The Funeral Games: A Story

by COSMAS POLITIS

1

THAT afternoon, soon after lunch— about two o’clock — we started for Psomalonos. Apart from Stavro, the rest of us were meeting Louis for the first time after . . . after all those days. As the two of us arrived with Laios we found Louis among the others, talking in his usual way. Only Louis was more sunburned, and there was a serious smile at the corner of his lips.

“Who’s the one walking with him?”

“Who?” said Laios with a start. “Oh, what am I thinking of . . . it’s Petrovik. Wasn’t there someone else?”

“Oh, for God’s sake! Don’t drive me mad.” Behind the station some gypsies had pitched their camp. We went further away, towards the sea. It seems that Louis and Stavro had come beforehand and arranged everything. We found the course already marked out and the posts set.

“That pile of wood will be in our way,” said someone.

“No,” said Stavro. “The course goes the other way. There’s the starting point.”

It was a pile of thick timbers coated with tar — ties for the railroad — stacked loosely crosswise. The pile went higher than our heads, far higher.

The boys got ready. Under their clothes they already had on their sports tilings—shorts, thin shirts — and then they took off their boots to put on the proper shoes. No one asked why the sports were taking place today, or what was the meaning of the sudden summons. We all felt a bodily desire for immortality, a desire to show our strength as a challenge, as a revenge for what had happened.

Waiting for the sports to begin, one boy practiced throwing and another did trial exercises for running or jumping. The elastic bodies were stretched and muscles played. It was a liberation, under the steady sunlight. At that minute everything changeable, ideas and such shifting phenomena, were of no account. The lines, the tension of the bodies, signified something static and eternal: the statuesque harmony of the gods who triumph untroubled above human misfortunes.

“You, what do you want, here?” called Cleobulos to two barefooted young gypsies.

“I told them to come,” said Louis.

The other gypsies and the small fry remained apart, round the tents, sitting cross-legged on the ground. They smiled a bitter, somewhat ironical smile at all that they did not understand. In their dark faces, their white teeth shone out. The women in holiday dress blossomed in the sunlight like manycolored flowers, startling by their absence of green leaves.

You would have said the sea and land were first divided on that day. The summer was sending messages of its coming. On the ridge of Akorphos, towards the north, the snow was cut askew where the sun struck the mountain, and was almost transparent on the rock. Further down the flanks were green, and as they went lower they were soft as the soil on the low foothills. And the foliage grew thickly — silk, velvet, cotton, silver . . . in some places darker, in others as light as a first coat of paint. Behind the railroad some trees with white blossoms were precociously in flower. And there beside us in the broad ditch under the embankment arum lilies dominated the thistles and nettles. They had freshly unfolded all their new green leaves. They crowded and intermingled; they were jostling one another, and the place seemed too small for the great spring that was coming. The thistles were still in bud. One or two little flowers, ever so small, stood in surprise on their stems in front of the sage bushes.

Louis was looking quietly at a stately ship that was sailing out to sea. Then he went slowly to the shore where the waves spread out against it, and dipped his hands in the water. The winter greenness of the sea had now turned to blue. The water retreated with the coquetry of springtime, and left millions of drops behind, on shells and pebbles. The foam smelled of oranges and rosemary. Who knows how long Louis would have gone on standing there. But Stavro put an arm round his waist and brought him back to us.

2

STANDING by the pile of timbers, the two gypsy children began a tune, the boy with a pipe, the girl with a drum. The games started.

They lasted till the evening, till the hour when the wind fell — and the day, hiding behind the mountains on the other side of the gulf, turned, reddening, to look at us for the last time. Then a thick band of mist spread over the foot of the mountains and only their summits showed, reflected vaguely in the quiet waters of an inland sea or a shoreless lake.

Louis took no part in the games. So two first places were won by visitors—Laios and Petrovik and there were two others that Louis would certainly have won. But now everything was over. Only nothing and emptiness were left here below.

“Bravo!” said Stavro to Aleko. “If you paid more attention to the position of your left foot . . .” and he began giving him technical explanations.

Louis sat on a stone and looked on. At the halfmile— someone ought to have been there — he stood up to follow the course better. He always kept the same calm. Only he could not contain himself when Michael burst into tears over nothing. The discus had hit him lightly on the wrist on a throw of Antony’s.

“Fool!” he said. “What are you crying for? People far better than you are dead!” And if Oleobulos hadn’t stopped him in time he’d have twisted Michael’s hand so that he would have been maimed for the rest of his life.

It was getting dark when a train whistled as it went by. It didn’t stop at the freight station, but went straight on into town. The last daylight shone on the roads and the low foreshore.

