The gulley carried on down towards gorges where the vegetation got thicker all the time. Neither the sea nor Zografos was in sight. I went deeper and deeper into dense jungle overlooked by the high ground covered with woods at the foot of the summit. Other gullies met mine, forming a maze of corridors. The map was no use at all. The certainty that I was well and truly lost became very worrying. I had picked up an ancient pathway paved with old flagstones which were prised apart by strong roots. As I went into a cedar forest it turned into a mere track, passing between rocks, some of which would have definitely fallen into the lower valleys if it were not for the trees they were resting against. Cedars, uprooted by the wind, kept blocking my path along the side of a steep slope, with clay-soil soaked by an unseen spring; it was slippery, dangerous ground. I lost my footing; my bag broke my fall, then slowed a frightening slide towards a sheer drop. One knee dislocated, doubled up with pain, still holding my bag by its cloth handle, I almost passed out ... Athos was only present in the oppressive, stormy heat, in the monumental size of hundred-year-old cedars, in heavy silence made more solemn by the singing of the cicadas, and in the occasional lone cry of a bird of prey swooping down from high branches.
The pain eased. I managed to get back on my feet and find my path again. A few metres further down it ran along a rocky little cliff where there was a cave used by the bulls.
In this abandoned part of Athos it was a deep lair, created for their use. At the entrance to this cave, an openwork door, made of gigantic stakes roughly fastened together, had been smashed and partly knocked over onto the earth floor, mingled with dung, trampled and fouled by the beasts, until it was no more than hard black peat marked with hundreds of prints. You could still see large stakes forming an enormous enclosure; shining stakes, polished like ivory where bulls had rubbed their flanks since Byzantium.
I entered this lair with fear and respect. A powerful smell overwhelmed me. No fresh dung, since the bulls only came here in winter. I noticed mangers fixed into the rock, a hayloft cut into the stone. Untold battles seemed to have set the bulls against each other; bedding, which was no more than a rotting dung-heap, had been shaken about; mangers had been pulled apart, torn down, trampled, crushed under furious hoofs. Trails of saliva and patches of blood spattered the rock, in several places cut open by horns. A primitive charm filled this cave; a silence and a cold, holy darkness helped relieve my fatigue: it was almost a temple of Mithras, I thought, gently pressing my lips to a bloodstain. The distant cries of the cicadas reached me faintly; the persistent smell of the bulls went to my head, intoxicating me; the entrance to the cave stood out clearly against the greenery of the jungle.
I went back outside; back to the warm heavy air and the forest smells. The sky was grey, a storm was rumbling dully; the day was getting on. I had to make it to Zografos before night, get out of the woods, make a final effort to find a path, especially since my injured knee hurt atrociously and added to my growing terror, caused by a total loss of feeling. The track must lead somewhere. It ran in among young bamboos; it was just a passage through thick vegetation; here and there were clearings. The grass, brutally flattened by tussling bulls, looked as if it had been scythed. I could not see further than ten metres in this narrow valley used only by beasts. The fact that there was bamboo suggested there was a river nearby; a snake slithered in the grass. Once more gripped by my fear of snakes, I went on slowly. The stormy heat of the day must have been making grass snakes and vipers particularly aggressive. No longer knowing where I was, shaking with fright at the slightest rustle of leaves, terrified by crawling things and hissing noises, I was about to go back to the cave, when in front of me I saw the dry bed of a stream, bare and white. It was like a respite. Its smooth round pebbles could not hide anything.
My footsteps crunched on the shingle and dry stones, which I decided to follow in the hope that they would help me get out of the jungle. The storm was approaching, darkening the sky. Trees washed away by flooding had come to rest against rocky sand-bars, covered with a greyish-pink mud, now cracked by the heat. Further downstream it became a sort of stairway of stone, jammed with dead branches.
At the bottom of the valley, a ford, as it was the middle of June, was no more than a dry bed of sand. To my left, a good wide path through a pine wood must lead to Zografos. I hurried along it; a peculiar green light had taken the place of the bright sunshine, the storm was coming; heavy drops were hitting the treetops. It was a mysterious dark path, with soft, sandy soil, where my footsteps made no sound. At the heart of this wood of very old pines, which gave off an exquisite scent of resin, a lamp was burning at a wayside altar, painted blue and containing an old icon. The rain was already whipping the trees; the wind swept away the dead leaves; a bolt of lightning tore the sky, the light blinded me, followed immediately by a violent thunderclap that shook the whole valley. I hurried on through torrential rain.
