Thoreau Bound, page 18
“I’m not tired Kosmos. And your talk isn’t wearing me out. It’s profoundly alive, and it speaks to me like a great book. Only it’s better than a book, because I can ask questions about the things I don’t agree with or don’t understand.”
“Good! We will talk more. For now, I wonder if you would care to see more of the people of Dembacchae. If you just know Kosmos and the town’s taverna, then you might think that the whole town is made of lunatics and male chauvinists. I have some special work to do for the next few hours. Come with me, or stay, whatever you like.”
I drank the lemon-water then stood up.
“Let’s go then, Kosmos. And if you’ll let me, maybe I can help you with your special work.”
Kosmos led me to his library, my bedroom for the night, a large sunny room with a wooden floor, one couch, a desk and chair, and shelves and shelves of books. Books in the shelves, books on the desk, books on the chairs, books in high piles from the floor: thousands of volumes in all. Mostly paperbacks, they were written in more than ten different languages, about half nonfiction and the other half novels, poetry, autobiography, and plays.
We washed our hands and faces, then I threw on a T-shirt and my only pair of shorts, and a gift from Kosmos: a pair of his thick black-cotton socks. As we rinsed some dishes and picked up shards of broken cups, we laughed about my hat on the head of the mule. I thanked Kosmos for washing my clothes.
“Thank Irene,” said Kosmos. “I asked her to wash them before they stunk so bad they would crawl out of the bag like her snakes.”
I threw a handful of dishwater at him.
“And if a garbage man says that my clothes reeked,” I said, “then who can argue with that?”
Irene burst through the doorway, skipping and singing, carrying a dozen oranges inside a pouch she had made by raising the front hem of her dress. She placed the oranges in a wooden bowl, insisted that she must come with us, then started to run through the doorway. Kosmos called her back.
“Irene, little bird who makes me sing. Please cover your chest with a shirt.”
“Why, Uncle Kosmos? It’s not cold outside.”
He nodded and looked into her eyes.
“You could wear one of Thoreau’s shirts, Irene.”
Delighted, Irene ran into the library, rummaged through my pile of worldly goods, selected my last remaining T-shirt, ran back to us, dropped the T-shirt over her head, then kissed the cheek of Kosmos and kissed my cheek. Singing and skipping, she ran to the sunny outside. When she met Kosmos’s dog Zorba she stroked him with her hands, and spoke to him as if he were a boy changed magically into a beast.
During the next hours I realized that this man Kosmos was a hero, an enlightened individual who used his intelligence and love to improve the world immediately around him. What were his great secrets? ... He lived for others; and he never postponed living, he lived today and now. Perhaps he truly believed that each hour we are alive is a paradise, each situation can be transformed, each moment can be the most intense moment we have ever lived.
We walked to a humble grocery store owned by friends of Kosmos. Here he bought a small hill of food, which the three of us carried, each of our hands holding one or two full plastic bags.
“The garbage collecting, that is for money only,” he said. “Until I find my Paradise — or it finds me — this is the real work.”
The real work comprised his weekly visits with elderly persons who had been forgotten, and with teenagers who had been ignored. At one house he left a bag of food for a poor old man; at another house he fixed a toilet and moved newspapers away from the wood stove; at a third he made arrangements to drive a woman to a doctor’s appointment later in the week, then pick up her medicine; at a fourth house, he simply said hello to a woman living alone, and promised to return soon to talk and drink tea. Each day he would visit others — men, women, children, and even animals — the old, the sick, the orphans, the poor and the alone.
“This unique man,” I thought, “has no greed, no need of the things that money buys, and not one selfish impulse in his entire soul. And he has no fear of any human being. Maybe that fearless kindness is the whole key.”
As we were walking homeward and I was thinking about these ideas, a dark-haired boy, breathing fast, ran up to Kosmos and shouted “Ella! Grigora!” — Come! Quickly! We ran and followed the boy to the sounds of angry shouts blaring from a seedy-looking tavern.
