The Sea Gulls: A Story

by ELIAS VENEZIS

1

THE little island ofl the north of Lesbos, between Petra and Molyvos, is barren and uninhabited. It has no name, and fishermen who work in those seas simply call it “the island.” No trees grow on it, only a few shrubs. Three miles away the mountains of Lesbos compose a gentle harmony of line, movement, and color. In face of this prodigality, the bare islet with its severe outline seems still more of a desert. It is as if God had forgotten it when he made the sea and the dry land in the first seven days of the world.

But in summer, from this bare strip of earth, you can see the sun set in the open sea. Then the waters take color, and continually change every minute, as if the light were melting in little waves. When it is a very clear evening, you can distinguish the mountains of Athos coming out of the sea, and then slowly disappearing in the falling dusk. At this hour old Dimitri, the sole inhabitant of the desert island, will perform the one action that unites him with life and with his fellow men: he will light the lamp in the lighthouse. The light will begin to flare up and to flicker, again and again, in the same rhythm, gravely, inevitably — like the dark powers of life, like destiny, like death.

The old lighthouse keeper drew his boat up onto the sand. He fastened it well, in case the weather might change in the night and the sea get rough. He looked at it once more, before taking the path to the lighthouse.

“Well, that journey is over . . .”he said quietly. He spoke to himself, and then was silent. This crossing to the opposite shore took place once a month. He went for his provisions — flour, oil, and the few other things he needed. In earlier years when he made the crossing he used to stay the whole day in the village. He would talk to old friends, hear the local news and the news of the world, whether people were at peace or war.

The customs officer would pay him his wages. “Well, come back all right next month, Dimitri.”

The old man would nod his head and thank him. “God willing, if we’re alive, my son.”

The rest of the time till he returned to “his island” he spent in going up to the little chapel of Our Lady, on the rock with the hundred steps, to say his prayers. He would cross his arms in front of the old icon, bow his head, and pray for his two sons, lost in the Asia Minor disaster, for other people, and lastly for himself.

“If they’re alive, protect them,” he prayed for his sons. “ Keep them from anger and from bad luck. Keep them from the knife . . .” He would murmur a Hail Mary, and anything else in the way of a prayer that he knew, his old legs trembling. “And for me, it’s time to rest . . .”he would say, as his eyes filled with tears.

Each time he went down the hundred steps with a lighter heart. He would stop on the road to watch children playing. They all knew him and when they saw him they shouted: “Uncle Dimitri! Uncle Dimitri!” He bought them nuts and distributed them among them, and they shouted gaily: “Don’t be long in coming back, Grandpa! Don’t be long!”

So it used to be every time, on every visit. But as the years passed, he drew away from human contact. Solitude gradually mastered him, absorbed him, day by day, as if with its terrible power it was filtering into his very being. Now he would try to shorten the time he had to stay in the village for his business. He even gave up the climb to the chapel on the rock. “Forgive me, I can’t climb any more,” he would say to God, as if it were a sin. ”I can pray to you anywhere, and you see how feeble I am.”

And when he got back to his island, after every journey, he would stay up for a long time in prayer, under the stars. He no longer asked for news of what was going on in the world. He didn’t want to know. Day by day the whole world tightened round the little island, closing it in with the deep sea and its colors, as the sun declined.

At last the only people he spoke to were fishermen, who put in to his island when bad weather overtook them. They stayed on the shore, waiting for the sea to calm, and talked about their troubles and their luck. They would spend the whole night there with the old man. Sometimes just before dawn, when other subjects were exhausted, he would speak of his two lost sons.

“Who knows?” said the fishermen. “Perhaps they’re alive and will come back, Dimitri. Just like your sea gulls that came back,”

He did not speak or move; his eyes stared into the night.

“ Yes, Dimitri, like your sea gulls. Your boys may come back as they did. Don’t give up hope.”Then they would talk about the old man’s sea gulls.

“Is it true, Dimitri, that you managed to tame them? Nobody ever heard of sea gulls being tame . . .”

