and I promised myself I would go back there someday, a bad
promise nullified by war. I had never been in a communist
country; there were more police than I had ever seen in my
life, and each one wanted to see everyone’s passport and go
through everyone’s luggage. I was easy on that score. I had
one small piece of luggage and nothing more.
While still in Yugoslavia, I began talking with an American
named Mildred. She was wrinkled as if her skin had been
white bread, squooshed and rolled and then left to dry. She
had smudges of lipstick here and there and was very kind to
me. I needed water desperately by the time we reached
Yugoslavia, but I was afraid to run out to the station when the
train stopped because I didn’t know when it would start up
again. I’ve always found traveling by train exhausting and anx-
iety-making. Mildred gave me water or pop or something I
could drink. The cows were in touching distance now, and so
were the peasants, though there were many more cows than
peasants.
Mildred was going to Athens. Someone had stolen al of her
money. She wondered if she could borrow some from me -
what I had would be exactly enough for her to liberate her
things, being held by an irate landlord, and then later that
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Heartbreak
same day she would have the money wired to her by her son
so she would be able to pay me back. We made a date to meet
in a town square in Athens for the day following our ar ival.
I gave Mildred pretty much al of my money. I had enough for
the YWCA that first night. The next day at the appointed
hour I waited in the square. She never came. The direct consequence was that as it started turning dark I had to find a man to take me to dinner and get me a room. And I would
have to do the same the next day and the day after that. I
kept hoping I'd find Mildred here or there. I never held it
against her.
6 8
Easter
I went to Crete to live and write. I didn’t know much about
it except that my roommate at the Y was from there. What I
found was heaven on earth: the bluest sky; water in bands of
turquoise, lavender, aqua, and silver; rocks so old they had
whole histories writ en on the underside of their rough edges;
opium poppies a foot high and blood red; a primitive harbor;
caves in which people lived; peasants who came down from
the mountains to the city for political speeches - there would
be a whole family in a wooden cart pulled by a mule with an
old man walking the mule; there was light the color of bright
yellow and bright white melted together, and it never went
away; even at night, somehow through the dark, the light
would manifest, an unmistakable presence, and in the darkest
part of night you could see the tiniest pebble resting by
your foot. This was an island on which old women in black
cooked on Bunsen burners, olive trees were wealth, and
there was a universal politics of noli me tangere with a
lineage from 400 years of Turkish occupation through Nazi
occupation; the people were fierce and proud and sometimes
terribly sad.
69
Heartbreak
The place changed for me one day. It was Easter. I was with
an English friend and a Greek lover. The streets began fil ing
up with gangs of men carrying lit torches. They seemed a
little KKK-ish. Their intentions did not seem friendly. My
Greek lover explained that the gangs were looking for Jews,
the kil ers of Christ. That would be me. My companions and
I hid behind a pil ar of a church. I don’t think there were other
Jews on the island, because this search for Christ’s kil ers had
gone on year after year, even before the Turkish occupation. I
wondered if the gang of men would kil me. I thought they
would. I was afraid, but the worst of it was that I was afraid
my Greek lover would give me up - here she is, the Jew. I was
the faithless one, because this question was in my heart and
mind. I wondered what would happen if the torches found us,
saw us and took us. I wondered if he’d stand up for me then.
I wondered how the people I’d been living with could turn
into a malignant crowd, a hate crowd. If there were no other
Jews on the island, it was because they had been killed or had
fled. (Tourist season had not yet begun. )
The next day teenaged boys dove into the Aegean Sea to
look for a jeweled cross blessed by the Orthodox priest and
thrown by him into the water; one boy found it and emerged
like an elegant whale from the water, cross raised above his
head as high as he could hold it. The sun and the cross merged
into an astonishing brightness, the natural and the man-made
making the boy into some kind of religious prince. It was
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Easter
beautiful and savage, and I could see myself bleeding out the
day before, a corpse on cold stone.
71
Knossos
I didn’t know anything about anthropology or the reconstruction of the ancient Cretan palace of Knossos by the English archeologist Sir Arthur Evans. I didn’t know it was the labyrinth of Daedalus or the palace of King Minos, the Minotaur symbolizing generations of sacralized bulls. I had no idea of
the claims that would be made for it later by feminists: the
bull was the sacred animal of Goddess religions and cults, the
symbol of the Great Goddess. One of the great icons of
modern feminism originates in Crete - the labyris, the double
ax. Both the bull and the labyris signified the Goddess religion,
and Knossos was a holy site. From 3, 700 years before Christ
to 2, 000 years before Christ, Crete was the zenith of civilization, a Goddess-worshiping civilization.
Originally I saw it from the opposite side of the road. A
friend and I went to have a picnic in the country north of
Heraklion; we had wine and a Greek soft cheese that I particularly favored; we were in love and trouble and so talked in our own pidgin tongue made up of Greek, English, and French.
I found myself going out there alone and finding refuge in the
intriguing building across the road, Knossos. I found the
72
Knossos
throne room especially lovely and intimate. I would take a
book, sit on the throne, and read, every now and then thinking about what it must have been like to live in this small and intimate room. The rest of the palace that had been restored
was closed, and as soon as I heard the first busload of tourists
sometime in late April I never went back. But for a while it
was mine. I felt at home there, something I rarely feel anywhere. Once I was inside, it was as familiar as my own skin. I loved the stone from which everything, including the throne,