Crete (4 page)

But these scripts, so accidentally discovered, have a value symbolic as well as historical. In this dark weave of violence and destruction, in which both human agencies and acts of God, as they are called, have played their part, there are lighter threads running through; and among them—perhaps chief among them—is human language, human writing. The desire to communicate is the desire to save, to preserve from destruction. This is a paradox that has always accompanied our story and it finds a vivid example here, in these obscure remains. Our own age is just as barbarous, or more—more, certainly, if the criterion lies in capacity for destruction. One hopes the archaeologist of the future will find evidence, in the ruins of our society, of this same saving desire to understand our fellows.

Kanevaro is an ordinary street, with ordinary activities going on: a few stores, a bar, a workshop, people passing—and a fenced-off area where other people lived their ordinary lives three and a half thousand years ago. Such conjunctions are present everywhere on the island, and in Chania, with its long history of human habitation, they spring out at you at every turn.

Still in Kastelli, not very far from the Minoan remains, there is a ruined monastery. Rising high above the broken arches of the cloister and all the tumbled debris of this ancient place of worship, where Byzantine priests once intoned their liturgies, there is a huge placard with a notice:
ROOMS FOR RENT WITH BATHROOM AND SEA VIEW.
For a wild moment it seems that some Cretan entrepreneur is offering to let ground space among the venerable vaults of the narthex and the weeded wasteland all around. A sea view there would be, certainly, and rooms enough, though roofless. The bathroom would be more problematic. But drawing nearer, you see that a house has been built inside the shell, a cunning combination of ancient stone and modern bricks and mortar. This is the Monastiraki Pension, lodging of undeniable character. The people of the island were for centuries the poorest of the poor. Now, for some of them, the past has turned to gold under the Midas touch of tourism.

The past snatches at you in the names of the streets and restaurants too, but it is the mythical past now. There is the Talus Bar, named after the bronze giant who was given by Zeus as a present to Europa, to be the guardian of her island of Crete. He was said to be the last survivor of the third race of men, after those of gold and silver, people fashioned in bronze, a ferocious race who destroyed themselves in endless warfare. Talus patrolled the cliffs of Crete and threw huge rocks down at any intruders he saw. He was kept alive by a single vein, closed at the ankle with a bronze pin. In the end he was betrayed by the sorceress Medea, who lulled him with promises of immortality and then pulled out the pin….

Then there is, inevitably, a Minos Street, named after the legendary king of Crete, who had the labyrinth of Knossos constructed as a home for the monstrous Minotaur, unnatural offspring of the union of his queen with a bull. The Minotaur, who, as the name suggests, was half royal prince, half bull, fed on human flesh. From Athens there came an annual tribute of youths and maidens to be sacrificed to him.

Close by is Ikarus Street, named for was the son of the great artificer Daedalus, who built the labyrinth. Father and son were kept imprisoned in this same labyrinth by King Minos. Daedalus made wings for them both out of wax and feathers, and the pair embarked on a daring escape plan. But Ikarus forgot his father's warning not to fly too near the sun. The wax melted and the young man went plunging down into the sea near the island of Samos.

These myths of Crete are among the most ancient we know and have a special quality that makes them stand out among the complex ramifications of Greek mythology. They have a darkness and splendor about them that is essentially tragic. They are stories that have shaped the imagination of the Western world.

Certainly they have shaped mine, from a very early age. The first book—the first real book—that I can remember possessing was called
Tales from Olympus,
a collection of Greek myths with beautiful color plates, or so I thought then, to illustrate them. I think I was about four at the time and better equipped to admire the pictures than read the text. And, of course, the stories were toned down and poeticized in a way that was thought then to be suitable for children—perhaps the toddlers are tougher now. The treachery and murder so prevalent in Greek myth had been softened. But the characters of the gods and goddesses, and their dealings with humans, came through in all its drama and has been with me ever since.

On this visit I was particularly aware of the mythological associations. I know I kept exclaiming at the names and launching into long explanations. This must have seemed a bit excessive to Aira, though she didn't say so. Not much before leaving I had written the final paragraphs of a novel set in Greece on the eve of the Trojan War, and in an effort to understand the world-view of the people of that remote time I had done a lot of background reading: Homer, Greek tragedy, works on prehistoric religion and mythology. So my mind was still full of it. Now, three months later, it's fading already, as I contemplate a new novel set in a totally different period. It's similar in a way to studying intensively for an exam. For a while you know everything, you are a walking encyclopedia, you bore friends and strangers alike with unasked-for information. Then, mercifully, it starts to get vaguer. In my time I have been a temporary expert on eighteenth-century sailing ships, medieval drama, the career of Horatio Nelson. To mention but a few.

In any case—because Crete so much sharpens one's sense of the past, because the associations we form are so swift as to seem unconscious, because of the ruggedness of the island, present-day sights can carry one back in imagination to remotest times. The harbor front at Chania, the light fading, a group of local soccer fans in red-and-white-striped shirts, some wearing a sort of jester's cap and bells in the same colors, holding aloft a huge red banner bearing the emblem and name of the club. They gather around the banner in a massed group, they take it by the corners and lay it on the ground. They sway their bodies forward and back, chanting a name in devotional unison, raising their arms above their heads, all together, in one concerted movement. The word they are chanting is indistinguishable. The name of a football star or a name of a god? They throw flares that land sizzling on the water. From some soundless smoke bomb in the midst of them, thick swirls rise up, showing ashy pink in the harbor light. The chant continues, and the rhythmic movements of the bodies forward and back, and for a while we are in the presence of a spirit that goes back to a time before Greek and Venetian and Turk, back to the earliest settlements here, to a people primitive and fearful, with jealous divinities to be propitiated.

