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thanassis triaridis
PETRO BOL¸
AND HIS
GENTLE
k n I f e
To Dimitri Papadoulis
Amongst
the armies of drunken adventurers, crazed alchemists, obsessive collectors and mercenaries
in search of treasures; amongst the unsettled souls who have seen God face to
face and who with every thought yearn after lost chalices, crowns of thorns,
fragments of the true cross or blessed amulets and occult medallions,
bracelets, necklaces and rings; who seek daemonic icons, forbidden books,
forgotten words, divine blooms and burning bushes or any such object that sits
uneasily between God and Man; amongst all of these troubled souls, there are a
few, no more than the number of fingers of one hand, who seek nothing more
dazzling or sort after than a humble knife. They probe the mysteries of other
ages and abruptly cut the conversation short if anyone tries to uncover the
dark motives of their quest. If you are lucky enough to come across one
drinking in a tavern, you must be shrewd to catch them off-guard, lulling them
with talk of the world and only then, in a moment of great weakness and lonely
melancholy, will they whisper one blood-soaked phrase in a fading voice: a
meandering fable of how God gave His Grace and His Fury to Petro
Bolé’s knife. Then, knowing that they have
revealed too much, they’ll rush from the table in a hurried silence and leave
the bewildered listener sitting alone in cruel confusion – the foul tale of Petro Bolé and the gentle
knife often has that effect…
***
Petros Bolés, as he was known before becoming the legend Petro Bolé under the latin version of his name,
wandered the bitter road of purity, a road that nevertheless led him to the very
bowels of hell. He was born in a Mediterranean
When he was ten years old, Petros’
great-grandfather had been caught in a vicious storm and hit by a thunderbolt.
The lightening passed straight through him and left him unharmed and that day
he made a vow to St George that bound his family never to eat meat for seven
generations. So it was that Petros and his family
lived on what they could make from sheep’s milk…
He was twelve years old when the army came and took
over the winter pastures. A month later his father came and told him that the
officer wanted twenty sheep slaughtered to roast at an army feast. Petros loved his
sheep like nothing else in his life: he would talk to them and his world was
filled with their serenity. He told his
father that since they lived on their flock’s milk, destroying the sheep would
be like destroying their own flesh. His father replied that the times had
changed and whether they would be allowed to graze their sheep on the winter
pastures was now in the hands of the army officer. Besides they would not be
eating the sheep themselves and breaking the family vow - in the end what was better: twenty
slaughtered sheep or the whole flock dead, frozen in the winter snows?
That night Petros cried for
the first time in his life. As he walked amongst his sleeping flock he felt his
mind being torn in two. At one point he threw himself in to the watering hole
and tried to drown himself. He didn’t succeed. Disgusted with himself, he sat
on a rock and as the sun rose swore never to love again.
The only thing he asked of his father was to be
allowed to kill the sheep himself the following morning. Then he set-off on the
road to the mountain where the blue-eyed people lived. He passed three villages
and as the sun started to wane, he reached the forge of old-Moumin,
the famous iron-monger whose magical hands, it was said, could forge iron
softer than the leaves of a poplar. He spoke clearly to the old man and
demanded “a knife that will finish-off my sheep in the gentlest possible way”.
The old blue-eyed man hesitated, “I’ve never been asked for something like that
before,” he replied, “I’ll try and make what you want, but I can’t promise
anything”.
At once, the old man locked himself in his hut and
left Petros sitting on the trunk of a tree, where he
waited all night. Just before dawn, old-Moumin opened
his door, a black cloth wrapped in his hands. His blue eyes shone strangely in
the dark: “Take the gentle knife you asked for… but I’ll tell you this: all
evening my workshop smelt of sulphur, which means that the devil was beside me…
Be warned, don’t let a drop of red-wine touch the blade as it spoils the steel.
