My writings are as small as bird droppings; on the second, maybe third page, they exhaust themselves, and then I dejectedly attempt to stretch them out, the sentences and innuendos like kittens which have been discarded at the dump. Sometimes I create arbitrary endings and I direct myself elsewhere. Other stories tangle themselves up inside of me, so I grasp the thread and I begin to unravel it, up until the moment it snaps again. Perhaps I seize it too abruptly. I leave my writings the way they birth themselves; fragments of a cleaved soul. To this day I cannot bring myself to write a longer piece, something akin to a chronicle.
I found myself at St. George the Koutalás, in a small meadow between Kesarianí and Karéa. If anyone were to ask me why I chose this piece of land to begin my novel, I naturally would not know how to answer. Let’s say it was a kind of revelation. Even if I tugged the thread, I realized my writings were bound with steel wire—when I pulled them to the surface, the thread held. The sentences reflected each other, they lined up and marched forward.
From up here, I have a vantage point on life, the phrases readily pour down on me like a cataclysm, their meanings gleaming. This lasts for a while—days, months in heat, and I cannot bring myself to do anything other than write, the typewriter’s keys waste away, the ribbon deteriorates, the paper runs out though I have not yet begun, not even a centimeter of what’s cluttered inside me is inscribed.
On this slice of earth all is illuminated. “Is it this simple?” I wonder to myself as I observe the brush scale up the mountainside, the hill beside me with the scorched rocks, the calcined tree which stubbornly holds itself up and the grove of eucalyptus trees—leaves dried from the pyre, and only at the hill’s peak a tuft of green—attempting rebirth. The garden, too, with its tattered chrysanthemums bowing their heads to the ground, the grapevine superimposing its brilliant yellow leaves against the church’s wall, the spring of water which runs softly alongside the cradle of the land; all of these things meld inside of me. I long to be a downcast chrysanthemum and lonesome tree, a eucalyptus whose sparse foliage sways in the wind, a vine that tries to find a home for its leaves. “This is who you are,” I think, “the small, forgotten rivulet that wishes to exist.”
For some, this space might not hold much meaning. A few years ago, even I preferred the park at Lombardiári, as I enjoyed the flora there, the way the crowns were dense—it is where I embraced women and even slithered my hand up their skirts; especially when dusk blankets the landscape, and the lights are dim, you can straddle a woman on top of you, light a cigarette, and drink your coffee all at the same time, and you know that just beyond the perimeter other couples revel in the same matters.
These things have tired me now. On one hand, you’ve got sickness, and on the other, old age, and most times neither of these have much merit, which is why I now avoid the spaces in which I once exhibited my pride. I prefer a bucolic walk at Koutalá and entertain the idea of appealing to the archdiocese in hopes of them delegating me this deserted meadow. Only a solitary nun resides here. They should assign her to some monastery where she’ll be in the company of other crones, and a priest who will tend to the church—where she’ll be an abbess who follows rules. What is she doing here alone?
I’ll breathlessly trail alongside the hill’s ridge to contemplate the scenery for my friends, the ones who are still standing, who have the courage to build an idiosyncratic commune. My friend, the dentist, is sick of women now. He is a sturdy old man who does not disclose any inclination toward marriage. He is the most assured out of all of us. Sometimes he brings his tools up here with him and works for free on anyone who is willing to make the trip, which is a type of social reciprocity considering the openness of the land. Panagákis, by exception, is the only married man here. In the old days, before his marriage, he thought about living a monastic life, and he traveled to Άgion Όros, but I don’t think that the flame of this yearning ever extinguished. He is always longing for a morsel of well-cut bread and a comforting blanket.
Then there is Dimítris, who’s been wrecked by women and alcohol. His hands shake vigorously, and he is unable to draw anymore. Perhaps he might be able to calm down again and pick up a brush, but it is unlikely considering his latest compulsions: He is obsessed with doubles; he takes his pills two by two, asks the waiter to cut his donuts in six, eight or twelve pieces. Always doubles. I know where this mania will drive him to: similar to the jailbird Stathoúros, who on most occasions was a sympathetic old man, but whose life was tortured by his obsession with pairs. He smoked his cigarettes two at a time and his deep inhalations also had to be twofold, and naturally, he had to reach fifty puffs on each cigarette (fifty on this one, he’d holler in the prison yard). It was the magic number; everything else in his life was coupled in twos. “The sun,” people would tell him, “and the moon,” he’d retort with emphasis. He then reached the point of pinching two clothespins on each of his garments, doubled the suds, and even started to count his steps, causing him to vomit all over himself. He did not converse with anyone out of fear of messing up his counting, and if people confused him, he muttered, “go take a long walk off a short pier, you old bastards.” He yelled all night and kept everyone awake in their cells. Even if Dimítris has this manic predisposition, we will consider not excluding him from accompanying us to the commune.
