The Walk of Life - Chapter 3

What surprised her the most was his calm manner that seemed to border to insensibility. But no, he wasn't insensible, and he's already proven that, he was just peaceful. And the peacefulness that ran through his whole being was so obvious that it could turn someone else mad. How could that be? How could he be like that? It was almost out-worldly the way he talked and acted. To her eyes he was wrapped in mystery, a mystery that she was eager to investigate.

They were walking in quiet for a long time that night. He asked her naught and he didn't even try to find an answer to the many questions that have started piling in his head since the moment he met her. Could it be that he wasn't that interested to know how she found herself on a Saturday night-Sunday morning, sitting at a park, alone and in tears? She asked him, without words, and so he didn't answer. At the moment she thought he didn't care, but as he would explain later he was simply letting her to decide whether she wanted to talk to him or not. He didn't want to blackmail her answers. Besides, he had already guessed the reason why, so all that remained were the details. The truth is that she wasn't willing to share those details with him at the moment because of her lack of faith in people. And if she couldn't talk to the people who knew her about it, how could she ever tell everything to a complete stranger?

So they kept silently walking their path towards nowhere in particular. They'd listen to each other's fade breaths once in a while and steal glimpses of each other's figures, but no more than that. It was as if they were walking in the forest and not the city streets. They hardly noticed the vehicles passing by, nor the voices of the other night walkers.

She doesn't know, she can't tell with a certainty since time stood still that night, how long that walk lasted, and she could never guess how much it would mean to her one day in the not so distant future. That simple walk would open for her the gates to a new life, a life full of tenderness and hard truths, clashes and reconciliations, love and repugnance.

Now she shuts her eyes forcefully and paints in a masterful way on the canvas of their inevitable past. She paints them as they walk, like friends and strangers at once, in the old city streets, listening to the sounds of the waking day and the dying night, and her inner sight is flooded with the colors of a rosy dawn and his warm unexpected presence.

No, that was not the happiest night-day of her life, but perhaps it was the most important of all. It was the beginning. The beginning that would be followed by many endings. The beginning of everything and nothing. Of the nothingness that now fills her life.

When I'm away I feel closer to you than ever, he once said, trying to find an excuse about his proclivity to leave every so often, for his need to visit new places, meet new people. If I don't miss you then I won't be able to love you the way I should, like my ideal you, he added, making her smile, in melancholy. Now she feels exactly like he describes, closer to him than ever, as he accompanies her from sleep to awakening, as he emerges so serene, and angry, and stubborn and tender out of her memories.

She regrets it. That she drove him away. That he left her. But she believes that things happened the way they were supposed to. Did they though? No, she's not sure about that, she could never be. He keeps insisting in his letters that everything happens for a reason, and that the pain of parting is far better than the daily death of life, and things like that, but she can't really follow his logic, agree with it.

Often enough she loses her head and then finds herself feeling like she hates him, she despises him, but not long after the mist clears from her delusional sky, and calmness, though unwelcome most of the time, returns and then she loves him again. She loves him with a lazy passion, almost drugged, because he have helped her find her own way in life, and then vanished like a passing shadow on an unending universe.

She's not kind to herself. She keeps asking him tough questions. She thinks that the answers can offer her an illusion of salvation. What would she do if she hadn't met him? Who would she be? Where would she go? These questions weigh in her thoughts and though she secretly knows the answers, they are softly killing her. She was saved by his love. He saved her from her own self and her false passions. He saved her from a self that wasn't hers to begin with. And she thanks the unknown gods of fortune for that, and she blames them, for the gift they give her, for the one they have taken away.

She feels strange. It is quite weird how someone like her, that makes her living through the art of word, cannot truly and clearly write on the blank page all that she wants, to put all the words in line and try to express how she feels. Perhaps, in the end, all her words were meant for him. But, maybe, she really doesn't know how she exactly feels at the moment, and thus she can't describe it.

Nevertheless, she is certain about one thing: that she is now poor; poor and rich at the same time. Poor in her day to day life. Rich in memories of the past one.

She's now wholly wrapped in a veil of sadness and she has no clue as to whether this self-imposed solitude could be the medicine that she needs. But, even if it isn't, that doesn't change anything. She wants to be all by herself. She's sick of people. People who have eyes that do not see, ears that do not listen. She's sick of them and they are sick of her, since none of them can any longer stand to be close to this great melancholic. No one can feel her, or even get her. And the truth is that she feels sorry. She's deeply sorry not for herself but for them. She no longer wishes to sacrifice her soul for their sake. She will not wear her fake happy face for them. But she's also sorry that she can find joy no more in the small and the unimportant, the ephemeral things in life. She's sorry that she can no longer give kisses in the air surrounding the ears, and exchange small compliments, extracts of lies, with the others, as the rules of social contact dictate.