Inside, we saw a foreign tourist with tattooed arms — a tall muscular Dutchman in his mid-twenties — standing at the bar holding a large hunting knife. Facing him stood two Greek brothers, about the same height and age as the foreigner, each holding in their hands a weapon just-made from a broken beer bottle, edged with jagged glass. A woman with a large chest and a low-cut dress that advertised it, sat smoking on a bar stool behind the Greeks. The argument had erupted when this woman — a German, and the girlfriend of one of the Greeks — had asked the Dutchman for a light for her cigarette.
Now, the three men involved in the altercation were shaking their weapons and shouting at one another, their faces flushed red from booze and rage. So much alcohol and anger it seemed inevitable that the drama had to finish in a bloody fight.
Kosmos said to the Dutchman, in the Dutch language, “Excuse my back,” as he placed his bag of groceries onto a bar stool. He stepped between the three men, then faced the two angry Greeks. One of these Greek brothers, named Costas, waved the glass bottle and shouted hoarsely like a man whose clothes were on fire, as the sides of his mouth dripped with salivary foam.
“Get out, Kosmos! This is not your fight!”
I took a step to stand beside my friend but I stopped immediately, as Kosmos warned me to stay back with a brusque swish of his hand. Smiling as cheerfully as if he had been strolling through a field of wildflowers, Kosmos spoke to Costas in a deep and soothing voice.
“You’re right, Costas. It’s not my fight. But I am wondering, and I ask you to wonder with me: Is this fight yours? ... Think about it, my friend. Fighting is serious business. A real man, a pallikári, will fight if there is no other choice, but first he does everything he can to make the peace.”
Costas was not so easily persuaded by nonviolent words. Consumed by flames of hate, he spat on the ground then waved his arms.
“Get out or you’ll get hurt, Kosmos!” Costas shouted. “You should have seen the way that malaka looked at my girlfriend’s tits!”
The smile on the face of Kosmos changed to the forgiving look of a father teaching a lesson to his son.
“Costas, look at her,” said Kosmos. “Your girlfriend, she has nice tits, right? As long as other men don’t touch them, why don’t you like other men to look? If other men did not look, it would mean that she was ugly. As ugly as the girlfriend I had last week. Remember that one? Nobody looked at her tits. Even I didn’t look at her tits, and if I would have looked I couldn’t have found them without a road map and a magnifying glass.”
The patrons in the bar burst out laughing, and the brother of Costas started to snicker. But Costas would not back down.
“I’m going to cut out his fuckeeng Dutch tongue!”
Kosmos’s voice remained the voice of the father who had dealt with many heated arguments between little boys. The voice that was fair to all sides, calm in any storm of insults, confident enough to speak his truth, trusting enough to let the young minds grow by making decisions for themselves. He reached inside the grocery bag and pulled out a large bottle.
“See this, Costas,” Kosmos said, turning the bottle in his hand. “This is the best wine in all of Kreetee. Not like the crap you get here at this cheap bar. This wine is the very best.”
Kosmos slammed the bottle onto the countertop, looked into the eyes of Costas, stepped closer to the raging young man, then spoke unyielding words with all of his usual good cheer.
“Now listen, Costas. Young men on Kreetee are too smart to fight with women or with old men, do you know why? Because they know that if they kick your ass then you’re disgraced, and if you kick their ass then people think you’re a coward and wonder why you don’t fight men your own age. You can’t win, see? So right now, you and me can fight until we kill we each other, or we can drink this wine. Decide.”
The silence that lasted a moment felt like it lasted a week. First, Costas’s brother put down his weapon. Then the Dutchman sheathed his knife. At last, Costas threw his jagged bottle against a wall.
Kosmos opened his bag and passed out wine bottles so everyone could drink. He filled his glass then stood up on a stool.
“To all ten thousand tourist dames
Who’ve shared my burning bed!
And to the dozen smarter names —
Who’ve chosen other men instead!”
He winked to the Dutchman, then smiled to Costas and his girl.
“To your health and long life!” Kosmos shouted. “Yassas!”
“Yassas!” shouted voices from the crowd.