Tímos relied on his eyes and headed for foreign lands. First, he embarked on his journey as an undergraduate, but now who knows how he makes do. One thing is for certain, he does not work. His constant aporia is why people toil away at jobs and why soldiers lace up their boots, and for this people call him slow, but he does not pay them any mind. He stretches out in his tent and takes long naps.
Lest I forget Tsaoúsis. The sad sack wasn’t even a sergeant. But he did care a whole lot about his tent and whether or not it would collapse from the winds and rain. His nickname stuck because he was the one who’d repair it and peg the stakes into the ground. Tsaoúsis was necessary for order. When our rooms will begin to smell putrid, around six months’ time, he’ll grab us by our ankles and scold us, and he might even put one of us to work as the custodian.
This is not to say that we will have a person in charge, leader, or representative though. So many years we’ve been filled to the brim with wardens, chiefs, lieutenants, and all kinds of different authority figures; dicks who demanded that we all piss in unison at the urinals. (Your piss had to lap against the left side of the can; if it strayed away, you became a suspect). Good riddance. And what kind of people were we, then, to accept that treatment for so many years? It befuddles me to think that there are still individuals who willingly accept the rules of such a rigid life. What happens to them, and they choose to enlist? I, however, and my friends as far as I know, will never find ourselves in any kind of structure. If it concerns a literary association, secretaries, a president, and priesthood, we will have nothing to do with it. We don’t have time to just try things out, and anyway, why would we attempt to traverse a road we know will lead us nowhere? Is it perhaps that the representatives were at fault and the authorities remain unscathed? This mess needs to be cleared up—authorities and representatives, form and content, ideas and praxis, they’re all the same, and when you try to single one of them out, you’re only trying to save scraps. So, the sum of all parts is at fault in this situation, leaders and members, hierarchy and committees, church doctrine and morons who resign to saying, “I believe.” I believe nothing anymore—they’re all clowns who need to be tossed out.
If people decide to build communes in the future, even if they’re on the moon, they need to keep in mind that it would be best practice to round up all the good-for-nothing leaders and dump them in a crater. There, they can accrue dust, rocks, and dirt and build a new party if they wish. There is no way that we will willingly participate anymore, to put it simply. If, however, they corner us, then we will cede—what else can we do? We won’t be thinking of the struggles at Marathóna, or the Gorgopótamo village. We’ll only have this weathered hillside on our minds, with its laurel bushes, and the thought of our hands on women’s limber bodies, or the way we’ll play hooky on our way back to the house with the fer forgé chairs that need another layer of white paint—yes, these will be the things we’ll reminisce on. As far as the “crusades” are concerned, they needn’t worry; we’re through with those kinds of tricks. Ideas have become half-baked now, and mischief and heroes have long since dwindled.
And, if all things considered, we need some type of government, then make some mother in charge of the Ministry of Birth, make a twentysomething-year-old stud responsible for the Ministry of Eros, and delegate the Ministry of Death to an old pensioner. These ministries would suffice. There are lackeys with their bureaucratic filing cabinets, and others without, but who all project their insecurities onto us and demand that we consider them our saviors. Isn’t that something. No one can save us, and this is something that the Minister of Death knows; he sees this despair every day in the gallery of corpses—one, two, three—so many perish, no one is salvaged. Therefore, the Minister does not boast. He does a typical job, counting the dead; he is cognizant of his fate and does not have an appetite for more power.
The young man, Minister of Eros, supervises the hotels and ensures that they have wonderful presentations and pleasant music—not at all like our time spent in decrepit banquet halls with cracked speakers and a hotelier who remotely changes the radio stations according to his whims. And like this, in the most critical moments, I happened to tune in to directions aimed at sailors, news about thousands of dead people, wars, typhoons, and the mawkish messages of German workers. Our rooms were only partitioned by thin drywall, so you could even hear your neighbor’s labored breath—who knows how many holes were in the walls and how many eyes were surveilling you. And people wonder why we are the way we are. Even so, we’re quite decent. We could be a lot more degenerate.
