In the eastern Mediterranean stands the rocky Greek island of Kalymnos, ten miles long by five wide. For some three thousand years its ships have put out to sea. In recent generations the men of Kalymnos have been sponge divers, then somewhere a chemist learned to make synthetic sponge, perhaps not so good as a natural sponge but cheaper. The continuity of three thousand years is broken, a way of life is ending.
It was in Athens that Morgan Leigh met Telfs and first heard about Kalymnos - in a Cretan Taverna, the Xania, down near the cathedral, drinking the black wine of Crete and watching four men with handkerchiefs in their hands, mincing and leaping and spinning in a wild, mad dance as heady as the wine.
Telfs was at a corner table by himself, drinking retzina with a morose and dedicated concentration, paying no attention to the barbaric music nor the violent twirlings of the men. A solitary figure he seemed, uncommunicative, unfriendly. His long egg-shaped head, bald and brown, appeared to have been chipped out of wood as a preliminary study of the grotesque by some sculptor not quite certain of his ability. It was a curious face - big mouth and bright caustic eyes and ears that stuck out, and very young things and very old things all mixed up together. An intelligent face, and a lonely one. It was not until towards the end of the evening, when Telfs came across to his table with the copper beaker of retzina in his hand, that Morgan saw the other things in his face.
The American walked steadily and poured the wine without spilling a drop, but he was drunk - drunk enough to be talkative.
"You English?" he said suspiciously.
"Not English," Morgan said. "Australian."
Telfs nodded, as if something had been explained to him. "I know Australia," he said. "I was out there in the war. I knew a girl there."
Morgan grinned. "Lots of Americans did."
Telfs shrugged. "What do you do?" he said.
"I write. Or try to."
"Is that why you're in Greece?"
Morgan nodded.
"Writing about what?"
"I don't know. I'm not sure. Not yet anyway. I suppose you could say I'm looking for something."
"You want something to write about?" He had a rough gravely voice that gave all his questions an edge of accusation. "Go to Kalymnos," he said. "In the Aegean, the Dodecanese, ten miles off the coast of Turkey. Go there."
"Yes? What is there in Kalymnos?"
"The whole goddamworld!" Telfs glared at him. "The whole goddam world, all of it, changing. Everywhere is changing, sure, but most places you can't see it. Too many things moving at once, too much clutter, everything too gummed up with too many things. But you can see it in Kalymnos. Past, present ... and the future, I guess. If there is a future of sorts, anyway. All there right in front of your eyes. The world changing." He spoke with a husky, desperate vehemence, as if the change he was talking about was something terrible, terrifying, something you had to talk about very quickly, lest it catch up with you.
"Go down there," he went on, "and take a look at God with the Byzantine face. Not our chubby, pink-faced God with his mealy mouth and turn-about collar, presiding over a safe little party of curates sipping weak tea and nibbling thin cucumber sandwiches. The big God with the dark, hard face!" Telfs was thinking of Nikolas, the kid Nikolas with his withered legs strapped up in irons and his picture of God, the only God he had ever seen: the fierce, stern, bearded face carved in ivory on the bishop's crook. And Telfs was thinking of how often he sat in Mina's little house on the rock hill near the blue church of Saint Vassilias, overlooking the green harbour of Kalymnos, trying to explain - he, who had lost all sense of Christianity twenty years before! - trying to explain to the child the two faces of God ... and Mina outside in the sun near the jasmine tree, sewing.
He called for more wine, the pale retzina for himself, the black wine for his companion, and began to talk about Kalymnos. Now, with Mina in his mind, he talked more quietly. But his words carried a sort of pleading undertone, as if he were anxious for somebody else to share his awareness of what he had known.
"It's just a seaport," he said. "A little Greek seaport, all crazy colours and light and sunshine, and storms too, storms that come boiling out of the air, in that corner of the Aegean where the world began. That's Kalymnos. It sent its war galleys to Troy. And all history has trampled over it for three thousand years ... But the boats have always gone out and come back and gone out again. It's got a pulse, a particular pulse. But now the pulse rate is slowing down. It's all coming to an end. I guess that's what gives it its special fascination. You can see the end of the world there, all wrapped up on one little island of fourteen thousand people."
"I don't quite see what you mean by----" Morgan began, but Telfs cut him short with a quick, impatient gesture.
"Listen," he said. "There's only the port, see. It's a seafaring town, it always has been. The island itself is nothing much more than one great big rock. It doesn't hold pasture, it doesn't grow food - not to speak of, not to keep fourteen thousand people alive. It lives on its divers and its boats. It lives on sponges. It's lived for a hell of a long time on sponges. But then some smart guy comes along and he spins a synthetic sponge out of a test tube in a laboratory. It comes easy out of a test tube, a whole lot easier and cheaper than groping around in thirty-five fathoms, groping for just one more sponge, hoping you can stand it, waiting to die maybe, or waiting to be crippled for the rest of your life." Telfs swilled the last of the retzina around the bottom of his glass. "Did you ever wonder why sponges cost plenty of money?" he said. "You've seen the poor bastards shuffling round Athens in their rags, hung with sponges to sell? Walking mountains of sponges with a couple of feet sticking out at the bottom, and frayed trouser cuffs. But do you ever see anybody buy one?" He shrugged. "Well," he said, "that's Kalymnos."
"The Sponge Divers", written in 1955 by Charmian Clift and George Johnston while they lived on Kalymnos, is the story of people facing this great break in the life of the island, some blindly, some weakly, some with purpose and determination. It is primarily about two of the strong ones: Manoli, captain of a sponding fleet and a fine diver, and Mina, the woman Manoli loves. Together they are the expression of what is timeless in the Greek isles, the eternal struggle with the sea, the hard work, the winde drinking and the zest for life.
It's been a rained-out few days at "Riverbend" and my thoughts turned to warmer and sunnier climes, remembering my "Greek salad days". What better way to do that than by being curled up at the fireplace with "The Sponge Divers". "Χρόνια Πολλά" to all my old friends in Greece!
P.S. Unfortunately, "The Sponge Divers" is not available for online reading; however, you could do worse than to read "The Bellstone - the Greek Sponge Divers of the Aegean" or, for an academic dissertation, "Kalymnian Sponge Diving".
