What would re-bind him? What glue would he find to reassemble the whole, to keep what was left from crumbling, being swift-crushed to dust? Would a word be enough? Would his word be enough? Could I be sure of my counsel, its effect? I had borne witness to a ruined hull of tears, a saddened lament of ashen regret, and all I could do was pray.
I do not know when I first noticed, but a dove came into the habit of frequenting a laurel in the cloister yard, the one which shaded the fountain at its centre. A sweet creature, she cooed a gentle melody, trilled up from a sated heart like the contented purr of a well-loved cat.
At some point during his retreat, I noticed her there and then each day thereafter. The monks likewise remarked her gentle presence and took it as an omen that God smiled on our work – the harvest would be plentiful, they thought, and the winter not so wicked.
But she brought me peace for another reason. For when the novice returned from bringing the Sad One’s meal to the window of his cell, remarking the cries of anguish which poured forth from within, I sometimes faltered in my faith, that my counsel had been correct.
At such times, I felt the need to sit by the fountain, within earshot of his distress, to pray. Yet it was the dove, not my prayers, which brought my anxious heart to rest. Whether her soft voice heard or her watchful eye spied through green leaves, yes, it was she who brought me comfort.
I have learnt, through long and bitter work, that the night is always darkest before dawn. Nevertheless, some small voice continued to invade my mind, like an earwig nibbling and gnawing at my resolve. Would he survive his retreat?
Over and over the Lord has told me to trust but ever I fail Him and this time no different. I grew ready to thrash myself for the ill doing I had brought the Sad One, prayed long for the strength not to break down the door and take his poor wasted fragments in my arms. To cry out: Forgive me!
I prayed. Oh, how I prayed! And at the darkest hour, yes, the Lord lifted me from the pit of despair when the novice returned one day and remarked: Now, he sings.
Sings? I thought. Sings?
Do we do it to ourselves? Is it a little game we play with the Almighty? Proof! Give me proof! is our demand, over and over. Prove that You exist! Prove that You listen and answer Your servants’ humble prayers!
I who am a very poor servant, one who demands so much of his Creator. The boy who drives the plough has more trust in His grace than I. Till now. Till the burden of proof, the sceptic’s heavy load, lightened with the breaking of dawn on my heart’s horizon on the thirty-ninth day when the novice came, not to tell of wails and rent flesh but the gentle hum of melody, and soft singing in a tongue he knew not.
That night Albaro returned from the monastery of Agios Georgios to wait beneath the laurel till I unbarred the cell and released its prisoner next day. So it was that we both watched the Sad One emerge like a babe born into the harsh light of a foreign world.
With one hand he shielded his eyes from a setting sun, with the other he clutched a single sheet of torn and filthy parchment. Indeed, we watched him emerge from the cave leaving all else behind save this scrap of paper trembling with life between his fingers, poetry in a script only his hand could write.
He had surrendered – fully, completely, been crushed to dust. No fragment remained of his self to be rebound, reforged. None needed. For out of dust had arisen a jewel of creation, our Lady Kiria, the merciful, the most compassionate. Embodied loving-kindness born afresh by his hand.
It was Kiria, the All-Pure, who had brought him home. By the grace of our Lady, he was restored to God’s care.
Seven
He began that very day, such was his hunger to write, to perfect the image scratched in charcoal on a snatch of discarded parchment.
Striding purposefully across to the fountain where we waited, he fixed me with eyes no longer rent by pain, eyes in which desire, a deep passion burned in its stead, and demanded: From where can I secure more paper and implements?
He clutched the sketch in a grimy hand whose fingernails were torn and ragged. Gently, Albaro took the drawing from his grasp and we both looked long at the face of the Lady, the bonny health of the Child.
With her arms she encircled the babe, yet one hand reached out toward us, her eyes turned from a son’s frothing joy in arms to fix her anonymous witness with immutable courage, knowing sorrow, infinite compassion.
Oh, how he had captured the bottomless well of her love within those coal-smudged eyes!
What you have written here is in the Eleousa style, I said. The Virgin cherishes her Son, it is clear, but still she shares with us the depth of emotion of a young mother who fears for the fate of her child.
No words did either the Sad One or his brother speak, yet the air was full of twinned resonance. And after some minutes, Albaro returned the drawing to its creator and said: It is done then.
Yes, the other agreed. It is done.
He had unblocked the channel from the source. A river pure and molten, wild and free, again flowed from his heart, and he trailed his hand in the water of the fountain which had murmured in the courtyard all these long days and nights.
This sustained me, he said of the water. It quenched my thirst with its longer-than ring song.
A new light welled in his eyes, these eyes of lightest brightest blue. He ran wet fingers through matted hair, scratched at a beard of rusty sand, suddenly grinned at the magnitude of revelation.
You knew all along, brother! he laughed and clapped Albaro on the back. Yet it was only when I heard the fountain’s voice, when I listened closely to its song that I knew, that I remembered, and slipped into its cleansing waters to heal my wounds.
Albaro whooped his joy, scooped water from the fountain, flung it up into the air.
We shall have to find you a new name, I said into the Sad One’s laughing face.
