“Where are you coming from?” my father asked me.
“From far, far away,” I replied, not breathing a word about my adventure of nearly taking vows at Sinai.
It was the second time an attempt of mine to attain sainthood had miscarried. The first time, you remember, was in my childhood when I went down to the harbor, ran to a captain who was preparing to weigh anchor, and begged him to take me to Mount Athos so that I could become a monk. The captain split his sides with laughter. “Home, home!” he shouted. Clapping his hands as though I were a pullet, he shooed me away. Now it had happened again. “Return to the world,” Father Joachim had cried. “In this day and age the world is the true monastery; that is where you will become a saint.”
It was to gather momentum that I returned to my native soil. Leaving Kastro, I walked out to the villages, where I ate and drank with shepherds and plowmen. I felt ashamed, seeing how the lazy, fraudulent life of the monastery was so strongly opposed by the whole land of Crete, this land which is incessantly battling, if not with floods and droughts, then with poverty, disease, or the Turk. And here I was trying to go against its will and betray it by becoming a monk! Father Joachim was right. The world is our monastery, the true monk he who lives with men and works with God here, in contact with the soil. God does not sit on a throne above the clouds. He wrestles here on earth, along with us. Solitude is no longer the road for the man who strives, and true prayer, prayer which steers a course straight for the Lord’s house and enters, is noble action. This, today, is how the true warrior prays.
A Cretan once said to me, “When you appear before the heavenly gates and they fail to open, do not take hold of the knocker to knock. Unhitch the musket from your shoulder and fire.”
“Do you actually believe God will be frightened into opening the gates?”
“No, lad, He won’t be frightened. But He’ll open them because He’ll realize you are returning from battle.”
Never did I hear from an educated man words so profound as those I heard from peasants, especially from oldsters who had completed the struggle. Their passions had subsided within them; they stood now before death’s threshold, tenderly casting a final, tranquil glance behind them.
One afternoon I encountered an old man on a mountain slope. He was wizened and gaunt, with snow-white hair, patched vrakes, and boots full of holes. As is the custom with Cretan shepherds, he held his staff extended across his shoulders. He kept climbing slowly, stone by stone, stopping every so often to gaze lingeringly at the surrounding mountains, the plain far below, and the band of sea visible in the distance between the walls of a ravine.
“Good afternoon, grandfather,” I called to him from a distance. “What are you doing here all by yourself?”
“Saying goodbye, son, saying goodbye . . .”
“In this forsaken place? I don’t see a soul here. Who are you saying goodbye to?”
The old man tossed his head angrily. “What forsaken place? Don’t you see the mountains and the sea? Why did God give us eyes? Don’t you hear the birds above you? Why did God give us ears? You call this place forsaken? These are my friends. We talk to each other; I call them and they answer me. I’m a shepherd. I have ranged for two generations in their company. But now the time for parting has come. It’s evening already.”
“But it’s still early in the afternoon, grandfather,” I said, assuming his sight had been dimmed by age. “It’s not evening yet.”
He shook his head. “I know what I’m talking about. It’s evening, I tell you, evening. . . . Goodbye.”
“You’ll lay even Charon by the heels, grandfather,” I said to encourage him.
He laughed. “I’ve already done so, confound it! Yes, don’t you worry, I’ve already laid him by the heels, the old cheat. How? By not being afraid of him! . . . Goodbye. You lay him out too, my fine lad, and you’ll have my blessing.”
I couldn’t bear to let him go.
“Give me your name, grandfather. I don’t want to forget you.”
“Well then, bend down and pick up a stone. Ask and it will tell you. It’s old Manoúsos from Kavrohóri, that’s what it will tell you. . . . All right, enough now! Pardon me. As you can see, I’m in a hurry. . . . Godspeed!”
So speaking, he resumed the ascent, stumbling because his sight was poor.