An old man, a friend of Kosmos, was sitting at a table near the door. Kosmos bent down and whispered into his friend’s ear.
“Georgios, do me a favor. Keep an eye on these little boys to make sure things don’t flare up again. If you need anything, send a kid to find me. I’ll be rambling around town for a while, then at the artist’s apartment, then at home.”
Georgios casually nodded, then Kosmos stepped outside the bar and took a deep breath.
“Shit, that was close, Thoreau. Don’t try that yourself, unless you have a deep rapport with the guy holding the jagged glass. I’ve known Costas since he was three years old. Let’s go now, before I think about how close I was to getting this body, that gives me so much pleasure, sliced up in twenty-four pieces like a plastic-wrapped bread. We’ve got more work to do.”
We visited the apartment of an old woman who was giving violin lessons to a teenaged girl: Kosmos placed a wad of Euros on her table, to pay for the lessons and a new bow. We passed a restaurant filled with a dozen teenagers standing in front of pay-per-play video games, and all the players laughed when Kosmos opened the door then shouted: “Look outward, children! Life is here, outside!”
A pack of twelve teenaged boys with sticks in their hands ran near us, chasing a cat with a string on its tail. Kosmos shouted to them and they approached him.
“Want to chase cats or play soccer?” he said. When soccer was unanimously chosen, Kosmos gave them the tools. “You guys lost your balls again? ... There’s a soccer ball in my truck, front seat, but don’t mess with my papers there. Goal posts are in my backyard: take them and put them up in the schoolyard. If I can’t come and play tonight, then I’ll see you guys on Saturday afternoon.”
As we strolled along the empty back streets, a sixteen-year-old boy walked past us, with hands in his pocket and his head dejectedly tucked down. Kosmos wrapped his arm around the boy’s shoulder.
“Yiannis,” he said. “Don’t you say hello to your friend, eh? ... Listen, I’ve been hearing stories about you and that nice girl, Galatea. You know that I won’t tell you what to do, I will just tell you what life will do to you if you keep on doing what you’re doing. See this rock? When I was your age, this rock had more brains then me. I would go out with any girl, it didn’t matter who it was. All the time I was telling the girls that I loved them, but to my friends I was saying: ‘I like her ass, but I don’t like her.’ ... Look inside the girl, not just what’s on the outside, do you understand? Don’t kiss her unless you like what’s on the inside, too. ... I’ll see you Friday afternoon at my house for the art class. Endaxi? OK.”
We walked to the bakery where Kosmos bought breads for dinner and a bouquet of flowers, then walked to the school and sat down on a bench there, and watched the boys and girls play soccer. There were no referees, and no adults involved to organize, and the children played not to win but for the pure joy of the game. Kosmos looked tired now, and he shook his head and laughed.
“I’m like that kid at the leaking dike, trying to stick his fingers in all the holes to keep the water from flooding the town! All day I’m putting fires out. But sometimes I wonder: what is anyone doing to snuff out the causes of these fires? ... Somebody needs to bring Truth back into Art, Thoreau. Or else these kids, and kids everywhere, will never have a chance for a good life. Art was invented to show the Truth in the world, to tell the Truth in one man’s heart. But when Art can’t find a respectable place, she puts on her low-cut red dress and she stands whistling on the corners of the streets. Art today is made for money, and money-covered Art is the highway to the murder of Truth, the decay of Culture and the extinction of Art.”
He gripped my shoulder with his hand.
“Thoreau, listen to me. If some pompous, self-deluded fool ever gives you the chance to choose — between the naked truth and the decked-out shams — remember how we talked today, and remember the eyes of these children that need our honesty. And then pick the Truth above Money and stand with that Truth, even if it means you’ll wind up cold, and hungry, and unpopular, and the loneliest man on Earth. ... There’s not much time, Thoreau! If our artists can’t find courage to take the honest path, then we might as well build another Cretan labyrinth, and throw the kids inside, and let the Minotaur eat up them up.”
He shouted “Bravo! Bravo!” to the boys and girls playing, and then stood up.