He is Agios Georgios! Albaro cried. Who has his dragon slain!
And anointed this fresh baptism with the holy water by his sleeve.
Eight
Some would call it fortuitous but I believe it an act of God. As Albaro took vows to join our order and follow his own calling to serve the brotherhood in Sinai, our master iconographer, Ioannis of Itanos, returned from the Queen of Cities without his young apprentice. It seemed the lad had been wooed by the grandness of empire and taken his leave of our modest island workshop to prostrate himself before a fine door.
Under normal circumstances this would have been impossible. He was indentured to our service, after all. But Ioannis could only shrug when I pointed out the obvious.
He is my son, Father. How can I refuse him anything?
Fortune smiles in the most ill-lit corridors. Ioannis acquired a new apprentice and Georgios ample practice in the polishing of his image. He continued to dwell in the small cell of his predecessor but now a candle burned the whole night through as he pored over texts describing technique and process, as he experimented with pigments and the application of gold leaf. Over and over he practiced the fineness of his stroke with brushes of different size, all the while working only with Her image.
The master approved this course of action. It is wise, he said, to perfect the writing of one icon before moving on to the other saints.
Yet Ioannis was greatly disturbed by Georgios’ insistence on writing the icon in the manner of its original conception during retreat rather than the manner prescribed in the texts, and I would hear heated argumentation emanating from the open studio door.
No – no! The face must be more angular, the jaw firmer, the lips thinner!
He never questioned Georgios’ portrayal of the Christ who gazed up at his mother in full abundance of the radiance of life, but only the manner of the Lady. And when he began to work with colour? Oh, it set the master’s teeth even further on edge and his rants grew louder still!
Do you call this the Lord’s work? I would hear him cry as a board was flung aside. No, no, no! You have read the texts! The maphorion must
be ochre red! And she is too dark, her skin should be lighter, refract more of the light. Like this –
I could picture the scenes of tussle from the oaths issuing from the far end of the cloister yard each day – Ioannis hovering about, taking up pencil or brush to adjust this or that, only to have his student alter it again. I could picture Georgios at his bench, quiet, implacable, no matter how much his master seethed. If I ever did hear him speak, his tone was low, even, its content undiscernible to those passing the workshop door.
One day I could take no more of my imaginings and invited myself in to bear witness. I watched as he worked, as they both worked at their separate benches, while several novices bustled about in the ongoing preparation of panels.
Indeed it was as I heard the master describe. This was not the Theotokos of template and tradition, of technique and rigorous rubric. Her face was softer, fuller, rounder. And yes, its colour was that of dark honey, her eyes the same smudged coals as in the first sketch, finely shaped like thick-lashed almonds. Yet within these black pools, a hint of green winked, a mix of malachite and azurite eddied in their depths, backlit by ethereal presence. I know not how he conjured it, but the effect astonished me. It was as if she held you within her well of compassion. Held you, and would not give you up.
Now I studied the maphorion which disturbed Ioannis beyond all else. Rather than painting the veil which dropped to her shoulders in ochre red to show her suffering and acquired holiness, he had rendered the whole in gold leaf. In the soft light of the workshop, the veil looked like the colour of ripened lemons. But when burnished by the afternoon sun? Then I beheld her true divinity – Kiria framed by the pure light of heaven.
Why do you persist in this disrespect? Ioannis cried at his apprentice, grateful for my magisterial presence. You know there is a specific text you must follow when writing the icon. You know you cannot intrude upon things you have not seen. Father! Tell him!
To paint in gold is to paint in Light, I said to Georgios. Ioannis speaks sincerely. You cannot play with images you have not seen. You must stay with the Truth as revealed.
But I have seen, Georgios said simply. And the Lord would have me write what I have seen. I dare not vary the script of divine vision no matter how many earthly rubrics I contradict along the way.
His eyes held a child’s wide innocence while Ioannis’ were confusion pure. I smiled into the gorge between the two and said: Aristotle believed that memory is an imprint on the soul. We see with the eye of the soul and therefore recognise the saints when they appear in vision. But it seems it has happened for you the other way round.
That ended it once and for all. Truce called in the face of unwavering resolve and inner sight, Ioannis looked anew at his apprentice. This was no student who should mix his master’s colours, prepare his panels, board after board, silently watching the teacher at work, year in, year out, heeding the murmured instructions of successive lessons drenched in painterly strokes.
I will not question you again, brother, Ioannis promised. But I can help you translate your vision with advice in colour and technique to bring what you have seen out from the ground of your being.
And watching their silent labour, the experienced craftsman and his simple brother, I felt soon we would have two masters in the workshop of Agia Aikaterini, one schooled in tradition, the other born to write.
Nine
From the beginning he prepared for the day he would leave. Writing his Kiria, his Child over and over, never starting the next till the last fully complete. Weeks or more each would take and he accompanied each panel from beginning to end, never calling for a board from the hand of a novice, but the faithful lover of each exemplar alone. He glued linen strips, he applied the gesso. He sketched in charcoal, he laid leaves of gold. He mixed the pigments with egg yolk and vinegar, and after many weeks of labour would seal the icon in a thick mantle of varnish.
