Prospero's Cell

by Lawrence Durrell

  Karaghiosis:

  The Laic Hero

  WE TIE UP at the old port on Tuesday and find little Ivan Zarian dancing down the great staircase under the lion of St. Mark to meet us. He has been waiting to tell us the great news. Karaghiosis has come to town and there is to be a performance this evening. All the children of the town and of course numbers of peasants will be there. We send Spiro to book seats for us all, and spend the afternoon sitting on the esplanade drinking lemonade in the white pure sunshine, and listening to clinking of ice in glasses around us. It is one of the innumerable Saints’ days, and as such a whole holiday. The cafes are crowded, and the green grass of the esplanade studded with the gay clothes of the Corfiot girls. Zarian, aroused from the abstraction into which his weekly Armenian literary article always throws him, discourses amiably about the art of the shadow play. He has come across Karaghiosis under different guises in Turkey and in the Middle East, where the little black-eyed man wore, instead of his enormous prehensile baboon’s arm, a phallus of equal dimensions. Translated into Greek he is no longer a symbol of pornographic buffoonery but something much more subtle—the embodiment of Greek character. It is a fertile theme. National character, says Zarian, is based upon the creations of the theatre. Huxley has remarked somewhere that Englishmen did not know how the Englishman should behave like until Falstaff was created; now the national character is so well established that everyone knows what to expect in the average Englishman. But what about the Greeks? Their national character is based on the idea of the impoverished and downtrodden little man getting the better of the world around him by sheer cunning. Add to this the salt of a self-deprecating humor and you have the immortal Greek. A man of impulse, full of boasts, impatient of slowness, quick of sympathy, and inventive as well as assimilative. A coward and a hero at the same time; a man torn between his natural and heroic genius and his hopeless power of ratiocination.

  In the middle of this discourse we are joined by Nimiec and Peltours who take an innocent delight in teasing Zarian; meanwhile the little Ivan is dancing about like a wasp waiting for it to get dark. As we have some shopping to do N. and I move off about our business with a promise to meet at “The Partridge” for a glass of wine before we all go on to the shadow play.

  The shadows hang deep in the arcades by the little shop of Nomikos the bookbinder. He is binding some sketchbooks for us. Farther down in what we call the Street of Smells, the ghosts of various dishes are being conjured up in great copper cauldrons: fish, sweetmeats, bread, onions.

  The northerners are down for a dance; I catch a glimpse of Father Nicholas bending over a stall and haggling fearfully about the price of a cantaloupe. Farther on Sandos is walking in his Sunday clothes listening raptly to the cries and shouts of the hawkers, while his little black-eyed daughter walks beside him, sucking sweets. We have just time to do our shopping so that I dare not stop to talk. “Will you come back with the caique tonight?” bawls Sandos, “or did you come in the little ‘lordiko’* today?”

  It is towards the hour of seven that, mellowed by the excellent wine of “The Partridge,” we cross the little cobbled square by the Church of the Saint, and seek our way through the alleys and fents of the Venetian town (the women touching hands as they talk on the balconies over our heads) to where the shadow play is to be shown. In a little sunken garden by the Italian school the lights and the grumble of a crowd had already marked the place. A prodigious trade in ginger beer and sweets is being carried on with the schoolchildren and the peasants who sit crammed into the small arena before the dazzling white screen upon which our hero is to appear. Two violins and a drum keep up a squalling sort of overture, punctuated by the giggles of the children and the pop of ginger beer bottles. (Important note: Ginger beer, first imported by the British during their occupation of the Ionian Islands, has never lost its hold over the Corcyrean public. In places such as the Canoni tavern it may even be bought in those small stone bottles which we remember from our childhood, and which are quite as aesthetically beautiful as the ancient Greek lamp-bowls with which the museum is crammed.)

  Our seats are right in front, where the orchestra can scrape away under our noses, and the sales of ginger beer increase noticeably owing to Ivan Zarian who persuades his father to buy us a bottle each. N. prefers nougat while Nimiec has found a paper bag full of peanuts. Thus equipped we are prepared for the spectacle of Karaghiosis, whose Greek is sure to baffle us however much his antics amuse.

