dressed from head to toe in black. One day she burns her hands
using an iron that you fill with hot coals to use. I have never
seen such an accident or such an iron. The only running water
is outside. There is a pump. M ’s fam ily is rich but he lives a
vagabond life. He was a Com m unist w ho left the party. His
fam ily has a trucking business. He went to university for tw o
years but there are so many books he hasn’t read, so many
books you can’t get here. He was the first one on the island to
wear bell-bottom pants, he showed up in them one day all
puffed up with pride but he has never read Freud. He w orks
behind the bar because he likes it and sometimes he carries
bags for tourists down at the harbor. O r maybe it is political, I
don’t know. Crete is a hotbed o f plots and plans. I never know
i f he will come back but not because I am afraid o f him leaving
me. He will never leave me. M aybe he flirts but he couldn’t
leave me; it’d kill him, I truly think. I’m afraid for him. I know
there is intrigue and danger but I can’t follow it or understand
it or appraise it. I put m y fears aside by saying to m yself that he
is vain, which he is; beautiful, smart, vain; he likes carrying the
bags o f the tourists; his beauty is riveting and he loves to see
the effect, the tremor, the shock. He loves the millions o f
flirtations. In the summer there are wom en from everywhere.
In the winter there are rich men from France w ho come on
yachts. I’ve seen the one he is with. I know he gets presents
from him. His best friend is a handsome Frenchman, a pied
noir, born in Algeria and he thinks it’s his, right-wing;
gunrunning from Crete for the outlawed O . A . S. I don’t
understand how they can be friends. O . A . S. is outright
fascist, imperialist, racist. But M says it is a tie beyond politics
and beyond betrayal. He is handsome and cold and keeps his
eyes away from me. I don’t know w hy I think N ikko looks
Russian because all the Russians in the harbor have been blond
and round-faced, bursting with good cheer. The Russians and
the Israelis seem to send blond sailors, ingenues; they are
blond and young and well-mannered and innocent, not
aggressive, eternal virgins with disarming shyness, an
ingenuity for having it seem always like the first time. I do
what I want, I go where I want, in bed with anyone who
catches my eye, a glimmer o f light or a soupcon o f romance.
I’m not inside time or language or rules or society. It’s minute
to minute with a sense o f being able to last forever like Crete
itself. In my mind I am doing what I want and it is private and I
don’t understand that everyone sees, everyone looks, everyone knows, because I am outside the accountability o f
language and family and convention; what I feel is the only
society I have or know; I don’t see the million eyes and more to
the point I don’t hear the million tongues. I think I am alone
living m y life as I want. I think that when I am with someone I
am with him. I don’t understand that everyone sees and tells M
he loves a whore but I would expect him to be above pettiness
and malice and small minds. I’ve met men from all over, N ew
Zealand, Australia, Israel, Nigeria, France, a Russian; only
one Amerikan, not military, a thin, gentle black man who
loved Nancy Wilson, the greatest jazz singer, he loved her and
loved her and loved her and I felt bad after. I’ve met Greeks in
Athens and in Piraeus and on Crete. It’s not a matter o f being
faithful; I don’t have the words or categories. It’s being too
alive to stop and living in the minute absolutely without' a
second thought because now is true. Everything I feel I feel
absolutely. I have no fear, no ambivalence, no yesterday, no
tom orrow; not even a name really. When I am with M there is
nothing else on earth than us, an embrace past anything
mortal, and when he is not with me I am still as alive, no less
so, a rapture with no reason to wait or deny m yself anything I
feel. There are lots o f Amerikans on Crete, military bases filled
ones sent here from Vietnam to rest and then sent back to
Vietnam. Sometimes they come to the cafes in the afternoons
to drink. I don’t go near them except to tell them not to go to
Vietnam. I say it quietly to tables full o f them in the blazing
sun that keeps them always a little blind so they hesitate and I
leave fast. The Cretans hate Amerikans; I guess most Greeks
do because the Am erikan government keeps interfering so
there w o n ’t be a left-wing government. The C . I. A. is a strong
and widely known presence. On Crete there are A ir Force
bases and the Amerikans treat the Cretans bad. The Cretans
know the arrogance o f occupying armies, the bilious arrogance. T hey recognize the condescension without speaking
the literal language o f the occupiers. M ost o f the Am erikans
are from the Deep South, white boys, and they call the Cretans
niggers. They laugh at them and shout at them and call them
cunts, treat them like dirt, even the old mountain men whose
faces surely would terrify anyone not a fool, the ones the Nazis
didn’t kill not because they were collaborators but because
they were resisters. The Amerikans are young, eighteen,
nineteen, twenty, and they have the arrogance o f Napoleon,
each and every one o f them; they are the kings o f the w orld all
flatulent with white wealth and the darkies are meant to serve
them. T hey make me ashamed. They hate anything not
