Introduction
Goutou Goupatou is a short story by Alexandros Papadiamantis, first published on January 1, 1899, in the Athenian newspaper Akropolis. It combines humor, compassion, and a sharp observation of village life. At its center is Manolis, known mockingly as “the Octopus,” a physically disabled and speech-impaired man who is ridiculed by the children and young men of the village but whose extraordinary strength becomes unexpectedly important. Through Manolis and the colorful world surrounding him, Papadiamantis portrays the rivalries, cruelties, loyalties, superstitions, and everyday customs of a small Greek community. The story is especially notable for Papadiamantis’s use of language: alongside his own literary narration, he reproduces the distorted speech of Manolis and the lively colloquial expressions of the villagers, creating both humor and a vivid sense of place. Beneath its comic surface, however, the story reveals a deeply humane portrait of a marginalized man whose devotion to his mother and unexpected courage ultimately command the reader’s sympathy.
By Alexandros Papadiamantis
The manges of the marketplace pelted him with stones, the girls of the neighborhood mocked him, and the little children and infants were afraid of him. They commonly called him “the Tapoes,” or “Manolis the Tapoe.”
"The Tapoes! Look, the Tapoes is coming…"
Fear and terror would seize the innocent infants at the sound of this name. The young people of the village, the regulars at the shops and coffeehouses, never stopped teasing him.
"You’re an octopus, poor Manoli; you’re an octopus."
And he, with his tongue bound by a tongue-tie right down to the roots of his teeth, would answer:
"Yes, I’m Tapoe!… You’re Tapoe." (Yes, I am an octopus. You are an octopus.)
He had so few friends and so innumerable enemies, in a place with so few people! Sometimes a compassionate or considerate person would defend him against the attacks of the street boys. To such a person he became a lifelong slave, willingly performing errands for him, accepting a gift or a treat only with difficulty. Toward everyone else there was neither friendship nor truce.
He had only his mother in the world. She cared for him, loved him passionately, and he adored her. He had no sister. One of his brothers had disappeared in America years ago and had never been heard from. The other, an idle good-for-nothing, had as his sole occupation going every year to the great mainland, where there were abundant harvests, and doing the work of the svarna; the svarna was a heavy plank, which horses or oxen dragged over the threshing floor, while he sat upon the plank, a living weight, so that the threshing might be properly completed. There he had died. The third roamed abroad as a sailor. Manolis had no other affection in the world besides his mother. She was already an old woman, and he himself had grown very much.
His few friends, those who sympathized with him in the marketplace, had repeatedly heard him threaten and say in his childish tongue:
"Tani Ya petou ’go piigo meta Bouti!" (When the Old Woman dies, I’ll throw myself into Bourtsi and drown.)
He considered himself useless. Except for his tongue, half of the man was healthy. His right foot dragged behind his left and did not move freely. His right hand, although thick and disproportionate, and seeming almost paralyzed, possessed tremendous strength. It resembled a manganon, or the teeth of a bull-dog. To seize something—usually the arm or back of some troublesome child—required effort; his other hand had to help it, touching the fist of the right hand, that is, and directing it. But once it had seized its object, the enormous hand would no longer release it, almost even if it wanted to let go. Woe, then, to the arm, to the shoulder blade, and woe to the head of the insolent one!
He was lame and hunchbacked and scarcely able to speak. He was Manolis the Tapoe.
Four or five people in the whole village knew his language well. He called them, as he himself had named them, Gomeos, Pagiotas, and Papagas. Their actual names were Lamiaeos, Michalios, and Papagiannis. But how did he derive Pagiotas from Michalios? A mystery. He rarely added a syllable or shifted the accent. His phonology was exceedingly peculiar, and in it gutturals abounded, as did the hard and unaspirated sounds among the consonants.
Gati was what he called gatti, gati for giati, gati for charti.
But suddenly, one day, he uttered a phrase in which this word occurred, yet it made no sense either as gatti, or as giati, or as charti. The phrase was:
“Pote ti Goutou, Goupatou, mam gati.”
(When Christ's [Christmas] and St. Basil's [New Year] come, so that we may eat…)
At first, the three experts in his language thought that he was mockingly calling the meats sold by the village butchers gattia [cat meat]. The three aforementioned men, and Pagiotas in particular, were highly proficient in the language and spoke it themselves. But when they consulted the superior wisdom of Kyr Giorgis the Lavkiotis, manager of the great coffeehouse, who was also the official patron of the Tapoe and, as it were, an honorary professor of his peculiar language, though he did not speak it himself, he declared that such bitter irony would not accord with the feelings of poor Manolis, but that perhaps he simply called the goat and the lamb gati.
