A dolphin bounded out of the calm waters, very near to us, its firm supple back gleaming powerfully in the sun. It plunged again, reappeared, soared joyfully—the entire ocean was its province. Suddenly another dolphin appeared in the distance and each raced head-on toward the other. Meeting, they frolicked, then all at once swam off side by side with lifted tails, dancing.
I was overjoyed. Extending my arm, I indicated the two dolphins.
“Is Christ crucified or resurrected?” I asked triumphantly. “What do the two dolphins tell us?”
But we had arrived at Dionysíou, and the bishop did not have time to reply.
The moment we stepped into the courtyard, we halted in terror. We felt we were entering a damp, dark prison for life-termers. The columns around the periphery were squat and black, the arches between them painted a dark orange. Every inch of the walls was covered with savage paintings of the Apocalypse: devils, hell-fire, prostitutes with two rivers of blood flowing from their breasts, hideous dragons with horns—all of the Church’s sadistic longing to intimidate men and bring them to heaven not by love but by fear.
The guestmaster came, the monk who looked after visitors. Seeing us glaring in terror at the paintings, he parted his narrow, yellowish lips maliciously—he seemed overcome with hatred at the sight of two well-dressed, thriving men in the flower of youth.
“Open wide your eyes,” he said. “Do not screw up your faces in a grimace. Look! Man’s body is full of fires, demons, and whores. The filth you see is not the inferno but the bowels of man.”
“Man is created in the image of God,” objected my friend. “He is not just this filth, he is something else.”
“He was,” shrieked the monk, “was, but isn’t any more. In the world you live in, the soul has become flesh too. Sin holds it to her breast and nurses it.”
“What’s to be done, then?” I asked. “Is there no door to salvation?”
“There is, there is. But it is a narrow, dark, and dangerous one. A person doesn’t enter easily.”
“What door do you mean?”
“Behold!”
He extended his hand and indicated the entrance to the monastery.
“We’re not ready yet,” said my friend, who had found the monk’s words irritating. “Later, when we’re old and feeble. The flesh is God’s work too.”
A venomous smile incised the monk’s lips.
“The flesh is the work of the devil,” he shrieked. “It’s time you learned, you emissaries from the world, that God’s work is the soul.”
Wrapping himself tightly in his robe as though afraid we might touch him, he disappeared beneath an orange vault.
We remained alone in the center of the courtyard.
“Let’s leave,” said my friend. “It’s obvious that Christ does not live here.”
The doors to two or three cells opened. Skeleton-like monks appeared, looked at us, murmured something, then closed their doors again.
“There is no love here,” insisted my friend. “Let’s leave.”
“Don’t you feel sorry for them?” I asked. “Suppose we remain here a few days and preach the true Christ? What do you say?”
“To them? Impossible! A waste of effort.”
“Nothing ever goes to waste. Even if they’re not saved, we shall be for undertaking the impossible.”
“Are you serious?” asked my friend, looking at me in amazement.
“If only I knew!” I replied, suddenly overcome by great despondency. “Would that I could actually do it! My heart says to me, If you are really a man, stay here and declare war. But alas! the mind—Satan—does not let me.”
Two monks made bold to come to us and bring us inside. They took us around the monastery. We saw a fresco of the giant with the head of a wild boar, Saint Christopher, and were shown his monstrous fang. Then they had us do obeisance to John the Baptist’s right hand. In the refectory were two fiery red seraphim, both holding a pair of erect lances in each hand, their snow-white feet planted in the green earth; on the left-hand wall a representation of the Virgin seated between two angels, with bright green trees on both sides, birds perched on the branches, and a slender cypress behind each of the angels; on the dome above us the Pantocrator with a ribbon unwinding from his mouth, and upon the ribbon large red letters. Raising their arms, the monks pointed to the Pantocrator.
“Can you make out what the letters say? Love one another. Pronounce those words to a dead stick and it will blossom, but pronounce them to a human being and he will not blossom. We are all headed for hell.”
