We decided to make discreet inquiries of the old gardener who for the last sixty years — that is, through Thick and Thin — has kept the hedges clipped in the shape of a crown discernible only to helicopters flying overhead in the direction of the Tatoi Summer Palace.
As we rounded the house, our curiosity was further aroused by an unmistakable odour of mothballs and the sight of laundry lines sagging under the weight of gold-braided uniforms and ermine tippets hung out for airing. The gardener immediately satisfied our curiosity by explaining that the house had not been sold and that, after a six-month self-imposed exile in Zurich following the December referendum that had rejected the King, the Vassiloglous had reoccupied their ancestral seat. Roused from their beds with dreams of kings dancing in their heads at 3:00 a.m. on June 4, they had been informed by a call from Athens that the amendment to article 111 of the Constitution, which would have barred members of the ex-royal family from holding public office, had been defeated in Parliament by a landslide vote of twenty-six to fourteen. The Vassiloglous had immediately booked one-way tickets back to Athens to prepare for the Royal Return.
We found Mme. Vassiloglou who, for the better part of ten years has been going around the house wailing, ‘Ah, le pauvre garcon!’, cheerfully unwrapping a hundred-odd silver bonbon dishes embossed with the thirty-drachma commemorative coin minted in honour of the Royal Wedding. Our attention was instantly drawn to a portrait of-Venizelos, that bSte noire of Greek royalists, hanging uneasily in the hall. Mme. Vassiloglou noting our dismay explained that bygones were bygones and that Democracy would be the fashion motif of the Royalist Revival.
Mme. Vassiloglou said that, while Queen Frederika was meditating in India, she had been meditating in Switzerland and had just finished a hefty biography of Louis Napoleon.
‘He was quite an obscure grandson of Le Grand, you realize, and everyone thought him an incompetent fool. Yet he returned to France in 1848, ran successfully for Parliament, spent a year gathering popular support about the country and was finally proclaimed Emperor in 1851.’
If our former king were indeed to return, run for office and win a seat in Parliament, how, we naively asked, should he be addressed in an Uncrowned Democracy? And how would Mr. Schleswig Holstein Sonderburg Glucksburg look in Greek on an election ballot? Mrs. Vassiloglou smiled indulgently. ‘Well, in view of the fine showing of the Lakonians who voted so strongly for the King in December, I think it would be nice if the government allowed Constantine to retain his old princely title, Duke of Sparta.’
Noting that Constantine had assured the nation in one of his statements that if he returned to Greece he would not bring his mother with him, we asked Mrs. Vassiloglou if she was not chagrined by the idea of mother and son being separated. Mrs. Vassiloglou delicately sidestepped the matter of the disclaimer and reminded us that the constitution as it now stands does not discriminate against any member of the royal family, that Women’s Rights is an important issue in the New Democracy and that another woman deputy in Parliament would be most appropriate.
‘It was Queen Frederika after all,’ she fondly recalled, ‘who started the fashion of sitting up front with her chauffeur which was a great egalitarian step forward at that time.’ (She started the fad of wearing sunglasses after dark, too, we recalled, which took such an alarming toll of elderly ladies in Kolonaki who tumbled by the score into potholes.)
At this point Mme. Vassiloglou opened a jewelry box revealing an unostentatious diamond tiara. As she shut it up again, she murmured that she would store it away for A More Appropriate Time. Calculating the fine example of Napoleon III for whom it took three years to achieve the throne after his return, we mentioned that 1978 might be a promising year.
‘In that case we shan’t be here,’ she said.
‘Are you really so despairing of the future of the royalist cause?’ we asked.
Mme. Vassiloglou drew herself up grandly. ‘Certainly not! By then we shall be in Constantinople, which, after all, is where the Vassiloglou family originated!’
And in the meantime?
‘Well, to begin with, the Royal Family has a backlog of at least 10,000 baptisms to attend to. There is still much to be done before Their return.’
Fighting Phobias
Then Paul stood in the midst of Mars’ hill, and said, Ye Men οι Athens, I perceive that in all things ye are too superstitious, — Acts 17.22
Last month the thirteenth day fell on a Friday and it was commemorated here by the launching of a campaign against superstition. This was a concession to Western ways, for in fact the unluckiest day in Greece falls not on Friday, but on Tuesday the thirteenth, which was the day on which Constantinople fell in 1453.
Nicolas Madroukas, a Greek-American who for thirty-two years has been trying to ‘liberate’, as he says, ‘superstition from the soul of the people,’ has created a Central Committe of the Thirteen to Eliminate the Fear of Thirteen. He himself was born on Friday the thirteenth.
