killed Christ the same w ay he thinks I am killing Amerika—
and it’s hard to believe in a God who keeps murdering you. I
want to say: you’re like God, He watches like you do, and He
lies; He says He is one thing but He is another. His eyes are
cold like yours and He lies. He investigates like you do, with
the same bad faith; and He lies. He uses up your trust and He
lies. He wants blind loyalty like you do; and He lies. He kills,
and He lies. He takes the very best in you, the part that wants
to be good and pure and holy and simple, and He twists it with
threats and pain; and He lies about it, He says H e’s not doing
it, it’s someone else somewhere else, evil or Satan or someone,
not Him. I am quiet though, such a polite girl, because I don’t
want him to be able to say I am crazy so I must not say things
about God and because I want to get away from this terrible
place o f his, this sterile, terrible Amerika that can show up
anywhere because its cops can show up anywhere. He has a
very Amerikan kind o f charm— the casual but systematic
ignorance that notes deviance and never forgets or forgives it;
the pragmatic policing that cops learn from the movies—-just
figure out who the bad guys are and nail them; he’s John
Wayne posing as Norman Mailer while Norman Mailer is
posing as Ernest Hem ingway who wanted to be John Wayne.
It’s ridiculous to be an Amerikan. It’s a grief too. He doesn’t
bother me again but a Greek cop does. He wants to see my
passport. First a uniformed cop comes to where I live and then
I have to go in for questioning and the higher-up cop who is
wearing a silk suit asks me lewd questions and knows who I
have been with and I don’t want to have to leave here so I ask
him, straight out, to leave me alone and he leaves it as a threat
that maybe he will and maybe he w on ’t. I tell him he shouldn’t
do what the Amerikans tell him and he flashes rage— at me but
also at them; is this ju st another Am erikan colony, I ask him ,
and who does he work for, and I thought the people here had
pride. He is flashfires o f rage, outbursts o f fury, but it is not
just national pride. He is a dangerous man. His method o f
questioning starts out calm; then, he threatens, he seduces, he
is enraged, all like quicksilver, no warning, no logic. He
makes clear he decides here and unlike other officials I have
seen he is no desk-bound functionary. He is a man o f arbitrary
lust and real power. He is corrupt and he enjoys being cruel.
He says as much. I am straightforward because it is m y only
chance. I tell him I love it here and I want to stay and he plays
with me, he lets me know that I can be punished— arrested,
deported, or ju st jailed if he wants, when he wants, and the
Am erikan governm ent will be distinctly uninterested. I can’t
say I w asn’t afraid but it didn’t show and it w asn’t bad. He
made me afraid on purpose and he knew how. He is intensely
sexual and I can feel him fucking and breaking fingers at the
same time; he is a brilliant communicator. I’m rescued by the
appearance o f a beautiful woman in a fur coat o f all things. He
wants her now and I can go for now but he’ll get back to me if
he remembers; and, he reminds me, he always know s where I
am, day or night, he can tell me better than I can keep track. I
want him to want her for a long time. I’m almost wanting to
kiss the ground. I’ve never loved somewhere before. I’m
living on land that breathes. Even the city, cement and stone
bathed in ancient light, breathes. Even the mountains, more
stone than any man-made stone, breathe. The sea breathes and
the sky breathes and there is light and color that breathe and
the Am erikan governm ent is smaller than this, smaller and
meaner, grayer and deader, and I don’t want them to lift me
o ff it and hurt m y life forever. I came from gray Am erika,
broken, crumbling concrete, poor and stained with blood and
some o f it was m y blood from when I was on m y knees and the
men came from behind and some o f it was knife blood from
when the gangs fought and the houses seemed dipped in
blood, bricks bathed in blood; w hy was there so much blood
and what was it for— who was bleeding and w hy— was there
some real reason or was it, as it seemed to me, just for fun, let’s
play cowboy. The cement desert I had lived on was the
carapace o f a new country, young, rich, all surging, tap-
dancing toward death, doing handstands toward death, the
tricks o f vital young men all hastening to death. Crete is old,
the stone is thousands o f years old, with blood and tears and
dying, invaders and resisters, birth and death, the mountains
are old, the ruins are stone ruins and they are old; but it’s not
poor and dirty and dying and crumbling and broken into dirty
dust and it hasn’t got the pale stains o f adolescent blood, sex
blood, gang blood, on it, the fun blood o f bad boys. It’s living
green and it’s living light and living rock and you can’t see the
blood, old blood generation after generation for thousands o f
years, as old as the stone, because the light heats it up and
burns it away and there is nothing dirty or ratty or stinking or
despondent and the people are proud and you don’t find them
on their knees. Even I’m not on my knees, stupid girl who falls
over for a shadow, who holds her breath excited to feel the
steely ice o f a knife on her breasts; Amerikan born and bred;
even I’m not on my knees. N ot even when entered from
behind, not even bent over and waiting; not on m y knees; not
waiting for bad boys to spill blood; mine. And the light burns
me clean too, the light and the heat, from the sun and from the
sex. Could you fuck the sun? That’s how I feel, like I’m
fucking the sun. I’m right up on it, smashed on it, a great,
brilliant body that is part o f its landscape, the heat melts us
together but it doesn’t burn me away, I’m flat on it and it
burns, m y arms are flat up against it and it burns, I’m flung flat
on it like it’s the ground but it’s the sun and it burns with me up
against it, arms up and out to hold it but there is nothing to
hold, the flames are never solid, never still, I’m solid, I’m still,
and I’m on it, smashed up against it. I think it’s the sun but it’s
M and he’s on top o f me and I’m burning but not to death, past
death, immortal, an eternal burning up against him and there
are waves o f heat that are suffocating but I breathe and I drown
but I don’t die no matter how far I go under. Y o u ’ve seen a fire
but have you ever been one— the red and blue and black and