Am erikan and anyone with dark skin. They are pale, anemic
boys with crew cuts; slight and tall and banal; filled with foul
language that they fire at the natives instead o f using guns. The
words were dirty when they said them; mean words. I didn’t
believe any words were dirty until I heard the white boys say
cunt. They live on the Amerikan bases and they keep
everything Amerikan as if they aren’t here but there. They
have Amerikan radio and newspapers and food wrapped in
plastic and frozen food and dishwashers and refrigerators and
ranch-type houses for officers and trailers and supermarkets
with Amerikan brands o f everything. The wives and children
never go o ff the bases; afraid o f the darkies, afraid o f food
without plastic wrap, they don’t see the ancient island, only
Amerikan concrete and fences. The Amerikan military is
always here; the bases are always manned and the culturally
impoverished wives and children are always on them; and it is
just convenient to let the Vietnam boys rest here for now, the
white ones. The wives and the children are in the ranch-type
houses and the trailers. They are in Greece, on the island o f
Crete, a place touched by whatever gods there ever were,
anyone can see that, in fact Zeus rests here, one mountain is his
profile, it is Crete, a place o f sublime beauty and ancient
heritage, unique in the world, older
than anything they can
imagine including their own God; but the wives and the
children never see it because it is not Amerikan, not the
suburbs, not pale white. The women never leave the bases.
The men come o ff to drink ouzo and to say dirty words to the
Greeks and to call them dirty names and laugh. Every other
word is nigger or cunt or fucking and they pick fights. I know
about the bases because an Amerikan doctor took me to one
where he lived in a ranch-type house with an Amerikan
kitchen with Formica cabinets and General Electric appliances.
The Greeks barely have kitchens. On Crete the people in the
mountains, mostly peasants, use bunsen burners to cook their
food. A huge family will have one bunsen burner. Everything
goes into one pot and it cooks on the one bunsen burner for ten
hours or twelve hours until late night when everyone eats. -
They have olive oil from the olive trees that grow everywhere
and vegetables and fruit and small animals they kill and milk
from goats. The fam ily will sit at a w ood table in the dark with
one oil lamp or candle giving light but the natural light on
Crete doesn’t go aw ay when it becomes night. There is no
electricity in the mountains but the dark is luminous and you
can see perfectly in it as if God is holding a candle above your
head. In the city people use bunsen burners too. When
Pappous makes a feast he takes some eggs from his chickens
and some olive oil and some potatoes bought from the market
for a few drachma and he makes an omelet over a bunsen
burner. It takes a long time, first for the oil to get really hot,
then to fry the potatoes, and the eggs cook slow ly; he invites
me and it is an afternoon’s feast. If people are rich they have
kitchens but the kitchens have nothing in them except running
cold water in a stone sink. The sink is a basin cut out o f a
counter made o f stone, as i f a piece o f hard rock was hauled in
from the mountains. It’s solid stone from top to bottom.
There are no w ood cabinets or shelves, just solid stone. I f there
is running hot water you are in the house o f a millionaire. I f
you are ju st in a rich house, the people heat the water up in a
kettle or pot. In the same w ay, there m ay be a bathtub
somewhere but the woman has to heat up kettle after kettle to
fill it. She will wash clothes and sheets and towels by hand in
the bathtub with the water she has cooked the same w ay the
peasant woman will wash clothes against rocks. There is no
refrigerator ever anywhere and no General Electric but there
m ay be two bunsen burners instead o f one. Y ou get food every
day at open markets in the streets and that is the only time
women get to go out; only married women. The Am erikans
never go anywhere without refrigerators and frozen food and
packaged food; I don’t know how they can stay in Vietnam.
The Am erikan doctor said he was writing a novel about the
Vietnam War like Norman M ailer’s The Naked and the Dead.
He had a crew cut. He had a Deep South accent. He was blond
and very tanned. He had square shoulders and a square jaw .
Military, not civilian. White socks, slacks, a casual shirt. N ot
young. N ot a boy. O ver thirty. Beefy. He is married and has
three children but his wife and children are away he says. He
sought me out and tried to talk to me about the War and
politics and writing; he began by invoking Mailer. It would
have been different if he had said Hem ingway. He was a
Hem ingway kind o f guy. But Mailer was busy being hip and
against the Vietnam War and taking drugs so it didn’t make
much sense to me; I know Hem ingway had leftist politics in
the Spanish Civil War but, really, Mailer was being very loud
against Vietnam and I couldn’t see someone who was happily
military appreciating it much, no matter how good The Naked
and the Dead was, if it was, which I m yself didn’t see. It was my
least favorite o f his books. I said I missed Amerikan coffee so
he took me to his ranch-type house for some. I meant
percolated coffee but he made Nescafe. The Greeks make
Nescafe too but they just use tap water; he boiled the water.
