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thanassis triaridis
THE CUT wHEaT
In memory of Thanassis
Delidimitriou (1905-1999)
Beyond the great mountains of the North - I’m talking
about the mountains no traveller has ever returned from crossing - there lies a
vast land of fertile valleys, dense forests and imposing rivers: a land that
reaches the
Of Scattered amongst rocks in the craggiest ravine of
Thunderbolt, the highest and most savage mountain of the
For a long time now, the village has been deserted.
Only the stone houses remain but long devoid of life: it’s almost as if some
otherworldly force and not the hands of men and women built them on the black
mountain. The wind tree still stands bare and sinister whilst the well at its
roots just waits.
No one goes up to Windtree anymore. Its name has been
removed from all the maps and apart from a few old men - long deaf and coughing
on their phlegm - who throw wild looks at anyone who approaches, no one knows
of its existence. It’s an old and dreadful story, an uncomfortable memory,
buried in fear and silence…
***
Thunderbolt is a truly terrifying mountain: a dry black
rock ripped in two, in part covered with meagre scrub, its jagged peaks pierce
the clouds. They say it was once green and full of forests and rivers, until
one day, God was overcome with melancholy and threw a terrible thunderbolt that
split it in two. Others say that as God let go, he suddenly regretted the
thunderbolt, but too late, it had left his hand and he couldn’t take it back.
He hid it in the heart of the mountain where its heat caused the earth to dry
up and left it blackened and cracked. And slowly people stopped going up to the
mountain with the strange name, fearing the wrath of the thunderbolt sleeping
in the bowels of the earth. In any case, what did anyone want from those dry
and deserted rocks?
Neither the old men nor anyone else could explain when
and how Windtree was inhabited. It seemed its people and houses had simply
grown out of the rocks. The inhabitants never considered leaving their wounded
mountain: the water from the well, the milk from their goats, the scents of the
wildflowers amongst the black rocks, the blowing of the wind and the rising and
setting sun were, for the people of Windtree, the greatest gifts God could give
- what more could they ask for? They had no church and considered one
superfluous; as for them the entire heavenly dome - from one horizon to the
other - was a church. They communed with the body and blood of Christ through
their eyes as he reddened the sky in the evening and showed that He was there
too, and everywhere else. At the age of fourteen, they all made an ancient vow
- no one knew when and why it was first made - marking their coming of age:
they would never raise their fists against another person, even if they
threatened their life and the lives of their children - Justice would come if
they turned the other cheek without retaliating.
One day, King Theodoros the First found himself on the
mountain. He was known as the Slayer of Heathens and Eagles by his flatterers,
clerks and poets. In the first years of his reign, Theodoros the First,
embarked on a great persecution of anyone who believed in a different God to
him. He burned as many of them in the central square of the city as he could;
all the others left the
It was hunting an eagle that he came to Thunderbolt.
Someone had spoken to him of an ash-tinted bird with eyes the colour of bronze,
whose gaze froze your blood. Perhaps this was the last eagle in the heavens? He
hunted on the craggy peaks for three weeks but never saw the eagle with eyes
the colour of bronze. Slowly, frustration with this fruitless quest grew in him
and amongst his flatterers. Later hunting in a steep gorge, they saw a girl
herding goats in a pasture. When the soldiers approached her to ask about the
eagle, she fled in fright and was lost in the rocks. The soldiers brought the
King her embroidered handkerchief and when Theodoros smelt it, his passion
flared. He forgot about the eagle with eyes the colour of bronze and ordered
them to find the girl’s village and lead him there.
The girl, of course, came from Windtree and, not one
of the twenty clerks amongst the King’s followers, knew of the village’s
existence - indeed, none of them could even imagine anyone foolhardy enough to
live on the rocks sheltering the inflamed thunderbolt. King Theodoros and his
followers entered the village the next morning and his musicians trumpeted the
Royal arrival. The chief flatterer barked an order: the girl with the white
handkerchief was to present herself to the King for his pleasure in bed.
Half an hour later, the head of each family came out
of their houses dressed in their best clothes and walked at a slow pace across
Windtree’s square to stand before the King and his flatterers. Standing upright
as a tree trunk, the eldest (whose beard was completely white), started to
speak: “My name’s Constantinos, King Theodoros, and I’m
the eldest of this village… My hair and beard are white and, for as long as I
remember, I’ve slept and woken up to the roar of Thunderbolt. The girl you’re
looking for is the daughter of Alexis and we all stand by whatever he says.”
As soon as the elder quietened down, a blue eyed man
with black bushy eyebrows stepped forward and looked the King in the eyes, “I’m
Alexis and the girl whose handkerchief you stole is my daughter. Snakes, wolves
and falcons have asked me for her and I refused them all… And I certainly wont have you ruin her!”
The King went yellow with rage and his slaves became
furious. The chief flatterer started shouting about dirty villagers who refused
to obey the man God Himself showered with gifts, about the vile brutes that
didn’t bow their heads before the glory of the Kingdom, and about ancient
revolutionaries that spread anarchy and insubordination. King Theodoros stopped
him with a nod and then turned his gaze to the First Councillor of the Kingdom.
He was a strange stooped man: no one had ever seen the pupils of his eyes,
where they should have been, there was just white. The First Councillor spoke
in a hushed voice (perhaps so the King would listen), “These people have
learned to live with the roar of the thunderbolt and will never fear the whip
of man,” he said.
A little later the King Theodoros’s order was
announced: all the men (including male children and babies) were to be executed
by hanging. Pregnant women would be forced to kneel and kicked in the stomach
until they lost their babies. And that’s what happened: for three days the
soldiers killed. All the male offspring of Windtree - elders, mature men,
youths, adolescents and small children were put to death by hanging. There
wasn’t the slightest resistance, as the men of Windtree kept their ancient
oath: they wouldn’t raise a fist against anyone, even to save their own lives
or those of their children. That’s how all one hundred eleven men and boys of
the village perished. After them came the turn of the
pregnant women: they were hauled into the square and struck by kicks in the
belly until they bled and showed they had miscarried.
All the bodies were thrown into the well at the foot
of the windtree, so the women of the village would know they were drinking
water that rotted the flesh of their men for as long as they lived. All this
was watched by the King himself so that he could be sure the inhabitants of the
village that had never feared the whip of man were wiped out forever and that
never, not even after a century of centuries, would the village that lived with
the roar of the thunderbolt and whose spirit wouldn’t bow before the orders of
their sovereign flourish again.
When the fourth day dawned everything was finished and
one hundred and eleven hanged corpses - the entire male population of the
village - had been thrown into the well. As soon as the soldiers finished, the
musicians played the royal march and the King’s procession left. The tedious
interlude crushing insubordinates was over and King Theodoros the First, the
Great Slayer of Heathens and Eagles, looked forward to hunting the ash-tinted
eagle with eyes the colour of bronze again.
As soon as the King and his soldiers left the
village, the women gathered around the well - and grave - of their men.
Anastasia, the daughter of Alexi, who was unwittingly at the centre of the
massacre, heard the laments and emerged stunned from the charcoal cellar where
she had hidden with her mother. When she understood what had happened she
rushed to the well and, before anyone could stop her, threw herself after the
men.
