and who does he work for, and I thought the people here had
pride. He is flashfires o f rage, outbursts o f fury, but it is not
just national pride. He is a dangerous man. His method o f
questioning starts out calm; then, he threatens, he seduces, he
is enraged, all like quicksilver, no warning, no logic. He
makes clear he decides here and unlike other officials I have
seen he is no desk-bound functionary. He is a man o f arbitrary
lust and real power. He is corrupt and he enjoys being cruel.
He says as much. I am straightforward because it is m y only
chance. I tell him I love it here and I want to stay and he plays
with me, he lets me know that I can be punished— arrested,
deported, or ju st jailed if he wants, when he wants, and the
Am erikan governm ent will be distinctly uninterested. I can’t
say I w asn’t afraid but it didn’t show and it w asn’t bad. He
made me afraid on purpose and he knew how. He is intensely
sexual and I can feel him fucking and breaking fingers at the
same time; he is a brilliant communicator. I’m rescued by the
appearance o f a beautiful woman in a fur coat o f all things. He
wants her now and I can go for now but he’ll get back to me if
he remembers; and, he reminds me, he always know s where I
am, day or night, he can tell me better than I can keep track. I
want him to want her for a long time. I’m almost wanting to
kiss the ground. I’ve never loved somewhere before. I’m
living on land that breathes. Even the city, cement and stone
bathed in ancient light, breathes. Even the mountains, more
stone than any man-made stone, breathe. The sea breathes and
the sky breathes and there is light and color that breathe and
the Am erikan governm ent is smaller than this, smaller and
meaner, grayer and deader, and I don’t want them to lift me
o ff it and hurt m y life forever. I came from gray Am erika,
broken, crumbling concrete, poor and stained with blood and
some o f it was m y blood from when I was on m y knees and the
men came from behind and some o f it was knife blood from
when the gangs fought and the houses seemed dipped in
blood, bricks bathed in blood; w hy was there so much blood
and what was it for— who was bleeding and w hy— was there
some real reason or was it, as it seemed to me, just for fun, let’s
play cowboy. The cement desert I had lived on was the
carapace o f a new country, young, rich, all surging, tap-
dancing toward death, doing handstands toward death, the
tricks o f vital young men all hastening to death. Crete is old,
the stone is thousands o f years old, with blood and tears and
dying, invaders and resisters, birth and death, the mountains
are old, the ruins are stone ruins and they are old; but it’s not
poor and dirty and dying and crumbling and broken into dirty
dust and it hasn’t got the pale stains o f adolescent blood, sex
blood, gang blood, on it, the fun blood o f bad boys. It’s living