The cemetery was simple and charming, like a balcony overlooking the sea. Just five or six wooden crosses gnawed by wind and salt.
Suddenly a flock of white pigeons flew over us, headed for the water. One of the monks, his eyes filled with murder and hunger, threw up his hand rapaciously as though wishing to catch them. “God, if I only had a gun!” he murmured, his teeth grating from ravenous hunger.
Our pilgrimage was finally drawing to a close. A few days before our departure I set out by myself to climb to Karoúlia, to the wild hermitages wedged between crags high above the sea. Burrowed in caves there and praying for the sins of the world, each far from his neighbor lest he draw comfort from the sight of another human being, live the most savage and saintly ascetics of the Holy Mountain. Each has a little basket hanging down over the water, and the skiffs which chance to pass from time to time draw up to these baskets and toss in a little bread, a few olives—whatever they have—in order to keep the ascetics from starving to death. Many of these savage ascetics go mad. Believing that they have sprouted wings, they fly out over the precipice and hurl downward. The shore line below is covered with bones.
Living at that time among these hermits was Makários the Speleote, a monk renowned for his sanctity. It was to see him that I departed for Karoúlia. I had made the decision the moment I set foot on the sacred mountain. I wanted to bow, kiss his hand, and confess to him. Not my sins—I did not believe I had committed very many up to that point—not my sins, but the satanic arrogance which frequently goaded me to speak insolently of the seven sacraments and the ten commandments, and made me wish to inscribe my own decalogue.
It was nearly noon when I reached the hermitages—black holes in the cliffside, each with its iron cross implanted in the rock. A skeleton emerged from one of the caves, terrifying me. It was as though the Last Judgment was already upon us and this skeleton had issued from the earth before having time to dress itself in all its flesh. Fear and disgust overwhelmed me, but at the same time a hidden, unconfessed admiration. Not daring to go near him, I asked directions from a distance. Without speaking, he extended a desiccated arm and directed me high above to a black cave at the very edge of the cliff.
I began to climb the crags once more, lacerating myself on their sharp edges. When I reached the cave, I leaned over to peer inside. Complete darkness; odor of soil and incense. Gradually I began to distinguish a tiny jug to the right in a cleft in the rock; nothing else. I was about to call out, but the silence within this darkness seemed so hallowed to me, so disquieting, that I did not dare. Here the human voice, I felt, was like a sin, a sacrilege.
My sight finally grew accustomed to the darkness, and as I peered inward with protruding eyeballs, I saw a gentle phosphorescence—a pale face and two emaciated arms—stir in the depths of the cave and I heard a sweet, gasping voice.
“Welcome!”
Working up courage, I entered the cave and proceeded toward the voice. The ascetic was curled on the ground. He had raised his head, and I was able in the half-light to make out his face as it gleamed in the depths of unutterable beatitude—hairless, with sunken eye sockets, gnawed away by vigils and hunger. All his hair had fallen out, and his head shone like a skull.
“Bless me, Father,” I said, bowing to kiss his bony hand.
For a long time neither of us spoke. I kept looking greedily at this soul which had obliterated its body, for this was what weighed down its
wings and kept it from mounting to heaven. The soul that believes is a merciless man-eating beast. It had devoured him: flesh, eyes, hair—all.
I did not know what to say, where to begin. The ramshackle body before me seemed like a battlefield following a terrible massacre; upon it I discerned the Tempter’s scratches and bites. Finally I gathered up courage.
“Do you still wrestle with the devil, Father Makários?” I asked him.
“Not any longer, my child. I have grown old now, and he has grown old with me. He doesn’t have the strength. . . . I wrestle with God.”
“With God!” I exclaimed in astonishment. “And you hope to win?”
“I hope to lose, my child. My bones remain with me still, and they continue to resist.”
“Yours is a hard life, Father. I too want to be saved. Is there no other way?”
“More agreeable?” asked the ascetic, smiling compassionately.
“More human, Father.”
“One, only one.”