After that, it will kill with the most horrific pain in the world…”
Seven hours later Petros
slaughtered his sheep with the blade the famous blue-eyed ironsmith had forged
for him. He found the blade still hot from grinding on the moon-stone when he
opened the rags and weighed the knife in his hands. It felt like a natural
continuation of his arm, as if he was born holding it. On its dull blade he
thought he saw a shadow beckon him. When
he thrust it into the throat of its first victim, the sheep lay in his arms in
absolute calm and serenity, as if death were a gentle breeze; the same with the
second, and with the third, and with all the remaining sheep. Once he had
finished, he remained silent for some time and then locked himself in a barn
while his father loaded the slaughtered sheep to take to the soldiers.
That same evening Petros
left his village never to return. He took nothing with him except a black cape
that had belonged to his dead grandfather (the man who had taught him to milk
sheep) and, of course, Moumin’s knife. He walked
without knowing where he was going, and when, the next day he reached a large
village, its inhabitants looked at him strangely. The boy drank some water from
the well and afterwards spoke to the surprised villagers, “If you have any
animals for slaughter, leave them to me to kill…” When they asked him why he
wanted to slaughter the animals, he replied that he had a gentle knife and that
the animals would not be frightened by the blackness of death but would only
feel a gentle breeze.
***
And with the knife in his belt, Petros
began his wanderings, first through
Time flowed, the seasons came and went, and Petros grew up as a wandering and hunted ghost delivering
sweet deaths to animals. Other than sheep and pigs, he was soon asked to kill
other animals: rabid dogs, old or wounded horses, sick mules and cattle. His
hair grew down to his waist, his face blackened with the hairs of adolescence
and his cape began to smell and became covered in patches. As he went from
place to place he learnt to speak other dialects, in fact he had a gift of
understanding a foreign language so that after just a few days he was able to
speak well enough to be able to say what he needed.
About five years had passed since Petros
left his village, when he found himself on the Green Plateau, north of
***
And so it was that Petros
became Petro Bolé,
in whose hands the gentle knife was used to kill not only animals, but people
too. He never asked for payment nor barter anything in exchange for his
services and from what he was given kept only what he needed for his horse,
giving the rest to the beggars and the drunkards in the wine-shops. He never
ate meat or drank wine, nor did he approach women hoping for love. At night he
would forget himself looking at the black dome above.
As the years passed, Petros’
wanderings continued: from the Green Plateau he went to
In anthologies of strange tales once popular but now
long forgotten, a few chilling incidents were written down and recorded: the
story of the fallen soprano who was glorious at her peak and asked Petro Bolé to deliver her
to Death as she sang the aria “Adio del passato” from
***
When the officials reached the inn around which his
rabble were camped, Petro Bolé
and his mob had wandered to very edge of Europe where the continent stretches accross and nearly touches Africa. Dressed in the finest
and most elaborate uniform the officer in charge demanded to speak to Petro Bolé. With great
pomp and distinction, he announced his King’s desire for him to visit the land of
the
The ship was waiting at the port and all the
disinherited hangers-on crammed on board with him– Petro
Bolé had insisted that no one who wanted to
follow him be stopped. They travelled for many days before arriving in the
capital of the Land of the
The next day the King invited him to the stateroom and
had everyone leave except Petros and his six
daughters. Together with their father, Caterina,
Maria, Louisa, Beatrice, Anna and Constanza comprised
the highest government council in the Kingdom and all were famous for their
beauty. Hieronymus’ five eldest daughters also distinguished themselves with
their intelligence, diplomatic skills and ability to govern the land wisely.
Only the youngest, Constanza, seemed caught in a net
of poisonous melancholy and had never spoken a word in her life. She just
stared into the void with a dark and solitary gaze.
