GEORGE THEOTOKAS

1/

LEONIS
A NOVEL

TRANSLATED FROM THE ORIGINAL GREEK BY

DONALD E. MARTIN

WITH A PREFACE BY
THEOFANIS G. STAVROU

A NOSTOS BOOK
1985
 PREFACE

George Theotokas (1905-1966) has been described by crit­

ics as one of the most versatile modern Greek writers and his
novel Leonis, set in the cosmopolitan atmosphere of Con­
stantinople on the eve of the First World War, as his most
successful work. He belongs to the much discussed “genera­
tion of the thirties” which has given Greece some of its finest
writers including the Nobel Prize winners George Seferis and
Odysseus Elytis. In fact, his essay The New Spirit (1929),
with which Theotokas made his literary debut, has been
claimed as the manifesto of that generation. As a novelist, es­
sayist, dramatist, founder and editor of literary journals, social
and cultural critic, Theotokas sought to play and indeed did
play the role of a gadfly in Greek society. One of his last works
The National Crisis (1966), consisting of a series of articles
touching on cultural and social issues he had published
earlier in a Greek newspaper, reflects his preoccupation with
the question of the role of the artist or intellectual in society.
His contemporaries expected this role from him and as Pro­
fessor Linos Politis so admirably put it, “the most important
thing about Theotokas, more important than his work, was his
presence in our world of letters: the presence of a cultivated
mind, conscious of the responsibilities of the intellectual,
sincere in his aims, open to all ideas, and above all honourable
in every aspect of his intellectual or personal life.” 1 He has
also been described as the most Cartesian of modern Greek
vii
writers, especially in his early works, whose “images speak
more to the m ind than the em otions,” an antidote, that is, to
the excessive lyricism burdening most of Greek prose.2
Theotokas was born in C onstantinople where he spent his
adolescent years, studied law at the University of Athens, and
traveled in E urope, especially France and England, before
beginning his career as a lawyer in 1931 and as a writer two
years earlier. Besides The Free Spirit, his literary output in­
cludes Leisure H ours (1931), Forw ard to the Social Problem
(1932), Argo (1933—1936), Euripides Pendozalis and Other
Stories (1937), The Demon (1938), Leonis (1940), The Game of
Folly Versus Wisdom (1947), The Sacred Road (1950), Essay
on America (1954), Problem s o f O ur Time (1956), The Price of
Freedom (1958), E ncounter on Pendeli (1958), Alcibiades
(1959), Journey to the M iddle E ast and Mount Athos (1961),
Intellectual Journey (1961), a collection of essays he wrote
throughout his lifetim e, and Invalids and Wayfarers (1964).
He was influential in organizing the National Theatre of
Northern G reece and from May 1964 to January 1965 he
served as the P resident of the Executive Council of the Na­
tional T heatre of G reece. Finally, it should he pointed out that
in collaboration with George Katsimbalis and other Athenian
intellectuals, he founded the influential literary journal Nea
Gram m ata. But the nam e of Theotokas is most readily asso­
ciated with his essay The Free Spirit and his two novels Argo
and Leonis. Literary merits aside, Argo has been acknowl­
edged as providing the best social commentary on Greece
during the period betw een the wars.3
Leonis belongs to the literature of “adolescence,” 4 and
according to its author, it is a “confessional novel.” In fact, it is
the story of Theotokas himself, the story of the “artist as a
young m an” at a most crucial moment in twentieth-century
history, the eve of the First World War. What sets Leonis
apart from other Greek works of fiction about adolescent
youth is the w riter’s ability to transform into objective phe­
nomenon the subjective reality experienced by the young
hero who “heard the War approaching” and whose fate was
nothing short of “ History” itself. Or as Leonis-Theotokas put
it, “ I w ept the tears of youth in that hidden place of spiritual
landscapes w here lyricism dies and epic rhythm begins.” In
viii
short, Leonis is a sensitive analysis of adolescent youth
with Constantinople and its environs as its immediate land­
scape but Europe in the era of the Great War as its all-encom­
passing canvass.
In Greece Leonis enjoyed considerable success having
gone through at least five editions. This is the first complete
English translation and it is based on the version which has
been circulating in G reece since 1940. While the English
edition was in press, I heard from Mrs. Lily Alivizatos,
Theotokas’s sister, that a new scholarly edition of Leonis
was about to appear in Athens under the editorship of Profes­
sor George Savidis. The initial reaction was to postpone pub­
lication of the English edition until we had an opportunity to
examine the new volume. It was finally decided to proceed
with publication plans, especially in view of the fact a French
edition by Renee Richer is also about to appear in the series
“Les Belles Lettres.” But the most important reason for com­
pleting the project was the assurance from Mrs. Alivizatos that
Leonis will continue to be published in Greece according
to the edition which has appeared several times since 1940.
Furthermore, the scholarly edition is by its very nature a lim­
ited one destined to serve primarily the needs of scholars,
especially philologists.5 We are therefore pleased that
Theotokas is again accessible to English readers through
Donald E. M artin’s translation of Leonis.

Theofanis G. Stavrou
University of Minnesota
December 10, 1984

NOTES
1 Linos Politis, A History o f Modem Greek Literature (Oxford: At the
Clarendon Press, 1973), 254.
2 C. Th. Dimaras, A History of Modem Greek Literature (Albany: State
University of New York Press, 1972), 493.
3 There is an English translation of Argo by E. Margaret Brooke and Ares
Tsatsopoulos (London: Methuen and Co. Ltd., 1951), unfortunately long out
of print.
4 In modern Greek literature this genre began to manifest itself during the
interwar years and has continued ever since. Generally speaking, this type of
literature served as a way of escape both for the writers themselves and the
audience they were addressing. It was an attempt at escape from the harsh

IX
realities which contributed to bringing about the Second World War and the
War itself. Besides Leonis, the best known such works in modern Greek lit­
erature are The Descendant (1935) by Thanasis Petsalis, Eroica (1938) by
Kosmas Politis, Warning (1943) by Andonis Vousvounis, Aeolian Land
(1943) by Uias Venezis, Journey with Hesperus (1946) by Angelos Terzakis,
and The Straw Hats (1946) by Margarita Lymberaki. For an analysis of this
phenomenon in modern Greek literature see Apostolos Sahinis, 1 Sinclironi
Pezografia Mas (Our Contemporary Prose) (Athens: Galaxy editions, 1971),
the first section of which (pp. 11-51) is devoted to an analysis of Greek novels
about "adolescence.” See also the only monographic study of Theotokas in
English by Thomas Doulis, George Theotokas (Boston: Twayne Publishers,
1975), and the same author’s useful study Disaster and Fiction: Modern
Greek Fiction and the Asia Minor Disaster of 1922 (Berkeley: University of
California Press, 1977). In both works, Doulis pays considerable attention to
Leonis.
5 I am grateful to Professor Savidis who, in a telephone conversation on
November 26, 1984, verified the following information about the scholarly or
“unorthodox" edition, information which should be of interest to Theotokas
scholars. By special agreement with Kollaros publishers, the new edition
undertaken by Ermis carries the title Simees ston llion (Flags in the Sun) and
is limited to 2,000 copies. It includes the original text and several passages
restored by the editor, passages dealing with sexual and political matters
which for some reason Theotokas did not include in subsequent editions,
relevant passages from Theotokas's diary, a long introduction by Professor
Savidis and a critical appendix by Professor Savidis and bis collaborator
M. Pieris comparing the various versions of the text. Finally, the new edition
contains drawings by Theotokas executed at the time when he was writing
Leonis.

X
 AUTHOR’S NOTE

I certainly feel no special pleasure in burdening my books

with prologues or explanatory notes. I do feel, however, that
when one has the inclination to write somewhat peculiar
books which do not fit into the established categories of liter­
ary prose in one’s country, he has an obligation to supply his
readers with some explanation of what he is about. So much
the more when, as I have sometimes observed, quite a few
people are put off and bothered by my writings for the chief
reason that they do not know how to classify them.
To tell the truth, when I set about writing Leonis, 1 had no
clear notion just what I was going to do. After the fact, of
course, one can say a thousand and one things, but at that time
the only thing I knew for sure — indeed, I could think of
nothing else — was that I heard the War approaching.
I belong to the m uch-touted generation which was going to
school during the First World War, and which was beginning
to think on and search out the purpose of its life amid great
social instability, in dim and unexplainable uneasiness, in dis­
sonant dance music, in the mechanically propelled, passion­
ate and optimistic poetry of what was at another time called
the “post-war” era. When the conviction formed within me
that the Great War was coming again, like a red cloud, to cover
the world, I was in a quite difficult situation, as of course were
many of my contemporaries.
First of all I felt that we were a generation marked out by a
xi
special fate, that it was useless for anyone to complain or pro­
test or try to forget, but that it was preferable for one to make
up his m ind that this was the way things were, that we were
the children of a great historical crisis which determ ined all of
our lives, and that our dreams and activities and works quite
naturally could not escape entirely the shadow which covered
us.
T h ese th ings ap p e are d to me q u ite obvious and self-
evident. But at the same time, as the hour of the new outbreak
drew near more swiftly, I felt dom inated by an intense nostal­
gia for the years of the First World War, of the Armistice, and
of the Asia M inor Expedition — a nostalgia for a lost world and
great historical moments, a nostalgia drenched with the bit­
tersw eet recollections of childhood and youth. But 1 was un­
able any longer to know for certain w hether it was actually a
nostalgia for childhood and youth or som ething like an old
illness hidden deeply in the organism, which one day rises
again to the surface owing to a change in atm ospheric condi­
tions.
Leonis was the offspring of this psychological aberration. I
wrote it in the margins, as it were, of the real preoccupations
of our time, as I felt the need to expend those confused emo­
tions, to express my nostalgia hastily in more or less objective
forms, to re-form interm ittently different things I had seen or
thought I had seen, to m ingle randomly real persons with
imaginary ones. I wrote, in short, w ithout clearly defined artis­
tic intentions.
N evertheless, the book finally did take shape, and now one
can attem pt to find a m eaning for it. Objectively I would call it
a small confessional novel, som ething like the ones enjoyed
by people in the Romantic era — confessional, that is, of cer­
tain psychological situations somehow tending to be typical of
that age.
In the books I have in m ind just now (every informed reader
has guessed the ones I mean), the author would usually rely
upon his own experience to relate in his own way how a youth
grew and took shape spiritually. This youth would be pre­
sented as the bearer of the moods and anxieties of a definite
era, but in a more or less universal manner. In these books the
Romantics sought mainly to express, to make conscious, and to
xii
analyze the chronic psychological crisis of their tim es, the
celebrated mal du siecle. O ne supposes that the youthful
heroes of these confessional narratives represented the most
sensitive and conscientious young people of the times, who
lived out the “sickness of the age” more deeply and intensely
than people in general.
The rhythm of things has changed, of course, betw een the
Romantics of 1830 and ourselves. We are different. We feel,
think, and write differently. Our own “ sickness of the age ,
whose existence is often noted but whose nature has not yet
been defined, cannot but have a m eaning basically different
from that given to the same expression by the Romantics. But
the example they set by madly delving into that type of “sick­
ness” cannot, I b elieve, hurt us any more than we have
already been hurt.
Within the limits of its resources, Leonis, too, relates in a
way the spiritual developm ent of a boy of the twentieth cen­
tury: his passage from childhood to youth and the flowering of
his teenage years. It describes one view of the crisis of youth.
And one can observe that anyone who lives at all consciously
has a certain experience of the crisis of youth and is capable of
saying something of his own about this eternal theme. But in
the case with which I am dealing, this crisis unfolds within
the atmosphere of great historical crises. The youth in my
book has the bitter privilege of feeling all around and inside
him the excessive stress of m ovem ent of his history. He feels
within his personal life the presence of History — not the past
history of books, but History which is in process and is mark­
ing one of its greatest turns: a burning and burdensome pres­
ence which hinders his youth from flowering freely, but
which gives it a special flavor and perhaps a special value.
I believe that such an intrusion of the historical factor — an
intrusion basically tragic in the classical sense — is imparting
to this day its special tone to the shaping of the spiritual life of
the generations of the tw entieth century. Some such view,
then, I suppose, is in the end likely to be the basis of the
conscious investigation of the psychological peculiarity of
those generations, the peculiarity which up till now has for the
most part been expressed subconsciously in literature. But I
realize that the subject cannot be so easily exhausted, and I
xiii
expect that other books of this type will be written which will
perhaps reveal new views on the subject.
Someone will perhaps observe that this has turned out to be
an excessively serious note about a book which is not serious.
But I think that it is unlikely that there shall ever be entirely
lacking in our writings that incompatible, unsuitable, discor­
dant, transitional, and tentative som ething which character­
izes the social, the sentimental, the spiritual and every other
aspect of our existence, at least for those of us who have any
genuine feeling for what is happening in the world. 1 have
never boasted that I have written anything finished and per­
fect. I write what 1 can. I try to express what I feel in the
manner in which 1 am able, in whichever way suits me best at
any moment, at times by means that appear serious, at other
times in language that comes closer to the language of chil­
dren.

Athens, summer of 1940.

xiv
 TRANSLATOR’S ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The work and pleasure of translating Leonis was carried on

“in the margins’ of many years; perhaps “ in the corners”
would be a more appropriate adaptation of the author’s
phrase. It began in 1966, the year of Theotokas’s death. To
those most interested and involved in the work — mentioned
hereafter in random order — I am very grateful. Peter Top­
ping, senior research m em ber of Dumbarton Oaks, who knew
the author, read and corrected many pages in several drafts
and read the entire m anuscript in its final form. His constant
encouragement and personal interest in the project was more
than anything else the cause of its being completed. Sopho­
cles Markianos, of Athens College, friend and fellow-graduate
of the University of Cincinnati, perused the entire text and
culled from it many of the errors which had become invisible
to me. My wife Sherrilyn also read the text, made many useful
suggestions, and corrected pageproofs. Friends at Rockford
College, especially Joan Surrey and Dain Trafton, urged me
to put on the finishing touches. The Mary Ashby Cheek Fund,
Rockford College, provided means to have the book typed,
and Ann Caron produced an excellent typescript. The fin­
ished translation received immediate attention and a positive
response from Theofanis Stavrou, of the University of Minne­
sota, in his capacity as General Editor of the Nostos series in
modern Greek history and culture. My special thanks go to
Nikos and Varvara Malkoutzis and to Dora Konsola and Apos-
xv
tolos Pouhias, who taught me most of the Greek I know. Fi­
nally, I m ust point out, with special gratitude, that it was the
late Professor Linos Politis, then head of the Department of
Modern Greek Literature at the University of Thessaloniki,
who first suggested that 1 read Leonis.
Donald E. Martin
Rockford, autum n of 1984

xvi
 I

He had pencils of every shade. He had all sorts of water

colors in tins, too, and beautiful sketchbooks with paper of the
best quality, thick, strong, soft to the touch, and white as milk.
It was a joy to look upon, a joy to touch. When yon put a hit of
color upon it, you could not stop.
He had been drawing since he was four, perhaps even be­
fore that. His great passion was to fill with drawings any sheet
of blank paper he came upon. When he was very young he
would draw only maskers and toys. Later he took to making
soldiers, priests, animals, houses, and steamers. When he be­
gan he did not know him self what he wanted to draw, but little
by little a whole story would unfold. The drawings spoke and
walked, one calling to the other. T hey w ere like grand­
mother’s endless yarns. Sometimes, just for the fun of it, he
would even make a donkey walk along the house tiles or a fat
woman fly through the air like a balloon.
When they took him to a friend’s house and he misbehaved,
they would give him a sheet of paper and a pencil and set him
in a corner. Then he would no longer be a bother to anyone.
When he was out along the road and saw a great w hite wall, he
would stop and consider how fine it would be if he could fill it
with people and trees and stories. The wall attracted him;
Leonis would turn and look at it, wishing that he could take it
with him. Then he thought of how all the walls of the City
ought to be covered with drawings; the houses, the churches.
1
the enclosure walls, the mosques, the palaces. There should
be drawings on everything from top to bottom so that each
road would be like an open book full of beautiful colored
pictures. He knew that this could not be, but he enjoyed think­
ing about it.
T hen he would play for hours with his lead soldiers, and
again w hole histories em erged: wars, sieges, spy missions,
executions. Finally there would be a great parade with Hags at
the head, victors and vanquished in the same ranks. The
evzones led the way, then the zouaves with their fezes and
broad red b reeches, the kilted Scotsmen with their bagpipes,
the royal guard of E ngland with their immense fuzzy caps, the
m arines d ressed in dark blue, and finally the cavalry: the
French dragoons with breastplates and helmets and the Ger­
man uhlans in th eir whites. Leonis was the commander-in­
chief and gave general orders. He wore his helmet and sword,
played his drum , and paraded around the room himself. A
num ber of soldiers whose heads had fallen off nevertheless
took th eir places in line. It was funny to see them marching
along w ithout th eir heads. Funny things were always happen­
ing.
At other times he would leaf through the large book with the
poem s in it, a thick book with a red cover decorated with
designs in gold and bearing the title, Anthology. Inside it
there w ere a num ber of subtitles: religious poems, patriotic
poems, drinking songs, love poems, etc. Leonis knew roughly
what the religious and patriotic poems were about. He asked
about the drinking songs and they explained that to him. But
w hen he asked about the love poems, instead of explaining
clearly, they w ould ju st beat about the bush and kid him. Just
for that he w ent one day to his grandmother and boasted that
he had learned a lot of poems. W hen she asked, “What kind of
poem s?” Leonis answ ered, “ Love poem s.” He said this to
trick her into an explanation. But grandmother put on her
glasses, looked him straight in the eye and asked, “What does
‘love poem ’ m ean?” Leonis did not know and was crushed
because his trick was found out. Then his grandmother said,
“ Now d on’t you be talking about that because you’re not old
enough.” Leonis was quite upset. It was not very considerate
of them to be bringing up this business of his age all the time.
2
 The Anthology also contained a num ber of pictures of the
poets. One was thin and noble, with a high forehead and fine
white hair. Another was stout and strong, had moustaches and
great side-whiskers, and appeared to be ready for a row. A
third, with a pointed goatee, was dressed in black and looked
very sad. Yet another wore the Greek kilt. The poets were of
all types, but they all had a somewhat wild and dreamy look.
The finest of all, though, was a young man with an open collar
whose name was Lord Byron. He was a foreigner, hut the
Greeks recognized him as their own and wrote much in praise
of him because he had sacrificed his life for the freedom of
Greece. Leonis did not understand the poems written about
him hut woidd gaze at his picture for hours and think about
him afterwards. He loved him especially and admired him. So
nobly had this young man acted that whatever the Greek poets
might have written in praise of him would have been hut
little. One day Leonis took the red book into his room secretly,
when no one was about, and kissed the picture ol Lord Byron.
Afterwards he was ashamed of what he had done.
At noon on Sunday his grandfather used to come, set him on
his knees, and together they would sing some funny songs:
Tahtirli! Where are you off to there, my girl?
We’re off to the grocer’s to get some cheese,
And when we found that he had no cheese,
We gave the grocer a hiding! . . .
Grandfather tickled him and Leonis would cry out. Then
grandfather would begin serious discussions with the other
persons who were there. Leonis did not understand anything,
but he was content to listen in. He huddled in a corner and
listened.
Grandfather was tall and straight. He had a fine waist and
liked to dance the Greek dances. His white beard was cut
square. On Sunday he wore his black redingote and tallish hat,
and gripped a great, heavy cane with a silver handle resem­
bling a bishop’s staff. He was called “Old Bilarikis” when he
was not around to hear. His children were known to everyone
as the Children of Old Bilarikis. Leonis was the grandson of
Old Bilarikis. Grandfather frightened them all and gave the
orders.
3
 He had his good times and bad. When he was joking and
laughing, everyone was happy and entertained. When he
i owned, no one raised his voice around him. If you happened
to go to his house at such times, grandmother would meet you
in the hall with various gestures which meant “speak softly,
don t laugh, don’t make any noise.” You understood and acted
accordingly. You tiptoed up the stairs and took care not to
slam any doors.
It was well known that grandfather would occasionally cane
someone outside of his own house. No one spoke of this in his
presence, but all the relatives commented on it frequently.
Did he not once thrash someone with his cane at high noon on
the Bridge of Galata? A crowd gathered, some of his acquaint­
ances saw him, and even the Turkish police came up. But the
police said nothing to him. They only ordered the crowd to
disperse. He was always on the best of terms with the police
— no one could ever explain just why. It seemed that he had a
certain manner and bearing which the police respected. When
he passed by the police station they would salute him, and
when he caned someone, not only were they not angry, but
they even smiled a little. They appeared to acknowledge the
right of such an upstanding and respected old man to show
the riffraff how to behave. Another time in his office he gave a
hiding to a respectable personage, a well-known businessman
of Galata, but in a rather unusual way. As they were dis­
agreeing over figures, grandfather seized a large, hard-covered
accounting book with both hands and began striking him on
the head. “ Business has fallen off,” he said later. “Commercial
trust has fallen off. In fact, the whole world has fallen off.”
Leonis loved his grandfather.

4
 II

The discussion arose in the hallway next to the kitchen.

Katina, the cook, had exclusive information concerning a
number of strange events which were taking place those days.
It was a bit like a fairy tale.
“The Serbian king,” she said, “went and shot the king of
Austria right in his own kingdom as he was leaving the palace
for a drive in his carriage. And he had the queen right next to
him. The queen jum ped up to protect him and she got it, too.
Both of them were killed by the same bullet. Now Austria
wants to make war on Serbia.”
But Sevasti, the chambermaid, knew the story differently.
“The Austrian killed the Serbian,” she said, “and because of
that Russia is angry and wants to make war on Austria.”
“No,” Katina countered, “ it’s like I told you. The Serbian
killed the Austrian and Austria wants to make war on Serbia
and the Bear said that h e’ll attack whoever bothers Serbia.
Russians and Serbs are the same race, and because of that they
stick up for one another. The same as the Croats and the Mon­
tenegrins.”
“ I know about them ,” said Sevasti, nodding her head. “ I
know about them .”
She always pretended that she knew everything.
But Leonis did not take their words very seriously and had
no confidence in them. He remembered a similar dispute that

5
 they had had at another time — last summer at Therapeia —
w hen they disagreed about the huge black ship which had
sailed into the Bosporus. Katina said that the Hag was Russian,
Sevasti said that it was German, while Leonis knew very well
that it was French. And how could they have become so con­
fused? Everybody knew the colors of France. Wherever this
Hag passed people were happy and smiled upon it. But who
would listen to Leonis? That quarrel had taken place on the
same day that an unknown and very old priest had appeared
on the quay. He struck up a great discussion with Katina about
boats and seas. H e said he could remem ber as though it were
yesterday the first tim e a steam -powered ship sailed into the
Bosporus. T he villages were turned upside down, he said, and
great crowds of Greeks and Turks, led by their priests and
hodjas, came down to the seaside, and at that time all of them
w ere in agreem ent that the world was lost. Katina moved her
head, d eep in thought. “Why was the world lost?” Leonis
asked himself.
By now he was following the conversation with only one ear
and was leaning out of the hall window which overlooked a
great storage area w here a charcoal shop was located. He had
many close ties with that charcoal shop. The children of the
charcoal man w ere always coming out and calling to him:
“ Hey there, kid! Throw in a soldier!”
Leonis w ould throw in lead soldiers of all types, one after
the other. T he charcoal m an’s children danced and jumped
about in the piles of charcoal and fire wood, now chasing one
another, now rolling about on the ground. No one bothered
about them. They did what they pleased. Leonis was envious.
Then they stretched out a string with cardboard boxes tied to
each end and played telephone.
But that night the children were gone. Only the charcoal
man was there, wearing his good clothes and a hat. He had
brought out a chair onto the sidewalk and was reading a news­
paper. Who knows why all this formality? Perhaps it was on
account of the war.
^ It was hot and peaceful. Night drew gradually closer. The
street was em pty, but huge Constantinople hummed all about
like a beehive. Wagons rolled loudly down the neighboring
6
cobblestone roadways. Unseen hawkers were still calling out
their wares. From among the tall grey houses, music sounded —
here a piano, there a barrel organ or a girl’s voice raised in
song. The bells of Hagia Triada sounded vespers. The trees
were fragrant. A little farther on, in the Taxim, in the Ayaz-
Pasha, you could see that the walkways were crowded. In the
shooting galleries, on the swings and wooden horses, in the
booths of the magicians, the miracle workers, and the wres­
tlers, who knows what jostling, laughter and shouts there
would be. In the beer halls there would be nowhere to sit.
Hordes of children would be running about playing among
the tables. And tbe singers would be seated in a row on a little
platform, guitars in hand, all of them small and plump, rosy
red, laughing, wearing great twisted moustaches:
I’ve traveled all places, encircled the earth,
and seen lovely girls, to tell you the truth.
But seen have I now here the like of our own,
our maiden of Smyrna, whose eyes steal your heart
and mouth for kisses was made.

Leonis was tired of Katina’s stories. He jum ped up and ran

to his room to draw.
But within a few days there was a great conference in the
dining room about the same events. Grandfather, Uncle Tza-
nis, Aunt Loxi, Aunt Rallou, and Aunt Markella had opened a
map of Europe on the table. They were waving their hands
and shouting:
“T hey’ll come through here!”
“ No, the road runs along this way, the natural road, the
historical road, the road of all the invasions!”
“The French are moving into Alsace!”
“The English fleet has closed them in here and squeezes
them like a pair of pliers . . . ”
“ Russia . . . ”
“ Russia . . . ”
“ Russia . . . ”
Russia ran over the map like a flood, giant, boundless, and
unrestrainable. Any larger and it would appear to cover the
whole world.
7
 Uncle Tzanis raised his voice. He was handsome, well-
groomed and very excited. He polled nervously at his moos-
tache and spoke with a tone of authority.
1he Russians,” he said, “look here, you can see where
hey 11 pass Here they’ll squash the power of Austria first
lung. A million troops will pour down over it. Who will stop
them.') No matter how many you kill, every day another mil­
lion will come pouring down. Two weeks from today they’ll
he in Vienna. I’ll bet anything at all — within two weeks! And
then the Kaiser will he isolated. He 11 be surrounded on all
sides. Russians on this side, French on that, the English from
the sea. T hey’ll strangle him. They’ll wipe him out. How long
will he hold out? A month? Two months? Three? With today’s
war machines it s impossible for him to last three months!”
Leonis drew close to his father, who was following the
scene from a distance, and spoke to him confidentially.
"Is it true,” he asked, ‘‘that the Serbian king killed the Aus­
trian?”
“A Serbian student killed the Archduke Ferdinand, the heir
to the Austrian throne.”
“Why?”
“To free his country.”
Leonis stopped short. The matter seemed more serious than
he had at first thought.
“And now what will happen?” he asked.
“ Now the Great Powers have found a suitable opportunity
to settle their differences.”
“And is it true that the war will end in three months?
His father shook his head as he tousled his son s hair. He
seem ed tired.
“No,” he answered quietly.
Leonis knew about wars. There was nothing in all this that
could surprise him. When he was very young he had heard
about the war which the Italians had waged against the Turks,
a war in which the Italians had taken a number of islands and,
as the family had said, had almost taken “our island.” Furth­
ermore, he knew stories about the war which Greece had
waged against the Turks — along with the Bulgars and the
Serbians and the Montenegrins. They had taken many islands,
too and cities. And Uncle Markos had gone to war, become a
8
captain, and sent a photograph of him self with a heard. It was
then that the cannon was heard in the City. It thundered in
Chataldja. Leonis had got up that night to listen to it. After that
there was another war in which the Greeks quarreled with the
Bulgarians and killed many of them, just as the great Emperor
Basil Bulgaroctonus did in the old days. Everyone at home
and at school was talking about him. So all this was routine.
He even had some large draw ings in loud colors which
showed fearsome Greek officers with twisted moustaches and
drawn swords, who chased the Bulgars in woods and in moun­
tains and threw them into lakes which reddened with the
flowing blood. He had also become familiar with the maps
and knew the various countries — which was a good country
and which was bad.
He was much amused by Montenegro. It seemed very com­
ic that even such a wee country, a mere smudge on the map,
raised its head and wanted to act and threaten. It was as
though a lad of his own age — or even a little younger — were
to meddle in the company of grown-ups and strut about like a
turkey, with a little wooden gun on his shoulder, making a fuss
and frightening the world. Funny lad!
“Who are the Montengrins with?” he asked.
But no one answered him. Grandfather was getting up to
leave, and everyone else was getting up along with him,
pushing back their chairs and gathering up the map. Aunt
Markella sighed deeply and said:
“Those poor heroic lads!”
Aunt Rallou also sighed and added:
“Their poor mothers!”
Their nervousness had abated. Now they all seemed de­
jected and at a loss for words. They stood motionless in a row,
like a collection of family photographs: the three aunts, mid­
dle-aged, properly squeezed and stretched into large corsets, ^
with little collars that completely covered their necks and
long sleeves with lacy cuffs; Uncle Tzanis, a young man of
thirty years, a man of the world and something of a charmer,
with thick, black hair covering his forehead and a small black
moustache. He wore white linen trousers of the latest sty le s
and a dark blue jacket with a huge, stiff collar and a small red
flower in his buttonhole. And finally there was Grandfather,
9
taller than the others, straight as a cypress, powerful and im­
pressive . . .
“ May God have mercy on m ankind,” said Grandfather in his
deep voice.
“Amen,” sighed Aunt Loxi.
The next day the subject took on large dimensions in the
Garden of the Taxim.

