The Colossus of Maroussi Read online

  In Athens it was actually chilly enough to wear an overcoat when we arrived. Athens has a temperamental climate, like New York. It has plenty of dust, too, if you start walking towards the outskirts. Even in the heart of the city sometimes, where the most fashionable, ultra-modern apartment houses are to be seen, the street is nothing but a dirt road. One can walk to the edge of the city in a half hour. It is really an enormous city containing almost a million inhabitants; it has grown a hundred times over since Byron’s day. The color scheme is blue and white, as it is throughout Greece. Even the newspapers use blue ink, a bright sky-blue, which makes the papers seem innocent and juvenile. The Athenians practically devour the newspapers; they have a perpetual hunger for news. From the balcony of my room at the Grand Hotel I could look down on Constitution Square which in the evening is black with people, thousands of them, seated at little tables loaded with drinks and ices, the waiters scurrying back and forth with trays to the cafés adjoining the square.

  Here one evening on his way back to Amaroussion I met Katsimbalis. It was definitely a meeting. As far as encounters with men go I have only known two others to compare with it in my whole life—when I met Blaise Cendrars and when I met Lawrence Durrell. I didn’t have very much to say that first evening; I listened spellbound, enchanted by every phrase he let drop. I saw that he was made for the monologue, like Cendrars, like Moricand the astrologer. I like the monologue even more than the duet, when it is good. It’s like watching a man write a book expressly for you: he writes it, reads it aloud, acts it, revises it, savors it, enjoys it, enjoys your enjoyment of it, and then tears it up and throws it to the winds. It’s a sublime performance, because while he’s going through with it you are God for him—unless you happen to be an insensitive and impatient dolt. But in that case the kind of monologue I refer to never happens.

  He was a curious mixture of things to me on that first occasion; he had the general physique of a bull, the tenacity of a vulture, the agility of a leopard, the tenderness of a lamb, and the coyness of a dove. He had a curious overgrown head which fascinated me and which, for some reason, I took to be singularly Athenian. His hands were rather small for his body, and overly delicate. He was a vital, powerful man, capable of brutal gestures and rough words, yet somehow conveying a sense of warmth which was soft and feminine. There was also a great element of the tragic in him which his adroit mimicry only enhanced. He was extremely sympathetic and at the same time ruthless as a boor. He seemed to be talking about himself all the time, but never egotistically. He talked about himself because he himself was the most interesting person he knew. I liked that quality very much—I have a little of it myself.

  We met a few days later to have dinner together—he, his wife Aspasia and the Durrells. After dinner we were to meet some friends of his. From the time he met us he was bubbling over. He was always that way, even on bad days when he complained of headache or dizziness or any of the hundred and one ailments which pestered him. He was taking us to a taverna in Piraeus, he said, because he wanted us to enjoy Greek cooking in the Greek way. It was one of his favorite hang-outs in the old days. “I made a mistake to get married,” he said—his wife listening and smiling indulgently—“I wasn’t cut out for marriage—it’s ruining me. I can’t sleep, I can’t smoke, I can’t drink any more…. I’m finished.” He was always talking about himself as of someone who was done for: it was a little motif which he wove into the monologue by way of warming up to a subject. Things which happened only yesterday fell into this same nostalgic done-for past. Sometimes, when he talked this way, he gave me the impression of being an enormous tortoise which had slipped out of its shell, a creature which was spending itself in a desperate struggle to get back into the shell which it had outgrown. In this struggle he always made himself look grotesque and ridiculous—he did it deliberately. He would laugh at himself, in the tragic way of the buffoon. We would all laugh, his wife too. No matter how sad or morbid or pathetic the story might be he would have us laughing continuously. He saw the humorous aspect of everything, which is the real test of the tragic sense.

