OTHER FACES, OTHER PHASES
My uncle was now gone--gone, let us hope, to where he was to find rest
from racial hatred, rest from national ambition.
Gone though he was, his influence over my life was never to go
entirely--in spite of radical modifications. He had enriched my
childhood with things beyond my age, yet things which I would not give
up for the most normal and sweetest of childhoods. He had taught me the
Greek Revolution as no book could ever have done; and he had given me
an idea of the big things expected of men. He had given me a worship
for my race amounting to superstition, and bequeathed to me a hatred
for the Turks which would have warped my intelligence, had I not been
blessed almost from my infancy with a power of observing for myself,
and also had not good fortune given me little Turkish Kiamelé as a
constant companion.
In the abstract, the Turks, from the deeds they had done, had taken
their place in my mind as the cruellest of races; yet in the concrete
that race was represented by dark-eyed, pretty little Kiamelé, the
sweetest and brightest memory of an otherwise bleak infancy.
Alongside the deeds of the Greeks, and the bloodshed of the Greek
Revolution, I had from her “The Arabian Nights.” She told them to me
in her picturesque, dramatic way, becoming a horse when a horse had to
come into the tale, and any other animal when that animal appeared; and
she imitated them with so great an ingenuity that she suggested the
very presence of the animal, with little tax on my imagination. She
talked with a thick voice, when a fat man spoke, and a terribly funny
piping voice when a thin one spoke. She draped herself exquisitely with
her veil, when a princess came into the tale; and her face assumed
the queerest look when the _ev-sahibs_, or supernatural sprites,
appeared. Had it not been for her and her “Arabian Nights,” I should
never have laughed, or known there was a funny side to life; for I had
little enough occasion for laughter with my uncle. Even to this day,
when I am amused, I laugh in the oriental way of my little Kiamelé.
After the death of my uncle, the course of my life was changed. I made
the acquaintance of my own family, who now came to live on the island,
in the same old house where he and I had lived. It took me a long time
to adjust myself to the new life, so different from the old, and
especially to meet children, and to try to talk with them. I had known
that other children existed, but I thought that each one was brought up
alone on an island with a grand-uncle, who taught it the history of its
race.
My father and I quickly became friends, and I soon began to talk
with him in the grown-up way I had talked with my uncle, much to his
amusement, I could see.
One day when I was sitting in his lap, with my arms encircling his
neck, I said to him:
“Father, do you feel the Turkish yoke?”
He gave a start. “What are you talking about, child?”
It was then I told him what I knew of our past, and of our obligations
toward the future; how some day we must rise and throw off that yoke,
and hear the holy liturgy again chanted in St Sophia.
He listened, interested, yet a flush of anger overspread his face. He
patted me, and murmured to himself: “And we thought she would grow
stronger living in the country.”
He bent down and kissed me. “I would not bother much, just now, about
these things,” he said. “I’d play and grow strong.”
“But, father,” I protested, “uncle told me never to forget those
things--not even for a day; to remember them constantly, and to bring
up my sons to carry forward the flag.”
“You see,” my father replied, very seriously, “you are not eight yet,
and I do not believe in early marriages; so you have twelve years
before you are married and thirteen before you have a son. During those
years there are a lot of nice and funny things to think about--and,
above all, you must grow strong physically.”
I must say I was quite disappointed at the way he took things. I was
quite miserable about it, and might have become morbid--for I liked
to cling to the big dreams of the future--had it not been for my
half-brother. He was fourteen years older than I, and he, too, like
my uncle lived in the past. His past, however, went beyond my uncle’s
past; and from him I was to learn, not of the woes of Greece, but of
the glory of Greece, of her golden age, and of the time when she, Queen
of the World, was first in civilization.
My horizon was gilded also by the Greek mythology--that wonderful Greek
mythology, which to my brother was living, not dead. He spoke one day
in such a way of Olympus that I exclaimed:
“You talk as if Olympus really existed, and were not only mythology.”
“Of course, it exists,” he replied. “I used to live there myself, until
they punished me by sending me down here. I cannot tell you all the
particulars, because, when Zeus is about to exile one, one is given a
potion which puts him to sleep, and while asleep he is carried beyond
the limits of the Olympian realm, and is left outside to live the life
of a man. But though he forgets a great deal--as, for example, how to
find his way back--he is left with the memory of his former existence.
That is his punishment. After his death, however, he is forgiven and
returns to Olympus again.”