The women cried and wept together until late
afternoon. As the sun sank, reddening the sky above Thunderbolt, one of them,
Dimitra, shouted to the others, “Women, we have nothing to look forward to:
neither men to be loved by nor seed to grow in our bellies. We cannot continue
our families alone… Let’s fall into the well after our husbands and sons before
night falls!” It was then that a screeching voice tore through the air; “Our
only way lies in the night…” it was Gabriela, the ugly witch, who the villagers
didn’t allow to live in a stone-built house forcing her to sleep in a cave outside
the village on Thunderbolt. “What do you mean?” they asked her, “you’ve never
had a man to be missing him now!”. “You may have lost
a man each,” the witch retorted in a wounded voice, “but I lost them all.
Listen to me… our only way now lies in the night - for all of you as well as
for me.” From her dress she took out a strange flower, “In every tree there is
a hollow hiding a great secret,” she said ambiguously. The eyes of the women
were all on the flower. It had petals like a poppy but with one difference, it
was completely black. “This is the Blackflower that only grows on the highest
rocks of Thunderbolt. Smell it’s scent and drowsiness
will wrap you in darkness… And you should know, darkness is
never wrong.”
After all that had happened, the women of Windtree
took heart in the fickle words of the witch and decided to take the road of the
night. They were desperate and alone: trees without roots, stalks without
flowers, branches without leaves, and, one after the other, the women smelt the
Blackflower that Gabriella offered. They were all wrapped in the sleep of
infallible darkness and the night that fell soon afterwards - black and
impenetrable - was full of winds that brought the greatest longings, most
ancient hopes, terrible loves and most irrational faith. The women looked into
the night face to face, walked its road and met its invisible elements; its
ghosts, elves, and demons and they kissed the women on the forehead and bit
them on the cheeks and got inside their nostrils, their breath, their souls. A little before dawn sparrows flew out of the
well: there were one hundred and eleven, exactly as many as were killed. They
circled in the air twice and then stopped for a moment on the lip of the well
at the foot of the wind tree. And then they flew high, higher than anyone can
imagine.
When first light from the East broke through the
night, the women woke from their sleep. With bitter mouths and hollow eyes they
approached the lip of the well. And there, where a little earlier the sparrows
had stopped, they found one hundred and eleven grains of wheat, as many as had
been killed. As the women hesitantly picked up the grains of wheat in their
palms (they had never held grains of wheat in their hands before) they noticed
something even more unbelievable: the names of their dead men were cut on each
grain, as if by the needle of God.
There was no doubt that the wheat had been brought by
the sparrows from the distant red valley where everything is counted and
justice done. “These grains of wheat are the spirits of our husbands, sons and
fathers,” said Dimitra, “through these they will live and our wombs will become
fruitful; these will guide us.” And speaking to herself,
Gabriella added, “I told you so, the night is the only way…”
And so the women of Windtree each took the grain of
inscribed wheat with the name of her hanged husband and put it under her
pillow. That evening they went to bed and slept on top of them. And the
apparently impossible happened: all the women of the village - old and young -
became pregnant. And nine months later they gave birth to the sons and
daughters of the inscribed wheat. From the grain with Alexi’s name Anastasia
was born again. Even ugly Gabriela, the witch, got pregnant: old Constantinos’
sister gave her his grain as he didn’t have any children and hadn’t ever slept
with a woman. Constantinos had married sixty years earlier but when he’d laid down with his wife in their bridal bed, she spat blood
and green phlegm and died that night. He swore never to touch the flesh of a
woman again. So from the grain with Constantinos’ name cut on it, Gabriela
became pregnant; when her daughter, Angeliki, was born everyone realised that
she was the most beautiful child ever to arrive in Windtree.
And so the inscribed wheat the sparrows brought to the
lip of the well the night after the massacre became the continuation of life
for Windtree. Mothers of young girls
kept the grains of wheat that carried the names of unmarried adolescents or
boys next to their candles and when the girls reached the age of marriage they
gave them the inscribed wheat to put under their pillows. Straight away the
girls became pregnant and gave birth after nine months. This continued for a
generation and the next until the first sons of the cut wheat became men,
married and in turn had more children. Meanwhile, no one ever threw a bucket
into the well under the wind tree - the night after the corpses of the hanged
men had been thrown into it, the same night the sparrows brought the inscribed
wheat, not one, but seven new wells had gushed water from the dry rocks.
Naturally, no one in the
As for the King’s First Councillor, the all-powerful and
awe-inspiring man, whose pupils no one had seen; he too, quickly followed his
King. It happened like this: the day after the grand state funeral of Theodoros
the First, the First Councillor asked for an expeditionary force of crack
soldiers to be prepared as fast as possible. He refused to declare the reason
and target of the force to the Great Council of the Kingdom charged with
handling the succession, saying, “If what I suspect is true, no one should
learn about it.” But he didn’t even
manage to start this mission. The day before its planned departure the force
was ready and the First Councillor lay down to sleep. In the morning, his
servants found a marble statue that looked just like him, dressed in his night
robes, with its hands clenched in fists, and - how strange - the marble right
middle finger was even wearing his ring. His eyelids were open and for the
first time his empty eyes didn’t strike fear into all who looked at them.
Naturally, the Great Councillors were upset by the
terrible event. What had happened to the First Councillor? Had he been the
victim of an unusually well organised kidnapping? Had he arranged an enigmatic
departure from life - but why then the expeditionary force? Or perhaps his body
really had turned to marble? And if this last possibility had actually taken
place… what terrible force could turn a human body to stone? After many hours
of discussion leading nowhere, the Council members decided to bury the event in
silence. They had the marble First Councillor broken into hundreds of pieces,
loaded on to a ship and dumped into the depths of the sea where no one could
find them.
Theopemtos, the son of Theodoros, became the new king
and immediately appointed a new First Councillor who immediately disbanded the
crack expeditionary force his predecessor had so carefully gathered together.
And so life in the
***
Ninety-nine years passed from the evening the sparrows
left the inscribed wheat on the lip of the well under the windtree. None of the
generation of women impregnated by the grains of wheat was still alive: they
all died peacefully in old age, surrounded by children and grandchildren to
send them off on their great journey. The inscribed grains remained by the
candlesticks of every house as the spirits of their massacred ancestors and
holy seed of the continuation of life in their village. Children grew up
listening to the story of the survival of their village as if it were the most
fearful and at the same time most magical fable. In the evenings they would
hide amongst the rocks around the well hoping to see the sparrows bring the
inscribed wheat once again, even though the old women said again and again,
“For the inscribed wheat to come, it isn’t enough to wait for it. You have to
ask…”
At that time the great great grandson of Theodoros the
First, Theodoros the Third, whose name in history remains the ‘Swinelover’,
ruled the
His adolescence matched his genius: no one ever saw
him get angry or lose his cool for as long as a second; the prince didn’t seem
to be afraid of anything and didn’t even desire or get passionate about much -
not the women of the court or his father’s young slaves, not hunting or the
other frenzied amusements of the palace. He had no friends and looked at the
palace flatterers and his contemporaries amongst the sons of the King’s Council
and generals with the same icy stare. Whenever he wasn’t at a lesson with his teachers
you could find him either in the library, lost in a rare volume, or studying
forgotten documents in the
One day Theopemtos the Second died: his life of
debauched orgies reached a fitting climax when the King strangled himself with
his own hands in an attempt to reach orgasm. Prince Theodoros was crowned King
Theodoros the Third and immediately put his plans for making sweeping changes
to the
No, Theodoros the Third, wasn’t unjust: when he
ordered all but three uniforms for his citizens be abolished (leaving one for
special occasions, one for everyday use and one for studying) he didn’t just
implement it himself but announced that any of the royal family who didn’t
comply be executed in public, including his own brother, Theophilos. When, once
again, he made a law that took away land from the nobles (under pain of death
for those who refused) the greatest resistance came from his own family over
forests where they’d hunted for generations. When he made the penalty for
stealing cutting off the hand at the wrist (with the provision that the thief’s
father perform the amputation on his son), he had the first General of the
Great Kingdom cut off his only son’s right hand after the boy had stolen an
extra helping of food from the cadet college.
