Report to Grego (58 page)

My heart's answer threw me into turmoil. If everything it said was true, what a fearful responsibility man bears for all the world's injustice and opprobrium!

T
he rhythm of events accelerated before many days had passed, perhaps because my soul was at last ready. Episodes followed one upon the other, pushing me. At any other time I would have considered them mere spectacles; now they were like flesh of my flesh.

One morning before we had gotten up, we heard a vague, boundless clamor, a remote lowing, as though far in the distance a herd of cattle on their way to the slaughterhouse had already felt the red bands around their necks and begun to bellow.

Itka jumped out of bed, wrapped herself in her threadbare overcoat, and without turning to look at me, hurtled down the stairs. The bellowing came continually closer. I flew to the window and opened it. Weightless flakes of snow were falling outside. In Greece the mountains and beaches would have gleamed in the morning sun, but here the light which crept over the snow-covered asphalt was sick and muddy.

Not a person, not a dog; the street completely deserted. Off in the distance, everywhere in the air, this deep bellowing which drew nearer and nearer. I waited. Little by little the street grew lighter. Two crows came and perched on an ice-encrusted tree without uttering a sound. They were waiting too.

Suddenly I saw a tail, bony woman with free-flowing hair dart into the far end of the street. She was not walking; she was leaping as though in a dance, a black banner flapping above her head. All at once behind her an army of men, women, and children appeared, wading through the snow in ordered formation, four abreast, pressing forward. The muddy light struck them. You saw nothing but pale, incensed faces with black holes for eyes, as if a thick army of blind, worm-eaten skulls had risen from the grave.

The light had grown a little stronger now; I was able to see more clearly. Across the street several shopkeepers were taking out their keys to open their stores, but as soon as they caught sight of the savage army, they replaced the keys in their pockets and glued themselves to the wall. The woman saw them. Striding across the sidewalk, she went up to them and flapped the black banner curtly over their heads. A hoarse voice rent the air.

“We are hungry!”

At that same moment she glanced up toward my window and opened her mouth. Divining the words she was about to utter, I became terrified, and without being fully aware of what I was saying, I began to shout, “Quiet! Quiet!”

I slammed the window shut and glued myself against the wall of the room—I was just like the shopkeepers. Completely discomposed, I murmured, “They are hungry . . . they are hungry; the Hunger Army . . .”

That entire day I could not—dared not—go outside for fear that along my way I might meet the woman with Hunger's black banner. This time she would be quick enough to hurl the grievous, insupportable words at me. I knew what words these would be; that was why I felt afraid and ashamed.

Itka arrived around noontime, pale and out of breath. Tossing her threadbare overcoat on the floor, she began to pace up and down the narrow room. I was huddled in a corner waiting. I could hear her heavy respiration. Turning suddenly, she pointed at me.

“You're to blame! You!” she screamed. “You and everyone like you: the well-meaning, well-fed—and indifferent. You need to know hunger and cold, to have children who are hungry and cold, to want to work and be refused work! That's what I expected from you, not this sauntering from city to city to gape at museums and old churches and weep when you look at the stars because they seem so very pretty or frightening. Poor fool, just lower your gaze, look at the child dying at your feet!”

She fell silent for a moment, and then: “You write poems. You speak in your turn—have the effrontery to speak—about poverty, oppression, and villainy. By transforming our pain into beauty you get it out of your system. Damn beauty, when it makes a man forget human suffering!”

Two tears flew from her eyes. I went close; I wanted to touch
her, to calm her by resting my hand upon her hair. But she winced, pushed me away, and cried, “Keep your hands off me!”

The glance she gave me was filled not only with resentment and scorn, but with hate.

The blood rose to my head.

“What do you expect me to do?” I cried angrily. “What can I do? . . . Leave me alone!”

“No, I won't leave you alone! You'd like me to leave you alone, you'd like to escape. But I won't! You cannot hate, is that it? Well, I'll teach you. You cannot fight? I'll teach you.”

An attempt at laughter marred her face. It was not laughter, it was an unbearable convulsion of the flesh. She stepped close to me.