“What is it?”
“Ascent. To climb a series of steps. From the full stomach to hunger, from the slaked throat to thirst, from joy to suffering. God sits at the summit of hunger, thirst, and suffering; the devil sits at the summit of the comfortable life. Choose.”
“I am still young. The world is nice. I have time to choose.”
Reaching out with the five bones of his hand, the ascetic touched my knee and pushed me.
“Wake up, my child. Wake up before death wakes you up.”
I shuddered.
“I am young,” I repeated in order to gain courage.
“Death loves the young. The inferno loves the young. Life is a tiny lighted candle, easily extinguished. Take care—wake up!”
He fell silent for a moment, and then: “Are your ready?”
Possessed by indignation and obstinacy, I shouted, “No!”
“Youthful arrogance! You say that and think it is something to boast about. Stop shouting. Aren’t you afraid?”
“Who isn’t? Yes, I am afraid. And what about yourself, holy Father, aren’t you afraid also? You have hungered, thirsted, suffered; you are about to reach the highest step. The door to paradise appears before you. But will this door open and let you in? Will it? Are you sure?”
Two tears rolled from the corners of his eyes. He sighed. Then, after a brief silence: “I am sure of God’s goodness. It is this that conquers and forgives man’s sins.”
“I too am sure of God’s goodness. In other words, this might also forgive my youthful arrogance.”
“Woe to us if we depended solely on God’s goodness. In that case virtue and vice would enter heaven arm in arm.”
“And do you believe, Father, that God’s goodness is not sufficiently great to allow that?”
As I uttered these words, across my mind flashed the thought-impious perhaps, but, who knows, perhaps thrice-hallowed—that the time of perfect salvation will come, of perfect reconciliation, when the fires of hell will be extinguished and Satan, the Prodigal Son, will mount to heaven and kiss the Father’s hand, tears flowing from his eyes. “I have sinned!” he will cry, and the Father, opening wide his arms, will say, “Welcome, welcome, my son. Forgive me for having tormented you so very much.”
But I dared not express my thought directly. Instead, I chose an oblique path as a means of conveying it.
“I’ve been told, Father, that a certain saint—I don’t remember now which one—was unable to find repose in heaven. God heard his sighs and summoned him. What’s the matter? What makes you sigh?’ He asked. ‘Aren’t you happy?’
“‘How do you expect me to be happy, Lord,’ the saint answered him, ‘when in the very center of Paradise there is a fountain that weeps?’
“‘What fountain?’
“‘The tears of the damned.’”
The ascetic crossed himself with trembling hands.
“Who are you?” he asked in an expiring, deathlike voice. “Get thee behind me, Satan!”
He crossed himself three more times, and spat into the air. “Get thee behind me, Satan,” he repeated. His voice had grown firm now.
I touched his knee, which gleamed nakedly in the half-light. My hand froze.
“Father,” I said, “I did not come here to tempt you; I am not the Tempter. I am a young man who wants to believe as my peasant grandfather believed, simply and naively, without asking questions. I want to, but I cannot.”
“Woe is you, woe is you, unfortunate boy. You shall be devoured by the mind; you shall be devoured by the ego—the ‘me,’ the self. Do you know when the Archangel Lucifer was hurled into hell, the same you defend and wish to save? It was when he turned to God and said, ‘Me.’
“Yes, yes, listen, young man, listen and register this well in your mind: One thing only is punished in the inferno—the ego. Yes, the ego, all curses upon it!”
I shook my head stubbornly. “By means of this ego, this awareness of self, man was separated from the beasts. Do not belittle it, Father Makários.”
“By means of this awareness of self, man was separated from God. Originally everything was united with God, contented in His bosom. There was no such thing as you, me, and him, no such thing as yours and mine; there were not two, there was one. One cosmos, one Being. This was the paradise you hear about, this and only this. From here we all had our start. This is what the soul remembers; to this it longs to return. Blessed be death! For what do you suppose death is? It is a mule; we mount this mule and depart.”
