The Colossus of Maroussi (27 page)

“Maybe,” I said, just to please him.

“In America everybody got a chance—poor man too, yes?”

“Sure.”

“Maybe I go back again and make big money, what you think?”

“Nothing like trying,” I answered.

“Sure, that’s what I tell my brother. You must work. In America you work like a son of a bitch—but you get paid for it. Here you work and work and work and what you got? Nothing. A piece of bread maybe. What kind of life is that? How you going to succeed?”

I groaned.

“You make lots of money in New York, I bet, yes?”

“No,” I said, “I never made a cent.”

“What you mean?” he said. “You couldn’t find job in New York?”

“I had lots of jobs,” I answered.

“You don’t stay long on one job, that’s it, yes?”

“That’s right,” I said.

“Maybe you don’t find the right job. You got to try many jobs—till you find the right one. You got to save your money. Maybe you have bad luck sometimes—then you have something for a rainy day, yes?”

“That’s it,” I said.

“Sometimes you get sick and you lose all your money. Sometimes a friend he take your money away from you. But you never give up, right? You stick it out. You try again.”

“That’s the idea,” I grunted.

“You got a good job waiting for you in New York?”

“No,” I said, “I haven’t any job.’

“Not so many jobs now as before,” he said. “In 1928 lots of jobs. Now everybody poor. I lose ten thousand dollars in stock market. Some people lose more. I say never mind, try again. Then I come to this country to see my brother. I stay too long. No money here. Only trouble…. You think Italy make trouble soon for Greece?”

“I don’t know,” I said.

“You think Germany win—or France?”

“I couldn’t say.”

“I think United States should go in the war. United States clean up those sons of bitches quick, yes? If United States make war on Germany I fight for United States.”

“That’s the stuff,” I said.

“Sure, why not?” he continued. “I no like to fight, but United States good country. Everybody get square deal, rich or poor. Uncle Sam afraid of nobody. We raise ten million, twenty million soldiers—like that! We kill those sons of bitches like dogs, yes?”

“You said it, brother.”

“I say to myself Uncle Sam he give me gun, he send me over to fight, I fight for him. Greek people no like Italians. Greek people like America. Everybody like America….”

“I like you too,” I said, getting up and shaking hands with him, “but now I’ve got to leave you—I must make pipi.”

“That’s all right, I’ll wait for you,” he said.

You’ll have a long wait, I thought to myself, as I disappeared inside the station. I got out on the other side of the station and walked around in the rain. When I returned I saw that the train was due to arrive at eight o’clock. A string of cars was standing at the platform waiting for the other section to arrive. Towards seven o’clock a bellhop from the hotel arrived and handed me a note. It was from Durrell, urging me to come back to the hotel and have dinner with them. The train wouldn’t arrive until after ten, he informed me. I thought it over and decided against it, more because I hated to say good-bye a second time than for any other reason.

I got into one of the coaches and sat there in the dark. Towards nine-thirty a train pulled in from the opposite direction and everybody got excited. But when we tried to climb aboard we found that it was an excursion train that had been hired by a club. As I stood on the platform of the special I learned that it was leaving for Athens in a few minutes. I was wondering if I couldn’t persuade them to take me along when a man came up to me and spoke to me in Greek. I answered in French that I couldn’t speak Greek, that I was an American and that I was very anxious to get to Athens as soon as possible. He called a young lady over who spoke English and when she learned that I was an American tourist she got excited and told me to wait, saying she thought she could fix it for me. I stood there a few minutes congratulating myself on my good luck. The young lady returned accompanied by a grave, melancholy-looking man with an officious air. He asked me very courteously why it was important for me to get back to Athens quickly, why couldn’t I wait for the other train which was due now in a little while, he was certain. I answered very courteously that there was no good reason except fear. He assured me there was nothing to be worried about. The other train was due in a few minutes and he had not the slightest doubt that it would leave in good time. He hesitated a moment and then cautiously, as if giving me a straw to grasp at, he inquired politely and with the utmost tact, as if unwilling to wrest the secret from me, whether I did not have a more urgent reason for wishing to leave ahead of time. There was something about his manner which warned me that it would be better not to invent a false reason. Something told me that he suspected me of being more than just a tourist. Beneath that suave, courteous exterior I divined the police inspector. True, I had in my pocket a letter from the Bureau of Tourisme which Seferiades had given me when I went to Crete, but experience has taught me that when a man is suspicious of you the better your credentials are the worse it is for you. I backed quietly down the steps, thanking him for his courtesy and excusing myself for the inconvenience I had caused him. “Your bags?” he said, with a flash of the eye. “I have none,” I said, and quickly disappeared in the crowd.

