4. The Greek-American

 
Ilias Spantidakis lay awake
in the narrow bed behind his kafeneíon,
thinking of gunfire. Somewhere shuffling feet
and coughing, not his father, not Babá—
Gus Kutsofes had got up to stir the fire
and heat the little bríki on the stove.
This was Denver. The year was 1912.
Today his fellow Greeks would go to war.
 
 
Den eímai Romaíos, eímai Kritikós.
I’m not a Greek, I am a Cretan, though
I’m far away from home. Ap’ to horió.
Each day this inner dialogue, the boy
he became in dreams reborn an immigrant,
rechristened Louis Tikas in New York,
hopping the westbound freight—Chicago, Denver,
everywhere Greeks said he could find a job.
 
 
Some days this waking to himself became
unbearable, like some ill-fitting mask,
the words he’d learned of English hard to hold,
his village dialect a refuge from
estranging streets. How long, O Lord, how long
must one man journey till he finds his home?
But home was Loutra, poverty, the house,
the olive press, his father serving coffee.
 
 
And Crete in Limbo, as the Scholar said—
a customer who came to read, to take
a glass of water with his coffee, and,
as he told Louis, hear the accent of
his youth. “Will you go back?” the Scholar asked.
“What would you do there? Live among the brigands?
The bread you make from stones is heavy bread,
my boy. You must cultivate your learning.”
 
 
How the Scholar lived he had never learned.
His clothes were like a dandified beggar’s
and each day he took his corner table
hours at a time for the price of one coffee.
“You have a brain, my boy. You’re good at English.
Everybody knows you—the boy who writes.”
“I wrote my declaration,” Louis said,
“to be a citizen. I signed the papers.”
 
 
“Yes, but the name you signed was not your own,”
the Scholar answered. He wiped his spectacles
and perched them on his nose. “I know you, my boy.
American—you’re so American,
I can tell you dream of silver dollars, eh?
You write your declaration, tell the man
that you intend to be American,
but you dream of going back.”
 
 
“And you? That book you always read—what is it?
Dante, the Italian, always Dante.
Tell me—are you out of Hell yet?”
“Oh yes,
my boy, I’ve crossed the river.”
“Tell me, then,
about this river. I’ve crossed a river too,
the Mississippi. Like you I crossed the sea.
But unlike you, I work.”
At that he took his rag and wiped the table.
 
 
He had such eloquence at morning, before
he rose and pulled his trousers on. It was
a language of his own, a fluency
he never matched aloud, though he had pride
in what he had accomplished. All Greek Town
knew him, the bootblack who became a merchant.
“Now take that document and go to Tikas.
He can read it for you.” That’s what they said.
 
 
Go to Tikas. Go to Tikas, Louis.
And he said his new name as he practiced
signing it, over and over. Twenty-six,
five foot eight, one hundred fifty pounds.
Louis Tikas, merchant, Market Street.
Levéntis. Palikári. Tell the Sultan
Louis Tikas has come to pay a call.
Then Gus poked through the curtain—”You up yet?”
 

* * *

 
And Crete in Limbo. That was far away
like voices drowning in the sea, still calling.
Gunfire, and a massive Turk collapsed,
spilling his turban on the bloody stones.
When he was three a Loutra man was hanged
from the plane tree in the square. Had he seen
this thing or only heard of it from his father?
When he was ten he saw the burning trees.
 
 
1896. The Turks had come
on foot, on horseback: rifles, bayonets
and torches. They burned the churches at Pyghí
where Ilias studied in the secret school
with Father Nicholas. They burned the trees
and wrecked the olive harvest for that year.
The siege at Réthymnon, where Moslems starved,
the Christians slaughtered at Iráklion—
 
 
two years of civil war. Then Crete was free!
A Greek, Prince George, was High Commissioner,
and came to feast in nearby villages.
Ilias Spantidakis walked the streets
of Réthymnon, saw Russian soldiers in
their brilliant uniforms, and somehow knew
this was the Limbo Crete the Scholar meant,
protectorate of European powers.
 
 
He couldn’t hate the foreigners who came,
and they were Orthodox. The refugees
were terrible to see. The muezzin
no longer called from the city’s minarets,
though there were Moslems still who had not left,
abused by Russian soldiers in the streets.
Ilias took the footpath back to Loutra,
making a vow that he would never kill.
 
 
His father’s musket hung above the fireplace
till days when he hunted birds on the mountainside
and took Ilias with him. “Learn to shoot,”
his father said. “Here’s the lead and powder. Load
from the muzzle, tamp it down, aim and fire.”
That musket butted like a Russian cannon
and scattered feathers over a stony field.
He’d killed a falcon, and he felt like crying.
 

* * *

 
The smell of eggs in olive oil. Louis,
not Ilias, rose and dressed, in worsted,
not in boots and breeches. He drew the curtain,
nodded to the older man. San mátia,
like eyes, the egg yolks sputtered in their whites.
“Megáli ‘méra,” Gus said. A great day.
“Soon we’ll all be Greeks. Greek-Americans.
Whatever we want. Today we eat like kings.”
 
 
He tipped the bríki, filling Louis’s cup
with heavy coffee he had ground himself.
“Your turn to sit. A man from Corinthos
will serve you breakfast, eh? You want to smoke?
I made four cigarettes—they’re on the table.
Here, feast on a pair of eyes. Remember
this day, October 25th, we’re brothers,
Cretan and Corinthian, we’re all Greek.”
 