  Presently the acetylene lamps on the hedge are extinguished, and the rows of eager faces are lit only by the light of the brilliant screen with its scarlet dado. The actors are taking up their dispositions, for now and then a shadow crosses the light, and the little peasant children cry out excitedly, hoping that it heralds the appearance of their hero. But the orchestra is still driving on with the awkward monotony of a squeaking shoe. I catch a glimpse of Father Nicholas at the end of a row, and seeing us smiling at him he feels called upon to make some little gesture which will put him, as it were, on the same plane as ourselves. He pushes aside the ginger-beer hawker, blows his nose loudly in a red handkerchief, and bawls to the tavern keeper across the road in superior accents: “Hey there, Niko—a submarine for my grandson if you please.” “A submarine” is a charming fantasy, Nicholas’s little grandson would much rather have a ginger beer but he is too experienced and tactful a child to interrupt the old boy. He sits vaguely smiling while the waiter darts across to them from the tavern with the “submarine”—which consists of a spoonful of white mastic in a glass of water. Nothing more or less. The procedure is simple. You eat the mastic and drink the water to take the sweetness out of your mouth. While the child is doing this, and while Father Nicholas is looking around him, pleased at having caused a little extra trouble, and at having been original, the orchestra gives a final squeal and dies out. Now expectancy reaches its maximum intensity, for the familiar noise of sticks being rattled together sounds from behind the screen. This is a sign for the play to begin.

  The crowd draws a sharp breath of familiarity and pleasure as the crapulous figure of Hadjiavatis lurches on to the screen, cocking an enormous eyebrow and muttering a few introductory remarks. “It is Hadjiavatis” cry the small children in the front row with piercing excitement, while Father Nicholas remarks audibly to the row behind him: “It is the rogue Hadjiavatis.” But even his gruffness cannot disguise the affection in his tones, for Hadjiavatis is beloved for his utter imbecility. He is to Karaghiosis what Watson is to Sherlock Holmes—his butt and “feed” at the same time. At the appearance of Hadjiavatis the orchestra strikes up a little jig—his signature tune—completely drowning his monologue, whereupon he gives an indignant shake of his whole body, commands it to be silent, and recommences his groans and exclamations. Apparently everything is rather gloomy. Nothing is right with him. He is poor, he cannot pay his rent, he has been recently set upon and badly beaten in mistake for someone else—in fact the whole universe is out of key. That is why he wanders erratically down this cardboard street with its fretwork houses searching for a friend—and of course there is only one friend that Hadjiavatis would go to seek in such a case. Karaghiosis. He bangs at the door of a hovel insistently and calls, “Karaghiosis, are you there?” For a while there is no answer; the tension of the children is agony to watch. “Are you there?” calls Hadjiavatis more insistently. A rather unsteady-looking coach passes across the stage almost running him over. He curses it, and recovering himself bangs ever more insistently at the door of the hovel. Finally a flap flies open and the head of the hero sticks out. At this a roar goes up from the children and a burst of joyous clapping which is hastily stilled in order not to miss what is being said. Karaghiosis has a great curved nose, a hump on his back, and the phallic arm already mentioned. He also has a wicked lidless eye, as ripe with mischief as a mulberry. “You wish to speak to Karaghiosis?” he says with becoming caution. “If it is about the rent then I am afraid Karaghiosis is not at home. As for the money you le
nt me last week I paid you back, as you no doubt remember.” With that he disappears and Hadjiavatis returns to his hammering once more. This time the head of one of Karaghiosis’s innumerable children appears. Father is in bed and not to be disturbed. Hadjiavatis implores in nasal accents for an interview, but apparently Karaghiosis’s wife refuses. Finally, in the course of the dialogue the word “bread” is mentioned, and at this the front door flies open and the hero bounds out of it, asking in accents of hope and hunger: “Did you say bread, O Hadjiavatis? Did I hear the word bread?”

  Hadjiavatis manages to find a crust of bread on his person which he hands over to the famished Karaghiosis who agrees to talk to him at some length. Indeed their conversation lasts a considerable time, and is punctuated by the most endearing asides of the hero: “A beautiful woman, did you say? Then keep her away from me. You know what it is. My beauty and charm—and, above all my social position—would make her fall in love with me immediately.”

