Birds Without Wings (75 page)

All the canals of my nose have filled up, but my ears are hurting, and above me I can see the hull of a boat, and I have already become accustomed to the taste of salt. There are knocking noises reverberating through the water, and the sound of engines. They must be from the Allied warships that are watching with principled neutrality and cautious apathy as we struggle and drown. At first the water was stinging the burns on my face and hands, but now they are quite cool, I am pleased to say, and I can hardly feel the wound where the Turkish soldier shot me as I tried to swim away from the jetty.

I was very bitter about this death until I started to die it properly. I had envisaged a more ideal death, such as being shot at the age of ninety by a jealous lover of twenty-one whilst in the arms of her nineteen-year-old rival. Better still, and thoroughly ideal indeed, would have been never to die at all. I loved my life. Who could have had a more wonderful time? And the only price to pay for it was the occasional trip to the clapquack, and the occasional worry about rates of interest and whether or not the raisin harvest was any good. I had such a wonderful life that I was even inspired by my serene mood to commit unwise acts of philanthropy, such as erecting the little pump house at Eskibahçe, and not collecting debts from my friends.

What bothers me is that I am dying (albeit quite pleasantly) because of the most gigantic fuck-up, brought about by domnoddies, nincompoops and ninnyhammers of the first order who happened to find themselves in charge of fucking everything up. Excuse the strong expression of my feelings. I would not normally use strong language in the presence of ladies, but as a drowning man who has lost everything because of the antics of addlepates, I feel entitled to express myself picturesquely. (I have just been
cursorily examined in the face by a harbour mullet, and it has swum away, presumably unoffended.)

Let’s get one thing clear; I am not and never have been a dumbbunny. If I were a dumbbunny, I would not have made my substantial fortune, would not have paid almost no taxes, and I would not have made good connections at every possible level of society. Nothing, my friends, is as innocent as the pursuit of cash, the avaricious but honest exchange of goods and labour. I am a capitalist, and no good capitalist can afford to be a dunderpate. I have made money out of every commodity, and even out of thin air, and I have spent it liberally on both necessities and frivolities. I have generated so much employment that when I get to Heaven God should give me a medal and my own private whorehouse. Without me many a fig grower would be poorer, and many a little tart less well dressed.

I will tell you who the rattlebrains are, beginning at the top. Actually, there is not a top, because there are so many contestants for the lackwit championships that all come in equal first. Before nominations begin, let me make it quite clear that I am not an Old Greek. I don’t come from Athens or any other poky little hole like that, where they don’t even speak Greek properly. I am a rayah Greek, a twenty-four-carat Asia Minor Greek, and my family have thrived here in Smyrna for generations, and I will hobnob with any old Turk or Jew or Armenian or Levantine as long as they are inclined to strike a mutually beneficial deal. I make no distinctions of race and religion as long as there’s some lovable cash in it or a good night out at Rosa’s, which I fear has now been burned to the ground in this very conflagration which, from Bella-Vista Street to the Custom House, from the Custom House to Basma-Khane, and northwards to Haji-Pasha and Massurdi, is reducing the prettiest little playground in the Levant to a heap of ash composed in equal parts of bones and timber.

Here are some of the lackbrains in random order: the Greek people for electing to office a romantic, His Romantic Adventureness, Prime Minister Eleftherios Venizelos, who honestly thought he could annex the nicest half of Turkey and tack it on to Old Greece, even though no one had given him permission, even though most people here are Turks, and no one with any sense pisses off the Turks, because the one thing the Turks are very good at is overreacting when pissed off. Clodpoll number two, the Greek people again for being just as romantic as the aforementioned romantic, for thinking that just because the civilisation here used to be approximately Greek in the distant past and is now partially Greek, it should be forced into political union with Old Greece. Timbernonce number three, the
aforementioned elected romantic, Eleftherios Venizelos, Prime Minister of Greece, prodigiously overendowed with Big Ideas.