King Theodoros the Third wasn’t unjust then; he was
however, unquestionably paranoid. In the third year of his reign, he ordered a
Chimera be painted outside every door of every house in the
In the seventh year of his reign things got really
savage when the King ordered thousands of snakes be
released in every town of the
It was the first occasion the Great Council asked for
an audience with the King since Theodoros the Third took to the throne and he
accepted immediately. The First Councillor spoke to him on all their behalf. He
was an old noble who believed that when the bridle was loose the masses could
be driven more easily and, with a trembling voice (knowing that he was risking
his head), he told the King that no one on the Great Council understood what
purpose the “humanizing snakes” served, that people found themselves in a
singular state of panic and that panic was a bad sign, and how, in the end, the
snakes didn’t just menace the masses with a horrific death - a minor evil - but
the nobles too, the members of the Great Council amongst them, even the King
himself. Theodoros listened to him carefully and as soon as the First
Councillor finished, asked the others if they had anything to add. No one
spoke, so the King, in an absolutely calm voice said, “Have you ever considered
the story of Circes? I’ve often wondered what it means to touch people with a
wand and transform them into pigs… Have you ever thought how people differ from
pigs? A worm! It’s a worm that excites them and makes them yearn, makes people
haughty, arrogant and slanderous; it’s a worm that makes them anarchic, reckless
and insubordinate; a worm that makes people believe they can master their own
lives. I must crush this worm of depraved freedom: it was this worm the Chimera
threatened from the doors of all the houses and it was for this worm I brought
the snakes from the Sea of the East. The snakes are instruments to humanize
people and make them walk with their eyes tied shut and their spirits numb with
fear. In other words, the snakes guide people towards the ultimate goal of
their existence and make them fear death and tremble before horrific pain; the
snakes are what drive them towards humility and keep them from straying from
their path, always reminding them of the insignificance and pettiness. The
snakes show everyone that values, ideas and theories are stinking lies in front
of the brutality of instincts. The snakes prove that humans are a sack of meat
and shit ruled by Fear alone; and when we feel that, we will feel the touch of
Circes not as punishment, but as Salvation: our Renaissance and our Final
Solution.”
The Great Council never asked for King Theodoros’
audience again, as there was simply no reason to. Its members locked themselves
in their houses and prayed quietly to be saved by whatever God or Devil they
believed in. Whenever they went outside, they covered their eyes like everyone
else so they wouldn’t see the death snakes and die. King Theodoros continued to
make laws to crush the worm of depraved freedom and make people terribly afraid
and full of self-hatred. A year later he built a luxurious pigsty in his palace
and had twenty-one pigs specially ordered from all the corners of the earth
brought to it. Before installing them in his palace, he had them paraded
through the whole capital and forced people to come out onto the streets to see
them. It all went to plan except that in the
It was in the tenth year of his reign that Theodoros
the Third shut himself in the museum for several days. He ordered no one to disturb
him; evidently showing that something important was occupying him. As soon as
he came out, he gave the order for a special expeditionary force under his
command to be prepared to go to Thunderbolt. It was the height of summer and
everybody asked themselves what the King could possibly want on those dry
rocks?
The reader has guessed correctly: King Theodoros the
Third was planning to climb to the same village his great-great-grandfather had
massacred ninety-nine years earlier. No one had been up to Thunderbolt since:
in any case, why would they? Common sense said that the women who remained in
Windtree would have aged and died; without men the women’s wombs would remain
barren and life would have been extinguished in the village. But King Theodoros
the Third didn’t believe in common sense and had evidently found something in
the Great Kingdom’s archives, something to arouse his suspicions, and linked it
with everything else: with the death of his great-great-grandfather and his
First Councillor. What he didn’t know, he connected in an intricate plot. And
so he set off for Thunderbolt certain he wouldn’t find an abandoned village on
the edge of a ravine. And of course, his suspicions were confirmed.
As soon as the people of Windtree learnt that soldiers
were climbing their mountain, they had few illusions about what would follow.
The time of trials had come once again, the time when they would show whether
they were worthy of the old tales. This time there was no need for a girl’s
handkerchief to lead the strangers to the village; Theodoros the Third arrived
uninvited and his flatterers ordered all the inhabitants to gather in the
square. The villagers wore their best clothes and walked out with steady
strides: it was a day that had been waiting for them for nearly a century. They
felt ready for whatever the King would do to them - the sparrows could always
bring the cut wheat once more.
Theodoros spoke in an icy, soulless voice, as if
someone else was speaking through his mouth, “Ninety-nine years ago my
predecessor passed through your land. The archives write that your ancestors
rebelled and all your men were hanged to death. Yet from what I see, your
village did not die and was not wiped from the face of the earth. Is there
anyone here who can give me a convincing explanation for all this?”
Emmanuel, the oldest man in the village (just two
years short of one hundred years old and the only one born of the inscribed
wheat who was still alive) responded - his beard reached his knees, his speech
was slow and his words fell like stones, “Your predecessor who passed through
this mountain was a murderer and the words of your witnesses are well written:
he tried to destroy our lives once and forever. He didn’t succeed, and now
you’ve come here looking for a convincing reason for why we’re living. You’re
looking for a convincing explanation! You and your like-minded murderers who
burn people in flames because it’s all you’ve got to bully people with…Well,
light the flames: we’ll live how we’ve always lived, with Justice…”
The icy voice of the King started once more: “You will
survive as you’ve always survived: you’ll hide like hares in the bushes, just
like your ancestors and your women will be the whores of demons like their
mothers and grandmothers - they’ll get pregnant by them like their mothers did
to give birth to you.”
The elder Emanmanuel spoke with his voice breaking
with rage, “Faint-hearted cowards and slaughterers of innocents - that’s what
you and your forefathers are! Your mother and the mothers of your ancestors
were demon’s whores! If I weren’t bound by our ancient oath I’d wash away these
curses in your blood! You and your kind must learn that in Windtree, Justice
alone continues life. When your ancestor hanged our forefathers, sparrows
brought wheat with the men’s names cut on each grain to this well. Those
inscribed grains impregnated our mothers and, if you try and lay waste to our
village, the sparrows will bring new grains of cut wheat - inscribed by justice
- and our lives will continue.”
As soon as he’d finished the King stood as still as a
statue for a while before doing an about turn and went to his tent: he’d heard
all he needed. He ordered his soldiers to post guards around the village so
that no one could escape to the mountains and afterwards shut himself in the
Royal Tent for twenty-four hours without seeing anyone.
The next day at midday his soldiers went into every
home and took the grain of inscribed wheat from the women’s candlesticks. One
woman, Anastasia, the great granddaughter of Alexis, held the grain with his
name on it tightly in her hand and refused to open it for anyone: they put her
on the table and cut her hand off at the wrist to take it from her… And when
they’d collected all the inscribed wheat, they dragged the people of Windtree
into the square so the King could address them. An ominous cloud hung over the
village as Theodoros waited before them on his strange wooden thrown. His voice
was as icy as the day before but, saying some words, his expression became even
more twisted.