And she's full of rage. A rage so fierce that seems to rule her every moment, destroy it, and which keeps her soul enslaved. It may one day calm down, weaken, and turn itself into something else, something completely different, but probably that's not going to happen any time soon. Unless, of course, he comes back to her. Or unless she meets someone like him, an exact replica, someone who will get to know her without asking her anything. The letter…

The image was taken from here.

 

Mademoiselle Fantine by Ana Zumani

After dinner.

The man is sitting in a low armchair and smoking a cigar.

The young woman is sitting next to him, wearing a black silk dress. A lace made of tulle embroidered with white pearls adorns her tall neck.

All of a sudden she places her hand over his, as if flattering him, as if pleading with him…

"What's wrong with you, doll?" wonders the man, "you've danced so much, laughed so much… what is the matter?"

Silence…

"Nannita?"

"Nothing… we are cumbersome creatures… the acrobats aren't… not to feel yourself… how great would that be…!"

"Does your head hurt, Nannita?"

"No… where has all the movement gone… the one which wherever it is, something beautiful is born? The swallows for example, the wildcats, the hurricanes. The Greeks used to run… the earth runs around the sun and itself… that's why everything is beautiful… the water runs, it flies… and if it doesn't fly it will become a fen… the wind runs, it flies… if it doesn't fly the clouds won't leave… but we are unwieldy.  Cantatrice grotesque. Ballerina."

He: "And Mademoiselle Fantine;… The great eccentric?"

She: "What is the nozzle? Movement! The maelstrom, Katrakis? Movement! Strange attractors. Event horizon… movement… Pavlova… how wonderful was that arrogant disposition of the joints…"

"Nannita…!"

She: "Mademoiselle Fantine… yes… she is movement… a movement that celebrates her own orgy… that explodes because of excessive speed… explosion… implosion… that beats herself… that shakes… who could self-sarcastically laugh herself to death. She's a gamin, a girl, a genius, a whirligig… something alive. Fantine will never grow old… the age of the cat cannot be guessed… to be like nature… how wonderful!... Fantine will never grow old… she is like running water, like crashing water… a waterfall… Fantine… yes!... I say, Yes!..."

He: "Fantine is an intoxicated majesty, a majesty that became arrogant and is now oscillating…"

She: "No! She is life… life like it should be… whatever living comes out from deep within contains its inebriation, its highs, its lows, its eccentricities, its craziness, its childishness, everything… but we have the "indispensable", that creeping "indispensable"… to everything!... I say, Yes…"

He: "Sweet, beloved, you are out of control, jubilant. Do you love Fantine that much?"

She: "Yes, I do. Are you jealous?"

He: "Almost…"

She: "I love myself in her. She's a side of my being that atrophies, withers… that cannot grow in this hard life. Sometimes I want to be something like a resounding laughter, something to kiss… something that has become insobriety… a doll that shakes her legs…"

She throws her head into her hands…

He: "What is your problem, Nannita?"

She: "Nothing… do you still love me?... say yes… say yes!... but I have no movement, I am not a whirligig…"

He: "Is jubilation not a movement of the soul, honey? Doesn't it spin you? And not only that. I'm dizzy myself… in what a wonderful way it is that you admire a ballerina grotesque!"

He kisses her hair, tenderly…

Translated from Greek by yours truly. My thanks to Ana Zumani for giving me the permission to publish it in this blog.

Image taken from here. 
 

Feature: Petros Markaris. The Greek Master of Crime Fiction

He’s a household name among crime fiction aficionados. His books have been translated into fourteen languages and are sold in more than twenty countries in the world. His last novel, Peraiosis, has sold fourteen editions in Greece (that should be over thirty thousand copies) in a little less than a month. And yet not many people know him in the English speaking world. I believe that sooner or later that is going to change.

Petros Markaris is one of those writers that somehow manage to try their hand in many different writing fields and succeed. He’s written crime novels, short stories, plays and screenplays (for Theo Angelopoulos among others), and translated the works of Goethe and Brecht from German to Greek, as well as quite a few books from and to Turkish. And he’s created a fictional hero that seems to openly express the thoughts, feelings and worries of the Greek people about what’s going on around them.

Costas Haritos, a CID chief who lives in Athens with his eccentric wife and troublesome daughter, doesn’t have many things to share with his European or American counterparts. Forget the lonesome figures of the American procedurals or thrillers, leave behind the angry souls fighting crime in a system that seems to protect the perpetrators more than the victims, and do not expect to meet at his face the guzzler detective that tries to drown his sorrows in a bottle of whiskey. Haritos is something and somebody else. Not that he doesn’t drink or doesn’t like his food, not that; the difference is that he does everything in moderation.

