy pool they have scooped from the darkness I can see the faces of my friends: Gideon protesting so violently that his monocle falls out, Hoyle smiling his preoccupied little smiles, Mills managing to talk and laugh all in the same breath, and E with her splendid dark head propped on her arm listening to them and smiling.

  Later, when they have gone, I walk about the churchyard for a while, listening to rustle of falling leaves among the tombs, and watching the moon rise slowly from the sea.

  “I should have knocked perhaps; but coming silently into the darkened room of the Villa Cleobolus (the room you had taken so much trouble to furnish) I found you sleeping on the divan, one arm behind your head, your warm cheek pressed to the painted face of the Turkish lovers on the counterpane. You had been crying in your sleep, for I saw a tear on your dark lashes. It could only have been with happiness to have escaped to this island. Beside you on the bedside table lay the unfinished letter to your parents. A sad childhood is a poor preparation for unexpected happiness. Cheer up, you have escaped. By the time you wake and read this I shall be swimming. Come and bathe before tea.”

  Among the more singular inhabitants of the town is the man whom Hoyle has christened “The Baron Baedeker.” He is to be seen wherever there is a function, a display, a procession of any kind, darting in and out of the crowd, his coattails flying. Over his shoulder he carries the kind of short stepladder that shoe salesmen use to reach their more inaccessible wares. From time to time he pauses, grounds his ladder, and climbing to the top of it leans over with a camera between his hands to take a photograph.

  The Baron is a tall and finely built man, whose silver hair is cut strictly en brosse over his large and sheep-like head. He wears clothes reminiscent of a German diplomat of t
he old school—a faded frock coat, dark trousers, and a black tie knotted round a celluloid collar. His glasses are very powerful and his grey eyes swim in the pear-shaped lenses with a sweet and reproachful mildness. Whatever the crowd and whatever its size, the Baron’s figure may be seen emerging from various parts of it like some strange flower, to hang for a moment by his elbows as he takes a photograph. He is festooned with cameras of different sizes. He palpitates with earnestness.

  During the first few weeks of the occupation the Baron succeeded in utterly demoralizing the Brigadier who was a bad public speaker. “Every time I make a speech,” he told Gideon, “I have only to look up and I see that obscene tulip of a man leering at me off a ladder and aiming something at me. Find out who he is and why he looks so like an UFA spy, will you?”

  The bulge in the Baron’s hip pocket is not, as the Brigadier surmised, caused by a gun but by a Bible. So much I discovered when he came to visit me yesterday in order to persuade me to buy some prints from him for use in the newspaper.

  He is Greek, born in Asia Minor, and his real name is Panagiotis Kalopodas. He is so devout as almost to be angelic. He has practiced photography for fifteen years in Rhodes and for the last ten has been the representative of the Foreign Bible Society—which perhaps accounts for the sobriety of his dress. “I am known in Rhodes as an honorable man,” he observed once during the course of our talk, with a simplicity that was most disarming. “Even the Germans, sir, treated me with respect.” In those clothes who could help it?

  His photograph albums constitute a unique history of the island which he guards most jealously. “One evening I shall show you them all,” he says. “I have recorded everything—even the visit of Goebbels.”

  As for the Nereids—they are the presiding spirits of these islands; almost every spring is haunted by them, and everywhere in the long verdant valleys beyond Monte Smith you will find dells and glades where the circles of daisies mark their dancing floors. They are benign spirits, fond of running water and shade; though not all their manifestations are harmless, and the superstitious fear them. All the half-witted children are supposed to have been bewitched by Nereids and woe to the man who unwittingly intrudes upon one of their dances, for they will force him to join in and dance till he drops. Once upon a time near Aphando, where the dates were supposed once to grow, and where now the fig trees stand in their solid lowering stances, like crocodiles, heavy with fruit; in Aphando there was a shepherdess who had lately borne a child. She was on her way up the hill to her sheepfold when she came upon a group of Nereids dancing. She began to run, but they overtook her; but on her back, in her little bag, she carried the swaddling clothes of the child, and when the Nereids touched her they recoiled, crying, “It burns. It burns.” A Nereid could only bear a changeling.