The Greek Islands (13 page)

Saints, like men, can become lazy and fail in their duties; it may be necessary sometimes to call them to order. As late as the last century in the Italian Abruzzi there lingered a custom which sounds very ancient. When the weather was not what it should be, or when a harvest turned out particularly badly, the statue of the village saint in the local church was carried out into the fields and ceremonially whipped. Nor were these Italian peasants the only ones to retain the sense of magic in their dealings with heavenly matters. Much the same sort of thing must have gone on in the mind of an eminent English archaeologist of whom I was told. He lived in Greece before the last war. He always carried an ash-plant in his car; for the
slightest
defection he would raise the bonnet and administer a smart thrashing to the engine. He seriously claimed that this
treatment
worked nine times out of ten in cases of dumb insolence, to which cars of that remote epoch were prone. The defect was remedied by the chastisement. Someone a little more modern might perhaps have thought of thrashing the chauffeur instead.

I am hunting for the right tone of voice in which to attempt to convey the strangely ambivalent attitude of the Greek
peasant
towards his patron saint; it is a compound of the personal
and sceptical which contains no hint of irreverence or
whimsicality
. He scolds his saint when things go wrong, as one might scold a business partner who has not been pulling his weight. And he feels so close to his saint that he can allow himself the luxury of a joke at his expense which, to the casual eye, might suggest disbelief in the powers of the
eidolon
. Not so. We spend our time in beseeching our saints and praying to them; the Greek wishes on his saint, and by a man-to-man attitude seeks to coax him into, the appropriate state of mind to grant the wish. He is particularly irritated when he has actually invested something like an
exvoto
in gold or a jewel, and the saint does not come across. I have even heard saints referred to in a most opprobrious fashion – sometimes as ‘that stinking old cuckold in the niche’. This is not irreverence, but a kind of superstition that one should not utter praise aloud for fear of igniting the devil. It is on a par with the Evil Eye drill; when you see a beautiful child you must spit thrice and mutter the formula
Na
meen avaskathi
(‘May she not be bewitched’). In ancient times certain deities had to be approached counter-clockwise, so to speak; there used to be a shrine to Heracles in Rhodian Lindos which could only be approached by walking backwards,
throwing
stones, and uttering the worst curses and blasphemies. The god would not respond to any other kind of blandishment.

It is not likely that you will take your leave of Crete with the happy feeling that you have come to grips with, and solved, any of the tantalizing problems it presents – whether those
concerned
with Minoan dating, the invasions of Mycenae, or the date of the Dorian epoch. It is pitiable how scanty and
enigmatic
, not to mention self-contradictory, the available materials are. But this provides a rich and muddled compost in which archaeologists and prehistorians can flourish; and they must be kept employed, for the best of them bring us enriching theories and discoveries. Nor from the world of fables and semi-fictions
will you feel that you have nailed the Minotaur, or really
elucidated
the scientific discoveries of Daedalus. It will not be your fault for, even as far back as Homer, the muddle and
overlapping
seem pretty constant; he speaks for example of ‘a land called Crete in the midst of the wine-dark sea … and in it many men beyond number and ninety cities. And there is a mixture of tongues there. There are Achaeans there and
stout-hearted
Eteo-Cretans, Cydonians and the wavy-haired Dorians, and illustrious Pelasgians.’

