Roumeli

by Patrick Leigh Fermor

  [14] By an odd demotic usage, smells are acoustically perceived: “Akou tin miroudiá!”: “Listen to the smell!”

  [15] Throughout the Orient and the Levant, from patriarchal bias, these coins were worth a fraction more if they were stamped with a king’s head instead of Queen Victoria’s. Conversely, in Albania and Montenegro, Maria Theresa thalers formed the backbone of the currency, as they did in Ethiopia.

  6. SOUNDS OF THE GREEK WORLD

  THE OLIVE-GROVES of Amphissa, the terraces of corn and vine, are notes on the syrinx, the Pindus is a jangle of goat-bells and the single herdsman’s pipe.

  Arcadia is the double flute, Aráchova the jingle of hammers on the strings of a dulcimer, Roumeli a klephtic song heckled by dogs and shrill whistles, Epirus the trample of elephants, the Pyrrhic stamp, the heel slapped in the Tsámiko dance, the sigh of Dodonian holm-oaks and Acroceraunian thunder and rain.

  The Meteora soar twisting to the sky as a Byzantine litany ascends in quarter-tones to the Christ Pantocrator across a cupola’s concavity.

  Mistra is a swoop of kestrels among cypress trees, a neo-Platonic syllogism under provincial purple; Sinai, a fanfare of rams’ horns, Daphni, a doxology, Athos the clatter from cape to cape of semantra, drowned by the waves, the millionth iteration of the Hesychastic prayer.

  Constantinople is the Emperor’s acclamation, the commination of Chrysostom, a lament for the Fall, the wail of amané, a grammarian’s cough and the mewing of cats; Alexandria the valediction of the Gods deserting Antony, a creak of papyrus, the eleven-fold wake that follows a quinquireme, a Judaeo-Ptolemaic bargain.

  The Propontis is the combustion of Greek fire from the bronze beaks of galleys, the Symplegades the breaking of ships’ timbers, Anatolia the epic of Digenis Akritas, Iconium the shock of Byzantine lances on the shields of the Sultan of Rūm, Caesarea the echo of Arian-fulminating anathema, Bithynia a prince’s cheetah pursuing an antelope through flower-strewn meadows, Cappadocia the wheeling of wood-pigeons between cones of tufa hollowed into monasteries, Trebizond a black Pontic gale from the Caucasus.

  Crete is the rhyming of couplets to the three-stringed lyra, the bang of gunfire, the roar along canyons of a landslide unloosed by the leap of an ibex, a maze-muted minotaur’s bellow, the brush of peacocks’ feathers through blood-red columns. Apokoronas is the treading of grapes, Malevizi the grumble of must fermenting and Ida a shepherd’s voice calling to the White Mountains. The Hindu Kush, the Khyber and the Indus are the footfalls of the Macedonian phalanx, Persia the homage of satraps in broken koinē. Sicily and Magna Grecia are inaudible notes of underground music. The Aspromonte is the sound of C reversed, Poseidon’s failing symbol in the rising Calabrian tide. Apulia and Salento are the shrinking Byzantine words of Otrantine speech, Stilo a covey of Kyrie eleisons on the wing. Ravenna is a letter dictated by the Exarch to the Catapan of Bari; Cargese, the Corsican erosion of Maniot syllables.

  Gavdos is a wind called Euroclydon.

  Eastern Macedonia is the pibroch of a shaggy bagpiper moccasined and cross-gartered in goathide, Western Macedonia a war-cry and the whisper of a snowfall. Oeta is the death agony of Hercules.

  Thrace is the beat of a drum.

  The Asian coasts are the poems of Anacreon and the Lydian mode; the Aegean, the songs of Alcaeus and Sappho, an Aeolian harp hung in a mastic-tree, a storm-drowned Gorgon’s voice wailing for Alexander; the Cyclades, the lyre-strokes of dolphin-borne Arion and the prehistoric tap of Helladic hammers.

  Aetolia is a scraping of cicadas, the Kravara a beggars’ chorus, Eurytania a drilling of crickets.

  The Rhodope is the click of anemones opening, Acarnania the crackle of withering asphodels.

  The Hellespont is the whips of Xerxes, the waves closing over the head of Leander; Lemnos, a carousing of Argonauts; Tenedos, a tall story on the way home from Troy.

  Chios is a cakewalk on a cottage piano, Syria is Offenbach from a bandstand.

  Hermoupolis is the filioque.

  Athens is a canticle of columns and a music-hall song, a jangle of trams, a pneumatic drill, a political speech, the inaudible paean of the Panathenaic hymn and the little owl hooting.

  Psychiko is la Tonquinoise, Kephissia a soirée musicale with a background of Yes, sir, that’s my baby; Leophoros Syngrou, an exhaust-pipe, Patisia a gear-change, New Phaleron a metrical hard-luck story to the accompaniment of bouzoukia, Old Phaleron a tango heard through convolvulus horns.

