He looked very Christian, very bemused, grimy and utterly stupid.
“German, German?” he stammered.
“Yes, German,” I answered curtly. He was getting on my nerves.
He was not unfriendly. He was just a moron. I told him I wanted to visit Konstamonitou.
“Visit?”
“Yes, visit, look at.”
“Ah, visit ...”
I could have hit him. He stuck his axe in the block and asked me to follow him. Still in the shade of the cedars, which formed a sort of wood in the middle of the fields, he led me towards a pen surrounded by heavy boards. For a moment I thought the poor man wanted to show me his pigs first. A violent jolt shook the planks, followed by galloping noises in the mud. I went closer. A large wild boar was studying me, an enormous beast with sparse bristles and bright eyes. It butted the enclosure a second time. A sharp, pungent smell rose from its sty.
“Wild boar, wild boar!”
“I can see it’s a wild boar,” I told the monk.
We went into the monastery. The poor man lived there alone, and he had let it go until now it was no more than a farm. The courtyard was a sea of mud where manure rotted. Flies were buzzing, wasps were swarming round some old vines; a calf came into the courtyard, perfectly at home, and followed us to a little red-brick church, where he opened the door for me; it was painted blue as well.
He stood back to let me go in. My boots echoed on the loose floor tiles as I walked towards the icons of a humble Deësis, painted by a clumsy hand. The church was cold, with low arches, decorated with naive frescoes which seemed to have been blackened by fire long ago. Everything was small at Konstamonitou, simple and poor. The iconostasis was just an old, primitive construction of gilded wood, eaten by worms. A Byzantine Christ, wild and sad, kept watching me. The Virgin had the look of a silly peasant woman, and John the Baptist that of a lunatic dressed in clothes made of camel-hair, taking his madness round with him among the rocks of a naively-portrayed desert. Christianity: a religion for little people! I rejected it with all my youthful strength. The grandeur of Byzantine art touched me, the Gospel annoyed me; gold attracted me, Judeo-Levantine pessimism horrified me. Christianity, the religion of the simple-minded, traitors to Europe, was to be destroyed for the good of Aryan thought! “Fine,” I said to the monk, taking a last glance at the humble Deësis, and left, my boots still making a loud noise.
“Come with me,” he said.
Lifting the skirt of his dirty black robes he set off up a steep wooden staircase, with very high steps, almost a ladder, which led to the one upper storey of this poor monastery. We went down a corridor. I thought he was going to offer me coffee in his kitchen, when he opened a door on to a balcony, whose many little windows looked on to the forest. There were small cupboards, with lots of drawers filled with powder paint. The rough floor was spattered with blue, ochre and pink. This was the long-abandoned holy studio of an icon painter. The monk made a gesture of wonderment. “Archeo Katigitis tis Zographikis!” he cried. A very old painter, a master ... had worked here! You could not wish to see a lovelier studio, with its delightful little windows, the small panes giving a gentle light. Curtains of fine material, faded by the sun, ran along little cords. Everything was fragile and delicate in this cramped studio, hovering above the kitchen garden. Fine-pointed brushes lay at the bottom of the drawers and on the window sills. Several copper pots were still filled with powdered gold. I lingered. I was moved. An old man had worked here for a very long time. You could imagine his patience and meticulousness, his taste for order, his slow, measured movements. The smell of glue hung in the air, impregnating the carved wood; but more than that there was a nameless charm, which might have been the love of good painting; perhaps you would call it the beneficial conditions of silence, humility, light, patience and solitude which are necessary for painting a masterpiece. This affected me personally. A part of my being loved Byzantine painting, although I could not see what the connection was that linked this attraction for gold and icons to Aryan thought. In the past, had I been a Christian, had I painted icons? Had I been this master or his disciple? The memory of it had been wiped away during the centuries. All I had left was a deep desire to touch this gold powder, these divine blues and ochres. Quietly I left the studio, with its views of the white marble slopes of the Holy Mountain beyond the pastures and the green forests. Back in the courtyard, rather ashamed of my harshness to the poor monk, I kissed his hand with a filial, probably Slavic gesture. Then I hurried away, leaving him to his logs and his black piglets.
