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

by Lawrence Durrell

  As for the Crusaders, you must hunt for them today in the folk-songs, in the superstitions. Here and there, too, you may find gleams reflected from their chivalry in the border ballads of the country; or their influence in the workmanship of old weapons—styles borrowed by the smiths of Constantinople and adapted to their own style. Pottery, too. In the pottery styles of some periods you may see the influence brought to bear by heartsick Turkish or Persian prisoners, who solaced themselves in their exile by painting plates which even today give back an echo of their oriental homesickness.

  Even this garden of the Villa Cleobolus where I write these lines.… Though it still lies on the site of the Grand Master’s garden, its appearance must have changed at least a dozen times since those days. Nevertheless the little groups of tombs like sentry boxes, the marble gravestones with their flowing Arabic inscriptions, make a not ineffective monument to that lost epoch; even though to the eye of an initiate they are of a later period—the graves of Turkish civil servants who died of boredom and overeating in small consular posts, or of political exiles who wore out their hearts waiting for an amnesty. The grove of eucalyptus trees towers over them all, the drifts of autumn leaves rain down on them. Each year they have to be dug out afresh from the mounds of leaf mold, to be renovated. And even now as I write these dry sickle-shaped leaves are breaking off and planing down, spinning like propellers as they fall upon the blue table.

  * The present Phileremo.

  Lesser Visitations

  HOYLE HAS BEEN seriously ill after his operation and poor Mills has been almost beside himself with anxiety. However after a relapse and a blood transfusion, Hoyle has rallied and is now permitted visitors. He lies in the dazzling white room he chose for himself at the Hospital, his hands folded on the red counterpane, staring out at the cypresses and the sea. I am touched by the pathos of his glance, by the magical composure of his face. The room is full of violets gathered by Chloe and dressed in green china bowls made for Hoyle by Huber. Here he lies like a mandarin with a few choice dictionaries beside his bed.

  “As you get old,” he says, “it gets harder to grab hold of life. This time my fingers nearly slipped.”

  He is still rather weak and we take it in turns to read to him. “Thank God it’s you this afternoon. I am beginning to hate Gideon. Yesterday he ate all my grapes and insisted on reading a book I didn’t want to read at all—just because he was in the middle of it himself. He gave me such a muddled synopsis of it, too, that I could hardly make head or tail of it. Then he borrowed my Turkish dictionary and brought it back full of breadcrumbs and grease marks. What is one to do with the fellow?”

  We read or chat away the afternoons.

  Deep-scented groves of Profeta with those magical carpets of peonies; and everywhere in the dense tree-scapes of the mountain the breathless promise of deer. The deer you see on the vases, perhaps, with the liquid melting almond-shaped eyes. Great bundles of conglomerate rise out of the green glades. Rock and grass. But the Germans killed all the deer when they were starving.

  Manoli told me a story today which I jotted down in my notebook. It is too good, in a sense, ever to make material for a short-story writer. Sometimes life itself borrows the forms of art, and the sort of story told by life is only fit to transcribe raw, without premeditation.

  St. Pantaleimon is a tiny village buried so deeply among the foothills around Taygetus that for weeks its inhabitants did not know that the Germans had overrun Greece. The occasional aircraft they saw only made them wonder what celebrations were going forward in Athens. Had Greek troops entered Rome? The village consisted entirely of grey beards except for three small boys aged about ten who kept the flocks. The oldest of these was Niko, a spade-bearded patriarch of eighty, tough as holm-oak. Well, one day the news came (Manoli talking), and Niko summoned a conference. Apparently Greece had fallen and they were surrounded by Germans. Doubtless these would soon appear. It was up to St. Pantaleimon to resist them. Accordingly all the old men furbished up their flintlocks, and looked to their ammunition. There was little enough of it. Enough for one good volley, perhaps, but they were determined that the Germans should have it. Weeks passed and nothing happened.

  Then a runner came up from the valley to say that a German patrol was on its way.

  The village elders took up ambush positions at the mouth of a defile—the only entry to the village. They heard noises. Presently a strong patrol of Germans came in sight—but alas! They were driving before them the whole flock of sheep and the three young shepherds whom they had captured on the hill. In a flash Niko saw what was going to happen. He drew a deep breath and hesitated. The ambushed Germans were unaware of the rifles pointing at them. Then Niko commended his soul to God and standing up roared “Fire.” The children fell with the rest.

