MANDRAS (mending his nets at the harbour): Yesterday British Somaliland fell to the Italians. How long before they attack us from Albania? It was tanks against camels, it seems. I feel so useless and insignificant here on this island. This is a time for men to be about their business. Arsenios wrote a letter for me to the King, saying that I wanted to volunteer, and I’ve got a letter from the office of Metaxas himself saying that I will get my call-up if I’m needed. Well, tonight I’m going to get him to write again and say that I want my call-up immediately. How am I going to tell Pelagia? I know one thing, I’m going to ask her to marry me before I leave, dowry or not. I’m going to ask her father’s permission, and then I’m going to go down on one knee and ask her. With no jokes. I’m going to make her understand that in defending Greece I will be defending her and every woman like her. It’s a question of national salvation. Everyone has the duty to do his utmost. And if I die, then it’s too bad, I won’t have died for nothing. I’ll die with the name of Pelagia and the name of Greece equally on my lips, because it amounts to the same thing, the same sacred thing. And if I live, I’ll walk with my head held high for the rest of my life, and I’ll come back to my dolphins and my nets, and everyone will say, ‘That’s Mandras, who fought in the war. We owe everything to people like him,’ and not Pelagia, and not her father, will be able to look at me and call me a fool and an idiot, and I’ll always be more than a nobody-fisherman with terracotta shards in his arse.
PELAGIA (taking kleftico from the communal oven): Where’s Mandras? He’s usually here by now. I want him to come. I can hardly breathe, I want him to come so much. My hands are shaking again. I’d better take this silly smile off my face, or everyone’ll think that I’m mad. Come, Mandras, please come, and I won’t give my share of the fish to Psipsina. Only the guts and the tail and the head. Stay for dinner, and stroke my shin with your feet, Mandras. Isn’t Psipsina big enough by now to tear up mice for herself? I’m so stupid, doing things by habit, without necessity. Stay for dinner.
12 All the Saint’s Miracles
Nothing on the island had changed, there had been no portents of war; God Himself had remained unperturbed by the megalomania and destruction visited upon the world. On August 23rd the sacred lily before the icon of Our Lady at Demountsandata had erupted punctually from its desiccated state and blossomed reassuringly, renewing the wonder and confirming the piety of the faithful. In the middle of the month a horde of non-venomous snakes, unknown to science, embellished with black crosses upon their heads and skin like velvet, had wriggled out of apparent nothingness at Markopoulo. They had filled the streets with their writhing and creeping, had approached the silver icon of the Virgin, had installed themselves upon the bishop’s throne, and at the end of the service had disappeared as quietly and unaccountably as they had come. In the great ruined castle of Kastro, high above Travliata and Mitakata, the martial spectres of Romans demanded passwords of Normans and French, and the shades of British redcoats played at dice with those of Turks, Catalans and Venetians amongst the dank and unmappable labyrinth of subterranean cisterns, tunnels and mines. In the fallen Venetian town of Fiskardo the roaring ghost of Guiscard strode the ramparts, braying for Greek blood and treasure. At the northern tip of Argostoli the sea poured down the sink-holes of the shore as ever, vanishing inexplicably into the bowels of the earth, and at Paliki the rock known as Kounopetra ceaselessly moved to its own unalterable rhythm. The villagers of Manzavinata, as predictable as the rock, never failed to inform all who would listen that once a fleet of British warships had slung a chain about Kounopetra, and had not moved it; it was one small Greek rock that had resisted the power and the scientific curiosity of the greatest empire ever known to man. Perhaps even more worthy of note, an expedition of Frenchmen had once more failed to find the bottom of Lake Akoli, and a puzzled zoologist from Wyoming had confirmed the report of the eminent historian, Iannis Kosti Laverdos, that the wild hares and some of the goats on Mt Ayia Dinati had gold and silver teeth.