 
“Yes,” said Louis, soaking a rusk in oil
and yolk, “but we had to come to America
to make it happen.”
“Ela,” Gus said. “Ela
paidí mou. With your man Venizelos
it will happen soon. We’ll have Enósis. Crete
is Greek.”
“You mean Greece is Cretan, don’t you?
Anyway, we’re all Americans.”
Louis wiped the egg from his black mustache.
 
 
Eleutherios Venizelos watched
from the framed wall photograph, a Cretan hero,
and across the narrow room so dimly lit
by the front window and one electric bulb,
the bearded Patriarch was watching too.
A flag and crucifix were all they had
besides these photographs for decoration,
a stove, six tables, sawdust on the floor,
 
 
a case in which they kept the bread and olives,
some curtained shelves for plates, a money box
and writing implements, a broom, two aprons.
They were merchants, partners in free trade,
citizens of Greek Town. At eight o’clock
they had a customer. Frayed but dignified,
the Scholar took his customary chair
and said in Greek he’d heard the talk of war.
 

* * *

 
Ilias Spantidakis was nineteen
when Venizelists rose against the Russians.
The men of Loutra heard the call, went out
to guard their olive trees, then joined andártes
from the White Mountains, booted men with beards
and muskets. At Atsipopoulo he fired
his father’s gun for the first time at a man
and heard the soldier screaming for his God.
 
 
A failed revolt, but he had learned to fight.
And now, October 25th, Louis stood
amid the crowd of Greeks on Champa Street,
hearing talk of war in Macedonia.
Four hundred Greeks would board the special train
then sail for home to save the Fatherland
against the Turks. With Gus he’d closed the shop
and joined the current of the multitude.
 
 
The Colorado sky, bluer than the flag
of Greece, spread almost cloudless over Denver,
city of cooking fires and crowded streets,
of cattle pens, cowboys and derelicts,
the whores and immigrants in their Sunday best.
Behind the fresh recruits, a marching band,
the clergy and the flags.
In all his six years in America,
 
 
living by his wits, his love of mankind
even when Yanks or Greeks were cheating him,
Louis never felt so proud, so desolate—
almost a Greek, almost American.
He joined those marching in the big parade
who would stay behind but wished their brothers well.
They were a crowd, an army with two flags.
He looked for friends among the heads and hats,
 
 
perhaps Dimitris, whom he knew in Crete,
the gigolo who never found a woman,
who found Ilias in the harbor street
at Réthymnon, and took his elbow, saying,
“Look, my friend. Look at the Cretan boys
who dive among the ships for any coin
the sailors toss. Look at the rags we wear.
How will your sisters make a dowry here?
 
 
How long will it take you, how many years
before you walk like a free man in Greece?
You’re good at school, my friend, good-looking, too.
How many decades will it take until
you can afford to marry? Look at the girls
even in Réthymno, the young ones married
to rich old men with spittle on their chins.
Look at their suffering. Look at their sad eyes.
 
 
Now look beyond the fishing caiques—you see?
The ship Dareios, bound for Patras harbor.
That’s where you find ships to America
where everybody has a job. The women
in America will fuck a handsome boy
for nothing. Money flows like water—rivers
of money. A President named Rockefeller
gives you a job the moment you disembark.”
 
 
Yes, Dimitris, always dreaming, believed
that bastard, Louis Skliris, and took a job
on the road to Cripple Creek, a job he paid for
only to find that no job had existed.
He was back in Denver. Louis rarely saw him.
One day he came into the coffee shop
with schemes about the coal fields to the north.
“Oneiro,” said Louis. “A dream. Someone’s lying.”
 
 
But other men who gossiped in the shop
were talking about coal. When there were strikes
mine owners hired scabs, gave them houses.
It was dirty work, but say you worked six months
and didn’t spend your pay on whores or poker.
Say you hid your money in a box
and say you made more money speaking English
to the bosses, Greek among the immigrants.
 
 
Say you could live a life of discipline,
I know it isn’t human but say you could.
There would be money for your sisters’ dowries,
money even for a picture bride
direct from Greece.
And so his mind ran on
long after the parade, when he returned
through strangely quiet streets, unlocked the door
and let the straggling customers back in.
 
 
Till midnight all the talking was of war,
the Scholar in the midst of it, performing
feats of intellect, accepting the smokes
Gus offered him to keep him speaking. War?
With the Ottomans? A dying empire’s troops
Would never stand up to the Greeks, but Greeks
were fools. Constantinopoli? He tapped
his temple. A city only of the mind.
 
 
At that the fights erupted. Louis played
his customary role of making peace
and bade his countrymen good night. And after
Gus had gone to bed he locked the shop
and walked down Market Street. He knew the houses
he was looking for, the mood of restlessness
that meant he needed company, though shame
at spending money for a woman wracked his brain.
 

* * *

 
This singular man. This footnote nearly lost
from pages of the history books. Louis-
Ilias, named for the fiery prophet,
but often so uncertain of his skin
that only someone else’s touch, some whore
who thought he was Sicilian or a Serb,
and took the money first and said no kissing,
made him believe that he was truly alive. . . .
 
 
What does it mean—nation of immigrants?
What are the accents, fables, voices of roads,
the tall tales told by the smallest desert plants?
Even the wind in the barbed wire goads
me into making lines, fencing my vagrant thought.
A story is the language of desire.
A journey home is never what it ought
to be.
A land of broken glass. Of gunfire.