  Everyone is delighted by this kind of byplay. Karaghiosis’s absurd vanity about himself is one of his strongest characteristics, and one which gets most of the laughs.

  But the real problem which besets Hadjiavatis is one of power. Why should other people have carriages and servants and not he? Why indeed? echoes Karaghiosis, absently helping himself to some fruit off a fruit stall.

  “I tell you what” says the hero at last. “Would you like to be Prime Minister?” Hadjiavatis, despite his innumerable experiences of Karaghiosis’s virtuosity in the matter of getting them both into trouble, eagerly agrees. “Very well, then,” says Karaghiosis, “have you any money?” It is apparently necessary to organize votes. Hadjiavatis unfortunately has only two drachmae which he is unwise enough to produce. The mulberry eye of the hero takes on a wicked glitter of cupidity and the children (who know quite well that whatever else happens, Hadjiavatis is sure to lose his money) roar with knowing laughter. Karaghiosis makes quite sure that the money is real and then, by one of those fertile and abrupt transitions for which his Hellenic mind is famous, he decides to make them both rich in a very short time. Hadjiavatis, like Doctor Watson, maintains a troubled faith in him while he shows a certain unwillingness to part with the money itself. “It is simple,” says Karaghiosis. “We will buy a bottle of wine for one drachma. We will sell it to the public at a drachma a glass. In that way we shall make considerable profit. With our profit we will buy more bottles of wine and sell them at a drachma a glass. In this way we shall become extremely rich and bribe enough voters to launch a party.” They traverse several celluloid squares, each garish in its many-colored fretwork frame, and at last the bottle of wine is bought and they take up a station in the street to hawk their wares. Karaghiosis maintains a running fire of mild obscenities to attract the public—raw enough to keep the members of the audience in a roar. Old Father Nicholas is now laughing quite helplessly and unaffectedly, and wiping his eye in his sleeve, while his little grandson is laughing in little suppressed bursts, in order not to miss anything. Meanwhile on the stage things are not going too well. There is an altercation with a policeman; carriages pass; but few customers show any interest in the wine, and at last Karaghiosis says: “Listen, Hadjiavatis. I have one drachma left over. Let me be the first customer. It is rather hot, and—who knows?—if we open the bottle it might stimulate trade. What do you say?” He pays over the drachma and Hadjiavatis carefully opens the wine and measures out a glass which the hero drinks with a rather overdone enjoyment. Meanwhile, Hadjiavatis himself is feeling the pangs of privation, and feels that he himself would like a glass of wine “just to take the taste of dust out of his mouth.” The drachma changes hands again. Karaghiosis assures him that so long as the glass of wine is being paid for they need not fear for a profit, and this seems to console both of them—for very shortly Karaghiosis again feels rather faint and buys himself another glass, and Hadjiavatis again follows suit. This is agonizingly funny. Everyone is in a roar except one small spectacled child with a pale face, sitting in the front row, who leans forward and shouts: “Hey, be careful, you are eating your capital.” A remark which I greeted with a further burst of laughter. The father of this budding bank manager (himself a clerk in a counting house) leans forward and pats the child’s head approvingly.

  And now of course the wine is finished, and the two puppets are busy trying to work out their profits. Karaghiosis’s great mulberry eye cannot conceal his satisfaction while a certain thickening of his speech indicates that he is now full of a sense of warmth and well-being.

