To the Country of Statues: A Story

by STRATIS MYRIVILIS

1

AS THE sun goes down behind Aegaleos, a great wave of golden light falls aslant on Lycabettus. At once red flames spring up and vibrate in the windows of the little church; high on the summit Apollo is retiring, and looks with radiance on the whitewashed sanctuary of St. George.

The wave of sunlight breaks on the gray rock, crumbles, and is scattered. Thence it trickles down the innumerable lovers’ alleys, making them for a minute like red ribbons among the pine woods; then again they are lost to view. The feeble little trees are motionless amid the gladdening light that shines through them; they stand holding with care on their thin needles, like bright birds, the last crumbs of the sun.

Then the flood of light descends the steps to the city. The sun brims over and pours down step by step. On the broad turnings of the steps the afternoon light spreads itself, as if harbored for a while before it is poured out down the hill of St. Nicolas. Some of these corners are so wide that they are like little squares. Here the children of the quarter collect in the afternoon.

They jump the steps two by two, then three by three and more; they climb the low pines of St. Nicolas, tear at them, and torment them. These pines are scabby, defenseless, little trees, ill-treated by the children, the caterpillars, and the women of the neighborhood. The women spread iheir washing on the branches, or hang their babies’ cradles on them, or in these years of distress, when fuel is very dear in the market, they break off a branch or two for firewood.

There, at the broad turn of the road, a group of little girls who are inseparable collect to play in the afternoon. They fill the quarter with their shouts. Sometimes they all shout together, just for the joy of hearing their own voices. They are only silent when all the chattering sparrows of Lycabettus disappear at dusk.

There are four of them: Beba, Fofi, Katina, and Matina — four children each four or five years old, who turn the world upside down with their noise, each with her own ways and her own fun.

Beba is fair, as round as a pomegranate. She has hair as fair as the silk of Indian corn, tightly plaited in two short pigtails, which begin very high up behind her ears. They must do her hair very tightly, that is why she sometimes looks odd. The skin is taut on her forehead, and she makes a sour face. She has blue eyes, really blue like hyacinths. She is altogether as pink as a pomegranate, and the little tight drawers she shows with every movement are pink too.

“You’re a rosebud,” the young lady from the big block of fiats told her one day.

“No,”she replied at once, shaking her head violently, “My real name is Maria, and they call me Beba. Rosie is Mrs. Merope’s servant.”

The next is Fofi. A dark face with finely drawn features, a sly dark eye, long slender legs, covered with scratches from the pine needles. She is always bending down and whispering secrets into the ears of the others, who listen to her seriously and shake their heads. It. is she who cheats the most, so the others keep an eye on her during their games.

Then there is lvatina, pale and plain, with hair almost as short as a boy’s, and wretched little earrings in her pierced ears. She was ill for months and nearly died. The others went and looked at her from the road, through the windows, and showed her their poor little dolls. They looked at her from far off, climbing up the pines, because she had typhoid, an infectious disease. That was when they cut her hair to the roots. Then, when she recovered, she came out a figure of fun with a green turban the color of a watermelon tightly tied round her head.

The smallest of all is Matina. How old can that child be? She is such a tiny thing that you might call her a big doll. She is auburn-haired, with great velvet eyes that flutter their eyelashes uneasily. She is so small that it looks as if God had found it difficult to find the clay to make her. Her nails, mouth, nose arc all so tiny that they are almost not there. But her eyes open especially wide; they fill her face and light it up and are so piercing that you look at her with wonder. She looks you straight in the eye and suddenly puts out her tongue at you.

Matina is pretty, cunning, crafty, mocking, and a chatterbox. She laughs and leaps unceasingly as if she had a flock of little devils living in every limb and in every finger, and as if every little bone had a devil in it to work its will. And if she has to stay quiet in one place for a minute, still she manages to move her head, or her hands, or her middle, or one foot. If she doesn’t move any of these, she shakes a lock of her auburn hair back and forth. She has a tuft in the middle of her head, tied with a red ribbon, and it bobs forward like a cock’s comb. Matina talks more than the rest of them together but she swallows half the consonants. Her tongue slips round R and loses it and she always turns TH into S. But she manages to say a lot, chattering from morning till night, filling the quarter with her lively noise.