Greece shares with the West certain irrational fears such as those which claim that breaking a mirror will bring seven years’ bad luck, that if three people light their cigarettes from one match one smoker will die (not so irrational these days), as well as those that involve a black cat crossing one’s path and the spilling of salt. (Madroukas considers the superstition about opening an umbrella inside the house to be sensible, however, since it may poke someone’s eye out.)
There are, however, certain local superstitions which we believe (pace Mr. Madroukas) that foreigners might take into account in the spirit of ‘not doing in Rome what the Romans don’t do’.
Never leave bureau drawers or closet doors open as people will gossip about you. Don’t spill oil. If you spill wine, put a drop of it on your finger and touch it behind your ear saying gouri, gouri in which case it will bring good luck. Don’t cut your nails on Wednesdays or Fridays and never wash your hair on Sundays. Never leave scissors open or people will say bad things about you and never pass a cake of soap directly to someone else. Most of all, never compliment a baby in its presence without spitting on it — discreetly of course — to chase away the evil eye.
Meanwhile, we wish Mr. Madroukas all success in his campaign (knock on wood)!
The Little Red Terror and Other Fables
IN THE clever disguise of total frontal nudity (i.e. Emmanuelle), the ‘powers of darkness’ (a fashionable phrase in Junta times, now coming back into vogue) nearly brought Greece to its knees in April. The same Dark Forces of Evil re-manifested themselves last month in the shape of a little red book which, despite its title and appearance, has nothing to do with politics. What is more, an equally sinister book, written by a monk but having nothing to do with religion, will soon appear.
The first,. The Little Red Book, is a manual for adolescents written by three Danes — an educator, a psychoanalyst and a sociologist. In a forthright manner, it offers information on a wide variety of subjects, such as classroom behaviour, student-teacher relationships, birth control, abortion, narcotics and other practical matters.
The publisher of its Greek edition, P.A. Vergos, announced that his object in bringing out the book was to fill a gap in the education being offered to our students. The Holy Synod of the Greek Orthodox Church, however, looked upon it quite differently. His Reverence, the Metropolitan of Patras, branded the book as an essay in anarchism and indecency, as an attack on religion, family and the State.
So the matter was brought to court and Mr. Vergos and E. Varika, who translated it into Greek, were charged on five counts. The book, it was claimed, insults the honour of teachers and provokes student disobedience; leads the students astray; encourages abortion; gives information on the supply and use of drugs; and is generally anti-social. (Some of these charges have a familiar ring — about 1400 years ago Socrates was put on trial for, among other things, ‘corrupting the youth of Athens’.)
The two-day trial was marked by a number of ‘incidents’. The prosecutor in his speech declared, ‘Anyone who attempts to undermine the traditional concepts of country, religion or family is a traitor. The book has been published only for gain and is backed by the powers of darkness, consisting of international criminals, dope-smugglers and dealers in white flesh.’
At this point the prosecutor was interrupted by shouts of ‘Shame…’ ‘Down with the Junta…’ etc. The courtroom, in an uproar, had to be emptied and two persons were arrested. The trial resumed and shortly thereafter the publisher and translator were sentenced to eight months in prison and the book was ordered confiscated. The defendants appealed their sentences and are now free. But The Little Red Book is not.
Although we are grateful to the Judiciary for shielding us from the seductions of Emmanuelle and The Little Red Book, we wish to point out that this sort of thing has its limits. The future of the nation, of the family and even of religion might be just as seriously jeopardized if, in our present state of enforced (though blessed) innocence, we were to forget how to go about propagating ourselves.
Meanwhile, the other publication allegedly inspired by ‘the powers of darkness’ is about to surface after having enjoyed an underground reputation for some time. Written by a monk, Gymnasios by name, who lived on Mount Athos about fifty years ago, it includes 350 herbal prescriptions said to cure infertility, biliousness, heart disease and beardlessness in men. As a consequence of disseminating this information, the unfortunate Gymnasios was accused of misleading the people, expelled from Mount Athos, hounded, arrested, imprisoned and finally shut up in an asylum.
Kostas Spanos, whose well-known shop of rare books, The Gallery of Bibliophiles’, is located at Ippokratous 23, will soon be circulating a limited edition of Gymnasios’ prescriptions together with a biographical sketch. Referring to the recent public interest in ‘exorcist’ books, Spanos asks, Ts this the result of the agonies and difficulties of life or because there are so many diseases from which men suffer?’
Perhaps the answer lies hidden in The Little Red Book but we hope that we, and Mr. Spanos, won’t have to wait fifty years to find out.