10
 The public G arden of the Taxim was very crowded. You had
to buy a ticket to get in: a dim e for adults, a nickel for children,
infants free. T he b o u n d aries betw een the different age
groups, however, were not clearly drawn, and at the entryway
considerable discussion would arise with the officials about
what each person should pay. As soon as you entered, you
faced the guards who wore uniforms and carried large switch­
es. They circulated everywhere and kept an eye on the chil­
dren. If you walked on seeded areas or if you cut flowers or
bran ch es, th ey w ould chase you down and give you a
thrashing. The trick was not to get caught, for if they caught
you, there was no escape. As you entered, there was a large
cistern on the left with red fish in it. There were also smaller
cisterns, some with fish and others without. There was also a
horde of loud-voiced and funny frogs. To the right there was a
booth where you could buy chocolates, sugared almonds, hon­
ey-sesame candy, sesame biscuits, peanuts, chick-peas, and
pumpkin seeds, roasted and salted, and green plums: ten
plums for a dime, eleven if you bargained. You got a little sick
towards evening, but it was worth the discomfort.
To the right and left were the official walkways of the Gar­
den. They formed a circle and went toward the great square in
the center. Those streets were for the nursemaids, governess­
es, and well-behaved children. There you might even meet
the two Italian sisters, Ida and Gilda, who were always
11
sweet! Leoni* \ . * [ le,y Were so delicate and touchy and so
know wh it t ' u ‘»ved w henever he saw them, but he did not
skinned !’ Sa\ t<i>11em- ^ e would stand and watch as they
„i . °JK ’ ,U1t *, 1en ^*e Woi'ld think, “What will people say
" U, 01 stan]c ' ng *lere and watching them?” He would
. ant^ ^ a v e . But in a while he would pass by
; , d; n. 1 ' n[ ‘d erent air, pretending to look for someone or
ia t lac ost som ething, then hurry on only to return,
om etim es Louise, the French girl, was there, dressed in
ac^ ^ * s , with her long chestnut curls hanging to her
s ou ders. She would act grown up, read by herself, or talk
' v 1 ier teachers. Leonis teased her. He was very bold with
her.
Between the two walkways, as in the square of the Garden,
were thick grasses, huge trees and narrow paths. There the
gangs held sway: the boys from the Lyceum, led by Paris,
Menos and Dimis; the boys from the Zographeio; the boys
from the School of Languages and Business; the boys from the
Catholic Brothers school; and the various unaffiliated boys
who did not go to any of the schools. These were called the
hooligans. Each gang picked an area for its headquarters and
did not allow anyone who did not belong to it to come near.
T he boundaries, how ever, were not respected, and conse­
quently there often arose great turmoil between the gangs
and som etimes even stone fights.
T heir favorite games were “barrels,” “slavery,’ “bowls,
and “thieves.” “ Barrels” was played according to very com­
plex rules, restrictions, and competitions, which would re­
quire a whole dissertation to set forth. But all the boys knew
the rules of the games by heart, inside and out, without ever
having been taught. T he rules had been handed down from
time immemorial, along with the legends of Byzantium. They
were plucked from the breezes of the Garden at the same time
that the ABC’s w ere learned. “ Slavery” was also a compli­
cated game which dem anded agility and art. Even girls often
took part in it, and w hen they did it was played with great
t0° 1 ec ,infi d ig n ity . “ Bowls was a game of target-
poll en e. . olayed with large, flat stones, or, if pre-
f ’T L t r S S broken' .able .ops from .he cof­
fee house. It. too, had Its regulations. But "thieves- was a
12
 heroic game. The fellows divided into two groups which rep­
resented the thieves and the police. Each team had its leader,
and the division was made in such a way as to give equal
strength to both sides. T he thieves then took to the road and
hid in the foliage of the Garden while the police set out to find
them. The rule of the game was that if the police caught up
with a thief and slapped him on the back, he thereby captured
him or killed him and elim inated him from the game. But this
rule was a double-edged blade, for the thieves could in the
same way remove the police from the game. Each player,
then, took care not to be found alone, faced with opponents too
strong for him who could catch him and slap him on the back.
If you did not succeed in getting away, you could stick close to
a wall or fall on the ground to protect your back with kicks and
blows until your own men came to the rescue. The whole
technique of the game lay in successfully isolating your oppo­
nent and removing him from the game. But anyone could set
up his defenses in a deserted hut or some basement, or in any
other convenient place and protect himself by any available
means: sticks, stones, or clods. Then a siege would begin.
Another rule was that you had no right to escape outside the
confines of the Garden. If you did that, it was treason and
everyone brought charges.
v/ In the central square there were two structures, one for the
coffee house, which continuously resounded with the cries of
the waiters; the other a stone platform for the big orchestra.
This one was tall, open on one side, and covered with a dome
like a church. There, on Sundays, the famous Turkish maestro,
Ihsan Bey, led the orchestra as a great crowd gathered. And
they would prom enade to the grand scherzos he created with
his baton. It was a real spectacle. From that point onward it
was another world. It was the little tables at the coffee shop
beneath the plane trees and the chestnuts; the great open-air
bar with straw easy chairs and tables decorated with flowers;
^ the well-groomed young men in straw hats and starched col­
lars, dark jackets and w hite linen trousers; the beautiful
ladies, tightly done up in their corsets, with long, narrow skirts
and huge hats loaded with imitation flowers and birds; it was
the families; it was the thunderous political discussions; it
was, in short, the world of grown-ups. The tables extended for
13
some distance, reaching the edge of the Garden, where it
formed a sort of balcony and looked down upon the Bosporus
and opposite, the shore of Asia and Scutari. Toward the right
the horizon of the Propontis brightened with the Princes’ Is­
lands, half shrouded by a light fog. It was an eye-filling pano­
rama, and tourists would stand for hours in admiration.
During the sum m er there was an open-air movie theater,
and every evening as it was about to begin, a sort of sacred
rite was performed. All the gangs would gather behind the
screen. From there they could see perfectly, except that the
image was backward, both faces and lettering, but that did not
really matter. As soon as it began to grow dark and the crowds
of boys had gathered, waiting im patiently and stomping on the
ground, a group of Garden officials cerem oniously carried in a
huge watering hose. They woidd hook it up to a faucet, un­
ravel it, and begin w etting down the screen. Sometimes the
water would not come out and the officials brought in tools.
That was a whole story in itselfl Finally the water would
stream powerfully onto the screen and the gangs would clap
enthusiastically, throw their caps into the air and cry out,
“ Hooray!” No one wanted to miss that performance.
At sun down Scutari shone as if it had been built of gold and
silver. For this reason the Greek children knew that Scutari by
its real name was Chrysopolis, the City of Gold. That was what
it was called by our fathers the Byzantines, the Great Emper­
ors. But the little Franks from the Brothers’ school would not
admit that Scutari could have had any other name and when
they heard about the Byzantines, they made fun: “Where are
your great Emperors, then? Why don’t they come out so we
can see them, too?” Sometimes they would invoke religion
into the dispute. “God,” they said, “destroyed them because
they were heretics.” Then Paris, who had strong arms and was
not afraid of anyone, came forth and answ ered angrily, “Are
we the ones who are heretics, or are you? Go read your his­
tory, you grungy dogs!” With that, great battles would break
out and in the evening Leonis would take a scolding: “You
shouldn’t get all sweaty like that! D on’t be throwing stones
and quarreling!” Leonis would not answer. Grown-ups do not
understand.
On only one occasion did he get upset and frightened. It
14
was the clay that the Franks announced that the orchestra plat­
form was their fortress, and they set up their defenses there.
All the Greek Orthodox gangs united and surrounded them to
pay them back at last for the betrayal of the Fourth Crusade. A
frightful siege took place, with boards, boulders, and mud
stirred up in buckets by special teams. The besiegers had
requisitioned the buckets and shovels from the smaller chil­
dren and hurled the mud from long distances. Man-to-man
combats also took place. Leonis w anted to be in the front
lines, even though he was not thought to be strong enough.
And the Franks, in one of their sallies, took him prisoner,
dragged him onto the platform, opened a trap door, and threw
him into a basement. That was the most frightening experi­
ence Leonis had ever had in his life, because the basem ent
was as dark as the Pit, and he had the impression that various
kinds of living things were moving about down there. There
was no air and he almost passed out. At some point the guard
set him free; that is, he threw him out w ith a couple of smart
stripes across the back.
On the right side of the Garden there was an area which was
rather more shaded than elsew here. It was deserted and full of
wild shrubs and thorns, a place where neither grown-ups nor
well-behaved children ever went. This area, which had an air
of mystery about it, was called “ the Forest” by the gangs.
There they would occasionally re-enact some of the crimes
shown in the movies. But everyone knew that other things
took place there, things more strange and interesting than the
crimes. One sort of game in particular that they played was to
crouch on all fours in the bushes of the Forest and to wait.
Then sometimes you would see some of the big kids bring
girls there to hug and kiss. But if they found you out, they
would as a rule give you a thrashing. The guards did not pass
by there.
One day something altogether comical took place there. A
woman appeared, running like mad with another woman in
pursuit screaming at her. Leonis and his companions Hew
from their hiding places and ran after them. The two women
burst forth onto one o f th e broad w alkw ays am id the
governesses and children. T here they grabbed each other by
the hats, and then, when they had Hung these to the ground.
15
by the hair, one pulling this way and the other that way. The
children w ere jum ping all around them and shouting. A gent­
leman in a straw hat stepped in to part them. At once they
threw his hat to the ground and tram pled upon it. (They
seem ed to have som ething against hats!) Finally other gentle­
men stepped in and pulled them apart. Then the woman who
was being chased and who had taken the worst heating hurst
into tears and sobs and screams, and the gentleman who had
restrained her did not know what to do with her. The other
woman turned and looked at the crowd with blazing eyes. She
was aflame, beet-red, and sm iling strangely. She said nothing,
picked up her hat, and left as quickly as she could. When
Leonis asked what the reason was that the two women were
s q u a b b lin g , o n e lad a n sw e re d him confidentially,
“courtship.” Leonis sought no further explanations so as not to
show that he did not know the m eaning of the word.
Another time Dimis came and took him away from the game
of “ barrels” and led him quickly to the Forest. There, crawl­
ing through the bushes, they came upon this scene: A student
of the Lyceum , Paul Proios, who was three grades above
Dimis and Leonis, was alone with a girl, holding her hands.
They were not saying anything — no kisses nor hugs — just
holding hands, standing there looking into one another’s eyes.
They w ere com pletely absorbed. The girl was very good-
looking. She had a sw eet face and beautiful light chestnut hair
which hung to her back. But Paul Proios was even more good-
looking. He had about him an air of nobility and pride. At the
Lyceum they said that he looked like an ancient god. He
usually dressed in blue with a white shirt and large open
collar. He was serious, read a great deal, and was esteemed by
everyone. He often walked alone or went about with students
older than him self and spoke of the ancient Greeks or the
Byzantine Em perors. Leonis liked him but was shy around
him. He had never spoken with him. Sometimes when they
were involved in the same game, Leonis was happy in the
thought that they w ere playing together, but he would not go
near him. He always thought that Paul Proios looked down on
him, and this bothered him very much. On that day Paul
Proios’s conduct with the girl made a great impression upon
him. He did not expect to find him in such a position. Yet
16
 there was nothing wrong in what they were doing. He did not
think it possible that Paul Proios could do anything wrong.
But then he began to feel envious. He becam e red in the face
and his heart pounded from envy. He was envious of Paul
Proios because he had the courage to do this with the girl,
while he thought that he him self would never dare to. And he
was envious of the girl, too, because she was with Paul Proios
and Paul Proios loved her. Dimis, lying on the ground beside
him, whispered a com m ent on the couple: “courtship.”
Later, one Sunday afternoon, Paris brought his sister to the
Garden. She never used to come with him. He suggested to
Leonis that if he would like, the three of them might walk
around and not take part in the games, because his sister did
not like them. So they walked the whole afternoon without
stopping. They went everywhere, leaving no corner of the
Garden unvisited. That Sunday was very pleasant and a bit
sad. It was hot but not oppressive. A great mildness pervaded
the atmosphere. The breeze was gentle, fresh, fragrant. Music-
played continuously. It played as it always did, and every­
thing was as it always was. Yet there was a different tone. It
was strange to observe the people quietly moving on their
round, and the children playing or gathered about the cisterns
tossing crusts to the red fish, and the ladies with their huge
✓ hats laughing and playing the coquette in the coffee house and
the bar, and the officers walking by twos in their great uni­
forms with their swords, and the bishops and archimandrites
and Catholic freres, who had also come out for air and to enjoy
the Bosporus and the Propontis. As you looked upon this
movement, which proceeded rhythmically as if to the sound of
the music, you suddenly got the impression that the Garden
was no longer the familiar Garden, with its games, its folly, its
battles, and its mysteries, but rather something else, some­
thing unbelievable. It was the endless stage of an imaginary
theater. And the people were playing in a production, harmo­
niously, courteously, and somewhat comically, and yet with
an incom prehensible affliction. And Leonis, too, was playing
in the production, walking lightly as if drawn along in a dance.
He was entertained by the performance and he was sad, not
knowing why he was sad.
And Paris was in the production, as was his sister, who was
17
quiet and dainty and wore a green cap which covered her ears.
She had a little face which you wanted to pet as you would pet
a cat. H er nam e was Nitsa, a cat’s name. Leonis had seen her
for the first time and was already quite fond of her. He liked
walking around with her. And he was very proud, for he knew
the Garden better than his companions and led them here and
there and show ed them all the sights and all the varieties
whose existence Nitsa would never have imagined. She was
im pressed and w anted to know all about everything. When
Leonis spoke, she looked him in the eyes very seriously and
studied his words. They w ere all very unhappy when they had
to part company.
Many tim es afterwards Leonis thought of that Sunday and
told everyone at home how fine it was. And when Sunday
came around again he did not want to play, but instead he
walked about and thought about how fine last Sunday was and
what a pity it was that it had passed and woidd perhaps never
return. He w anted very much to talk to Paris about this, to tell
him to bring his sister again, but he was too shy and said
nothing to him. Sometim es during the night in his bed, when
the light was out, he would think about the Garden which was
like a theater, and the pleasantness of that afternoon, and the
girl in the green cap, and he w hispered secretly to himself the
strange word: “courtship.”

18
 IV

On the day after the m eeting held in the dining room, at

which the war question was discussed, Leonis arrived at the
Garden to find all his friends mustered around the orchestra
platform engaged in very serious deliberations. Some older
students of the Lyceum were there, too, and among them Paul
Proios, who was wearing the same dark blue outfit as usual
with the open collar. Leonis walked up and asked what game
they were intending to play, and they informed him that, in­
stead of playing “thieves” or “slavery” or any of the usual
games, they would play “the Great War.”
Then they agreed that the older boys would be the great
Powers and that Paul Proios would be Russia. The others were
to be the smaller countries, and Leonis, they decided, would
be Montenegro since he was among the smallest of the boys.
As there were not enough European countries to include all
the boys, they decided that the countries of the Western hemi­
sphere would enter the war and agreed how to divide them
between the two camps. Uruguay, for example, would side
with the English and French, and Paraguay with the Germans,
and so on. In this way they maintained a balance of power.
They also ruled that Montenegro, a country too small to act on
its own, would always accompany Russia as adjutant.
The game was like “thieves” except that, instead of being
called thieves and police, they all had the names of countries.
But as before, one half hunted down the other, and whoever
19
 was caught and slapped on the hack was out of the game. The
battle ground was the entire Garden.
Paul Proios had no need of help. He was one of the oldest of
the fellows and was afraid of no one. It was rather out of
kindness that he took Leonis along with him. The enemy
states did not com e near him. Indeed, they avoided him, and
he had to hide and break suddenly upon them so that they had
no chance to escape.
The two of them began coursing around the Garden, hiding
in the foliage, craw ling along the ground, lurking behind
walls. They spoke b u t little. Paul Proios gave a few orders and
Leonis did w hatever he could to satisfy him.
T hen, at the p roper tim e, Paul Proios rushed upon the
enem y, and Leonis followed at a run to show that he was not
afraid, even if his reenforcem ents were of no use. Panic en­
sued. T he small enem y states fled in every direction. Paul
Proios passed them by with contem pt and ran to measure him­
self with som eone his own age. But the great Powers of the
opposing side fled before him w henever they found them­
selves cut off. Such a fellow as he was had certainly taken their
measure!
It was again a very beautiful afternoon. There were few
people in the Garden. T he music played to itself, pettishly, for
no one was paying any attention to it. The sky was burdened
with clouds. As evening came over the foliage and the Bos­
porus changed colors and darkened, and Scutari, opposite,
utterly glistening in fire and gold, you would occasionally feel
a dam p chill p en etrate. It was like the beginning of au­
tu m n , like th o se m elan c h o ly days w hen the first rains
V approach, w hen the resorts are abandoned, and the schools are
about to open. Leonis would always cry on the day he left the
resort, w hen vacation was over. On the ship from the Princes’
Island or Therapeia, as he watched the resort melt into the
mist of the evening and the great grey houses grow near, he
would begin to cry. Everyone knew it was coming and waited
for it. W hen the first tears pushed forth at the corners of his
eyes, the company would begin laughing and teasing. He was
half laughing him self because he knew that what he was doing
was funny. But he could not hold back his sobs; such affliction
overpow ered him and such affection for those unforgettable
20
days on the beaches and boats, in the forests and gardens, for
the days of freedom, filled with beauty, which had passed
forever. And what was happening to him was a comedy in
which he laughed and cried at the same time, and the whole
ship turned to watch. So it was on that evening in the Garden.
You could see that something was coming to an end; some­
thing was disappearing. Beautiful days were vanishing into
the mists and gold of times past.
When it had grown quite dark, the game centered on the
great square, and there they counted for the last time those
who had not yet been put out of the game. Paul Proios then
decided to make a great charge and to end the war. He first
mounted the platform and then surveyed the battle ground.
Leonis, who was exhausted, was not following him any longer.
He had fallen upon the ground in a heap and watched him
from the distance. Then Paul Proios rushed out across the
square on his own, red in the face, lightening fast, with his
hair in the wind. He ran with a certain grandeur, his body
straight and his head held high. There could not have been
anyone to stand up against him. Everyone knew at that mo­
ment that the game was over.
Leonis forgot his weariness. He got up and went running
toward his leader from the far side of the square. But suddenly
he saw Dimis armed with a rifle also running toward Paul
Proios. Dimis was an insignificant South American country
allied with Germany. His weapon was a small wooden rifle for
target practice, the kind that shoots a stick with a rubber head
on it so that it will adhere to the target. But Dimis was capable
of shooting the stick without the rubber head. In the excite­
ment of the game he was not thinking and was in fact kneeling
in the middle of the square and taking aim at Paul Proios.
Leonis rushes at him and grabs the gun from his hands. Dimis
resists. They yank the gun first one way, then the other.
Leonis loses his balance, falls to his knees and just then feels
a sharp burning on his upper lip. The metal barrel of the gun
pierced deeply the flesh between his nose and his mouth.
Dimis sees blood, lets go of the gun, and takes to his heels.
Leonis sees red everywhere, on his hands, his clothes, and on
the ground.
“ Blood!” he stammers, “ Blood!”
21
 He had never seen blood run before.
Paul Proios gathered him up and laid him down out of the
way. Others ran to the coffee shop for water. A girl offered
a clean h andkerchief. . .
People gathered around. Dimis was crying. Menos and
some other boys were running around shouting, “Yea for the
war!”

22
 V

Then the army began to pass through the streets: Germans,

Austrians, Turks. The world filled with music and flashing
bayonets. The City was shaken all day by the heavy step of the
divisions. The bayonets passed incessantly, line after line, and
disappeared. They were like ears of corn moved by the wind.
Then parades of great white automobiles passed by with red
crosses painted on their sides. The army left and the casualties
arrived in a continuous and never-ending procession.
They had taken over a num ber of schools, the best ones, and
had turned them into hospitals and infirmaries for the army.
The famed Lyceum no one would deign to take, for it was a
real sham bles, but the Germans had taken over the Zog-
rapheio which was directly behind G randfather’s house.
When Leonis came to spend the day, he could see from
Grandfather’s windows the court yard of the Zographeio
where the students used to play, and the classrooms which
had become hospital rooms, and the Germans who came and
went in their pyjamas and shaven heads. Sometimes they
would catch his eye and shout funny things, but Leonis would
not respond. He did not even understand their language. They
also had a large picture of their Emperor in one of the class
rooms. He was wearing his helm et and all his medals and that
renowned mustache of his which was pointed like bayonets
and twisted upwards. From time to time they were in high
spirits and would have pillow fights and laugh. Then Grand­
mother would say:
23
 “The poor souls are just children. Who knows what will
happen to their m others.”
Leonis was often busy with his grandm other’s Hower pots,
especially the carnations. He w atered them , looked after
them, m easured their buds, and announced whenever new
flowers opened.

But his friends did not like flowers. They had their minds on
other things. Paris did not really bother about anything at all
except the war games in the Garden. Dimis spent his time
with practical jokes. Menos, for his part, went in for politics.
He created problem s continuously from the time that the war
had started and the study of Turkish had become mandatory.
Mr. Nikoletopoulos, the instructor in Turkish, would call him
to the blackboard. Menos, in black overalls, fat, unkempt, and
sm udged with chalk, would go up to the board and look stu­
pidly at the teacher. Mr. Nikoletopoulos would dictate. Menos
would stand there. Then Mr. Nikoletopoulos would ask:
“ M enelaos, why do you not know your lesson?”
And Menos always answ ered in the same way:
“ My father told me not to learn Turkish.”
Mr. Nikoletopoulos would then get up from his chair and
give him a smart swat, saying:
“ If the governm ent closes our school, will your father come
and open it again for us?”
Menos would return to his seat red as a boiled lobster and
Mr. Nikoletopoulos would bend over his grade book and enter
a huge zero. This scenario had been repeated dozens of times.
Menos was again ready to cause a scene on the day that the
German Em peror had arrived.
On that day the whole Lyceum had gathered on a sidewalk
in Galata, professors and instructors out front — so said the
directive. T he directive also said that when the Emperor
passed by everyone was to shout, “ Hail!” There were other
schools and a crowd of townspeople all about, on the pave­
m en t and at th e w in d o w s, an d so ld ie rs o utfitted w ith
bayonets, and policem en on horseback. The houses were
decked out with flags. Everyone was waiting and seemed a bit
apprehensive.
“ I’m not going to shout ‘H ail’,” Menos was muttering over
 and over again doggedly. “ My father told me I wasn’t to
shout.”
“Then just what is it that your father wants?”
“ My father wants . . . my father wants . . . ‘justice’!”
Suddenly a loud command was heard from a distance, a
second command from closer by, and a third there from the
road. The rifles jolted in unison to the ground. The bayonets
flashed over the heads of the crowd. From a neighboring street
an unseen military band burst out, hurriedly, cheerfully, a bit
comically, and full of what sounded like the jangle of tin
^ c a n s . T h en th e cavalry of th e S u lta n ’s G uards
passed by dressed from head to toe in red. They gripped great
lances decorated with little red Hags. The whole crowd was in
motion, each person treading on his neighbor’s feet. After the
cavalry came some automobiles, mingled in confused array
with horses, drawn swords, and helmets. The metal shone.
The little red flags fluttered merrily in the wind. Leonis saw
several men with big mustaches but never found out which
one was the Emperor.
“You saw how I didn’t shout!” boasted Menos.
But Leonis had forgotten about that. “ In the old days,” he
was thinking, “here on these roads our own Emperors passed;
now every Tom, Dick, and Harry goes by.” Those were
Emperors worthy of the name: Basil Bulgaroctonus, Nicephor-
us Phocas, John Tzimisces, Manuel Comnenus, lofty men,
dressed in gold like rulers, with beautiful blond beards and
reverend appearance, whose hands you would want to kiss,
terrible when they faced the enemy, but peaceful and gentle-
spoken like good fathers when dealing with friends. Or poor
^ Constantine Palaeologus, the m ildest of them all . . .
Leonis recalled the words of his grandfather: “the world has
fallen off!” And now, with the war on, Old Bilarikis was in the
habit of saying, “ I’m newly poor!” He said it loudly, defiantly,
to show how little he thought of the newly rich. So it appeared
to be with the nations: they were either newly rich or newly
poor. “We are a newly poor nation,” Leonis thought, and that
gave him a very good feeling. To be newly poor was genteel,
proper and ennobling, and gave the impression of having
been unjustly treated and of deserving friendship.

25
V The Great Fire began one morning in a strong north wind.
By the afternoon rumor said that five hundred houses were on
fire; some put it up to a thousand. Soot was everywhere. When
night fell, almost all the area betw een the sea and the heights
of the Taxim was ablaze. The Hames approached the German
Embassy building and carved away at the railings around the
gardens of Sira-Selvi.
The sky was filled with reddish black clouds mixed with
smoke. T he waters of the Bosporus were red. Galata, Old
Stamboul, and Scutari all shone red. The quarter which was
burning was on a down slope, large as a city, with its temples,
new dw ellings, num erous hovels, its squares, rows of trees
and flower beds. All had turned to Hames.
Here and there a high-rise, slender and proud as a bride, or
a mosque with its m inarets, resisted the flames for a while. One
could see some walls prevailing against the scourge or a
white dome flashing against the background of the glowing
hot night. T he Hames danced round and round like devils,
shifting directions, draw ing their dance towards another quar­
ter, or fleeing in haste Hogged by the wind. Then, as if they
had receiv ed reinforcem ents, they swooped down again,
stronger than before.
Suddenly the brave building which had resisted gave up,
taking fire like a torch. The flames forced their way inside
from all directions, som ersaulting, filling it up and overflow­
ing from the windows; then they pierced the roof and over­
flowed from there, too. All at once the building started to
collapse, sm othering the blaze and becoming a part of the fire
dance. From time to time a great wind would arise with a
voice like the cry of a small child. It would pluck up and
tum ble everything together, making one thing out of every­
thing. All the colors and the gambolings of the flames were
obscured, leaving nothing to see but an even tone, a single-
deep-colored flow of flame which poured towards the sea
betw een the black heights.
All over the City it was raining bits of ash and smelled of
conflagration. T he church bells were ringing unceasingly, one
answering the other from the heights ofP era to the seven hills
of Old Stamboul. They sent messages and appealed for help as
if three hundred thousand Barbarians had encam ped outside
26
 the walls and had begun the attack, and it was time for the
Virgin Mary, their Champion General, to perform her miracle.
Thousands of dogs were howling in accompaniment to the
inarticulate wailing of the throng. A whole population was
shifting from one side of the City to the other, carrying with
them, on their backs or in carts, mattresses, quilts, bundles,
trunks, sacks of food, baskets filled with porcelains and silver
work, canary cages. Many had stationed themselves tempo­
rarily in the enclosures of the churches; others had stretched
out on the pavements for a fitful rest. The police and the fire
departments were overwhelmed. They did not know where to
go first and almost gave up the struggle. The army had taken
their place. It proceeded with heavy steps up and down the
cobblestone streets, em ptied the roadways, dem olished
houses, made requisitions, pushed before them the herds of
refugees. The German officers had rightly assumed general
control. They were on the move continuously in the red night,
wearing their monocles and gloves, dark, alert, and cool,
neither hurrying nor dallying, like men trained to give orders
in times of danger.

Leonis and Katina arrived at Grandfather’s house a little

after nine in the evening with a cart full of trunks and suit­
cases. Leonis’s house was in no danger yet but was likely to
be within a few hours if the wind kept up. They decided to get
the boy away along with the valuables of the house and a
considerable supply of clothing, for better or for worse. Grand­
father’s house was near Galata-Serai in the center of the Stav-
rodromion quarter of Pera and out of the path of danger. Fire
had never made it that far.
Katina declared that she could not remember a catastrophe
like this one.
“ I’ve seen many fires,” she said, “and earthquakes, and kill­
ings, but such a disaster as this I’ve not seen before in all my
forty-nine years.”
“Not counting the summers,” said Grandmother.
^ Grandmother did not like Katina at all. Both of them were
genuine Phanariots, born and raised in the heart of the Pha-
nari district in the shadow of the Patriarchal Domain and of
the Great School of the Nation, and they disagreed heartily
27
about a mass of Phanariot concerns which were of interest to
no one but them selves: various technicalities about fasting,
about the calendar of festivals, and about the liturgy, and
about how the rose becomes sweet; also about the gossip of
the Phanari district: how the niece of the Metropolitan of
Caesarea is, and what the adopted daughter of the Great Chan­
cellor says, and other such matters. Moreover, Katina had a
weakness for wanting to appear younger than Grandmother
and did not lose an opportunity to bring the subject of age into
the conversation. G randm other would not pardon her for that.
G randm other gave directions for putting the trunks and suit­
cases into the proper places, opened her great wardrobes, took
out clean sheets and pillows, and made a bed for Leonis on the
sofa in her own room, went in and out twenty times clanking
her keys, took care of everything, and finally said that it was
time to see what could be found to eat. All through this Grand­
father was sitting deep in thought near the fireplace in the
dining room, gazing downward. His voice had not been heard.
T he dining room was a shadowy chamber on the ground
floor. Its windows faced the street on one side and the court­
yard of the Zographeio on the other. It was heavy with furni­
ture. T here were dark red curtains at the windows. On the
wall above the fireplace were hanging two round gypsum re­
liefs, naively painted, one representing the poet Achilleas Para-
schos and the other Rhegas Pheraios with the label: 'Rhegas
the First Martyr.”
They sat down and ate in silence with heavy hearts, Grand­
father at one end of the table. Grandm other at the other, and
Leonis in betw een. At last Grandfather lifted his head and
said: “Would you bring me som ething to drink, Artemisia?
“ I’ll get it, D im itraki,” answ ered Grandmother.
She got up, clanking her keys again, opened a cupboard, and
brought out a bottle of red wine and a small wine glass. Grand­
father took the bottle, filled the glass and em ptied it with one
swallow. He shortly refilled it and em ptied it again, and was
about to fill it a third time.
“ T h at w ill hit you hard, D im itraki,” rem arked Grand­
mother.
“ Let it hit me, Artemisia.”
“ Do as you think best, Dim itraki.”
28
 Grandfather filled the glass again and began drinking it
down.
“Take the bottle away, Artemisia,” he said.
“I’ll get it, Dimitraki.”
Grandmother took the bottle, put it away and returned to
her place. Then Grandfather stopped eating and said soberly:
V “The world is being destroyed, and we sit here eating and
drinking.”
“What can we do to keep these terrible things from happen­
ing, Dimitraki?” asked Grandmother.
Grandfather did not answer, but continued in the same
tone:
“The City is burning. Europe is burning. Nations are being
slaughtered. Thousands of people are being killed at this very
minute in the war. And we think of nothing but our food!
“ You’re wrong, D im itraki,” said Grandm other. “ All our
lives we have worked for others. We’ve reared our children
according to our religion; w e’ve supported our relatives and
have helped many other people. Now what do you expect us
old folks to do? And who will pay any attention to us, any­
way?”
“The world is being destroyed right here!” Grandfather said
once again loudly and brought his hand down on the table.
Suddenly his eyes Hashed. He leaned back in his chair,
pushed his plate away, and began to sing, slowly, deeply, with
a voice that filled the house: “ Dark is the Night on the Moun­
tain.”
Grandmother grasped his hand.
“ Dimitraki!” she whispered, “ No, Dimitraki, if you love me,
don’t do that!”
But Grandfather did not stop.
“ Dimitraki, they’ll hear you!” Grandm other shouted. “ Peo­
ple are walking by in the street. The army is nearby. Don’t,
Dimitraki, you m ustn’t!”
But Grandfather did not hear her any longer. He sang the
patriotic martial song to the end in the same voice, without
wavering. Then he stopped a moment to catch his breath. His
jaw trem bled slightly, and there was a little sweat upon his
forehead. He stood up.
“Stand up!” he ordered Leonis.
29
 And he began very slowly and more powerfully than before:
I know you from the terrible
cut of your sword.

