Cartes Postales From Greece

by Victoria Hislop

  Afterwards, she walked back once again through the city’s treeless centre, peering upwards through the concrete towers to find the stars. She hurried home. She was late for the weekly Skype session with her parents in Lamia, but knew they would have stayed up. From the closest station, it was a half-hour train journey home.

  ‘Agapi mou? How are you? How is Düsseldorf? Is it cold?’

  There was not a breath between the questions.

  ‘I hope you are eating more than just sausages and schnitzel, my darling. I know German food is a bit heavy. I wish I could post you some nice dolmadakia. But I will send you some olive oil. Uncle Dimitris just finished his harvest and he says it’s the best for ten years or more. We’re so proud of you, darling. But we miss you. Aunt Georgia sends her love. It was her saint’s day yesterday. Did you remember to wish her Hronia Polla? She says she didn’t hear from you …’

  ‘Mama …’

  Her father’s face appeared on her screen, jostling her mother to the side. Athina loved to see them both, and enjoyed the glimpse into her old home, so familiar and unchanged. It gave her a lump in her throat.

  ‘Matia mou, your cousin Giannis just lost his job in the insurance company and he’s taken work as a barman. And his brother has been applying for positions all winter. And there is nothing. There is no work here. He was offered a post in Katerini but …’

  ‘Papa,’ she said. ‘Why isn’t he taking the job?’

  ‘We’ve told him to talk to you. Maybe you could find him something in Germany? Is there someone you could ask? He’s a good kid. Do you think you could? Your aunt would be so happy. Things are really bad here now.’

  ‘We’re so proud of you,’ interjected her mother, tipping her head on to her husband’s shoulder so that her daughter could see her. It was true. They were both full of pride that their only child had excelled at school and gone to university. They were also happy that they had been able to afford to send her to the UK to do a Masters. Not everyone could do that.

  Her father was determined to continue with the news update.

  ‘The government seems to be making things worse at the moment. There was a demonstration today and there is going to be general strike next week. Syriza are in trouble. They’ve disappointed everyone. Even the people who voted for them.’

  It was almost impossible to interrupt either her mother’s stream of consciousness or her father’s flow of gloom about the Greek economy. She did not even try.

  ‘It doesn’t look very cosy there,’ said her mother, peering into the screen. ‘Is it warm enough? Has it been snowing yet? How is your housemate?’

  Athina’s flatmate was a doctor who had placed an advertisement in a Greek newspaper, Kathimerini, for someone to share her place in Düsseldorf. She wanted to live with a fellow Greek, even though her hours in the hospital allowed little time at home. Athina herself had to leave at seven in the morning to get across the crowded city, and she often returned after ten at night, so the two young women rarely saw each other, except for brief chats outside the bathroom.

  ‘She’s fine,’ answered Athina. ‘Working long hours.’

  ‘You work too hard, too,’ said her mother ruefully.

  She could not hear exactly what her father muttered in her mother’s ear, but she thought she heard:

  ‘Better than not working at all …’

  The push and pull of her father’s pride and ambition for her and her mother’s strong desire to bring her only child back into the nest was something that had for years been a conflict. She reacted against both, and the conversations were exhausting. She had to conceal so much from them, and to try to avoid drowning in their well-meaning but sometimes bullying instructions. At least in Düsseldorf she was not stifled by them, as she had been in her home town.

  She had told her parents that she was paid 1,600 euros and had never been able to bring herself to correct their misconception that this was her monthly salary. In fact, it was her weekly salary, an astronomical sum by Greek standards. Initially, she could not believe how generous the bank was, but of late she had begun to regard her earnings as compensation. Some days it felt as if she had sold her life to this faceless corporation.

  The following day, at the early-morning conference, she gazed out at the usual view of the soulless city, with its kilometres of smug steel and glass. She realised she had to get away.

  There was a long weekend coming up and she had nothing to stay in Germany for. An embryonic relationship with a colleague had fizzled out, which was probably a good thing, as it was frowned upon to date someone in the firm.

  Before the conference had even ended, she had booked a return flight to Athens on her iPad. But she did not plan to go home. Her father would be upset that she was not happy in Düsseldorf and her mother might get false hopes about her coming back to Greece. She had another idea.

  Those words on the poster, ‘Find yourself’, had brought back something she had learned at school. They were words that were supposed to have been engraved above the door of Apollo’s temple in Delphi: Gnothi s’eafton: ‘Know yourself’.

  She had never been to Delphi but, like every Greek schoolchild, she knew that for many centuries people had sought guidance there about their future.

  The priest and the prophetess were long gone, and yet plenty of people still visited the ancient site. She wondered why. At least going there might give her time to think, as well as to see some blue sky.

  Athina killed time on the flight by reading her horoscope in the inflight magazine. If you followed the instructions and took the astrologer’s advice, at least it would be a way through life. The writers always sounded so sure, wrote with such conviction that she, a Libran, had certain characteristics and must therefore do x or y with her life. Perhaps it was today’s equivalent of consulting the oracle. It was simply a matter of faith, and she envied people who had it.