Talking of which, what about the positive plague of firebrand priests we’ve been inundated with? All these men of God who want us to go out and kill Turks in the name of Holy this and Holy that? What about all this talk of rebuilding Byzantium? What on earth for? And some of them even talking with all seriousness about the imminent return of the Marble Emperor! What are we supposed to make of it when Archbishop Chrysostomos himself puts on his mitre and blesses our troops when they land at the quay, and strikes at Turkish gendarmes with his pastoral staff, and encourages his entourage to spit on them? I tell you what it looked like to everybody, without a shadow of a doubt. It looked not like an Allied occupation but another stupid Crusade, several hundred years too late. I admit I am sorry about what happened to Chrysostomos when the Turks took the town back. I don’t think he deserved to be torn up by a mob, any more than I deserve to drown, but he was still a troublemaker and a Holy Fool, and I am only sorry that becoming a martyr will make people forget what a troublemaker he was.

And look what the Old Greeks did to the chief of police when they took over! He waited for them in his office so that he could hand over his authority, and they beat him and cut off his ears and gouged out his eyes, and everyone thought it a very fine thing and was pleased when he died that night in hospital, and you can bet that the same people who are horrified about the dismemberment of the archbishop were symmetrically gratified by the ditto of the police chief.

Rabbitbrains number four, all the Allied presidents and prime ministers for thinking it would be a good idea to let the Old Greeks occupy any bit of Turkey, because there’s nothing like an Old Greek for harbouring grudges and grievances. How they nurse them and caress them and murmur endearments to them! An Old Greek nurtures historical hatreds like a botanist does a rare and exotic orchid. When an Old Greek turns senile he forgets everything except a grudge. If they were plants, these antique resentments would overwhelm the entire Levant and turn it into a jungle! And ninety-nine per cent of their most cherished and beloved grudges happen to be against the Turks. Did the British and the French and the Italians honestly think that Greek soldiers were going to be nice to the Turks after the landing?

Biggest fuckwit of all, now I come to think of it, must be that British Prime Minister, the Right Honourable Jobbernowl David Lloyd George, for encouraging the Old Greeks and the plausible Venizelos. I wrote to
Lloyd George myself. I didn’t address him as “Dear Fuckwit,” though I should have done. I said “Honoured Sir.” I told him that this region can’t be self-supporting because even though it might be pretty it doesn’t have good land. I told him that all the trade comes from the hinterland, and this Greek occupation has cut us off from it. On top of that you had Greek soldiers and chettas and Bashi-Bazouks causing mayhem in all the rural areas, and on top of that we had Armenian bands and Circassian bands, and Turkish bands, and the net result was that the farmers couldn’t work their land. I said in my letter that this city had been ruined and impoverished, there was no trade any more, I said that the rue Franque was virtually closed down, and that I personally was going to move my money to Alexandria. I didn’t get a reply. I wrote the letter in French. I wonder what language the dead speak.

I nearly forgot King Constantine, coming here and landing at the very spot where the Crusaders landed, instead of landing at the port like a sensible and responsible monarch. And I nearly forgot General Hazianestis, Supreme Commander, rumoured to be mad, and sincerely convinced on one day that his legs were made of sugar, and on another that they were made of glass. This was his reason for not rising when one entered the room, in case they broke. I was once strolling with him along a corridor after a good dinner, and was just thinking about going to Rosa’s, when I was startled by the General, who had just caught sight of himself in a mirror. He sprang to attention and saluted himself, his hand quivering with disciplined admiration. When he had finished, he said to me, as if it were perfectly obvious, “One should always salute the commander-in-chief.” I heard that once he confined himself to barracks for walking on the grass when it was against regulations. Madman or noodle? Who knows? Whoever appointed him must have been both.

Please note that I don’t place our dear High Commissioner, Mr. Stergiadis, very high in my pantheon of nincompoops. The stupidest thing he did was to take on the job in the first place. He should have stayed in Epirus.

I’ll tell you what I liked about Stergiadis; he was bad-tempered and he cultivated the noble art of alienating everybody quite impartially. When the notables invited him to a party, he didn’t go, and neither did he have any parties and invite the notables. That’s what annoyed them more than anything else. In fact, he just went home like everybody else after a day’s work. It didn’t bother me much, because I’d rather have gone to Rosa’s than gossip with bigwigs.