“I don’t want to slaughter you, villagers, and I don’t
hate you. I am King and I am not allowed such passions as Hatred or Love. I am
not angered by your elder’s insulting words; in any case I didn’t climb all the
way up here to punish rude old men… I came to your rock to crush the worm that
animates men and makes people stray from their goals - and only for that.
“All the councillors of the Kingdom asked themselves
why, when they learned of my expedition to your village and they thought I was
mad to come up to the insignificant cliffs of Thunderbolt. Now that I’ve found
you alive, in spite of my great-great-grandfather’s efforts, they’ve begun to
doubt me again. Why don’t I simply pass a rope around all your necks, hang you
all and be done with it. But the doubters too, are idiots: they aren’t worthy
of seeing the Vision with their eyes…
“Have you ever thought, people
of Windtree, why it is blood circulates inside your flesh and keeps it
alive? Have you ever understood that
everything contains within it its end; in other words, its perfect form? Have
you ever considered what the perfect form of man is? It’s certainly not a
two-legged creature that grows up, ages and dies to become two palmfuls of dust
and bones - and surely not a being that arrogantly thinks its purpose is to
reach the sky, if only for a moment, before being buried in the bowels of the
earth. The real purpose of human life - fleeting as it is - is to become
eternal pigs: the four-legged, unified creatures that grow fat without elevating
themselves and grunting continuously with fear, because only the Age of Fear
offers immortality…
“Yes, men and women of Windtree, the end of humanity
is in becoming eternal, frightened pigs. It is the accursed worm that nestles
inside people that makes them stray from the path. I will crush this worm!
Someone had to take Circes wand out of its golden case and hold it in his hands
once again, to touch the bodies of people and cleanse them of their curse.
That’s why I’m here, in front of you all…
“It doesn’t matter that you are alive, people of
Windtree; it doesn’t bother me that you continue to exist despite my
forefather’s will… What upsets me is you don’t fear death or the King’s noose…
not the knives of the strong or the power of my soldiers! It bothers me you’ve
learned to live on Thunderbolt without trembling lest the mountain burn your
flesh, it bothers me you’ve learnt to have faith in the inscribed wheat, and it
bothers me that you survive through Justice and not through Fear. A worm nestles
in the minds and spirits of each of you and it’s the worm I must crush in order
to free you and lead you to your true destinies… Open your eyes and see before
you the Vision! Eternity awaits you all…”
King Theodoros stopped his icy frenzy and examined the
faces in front of him with his eyes. He raised his hands up high brandishing a
leather bag: “In this bag there are the grains of inscribed wheat that
impregnated the women of your village after your men were hanged. My soldiers
will grind them up here before you all and make flour. Then we will mix it with
more flour, add water, knead it and make a loaf of bread -in front of you all,
we shall light a fire and bake the loaf…”
And after saying these words, he gave the leather bag
to one of his aides. His soldiers then brought a pestle and dropping one grain
in after the other, he threw in all the inscribed wheat and started to grind it
slowly. The faces of the villagers blackened with horror and some of the women
and the youngest of the men cried silently. Finally the soldiers finished their
work and half a plate of flour had been ground; it was mixed with more flour,
water was poured in, and they kneaded it and slowly formed a loaf. They lit a
fire and started to bake it on top of red stones. Before the baking the King
took out his knife and carved upon the dough the following ancient phrase: Go be a pig, as your own fellows are.
As soon as the bread was baked the King gave orders to
place it on a wooden plate and said to the villagers: “The time has come for
the worm inside you to be crushed: anyone who refuses to eat a chunk of this
bread will die by hanging and have their body thrown into the well to rot. The
same goes for women, children and babies. Those of you who eat a mouthful and
swallow it down into your stomachs without chewing… not only will you not die,
but I will take you with me, give you wealth and noble titles, I will make you
Councillors of the Great Kingdom, I will give you more power than you can
imagine - honours the like of which are deserved by people who crush the worm
within them! Meanwhile you will stay here, in this square, for the whole night.
Tomorrow at dawn, I will return and, by then, you will have decided whether you
will live or writhe in the noose…” And that’s what happened: Theodoros the
Third left immediately and left his soldiers to guard the people of Windtree .
Until the sun started to set, not a word was heard
from the square; as soon as it got dark a soft whispering began. Then the
thunderous voice of the elder Emmanuel cried out, “Stop your
chattering, men and women of Windtree… Don’t you understand that this
whispering is exactly what that arch-murderer wants - that’s why he didn’t have
us choose straight away, but left us to wait all night, so that fear threatens
us and we are tempted to eat the souls of our forefathers. For that reason,
stop your whispering and prepare yourselves to feel the noose around your
necks. Don’t worry about your descendants, Justice will save us…”
A youthful voice was heard from the crowd of
villagers: it started hesitantly but soon became more and more clear, “I’d say
the same thing as you, old Emmanuel, if I were as near death as you are. But I
still haven’t had time to feel the joy of love, the sweetness of getting my
woman pregnant, seeing my children born, grow up, fall in love and have their
children… I haven’t even seen the marks I left climbing trees changed by time, my scribbles on the wall melt away in the rain or the
knife of my childhood go blunt. I haven’t had my fill of dawn and sunsets, the
calm of the night, or the singing of the birds, not even the cry of wolves or
just the blooming of wildflowers. Is it worth losing all that for the sake of
not downing a piece of bread? Is the grain of wheat that our grandmother’s
guarded by their candlesticks so important that it’s worth us being wiped off
the face the earth? Even if it once saved us, should we be lost because of it
now?”
A wild tremor of rage filled Emmanuel’s voice, “You
are talking about the gifts of life whilst you hide in the dark shadow of the
many. Why don’t you say your name so your mother can hear the words of the one
that gave her belly so much pain? You talk of the joys of falling in love and
impregnating a woman, watching the birth of your children and bringing them up,
of seeing the day and hearing the night; do you believe all that follows some
law? Learn that there are two laws in life: Power and Justice - and our law is Justice! That’s why we wont eat
the inscribed wheat that the Power of a trivial king grinds and kneads before
our eyes. We will not become the servants of injustice: the cut wheat gave life
to our village! If we swallow one mouthful of this loaf we’ll become unjust and
escape the noose - but we’ll be lost forever.”
The whispering continued after the old man’s words.
Night had fallen for good. Not long afterwards another voice - different from
the first - started, “It’s not how you say it is Emmanuel, and your white hair
doesn’t mean that you alone are right. If you want to speak, it’s on your own
behalf - let us speak for our own lives. You tell us about Justice - that it supposedly saved our ancestors: well, it’s a fine
story for the nights when the wind rages. But now when our lives teeter on the
cliff-edge, let’s put aside fairy stories. Justice doesn’t exist. The only
right we have is people’s yearning to live - we were all born to live - even if
I owe my life to the inscribed wheat, I don’t have a problem eating it so I can
live. And so that no one can say I’m speaking under the cover of darkness, my
name is Vassileos, son of Dionysus, who was killed in his fight with the
red-eyed wolf - he killed it too - and saved our animals.”
At his words there was silence for half a minute. Then
the shrill voice of Alexandra, Vassileos mother, was heard: “Your father was
blessed when the wolf ate his heart. I remember it like yesterday, when they
brought his ripped up body to my house: everyone honoured him for being killed
in battle with the wolf and I cursed them all because I’d lost my man. But tonight,
I say he was lucky he didn’t hear you speak this evening. I wont
stop you eating the souls of our forefathers but forget that you’re my son -
I’d prefer to give birth to the red-eyed wolf a thousand times than give birth
to you!”