G randm other also rose, m echanically, with fear etched

upon her face. She did not speak again. She looked now at
Grandfather and now at the window and waited patiently for
the evil hour to pass. G randm other’s two servants and Katina
gathered at the dining room door, clinging to one another,
gazing at G randfather with w ide-open eyes. They, too, were
waiting. They could do nothing else. But Leonis Hew to the
seven heavens. He accom panied his grandfather as loudly as
he could and laughed m errily as he sang:
. . . and brave as at first,
Hail, O Hail, Liberty!
Then they sang the second verse:
There inside you dwelt,
bitter, ashamed . . .
Then they sang the third, which ends:
. . . one hand struck the other
in hopelessness.
They did not go further because they did not know any more
of it. When they finished, G randfather mopped the sweat from
his brow and sighed deeply and painfully, for he was ex­
hausted. T he w om en d id not speak nor move from their
places. They were waiting for a knock at the door. But there
was none.
“ L et’s go take a nap,’’ said Old Bilarikis, turning to Leonis.
And he added thoughtfully:
“What else can you and I do?”
He took Leonis by the hand and the two of them proceeded
formally towards the door. The women drew back from their
path. They crossed the anteroom and started up the stairs,
hand in hand, w ith o u t speaking, w hile the four women
gathered at the door of the dining room followed them with
their eyes. They, too, w ere silent.

30
 The Lyceum was a large building in the Square of the Tax-
im. It was gray and ancient. During the winter the ceilings
leaked and the wind blew in through the doors and windows,
sometimes even though the walls. W henever disturbances
greater than usual took place in the class rooms, the walls
shook and lime fell in chunks.
But it was an inexhaustible mansion. You never found the
end of it. It was full of shadows and mysteries and corners into
which you dared not go wandering by yourself. There were
hiding places and trap doors everywhere. Things moved about
in the roof, and rumor said that they were not just mice, but
perhaps even snakes. Out in back hanging courtyards were
joined to one another by great tum ble-down marble staircases.
From there the Lyceum looked towards the Bosporus, and it
was a fabulous view: gardens on the sea, the whitest palaces,
and opposite, Scutari with its gold and its boundless cypress
forests. Beyond the courtyards was a long slope, abandoned to
the mercy of God, full of wild figs, nettles, and thistles. The
Lyceum bounded that slope, and it was there that adventure
games were played and the battles shown in the movies
reenacted: the great war, for instance, that Julius Caesar
waged against the Gauls, or the daily struggles betw een the
Americans and the Indians. In the courtyards there were also
stables, no longer in use, of course, and some ruins of small
dw ellings w h ere the stab le-k eep ers, coach-drivers, and
31
gardeners used to live. For the Lyceum in its early years — a
hundred or a hundred and fifty years ago — had likely been a
palace itself.

Leonis sat on the slope beneath a tree with his back leaning
against the trunk. In the great courtyard the hoys were playing
“barrels” with laughter and shouts. Leonis was tired of the
game. He w anted to draw. His hand itched for it. He sketched
a mountain and some trees in the dirt with his finger and saw
their colors in his imagination. The mountain would be on the
Bosporus, w here one sees a hundred shades of green jumbled
together, w hile on the Princes’ Islands there is but one shade
of green, pine. For games and swimming Leonis preferred the
Princes’ Islands, where everything is peaceful and cheerful.
But for drawing he preferred the Bosporus.
Dimis was moving about close by. He, too, was running his
fingers over the ground, looking very occupied. But it was
obvious that his mind was elsewhere. Short and slender as he
was, with clever face and playful grey eyes, forever on the go,
checking out all the corners, and contriving a thousand and
two ruses, he looked a bit like one of the mice of the Lyceum.
Finally he spoke.
“ Did you know,” he asked, “that Nicephorus Phocas was an
Arm enian?”
“ Ah, the devil he was!”
“ He was, I tell you. So was John Tzimisces.”
“ He was an Armenian, too?”
“ Yes, indeed. A fair num ber of the Emperors were Arme­
nians.”
“You’re crazy!” said Leonis.
He got up, enraged.
“ Im possible!” he shouted.
W here could he have heard such a thing as the greatest
Em perors of the Greeks being Armenians?
“ And was Basil Bulgaroctonus an Armenian, too?” he asked
sarcastically.
“ I don’t know,” said Dimis. “ Probably not. But I’m abso­
lutely sure Nicephorus Phocas.”
“T he devil he was!” Leonis said again.
It would have been written in the books. Such matters are
32
not secret. We know who the Armenians are. They have their
own nam es, d ifferen t ones: Angop, K arabet, K alafatian,
Turcomian, not Nicephorus and Phocas and John! Leonis did
not mean that the Armenians were not good people. Actually
they are peaceful, easygoing, and soft-spoken. They like good
food, sweets, and syrups. When you go to their homes they go
to great pains to look after you. They rush to provide a pillow
wherever you want to sit. They give you a footrest, tell you an
array of compliments, and feed you so much that you leave
with a stomachache. But they do not do for Emperors and
commanders-in-chief. That is not their function and especial­
ly not to rule the Greeks and the City! Such was Leonis’s
opinion.
Dimis continued playing in the dust. H e spoke no more on
that subject, but suddenly his eyes flashed and he asked:
“ Do you know Eleni Phoka?”
“ Eleni Phoka?”
“ I don’t mean that she’s an Armenian, too,” Dimis hastened
to explain.
“No, I don’t know her,” said Leonis.
“That’s funny, since you lived so close to her on Prinkipos
last summer.
“I just know her by sight. We don’t talk.”
To be sure, he knew her by sight very well indeed. All
summer long a day did not pass without his having seen her a
dozen times. The story would begin around ten or eleven
o’clock in the morning, when Eleni Phoka started off for the
beach with the other older girls and boys. First there were the
shouts from the road and from the windows until they had
assembled, the bells of the gardens ringing out their signals,
and the laughing and singing: a com plete pandemonium .
Finally they would leave down through the pines all together
arm in arm, or running and flapping their bathing suits in the
wind, Eleni Phoka leading the pack, hatless, sleeveless, wear­
ing no socks, her full, beautiful, dark-blond hair waving down
her back. Later, when they returned, it was the same to-do —
even more so. Sometimes they would return astride donkeys,
shrieking and galloping wildly and raising a cloud of dust. The
donkey herders would run along behind, barefooted, yelling
along with the rest, goading the animals with their switches.
33
W hen they stopped, the boys embraced the girls as they
helped them down from the saddles, the girls holding the boys
around the neck. 1hey were all beet-red, their eyes shone, and
they were weak from laughter. In the evening they would
dress up and take their walk around the big hotels or gather at
one of their houses to play the piano and dance.
Leonis did not like this group at all. He did not like the way
they carried on, stirring up the neighborhood and taking
thought for no one but them selves as if the whole mountain
w ere theirs. Who did they think they were? He became very
standoffish with them . W henever he met them, he turned
away deliberately just to teach them a lesson, so they would
know how little everyone thought of them. But the truth was
(and this he would confess to no one, not even to Dimis) that
he had a feeling that Eleni Phoka and her friends looked down
upon him. T hey had never shown the slightest interest in him
nor even acknow ledged his presence. He might as well have
been invisible, so that they never suspected that he was there.
For a whole sum m er it was as if Leonis did not even exist.
He rem em bered Eleni Phoka’s mother, too. He recalled that
she was tall, imposing, loaded down with bracelets, lace and
m uslin, and th at her head was covered all around with veils.
She was so tightly pinched and crammed into her corset that
she was unable to lean back in the straw cab. She would al­
ways travel in a cab. No one had ever seen her walk on the
streets of the island. W hen she passed by, the whole place
was fragrant all around with her perfumes. She would carry a
funny little um brella, red or green or yellow — a different
color every day. She was a widow, and people said that she
was a very attractive woman, a beauty, a femme fatale, and
other such things, but Leonis did not understand anything
about all this fate and beauty. She was simply a woman who
had been around. All of Prinkipos knew that she was the lover
of a great Germ an general, a von So-and-so. “What does that
m atter to m e?” thought Leonis.
Dimis assum ed a very confidential and mysterious air.
“You know ,” he said, “ one of our friends kissed Eleni Pho­
ka.”
“W hich friend of ours?”
“ Paul Proios.”
34
 “Where did you find that out?”
“ I saw them with my own eyes last August on Prinkipos.”
“ Impossible. Paul Proios didn’t even go to Prinkipos last
summer.”
“ But didn’t I tell you I saw them with my own eyes?”
“Impossible. Paul Proios is a friend of mine. He would have
come over to see m e.”
“You’re stupid. A fellow thinks of his girl first and his
friends afterwards.”
“ But I invited him, and he wrote that he didn’t have time to
come over. And nobody else saw him on Prinkipos, either.”
“ It seems he came over and looked her up on the sly, said
Dimis. “One day, it must have been four in the afternoon —
the whole island was asleep — I went out for a walk by myself
on the path that goes from Nizami to Christo. There wasn’t a
soul around. Suddenly I hear suspicious laughter in the
woods. I hide right away in the bushes and crawl on all fours
like we do in the Garden. I get close to the place where the
laughter is coming from, and what do I see? Paul Proios and
Eleni Phoka were sitting on the ground with their arms
around each other. They were holding one another tight and
kissing each other on the mouth. After each kiss she broke out
laughing. But he was serious. I watched them for some time
and then got out of there without their seeing me. I didn’t see
them do anything else.”
Dimis stood there for a while. He seemed to hesitate for a
moment. Then he continued in the same confidential tone:
“Other guys have kissed her, too.”
“What do I care about that?” said Leonis.
“ I don’t care either,” said Dimis.
But he forgot what he had said and added shortly:
“ I’d like to kiss her myself.”
“Go ahead and try,” said Leonis. “ From what you say it
shouldn’t be very difficult.”
“ How should I?” m urm ured Dimis. “ She always runs
around with the big kids. She doesn’t pay any attention to us.”
Leonis got up.
“ Let’s go play,” he said.
Without further discussion they went up to the big court­
yard where a game of “barrels” had just ended. The kids were
35
gathered in a circle commenting vigorously on their game.
There were students from various grades.
Let us play, too,” shouted Leonis.
Then some of them said that they had had enough of “bar-
lels and wanted to play slaves. They all agreed and were
discussing how they would play it when Paul Proios appeared
and asked if he could play. He had grown taller of late. Now
he was wearing long pants, but as always he was dressed in
dark blue with his shirt open. His face was thinner.
“ L et’s go,” Leonis said to Dimis.
“Why go?”
“ I don’t want to play with him .”
He said it loudly enough for some of the others to hear. He
turned from the group and went back down the slope. There
he sat down in the same spot beneath his tree and began
throwing stones into the bushes. Dimis really did not know
how to react. T he boys set aside preparations for the game to
discuss this incom prehensible event. They were all extremely
upset.
Soon Paul Proios approached Leonis on his own.
“Why don’t you want to play with me?” he asked.
“ Because.”
“What did I do to you?”
“ N othing.”
“T hen why do you treat me like that?”
“ I’ll do w hatever I want.”
“ If you weren t three years younger than I, I d whip you,
said Paul Proios.
Leonis lit up like a match. He jum ped bolt upright.
“Just try it!” he shouted and rushed at Paul Proios.
But the latter quickly took him by both his hands and held
him off. T hen Leonis began to kick and scream:
“You rat! You rat!”
Paul Proios took both Leonis’s hands with his own left hand
and with his right gave him two or three swats. Leonis felt his
cheeks burn and the tears stream from his eyes. He was chok­
ing and furious. He freed his hands with a violent jerk and
again rushed at Paul Proios, trying to grab him by the neck.
They both lost their balance and went rolling down the slope
among the thistles, scratching up their hands and faces.
36
 The gang scrambled down the hill, too, to separate them.
When Leonis got up, torn and bleeding as he was, he wanted
to jump on his opponent again and continue the duel. But the
other boys caught him and held him fast.
“You rat!” shouted Leonis.
Paul Proios brushed him self off and wiped the blood from
his face. He did not respond to Leonis’s shouts nor did he
even turn around to look at him, but he said emphatically:
“ H e’s crazy!”
Leonis did not know at all why he had acted as he did. He
did not understand himself.

37
 VII

By this time the Germ an soldiers were just schoolboys only

a few years older than Leonis and his companions. Their
officers w ere ill-tem pered and tired and did not have the
appetite for am usem ents that they had once had. Nor did they
any longer bring operettas from Vienna. In the evenings in the
dining room som eone would read the news releases aloud as
Uncle Tzanis laid it all out on the map. Then there would he a
discussion about food. Bread was a black, muddy substance
which tasted like earth leavened with chaff. But, then, all the
edib les had strange flavors and were difficult to swallow.
Sugar and lem ons had becom e items of great luxury. Discus­
sion w ould arise, too, about the epidem ics, especially the
eruptive typhus, which was ravaging the army, and there was
even some cholera here and there.
But the movies w ere operating normally and continually
showed armies, cannons, and vehicles all bogged down in
endless mud. Later there came some very serious Swedish
films, full of love scenes, crimes, and other adventures which
took place in beautiful northern countries. Everyone was talk­
ing about the Swedish films. T heir great actor was named
Molander. He was m iddle-aged, blond, and very sober and
reserved in his m ovem ents, a man of great nobility with a very
gentle and sad look in his eyes. Often he played the doctor or
the pastor, som etim es the prince, and at times even the vaga-
38
bond. Women worshipped him. His photographs were every­
where: in magazines, in store windows, even in homes. One
day Aunt Loxi confessed that she would like to he able to give
up her entire station in life to become a movie actress just for
the chance to play opposite Molander. This reached Grand­
father’s ear — who told him has never been found out. He kept
it to him self for a while, until his opportunity came to make a
remark about it to Aunt Loxi in the presence of other members
of the family: a simple remark, without any anger at all, for the
sole purpose of pointing out to her that he was not very' im­
pressed with what she had said. Not, to he sure, that it would
ever he possible for Aunt Loxi to play in the movies hut that it
was not proper for her to say such things even in jest. That was
the way things were. Aunt Loxi was crushed. Grandfather’s
comment cost her a great deal.
And then there were always the little American films about
the everlasting wars betw een the Americans and the Indians,
hut only children talked about them.

It was the beginning of summer. Sunday noon. Quite a few

people were strolling on the paths in the Garden of the Taxim.
The small tables were almost all taken. The sky was perfectly
clear. The sun burned somewhat as it fell between the great,
old chestnut trees. No serious demands were made upon the
orchestra which was saving its energy for the evening. Now it
was playing only polkas and easy waltzes.
Leonis, Paris, and Dimis were standing on the parapet of
the Garden looking at the view. All three of them were wear­
ing sailor suits and large straw hats, as though they had
planned it beforehand. They w ere laughing and saying,
“We’re like three brothers!”
Suddenly Dimis seized his companions by the arms.
“ Look!” he shouted. “They’re coming again!”
And he pointed in the direction of the Propontis. A good eye
could make out high in the sky some black spots which were
drawing nearer.
Around them at the tables no one had noticed.
“ Run!” shouted Paris.
Leonis was already running to get away, but Dimis res­
trained them for a moment.
39
 Hold on a m inute, guys. Let’s see for once how it’s done.”
Im m ed iately afterw ard they heard the cannon. But no
smoke from it could he seen anywhere. The black spots came
rushing downwards toward the opposite shore of the Bospo­
rus, to the place where the Haidar Pasha railway station was
located. And they must have dropped something there* be­
cause there were explosions. In the meantime, the machine-
gun had started up and was pounding away relentlessly. It
sounded as though it might he working right next to you. The
German airplanes took off, and a great battle began in the sky
betw een E urope and Asia. Some of the airplanes came and
went speedily over the Garden.
All this took place in the space of a minute. But before you
could look around, the Garden was empty. Everyone in a
crush had plunged toward the coffee shop, knocking over
chairs and tables and tram pling on straw hats. The waiters
dropped their trays of glasses and carafes. Two or three
women fainted in the panic and had to be carried in. Some­
where close by, plates of glass shattered with a resounding
crash. W ithout realizing exactly how it had come about,
Leonis, Dimis, and Paris found themselves squeezed in with a
crowd of people in the basem ent of the coffee shop, along with
Paul Proios who was with another older student named John
Stasinos, a tall, skinny lad with a long neck, whom they cajled
“ Stork” at the Lyceum.
Paul Proios and Leonis looked at one another. They had not
spoken to each other since the incident on the slope by the
Lyceum.
“ Looks pretty grim,” m uttered the Stork.
“T he bombs aren’t as dangerous as the machine gun bul­
lets,” said Leonis.
He had heard this many times from the grown-ups and was
repeating it m echanically in order to say something.
“ T hey d ec id e in advance w here they’re going to drop
bom bs,” he continued. “Why would they drop them on the
G arden?”
“ But the bombs can fall som ewhere else, too, by accident,”
said Paul Proios. “ How can they aim from so high up?’
“ Here inside w e’re in no danger,” answered Leonis. The
walls are strong.”
40
 “ Did you count how many there w ere?” asked Paul Proios.
“ I counted them ” Dimis interrupted. “There were seven.”
He had made up the num ber, of course. No one had had the
composure to sit and count airplanes when cannons were roar­
ing and bombs were bursting.
Leonis was happy to have spoken with Paul Proios again,
but felt that he was in an awkward situation in relation to him
and wanted to do something to get away from where he was.
Close by he saw a wobbly wooden table which had been
pitched into a corner. He dragged it under a window, climbed
onto it, and drew his face near to the window grating.
The Garden was deserted and in disarray, as if a whirlwind
had passed over it. T here were tables overturned, broken
chairs, glasses thrown to the ground and smashed, countless
hats. And this devastation of inanimate objects, under the
great light of the summer noon, was yet more striking as it was
accompanied by the ceaseless din of the sky battle: a dead
scene with a demonic noise in the air and not a living person
to be seen.
But no, someone was there. Leonis was not slow in spotting
him. One man had not stirred from his place. He continued to
sit in the table area under the sky battle as though nothing
were happening. It was a German officer, very young, neat,
and im pertinent, with that air of defiance of young aristocrats
in uniform. He was slender and cramped as if corseted in his
grey-green uniform. Smoking undisturbedly, full of contempt
for his danger and the panic-stricken crowd, he did not care
what might happen to him. He took not the least account of
that. Or, if it did matter, he did not condescend to get up, to
run, to protect himself, to become one with the mob. He
wanted to be different from Leonis and his companions and
the other people in the Garden. He was of another class,
another race, a different kind of man, born to command, to
make war and to be killed, exclusively destined for such
works, and disdainful of every other effort. This was the way
he was; this was the way it pleased him to be. He had made
his decision and had dedicated his life. His dream could be no
other than to end his life one day, as he was in danger of
ending it there, in a violent death while he was still young,
neat, domineering, and full of contempt. Leonis could not get
41
enough o f w atching him. He had never admired a person so
much.
Suddenly th ere was a frightful explosion. You would have
thought that it was only two steps away. The structure of the
coffee shop was shaken to its foundations. The window panes
which had up till then survived were all at once shattered.
Leonis was throw n from the table. He stumbled into the
crowd and got snarled in the skirts of screaming women.
T h ere was just tim e for him to see Paul Proios standing
m otionless, leaning against a wall, pale, lips tightly shut, eyes
expressionless. Leonis was dragged along by the frantic peo­
ple and found him self at the other end of the basement.
After some time, when the City was quiet again, he found
his friends at the exit of the coffee shop. The crowd had
poured again onto the walkways in the Garden. Waiters were
setting the tables and chairs upright and sweeping up the
broken glass. T he young German officer had disappeared into
the crowd; his role had ended. The strollers were now having
spirited discussions about the event and were commenting on
the sky battle from the strategic point of view. Everyone had
information about the target at which the planes had been
aim ing, about th eir armaments, about their speed, and about
the merits of their engines. They were joking, laughing, gently
mocking one another. It was amusing to observe them. Each
one w anted to show that he was not afraid while proving that
everyone else was. T he women powdered their noses and
adjusted th eir hats. They were excited and aglow as if they
had just em erged from some madcap entertainment.
Leonis, Dimis, Paris, Proios, and Stasinos headed for the
exit of the G arden, still filled with the noise and shock of the
battle. T hey w ere all talking loudly at once, oblivious to ev­
erything around them . But as they were walking along, the
five of them in a row, Dimis tugged at Leonis’s sleeve and
w hispered in his ear:
“T here they are!”
From the opposite direction there came two young girls,
about fifteen years old, the one taller than the other. The tall­
er, who seem ed to have the other under her control, was a
beautiful girl, brisk, striking, and very proud. Her hair was
light brown, her eyes blue, close to grey. She had an odd look,
42
distant and stubborn, which seem ed to see more than one
might well wish to reveal. She was dressed in yellow, which
suited her quite well and im parted to her a brightness match­
ing her face and poise.
Quiet and regal, she passed close by them with light step.
She looked the five boys straight in the eye, and yet, as it
seemed, from above them . They im m ediately fell silent,
soberly taking in her charms as she passed by. Only Paul
Proios deliberately turned his face away to show that he was at
outs with her.
After they had walked a few steps farther, Leonis could not
resist the temptation to turn around and look at her again. He
then saw that the girl in yellow, too, was turning at the same
instant and was looking at him curiously, as if she were notic­
ing him for the first time and was wondering who he was.
Leonis felt something em ptying and tightening at the bottom
of his throat and in his chest, as when one leans out to look at
the road from a great height.
They arrived at the exit of the Garden. No one had remarked
about Eleni Phoka passing by. Only when they had emerged
onto the road did Leonis hear the Stork quietly ask Paul
Proios:
“ Don’t you say hello to her any more?”
“No,” he answered stubbornly, “ I don’t want to have any­
thing to do with a girl who runs around kissing everybody.”
Leonis again felt the same tightening. He was unhappy
without knowing why. He was preoccupied and had no desire
for further conversation. He had completely forgotten the air­
planes and the young German officer.

43
 VIII

I he art studio was empty. Leonis prepared his easel with­

out enthusiasm , fingered his charcoal and spindles, and began
kneading the piece of bread he had brought with him. He ate a
bit of it mechanically. That was a bad sign. Whenever he ate
his bread he was sure that his work would not go well. But
how was it to go well? Always fruit and pitchers. Leonis had
grown tired of it. For variety Mr. Montefredini would occa­
sionally set up a gypsum reproduction of the Apollo Belvedere
or the Vatican Artemis or the Venus of Melos for them to
sketch, soulless things, cold and expressionless. Then there
was that tyranny of proportions, squaring off and measuring
from a distance with one eye shut. Leonis felt trapped in all
these technicalities and tied down to his paper with invisible
threads. He was happiest when he slipped off with his paints
to the gardens or to the old neighborhoods or to the peak of a
hill which com m anded a good view, there to abandon himself
com pletely to the charm of colors, to swim at random in the
colors, no m atter what should come of it. What he painted
would have no great similarity to what he was looking at, but
what did that matter? One was not supposed to copy things as
they are — there are cameras for that purpose — but to make
colors blend ju st right, to make them dance, revel, harmonize
and become a chromatic synthesis, rather like a musical com­
position, w here the colors would be the notes. It was, after all,
a game of the eye, to look at and to enjoy. What the colors
44
represented did not have any particular significance; perhaps
they did not represent anything at all, just as music does not
represent anything. Colors were for playing with and not for
teaching and getting serious about. That was how Leonis con­
sidered the matter.
Mr. Montefredini, however, saw the m atter quite different­
ly. Mr. Montefredini (Cav. Prof. Gaetano M ontefredini, as his
name appeared in large, imposing letters on his outer door)
was not just anyone. He was a person of consequence. He was
famous all over Pera, from the Tunnel Station to the Taxim.
He often held exhibitions of his own and his students’ work,
and the French language newspapers praised him. When you
said that you were a student of his, it made the best of im pres­
sions; the world held you in honor. But his m anner at certain
moments made Leonis w’ant to laugh. That is, Professor Mon­
tefredini was no funnier than anyone else who was short,
stout, loud-voiced, and full of jests; who had thick, curly hair
and oiled mustaches twisted threateningly upwards; and who
wore a velvet jacket, a gold chain, and the huge, spotted tie of
an artist. But what passed all bounds was chiefly the way in
which he would all of a sudden begin his tirade. He would
walk up and down the studio talking relentlessly all the while,
taking a paint brush from here and a charcoal stick from there,
conveying an opinion about Leonardo da Vinci, another about
the revolutionary impressionists, three humorous anecdotes
and a discussion about the war, and then, out of the blue, he
would stop in the midst of the easels, lift his hands towards the
ceiling, and begin a terrific uproar. He would sweat and pant,
his eyes throwing sparks. Something frightful was surely on
the verge of happening, but the outburst was in reality nothing
but a tirade ‘against an unknown’. More precisely, Mr. Mon­
tefredini had it in for a class of people which he referred to as
“amateurs.” They were the nightmare of his life. A day could
not pass without his remem bering them and without his be­
coming upset and suffering because of them. The amateurs
had destroyed the taste of the common people. The amateurs
had demolished the artistic ideals of the young. The amateurs
had diluted the great traditions. The amateurs had cheapened
values. They had ruined the market. The world had filled with
amateurs and amateurish works. They multiplied like mice,
45
like insects. How then is chaste Art to he rescued from this
Hood of charlatanism ? How is she to breathe? How is she to
blossom? T he am ateurs were very simply the reason that there
w ere no m ore Leonardos, Michelangelos, and Raphaels. For
this reason Mr. M ontefredini, as a professor of art, or rather as
its prophet — and especially as a prophet reared up not in the
streets and alleys, but in great and glorious Rome, that is, as a
man responsible for the state of art in the world (yes, Mr.
M ontefredini was a responsible man and formally recognized
these responsibilities and lifted his voice responsibly to pro­
nounce these words) — as an artist, then, responsible, con­
scious, and im movable unto death, he had the obligation to
wage war against am ateurism w henever he found it, above all
in his students, and to direct them in the severe discipline of
true, great, and eternal art. (Leonis was a latent amateur by
inclination, because w hen one is used from childhood on to
play with art, one can never again grasp its deepest meaning.)
Art is not a game, Mr. M ontefredini was proclaiming. It is an
initiation. It is a m etaphysic. It is a religion! Then give him
fruit, pitchers, and gypsum figures! He could be fastened for
whole w eeks in the same place to draw an orange on a plate.
T he art studio was in his home on a small, solitary side
street off T elegraph Road. It was a spacious salon with a sepa­
rate entrance and many windows and abundant light, full of
easels, oil cloths, sketching paper, and gypsum figures of the
great works of classical sculpture. It always smelled strongly
of the fumes of oil paints, naphtha, and varnish. Leonis en­
joyed this smell. He loved it. When he left he liked to think
that he was taking it with him on his hands and clothing. In
the m iddle of the studio was a small platform where the mod­
els would sit. Once a week, on Thursday afternoons, the class
would draw a nude. A frightfully ugly woman would come —
you w ould think that an uglier one could not he found — yel­
lowish, skinny, with fallen breasts and hones jutting in all direc­
tions. She w ould disrobe behind a screen, mount the platform
stark naked, and sit down on a stool. All this was done with the
greatest sobriety. You w ere not to laugh nor to comment on what
was taking place. That was a part of the ‘initiation’. The students
took their places around the platform, laid out their squares on
the paper and b^gan to gesture quietly with ruler and meter
46
stick, and, with one eye shut, to reckon the distances of the
various limbs of the naked woman. Most of them gathered be­
hind her. Only once was Leonis on that scene, and he was rather
upset. He did not understand what relish they took in these
things. Mr. M ontefredini called him and told him not to
come any more on Thursday afternoons because he was still
too young. He gave him a light, friendly cuff and added
with a mischievous wink:
“When you get older and grow a mustache, your turn will
come to study the nude.”
Two or three students who heard this humorous remark
began to laugh. Leonis left in shame.
Now he was chewing on his piece of bread and was bored.
He had set up his easel behind the Aphrodite of Melos and
was sketching her outline sullenly. But he did not remain long
without company. In a short time the door opened and Miss
Julia Asimaki appeared with a gigantic straw hat on her head
and a red muslin kerchief around her neck. She was clutching
an umbrella with tassels. Leonis blushed to the eyebrows.
“All alone!” said the young woman cheerfully.
“ Hello,” answ ered Leonis and continued working with
greater zeal than before.
She proceeded indifferently into the studio and began
quietly singing in German the famous waltz from the Merry
Widow. A light feminine fragrance trailed around her and
mixed with the aroma of painting. She was an older girl, her
face animated and attractive. Her hair was bouffant and her
skin soft, almost transparent. The sun seem ed never to have
seen it. She was renowned for her skin. The professor was
always making comments upon it and admiring it. The profes­
sor was very bold with her. He lost no opportunity to take her
by the hand or arm.
Leonis was working with lowered head. He would sketch
and erase nervously not knowing exactly what he was doing.
Miss Asimaki took off her straw hat, put on her apron, and
began getting her easel ready, hum m ing her song all the
while.
They had never until that day been alone together, and they
had never exchanged many words. But something not at all
insignificant had passed betw een them. One day they were
47
working about a yard apart from one another and somewhat
farther away from the other students. Miss Asimaki was strug­
gling with her oils and appeared to he completely engrossed
in her work. She had her legs crossed and her palette leaned
against a stool. She would frequently lean over to get at her
paints. At some point Leonis observed that each time she
leaned over, her skirt rode up so much that he was able to see
not only her legs but even one of her garters and a finger’s-
breadth of flesh above that. And when her body returned to its
upright position, her skirt remained hitched up and all these
m ysteries continued to show. Leonis lost control. He blushed.
His heart com m enced to pound, and he felt that he was in a
very difficult situation. But he did not know what was happen­
ing to him nor what exactly he wanted to do about it. On the
one hand he w anted to leave; on the other, there was some­
thing drawing him powerfully towards the hiked-up fabric. All
around them the other students were working. You could hear
the charcoal scraping along the hard surfaces of paper and a
few quiet conversations. Leonis lifted his head again in two or
three minutes. The skirt had been shifted downward. It cov­
ered her legs halfway down. He breathed more easily but was
not able to relax. His mind was over there. He turned again
shortly. T he skirt was hitched up again, higher than before.
Now you could see a wide area of Hesh which vanished and
was lost in the shadows and mystery, in some depth, moist and
warm which enticed and would no doubt dissolve you. Miss
Asimaki was working very seriously, without looking around
her. But Leonis was not able to draw one correct line that
m orning. T he charcoal trem bled in his fingers. His body
burned, and he thought that if he tried to get up his legs would
not carry his weight. This scene repeated itself on two other
mornings. But took on new dimensions the last time, when
Leonis, long engrossed in looking at her, realized at some
point that Julia Asimaki’s eyes were fixed on him. He raised
his glance and looked at her, and then she smiled at him in a
strange m anner which was like a caress but also like a taunt.
Leonis swallowed all the bread he had in his mouth without
chew ing it. . . .
The hum m ing of the Merry Widow stopped. Miss Asima­
ki began working; her charcoal scraped heavily. The charcoal
48
in Leonis’s fingers began to trem ble again. He could not stand
it. He turned his eyes. Her skirt was pulled down as far as it
would go. Leonis breathed more easily. But soon he heard her
voice:
“How’s your drawing coming?” she asked.
Leonis set aside his charcoal and his bread, turned toward
her, thought about what to say, and finally said with some
effort:
“I’m not very pleased with myself.”
Miss Asimaki smiled.
“You’re ambitious, I see. And at your age! Bravo, you’ll go
far.”
She continued her work without looking at him.
“What do you want to be when you grow up?” she asked.
“An artist, naturally.”
“Why naturally?”
“ For as long as I can rem em ber I’ve had a passion for draw­
ing.”
“You want to become a great artist, is that it?”
“Oh, yes, great; otherwise it isn’t worth the trouble. As
great as that Theotokopoulos from Crete."
“And where did you learn about Theotokopoulos?”
“I read about him in some magazine.”
“You frighten me. You have amazing plans in m ind.”
“Oh, I don’t know — don’t take it all so seriously. But, still,
I’m not at all pleased with myself.”
“Let me see what you’re doing.”
Miss Asimaki came up, took a stool, and sat next to him. She
examined his work carefully. Then she took some charcoal
and corrected some lines.
“There, like that,” she said. “That’s how you must do it to
become a Theotokopoulos some day.”
She took the spindle and began making smudges.
Leonis was suddenly paralyzed. He felt her limbs leaning
upon him, soft, heavy, and warm. A burning sweetness was
spreading through his body, and an infinite pleasure was
flooding over him and turning him numb. It was superb. He
had never felt such pleasure, such charm, such annihilation.
He was ready to surrender. To what or to whom he did not
know, but he was surrendering. He turned and looked at her
49
in the eyes, bashfully, suppliantly. She laid down the charcoal
and the spindle and smiled at him. She nodded her head as if
to ask what he w anted and to ask him something which she
already knew. Leonis lowered his eyes, felt his ears burn.
T hen lie felt her hand travel over him softly and steadily as
though seeking something.

