A Journey to Mount Athos

by FranCois Augieras

  Back on the sand I fetched my stick and my clothes; I left the tranquil bay behind me. I walked along by the sea with no other care than to satisfy, as soon as possible, the hearty appetite that last night’s dish of beans had barely appeased.

  I was soon in sight of a monastery on a steep headland. It had the distinct look of a fortified castle, with its square towers and wooden balconies clinging to walls overhanging the sea. Mule-drivers I met along the way told me the monastery was called Stavronikita, and that it was poor, which seemed to augur badly for the way starving travellers would be treated.

  Contrary to this unkind assumption, a monk, stepping aside respectfully for me, asks me to come up to the boudoir. At the top of the monastery is a charming little drawing room, rather Turkish with its divans, its cushions, all very ethereal, suspended in mid-air forty metres above the waves that roar against the rocks. On three sides of this delightful room, twenty small windows give a view of the blue and green water and the vast horizon. One window is open: he closes it immediately for fear I may be bothered by the strong wind from the open sea. He gets me to sit down on a divan ... completely at my ease; he slides a cushion behind my back, disappears, comes back with a silver tray, on it a small cup of coffee, a large glass of water and a plate containing a finger of jam. He places it all on a round table in the middle of the drawing room. I want to get up, approach the table. But I must stay on the cushions, rest from my fatigue. He puts the tray next to me on the divan. A forgotten teaspoon obliges him to disappear again. Here he is, back again, with a delightful little spoon which he sinks into that finger’s length of exquisite fruit preserve. My coffee is not too sweet? I find it to my taste. He is reassured. Is my water too cool? It suits me well. He smiles with pleasure. He is at my disposal: I mention that I have not eaten. At these words he runs to his kitchen, comes back with a lace cloth which he throws on the table; he sets out knives and forks, all silver; he brings a carafe of water and asks me to consent to wait a moment. The moment becomes an hour: forty metres below me the sea is crashing; the little windows shake in the gusts of wind. At last the door opens: he appears, plate in hand. He brings up a chair and I sit down at the table in front of a small white cheese and a crust of bread. That is all; there is nothing more to hope for; better to leave! A boat seems to be wanting to drop anchor at the foot of Stavronikita. I thank my host and run down to the shore, just in time to climb aboard.

  At the helm was the old man from Ierissos. He asked me if I wanted to return to life. I told him I preferred to stay on Athos, that I was in search of Wisdom and a master. He offered to leave me at Pantocrator, which was in sight. I agreed, and we headed towards a harbour hollowed out of the rocks in the shadow of several Byzantine towers.

  He gave me onions and wine. Long green swells coming in from the open sea caught the boat sideways on, lifted it up, passed under the hull in a slow movement before going off into the distance to smash themselves on the reefs and the beaches. It was early afternoon and the sea was strong and beautiful; the sun warmed the wooden hull; our heavy little boat sunk into deep foaming valleys that were strangely silent. Then, with a great surge from the engine, sputtering on the clear water, it climbed back up the slopes of the untiring sea. Pantocrator was approaching. We made slow headway, rolling on the stormy sea, deep and cold. We were hit by new breakers that hid the horizon for a moment: the vast horizon, lost then found again each time the waves passed.

  The thunder of the surf echoed against the rocks that were now no more than a cable’s length away. We had to pass through some narrows. Our caique, its engine on slow, rolled at the foot of the high walls. We took advantage of a lull in the waves to enter the channel. A heavy swell came in; it lifted us up stern first and threw us into the harbour with a cascade of spray. Engine idling, we fetched up gently against a quay built of large strong stones.

  There were fisheries with wooden balconies supported by crude, roughly hewn beams, older than the first crusades. Some ancient boats, pulled up onto dry land, had almost rotted away. The old man unloaded some wooden chests then put out to sea again. At the entrance to the channel, a fisherman was casting his line into the eternal tide. In the distance, the blue foothills of the Holy Mountain stood out against the horizon of the sea.

