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Niobe
Iakovos watches Niobe brush her hair; black as the depths of the Dicte Cave. It splays on her shoulders, as though nurtured by the night. He moves to run fingers through its slippery sheen and lifts a heavy lock to his lips. "You are the muse of Minos." He meets her eyes in the mirror. "You were painted two thousand years ago. How have those genes of inspiration and savage sacrifice dropped directly through the generations?"
Niobe smiles. "What are you? An artist or a geneticist?"
As he paints the women of Hania, Iakovos is haunted by their pervasive predecessors; the women with bare breasts and bead-hung hair, who watched youths leaping bulls.
The women's essence might lie in Crete's spent hills; tender still, although deprived of tree-lined dignity, like women de-flowered on a day too distant to recall.
How great those trees grew when Minos moved through the land to renew his laws. How they blazed when Talos, his brazen, bull-headed defender hurled rocks at invaders. The island had flowed with sacrificial fire. Great horns of consecration curved insatiably against the sky. The smell of incense, smoke and blood merged with the myths of the moon. Superstition and inviolate ritual vied with a meticulous creativity.
Niobe leans over Iakovos, urging him to the bed on which small pools of waning sun spill like liquid gold. She is a little afraid of his perceptions. As darkly sensuous as Minos himself might have been, he works as though directly in touch with the Minoans who painted their palaces with every nuance of the natural world.
On hot nights, when the city's sensuality is palpable, Iakovos sees in Niobe the nonchalant women who smiled at Knossos. Lulled by the late light and voices in the street below, past and present merge. Niobe assumes the dark flesh of the palace women with its Anatolian fragrance. She might embody their subservience to ritual and sour hints of the bewildered bull which have clung to them as they left the bull court.
Vassilis scrutinises the painting of Niobe Iakovos is about to sign with his flourishing signature. The face is Niobe's, yet her puckish smile seems alien.
"What does Niobe think of it?" he asks.
"She hasn't seen it yet. She's tiring of me. She suspects I have another woman. How can I tell her I'm haunted by women painted almost three thousand years ago?"
Vassilis says, "I've been trying to convince you for years there are sources of great power that need only a receptive mind to manifest. Think of what has happened on our island. Is it any wonder the past has persisted in the present?"
Vassilis is a practising alchemist; a rare and suspect occupation that draws a response from the older people who have seen such perversions of human nature, Vassilis’s propositions seem viable.
As Niobe's interest in Iakovos wanes, he sees his chance to seduce her. His senses, too often channelled from sensuality to esoteric formulae, are roused by her dark defences.
One dust-filled afternoon he threads through the narrow streets of the old Venetian town to the small house of peeling blue plaster where Niobe lives, taking in sewing and making alterations on the sewing machine inherited from her mother.
In her mind she makes undulating dresses in shades of sunset and dawn, laced by layers of night, to flow through moonlight on some ethereal woman. Flowers of the Cretan spring shimmer to her from their fields beneath the limestone peaks. In her mind she paints them onto fine cotton, so as the clothes move on willowy women, the flowers flutter as though stirred by a light wind, expanding with the intangibility of dream.
But as Vassilis enters, he sees only coarse suiting and plain working skirts with a white buttoned blouse draped on Niobe's simple chair.
She raises her dark head, turning to him eyes that are red-rimmed from sewing in poor light. Her skin is sallow, her shoulders still hunched from her posture at the machine.
But he agrees with Iakovos. In certain light - a shaft of late sun falling as she stands by the window, under the moon or in low lamp light, Niobe is transformed into a mildly mocking and sophisticated woman of Minos. As she turns to gather her work, he sees her profile; uncannily like that of a Minoan.
She serves him strong coffee. They speak of the forthcoming election and Turkish war-mongering, carefully avoiding the personal. Both feel unaccountably shy.
Iakovos stands like a watchful spirit between them. Then, as though Aphrodite has intervened, they acknowledge and dismiss him simultaneously and draw together in the fading light.