50
 IX

At eight in the morning when not a soul was around, the two
of them would m eet from time to time in the studio. The
students usually began to arrive after nine. Mr. Montefredini
did not appear until after ten.
Julia would kiss him on the lips, on the eyes or on his ear,
and taught him how to kiss her. She allowed him to do as he
wished, showed him how to please her and returned the plea­
sure whenever he wished.
“Let me see,” Leonis would ask.
He would ask so charmingly that she did not have the heart
to turn him down. They would make a screen of the easels.
It was so beautiful in the warm atmosphere of the great,
dusty hall, in the heavy aroma of art and the gypsum gods all
about who looked on without expression. . . .
In the evening at home Leonis would sketch in secret on his
paper whatever he had done and seen, and would add to it
from his imagination. He discovered in his fantasy new per­
spectives and new com positions. He drew nudes or half-
clothed bodies which were entangled in various poses or
danced wild dances. These drawings, too, became whole stor­
ies. Later he would burn the papers.
One night he slept very fitfully. His encounters with Julia
had on other occasions disturbed his sleep, but this time his
vexation had reached a peak. He was supposed to meet her on
the following morning. It had been several days since they
51
had met. When he closed his eyes and sleep began to overtake
him, he saw confused visions of her limbs. He felt the touch of
hei skin, the taste of her lips. It enveloped him: her moist
warmth overcame him, the fragrance of her face, her breast,
her skirts. I le almost succumbed to the pleasure, reaching the
final stage, but he did not. At the last minute he awoke and
turned over and over in the sheets in a sweat, his mouth burn­
ing, his throat dry, his body warm as if in a fever. It was a
painful night. As soon as it grew light he jumped out of bed,
splashed him self vigorously with water, and somehow recov­
ered. But he did not have the patience to wait around until Mr.
M ontefredini’s door would be open. He left the house earlier
than usual and, to pass the time, went for a walk to Straight
Street in Pera.
It was one of the first autumn mornings, cloudy and damp.
The sky was heavy, oppressive, like the night which Leonis
had just spent. You could sense an electricity in the air, a
forewarning of a storm. W inter was approaching, that was
clear enough, a bad winter which the frosts of Russia and the
storms of the Black Sea would nourish. The streets of Pera
w'ere deserted. The great city was still asleep. It breathed
heavily, sleeping, one might say, the uneasy sleep of war.
W here Leonis was headed, however, towards the end of
Straight Street near the Taxim Square, he saw a group of peo­
ple. A num ber of passers-by had gathered before a tall house
and were silently gazing upward. Leonis came up and looked,
too. On a balcony of the uppermost story of the house, two men
were trying to set a flag pole into place. The flag was half
folded. Leonis did not recognize it immediately, but he noted
from what he was able to see that it was not the German flag
nor that of any of its allies. A little farther from the group of
onlookers a German patrol had stopped, a patrol consisting of
soldiers who looked like school boys, with a sergeant of
th e sam e age in charge. T hey w ere ill-dressed and ill-
nourished fellows with the tired and jaded look of having
been up all night. They looked on as did the rest of the group
and waited. Finally the pole was in place. The flag rolled out
with the breath of the morning breeze and Leonis recognized
the colors of England.
With their hands in their pockets and cigarettes in their
52
mouths, the onlookers stood and watched almost indifferently,
as if nothing special had taken place or as if (it might he)
something so profoundly significant had happened that they
could not digest it all at once. But no one left. Something held
them rooted in place. Leonis turned again to the Germans.
Spaced out along the cobblestone pavem ent as though turned
to wood, they looked at the enem y Hag with fixed gaze. Only
the sergeant tightened his lips into that well-known grimace
of the child who wants to cry but is ashamed and struggles not
to betray himself.
Leonis asked a man what was happening.
“ I don’t know,” he said.
No one knew anything.
Leonis went on in the direction of Galata-Serai without
noticing anything which would reveal any change in things.
The City continued to sleep. The policem en were in their
places. The scattered passers-by moved along hastily and in­
differently. The trams passed by empty. There was no other
Hag anywhere. Leonis was preoccupied as he walked along
the streets of the downtown area. Then, as he started to make
his way back to the place where the English Hag had been
raised, he rem em bered Julia. Once again that burning all over
his body, her taste on his lips, the fresh charm at his fingertips.
He looked at his watch. It was after seven thirty. He headed
swiftly for the professor’s house.
He opened the studio door m echanically and stood for a
moment on the threshold to get his breath, for he had been
running. The warm, stagnant air struck him in the face. He had
already forgotten w hat had h ap p e n ed on the road. He
breathed deeply the rancid odor which now touched so
strangely upon the most secret chords of his sensitivity. He
felt completely in his elem ent, cheerfully at ease in all the dust
and stains. He wanted to dance. He stepped up to a mirror and
looked at himself. His face wore a sly and subtle look that he
was pleased with. He laughed merrily and walked around the
room, running his fingers along everything he came upon. To
kill time he prepared his easel. He kneaded his piece of bread,
sat down, got up, and looked out of the window countless
times. It was eight thirty and she had not arrived.
His body burned again. He was sweating and nervous as
53
during the previous night. He cut off a small piece of sketch­
ing paper and began to draw a woman dancing nude. Oh, he
knew all about the nude. He had seen all and touched with his
hands. No one could fool him any more. He could draw it
freely from every view in all its details. Then he sketched a
partially draped woman who wore a large hat and undercloth­
ing to cover her nakedness a bit. Dimis had shown him some
photographs like this at the Lyceum: women in strange poses
always wearing hats. He rem em bered and added black stock­
ings to the half-naked figure. He liked that better. He looked
at her for a w hile, then tore the paper into small bits. It was
after nine o ’clock. He took a large sheet and began to sketch
Miss Asimaki as she was sitting and drawing the first time he
felt the attraction of her skirt and what was showing under the
skirt. T hen he sketched her in other poses, her body more
uncovered with each drawing. It seemed like the charcoal leapt
in his fingers and pulled him along. He filled the sheet in an
instant. He tore it up and took another, beginning again the
same story in greater detail, then tore up this one, too. He felt
like tearing up all the papers, all the oil cloths around him, and
sm ashing all the gypsum figures. He wanted to do something
vicious. Yes, he could do the worst, the basest thing he might
set his hand to: stealing, for instance. He felt clearly that in his
fit of agitation he could steal, that he would enjoy stealing,
with no other reason than that, just then, he wanted to do
som ething vicious. . . .
The studio door opened forcefully and Mr. Montefredini s
servant woman came in excitedly.
“Are you ju st going to sit there, my lad,” she shouted.
“ H aven’t you heard any of the ruckus?”
Leonis jum ped as if som eone had awakened him in the
m iddle of a dream.
“W hat ruckus?” he asked, shaken.
“ Praise the Lord, the war is over!” shouted the servant
woman as if she w ere crazy. “The war is over!”
She w ent out leaving the door open. He heard her shouting
as she ran down the stairs:
“T he war is over!”
Leonis got up, m opped his forehead, looked at the time. It
was almost eleven o’clock. W ithout another thought he, too,
flew out of the door at a run.
54
 The sidewalk outside of M ontefredini’s was deserted as al­
ways, but on Telegraph Road Leonis met people talking loud­
ly and laughing and running nervously from one door to the
next. At the windows there were three or four Greek flags
waving. His ear took in various details of the events:
“Yesterday the armistice was signed. The fleets were pass­
ing through the Dardanelles this morning. They’re on the
way. And the Greek fleet with them!”
There was also talk about merchant ships following, loaded
with flour, sugar, coffee, and all the other bounties of God.
Along with the war, the blockade ended, the epidemics ended,
the persecutions, and all the rest.
Leonis went down to Straight Street. It was decked with
Hags from one end to the other: English flags, French, Italian,
and especially Greek. The windows and balconies were
crowded with people. The street looked as if a demonstration
was under way. Traffic was at a standstill. They were all drag­
ging one another about and bustling around belter skelter.
They did not know what they were after nor what they were
doing. They talked and laughed all at once. Everyone had
become brothers and sisters, and they all looked a bit like
madmen. A wind of insanity had blown upon the City and had
united them in their joy of this great celebration. The sky had
grown clearer and the storm had moved off without breaking
loose. The sun had broken through the clouds and played with
the colors of the Hags. It was an endless festival of brilliant
colors.
Military uniforms were no longer to be seen anywhere. All
those troops which till yesterday had paraded up and down
the shoplined hills of the City, the officers who thundered
upon the pavements in their boots, the countless military pa­
trols, the cavalrymen and the marines, all had disappeared at
once. They were leaving, giving up the struggle, surrendering
their places. Now other troops would fill the great city and
mount parades with music and flags out front. Other generals
would shout their commands from horseback. Other uniforms
would circulate on the streets, in the Center, in the suburbs,
and would pair off with the girls. The crowds of girls of all
nationalities, who had grown used to speaking German after a
fashion and to singing the tunes from the Viennese light thea­
ter, now would have to forget all that as being no longer of any
55
use, and learn or recollect other languages. Now they would
get to know new faces and new customs. Everything would be
different. A new life would swoop violently upon them every­
where and give a different atmosphere and a different appear­
a n d to the ancient imperial city. How fascinating people
were! Constantly renew ed and incapable of exhaustion! Peo­
ple were wonderful!
"H ere come the fleets!”
Someone grabbed Leonis and kissed him. It was Menos, the
fat kid w ith the political ideas. He explained:
“ Everyone is kissing each other today. Christos anesti!"
He took him by the arm and drew him away.
“ L et’s go up to the top of one of the buildings,” he shouted.
“Everyone is going up. Let’s go up and see the fleets com­
ing in to take over the City!”
The sky cleared gradually. The sun became brighter. The
colors of the Hags took on even more life. The air was light,
cool, and refreshing. Now it was like a fine spring day after a
rain, like E aster amid poppies and daisies. It was not in­
appropriate to say C hristos anesti, Christ has risen. It fitted in
with everything. You wanted to run, to play, to roll in the
grass, to kiss whom ever you met and then to gather Howers
and sing. Everyone was laughing. No one knew why. You
laughed with them . You could do nothing but surrender your­
self to the great wave of laughter.
“ So that’s what peace is,” murmured Leonis.
Such a strange, such an unbelievable thing: peace. A life
w ithout m obilization, w ithout military law, without daily
news releases, without bom bardm ent from the air, without
food shortages, w ithout those dark films showing trenches,
helm eted men subm erged in mud, and cannons, which they
pulled through the rain, an unnatural life which Leonis did
not understand very well. It never occurred to him how the
world got on w hen there was no war and what the rhythm of
things would be then. Something good was coming on. Leonis
was laughing for joy but did not understand it.
“ Peace, th en .”
“ No,” cried Menos. “ It’s more than peace. It’s victory!
He shouted the last word with all the power of his lungs into
the roar of the throng which kept getting louder.
56
 X

The 12th Troop of the Greek scouts was lined up along

Mnematakia Avenue near the Pathe Theater, with trumpets,
drums, and unfurled Hag. The troop leader, Paul Proios, in an
officer’s uniform, was walking outside the formation. He was
beginning to mature and had filled out quite a bit during the
last two years. He was clutching a short reed cane like the
ones in fashion with the English soldiers. The Greek scouts
had the privilege of buying canes and whatever else they
wanted from the English canteens.
Second in command was Stasinos, more stork-like than ever.
Paris and Menos were squad leaders, with Leonis a sergeant
in Paris’s squad. Dimis had remained behind, just a scout
without rank and without any specialty. He had grown lazy,
chased the girls, and thought about nothing else. He had
joined the scouts solely because the uniform had a great effect
upon the girls. None of them would turn to look at a fellow
unless he was in uniform. Leonis wore the badge of the tele­
grapher on his sleeve. He was very good at sending Morse
code, and had some esteem in the Troop for this and for the
reason that he was an artist and painter and former student of
the great Italian professor, Montefredini. He had made sketch­
es of his comrades as well as some water colors, rather like
caricatures, showing scenes from life in the army barracks. He
had even sold two or three of these to a large stationery store
on Straight Street. These were placed in the store window
57
along with a num ber of other amateur works on current sub-
jects. C heap works to lie sure, but, however so, this publicity,
this initiation, had m ade an impression upon his comrades!
Leonis had left the professor now and was drawing on his
own. He was now older and had gained whatever he could
from his teachers. From now on he would create. He wanted to
test out his abilities on his own to see what he could do. Lat­
er, w hen he finished high school, he would go to Athens and
Paris to perfect him self as an artist.
The war was over now. There would never be another.
Everyone knew that that was the last one. During those very
days in a great hall in Paris there was a gathering of world
leaders, President Wilson, Clemenceau, Lloyd George, per­
sons who were alm ost mythological, suspended in History,
the legend and the reality of newspapers and movies. And
they had founded with great ceremony a new institution to he
called the Com m unity or League of Nations, which would
consecrate once for all an established legality and undisturbed
peace in the relationships betw een nations. “This war,” Presi­
dent Wilson had said, “ this war, which has had such frightful
consequences, has nevertheless had very great and very fine
consequences, too. Nations have been convinced, more than
ever before, o f the greatness and power of Right . . .”
All the great questions of humanity had more or less been
set in order. H ereafter no one would have the right to com­
plain that the world was not as it should be. The old should be
forgotten. A new epoch was beginning in the world amid free­
dom and prosperity. Each person would do whatever his heart
desires; one would draw, another write poems, another travel,
w ander from place to place, go to the Indies, to Japan, to the
islands of the Pacific Ocean. Dimis would have nothing more
to do than chase girls. Why not? since he likes to. And each
nation w ould likewise follow its bent, enjoy life without re­
strictions, walk undisturbed along the road to progress. The
Greek state would have to make yet a small effort and give a
last push to tidy up some unsettled matters concerning Asia
Minor, then there would be no other dark spot to hinder the
co n ten tm en t and the games of the children of Odysseus.
“ Happy are you,” said the ancients, “who today are beginning
your life. Fortunate race!”
58
 The City had put on its best. It was decked with Hags and
laurel branches to receive a new conqueror. The commander of
the allied powers of the Eastern Front was about to enter the
capital of the Em pire officially, as victor. Allied troops had
lined the streets w here he would pass. The scout troops,
which had just formed ranks, were perm itted to stand at a
number of designated places.
The crowds were once again stream ing into the streets of
the Center, to the windows, onto the balconies, to the tops of
the buildings, fluttering their little Hags and happily shouting.
They were mingling with uniforms of every color, French,
British, Italian, Greek, as well as a variety of others: African
legionnaires with large red fezes and white burnooses; Indian
soldiers wearing turbans; Sengalese, black as pitch; blond
Scotsmen with their dark colored kilts; Italian Bersalieri with
Hat, round hats decked with feathers; carabinieri in deep blue
suits and great N apoleonic caps; Greek evzones; C retan
police with their traditional breeches and top boots; countless
Russian officers from all branches of the Czar’s armies, ragged
and formal, chests covered with medals and holes in their
trousers. You were inundated with colorful trappings: modern
military uniforms of blue, green, or khaki, local uniforms,
great uniforms of the nineteenth century — which recalled
the old heroic lithographs — colorful crests, gold braid,
brandenburgs, swords with tassels, capes. The Garden of the
Taxim had never before seen such glories.
It was a great national ball which lasted for months, a ball
with a thousand different costumes and as many types of
music. The French sang “ M adelon” and “ Aupres de ma
blonde.” The English sang “Tipperary” and “ Katy.” The Ital­
ians kept up the song day and night and had shaken out all the
operas and serenades. The Greeks stuck to their patriotic-
songs. Every few days there was a ceremony, a parade, a
national holiday, or a great popular entertainm ent. Each ally
sought to outdo the others. The Greeks had first place for their
popular gatherings, when they celebrated the 25th of March or
their Easter (to which they had lent political significance) or
the St. Eleutherios, which Venizelos used to celebrate. At that
time thousands poured into the streets with flags, banners, and
laurel branches. They stopped traffic, climbed atop streetcars.
59
caused general destruction, and finally came to blows with the
I urkish police. T he French outdid all others in their demon­
strations of military might, which took place usually on the
H eld of Ares and was a sight worth traveling far to attend.
I heii leaders came down on horseback and gave orders to
some crack troops dressed in blue and carrying powder-
burned Hags out front. Behind them came the cannons, the
armored cars, the tanks. Various decorations were awarded,
swords glittered, the general kissed the new cavalrymen, all to
an incessant Marseillaises. Finally there was a frightening
charge by the African cavalry, their white burnooses in the air,
amid a cloud of dust and a pandemonium of riHe shots. . . .
When the order sounded at the turn of the road and the
army presented arms, the scouts, too, saluted with hands to
their canes, w hile the troop leader saluted hand to forehead,
clutching his cane firmly under his left arm as he had seen the
English officers do. When all this had taken place — and it
took place in an instant — Leonis took to thinking about
another time at which he had been in a like situation, hack
when the Em peror of Germany had come into the City. To be
sure there were basic differences in the two receptions, for at
that time it was Others, while this time, thought Leonis, “it’s
us.” Nevertheless it seemed to him for a moment to be fun­
dam entally the same — all this coming and going of Emperors
and com m anders-in-chief on the roads and the hills of Great
Constantine — as if it were the same event in different phases,
of which the one com pleted the foregoing and called up the
following. It was what the newspapers called History: ‘‘We
are standing at a great turning point of world History, etc.
The new spapers said it loosely, revealing by their tone that
they did not know what they were saying, but Leonis felt it
now very clearly.
T he procession was abrupt, aggressive, and free of needless
frills. Out front came a troop of English cavalry in khakis.
Following at some distance came General Franchet d’Esperey
on horseback, also in campaign uniform. Two French soldiers
on foot, wearing helmets, held the reins of his horse. They
might have been entering the conquered city and leading in
their commander. Next came the officers of the general staff,
the director of the occupation forces, the members of the mili-
60
tary missions — all on horseback — and after these some small
units of the army as honor guard. The crowd waved its Hags,
clapped, and shouted its welcomes to the commander. But his
scowls and moodiness made him appear ill-natured. He did
not respond, even with a glance, to the cheers and applause.
His thoughts were not concerned with that. He was the most
powerful, he was the conqueror, and he had taken the City.
That he knew and he did not even want to know anything else.
He looked at the head of his horse and clenched his teeth. To
all appearances he was one with his horse, the helm ets, the
swords, the spears, and all that massive power which you
could feel was behind him. He was that very power, that im­
personal, unmoved, and inexorable military power, and it
made no difference to him w hether the C hristian people
greeted him or not. Nor was he willing to give any assurances
to them.
He, too, had taken the City, as had so many other knights in
the course of the centuries. He had obviously taken it without
passion, and he did not want to keep it. Perhaps he him self did
not know what he would do with it and was oppressed by that
problem. But so what? Let him do whatever he wanted with it.
That did not matter to Leonis. He was more involved in the
strange enchantment now gripping him: the feeling that the
City, Europe, the world were all just an endless theatrical
scene, just as the Garden of the Taxim had once been, a scene
in which nations moved, and armies, and commanders astride
large parade horses. And they seemed to be playing in a pro­
duction which moved to a secret, im perceptible rhythm.
They would come, go, relinquish their places to one another,
bow. It was a fantastic, gigantic minuet. It was History. And
Leonis himself was in History. With his Greek scouting cap
and his great cane and with a blue kerchief around his neck,
he was passing into History, saluting the important person­
ages and marching in the parade. And he seemed to feel the
great wave of History lift him lightly and draw him along with
the armies, the peoples, and the Empires. And he was happy
about that marvelous thing happening to him. He wanted to
laugh for joy, but he did not laugh, because at the same instant
an unexplainable sadness overtook him and choked him. It
was all so fine and yet so sad.
61
 Later, w hen the parade broke up, the 12th Troop moved in
formation up Straight Street in Pera toward the Taxim to re­
turn to its headquarters. It moved in step, in ranks of four, to
the sound of its drum s and trum pet. Its flags waved beautifully
over their caps. T he crowd clapped; many ‘hoorays’ were
heard. T he scouts stretched tall, but were too bashful to raise
their eyes.
“T h ey ’re doing all that clapping for us,” whispered one of
the troop who walked ahead of Leonis.
“Well, after all, w e’re the 12th Troop!” answered another
with self-satisfaction.
“T he E leni Phoka T roop,” Dimis whispered in fun.
Sergeant Paris reddened, turned and looked at him fiercely.
Dimis hit his lip in order not to break out laughing. Leonis
pretended not to have seen or heard anything.
T he leader walked outside the formation, upright, hand­
some, and a bit dream y, with his bamboo cane under his arm.

62
 XI

The truth is that during the meetings of the 12th Troop the
evening could not pass without a discussion about Eleni Pho-
ka. First of all everyone knew in detail about their leader —
thanks to the discretion of Dimis. The Stork went around with
her, too. He went on walks with her from time to time in the
Garden of the Taxim. Paris was completely head over heels
about her. As soon as he heard her name he blushed, grew
angry, and started looking for trouble. He thought that he had
more right to her than the rest because his sister had a great
deal to do with her, and the two of them would sometimes go
to her house for tea. Later on he would relate by the hour what
took place at those marvelous gatherings, where all was flow­
ers and sweets and girls who had not yet put up their hair, but
each had her love. He told also what Eleni Phoka had said to
him and how important he personally was to her, how obvious
it was that she considered him apart from the others she in­
vited, and how she took him by the hand and taught him the
latest dances, the one-step, the fox trot, and the valse hesita­
tion. Sometimes, while they were dancing, Paris would start
to squeeze her hand. Eleni did not grow angry but would
simply smile at him. Then she would say, “We will be always
be friends, won’t we?” These words, according to Paris, had
great significance. Let anyone disagree with him who dared.
Eleni Phoka’s mother was never there. She was frightfully
63
Inisy, every clay at some reception, at a ball, or on a flagship.
1He whole city knew that she had at her feet one of the most
famous admirals of England.
One day at the troop Headquarters there was a great stir. A
scout by the name of Adamopoulos said something insulting
aboiit Eleni Phoka. Paris Hew into a rage and began boxing
" it i him. Adamopoulos left aside all the rules and responded
u ith kicks and blows with a chair. Finally they went rolling on
the ground grappling with each other. The Troop undertook to
separate them, but there was almost a general free-for-all.
It seems that this rage for Eleni Phoka was contagious.
They learned later that Adamopoulos carried her picture in his
wallet. He must have filched it from someone else because he
did not know Eleni Phoka personally. But no one dared to lay
claim to the photograph, and they never found out whose it
was originally. There were other such collisions in Troop 12,
too. Once on an overnight excursion to Floria, for instance,
Leonis went over and struck up a conversation with a younger
scout — the Benjamin of the Troop — whose name was Men­
tor (a funny name for the youngest of all). They stretched out
on the sand bank, watched the moon, and chatted. Then the
younger scout, moved somewhat by the friendship ottered
him by Leonis, began confiding to him some of the secrets of
his life and told him that he thought day and night about a girl
(this was strictly between them; no one else was to know
anything about it) and that the girl thought a great deal of him;
that is to say, she would look him straight in the eyes each
time she met him in the Garden, while she ignored all the
others; and she was right in ignoring them, because she was a
girl such as there was no other in the whole City, and on and
on. At first Leonis did not say anything, but as he began to see
where all this was heading, he got up and spoke roughly to the
young scout:
“That’s all we needed,” he shouted, for even you to be m
love with Eleni Phoka! You, who are still learning your Anaba-
sis\
Mentor was greatly distressed and almost broke into tears.
“Everyone else loves her,” he answered. “Why should I be
the only one who doesn’t have the right to?”
He was much bothered by being the youngest, and they
64
were always hinting around about his age. The injustice of it
all got the best of him.
“Go to the devil all of you!” shouted Leonis, infuriated.
“You’re fools, not m en!”
He walked off cursing in the moonlight.
“The devil with you! The devil!”
Paris came up to talk about some scouting m atters related to
the overnight, but Leonis, facing him nose to nose, said, "Go
to the devil!” That was an insult to a superior in the perform­
ance of his duty, but Paris did not make an issue of it. He was
basically a good lad in spite of his heavy and abrupt moods.
Leonis did not admit to anyone that every time he met Eleni
Phoka in the Garden, on the street, or at the movies, he always
felt that same tightening in his throat and chest. Perhaps she
was the reason that he, too, began to pick quarrels with who­
ever was in love with her.
Julia Asimaki had left almost as soon as the Straits were
opened. Some of her cousins had called her to Alexandria to
marry her off. She left singing. She much liked the idea of
being married. It mattered not at all that she had never seen
the groom. She had promised to send cards to Leonis but did
not send even one. She forgot him immediately. Leonis was
quite piqued by this and warmly disliked her now. But he saw
her sometimes in his dreams and felt again the warmth of her
limbs, the taste of her mouth, her fragrance, and then, without
wanting to, he would give way to the pleasure of it all. Still, he
never felt for her that strange tightening.
For some time he had not been near a girl. Then he had
been accommodated temporarily by a maid from Asia Minor
who worked for his Aunt Markella. With her he did about the
same things as with Miss Asimaki and had fun with her. Some
of his friends had solved the problem differently, finding their
pleasure by themselves, and explained to Leonis how this was
done. But Leonis did not like that way. He wanted a girl. That
was what he was used to, and that he believed to be the right
and the best way. If he found no girl eager for the job, then
time could pass without his doing anything, except what took
place in his dreams. But he was not responsible for that; it was
something that happened by itself. Now, after a fashion he had
got along with this servant girl. But it was nothing extraordi-
65
nary, and later it becam e a rather rare occurrence, because
Aunt M arkella did not go out very often, and when she was at
home, she never ceased running up and down from floor to
floor, from roof to kitchen, opening and shutting all the doors
to see that everything was in its place. Where were the great
conveniences of M ontefredini’s school?
Finally Leonis began to accompany Dimis on his girl­
huntin g cam paigns. T hey would go out together towards
evening and take walks in the Taxim, the Ayaz-Pasha, or the
Field of Ares. A large part of the Field of Ares had been arbi­
trarily appropriated by the Russian refugees who had put up
an array of board huts, where they maintained an interminable
brawl. T here you would see pranks and oddities of all sorts,
im provised Russian orchestras and choruses with balalaikas,
Cossack dances with knives, acrobats, jugglers, marionette
plays and shadow plays, open air bars, where it is said that the
waitresses were duchesses and ladies of prestige from the
court of the czar; lotteries, card playing, target shooting, and a
terrific turm oil of music, singing, laughter, screams, and rifle
shots. Som etim es a fracas of Hom eric proportions would
erupt, w here you might see a Greek sailor and a kilted Scots­
man joined to w hip one another, and a group of Italian Bersa-
lieri and some Russian officers, with their beards and medals,
falling into the m idst to separate them. There would he a rally,
the flash of a bayonet, mobs running to see, other mobs run­
ning in flight. You could hear curses and screams in every
language of E urope and the Near East. The dust would rise
like a thick fog and cover everything. The game hoards were
knocked over, the wooden railings were shattered by the tram­
pling of the combatants. Finally the international patrol would
arrive and restore order with kicks and clouts.
W hen evening fell and the lights were turned on, this gypsy
quarter took on an almost phantasmagorical appearance. You
no longer knew w here you were. If you had gone up to a bar
and w et your lips on one of the drinks which the duchesses
served, you w ould have completely lost your senses, every­
thing spinning around you and roaring inarticulately. It was
like a mad ball. Suddenly you would stop, dazzled, and look at
the figure of a woman who smiled in the half-light of a hut or
in the reflected rays of a fire of dry wood, a tall woman, very
66
blond, exotic, aglow and beautiful as a goddess. You gazed
open-mouthed, magnetized and stupid. You could lose your­
self there for hours if your comrades did not drag you away. It
was not longing, nor was it love. It was purely and simply
enchantment.
Dimis especially liked to go there. He would not go
near the Russian women. He did not have the courage for that
but hunted instead for girls from the City who came to see the
Russian frolics, with faces lit up and eyes glazed. Leonis fol­
lowed. He took no initiative hut was continuously afraid that
someone would see him.
One time as they were returning from the Russian huts and
were walking along the Avenue of the Taxim, Leonis, out of
the blue, received a stout slap on the face from a strong, husky
girl. Dimis explained later that, as they were passing by, he
had grabbed her at the appointed spot. He could not, he said,
resist the temptation; it was something stronger than his will.
But, being short and agile, he succeeded in hiding in hack of
Leonis, who took the swat.
The walkway was full of pedestrians. People stood and
watched. Never had Leonis suffered such frightful humilia­
tion. As she slapped him, she screamed:
“ For shame, you nasty hoy!”
Leonis was stooped over looking for his cap, which had
rolled off along the ground. First he looked down, then at the
girl and stammered:
“I’m sorry, Miss . . . I don’t understand, Miss . . . ”
Dimis was fifteen feet away, playing the innocent bystand­
er, with his hands in his pockets. Later he said that he was
terribly sorry, that he would see to it that such an unpleasant
event would not take place again. Leonis shouted at him, and
for a whole week he complained, swearing that he would nev­
er go out with Dimis again. Nevertheless he went.
They would find girls — not the best sort — two in number
and both willing, if anything were to come of it. At first they
would follow them for a while without saying anything, only
exchanging smiles on the sly — all this at some distance,
according to the established routine. If the girls were willing,
they would leave the lighted areas and head down some dark
side street. That was the signal that the “courting” could be-
67
overtures. The T t * ^ dreW nearer and Dimis made the
moved in W» uld answer with giggles as the boys
arms, it Was > „ V,na ly they a11 formed a Party and joined
this wav mV 18 , )ef°rehand who would get which girl. In
low wall o r l 7 Uld Walk ab° Ut for a while, then go sit on a
there wm 1 M ,S,tairs °! a downhdl road, and then usually
learned ♦ ( U dle fooling around which Leonis had
wav Mv fri>n\ ‘, ,Sf Asimah»- There he found his pleasure in the
thV ft* U lkt d ' 11 dle K*rls did not know how, he showed
6111 . e way- But on most occasions they knew their lessons
marvelously well.
But one day Dimis declared that all that was no longer
a ^ uatf, and that they must finally decide to go to the
( Ebony. Leonis shuddered at hearing this name. To the
“Ebony”? Good Grief. Us, in the “Ebony”?
There s no other solution,” said Dimis. “That’s how peo­
ple do: they either get married or go to the ‘Ebony’.”
But 1 m not interested in the ‘Ebony’ or in marriage,”
answered Leonis. “ I’m all right as I am.”
“Well, I' m not all right,” said Dimis. “I’m suffering.”
It was so ridiculous for Dimis to say he was suffering — that
bounder!
The subject was discussed countless times. Dimis had laid
aside a nest egg. At last Leonis agreed to a compromise solu­
tion, which was to pass by the “Ebony” without stopping, to
see things from close up — just to get over the chill. Later on
they would discuss again whether to “go" or not.
The date and hour of this historical walk had been set days
before and with great solemnity. The two friends pulled their
caps far down to their eyebrows and drew up their collars.
They walked stoopshouldered at a quick pace, like conspir­
ators in the movies. Their hearts beat loudly. Their voices
came out with difficulty. From the time they set forth they felt
that they had been cut off from every appetite of the flesh. But
‘ Ud they would do it, and do it they must. It became a
, r ,u |;ration From one alley to the next they arrived at
T?ft the much-talked-of street, about which all the boys’
1 ols all the gymnasiums, and the scout troops shouted, the
sc
‘Ebony Hoad.
fa m o u s a t one encj 0f the street and crossed deter-
They
68
minedly to the other side. They had decided to traverse the
whole street, from end to end. It was a narrow cobblestone
street, like a thousand others in the City, except that there was
a peculiar movement all along it. The doors of the houses were
open or ajar. The grillworks of the ground Hoors were shut.
Some venerable old women had brought out their chairs to the
sidewalk and took the air peacefully. A few women were
standing at the doors or at the windows, lightly clad, with
bright ribbons in their hair or a cord tied around their necks,
and had painted their lips and eyes in lively colors. They even
had the courage to smoke, right in the open, in public. But
Leonis observed nothing else of what the myths told about the
Ebony, that, supposedly, one would see in the doors and win­
dows women stark naked who made provocative gestures; that
they fell upon you and choked you with kisses; that men were
knifed in the m iddle of the street without anyone intervening.
There were a num ber of men there, but very sober ones. They
were coming out of and going into the houses without any
disorderliness, or they were at the doors dealing coolly with
the old women. Most of them were military men from the
Allied forces. A group of Italians were shyly singing a quiet
song. Now and then you would hear a bit of music from within
the houses, a piano or a phonograph. That was all. No one
spoke to Leonis or Dimis, nor did anyone even notice them.
But when they came to the end of “ Ebony Road" and
emerged onto the ordinary streets and found themselves once
again amid houses with grillworks open and doors shut and
among women without ribbons and bright make-up, Leonis
felt as if a great weight had been lifted from him. He breathed
freely and realized that a little before this his breathing had
not been regular. He did not know what had bothered him so,
whether it was the sight of those women, or the look of the
soldiers when they entered the houses, or maybe a strange
aroma in the street, or something else. He did not know what
exactly he had felt back there, but whatever it was, it resem­
bled asphyxiation.
“You see,” said Dimis, “ it isn’t all that terrible. Now that
we’ve tested it out, what do you say, shall we ‘go’?”
“No,” answered Leonis irritably. “No! no!”
How pleased and comforted he was that day by the recollec-
69
tion of a Kiri ,n a yellow skirt with a distant and stubborn look,
who passed light as air in the back streets of the Garden, the
stra n g e charm w h ich enw rapped the ancient chest­
nuts . . .

