free download here - Michael Llewellyn-Smith

The Great Island
with garlands. Soon it was done. The guests processed round the altar,
dropped a present into a large basket, received a sugared almond and
left the church. Outside, the procession formed up again, to go back to
the groom’s house for the feast. This time we walked along with them,
recording as unobtrusively as possible.
Come outside, mother of the bridegroom, mother of the bride,
To see your precious son and golden bride.
Later in the evening we slipped out of the feast, where the guests
were happily singing the mantinades, or rhymed couplets, of which
every Cretan has an apparently inexhaustible repertoire. We went to
the café of Stelios the mayor, where two instrumentalists from Rethymnon
had come to play. Twenty yards away we stopped and listened.
They were dancing the Syrtos, most ancient and graceful of Greek
dances. As I stood in a pool of darkness I could see the dancers silhouetted,
clapping their hands and crying out. The reedy tones of the
lyre pierced the stillness. Far away a dog barked. Quietly Brian laid
the tape-recorder on a stone wall and switched it on. The atmosphere
of this tape is indescribable. Whenever I hear it I shall see those
Cretans, their legs gliding and growing from the ground in the side-lit
semicircle of the dance; see Stelios, too, as he tried later to dance on a
wine bottle for our benefit and gashed his thumb on the shattered
wreck.
One night we gave a dinner party up in our camp where the village
spring emerges from under the olives and holm-oaks. George Psychoundakis,
Pavlos the singer, and Stelios, our young interpreter, were
the guests. With us were two girls from Cambridge who had spent a
domestic week learning to spin and bake with the women of the village.
Out of slender resources (meat and fish, eggs, milk and cheese were still
not allowed) they produced a wonderful meal. Munching an olive,
Pavlos jokes with George. Occasionally Stelios translates. ‘The girls are
looking even more beautiful than when they arrived.’ Brian says it is
the sun, food and friendliness of Asi Gonia. The conversation warms up,
the laughter increases. The bottle of wine is exhausted and we go on to
retsina. Pavlos roars with delight and keeps putting out his glass for
more. He circles his finger in a typical Greek gesture, throws back his
head, and cries, ‘ Po-po-po, only a little’, then drains the glass and asks
again. He does his imitation of Xan Fielding, his favourite among the
English who fought here during the war. Fielding used to chain-smoke.
‘Ninety a day,’ says Pavlos, sucking in breath through his cigarette
holder, throwing away an imaginary stub, and immediately lighting
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