  The Plaka is a drunken polyphony at four in the morning in praise of retsina and the tune of a musical-box perched on a photograph album of faded plum velvet with filigree clasps at five in the afternoon.

  Omonia is an equivocal whisper, a boast about Brooklyn; Kolonaki, the rattle of ice-cubes and a radiogramophone, Maroussi a monologue.

  Piraeus is a hashish-smoking rubiyat to the geometry of the butcher’s dance and a ship’s siren.

  Hymettus is the hum of bees, Attica a footfall on pine-needles.

  Salonica is an argument over a bill of lading, a Ladino greeting outside a synagogue; Volo, the smack of backgammon counters, Patras, the grate of cranes unloading, Samos, the bubbling of a narghilé.

  Kalamata is a piling of crates and a pattering of olives.

  Yanina is the clash of scimitars, the clink of silversmiths, Trikkala a stork’s beak-rattling from a broken minaret, Paramythia a coppersmith’s clank.

  Navarino and Lepanto are the boom of cannon, Tripoli the criss-cross of yataghans, Psara the smouldering of fire-ships, Hydra a shout in Albanian from the cross-trees of a brigantine, Arkadi the explosion of powder-kegs, Souli the reverberation of long-barrelled guns, Zalongo the sound of women singing that grows fainter by seconds.

  Tyrnavos is the Priapic song of a phallophore, Mavrolevfi the ululation of ikon-bearing firewalkers.

  Olympus is the sky’s echo, Parnassus the rush of an eagle’s wing.

  Delphi is a mantic muttering through marble under mountains, the dying-away of a murmuring spring, Olympia the music of the spheres, Sparta an anvil’s ring. Thebes a riddle, Mycenae an axe falling, Ithaca an arrow’s flight.

  Karytaina is the echo of Frankish horns blowing, the distant baying of Burgundian hounds. St. Hilarion is a tournament and the ghost of a chanson de geste, Navpaktos a virelai, and Monemvasia the crash of a mangonel.

  The shores of Cyprus are the doves of Aphrodite, the voices of Achaeans landing, of Argives, Laconians, and Arcadians, the lutes of the Lusignan.

  Nicosia is a slogan for Union, the sizzle of kebabs, the drip of HP sauce, the splutter of soda syphons, the hiss of a fuse; Kyrenia, a ten-year-old rumba, a sahib’s guffaw, the limericks of remittance-men.

  Bassae and Sunium are the noise of the wind like panpipes through fluted pillars, Nemea the rumble of a column’s collapse. Naoussa is the thud of a falling apple, Edessa a waterfall, Kavalla the drop of an amber bead. Metsovo is a burning pinecone, Samarina a voice in Vlach, Avdela a stag’s belling, Grammos, the breath of a hibernating bear, Tzoumerka a wolf’s howl.

  Delos is the birth-wail of Apollo, Paxos a voice crying for the death of Pan.

  Andros is running water.

  The Ionian scatters the sound of mandolines towards the sunset.

  Corfu is the sirocco lifting a doge’s gonfalon, Zante is a guitar, Cephalonia a curse, Cythera the dip of an oar, Levkas the splash of a trident.

  Chalcis is the flurry of the tide, Naxos the boxwood click of a rosary muffled by a nun’s skirt; Ossa is a giant’s tread, Pelion the beat of centaurs’ hoofs through glades of chestnut, Tempe a susurrus of plane trees, and Rhodes a flutter of moths.

  Santorin zigzags to the sky at dawn like a lark singing but dies at sunset with the Dies Irae. Komotini is a muezzin’s call, Patmos the faraway trumpets of the Apocalypse.

  The Dodecanese is a sea-song by twelve sponge-fishers, Antikythera a mermaid forsaken; Skopelos, a lobster’s and Poros, a mock-turtle’s song, Aegina a tambourine.

  The Sporades are the sea’s whisper through olive t
rees.

  The Ambracian gulf is a lowland lament with brekekekex! from Preveza, koax! from Amphilochia and an answering koax! across the mountains from Missolonghi.

  Thessaly is a scythe’s blade through cornstalks.

  Leonidion is a dialogue in Doric, Lemonadassos a mill-wheel grinding, the swing of a lantern through lemon-woods.

  The Hebrus river is a song floating seawards, the Struma a challenge, the Aliacmon a ravine’s voice, Pamisos a lullaby, the Alphaeus a clatter of pebbles, the Ladon a midsummer gasp under oleanders; the Acheron, blue-green thunder falling through forests. The winding Acheloös is a reeds’ conspiracy, the call of a heron, the bittern’s answer; the Eurotas is an elegy, the Louros a trout’s ripple, the Spercheios a flutter of flagleaves.