It is true that we cannot conquer death; we can, however, conquer our fear of death. This aged mountaineer was facing the end with serenity. The hills had enlarged and fortified his soul; he would not condescend to kneel before Charon. What he wanted from him was simply a few days’ respite to give him time to take leave of his former companions—the fresh air, thyme, and stones.
But as I was walking one day near Phaistos, down below on the fertile plain of Messará, I saw another old man, a centenarian. He was sitting on the doorstep of his humble cottage, sunning himself. His eyes were like two red wounds; his nose was dripping, spittle was running from his mouth, and he smelled of tobacco and urine.
Upon my entrance to the village, one of the man’s grandsons had spoken to me laughingly about his grandfather. I was told to go and see him because he had become a baby again; apparently he seated himself at the village tap each evening and waited for the young girls to come along to fill their jugs. “He cranes his neck the minute he hears their clogs,” the grandson told me. “He is half blind and can’t make them out very well, so he holds out his arms and calls, ‘You there, who are you? Come here, my child, if you want my blessing. Come close and let me see you.’
“The girl goes up to him with a laugh, and the old codger thrusts his hand into her face. He strokes it greedily—you’d think he wanted to gobble it up—pets the nose, mouth, and chin insatiably, then tries to go down to the throat. But the girl won’t let him. She lets out a screech, and off she runs amid peals of laughter. The old man is left sighing, his palm still open.
“And how he sighs! You’ve simply got to hear him. It’s like a buffalo. I asked him one day, ‘But why do you sigh, Grandpa? What’s the matter with you?’ And he answered me with flowing tears, ‘What do you think is the matter with me, confound it! Don’t you have eyes in your head? I’m sinking into the grave and leaving such beautiful girls behind! Oh, if only I were a king to have them all slaughtered so that I could take them with me!’
“Then, feeling full of reproach, he begins to sing a mantinádha, always the same one, in a hushed voice:
Alas! the times gone by; alas! the times so dear.
O to have them back, if only one day a year.”
Listening to the grandson made me impatient to go and admire this centenarian oak. I was shown his cottage, where I found him sitting in the sun warming himself. Going up to him, I said, “Well, well, grandfather, I hear you’re a hundred years old. Tell me, how has life seemed to you these hundred years?”
He looked up with inflamed, lashless eyes.
“It’s like a glass of cold water, my child.”
“And are you still thirsty, grandfather?”
He raised his hand high, as though to call down a curse. “Damn whoever isn’t!” he said.
I stayed for three days in a monastery overlooking the Libyan Sea. I have always liked the anachronistic life of monasteries—the ancient rhythm governing them, the monks with their cunning or drowsy eyes, their bloated or empty bellies, their large hands clasping the pruning hook or spade at one moment, the Holy Chalice and paten at the next. I have always liked the odor of incense, the melismatics in the chapel at dawn and afterwards everyone progressing together to the great manger, the refectory, which reeks of offal and rancid olive oil. And in the evening the muted conversations on the monastery terrace, and the oppressive silences filled with the faraway echoes of the world. Only seldom did we talk about Christ. He was like a strict but absent master who had gone to heaven and left his servants by themselves in his castle, where they shamelessly invaded the larder, went down to the wine cellar, reclined on the soft beds—danced while the cat was gone. Ah,
but should He appear suddenly at the door, how the tables would be overthrown, and what cries these befrocked suitors would emit, and how the Lord’s bow would twang!
One day as I was sitting on the monastery terrace with one of the monks, I brought the conversation around to the saint I love so much, Francis of Assisi. The monk had never heard of him. He made a sour face (Francis was a Catholic saint, a heretic). But Greek curiosity won in the end.
“Fine and good, you tell and I’ll listen.” He crossed his hands over his abdomen, ready to condemn everything I said.
“This saint,” I began, “used to say in his prayers to God: ‘How can I enjoy heaven, Lord, when I know hell exists? Dear Lord, either take pity on the damned and put them in paradise, or let me go down to the inferno and comfort the sufferers. I’ll found an order whose purpose will be to descend to the inferno and comfort the damned. And if we can’t lighten their pain, we’ll remain in hell ourselves and suffer along with them.’”