Their union is instant and complete. Vassilis feels Niobe alchemically form. She has the liquidity of water as she slips between his hands, the ferocity of fire in her rapid responses, the sweetness of unpolluted air as she turns and briefly stretches and in the movement of her flesh, the undulations of the earth. She becomes his personal creation.
Niobe sees less of Iakovos. His pain is alleviated by an increasing retreat into dream. As day slides softly into moon-white night, his grasp of reality falters. Women's faces darken, their bodies assume lithe dimensions. Their voices fade as though absorbed by the past. Their lips move with strange and soundless words.
Iakovos passes among them; his eyes distant while injesting their essence. He sits absently at cafes in the outer harbour, taking an hour over a single brandy, unnoticed by the throng; other aliens, briefly touching, then leaving the town.
He returns to his studio near the Archaeological Museum on Halidhon and looks long at the portrait of Niobe. Her head appears to shift slightly and she confronts his distraction with inscrutable eyes. Peering into them, Iakovos sees the island, thick with cypresses beneath a hard blue sky. Fires flicker before tall lilies.
He withdraws and Niobe reverts to a likeness in oils. Iakovos sets out for her house.
The buildings of the old town bombed by Nazis, were once elegant Venetian palaces and vast warehouses for goods brought in by sea. They rear like ragged ghosts, softened by lamplight, with the aroma of fresh fish and chicken turning over charcoal. The people within these fragile shells also inhabit a fantasy.
Iakovos reaches Niobe's house. The windows are unlit, the house uncannily still. He knocks. Silence. He pushes the door and it opens. He passes through the dark kitchen into the cramped room where Niobe sews and fantasises. A plain dress lies on the couch. It might drape a sleeping figure. Iakovos lifts it and it hangs limply in his hands.
He moves to the bedroom. Is Niobe unwell? The door is closed. He turns the handle and enters.
Two heads lie on the pillow. Niobe's face almost touches that of Vassilis. They are sleeping, as innocent as the first couple on Earth, devoid of guilt and blindly fulfilled in each other's existence.
Iakovos cannot move. To find Niobe with a stranger would be painful. But Vassilis is his closest friend. Stunned, he watches them almost imperceptibly breathing.
Then Iakovos rips the sheet off Vassilis and pulls him onto the floor. He pummels and drags him across the room. Niobe's screams eventually slow his blows. Sickened, he backs from the room and leaves the house.
Vassilis is hospitalised, slowly recovers and three weeks later marries Niobe.
The couple avoids the cafes where Iakovos sits; sullen and unseeing. Initially he is wracked by the need for vengeance but as the winter rains begin, his impetus falters.
He lies for hours in his dark studio with no urge to paint. He is transfixed by the portrait of Niobe, still propped on the easel. Her eyes mock him, changing with the light; the derisive eyes of the Bronze Age woman whose influence was enhanced by the power of the Great Goddess.
Iakovos goes to Knossos, intent, although he does not know how, on exorcising the woman's image. The palace remains are bleak; Arthur Evans's self-conscious restoration abandoned and misplaced; the great horns of consecration a latter-day fancy, seeming now devoid of religious significance.
Iakovos peers into the lower rooms, redolent with dread and now out of bounds. Dolphins, suspended in a displaced world of water, swim in what is thought to have been the queen's quarters and, nearby, the brooding room wher
e Minos is assumed to have sat, is fraught with the fantasy of griffins.
Iakovos ponders the perversity of Pasiphae, mating with the great white bull and giving birth to the Minotaur. Breathing the legacy of two thousand years, he feels the pressure of the labyrinth, built by Daedalus, as though he is penetrating its dark depths.
He thinks of Minos's fury at his wife's bizarre adultery. He envisages Niobe with Vassilis and sinks onto cold stone; motionless as their bodies move relentlessly through his mind.