All the while he worked silently, reverently, building up the layers of paint and deepening the colours to a jewel-like consistence. In so doing, he transformed his world from darkness to light. As if the knowledge had always been there, dormant, sleeping, till the time ripe for its manifestation in one glorious image, written over and over again, from the book of a placated heart.
So was each Kiria born, so was each Kiria resurrected into an afterlife fully realised by his hand. Each the same as the last, the first, an Eleousa of Tender Mercy, approaching the Glykophilousa of Sweet-Kissing. There was the loving expression, one for the other, nestled together, cheek to cheek.
But in his translation, the Panagia turned not toward her son or with eyes sadly away as decreed in a manual. Rather, she stared resolutely at her viewer, determined to share her strength, extend her compassion, her eyes immutable, unwavering, conveying the wisdom of her heart.
A mother’s love knows no bounds, a mother’s love.
We shall call her the Kardiotissa, I said. She reaches out to us with her heart and invites us to share in the redemptive power of her love.
Thus a day came when Ioannis said to Georgios: I can teach you no more. And he left us to continue a life’s work in seclusion, gifting me the first Kardiotissa fully realised under his master’s instruction in farewell.
Indeed, he apologised for its imperfection, for the imperfection of all he had written until now. Shook his head as he said: I can never seem to replicate the perfection of my vision. My translation is always faulty.
He shrugged, admitted: I have perfected technique. But what I speak of is not a matter of craft or skill with the hand or eye or materials at my elbow. I pray constantly for His support to bring the inner vision out. I am His servant, yet ever do I fail Him.
I smiled. We always fall short, brother, but still we try. Our souls swoon in the face of the Beloved, it is only natural. Blessed are we who do His work. Each action serves as your teacher – eating, sleeping, praying, writing, aught soever. Whatever you do serves the Lord.
I watched him leave, retreat once more into the wilderness, leading only a donkey which carried the tools of his trade.
Ten
Years pass as they do but never did he waver from his task. Afresh, anew, each time. Each time the first, the only time. Of entering eternity’s halls to capture a frozen instant, less than the twinkling of an eye, when Kiria’s countenance was stilled, her babe’s arms outstretched.
Held within a deep recess of candled light, a niche within the circlet of the world, he wrote in a space where everything was stilled, where life itself held its forever breath, waiting for what would be – the moment after the tock, before the tick again. Intermezzo this space, in-between.
Like St Basil, he found his place of retreat below the crest of a rise, at the end of a path which attracted no wayfarer, a place where he could dwell on Her image and a fine view of the sea, a tranquil paradise for converse with God. There, he plucked what he needed from hillside orchards of fig and pomegranate, apple, pear, or walnut, tended his own small garden, and kept wild boar at bay with a stone wall topped by a hedge of thorn.
Regularly he loaded a Panagia Kardiotissa into the saddlebag of his donkey and, with a slap to the backside, sent him off through the lemon grove, up and over the ridge, down across meadows and ploughed fields, past orchards and vineyards. Presently his helpmate would arrive at the monastery gate of Agios Georgios where a monk, having remarked his passage from some distance, waited to relieve him of his load. Tossed hay was brought for his pleasure, he drank deep from a trough of water freshly drawn while the monk prepared a return load of provisions for his master’s work or sustenance.
The hut in which Georgios dwelt was an old shepherd’s dwelling long since fallen into disuse and disrepair. It was on land we leased from the widow Theodora of the house of Constantine, part of a larger parcel on which we tended olives, grew grapes, pastured a herd of goats. A pious woman of some beauty, still in her prime, she understood the great works we attempted and offered her land for only a small tribute
.
One day she summoned me to her villa in the town to discuss the matter of a small chapel in the grounds of her country estate, erected in honour of the husband now deceased. It had been some years since I had consecrated the space. At that time she had no further funds to decorate its walls. But now, after several profitable seasons and another bountiful harvest expected, she summoned me and said:
I wish to commission an iconostasis, and for the walls to be daubed with fine frescoes. I have a desire for the farmhands to know the Word of our Lord although they cannot read Holy Scripture. I would wish their prayers directed by the stories of the saints, our Lady and, of course, our Saviour.
We agreed she should accompany me to the cloister workshop to discuss the various options with Master Ioannis. Once there, however, she was most taken by a depiction of the Theotokos rendered by Georgios in recluse.
By whose hand was this made?
An anchorite lives above the sea beyond our monastery in the Messara Valley. He writes from inner vision.
What else does he make?
None other than our Lady Kiria.
He never varies the script of her depiction?
I shook my head. It is the Kardiotissa he sees within his own heart which compels him to write.
She studied the form some more, then suddenly swept from the studio, throwing over her shoulder this instruction:
If you can convince him to include some other scenes in his repertoire, this is the artist who shall do the work.
At which Ioannis raised a bushy eyebrow which seemed to wish me much luck.
Some weeks later, opportunity took me to our brothers at Agios Georgios. It was time to do the calculations on quantities expected from this year’s harvest. No more than a set of predictions at this stage correlated against a list of Sinai’s needs, but as the task would be mine to fill the shortfall from contracts negotiated with third parties, it was best to have such information early.