If he lived at the start of a slightly less muddled epoch, this was because of the power of the written word. Now, exactly when the Greeks started to write instead of to pict is still a matter for speculation. Some recent evidence suggests a date around 1400
BC
. But the flashpoint came when one day they took over the Phoenician alphabet; the actual borrowing
process
cannot be either described or dated with any accuracy, but it signalled the beginning of something momentous –
literature
! This brings us ourselves closer to the Greeks, for the whole beginning of our intellectual life and culture is rooted in the two great poems which sprang from this take-over bid. The deliberacy and rationality of the act seem beyond doubt, for the Phoenician sign-system was not simply copied, but adapted and modified to fit the needs of the Greek tongue, which was unrelated to the Semitic family group to which the Phoenician belonged. The pre-Greek invaders of the land had brought with them a language which belonged to a group of ancient
languages
; among them Indian (Sanscrit), Persian and Armenian. Through this vast mesh of historic influences, accompanied by countless changes and trends and overlappings, the Greek
language
finally precipitated itself like a rare calx – and then with a masterstroke one day appropriated an alphabet in which, as if in a mould, it could marmorealize itself. Written, it also became a channel for psychological elements of the national character to
stabilize themselves – to clothe themselves in myth and poetry. But here I must catch myself up sharply, for I have referred to a ‘national’ character quite inadvertently. A quotation from a Cambridge scholar M. I. Finley must put me in my place:

It recedes and recedes from us, this strange land, until it starts to take its place among historical figments and myths and metaphors – with not reality but a haunting dream as its
morphological
envelope. It becomes as unreal as a Minoan Age or a Minotaur or a peasant crossing himself backwards, or the old men whose baggy Turkish-style breeches have taken their shape because one day a new saviour will be born of a man and one must not risk bruising the infant’s head when it appears … There is an extraordinary tangle of legends ancient and modern which somehow have the right sort of plangence when you are there, on the spot, sitting in some battered café in Chanea drinking
ouzo
and watching the sun slowly setting upon these grave, poetical abstractions. The stout walls are Venetian.
Yesterday
, walking by the shore of a small viscous lagoon, I noticed an overpowering smell of rotting iodine; and then herons rose and clanked awkwardly away to the further marshes, uttering their desolate cry which was supposed to be a Turkish word
once – but what word had slipped my memory. It is also hard to imagine a siege of twenty-two years, or the extraordinary beauty of hundreds of parachutes falling out of the sky, Icarus fashion, in 1941. Everything exists in an eternal present locked in this extraordinary historic dream which is Crete, which is Greece – a country which has never existed.

By now the visitor will have made his first experiments with the Greek cuisine – so variable in execution that it can convey the impression of being anything between horrible and
good-to
-fair. Poor countries do not have the money to turn out great chefs but, though one can eat abominably in many parts of Greece, there has been of late a remarkable improvement
overall
. The range of choice is limited of course, though the raw materials (as any visit to the fish or fruit market will convince you) are as good as in Naples or Marseilles. What happens to them? There is no general rule. One must work to find one’s own palatable restaurant in whichever place one is, and put one’s trust in the Greeks only when by some accident of nature they come up with something really good. Though limited, the cuisine has a number of really delicious dishes to its credit. The problem is to find them well cooked, and presented
reasonably
warm. It is not true that all Greeks are born without taste buds: there are a number of fancy feeders in Athens, who spend their time running from one place to another hunting for that delectable dish they ate last week. It is really
astonishing
too how the wine can vary from bottle to bottle, how taverns can vary from week to week in their fare. You should always be on the
qui vive
. If you fall upon
sofrito
(meat stew) well done in Corfu, or
souzoukakia
(spitted entrails) in Rhodes, you will catch a glimpse of what would be possible if there were money and time – for the fruit and vegetables and fish are as good as anywhere. Cooks vary, and one needs the patience of Job to put up with this. Yet why does this little
character-defect not seem to matter too much? You get over your first vexation rapidly and sink into a resigned mood where you accept whatever comes with equanimity – and so much is really good that does come (lobsters or crayfish in Hydra are examples).

