Mercy Read online

  dressed from head to toe in black. One day she burns her hands

  using an iron that you fill with hot coals to use. I have never

  seen such an accident or such an iron. The only running water

  is outside. There is a pump. M ’s fam ily is rich but he lives a

  vagabond life. He was a Com m unist w ho left the party. His

  fam ily has a trucking business. He went to university for tw o

  years but there are so many books he hasn’t read, so many

  books you can’t get here. He was the first one on the island to

  wear bell-bottom pants, he showed up in them one day all

  puffed up with pride but he has never read Freud. He w orks

  behind the bar because he likes it and sometimes he carries

  bags for tourists down at the harbor. O r maybe it is political, I

  don’t know. Crete is a hotbed o f plots and plans. I never know

  i f he will come back but not because I am afraid o f him leaving

  me. He will never leave me. M aybe he flirts but he couldn’t

  leave me; it’d kill him, I truly think. I’m afraid for him. I know

  there is intrigue and danger but I can’t follow it or understand

  it or appraise it. I put m y fears aside by saying to m yself that he

  is vain, which he is; beautiful, smart, vain; he likes carrying the

  bags o f the tourists; his beauty is riveting and he loves to see

  the effect, the tremor, the shock. He loves the millions o f

  flirtations. In the summer there are wom en from everywhere.

  In the winter there are rich men from France w ho come on

  yachts. I’ve seen the one he is with. I know he gets presents

  from him. His best friend is a handsome Frenchman, a pied

  noir, born in Algeria and he thinks it’s his, right-wing;

  gunrunning from Crete for the outlawed O . A . S. I don’t

  understand how they can be friends. O . A . S. is outright

  fascist, imperialist, racist. But M says it is a tie beyond politics

  and beyond betrayal. He is handsome and cold and keeps his

  eyes away from me. I don’t know w hy I think N ikko looks

  Russian because all the Russians in the harbor have been blond

  and round-faced, bursting with good cheer. The Russians and

  the Israelis seem to send blond sailors, ingenues; they are

  blond and young and well-mannered and innocent, not

  aggressive, eternal virgins with disarming shyness, an

  ingenuity for having it seem always like the first time. I do

  what I want, I go where I want, in bed with anyone who

  catches my eye, a glimmer o f light or a soupcon o f romance.

  I’m not inside time or language or rules or society. It’s minute

  to minute with a sense o f being able to last forever like Crete

  itself. In my mind I am doing what I want and it is private and I

  don’t understand that everyone sees, everyone looks, everyone knows, because I am outside the accountability o f

  language and family and convention; what I feel is the only

  society I have or know; I don’t see the million eyes and more to

  the point I don’t hear the million tongues. I think I am alone

  living m y life as I want. I think that when I am with someone I

  am with him. I don’t understand that everyone sees and tells M

  he loves a whore but I would expect him to be above pettiness

  and malice and small minds. I’ve met men from all over, N ew

  Zealand, Australia, Israel, Nigeria, France, a Russian; only

  one Amerikan, not military, a thin, gentle black man who

  loved Nancy Wilson, the greatest jazz singer, he loved her and

  loved her and loved her and I felt bad after. I’ve met Greeks in

  Athens and in Piraeus and on Crete. It’s not a matter o f being

  faithful; I don’t have the words or categories. It’s being too

  alive to stop and living in the minute absolutely without' a

  second thought because now is true. Everything I feel I feel

  absolutely. I have no fear, no ambivalence, no yesterday, no

  tom orrow; not even a name really. When I am with M there is

  nothing else on earth than us, an embrace past anything

  mortal, and when he is not with me I am still as alive, no less

  so, a rapture with no reason to wait or deny m yself anything I

  feel. There are lots o f Amerikans on Crete, military bases filled

  with soldiers, the permanent ones for the bases and then the

  ones sent here from Vietnam to rest and then sent back to

  Vietnam. Sometimes they come to the cafes in the afternoons

  to drink. I don’t go near them except to tell them not to go to

  Vietnam. I say it quietly to tables full o f them in the blazing

  sun that keeps them always a little blind so they hesitate and I

  leave fast. The Cretans hate Amerikans; I guess most Greeks

  do because the Am erikan government keeps interfering so

  there w o n ’t be a left-wing government. The C . I. A. is a strong

  and widely known presence. On Crete there are A ir Force

  bases and the Amerikans treat the Cretans bad. The Cretans

  know the arrogance o f occupying armies, the bilious arrogance. T hey recognize the condescension without speaking