Niobe gives birth as the snow begins to melt on the White Mountains. Briefly, she sees the struggling child, then, gasping from loss of blood, dies.
Vassilis is numb. His cold hand closes on her white brow. He had felt her thoughts extinguished one by one.
He looks in anguish at the screaming child. Unable to tolerate her, he instructs the midwife to arrange a rapid adoption.
The child grows with fluid limbs and hair, that like Niobe's, flows around her face, suggesting the undulations of a secret river. She has inherited strange insights from her father. Oddly compelled, her foster parents call her Ariadne.
She has hung her mother's clothes, made on the machine that is now hers, on the walls of the small room in Mochon. The dresses - some bearing the flowers that had moved through her mind - retain their inner life; flowers that shimmer as the first spring sunshine slants through the window, then dim, as though about to die, when autumn rain spatters the glass.
This is when Ariadne wonders what her mother was like. She has seen Vassilis, sitting darkly at a cafe. Everyone knows of his alchemical claims. Some believe them. Others are sceptical. Many also know how he had his child instantly adopted.
Ariadne wants to speak to him. She watches him from a distance; noting the intelligent face as he discusses some controversial magic; confident in the ancient art to which he is addicted.
One night he moves with relish round his workshop. In his head swim the enigmatic elements of nature; the impetus of life, the black hole of death, the euphoria of unity, the yearning to grasp infinity.
Piece by piece, he will approach the Great Work; the attainment of perfection symbolised by the creation of gold. In dreams he perceives the secrets of hermetic alchemy.
Enveloped by the soft southern night, he enters the labyrinth of the gods; an interlocked logic of growth, death and renewal, carried in the essence of a single seed.
He enters the seed and feels it pulsate, expanding with the aspirations of those trapped by Earth's revolutions. He feels the lifting of exultant life, its diminishing and inevitable demise. Then the thrust of regeneration, even a glimpse of infinity.
He always wakes at this point; the enormity too great to grasp.
On other nights he is transformed into a body of light, filled with "quintessence"; the elusive fifth element sought by philosophers.
By first light he returns to his workroom. Fleetingly, he senses Niobe and hears splintered intimations of her voice. He must create the Philosopher's Stone. It is spring. The time is right. He will go to the sea and find the stone of the philosophers; a real stone which must be prepared and purified before the final Philosopher's Stone can even be contemplated.
He drives through Hania's suburbs - subdued after the brief winter. The sun is warm behind him; the first fire of a new season which will be washed with flowers.
The White Mountains shine. The shepherds who brought their herds to the lower reaches, test the air and look towards the high slopes, still white with snow.
Vassilis reaches the wild expanse of Mylos Beach. The waves rear; fury contained, to crash and, still enraged, withdraw.
Thodorou island - in myth a beast that would have eaten Crete - has a dream-like haze, its great cave, a watchful eye, as though the beast still waits to encroach. Poseidon had turned it into stone and now the island abounds with kri-kri, the wild Cretan goat.
Vassilis walks past driftwood contorted like alien creatures flung ashore by a force Poseidon would consider playful. He stoops and picks up a large grey stone banded with white lines of erosion. It is typical of the crude distress created by the Cretan Sea.
He holds the cold stone to the new sun's warmth, then places it in his pocket. The sun strengthens; symbol of the gold of earth and inner light.
Iakovos begins to paint again. His hand moves spontaneously with swift deliberation, creating a wild abstraction of the labyrinth and its rituals. He smells the burning oil, the sacrificial flesh of the bull, sees smokily, the dark women dancing with jewels flickering through flames that die, yet still emanate the essence of fire. He paints dark symbols; people looking at the new moon; transfixed by its clean curve as though relating their existence to the constellations.
He pauses, steps back. The canvas seethes; a swirling incoherence, which, as he looks, flows in waves of fear and blind abeyance.
