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Epilogue
At this point one thinks of all the things one has left out, and they are
legion. No word about costumes and embroideries, very little about the
life of the three big towns, nothing of the architecture, very little about
the way Crete is run today. There is one omission that I must correct,
by emphasizing that travel in Crete can be very boring. Since it is
almost part of the writer’s job to improve on his subject, the impression
is often given that foreign parts are some sort of paradise. This is
inevitable. If I had a nightmare about Crete it would be peopled by
young men who stare and stare, and when they do ask a question it is
‘Deutsch?’ I should be sitting in a flyblown café surrounded by these
men, who sit astride the wooden chairs and lean their forearms on the
back of the chair. One or two of them are clicking worry beads. Then
the gramophone comes to life, grotesquely loud and distorted, broadcasting
monotonous dance music throughout the whole village. No one
tries to turn it down. No one seems to be listening. Sitting engulfed in
this noise, you can still just hear against it the click of the beads and
the slap of dirty playing cards on the table. Someone starts a conversation.
‘Deutsch?’
‘No, English.’
‘Ah, English. Good. What do you think of our place? It’s a nice
place, isn’t it?’
‘A very nice place, yes.’
And in a few moments one is comparing Crete with England, saying
for the thousandth time that we have no olives, no grapes, precious
little sun, and drawing for the thousandth time the same expressions
of surprise or of tolerant superior knowledge. All such conversations
repeat themselves to the very words used. Certain phrases imprint
themselves on the memory: (‘You look alike, are you brother and
sister?’ or ‘You must marry a Cretan girl’) and one finds oneself
answering in formulae too.
If it were an extravagant nightmare it might contain the dignified
white-haired Greek-American who buttonholed me once in St Nicholas
and would not let me go.
‘Listen to me, boy. How old do I look, eh?’
‘Sixty?’
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