As soon as the train had pulled out I came out on the platform of the station and dove into the buffet where I put away some tender bits of lamb and a few cognacs. I felt as though I had narrowly missed going to jail. Two prisoners who were handcuff ed came in escorted by soldiers. I learned later that they had murdered the man who had violated their sister. They were good men, mountaineers, and they had surrendered without resistance. I went outside and got up an appetite watching a tender lamb being rolled on a spit. I had some more cognac. Then I got inside a coach and fell into conversation with a Greek who had lived in Paris. He was even more of a bore than the guy from Detroit. He was an intellectual who liked all the wrong things. I extricated myself as gracefully as possible and paced up and down in the rain again.

When the train did roll in at midnight I could scarcely believe my eyes. Of course it didn’t pull out until about two in the morning—I didn’t expect it to do any better. I had changed my ticket for a first-class compartment, thinking thereby to gain a little sleep before morning. There was only one man in the compartment with me and he soon began to doze off. I had a whole bench to myself, an upholstered one with white doilies over it. I stretched out full length and closed my eyes. Presently I felt something crawling over my neck. I sat up and brushed off a fat cockroach. As I sat there, gazing stupidly ahead of me, I noticed a file of cockroaches climbing the wall opposite. Then I took a glance at my fellow traveler. To my disgust I saw that they were crawling at a good pace over the lapel of his coat, onto his tie and down inside his vest. I got up and nudged him, pointing to the cockroaches. He made a grimace, brushed them off and with a smile fell back to sleep again. Not me. I was as wide awake as if I had just swallowed a half dozen cups of coffee. I felt itchy all over, I went outside and stood in the corridor. The train was going downhill, not just fast as trains do when they go downhill, but as if the engineer had gone to sleep and left the throttle wide open. I felt anxious. I wondered whether it would be wise to wake my companion up and warn him that something was wrong. Finally I realized that I didn’t know how to express the thought in Greek and I gave up the idea. I clung to the open window with two hands and prayed to Christ and all the little angels that we’d hit the bottom without going off the track. Somewhere before Argos I felt the brakes being applied and realized with a sigh of relief that the engineer was at his post. As we came to a stop I felt a gush of warm, fragrant air. Some urchins in bare feet swarmed around the train with baskets of fruit and soda water. They looked as if they had been routed out of bed—little tots, about eight or ten years of age. I could see nothing but mountains about and overhead the moon scudding through the clouds. The warm air seemed to be coming up from the sea, rising slowly and steadily, like incense. A pile of old ties were going up in flames, casting a weird light on the black mountains yonder.

At the hotel in Athens I found a note from the American Express saying that the boat had been held up another twenty-four hours. Golfo the maid was overjoyed to see me. My socks and shirts were lying on the bed, all beautifully mended during my absence. After I had taken a bath and a nap I telephoned Katsimbalis and Seferiades to have a last dinner together. Captain Antoniou unfortunately was taking his boat to Saloniki. Ghika was unable to come, but promised to take me to the boat on the morrow. Theodore Stephanides was in Corfu putting his X-ray laboratory in shape. Durrell and Nancy, either they were marooned in the hotel at Tripolis or they were sitting in the amphitheatre at Epidaurus. There was one other person whose presence I missed and that was Spiro of Corfu. I didn’t realize it then, but Spiro was getting ready to die. Only the other day I received a letter from his son telling me that Spiro’s last words were: “New York! New York! I want to find Henry Miller’s house!” Here is how Lillis, his son, put it in his letter: “My poor father died with your name in his mouth which closed forever. The last day, he had lost his logic and pronounced a lot of words in English as: ‘New York! New York! where can I find Mr. Miller’s house?’ He died as poor as he always was. He did not realize his dream to be rich. This year I finish the Commercial School of Corfu but I am unemployed. And this is a result of the miserable war. Who knows when I shall find a job to be able to feed my family. Anyway such is the life and we can do nothing to it…”

No, Lillis is quite right—we can do nothing to it! And that is why I look back on Greece with such pleasure. The moment I stepped on the American boat which was to take me to New York I felt that I was in another world. I was among the go-getters again, among the restless souls who, not knowing how to live their own life, wish to change the world for everybody. Ghika, who had brought me to the quay, came on board to have a look at the strange American boat which lay at anchor in the port of Piraeus. The bar was open and we had a last drink together. I felt as though I were already back in New York: there was that clean, vacuous, anonymous atmosphere which I know so well and detest with all my heart. Ghika was impressed with the luxurious appearance of the boat; it answered to the picture which he had built up in his mind. Myself, I felt depressed. I was sorry I hadn’t been able to take a Greek boat.