The next morning Vassilis leaves the house at dawn and drives to the lower slopes of the mountains behind the town. There he gathers the fresh spring dew; pulling up grasses, and, turning to acknowledge the sun, shaking the dew into a small container.
Ariadne has located Vassilis's house. She finds it shuttered. But, nearing a lower window, she peers through a crack. Vassilis moves purposefully round the sparse room. Ariadne sees him take a white powder and from the other container, shake in the dew.
She strains to see, as he turns his back to her, raising his hands in a silent ritual. She smells smoke; an acrid burning from the bench, but sees no flames. Vassilis has created the secret fire.
Ariadne has an impulse to knock on the door, but her courage fails and, thoughtfully, she leaves.
Vassilis takes up the striped stone he had found on Mylos Beach and places it in a mortar. As though succumbing to his will, it responds to the pestle, crumbling into countless pieces. He takes the vessel of smokeless fire and adds it to the "materia prima." He has created the Philosophic Egg. He pours this back into the vessel, seals it and places it in an anthanor where it will be kept at a constant temperature.
He watches as sulphur - the hot male symbol of the sun - interacts with mercury; coldly feminine and reflecting the moon.
Ariadne grows. Each day she feels more ambivalent towards her foster parents. From neighbours she has learned how Iakovos loved Niobe and how Vassilis took her from him. And she knows where Iakovos lives.
She has heard he has become a recluse. She reaches the small house, knocks and waits, until eventually the door opens. Iakovos, unkempt, confronts her. He knows who she is and for a moment, sees her as the child he might have had. Then his face hardens. He waits.
"May I come in?" Ariadne almost whispers. He gestures for her to pass. "Why have you come?"
Ariadne wants to say she is seeking her roots, true relationships, the meaning of her existence. But she is speechless. The studio is oppressive and steeped in the smell of oil paint.
She feels Iakovos breathing fast by her shoulder. Ariadne is wearing one of Niobe's dresses with blood-red flowers that bleed as she moves. She looks at the canvas suffused with fear.
As though influenced by her predecessor, she is drawn into the horror of the labyrinth and is aware of fire without smoke, of imminent suffocation.
And she is aware of Iakovos running his hand through her hair, while Niobe moves through his mind. Ariadne pulls away and rushes from the room.
Vassilis, who had fallen asleep while watching the disturbing interaction of mercury and sulphur, suddenly wakes. Niobe stands before him in her white dress bruised with poppies. Is she Niobe? Or her double? She is younger, her wide eyes accusing.
Vassilis reaches for her, but, with an acrid smell of smoke, she fades. There are red petals on the floor, but these too vanish when he stoops to gather them.
Trembling, he approaches his work bench and from clay, begins to shape a small figure resembling Niobe. Uncannily she grows; his longing shaping her lithe limbs, the undulating hair. Her features are minutely formed and she looks at him; saddened, her body loosely mourning. Yet she i
s lifeless.
Gently he lifts her and carries her to the piece of waste ground by his house. It is still moist from the spring rains. He scoops a hollow and places her within. Then, as the moon sheds white light at his feet, he walks round it clockwise, chanting an ancient formula, which intensifies as he begins to sweat. The dead Niobe of flesh and blood dances in his mind, then the clay replica trembles and with the impetus of sudden life, stands and looks up at Vassilis with real eyes. Her black hair is silvered by the moon and lifts in the night breeze. She raises her arms as though yearning to be held.
Vassilis bends and gathers her in one hand. Her white flesh is soft and cold. She whimpers. He raises her to his lips, kisses her tiny head and flowing hair. He takes her inside and places her carefully on the bed. She sways, falls and rolls over. Vassilis sits beside her and strokes her body with one finger. She sighs and looks at him in recognition.
"Niobe," he whispers. He places her on the pillow and stretches beside her. He closes his eyes and Niobe fills his mind. He feels her arms draw him, her breath warm on his face. He embraces her and is borne to the limits of lilting existence.