  From now on the play becomes a surrealist fantasia. Their rise to fame is meteoric and is accomplished by the unblushing cunning of the hero, with Hadjiavatis suffering here and there for his errors of judgment. Almost nothing is too fantastic to present, and I can see from the glowing face of Father Nicholas that what our surrealist friends might call “the triumph over causality” is considerably older than Breton—and indeed is an integral part of all peasant art. The succession of figures on the dazzling screen glow with a kind of brittle life of their own; the voices (whose volume and pitch betray their human origin) crackle and spark with a kind of suppressed hysteria. All Greece is in this scene; the marketplace, the row of Turkish figures, the wonderful power and elasticity of thought and verbal felicity; the tenderness and vulgarity of Karaghiosis; and all indicated with so little of the landscape to which I had hoped to be a guide. Karaghiosis, whose humor is cast in a townsman’s mold, is still surrounded by memories of the day when he and his kind were mad, violent clansmen in the hills around Olympus: or scattered colonies across the Black Sea, still tenaciously holding to an optative mood and a pronunciation which Piraeus has forgotten or only remembers as a joke. On this little dazzling screen you have the whole laic mystery of Greece which has been so long dormant in the mountains and islands—in the groves and valleys of the archipelago. You have the spirit and the unconquerable adaptability of the Greek who has penetrated with the leaven of his mercuric irony and humor into every quarter of the globe.

  By now we have met a number of characters who are to become familiar in the immortal Karaghiosis cycle of plays. There is Gnio-Gnio, a lunatic figure in a top hat and cutaway coat, whose singing Zante accent is a joy to listen to. There are the Salonika Jews, each tiny and clad in a shapeless sack-like robe, out of which they speak shrill and clever, hands firmly folded in front of them. There is even an unusual figure called “The Lord” who is dressed in what Father Nicholas must imagine to be the conventional English fashion—in a tailcoat, buttonhole, spats, and a topper. There is also the appalling Stavrakas of Piraeus whose vanity and vulgarity make him justly the object of little children’s derision. There is the Grand Vizier, a most sympathetic figure, and of imposing size—not to mention the Cadi, who orders beatings with a cool impersonal air of detachment.

  The drama reaches its peak with a faked election, in which Karaghiosis, in order to win, manages to resurrect all the corpses in the local cemeteries, who pass in a grisly single-file across the stage to the polling booth to vote for the hero.

  And now, with abrupt suddenness Karaghiosis appears to recite a short epilogue and while the applause is still deafening us, the screen goes out and we are in darkness. The orchestra has long since packed up, and we stumble yawning from the garden in the darkness, pressed all about by the eager bodies of the children. The warm sign of “The Partridge” welcomes us and the company is enriched tonight by the seldom presence of Nimiec, who has tales to tell about the caves off the north end of the Saint Angelo cape. He has just spent a week with the fishermen there trying to catch a shark. Zarian is in form too. His memory has been strengthened and awakened by Karaghiosis, and he has stories about Georgia and the Caucasus dancers which will last well into the night. Only Theodore, whose constancy in erudition is the marvel and envy of all of us, has succumbed to the lure of documentation and is writing a few notes on the back of the menu, which must be incorporated in the book. There is some fresh squid, smoking hot with green vegetab
les, and some Spartila wine to whet the appetites of our imaginations; and to round it all off, the three puppet-players drop in to the tavern for a glass of wine. The leader is a sharp-featured young man, whose sallow boredom of expression conceals his gifts of mimicry and satire; his helpers are both small and podgy and nondescript of feature. All three are clad in cheap suits and felt hats. Invited to a glass of wine they sit awkwardly among so many “foreigners” and answer questions with pleasure; I think they distrust our interest in the shadow play; there is the faint Greek suspicion at the back of their minds that they are the victims of a misplaced politeness; also why the bearded professorial gentleman should be writing details about Karaghiosis on the back of a menu is rather a mystery. But Theodore’s charming mildness and the convivial bacchic warmth of Zarian soon thaws their shyness. Also the blind fiddler’s son has begun his acrid tunes on the violin, standing by the chair of his father—and under cover of the music and the clink of glasses confidences are easier. They come from Patras. Every year in the autumn they play up as far as Preveza, and then come across the straits to tour Corcyra, Cephalonia, and Zante. One of them has a couple of the Karaghiosis chap-books in his pocket, and, turning from the garish cover (which shows the hero engaged in ferocious argument with the Vizier) I happen upon a list of some hundred titles of plays which deal with the adventures of this latest addition to the Greek Pantheon. “Karaghiosis the Architect,” “Karaghiosis the Martyr of Virtue,” “Karaghiosis the Archaeologist,” “Karaghiosis in Love,” “Karaghiosis the Financier.”