Читать книгу A Child of the Orient - Demetra Vaka - Страница 8

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THERE is no use pretending that there has ever existed the least sense of fraternity between the Greeks and the Turks. They had their quarters and we had ours. They brought their customs and traditions from the East, and we held fast to our own. The two races had nothing to give each other. They ignored us totally, and we only remembered them to hate them and to make ready some day to throw off their dominion.

I have never heard a good word for the Turks from such of my people as have not crossed their thresholds. It is almost unbelievable that for upward of four hundred years we should have lived side by side, ignorant of each other’s history, and positively refusing to learn of each other’s good qualities. With entire sincerity the Greeks daily relate to each other awful deeds of the Turks—deeds which are mere rumour and hearsay, and contain only a grain of truth, or none at all.

Each side did its best to keep the other as far away as possible. They had their resorts and we had ours. They had their tekhé and we had our schools; they had their mosques and we had our churches; they had their Punch and Judy shows and we had our theatres; they had their music and we had our own; they had their language and we clung jealously to ours. Our own differences we did not bring before the Turkish law, but before our own Church. Neither in sorrow nor in pleasure did we mingle. Turkey is the only country in the world where one may travel for months without using the language of the country, with such great tenacity do the conquered races cling to their own. Indeed, in order to live comfortably in Constantinople, one must know Greek, not Turkish.

After I had played with Turkish girls for two years, had been in and out of their homes as a friend, and liked them, one morning my grand-aunt Kalliroë came to our house in a great state of excitement and worry.

“Go fetch your father, dear,” she cried to me, “and tell him that it is of the utmost importance—of the utmost national importance.”

Aunt Kalliroë was an old lady, and the last of her type I remember. She was of an old Phanariot family, and to her the traditions of Phanar—the Greek portion of Constantinople—were as important as her religious duties. She always dressed in the old fashion of Phanar, wearing black lace, turban-like, on her head, a dress in one piece, with ample skirts, and a shawl which she let hang gracefully over her shoulders. She was tall and imposing, with the sharp features of the Greeks of Phanar, which perhaps were sharpened during their first two hundred years under Turkish rule. Even in her old age her eyes were as piercing and clear as a hawk’s. She carried a cane, and wore silk mittens made by hand; and whenever she met a Turk in the street she muttered exorcizing words, as if he were an evil spirit.

Upon her marriage she had at first gone to live in another community, where the Greek traditions were not so rigidly adhered to. At once she decided that her marriage was providential, and that God had meant her to go to this place to revive the Greek spirit. She undertook her task with a fervour at once patriotic and religious; and she succeeded in her mission, for she made these wayward sheep return rigorously to the fold.

“Go, child!” she now admonished me impatiently. “Don’t stand there and stare at me—go fetch your father.”

I knew my father did not like to be disturbed in the morning, but I knew also that there was not a human being who did not obey Aunt Kalliroë, so I went and fetched my father.

“Nephew!” she cried, without any greeting, as soon as she saw him, “I will not countenance it—I will not tolerate it! He must be made to understand the impossibility of his desire.”

My father sat down by her, took her silk-mittened hand, and kissed the fingers.

“Now just tell me who is ‘he.’”

Aunt Kalliroë looked at my father with disgusted surprise.

“Nephew, are you living at the North Pole, and not in Turkey? Baky Pasha, of course.”

She flung the name as if it were a bomb, and waited for it to explode. My father took the matter calmly.

“What has he done?” he inquired.

“Nephew, what is the matter with you? Don’t you know?”

My father shook his head. “Tell me,” he begged.

“He is proposing to buy the Spathary homestead! The—Spathary—homestead! Why the man didn’t leave it to the Church I can’t understand; but I suppose the stroke prevented him from putting his affairs in order. Well, his only heirs live in Roumania, and they want to sell the house, not to rent it, and what is more they are asking a ridiculous price. The house has been vacant for two years; and now Baky Pasha, the Asiatic brute and murderer, proposes to buy it, to buy a Christian home, which contains a niche for our saints in every bed-chamber—a home which has been blessed by our priests, and in which many a Christian child has been baptized!”

She threw up her hands in despair.

“Christian God, are you going to try your children much more? You have sent these Asiatic hordes to come and conquer us; you have allowed your great church to be polluted by their profane creed; and now are you going to try your children further by permitting these beasts to buy Christian homes to lead their improper lives in?”

My father waited till her outburst came to an end, and then said gently: “You know, Aunt Kalliroë, Baky is a very nice fellow, and what is more he has never murdered anybody, or is likely to.”

My grand-aunt stared at my father; then asked stiffly: “And what is his nationality, please?”

“He is a Turk, of course——”

“A Turk—and not a murderer?” She lifted her eyes to the ceiling. “Christian God, what are we coming to? Is 1453 so far away that your children have forgotten it? A Turk—and not a murderer! But I am not here to discuss the Turks with you, nephew; for are you not a Turkish official, do you not consort daily with these barbarians, and do they not even say that you permit your innocent babe to sleep under the roof where Turks keep their women? Christian God, give grace to your children.”