I was even more depressed when I found that I was to have opposite me at the table a Greek surgeon who had become an American citizen and who had spent some twenty years or so in America. We hit it off badly right from the start. Everything he said I disagreed with; everything he liked I detested. I never met a man in my life whom I more thoroughly despised than this Greek. Finally, about the end of the second day, after he had gotten me aside to finish a discussion which had begun at the dinner table, I told him frankly that despite his age, his experience of life, which was vast, despite his status, despite his knowledge, despite the fact that he was a Greek, I considered him an ignorant fool and that I wanted nothing more to do with him. He was a man approaching seventy, a man who was evidently respected by those who knew him, a man who had been distinguished for bravery on the field of battle and who had been honored for his contribution to medical science; he was also a man who had travelled to every nook and corner of the world. He was somebody and in his declining years he lived in the realization of that fact. My words therefore produced a veritable shock in him. He said he had never been spoken to that way in his life. He was insulted and outraged. I told him I was glad to hear it, it would do him good.

From that moment on of course we never addressed a word to one another. At meals I looked straight through him, as if he were a transparent object. It was embarrassing for the others, more so because we were both well liked, but I would no more think of conciliating that pest than I would of jumping off the boat. Throughout the voyage the doctor would air his views which everybody would listen to with attention and respect and then I would air mine, taking a perverse delight in demolishing everything he said, yet never answering him directly but talking as if he had already left the table. It’s a wonder we didn’t get dyspepsia before the voyage was out.

Coming back to America I am happy to say I have never run into a type like that again. Everywhere I go I see Greek faces and often I stop a man in the street and ask him if he isn’t a Greek. It heartens me to have a little chat with a stranger from Sparta or Corinth or Argos. Only the other day, in the lavatory of a big hotel in New York, I struck up a friendly conversation with the attendant who proved to be a Greek from the Peloponnesus. He gave me a long and instructive talk about the construction of the second Parthenon. Lavatories are usually underground and the atmosphere, one would imagine, is scarcely conducive to good talk, but I had a wonderful conversation in this particular hole and I’ve made a mental note to come back at intervals and resume intercourse with my new-found friend. I know a night elevator runner in another hotel who is also interesting to talk to. The fact is, the more humble the employment the more interesting I find the Greek to he.

The greatest single impression which Greece made upon me is that it is a man-sized world. Now it is true that France also conveys this impression, and yet there is a difference, a difference which is profound. Greece is the home of the gods; they may have died but their presence still makes itself felt. The gods were of human proportion: they were created out of the human spirit. In France, as elsewhere in the Western world, this link between the human and the divine is broken. The skepticism and paralysis produced by this schism in the very nature of man provides the clue to the inevitable destruction of our present civilization. If men cease to believe that they will one day become gods then they will surely become worms. Much has been said about a new order of life destined to arise on this American continent. It should be borne in mind, however, that not even a beginning has been visioned for at least a thousand years to come. The present way of life, which is America’s, is doomed as surely as is that of Europe. No nation on earth can possibly give birth to a new order of life until a world view is established. We have learned through bitter mistakes that all the peoples of the earth are vitally connected, but we have not made use of that knowledge in an intelligent way. We have seen two world wars and we shall undoubtedly see a third and a fourth, possibly more. There will be no hope of peace until the old order is shattered. The world must become small again as the old Greek world was—small enough to include everybody. Until the very last man is included there will be no real human society. My intelligence tells me that such a condition of life will be a long time in coming, but my intelligence also tells me that nothing short of that will ever satisfy man. Until he has become fully human, until he learns to conduct himself as a member of the earth, he will continue to create gods who will destroy him. The tragedy of Greece lies not in the destruction of a great culture but in the abortion of a great vision. We say erroneously that the Greeks humanized the gods. It is just the contrary. The gods humanized the Greeks. There was a moment when it seemed as if the real significance of life had been grasped, a breathless moment when the destiny of the whole human race was in jeopardy. The moment was lost in the blaze of power which engulfed the intoxicated Greeks. They made mythology of a reality which was too great for their human comprehension. We forget, in our enchantment with the myth, that it is born of reality and is fundamentally no different from any other form of creation, except that it has to do with the very quick of life. We too are creating myths, though we are perhaps not aware of it. But in our myths there is no place for the gods. We are building an abstract, dehumanized world out of the ashes of an illusory materialism. We are proving to ourselves that the universe is empty, a task which is justified by our own empty logic. We are determined to conquer and conquer we shall, but the conquest is death.