Emerging from the wood, I spotted Zografos, a large, fairly recent monastery, an enormous barracks surrounded by cypress trees which were being shaken by gusts of wind. I ran along a little path. I entered the courtyard at the same time as a second thunderclap resounded off the roof. The gutters, overflowing with water, poured torrents onto the flagstones.
A door opened and I was asked to come up to the parlour. Soaked to the skin, my clothes in tatters, I stretched out on a couch. The storm was raging with dull roars and thunderclaps, repeated by the surrounding echoes. They brought me coffee and raki. Through a small window I saw the black sky and the bright green forests in the rain. Each explosion of thunder lit up the drawing room, the sound of the water on the roofs was deafening; hailstones rattled against the panes of the little window, whose weak catch threatened to break. Had I caught a cold? I was shivering with exhaustion and fever. I was taken to my room, where I put myself to bed without any supper, while the storm slowly moved away. An old monk sat by my bed and deftly felt my painful knee. He had brought a rusty metal box which he opened with some difficulty. From it he took a honey-coloured ointment, which had the miraculous effect of instantly easing my pain. In the silence that had returned, and the delightful calm that followed the storm, he stayed with me, holding my hand, talking to me in a low voice. Who was I? I did not know. My torn clothes were pitiful to see. Was I poor? I did not know if I was poor. He congratulated me on my detachment and my lack of vanity as regards clothing. He returned to the bad state of my clothes: my shirt was no more than a rag, my espadrilles no longer stayed on my feet ... Poor child, poor child, he said. He stood up, opened the door of a tiny room, and dragged out a heavy, carefully padlocked trunk onto the wooden floor.
Poor child, he continued to mutter as he chose a little key from a bunch he had just taken from his pocket. He opened the trunk, and I saw him take out military effects, which he threw one by one onto a table. The trunk also contained an excellent pair of boots, cards, notebooks and binoculars, which he put to one side. The clothes seemed to be my size. He checked by laying them on me, as one takes the measurements of a dead person, for I stayed stretched out on the bed, still trembling with fever. There was a pair of khaki shorts and three shirts of the same colour, with no insignia other than an eagle with outspread wings above a sort of cross in the shape of a swastika. The clothes were almost brand-new, slightly faded by the sun. I thanked him for his kindness and asked him about the origin of these military clothes, which had clearly not been worn for a long time.
Kneeling on the floor by the open trunk that he was still exploring, he answered me in a voice that was slow and solemn, hoarse, a little sad, saying that he rejoiced at this opportunity to show charity by giving me the means to clothe myself decently. My lack of memory explained my question. I would have to have forgotten an awful lot about the century not to know that a war had divided human beings. It had been about twenty years ago, foreign soldiers had come to Athos, busying themselves only with archaeology. There were just a few of them, very correct, very handsome, they had stayed only a year, leaving goo
d memories. One of them, exactly my age, had lodged at Zografos. He had known him well ... The dear child had left one day, entrusting him with his trunk, promising to come back and fetch it. They had never seen him again. My good monk gave a deep sigh. His far-off gaze seemed to be back in 1942-43 again, years that reminded me of nothing, but for which he was still nostalgic.
The past meant little to me. I was delighted to see the excellent, almost brand-new clothes I was being offered at just the right moment, and still more amused, I who had no sense of identity, at the idea of putting on the clothes of a boy my age who had disappeared for ever and, in a sense, being that boy for a time! The boots seemed to be my size, and I was given them gladly. I also wanted his identity card, his notebooks, his papers, his binoculars—all the contents of the trunk! He hesitated, showed me his military papers: I might as well—one more incarnation did not matter. So, twenty years later, I wanted to be Eric Strauss, aged twenty-four, native of Munich, Bavaria, student of philosophy, corporal in the Hermann Goring Airborne Division stationed in Heraklion, Crete, assigned to a special mission on Mount Athos ... Such a lack of reserve displeased the old man. I saw in his eyes that he took me for one of those people to whom one gives a little out of charity, and who then shamelessly want everything. Taken by surprise for a moment, his natural goodness put this lack of delicacy down to my extreme poverty. We compromised: he would keep the binoculars in memory of that so very polite, so very courteous young German who seemed to have left many regrets on Athos, and I would take the rest.