The monk burst out laughing. “Now let me tell you a nice story,” he said. “Once upon a time a pasha invited a pauper to dinner. He placed a plate of olives in front of him and also a plate of black caviar. Without so much as glancing at the olives, the pauper attacked the caviar unstintingly and ate away. ‘Have some olives too, brother,’ the pasha said to him. ‘Why, pasha effendi?’ the other replied. ‘What’s wrong with caviar?’
“Understand? Paradise is the black caviar. I’m sorry, but as far as I’m concerned, your friend Francescis—whatdyacallim?—is just another idiotic Catholic.”
On the day of my departure I rose before dawn and went to matins, longing to hear the monotonous quavering melody the monks offered to God, and the moving words, so full of contrition, which the faithful of ancient times had found to bid the Lord good morning before the break of day: “God, my God, before thee I come in the morning. My soul thirsteth for thee, flesh longeth for thee in a dry and thirsty land, where no water is . . .” I stood in a stall next to the window, through which I saw the Libyan Sea far below me, boundless and untraveled, still white in the morning mist, and reaching out as far as the warm sands of Africa. The birds had awakened with the monks and begun their own melodizing to greet the light. In the middle of the courtyard the cypress’s crown was already aglow, while the leaves of the orange tree next to it remained plunged in dark green obscurity. The semantrist had completed his round of the cells to wake the monks; now, entering the half-lighted chapel, he removed his flowing kalýmmafko and hung the wooden semantron next to the door. As he stood silhouetted in the doorway, his curly, raven-black beard and the hair falling free over his shoulders had a brilliant sheen. Tall, of blackish complexion, he was overflowing with youthfulness. What a shame that a body such as his had not been destined to embrace a woman and beget children. His sons and daughters would have beautified the world.
While I was meditating on how often the world’s loss fails to bring about God’s gain, a woman wrapped in a black wimple appeared timidly at the doorway, an infant in her arms. The abbot had warned me the day before, with a cunning smile, not to be scandalized when a newlywed from a nearby village came on the morrow to ask his blessing for her newborn son. She wanted to protect him from the evil eye; apparently he was extremely beautiful, and the bushy-browed glouters were putting a hex on him.
Stopping next to the door, she began to wait with bowed head for matins to finish and the abbot to approach with his aspergillum. The atmosphere seemed to change, the heavy monkish exhalations to mix with the woman’s breath, the chapel to smell of milk and the laurel oil from the newlywed’s freshly washed hair. The abbot’s sluggish voice took on new life, just precisely at the moment he was chanting the joyous hymn: “It is the Lord God and He is revealed to us; blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord. . . .” The monks leaned forward in their stalls, turned, threw sidewise glances toward the door; two or three began to cough. The semantrist went up to the woman and whispered something in her ear. Without raising her head, she stepped forward two paces and sat down in the stall nearest the door. You could sense that everyone had lost his tranquility, and that all the monks now, and I with them, could not wait for matins to be over.
The sun had risen meanwhile. The yard filled with light; the oblique rays entered the chapel, making the holy icons and the monks’ faces and hands gleam brightly. The monks stepped down from their stalls, all sighing “Praise the Lord, praise the Lord.” The service had ended.
The abbot donned his stole and picked up the aspergillum. The semantrist stood behind him with the ciborium of holy water. The woman placed herself at the door, her whole body in the light. She had pushed away her black wimple now, revealing her entire face. Lifting her eyes, she looked at the abbot, who had rested his palm on the infant’s tiny head and begun to pronounce the blessing. Afterwards, she fixed her gaze on the semantrist. Her large, black, sorrowful eyes, with their inexpressible sweetness, reminded me of the eyes of the Portaïtissa at the Iviron Monastery—the same sweetness, the same anguish of mother for son.