  I walked up to Pantocrator. I went into the courtyard, then the church. I had a rest by the icons. Monks were getting ready to sing vespers in the cool shadows of their church. To me it seemed all the more silent and peaceful because I had come from the uproar of the water, which still echoed in my ears. My eyes seared by heat, light and salt, I was almost blind in the presence of the holy images. The memory of the bright green sea was still in the depths of my aching eyes, and superimposed itself on the faces of the gods painted on heavy pieces of wood: Christ, the Virgin, the great green waves! The perpetual tide, the angels, the gold of the great wooden panels! For me, arriving from the sea, these icons had the look of primitively-painted flotsam, scarlet, midnight blue, ochre and black, colours of the after-life.

  I was drunk with fatigue and thirst. But the sweetness and strength of the old Byzantine chants which now rose under the domes gave me a delightful rest from my worries. Sad and solemn chants, suddenly deliriously happy, then sad again. There was a motion in them like the tide: from far away, from an eternal ocean, they gradually rose up to take my soul by storm, broke up like spray into shouts of joy, tears, and washed away my tiredness. Then they seemed to withdraw. It was now no more than a murmur. Slackening off for a moment they came back, tireless, like great rolling waves. Glorifying the Lord, the bearded monks answered each other from stall to stall. Their church was full of treasures from distant expeditions to the Divine. From them they had brought back Christ, the Virgin, the saints, copper candlesticks, silver chandeliers, a shining iconostasis, painted images. At the end of vespers, when they had congratulated each other on their pillaging, when they had spent a long time scenting their treasures, their wrecks and their gods with incense, they left the church and disappeared into the depths of the monastery.

  I went out into the courtyard and drank water from a fountain. At Pantocrator, none of the monks seemed to be my master. I wanted to reach Esphigmenou before nightfall. In the kitchens I was told it was impossible. Esphigmenou was more than a day’s walk away. Better to hope that a caique would come by. Waiting, hoping, arming oneself with patience: that seemed to be the prevailing law on Athos. Good luck was on my side. A boat saw my signals and quickly took me aboard at the entrance to the harbour.

  Long shadows were already stretching out over the sea and the dense forests of black cedars that covered the slopes of the Holy Mountain. The boat was piloted by a young fisherman, almost a child. We were travelling fast across the water, which was now calmer. Without slackening our pace we passed Vatopedi, and an hour later we saw the inlet, beyond which stood the sad monastery of Esphigmenou. Clad in grey stone, worn away by damp, forever cut off from the sun, its tall facade rose up beside the water, lashed for centuries by the waves of the great winter storms, which seemed to have broken several windows. Under the latrines, which were recognisable by their narrow openings and the long trails of black filth that stained the walls like a sort of leprosy, the smell of rotten fish, dead seaweed and excrement hung in the air.

  The child slept here every night. We landed at a small jetty. He took loaves and fish from a chest, and a jar of wine, and we went down to the shore, making the shingle crunch beneath our feet. A cold surf washed along this mournful creek. We climbed a slope paved with little stones taken from the sea since time immemorial, we went under an ancient arch; a poor rusty lantern lit up a painted Virgin at the back of a niche rotted by the spray. Esphigmenou seemed in a state of dilapidation that was verging on the dire; so I was very surprised to see the inner courtyard with its many arcades cheerfully painted white, a fountain of bright marble, pretty vines with ripening grapes, in unexpected contrast to the grim façade that faced the sea. In a tower, chimes sounded. Then, in the calm g
olden air of evening, came the clear sound of a heavy blow on an unseen bell.