He stood up and pushed the trunk back into the depths of the little room. The binoculars in his hand, he came up to me in a fatherly way, took my pulse, shook his head, and then left, assuring me that he would soon bring my dinner. He came back with a tray on which he had arranged a few flowers around a plate of soup. I sat on the bed; he put the tray on my knees, remained standing, watching me eat my supper. Then he wished me goodnight. He headed for the door; suddenly, retracing his steps, half-opening his robe, he took the pair of binoculars I wanted and which he was hiding against his heart. With a kindly smile he dropped them on my sheets and went away, leaving me to my joy at being someone else.
The storm had washed the sky, which was clear and light the following day. I studied my map: Konstamonitou was not far, nor was the west coast. I could get there before noon. I examined my bag, damaged by the bull: tins of instant coffee and bags of sugar had not stood up to the fierce blows from its horns. Only one tin and a little sugar were still usable. I took out what was only good for throwing away, which made room to cram in the clothes, the notebooks and the boots I had been given. I decided to leave Zografos dressed as I had been the day before. Why tear a good military uniform on the brambles of Athos’s bad roads? I would change in the woods and arrive properly dressed at the next monastery. Emptied of a dozen tins of coffee, my bag managed to take all Strauss’s things. But what a weight to carry up hill and down dale! To get to the top of the Holy Mountain quickly, it would have been better to be free and light, without luggage. I did not have a past: so why burden myself with someone else’s memories? I almost left everything behind. But Strauss seemed to be not entirely another person ...
And anyway, his maps proved to be more accurate than mine. He had carried out a topographical survey of the region, correcting many errors on the old maps. I no longer hesitated about which path to take, especially since I was leaving the forests for delightful valleys where there was less risk of getting lost.
In front of me lay beautiful meadows. The fresh bright air was a sign that the sea was just beyond the hills. A hot sun was scorching the undergrowth. I stopped by some clear water which ran between flat stones. I took off my clothes; naked beside the stream, I made some coffee, alone, happy in a green jungle. A vast sky shone like a perfect blue dome above my head. Dragonflies, their wings quivering, ready to fly off again—a species I didn’t recognise—settled on my hands, on the stones: heavy dragonflies, violet, like flowers. I put water in a little saucepan, poured in some instant coffee and sugar and stirred it with a dried twig. Naked, it was as if I were outside of myself. I was sharing unreservedly in the joy of living.
In this lonely valley, as if by some divine spell, nature exceeded itself. The birds, of every colour, were bigger and more beautiful than elsewhere. Was I in the Paradise of the dragonflies, in countless numbers around the stream, and of the birds of God?
My bag thrown into the grass, the clothes I had taken off, and a saucepan on top of a stone made a humble camp, a symbol of my taste for wandering and my poverty. But was I still poor? I rummaged in the bag and laid out my treasures, Strauss’s military effects, maps and notebooks, his boots and his binoculars, excellent black boots which I put on without further ado. I took a few steps, and went into the long grass, still damp with morning dew. Jays were chattering in a thicket; a pair of young buzzards soared in the calm air. They flew away from each other, their flights crossed, they fled each other with a flapping of wings, as if playing a game—then slowly came close again, out of love.
With short boots on I was less afraid of snakes. Naked, I went as far as the edge of the wood, watching the buzzards, which soon swooped down onto a tree with a great sound of feathers whipping the branches. I walked up to the tree, a lone oak in the jungle. They did not fly off: they were not afraid of me. I went back to my little campsite. The young buzzards, the only couple in this peaceful valley, would have made me regret being alone, even with the feminine part of my nature to take my mind off of this solitude in the garden of Eden. But the clothes of a young soldier who had disappeared twenty years before, had given me, in the absence of a wife, the chance, while I wore them, of a metamorphosis. Soon I was dressed as him. The badge, sewn on to one of the pockets of his shirt, was a fine one: an eagle above a fiery wheel.