He spoke, and the more he spoke the more brightly luminous did his features become. A sweet, contented smile suffused outward from his lips and invaded his entire face. You could sense that he was submerged in paradise.
“Why are you smiling, Father?” I asked.
“How can I keep from smiling? I am happy, my child. Each day, each hour, I hear the mule’s hoofbeats: I hear death approaching.”
I had climbed the rocks with the intention of confessing to this fierce life-denier, but I saw that it was still too soon. Inside me, life had not yet volatilized. I greatly loved the visible world. Lucifer gleamed with brilliance in my mind; he still had not vanished into the blinding brilliance of God. Later, I said to myself; later, when I grow old and feeble, when Lucifer grows feeble inside me.
I rose. The old man raised his head.
“Are you leaving?” he asked. “Good luck. God be with you.”
And a moment later, mockingly: “Regards to the world.”
“Regards to heaven,” I retorted. “And tell God it’s not our fault but His—because He made the world so beautiful.”
Not all of the monks, however, were happy; not all were sure. I remember one especially, Father Ignatius. My friend and I stayed up talking each night after the monks departed for bed and we were left alone in the guest hall. We discussed our great spiritual concerns and the various pathways man could follow in order to reach God. In addition, we struggled to give a more virginal content to this word which had become so trite in the mouths of priests. Once while we were talking—it must have already been midnight—a voice choked with emotion suddenly bounded out of a dark corner.
“May God enable me to sit here and listen to you for all eternity. I want no other paradise!”
It was Father Ignatius. He had been listening to us, huddled in the semidarkness. Assuredly he did not understand very well what we were saying, but he had been moved by the words God, love, and duty which recurred again and again during our conversation, and above all by the tone and warmth of our voices. Also, perhaps, by how pale our faces looked in the lamplight.
We became friends. From that night onward he remained continually in our presence, not speaking, just listening. You could feel his thirst to hear talk which surpassed the conversation the monks had among themselves. On the eve of our departure he called me to his cell. It was late; my friend was tired and had gone to bed.
“I want to confess to you,” he said. “Sit down.”
He gave me a stool an
d I seated myself. I looked at him. His sparse, all-white beard gleamed in the moonlight. His black robe had turned green with age; the material was shiny from wear and grease stains. His cheeks were sunken, his face covered everywhere with deep wrinkles, like a plowed field. His thick, prickly eyebrows beetled over his hollowed, jet-black eyes. He smelled of incense and rancid olive oil. The big toe of his right foot protruded through a rip in his large coarsely made shoes.
For a long while he remained silent, as though he had made a decision which he now regretted.
At last he said, “For the love of God, be patient and listen to me. Do not speak or get up to leave until I have finished my confession. Have pity on me.”
His voice was trembling.
“Would you like some coffee?” he asked, as though wishing to postpone the difficult moment. But without waiting for a reply he sat down on his humble bed and clasped his beard, pensive and undecided. I pitied him.
“There is no need for you to hesitate, Father Ignatius,” I said. “I am a good person, and I know something about human suffering. Speak freely; unburden yourself.”
“It’s not a question of suffering,” he said—suddenly his senile voice took on strength—“not suffering, but joy. Is joy accursed or blessed? For years I’ve been tormenting myself in an effort to find out, and I can’t. That’s why I called you. I need help. Do you understand?”
No sooner had he uttered these words than his heart opened. He hesitated no longer now. Crossing himself and focusing his eyes not on me but on the watch lamp burning opposite him, next to the icon of the Crucified, he began.
“My son, for years and years I tried to see God, but without success. For years I prostrated myself—here, look how callused my hands are. For years after that I cried out, Very well, let me not see God, since I am unworthy. But let me be able to feel His invisible presence so that I too may rejoice if only for a split second and know that I am a Christian and that my years in the monastery were not spent for nothing. I cried out, wept, fasted—in vain! My heart was unable to open and let God enter me. Satan had locked it and he held the keys.”