He didn’t take bribes either, and that was deeply annoying. That was
the one way he annoyed me, in fact. “How am I supposed to get things done, then?” I asked him, and I can tell you I was genuinely perplexed, and he looked at me as if I were mad and said, “Mr. Theodorou, you will have to go through the proper channels.”

I said, “Proper channels? What proper channels? Round here there have never been any proper channels. I wouldn’t know a proper channel if it came up and spoke to me in the street. I wouldn’t know a proper channel if it introduced itself to me and handed over a calling card!”

He just shrugged and said, “I sincerely hope that you and the proper channels become better acquainted during my period as High Commissioner.”

The other thing that annoyed everyone was that he was so scrupulously fair to the Turks that all the Greeks thought that he was anti-Greek. They thought it outrageous that he set the police on them when they got caught out, innocently and magnanimously inflicting atrocities on Turks. They thought it displayed a lamentable lack of Hellenic ideals, because what they really wanted was to clear the Turks out altogether. To be fair, in 1914 the Turks tried to clear all of us out as well, and God knows how many thousands of rayah Greeks got frogmarched to the interior and never came back. It was probably half a million. So don’t misunderstand me, it isn’t that I think the Old Greeks are worse than the Turks, what irritates me is that they think they’re so much better when really they’re exactly the same. God made them Cain and Abel, and whichever one happens to have the upper hand takes his turn as Cain. Whoever is unfortunate enough to be playing the role of Abel seizes the opportunity to bemoan the barbarism of the other. If I ever get to meet God In Person I shall suggest quite forcefully that He impartially abolish their religions, and then they will be friends for ever.

I went to see Stergiadis about something once, to complain about the murder of one of my Turkish customers who happened to owe me a lot of money, and by that time we were almost friends, and he confided something to me. He said that the Allies were getting very twitchy, and thinking that they had made a terrible mistake. There was a British general called Milne who had laid out the borders that would limit the occupation, but of course it was ignored. And then the British started getting inundated with reports from all quarters, about the antics of the Greek chettas and the Old Greek troops, and they started to put pressure on Prime Minister Venizelos, and he put pressure on Stergiadis, who tried to put pressure on the military, and didn’t get anywhere at all. The fact is that the military were
out of control and more often than not the high command didn’t even know what the soldiers were up to. It was driving Stergiadis crazy. “Mr. Theodorou,” he said to me very gloomily, “the sad thing is that I have to listen to so many people talking about our civilising mission.” He didn’t say any more, he just left it at that.

As for me, I knew it was going to be a fiasco from the first day. Like everyone else I came down to the harbour when the evzones landed, and for a while I even felt like cheering and waving a Greek flag. It was certainly an exciting occasion, for a few minutes. Then some idiot fired a shot, and the soldiers opened fire on the Turkish barracks, and it went downhill from there. Excitement is only a good thing within certain limits, I would say, and that was a little too exciting. I prefer the more innocent excitements of the bawdy house. I think they killed three hundred Turks on the first day, and what’s worse, the rayah rabble started looting the Turkish shops and stamping on fezzes and tearing off veils and committing the usual unimaginative horrors and bestialities. Thank God that Stergiadis turned up and re-established order. Even so, the soldiers and the rayah rabble continued to engage themselves in their exhilarating spree of self-congratulation, with their stupid flag-waving processions, and their ubiquitous portraits of Venizelos, and their thoughtless patriotic songs. There was one in particular that was going through my mind just now when I began drowning, and it was annoying me beyond measure, because when you are dying the last thing you want is a stupid song going round and round in your mind like the gibbering of a lunatic. Actually, I wish I had never mentioned it. The damn thing’s coming back.

Now that the fustanella
Has come to Smyrna
The fez will disappear
The blood of the Turks will flow
Now we’ve taken Smyrna
Let’s fly to Haghia Sophia.
The mosques will be razed to the ground
And the cross will be erected.