Sometimes the clashes of period are more ironic, more like sly jokes. Outside a store on Halidon Street in Chania is an exact copy in plaster of
La Bocca della Verità,
the Mouth of Truth, a stone disc with the face of a Roman river god carved on it, set in a wall in the portico of the Church of Santa Maria in Cosmedin in Rome. The Romans used these discs as drainage lids or sluices for regulating the water system of the city, but this particular one was retrieved and placed in the wall of the church, probably sometime in the late Middle Ages. A popular superstition grew up around it, no doubt encouraged by the authorities, as it made the task of intelligence gathering easier. According to the legend, anyone suspected of heresy or conspiracy was obliged to put a hand into the stone mouth. If innocent, nothing happened; if guilty, the hand was bitten off. In short, this was a medieval lie detector.

This simulacrum, on a busy street in Chania, strikes a note of incongruity almost comic. To convey a sense of remoteness and antiquity, the Cretans use an image that belongs to a time much less remote than the far reaches of their own past—the Romans are of yesterday by comparison. Between pizzeria and car-rental agency, with his abundant tresses and luxuriant beard designed to simulate the flow of water, an expression of open-mouthed consternation on his face, this minor god watches the people and the traffic pass. Above his head there is a slot for coins, and above this the words
HAND ANALYZER
. Now and again people stop before him, insert a euro, press a button for the desired language, and put their hands into the mouth, palm uppermost. The river god prints out a character analysis. The oracle has been computerized. The analysis will not contain anything to trouble or disturb. People chuckle but in some way perhaps believe it, and the euros clink. Even in such standardized versions of ourselves we cling to the notion of our own uniqueness.

Chania: La Bocca della Verità

It is above all in the Archaeological Museum, on the same street, that the layers of history are most apparent. Of course, any museum will have this effect—it is the effect museums aim at. But this particular collection is housed in a building that is in itself an eloquent testimonial to fusions of past and present. This was originally the Church of San Francesco, built by the Venetians, once one of the island's most imposing churches, now deconsecrated and lacking the soaring bell tower that once symbolized its virility.

The bronze figurines and terra-cotta sarcophagi and Hellenistic and Roman sculptures and Minoan ceramics are displayed in the chapels and along the sides of the nave. Roman mosaics depicting the pagan loves of Bacchus and Ariadne are laid out on the floor of this Catholic church in the place where the altar once stood and the Eucharist was performed.

Ariadne too has her place in the myths of Crete. She was a daughter of Minos, and when the hero Theseus came to the island, along with the other youths and maidens sent as tribute from conquered Athens to be sacrificed to the Minotaur, she fell in love with him. After he had killed the monster in the heart of the labyrinth where it lived, he was able to find his way out again by means of a ball of thread Ariadne had given him, one end of which was attached to the entrance. Theseus took her away with him as he had promised, but abandoned her on the Aegean island of Naxos, where she was discovered in tears by the god Bacchus—or Dionysos, as he was called by the Greeks. She became his consort and after her death he set her in the sky as the constellation Corona Borealis.

The Minotaur was half man, half bull, a strange hybrid creature. There is much about the ancient Cretan bull cult that we don't know. The huge quantity of clay figurines of bulls on display in the museum is distinctly mysterious. Of small size and crude workmanship, they have been excavated in great heaps in the surrounding region. Perhaps offerings to Poseidon as god of fertility and virile force. Certainly much cheaper to offer than real ones …

We come upon a showcase with finds from the tomb of one Sossima, who died in childbirth around 300
B.C.
Scraps of gold thread from her funeral dress, necklaces for the afterlife, the gold coin that was placed in her mouth to give to the boatman Charon so that he would ferry her across to the Underworld. These remains of an arrested life convey the same sadness as the jar of burned peas in the Minoan house, though ten centuries separate them in time.

In the small courtyard outside we hear the strains from somewhere nearby of a Brahms symphony. A venerable mulberry tree shades the whole area, planted probably during the Ottoman occupation—the Turks were fond of mulberry trees and planted them all over the island. There is a beautiful Turkish fountain with grooves at the base for ritual washing before entering the mosque. Across from this a stone lion, faceless and eroded but still with mane and haunches and an inscription below, still readable:
EVANGELISTA MEUS
.

The Lion of St. Mark, symbol of Venetian power, the Mohammedan ablution grooves, the romantic German music, make for a kind of blended effect, a sense of the merging of times and places that can become addictive for those who spend time on the island.

Walking westward along Zabeliou Street, following the line of the harbor, one gets the essential feeling of the old city. At the end of Moschon Street is what remains of the Renieri Gate—the Renieri were one of the ruling Venetian families. The line of the arch is still intact, a whole culture of elegance and propriety in a few yards of curving stone. On the lintel above the gate the Renieri coat of arms can still be made out. Not far away is the palazzo the family once owned. This was later the property of a Turkish official who screened off the courtyard and separated it from the street beyond to protect the ladies of his harem from the gaze of passersby. The chapel which formed part of the original palazzo—the only remaining family chapel in Chania—still stands, or at least a narrow section of the facade does, squeezed between buildings on either side, with its rose window and Gothic doorway. The inner courtyard of the palazzo, where the Renieri once took their ease and later the jealously guarded ladies of the harem strolled, has undergone a third metamorphosis. It is now the excellent Sultana Restaurant, where you can enjoy your raki and mezedes and watch the stars come out overhead.