He made me a martini. I have never had one. It sits on the
Formica. It’s pretty but it looks like oily ethyl alcohol to me. I
never sit down. I ask him about his novel but he doesn’t have
anything to say except that it is against the War. I ask to read it
but it isn’t in the house. He asks me all these questions about
how I feel and what I think. I’m perplexed and I’m trying to
figure it out, standing right there; he’s talking and my brain is
pulling in circles, questions; I’m asking m yself if he wants to
fuck or what and what’s wrong with this picture? Is it being in
a ranch-type house on an island o f peasants? Is it Formica on an
ancient island o f stone and sand? Is it the missing wife and
children and how ill at ease he is in this house where he says he
lives and w hy aren’t there any photographs o f the wife and
children? Why is it so empty, so not lived in, with everything
in place and no mess, no piles, no letters or notes or pens or old-
mail? Is it how old he is— he’s a real adult, straight and narrow,
from the 1950s unchanged until now. Is it that it is hard to
believe he is a doctor? When he started talking to me on the
street he said he was near where I live taking care o f a Cretan
child who was sick— with nothing no less, just a sore throat.
He said it was good public relations for the military to help, for
a doctor to help. Is it that he doesn’t know anything about
writing or about novels or about his own novel or even about
The Naked and the Dead or even about Norm an Mailer? Is it
that he is in the military, must be career military, he certainly
w asn’t drafted, and keeps saying he is against the War but he
doesn’t seem to know what’s wrong with it? Is it that he is an
officer and w hy would such a person want to talk with me? O r
is it that no man, ever, asks a woman what she thinks in detail,
with insistence, systematically, concentrating on her answers,
a checklist o f political questions about the War and writing and
what I am doing here on Crete now. Never. N ot ever. Then I
grasp that he is a cop. I was an Amerikan abroad in troubled
times in a country the C . I. A. wanted to run and I’d been in jail
against the War. I talked to soldiers and told them not to go to
Vietnam. I told them it was wrong. I had written letters to the
government telling them to stop. The F . B . I. had bothered me
when they could find me, followed me, harassed me, interfered with me, and that’s the honest truth; they’d threatened me. N o w a tall man with a square face and a red neck and a
crew cut and square shoulders, a quarterback with a Deep
South accent, wants to know what I think. A girl could live
her whole life and never have a man want to know so much. I
love m y country for giving me this unique experience. I try to
leave it but it follows me. I try to disaffiliate but it affiliates.
But I had learned to be quiet, a discipline o f survival. I never
volunteered anything or had any small talk. It was a w ay o f
life. I was never in danger o f accidentally talking too much.
Living outside o f language is freedom and chattering is stupid
and I never talked to Amerikans except to tell them not to go
to Vietnam; from m y heart, I had nothing else to say to them. I
would have liked to talk with a writer, or listen actually; that
was the hook; I would have asked questions and listened and
tried to understand what he was writing and how he was
doing it and w hy and what it made him feel. I was trying to
write m yself and it would have been different from regular
talk to talk with a writer who was trying to do something and
maybe I could learn. But he wasn’t a writer and I hadn’t
gibbered on about anything; perhaps he was surprised. N o w I
was alone with him in a ranch-type house and I couldn’t get
home without his help and I needed him to let me go; not keep
me; not hurt me; not arrest me; not fuck me; and I felt some
fear about how I would get away because it is always best to
sleep with men before they force you; and I was confused,
because it wasn’t sex, it was answers to questions. And I
thought about it, and I looked around the ranch-type house,
and considered how strong he was and it was best not to make
him angry; but I felt honor bound to tell my government not
just about the War but about how they were fucking up the
country, the U . S . A ., and I couldn’t act like I didn’t know or
didn’t care or retreat. M y name is Andrea I told him. It means
manhood or courage. It is a European name but in Europe
only boys are named it. I was born down the street from Walt
Whitman’s house, on Mickle Street in Camden in 1946. I’m
from his street. I’m from his country, the country he wrote
about in his poems, the country o f freedom, the country o f
ecstasy, the country o f jo y o f the body, the country o f
universal love o f every kind o f folk, no one unworthy or too
low, the country o f working men and w orking women with