free download here - Michael Llewellyn-Smith

The Great Island
free of them and must fend for herself. The demands now are clear;
better communications, better education, not only in the schools but
throughout the country so that the smallholder may understand what
sort of damage his goat is doing; increased productivity. If the Cretan’s
energy could be harnessed to these tasks the island would gradually
turn into the kind of paradise it might have been under the Venetians.
What would be lost would be not the valuable qualities which sustained
Crete through successive occupations, but the trappings of a
dated philosophy which was nourished by the very forces it sought to
combat. It is pathetic sometimes to hear Cretans talking about the last
war, and to realize that, hellish as it was, they do not know what to do
now that it is over. Those who go to Germany to find work do not go
because they expect to like it abroad, but because the life at home is a
poor one, lacking in comfort and purpose. There is still no substitute
for the purpose that is now dead – ‘Freedom or Death’. Other societies,
like our own, having grown used to materialism and tired of abstractions,
have no need for a substitute. But a heroic society like the Cretan
does need one.
George Psychoundakis has not changed. His son Nikos, who
gave such trouble when he was born three years ago that I had to
take George’s wife and her mother on that alarming emergency ride
down to Rethymnon hospital, is growing up. He has one of those
deliberate, husky, serious voices in which you can hear the intelligence
growing. Suddenly his face goes puzzled, widens and breaks into
laughter – a short intense burst. Whereas Angelica, the baby, is just
amazed by the world.
George has started keeping bees. His front parlour has a honey
extractor alongside the divan, under the family photographs. This
year he got forty kilos of honey, dark and ambrosial. Next year he will
expand the business, if he has not emigrated to Germany by then. I
think even George hopes that he will decide not to emigrate. We went
down to inspect the beehives, and while I sat on a rock and watched,
George slaughtered bumblebees with a stiff besom, giving a running
commentary:
‘They’re the greatest enemy – got you! – of the bcc. It’s all – got
you, you cuckold ! – all in my book up at the house – CUCKOLDS !’
Later we sat in the café with Pavlos, who says he wishes he had a
record of his songs. He can remember recording ‘And what became of
them, the brave ones of the world?’ for us. ‘I sang you that song for its
meaning, not for the tune. It is an allegory’; and he explains to the
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