If you look closely at Matina’s little face you sense something in it which tells you that, of the four little friends, it will be her fate first to lose her childish happiness. That must be why she is in such a hurry to enjoy herself . . . faster, faster! Matina is a newcomer to the neighborhood. It is hardly a full month since her piercing voice joined the symphony of sound that the life of Athens makes round the little wood of St. Nicolas. All the same she has managed to become the leader in play; she is the arbitrator when there is any suspicion of cheating. All through the heat she wears a chocolate skirt with a worn fur trimming. It is made of a bit of cast-off silk, and her friends look at it and approach it with respect.

2

IN THE famine winter Matina had been found crying and screaming in a little house in the Tourkovounia neighborhood. It was early in the morning, and her cries woke the neighbors as they lay in that quiet, full of despair and hopelessness, of people dying in holes and corners. It was snowing outside. A heap of snow had collected on the pitched roof and was getting in through the wide cracks, piling up in parallel lines. The wind, with a slow and regular rhythm, was beating against a piece of tin that had been fastened to the frame of a broken window.

Antiope, the elder sister, lay dead — a little heap of bones — her knees drawn up to her empty stomach, her head sunk deep into her shoulders, her fists doubled into her chin. She also had the same big eyes and plentiful, thick lashes. Her eyes were still open, fixed on the door, where the neighbor women came one by one to cross themselves. The children’s mother was dead too. She had clenched her teeth and died without uttering a word that same night. On her face, where the cheekbones stood out, were two large tears. They had remained there, and frozen.

Her children had learned, whenever their mother fainted from hunger, not to leave her but just to bite her middle finger to rouse her. The pain pierced to the bone and was able to shake off the drowsiness of death. Then she would go to the Italian barracks to hunt in the garbage cans for a bit of orange peel, or a bone, or some potato parings from the mess. So the neighbors found Matina biting her dead mother’s finger. That is why she kept on screaming and crying when she did not manage to rouse her.

The women of the neighborhood made off to the town to get the dead-cart to come. Hours went by before the clerks came and the office opened. There was only a single porter there with his head tied up in a woman’s woolen shawl. He stood motionless behind the rail; he was just skin and bone. His dark face had gone yellow, his hands were pushed into the sleeves of his greatcoat, and he never stopped shivering. “Wait for Mr. Manoukos to come,”he told the women, “he’s in charge of all that.”

They waited, standing on the marble floor, trembling with cold. Finally a door opened, and a tall thin man, like a skeleton, came in. He was wrapped in an overcoat, that came down below his knees, but still seemed short. At once the porter was roused from his immobility. He stood up straight, took his hands out of his sleeves, made a bow, and explained the matter. Mr. Manoukos, whose expression showed his teeth as he listened, made a slight gesture and cut him short. He turned to the women and told them to cope with the situation as best they could. There was nothing he could do. The municipality had not a drop of gasoline left, either for the dead or for the collection of garbage.

So the bodies lay quiet till the evening. Then old Stephanos came, who used to work at the ironmonger’s shop at the corner and now pushed an old cart on errands — “Errands executed" was painted on it. He put the bodies on his cart, covered them with old army blankets, and took them to the cemetery. They weighed almost nothing.

Athens, with its lights out, sunk in the darkness of war, was still in its anguish, full of resentment and heavy grief. Night fell from a sky full of bright stars and indifference and lay on the muddy snow that the day had soiled. The starlight just sufficed to show by the shadow if a passer-by were man or woman. As night drew on the sounds of the day were silenced. And as the noise of life quietened the cry of the hungry city arose. It was the howl of those who were dying—on the marble pavements, on the steps, in doorways, in dark corners, in cellars. And as the darkness blotted out their forms, the clearer rose these voices, distinct from any other sound. They rose everywhere, from every street, every crossing, every out-of-the-way corner. They pierced the night, lashed it, and filled it with a terrible spirit of savagery.

“I’m hung-ry . . . hung-ry.”