  The food…food was something he was passionate about. He had been enjoying good food since childhood and I guess he will go on enjoying it until he dies. His father had been a great gourmet and Katsimbalis, though perhaps lacking some of his father’s sensual refinements and accomplishments, was following the family tradition. Between great carnivorous gulps of food he would pound his chest like a gorilla before washing it down with a hogshead of rezina. He had drunk a lot of rezina in his time: he said it was good for one, good for the kidneys, good for the liver, good for the lungs, good for the bowels and for the mind, good for everything. Everything he took into his system was good, whether it was poison or ambrosia. He didn’t believe in moderation nor good sense nor anything that was inhibitory. He believed in going the whole hog and then taking your punishment. There were a lot of things he couldn’t do any more—the war had bunged him up a bit. But despite the bad arm, the dislocated knee, the damaged eye, the disorganized liver, the rheumatic twinges, the arthritic disturbances, the migraine, the dizziness and God knows what, what was left of the catastrophe was alive and flourishing like a smoking dung-heap. He could galvanize the dead with his talk. It was a sort of devouring process: when he described a place he ate into it, like a goat attacking a carpet. If he described a person he ate him alive from head to toe. If it were an event he would devour every detail, like an army of white ants descending upon a forest. He was everywhere at once, in his talk. He attacked from above and below, from the front, rear and flanks. If he couldn’t dispose of a thing at once, for lack of a phrase or an image, he would spike it temporarily and move on, coming back to it later and devouring it piecemeal. Or like a juggler, he would loss it in the air and, just when you thought he had forgotten it, that it would fall and break, he would deftly put an arm behind his back and catch it in his palm without even turning his eye. It wasn’t just talk he handed out, but language—food and beast language. He always talked against a landscape, like the protagonist of a lost world. The Attic landscape was best of all for his purpose: it contains the necessary ingredients for the dramatic monologue. One has only to see the open air theatres buried in the hillsides to understand the importance of this setting. Even if his talk carried him to Paris, for example, to a place like the Faubourg Montmartre, he spiced and flavored it with his Attic ingredients, with thyme, sage, tufa, asphodel, honey, red clay, blue roofs, acanthus trimmings, violet light, hot rocks, dry winds, dust, rezina, arthritis and the electrical crackle that plays over the low hills like a swift serpent with a broken spine. He was a strange contradiction, even in his talk. With his snake-like tongue which struck like lightning, with fingers moving nervously, as though wandering over an imaginary spinet, with pounding, brutal gestures which somehow never smashed anything but simply raised a din, with all the boom of surf and the roar and sizzle and razzle-dazzle, if you suddenly observed him closely you got the impression that he was sitting there immobile, that only the round falcon’s eye was alert, that he was a bird which had been hypnotized, or had hypnotized itself, and that his claws were fastened to the wrist of an invisible giant, a giant like the earth. All this flurry and din, all these kaleidoscopic prestidigitations of his, was only a sort of wizardry which he employed to conceal the fact that he was a prisoner—that was the impression he gave me when I studied him, when I could break the spell for a moment and observe him attentively. But to break the spell required a power and a magic almost equal to his own; it made one feel foolish and impotent, as one always does when one succeeds in destroying the power of illusion. Magic is never destroyed—the most we can do is to cut ourselves off, amputate the mysterious antennae which serve to connect us with forces beyond our power of understanding. Many a time, as Katsimbalis talked, I caught that look on the face of a listener which told me that the invisible wires had been connected, that something was being communicated which was over and above language, over and above pers
onality, something magical which we recognize in dream and which makes the face of the sleeper relax and expand with a bloom such as we rarely see in waking life. Oft en when meditating on this quality of his I thought of his frequent allusions to the incomparable honey which is stored by the bees on the slopes of his beloved Hymettos. Over and over he would try to explain the reasons why this honey from Mount Hymettos was unique. Nobody can explain it satisfactorily. Nobody can explain anything which is unique. One can describe, worship and adore. And that is all I can do with Katsimbalis’ talk.