“ Yes, they were tame, my sons. Everything here below can be tamed —except man.”

They asked him to tell them the story of the sea gulls again, though they knew it, as everyone did who lived on the opposite shore. He had found them among the rocks, two tiny sea gulls, still unfledged. It was winter, and he took them to his cottage beside the lighthouse. He kept them and brought them up, feeding them on the minnows from his net. One day he thought of giving them names.

“Well, you, we’!l call you . . .” That day his heart and his memory were full of his two children —at the time when they were very young, and he used to shout after them. “Well . . . we’ll call you Vasilaki,” he said to one bird. “And let’s call you Argyri.” So from then on he began to call them by his sons’ names, and in time the sea gulls almost seemed to recognize them.

When the birds were grown — it was almost spring—he thought one morning that it was a shame to keep them in captivity. He decided to set them free. He opened the big wicker cage and took out one bird. He held it in bis hands and stroked it. He felt his heart lighten.

“Well, good-by, Yasilaki!” he said to the bird, and opened his hands to let it fly. “The gull flew away. He took out the other, stroking it as he had the first, and lot it go too. Everything was peaceful that day, and the night that followed was quiet. Only he felt still more alone.

That evening—he had gone to bed early—he heard light tappings on the cottage window. He went to look . . . and could hardly believe it. He was overcome with joy, as if it were his sons returning. He opened the door for the gulls to fly in.

And from then on this is what happened: the birds would fly off in the morning, voyage as far as the Asiatic mainland, or to Sigri, but they always came back in the evening. They would join in flocks of other gulls, and often flew over the island. If they flew low, the old man would recognize them by the ash-colored markings under their wings. When he went out in his boat, and they were circling near, the gulls would fly low and screech round him. The other fishermen got to know them, and when they saw them they laughed, and shouted: “Vasilaki! Argyri! ”

2

So THE days went by on the desert island — one like another — an uninterrupted series of days and nights leading to nothing, except to death. But one summer evening something unusual happened. The gulls did not return. Nor did they come back next day, nor the following night. “Perhaps they made a very long journey,” the old man told himself, trying to cheat his anxiety.

Next morning he was sitting on the stone parapet of the lighthouse, looking out to sea. About a mile offshore the sea was being furrowed as if dolphins were playing there. He liked to watch for dolphins passing, following their slow movements as they rose like silver out of the water and slipped back into it again.

“It must be dolphins again.” But soon he saw clearly that it was not. “They’re people!” he cried in astonishment.

He went down to the shore to wait. Soon he made out that it was a boy and a girl. They were swimming side by side, with slow strokes, full of confidence. And the little waves closed over the furrow they drew behind them. What could they be doing? He did not remember people swimming there ever before. Nor did there seem to be any boat around from which they could have fallen.

Soon they had reached shore. The two wet bodies stood on the beach, shaking the sea off themselves. The boy looked the girl in the eye, stretched his arms above his head, drew a deep breath, and said: “Ah! That was fine!” The girl made the same motion with her arms, more slowly: “It was fine!” Then they ran towards the lighthouse keeper.

“You’re Uncle Dimitri?” asked the boy.

The old man stood up, turning his head away from the girl’s naked body that glittered in the bright sunlight. “Yes, I am,” he said, in confusion. “Have you had an accident?”

“Oh, no!” said the boy quickly. “Yesterday my friend and I were saying we should try to swim out. here . . . and here we are!”

“Where have you come from?” asked the old man, in astonishment.

“Why, from Petra, over there.”

Dimitri did not know what to say, and could only murmur that he never remembered anyone’s getting to the island without a boat before. He invited them to come up to the lighthouse and he led the way, with the young people following. They could neither of them be more than eighteen or nineteen. The old man went in front, and his years as he climbed seemed to weigh on him more heavily than usual as if they were reproachful because he would not let them rest.

They sat on the parapet of the lighthouse— below them the waveless Aegean and the sun trembling above it.

“Where do you come from?" asked the old man.