There were children’s voices, full of heart-rending bewilderment; powerful women’s voices, like the cry of wild night birds; and men’s voices, sharp and short. If you heard them you understood that there were few hours and little breath left in that life that was trying to hold on to a dried-up frame. And when night came and hid the forms of those about to die the voices lost all individual character and were confounded in a mixture of various cries, of groans and prayers, and anger, giving out one word, the same, always the same: “hung-ry . . . hung-ry . . . hung-ry!”

And it was no longer only the prostrate creatures that cried out in the night. It was the city itself, Athens, that howled for hunger, that cried out from the trees in the gardens, the columns of the temples, the doorways, the unfit street lamps, and the rubbish heaps. It cried from the statues of heroes and benefactors with their marble mouths, from iron doors, from pediments, and from dry wells choked with refuse . . . until at last the word “hungry” lost its shape: half was swallowed by the silence and the other half was poured out on the dirty snow, stuck to the walls and confused in the trees, like the cry of jackals, an inarticulate sound of horror: . . gry! . . . gry! . . . gry!”

3

OLD Stephanos pushed his cart patiently, with professional conscientiousness. All day long he carted the knapsacks of the army of occupation or took the officers’ suitcases from the railway station to headquarters. Like everyone else, he had had enough of the cry of the city. He pushed on without paying it much attention. Around Zappeion Park the cry seemed less loud; it was stifled in the foliage of the trees. Near the park a strange man held him up; it was terrifying. He leaped out at Stephanos from one of those holes left after the excavation of the temple of Olympian Zeus. The man was thickly built, about thirty, with his head hidden in a soldier’s cap. He had a club in his hand and raised it to bar old Stephanos’s progress. He seemed to be in a rage.

“What do you want?” Stephanos’s knees were quaking with fear.

“Something out of your cart, you black marketeer!”

Stephanos was speechless. He stood staring at the rascal, who flung himself on the cart, pulled at the blankets and fumbled greedily under them. When he found out what was in the cart — the two bodies—he recoiled and staggered off. Stephanos pushed his cart on. As he went he heard the man behind him crying with great sobs.

Outside the cemetery he found many other corpses laid out on the ground here and there. Their long forms, two by two, three by three, made dark patches on the whiteness. Other carts came out of the dusk; their dead were carefully deposited; then they went away. Some people carried their corpse on their shoulders like a bag and gave a sigh of relief as they put it down on the ground after the exhaustion of the climb. They bent down, put the legs straight, and crossed the corpse’s arms on its chest. They looked at it a while, covered the face, and went off, still bent. Some women came, walking with great difficulty as they carried their dead children in their arms. They held them to their bodies as if they were suckling them, and their thin legs dangled down.

They all left their dead on the ground and went away in haste not to be seen. Old Stephanos did the same thing. He put the two corpses together on the snow, arranging them side by side. Then he crossed himself, put the blankets into his cart, spat on his hands, and went down the hill before the police might come and begin inquiring into the identity of the deceased. The object of concealing the identity of the dead was to save their ration cards for the living — the four ounces of ersatz bread in the weekly distribution. Like other people, old Stephanos was a family man, with a wife and four children to support. And now that these two had gone where they had gone, why let their rations go begging? That would be a sin.

Then he went home and rested. When it was broad daylight again he went after Matina, put her into the cart and wrapped her up well in the same blankets, only exposing her head and one hand so she could nibble at a Lit of corn bread. He took her to the cathedral so that the orphan should not die in the street. Matina was much comforted by this journey in the cart.

There was snow everywhere; the cart bumped over the pebbles. She saw people pass, humped and wrapped up to the ears, their breath streaming down their unshaven chins. Matina, bundled up in the dusty blanket, sat grave as a little owl and was amused by what she saw. When they came to the paved streets old Stephanos’s cart rolled more quickly; he pushed it more easily and shouted, “Way, please!” to the passers-by. It was great fun.