The Philosopher's Egg changes, grows dark. Vassilis unstops the vessel and the smell of corruption floods out. He replaces the seal.
When he wakes, Niobe has vanished. Distraught, he leaves the house, eyes downcast to seek her tiny form. Fearfully, he hurries through the harbour, blindly boards a bus and is borne along the wild coast to Kolimbari.
Fishermen pore over broken nets, the presence of freshly caught fish is potent in the streets. Mysteriously impelled, Vassilis climbs the hill to Moni Gonia and walks on, to where the road winds high above the sea. Black rock is heaped against bright blue water, thrusting and retrieving ferocious heads of foam. Early spring flowers glimmer in the rocks.
Vassilis sees the distant figure of a man. He walks faster, as though the stranger has some personal and imperative significance. Vassilis gains on him. It is Iakovos, carrying easel and paints and heading for a piece of ground with a view of the great Gulf of Hania.
Vassilis stops short. Iakovos looks up. Uncannily, their animosity evaporates and the two men stand in silence as though reconciled. Iakovos unpacks his paints and sets up his easel. The canvas is stark in the sun. Before Iakovos applies his brush, a dwarfed and wavering woman appears; a nebulous suggestion, that, as Iakovos paints, grows into the image of Niobe. A few inches high, she is perfect in every detail, from fragile fingernails to splayed black hair.
As Iakovos continues to paint, she slowly expands; her minute limbs filling and possessing the canvas. Instinctively Iakovos paints one of the dresses that flow with flowers and sinuously sway as though lifted by the west wind.
Suddenly a strong air current issues from the canvas, drawing the men into a vortex of colour and warmth. They are enveloped by female flesh; the homunculus of Niobe striving for tangible life.
Then Vassilis smells sour putrefaction; an inevitable aspect of alchemical advance. Niobe walks away. The men follow. The flowers on her dress fade, droop, their petals falling with the foul smell of decomposition. Her skin blackens, her dark hair drifts like a funeral veil.
They pass through a mass of rocks scythed as though by knives. They form a distorted processional way, leaning like the wounded guardians of some demonically denuded land. Then the men stand on the great staircase leading to the Knossos labyrinth.
Niobe descends into darkness. Her putrefaction drifts into the crumbled crevices. The men pass through the passages, pulsating with the transition of life into premature death. A bellow echoes through the darkness.
The possessiveness and guilt that had overwhelmed the men, are drawn into the darkly breathing walls. Niobe - dying and obscene - turns to face them. It was she who had bellowed in her anguish.
Vassilis knows that from death, his alchemy will draw life. But first he and Iakovos, must pass beyond Niobe, hunched silently now on the tainted ground.
Shapelessly, with a stench of dead lilies, she is disintegrating. The texture of her rotten flesh wraps around the men. They moan, lifting feet that might be forged from iron.
Then there is daylight and spring whispers in the trees outside the labyrinth. And there, beneath a flurry of fresh leaves, stands Ariadne; vibrant in the restless air. She could be the daughter of Minos, wooed and abandoned by Theseus. She might have danced with the early passion of puberty on the maze-like floor built by Daedalus. But now she stands softly; flesh, blood and a soul perceiving its roots.
Both men had loved Niobe and Ariadne bore her genes. Through her they sense the unity sought by artist and alchemist. The Philosopher's Stone has many guises and is as intangible as air.
Its presence lies now in the face of Ariadne; a response like a long-lit fire of unconditional feeling for the two frightened men motionless before her.
Iakovos clutches the canvas, through which all have passed. On its surface Ariadne has replaced Niobe. Red flowers dance on her dress and a faint fragrance floats on the unsullied air.
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Labyrinth
This is a tale investing Pasiphae and Egyptian royalty with fantasy. Pasiphae, after the fall of Crete, obsessively seeks the Minotaur. She is guilt-ridden by her adultery with the bull and convinced that only the death of Asterius, the Minotaur, will redeem humanity.