  The moment she stepped off the plane, the fragrance of her country assailed her. Even the airport itself had a distinctive scent. It was probably just air freshener, but she wanted to fill her lungs with its sweetness. The whole airport seemed alive, and the cafés in Arrivals were thronging. Before queuing to hire a car, she bought herself an elliniko metrio, a strong, slightly sugared Greek coffee. She was like an addict getting her first fix after a long time.

  ‘Having a good day?’ asked the man on the Hertz desk.

  Her smile was noticeable. Most people who came to hire cars were stressed, but this rather well-dressed young woman seemed at ease.

  ‘Yes,’ she answered. ‘Very.’

  ‘Going somewhere nice?’

  ‘Somewhere I’ve never been before,’ she said. ‘Delphi.’

  ‘Going to consult the oracle?’ he said teasingly.

  ‘Kind of …’

  He handed her a key.

  ‘Good luck!’

  As she drove along the motorway it was as if the car knew the way. It was a simple route, almost a straight line to her destination. He must have upgraded her, and the sound system in her Audi brought the familiar voice of Giorgos Dalaras bursting into the luxuriously upholstered interior. It was as if he were personally serenading her.

  S’agapo, yiati eisai orea,

  S’agapo, yiati eisai esi.

  I love you ’cause you’re beautiful,

  I love you ’cause you’re you.

  She had not allowed herself to listen to Greek music while she was away because it made her homesick, but now she was ‘home’ she could indulge herself. She sang with him, shouting the words to the lushly forested mountains ahead of her.

  The journey took her through a green landscape along a road lined with luminous yellow broom. The sky was azure. The spectacular valley through which she drove was almost enough to have come for.

  Within two hours, she saw the first signpost to Delphi.

  It was only the glimpse of a few columns through the trees that alerted her to the fact that she had arrived.

  Having parked, she s
trolled in to buy a ticket for the site and the museum.

  ‘Go to the Temple of Apollo first,’ said the woman on the desk. ‘Then the museum. It’s best that way round.’

  Dutifully, she did as she was instructed. The afternoon was sunny, but in late spring there were few other tourists. Athina wandered along the path, the ‘Sacred Way’, trying to imagine how it had looked two and a half thousand years before. There were remains of the treasuries where, in ancient times, people had left their offerings of money to be given to the priest in exchange for his predictions and advice.

  At the site of the Temple of Apollo were some impressive pillars, but the archaeology was not enough for her. It was like looking at a human skeleton and trying to imagine a living, breathing person. She continually glanced at the reconstructions in her guidebook to build a mental image of how it had really looked. The amphitheatre and the gymnasium needed less imagination. They were intact, and the silver-grey stones seemed still to hold within them the cheers and murmurs of excited crowds.

  She soon understood from the captions that the original site of the oracle had long been buried by an earthquake. It must have been a catastrophe for people to lose their source of wisdom and guidance, and she couldn’t help feeling a pang of disappointment for herself.

  Before going to the museum, where sculptures and other artefacts excavated from the site were displayed, she went to the café to buy water, and sat down on the terrace outside to admire the view. The rugged natural beauty of the location was a sight itself, even without the ancient artefacts.

  Just before Delphi, she had stopped in Arachova to buy cigarettes. She had not smoked since her last visit to Greece over a year ago – in Germany, it was virtually impossible to do so without breaking a law. As she inhaled, Athina knew that the pleasure was more to do with the freedom to smoke than with the nicotine itself.

  The smell of pines was strong and, with the warmth of the sun on her face, she felt herself begin to thaw. She closed her eyes. The previous summer, she had worn her winter coat every day. For the first time in eighteen months, she was without it. It was still on the back seat of her car, and the drabness of Düsseldorf, with its unrelieved grey skies, seemed far away.

  She stubbed out the cigarette and got up. She was ready for the museum.

  The moment she entered, she was bewitched by the spacious rooms that housed the most exquisite artefacts she had ever seen. All of them were thousands of years old, and most were in glorious golden stone. There were sections of friezes depicting scenes from the Trojan War: abductions, battles, lions, giants and gods. They were full of action and movement, telling stories as if showing them on a film reel.

  There were also tiny statuettes only a few centimetres high, and more monumental works such as those of the Kouroi. The story of these powerfully built twin brothers was a tragic one.

  Their mother needed to be taken by wagon to a temple and, as there were no oxen to pull it, the two young men harnessed themselves to it and dragged it. She was overcome at what they had done for her and prayed for them to be given the best a man could receive. They lay down to sleep and never woke again.

  Athina was shocked.

  A peaceful death, she thought. Was that really the highest prize?

  The bittersweetness of the story’s ending left her feeling empty.

  Not far away stood the statue of Antinous, supposedly the most handsome man in the world, and beloved by the Emperor Hadrian. When he drowned in the Nile, the heartbroken Hadrian made him a demi-god. The statue was full of pathos, a lament to lost beauty and youth.

  These images of early and untimely death haunted her. Not one of the three knew even the day before that their lives would end. Had they achieved what they wanted to achieve? She doubted it.

