Steve Katz - The Compleat Memoirrhoids - 137.n

No one I know ever saw Robert Lee Boudreau again. I heard rumors that he came down in a stand of lodgepole south of Duluth. In another report he was seen sliding down a loblolly in east Texas. I would like very much to catch up with him and hear his story, but all I’ve heard is rumors. Nothing has been verified.

The streets of Sougia, on Western Crete, in the prefecture of Chania, were chorused with bleating kids. Each family held a small goat tethered to a standpipe or a hook on the wall. The Greek Easter approached. It follows Passover, on the first Sunday after the first full moon after the Spring equinox. If the goats had that knowledge they would lead their kids into the hills. Every family roasts one after Easter, in celebration of the resurrection.

The bus that brought me and a smatter of other passengers from Cha-nia stopped to expel us at a modest coffee shop cum convenience store cum greengrocer cum post office. A henna-haired woman, dodging her fifties, skin like tanned leather, scrutinized me as I entered the little store to ask about rooms available. The shopkeeper gave me a list of addresses, and explained in halting English how to find the streets indicated. As I left, this beaked and wrinkled harridan dropped on me like a vulture on its feast.

“Vat you are doing here?” she demanded in a German accent so thick she must have resented speaking the language. “You are Amerikaner, is it not?”

I didn’t answer. The question seemed stupid, and her attitude presumptuous.

“Vy come you here? Sougia?” I was suddenly in a WWII flick, being interrogated by the SS Mitteloberunterfuhrer, played by Klaus Kinski. She looked a bit like Kinski wrecked by the sun. Her steel blue eyes burned coldly out of her tan, accusing me. Of what? Trespassing? Being American? Jew?

I slung my backpack over one shoulder and set out among the tethered goats to rent a room for a week or so. The encounter was unnerving. The woman acted like the official capo of the place. It felt as if I was trying to get into some exclusive club in Tribeca, for which I had the wrong tattoos. Crete had been an example of a proud and fierce resistance to German invasion during WW II. The Germans never got a foothold. This woman had assaulted me, her voice a dim crazy echo of Nazism. She (they) had somehow slipped in by the back door, concealed in the Trojan Horse of tourism.

My room was above a family home, comfortable and airy, with a view of the sea from the balcony. A friendly little goat was tethered near the door. A narrow balcony that I shared with the adjoining room looked out over the calm azure. Two women rented the other room. They were sunbathing when I arrived. I introduced myself to their toplessness. Gudrun and Beata. They were happy to meet me. It was all tits and smiles. Nobody was out on the long gorgeous beach visible from the balcony. The women pointed to some rocks jutting like a breakwater to the south of us. They explained that the town didn’t permit nude sunbathing within sight of their population, so the tourists go naked out beyond those rocks.

I jumped into my swimsuit, grabbed a towel, ran to the beach, and splashed into the calm shimmer. It was only waist deep as far as I swam out. I dried off for a few minutes, then walked down the beach to see what was shaking beyond the breakwater. I clambered over the rocks, then gazed out at blinding hummocks of white flesh. The NaktensonnenbadenVerein lay about on the small rocky beach like walruses. Most of it was female. The beach served as a griddle for roasting Germans. Its surface glistened with sun grease and jiggled like vanilla pudding. I was clearly overdressed, but I didn’t feel like dropping my swimsuit. I waded out across the froth of flesh. Some sat up to check me out. Others walked around oblivious. A plump frau greeted me, her seven year old son clinging to her thigh. She grinned, missing some teeth, her boobs thrust forward aggressively. She was happy to meet an American, though she looked disparagingly at my swimsuit. Her Fotze hid under a crease of flesh.

Back at the room I stretched out on the bed and speculated about dinner. There were only a couple of options. Which was best? Was I hungry yet? The knock on my door broke my reverie. Here was Gudrun, appearing as a barefoot Goth with purple lipstick and black nail polish. She looked as if she was about to go out for maximum damage in Berlin or Hamburg. She wore a black mini and no panties and a dark tube top tastefully sequinned. From a seat on my bed she asked questions as if conducting an interview. “Where do you come from? What do you do? Why are you alone?” During the course of the interrogation she revealed that she was from Dusseldorf and was tired of apologizing for being German. I hadn’t heard any apology. She was proud to be German. I assured her that pride was nothing to be ashamed of. As she slipped off my bed and headed for the door she told me she had decided not to have sex with me after all. After all of what? I felt as if I’d escaped an invitation to ritual cruelty.

Early the next morning I took the short boat ride to Aghia Roumeli at the base of the Samaria gorge. It’s the longest gorge in Europe. The trail was eighteen kilometers of precipice and waterfall. The guidebooks explained that everybody arrived in their tour buses at the top, and stumbled down the gorge. I started at the bottom to hike up as far as I could reasonably go and still return to catch the evening boat to Sougia. I was alone at the start, folded into the silence. I passed one goatherd with his tame goats climbing the rocks. “Yassou,” he greeted me, a universal greeting on Crete. The gorge was beautiful and quiet, with steep rock walls and occasional kri-kri, the wild goats, managing the cliffsides. Whiffs of cypress and pine and a bell-like sound of falling water enraptured me in a perfect morning. Not until about the fifth kilometer did I start to run into the people pouring down the trail from tour buses at the top. A sextet of young backpackers skipped by me, after them a squad of sturdy Brits, then a group of serious dogged Bavarians, some in lederhosen, then a battalion of Japanese tourists with cameras, some of whom took pictures of me. To them I was part of the scenery. “Yassou,” I said to them. “Yassou,” they responded and bowed. Near the church of Santa Maria, about half way up, there was some excitement. A group of well dressed tourists had gathered around a woman in distress. She had passed out. The tour guide and medics were about to load her onto a mule to haul her back to the entrance. Their efficiency made it obvious they were used to such disasters. Her companions were dressed formally, some of the women in high heels, men in suits and ties, maintaining a decorum obviously more important to them than comfort on the trail. I went just a little further, then reluctantly turned back to make the boat in time.

On the eve of Easter the priest came to reconsecrate the church. He served several of the villages around. A priest must circle the church three times counterclockwise, carrying a lit candle. If the candle blows out before the three circumambulations, he has to start again. He must not fail. At shortly before midnight all the townspeople and a few of the tourists gathered in the chilly air. The men pulled their berets over their ears, and the women wrapped themselves tightly in their shawls. They stomped their feet to keep warm, their breaths frosty. The priest had three other churches to deal with before he got to Sougia. People told stories, told jokes, none of which I understood, though I laughed along in the general good humor. At about two A.M. a wind came up, and the people looked at each other apprehensively. How do you keep the candle lit in this wind? It was 4 A.M. before the priest arrived. He was sloshed, his robes disheveled, whipping in the gusts. The other towns had marinated him in ouzo. People guided him into the church, where he said the appropriate prayer and shook a bit of holy water around. They placed the ritual candle holder in his trembling hand, and lit the candle, and guided him to the door. He was giggling. A couple of men held him erect and moved him to start on his three trips around the church. It was a small building, but the soused holy man and the wind increased the difficulties. If this failed they couldn’t use the church for the next year. People surrounded the priest and tried to block the wind, but the flame guttered in the random gusts and blew out. The priest, oblivious, plump, jovial, willing to go for hours, had to be staggered back to the starting place, over and over. I gave up on the ritual, and went back to find my bed. I am sure the priest succeeded, one way or another. When I got up just after noon, the bleating of the kids had stopped, and the air was redolent with a spicy perfume of slowly roasting goat.