  Larissa is a bray, Tinos a chime of bells, Avgo a seal’s bark. Icaria a moan in a nightmare, Skyros an anchor’s drop, Paros the sound of quarrying, Cnidus the chip of a chisel, Amorgos a stream under leaves, Thasos a nightingale, Seriphos the hiss of Medusa’s head and the wind, Pholegandros a seagull’s and and Anaphe a swallow’s cry, Siphnos a lyric, Samothrace a snore, Ios a soliloquy, Gavdopoula a sigh, and the Strophades, silence.

  Methone is a fugue of cormorants through broken demilunes, Corone an amphora that holds the waves’ fall captive.

  Cape Taenarus is the squeak of bats in a cave that leads to Hades, Cape Malea a wrangle of tempest-haunting birds, the cries of drowning men. The Mani ascends in a shout for vengeance and dies in a dirge turned to stone.

  The seas of Greece are the Odyssey whose music we can never know: the limitless sweep and throb of prosody, the flux and reflux of hexameters scanned by winds and currents and accompanied, for its escort of accents,

  for the fall of its dactyls

  the calm of spondees

  the run of tribrachs

  the ambiguity of trochees

  and the lash of anapaests;

  for the flexibility of accidence,

  the congruence of syntax

  and the confluence of its crasis;

  for the fluctuating of enclitic and proclitic,

  for the halt of caesurae and the flight of the digamma,

  for the ruffle of hard and soft breathings,

  for its liquid syllables and the collusion of diphthongs,

  for the receding tide of proparoxytones

  and the hollowness of perispomena stalactitic with subscripts,

  for the inconsequence of anacolouthon,

  the economy of synecdoche,

  the compression of hendiadys

  and the extravagance of its epithets,

  for the embrace of zeugma,

  for the abruptness of asyndeton

  for the swell of hyperbole

  and the challenge of apostrophe,

  for the splash and the boom and the clamour and the echo

  and the murmur of onomatopoeia

  by the

  islands and harbours and causeways and soundings and crescents of shingle, whirlpools and bays and lagoons and narrows and chasms and roadsteads, seismic upheavals of crags in the haze of meridian panic, sockets and smouldering circles of stone and dying volcanoes; islets lying in pale archipelagos, gulfs, reefs and headlands, warrened with cavities, that end in a litter of rocks and spikes where the limestone goes dark at sunset; thunderbolt sea-marks scattered on the water, light in the reign of the Pleiades, slowly spinning the sea-sounds that sigh in the caves of solitary islands.

  TEΛOΣ

  APPENDIX I

  Derivations of Sarakatsán

  ON THE FACE of it—and, alas, as deep as one can dive—the word Sarakatsán means nothing at all. Nevertheless, there are several possibilities that beckon enticingly (one in particular shines with a seductive glitter) and this has proved a stimulating challenge to ethnographers, philologists and publicists, both Greek and foreign, for many decades. Conflicting derivations are always fascinating and the Sarakatsáns (who are also less correctly known in the Balkan countries outside Greece, as Karakatchans) have given rise to a rich and varied crop. Greeks are invariably fertile in this field. Aravantinos declares that they originated in an Akarnanian village called Saraketsi and later took to a wandering life. Another opinion maintains that they once lived near the Katsáno villages in Epirus, and are thus para Katsánoi, para meaning, in this instance, “near”—near-Katsánians in fact, the P mysteriously and un-Grimmishly turning into S. I. Lampides thinks they were actually from the Katsáno villages but takes the alternative affix kara, which means “black” in Turkish, and metaphorically, “wretched,” and makes them “woebegone Katsánians.” As a second string to his bow, he derives them in vague and doubting terms (as Uncle Petro did himself) from the Vlach village of Syrako on the Acheloös river; in yet a third alternative he mates the Arabic words kara, “on land” or sara, “swift,” to the Turkish verb katchan, “to depart” or “to flee”—in two hybrid matches, giving birth to “landwanderers,” and “swift wanderers.” Yet others link katchan with the Turkish kir, “desert,” to arrive at “desert departers.” Another links kara with the Albanian adjective katsianon, which is applied to dark or purplish-faced sheep, of which, indeed, Sarakatsán flocks contain large numbers; this gives us “black dark faced ones.” The great Danish authority on these Nomads, Axel Hoeg, thinks the Vlacho-Rumanian word sarac, or “poor,” may have something to do with it. So does J. Ancel. A. Dimitriades couples the Turkish saran, “a load,” with katchan, to make “burdened wanderers.” I. Sayiaxis brings sarika, a Slav word for the fustanella, the kilt which they once all wore, into play: “the kilted ones.” B. Skaphiadis, on the other hand, would like to connect them with a hellenized Vlach word, also sarika, but meaning here, “raw wool”: “the shaggy men.” D. Georgakas manages to bring in the Turkish word for “yellow”—that is, sari—which strikes a new note: “yellow wanderers.” G. Kotsioulas, sinisterly, links our old friend katchan with the Turkish siari, “a thief,” transforming them into fugitives from justice. With disarming simplicity and enviable boldness, I. Vlachoyannis declares them to be Saracens....A current derivation is the combination of the two Turkish words which crop up most frequently in this catalogue into “The black ones who depart.” It has no better claim than any of the others—except the ones which are patently absurd or linguistically impossible—and I have called this chapter “The Black Departers” merely because the term does happen to conjure them up, but the initial K instead of the much more widespread S, casts doubt at once. To close this list, a writer whose name escapes me for the moment vies with Vlachoyannis’ Saracens by coolly turning them all into Syracusans from Sicily....There is something wrong with all of these solutions, and nothing to recommend one at the expense of its rivals. Nearly all the names I have cited are those of respectable writers. It is typical of the most serious student of them all, Dr. Axel Hoeg, that his suggestion is the most diffident and tentative of the lot. His only peer in the field, Mrs. Angelica Hadjimichalis, offers none at all. The name is as useless a guide to their origins as are historical records.