Suddenly the infant began to kick his tiny legs and bawl. In order to pacify him, the mother unbuttoned her bodice and drew out her breast. The infant snatched at the nipple and became quiet. It was a moment I shall never forget: the newlywed’s bosom gleaming in its snow-white roundness, the air smelling even more strongly than before of milk, also ever so slightly of sweat, and the Libyan Sea stretched out, a rich blue now, behind the woman’s shoulders. The abbot became tongue-tied, but just for an instant. God quickly conquered in him, and he completed the prayer without disgracing himself.
The devil had prodded me to speak to the semantrist. I went up to him in the courtyard, although I had no idea what to say.
“Father Nikódemos . . .” I began.
But he increased his pace and entered his cell.
An hour later I resumed my travels, on foot as I always preferred.
How many years have elapsed since then? Forty? Fifty? The monastery has faded from my memory and in its place, gleaming above the Libyan Sea, is nothing but the mother’s round, white, immortal breast.
Nightfall overtook me the next day as I was nearing a village. I was hungry and tired from having walked all day over rocky barrens, but though I knew no one in the village, nor even had the slightest idea of its name, I felt at ease. I knew that no matter what door you knock on in a Cretan village, it will be opened for you. A meal will be served in your honor and you will sleep between the best sheets in the house. In Crete the stranger is still the unknown god. Before him all doors and all hearts are opened.
Night had already begun to descend as I entered the village. The doors were all shut; in the courtyards the dogs caught the intruder’s scent and began to bark. Where should I go, at which door should I knock? At the priest’s home, where all strangers find refuge. The priests in our villages are uncultivated, their education meager; they are incapable of any theoretical discussion of Christian doctrine. But Christ lives in their hearts, and sometimes they see Him with their eyes, if not by the pillow of a wartime casualty, then sitting beneath a flowering almond tree in springtime.
A door opened. A little old woman came out with a lamp in her hand to see who the stranger was who had entered the village at such an hour. I stopped. “Long may you live, madam,” I said, sweetening my voice so that she would not be frightened. “I am a stranger and have nowhere to sleep. Would you be so kind as to direct me to the priest’s house?”
“Gladly. I’ll hold the lamp so you won’t stumble. God—his holy name be blessed—gave soil to some, stones to others. Our lot was the stones. Watch your step and follow me.”
She led the way with the lamp. We turned a corner and arrived at a vaulted doorway. A lantern was hanging outside.
“This is the priest’s house,” said the old woman.
Lifting the lamp, she threw the light on my face and sighed. She was going to say something, but changed her mind.
“Thank you, my fine woman,” I said. ??
?Sorry to bother you. Good night.”
She kept looking at me, not going away.
“If you wouldn’t mind a poor house, you could come and lodge with me.”
But I had already knocked on the priest’s door. I heard heavy steps in the yard. The door opened. Standing in front of me was an old man with a snow-white beard and long hair flowing down over his shoulders. Without asking me who I was or what I wanted, he extended his hand.
“Welcome. Are you a stranger? Come in.”
I heard voices as I entered. Doors opened and closed, and several women slipped hastily into the adjoining room and vanished. The priest had me sit down on the couch.
“My wife, the papadhiá, is a little indisposed; you’ll have to excuse her. But I myself will cook for you, lay the table for your supper, and prepare a bed so that you can sleep.”
His voice was heavy and afflicted. I looked at him. He was extremely pale, and his eyes were swollen and inflamed, as though from weeping. But no thought of a misfortune occurred to me. I ate, slept, and in the morning the priest came and brought me a tray of bread, cheese, and milk. I held out my hand, thanked him, and said goodbye.
“God bless you, my son,” he said. “Christ be with you.”
I left. At the edge of the village an old man appeared. Placing his hand over his breast, he greeted me.
“Where did you spend the night, son?” he asked.
“At the priest’s house.”
The old man sighed. “Ah, the poor fellow. And you didn’t catch wind of anything?”
“What was there to catch wind of?”