  The “evil eye” is a well-known Mediterranean superstition. Most children, all valuable beasts of burden—and by extension all motorcars, wear the familiar blue beads which can avert the malediction of anyone who has what Ovid calls “the double pupil of the eye.” This week there was rather an amusing crisis involving this deeply-rooted belief. The seven refurbished taxis of Rhodes had just been licensed to circulate and great was the rejoicing when it was announced that from Tuesday next the taxi rank on the pier would contain seven road-worthy vehicles. On Tuesday however nothing happened. It seems that there were no blue beads to tie on the radiators. The vehicles were in hourly danger of being blighted by the evil eye if they should circulate without this precaution. Moreover there seemed none available for sale in the town. The Administration was nonplussed. The Brigadier sent for me: “Is it true,” he said, “that these bloody lunatics won’t circulate without lucky charms tied to their bloody bonnets?” I explained what I knew of the terrible powers of the evil eye, of how in the past innocent taxis had been struck dead in their tracks by the power of a witch; had developed carburetor trouble or the pitiful state of wasting away known as “slow puncture.” He was not impressed by this. “Honestly,” he said, “they really drive one crazy. I can’t think what you see in them. Now the Swahili.…” When he had finished telling me how superior the Swahili were he said: “Well, I suppose we’ll have to signal Cairo for some blue beads. They’ll think I’ve gone out of my mind. Sometimes I think it won’t be long before I do.”

  The situation, however, was saved by Martin, the young South African who is virtually mayor of Rhodes. He came into the room at this moment and said “It’s all right, sir. I’ve issued them with saints.” The Brigadier threw up his hands. “You’ve done what?”

  “I got them an issue of saints from the Archbishop. They’re quite happy now.”

  It was a happy stroke, Martin had prevailed upon the clergy to provide seven “assorted saints” as he called them—those little tin medallions with a colored saint on them. These they had happily tacked on to the dashboard of their taxis.

  If you should happen to admire a pretty child or a beautiful animal in the presence of the mother or owner, it is only common politeness, as well as firmly established custom, to turn your head aside, spit thrice, and mutter the charm (“may it not be blighted”). This is not merely a nostrum against the evil eye, though it serves its purpose in this context as well. Huber tells me that this is a custom of the greatest antiquity; in fact the of the ancient Greeks, who warded off the vengeance of Nemesis in this fashion. Conversely if you see someone afflicted by some terrible illness you can guard yourself and your own family against it by the same charm. Gideon has contracted the habit in the course of his cattle appraising and spits with great abandon whenever he stops to discuss a prize hog or pat a peasant’s child. Perhaps the old English custom of spitting on a silver coin before pocketing it is a remnant of the same belief.

  Mills has been away in the south of the island with Chloe, who combines the roles of wife and nurse with equal skill. It is his habit to scribble me a few lines from time to time, asking me to convey messages to his hospital, or to arrange for drugs to be motored
out to him. Here is a typical passage from a letter:

  I was called out some days ago to a village near Siana, unpronounceable name. A farmer’s pregnant ass had been gored by a bull. It had aborted, poor thing, and stood in the middle of the field beside the dead foal with its intestines hanging down to the ground through a wound eight inches long. An attempt had been made by the villagers to sew up the rent with silk but it had broken down at once. I gave the patient 3 grains of morphia and had it lifted off its feet on to its side. Chloe and I then bathed its guts in saltwater to clean out the dirt. We popped them back into the abdomen with plenty of sulphon-amide and did a complete surgical repair to the laceration. This took over two hours, terribly exhausting. At the end of it the donkey got to its feet and took some water out of a pail. I ordered it water and milk for a day and then a normal diet. The farmer’s pent-up emotions were now free to devote to the bull. He chased it round and round the field hammering its behind with a huge rock taken from the wall of the field, swearing marvelously as he ran. As I did not want to perform the same sort of operation on him (the bull showed signs of annoyance) I thought it better to retreat, which we were allowed to do when everybody had had a chance to kiss our cheeks or our hands.

  The ass did quite well for a day or two. Then, alas, its abdomen began to swell—inevitable peritonitis—and to our great grief it died. The farmer cried, and all the villagers; and Chloe cried, and I was hard put to it not to do the same. It was not the personality of the ass that made it seem so heartbreaking. When you realize how these people live and what a beast of burden means to them the loss is far graver than the loss of a pet. It is a setback in the battle against starvation.

  Today the farmer has sent us a beautifully worked goatskin knapsack, fit for a baby Pan.