Ever since the time when the Goddess Io had been instrumental in the killing of Memnon by Achilles and had precipitated the accidental shooting of Procris by her own unsuspecting husband, the island had been a prodigy of wonders. This itself was no wonder, for the island possessed a saint unique to itself, and it was as if his numinous power was too great and too effulgent to be contained within himself.
St Gerasimos, withered and blackened, sealed inside his domed and gilded sarcophagus by the reredos of his own monastery, dead for five centuries, rose up at night. Decked in scarlet and golden robes, precious stones and ancient medals, he rattled and creaked his way discreetly amongst his flock of sinners and the sick, visiting them in their homes, sometimes even going abroad to his native Corinthia, there to visit the bones of his fathers and wander amongst the hills and groves of his youth. But the dutiful saint had always returned by morning, obliging the garrulous nuns who attended him to clean the mud from the golden brocade of his slippers and resettle his emaciated and mummified limbs into a posture of peaceful repose.
He was a real saint, a genuine holy man with nothing in common with the imaginary and doubtful saints of other faiths. He had not blemished the world, like St Dominic with his inquisition, he had not been an eighteen-foot giant with cannibal proclivities, like St Christopher, and he had not accidentally killed the spectators at his death, like St Catherine. Neither was he an incomplete saint, like St Andrew, who had succeeded in leaving only the sole of his right foot in the convent near Travliata. Like St Spiridon of Corfu, Gerasimos had lived an exemplary life and left his entire mortal shell as an inspiration and as evidence.
He had gone for a monk at the age of twelve, spent the same number of years in the Holy Land, had dwelt for five years in Zante, and had finally settled in a cave at Spilla, thence to reorganise the monastery at Omala, where he had planted the plane tree and dug the well with his own hands. He was so beloved of the normally cynical islanders that he had two feast days to himself, one in August and one in October; sons by the dozen were named after him, he was believed in more fervently than the Lord Himself, and from his throne in heaven he had had to become used to folk cursing and swearing in his name. On the two feast days he tolerantly averted the eyes of his soul as the entire population of the island waxed outlandishly drunk.
It was on the eighth day before Metaxas rejected the ultimatum of the Duce, yet it might have been any feast day of the last hundred years. The cruelty had gone out of the sun and the day was gloriously warm without being oppressive. A light breeze from the sea wandered in and out of the olives, rustling the leaves so that each one flashed an intricate semaphore of silver and dark green. Poppies and daisies swayed amid grass that was still sere from the summer but was now beginning to freshen, and the bees made the most of the flowers, as if aware of the onset of autumn; their numerous hives dripped with the clear dark honey that the islanders confidently knew to be the best in the world. High on Mt Aenos the Egyptian vultures searched for the corpses of unfortunate or clumsy goats, and down in the briars of the plains the small black Sicilian warblers flitted and squabbled. Innumerable hedgehogs rooted and snuffled beneath them, providently arranging nests of grass and leaves in anticipation of some cold days ahead, and the beaches were strewn with what appeared to be minor shipwrecks, half-dismantled boats drawn up out of the water for inspection and recaulking. Tropical plants in the south of the island began to appear less exuberant, as though drawing in their sap or holding their breath, and the fig trees displayed heavy purple fruit amid the green youngsters that would ripen in the subsequent year, the year in which they would become officially the fruit of the Fascists of Rome.
At dawn Alekos stroked the stock of his antiquated rifle and decided to leave it behind; there were always too many casualties at the feast of the saint, and this detracted from the miracles. He wrapped the weapon in his blankets and walked out into the mist to see if the goats were well; he was planning to leave them to themselves for one day, but
he was sure that the saint would protect them. All through the long walk down from Mt Aenos he knew that he would be able to hear the plangent tones of their bells; he would play a game with himself in which he identified the sound of each. He felt an almost unbearable excitement as he imagined in advance the spectacle of the saint curing epileptics and the mad. Who would he choose?
