But he had great majestic dignity, a rare charm and nobility. When you watched him speak, his blue eyes sparkling ecstatically, or heard him rattle the windows as he recited his poems, you understood what the ancient Greek rhapsodists must have been like, the bards who wandered from palace to palace, crowned with vine leaves or violets, and tamed their still-bestial auditors by means of poetry. Truly, from the very first moment I saw this young man, I felt that he was an honor to the human race.
We became abrupt, immediate friends. So greatly did we differ, we divined at once that each needed the other and that the two of us together would constitute the whole man. I was coarse and taciturn, with the tough hide of a peasant. Full of questions and metaphysical struggles, I remained undeceived by striking exteriors, for I divined the skull beneath the beautiful face. I was devoid of naïveté, sure of nothing. I had not been born a prince; I was struggling to become one. He was jolly, with a stately grandiloquence, sure of himself, the possessor of noble flesh and the unsophisticated, strength-engendering faith that he was immortal. Certain he had been born a prince, he had no need to suffer or struggle to become one. Nor to yearn for the summit, since—of this he was certain also—he had already attained the summit. He was convinced that he was unique and irreplaceable. He would not condescend to compare himself with any other great artist, dead or alive, and this naïveté gave him vast self-confidence and strength.
Once I told him how the queen bee flies into the air on her marriage day followed by an army of drones who try to catch her. One succeeds—the bridegroom. He couples with her, and all the rest fall to the ground and die.
“All the suitors die contented,” I said to him, “because they all feel the bridegroom’s joy at his nuptials—as though all had been united into one.”
But my friend simply burst into thunderous laughter.
“I don’t understand what you say at all. The bridegroom has to be me, me and no one else!”
“The spirit is not called Me, it is called All of us,” I replied with a laugh. And I reminded him of the words of a beloved mystic: “I think I am being crowned, whereas others are the victors.”
Later, when I knew him better, I said to him one day, “The great difference between us, Angelos, is this: you believe you have found salvation, and believing this, you are saved; I believe that salvation does not exist, and believing this, I am saved.”
Lying in ambush deep down inside him, however, was an extremely compelling, extremely tender weakness: he had an absolute need to be loved and admired. If you were able to penetrate his triumphant face and trumpet-voiced self-assurance, you saw a perturbed aristocrat holding out his hand to every passer-by. An old friend of his, a very cynical person, said to me one day, “He plays the sultan, but he is really a sultana.”
Many, out of jealousy or an aversion to the pomposity of his outward life, considered him a play-actor and hypocrite; they claimed that he believed in nothing, that all his sayings and doings were lies and ostentation, that he was a peacock with his stunning feathers permanently deployed, but that if you plucked him you would find nothing but a common, insignificant hen.
No, he was not a hypocrite. His outward life—the big talk, the arrogance and bombast, the assurance that he was unique in the world and could perform miracles at will—all this corresponded with absolute sincerity to his profound inward certainty. He did not pretend he was unique; he firmly believed it. He was capable of putting his hand in a fire with the certainty that he would not be burned; he was capable of plunging unconcernedly into battle with the certainty that no bullet could ever touch him. He ate a great deal and boasted of it, because he was certain that whatever he ate would be transformed into spirit. “As for the others . . . ” he used to say with roars of laughter, “as for the others . . .”
One day while we were strolling through the old part of Athens, he remarked, “I feel so much God in me that if you touch my hand this moment, it will emit sparks.”
I said nothing.
“What, don’t you believe me?” he asked, seeing me remain silent. “Try. Touch it!” He held out his hand.
I did not want to humiliate him. “Very well,” I said. “I believe. Why do I have to try?”
I was naturally convinced that it would not emit sparks. Or was I? Who knows . . . Now I am sorry that I did not try.
Angelos a hypocrite? He would have been had he put on a show of simplicity and modesty. But he was the sincerest person in the world. This I confirmed one day when I observed an incident which passed beyond the limits of the comic and entered the dangerous, fiery domain of lunacy.
We were sojourning in a country house set among pine trees by the edge of the sea. We went for long walks together, read Dante, the Old Testament, and Homer, and he recited his verses to me in his thunderous voice. These were the first days of our acquaintanceship, the time of betrothal. I was overjoyed at having found a person incapable of breathing anywhere but on the most elevated level of desire. We were destroying and rebuilding the world. Both of us knew with certainty that the soul was omnipotent, with the single difference that he thought this of his own soul, I of the soul of all mankind.
Late one afternoon as we were about to take our evening walk and were still standing on the threshold looking at the sea, who should arrive at a run but the village postman. Removing a letter from his sack, he gave it to my friend. Then he leaned against his ear and said in an agitated, frightened voice, “You also have an immense parcel.”
But my friend did not hear. His face vermilion, he was reading the letter. He handed it to me.
“Read . . .”
I took the letter and read: “Dearest Buddháki, our neighbor the tailor just died, poor thing. I’m sending him to you. Please revive him.” The letter was signed by his wife.
My friend gave me an anguished look. “Do you think I . . . Is it difficult?”