I stared at my brother, but his calm assurance, and the faith I had in
him, made me implicitly believe him--and to-day I think he really more
than half believed it himself.
After this I was not surprised to have him tell me that the gods of
Greece were not dead, but forced to retire on the mountains of Olympus,
because Christianity had to come first. “You see, little one, you will
presently learn the Old Testament, as you are now being taught the
New--and as I am teaching you Mythology. You will find out, as you grow
older, that you need all three to balance things up.”
From him I heard not only the names of the great Greek writers, but
he read to me by the hour from them. At first they were very hard to
understand, since the Greek we speak is so much simpler than the Greek
of Aristophanes and Sophocles; but since, after all, it is the same
language, I learned to recite it pretty well before even I knew how to
read and write.
It was from my brother, too, that I learned to know the Greek
Revolution as our great modern poets sang of it; and before the year
was over I could recite the “Chani of Gravia” and other celebrated
poems, as American children recite “Mother Goose.”
One day there came into our garden, where my brother and I sat, a
handsome young man, saying: “They told me you were in the garden, so I
came to find you.” He sat down by us and plunged into a conversation
about a certain game they were getting up, and of which my brother was
the captain. We escorted him to the gate, when he left us, and after he
was out of ear-shot I asked my brother who he was, as he had forgotten
to introduce us.
“It is Arif Bey,” he replied rather curtly.
“You don’t mean a real Turk?” I cried.
“Why, yes.”
“But you seemed so friendly with him!”
“Why not? I like him first rate.”
“How can you be friends with a Turk?”
“He’s an awfully good fellow.”
“But ought we to like them, and treat them as if they were our equals?”
“Well, what can we do, sister? They are the masters here, and we belong
to the Turkish officialdom. We have got to be friendly with them.”
“But we ought to hate them just the same, since we must kill them.
Wouldn’t you kill him, if you could?”
“I don’t think I hate Arif Bey--and as for killing him, I hope I shall
never have to.”
“But if we are not to kill them, how are we going to be free again, and
how can the Greek flag fly over the Galata Tower?”
“Look here, baby, what you need is to play more and not think so much.
Now come, and I’ll teach you to climb trees, and for every tree you
climb yourself I’ll tell you a tale about the time when I lived on
Mount Olympus.”
I was agile by nature, in spite of being frail, and in no time I
learned to climb even the tallest trees on our place, an occupation
which delighted me as much as anything I had ever done.
Arif Bey I saw again and again, for I became the constant companion of
either my father or my brother, and I could not find it in my heart
to hate him. A few years older than my brother, he was taller and his
shoulders were broader, and he carried himself with a dash worthy of
the old demi-gods of Greece. As for his eyes they were as kind and good
to look into as those of my brother. What is more I was never afraid in
his presence, and one day he spoke so tenderly of his sick mother that
I pretty much changed my mind about the delight of seeing him killed.
It was then that I talked very eulogistically about him to my brother;
but one never can tell what grown-ups will do--they are the most
inconsistent of human beings.
“Look here, baby”--he interrupted my praises of Arif Bey--“Arif is
handsome and a nice chap, and I can trust him up to a certain point;
but don’t get to thinking he is as good as we are. A Turk never is.
They have enough Greek blood in them to look decent, but they have
enough Turkish left to be Asiatics, and don’t forget that. An Asiatic
is something inferior at best. Look at Arif Bey himself, for example.
He is about the best of them, and yet, barely twenty-seven, he has two
wives already. There is Asia for you!”
I was quite perplexed in regard to the proper attitude of mind toward
the Turks. The only girl I knew was Kiamelé--and I adored her. The
only man was Arif Bey--and he got so mixed up in my mind with the
demi-gods that I did not even mind his two wives. My uncle had been
dead for almost a year, and I had no one to incite me against them.
The old Greek writers and the beautiful mythology was beginning to
make me tolerant toward everybody. I began to lose the feeling of the
yoke, since Greece had once been the greatest of great countries.
When one has a past achievement to be proud of, one bears a temporary
humiliation better--and there was so much in the Greek past that the
weight of the yoke lifted perceptibly from my neck. It is true I kept
the little flag nailed under the iconostasis, before which I said my
prayers every night, and when I felt that I was not quite as loyal to
it as I ought to be, I used to pray to the Christian gods to help me
to remember it. I say “gods,” because to my mind God and Christ, and
St Nicholas, and St George, and the rest of the saints were much the
same sort of a group as the old Greek gods, now in seclusion on Mount
Olympus.