So Matina found herself with many other children. They were scared and very thin, nothing but skeletons, with swollen stomachs. They wetted themselves and cried, or they sat down and looked thoughtfully at their hands. Then the ladies in white would come to look after them. Many of them slopped crying at once; then the ladies wrapped them up and took them away. Matina was there for a long time. The house had a big courtyard with two tall cypresses in the middle. They seemed to go right up to the sky, to God! Matina looked at them through a crack in the balcony door every evening when prayers were being said in the dormitory. Hundreds of sparrows chirped in their dark foliage in the afternoon but Matina could not see the birds. She imagined it was the two tall trees which were talking every evening with bird voices, with hundreds of bird voices, filling the yard with happy sounds. This happened about dusk, when the little bell in the chapel nearby rang for vespers. It was like a signal for the birds to gather. Then gradually they grew quiet as evening fell, and the yard was full of sorrow. The deeper night drew on, the greater was the sorrow. Sorrow seemed anchored there, in dark waters.

Then one very cold morning two men came and felled the two cypresses. They cut them into logs for the stove that boiled the caldron for the cooking. They hacked them and then sawed them with a big saw, one man at each end. The men panted as they worked and wiped off their sweat. It was exciting when they pulled the trees down by long ropes fastened to the tops. They creaked as if their broken roots were crying for pain. The children chirped with delight as they fell.

Then there was open sky where the trees had stood outside the window of the big dormitory. Nothing was there any more but the sky. No more bird voices at the hour of vespers. Only a melancholy silence in the vast courtyard which was now as empty as the square of blue sky in the window.

Then spring came and the children were taken to another house where Matina was separated from her friends. She stayed in the new house for a long time until Mrs. Tasia, her adoptive mother, came and took her.

4

So THAT is how Matina came to be playing outside St. Nicolas as the adopted child of Dionysis Tasia and his wife. They were a childless couple. Dionysis was half blind. With one eye he could see a bit by daylight but the other was quite gone. He always had to turn his half-blind eye toward you in order to recognize you — just as a cock turns its head to look at something.

Dionysis played the guitar and sang drinking songs in the taverns between the Exarchia and the west slopes of Lycabettus. Sometimes he went as far as the Plaka if a party of friends took him with them. He was fond of old romantic songs: “Far in the desert, I dug my gra-a-ave to li-i-ie there!” His reward was wine and scraps of food. Thus he tried to get through the evil days; God’s will be done!

Mrs. Tasia was bolder in these difficult times. She began in the Exarchia market with dandelions. Then she sold all sorts of herbs she found and dug up. Once she had to go to the police court because a family who had eaten her greens went out of their minds. But God granted that this trouble did not last long: the people who had been made ill recovered. Next Mrs. Tasia took to trading cigarettes. Then she made a sort of ersatz flour. Finally she appeared in the market with a provision stall — a grand black marketeer, with millions stuffed away into her pillows.

Now at last, she had all her weary heart could desire: ouzo, and fried potatoes, and long, felt boots, and a gramophone with a big green horn. Still she was not happy. She wanted a child and God had denied her one. In front of the neighbors Mrs. Tasia blamed it on God, but when she was angry with Dionysis she screamed “good-for-nothing” at him, and he hung his head.

But now she had the great dream of her life come true before her eyes — a lovely, merry child, all ready-made. What joy to have her by her and take pride in her, to do her hair on Sundays and lake her to church, and preen herself. Praise to the Almighty, who leaves no one good without some comfort.

Mrs. Tasia now dreamed of a better house in a more respectable neighborhood — but where to find a vacant house with all this crowding of people into Athens? So she still stayed on in the same place in this poor quarter of Lycabettus. At night she went up the steep hill with Dionysis. They met below in the square at the Exarchia in a basement tavern. Mrs. Tasia used to sit there, rubbing one leg impatiently against the other, waiting for Dionysis to return from His musical round.

They climb up the hill arm in arm because Dionysis cannot see well enough to walk at night, especially if he has already been drinking with the people he plays for. Each is at once a prop and a burden to the other. They stop on a step to catch their breath and curse each other quietly and passionately.

“You slut! May God rot you!”

“ Good-for-nothing! Laughing-stock! ”

They sigh from the bottom of their hearts, then lean on each other again, and slowly go up the steps. Then they stop again and quarrel.