  It was later, after I had returned to Corfu and had had a good taste of solitude, that I appreciated the Katsimbalistic monologue even more. Lying nude in the sun on a ledge of rock by the sea I would often close my eyes and try to re-weave the pattern of his talks. It was then that I made the discovery that his talk created reverberations, that the echo took a long time to reach one’s ears. I began to compare it with French talk in which I had been enveloped for so long. The latter seemed more like the play of light on an alabaster vase, something reflective, nimble, dancing, liquid, evanescent, whereas the other, the Katsimbalistic language, was opaque, cloudy, pregnant with resonances which could only be understood long afterwards when the reverberations announced the collision with thoughts, people, objects located in distant parts of the earth. The Frenchman puts walls about his talk, as he does about his garden: he puts limits about everything in order to feel at home. At bottom he lacks confidence in his fellow man; he is skeptical because he doesn’t believe in the innate goodness of human beings. He has become a realist because it is safe and practical. The Greek, on the other hand, is an adventurer: he is reckless and adaptable, he makes friends easily. The walls which you see in Greece, when they are not of Turkish or Venetian origin, go back to the Cyclopean age. Of my own experience I would say that there is no more direct, approachable, easy man to deal with than the Greek. He becomes a friend immediately: he goes out to you. With the Frenchman friendship is a long and laborious process: it may take a lifetime to make a friend of him. He is best in acquaintanceship where there is little to risk and where there are no aftermaths. The very word ami contains almost nothing of the flavor of friend, as we feel it in English. C’est mon ami cannot be translated by “this is my friend.” There is no counterpart to this English phrase in the French language. It is a gap which has never been filled, like the word “home.” These things affect conversation. One can converse all right, but it is difficult to have a heart to heart talk. All France, it has often been said, is a garden, and if you love France, as I do, it can be a very beautiful garden. For myself I found it healing and soothing to the spirit; I recovered from the shocks and bruises which I had received in my own country. But there comes a day, when you are well again and strong, when this atmosphere ceases to be nourishing. You long to break out and test your powers. Then the French spirit seems inadequate. You long to make friends, to create enemies, to look beyond walls and cultivated patches of earth. You want to cease thinking in terms of life insurance, sick benefits, old age pensions and so on.

  After the succulent repast at the taverna in Piraeus, all of us a bit stinko from the rezina, we moved back to the big square in Athens. It was midnight or a little after and the square still crowded with people. Katsimbalis seemed to divine the spot where his friends were seated. We were introduced to his bosom comrades, George Seferiades and Captain Antoniou of the good ship “Acropolis.” They soon began plying me with questions about America and American writers. Like most educated Europeans they knew more about American literature than I ever will. Antoniou had been to America several times, had walked about the streets of New York, Boston, New Orleans, San Francisco and other ports. The thought of him walking about the streets of our big cities in bewilderment led me to broach the name of Sherwood Anderson whom I always think of as the one American writer of our time who has walked the streets of our American cities as a genuine poet. Since they scarcely knew his name, and since the conversation was already veering towards more familiar ground, namely Edgar Allan Poe, a subject I am weary of listening to, I suddenly became obsessed with the idea of selling them Sherwood Anderson. I began a monologue myself for a change—about writers who walk the streets in America and are not recognized until they are ready for the grave. I was so enthusiastic about the subject that I actually identified myself with Sherwood Anderson. He would probably have been astounded had he heard of the exploits I was crediting him with. I’ve always had a particular weakness for the author of “Many Marriages.” In my worst days in America he was the man who comforted me, by his writings. It was only the other day that I met him for the first time. I found no discrepancy between the man and the writer. I saw in him the born storyteller, the man who can make even the egg triumphant.