  The clock’s one hand showed a time in the afternoon, or the night. But I knew that on Athos, time is not that of humankind. The sun was setting beyond the hills that I glimpsed above the roofs. The child suggested that I have supper with him. I followed him; a second door opened on to the countryside. He lived outside the walls in a little mule-driver’s house near a pond; a half-ruined house of unspeakable squalor where he lit a fire in a narrow grate. I sat down on some wooden bed-boards covered with a sort of litter made of torn cloths and straw. He slept there, apparently not suffering from the poverty in this little house with glassless windows, and walls of dried earth which were lit by the first flames of a fire of vine shoots. He set the fish to fry in a pan, added hot peppers and salt, which he took from the bottom of dirty little boxes containing fish-hooks, thread, needles and lead weights. He gave me some delicious resinous wine. This encampment, this insouciance, this mess pleased me in the sweetness of evening. In this poor house, black with smoke and filth, everything was witness to a strange joy of living which gradually took hold of me. The child slept on the boards. He put his humble treasures in little tins; he owned a boat. He was very happy: that could be seen from his measured, solemn movements, his reserved smile, his joy in welcoming me. He had found happiness in the Land of the Dead. Now he was making coffee. This strange house, inhabited by a child, seemed to date from a far-distant time when young sailors went to sea alone. This touched me personally, as if I had once been this child. At the very least, might I have known him in the past? Was Mount Athos not an incredible storehouse of memories and dreams? Like me, did some dead men come back here to sleep occasionally? The resinous wine, a charm as old as the world, gradually made me drunk. I was falling asleep in front of the fire, on the clothes thrown on the wooden bed-boards where I was thoroughly happy, right down to the distant depths of my wild, affectionate nature. He had ground the coffee in a funny little cylinder with a crank handle, the water was boiling, night was falling. The child stretched out affectionately beside me and held me tight: he wanted me to stay with him tonight, and other nights, for ever! I would have agreed to resume a life I had already lived a few centuries before; I would have been a sailor with him on his boat again, and been satisfied with that dream among so many others, had the monks of Athos not exercised a more powerful attraction over me. For I had been a monk in an ancient time, that I remembered as night fell. I must go back to the monastery! I gently kissed his hot lips, his beautiful eyes. I left him quickly, for the outer door was being closed, while at the same time the sound of chains echoed from over by the second door, which opened on to the sea.

  The chimes sounded the third hour of the night. It was time for me to beg my food from door to door in the shadows. I went up to the first floor and into very dark corridors whose cedar-wood ceilings smelt of mould and the forest. By the light of a small lantern I glimpsed strange, gilded wood-carvings; I noticed a chink of light coming from under a door. I went in. A poor paraffin lamp lit up some ovens. I asked for bread. A monk gestured to me to sit down and wait a moment. In the warm glow of the lamp, among the shadows thrown against a wall, he stirred up the hot coals and soon put in front of me a bowl of soup which I drank without a word, my elbows resting on the dirty wood of a massive table, telling myself once again that it was my destiny to eternally beg for soup at monasteries in the early part of each night. From a window there was a view of the black hills of the Holy Mountain, the lamp was slowly dying, close to the ovens an icon glowed. An ancient happiness made me linger in this kitchen, with its overpowering smell of ingrained filth, rancid oil and strong spice. My hunger subdued, I was sure I had drunk soup a hundred times in this kitchen at Esphigmenou. Here I am, back again, I thought. To be caught up in this maze of time for who knows how long, to find myself back in this monastery, young again, very free, made me more drunk with pleasure than the tot of raki I had just been given. The monk wanted to padlock the door of his kitchen before going to bed; I had to leave. But who was I, from one life to another? Who stood up, thanked him for his kindness, kissed his hand? Who was it who was taken to the door of a distant bedroom? And who fell asleep, drunk with joy?