“You, Petro Bolé, have been much on my mind,” said King
Hieronymus, getting straight to the point, “and after deep and thorough thought
I decided to invite you to my land. Over the last few years, amongst the honest
people of the Kingdom of the Great Lake there have been increasing numbers of
miserable and dispossessed subjects: they have no hope in their short lives and
die slowly of poverty, hunger and misery: some from ghastly choleras, others
infected with malarial fevers or poisoned by polluted waters. No one is capable
of offering them the hope of happiness or a brighter tomorrow…to relieve these
miserable souls of their sorrows and temporarily alleviate the despair crushing
their spirits. After much painful thought, I now believe it is my obligation to
offer these poor wretches their only remaining chance for happiness: death by
your gentle knife…
“If you accept my onerous proposition, then I will
appoint you First Lord of the land, and will shower upon you as many riches as
you desire. Tomorrow, I will send heralds to all the towns and villages in the
Kingdom of the
Petros remained
sceptical for some time. All he could see in his mind was an image of
innocence: the eyes of the sheep and the eyes of people and his gentle knife
that gave Grace to souls at the moment of death. His years of wandering throughout
the world had left him with a loathing for kings, but Hieronymus was only
asking him to do what he had always done… At some point his eyes came to rest
on Constanza, the King’s beautiful mute daughter and
in her dark gaze he saw a momentary flash that stirred something unfamiliar
within him. “I accept,” he declared to the King, “and I don’t want titles or
riches. I just want to take an evening walk in the palace gardens with your
youngest daughter every time the moon disappears.”
And so it was: King Hieronymus accepted his terms
without further discussion. The following day, heralds began to travel to the
ends of the Kingdom offering the people of the towns and villages a stroke of Petro Bolé’s angelic knife
and drawing up long lists of all those who wanted to die by the gentle blade.
When he arrived in the first towns to distribute death as gently as a breath,
three times the number of people came to be killed as were registered on the
lists, queuing in lines two deep in front of the carriage that carried him and
his strange companions. There were times when Petros
killed for three days without stop as soldiers dug mass graves for his victims
and the priests gave them group funerals. So the Kingdom of the
Every four weeks Petros returned to the King’s palace from whatever part of
the country he was in: those nights, when moon was hidden, he would walk through
the maze-like palace gardens with Constanza, the two
of them always ending up in the tall wind-swept pavilion. Of course, they never
said a word to each other: Constanza had never spoken
and Petros only spoke in order to kill - every other
conversation was fruitless and therefore unknown to him. They sat in the
pavilion all night without talking, touching or looking at each other and just
listened to the breeze. Constanza would then undo her
hair, letting the wind brush it against Petros’
cheek. They would then return to their rooms before dawn so Petros
could leave the next morning to deliver the gentle death the disinherited of
Kingdom yearned for.
On their thirteenth meeting (after Petros
had been in the land of the
Feeling unfamiliarly excited, he returned to his room
just before dawn. Hieronymus had given him the grandest guest room of the
palace. He fell onto his bed without lighting a candle, when he noticed a
folded piece of paper next to his cheek. It was a letter written in a strange
hand and left unsigned:
Petro Bolé, this letter is
written to you by someone who believes that you don’t deserve to become one of
Satan’s followers like the King and his daughters: whatever Hieronymus told
you, the only thing that he desires is deliverance from his poor and unhappy
subjects and he has found in you an innocent to do his dirty-work. As for his
alleged obligation to bring the angelic stroke of your knife to his unhappy
subjects: it is utterly false. The explanation is that he will be rid of all
those who are slowly withering away and who, one day in their unhappiness, may
raise their fists against him. You are the perfect instrument. Don’t forget Costanza is involved, even if she plays the melancholic and
distant one. All you need to do is hide in the Council Chamber one evening when
everyone believes you to be far away and to listen to what Heronimos
and his daughters say about you.
The following morning Petros started off with his retinue of soldiers and
hangers-on to bring death to the Town of the Swans in the
As soon as they sat down,
Hieronymus asked for a glass of wine. Katerina, the
eldest, brought it to him and said to him with satisfaction “My King, let us
drink to the health of Petro Bole. I received a
message he was continuing on his journey without any problems. The day after
tomorrow we will be finished with the Town of the Swans leaving only the other
towns of the Northern Provinces: at this rate, in two months he will have
cleansed the country of all those whose unhappiness undermines our prosperity.”