They bring home sweets for Matina, and slices of fried fish wrapped in colored German newspapers, and even white bread. They spread a cloth for her and put things in front of her, one by one. Then they withdraw to a low divan, take off their shoes, and begin abusing each other, always in the same careful way — quietly, without raising their voices, in a subdued tone full of dark, ycars-long hatred. Their curses die away into sighs and murmurs; there is passion between them, real passion, as keen as that of lovers.

“ Vile, vile creature!”

“Shut up, you blind bird, you good-for-nothing!”

Mrs. Tasia has grown fat from good eating. Her bosom is rounded as in her youth, her legs plump. She has begun to use powder and lipstick. Dionysis suspects that she may be unfaithful to him.

Matina eats her supper and her orange with an excellent appetite; she has gotten used to hearing them fight and it makes no impression on her. When she has finished her food she says in a loud voice the prayer she learned at the orphanage, putting one foot behind the other. They stop talking and cross themselves when she does. Then she says good night, speaking to them in the plural, and goes to bed.

“Good night, Daddy. Good night, Mummy.”

Then the couple stop quarreling, sigh, moved to tears, and they belch out breath tainted with brandy, herring, and radishes. When his wife begins to snore Dionysis takes down his guitar from the wall and begins to strum a myroloï quietly to ease his heavy heart. “Far in the de-e-sert, I dug my grave, to li-i-ie there.”

In the morning Matina drinks tinned milk like a rich little black-market child. They wash her, and dress her, and comb her tuft, and let her go out. The couple go off, each to his work, and Matina plays till midday, as free as the sparrows on Lycabettus. She gets her friends together, shouting from far ofT: “What shall we play? What shall we play?” The whole of her is talking and moving— you would think it would make her dizzy.

“Let’s play statues.”

It is their favorite game, and they play it for hours without tiring of it. The “Mama” turns her face to the wall, shuts her eyes, and stuffs her lingers into her ears so as not to hear or see. Then, when the others tell her that they are ready, she begins to recite slowly and rhythmically, moving her head and hands in time.

“Ones, twos, and threes . . . beans and peas.

I have come to the country of statues.”

Then the others stand silent and motionless, as if made of marble. They have turned into statues, each petrified in the pose she has chosen; this pose is meant to represent something. Often they get together, and whisper, and pose as a composite group, all three of them. They take the subject from a picture or from their own life. The “Mama” examines them carefully, going back and forth, and at the end chooses the statue she thinks the most successful. Then that child becomes the “Mama” in her turn and the game goes on.

The poses they think up are striking. Beba likes being a ballerina. She takes up her skirt with two fingers, lifts one leg, and tries to balance on the other, sticking out her tongue as a counterweight. Katina never smiles when she is a statue. She takes it all very seriously, looking into the distance just as marble statues gaze. Fofi, on the other hand, is still crafty, even as a statue. She stands straight, puts her feet together, stretches out her arms right and left, and turns her head to the right shoulder. It is obvious what she is: Christ on the cross. Matina is kneeling at her feet with hands over her face: she is Our Lady, and she is weeping. But between her fingers she looks to see what is going on. Because Christ (Fofi) is quietly opening one little eye and winking at the “Mama” to be chosen. Matina wrinkles her nose in scorn.

These set compositions are most often arranged by Matina when it is not her turn to be “Mama.”

“Ones, twos, and threes . . . beans and peas. I have come to the country of statues!”

This time the “Mama” is Katina. Matina takes the others apart and explains in whispers the composition they are to make. She tells them quickly, guiding them with gestures and movements of every part of her body. Then, when the “Mama” turns her face from the wall, the following group is discovered :

Beba is lying on a step, her body stretched out and her eyes shut, motionless and sullen as the dead are. Fofi is kneeling on her right, biting her middle linger. Curled up, on the other side lies Matina, her head sunk between her shoulders, her arms crossed on her breast, and her legs drawn up to her belly, as embryos lie in the womb. She has the big, motionless, wide-open eyes that remain in her memory, the eyes of her dead sister.

Only quietly, carefully, without stirring a hair of her head, she turns the pupil of her eye to watch Fofi, in case the cheat is winking again at the “Mama,” as she has the habit of doing.

Translated by Robart Liddell