“We’re students in Athens,” said the girl. “I study chemistry, and he’s at the Polytechnic.”

“Oh, really! . . .” murmured the old man, without understanding.

“Have you ever been to Athens?” asked the girl.

“No, never.”

“Would you like to go?”

His voice was soft, could scarcely be heard: “No child, it’s too late now.”

“ You must be very much alone here.”

“Yes, I’m very much alone, my child.”

They were silent. A short time passed. A flight of gulls went by, high up in the sky. The old man got up and went into the cottage to find something to offer them. From the little window he could see the two young people, where they had stretched out on the parapet. Drops of water from the sea still trembled on their bodies and their faces. The sun had tanned them deeply, and they lay there like two bronze statues cast up by the sea — a god of youth and a goddess of health. The girl’s black hair fell over her shoulders, and a deep light moved in her large dark eyes. The boy lifted himself and bent towards her, drawn to her as if in a dream. Very gently his fingertips touched her cheek.

“Hrysoula ...” he only murmured her name, his lips trembling with emotion. The dark eyes were lifted and remained motionless for a moment, fixed on the boy’s face. Then she clasped her hands about his head and kissed him passionately.

Everything was simple and quiet on the desert island in that blessed moment, and all was quiet in the old man’s heart. He was filled with happiness that summer morning, his eyes brimming with tears. This unforeseen tenderness that had entered his solitude, and the motionless sea . . .

“Grandpa, shall we come in too?” the girl called.

“I’m coming, I’m coming,” he said in confusion.

He brought them fruit, almonds, and cold water. “I’ve nothing else . . .” he murmured, as if asking their pardon.

“Sit down, sit down, Grandpa.” The girl took him by the hand and made him sit down by her.

“Come back tomorrow,” he said timidly. “I’ll catch some fish for you tonight.”

“We have to go home tomorrow,” said the girl sadly. “What a pity we were here all these days without coming over! Are you always alone like this, Grandpa?”

“Always, my child.”

“Ah, now I understand about the gulls,” said the boy.

“Yes, my son, that’s what it is. Solitude.”

“ You must forgive them. Grandpa,”the boy said again, a moment later. “If they’d known, they would never have done it.”

The old man did not understand. He paused, bewildered. “Who are you talking about, my son?”

“The people who killed your sea gulls, I mean. They were friends of ours.”

The old man felt his knees trembling. “Did you say . . . they killed them?”

“Didn’t you know . . . ?” The boy bit his lip, but it was too late. He told him the story. They had gone out shooting, all the young people, down by the shore; the two gulls flew lower than the others, and their friend brought them down. Later some fishermen had recognized the ash-colored markings on their wings.

The old man listened silently. It was nothing, only two sea gulls.

“They didn’t know, Grandpa . . .” said the girl, gently, moved by the dumb grief which she saw on the old face. “They didn’t know . . .”

He nodded his head slowly in assent. “Yes, my child. They couldn’t have known . . .”

Some time went by. “ We must go,” said the boy. The girl got up. “Yes, we must start back.” They went ahead, the old man following a little behind them. They reached the shore.

“Good-by, Grandpa,” said the girl. She took his hand, and bent to kiss it. He stroked her long hair. “God bless you,” he murmured with emotion.

They waded into the sea and swam off. For a long time he watched the little furrow their bodies drew in the sea. Then they faded from his sight, and the sea was empty and infinite.

Night fell. He sat on the parapet of the lighthouse, and the hours went by. Everything passed before his dim eyes: his youth, the sons he had brought up and lost, and the people who had hurt him. All passed, all faded — even the two young people who had kissed each other on that very spot a few hours before. And a flight of gulls flying high, two with ash-colored wings. They were gone too. Nothing remained that would come back. His head sank forward and his tears fell on the dry earth. Above him the lighthouse lamp flickered, again and again, in the same rhythm, slowly, inevitably, like the dark powers of life, like destiny, like death.

Translated by Robert Liddell and Constantine Trypanis