At the village, Father Arsenios poured a bottle of Robola down his throat and wiped his eyes blearily, unaccustomed to the hardship of early rising, and Pelagia and her father chained up the goat to the olive tree and locked Psipsina in a cupboard where she would find nothing to tear to pieces. Kokolios struggled very briefly with his Communist beliefs about the opiate of the masses, and then put on his wife’s clothes anyway. Stamatis glued a conical paper hat together, and tried it for size whilst his wife cut up lumps of cheese, wrapped up rozoli and mantola sweetmeats, and remembered things to complain about. Megalo Velisarios loaded his culverin onto the back of a sturdy bull that he had borrowed from a third cousin, and dreamed of winning the race. He had loaded the cannon with scraps of silver and gold foil, and looked forward to the sighs of admiration of the crowd as the sparkling ammunition shot up into the sky and then fluttered down like a rain of metallic butterflies.
At the monastery the rubicund little nuns awakened the many guests and pilgrims in their tidy guestrooms, filled the garish washbowls and waterjugs, plumped up the embroidered pillows, replaced the luxurious towels, and swept out the dust. They themselves lived in spartan little rooms with nothing but a shredded mat, a creaky truckle bed, and dark icons upon the wall. Their pleasure lay in catering for others, listening with exquisite prurience to their tales of woe and betrayal, and constructing a jigsaw image of the outside world from what they had heard. It was better to hear of it than to have to inhabit it, of that they were convinced.
In the adjacent madhouse, other nuns dressed the inmates in clean robes and wondered which one would be cured by the aura of the saint. There were very few occasions when he had withheld a cure, and no doubt his great charity (and perhaps his vanity) was in itself a guarantee of some unfortunate’s restoration. Would it be Mina, who squawked and gibbered, recognised no one, and exposed herself to the unwary? Would it be Dmitri, who smashed windows and bottles and ate the glass? Maria, who thought that she was Queen of America and made even the doctors approach her on their knees? Socrates, who was so much a victim of neurasthenia that the mere lifting of a fork was an unsustainable responsibility that could make him weep and tremble? The nuns believed that to live near the saint was itself a gentle form of remedy, and in their lucid moments the mad wondered when their turn would come. The saint selected his cures with no apparent logic or consistency, and some died after waiting for forty years, whilst others arrived one year with a record of atheism and reprehensible behaviour and were away the next.
Outside in the beautiful meadows of the valley and amongst the plane trees that lined the road from Kastro, pilgrims and corybants had been arriving for two days, some of them from distant parts indeed. The relatives of the mad had already kissed the hand of the saint and had prayed together in the church for the healing of their loved ones, whilst the nuns polished the golden ornaments, filled the building with flowers, and lit the gigantic tapers. The pews were filled with distant acquaintances renewing their friendship by means of the animated and voluble conversation that non-Greeks mistakenly construe as irreverence. Outside, the pilgrims unloaded animals laden with feta, melons, cooked fowl, and Cephallonian meat pie, shared it with their neighbours, and composed epigrammatic couplets at each others’ expense. Groups of laughing girls strolled about, arm in arm, smiling sideways at potential husbands and possible sources of flirtation, and the men, pretending to ignore them, stood about in knots, gesticulating and waving bottles as they solved the outstanding problems of the world. Priests swarmed together like bees, discussing theological points with immense gravitas, their grey beards augmenting the patriarchal effect of their shining black shoes and flapping robes, and endured the flattering interruptions of the faithful, who could never think of any sensible pretext for conversation other than to enquire whether or not this or that bishop was likely to attend.
But in truth the scenes of pastoral merriment and ecclesiastical dignity were a disguise for the growing anxiety in the hearts of everyone there, the anxiety of anticipation, the fear of witnessing the mechanically inexplicable, the trepidation that afflicts those who are about to be witnesses to the breaking of the veil between this world and the next. It was a species of nervousness that swelled into a tightening of the chest and a susceptibility to tears as soon as the bell began to toll for the commencement of the service.