Once the readers get to know him well they’ll come to understand that he lives and breathes for his job, but that doesn’t turn him blind to the world. He may love what he does for a living, but he’s not obsessive about enforcing the law if the ends don’t justify the means. He wants to do what’s right, according to his own code of ethics, and if to accomplish that he has to turn a blind eye every now and then, well, he’ll just do that. He’s kind of a loner, truth be told, but he’s a man of the people as well. He can feel their pain and their agony, he can speak their tongue.

In these turbulent times for Greece, Markaris seems to be the only writer who can really talk about what is going on in the country. In 2010 he brought out the first book in a trilogy (The Trilogy of the Crisis) titled Overdue Loans (Lixiprothesma Daneia) about the current economic and social realities in his homeland. In that book an unlikely avenger starts killing local and foreign bankers and urges the public, through posters on the city’s walls, not to pay their debts to the banks. Haritos needs to find and arrest him before things get completely out of hand.

In Peraiosis or Completion that came out a year later a man that calls himself the Tax Collector starts killing tax evaders in order to scare rich people into paying their taxes and thus filling the state coffers, and Haritos finds himself in a moral dilemma, since he really doesn’t know what to do. He suffered a big salary cut, his bonuses are no more, his daughter is about to emigrate to find a job; and he’s supposed to arrest the man that targets the very people that did everything they possibly could to lead the country into catastrophe? Should he do that? And, moreover, does he want to do it?

The third part of the trilogy came out towards the end of last year, it is called Psomi, Pedia, Eleftheria (Bread, Education, Freedom) and in it the author turns his gaze on the so-called Genia tou Politexneiou (The Generation of the Polytechnic University) which helped to bring down the dictatorship in Greece in 1973. The young people behind the revolt were to rise to power in the years to come and betray all their beliefs and break all their promises in order to cling to their posts in government and the glory that came with them.

As one can gather Markaris is not only a crime fiction writer but also a social commentator. He keeps his eyes and mind open, he listens to what the people all around him have to say, he watches what’s going on in his front yard and really talks his mind. As one of Haritos´s friends says in Che Committed Suicide: “The revolution became a t-shirt;” and an empty one at that.

The latter is one of four novels by the author available in English. The other three are The Late-Night News, Zone Defence and Deadline in Athens. With which book should a reader start the journey into Haritos´ world? Well, any of the above will do, since they all are stand-alone novels. I personally started with Che Committed Suicide and then went back to the older books in the list and didn’t regret it for a minute.

Markaris is a consistent writer who keeps his standards high. If I was asked by someone to tell which famous detectives he reminds me of, I would say Michael Connelly’s Harry Bosch and Ian Rankin’s John Rebus. What’s the common denominator? Their unflinching quest for the truth. Because in the end it’s all about the truth, isn’t it? Will it set you free though? Haritos is not one to ask, or say.

If you really want to find out what is going in Greece right now Markaris is your man. And if you love high quality crime fiction he can definitely deliver the goods.

This article was first published at the American website Criminal Element more than a year ago.

Nikos Kazantzakis - The Saviors of God

The most famous writer that ever came out of Greece was Nikos Kazantzakis, the author of the widely acclaimed "The Last Temptation of Christ" and "Zorba the Greek". Today for you i have an extract from his "bible", the Askitiki, or, as it was translated in English, "The Saviors of God":

We come from a dark abyss, we end in a dark abyss, and we call the luminous interval life. As soon as we are born the return begins, at once the setting forth and the coming back; we die in every moment. Because of this many have cried out: The goal of life is death! But as soon as we are born we begin the struggle to create, to compose, to turn matter into life; we are born in every moment. Because of this many have cried out: The goal of ephemeral life is immortality! In the temporary living organism these two streams collide ... both opposing forces are holy. It is our duty, therefore, to grasp that vision which can embrace and harmonize these two enormous, timeless, and indestructible forces, and with this vision to modulate our thinking and our action.

The Preparation : First Duty

With clarity and quiet, I look upon the world and say: All that I see, hear, taste, smell, and touch are the creations of my mind.The sun comes up and the sun goes down in my skull. Out of one of my temples the sun rises, and into the other the sun sets.The stars shine in my brain; ideas, men, animals browse in my temporal head; songs and weeping fill the twisted shells of my ears and storm the air for a moment.
"I do not know whether behind appearances there lives and moves a secret essence superior to me. Nor do I ask; I do not care. I create phenomena in swarms, and paint with a full palette a gigantic and gaudy curtain before the abyss. Do not say, "Draw the curtain that I may see the painting." The curtain is the painting.
To SEE and accept the boundaries of the human mind without vain rebellion, and in these severe limitations to work ceaselessly without protest — this is where man's first duty lies.
I subdue matter and force it to become my mind's good medium. I rejoice in plants, in animals, in man and in gods, as though they were my children. I feel all the universe nestling about me and following me as though it were my own body.
Read more at the Source
Bio: Wikipedia

Book Choice: The Last Temptation of Christ