  There were plenty of other memento mori in Delphi, but she needed little reminder that life should not be wasted. This was not a revelation. Death had been present even on her journey here. She had seen numerous roadside memorials to accident victims, several cemeteries and many trees on which were pinned the faces of dead men or women, to advertise a forthcoming memorial or funeral service.

  What she really wanted was direction. Like the people in ancient times who had come here, she yearned for some advice, an insight into what she should do with her life.

  Before leaving, she decided she would take a look at the Temple of Athina, the Tholos. It was just across the road from the museum.

  It was past six now and all the other visitors had gone. The few coaches had left promptly at five. It was so deserted that she felt like a trespasser as she walked along the rough ground to the temple’s ruins.

  The profusion of yellow margaritas and wild grasses that grew all around the site gave it a look of total abandonment. A goldfinch sang tunefully in the nearby olive grove and an invisible cuckoo softly accompanied him. Other birds whistled and cheeped. The air was full of midges.

  The intimate circle of pillars immediately enchanted her. There was a completeness about this temple, the Tholos, that other parts of Delphi did not have. Perhaps she felt connected with it because of its name? Athina passed nearly an hour sitting on the stones, listening to the birds and gazing at the landscape around her.

  She had not even noticed the small house tucked away in the corner of the site, and the sudden appearance of a man almost next to her gave her a start.

  When she saw he was in uniform, she relaxed.

  ‘You work late,’ she said.

  ‘All night,’ he answered. ‘There’s a healthy black market in antiquities. So we have to guard our treasures.’

  ‘But it would be hard for anyone to steal those, wouldn’t it?’

  Athina pointed at the trio of lofty pillars that soared above them into the sky. Three out of twenty that once formed a rotunda had been restored.

  ‘You’d be surprised what people nick,’ he said.

  ‘It’s a beautiful place,’ she said.

  ‘In my opinion, this is the most lovely part of the whole site,’ he said.

  It seemed he didn’t do this job just for the money. She could sense that he genuinely loved the stones for which he was the watchman.

  ‘The Sanctuary of Athina …’

  ‘Pronoia?’ said Athina, reading from her guidebook.

  ‘Foresight. Athina of Foresight.’

  ‘She gave insight into the future?’ asked Athina.

  ‘Some believed so. It might not only have been from the oracle that people sought advice.’

  ‘What is it like being here … when it’s dark?’

  She imagined that, at night, this area of fallen columns and grey, stone slabs might be rather ghostly.

  ‘I’m used to it,’ he said. ‘But it has more than ample rewards.’

  For a moment, Athina wondered what he meant.

  ‘Look behind you,’ he said.

  Athina turned.

  What she saw shocked her. It was a sunset of such strangeness and intensity that she gasped. The sky was pink and smoky, as if a volcano had erupted in the distance and sent its flames and ashes towards the heavens.

  For a year, she had not seen the setting of the sun. In Düsseldorf, it quietly slipped away from the day, behind either clouds or buildings.

  Only now did Athina remember its strength and power. Until she had gone to live in Germany, the movements of the sun, the moon and the stars had been part of daily life, always there, always visible. She had not realised how intensely she had missed the beauty of Greece.

  The sunset seemed supernatural. She stood side by side with the guard, watching the extraordinary phenomenon, in silence, feeling its supernatural force.

  ‘I never tire of it,’ he said.

  He liked to talk, as did anyone who spent so many hours alone, and she was happy to listen.

  ‘Someone could take away the pillars, but nothing can take away the gifts of nature,’ he said. ‘We’re blessed by them in this country.’

  They strolled around the circular temple
together while he continued.

  ‘I sometimes wonder, for all the talk of Athina of Pronoia and the Delphic Oracle, whether the real attractions here are the landscape and the sunset. And can you imagine a full moon over all this? It’s worth seeing, I tell you. It takes your breath away.’

  Athina listened to every word he said.

  ‘I wouldn’t want to be anywhere else. They tried to make me take a post at Epidaurus. But I didn’t want to go. I refused. Sometimes you just know where you want to be. It’s the place where you are really happy. Even if it’s once a day, for a few moments. If life is worth living for those moments, then you have something. And here is where I want to be.’

  He drew on his cigarette and gazed towards the west at the first star that had appeared, just at that moment, in the indigo sky.

  In a moment of pure epiphany, Athina felt as if she had been set free. She knew where she wanted to be. Finally, the oracle had spoken.

  Athina was very animated by the decision she had made. She certainly seemed independent enough to make a new start, and told me that she had saved plenty of money from her time in Germany. She would be comfortable in Athens, even if she could never again match the salary she had earned in Düsseldorf. Her parents would know nothing of her decision until she was back in Greece for good.

  ‘It’s much easier that way! I know it’s the right thing for me,’ she said, with certainty. ‘But you can imagine the family discussions that will go on.’

  I mentioned that, in the UK, most children don’t really consult their parents about every life decision, and that they are encouraged to be independent.

  ‘They try to interfere in everything here,’ she said. ‘They would even come into school to sit your exams if they could!’