After Alexandra, the elder Emmanuel spoke again, his
voice no longer trembled with rage but was full of grief, “In truth, this King
isn’t like his predecessors at all: they were murderers, butchers and brutes
that fed on blood but he feeds on people’s souls. He came here for that and
he’s ripping our souls apart, he knows that with the noose one just dies, but
he wants to ruin us completely by making us eat the seeds that gave us life -
he wants to make us eat ourselves. Think about the way his wretched scheme has
already divided us, how it divides a son from the mother who gave birth to him.
I implore you, people of Windtree, stand together until the morning. Let us be
silent in the dark and speak again at dawn when we can see each other face to
face.”
And again they didn’t heed his words; perhaps because
it was dead calm that night and even the stars were hidden behind clouds. In
the dark many of them were caught in the King’s trap. The whispering did not
stop and the voices got louder. It wasn’t so much Theodoros the Third’s threat
of immanent death that tried the villager’s consciences: if it were a one-way
track to death, they would have all gone to the noose with their heads held
high, but now they had a chance of escape. People are made to stray from
justice and the story of the cut wheat the sparrows once brought to the mouth
of the well, got more and more distant before the possibility of living on, if
only by eating a mouthful of a loaf of bread. And slowly the number of people
whose souls bowed down before the dilemma rose.
A little before dawn the noise became more intense and
the whispering had turned in to savage arguments. Shouting, threats, curses and
prayers could all be heard. It was clear that the village was split in two; on
one side, were those who would not eat the grains that gave them life, the ones
who thought reason and instincts couldn’t save them now but Justice would. On
the other side were those that didn’t want to die and wanted to enjoy life,
fall in love and bring up their children; they didn’t want to be lost forever
for the sake of an old fairy tale. One could now hear fights and broken words
and phrases, one drowned out by the next: “reason”, “Justice”, “madness”,
“injustice”, “life”, “death” and other such words; and you could no longer tell
who was speaking and what they were saying that savage night.
At sunrise they quietened down and looked each other
in the eyes: it was easy to tell from their gaze on what side everyone stood.
If their gaze burned straight ahead, they would go the noose, but if their
eyelids fluttered as they hid their gaze downwards, then they would eat the
mouthful of bread the Slanderer had made to crush the souls of the villagers.
And the number who had chosen to eat the bread was ten times greater than the
amount people who chose death. Old Emmanuel was shocked to see six of his
grandchildren amongst them. Tears came to his eyes and in his wild grief
managed the following words in a broken voice, “In one night, we have ruined
everything that Thunderbolt carved onto our souls, I hope at least one hundred
and eleven of us go to the noose - so we don’t fall short of our one hundred
and eleven forefathers, fewer than the one hundred and eleven grains of cut
wheat.”
The King reached the square at the right time,
evidently his soldiers had kept him informed about what was going on all night
and, naturally, he had studied everything carefully. He ordered his
executioners to build three gallows and started to send over those who
absolutely refused to eat the bread with Circes’ phrase carved upon it. In that
way they couldn’t use their eyes or words to bully the ones that chose to live.
He didn’t even talk to them and so give them another chance to show they
weren’t scared of him. The first to be cradled by the noose was old Emmanuel who
went arm in arm with his two granddaughters, Faith and Hope. When they put the
rope around their necks, the old man uttered the following words “Father, live
through my death.” They were hanged all at once and their hands remained
entwined - the soldiers couldn’t prise them apart and so they were thrown into
the well together. After them, twelve groups of three were led to the noose:
they were old men and women, Avgerinos, Manthos, swift-footed Georgakis,
Iordannis and his son Telegonos, Michealos and Asymenia, Anastasia and her son
Anthony, Evanthos with nine of his ten grandchildren, Alexandra the widow of
Dionysus, Chrisodactylus, Petros, Stefanos the younger, Katerina with her
triplet sons, the six Alexis from the grain of old Alexis’ (who had refused to
let Theodoros the First have his daughter), the two Dhimitris and Aiolia who
took her name from the blowing of the wind. And all of them, before writhing in
the noose, repeated Emmanuel’s phrase, “Father, live through my death.” And as
soon as they were dead the soldiers threw their corpses into the well.
When he was done with them, Theodoros the Third asked
the villagers that had chosen life to stand in a line in front of the bread
made by grinding the inscribed wheat. Holding his two children in his arms,
Vasileos, the son of Dionysus and Alexandra - who disowned him the previous
night - was first to stand before the loaf. He uttered the phrase “Father, live
through my life”, bit a mouthful of bread and spat it into the mouth of his
son, then bit another and spat it into the mouth of his daughter, before biting
off a third chunk and forcing it down his own throat. Then came Sifas with his
children and grandchildren, behind him Yiannis son of Dimitra, the three
Nikos’, Petros the kiln-firer, Emmanuel’s six grandsons with all their families
and many more - in a seemingly endless line of men, women and children, couples
in love - all moving with hesitant steps and eyes lowered towards the ground.
They stood in the line of life and, in order to live, ate the souls of their
ancestors, repeating the same phrase. Each time one of the villagers ate a
mouthful of bread, his or her mouth twisted strangely and expressed something
between pain and pleasure and they all muttered the same incomprehensible
phrase the King had carved onto the ungodly bread: “Go be a pig, as your own
fellows are.”
In the end over a thousand villagers ate a piece of
that terrible loaf. For every fifteen that ate it there was one who refused and
went and stood in front of the gallows. When the number choosing death reached
three (and after a signal from the King) the executioners hanged them and threw
their corpses into the well - Theodoros the Third was sure not to let too many
people who didn’t obey Circe’s command gather together. And the others, the
ones who’d eaten the bread, walked to the right side of the square with their
heads bowed and waited for the others.
Everything was finished early that afternoon when the
last of the villagers made their decision. There had been eleven waverers who
couldn’t make up their minds but who eventually moved forward together and,
tentatively, ate their share of bread. They managed to splutter, “Father, live
through my life” from between their teeth before joining the group who’d chosen
life. All the people of Windtree who remained alive had eaten the inscribed
loaf that a century before had saved their village. Whoever
refused was hanged and their corpse thrown in the well. One of the courtiers
read out the macabre statistics: the dead numbered one hundred and ten; over a
thousand had chosen to live. With the announcement of the end of the
proceedings, King Theodoros the Third made a triumphant proclamation for the
first and only time in his life, repeating once more the ancient phrase “Go be
a pig, as your own fellows are.”
Then something unexpected happened: a girl stepped out
from amongst the many people who had chosen to live and walked towards the last
crust of the unholy loaf. It was Angeliki, the beautiful fifteen-year-old
descendant of Gabriella and her union with the inscribed grain of Constantinos
(who’d never slept with a woman all his life); a union that had born four
generations of girls, each called Angeliki and each more beautiful than the
last; so exceptionally beautiful were they that everyone waited excitedly to
see the next Angeliki be born and witness God’s blessings to Mankind.
They had watched her join the line with the rest of
the living and bite the bread - unexpectedly cheering the others who had seen
her mother and grandmother go to the noose and expected her to follow. The
fifth Angeliki, the daughter of the fourth Angeliki and granddaughter of the
third, had suddenly darkened on hearing the courtier’s announcement of the end
of the process. She moved to the remnants of the bread like a sleepwalker and
stopped. From her mouth she took out the lump of bread she was supposed to have
eaten earlier. She had held it under her tongue instead; she spat it onto her
hand and then mixed it into the crust of the loaf, loudly echoing the words of
old Emmanuel, “We mustn’t fall short of our one hundred and eleven forefathers,
fewer than the one hundred and eleven grains of cut wheat.” And she walked up
to the gallows and took her place in front of the middle noose. Straight away
King Theodoros made a sign to hang her to his executioner, but even the
executioner was overcome by her unworldly beauty and hesitated a few seconds
before tightening the noose. In those seconds the girl managed to cry out her
last words: not the same as the other hanged people, but the following dark and
enigmatic phrase, “Lambros, behind me lies the way out.” Her body was thrown
into the well.