I always remind myself how the peasantry lives between fiestas. When young I shared many an agricultural worker’s meal in the shade of a tree. Consisting then of two or three cloves of garlic, a hunk of bread, and a gullet full of wine, it was astonishingly nourishing – particularly the garlic, which chases away all fatigue. There is another reason why the Greeks are confused in their kitchen: tourist authorities have convinced them that northern peoples like the Swedes, Britons or
Germans
will not come to Greece if there is garlic in the food (and of course it is sometimes true). So the meals come up as shoddy imitations of British Railways’
haute cuisine
. For people who dream of dancing peach to peach on the sun deck, garlic is of course a hazard. What is to be done? I do not know; this
non-garlic
scourge has now hit the south of France where in the Langue d’Oc the cuisine in the small hotels has become a shambles, because of a few bus-loads of somnolent Swedes or subfusc Germans. Mass catering, they call it, and the hotel keepers (who
do
know how to cook) are up in arms but will do nothing to harm their custom. How will the Greek ever improve his cuisine at this rate?

But the real test is what the Greeks eat at home, and here there is no doubt that they fare well and show both skill and taste. Whenever you are invited to a private house or to an engagement party, say, you are astonished at the variety and tastiness of the food. But it takes a great deal of preparing; always in the background, there is the hovering figure of grandma who has been up since four to start cooking for the feast. The general preference for food in Greece leans a bit
towards the
meze
or
amuse gueule
; which is understandable when nearly all the food you eat is partaken of outdoors under a vine. The Greeks like a dozen little dishes with a dozen different things
à la Chinoise
, rather than the heavy structured meal which the French, say, prefer. Moreover their idea of real
conviviality
is that you and your friends should dip in the same dish … The notion is a sound one.

As for drink, the controversial
rezina
has been discussed so often that it seems invidious to do it again.
Rezina
may well taste ‘like pure turpentine which has been strained through the socks of a bishop’, as someone wrote to me; but it is to be recommended most warmly. You should make a real effort with it, but be warned that it is never as good bottled as it is fresh from the blue cans of the Athenian
Plaka
. It is a perfect adjunct for food which is oil-cooked, and sometimes with oil not too fresh. Its pungent aroma clears the mind and the palate at one blow. Yet it is mild, and you can drink gallons without a
hangover
; nor does it ever provoke the disgusting, leaden sort of drunkenness that gin does – but rather, high spirits and wit. If you drink
rezina
you will live for ever, and never be a trial to your friends or to waiters. If you really cannot take any pleasure in it, you will find today several good little wines, white and red, which are not only stable but very good to taste. I think immediately of
Santa Elena
(white) and
Naoussa
(red), which are available almost everywhere because their production is high. But some of the monasteries also have good small wines which do not travel. In Santorin I remember once a red wine that came from volcanic soil and was faintly fizzy. It is worthwhile experimenting with the local brew wherever you are. You simply have to present yourself at a wine shop and say gravely, ‘I want some samples,’ and a glass is produced and you are invited to sit down. Whole mornings can be passed in this delicious sport when once you have tired of ruins and thirsty, dusty valleys.

Confused memories will remain of the rich groves of orange, lemon and almond, and the darkness of the tall cypresses which rise everywhere, self-seeded it would seem. The two varieties – the slender and the spread-out variety – are supposed by the peasants to be the male and female of the tree; whereas in truth the cypress is
monoecious
with the male and female flower on the same tree. What else? Yes, the stands of Aleppo pine along the hilly seashore – so often attacked by the Processionary caterpillar, the larva of the moth, whose untidy web-like nets can be seen in the branches. If you camp, watch out for the hairs of this caterpillar which are highly irritating to the skin and can indeed cause blindness. Other trees are the elm, the eastern plane and the white poplar (now alas dying of various fungoid diseases which they cannot as yet cure). Most curious among trees is the Tree of Heaven which, imported into France from China in 1751 as a garden plant, suddenly decided it liked Crete and has naturalized itself. It grows rapidly and seeds itself with winged seeds – which can travel twenty metres. In June and July it is covered with a riot of huge crimson flower-like leaves. However, the peasants hate this tree despite its beauty and call it ‘Stinktree’ – the leaves smell bad, and its seedlings invade their holdings.