I shrugged my shoulders. “I don’t know. At all events . . . Yes, it is very difficult.”
But the postman was in a hurry.
“What should I do with the parcel?” he asked, already raising his foot to leave.
“Deliver it!” replied my friend brusquely, and he turned and looked at me again, as though expecting encouragement.
But I felt extremely disturbed and said nothing.
We stood there in silence and waited. The sun was about to set, the sea had turned dark rose. My friend waited, biting his lips.
Soon two villagers appeared carrying a cheap coffin. Inside was the tailor.
“Bring him upstairs!” commanded my friend. His radiant face had darkened.
Once more he turned and looked at me. “What do you think?” he asked again, glaring anxiously right into my pupils. “Do you believe I can do it?”
“Try,” I answered. “I’ll go for a walk.”
I set out along the shore line. Deeply inhaling the aroma of pine and sea, I thought to myself, Now we shall see whether he is a hypocrite or a dangerously venturesome soul ready to desire and attempt the impossible. What will he do: try to resurrect the corpse, or, afraid of looking ridiculous, go off by stealth like a sly fox and creep softly into bed? Tonight we shall see. . . . My heart in a ferment, I walked as quickly as I could, trembling at the thought that my friend’s soul should be put to the test in this way before me.
The sun had already plunged below the horizon. From the pine forest came the first sorrowful, tender hooting of owls. The distant mountain peaks began to melt away into the dusk.
I purposely extended my walk, feeling uncomfortable about returning to the house. First and foremost, the presence of the corpse bothered me; I had never been able to confront a corpse without shuddering from fear and loathing. Secondly, I wished to postpone as long as possible the necessity of seeing how my friend would behave in this crucial moment.
When I reached the house, my friend’s room, which stood above my own, was ablaze with light. Feeling in no mood for supper, I went to bed. But how was I to sleep? All night
long above me I heard a muted bellowing and the creaking of the bed, followed immediately by heavy pacing up and down the room for a considerable period, then the groans and creaking again. All night long. From time to time I heard my friend sigh deeply and open the window, as though suffocating and in need of air. By dawn I had grown tired enough to fall asleep. When I awoke and went downstairs, it was already quite late. My friend was sitting at the table, the milk in front of him untouched. I grew frightened when I saw him. He was deathly pale, his lips ashen; two large blue rings extended around his eyes. I did not speak to him. Perturbed, I sat down at his side and waited.
“I did what I could,” he said at last, as though wishing to justify himself. “Do you remember how the prophet Elisha restored the dead man? He lay down with his whole body on top of him, glued his mouth to the corpse’s and blew his breath into it, bellowing. I did the same.”
He fell silent for a moment, and then: “All night long . . . all night long. In vain!”
I gazed at my friend with amazement and admiration. True, he had entered the realm of the ridiculous, but he had passed beyond it to reach the tragic boundaries of lunacy, and now he had returned and was sitting next to me exhausted.
He got up and went to the door. Wiping his brow, which was pearled with large drops of sweat, he looked at the sea in front of him.
“Now what’s to be done?” he asked, turning to me.
“Call the priest to come and bury him,” I replied. “As for us, let’s go for our walk along the beach.”
I gave him my arm, which was trembling. Removing our shoes and socks, we waded along the shore, refreshing ourselves. Though he did not speak, I could feel him being calmed by the water’s coolness and quiet rippling.
“I’m ashamed . . .” he murmured finally. “Does this mean that the soul is not omnipotent?”
“It isn’t yet,” I replied, “but it will be. You did a wonderfully brave thing in wishing to overstep human boundaries, but it is also a wonderfully brave thing to acknowledge those boundaries fearlessly and without despair. We are going to beat our heads against the bars, then beat them some more; many heads will be smashed to pieces, but one day the bars will break.”
“The head that breaks them must be mine—that’s what I want,” he declared, obstinately hurling a large pebble into the sea. “Mine,” he shouted, “mine and no one else’s!”
I smiled. This mine, mine and me, me was my friend’s terrible prison, a dungeon without windows or doors.
“Do you know the highest peak a man can reach?” I asked in an effort to comfort him. “It is to conquer the self, the ego. When we reach that peak, and only then, Angelos, we shall be saved.”
He said nothing, but he was beating the waves maniacally with his heel.
The atmosphere between us grew heavy.
“Let’s go home,” he said. “I’m tired.”
He was not tired; he was angry.
We did not exchange a single word the entire way back. We walked quickly. A breeze had risen and the sea was sighing. The air felt damp and briny.
When we reached the house, I pointed to my friend’s extensive library in an effort to exorcise the unfortunate incident.
“Look,” I said, “I’ll close my eyes and take a book. The book will decide.”
“Decide what?” my friend asked with irritation.
“What we do tomorrow.”
Closing my eyes and groping with my hand, I seized a book. My friend snatched it out of my fingers and opened it. It was a large album of photographs: monasteries, monks, campaniles, cypresses, cells atop precipitous cliffs, with the sea raging savagely beneath.
“Mount Athos!” I cried.
My friend’s face gleamed.