So it was that thanks to fifteen-year-old Angeliki,
the hanged people numbered no less than the one hundred and eleven hanged at
the previous massacre, ninety-nine years earlier… It certainly cast a shadow
over the King’s triumph: the old total had been reached by the villagers who
refused the touch of his wand and the executioner’s delay had given her time to
say her last enigmatic words. Straight after this final hanging, the King
ordered his archers to shoot all three executioners - not just the one who’d
hesitated - and no one really understood why. Their corpses were thrown into
the well, too.
The villagers who’d chosen to eat the loaf of cut
wheat also felt the shadow cast by Angeliki’s actions and last words. They all
turned towards Lambros, the tenth grandson of Evanthos and the only one not to
follow his grandfather to the noose. Angeliki must have been talking to him, as
there was no other Lambros in Windtree. The eighteen-year-old young man was as
tall as a poplar with black eyes and hair - the most handsome youth in the
village. No one suspected anything was going on between him and the last
descendant of Gabriella, but it seems whatever there was had been kept well
hidden. They had both chosen to eat the cut wheat and live, evidently coming to
the decision together the previous night and earlier that day, they had lined
up for the bread with Angeliki in front and Lambros immediately behind her. He
hadn’t made the slightest attempt to stop her when he saw her going back to the
bread and spit out her mouthful before going to stand at the gallows, but his eyes
took the colour of dust. And when she called out her last enigmatic words, his
eyes held a blank stare; as if his spirit had been crushed within him. He
wasn’t to speak for another ninety-nine years.
Quickly however Lambros,
stopped being the centre of attention; as that day so many things happened. In
response to a new signal from the King his soldiers brought twenty-one gold
carriages into the square and from inside them
twenty-one pigs got out. They were the ones the King had gathered from all the corners
of the earth and brought with him on this dreadful expedition. He grabbed what
was left of the crust and threw it to the pigs, shouting at the cowering
people, “Watch, people of Windtree, as the new world eats the old…” In a few
seconds the pigs had eaten the crust of bread and were squealing for more.
After that the King crossed his hands and spoke to the
villagers who’d eaten the unholy loaf before the pigs. “You will come with me,
people of Windtree,” he said in his normal icy and neutral
tone once more, “to the capital of the
After those words that fearful day came to an end. The
villagers spent the night digesting the cut wheat in the same square their
grandfathers and grandmothers had smelt Gabriella’s Blackflower and had then
waited for the sparrows to bring the inscribed wheat from the depths of the
well. This time however, no one dared look to its mouth - after all the night wont bring you anything unless you ask for it.
At dawn the next day they set off with the King, his
followers and soldiers for the capital of the
Three months later, something happened that changed
the
“But first
numberless bands of the dead came on
With a
tremendous shout, and sallow fear seized me
Lest noble Persephone send the Gorgon head
Of the dread monster from
the hall of Hades against me.”
The whole of the
***
The years that followed were years
of prosperity; at least that’s what you read in history books. The
Amongst the rulers were the people from Windtree who’d
eaten the inscribed wheat -and they were incredibly successful in their new role.
The villagers who until recently had lived off the milk of their yews, changed
to feeding off the blood of the many with miraculous ease. People who’d never
bridled horses began to bridle human souls as naturally as if they’d done so
from birth. They married heiresses, had children, became more numerous and
richer; they put down roots in the ruling class, wore silk neck ties and talked
of advancement, progress and development and meant their own advancement, their
own profit and their own development; they spoke about rights and meant
interests; of God and worshiped anything that kept them in power; they spoke of
freedom and meant the right of others to be their slaves; of doubt and meant
the rights of the hungry to doubt their hunger; of ethics and meant the right
of the well-fed to believe their food blessed; they discussed health and
believed the dreams of the poor a sickness; they spoke of life but meant the
death of others. They never spoke of Thunderbolt, Windtree, the cut wheat or
their earlier lives.
Years passed and the
***
Ninety-nine years had passed from the day the
villagers of Windtree ate the inscribed wheat and preserved their lives by
digesting the souls of their ancestors. The first symptoms appeared on the hot summers day exactly ninety-nine years after that day: an
intense pallor spread across all the people from Windtree and their blood
descendants. All of a sudden the immortal generation from Windtree - the same
people everyone had called seeds blessed by God - started showing signs of a
hitherto unheard of illness: their bodies started to rot even thought they
carried on living. Day by day their flesh decayed and was stripped from their
bones. There were now more than six thousand of them: the fabulously old (the
people who ate the bread in Windtree were now more than one hundred and fifty),
their children, grandchildren, great grandchildren and even great great
grandchildren some of whom were still children and babies. They all literally
became living dead. Day by day, as the summer continued around them, the
descendants of the villagers from Windtree rotted whole and became more and
more repulsive. They stank unbearably, suffered in horrific pain and their flesh
filled with worms and fell off just exposing their bones.
It really was something indescribable - as if the
hounds of hell risen and eaten the bodies of the living or infernal deities had
created a monster from nothing that then fed upon its brothers. Perhaps the
souls of their ancestors had woken in their descendants and avenged themselves
on the flesh that had once tried to digest them...
It was an incredible evil but at the same time a sort
of response: for the burnt corpses of the insane and the magicians, for the
children who died of pneumonia in the mines, for the poor who died like brutes
in the street, for the fragments of battle-killed soldiers and the carcasses of
the hanged tenants - killed for stealing a handful of barley or rice. It was a response
for the Justice they refused on the day they ate the inscribed wheat.
The doctors and physicians of the
When the people from Windtree realized what was
happening and felt the world collapsing beneath their feet, they tried to kill
themselves by all the methods the human mind can devise: they drank poison,
fell into the sea with stones around their necks, held dynamite to their chests
and set it alight, jumped off cliffs, stabbed themselves with knives through
the heart, and shot themselves with all kinds of bullets - lead, silver and
even gold. It all came to nothing: the descendants of the villagers couldn’t die, it was almost as if Death himself had turned his back
on their existence. When the order from the young King Theopemtos the Sixth
announced all the living dead in the Great Kingdom were to give up their
positions of power, have their privileges taken away, they all agreed
voluntarily and without the slightest resistance. Even flames couldn’t end
their lives along with their bodies, going out without burning what was left of
their worm-ridden flesh.
There was, of course, a special meeting of the Great
Council in the Kingdom. They made the following decision: the villagers and
their descendants were to be arrested and as they were evidently immortal,
banished temporarily in Valtos until a deserted island could be found for their
permanent exile. They were to wear masks or black hoods to hide their horrific
features from the subjects of the
So the six thousand living dead found themselves in
Valtos. Every family arrived in their luxurious carriages stuffed full (more
out of habit than need) with as many valuable objects as they could carry. In truth,
it was a very strange sight, so many thousands of people - even little children
and babies - wearing odd masks. On the first night the eldest people lit a big
fire and gathered around it to talk. It wasn’t easy as some of them shouted,
others condemned, many prayed whilst more gave in to false hopes. Mothers
cried, asking what their children had done to deserve their flesh rotting and
filling with worms. And all these sounds came from behind immobile masks that -
whether they guffawed or scowled - added to the menacing and absurd air of the
gathering. Then they heard a voice, “Don’t cry, women - we chose Injustice and
brought children into this world through Injustice. We put the worms that eat
our flesh inside us - we chose to rot…” It was Stefanos, the King’s Head Clerk,
who spoke.