“Do you know the oriental proverb: ‘Whoever mounts a tiger can never again dismount'? You mounted a tiger—me—and I shall never let you dismount!”

Opening a small cupboard, she brought out some bread, a little butter, several apples. She lit the kerosene burner and prepared tea. Not breathing a word, we sat down on two stools (all the room possessed), drew a little table near us, and began to eat. I observed her palpitating eyebrows. She kept lifting her cup in order to drink and then forgetting herself with her arm in mid-air. Her mind was elsewhere; some thought was tormenting her. I chewed away with bowed head, terribly ashamed. For I sensed with humiliation that this woman was stronger than I.

We finished our meal. She raised her head and looked at me. Her eyes were flickering now, her lips had reddened.

“Forgive me for speaking so nastily—but I've just come from the Hunger Army.”

Rising, she went to the window and closed the tattered curtains. A peaceful, compassionate light poured into the room. She pushed the little table to one side, making space. Then she went to the divan and drew back the covers. I followed her, out of the corner of my eye. As she was unbuttoning her blouse she turned to glance at me.

“Are you sleepy?” I asked her, laughing.

“No,” she answered. Her voice had grown murky. “Come!”

The next day she rose before dawn and hastily packed her tiny valise. Coming to the divan, she awakened me.

“I'm going,” she said.

I shuddered. “Going? Going where?”

“Far away. Don't ask. Goodbye until we meet again.”

“When?”

She shrugged her shoulders. Wrapping a scarf tightly around her hair, she stooped and picked up her little valise. Then she looked at me. Her blue eyes were hard and dry, her thick lips smiling.

“Thanks for all the nights,” she said. “We performed our duty to the flesh very thoroughly. Buddha is done and finished; we exorcised him. . . . Why look at me like that? Are you sorry?”

I said nothing. A most bitter sweetness had settled in my vitals. All those nights and days were mixing together inside me and filling my entrails with joy and anguish.

“Are you sorry?” she asked again.

She had reached the door and was extending her hand to open it.

“Yes, I am sorry,” I replied with irritation. “You demolished Buddha for me; my heart is empty.”

“So you need a master, do you?” She laughed ironically.

“Yes, I do. Better a master than anarchy. Buddha gave a rhythm to my life, a purpose. He put a bridle on the demons inside me. But now . . .”

She wrinkled her brows. She was no longer laughing.

“Comrade,” she said (it was the first time she had called me comrade), “your heart has been emptied and cleansed; it is ready. That's what I wanted. I have faith in you—don't listen to what I say when I'm angry. You are an honest man and one who is uneasy. I have faith in you. . . .”

She reflected a moment, then added, “No, not in you but in the Cry of our times. Be quiet and you'll hear it. Goodbye.”

She opened the door. I heard her hasty steps as she descended the stairs.

“B
e quiet and you'll hear it!” Those words of Itka's escorted me many days and nights. Keeping quiet, I listened intently, trying to hear. I attended lectures given by the friends of Russia, read their books and pamphlets, wandered late at night through the working-class sections of Berlin. I viewed the poverty and nakedness, heard sinister conversations, breathed in an atmosphere filled with indignation. Sorrow and compassion took possession of me at first,
then anger, and finally the bitter certainty that I myself was responsible, that the fiery Jewess was right. The fault was mine! Why? Because I did not rise up to shout, because I saw, pitied, and straightway forgot, because I lay down at night and slept in a warm bed, without thinking of those who lacked a roof over their heads.

One of Francis of Assisi's disciples found his shivering master walking naked one night in the heart of winter. “Why do you go naked in such cold, Father Francis?” he said to him in astonishment. “Because, my brother, thousands upon thousands of brothers and sisters are cold at this moment. I have no blankets to give them to make them warm, so I join them in their coldness.”

I recalled the Poor Man of God's words, but only now did I realize that to join others in their coldness was not enough. One had to cry out, “Forward all together, everyone who is hungry, everyone who is cold. There are scores of extra blankets. Take them and cover your nakedness!”