  APPENDIX II

  Glossary of Boliaric Vocabulary

  PERHAPS it’s better to leave out the ordinary Greek words, with the proviso that they are never the same as the boliaric ones. A few bear the same link to the object described as fennel does to a beard—velazoura, for instance, means “sheep” and “goats,” “a flock”—velazo is the Greek for “bleat”; similarly, bokla—“hair”—is probably the Greek boukla, “a curl,” a recent acquisition from French. A town is kio—surely the Turkish kioi, just as sielo is Russian—and boliaric—for a village, and kaïn—“dog”—the Vlach or Rumanian descendant of canis. Gaïna we have already met; with neró, the Greek for “water,” affixed, it becomes nerogáïna, “waterfowl,” viz. “ducks and geese.” But what have koubouria (the same, incidentally, as the manga slang for “pistols”), or tchillingária, to do with “a woman’s breasts”? Kouti, in Greek, is “a box”; but why is the boliaric for “house” always its genitive—ko
utiou? Perhaps it has nothing to do with Greek at all....Tchmeki is “sleep” (also “hotel”); tchemkiazo is “I sleep,” tchmékiza, “I slept” and tha tchimikiázo, “I will sleep.” Here is a boliaric zoo of domestic animals: cow, marini; pig, birdzin; hen, gaïna; waterfowl, nerogáïna; hare, daousénos; mule, mangatchko; dog, kaïn; sheep, bikiaïn; flocks, velazoúra; horse, pharí (akin to the Greek for mare, phorada?); donkey, mánganos or yipsíni; lice, maritzes; and cat, markantós.

  Markantós....I wonder what “a cat” has to do with “the saints,” for these, in Kravarese, are Oi Markantonaioi, the Markantonies (and what have they to do with Cleopatra’s lover?). Some objects that play a great part in mendicant life had several synonyms, each slightly different. “Money” is alepoúmata—something to do with alepou, a fox?—and matzónia; kítrino, meaning “a sovereign,” is literally “a yellow one”; perhaps kolyva, or koulouva, also meaning “a gold coin,” is related to the big round funeral cake to which it sounds similar in ordinary Greek. Platanóphylla, literally “plane tree leaves,” is “paper money”; photerí—perhaps “a shining one”—is “a drachma,” a diphóteri, “two drachmas.” (Confusingly, photerá is also “letters,” “writing”) and “a thousand drachmas” is a hína, or “goose.”...The sticks that are so important in a beggar’s life (“wood”—x′ylo in Greek—has the second meaning of “the stick,” “a thrashing,” e.g. “I ate wood” = “I was beaten up”) has many synonyms: grigóro, láoussa, matsoúka, straví, kaníki and dervo—all “sticks.” Lachanidi, for “a knife,” suggests “cabbage-cutting”; but whence comes beldevéni—also a knife? Tcharmalídi is “a gun,” tchóki, “a stone,” karvoúni (coal), “a train”; armabíl, which sounds just like the Greek-American word for a motor, is exactly that and usually a bus; mákina, “a camera,” suggests an Italian machine: it takes mouta, or “snapshots,” related, perhaps, to the everyday moutra (“face,” “mug,” “phiz”). Sardinia are “shoes,” daïri, “a road,” klitzino, “a ring,” batzoutou or koutzourou (lame or stumbling? rickety?), “a table”; kranídi and traganída are “time,” while traganídi is “a watch,” whose dial records the march of the phlambouri. This word means, “the sun” or “day”[1] and the plural, phlambouria, is days. When the phlambouri sets, hálpou, “the night,” follows. Hálpou...an eerie word.