Stefanos was the great grandson of Emmanuel and as a
six-year old, he had seen his grandfather killed by the Swinelover’s noose
before his parents put him in line to eat the inscribed wheat. He became Head
Clerk to the King and the wise old men of the court said there hadn’t been a
mind like his since the Swinelover. He spoke twelve languages and, it was said,
knew the contents of hundred thaousend parchments in the
“Understand it all, men and women of Windtree,
everything ended the day we ate the spirits of our ancestors. Until then we
lived through Justice and that brought us into the world, fed us, held us in
life and put us to sleep. Women, it pains me to see your children, just as it
hurts me to look at my grandchildren who are rotting away along with yours. But
we chose to continue to live through injustice. We ate the Swinelover’s bread
and his plan worked: he turned us into what he wanted, guilty people who could
infect others with our guilt.
“We shouldn’t cry or howl because we chose what
happened to us: we didn’t give the masses such a choice when we imposed
ourselves upon them. When they called us ‘blessed seeds’ we swaggered happily -
we fooled ourselves with the thought we did the right thing: that real justice
is about doing evil. Its what we’ve all become since
we chose to become executioners and sold our innocence to be the ones that
tighten the collar of the noose but don’t feel it on our necks. We slaughtered,
killed, insulted and raped; we ate and digested what we owed our lives to and
the dog that’s now eating our faces and the worms that feast on our bodies are
our payment.”
That’s what Stefanos said. Silence fell on the crowd
and only the crackle of the burning wood could be heard. At some point
Vasileos, the son of Dionysus and Alexandra, spoke, he
was wearing a snake’s mask, “Stefanos speaks the truth, the worms inside us and
the bodies of our children were put there by us and, first of all, by me, who
drove you all to eat the bread and escape the gallows. I served Injustice then
and now I can’t find a way for us to die… because even death is sick of us.”
No one could find reasons to object to what Stefanos
and Vassileos said. The people from Windtree understood their injustice and the
only thing they wanted to do was surrender themselves
to Justice, to stand trial in its light and die at last. Stefanos spoke again:
“Listen, men and women, we shall deliver ourselves to
Justice, just as we chose Injustice - we’ll ask for the inscribed wheat. We all
know where we can find it and only one journey separates us from our answer: we
must go back to Windtree. We’ll find the cut seeds once again and, through
them, the Justice that will lead us to death. But the old story (the one we’ve
so often pretended to have forgotten) says one thing: for the sparrows to bring
us the inscribed wheat we’ve got to ask for it in the night. We must smell
Gabriela’s Blackflower again - but we’ve got to find it - and no one knows
where it lies hidden on the mountain.”
Stefanos’ words were followed by a loud murmur that
gradually, as time passed, died out. Finally silence ruled: there was no other
way out. Then after some time a voice shouted out two words: the names of
Angeliki and Lambros.
The majority of the group were
too young to remember and shrugged their shoulders in surprise. The names may
have meant nothing to them but to the others, the original villagers, the two
names (and strangely, not Stefanos’ speech earlier on) sent them into a joyous
trance that lasted some time. With absolute clarity they saw before them all
the horrific images - one after the other - of that day ninety-nine years
earlier when the Swinelover had put the bread of their ancestor’s souls before
them. They had long since consigned them definitively to an oblivion they
didn’t see even in their darkest dreams. In this strange vision rose Angeliki
once again, the last descendant of Gabriela: the fifteen-year-old beauty who
abandoned the living and went to her death on the scaffold so that the dead
numbered one hundred and eleven, not less than their forbearers whose names
were inscribed on the grains of wheat. They heard her enigmatic words once
more, uttered whilst the executioner hesitated in awe of her beauty: “Lambros,
behind me lies the way out.”
Lambros alone, of all the people brought from Windtree
by the Swinelover, hadn’t exploited power in the
In their despair, the living dead at last remembered
Lambros and Angeliki - in particular they remembered her last words before
death: addressed to Lambros speaking of a ‘way out’ somewhere ‘behind her’. And
then their minds turned to the revolting witch, legendary Gabriela, who gave
the women of Windtree the Blackflower to smell and had them search for their
‘way out’ in the night. For sure, Gabriela’s secret would be passed from mother
to daughter and who else but her last descendant would know where the
Blackflower lay hidden? Was it possible Angeliki was talking about that whilst
the noose hung around her neck when she called Lambros and said the way out lay
behind her?
It was decided that Stefanos, Vassileos and Sifas
would go to Lambros’ distant monastery and ask him for help. Besides, he too
had eaten the inscribed wheat and so his body would be rotting as well… The
carriage journey took three days and they spent another day on donkeys before
they reached his cell. They found him carving a stick with his knife: the
infernal dog had only laid waste to half of Lambros’ face, the rest lay
unscathed and adolescent, a contrast that made his
appearance even more frightful. When he saw the three masked men approach -
despite not having seen anyone for half a century - he remained indifferent.
They spoke and told him who they were. They spoke of the curse that had fallen
on the people of Windtree and their descendants in the
A strange glow passed through Lambros’ eyes and he
stared at them for the first time. Stefanos, noticing his words had an effect,
kept talking and asked about the Blackflower, and telling him how much they
needed to pray for the inscribed wheat again: if they were given it once more,
they could eat it and be accepted by Justice and at last find death. He talked
of Angeliki’s last words and how they must have meant something. He tried to
explain the unmentionable horrors the curse of eternal life brought and even
reminded him of the Swinelover’s anger when he heard Angeliki’s last words.
With a nod Lambros stopped Stefanos and, in sign language, asked for a pen and
paper. They must have had a premonition it would be needed and so they gave
Lambros something to write with. Very slowly Lambros wrote - well more or less
carved - the letters onto the paper with his quill; he hadn’t written for
ninety-nine years. He wrote in hieroglyphics that only Stefanos could read:
“I was with Angeliki every evening whilst everyone
else in the village slept, we used to meet at the
Pitchfork spring. We hid ourselves from everyone else,
she wanted it that way and never explained it to me. No one found out about us.
The evening the Swinelover penned us in the square, we whispered very quietly
to each other so no one would discover us. I pressured her into eating the
inscribed wheat bread with me - I just couldn’t bear to lose her or her kisses,
and the sorrow in her eyes that seemed to embrace me as if I were holding her
in my arms. She answered me with an incomprehensible phrase, something about
Justice not being stronger than Love. She seemed persuaded. The next day, I
sent her to eat the loaf first, just to be sure. Then I went too, the only one
of Evanthos’ grandsons who didn’t stand at the gallows. I lived only to be with
her; but she kept her mouthful under her tongue…
“Don’t ask me about the Blackflower: we never spoke of
it and she never told me anything. Anyway, I don’t think I’m worthy of redemption
after what we’ve done: we ate the seeds that gave us life speaking of Life and
Love, but in reality we thought only of our own lives and loved only ourselves
and no one else. Only the just die - we the unjust, may as well live eternity
rotting…”
When Lambros gave them the paper and they read it,
they understood he had nothing more to tell them. One more thought held in
Stefanos’ mind, and it was for all the people who ate the cut wheat and their
descendants to return to Windtree together. And there, in the square by the
ancient tree on the edge of the ravine, ask for the key to the riddle, there,
in the square where they were offered the choice between Justice and Injustice
and they had chosen Injustice.
