The Emigrants

On the desk in front of me is the agenda book that belonged to Ambros, which Aunt Fini gave me on my winter visit to Cedar Glen West. It is a pocket diary for the year 1913, bound in soft burgundy leather and measuring about twelve centimetres by eight. Ambros must have bought it in Milan, because that is where his entries begin, on the 20th of August: Palace H, 3 pm, Signora M. Evening, Teatro S. Martino, Corso V. Em. I tre Emisferi. Deciphering his tiny handwriting, which not infrequently moved to and fro between several

languages, was an arduous task, one I should probably never have accomplished if those words committed to paper almost eighty years before had not, as it were, opened up of their own accord. The entries gradually become more detailed, and it appears that, at the end of August, Ambros and Cosmo left from Venice for Greece and Constantinople, in a steam yacht. Early morning (it says), myself on deck for a long time, looking astern. The lights of the city receding into the distance under a veil of rain. The islands in the lagoon like shadows. Mai du pays. Le navigateur écrit son journal à la vue de la terre qui s'éloigne. The following day he writes: Off the Croatian coast. Cosmo very restless. A beautiful sky. Treeless mountains. The clouds built high. As good as dark at three in the afternoon. Bad weather. We strike our sails. Seven in the evening, the storm full force. Waves breaking on the deck. The Austrian captain has lit an oil lamp before the picture of Our Lady in his cabin. He is kneeling on the floor, praying. In Italian, strange to say, for the poor lost seamen sepolti in questo sacro mare. The stormy night is followed by a windless day. Steam up, steadily southward. I put things back in order. In the failing light ahead, pearly grey on the line of the horizon, an island. Cosmo stands fore like a pilot. Calls the name Fano to a sailor. Sfsiorsf, the sailor shouts, and, pointing ahead, he repeats, louder: Fano! Fano! Later, low on the already darkened island, I see a fire. There are fishermen on the beach. One of them waves a burning piece of wood. We pass them, and a few hours later enter the harbour of Kassiopé on the north coast of Kérkyra. Next morning the most fearful racket on board. Repairing damage to the engine. Ashore with Cosmo. Up to the ruins of the fortifications. A holm oak growing right out of the castle. We lie beneath the canopy of leaves as in an arbour. Below, they are hammering away at the boiler. A day out of time. At night we sleep on deck. The singing of crickets. Woken by a breeze on my brow. Across the straits, beyond the blue-black mountains of Albania, day is breaking, its glowing flame blazing across the lightless world. And at the same time two white ocean-going yachts trailing white smoke cross the scene, so slowly it is as if they were being pulled across a stage inch by inch. One would hardly think they were moving, but at length they are gone, into the wings of Cape Varvara with its dark green forests, over which hangs the thin sickle of the crescent moon. - 6th September: From Kérkyra via Ithaca and Patras into the Gulf of Corinth. At Itéa decided to send the boat on ahead and travel overland to Athens. Now in the hills at Delphi, the night already very cool. We lay down to sleep two hours ago, wrapped in our coats. Our saddles serve as pillows. The horses stand heads bowed beneath the laurel tree, the leaves of which rustle softly like tiny sheets of metal. Above us the Milky Way (where the Gods pass, says Cosmo), so resplendent that I can write this by its light. If I look straight up I can see the Swan and Cassiopeia. They are the same stars I saw above the Alps as a child and later above the Japanese house in its lake, above the Pacific, and out over Long Island Sound. I can scarcely believe I am the same person, and in Greece. But now and then the fragrance of juniper wafts across to us, so it is surely so.