THE COMING OF THE DIGNITARIES

 

In those days dignitaries walked among us from over the sea, from the land we left behind, in order to confer legitimacy upon us all and to certify our ethnic credentials. We knew they were not from our climes, as they entered the building in procession, accompanied by local grandees, elected of course, for the adults around us treated them with a reverence and a respect we had never seen them afford to their peers. They bustled about them gently, touched their white linen suits adoringly, in the manner in which our grandmothers would reach out to touch the priest’s vestments on Sundays, during the Great Entrance, and would hasten to flank their paths as they walked, blocking access with their broad shoulders, to the fallen, the vanquished and the deposed, who in their desperation to be seen in the company of the dignitaries, to address their august personages and regain their erstwhile potency, would utter unintelligible cries akin to the exclamations of Cassandra in Aeschylus' Agamemnon: «ἰὼ! ἆ ἆ! ἒ ἔ, παπαῖ παπαῖ! ἰὼ πόποι! ὀτοτοτοῖ πόποι δᾶ!», not just untranslatable but inarticulate syllables representing yesterday’s men’s howl of despondency, drowned out partially, by the musicians who preceded the dignitaries, as if in a village bridal procession, where the dowry comprised of all of us.

A Byzantine satirical song about the widow of Nicephoros II Phocas, Theophano, describes a parade where she rides a mule, accompanied by “shrivelled horn-players with hand-sized anuses,” (κουκουροβουκινάτορες φουκτοκωλοτρυπᾶτοι). Our klarintzides were neither shrivelled, nor diminutive. Their hands were callused from years of work in the factories and they played not for the dignitaries, but for themselves.

As was the custom, we had been weighted with the task of learning vast chunks of appropriate verse off by heart, to be parroted for the benefit of the dignitaries upon cue. To this end, we had been subjected to vigorous training and rehearsal weeks in advance, and having mastered the verse, we were exhorted to deliver it with feeling, which according to the aesthetic directions of our instructors, basically meant to shout it at the top of our prepubescent voices. Try as we might, and regardless of the countless warnings that we were about to shame our families, our syllogo, our place of origin and our common ancestors down to Pericles and Kolokotronis,  we could not ever imbue the epic verse with the emotion it seemed to require. As the guilt trip continued, we considered Linos of Thrace, the brother of Orpheus, who taught music as well as the alphabet to the young Heracles. The demigod, learning to play the lyre, was unable to appreciate what which was taught to him “because of his sluggishness of soul.” When Heracles proceeded to murder the instrument, Linus reprimanded him for making errors by striking him with a cane. Sufficiently provoked, Heracles flew into a rage and bludgeoned his teacher to death with his own lyre.

Our performance was preceded always by the speech of welcome by our first among equals. On and on he would intone, valiantly retrieving every single cliché he had ever learned in the village primary school, as well as those acquired during intercommunal relations in the adopted country, striving to seek the dignitaries approval and a possible invitation to visit them in Greece by praising them in the most superlative way possible. Having been born in the mountain fastnesses, our first among equals would most likely not have been aware that in medieval Nubia, the nobility enjoyed Greek titles such as αρχιτρικλινάριος or indeed: αρχιμειζότερος (ie arch-greatest) which is a mercy, for in the time before internet and mobile phones, the younger generations found compound words commencing in αρχι- most absorbing.

Sadly, these particular dignitaries shared a political affiliation with a political party, which, most disturbingly, espoused a form of informality in public appearances and the traditional tropes fell rather flat. To everyone’s relief, they had brought with them their own laudatory code of prescribed forms of acclamation, which was delivered in the manner and style of Byzantine polymath Michael Psellos exhorting his rather serious Byzantine friends to lighten up:

“In order to appear solemn and pompous, you reject the charms of words, you reject the audacity that belongs to friendship, you detest jocular speech and you dispense with play, the only thing that can make our life more cheerful when we mix it into our lifestyle.”

Curiously, the injunction fell flat and our first of equals was so discomposed that he forgot to release us from the αποθήκη were we were secreted in order to conduct a last minute rehearsal. The dignitaries, relieved that the show was ostensibly over, walked past him, a signifying to all those cognoscenti that he had lost the Mandate of Heaven and would not survive the next Annual General Meeting, and somehow contrived to free us from our confinement. Observing us reciting the poem about the Death of Botsaris to the tune of AC DC’s Back in Black, one of the dignitaries exclaimed:

-Ρε, τι γίνεται εδώ πέρα;

-Συναυλία κλασίματος, I responded nonchalantly, as his face turned various shades of porphyry.

As I was hurriedly whisked away by our incensed second (and soon to be first) among equals to be delivered to the custody of my parents with a sore posterior and the observation: «Να χαίρεστε το γιο που κάνατε», I could have referred  in my defence, to the Byzantine Emperor Basil I who enjoyed poking fun of his mother, the saintly Theodora, restorer of icons’ exaggerated exhibitions of public piety. Accordingly, one day he decided to dress his court jester Groullos in patriarchal vestments and sat him on the throne in the Chrysotriklinos, the imperial throne room. Subsequently he summoned his mother, to receive a patriarchal blessing. When Theodora approached, Groullos turned around abruptly and exposed his posterior to her, all the while “emitting a donkey-like noise from his foul entrails.” After waiting for the odour to disperse, the Emperor then advised his mother that he wished from thereon in, to be known as the Bishop of Colonville.

I did not do so, for I was only six and had no idea who the Emperors were. It so happened that a few weeks before, my mother, who belonged to an esteemed body known as the γυναικείο τμήμα, or women’s auxiliary, of a regional community organisation, (for it was not meet for women in those days to collaborate as equals with the power-brokers of the patriarchy) was granted the rare privilege of being granted an audience with the Gerousia, specifically in order to receive orders as to the proper reception of the dignitaries. Returning home and having been asked by my father how the meeting went, I overheard her describing it as a «συναυλία κλασίματος», and assumed that this was the proper Greek phrase to employ, in order to denote any Greek community organisation’s deliberations.

The patronage, funding and continued communication promised to us by the visiting dignitaries turned out to be a load of hot air. It did not materialise, and this apparently was my fault, as I insulted them and not because they were, as the Byzantines put it, Πρεσβευτοκερδοσυγχυτοσπονδοφθόροι, that is, those who destroy (phthoros) treaties (spondai) and throw them into confusion (synkhyzo) by being an ambassador (presveutis) motivated by greed (kerdos). The Homo hellenicus paroiciaigeticoi of our organisation are long gone and the dignitaries of yore have forgotten of their existence. There no longer exists the existential need, nor the financial capacity to invite them to witness our diminution. Yet, on the odd occasion, when some of them remember that there exist brethren abroad among whom a cheap and enjoyable sojourn is considered possible, and the appropriate feelers are put out, I am reminded of the following joke from the ancient Greek joke book Philogelos;

“A man with bad breath meets a deaf person and greets him.

“Yuck!” the deaf person replies.

“What have I said?” asks the halitosian.

“You farted!” replies the deaf person.

There are certain things, you just can’t unsmell.

DEAN KALIMNIOU

First published in NKEE on Saturday 19 October 2024