70
 XII

The scouts had worked hard decorating the Garden. They

had climbed trees and hung up colored lanterns and flags. The
lanterns sketched garlands from tree to tree, and Hags were
gathered into bouquets and tied with laurel branches. They
had also put together a broad laurel-lined archway near the
entrance. On the legs of the arch they hung pictures of the
Allied leaders and of Venizelos, and in many other places they
had placed laurel branches, pictures of generals, and large
drawings of wounded soldiers and the lovely nurses who
attended them. It was the anniversary of the Greek Red Cross.
The Garden of the Taxim was full of booths where the
ladies of the Commission sold items of every description, arti­
cles donated by stores and factories and a number of hand­
icraft shops which had been set up for just this purpose. There
were raffles and games of every kind. The ladies had many
girls to assist them and the scouts ran errands and relieved the
girls of the heavy work.
The big band of the Greek fleet had taken its place on the
stone platform in the middle of the Garden. There were other
musical groups, too, in the coffee shops, the bar, and else­
where. Of special note was a strange assemblage playing a
jum bled combination of pianos, violins, cellos, trumpets, har­
monicas, drums, cymbals, and other unrecognizable instru­
ments. They made a fiendish racket such as no one had ever
heard before. In the m iddle of this group was a black man
71
beating a huge drum a i . • r .
Pectedly honk ' <lIK a stnnR °*tln cans- He would unex-
burst out 1..„„u.an ai,tomobile horn, shout loudly, and then
they found n,o rk 8.’ , S teeth HashinS the sun. On that day
a new style wl .hjlt *h,s crazy orchestra was called a jazz band:
stir in par; i.. K * l;u^ come bom America and was causing a
nmninn i- ■ ■ wf s something of an absurdity. Everyone was
about it ° ^<>ln ^1C Crow<^ an^ listen. The scouts were wild
• \\ ooc en platform had also been set up in the midst of the
a ) es w ere folk dances were to be performed in local cos-
um t. E \erv sort of Greek dress was on parade: kilts from the
()rea and from Roumeli; white peasant skirts with
om noidering; colorful shawls and necklaces of gold Florins;
neeches from the islands; richly hued stuffs from Macedonia.
Now they could strike up the syrto, the kalumutiano, the tra-
ta, and any other dance the lutes and pipes could recall! When
the gendarme from Crete appeared in short breeches and top-
boots and began the pentozali, the Garden rocked with cries
of approval. The boards groaned so from the dancers bounding
up and down on them that no more dances were performed on
them afterward for fear of an accident.
The flags waved in the sun in such numbers that one was
caught in the fold of the next, or they came playfully to blows
with lively flaps. Everywhere there was a crush of people. The
waiters had gone mad. The women of the Commission were
almost overcome by profits beyond anything they had imag-
ined.
But the scouts maintained order. Leonis had great responsi­
bilities as leader of a whole patrol: four scouts, canes in hand,
with serious and uncompromising mien. They circulated up
and down the whole Garden, crossed through the gatherings
r p ie reviewed the booths, kept abreast of everything that
v is going on. There was a number of such patrols, and when
l ev crossed paths they saluted one another with a turn of the
i ' ] No one actually noticed them or had any use for their
** 'ces but they nevertheless kept order. It was a three-hour

tour of duty • -n the eVening Leonis went off duty and

At] "dTtraight over to the Pythia.
heaaecy>i*k_» ^ her booth near the motion picture screen.
The ' 72
Hers was the very last one, set up somewhat mysteriously off
the path as befitted her. Instead of a door, it had a red curtain.
Outside there sat a girl from the Commission who called out:
“This way for the Pythia! Come to the Pythia!”
You paid as much as you liked; Leonis gave all the change
he had on him and went in.
The Pythia was an elderly, thin, small-boned woman with
her hair tied with a muslin kerchief like those worn by the
elegant Turkish women who had given up the veil. But she
was not Turkish at all. When Leonis went in and saluted her in
military fashion, she smiled at him and motioned him to come
closer. She had him sit next to her. Leonis was a bit uneasy. It
was the first time that he had done such a thing as having his
fortune told.
The Pythia opened his left hand and looked at it closely.
“Oh,” she said immediately, “how long you will live! Eigh­
ty years, maybe ninety.”
Leonis laughed, thinking how lucky that would be, but
down deep he was not at all concerned about whether he
would ever be ninety, or seventy, or even fifty. All that was so
distant and inconceivable.
“You are lucky,” continued the Pythia quietly. “ Do not
doubt your fortune. Your good luck will work for you. Now
let’s have a look at your inclinations.”
She looked at his hand even more seriously, lifting it and
drawing it toward the light . . .
“ Do you like art?” she asked.
“Yes,” answered Leonis weakly.
“Which art?”
“ I draw.”
The Pythia was pleased. She gave him, it seemed, a good
grade.
“ Lines . . . colors . . . this is your fortune,” she murmured.
“ Do not stop. You can do something good. Yes, you will do
something good.”
All that was, to be sure, very, very nice, but it was aside from
the main question which had brought Leonis there, the ques­
tion which the Pythia, in her concentration, finally decided to
touch upon.
“ It appears that your heart will be somewhat capricious,”
73
she said smiling. "It will lean in many directions. But, wait a
m inute. What do I see?”
She turned his hand to one side, then turned it to the other.
A love match!” she said triumphantly. “ Here is the sign
here, this cross.”
Leonis blushed to the eyebrows. Without looking at her he
w hispered:
“W hen?”
T he Pythia laughed.
“As soon as you’re old enough, I hope,” she said. “You don’t
know how fast the years pass.”
She was w ithdraw n again and once more looked very sad.
Leonis did not know how to react. He sat for a while waiting
for her to say som ething else to him, but she did not say any­
thing else. She was exhausted. That was all her wisdom. He
drew his hand gently away, arose and murmured a thank you.
The Pythia came to again. She stretched forth her hand,
bade him farewell, and gave him a friendly smile. As he was
crossing the threshold she called to him.
“ D on’t forget what I told you: your fortune works . . . ”
Leonis w ent out into the open air a hit shaken; he was not
sure just why. He moved hastily into the crowd, to the music,
to the flags. He w anted very much to find Dimis and start a
great row with him. T here were always a thousand and two
reasons for setting up a row with Dimis.
“ L eonis!”
It was his grandfather’s voice.
Leonis jum ped and turned searching the crowd. His grand­
father was engaged in conversation with a lady under a tree,
an aged lady, but well-off, rose red, and attractive for all her
w hite hair. Old Bilarikis was very attentive to her. He had
offered her the carnation which he had had in his buttonhole.
T heir conversation was full of teasing, wit, and incompre­
hensible allusions. T he two of them must have had something
in com m on in their past. Everyone said that Grandfather had a
great deal in his past.
G randfather was pleased to see Leonis in his uniform. He
rested his hand on his shoulder and drew him over to the lady
with pride. To he sure, Leonis liked to wear the Greek uni­
form and cap with its national symbol and to parade with the
74
flags out front. That was something good to which Grandfather
could have no objections, especially if one considered all that
had passed: the gallows in the squares, the patriotic songs
during the night, the secrecy amidst fear and trembling. Now
everything was changed. The younger generation was with its
flags opening a way towards a new and better world, a world of
freedom and joy. Grandfather’s latest craze was to stop En­
glish and French sailors on the road (not soldiers, but sailors
— such was his whim) and to take them to the beer halls and
treat them to drinks. He became friendly with the French
especially, since he knew a smattering of their language, and
in the end he would get up and cry out, “Vive la France!”
“Eleni!”
It was the voice of the aged, charming lady.
And immediately the answer:
“Yes, Aunt.”
Leonis did not turn to look. He felt a light skirt next to him, a
head of thick, light-colored hair in disarray beneath a large
straw hat, a lovely face, fresh and smiling, a great sweetness in
all things around her.
“Allow me to present a favorite niece of mine,” said the lady
to Grandfather. “This is Eleni Phoka.”
“Which Phokas?” asked Grandfather, as he took the hand of
the girl.
The lady gave all the details. The unfortunate father of the
youngster had been the lady’s first cousin. He had been a
grain dealer who had died during the first Balkan War. Grand­
father remem bered him perfectly well. To be sure, he had had
dealings with him, professional dealings. Who knows if he had
not thrashed him sometime or other on the Bridge or at some
other much frequented route of Galata.
Then the lady presented Leonis to her niece.
“This young warrior,” she said, “is the grandson of Mr.
Bilarikis.”
Eleni Phoka looked him steadily in the eye as was her wont.
She smiled with familiarity. Leonis fell to considering differ­
ent things which seem ed to him at this moment to be the most
astonishing that could happen in the world.
“ I’m near her — I’m near her for the first time — I’m looking
at her — she is looking at me — she is smiling for me — for no
75
other — she is holding out her hand to me — 1 am taking her
hand — I, Leonis, am holding her hand in my own hand — it
isn’t a myth — it isn’t a dream — it is something really happen­
ing, which I feel on the skin of my hand, in the beat of my
heart — how my heart pounds — I’m beet red — my ears are
burning — I’m clumsy — I’m ridiculous — I don’t know how
to stand in front of her, where to put my hands — how my
hands worry me! — but won’t I find anything to say?”
“Your fortune is working,” said the echo in his memory. “A
love match . . . Eighty years . . . Ninety years . . . ”
How funny! Leonis ninety years old, with a great white
beard like Santa Claus and with squads of grandchildren and
great grandchildren . . . It would be som ething fine, though, a
love match, for this great sweetness which now covered the
very trees of the Garden to last all his life, and that marvelous
tightening in the chest, and for her to smile like that always, to
look him in the eyes and smile . . .
Eleni Phoka was in a great hurry. She excused herself, had
business at the kiosks, could not stay with them any longer.
She said good-bye to her aunt, to Grandfather, and turned
again to Leonis.
“ I hope,” she said, “that it will not be long before we see
one another again.”
Then Leonis thought, for the first time in his life: “ 1 am in
love!” And the whole world around him seemed but a hill of
ants.

76
 XIII

He saw her again neither that evening nor on any other day
for a long time. At some point Dimis brought the news. Eleni
Phoka had gone to Athens. She did not say when she would
return nor whether she would return at all. Anyway, Dimis did
not at all believe in the virtue of girls who traveled to Athens.
People had things to say about the amusements and corrup­
tion of Athens, which was on its way to becoming a real Paris.
Most of the women were divorced; all the girls had lovers; the
gar^onnieres would take them in and give them back again.
Dimis knew a pile of stories — terrible accounts — about the
life of Athenian students, about the girls of the Arsakeion; to
say nothing of the social and artistic circles, the backstage
crowds at the theaters, the Athenian carnivals . . . Certainly
the City would never see Eleni Phoka again. They would
spirit her away as soon as she set foot on the pier of Piraeus.
Leonis did not sleep well and he had lost his appetite. Los­
ing his appetite for so long a time was something quite new to
him. He thought to himself, “Just think! I’m in love!” He
would go on long walks by himself, out beyond Shishli, lie in
the grass and say, “ I’m in love!” It was absolutely dum bfound­
ing and, to be sure, a bit funny, but he enjoyed it so. It was
sweet, profound, and moving, setting him apart from everyone
else. It was isolating, permeating, and gently inebriating. He
did not worry about what they were doing and saying around
77
him, nor what they might he thinking about him in school or in
the Troop. They were all so distant, so paltry, mere ants, a
meaningless crowd. The real world was the trees, the grass,
the fragrance of the earth, the blue sky betw een the leaves and
Leonis stretched out under the trees, with his hands folded
behind his head, a wild flower in his mouth, and his great love
in his heart.
As he was preparing his lessons for the next day, he sudden­
ly had to stop, unable to continue. He took a beautiful white
sheet of paper, spread it out in front of him, and began with
trembling hand to write her name:

E L E N IP H O K A

E L E N I PIIOKA

E L E N I PIIOKA

It seemed to strange to him, so unbelievable and incompre­

hensible: this name, these letters arranged in a row, these
sounds on the tongue, this existence — all that changeable and
playful vitality, the beautiful hair falling to the shoulders, the
insistent look, the smile, the sound . . . What was this crea­
tion, this bounty, this mystical symbol,
E L E N I PIIO K A ?

How was it possible for such a creation to exist in the world?

But did it exist at all? Or was it all perhaps nothing more
than a vision, a self-deception, a fiction?
Then something happened on the paper. Nothing changed
and yet everything changed. The whiteness of the paper, the
strange lines of letters, everything became transfigured; their
essence, their flavor, their fragrance altered. This name, this
warmth, this brilliance, was not only something which ex­
isted, but it was the only thing that did exist. Without it the
world was without substance and empty, with no meaning
left, not even in the flags on the streets and in the trees, nor the
generals on horseback, nor the Russian hovels, nor Dim is’s
girls. None of these things were even worth considering. They
were all extinguished, dissolved like a summer cloud. This
78
unexplainable creature, this vision, was all. It was the world;
it was life; it was Leonis’s great ideal; the world and the
reason for his existence was love . . .

Now he was going to another school. His father had decided

that the Lyceum had fallen off and had placed him in the
Ayaz-Pasha prep-school. T here the regimen was different and
the discipline much stricter. For this reason there was a good
deal of work to do.
In the morning the school was French, with a French direc­
tor and French teachers who taught all the classes in their own
language. In the afternoon an in d ep en d en t Greek upper
school offered a limited program of courses for the Greek stu­
dents. In the morning students of all nationalities came: a
noisy crowd of Arm enian Catholics; a crowd of Spanish­
speaking Jews, just as noisy; a num ber of Italians and French
from the City; and other Frenchm en from France, children of
the diplomatic employees and the officers of the occupation
forces; some Slavs; two or three Turks, very serious and dig­
nified; and two or three Maltese with powerful hands. The
latter represented the British Em pire and were frightfully
proud of their role. They wore the English colors conspic­
uously and threatened to smash the face of whoever might
dare to speak unbecomingly of England and the English.
As soon as the Greeks had gathered in large enough num­
bers, their first thought was to found a Greek League, which
then dived headlong into the business of organizing lectures
and discussions on the lectures, and electing a presidential
staff for every trifle. This body suffered from a year of political
crisis, which arose from the profound disagreem ent among the
membership regarding the language question. Proponents of
the demotic and the puristic languages were about evenly
matched and equally fanatic. The other nationalities did not
succeed in grasping the reason for all the fuss, nor how it was
possible for a nation not to know which was its real language.
The director of the French section was named Boucher, but
the Greek students had humorously hellenized his name to
Voukios. He was an elderly man, tall, lean, very wrinkled,
with grey hair, grey moustache, and blue eyes, always wearing
79
a long black redingote cinched at the waist and smeared with
chalk. He was very agile in spite of his years, going up and
down the stairs in one breath and taking them four at a time
like a youngster. He was everywhere at once, quiet as a cat,
and always annoyed; he saw everything that happened, heard
everything that was said, and meted out punishm ent like the
very Devil from morning till evening. At critical times he was
overcome by a sort of hysteria; his cheek trem bled, his eyes
flashed, his voice broke into a screech, and he filled the school
with an air of panic.
Voukios and Leonis hated one another from the very first
day they met. It was an instinctive, dark, causeless, incompre­
hensible hatred, and for this reason the worst of all types of
hatred: a genuine passion akin to true love. A week could not
pass without a show of hatred, without some hysterical out­
breaks from Voukios aimed specifically at Leonis and fol­
lowed by the appropriate punishm ent. It became the talk of
the school, the particular severity with which the director of
the French department treated Leonis every time he was in­
volved in a dispute, however insignificant. But the truth is that
all the injustice was not on the part of Voukios. Leonis also
had a sadistic streak. He had discovered the weak spot of his
adversary and did not lose an opportunity to strike him there.
When Voukios began addressing reproofs to him, Leonis
would not answer but would gaze downward and smile just a
drop. That was the weak spot. He smiled so little that no one
could say, “What are you smiling about?” It was not even a
smile. It was a trace, a suspicion of mockery in his expression,
in his eyes, in the corners of his mouth. This was nevertheless
adequate to strike his opponent to the depths of his soul. At
that point Voukios flew into a rage. He sickened, screamed,
stamped his feet in fury, and began an uproar. His whole body
trembled. It was something frightful. No one understood how
it was that he suffered so much over matters of as little impor­
tance as those which were the apparent reasons for his rage.
But Leonis knew the secret, unacknowledged reason. He told
no one but kept to himself the joy of his dem onic victory.
Leonis was once accused of regularly skipping the two-hour
physics and chemistry classes, spending the time instead
80
sneaking away from school, taking other students with him,
and bribing the guard into silence. The deserters from physics
and chemistry would head down to the Palace of Dolma-
Bahche and there rent boats and set out singing onto the Bos­
porus. It was said that they even lighted cigarettes. They were
able to get away with this because the forgetful teacher never
called the roll nor even knew who or how many his students
were. But the scandal broke the day it was discovered by
Voukios himself. There was a severe interrogation and Leonis
was singled out as the chief offender. Voukios wanted nothing
else. He turned it into a major issue, dragged Leonis before
the general directors of the school and before the Association
of Teachers. There Leonis saw the dark side of his situation
and used a clever evasion when he was called upon to make
his defense.
“Gentlemen,” he explained, “ I am guilty. I admit it.”
“And have you nothing to say in your defense?” asked the
Greek general director, who was the en trep ren eu r of the
school.
“No, there is no excuse for my action. I am waiting to be
punished.”
He had had a feeling that he would make the best im pres­
sion this way, whereas denials and inventions would just get
him in deeper. In fact, the general director was enthusiastic
about this response and did not conceal his joy. The teachers,
too, expressed their pleasure.
“He at least knows how to take the consequences of his
actions!” exclaimed the general director triumphantly, and the
teachers approved.
Leonis was proud of him self and swelled up like a turkey.
He looked at Voukios out of the corner of his eye and laughed
to himself. Voukios said nothing. His cheek trem bled slightly,
but he did not break into his fit of hysteria. He kept control of
himself. They imposed the lightest punishm ent upon Leonis
that the rules would allow and let him go, but at the exit door
Voukios drew him aside into a corner and spoke to him
solemnly.
Leonis,’ he said, “you are very clever. Today you beat me.
But don’t think that you will ever have the last word. From
81
now on the war between us will be harsh. I’m warning you.
You know you’ll have me to face in everything you do and
every step you take. You had better watch out.”
“Just as you say, sir,” answered Leonis in the same solemn
tone.
That was the state of things when M. C alibourg joined the
faculty.
He appeared at school one morning in the blue uniform of
the French army, his pockets stuffed with old books and pa­
pers. Though still a sergeant-major without a discharge, he
had evidently acquired permission to teach.
He was no longer a young man, probably over forty. His
blond hair was abundant, his moustache long, and his beard
pointed in the style of the nineteenth-century artists. He was
shy, gentle, soft-spoken, and easygoing. Leonis liked him from
the first day and felt that for him this man would be the coun­
terweight to Voukios, the man to reconcile him to school
desks, to literature, and perhaps even to France.
M. Galibourg did not lift his eyes to look at his class face to
face. It was obvious that he was suffering from a bad case of
stage fright. He made no introductory remarks nor even asked
what the students had been studying up till then.
“I shall read to you,” he said, “a bit of C hateaubriand.”
He opened one of his notebooks and began to read slowly a
strange prose passage, one that they had never heard before.
His voice was like a cello playing: an intense pleasure not
only to the ear, but somehow to the entire body. Leonis en­
joyed that class very much. He had never imagined that it was
possible for one to experience that sort of pleasure from read­
ing a book, especially a book which was not even a poem, or,
strictly speaking, a narrative. Actually he did not understand
at all what the passage meant. He was so absorbed in his
enjoyment that he paid no attention to the teacher’s explana­
tions. But he was filled the whole day with the same delight,
and at night, when sleep was overtaking him, he smiled,
charmed by that deep rhythm still sounding in his ears.
The next time the class met, the teacher in the army uniform
began reading lines of poetry:
Dictes moy oil, n’en quel pays
Est Flora, la belle Romaine . . .
82
or,
Quand vous serez bien vieille, an soir, a la chandelle . . .
All he would do was simply read aloud and then lose him­
self in discussing some half-read page. The hour passed with­
out your realizing it. When the bell rang, signaling recess, M.
Calikourg would rise, troubled and ashamed, and complain to
himself:
“We’ve been too absorbed again today. I didn’t examine
anyone or put down a grade. Write me a composition, please.”
And he would assign a theme, such as, “ Explain in what
way Ronsard was a Classic and in what way he was a Roman­
tic.” And he would add, “just to sharpen your critical sense.”
But at other times he would tire of this sort of topic and
assign one which was com pletely imaginary: “ Describe your
encounter with pirates in the Spain of the Romantic Era.”
Then you would let your mind go free to play, to amuse
itself, and do crazy things: you would follow the pirates into
the dark Medieval lands, to deserted plateaux beaten by de­
monic winds, to precipitous crags and into caves. The pirates
were on horseback, wore capes and large, round, Hat caps,
wielded long carbines, and loved the dark gypsy girls who
danced to castanets around a huge fire of dry wood. Their
adventures were endless. The gendarmes then took part in the
action, as well as the clergy, and the local overlord and his
daughter, who inevitably fell in love with the leader of the
gang . . .
Gradually the “contemporary” novelists found their way in
with the older poets. “Contemporary” novelists, to M. Gali-
bourg, were those who had appeared in literature after 1800:
Balzac, Stendhal, Merrimee, Nodier . . . In every lesson he
told of another book, reading passages from here and there
and coloring the narrative with his own comments about the
plot, the style, and the characters. The world was filled with
heroes from the novels. They were romantic, ambitious, love-
struck, maniacal, wearing side whiskers and the bright, strik­
ing garb of the beginning and the middle of the nineteenth
century: immense hats, high pointed collars, audacious redin-
gotes of green, yellow or blue; and sweet, dreamy heroines
in broad, thickly pleated skirts, laces flowing unchecked and
83
funny ringlets and pigtails. This rowdy, fanatical and poetical
mob traveled swiftly in its carriages from one end of Europe to
the other, gesturing melodramatically, musing in damp and
ancient gardens or in the shadow of Gothic churches, conspir­
ing, duelling, conversing madly about the immortality of the
soul, or growing sick from love. For a while they appeared
incomparably more real and alive than living people. But in
a short time this intensive life abated; the fantastic charac­
ters dissolved; their voices stilled. Peace returned to the
earth, beautiful and sad. M. Galibourg was reading poems
quietly — almost in a whisper — which told of the beauty of
the world and about the sweetness of death.
Now Leonis was seized with a mania for drawing eyes.
Without warning it would suddenly come upon him. He
would immediately abandon all other pursuits, pin a large
white sheet of paper onto his easel, and with his charcoal
design large, wild, ecstatic eyes. Then around the eyes he
sketched the faces of women, dreamy and passionate women
with long, swan-like necks. Sometimes the face would not fit
onto the paper, and at least part of it woidd always run off the
edge. But it was impossible for him to design the outline of the
head first and then do the eyes. He had to begin with the eyes;
this was the true satisfaction; there was no satisfaction in the
rest. He could not have told you why, nor did he know
whether these eyes and these faces like swans had any rela­
tion to the readings done by the new teacher, to the fictional
heroes of a past age or with the Spanish pirates.
One day it was snowing hard. Only a few students had come
to school and M. Galibourg’s class took on an intimate tone.
For the first time the teacher spoke confidentially about him­
self and his life. He was a poet, he confessed openly. He had
lived for many years among poets. In Paris, in the Latin Quar­
ter, he had written many notebooks of poems. He had met
Verlaine, yes, the great Verlaine, face to face.
Les sanglots longs
des violons
de 1’automne . . .