For the time being, however, the matter remained uncertain, even to this very hour.
Four or five people in the whole village knew his language well. These were called, as he himself had named them, Gomeos, Pagiotas, and Papagas. Their actual names were Lamiaios, Michalios, and Papagiannis. But how had he formed Pagiotas from Michalios? A mystery. He rarely added a syllable or shifted the accent. His phonology was most peculiar, abounding in gutturals, as well as in the hard and unaspirated consonants.
Gati was his word for gatí, gati for giatí, and gati for chartí.
But one day he suddenly uttered a phrase in which this word occurred, yet it made no sense as gatí, nor as giatí, nor as chartí. The phrase was:
“Póte ti Goutou, Goupatou, mam gati.”
(When Christ's [Christmas] and St. Basil's [New Year] come, so that we may eat…)
At first, the three interpreters of his language thought that he was mockingly calling the meats sold by the village butchers gatia [cats]. The three aforementioned men, and Pagiotas in particular, were well versed in the language and spoke it themselves. But when they consulted the higher wisdom of Kyr Giorgis the Lavkiotis, proprietor of the large coffeehouse, who was also Tapoe’s official patron and, as it were, an honorary professor of his peculiar language, though he did not speak it himself, he pronounced that such bitter irony would not be fitting to the feelings of poor Manolis; rather, perhaps he simply called the kid goat and the lamb gati as well. And so the matter remained uncertain to this very day.
He really did wait impatiently for “when Christ's and St. Basil's come,” and as soon as the Forty-Day Fast began, behind the door of Kyr Giorgis’s coffeehouse he would mark with his own hand, using a piece of chalk, as many iotas as there were days in the Fast. And every morning, before Giorgis gave him a cigarette to smoke or a coffee to drink, he would hurry to erase one iota, and watched happily as they grew fewer. But the fine manges of the marketplace would secretly go and write as many more iotas as he had erased, so that the Forty-Day Fast seemed as though it would never come to an end.
Saint Nicholas had already whitened his beard several days before, and it was Saint Spyridon’s turn to whiten his; there were now only twelve days left until Christmas.
“We’ve got plenty of time yet, you octopus!” shouted Nikolos the Balalas at him. “Twenty-two more days we need.”
“Yes, octopus!” mumbled Manolis. “Ta koti kota ty.” (Mind your tongue, you.)
“They’re fooling you, Mani; twelve more days,” Giorgis consoled him.
And Manolis’s heart returned to its proper place. He had undertaken an obligation for the holidays. He was to accompany some of the children of the Lower Neighborhood, those who were the children or nephews and nieces of his friends and protectors, when they went up to the upper part of the village, on the evenings of Christmas Eve, Saint Basil’s, and Lights [Theophany], in twos and threes, to sing the joyful songs in the houses and shops of the Upper Parish. For they would never have dared to go up there alone.
All the children of the village were divided into two great, fully armed camps. Hostilities began in autumn, lasted throughout the winter, continued into spring, and did not cease in summer—except insofar as they were transferred to the open plain, where the apples, cherries, pears, and later the grapes reddened prematurely and bared their bloodstained teeth provocatively. The official stone battle was fought especially on Palm Sunday, but the daily stone-fighting between the two bands of lads never let up.
In the Upper Parish, there above the Rock, ruled the terrible Tselotatos [Tallest]. He was as tall as the Rock upon which he had his throne, curly-haired, uncombed, bareheaded, barefoot, and horrifying. He was the recognized leader of the manges of the Upper Parish and of the whole village. His two feet were thick, dark-skinned, and broad, like two masts. He wore a variegated shirt that served at once as both undershirt and outer garment, and short trousers, winter and summer. No child, young man, or old man had leave to pass that way near the Rock, nor did any old woman or young woman have authority to go to the spring with her water jar. He was about seventeen years old and already a terrifying specter. He levied taxes upon old women, housewives, and poor widows. If Garoufalia the baker did not give him his portion of the bread from the oven, he would not allow her to bake the loaves. He would set fire to the branches and burn them in the courtyard of the bakery; then he would call the other children and have them jump three times over the blaze, as though it were already Saint John’s Day in Liotropi. From one neighbor he demanded a cheese pie swimming in butter for him to eat; from another, an oil pie with plenty of oil, or some gria (a large fritter, as big as the frying pan); from another, tylikto (a kind of zucchini pie), or bobota with very, very much honey.