It was the last thing left to them; they left the
monastery on the
On the day they finally reached Windtree, everything
was just as they’d left it ninety-nine years earlier: houses, humble utensils,
half-opened windows, the square, well and tree on the edge of the ravine and
even the fateful gallows were all still there. From somewhere inside the mountain,
a deep rumble was heard: they were back on Thunderbolt. “Men and women of
Windtree,” it was Vassileos’ voice they heard, “take off your masks, we’re in
Windree now.”
The six thousand living dead took their masks off and
threw them to the ground, where the wind, in a strong gust, picked them up and
scattered them to the four horizons. Then the people of Windtree looked at each
other face to face for the first time and all felt they saw themselves in the
rotten features of one another, as if there weren’t six thousand people but
one, one unjust person searching to be tried, there, on the edge of the world
by the thunderbolt of Justice.
What Stefanos hoped for happened: the riddle was
solved in the square where Justice and Injustice had offered themselves.
Suddenly, everyone noticed Lambros walking almost in a trance towards the
gallows where once the Swinelover’s executioner carried out the hangings. He
stood at the middle one - just like Angeliki, ninety-nine years earlier.
Unexpectedly, he turned around completely and looked at the wind tree hanging
into the ravine. He reached the edge almost running and disappeared. But he
hadn’t jumped into the void and a few people who ran to the chasm saw him
climbing up the side of the cliff like an adolescent, holding onto the roots of
the wind tree that lay exposed on the rocks. Where the roots fused to form the
trunk there was a hollow: Lambros stretched out his hand, picked something up
and put it in his coat before climbing back with feline agility. Everyone gathered
around him and, in a very slow movement, he took something out of his coat and
held it in his horrifically rotten hands like an injured bird. It was, of
course, the Blackflower.
Angeliki’s last words, “Lambros, behind me lies the way out”, had meant more than they could possibly
imagine. Behind her back, behind the scaffold and the
executioners, beyond the wind tree, in a hollow on the side of the cliff; where
you’d find it only if you asked. Of course, the people who’d grown up in
Windtree knew Gabriela’s old words - in each tree there’s a hollow that holds a
great secret. Five generations after Gabriella and two years short of two
centuries since the sparrows brought the inscribed wheat to the bereaved women,
it was Angeliki’s turn (even if she’d been dead for nearly a century) to give
the Blackflower to people who’d lost hope.
A little later Stefanos spoke, his voice trembling
with emotion, “The Blackflower Lambros holds is our only way… Let’s smell it,
men and women of Windtree, there might still be room for us in the infallible
darkness. We once ate the wheat that gave life to our village to save our own
lives; now, we ask it for death, any death, so long as we’re released from
seeing our own decay. Let’s pray to the spirits we ate to close our eyes and to
Justice to bring us death…”
It was getting dark and the villagers who had once
eaten the inscribed wheat, now with their faces now mauled by an infernal
hound, sat on the ground of their forbearers to pray for what they once
refused. And one after another, they sniffed the Blackflower and disappeared
into the infallible darkness - the night that was now their only way out.
Night fell, a night that covers everything
and is always the same; utterly black and impenetrable, and dedicated to the greatest
longings, most ancient hopes, terrible moves and most irrational faith.
And despairing, the living dead - the same people who’d eaten the seeds that
gave them life and from whom now even Death had turned his back - faced the
night head on. Like the women one hundred and ninety eight years earlier, they
faced ghosts, elves, vampires and demons that circled the living dead and went
inside them. And afterwards, from the well, like blue sparks there flew one
hundred and eleven sparrows: one hundred and eleven like before, one hundred
and eleven, as many as had refused to eat the inscribed wheat. They circled in
the sky twice and then stopped for a moment on the lip of the well. Then they
flew high, higher than anyone can imagine.
The first light of day brought an end to the trials of
the living dead. Their hideous faces turned towards the well where, on its lip,
lay one hundred and eleven inscribed grains of wheat. They approached the well
hesitantly. The men who reached it first told the others: cut onto the grains
of wheat were one hundred and eleven names, the names of those who, in front of
the Swinelover ninety nine years earlier, had preferred the noose to eating the
souls of their forbearers. It was as if God had cut them with his needle just
like all those years before.
Vasileos, son of Dionysus and Alexandra, and the first
person to eat the unholy bread ninety nine years earlier, took out his black
handkerchief and wrapped the new cut wheat up inside. The elder Sifus went to
the house he’d abandoned that black day and emerged carrying a big cooking pot.
Yiannis, the son of Dhimitris, filled it with water from the spring by the
rocks whilst Petros the kiln-worker lit a fire. When the water in the pot was
boiling, Vassileos, emptied the inscribed wheat from
his handkerchief saying “Forgive us, God, we may have lived by unjust means but
at least let us die with Justice.”
An hour later the strange soup was bubbling and the
villagers gathered in a seemingly endless line. A nod from Lambros made it
clear he was going to serve the soup to everyone and they all obeyed his wish.
Vassileos was the first to drink the soup but this time saying the opposite of
what he had said ninety nine years earlier: “Father, live through my death.”
Behind him followed Sifas and his unending family, then Stefanos and the
others. They all repeated the same phrase - as only through death can others be
born.
After drinking a spoonful of soup, they went and lay down
next to the well alongside the rest of their families, took of their gloves and
linked rotten fingers with the rotten fingers of their neighbour. And around
the well the rows kept growing. Inside two hours Windtree’s humble square was
full of six thousand living dead, stretched out and waiting - peacefully now -
for Justice.
Once he’d finished serving everyone else, Lambros
drank the last spoonful of soup made of cut wheat and went and lay down holding
hands with his neighbour. Before he put the spoon between his rotten lips, he
spoke again - the first and last time for ninety-nine years. He didn’t say the
same thing as the others; no, he owed someone a final farewell: “Only you are
the way out, Angeliki.”
By midday, their souls had left all their bodies. As
the sun started its descent there was a moment of absolute silence once again
and suddenly, the horrible corpses in the square transformed into normal
bodies, with warm flesh and well formed human faces, each with the deep scars
of strangulation around their necks. Then the clouds quickly filled and
darkened the sky, and from deep below came the terrible murmur of Thunderbolt…
***
Since then, many years have passed. The
Naturally, Thunderbolt still exists, though it is now
cut off by walls, fences and barbed wire, and guarded by soldiers. They survey
it with ever improving machines each of which has the eyes of ten thousand
eagles, the strength of ten thousand lions and the venom of ten thousand
snakes. And there’s a long-standing order that no subject or foreigner may
climb the black mountain: supposedly, inside it burns an evil flame that causes
whoever approaches to vanish.
If you really want it though, you’ll defy the order
and find the break in the walls, the way to penetrate the barbed wire and trick
the guards and their machines. And then you’ll climb the dry rock and cross no
end of ravines. And sometime, from the depths of the mountain, you’ll hear the
roar of old Thunderbolt and a savage fear and an inexplicable yearning will
fill you soul.
And you’ll continue walking above the roar of
sleepless Thunderbolt because you know that in its most remote ravine lies the deserted
[Translation: Leonidas Liambeys]
~
[The short novel ‘The cut wheat’ was written in the
summer of 1998. 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. Translation
from Homer are by Albert Cook, (W.W. Norton &
Company Inc, NYC, 1993) for Odyssey, Book XI, verses 634.]