  the literal language o f the occupiers. M ost o f the Am erikans

  are from the Deep South, white boys, and they call the Cretans

  niggers. They laugh at them and shout at them and call them

  cunts, treat them like dirt, even the old mountain men whose

  faces surely would terrify anyone not a fool, the ones the Nazis

  didn’t kill not because they were collaborators but because

  they were resisters. The Amerikans are young, eighteen,

  nineteen, twenty, and they have the arrogance o f Napoleon,

  each and every one o f them; they are the kings o f the w orld all

  flatulent with white wealth and the darkies are meant to serve

  them. T hey make me ashamed. They hate anything not

  Am erikan and anyone with dark skin. They are pale, anemic

  boys with crew cuts; slight and tall and banal; filled with foul

  language that they fire at the natives instead o f using guns. The

  words were dirty when they said them; mean words. I didn’t

  believe any words were dirty until I heard the white boys say

  cunt. They live on the Amerikan bases and they keep

  everything Amerikan as if they aren’t here but there. They

  have Amerikan radio and newspapers and food wrapped in

  plastic and frozen food and dishwashers and refrigerators and

  ranch-type houses for officers and trailers and supermarkets

  with Amerikan brands o f everything. The wives and children

  never go o ff the bases; afraid o f the darkies, afraid o f food

  without plastic wrap, they don’t see the ancient island, only

  Amerikan concrete and fences. The Amerikan military is

  always here; the bases are always manned and the culturally

  impoverished wives and children are always on them; and it is

  just convenient to let the Vietnam boys rest here for now, the

  white ones. The wives and the children are in the ranch-type

  houses and the trailers. They are in Greece, on the island o f

  Crete, a place touched by whatever gods there ever were,

  anyone can see that, in fact Zeus rests here, one mountain is his

  profile, it is Crete, a place o f sublime beauty and ancient

  heritage, unique in the world, older
than anything they can

  imagine including their own God; but the wives and the

  children never see it because it is not Amerikan, not the

  suburbs, not pale white. The women never leave the bases.

  The men come o ff to drink ouzo and to say dirty words to the

  Greeks and to call them dirty names and laugh. Every other

  word is nigger or cunt or fucking and they pick fights. I know

  about the bases because an Amerikan doctor took me to one

  where he lived in a ranch-type house with an Amerikan

  kitchen with Formica cabinets and General Electric appliances.

  The Greeks barely have kitchens. On Crete the people in the

  mountains, mostly peasants, use bunsen burners to cook their

  food. A huge family will have one bunsen burner. Everything

  goes into one pot and it cooks on the one bunsen burner for ten

  hours or twelve hours until late night when everyone eats. -

  They have olive oil from the olive trees that grow everywhere

  and vegetables and fruit and small animals they kill and milk

  from goats. The fam ily will sit at a w ood table in the dark with

  one oil lamp or candle giving light but the natural light on

  Crete doesn’t go aw ay when it becomes night. There is no

  electricity in the mountains but the dark is luminous and you

  can see perfectly in it as if God is holding a candle above your

  head. In the city people use bunsen burners too. When

  Pappous makes a feast he takes some eggs from his chickens

  and some olive oil and some potatoes bought from the market

  for a few drachma and he makes an omelet over a bunsen

  burner. It takes a long time, first for the oil to get really hot,

  then to fry the potatoes, and the eggs cook slow ly; he invites

  me and it is an afternoon’s feast. If people are rich they have

  kitchens but the kitchens have nothing in them except running

  cold water in a stone sink. The sink is a basin cut out o f a

  counter made o f stone, as i f a piece o f hard rock was hauled in

  from the mountains. It’s solid stone from top to bottom.

  There are no w ood cabinets or shelves, just solid stone. I f there

  is running hot water you are in the house o f a millionaire. I f

  you are ju st in a rich house, the people heat the water up in a

  kettle or pot. In the same w ay, there m ay be a bathtub

  somewhere but the woman has to heat up kettle after kettle to

  fill it. She will wash clothes and sheets and towels by hand in

  the bathtub with the water she has cooked the same w ay the

  peasant woman will wash clothes against rocks. There is no

  refrigerator ever anywhere and no General Electric but there

  m ay be two bunsen burners instead o f one. Y ou get food every

  day at open markets in the streets and that is the only time

  women get to go out; only married women. The Am erikans

  never go anywhere without refrigerators and frozen food and

  packaged food; I don’t know how they can stay in Vietnam.

  The Am erikan doctor said he was writing a novel about the

  Vietnam War like Norman M ailer’s The Naked and the Dead.

  He had a crew cut. He had a Deep South accent. He was blond

  and very tanned. He had square shoulders and a square jaw .

  Military, not civilian. White socks, slacks, a casual shirt. N ot

  young. N ot a boy. O ver thirty. Beefy. He is married and has

  three children but his wife and children are away he says. He

  sought me out and tried to talk to me about the War and

  politics and writing; he began by invoking Mailer. It would

  have been different if he had said Hem ingway. He was a

  Hem ingway kind o f guy. But Mailer was busy being hip and

  against the Vietnam War and taking drugs so it didn’t make

  much sense to me; I know Hem ingway had leftist politics in

  the Spanish Civil War but, really, Mailer was being very loud

  against Vietnam and I couldn’t see someone who was happily

  military appreciating it much, no matter how good The Naked

  and the Dead was, if it was, which I m yself didn’t see. It was my

  least favorite o f his books. I said I missed Amerikan coffee so

  he took me to his ranch-type house for some. I meant

  percolated coffee but he made Nescafe. The Greeks make

  Nescafe too but they just use tap water; he boiled the water.