He had heard the old tales about the monsters that lurked near the spring from which the village drew its water. If he lived long enough to reach the age of twenty, he planned to impose upon the inhabitants, as an annual tax, at least one girl. And the Sultan, as he had heard people say, married once a year.
Unfortunately, he was very short-lived; he did not live to reach that age. And he was the last of his generation. When he was a child, at the windmill where he had been raised, his two little brothers and sisters had died. Then the old woman, his mother, died, and afterward the old man. It seemed to him that the windmill had fallen upon them from above and crushed them, and in fact it did fall, since the old man was no longer alive to grind it. From the mill to the Mnimouria, the village cemetery, was very near.
His parents had been good Christians, he thought, and had not imposed upon people the great burden of carrying them far away to bury them. Besides, he too had fed the dead quite enough, he said, and it was time now for him to begin suckling the living. And since the fallen windmill was no longer fit for anyone to live in, he himself was carried to the other end of the elevated neighborhood, above the rocks. There he established his throne.
He was the recognized leader of all the manges and the terrible enemy of all the schoolchildren. All the children “made the sign” to him. He was Mitros—the Mitros, the Tselotatos—or “Tselotatos Doctor.” Where and why had he acquired this name? Unknown. Perhaps it was a child’s conception of hypsilotatos (“most high”) or exochotatos (“most distinguished”). I do not know.
The mayor of the place, “also carrying out the duties of police,” happened one day to pass by there, near the Rock, not far from the spring, where Tselotatos had his headquarters. The poor women of the neighborhood had bitterly complained about the scourge. The mayor shrugged his shoulders, smiled, addressed mild reprimands to Mitros and to the entire twelve-member gang of manges—Tselotatos had exactly a dozen, as many counselors as the mayor had—and pronounced:
“Let the children play, will you? It doesn’t do any harm. Just so long as they don’t carry it too far.”
Five or six schoolchildren, among those whom Tselotatos relentlessly hunted, had gone up in the company of Manolios the Tapoe to the Upper Neighborhood on the evening of Saint Basil’s Eve that year.
Manolios the Tapoe, “his heart told him so, for once.” (Such a syntactical construction, with the permission of all grammarians, seems to us expressive of the man.) Manolios the Tapoe’s feet went one way, his hands another, and his body another. Yet his muscles were strong, and the fist of that paralyzed hand gripped like a manganon.
They went up, and they had their fear as well. It was not the first time. In previous years, Mitros the Tselotatos, with his band, though he was still small himself, had utterly laid waste to poor Tapoe, together with those under his protection. This time, two or three from Mitros’s gang, who were keeping watch, had spotted the newcomers from afar in the moonlight. It was about two hours after sunset.
“Manolis the Octopus is coming; he’s bringing us kelepouria [bargained items],” the lookout announced to Mitros the Tselotatos.
“Are there many?” asked another mangas, who was standing beside Mitros.
“There are five, six, seven, eight; there must be about ten… as many as a dozen,” said the lookout.
“Be quiet, you!” Mitros rebuked the one who had asked. “It’s none of your business. Where are they?”
“They’re almost here; they’ve drawn near.”
“Take your posts, you lot! Gather plenty of rocks,” ordered Tselotatos. “Unless I tell you, nobody throws one!”
When the company drew near, the band was impatient to rush upon them. But Mitros ordered them to remain hidden, “at their posts.”
“We’ll take them up close,” Mitros explained to the one nearest him. “Let them make money first, and then.”
“Ah!” said the other.
By make money, Mitros meant that they should first collect some money after singing here and there at the houses. Then they would rush them, take their money, and give them a beating as well. The “rocks” they had gathered would be useful only if the others happened to turn and flee in haste.
The children of the Lower Parish, dividing themselves into two groups, entered two shops and began singing the song of Saint Basil’s. Manolis the Octopus stood at the doorpost of one of them. Then they entered other shops, and afterward went up to familiar houses. Manolis was always the guard at the outer door.
Tselotatos’s gang, always invisible, followed them from behind, concealed in the narrow passages and in the corners of the houses.