“Just what I wanted!” he shouted. “I’ve wanted that for years and years. Let’s go!”
He spread his arms and clasped me tightly to his breast.
“Are you ready?” he asked. “Should we put on our seven-league boots—we’re ogres, aren’t we? Yes, let’s put on our seven-league boots to tread the Holy Mountain.”
It was raining. The summit of Athos had disappeared behind a wrapping of dense mist. The sea was calm, jellied, muddy. A monastery gleamed brilliantly white amid rain-blackened chestnut trees. The sky had descended to the treetops; the rain was silent and continuous, the kind that saturates the ground. Five or six drenched monks stood on the wharf like cypress trees.
Two monks sat chatting next to us in the rowboat which was bringing us to Daphne, the Holy Mountain’s tiny port. The younger of the pair, who had a scanty black beard and carried a heavy sack beneath his arm, was saying, “Just to hear him chant, you forget the world. His voice is sweeter than a father or a mother.”
The other replied, “What are you trying to tell me? In our monastery we have a blackbird who sings the ‘Lord, I Cried unto Thee’ and the ‘Christ Is Risen.’ He makes your head whirl. We call him Father Blackbird; he comes to church with us, and he fasts the whole of Lent.”
“Then he couldn’t be a blackbird, Father Lavréndios,” the young monk said after reflection, “No, he couldn’t be a blackbird.”
We set foot upon the sacred ground. The monks standing on the wharf cast trained eyes on each person who debarked, in case a woman dressed in man’s clothing should be hidden among the passengers. In the thousand years since the Holy Mountain was consecrated to the Virgin, no woman has ever set foot here, no feminine exhalations have soiled the air, not even those of female animals—ewes, nanny goats, hens, or cats. The air is soiled only by masculine exhalations.
Our two traveling companions had set out behind us, loaded down like mules. They increased their pace in order to catch up.
“Pilgrims?” asked the young monk, smiling. “May Her Grace aid you.”
Hermits are always dying to talk. These two, working up steam, chatted about miracles, holy relics, about the ascetics who lift their arms in prayer at the top of great cliffs.
“And as long as they keep their arms raised,” said the young one, “you need have no fear that the world will collapse. They hold up the world and keep it from falling.”
“Is it true that a woman has never set foot on the Holy Mountain?” I asked.
“Never, never,” replied the older of the two, spitting into the air and mumbling “Get thee behind me, Satan! Sometimes a woman is saucy enough to come ashore here dressed as a man. But the monks on watch spot her immediately and send her away.”
“How can they tell?” asked my friend with a laugh.
“From the smell,” the young monk answered. “Here, ask the Father; he was once a sentry at the wharf.”
My friend turned to the old monk. “Do women smell different, holy Father? What do they smell like?”
“Like stinking skunks,” answered the old man, quickening his pace.
The rain began to decrease. A wind must have risen in the upper levels of the atmosphere; the clouds broke and a little sunlight appeared. All at once the earth smiled, still bathed in tears, and an extremely pale rainbow suspended itself in the air along with the sun, re-establishing the friendship between sky and wetted soil.
“The Virgin’s girdle!” exclaimed the two monks, crossing themselves.
Leaning on our stout oaken walking sticks, our sacks on our backs, we climbed the cobbled road that led to Karyés, passing through a dense forest of half-defoliated chestnut trees, pistachios, and broad-leafed laurels. The air smelled of incense, or so it seemed to us. We felt that we had entered a colossal church composed of sea, mountains, and chestnut forests, and roofed at the top by the open sky instead of a dome. I turned to my friend; I wanted to break the silence which had begun to weigh upon me.
“Why don’t we talk a little?” I suggested.
“We are,” answered my friend, touching my shoulder lightly. “We are, but with silence, the tongue of angels.”
Then he suddenly appeared to grow angry.
“What do you expect us to say? That it’s beautiful, t
hat our hearts have sprouted wings and want to fly away, that we’ve started along a road leading to Paradise? Words, words, words. Keep quiet!”
Two blackbirds darted out from a walnut tree; the wet branches shook and the raindrops splashed our faces.
“The bird kingdom has its monks too—the blackbirds,” said the elderly Father. “The Holy Mountain is full of them.”
“And what about the stars, Father Lavréndios?” asked the youth. “Do they have their monks too?”
“They used to be monks, all of them, my brother. Here on earth they bore witness to the faith of Christ, were martyred, and rose to Abraham’s bosom. Heaven, in case you don’t know it, is Abraham’s bosom.”
I listened to them, admiring man’s soul, that force which in its omnipotence has been able to transform all things and subject them to its dream. The faithful have made both heaven and earth whirl around one immortal polestar, Christ, one immutable figure, obliging both to enter His service. Christ, for them, is the Great Answer to every perplexity. All things are explained, illuminated, placed in order, and the soul rests at ease. Questions are asked only by those without faith; they alone struggle, lose their way, and fall into despair.
But a few days after we reached the Holy Mountain, a half-insane ascetic said something which muzzled me. He lived in a state of ecstatic frenzy perched in a cave overhanging the sea.