  He made me a martini. I have never had one. It sits on the

  Formica. It’s pretty but it looks like oily ethyl alcohol to me. I

  never sit down. I ask him about his novel but he doesn’t have

  anything to say except that it is against the War. I ask to read it

  but it isn’t in the house. He asks me all these questions about

  how I feel and what I think. I’m perplexed and I’m trying to

  figure it out, standing right there; he’s talking and my brain is

  pulling in circles, questions; I’m asking m yself if he wants to

  fuck or what and what’s wrong with this picture? Is it being in

  a ranch-type house on an island o f peasants? Is it Formica on an

  ancient island o f stone and sand? Is it the missing wife and

  children and how ill at ease he is in this house where he says he

  lives and w hy aren’t there any photographs o f the wife and

  children? Why is it so empty, so not lived in, with everything

  in place and no mess, no piles, no letters or notes or pens or old-

  mail? Is it how old he is— he’s a real adult, straight and narrow,

  from the 1950s unchanged until now. Is it that it is hard to

  believe he is a doctor? When he started talking to me on the

  street he said he was near where I live taking care o f a Cretan

  child who was sick— with nothing no less, just a sore throat.

  He said it was good public relations for the military to help, for

  a doctor to help. Is it that he doesn’t know anything about

  writing or about novels or about his own novel or even about

  The Naked and the Dead or even about Norm an Mailer? Is it

  that he is in the military, must be career military, he certainly

  w asn’t drafted, and keeps saying he is against the War but he

  doesn’t seem to know what’s wrong with it? Is it that he is an

  officer and w hy would such a person want to talk with me? O r

  is it that no man, ever, asks a woman what she thinks in detail,

  with insistence, systematically, concentrating on her answers,

  a checklist o f political questions about the War and writing and

  what I am doing here on Crete now. Never. N ot ever. Then I

  grasp that he is a cop. I was an Amerikan abroad in troubled

  times in a country the C . I. A. wanted to run and I’d been in jail

  against the War. I talked to soldiers and told them not to go to

  Vietnam. I told them it was wrong. I had written letters to the

  government telling them to stop. The F . B . I. had bothered me

  when they could find me, followed me, harassed me, interfered with me, and that’s the honest truth; they’d threatened me. N o w a tall man with a square face and a red neck and a

  crew cut and square shoulders, a quarterback with a Deep

  South accent, wants to know what I think. A girl could live

  her whole life and never have a man want to know so much. I

  love m y country for giving me this unique experience. I try to


  leave it but it follows me. I try to disaffiliate but it affiliates.

  But I had learned to be quiet, a discipline o f survival. I never

  volunteered anything or had any small talk. It was a w ay o f

  life. I was never in danger o f accidentally talking too much.

  Living outside o f language is freedom and chattering is stupid

  and I never talked to Amerikans except to tell them not to go

  to Vietnam; from m y heart, I had nothing else to say to them. I

  would have liked to talk with a writer, or listen actually; that

  was the hook; I would have asked questions and listened and

  tried to understand what he was writing and how he was

  doing it and w hy and what it made him feel. I was trying to

  write m yself and it would have been different from regular

  talk to talk with a writer who was trying to do something and

  maybe I could learn. But he wasn’t a writer and I hadn’t

  gibbered on about anything; perhaps he was surprised. N o w I

  was alone with him in a ranch-type house and I couldn’t get

  home without his help and I needed him to let me go; not keep

  me; not hurt me; not arrest me; not fuck me; and I felt some

  fear about how I would get away because it is always best to

  sleep with men before they force you; and I was confused,

  because it wasn’t sex, it was answers to questions. And I

  thought about it, and I looked around the ranch-type house,

  and considered how strong he was and it was best not to make

  him angry; but I felt honor bound to tell my government not

  just about the War but about how they were fucking up the

  country, the U . S . A ., and I couldn’t act like I didn’t know or

  didn’t care or retreat. M y name is Andrea I told him. It means

  manhood or courage. It is a European name but in Europe

  only boys are named it. I was born down the street from Walt

  Whitman’s house, on Mickle Street in Camden in 1946. I’m

  from his street. I’m from his country, the country he wrote

  about in his poems, the country o f freedom, the country o f

  ecstasy, the country o f jo y o f the body, the country o f

  universal love o f every kind o f folk, no one unworthy or too

  low, the country o f working men and w orking women with