  And who was woken up, and by whom, around midnight? The monk who had given me soup was sitting on the edge of my bed. He took a dried fig out of his pocket and slipped it furtively into my hands. He was a fat man burdened by his belly and by his luxuriant beard. Sitting on my sheets as he was, his short legs did not touch the floor, so this religious man found himself in a most awkward position for keeping me company. Breathing heavily, he settled himself more comfortably on my bed, and in the darkness he sought out my face with the tips of his fingers like a blind man. Delicately he pulled away the shirt that covered my shoulders; with a lecherous moan he threw himself on my bared flesh; he sank his sharply pointed teeth into it, growling like a beast and pinching my hips. Caught unawares by this visit, I had propped myself up on my elbows on my little bolster so as to be better able to face up to this great outburst of appetite. My host was crushing me with all his weight; I knelt on the bed and, more comfortable in that position, let my famished friend do as he wished, accustomed as I was to the sudden insatiable desires of the good monks of Athos. He devoured my shoulder for a little while, then murmured sweet nothings to me, afraid he might be caught in the act of devouring a young traveller in the middle of the night. His robes smelt of filth and old cooking pots, his rough beard scratched the little opening to my ear. Then suddenly he stopped whispering that I was desirable and listened closely in the darkness. Reassured by the silent corridors, he set to devouring my shoulder again, still growling with pleasure, and pinching my hips so hard that I moaned with pain, which seemed to sharpen his taste for fresh flesh. The iron bed groaned under the weight of my host, time passed slowly. I saw that one of the white walls of my bedroom was lit up by the moon, and leant one hand against it. The narrow window looked out on to the cold, gloomy inlet where I had come ashore; a powerful smell of dead seaweed rose from the near-silent sea in the depth of the night. From my bedroom under the old stone roof, more than fifteen metres above the quiet water, I heard our boat, lifted up by a slight swell, bumping now and then against the stone slabs of the little jetty. I ate the fig. I was moved by my host, I felt pity for him. He trembled with pleasure as he devoured me! I was very hungry as well, but I could not throw myself on people. To me this old man seemed very childlike; I had the feeling of being older than him, wiser, as old as the world despite my adolescent appearance. My young body housed an old soul, very human, capable of compassion, of great tenderness, of kindliness: kneeling on the edge of my bed, I lowered my eyes. He was on the point of proving his virility to me, seducing me as one might a girl, when footsteps in the corridor filled him with alarm. They went away, but it had ruined his appetite. He tried to revive his hunger by pinching the nape of my neck with his sturdy fingers, but his heart was no longer in it. He was very upset, and cursed the unwelcome visitor who had spoilt his pleasure. No more appetite, no more joy! My discreet efforts to restore my host to a state in which he might finish his supper met only doleful indifference. No longer hungry, he soon gave up the urge to dine. Furious with himself and with the weight of years, he got off my bed and readjusted his clothes. He kissed my cheek; by way of a compliment he gave me one last pinch, so hard that I would have cried out in pain, had I not had the best sort of nature you could hope to find in a boy you wake up in the middle of the night, eat raw and use as if he were a girl. He half-opened my door and crept off into the darkness. My entire body painful, exhausted, my soul happy, I fell asleep again, rocked by the sound of the waves breaking peacefully on the shingle in the little creek. Two or three times I heard our boat drag on its moorings then drift back to shore, bumping gently against the jetty: four times perhaps, no more; for I sank delightfully into heavenly sleep.

  Did I wake in a cool cavern at the bottom of the sea? Cold, blue-green, i
ridescent, murky, the colour of unsettled water, the beautiful light of morning was reflected by the mirror of the waves. It danced on the ceiling, on my bed, on the whitewashed walls of my room, which faced north, away from the sun, and so remained in sad, tranquil shadow. Gentle waves ran over my face and hands.

  The metal bars protecting my window made the shape of a cross against the horizon. The window embrasure was cut so deep into the thick walls that I could sit in it as if it were a sort of lodge. With the coming of day the wind had got stronger; powerful breakers crashed over the rocks and ran into calm pools that they whitened with foam. The sea shone pure emerald under a bright blue sky. While I was asleep the caique had been moved away from the jetty, and was firmly anchored a few ropes’ length from the shore, rolling heavily on the waves. There was no question of travelling by sea today. Best continue my journey on the paths that led deep into the countryside. Yet there was no hurry to leave Esphigmenou; the kitchen must be closed at this time of day. So I stayed at the window, face pressed against the bars, never tiring of the sight of cold waves attacking the coast.