Roumeli (32 page)

[3]
This odd word, logically, is the third person plural of the subjunctive of an unknown verb of which the first person present indicative would be
boliarévo
. (“Boliarize” is an attempt to turn it into an English verb.)

[4]
“Happy journey!”

[5]
Koulouria
are hard-crusted circular rolls with a hole in the middle, sprinkled with sesame seeds. The inhabitants of Yanina and Epirotes in general are nick-named
plakoképhaloi
, flat-heads; their mothers are said to smack their babies on the crown to make it more convenient, later on, for balancing a
koulouri
-tray. Traditionally, this smack is accompanied by the words “
Kai tzimitzís stin Póli!
” “May you become a roll-seller in the City!” The City—Constantinople—drew young Yaniniots like a magnet for centuries.

[6]
The Vlach and Rumanian languages are so close that some authorities think that they are the same and the differences merely the result of a few centuries separation. Vlach (or Aroman) communities, some static and some semi-nomadic, are sprinkled across the southern Balkans. Others maintain they are similar but unrelated developments of low Latin springing up in the Roman garrisoned colonies of Dacia—modern Rumania—and Macedonia. The Vlach language in Greece has two slightly differing dialects, spread over the Pindus round Metsovo and Samarina respectively. They could, it is argued, be the remains of the Roman legion garrisoned in the passes of the Pindus, recruited among Italiots or locally among Greeks, all of them speaking camp-Latin. When Honorius recalled the legions to Rome, this order, which emptied Britain of its Roman soldiery, may have failed to reach these remote folds of the Pindus; and here the benighted legionaries have remained ever since, rock-pools of corrupt Latin-speakers waiting for orders and pasturing their huge flocks all over Thessaly and the Pindus; or so they say. This is dangerous ground: nationalism, irridentism and opportunism have blurred the purely scholarly approach which this odd survival deserves. Unless he is ready to plunge deep, a writer can only mention the phenomenon and pass on. I choose the latter prudent course. One bold theory—where did I read it?—upholds that the Vlachs are the remains of Pompey's army, defeated by Caesar at Pharsalus in the Thessalian plain, in 48
B
.
C
. Enviable precision.

[7]
Reluctantly, dreading lest the reader, daunted by pages of italics, should skip them, I have lifted most of the Boliaric glossary to the end of the book. It would be a shame if this curious secret language should vanish unrecorded. So there it is, in Appendix II. I long for the reader to turn to it at once but I am in no position to insist.

[8]
Again, Slav?

[9]
Harman's Caveat, or Warning for Common Cursetors, vulgarly called vagabonds
(1567) gives the following example of “peddelars Frenche or canting”: “Bene Lightman's to thy quarromes, in what tipken hast thou lypped in this darkemans, whether in a lybbage or a strummel? (Good morrow to thy body, in what house hast thou lain all night, whether in a bed or in the straw?)”

[10]
An insulting term for the Royal Family.

[11]
Every now and then one is surprised by this rumour of evaporated Jewish communities. As we know, there were plenty in the time of the Acts of the Apostles and there are frequent mentions of them by Jewish travellers and Byzantine writers in mediaeval and early renaissance times. (I have touched on the question at some length at the beginning of
Mani
.) Greeks connect the silk industry with Jews and the resemblance of the name Solomos (which means “salmon” and is also the name of Greece's greatest nineteenth-century poet, a Venetian count from the Ionian Isles) to Solomon seems, to villagers, to clinch things. But they are not accurate in these matters: sometimes “
Evraioi
” or “
Ovraioi
” means little more than “foreign” and sometimes it merely designates a Greek speaking a different dialect, such as Tzakonian. The last village to which I have heard Jewish origins ascribed, on the strength of the name Solomos, is Koutíphari, in the outer Mani, the ancient Thalamai of Pausanias.

[12]
I was as surprised to see this tremendous and expensive set of books in this poverty-stricken village as I would be to find the
Encyclopaedia Britannica
in an English farm labourer's cottage: more so; the poverty in the Kravara defeats all comparison. Greece is full of surprises like this. I bought these wonderful volumes, all thirty-three of them, for £50 secondhand some years ago, brought them back to England in a crate and nearly lost them all in Belgrade. A terrible moment.

[13]
The last statement was corroborated later. There are two in the heart of Kolonaki, the fashionable quarter of Athens, who are both from Kravara villages. Impressively clad in the shiny peaked caps and white dustcoats that photographers have turned into a uniform, they woo passers-by to their tripods. Since this visit, whenever our paths cross now, it is a race to see which of the three of us will say first: “
Stíliane! Mas photae o banikos patellos!
”

[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.

T
HE 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 RÅ«m, 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 trees.

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.