Once Verlaine stopped him outside the Sorbonne and asked

him for money. He was drunk. M. Galibourg had no more than
84
a nickel on him. That was his entire student’s estate. He gave
it to him. How was it possible to refuse anything to the
greatest poet of his age? Then he followed him as he made his
way, staggering slightly, to a coffee shop, where he leaned on
the bar and drank the whole nickel’s worth down at a gulp.
The great Verlaine, ragged and blind drunk, hitting up stu­
dents for a nickel — what moving stories these were!
"Do you remem ber some of your poems to recite for us?”
asked Leonis.
M. Galibourg thought that he could rem em ber some of
them. He could perhaps recite one or two of them, since it was
snowing so hard that there was no way of having a regular
class. He crossed his hands and recited, looking with fixed
gaze at the snow which was falling and whitening the steps of
the neighboring houses. They were simple, sad, and noble
poems apparently written many, many years ago about the
men described in those unforgettable French novels of the
Romanticism. Leonis was moved. Perhaps it was the snow
which made him something of a romantic, too.
“ Did you publish your poems?” he asked when the teacher
had finished his recitation.
“No,” answered M. Galibourg and was absorbed again in
watching the snow.
“Are you going to publish them ?” asked Leonis again.
“No.”
M. Galibourg smiled with affliction and perseverance. But
Leonis was unable to corral his curiosity.
“Why not?” he asked again.
“ Perhaps I would have published them ,” said M. Gali­
bourg. “ But the war came. All during those years, you under­
stand, we had other things to do than publish books. Now, I
believe, the era of my poems has passed. The world has
changed. The hearts of men have changed. I don’t think any­
one would like my poems any more . . . ”
He made a gesture of indifference and continued:
“Let’s take a look at our work.”
He did not speak of poetry again that day.
But that night Leonis dreamed of Eleni Phoka. She was
dressed in white, with white flowers in her hair, and walked in
a great garden with towering trees and thick foliage and sculp-
85
tures and running water, a shadowy garden, damp and full of
white flowers: a vision of lilies and snow-white roses in the
radiance of the large garden. Leonis approached, took her hy
the hand and drew her gently through the trees and flowers.
Both of them seemed light as air, almost suspended above the
ground, as though in a dance. But no music was playing.
“Eleni,” Leonis was saying, “you are my wife. I want to live
for you. I want to give you all that I have.”
Then he was looking her in the eyes and saying to her:
“I adore you.”
He was very happy as he thought about this, as he spoke
more seriously than he had ever spoken before in his life.
Then he asked:
“Are you happy?”
And she did not answer, only looked into his eyes and
smiled at him affectionately.
Afterwards, when that scene had vanished, Leonis was very
sick and near to dying. He was lying on his bed fighting for his
life. All his family had gathered around him with helplessness
drawn on their faces. They did not know what to do and had
exhausted all their resources. All the boys were there, too,
Paul Proios in front, and Dimis, funny as always (even in this
tragic circumstance you wanted to laugh when you looked at
him). Voukios, too, was there standing in a corner, dumb­
founded and smeared with chalk. His cheek was trembling
again, but this time not with rage. It was trem bling with re­
morse. Voukios was aware at that crucial hour of the degree to
which he had been to blame about Leonis and understood
quite well that he, too, was partly responsible for whatever
happened. But it was too late. Now he would pay for every­
thing. The death of Leonis would be Voukios’s punishm ent —
a frightful and irreversible punishm ent. Voukios would suffer
within unendingly and be the most abject man in the world.
He would seek consolation from everyone, going from here to
there in the school, trying to justify himself, saying that he
wasn’t to blame for the death of Leonis and that he used to
punish him for his own good. But everyone would turn his
back on him conspicuously, unwilling to speak to him any
more after this catastrophe. Yes, Voukios would surely pay for
whatever he had done; there was some justice in this world.
86
The doctors looked at Leonis with disheartened expressions
and said that science could otter nothing else and that they
were laying down their arms.
Then M. G alibourgappeared in his blue uniform, with note­
books and papers stuffed in his pockets. He stroked his beard
and showed very clearly by his m anner that he lent absolutely
no importance to the doctors’ opinions. The poet despised the
doctors and all their knowledge. The poet had understanding.
And M. Galibourg said:
“ I know what m edicine will save him.”
There was a great commotion.
“What? What?” they all asked.
M. Galibourg stood for a moment deep in thought, melan­
choly, all the while stroking his blond beard mechanically.
“The medicine is,” he murmured, “the medicine is love.”
They all looked at one another and marveled at the poet’s
wisdom. And, amid the commotion, someone moved toward
Leonis and leaned over his bed. It was She. Though nearly
dead he felt his powers suddenly awaken, his blood circulate
joyfully and his face take on color. He was breathing freely.
He smiled. His sickness Hed from him like an evil black cloud
which the breeze sets to flight. He sat up completely recov­
ered. And all were amazed at the power of love which over­
comes death. And everyone took pride in the lovers and said:
“What a beautiful couple! What a perfect couple!” And Eleni
Phoka took his two hands in her hands and looked him deeply
in the eyes and pronounced the words that he had said to her:
“ I adore you.”
Leonis awoke in the middle of the night. He jumped up
suddenly, not knowing what it was he wanted. He wanted
something new, something strange. He was unable to under­
stand him self very well. His heart was beating swiftly. He
thought he had a bit of a fever. Opening a window, he leaned
out and breathed the cold air deeply. It cheered him and re­
vived him. He became pensive and looked at the deserted
road which disappeared in the darkness among the black
masses of the houses.
Suddenly he began speaking, there by himself in the mid­
dle of the night, uttering things as they came to him. He was
speaking to Her, saying whatever came to his mind, but speak-
87
ing in rhythm, as in a song, a rhythm which he had not chosen,
a rhythm which had come upon him from elsew here, alien to
his will. It was as though, in the deep of the night and of his
dreams, he heard and followed a strange soundless music, a
music of silence. And the words came of themselves to his lips
and took their places in the rhythm, as bees that sit in their
numbers together on a flower and cover it completely.
Leonis stopped and gathered his thoughts. It was the first
time that he had ever played this game.
“ But, what am I doing?” he asked himself.
“ It’s nothing,” he answered. “ I’m making a poem .”

88
 XIV

Now they were calling her “Miss.” She had put up her hair,
gone out into the world, traveled, and learned about life in
Athens. She was constantly talking about Kifissia, Phaleron,
Loutraki, about the moonlit nights on the Acropolis, and about
society at the coffee shops of Yannakis and Dore on Sunday
afternoons. At the narrow crossing where Panepistimiou Ave­
nue meets Syntagma Square, the sidewalks on either side of
the road are broad and crowded with small tables. This cross­
ing, called the Athenian D ardanelles, is famous all over
Greece. And these two fabulous centers, laden with mus­
lins, taffetas, tulles, gaudy umbrellas, wom en’s flower-covered
hats, straw hats, swords and spurs, guard aggressively the two
shores of the avenue like two strongholds of society and gos­
sip. There one learned of all the love affairs, all the engage­
ments, the scandals and divorces of the Capital — along with
the secret and unacknowledged reasons for each divorce.
Eleni Phoka had all this information by heart, backwards
and forwards. She had studied it for whole months. Not only
that, but she had her opinions about the poets of the day, about
Gryparis, Porphyras, and Angelos Sikelianos, the prince of the
literary youth. She had even met Kostis Palamas in person one
evening at the girls’ high school. She recalled his thick, black
eyebrows, his deep impressive voice. He had spoken to her
with affection about the City, and had recited some verses:
89
 The beautiful islands, the tragic islands, the
nine deserted islands,
with green Princes’ Islands, with barren Proti
lying encircled in the arms of the Marmara.
It was so beautiful in Athens, the breeze so sweet, and na­
ture was so gentle and refined. Interesting things were to be
heard everywhere. You were aware that a life full of happi­
ness, poems, love, and ideas was surrounding and drawing
you gently onward. And everything was done in so gracious a
manner.
One afternoon, on Amalia Avenue, as she was walking alone
under the pepper trees, an autom obile came up slowly and
stopped beside her. The street was empty. The car was driven
by an alert, well-dressed young man with an athletic build and
an intelligent face. He, too, was alone. His pretext for stopping
was that he had hurt him self somehow, but he was looking at
her from one side and smiling a bit. Eleni Phoka was startled,
for she had recognized him im mediately as King Alexander.
She pretended that she did not know who he was, avoided his
glance and proceeded along her way indifferently, though she
was trembling slightly. The royal autom obile also moved on
and stopped again a little farther on. She passed it by again
and again the car stopped and waited. They played this quiet
game for a short time, and then the young man finally decided
to set out in earnest toward Phaleron. When he passed her for
the last time, he turned straight to her and smiled in a cheer­
ful, friendly way, as if to thank her for her company. For some
time afterwards she felt the caress of the royal smile on her
face, her dress and her body. She was more lighthearted than
ever. The breeze seemed to draw her along in the bittersweet
fragrance of the pepper trees. Her entire life seemed to her
thereafter to be nothing but song and dance. She was dressed
in yellow and carried a bouquet of violets. She was madly fond
of yellow dresses, violets, poetry, and naval officers.
Tonight, too, she was dressed in yellow. She was sitting at
one end of the garden in a straw lounge chair, her head thrown
part way back, and three officers of the Kilkis standing around
her. She was happy. She knew that she was beautiful and that
her dress was flattering. She enjoyed wearing it and sitting in
this way, half reclining on her lounge chair, with the three
90
sailors standing about admiring her. The three officers were
handsome fellows, too, smart-looking, supple, strong, and ma­
tured by war and by life. She was pleased with herself,
pleased with her officers, and with the evening. She shone
from head to toe, radiating beauty and joy.
It was a large reception. All Prinkipos had been invited to
honor the squadron officers of the Greek fleet, which had
anchored between Prinkipos and Chalki. The garden in which
the reception was being held was an unfrequented place slop­
ing in many levels from the Nizami motor road down to the
sea, where a quay and a small harbor formed a part of it.
Darkness had fallen and the garden was lighted with colorful
paper lanterns which had been hung in the trees. On a large
veranda music was playing and the admiral had opened the
dance. The sea was calm. The atmosphere was summery and
delightful, heavy with the fragrance of flowers and women.
It was the first time that Leonis had ever been invited to
such a gathering. More accurately, he had been invited be­
cause an extra was needed; the hosts did not even know of his
existence. But since his cousins had no one to take them that
evening, they had seen to it that he was invited as their escort.
He had no desire to accept this invitation, but his cousins had
begged him so much that there was no way for him to get out
of it. Nor could he take off in the m iddle of it, for he had
promised to stay till the end. He would, then, empty this cup
to the lees — such were familial obligations. Worst of all he
did not know how to dance.
It was as clear as day to him that he was totally out of his
element. He knew perfectly well what his elem ent was: the
12th Troop and the big scout excursions to the m ountain tops,
to the far shores, or to the dark forests of the Bosporus; the
Garden of the Taxim with its inexhaustible oddities and mys­
teries; the glittering movies of Straight Street, or even some
hot, dusty art studio; or the school with M. Galibourg’s classes
and Voukios s nervous outbreaks. There, he felt, was his
world. And within that world Leonis am ounted to something.
He was someone known and recognized for his worth. But
here, among all these shiny officers in their blue uniforms and
gold braid and all these perfumed ladies in their filmy gowns,
what did Leonis amount to? Absolutely nothing. He was noth-
91
ing but a disoriented and clumsy kid, who did not know any­
one, did not know how to act or what to say, and did not even
know how to dance; in short, an am using object. As soon as he
began to think about it, he felt ashamed and scorned. He dared
not look at anyone face to face, but he nevertheless sensed in
the air that the sole function of this polished society was to
discuss, ridicule and scorn him alone. When he saw Eleni
Phoka among her officers, he tried to hide so he would not
meet her here in this situation, out of his elem ent, belittled
and surrounded by enem ies. But he was unable to escape her
eye. She saw him and sm iled at him. He waved at her from the
distance and moved to the other end of the garden.
A little later he found him self by chance next to a group of
girls who were talking about her. Eleni Phoka, they said, was
not staying in Prinkipos that summer. She had stayed in the
City, but as soon as she heard of this reception, she had moved
heaven and earth to get an invitation. Nor did she even know
the hosts, but what did that matter? She wanted to be invited
anyway. All the girls had specific information on the subject.
When she succeeded in prying loose an invitation, she loaded
herself onto a friend of her m other for two days’ lodging on the
island. She got her way in this, too.
“In this world, kids,” the oldest of the girls said didactically,
“in this world, you can’t be ashamed to exploit everything so
as not to lose a chance to get what you want. And you can’t be
bothered about what people will say. She’s found out how to
get along! Not like us!”
The other girls in the group answ ered with sarcasm and
poisonous remarks about Eleni Phoka’s successes in Athens,
especially her oft-told m eeting with the king on Amalia Ave­
nue. Leonis shuddered. It had never occurred to him that girls
could talk so venomously about another girl. He thought all
women were of one party, solidly united and supportive of
one another against the men. That had always been his belief,
but to all appearances he must change it.
Leonis did not like these girls and w ent off by himself. He
walked around aimlessly for a while in the darkest parts of the
garden. Then, lost in thought, he leaned on a balustrade and
looked at the sea and at the Kilkis, huge and heavy with its two
steel towers, like a castle in the middle of the Propontis, anti­
torpedo boats all around guarding it like trusty dogs.
92
 “I’m worthless,” thought Leonis.
Through the foliage came the hushed, slow, and melancholy
sound of violins. The unfurrowed sea mirrored the lights of
the warships. Out in the open sea other ships were passing.
“I’m worthless.”
Suddenly on the balustrade where he was leaning he felt
the light weight of another body. But he did not turn to look.
He continued watching the sea, already absorbed and m agne­
tized by this unseen presence.
Who else but She could come to him like this?
He felt sure it was inevitable, that this was the only reason
that everyone had gathered together there with their gold and
silks; the only reason that music was playing and lanterns in
the garden and lights on the warships were shining: just so the
two of them could be alone at the balustrade to talk. Every­
thing was fated. Leonis suddenly understood that and wanted
by no means to oppose fate.
“Why don’t you dance?” asked Eleni Phoka.
The most grievous question, the most unbearable.
“I don’t know how to dance.”
“How can you possibly not know how?”
“I never learned.”
“I didn’t either. No one learns. Everyone knows how w ith­
out learning. You just think you don’t know how. It’s a notion
of yours.”
A most difficult discussion. (“ I’m worthless! Worthless!” )
“I’ve never tried. Perhaps if I try . . .”
“Try with me.”
“Now?”
“Now.”
It was a command. He followed her to the veranda m echani­
cally, like a sleepwalker. He began dancing lightly, not know­
ing what he was doing, leaving himself in her hands. The
rhythm drew him along. It was not as difficult as he had
thought. The best way was not to think about it, to let go as
when swimming with the tide. It was easy and pleasant, a
slight intoxication which spins you around lightly without
really making you dizzy. He did not speak a word to her as
long as the dance lasted, nor was he looking at her; he was
scarcely touching her. He only felt her skirt when it caressed
his knees and sometimes her hair on his cheek. “ I’m with her
93
— I’m dancing with her — it is I who am dancing with her, not
someone else, I! — her hair — her hairdo — her neck — her
shoulder — Ah, and her skin! — her hand — her hand in my
hand for so long, so long . . And her perfum e penetrated to
the depth of his soul . . .
They stopped.
“There, did you see that you can?” she said. “You just have
to make up your mind to it. Take me som ewhere to sit for a
while. I’m tired of our liberators.”
They sat down at one end of the veranda. “ I’m alone with
her — she is looking at me — her glance — how many times in
the Garden, in my sleep . . . it’s real, it isn’t a dream — she is
talking to me! she is talking only to m e . . .”
She was talking about the “ Liberators.”
“ I love them so m uch,” she was saying. “T hey’re such good
fellows, poor guys! But they’re crazy. They make you dizzy,
drive you nuts . . .”
She was talking swiftly, all in one breath, smiling. “ It’s not
their fault,” she was saying. “W e’re to blame. In Athens no
one kept them off to them selves. They treated them like
everyone else. Here, when they come with their boats and
their flags and their fanfares, they’re all kings. When they
show up everyone goes berserk, hoorahing and hoisting them
on their shoulders, hugging and kissing them. What are the
guys to do? They’re lost! And I pay for the damages. Look what
they’ve done for me tonight.”
Her skirt had been ripped from the waist down. She had
repaired it with pins.
“—We’re alone, She and I, amid flowers and under the stars
— only the two of us — what I’ve longed for and imagined so
often, is happening — at last, it’s happening! — it’s right this
moment, this great marvelous moment that I’m living — we
look at one another — she speaks to me — she smiles — the
flash of her eyes, her lips — I laugh, too — we laugh together,
joined in laughter, w e’re a . . .”
They were quiet for a while looking at the big battleship
with its towers in the moonlit night.
She spoke again.
“It seems so strange to me,” she said. “This is the first time
we’ve talked, and yet I have the impression that I’ve known
you for years, that I know you w ell.”
94
 “I think I’ve always known you.”
“Perhaps we met a lot when we were small. We must have
seen each other often. In the Garden, maybe? or here on
Prinkipos?”
“Yes, we’ve seen one another, but I don’t know whether
that’s what gives me this im pression.”
“Then, what is it?”
She looked at him soberly. Leonis did not answer.
Her officers had discovered her from the distance. They
were drawing hastily nearer, three, four, five, a whole crowd
of them, laughing, excited. They were looking for her. She
could not turn them down. She had promised dances to the
whole Greek fleet. The officers paid no attention to Leonis.
They did not even look at him. Once again Leonis felt worth­
less.
But as she was leaving, led off by her cavaliers to the dance
floor, she called from among the blue uniforms, saying that she
was going to stay on Prinkipos the next day, that she was going
swimming late afternoon at Yorgouli and wanted to see him
again.
“ I’d like that very m uch,” he shouted, “very much!”

95
 Yorgoulis was the name of the cafe owner who had first
discovered and exploited the beach near the Headland of
Prinkipos in the pine forest. The beach had taken on his name,
had becom e Yorgouli, and w ith that nam e had become
famous. For it was there during the war that the German
officers had organized the first “mixed bathing” that the City
had ever seen. At one time it had upset the society of Constan­
tinople. Crowds of people would come to Prinkipos just to
take in this unheard-of spectacle. They arrived in droves at
Yorgouli by car, boat, and steam launch. They found it very
strange and even discom forting to see huge m en, mous­
tachioed and hairy, go into the water with women in intricate,
colorful suits. Hand in hand they went, and thrashed about
playing like small children, splashing one another and shout­
ing. Then they lay down in the sun, not caring where their
swimsuits clung and revealed their lines, their bare legs
arranged in rows as if legs were something one put on display.
Many of the onlookers put on a stern countenance and con­
demned the new fashion, saying that it would be the destruc­
tion and ruination of society. But down deep they must not
have objected so strongly to the spectacle, because they would
not budge from it except when the swimmers had dressed and
departed. Besides, this was a high class bathing area. One
could m eet important individuals there, and women known
96
for their finery and their beauty. It was here that Eleni Phoka’s
mother had got the best of the generals.
By now everyone was doing it. The Allies had brought
“mixed bathing” to all the beaches of the Princes’ Islands and
the Bosporus, and the people for the most part were growing
used to it. The crowds of Russian refugees had even aban­
doned their bathing suits. You could watch the aristocratic
waitresses taking their swims stark naked on all the out-of-the-
way beaches, nor did it bother them at all that passers-by
stopped to watch. Both army and navy had a time of it. The
summer was an unending holiday for everyone. But Yorgouli
retained a special aura from its past greatness.

They swam together for some time. She was the better
swimmer and struck out quite a distance from shore. He asked
her not to go out so far because he was tired out just from
keeping up with her. Finally they came out, dressed, and
rented a boat — without the services of the boatman. It was
getting on towards evening. The beach was almost deserted.
The sea appeared calm. It was not tiring to row.
“Where are we going?” she asked.
“Nowhere special.”
When the boatman untied the boat, he had told them not to
go out too far, for there were big waves out there. Leonis kept
in close to the shore as he rowed toward Nizami.
The island unfolded gently on their left, close and intimate,
and at the same time somewhat muted in the light shadows of
the evening. There were villas everywhere with red tiles and
gardens overgrown with roses, popinacs, mimosas, and car­
pets of petunias and pansies; and beyond these were hills
with pine forests. Laughter could be heard from the gardens,
and shouting and barking: the sounds of children and dogs at
play. And the damp, monotonous sound of the oars.
He was looking at her in silence. Seated in the prow with
her head tilted out over the side of the boat, she was watching
her hand trail through the water. She had let her hair down to
dry. It poured to her shoulders as it had done when she was
small, when Leonis, too, was small; yesterday.
“What is this being?” he asked himself.
She was like a lily curved at the edge of the water.
97
 “ Do I know her? does she know me? if I speak to her, will
she understand? will she even hear my voice?”
She seemed absent, absorbed in her strange existence, in
the furrow which her hand was making in the water, in the
green phantasmagoria of the silent, exotic world moving in the
depths.
“ She and I here, in the boat, alone, betw een sky and sea
— She — But how is it possible? — how is it possible?”
The gardens were becoming dark. The oars, the continuous
oars, and the water, dripping and splattering the sea all around
the boat.
“ She? — what is She? — just who is She?”
The creature in the boat, this inexplicable presence, this
flowing hair, this white hand in the water, what is all this, this
charm, this silence?
He turned and looked at the sky. The sun was setting be­
hind Chalki, moist as a ripe fruit, very red. A world was
aflame. And against the background of fire, in the low fog of
the sea, the Kilkis, grey, ironbound, with its cannons laid bare,
a huge shadow, mute, unbelievable. Everything was unbe­
lievable. The boat had passed the bounds of reality and was
sailing in the world of fiction. . . .
A bump of the prow against som ething hard. They were
jolted. Fortunately nothing had broken.
“We’ve been asleep wide awake,” she said laughing.
They had run up against a small private dock, half collapsed
and submerged in a tangle of weeds.
She looked around happily, pleased with the place. It was
just right for her at that moment.
“ Let’s get out here,” she said.
Tall walls led away from the two sides of the dock. Between
them there was a shady garden leading uphill to a large, grey,
closed-up house. There were no flowers nor grass, only huge
trees in large numbers, wild shrubs and ivy thick upon the
trees, on the walls and on the house. Everything seem ed to be
rotting from the inside, ready to collapse, to dissolve. A green,
mouldy, forgotten building which, at night, would suggest
snakes or ghosts. Night was approaching.
Leonis lashed the boat to a ring on the mole. They sat there
with their feet dangling in the sea.
98
 “What do you think of me? What do you want from me?” he
thought.
He touched her skirt with the tips of his fingers. He played
gently with the fabric. He felt her warmth, the mystery of her
body.
A p o w erfu l o d o r o f b rin e and sea w eed . E v ery th in g
wrapped about him, filled him, drew him, the odor, the damp­
ness, the shadows.
“I don’t know anything. I’m worthless . . .”
She took the hand which was playing in the fabric. She held
it in her hand, sober and saddened.
When his lips touched hers he felt his eyes fill . . .

99
 h
XVI

Leonis was standing in front of Paul Proios. He was beet

red, upset and amazed by what he was about to say. Paul
Proios was arranging his books in his room without enthu­
siasm.
“ Do you know why I’ve com e?” Leonis asked.
“ How am I supposed to know?”
“ I’ve got to tell you som ething.”
“Why do you have to tell m e?”
“Because you’re my best friend.”
“ Fancy that!”
“Don’t kid me; you know what I’m saying is true.”
“I know that you have been a hopeless romantic of late.
Suddenly the idea has come to you that it was a pressing
necessity to have a Best Friend — only one, as it happens in
the novels. So you jum p on the steam er and deposit yourself
on me. But anyway, I ’ll listen to your story.”
“Paul, I’ve told it to no one. I only want to tell you — I’m —
I’m in love . . .”
He had spent the whole day wandering in the forest or
stretched out on his back beneath the pines, chewing wild-
flowers. But the next day he had to tell it. For a long time he
had kept it to himself, but was no longer able to. The cup was
brimming. He had taken the steamer, come to the City and run
to Pera in one breath and now he had suddenly told all: simply
that he was in love.
100
 The leader of the 12th Troop got up from his work and
looked at him face to face, very soberly, as if he were going to
give orders of great seriousness. But his eyes were laughing in
a friendly and ironic fashion.
“Very interesting!” he said. “ Frightfully interesting! The
Best Friend w asn’t enough. Naturally there had to be a She.”
“Don’t make fun of m e,” shouted Leonis, “ I’m in love with
her.”
“With her!”
“Yes, with her! With her!”
The leader’s eyes were laughing in the same way.
“But of course, with her,” he said as if he were talking about
the most natural of things. “Who else would you be in love
with if not her? What the devil! You know what she’s called in
the 12th Troop?”
“Yes, she’s called . . .”
“She’s called by her right name. But don’t worry if that’s all
it is. It’s a small epidem ic in the scouts. One catches it from
the other. Fortunately it’s something that passes. You’ll get
over it, too.”
“Paul, I assure you it’s serious. I think I’ve loved her fore­
ver.”
“Lord ‘a’ mercy! But have you ever spoken to her?”
“I kissed her.”
“You kissed her? You, too?”
“ Me, too.”
“ But then is there anyone left who hasn’t?”
Paul Proios pitched some books he was holding onto a sofa
and took several steps around the room. He looked annoyed.
“ It’s tim e for us to come to an understanding,” thought
Leonis.
“ I said I considered you my best friend,” he continued.
“You admit it on the inside, no matter how much you kid
about it. I want you to talk to me honestly as I do to you. I
know that at some time . . . ”
“You know that at some time I kissed her myself. Yes, I’ve
kissed her many times.”
“You loved her as I do?”
“I ’m not a romantic like you are. I don’t believe the words of
the poets any more. My ambition is to be strong and to be
master of myself, not a plaything for women.”
101
 “ But you loved her?”
“I don’t know. Maybe. For a moment. Oh, it didn’t last
long.”
“Then it’s over?”
“Yes, thank God! It’s been years since there’s been anything
left to that story. Years since w e’ve spoken to one another, or
even said hello. I doubt if she remem bers that I exist any
more.”
“ I’d be a most unhappy fellow if you loved her, too,” said
Leonis, “ if I knew that you still loved her even a bit, or that
you could be annoyed with me because I kissed her or be­
cause I love her.”
The leader became calm and smiled.
“ Don’t worry,” he answered. “You’re free to kiss her as
many times as you like. I’m not apt to be bothered because
once she and I kidded one another a bit. Besides, we both
knew well enough that it was just for fun. Perhaps I loved her
a drop, but that doesn’t keep the whole thing from being a joke
and us from knowing that it was. A pleasant joke, if you wish,
but all the same the day came when I grew tired of her coquet­
ries, her lies. Such a liar, such an actress I’ve never seen
before. I don’t know how she is now, perhaps she’s straight­
ened out, but back then she was beyond description. I got
tired of her and chased her away.”
“ How can you talk that way since you loved her?”
“Oh, I said much worse to her, believe me. Before I chased
her off I wanted to show her that I was on to her. I told her
very, very candidly whatever I had to say. I revealed her to her
own eyes. She sent me letters, but got no answers.”
“ She sent you letters . . .”
“ Let’s go for a walk, OK?”
On the road they talked about the movies. New American
films had come, not like those little ones with Indian wars, but
great long ones with skyscrapers and countless automobiles
and troups of women who danced half naked and with execu­
tions in the electric chair — jarring subjects. And all their
women were superb, so Paul Proios said.
“She got no answers — her lies — her coquetry — I ’d like
that very much, very much! — I have the impression that I ’ve
always known you — we used to m eet when we were young —
102
our g lan ces m e t — th e y a re such good fellow s, poor guys! —
th e b a ttle sh ip , th e flam ing skies — th e boat, th e d rip p in g of
th e oars — o n ly th e tw o of us, sh e an d I — She! — h er hand in
th e w a te r — th e fra g ra n ce o f th e sea, so strong! — th e m aterial
of h e r d re ss — m y fingers on th e cloth — h e r lips — h er closed
eyes — th e te ars in m y ey es — w hy d o n ’t you d an c e? you ju st
th in k you d o n ’t know how ; it’s a notion you have — I think
I ’ve k n o w n you alw ays — w e h a p p e n e d to kid one anoth er, a
p le a sa n t jo k e — in th e boat, th e oars, th e d rip p in g , she and I,
only us tw o — b u t w h a t is sh e ? w ho is sh e? do I know her?
d oes sh e know m e ? — O h, h e r lips an d h e r eyes! — she is like
a flow er — how is it p o ssib le ? — H ow is it p o ssib le? . .
They entered the Garden of the Taxim instinctively and
walked down the roads between strollers and crowds of chil­
dren playing and running noisily. A light, golden dust was
filling the air. All was liveliness and warmth. Uniforms shone
happily. People were laughing.
He would see her again in fifteen days, back on Prinkipos.
She would let him know exactly when and where. Earlier than
that would be absolutely impossible. As much as she wanted
to, there was no way. She had been invited to stay at Ther-
apeia. She had promised. She had great obligations to fulfill.
But she would finish all that in fifteen days and then all the
world would be theirs. She would dance only with him. They
would swim for hours and go again in the boat to the deserted
garden with its big grey house, “our house,” she had called it.
When Leonis had stayed alone that evening when they had
swum together, it was the same thing again: tears were falling.
“What the devil is the matter with me? what am I crying
about?” he asked himself. Then he would say in accusation,
“ I ’ve become a baby again! I’m ridiculous!” Nevertheless
there was no doubt remaining that this was the great love, the
love of the poets . . .
They sat at a table in the coffee shop, near to the parapet of
the Garden so they could see the view.
“ Remember what running around we used to do here.” said
Leonis. “Remember how I admired you during those years?”
“ Imagine that!” answered the leader of the 12th Troop,
laughing with his eyes as before.
His latest craze was poking fun at expressions of sentiment.
103
 “You were my hero,” continued Leonis. “ I wanted to be just
like you some day. Rem em ber an evening when we were
playing the Big War (which had just been declared) and we
were all Powers; you were Russia and I was your adjutant.
Remember how I moved into the battle to give my life for
you? Look, I still have the scar on my upper lip from my
wound.”
The leader became serious and detached for a moment.
“Who knows,” he said, “ if that isn’t the best solution, for
one to be able to give up his life?”
“The best solution for what?” Leonis asked.
“ I don’t know,” Paul Proios answered. “ I can’t explain it
very clearly. But listen. Since w e’re here, I’ll tell you a secret.
I’ll talk to you man to man. No one else need know what I’m
going to tell you. Keep it to yourself. I’m thinking about going
to enlist in Asia Minor. I’ve been turning this idea over in my
mind for some time now.”
“ But your age group isn’t being called up yet,” observed
Leonis.
“ So what?” continued Paul Proios. “They can’t refuse to
take me. Others my age have gone and been taken in. My plan
is to go secretly, because if I bring this up at home, they’ll
want to stop me. I’ll leave a letter for my mother; I’ll get on a
ship and go to Mountania. There I’ll present myself and tell
them I want to go to the war. That’s it. They’ll fit me out, train
me for a couple of months and send me to the front. T here’s
nothing unusual about it. Many others have done it.”
“Yes, but you’ve never talked about this before.”
“Sometimes I don’t talk at all about what’s bothering me the
most. For a whole year now a day hasn’t passed that I haven’t
thought about the war and what’s happening there. The war
isn’t going well. Everyone knows that in spite of w hat’s writ­
ten in the Greek newspapers. We know it, but we ignore it.
Ever since the Armistice w e’ve done nothing but celebrate
and enjoy ourselves. Our life has become an endless festival.
They told us that there would never be another war and we
pretended to believe it. But look how the war started up again
immediately and is going worse than ever. I assure you that
it’s time for us to start thinking about it. At least I feel that my
place is no longer here in the charitable celebrations of the
104
Garden and in the parades of Straight Street, but somewhere
else. And what’s more — I can’t explain — it seems to me that
it’s not just a question of Greece . .
“What is it a question of, then?”
The leader was looking into the distance with fixed gaze.
Suddenly he became pale. He had never appeared so hand­
some to Leonis.
“ I don’t know,” he murmured. “A thousand things. It’s so
difficult to understand. All I know, the only thing I understand
well is that in an age such as this one beginning with us, an
age so intense and full of so many struggles and great deeds
either taking place or felt to be drawing near, the only thing
that really matters is that we get into it, to take part with as
much strength as we have: to enter into the age. That’s the
question. Think of what was happening in the world during
those years we were playing in the Garden, what is happening
around us today, what is happening in Europe, what is hap­
pening in Russia!”
“ But just what is happening in Russia?”
The leader was absolutely absorbed.
“ I don’t know,” he said. “I don’t know anything. People are
at war. I can no longer keep on playing or arranging my books.
I want to take part. . . .”