The twentysomething-year-old expands his supervision to the parks: “Here,” he says, “we should place a queen-sized bed with a view of the pond. This is where the grass will be utilized.” All around him there are employees taking notes, all young men who very well know what it’s like to hold a girl in their arms.
Everything will be nice and dandy, at least for the young. No system or futuristic community can serve the old. They will have to face the great conqueror, the Minister of Death. I already look him in the eyes and feel that many times he is smiling at me, and so I am desensitizing myself to any inkling of hope.
All the times that I dreamt or hoped, I didn’t delude myself; I only thought, “it is what it is, I missed my shot.” And something else: I was forced to pay for dreaming; I was so blindsided that I swore to never hope again. It was like the time I had a date with a woman I desired deeply. I went to meet her with my shoulders back and my chin held high. That same night I urinated blood. Following this, I haven’t dared to keep my shoulders back or hold my chin up. I wander around reservedly and with a hunched back, I exist modestly and discreetly, if possible, even if it is difficult to ultimately disappear from people’s memories. The Minister has taken note of my circumstance and is patiently waiting. I’ve been marked.
If there had been a mother assigned to the Ministry of Birth from the get-go, maybe things would be better. She’d care about the way I carry myself, and she’d make sure that I am in constant contact with the world. Completely unlike what happened to me: They cut me at my navel. They knotted up my umbilical cord so I could never aspire to form a new connection. I was in pain and began to sob about not being able to have a direct bond with the world. Since then, I detachedly land onto sweaty sheets, and my life has become the anxiety of falling.
I was falling, always falling in relation to some distant star. I charted an elliptical orbit and at the end found myself landing on the dirt, maybe even wedging myself into a grave. I was cheated. “You can’t resolve your problems with a general and abstract descent,” the stars flickered—a sign of danger. I navigated around the rocks a little too closely, so much so that my pants tore up. “Maybe on the other trip,” I thought to myself and adjusted my direction with the purpose of discovering a connection to other galaxies, somewhere that I can grab onto and rescue myself from this chaos.
The best period of my life was when I tumbled into that tepid stream of air—something like a Gulf Stream—when I met the girl with warm feet. For the first time, I didn’t have to heat up a woman’s legs in bed. This created an urge within me that made me want to dance, to float about. It did not last long. The people who prepared the weather report predicted cold wind and I began to have reservations. I was falling again, but not solely as a result of my body’s weight, which is very natural, but also due to other powers who were plotting and fabricating an endless void beneath me. I only realized this because I had a gut feeling, and my ganglia swelled up—it is not easy to discern if you are falling when in motion. Everything around you jumbles; people, ideas, and the universe, and all the while you think that it’s all normal.
And like this, I fell straight onto my back in a general direction; I saw Mr. Masturbation standing there with all his belongings strewn about, his knapsacks strapped to his back and a sycamore leaf covering his junk. He was wearing a coat and naturally had his hand in his pocket. With the park as a backdrop, Mr. Masturbation smiled idiotically while observing the ongoing traffic. Happy Mr. Masturbation. I got up and walked along and thought of Mr. Eftíchios. How does this all cancel out? How does he come into play? Why is his trench coat buttoned up the wrong way? How is his sycamore leaf staying put with all this wind? I noticed that he, too, was severed and that his umbilical cord was nonexistent, and his puppet strings were attached to a distant purpose. His only connection was to himself. This is when I understood, when I realized: Under his coat, he was stroking the only cord he had left; his intestine. It was hanging there. This is what they had allowed him to keep, and it was a wonderful way to communicate with the world. He did not need to hold on to anything else because everything had come full circle.
Why do I bother with trying to communicate with other people? What does the commune need now? Why don’t I act like every Mr. Masturbation or Mr. Eftíchios? Why do I lose myself in my writing? It’s all about me and my little car. Me and my little shop. Me and my house. So many things are in my periphery, I do not need to create connections with other people. If possible, I would like to avoid wandering around this morose landscape any longer. Come on, you bastard, write about normal people—the ones you walk past, even for just a second, the ones who made impressions on you. Write about what it is like to live in the yard, the jail cells and barracks, or the man who used to sit on a stool and teach his friend how to play the bouzouki.
But of course, there was no bouzouki. All of the musical beginnings, variations, and endings were instead played by people’s mouths and hands. Those are the ones who keep the score.