Little by little I began to divine the all-embracing, panhuman significance of the bloody experiment taking place in Russia's boundless land, her boundless soul. My mind began to tolerate and accept the revolutionary slogans which formerly had seemed so extremely naïve and utopian to me. As I gazed at the famished faces, sunken cheeks, and clenched fists, I began to have a presentiment of man's divine privilege: by believing in a myth, desiring it, imbruing it with blood, sweat and tears (tears alone are not sufficient, nor is blood, nor sweat), man transforms that myth into reality.

I was terrified. For the first time I saw how creative man's intervention is, and how great his responsibility. We are to blame if reality does not take the form we desire. Whatever we have not desired with sufficient strength, that we call nonexistent. Desire it, imbrue it with your blood, your sweat, your tears, and it will take on a body. Reality is nothing more than the chimera subjected to our desire and our suffering.

My heart began to throb for the hungry and oppressed. Their patience had given out; they had begun the assault. It seemed that all my Cretan blood scented revolution and commenced to seethe. I saw freedom and slavery before me again—the eternal adversaries—and Crete rose up inside me and whooped.

Could this be the Cry I was waiting to hear? Perhaps. In the decisive moments of my life Crete has never failed to rise up within me and whoop.

One evening, tired of the day's horrible sights, I bent over my desk and began looking through a book on Renaissance art in an attempt to forget all I had seen, heard, and suffered while roaming since early morning. More than wine or love, more underhandedly than ideas, art is able to entice man and make him forget. Art takes the place of duty; it fights to convert the ephemeral into the eternal and to transubstantiate man's suffering into beauty. What does it matter if Troy was reduced to ashes and Priam and his sons killed? In what way would the world have benefited, and how much poorer man's soul would be, if Troy had continued to live in happiness and if Homer had not come along to convert the slaughter into immortal hexameters? A statue, a verse, a tragedy, a painting—these are the supreme memorials man has erected on earth.

Supreme, but also the most dangerous for everyday human suffering. Art makes us scorn the petty everyday concern for food, and even for justice; we forget that this is the root which nourishes the immortal flower.

The early Christians were right in not wanting their artists to make the Virgin beautiful in sacred paintings. Seduced by her beauty, we forget that she is the Mother of God.

Suddenly there was a knock on the door. I opened it. A telegram from Moscow! I read it again and again, rubbing my eyes from disbelief. I held it up to the lamp and examined it, as though it concealed a dangerous secret which I wished to discover in the light before making my decision. This little piece of paper might be a message from destiny coming to change my life, I reflected. In my interests or against them? Who can trust destiny? It is not blind, it blinds.

Should I go or not? The telegram invited me to travel to Moscow to represent Greek intellectuals at the great tenth anniversary of the revolution. Pilgrims would be speeding to the red Mecca from all over the world. Who had made this invitation possible by mentioning my name? Why had I been chosen? Three days later I understood. I received a short letter from Moscow. It was a teasing summons from Itka:

All hail, you pseudo Buddhist with a full stomach, you aristocrat, you amateur sufferer! Until now you have sought God's countenance, deserting one false god to go to another false god. Come here, my poor friend, to find the countenance of the true god, the countenance of man. Come if you want to be saved. The world we are building is still a mere framework. Bend down in your turn, add a stone, build; Buddha is fine, fine indeed—for gray beards!

Night had fallen by now. I rose and opened the window. Outside all was peaceful. The snow had stopped. From some bell tower a clock chimed sweetly in the frigid air. The trees in the street below me glistened, coated with icicles. And as my gaze began to lose itself in the nocturnal haze, Russia suddenly unfurled before me, vast, buried in whiteness, with its warm, lighted isbas, and its sleighs that slide over the snow. Steam rose from the horses' nostrils, and I even heard the cheerful little bells tinkling on their necks. Beyond, at the snow's edge, gilded domes flashed brilliantly, crowned not by crosses but by red flags like conflagrations. I recalled a half-mad Athonite monk who used to tell me, “Every man and every object is crowned by a cluster of flames. If these flames go out, the man and the object perish.” He was right. Russia too, I reflected, was crowned by a cluster of flames. If these flames went out, Russia would perish.