105
 XVII

She was happy. She did not know exactly why, but she was
happy. And she did not know what she was after, now here,
now there, nor anything else. She was light as a feather, the
wind tugging gently at her yellow dress, steering her about at
random. Lighthearted and self-intoxicated, she abandoned
herself to chance and to the wind.
Beauty was everywhere. Everywhere along the sea were
gardens with flowers and fragrances, and everywhere music
playing from out of the foliage, heavily loaded battleships and
handsome officers, who engaged in good natured disputes —
humor and some passion in their eyes — about who was to
dance with her first. How funny they were as they sat contriv­
ing schoolboy pranks in order to trick one another out of a
dance!
Once during a waltz a French commander had asked her
quietly if she would by chance like to have a small apartment
of her own, beautifully furnished, in whatever neighborhood
she liked best, and whatever else she needed, and to live by
herself and not have to depend upon anyone. It seem ed that
he would be staying in the City for some time, he said. He had
need in his life for beauty and poetry. It was necessary, he
said, to mould our lives like a poem, like a musical symphony.
He would teach her the highest art, the art of life.
He was a man between fifty and sixty years old, with a tired
face and grey hair, but supple in build and neat without
106
affectation: a genuine aristocrat, accustomed to good living,
wise, fatherly, and ironical. Eleni Phoka could not be angry
with his propositions. She found it pleasing to know that he
liked her. She was moved a bit by his style and appearance,
his natural and matured politeness, the boundless experience
in his eye, and his teasing irony. She let him go on talking,
then leaned her head back and broke out laughing, there in his
arms, there in the rhythmic whirl of the dance.
She was never angry about anything they said to her. Why
should she be? She loved them all. The younger ones more, of
course. A young English ensign — almost a child — proposed
marriage to her the second time he saw her. He was innocent.
No other solution occurred to him. He was as red as a poppy,
and did not dare look her in the eye. Instead of answering, she
turned and kissed him on the mouth. It is so moving, when
you come right down to it, for a man to come and propose
marriage, to come bashfully and with lowered voice ask you to
take his life to do with whatever you might do. Eleni Phoka
felt this very strongly. She doubly loved the men who pro­
posed to her. The poor English lad had lost control. He did not
know what the kiss meant; were they engaged, or was it only
fun? Eleni Phoka broke out laughing again. He looked so fun­
ny to her. But she left him in doubt. When they met she would
talk about other things, kiss him and laugh. He had learned to
laugh along with her, without knowing why. And so their
meetings were full of frivolous laughter and perplexing kisses.
Later they sent him on a patrol to the China Sea. From every
port he sent her cards and wrote:
Dear Eleni, when will you at last decide to marry me? Please
do not forget me. Yours in all sincerity.

As for the Greeks, she counted their confessions of love by

the dozens. But while the Greek lads would take fire more
readily, they would also lose interest more readily. They
would come around with frightening confessions, talk about
their souls, their life’s ideals, and the end of the world, threat­
ening to kill or be killed. And later on you realized that no­
thing ever came of it. Eleni Phoka was much amused by their
pretensions and by the manner in which they carried on when
they fell into such confusion that they did not know them-
107
selves with whom they were in love. They were quite befud­
dled in the midst of so many dresses, so many ceremonies, so
much music, such a surplus of enthusiasm and affection. To
say nothing of the Russian duchesses who swam in the huff on
all the beaches and then stretched out on the rocks to sun
bathe, like statues of Aphrodite. And if a boat passed, their
marble forms raised up to wave a greeting. What were the poor
sailors to do? How could they help coming unmoored?
“The lads will be spoiled,” said an old admiral one evening
in the messroom of the Averoff. “ Later on they’ll return to
Athens and nothing will please them, and then the coup will
begin. . . .”
But she, at any rate, was happy. Every day, every moment,
in every pore, she soaked up and enjoyed her happiness. She
remembered nothing except what was taking place at the very
moment at which there was talk of it. What had happened last
month or last week she had no time to recall. It was not per­
versity, but merely happiness, the great, blessed release of
happiness. It was a ball that never ended, in the gardens, in
the flower-decked verandas, on the decks of the warships,
among the gold-braided uniforms, amid the fragrances, in the
playful lights, and in the sudden flash of the search-lights
which crisscrossed the night from the open waters; a ball with
a thousand escorts who all spoke of love, each in a new way.
She did not remember. It was impossible for her to remember.
And whoever did not like her attitude was better off leaving
her alone. She had no time for superfluous talk.
Six weeks passed without her appearance on Prinkipos.
But when Leonis timorously appeared at one end of the
entryway for the big dance at the Hotel Imperial, stopped
short, conscious of his lack of savoir fa ire , and wondered
whether it might not be better for him to return home im­
mediately, he suddenly realized that She was there.
He did not actually see her, but he knew. He sensed her.
Amid the clamor of voices he sensed her voice. Amid the
continuous rustle of skirts which whirled before him, he felt
her own inimitable rustle. Her glance flowed out into the
dance hall, into the movement of the neat and excited crowd
into the mirrors and into the glitter of the chandeliers; it shone
from everywhere.
108
 He was ready to kneel before her and kiss the hem of her
skirt, like a slave.
“It’s Her! How is that possible?”
Like a slave! he liked that. To be her slave. She was his
greatest, his only happiness. He felt his knees weaken, his
face burn. He drew aside, went out onto a deserted veranda,
and became for a while lost in thought. Mechanically he ran
his fingers over some branches which entw ined the balus­
trade. Some unseen Howers fell apart in his fingers. Mimosas.
Their aroma. He felt that the night, the aloneness, cleared his
thoughts. He belonged to her, there was no doubt of that,
belonged to her forever. Of course she did not keep any of her
promises. She had not returned in two weeks. She had not
sent a message. She had not hurried to him. She was dancing
with others and forgot him. But what did all that matter, since
he was her slave? It was her right to remem ber him or to forget
him, to keep or not to keep the promises she made him. His
own right was to ask and to wait.
He went back into the hall when the dance was finished. He
felt braver and wanted to tell her many things. He circulated
the entire hall and reviewed all the groups one by one, but he
did not find her. He began strolling through the adjoining
rooms, and finally saw her in an out-of-the-way salon among
girls and young men who were vividly talking and gesticulat­
ing. Leonis did not approach them. He felt hatred for all those
young men and girls. Not that they were at fault in any way,
but he hated them. Perhaps because if they knew that he was
in love and with whom, they would repeat it among them ­
selves with jokes and laughter. They would mimic his ex­
pression, his gait, the tone of his voice, his professions of love.
They would ridicule everything. He thought he could already
hear their secret laughter, their gossip, and their ridicule. He
stood at a distance and waited for her to turn and see him.
She turned and looked at him. She greeted him without
showing the least surprise at seeing him after so long a time,
and continued chatting. It was as though Leonis were not
there or as if it were not he who had been with her in the boat
back then. The dance began again. This time Leonis felt that
the music gave him strength. He stepped forward, took her by
the hand gently, without saying anything, and was about to
109
draw her into the dance. But she freed her hand and refused.
This dance was promised to one of the young men there, as
was the next and many following the next.
“ I’m sorry,” she said. “ I’m very sorry.”
She was terribly busy. She was sorry, but she hadn’t time

“I want to tell you som ething,” said Leonis.

She looked at him as though she could not rightly recall who
he was, as if she were unable to understand how it could be
possible for him to have anything to say to her.
“ Some other time,” she m urm ured, “some other time.”
She left, arm in arm with one of her girl friends, walking in
time with the music. She looked at him again with the same
uncom prehending look before the crowd took her into its
whirl.
“ She! — her eyes — her lips — she was very sorry — some
other time! — but who is she? — where is he? — how is it
possible?”
Leonis felt a heavy slap on the back. He awoke, shaken.
Dimis broke out laughing: Dimis in a tuxedo, freshly ironed
and cologned, with hair slicked back and a face like an oiled
mouse and with that air of experience and self-confidence
which befits one who has come so far in life as to be about to
take his high school diploma in a few months.
“What’s the matter? Why are you slamming me so hard?”
shouted Leonis.
“What’s the matter with you?”
“Me?”
“Yes, you. You looked like a scarecrow, turned to wood,
gone stupid and pop-eyed. I was afraid when I saw you.”
“Go to the devil! L et’s go out and get some air.”
They went out to the garden of the hotel and down a walk­
way into the starlight. Dimis offered him a cigarette. They
took a few puffs watching out that some uncle did not see
them. But Dimis was restless. He wanted to go back, to mix
with the crowd, to dance and see new faces.
“ Did you see the girl in green? Did you see the one in pink?
Did you see the one with the blond curls?”
He was rambling. He did not know what he was saying.
Leonis grabbed him by the arm. He wanted to cry.
110
 “Dimis,” he said, “ I’ve got to tell you som ething — some­
thing serious.”
“Ah, to the devil with it! Is this the time for serious talk?
“Dimis, there is a girl . . .”
“A girl? A hundred girls! A thousand girls! All the girls are
for us! You are the com plete fool if you think about just one
gid! • • •”
“You’re an animal!” shouted Leonis. “ It’s my own fault if I
sit around and talk with a creature like you. Get away from
me!”
Dimis exploded with laughter again and, with a sudden
movement, shoved his hand into Leonis’s hair and disheveled
it completely. Then he jum ped back a few steps just in case.
Leonis rushed at him headlong, swinging wildly. He was
furious. He wanted to kick him, hurl rocks at him. But it was
too dark to see the ground.
Dimis went running into a rose clum p and then made a long
oblique jump. Leonis followed. He felt the thorns pierce his
trousers. But when he realized where he was headed, it was
too late. He had reached the rim of a cistern and was bent too
far forward to be able to control himself. His arms, thrashing
against the night, led him on. He sank neck deep into the
water.
Dimis, hearing the great splash, stopped running, hesitated
a moment and decided to come back to help. He stretched his
hand to his friend and pulled him out. No one else had noticed
the incident. There were people on the verandas, but they
were not looking that way. And the music seemed to have
veiled the sound of the splash.
Leonis drew him self out with difficulty, heavy from the wa­
ter that soaked his clothes. He sat exhausted on the rim of the
cistern. His confusion had passed. He felt refreshed and
awake, but also wearied. He had had enough of whatever
amusement that evening had offered. He was tired of it, too
weary even to get up and go home, too weary to discuss with
Dimis how all these strange events had come to pass. He was
tired of everything and thought all of it tedious. He sat irreso­
lutely in that place and felt his wet clothes cling,to his limbs.
And the only thing he wanted to do was to sit there and look at
the stars.
Ill
 Dimis was standing close by, sorry and dejected. All this
was costing him much, so much that he could find no word of
consolation for either his friend or himself. But he stayed at a
distance just in case. No one knows what might happen when
someone falls into the water and has the notion that someone
else is to blame for it.
“ She doesn’t love me!’’ m urm ured Leonis.
Dimis preferred not to open a discussion on such a subject
at such a time.

112
 XVIII

“Do you have the letters on you?” asked Paul Proios.

Leonis checked his pockets.
“Here they are.”
One letter was for Paul Proios’s mother and one was for the
Board of Directors of the Greek Scouts. He was giving up
leadership of the 12th Troop to go to war. They had agreed
that Leonis would deliver the letters when the steam er had
left.
They were standing on the edge of a wharf in Galata with a
small suitcase between them. It was a small, grimy steam er
flying a Greek flag, half freight, half passenger, overflowing
with packing cases, bags, and people jostling one another. A
few yards farther down was the French ship of the Marseille
line, at least four times as tall. On the other side was the
gigantic steel hulk of the Iron Duke. Toward the open sea
were crowds of ships of war and of peace, countless boats,
whistles and shouts. The light color of the Greek flag had
become grey from much use.
“Well, be seeing you!” said Paul Proios.
“See you!”
They shook hands solemnly. Paul Proios lifted his suitcase,
walked up the steps, and went over to lean on the gunwale of
the steamer. They smiled at one another across the distance.
The steamer whistled for the third time as the crowd moved
to the wharf. The steps were about to be drawn up.
113
 “ Be seeing you, then!”
“ See you!”
A few late-coming passengers arrived at a run and were
waving their arms. T he steps w ere lowered again and took
these, too, on board. From one of the decks of the French
steamer some sailors were shouting jokes. The small vessel
with the grey Hag w eighed anchor. Out of a cloud of smoke
Paul Proios waved his hand.

At the same time from another corner of the City, Dimis set
out with some equally disturbing news. He could not keep it
to himself. He had to shout it to someone. The news weighed
him down, kept him from thinking about anything else. It was
strangling him. He had to cast it off so he could breathe.
He arrived at the Garden, circulated all of it at one hreath,
panting, sweating, excited. He found no one. No one was
there to receive his news, to be as excited as he was and to
begin running to pass it on elsew here so that Dimis could he
freed from it. N either on the walkways nor at the tables nor in
the out-of-the-way corners: no one!
He went running out of the Garden, dashed to the Field ol
Ares, traversed the Russian huts at the same speed: no one! It
was a frightful thing not to be able to find a soul. He was not
asking for anything unreasonable. Just one other person to talk
with, one other person to know about Eleni Phoka, what
significance the name Eleni Phoka had in their world. And the
Troop would not gather at headquarters for hours.
Dimis walked swiftly the whole length of Straight Street, up
to the Tunnel, and went on to the Skalakia. Unconsciously he
began walking down the great stone-paved stairs which led
from Pera to Galata betw een tum ble-down houses and dis­
orderly shop windows.
A few years ago he used to spend hours there with Leonis,
running up and down, w henever they had a few pennies left
over and had decided to waste them on something. It was a
fantastic place, perhaps the m ost frequented spot of the
Christian community in the City and, at the same time, the
permanent headquarters of the most brilliant cosmopolitan
market place for peddlers of trifles conceivable to the mind of
114
humankind. It was the place where all the trifle-peddling de­
mons converge from Turkey, Greece, Russia, Latin Europe,
Israel, the Balkans, the Caucasus, and there is an unceasing
flood of rickety toys and musical instruments of every type, of
drawings and postcards from everywhere in the world, of pap­
er angels, creches, folk costumes, embroidery, florins, gew­
gaws from East and West, of m asquerade costumes, masks,
false noses and beards, of old books with luxurious covers,
great portraits of Napoleon, of Queen Victoria or of the sultans
of the Turkish Empire, of stamp collections, decals, photo­
graphs of nude women in unimaginable quantities, and of
houreki, hougatsa, halvah, and pasteli in such abundance and
variety that it was im possible to know all the shades of differ­
ence and qualities of each sort no matter what experience and
wisdom you had attained on the subject. From one end of the
Skalakia to the other the hawkers shouted their wares, each
one in his own language, finally mixing all the languages.
They would place in the middle of the road huge coffers full of
items to be sold for however much they would bring. You
could get on your hands and knees and bury your arms in the
coffers, searching for as long as you wished, choosing accord­
ing to whim, trying out the toys on the ground. The hawkers
would sing out rhythmically: “Falimento prama! Falimento
prama!” It was an international expression which had
emerged from a mixture of languages. Leonis and Dimis, full
of excitement, would crouch in the thick dust of the road with
their arms plunged elbow-deep in toys and drawings, and sing
along with them in the same tone: “ Falimento prama!. .
What had become of those years!
The Skalakia was behind him. Now Dimis was scanning the
quays of Galata in a daze. Suddenly he realized that what he
was doing was absolutely senseless. There was no reason for
him to think that he would find any of his friends there. Some­
thing inside must have gone haywire or some strange fly must
have bitten him for him to have made that trip in such haste
and so needlessly. He was looking at the countless boats
which were bobbing gently in the last lively rays of the setting
sun. He grew sad. That huge harbor scene always saddened
him for some reason he could not explain.
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 He was weary, irresolute, overcome. He did not understand
it. There in the grey wharfs his world ended and the unknown,
the Void, began. He could not understand the Void. Nor could
he understand at all the news which he carried with him.
Strange things were happening and he watched in bewilder­
ment, then ran into the streets like a fool. Then he asked
himself what he was after and could not answer. What the
devil could he be looking for there at that time, at the edge of
the Void, alone with his melancholy and this great, unusable,
tyrannizing item of news?
And what meaning did the Skalakia have any more, now that
Dimis and Leonis did not feel like singing with the hawkers?
What meaning did the bustle and the crazy shouting have?
The world was turning like a top. No one knew where he
was going nor what he wanted. A small steam er with a Greek
flag was launching out beyond the Tower of Leander and turn­
ing south. Other steamers were coming from the south, from
the Bosporus, from the shore of Asia. The vast City drank in
ships from every direction into all her harbors, drank in and
discharged incessantly both freight and human beings, a proc­
ess both great and saddening. Dimis grew tired of standing
there. He did not like being so depressed. He then jum ped on
a tram, absorbed in thought, and returned slowly to Pera.

When he finally reached the headquarters of the Troop,

there were a fair num ber gathered who were already discuss­
ing the great news which Leonis had brought back a while
before: the news that Paul Proios, leader of the Troop, had
resigned and gone as a volunteer to the war.
The scouts were very upset. The news had affected them
very deeply. Dimis had just heard the news, which struck him
like a bombshell. He was so surprised that he forgot his own
news. He threw him self into a chair, exhausted.
“And who’s going to be the leader now?” he asked.
Stasinos would be leader. There was no doubt about that.
He was not the best solution to the problem, but there was no
other. The Stork would take up the command and march out­
side the formation. And the world was apparently fated to see
that, too.
“I quit!” shouted Dimis. “ I won’t have the Stork for leader.”
116
 Stasinos and Dimis never got along well. More precisely,
they despised one another profoundly, and never lost an
opportunity to show their mutual contempt. But others, too,
had objections to the Stork. They did not acknowledge in him
enough authority to accept him in the highest command. A
slight wind of military revolt was blowing in all the squads,
and the squad leaders showed no inclination to resist it. They
had gathered around Paris and were discussing in low voices
their considerable displeasure. Surely they, too, were speak­
ing against Stasinos. Paris listened to them quietly and grave­
ly, his hands in his pockets, gazing downwards.
Leonis recalled the little steamer which was moving off in
the smoke amid the noise of the harbor, and the hand waving
good-bye.
“Where is he going?” he asked himself.
It was the first time that he considered the m eaning of this
action. The hand now seemed to wave from another world.
“My God! Where is he going?”
“Think of that! What a let-down!” shouted Dimis. “The
Stork as leader of the Eleni Phoka Troop!”
He struck his forehead hard and jum ped up.
“Hey! I forget to tell you something else!”
He was unable to speak from his excitement. A lump was in
his throat.
They all surrounded him.
“What? What?”
“Eleni Phoka is engaged!”
What a piece of news to have forgotten! News which a short
time before had caused him to run halfway across the City to
find someone to shout it to.
He sat back down in his chair, half-dead.
The Eleni Phoka Troop doesn’t exist any more,” he m ur­
mured with a look of utter defeat. “Let it all go to the devil!
Everything is falling apart! I’m going to the war, too . . .”
Leonis grabbed him by the arm. He was yellow.
“Who’s the fellow?” he asked weakly.
Dimis was resurrected. His eyes shone cunningly.
“Commander Arvanitakis of the Kilkis," he answered, “the
tall fellow with the blond moustache.”
And he added confidentially:
117
 “ H e’s forty years old. She’ll have an easy time of it.”
He brought his hand to his forehead and with his two fingers
made a sign that signified marital misfortune. A fellow like
him had to have his joke even in the most serious circum­
stances.

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 XIX

In the end no one quit, not even Dimis the loudmouthed.

Poor Stasinos did as well as he could. He realized that his
authority was not great and he tried to eke it out with effort.
He had doubled the hours in gymnastics and theoretical in­
struction, and had increased as much as he could the number
of hikes, celebrations, and talent shows. He was killing him­
self with work.
One Sunday night four Troops were returning together by
steamer from St. S tephen’s. They had occupied the entire deck
and had taken up positions at the gunwales with feet hanging
out over the sea. They were in high spirits. Stasinos told jokes
all the while and the scouts were laughing.
With them was a Troop which had its headquarters in the
Olympia gym nastic fields, and whose leader was a well-
known gymnast named Valsamis. The scouts of this Troop,
called the Valsamics, did not mingle very much with the
others but wanted to remain aloof. They were in the best
physical shape and came in first in all the meets. Even in the
long hikes they were always fresher than the rest and did not
leave off singing even on the upgrades.
They had a song which they alone sang. It was, so to speak,
the Valsamic anthem. No one remembers any more what ca­
price possessed them to adopt it, but custom had hallowed it
as something special about which no one had license to joke.
The other Troops tended not to sing that song, pretending not
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to understand its significance. But deep down they all knew
perfectly well that if another group dared to use it for their
own am usem ent there would be a terrible war. Only once in a
while, when the Valsamics were gathered around and singing
their song, a few boys from other Troops would draw near,
with friendly countenance and with all appropriate modesty
and politeness, and begin very timidly to accompany them,
like shy foreigners who sing the national anthem of the coun­
try which extends them hospitality. That was allowed. It was
even a show of sympathy and respect.
On that evening the Valsamics had gathered on the prow,
separate from the other Troops, according to custom, and were
singing their hymn with especial feeling. The pleasantness of
the sea passage seem ed to have affected them , as perhaps did
the mass of the grey Seven Hills, which was drawing closer
with its adornment of palaces and tem ples.
It was an old-fashioned, sad, rom antic melody, but the
words were somehow timely. A man deeply afflicted with love
spoke to the woman of his dreams and told her what gifts and
what honors he would bestow upon her if he were rich. But
not rich in the common, lowly sense of wealth, as some insig­
nificant persons are wealthy, but rich in a real sense; rich
enough to buy anything w hatsoever and to satisfy all the
whims of his beloved, as rich as the princes of folklore.
He told her of the treasures he would give her, about the
palaces he would build her, about the untrodden gardens of
the palaces, about the marvelous journeys he would offer to
her, and heaps more besides. But all that was nothing com­
pared to what came last to cap all the gifts and honors. He
would get her, he said, the French commander-in-chief for
coachman to drive the coach on her journey, and the leader of
the British fleet for her boatman. This was the conclusion of
the song:
And I will get for you the English admiral
to draw the oars for you!

Such were the great deeds which the Valsamic lover would
do for his girl with the fabulous wealth he wanted to get for
her. Such a love that was!
Leonis found the words to the song a bit funny, but the
120
pleasing sound of it saddened him. Me was lost in thought
leaning upon the gunwale apart from the others, looking at the
sea, and allowing the song to fill him and gently dull his
senses. It was fine. He wanted nothing from no one. It was
very fine. He wanted to he alone.
The English admiral had not been informed about the way
in which the scouts had arranged his fortune, but some officers
of the English infantry, also on their way to the City, had got­
ten onto the same ship along with some women. They had
made themselves at home in the salon, ordered up some bottles
and lighted their pipes, chatting and drinking amid shouts
and laughter. Two of the women had come out onto the deck
and circulated unconcernedly among the boys.
The song, the sea, the sunset behind the blurred mass of the
City, the great mouth of the Bosporus, shadowy, deep, fresh,
luxuriant . . .
“What do these women want from m e?”
Leonis realized it at once, without even looking at them. He
smelled it in the air; it was a peculiar flavor that the air sur­
rounding him took on just at that moment; the women ex­
pected something of him. They were scrutinizing from a dis­
tance his face and body and the angle his body made as he
leaned against the bulwark. They were talking about him.
They were talking with their lips and with their eyes.
“I wish they’d go to the devil!”
He turned back to the sea again, but did not see the waves
any longer nor hear the song. They had depressed him by
their manner and spoiled his evening for him. They were not
beautiful nor even p articularly young, ju st two foreign
women, nothing more, two drab, insignificant women in
traveling garb. It was not worthwhile having anything to do
with them. But they had an air about them, in their glance, in
the way they moved their lips as they spoke English to one
another, or the way they smiled; something which provoked,
angered, stirred up the insides as if by the secret and evil
cunning of a carnivorous animal.
They moved away and returned to the salon.
Suddenly Leonis realized that one of them had come back
out and was leaning on the gunwale a bit farther down and
was looking at the sea exactly as he was. She did not look in
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his direction at all. She was just looking at the sea, showing no
signs of looking for anything or expecting anything. She was
presumably engrossed in looking at the sea just as Leonis was.
It was frightful. Leonis felt that he could not bear her pres­
ence, that he hated her. This loneliness, this abandonment
between sky and sea, this vertigo in the Void was the most
frightful thing in the world. The death of his love, of his great
love. She was lost, quenched for ever in the revolving years,
buried in times past. The loneliness next to this foreign, grace­
less woman with the sly look. No! No!
He left without looking at her again, moving as far away as
he could and sat in the rem otest corner of the prow, all alone,
lar from his companions and the women and all else, sus­
pended over the sea, alone over the beautiful, huge, foam-
covered wave, which was divided by the onrush of the steam­
er.
The steamer skirted the point of the Seraglio and headed for
the City, moving at reduced speed towards the Bridge, among
hundreds of boats, in the apotheosis of the last splendor of
sunset, in the first lights of evening, and in the great Byzantine
shades.
It was a sight to disturb the heart.
And the Valsamics with the nonsensical, sad song . . .
She, dressed in yellow, with a bouquet of violets pinned to
her bosom, beautiful, laughing, happy, radiant among her
officers . . .
Paul Proios, pallid, teeth clenched, gazing feverishly, with
helmet and fixed bayonet, hunched under the barbed wire and
the smoke . . .
Leonis could contain him self no longer. (Fortunately no one
was looking that way.) He broke down in tears once and for all,
in the great lament which w eighed upon him for so long, a
lament which was suffocating, burning, salt as the sea, the
rending lament of Youth.

