The Lost Sailors Read Online Free PDF Page B

to you, captain!
    Hail to you, old ladies—what are you doing there?
    Are you counting the stars and the passing ships?
    Are you talking to the moon, you visionaries?
    No, neither the stars nor the ships—they have sunk;
    Nor the moon—it is obscured;
    We’re only saying farewell to the world, captain.

    â€œYannis Ritsos. A Greek poet. No one remembers him these days. Or almost no one. The colonels sentenced him to house arrest on the island of Leros. Because he was a Communist, I think. He wasn’t the only one, of course. The bastards had turned most of the islands into camps. For young people in Greece, reciting Ritsos was a way of resisting the dictatorship.”
    â€œWere you politically active?”
    â€œI recited poems to Melina!”
    He was evading the question, of course. It was all a long time ago. He had made a deliberate decision to forget. Like all those who had suffered and been humiliated under the dictatorship. For him, those days were like a scar that hadn’t healed properly and occasionally bled.
    What had made him recite Ritsos? What had gone through his head at that moment? He didn’t know. We never know why, and how, a particular memory comes back to us. They’re there, that’s all. Ready to pounce. To drag us back to a lost world. Any memory, even the most beautiful or the most insignificant, is a record of a moment in life that we botched. A witness to an act that didn’t lead anywhere. It only comes back to the surface to try to find fulfilment. Or an explanation. Diamantis was becoming an easy prey to memories.
    Melina had started crying.
    The army had just arrested their literature teacher, Costa Staikos. The previous summer, he had shown them Patmos. The island that houses one of the finest libraries in the East. The Saint John library. The oldest existing manuscript of Plato’s
Dialogues
was kept there until an English traveller named Daniel Clarke stole it in 1801. It was surely that visit that inspired Melina to study Byzantine manuscripts.
    Staikos was a friend of Ritsos. He shared the same ideas, and often quoted him in his classes. Someone informed on him, and five men burst in during the class and beat Staikos up. In front of his pupils. Then they dragged him out of the classroom. As if he were a dangerous criminal. One of the soldiers, an elderly officer, lectured them about the moral order. About the mission the Greeks had to fulfill. Some of the pupils applauded. That was when Melina burst into tears.
    The officer walked up to her and slapped her.
    Diamantis walked Melina home. They didn’t talk the whole way.
    â€œWhere does your father keep his ammunition?”
    Melina and her mother looked at him uncomprehendingly.
    â€œOn top of the wardrobe,” Melina replied. “Why do you ask?”
    â€œBecause I’m going to kill that guy! I’m going to kill him!”
    â€œOh, God, that’s enough!” her mother cried. “Go home.”
    The next day Melina and he joined the Socialist Youth Movement. They threw themselves passionately into political action. Even violently, where Diamantis was concerned. But he had never been able to wipe out the memory of that slap Melina had received. He knew what he should have done. He should have killed the man. That was what he thought, even now.
    â€œAnd what about you, Abdul?” he said, to break the silence. “Who are you?”
    Abdul jumped. “Me?” He had been lost in thought. It was happening to him more and more frequently. He wanted to answer Diamantis with a joke, but couldn’t find the words. He was exhausted. He wanted to sleep. He didn’t want to think about Cephea anymore.
Women
, he had read recently in a cheap novel,
always leave their husbands. The only problem is that they don’t take their bodies with them
. That was the question he asked himself: how long ago had Cephea left him?
    â€œYou’re not obliged to