...And Dreams Are Dreams

“All this happened at Nafplion, in the fortress of Palamidi. Then, the king’s court left Nafplion and came to Athens. The dog moved with them, during which it watched the Bavarians making the laws, the Bavarians building, the Bavarians constituting the army. ‘Who am I?’ wondered the dog. ‘I’m a Christian Orthodox dog. What do these people of another religion want? I had my own Holy Virgin and my own Jesus who sustained me during four hundred years of darkness. Who are they? What do they want?’ It was as if, little by little, the dog’s self-awareness was awakened. And it started exercising its jaws to bite.

‘Beware of the dog’, read the sign outside its hovel, while the foreign dogs lived in the palace. Meanwhile the years went by, and the dog kept demanding its rights, which the Bavarian dogs adamantly refused to grant. Until one day, the dog kicked them out. It had grown by then, it had become strong. But with all the crossbreeding that had gone on during all these years, there had appeared a mixed breed of dog in our country, and the blood of the original dog, the one they had imprisoned in Palamidi, had been polluted. Thus there were four parties of dogs, the French, the English, the Russian, and the dogs of the Steppe. Only the Bavarians hadn’t succeeded in grafting their breed before leaving, in order to produce wolfhounds. And that is how, since then, my boy, we have had these breeds….”

The captain was standing, wrapped in his solitude, thinking. He could hear the conversation taking place on deck, about the loan that the Socialist government was preparing to receive from the Common Market (“Taking out a loan,” Aristotle explained in his nasal voice, “presupposes the devaluation of the drachma.”).

Times of old came to the captain’s mind, long-forgotten memories of that first loan our nation took out, because, the captain’s great-grandfathers had explained, “We must have a powerful fleet. We can only fight the Turk at sea. We must have steamships, armed with heavy cannons for the urgent needs of the struggle.” It was a loan for which our national territory was mortgaged, but we never saw the ships, and the money was pocketed by those who had given it. “We are an oppressed people, because we are indebted,”

Aristotle’s voice could be heard intoning from on deck. And the captain dreamed on, standing on the bridge, though he did not sleep.

“But who pocketed the money, Grandfather?”

“It’s a mixed-up story, my boy.”

Tell me, Grandfather.”

“There were four of them in on it. A satanic foursome from the city of London. Ellis, Hobhouse, Burdett, and the Ricardo brothers, the mafiosi of that time. They started by looking for an admiral. And they found one. A ‘killer’ of the seas, famous for his exploits in Latin America, in Brazil. He was the one we would do business with. His name was Cochrane.

‘Within a few weeks, he will arrive in Constantinople and destroy by fire the entire Turkish fleet inside the Golden Horn.’ That’s what they said, and that’s what we believed. As if we didn’t have our own fire ships, as if we didn’t have our own brave warriors. But it’s always the foreigner who’s the coach, the technical advisor of our national team. Karaiskaki and Miaoulis accepted him in order to please the Anglophiles. The Russophiles were pleased with Capodistrias, who had not yet agreed to be governor, but who would do so presently. The Francophiles had their Fabvier. What a state this was going to be! And who were we?

Kassomoulis wrote: ‘It was rumored that Lord Cochrane would arrive in Greece overnight, and that Greece would be saved by his stratagems and his maritime fireworks. This encouraged us greatly.’ Poor Kassomoulis! Poor heroes!

“But Cochrane wanted a lot of dough. He was considered an expert coach whose team was

guaranteed to become world champion. So he charged accordingly. It was decided he would be paid out of the second loan, which was about £2,000,000. Of this, Cochrane would receive £37,000 in advance, and £20,000 upon completing his mission. Furthermore, he was entrusted with deciding what ships they would buy. Which meant he decided how the £300,000

intended for purchasing and arming the ships would be spent.