  Omens of our impending departure are in the air. There seems a fair chance of the Peace Conference coming to a decision which will involve the fate of the islands. The Greeks have appointed a Governor designate who will for the time hold a watching brief with a small military mission. Gideon’s delight is marked when he hears that this exalted functionary is to be the redoubtable General Gigantes,* an old friend of his. We meet the little party at the airstrip near Calato and soon the two monocled soldiers are shaking hands with each. “Gideon, you rogue,” growls Gigantes grasping him by the hand. They go off together arm in arm, their conversation punctuated by roars of laughter.

  That evening we celebrate a new addition to our ranks, and the conversation takes on an added animation, an Athenian zest. The General brings with him a pungent whiff of politics and warfare from the north to enliven the taedium vitae of a territory where sobriety and firm government have allowed little free play to the typical Greek character with its talent for political intrigues.

  The war completely destroyed the livestock, and thus stopped the manufacture of raw materials for clothes. Long before this, however, the influence of western dress had driven the peasant in the direction of the shapeless cloth cap, the trousers and open shirts which so many of them wear today. On feast days, perhaps, the elder men would open their oak chests and lay out the traditional eagle-winged bolero, the blue Turkish trousers and the sashes in which they carried their silver-knuckled pistols or daggers. The craft has not died, but the materials are sadly lacking today which would enable the wife of the family to trick out her man’s costume and her own with delicate gold embroidery and scarlet piping. Nevertheless while no new costumes are being made the old have been carefully preserved, and at festivals the women once more emerge from their everyday clothes and dance in full costume. This is something worth watching. The best dancers of the island are the girls of Embona, the village which lies at the foot of Atabyron; after them those of Soroni.

  General Gigantes before settling in has decided to make a royal progress through the islands with the Brigadier, to show their respective flags. Gideon says that his privately confessed intention is to leave no wine untasted in the fourteen islands—and from what I know of the Brigadier he will fall in with this plan without demur. Gideon, needless to say, has succeeded in getting himself invited. “As chief of Agriculture,” he says, “I am more or less responsible for the wine and food. Besides, old Gigantes can teach us all a thing or two.”

  The new proclamation on censorship has vested the responsibility in me; but the wording of the text runs: “All printed material must be submitted to the Information Office before issue,” and the Rhodians have taken it all too literally. My office is crowded now with a variety of people asking me to frank beer bottle labels, cartons, theater advertisements and handbills of all kinds. In this way I have increased my acquaintance a hundred-fold. It is very seldom, however, that a writer strays into my net. Nevertheless, today my door flew open and standing before me was a large cadaverous individual with corncob teeth and curling moustaches, clad in a blood-stained smock. He turned out to be a butcher-poet from one of the outlying villages. “Is it true,” he said with a ghastly grimace, and in a tone of such hollowness and resonance that I recognized at once the village speechmaker. “Is it true that the democratic Anglo-Saxons impose censorship on works of art?” I admitted that it was true.* He sighed and cast his eyes to the ceiling. “Sir,” he said, “what a disappointment after seeing the Italians run like hares.” He produced from under his smock a wad of the ruled scrap paper that tradesmen use for their business jottings and held it out to me, saying simply, “I am Manoli the butcher, and this is my epic.”

  I cannot read the cursive hand easily, though the text was fairly written, but I was reluctant to let my visitor go without getting to know him better. “Read me a little of it,” I said. His eye brightened and drawing himself up he launched into his epic without a trace of embarrassment. It was comical, but it was also impressive, his utter self-possession. The poem itself was a portentous piece of doggerel, written in thumping sixteen-foot lines, and entitled The Miseries and Trials of Rhodes Under the Plague of the Fascists. I longed for Gideon to be there to enjoy it with me. Manoli the butcher was rapt. The truth was that he did not read very fluently and the monotonous cadences of the poem demanded the utmost attention if he was going to get the scansion right. He picked off each accent with a slight nod of the head. The whole performance took him about twenty minutes. The sound of all this powerful declamation attracted attention; first E tiptoed in, then the Greek editor Kostas, and finally the Baron Baedeker, clutching a handful of soiled prints. Manoli was not put out by this addition to his audience; he continued his monotonous chant, but inclined himself towards the newcomers slightly, to give them the benefit of the performance. As he came to the end of each page he allowed it to drop to the floor with a superb gesture, so that at last he stood before us empty-handed with his epic littering the floor around his feet.

  Kostas humbly gathered up the pages, stifling a desire to laugh. Manoli stood there with a queer mixture of humility and pride, clasping his large hands. “It is very remarkable,” I said. The rest of the audience muttered suitable praises. The butcher inclined his head modestly, though he obviously held himself in good conceit. “I wish to print it,” he said, “So that there should be some record of our sufferings.”