First of all the stars, Venus shone out from behind a dark cloud. In the green twilight horsemen were galloping after some mythical beast with twisted tail and spread wings engraved in crimson. The trees, which all day long tell the pure and simple truth, at this hour were mocking, as if playing some fantastic role.

Louis sat on his stone, apart, silent, looking at the shadow which lengthened on the ground. He would not raise his eyes off the earth — nor his mind.

It was already nightfall. It was just as well that the gypsies had lit fires and we could see something. As we passed in front of the tents we saw them sitting in the same position, gazing somewhere into the void with the flame of the fire on their faces. They seemed to be looking far away, into the future — a long journey without an end. That’s how Laios explained it. And then he said: “Let’s go near them again.”

We went by them once again, right beside them. We looked down from above. But this evening the gypsy women had their necks weighted with chains of coins, and we could not make out their breasts.

Aleko walked silently.

“How is it they didn’t go into the town today as it’s Carnival Thursday?” Laios wondered. Then he added: “I dare say Louis paid them to stay.”

The outskirts round the station were quiet and empty, as always in the evening. The madness of the Carnival would begin by the fish market. The first sign of it was a dirty clown at the corner holding a hard balloon made out of a cow’s bladder, with which he hit the street boys on the head.

“Lights, lights!” The street sellers were crying their wares, and from time to time they lit a flare and hurled it up into the air — either those red ones or the kind that break into stars and smell of sulphur. And when one of them fell on the paper festoons that decorated the butcher’s there was an uproar; everyone ran up and it all ended in a row.

Aloe Street with the cafés — to the right of the shopping street &emdsah; was quieter. It was rather chilly, in spite of the lovely evening, and the clients preferred to stay inside. Some families had brought even their small children with them, most of them in fancy dress as Evzones or country girls. The little things sat quietly, holding small muslin bags of confetti. They amused themselves by watching their elders eating various sweet things, and commenting on the company near them. All this could be seen from the street, amid the cloud of smoke behind the heavy glass doors.

At one moment there was an uproar in the street. Some tattered ragamuffins with blackened faces stood in front of the Grand Café, playing drums and moving their bodies like bears. Behind them shouted the street urchins. Everyone left the tables to watch. Mothers picked up their babies, and they flattened their noses against the windows. One of the ragamuffins passed round the plate for fiveor ten-lepton pieces. Then the crowd round them became sparser. Someone called: “Here come the police!” . . . and the street boys took to their heels, pulling up their skirts to run better.

Three urchins went up to a bigger one and said, pointing to a brightness shining above the houses: “ What’s that over there? Fireworks? Let’s go see.”

Fireworks? W hy should there be fireworks at this carnival? It’s only on Good Friday evening that people amuse themselves by lighting squibs and throwing rockets. The fact is that the sky was red down towards the station. It couldn’t be the gypsies’ fires, just a few sticks!

On the following days there were a lot of rumors about that evening. Some people said the gypsies wanted to set fire to the station and had set a light to the tarred railroad ties; others said some boys were to blame — it appeared some rich young man had followed a whim and had been drinking till dawn with the gypsies — and that sort of thing. It was further said that they had stolen a cow and roasted it alive.

But the few who were present, either at the end or from the beginning — none of them confessed to it.—witnessed a most solemn ceremony.

3

IT is true that something living escaped half roasted from the pyre. It wasn’t a cow nor a donkey, nor a dog. It rolled on the ground and then took to its heels, mewing like a cat. And there were picked up among the ashes a tin helmet half melted by the fire and other iron objects—hooks and the blade of an ax.

The fire only burned the ties and went no further — and indeed it could not have happened otherwise, as they stood apart in the middle of the field. They caught like a torch, and the fire soared straight up in the still air. The crackle of the flames made the gypsies’ horses neigh. As for the gypsy women, 1 hey collected together and started a lament, tearing their hair and weeping, each of them, with some sorrow of her own, calling to mind secret and forbidden memories. They beat their breasts and sang words that shook the heart—even though no one understood their language — and their storm-tossed bodies rocked backwards and forwards with the tune of the song as they swayed from the waist.

The two gypsy children were wearing out the pipe and drum. And their elder sister, the gypsy madonna, began a slow dance of half movements — and so the sorrow was held in control — and coin clinked faintly against coin, and bracelet against bracelet. Bare-breasted, burned golden by the fire, as sure of herself as pleasure, she danced — and beyond this loveliness reigned the obscurity of the night.

And from the bare stone walls the lizards poked out their heads, deceived by the fire, and stood watching on the rocks.

All who saw with their eyes can bear witness that this and nothing else is what really happened.

Translated by Robert Liddell and Andreas Cambas