I haven't quickly posted this story, and I am not sure if it is a real reminiscence, of my father's. It does however reflect his deep cynicism about humanity, and is among the explanations for his resistance to faith---that God would bother to create such people, that this could not possibly be the action of a good God to allow the vagaries of human banality or worse, cruelty. It was pointless to attempt to remind him that the villain was not God, but the wilfulness of the creation. Order was thrown into disorder, not by God, but by a pride born of Pelagianism, the idea that man does not need God, that there can be no original sin and man can perfect himself. It happened in Eden; it continues now, the only difference is that after Redemption, the second chance at choice is a purely individual one. It will save or condemn each of us based on the choice, rather than lead to a collective salvation or condemnation as the choice of Adam and Eve very nearly caused.
Man causes the mess. He blames God. He excises God. And remains clueless about the mess of his own making.
Sin is a choice. The people in this story are fictional (or real) examples of it of varying degrees. Wasn't Harvey Weinstein considered a good and honorable man even though all his "friends" also good and honorable men (and women) knew otherwise? And whose fault is that?
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They Are All Good and Honorable Men
Prologue
There is a scene in the movie, Zorba the Greek, in which the Cretan, Mavrandoni, cuts the throat of the town's beautiful widow. The townspeople, assembled for the execution, approve. It was an act of honor. Mavrandoni wipes his knife and stands before the populace, proud, unashamed. He is, after all, "Kalos kai agathos," good and noble. He has avenged a mortal assault on his honor.
What was the offense? The widow rejected the attentions of his son, an infatuated juvenile. The boy commits suicide. And worse, she had given her favors elsewhere.
There are cerebral processs that have mystified me throughout my life. I began to notice certain startling aberrations of the cognitive mind early in my youth.
The movie I had just watched reminded me of some people I have known, all I am sure, thought to possess the qualities of the good and honorable which they brought with them from the "Patrida" the fatherland, the old country, in the early years of the 20th Century in a small piece of New York.
There was never a day when some one of my father's townsmen did not make an appearance at his store.
They came out of loneliness for an occasional glass of ouzo, a favorite Greek potable, or a loan, to tide one over, or some feta with retsina wine and the discussion of the latest crisis in the homeland. Several came for no visible reason at all.
Since, as a pre-teenager, I was required to do service in the store--one was never too young to learn about work--I got to know each of the visitors intimately.
There was Mr. Stelyn. Not only was he a visitor on a social basis, he was a supplier to my father's stores of glazed fruits, in those cellophane wrapped, beribboned packages of gift or steamer "Bon Voyage" baskets purchased by the elite for the elite.
Mr. Stelyn was a Church goer, an entrepreneur of status. Papa considered him a person of the highest "Kalos kai agathos", good and noble, an opinion he had, in retrospect, about all his peripetatic friends.
One day when I was alone in the front of the store making childish drawings, Mr. Stelyn approached me.
He looked down at my artistic endeavor and smiled, disclosing two gold capped canines, and said, "Nice, nice picture," and drew close to my left side. He continued in his thick accent.
"Make, make nice picture."
I was not too young to recognize his member, erect within his trousers, impacting a point near my waist.
The contact was quickly and abruptly aborted when my father came into the store. There was the usual exchange of salutations. Mr. Stelyn returned his salutation with a wide smile enhancing the two golden crowns, framed in a very white face.
"Kala eemeh, kala eemeh, Yoryee." "I am well, George," which was my father's name.
In retrospect, it is well I did not report the incident to my father. He was predictably capable of killing Mr. Stelyn or more likely, slapping me for uttering such an accusation against his countryman.
Mr. Peter Booloukos was one of three brothers, each notable for inclusion in my pantheon of worthy men.
He spoke little English. In one of our rare dialogues--the elder tutoring the younger--he lectured me on the linguistic dependence of English on Greek. I remember only one word of his dissertation. "Aeer, aeer!" I took this to mean "Air". His profundity had discovered the similarity thus between the English and Greek languages.
I was in great need of that substance "air", to mitigate the strong oor of ouzo in our confined atmosphere.
I was afraid of this man. There was something sinister about his appearance. He wore black exclusively. An also black slouch hat topped the rest of his macabre ensemble. My fears were well founded. Pete never entered or exited from the front door of his apartment. I knew of the circuitous route he took beause I was in his home on an errand for my father.
Pete controlled the space allocated to the peddlers of frankfurters, chestnuts and other street business from Fifty-Ninth Stree and Broadway to One Hundreth and Tenth Street. If a recalcitrant peddlar refused him cash tribute, his wagon would be overturned or worse.
Pete had been married. When he susptected that his wife was unfaithful, he chained her to her bed. She broke loose and jumped from the third story window. She did not die. He had her repatriated.
I do not remember the name of the middle Booloukos. My brother, Tony, who had a a distinct talent to characterize someone with a word, called him the "Hook". I suppose this was inspired by the fact that this Booloukos was a man of huge build, but with one withered arm and hand that was permanently affixed at his waist level.
The third Booloukos was Aristotle. He had a beautiful daughter in love with someone they called "O Americanos", the "American".
The brothers discouraged this relationship. I overheard their rendition of their application of interdiction in the time worn tradition of their village of origin.
The other men nodded in approval of the Homeric account.
Two of the brothers held the young man while the "Hook" applied convincing physical chastisement. He disappeared.
The daughter, named Chrysoula," a name suggesting a quality of gold, disappeared in a way. She walked into space from the roof of her house.
There was one man I knew nothing of except what might be called externals. He was a perpetual visitor to my father's store, coming in those brief hours of respite from his job as a dishwasher. He had taken the job on the day he left steerage of a magnificent ocean liner, one of the Cunard leviathans. He had never left that job. He was a youngish man, with a full head of black hair and a perpetual half-smile in the fashion of the comedian Stan Laurel.
His perpetual expression and unique taciturnity intrigued me. He spoke to me only once in perhaps ten years of his comings and goings. His name was Christos, aptly named if one considers kindness and patience. Alas, he was also a man of limited cerebral capability. He was, one day, the only extraneous visitor of the motley crew that usually made its appearance. He had his usual half-smile but it had the quality of distress about it. I asked what ailed him in Greek, not sure that in pronouncing his name, I was correct in using the "dative" declension rather than the "vocative". I was learning Greei.
"Echo ponos," he said, pointing to his stomach. Pain.
I remembered a nostrum I had recently learned in the science portion of the "Book of Knowledge". It called for two glasses, one filled with lemon juice and the other a solution of bicarbonate of soda and water. I prepared the potion, while Christos observed. Cynicism seemed to alter his expression, slightly. His eyes opened when I poured one glass into the other and produced a marvelous foam.
I gave it to him to drink, which he did, like an obedient child.
There was an enormous burp, and a look of surprised, unexpected pleasure.
"Make me 'nother one, boy," was the second complete sentence I heard from him, in the same day.
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