Nine

All the stories I have loved were rivers, but I would like you to see the one I have decided to tell as a sea: who will ever exhaust it? Certainly not me. Yet I have a longing to reach it and enter the inexhaustible. I am referring to the mystery of the Word, and I go to celebrate it in the courtyard of childhood. There I lay out my castles, with ashes from Auschwitz, the unblemished tears of Turin, soil from the Green Line, verses from Siberia, Athonite relics and a few strolls through the arcades of Athens. If I am not mistaken, the foam will be called Kronaka, that is to say, Chronicle. The rest, perhaps eternity, I hope will be my depths. The publication is made possible by the kind sponsorship of the Kimonos Arts Centre.

L. S. 8605 SPECIAL LETTER BY ORDER 13.3.1957. Time 7.30 pm. The most beautiful day of my life. _The most beautiful hour. / Don’t ask why. / She’s no little angel but she looks just like one; / a little baby girl look how she looks at me! / In her innocent gaze a glimmer hovers / and a new star seems to be born with her. / Yes, I know – each of us was born so innocent; / but… each of us strayed into the thick darkness / and when – alas – they remembered, their heart was empty; / and perhaps it was too late._ Thus begins the final letter of the last EOKA fighter to be hanged by the British at Nicosia Central Prison, in the early hours of 14 March 1957. His name was Evagoras Pallikarides. He was 19 years old. He was the ninth to die by hanging. This is how the final letter ends: I send my love to you all… in writing and from afar. Evagoras. From this distance, I am copying down a few things.

Paris, 1986. One winter’s night, two men meet in a bistro. One is the journalist Giorgos Iliadis. The other is many. The journalist says: ‘Mr Sampson, your life so far has been turbulent and controversial. […] The same people have called you both a hero and a traitor. Two main periods dominate your life: 1955 and 1974. Do you believe that the Sampson of 1974 tarnished the glory of the Sampson of 1955?” The Samson of ’86 replies in ’98, speaking of himself in the third person: “In the public consciousness, Nikos Samson remains the man he was in 1955 and 1963.” So, how many Samsons are there? Above all: who are they? Look and see: Change this conversation, for now is not the time / to tell you my secret, but as far as I can / I shall keep it hidden deeper still. For only by keeping it hidden / shall I be freed from my unworthy bonds and my sufferings. So spoke Aeschylus’ hero, the Titan, in whose name Nikos Samson once signed a proclamation: PROMETHEUS. I don’t know if it’s right (probably not), but the above lines remind me of that song by Vougiouklaki, which has a secret hidden in the depths of her heart that she will never reveal. It may be her secret marriage to the journalist Iliadis in 1982, which the great star revealed in 1993, saying: ‘I pulled a fast one on you’. I intend to do the same myself.

On 20 July 1974, the Turkish General Staff issued a proclamation regarding the invasion of Cyprus, the closing words of which seem to serve as a preface to my work: ‘Through today’s operation, we have opened an unforgettable chapter in our heroic history and in that of humanity.’ Because I love heroic stories, I thought I would translate this page into Greek, and into the other languages spoken by the dead, and share it with humanity. To do it properly, I drew on a novel by the cosmopolitan writer Joseph Roth, who comments on it himself in a letter: ‘It is the first and last time I have written anything historical. The devil take it. The Antichrist himself pushed me to do this. It is a shame, a shame that anyone should want to give shape and form once again to events that have already happened – a shame and a disgrace.” The letter is undated, and perhaps recalls the title Event 74, without the apostrophe of the year before the number. That must mean something. Roth concludes with the phrase: ‘There is something sacrilegious here – I don’t know exactly what.’ Could my book be blasphemous? There is one way to find out, I would say, and a very specific time, hour, and season, namely the following: when all things turn to smoke (as Heraclitus teaches), our nostrils will recognise them. On 20 July, the prophet Elijah is certainly honoured – the Prophet, that is, of Fire. K.M.