After an hour, Manolis’s company came down again to the main road. The clinking of the children’s pockets could be heard. Tapoe looked this way and that. They had heard whispers two or three times. He did not know the lay of the place well. He was suspicious and wanted to search around, to make certain. He did not want to leave the children on their own.
“What do you suppose Tselotatos is up to?” one of the children said at that moment.
“How could he have remembered us?”
“There’s Tselotatos!” a terrible voice suddenly rang out. “Tselotatos Doctor!”
It was Tselotatos himself, who suddenly sprang out from a ruin, followed by his entire gang.
“Tselotatos Doctor!” his gang members repeated in chorus. “Everyone, make the salute! Tselotatos Doctor!”
“You lot, grab the kelepouria!” shouted Tselotatos. “I’ll deal with the Octopus myself!”
In the blink of an eye, Tselotatos and Tapoe found themselves face to face.
The fight began. At once poor Tapoe took two blows to the head, three, four, from the hand of the terrible Tselotatos.
There seemed not the slightest possibility, there was not the slightest hope, that he would escape suffering the same fate.
One of the children, the one who was closer to Tapoe, slipped free from the hands of one of the manges and quietly approached Tapoe.
This child understood Manolis’s language well. The far-sighted Tapoe had told him, both in words and by gestures:
“Haa yiis Totato mami mimi, ea nta, hei to ao hei.”
(That is to say: As soon as you see Tselotatos coming close to making me a corpse, come near and put this hand of mine (the left one) upon the wrist of my other hand (the right one).)
At the critical moment, this child remembered the instruction, approached Tapoe, and tried to carry out the prescribed maneuver. He succeeded.
“What did you do to him, man? Magic?” the others asked.
A moment later, Tselotatos’s neck was caught as though in a terrible snare, within the clenched fist, with its hooked talons, of Tapoe’s enormous hand. Tselotatos gave a muffled cry. He gasped, writhed in agony, convulsed. A little more, and if Tapoe tightened his grip, there would be no Tselotatos left.
“Pokylou!” Tapoe cried, and nothing more. (Stray dog!)
The children of the gang let their hands fall and dropped the kelepouria. They did not even have time to search their pockets.
The company from the Lower Parish took heart.
“Bravo, Manoli! Bravo!”
A little more, and the defenders would have taken the offensive. Tselotatos was choking, wheezing, dying. His eyes had bulged from their sockets. The reflected light from the shop lamps made them look terrifying in the night. The moon was shining high above. Silence, and terror, and anguish.
One of the children from the gang felt genuine affection for Tselotatos. He loved him as a sworn brother. This child had heard it said that whenever Tapoe happened to hear that his mother had suddenly fallen ill, he would run off beside himself with terror and despair. Suddenly this memory came to him. The child cried out spontaneously:
“Your mother is dying, Manoli! Manoli, run—your mother is dying!”
In order to be saved from the teeth of Scylla, in ancient times, one had to invoke the monster’s mother. “Invoke Crataeis, mother of Scylla, who bore her as a bane to mortals.”
In our own times, those who call upon Saint Phanourios are obliged to say: “May God forgive the mother of Saint Phanourios! May God forgive her!” The coincidence merely attests to how universal is the tenderness toward one’s mother, both among saints and among monsters.
Tapoes was terrified, stunned, turned pale. For a moment he believed the false report; he was defeated by the childish ruse. He released the neck which he had been fiercely squeezing. Tselotatos escaped with his life, cheaply enough, that night.
The children of the gang had begun to scatter. In the meantime, the two neighboring shopkeepers had got wind of what was happening. They came out shouting and scolding: “What’s going on here? What’s happening here?”
Tselotatos, dazed, collapsed into a corner to catch his breath. And all the other children, except for that devoted one who had devised and carried out the ruse, fled.
Manolis and his companions went down toward their own parish. All the children were proud and pleased with themselves. That year, they had emerged victorious from the contest. Manolis was ashamed because he had believed the lying child.
“It doesn’t matter,” Vangelis comforted him, the one who knew his language and who had carried out the experiment of inserting and directing the hand. “It’s better that he fooled you than that he had told you the truth and you had said again, as that other time—remember?—when your mother was in danger of dying: ‘Pá meni! pá ntameni!’ (There she goes, poor thing! Completely gone, utterly unfortunate!)”
Source: Translated by John Sanidopoulos.