Lying in the grass, I went through his papers, his notebooks filled with photos and letters.
I had two sisters. A photo, dated 1934, taken by our parents, showed the three of us in a garden in Bavaria. My pretty sisters had long plaits and were standing in front of the Alps and smiling. 1935, a photo of me in the Hitler Youth. I am fifteen; my face glows with a rapturous joy, the wind has dishevelled my long hair. 1936, still in the Hitler Youth; someone has photographed me beside a glider; on the side of a slope, my comrades can be seen holding a cable attached to the front of the plane.
‘Eric, the day he got his glider pilot’s licence’; I recognised Mother’s writing. 1938, my sisters, prettier than ever! 1939, at the flying school in Stuttgart. This time I am in the uniform of the Luftwaffe. Photos of the French countryside and of Crete; letters from my mother, notebooks describing my journey, which I decided to reread later.
It must have been ten o’clock in the morning. I gathered up my possessions and headed for Konstamonitou, sad to leave this peaceful valley, telling myself as I went that the myth of the garden of Eden is fundamental to German thought. The Semitic notion of sin is foreign to us; we fight to rediscover Man before the Fall, and to give him victory over the will of all the worn-out races! I suddenly remembered it was 1954. For a few moments I had thought it was 1942! Since my arrival on Athos I had often noticed a sudden burst of time, an undercurrent from the past, sometimes difficult to make out, but undeniable, from details, from little things ... and getting more frequent every day; breaks in time, inversions of time, probably connected to the loss of a personal identity. I was dead! Was I dreaming? My adventures on the Holy Mountain were merely the result of my tendencies and my previous lives. So who was dead? Had I been Strauss? Or was Strauss just one possibility for me, among all my likely ones? I must get used to being just a soul, rich with the many lives I had lived—or not lived. For in the world beyond, the possible is as true as all the rest! One certainty made itself clear: I had only crossed a first threshold. My past lives were still exerting all their influence on my behaviour. True death, the ultimate threshold, would come later. If I had had to give a name to these beautiful valleys, to t
he immaculate peak where I was headed, I would have called them the Devakhan: the land of happy souls. The word Devakhan came from the vocabulary of Hinduism. So who had studied Hinduism? Strauss, at Munich University? Strauss, the philosophy graduate? Or someone else I was, someone whose name I did not know, and who was walking along a path through a wood in the cool shadows?
I spotted Konstamonitou: a small, very rustic-looking monastery. It was like a long, ancient farmhouse with a grey stone roof and half-ruined balconies, just visible above the long green grass. The air smelt of new-mown hay. Tame bulls were grazing in a meadow enclosed by fences made of young, roughly-cut pine. I pushed open a gate. Under a vast blue sky I crossed the meadow, keeping my distance from the bulls. Another gate led to a decent cobbled pathway. I seemed to recognise these enormous pastures and this path which led to some cedars. Had I been to Konstamonitou during the war, in 1942? Or was coming to this monastery just a dream, born of the undercurrent of another past, in the same way that I imagined myself as Strauss? I must give up any idea of identity, see time break loose without being surprised by it! I was getting used to this new state, even enjoying it, as one breathes clearer air at high altitude. Dead, I felt lightened, freer and happier than on earth. The sky was blue, I was young. With no regrets, I made do without time, I made do without myself.
I was not so sure about the welcome that might await me in this old monastery. The Germans had left good memories; but this eagle, this swastika sewn over my heart, could mean there were surprises in store.
At the far end of the path, the cedars shaded pigsties where black piglets wallowed in the mire. As I got closer they gave shrill cries, as if they hated Germans. The rusticity and great age of Konstamonitou became more apparent all the time. The entrance, dark and dirty, was like the entrance to a barn; the door had recently been painted bright blue, a celestial colour that contrasted unexpectedly with the sorry state of the roofs and the walls. On this June morning under the cedars, a monk was splitting wood. He put down his axe and watched me approach, wide-eyed. When the piglets had stopped their noise I greeted him politely. He answered with indistinct grunts. He seemed a bit simple. I showed him the parchment giving me the right to enter all the monasteries on Athos.
A Journey to Mount Athos Page 8