Free Report to Grego by Nikos Kazantzakis

fangs. I pinned my eyes on the top of his head to see if he had horns. But I was unable to see, because he was wearing a hat.
    â€œThis is my son,” my father said.
    Untangling my hand from his own, he turned me over to the teacher.
    â€œHis bones are mine, his flesh is yours. Don’t feel sorry for him. Thrash him and make a man of him.”
    â€œDon’t worry, Captain Michael,” said the teacher, pointing to his switch. “Right here is the tool which makes men.”
    A pile of heads remains fixed in my memory from those elementary school days, a pile of children’s heads glued one to the next like skulls. Most of them must actually have become skulls by now. But remaining in me above and beyond those heads, undying, are my four teachers.
    Paterópoulos in the first grade: a little old man, very short, fierce-eyed, with drooping mustache, and the switch constantly in hand. He hunted us down, collected us, then set us out in a row as though we were ducks and he were taking us to market to sell. “The bones are mine, the flesh is yours, Teacher,” every father instructed him as he turned over his wild goat of a son. “Thrash him, thrash him until he becomes a man.” And he thrashed us pitilessly. All of us, teacher and students alike, awaited the day when these many beatings would turn us into men. When I grew older and philanthropic theories began to mislead my mind, I termed this method barbarous. But when I came to know human nature still better, I blessed, and still bless, Pateropoulos’s holy switch. It was this that taught us that suffering is the greatest guide along the ascent which leads from animal to man.
    T ítyros—“What-cheese”—reigned over the second grade; reigned, poor fellow, but did not govern. He was pale, with spectacles, starched collar and shirt, pointed down-at-heel patent leather shoes, a huge hairy nose, and slender fingers yellowed from tobacco. His real name wasn’t What-cheese, it was Papadákis. But one day his father, who was the priest in an outlying village, came to town bringing him a large head of cheese as a present. “What cheese is this, Father?” said the son [using the form tyrós instead of tyrí, to show off his katharévousa]. A neighbor happened to be at the house. She overheard, spread the word, and the poor teacher was roasted over the coals and given this nickname. What-cheese did not thrash, he entreated. He used to read us Robinson Crusoe , explaining each and every word. Then he gazed at us with tenderness and anguish, as though begging us to understand. But we were thumbing through the book and gazing ecstatically at the poorly printed pictures of tropical forests, trees with great fat leaves, Robinson in his broad-brimmed straw hat with an expanseof deserted ocean on all sides. Bringing out his tobacco pouch, poor What-cheese would roll a cigarette to smoke during recess, look at us imploringly, and wait.
    One day when we were doing Sacred History, we came to Esau, who sold his birthright to Jacob for a pottage of lentils. When I went home for dinner, I asked my father what birthright meant. “Go ask Uncle Nikoláki,” he said, scratching his head and coughing.
    This uncle had finished elementary school, which made him the family’s most educated member. He was my mother’s brother: a stubby little Tom Thumb, bald, with large timorous eyes and monstrous hands all covered with hair. He had married above him, and his jaundiced, venom-nosed wife felt nothing but scorn for him. She was also jealous. Every night she tied his foot to the bedpost with rope to keep him from getting up during the night and going to visit their plump big-breasted servant, who slept downstairs. In the morning she released him. My poor uncle endured this martyrdom for five years, but then the Lord willed that the venom-nose should die (this is why we call Him the All-good) and this time my uncle