“Now I can ask for your help with something, Thoreau. Take Irene to the beach and play with her. If I’m lucky, I’ll be home in a few hours. And if not, in a few minutes. There’s an attractive thirty-year-old French woman who has invited me to see her paintings. She’d probably enjoy your company, but I’d rather work with her alone. Thank you, Thoreau.”
When Kosmos had left us, I looked up at the sky’s peaceful light and then down at the carefree smile of Irene.
“Irene, let’s take the food home. After that, you can show me the beach, and then we can play anything you want to play.”
Irene screamed with joy. “We can play Snake Goddess!”
Fifteen minutes later we were walking on the beach and holding hands. Irene smiled sweetly into my deep-seeing eyes. Once again, she assumed the posture of the Snake Goddess, and assigned me to play the role of Priapus, that upstanding reject of the gods.
“I’ll do my best, Irene. But I know only a little bit about this minor deity named Priapus. Aphrodite was his mother, and no one is sure whether his father was Adonis or Dionysus. He was the god of procreation, god of the gardens and the vines. He once caused a stir when he got drunk and tried to violate the virgin-goddess Hestia, but before he could molest her, an ass braying woke the sleeping goddess, and Priapus ran terrified away. A kind of national village idiot to the ancient Greeks, Priapus stands for obscene humor, thanks to his comical phallus, always-ready and ever-erect. This state of permanent erection was a subtle curse from Hera — wife of Zeus — to show her disapproval of the promiscuity of Aphrodite. Priapus’s ugly face reflected the morals of the Greeks, who were far from prudes, but believed that sexual excess interfered with the functioning of an orderly society. These days, many statues of Priapus are used as grotesque scarecrows, to guard the gardens and to hold the hollowed gourds.”
Irene’s face revealed that she had understood only a small part of that description. I placed my hands on both hips.
“Irene, did you know that Priapus was a gardener who loved to prune pear trees? And you know, sometimes the goddesses cast a spell on him. And because of this spell, every time he sees a Snake Goddess, he thinks she is a pear tree and he wants to prune her — ” Priapus opened and closed his arms like a pruning tool’s great jaws. “ — with these sharp shears!”
Irene screamed happily and ran laughing up the beach. For the next hours I chased her — over the sand, up and down the hillsides, in the water, through the lemon orchards — catching her and swinging her around, then letting her go, and chasing her again and again. Now and then I tickled her, or pretended to throw her into the waves, or let her ride on my back or shoulders. It was in this lighthearted way — Irene laughing wildly as I ran with her on my shouldertops — that we arrived back at the house of Kosmos. Kosmos was standing in the kitchen wearing an apron, holding a wooden spoon, and when he saw us he shouted with joy.
“Irene! Thoreau! I’m so glad to see you both!”
He stood watching us with paternal pride. “Irene, you look especially lovely this evening. And Thoreau, thank you ten thousand times for taking care of my little girl. Whenever I see Irene laughing that way, then the gods envy my happiness.”
He threw me a bunched-up cloth which opened up to be an apron.
“I have a feeling you like to cook, Thoreau.”
“I love to cook. How did you know? But I want to ask you something, Kosmos. Is what I’ve seen today typical of your life every day?”
Kosmos smiled as he stirred the soup.
“My life is helping people. I can’t change the way I am. Yes, every day I do two hours with the garbage work; then make a round to see my old white-haired friends; and every week I play soccer and give art lessons, and I talk with the troubled teenaged girls and boys. After my social work, I come back here to build things out of wood or stone, or to make music, or to read or paint, or sing to my garden to help the vegetables and flowers grow.”
He threw a handful of spices into the pot, then licked a soup sample from his wooden spoon.
“And every day I give lessons to Irene. But the truth is, I learn more from her — about how to live with simple honesty and joy — than I can teach from all my stories and books. And every night I share dinner with friends or interesting travelers. Or with tourist women, the ones who don’t mind sleeping with a man older than their dads. And there’s a secret project I’m working on — something that means everything to me — but already I’ve hinted too much about that.”
I noticed that he hadn’t faced me once since I’d returned home with Irene.