She stopped to fill her glass with wine when her sister Louisa asked, “My king
and much-loved sisters, are you certain all these unhappy wretches who go to be
slaughtered by his gentle knife aren’t of some use to us? What if there’s a
war? Who will we send to be killed?” Hieronymus reassured her: “Your thoughts
are not unreasonable, my daughter, but you forget that the times have changed. Once
the wretched were indispensable - they had to unthinkingly spill their blood in
wars and be slaves in peace time: work, organise and harvest the land and mine
stone or iron from the depths of the earth. Now though, we’ve got machines for
war and peace, we even have machines to make machines and soon we will have
machines that can command machines. Nowadays, all that the poor do is ask for
bread and their suffering blackens our consciences and make us feel guilty,
just as the sick fill our hospitals until they die. All these people may be
loathsome now, but one day they may become dangerous in their desperation and
demand bread or infect us with their diseases or just contaminate us with their
poverty and ugliness. Life itself wont accept them, so what business have they
got amongst us? Look at the effort that were making to bury them: I’m sorry,
but I’m consoled by the thought that human flesh makes such good fertiliser!”
With that, Hieronymus finished and all of them burst into laughter.
“But, my king, had you not found Petro Bolé, what would you
have done?” asked Beatrice as soon as their laughter had subsided. Taking
another gulp of wine the King replied, “In truth, I found myself at a dead end:
I was at the point negotiating a war with our neighbours to be rid of them all,
but a war would mean opening up my palace treasury. I also considered infecting
them with a disease to exterminate them all but the palace doctors warned me
that the disease would spread to the rest of us. They couldn’t even be loaded
onto ships – supposedly to take them to a new world – only to sink them once
out in the open ocean. Where would I find so many ships? Then, just as I was
despairing, I heard of Petro Bolé
and the gentle death he delivers out of compassion to all who are suffering.
And as you saw: it was as easy for me to play the compassionate role and
persuade him to slaughter the miserable wretches of kingdom, supposedly for
their own good… It is the ideal solution: he’ll kill them all without
resistance or rebellion. I’ve even heard they die honouring my name and
thanking me for bringing the angel that caresses them into the next world.”
Once again they all laughed at
Hieronymus’ joke. Then it was Anna’s turn to ask a question, “So, my King, when
he’s finished with the
Petros waited behind the curtains until the King and his
daughters retired to their bedrooms, and swooning from the confusion in his
mind he went to his room to think. On his pillow there lay a bunch of seven
keys and a note in the same strange writing: ‘They are not worthy of your gentle
knife.’
Then, holding the bunch of seven
keys, Petros went to the palace kitchens, removed the
knife from his breast pocket and plunged it into a jug of red wine. He left it
there for an hour remembering the words of old-Moumin:
the knife’s steel would be ruined after soaking in red wine and then kill with
the most horrific pains in the world. At one point he looked at the dark blade
and a dull shadow waved, just like before…
With a firm step he went to King
Hieronymus’ room and unlocked it with the first key of the bunch. Petro Bolé bent over the
sleeping King and with one movement cut his throat. The fearsome groan of pain he heard was very
distant, leaving Petro Bolé
indifferent. Next, he went to the rooms of Caterina,
Maria, Louisa, Beatrice, Anna and Constanza and
slaughtered them all in the same way. Only as he was leaving Constanza’s room, did he see the last note on her mirror,
written in the same strange handwriting ‘If we were not born to slaughter
then maybe we would have found time for love…’
***
The foul murderer Petro Bolé was arrested the next morning by the King’s
soldiers in the tall pavilion of the palace gardens. As hard as they searched,
they never found his knife… His death was exemplary: for nine days they hung him
in chains in the capital’s central square. On the third evening his mob of mad
and unhappy followers arrived, camped beneath him and prayed for his soul.
Before dawn the heavily armed palace guards came and massacred them all. On the
ninth day the people of the capital gathered in the square to watch his
execution. He was tied to two wheels that were turned slowly in opposite
directions and when his body was stretched, they cut the skin of his stomach
with a knife. From that incision his skin started to tear. Petros,
who until that moment had been conscious, did not let out a single cry of pain.
In a blur he thought he saw Costanza sleeping amongst
his sheep, but after that everything went dark. When at last his body split in
two, the crowd roared.
[Translation: Leonidas Liambeys]
~
[The short novel ‘Petro
Bolé and his gentle knife’ was written in
the summer of 1999. It was published in Greek in Spring
2002 by Patakis Editions and it was republished in
the collected edition Tears Stories of Thanassis Triaridis in Autumn
2010 by Digma Editions.]