She joined her hands, and her lips moved in silent prayer.

“Just tell me what I can do for you?” my father begged.

“You can speak for me to that Turk, and tell him that the Spathary homestead is Greek, and that it is in the midst of a Greek community, where he is not wanted. If he offers so much money that it will be sold to him, well, it shall be burned to the ground before he moves into it, that is all.”

My father opened his cigarette case, and offered her a cigarette, for all the women of her generation smoked.

She selected one, and examined it closely. “I am gratified at least to see that you smoke what is made by your countrymen, and not Turkish cigarettes.”

My father laughed. “Why, auntie, there is not a Turkish cigarette-maker in all Turkey. All the Turkish cigarettes are made by Greeks.”

Aunt Kalliroë took a puff or two; then, for once, on the defensive, she observed: “All decent things are made by Greeks—isn’t that so?”

“I suppose so.”

“You ought not to ‘suppose so,’” she cried, again on the offensive; “you ought to be certain. Christian God, what are we coming to? Is this the patriotism to be expected of the men who must try to free your great church from the Mussulman profaning?”

“Tell me, how do you propose to settle the Spathary matter?” my father asked, reverting to the less dangerous topic. “If Baky shouldn’t buy it, how would you keep off other Turks who might wish to buy? Your community is an old-fashioned one. The younger generation of Greeks is moving away from it; and only rich Turks will buy the big old Greek homesteads.”

“I propose to buy it myself,” she thundered, “and move into it, and sell my own house to the Bishop of Heraclea, who wants it.”

“How much does he offer for your house?”

“Four thousand pounds.”

“And what do the Spathary heirs ask?”

“Those Roumanian Greeks have no more idea of value than they have of patriotism—they are asking five thousand, and what is more I shall have to pay it.”

“Then you will sell the home of your husband’s forefathers, and pay a thousand pounds more for an inferior one?”

She banged her stick on the floor in exasperation. “I am not driving a money bargain: I am keeping a Turk from coming among us. Great Christian God, am I to permit an infidel to pass daily by my door, and to walk the street where Christian virgins dwell?”

“Why doesn’t the Bishop buy the Spathary homestead?” my father suggested.

“It isn’t big enough. It hasn’t enough ground. And it’s farther from the landing. Now, are you going to carry my message to that brutal Turk?”

“Yes, certainly. And I know that he will not be willing to buy where he is not wanted. But I am sorry that you are going to lose your own home, and pay a thousand pounds over.”

“Needn’t worry! I have enough to live on, and, as you know, all my money goes to the Educational Fund, so that I might just as well use a thousand pounds now to keep a Turk away from Christians.”

The next time we visited Aunt Kalliroë she was installed in the Spathary homestead. Just within the front door stood a small table, covered with a white linen table-cloth, such as orthodox Greek women spun themselves for the purpose of putting on the tables where the ikons were laid—table-cloths always washed by the mistress herself in a basin kept apart from the other dishes. On the table lay a Greek ikon, a brass candlestick holding three candles, all burning, and a brass incense-burner, from which a column of blue smoke was rising, filling the house with the odour of incense.

“Why, it isn’t Easter and it isn’t Christmas,” I cried. “It isn’t even a great saint’s day. Why are you burning the candles and the incense, Aunt Kalliroë?”

“They have been burning since I moved into this house, and they shall burn for thrice forty days, to cleanse it from Turkish pollution.”

“But since Baky Pasha never bought it, and never lived in it——”

“No, but a Turk has coveted it, and that is enough to pollute a Christian home.”

This incident is one of many. It illustrates the feeling which existed in the hearts of the orthodox Greeks for the people who conquered them and brought, to the very capital of their former empire, their religion and their customs. We disliked them and feared them; and our fear partook both of the real and of the unreal, because we ascribed to them not only the deeds which they had done, but also a great many that they were incapable of doing, and had not even considered the possibility of doing.

I wonder now what would have been the outcome had the Greeks and the Turks mingled more together; had they come to know each other and to recognize each other’s good qualities, and had they been able to profit by the good which is in each nation. Had the Turks, for example, borrowed from the light of Greek civilization and culture; and had the Greeks profited by the calm contemplative spirit, which is the keynote of the Turkish character, when not in war. I wonder always what would have been the outcome, and perhaps that is one more reason why I try to show what is best in the Turks—to save the gold from the dross, and to disentangle from the bad what was divine and immortal in them.

We Greeks have never been able to learn from them and to give something in exchange; but why let it be lost to the whole world? And since we call ourselves Christians, why should we not be able to say—when the sick shall be dead—even as Christ said of the dead dog: “Yes, he is a dead dog—but his teeth are beautiful.”