There was a sudden buzz of chatter and activity as the people began to press into the church, packed it beyond capacity, and compressed themselves together in the courtyard outside. Some people went to stand in the priests’ cemetery. At different points in the crowd Alekos, Velisarios, Pelagia, Dr Iannis, Kokolios, and Stamatis all strained their heads sideways to hear the distant intonations of the priest. When the folk inside the church crossed themselves, those at the door did so a moment afterwards, and then those behind them, and then those at the back, so that a ripple of gestures passed through the crowd like that of a stone tossed into a pool.
The sun climbed higher and the people, crammed together, began to perspire. The sticky heat was just becoming intolerable when the service drew to a resounding close, and the people began a reverse process of shuffling and jostling, in which those who had been the unlucky ones with respect to a place in the church suddenly found their fortunes changed as they became the first to reach the site of the miracles beneath the plane tree of the saint.
Inside the church the saint’s body was taken up by the bearers, and beneath the tree the happy nuns arranged and rearranged the unpredictable and erratic gathering of the mad, most of whom had become both subdued and terrified, overwhelmed by the impression of a chaos of unfamiliar faces pressing all about them. The glass-eater began to howl. The Queen of America, thrilled by the arrival of her subjects, composed herself into a posture of supreme regality, and Socrates stared abjectly at his right foot, which it had become too much of an ordeal to move. He summoned up an effort of will which, to his consternation, moved one of his forefingers. He tried to make the effort of will to stop it, but could not make the effort of will to make the effort of will. Locked into an infinite regress of incapacity, he stood absolutely still and retreated into the kaleidoscope of unconnected images behind his eyes. One of the nuns wiped a tear from his face, and hurried on to quiet the glass-eater. Others joined her in order to cajole the patients into lying or sitting.
Mina sat beneath the mighty tree and put her arms about her knees. Despite the throng of people and despite the palpable curtain that separated her world from theirs, she felt something like a mood of calm cut through the gibbering of her thoughts. She looked at the glaring whitewash of the church and realised that it was a church. ‘Turtles’ eggs,’ she thought, and then remembered a snatch of a nonsense rhyme from her childhood. She stood up suddenly and began to lift her robe, but was forced down gently by a nun. She accepted it, and listened vaguely to the turmoil of voices inside her own chest. Sometimes the voices shouted and screeched, and she could not get rid of them even by crouching in corners or beating her face against a wall. Sometimes they made her do things by threatening not to go away until she did what she was told. Sometimes they made her itch all over until she was in a frenzy of ripping her own flesh with her nails, and sometimes they told her to stop breathing. In a whirling of panic she would feel her lungs stop and her heart slow towards a heavy halt. Sometimes the gap between herself and the world would yawn so wide that she would look down and see an infinite void beneath her feet; those were the times when she would run wildly, trying to find the ground, crashing into invisible things that made her bruise and bleed. Sometimes, overwhelmed with fear, she would sweat so much that she became too slippery for t
he nuns to restrain, and she would slide on the floor of the asylum, weeping and hawking. The worst thing was when she could see the faces of the people around her, knew that they were looking at her, knew that they were planning to kill her, and lifted her skirts to hide her own face, as though by this magic she could prevent them from seeing her. Whenever she did this, hands appeared from nowhere and dragged her skirts down again, so that she was forced to struggle with all the strength of her desperation to raise them up. Hunted and wounded, Mina sat on the grass and cowered as an unintelligible shadow approached and passed over her.
Dr Iannis and Pelagia had found themselves at the front of the crowd, and watched with mounting excitement as the ornamented body of the saint was carried over the recumbent madmen. Never had a body been handled with greater solicitude, nor with so much respect; it must not be jostled in its bier, nor disarranged. Its bearers stepped carefully between the limbs of the mad, and anxious families restrained the flailing and convulsing of their afflicted relatives. The glass-eater’s eyes rolled, and his mouth foamed with epileptic spume, but he remained still. He had no family to constrain him, and he drew power from the saint to constrain himself. He saw a pair of embroidered slippers pass by his nose.