  As I say, I went on talking about Sherwood Anderson like a blue streak. It was to Captain Antoniou that I chiefly addressed myself. I remember the look he gave me when I had finished, the look which said: “Sold. Wrap them up, I’ll take the whole set.” Many times since I’ve enjoyed the pleasure of rereading Sherwood Anderson through Antoniou’s eyes. Antoniou is constantly sailing from one island to another, writing his poems as he walks about strange cities at night. Once, a few months later, I met him for a few minutes one evening in the strange port of Herakleion in Crete. He was still thinking about Sherwood Anderson, though his talk was of cargoes and weather reports and water supplies. Once out to sea I could picture him going up to his cabin and, taking a little book from the rack, burying himself in the mysterious night of a nameless Ohio town. The night always made me a little envious of him, envious of his peace and solitude at sea. I envied him the islands he was always stopping off at and the lonely walks through silent villages whose names mean nothing to us. To be a pilot was the first ambition I had ever voiced. I liked the idea of being alone in the little house above the deck, steering the ship over its perilous course. To be aware of the weather, to be in it, battling with it, meant everything to me. In Antoniou’s countenance there were always traces of the weather. And in Sherwood Anderson’s writing there are always traces of the weather. I like men who have the weather in their blood….

  We separated in the early hours of the morning. I went back to the hotel, opened the window and stood for a while on the balcony looking down on the square which was now deserted. I had made two more stalwart Greek friends and I was happy about it. I began to think of all the friends I had made in the short time that I was there. I thought of Spiro, the taxi-driver, and of Kare-menaios, the gendarme. There was also Max, the refugee, living like a duke at the King George Hotel; he seemed to have nothing on his mind but how to make his friends happy with the drachmas which he couldn’t take out of the country. There was also the proprietor of my hotel who, unlike any French hotelkeeper I have ever met, used to say to me at intervals—“Do you need any money?” If I told him I was taking a little trip he would say: “Be sure to wire me if you need any money.” Spiro was the same way. When we said good-bye at the dock the night of the general panic, his last words were—“Mr. Henry, if you come back to Corfu I want you to stay with me. I don’t want any money, Mr. Henry—I want you to come and live with us as long as you like.” Everywhere I went in Greece it was the same tune. Even at the prefecture, while waiting to have my papers put in order, the gendarme would send out for a coffee and cigarettes to put me at ease. I liked the way they begged too. They weren’t shamefaced about it. They would hold you up openly and ask for money or cigarettes as if they were entitled to it. It’s a good sign when people beg that way: it means that they know how to give. The French, for example, know neither how to give nor how to ask for favors—either way they feel uneasy. They make a virtue of not molesting you. It’s the wall again. A Greek has no walls around him: he gives and takes without stint.

  The English in Greece—a sorry lot, by the way—seem to have a poor opinion of the Greek character. The English are torpid, unimaginative, lacking in resiliency. They seem to think that the Gre
eks should be eternally grateful to them because they have a powerful fleet. The Englishman in Greece is a farce and an eye-sore: he isn’t worth the dirt between a poor Greek’s toes. For centuries the Greeks have had the cruelest enemy a people could have—the Turks. After centuries of enslavement they threw off the yoke and, had the big Powers not interfered, they would probably have driven the Turks into the ground and annihilated them. To-day the two peoples, after an exchange of populations which is nothing if not extraordinary, are friends. They respect one another. And yet the English, who would have disappeared from the face of the earth had they been subjected to the same treatment, pretend to look down on the Greeks.

  Everywhere you go in Greece the atmosphere is pregnant with heroic deeds. I am speaking of modern Greece, not ancient Greece. And the women, when you look into the history of this little country, were just as heroic as the men. In fact, I have even a greater respect for the Greek woman than for the Greek man. The Greek woman and the Greek Orthodox priest—they sustained the fighting spirit. For stubbornness, courage, recklessness, daring, there are no greater examples anywhere. No wonder Durrell wanted to fight with the Greeks. Who wouldn’t prefer to fight beside a Bouboulina, for example, than with a gang of sickly, effeminate recruits from Oxford or Cambridge?