  “Kostas,” I said solemnly. “Hand me the rubber stamp.”

  Kostas breathed on the article reverently and gave me the shadow of a wink. I gravely stamped the manuscript and handed it back to the butcher who replaced it in its hiding place under the bloody apron. “Sir,” he said, “I thank you,” and shaking my hand warmly he withdrew.

  Later that morning when we set out in the brilliant sunshine to walk back to the hotel a breathless child ran up to us and thrust a blood-stained paper parcel into the saddlebag I was carrying over my arm. “It is from Manoli, sir.” he piped. For a moment I was nonplussed. There are so many Manolis: we have three among the printers. Then I remembered. Inside the parcel were some lamb chops, a true poet’s gift.

  Timachidas of Rhodes was an epic poet the loss of whose work only Gideon mourns. It was a
single immense epic pregnantly entitled The Dinners. Was it simply a catalog of dinners he had enjoyed in the past—or a poem devoted to ideal dinners which he would have liked to enjoy if he had had the means? We shall never know. Parmenon of Rhodes was famous for an early cookery book which is also unhappily lost. It might have given us some help with the vexing questions raised by Lynceus of Samnos who goes out of his way to praise Rhodian delicacies among which he lists the aphye (anchovy?), the ellops (swordfish?), the orphos (sea perch?) and the alopex (shark?). The conjectures are not mine but Torr’s.

  Among an unsorted mass of crumpled notes I came upon a few lines about a visit to Calithea last week with Mills and E. A few random impressions of swimming in a dark sea under a clear and moonless sky:

  All around contorted hefts of volcanic rock snarling immobile dragon snarls. Smell of bitter creeper and cloying jasmine. The dark water, warm and salty from a day of south wind. Occasional draughts of cool air and colder currents curling in snake-like from the rock entrances of the harbor. Hanging there in the sea as if in a web, webbed feet spread, webbed fingers parted, to look back and upwards through wet eyelashes at the star-flowered sky, huge pieces of which slide about like glassy panes, so one can reach up and knock aside the planets. A silence palpitant with quiet voices and the aberrant crunch of oars. This silence was not absolute, as if the membranes of the air, damp and sticky mucilage, were glued together with the warm sticky night, reminding one that silence, after all, is only sound in emulsion. Later in an orchard of pears above the harbor a fugitive happiness: thin sweet grapes and mastika.

  The royal party has returned rather the worse for wear. It was not however the carousing which caused the trouble—though both Gideon and the Brigadier seem a trifle chastened by their experiences. It was the tireless walking imposed on them by Gigantes who insisted on inspecting every island in detail and showed an utter disregard for distances and natural obstacles. Honor dictated that where he went the Brigadier must follow; and where the Brigadier went, Gideon must go to. “God, what a jaunt,” said my friend. Up the dizzy crater of Nisyros, perched on barbaric eructating mules, round the crumbling coves of Patmos and Astypalea, the sinuosities of Cos and Leros—wherever there was firm ground the Greek General marched firmly, gleaming monocle in eye, pausing only to utter good-humored taunts at their dilatoriness. Each day there was some prodigious excursion to undertake to some unvisited corner of an island where the startled peasantry (having caught sight of their visitors from distant peaks and crags) had already set out a table in the main street and broached the best wine. And now Greek hospitality set in like a Trade wind, and glasses were clinked and emptied in response to numberless toasts—the native genius of Gigantes, like that of Gideon, lent itself to the creation of toasts. More than once they were carried back on mules from these outposts in a state of exhilarated exhaustion. Once Gideon was deposited in the sea by his mule. He suspected that Gigantes pushed him. And one of the younger liaison officers, declaring that he saw a mermaid, set off swimming after it in the direction of Asia Minor, calling upon it in eloquent terms to stay and talk. He was placed under close arrest, and was so indignant that nobody believed his story that he challenged Gideon to a duel on the sand beaches of Cos. The Brigadier’s uniform was eaten by a goat while he was bathing. … “Altogether,” said Gideon, “there is a wealth of local color about this excursion which can only be discussed in the privacy of the club, as between officers of equal rank.” The only member of the party who was not prostrated was the indomitable Gigantes himself who declared that the excursion left him feeling “remarkably fresh.” Among the spoils of the raid were several casks of what Gideon called “alcoholic booty” which will enable us all to study wine production in the islands in the detail such a subject deserves. I have agreed to give style and tone to the report which Gideon is writing, on condition that I share some of the research.