122
 THE DIARY OF LEONIS

Three nights running I jum p out of bed like a sleepwalker,

seize a large sheet of sketching paper and begin again to draw
eyes — deep, ecstatic eyes. Then, around the eyes I draw the
faces and the long hair. They are women, beautiful and wild,
who looked at me as though from a dream. They are like
ghosts of women. On the next day I tear them all up. I know
that it isn’t artistic work, not art at all. It is unsatisfied love and
nothing more. My God, when will I find the composure I need
to create a work of art, to justify at last my existence in the
world? (To justify it to myself?)
March 1st
The war in Asia Minor grows tougher. In Athens they are
calling out the reserves. Paul was right; this story will not have
an easy ending.
The day before yesterday Stasinos left, too. He seemed to
look at things on the bright side. He was in high spirits, kid­
ding about everything. But I don’t think he believed what he
was saying, that in about three or four months they would all
be back. But it did not appear to bother him much. The Troop
went down to the wharf to see him off. He shouted a stream of
jokes from the deck. Poor Stork was not a bad companion. Now
123
that he has left we all like him and are sorry to have lost him.
Who knows, he might even be killed. This is war.
They say that Paris will be leader. T here will be other pro­
motions, too. I’ll be a sergeant. But I’m afraid that my enthu­
siasm for this business has fallen off quite a bit. What meaning
is there in our holiday parades in the streets and in the victory
songs, since the war continues and gets worse? And today our
friends, our older classmates, are fighting in the war.
March 2nd
Then what does the 12th Troop represent now that it has
ceased to be the Eleni Phoka Troop?
March 25 (National Holiday)
In the beginning was the Garden.
Then came the War.
Then came She and walked in the War and in the Garden.
And the Garden was all greenery and heavy music and kids
running around. And the mysterious things happening behind
the foliage and some lovely ladies with huge straw hats and
with very red lips which laughed in the sun. And opposite was
Chrysopolis like a fireworks display.
The War was like a red cloud which covered the sky, a red
shadow which spread over everything. As it spread it became
one with everything so that little by little each person grew
used to it and began to forget it. But from time to time there
would be a loud noise and a tremor like an earthquake and
then they would all awaken and remember.
She was dressed in yellow in the green Garden, in the red
shadow, and so the whole world was green, red, and yellow.
The world had beautiful colors. It was a joy to draw. And also
when She passed, everything becam e g entle, m ild, and
pleasant, so pleasant that you would feel a great sense of good
fortune and then want to weep. The world then filled with
music and poetry. No one knew what he wanted, all he knew
was that the beauty of the world w eighed upon his soul.
Then the sky opened and bells began ringing and the world
filled with flags. There were flags of a thousand colors; they
waved in all the windows and balconies, in the trees, on the
telegraph poles, and on great laurel arches. Soldiers passed
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beneath the arches, in freshly pressed uniforms, with glisten­
ing buttons. The women kissed them.
Then there was a big parade with music out front, cannons
and war gear coming up behind. Airplanes put on humorous
shows and crossed the sky head down and feet up.
The Troop, dressed in khaki, wearing caps and blue ker­
chiefs around their necks, their swagger sticks in their hands,
proceed through a deep, endless woods with towering trees
covering the entire sky. The distant singing of unseen birds.
The shivering of the bushes and leaves, the whispering, the
mystical voices. The drops that dripped heavily from one
branch to the next. The Troop moves down the path in close
formation, gripping swagger sticks and singing a song. The big
trees bending down to listen . . .
Night. The Great Walls. The Plain of Thrace, boundless,
ploughed by a thousand invasions. The seven hills of Byzan­
tium, shadowy, mute, laden with the ruins of Empires. The
waves of the Golden Horn lapping in the starlight. And the tall
shades of the Emperors with fine beards and golden weapons,
which pass ethereally over the Walls and disappear into the
shadow . . .
They all vanish, are lost and formed again, m eet again and
dissolve again. I lose them continually and feel continually
that they are approaching to unite, to become one thing, one
shape, one existence, something which moves toward becom­
ing “I”.
April
Chance meeting with M. Galibourg in the Garden. He called
me over and I sat down at his table. Discussion of my future.
HE: From your themes I observe that you have some in­
clination toward literature. You must cultivate it. You might do
something good.
I: Perhaps Til write something one day, but literature for me
can be nothing other than a side line. Drawing is my real
inclination.
HE: So be it. Cultivate the two together. These two arts
come together in the same person sometimes. And, to be sure,
drawing has this great advantage as opposed to literature: that
it speaks a language that all nations understand. It has no need
125
of translators. For this reason, moreover, if you are one day to
write, I recommend that you write in French.
I: Do you believe that it is right for one to deny his country?
HE: I didn’t say any such thing, for heaven’s sake!
I: But is not denying one’s language the same as denying his
country?
HE: It is not a question of denying anything. I’m not sug­
gesting that you become a pseudo-Frenchm an, so that you fear
lest someone might by chance discover your foreign origins.
I’m saying, on the contrary, that you should preserve your
nationality, your national distinctiveness, your Greek spirit, in
short, whatever it is that sets you apart among nations, on the
condition, of course, that it has hum ane value; but whatever
you preserve and in general w hatever you have to say, you
can, I believe, say with refinem ent in an international lan­
guage, exactly as many learned men of all nations in antiquity
wrote in Greek and in the M iddle Ages in Latin.
I: The ancients did not have certain emotions that we do, or
did not have them so well developed.
HE: The ancients were simply wiser than we are. They
were emancipated from many of our superstitions and biases.
They looked upon writing as precisely what it was: a means ot
communication with m ankind, w ith civilized peoples, as
widely, and as effectively as possible. They preferred to use
languages ready at hand, cultivated by great spiritual tradi­
tions, and established not as idioms of this or that nation, but
as organs of communication betw een peoples, as media of
expression belonging to all peoples. I ask you to believe that I
do not suggest French because I am a Frenchman, but be­
cause I judge objectively that this language has about all the
characteristics needed for playing the same role in Europe
today that in another time Latin or Greek has played. I am not
making nationalistic propaganda. I’ve told you before that the
war has cured me of this type of madness.
I: Perhaps you are right, but it doesn’t seem to me that I’ll
ever succeed in following your advice. I have no difficulty
understanding an international ideal. I believe that I am up to
a point sufficiently cosmopolitan, but there is one thing that
binds me very tightly to my country, and that is precisely its
language. You cannot imagine the great joy which comes over
126
me when I set down two verses and feel that I’m touching
upon a fresh, new, unformed language; that I am molding it as
I want, that I am participating in a great undertaking, in a work
intended to live for ages, perhaps thousands of years, in the
shaping of a new language — and that this new language is
just as much Greek as the language of Homer!
HE: You’re talking like som eone in love.
I: Yes, perhaps . . . It is som ething that, when I first felt it,
seemed to me as though I had been born a second time. How,
then, is it possible for me to abandon my language?
HE: Perhaps you are right. But even if you aren’t, I am
pleased with your enthusiasm .
We were quiet for a while, wrapped up in our thoughts.
Then altogether disjointedly and, I believe, a bit foolishly, I
asked him:
“Do you believe in love?’’
I meant the other kind of love, of course, not the love of
language.
M. Galibourg smiled in a friendly way and answered:
“ It doesn’t matter much any more w hether I believe in love
or not. Now it is your turn to believe in it.’’
THE FIRST OF MAY
In the beginning were the colors.
Then came the poetry.
Then She came and walked amid the colors and the poetry.
The colors were an entire festival. You jum ped in and rev­
eled on all fours: hands, clothing, and face smudged; never
enough smudges.
The fragrance of art.
Oil paints on the palette, sweet smelling, thick, shining, that
you wanted to lean over to taste.
You let the colors dance and you danced with them: it was
great fun.
The poems were like a crowd of birds which sang all
together unseen in the foliage, each in its own language, each
in a different tone, finally becoming a unique music.
And the colors became music and they were again the same
music.
And the music, one day, was She.
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May 8
Yesterday I caught m yself doing som ething so foolish that I’m
almost ashamed to take note of it here.
When the evening had fallen and it was really quite gloomy,
and I was walking alone and had becom e engrossed in looking
at the view of the Bosporus from a height, a great feeling of
love suddenly seized upon me. At that tim e it seemed to me
(so much did I love her at that moment) that it was impossible
for her not to hear my love w herever she was. So I put as much
force into my soul as I could, stretching out my soul as one
stretches a bow to shoot an arrow, and I was sure that my love
would have flown the seas, would reach her in Athens, would
strike her and say to her, “ Leonis loves you as no one has
loved you; Leonis has not stopped and will not stop thinking
of you; Leonis is yours for always . . .” And other such things,
I suppose, in ample num bers. I absolutely believed that this
could be done, that the power of love was sufficient to cause
souls to communicate from afar in such a way. And I forced my
soul with all my strength so that the communication would be
more effective.
This morning when I awoke, I asked myself, “Was it I who
did that?”
May 17
News from Asia Minor. A postcard from Stasinos from Prusa. A
letter from Paul from Kiutahya. They had not yet succeeded in
finding one another.
Paul writes:
“ Last night I wanted to be alone. I w ent into the fields and
stood far.from the rest and looked at the stars. And so I forgot
myself for some time, and I don’t rem em ber very well any
more what I was thinking about. I think I was recollecting
some events in my life, along with all of you, and my heart was
heavy without my knowing why. At last I thought, ‘Now who
am I and what am I looking for here?’ This question troubled
me the more because I did not know how to answer myself.
But later I turned my thoughts to Greece, and she seem ed to
me like a woman sad and proud, with a noble face and wound­
ed feet and with luxurious but tattered clothing. And I said to
myself, Whatever she is, she is my Country, and has sent me
128
here to these wild plains, with the death that lurks all around,
because she has need of m e.’ This is what I thought and I
returned to the others refreshed . . . ”

May 29
In the beginning was the War.
Or one might say, In the beginning was Greece with the
wounded feet.
Or again, In the beginning was History, the great untam able
wave, now up, now down.
And “I” in the midst of History, on the crest of the wave or
on the brink of the abyss, which opens suddenly to swallow
everything.
Vertigo!
My lot. Our lot.
May 30
Whatever is to happen, my paints and brushes will remain and
my art will remain for me. Even without Her and without
anyone, even without my Country, my art will remain: I’ll live
for my art.

May 31
I shall hang upon my shoulder the tools of my art. I shall put
my cap on crooked and put my hands into my pockets. I ’ll
even have a flower in my buttonhole and a long green leaf in
my cap. I’ll whistle a happy tune and encircle the world. I ’ll
stay wherever I like and I’ll leave as soon as I take the notion
to leave. I’ll lie for as long as the mood lasts upon the flowery
hills and on the golden sands. I’ll chew on weeds and take joy
in the landscapes and the aromas of sea and earth. I’ll swim
and play on the boats. I’ll be the number-one friend of all the
world. In the villages they’ll receive me with laughter and
jokes. The girls will begin the song as soon as they see me and
I’ll sing along, too. My dog will run on ahead and announce
my arrival. (Naturally I’ll have a dog; we’ll love each other like
brothers.) Then he’ll return and jump on me to play as though
he were crazy. We’ll roll along the ground. Then I’ll talk to
him sternly and he’ll quiet down, put his tail between his legs
and act offended. The girls will laugh. I shall enter large cities
129
like an explorer and go through them carefully and in amaze­
ment I shall discover everything, I in front, my dog following.
Then I ’ll forget myself for hours and daydream on the
bridges, in the ancient churches, in the parks, in the museums
or in the glittering squares in the evening when thousands of
automobiles pour in with their lights on. I’ll m eet interesting
people everywhere. W e’ll talk and exchange ideas and we will
all be charmed, so interesting will these talks be. Then we’ll
go and amuse ourselves in cool, poetic cabarets, with grape­
vines in profusion, with paintings upon the walls, and with
huge, fragrant barrels lined up in a row like an honor guard.
I’ll make love with beautiful and good-natured women. I’ll
love them in friendship and the pleasure we have will be a
token of friendship. We will not have worries and sighs and
bitter words and malice. Our love affairs will be all smiles and
good-heartedness. One shall be a Spanish dancer with a red
shawl. She will dance and all the while look into my eyes and
will throw me a flower. T hen there will be an Italian girl with
her guitar, a French girl with her beautiful French, which will
be a divine joy to hear spoken, and a girl from Scandinavia,
too, blonde, distant, exotic, who might have been taken from
some myth of the North. There will be others, too, from other
countries. I shall visit all countries and I’ll partake of whatever
good they have, and I’ll love everything because everything is
basically good and beautiful. One must only be worthy of
perceiving their beauty. And w henever I wish (and I shall
wish to often) I shall sit down to work. Slowly my work will
arise from amid beauty and joy. I shall traverse the world and
do whatever my heart draws me to do, and I’ll leave in every
corner a piece of my work. I shall be as a tree which lets its
ripe fruits fall from it for no other reason than that their time
has come to fall and to make room for more. So shall I be and I
shall be glad to feel my fruit fall from me. And one morning,
from no deliberate act or expectation of my own, I shall awake
to be informed that my work has earned me fame. And every­
one will run to admire it. And then She will hear about me and
remember me. She’ll say, “ Poor Leonis once loved me.” She
shall be proud and sad. And I, with my dog and with my tools

130
on my shoulder, shall ever return to the seas, the c
the countryside . . .
June I
Paul Proios was killed.
I stop. I cannot write.

131
 XXI

Autumn.
The sky was clear blue, the air sweet, the hills fragrant with
pine and thyme.
There was an infinite and invincible light which seemed to
be pouring in from every direction, not only from the sky, but
from the very ground, from the stones, from the tiers of white
houses, from the blue sea which glistened around the gentle
lines of the hills. The dust and vapors were light diffused into
the atmosphere. The columns were light compacted and solid.
The hills were so weightless that the wind seem ed to be mov­
ing them along slowly. They were changing colors all the
while, passing from silver-grey to rose, then to violet. At night
in the moonlight they were like clouds at anchor. The city was
a dull whiteness strewn untidily on the plain, amid scattered
patches of greenery, on abrupt rocky hills and on the prec­
ipices of quarries. It was Athens.
His father had said to him:
Naturally w e’ve lost whatever we had. Now let’s see how
we come out of this.”
Later on he had left the country and had left Leonis by
himself in a cheap hotel near Omonoia Square, with a chest of
books and his drawing equipm ent.
It was the first time he had lived alone, and in some respects
he was pleased with it. There was certainly som ething fine in
this feeling of absolute independence, in the streets, in the
132
restaurant, or at night in bed with the light out and the^win­
dow open and life outside unceasingly moving and hum nu. s-
Or in the other great pleasure, to be able to smoke from mom
ing till night without interruption and not to have anyone
there to point out that you were only seventeen, that it was no
nice, that you were ruining your health, etc. But his heart w a s
heavy. His every thought finally left in him a bitter and d e­
pressing sensation, like the taste of a cigarette after too much
smoking. Nearly everything took on a spoiled flavor of smo e.
He avoided touching his art tools. He went mechanically
and enrolled in the Law School. It was there that everyone
went who wanted to do something with studies and books but
did not know what. It was a sort of refuge, but it did not attract
him. He had no friends. Most of the time he went around quite
alone in the bright light and the heavy aroma of the crowds of
refugees and soldiers, or, in the evening, on shadowy streets
with small, weak lights here and there, where suspicious
shadows vanished around corners and patrols appeared
noiselessly to check draft cards. He was ashamed to enter the
coffee shops.
He had no friends, but finally he had found some casual
acquaintances. Fellows from school, from the Lyceum, and
others whom he knew only by sight, now in exile, came to
speak with him. Some were former scouts, some were soccer
players well known from the old days on the sports field of the
Taxim. All of them were now walking about unemployed be­
tween Omonoia Square and the Zappeion making plans for
trips to Africa and the Indies. They had submitted applica­
tions to different companies, foreign and overseas Greek, and
were awaiting replies. In the meantime they studied maps and
journals on faraway and exotic places. They had tied up their
knapsacks to ship out, to traverse the world, to make careers in
wealthy places, to make money, not jokes. Each one would
have twenty black slaves apiece and as many women as he
pleased. They would hunt elephants and lions. Others wanted
to head out at random. They cared nothing about companies
and careers, but only for adventures, the charm of the un­
known, the intensive life. They spoke of China, of Tibet
Sometimes these young men would take Leonis to some
billiard hall in Hafteia. There they would light up large En-
133
glish pipes, take off th eir jackets and begin playing in their
vests. T hat was their routine. Leonis would try to play, but he
was very clum sy and did not get anywhere. Later the group
would decide upon one of the various cheap houses around
Kanningos Square or toward the lower end of St. Constantine
Street. W hen the fellows had no money among them for this
activity, they would spend the evening in the salon smoking
their English pipes, joking with the girls, and observing the
comings and goings of the custom ers. It smelled of smoke,
cheap perfum e, and sinks.
Some of his other acquaintances had cast themselves, as
they put it, upon the Stock Exchange; that is, into the “free
m arket of the exchange,” w hich operated outside, on the
threshold of the real Stock Exchange. There it was a genuine
madhouse. H undreds of people stream ed by, frantic, bathed
in sweat, hair on end, jum ping about all at once and shouting
out num bers. This was the Country of Bedlam.
It was not long before that the Asia Minor front had broken
and Smyrna had fallen, and a whole population had fled to the
Kingdom. Most of the people had nothing but the clothes they
were wearing. T he refugees had settled w herever there was
an available roof: in palaces, in theaters, in railway stations, in
schools, in uninhabited houses. They had spread out their
clothing on all the walls and had filled the sidewalks with
dirty water. At the fountains there was a crush of people. At
hotels and restaurants it was packed as on a boat full of cele­
brants. On the streets there was an atm osphere of military
defeat and economic catastrophe. Everyw here there were pa­
trols with fixed bayonets, armored cars, unwashed and unem­
ployed crowds, and women who were begging or selling small
valuables wrapped in scarves. They were all expecting some­
thing; no one knew what. Some were making speeches or
reciting poems in the squares, but no one understood what
they wanted, and perhaps they did not know very clearly
themselves.
Flags passed by once again in the great light, this time torn
and blackened by the smoke of battle. The men who accompa­
nied them looked like sick people and had feverish expres­
sions. One day Leonis saw some soldiers w eeping in line as
they walked in step behind their tattered flag in the Athenian
134
sunshine. The most grievous thing he had ever seen was those
soldiers weeping.
“Well, how did you like the Acropolis?” asked an old ac­
quaintance of his father one day. He was a senior member of
the judiciary.
“I thought that the columns were w hite,” answered Leonis.
“How is that?”
“Look, in the photographs they are always white. Besides,
you get the notion that marble can’t be any color but white
. . . But when I came up I saw that they were reddish, yellow­
ish, golden, if you will, but not w hite.”
“ Does that mean you didn’t like the Acropolis?”
“I didn’t mean that . . .”
The juryman was disappointed in him. Leonis was unable to
explain. There was something that did not fit in with all the
rest. But, then, nothing fitted in with anything. Even if the
columns had been white, they still would not have fit in with
anything. It was a chaos, a discordant jum ble of all the ingre­
dients, a frenzied stirring in the dust and light.
From the Acropolis, from Mount Philopappus, from
Lycabettus, he would look at the sea and at the shore, which
grew dim and trem bled in the mist of the tepid earth, and at
the microscopic ships, which moved off into the open sea. In
the depths of the horizon, in the blinding light and the cool­
ness of the Aegean, the great shades of Byzantium seemed
about to emerge into view. Suddenly it appeared to him that
nothing had intervened, that everything happening then was
but a vision, that the truth lay there on the horizon, in the fog
on the beautiful sea. His truth, you might say, was emerging
again into the light, and was coming towards him and was
about to take him warmly and sweetly unto herself. The Gar­
den was coming with all its children and music. The 12th
Troop was coming in ranks of four with its flag and trumpets.
His love was coming, as he had known her then, there . . .
But the fog was lifting and the shadows were dispelled into
the glistening, blue element. All that had passed by, finished
forever, so it seemed. And his love, too, had died, along with
all the rest, in that great rending apart at the time when she
had left his city, not in the way that he knew people were wont
to come and go, following their individual will or their indi-
135
vidual need, but drawn away all at once by a gigantic wave,
incomparably more powerful than the wills of individuals,
w hich cut lives in two, abolished custom s, pulled down
houses, turned society upside down, seized upon a whole new
people and threw it suddenly from one seashore to the other.
It seem ed to be once again what the newspapers called
History. Leonis willingly or not was plunged up to his neck in
History. Leonis almost had, as the saying goes, a role in His­
tory.
“ I still have my art! I still have my art!”
But his art utensils rem ained locked in the bottom of a
trunk. He did not even want to look at them. It still galled him
even to think about them. It was a strange bitterness which he
nevertheless did not take the trouble to explain to himself.
Instead he left it alone to fill him and weigh heavily upon him
in the evening, in the grey hotel room, in the reflections of the
electric street lights and the confused sounds. . . .

One day in Syntagma Square he ran into John Stasinos.

They greeted one another warmly, then looked curiously at
each other and did not know what to say.
Stasinos looked a wreck. He had grown much thinner. He
was caved in and had become even more of a stork than be­
fore. His head seem ed to have become smaller. His skin had
become a dark yellowish color. He was rum pled, unshaven,
and dirty. He had received a medical release from the army a
short time before.
Leonis suggested that they take a walk, but he soon realized
that his companion walked with difficulty. He drew him into
the Royal Garden and there they sat down on a bench.
“ Do you have a cigarette?” asked Stasinos shyly.
They each lighted up. Stasinos leaned his head back, ex­
hausted, and stretched out his long legs.
“Let’s not talk about the war,” he said.
“OK with m e,” said Leonis.
“ How’s the drawing coming along?” asked Stasinos.
He looked at the sky wearily.
“ I don’t know,” Leonis answered.
“What do you mean, you don’t know?”
“ I don’t know anything. I feel very tired.”
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 “Are you tired of drawing?”
“ It’s worse than that. I despise it.”
“You’ll get over it. As soon as you’re used to your new life
here, you’ll start drawing again and be as happy with it as you
were before.”
“ I don’t know. From time to time I feel like the snake that
sloughs off its old skin. It’s just that my new skin has not taken
shape yet and everything shakes me up and bothers me. And
I’m not sure it will ever take proper shape.”
“That’s funny.”
“ Everything is funny.”
“Yea, sure . . . ”
Stasinos became withdrawn for a few moments, then con­
tinued:
“And the funniest of all are the ideologies and struggles.”
Leonis felt his weariness, his indecision, and his bitterness
increasing next to this defeated soldier.
“Why was Paul Proios killed?” he asked softly.
“ Paul Proios didn’t die for ideologies,” Stasinos answered
dully. “If Paul Proios died for anything, it was for Eleni Pho-
ka.”
Leonis was rattled.
“ Impossible!” he shouted.
“Why impossible?”
“ I knew him, I knew them both. It’s absolutely impossible!”
“You can believe me. I’m the only one who knows the truth
about that story. The only one in the world.”
“What story? What do you know?”
“Paul Proios never gave up loving her, from the first that he
knew anything of the world. He did not love anyone else in
his life. She was his great love and his only love.”
“Impossible!” Leonis said again, exhausted.
“ Believe me, will you? I’ve never seen a person love so
much. But he was hurt by her conduct, by the way she lived.
He felt deceived, laughed at. You know him well; you know
how intransigent he was in matters of pride. He was not able
to make any concession for her; his pride did not allow him to.
It became a real disease. One day he swore not to speak to her
again and kept his resolve. But he was unhappy. He left for the
war before they called him, so he could cool off.”
137
 A mom ent later Stasinos shrugged his shoulders and added:
“Who knows, perhaps he had som ething else in mind.”
“ He wrote to me about G reece,” m urm ured Leonis, “about
Greece with the w ounded feet.”
“ Perhaps that, too. W hat’s there to say? Anything might be
true . . . ”
Stasinos was gently relinquishing his point of view.
Leonis was lost in thought.
“ I still rem em ber,” he continued, “ how he said to me one
day that Greece w asn’t the only thing that mattered. He was
talking about our times. He said that he wanted to take part.”
“ I don’t know what to tell you,” answ ered Stasinos. “When
a person is killed, how is it possible to know with absolute
certainty why he was headed towards death ? — if he even had
in mind any such reason at all. So many strange things hap­
pen! We can suppose just about anything. Both what I said to
you and what you said. Perhaps it’s best to admit that Paul
Proios will stay in our memories as a discrete person, whom
we didn’t understand very well, who d id n ’t give us many ex­
planations for his existence; a fine person, nevertheless,
perhaps the finest I’ve ever seen. But I haven’t told you the
strangest p a r t. . . T he strangest part is that she loved him just
as much.”
“ But then,” w hispered Leonis w ithout looking at him, “if
she loved him why did she do all those things?”
“ How should I know? Because she liked to.”
“ But if she loved him . . . ”
“ She loved him but in the way that suited her. She had her
own way of loving. She wanted to love him and at the same
time do everything she was doing. T hat’s the way she was; she
couldn’t be any other way. But she loved him a great deal. I
am sure that she never loved anyone else. I saw the letters she
wrote him when he sent her away. I assure you that a girl
could not write such letters if she did not feel som ething.”
“ But, then, why did she get m arried?”
“Who knows? Perhaps she married for the same reason that
we go off to war: jum p in and come what may!”
He was quiet for a moment, then continued.
“ W hat can I say? Perhaps all this is a creation of my
imagination. In the war, you know, the imagination goes hay­
wire.”
138
 Leonis felt that he could not continue the conversation. He
nervously lighted a second cigarette.
“Oh, I’m sure that she would mourn a great deal over him,”
Stasinos continued shortly. “She’s probably still crying. But
she’s not likely to cry all her life. Especially now that the
Revolution has made her husband an admiral!”
He moved his head sadly and murmured:
“ Don’t worry about it, kid. It’s all a joke!”

For the third time Leonis tried to draw, but again he did not
succeed.
He had set up his gear next to a window and spent his time
looking out. He was not looking at anything in particular, just
the sparse clouds, the sunlight. He wanted to do a work to be
called “ Im pression of A thens,” or som ething sim ilar, a
composite painting in which open tones would predominate.
There was no need for him to keep to a specific theme. He
wanted this work to embrace all the themes which made up
this new reality: Athens. That is, it would include the reflec­
tion of light upon the walls, the steep abrupt lines of shadow,
the red-gold patina of History which covers the ancient tem­
ples, the simplicity and gentleness of the hills, the lightness of
the atmosphere, the noise and ant hill activity of the city, the
clever and obstinate face of the crowd, and, in the background,
in an almost invisible curtain of fog, the stunning beauty of the
Aegean. If he could find a way, he wanted to make all this into
a single whole that would get it out of his system once for all
and free him from it. As during a trip at sea your feelings,
thoughts, desires and all else become blue, and, back in the
city, remain brimming with the blue coloring. Then, sitting
down and drawing something blue, a blue woman, for in­
stance, empties the emotions and frees them from the sea. In
this way Leonis wanted to find, once and for all, the synthesis
of colors, the unified tone, which would express Athens and
all the themes which comprise Athens, so that he could fill his
canvas with this tone and find his release. He wanted to, but
was unable. For the third time he fought with his oil paints for
hours and again he accom plished nothing. What he was
searching for did not come; the emptying and the freeing did
not take place. He came close; he made it to the verge, but
nothing came of it. There seemed to be something in the way.
139
He did not know what was blocking him, but it was something
which he could not overcome. He knew what he wanted. He
saw what he wanted w ithin himself, but he did not succeed in
finding the way to bring it to light.
For the third tim e he threw down his brushes disheartened.
In a fit of obstinacy he kicked them to the other side of the
room. He could not draw. It was as clear as light that he could
not. Something had been ruined in the process. There was
something that no longer worked as it used to. As they say
about singers w hen their voices crack, so to Leonis it was as if
that which was, in his life, what the voice is to the singer, had
cracked. He did not know exactly when. W henever he picked
up a brush in the secure knowledge of what he wanted to do
with it, and could see within him self with perfect clarity what
he wanted to do, it appeared to him at first the easiest thing in
the world, so easy, in fact, that it no longer seem ed worth the
effort. But by the time that he had taken thought and decided
that it was presumably worth the effort, that fearful ease had
already made him shaky. It was not a genuine ease, but some­
thing treacherous: a difficulty which looked like ease in order
to cheat him; a difficulty not in performance or in art, but
inside, within his heart, in his thoughts, in his will; a difficulty
like an immovable w eight which treacherously sapped all his
powers from the first. Even the colors seem ed to take on the
taste of a cigarette after too much smoking.
He kicked away his brushes. In his irritation he had unin­
tentionally upset the chair, too, which he was using as an
easel. But he did not feel like picking it up. He did not need it
any longer. He stood upright and undecided in the middle of
his room and was looking in the mirror on his closet, his hands
in his pockets, unkem pt and smeared with paint.
“ I’ve lost my art,” he murmured.
He had not up till that m oment realized the whole signif­
icance of the fact. Now, opposite the mirror, for the first time,
he understood. It was yet another thing vanishing into the
past, into the fog of the blue sea; a bit of life which was becom­
ing memory. It was something which was ending, as the old
songs said, “for e ’er.”
He lay down upon the bed as he was, with his clothes and
shoes on, and remained there for many hours, until it grew late
140
and the room was plunged into darkness. But he did not feel
like getting up, turning on the light, or going out to eat. He
remained lying there, with his eyes open in the night, and the
only thing he did was to murmur from time to time, without
complaint, but with surprise and perplexity:
“ I’ve lost my art. I’ve lost my art.”

141
 XXII

“W e’ve lost everything we had,” thinks Leonis. “ I’ve lost

my city. I’ve lost my comrades. I’ve lost my best friend. I’ve
lost my love. I’ve lost my art. Now let’s see how we come out
of this.”
He climbs the rough hill easily and swiftly, stirred by the
wind and fragrance. He abandons the path and is making his
way up a steep em bankm ent, jum ping like a goat from rock to
rock, sinking into the spiny bushes, losing him self in the arbu­
tus. Nor does he care that his clothing is torn, that his hands
and legs are scratched. He does not care about anything. The
marvelous hill had cast a spell upon him.
He feels that the Greek land is taking him back again to
herself by gradual assimilation. For the first time he thinks
about his ancestors, the farmers and sailors of the Aegean. He
feels them all about, sunburned, laughing, struck by imagina­
tion. He recognizes them in the atmosphere, in the light, in
the aromas of the hill and in the mists of the great sea. He
recognizes everything: the wind, those islands, those gods

All this is his own as if he had lived it in another life, and

was now calling it back to mind.
“Lady,” he calls aloud.
Since he is alone on the hill, we suppose that he is address­
ing an imaginary, mythical, or supernatural being, or at least
142
some personified concept, such as those which the most
imaginative poets are wont to stir into their texts.
“Lady, I have lost whatever I had. You see, I turn to you
with empty hands. Take me, I ask of you, and form me in any
manner you please. Make of me whatever you want, to be a
slave to serve you.”
Long and loudly he laughs. How funny to wander on the
hillside and converse with a personified metaphysical being!
But suddenly he is no longer alone. A dense, warm, and fright­
ened life all at once surrounds him. Without realizing it, he
had stumbled into the midst of a flock of sheep, which jump
about and move off in all directions, ringing their bells in
unison. A shepherd’s dog, big and black, is standing upon a
rock, as though on a pedestal with the sky as backdrop. It is
tense and looks at him sternly.
Leonis remains quiet. There is a moment of gravity, a mo­
ment of reverence. He had reached the top of Mount Hymet-
tus and is walking evenly now across a very long, narrow hill
pasture. The breeze that blows from Penteli nudges him gent­
ly. He is happy, strong, and really something. He no longer
has anything to say nor anything to think about. He breathes in
the surrounding beauty as deeply as he can and imagines him­
self walking in the empyraean.
At his feet, from the two sides of the mountain, the plains of
Attica spread towards the sea and broadly inscribe great lacy
shorelines around him. The white villages with their geometric-
vegetation, the ant hill activity of Athens, the pointed cone of
Mount Lycabettus, the microscopic Acropolis, the stone bow
of Piraeus with its countless smoking chimneys, are like a
heap of toys scattered on a rug. Far off in the glistening Ae­
gean, almost out of sight, other toys, the ships, were moving
slowly, coming towards the harbor or leaving it and disappear­
ing on the misty horizon. Even the mountain appears to him
now like a gigantic ship with its prow pointed southward, a
breeze at the stern. Leonis is on a journey.
He moves on happily up the gentle slope towards the small
white mark of the peak in the apotheosis of blue.

“I was happy before,” Leonis is thinking, “now again this

weight on my chest. I had forgotten everything before, but
143
now I rem em ber again. Before, I was young and strong, now
my youth is passing. I am two-fold: 1 am two I’s and I don’t
know which of the two is the more genuine.
“ I am a yes and a no,” thinks Leonis. “ I am something that is
dying and som ething that is trying to be born. It seems I’ve
come too late, but then no one can keep me from believing
that at the same time I ’ve come too early. I am marked by the
contradictions of my era. I am a child of the era, an offshoot of
History.
‘‘Up till now men have given many and different names to
their fate,” thinks Leonis. ‘‘They have tried to grasp it and
explain it in a thousand ways within their religions, philos­
ophies, ethics, and natural sciences. We have called our fate
History. But the nature of the thing does not seem to change
amid all this nom enclature. The given facts of the problem
remain always the same as they were from their common be­
ginning; that is, from one side a mystical power, immeasur­
ably more powerful than human will, which draws everything
into its inexorable rhythm; and from the other side, human
beings, who are under its authority, who know this, and who
look upon it face to face. And we, then, with our touted histor­
ical consciousness, come close to becoming what they call
tragic figures.
“ I am the poorest person in the world,” thinks Leonis. ‘‘I am
the person who presents him self with empty hands. I have no
wealth to share, no truths to impart. I cannot even speak fine
words. I am ashamed when other people treat me well. I end
up not having the face to appear among them. But let’s not
exaggerate. The right thing is not to complain, but simply to
accept that all things are in order and that I have not come off
ridiculous in the reckoning, since I’ve had the chance to see
the flaming dawn of this remarkable century and History in its
great beauty. I w ept the tears of youth in that hidden place of
spiritual landscapes where lyricism dies and epic rhythm be­
gins. That is, all else aside, an experience out of the ordinary.
“W e’ve lost whatever we had,” thinks Leonis. “W e’ve lost
all our loves, but we are in love with a thousand things, with
everything that passes away and everything that is beginning.
From whatever side we consider ourselves, we are split down
the middle: without convictions, without opinions, yet filled
144
with ideas, suspicions, premonitions; without goals, yet filled
with the necessity for action; daydreaming, yet full of con­
sciousness; romantic, yet full of science and practicality; a
follower of religions from which the gods seem absent; in love
with things which lived yesterday, or will live tomorrow and
with other things which have perhaps never lived nor shall
ever live. Finally — what will come of it? — we are such as we
are, and not by our own decision. If anyone doesn’t like it, we
are sorry, but such was the will of the era which defines our
existence. If we do not enclose our era within our souls, how
are we to be genuine? And if we do not have the courage to
prove ourselves false, how shall we succeed in being honest?

With such thoughts Leonis returned to the city where a new

life awaited.

145