A rugged path led down to the sea. I walked with light steps, happy with this perpetual wandering which, towards midday, brought me to a shoreline.
How many days was it since I arrived on Athos? Four or five? I would have thought more. Once again, the feeling of a vast expanse of time, constantly interrupted, uncertain, delicious—almost an absence of time! At the very least, with every step I took, I felt time was being modified because of the proximity of the Divine. At that moment there was not a boat in sight. The horizon was very blue. A fisherman’s house. No one around. A jetty jutted out into the water, so clear that I could see the shingle beneath the surface a long way out, right up to the first plunging drops, where they disappeared into green depths. I took off my clothes and my boots. The stones burnt in the hot noonday sun, the light blinded me. I bathed; but, racked with hunger and quite weak, I dare not lose my footing. Returning to the shore with its large pebbles, very white, like bones piled up beside the motionless sea, I put on my Luftwaffe clothes again, and looked in vain for a spring. The house, its door double-locked, was reached by a small set of steps and had a veranda on the front, covered by a plank roof which shaded me from the beating sun. I lay down on the rough floorboards. There was a table, chairs, bundles of garlic hanging from the beams. Would the fishermen come back tonight? Or ever? I was alone on the west coast. And without water! I fell asleep. What did I have to fear on Athos? The calm sea lapped softly over the shingle of the deserted beach; not a cloud in the blue Greek sky; not a sound, except for the gentle surf.
A sudden, loud crash woke me from my nap. Mule-drivers, back from the hills, dumped a load of logs onto the stones of the beach. They found me lying in front of their door.
“You German?”
Still half-asleep from my siesta, not quite knowing what I was doing on the floor—and even less who I was—I accepted without protest the first role I was given to play:
“Yes, German.”
I stood up so they could get past. They went into their poor house and suggested I share their modest supper. We had dinner on the balcony, in view of the sea. I told them I wanted to reach the summit of Athos. As I might have expected, they tried to dissuade me. I insisted. They told me I had come much too far north, that I must go back to Kariés. The sun was disappearing below the horizon of the sea; they smoked fine Greek cigarettes, played cards. At nightfall they brought a bed out onto the balcony for me, and went off to sleep on the sand.
Delighted to be alone at last, stretched out on this uncomfortable bed, one shoulder on my bag, I looked at the sea, very black in the moonless night: the Aegean Sea, flecked with white foam. A great warmth rose up from the shore. I got some cool air from the waves each time they touched the stones ... A mighty silence followed every soft murmur of the gently-sifted pebbles ... The water swept in again, untiring in its divine determination to wash this beach for eternity.
The sturdy struts and beams of my wooden balcony stood out dimly against the sky. The night was beautiful, harmonious, full of stars! The song of the tide died way, only to begin again with a delicacy beyond measure. The admirable monument of the stars and constellations shone above the heavy marble of the smooth warm water. On this summer night, on this balcony, a few steps from the sea, I was happy in a land I loved, my soul’s true homeland, a place where dreams were stored. I did not want to sleep, so much did this delicious night keep my eyes open in the depths of a darkness that was
only interrupted by the gentle motion of the surf.
I still did not know who I was. Should I hope to re-emerge from this state of gentle alienation? I was dead, and quietly welcomed, fed, housed, passed from hand to hand like a soul forever rescued and protected; a soul that will not return to the world of men, and which must slowly get accustomed to a new life that still surprises and pleases it ... A stronger wave swept onto the shore, thundering on the shingle, hurling a tide of foam against the beach. The wind got up; a coolness breathed out by the sea stroked my face. I closed my eyes on the rickety bed and fell asleep, while the mules, left to wander, tinkled their little bells far away in the countryside.
By the time the sun was just getting up, I had left the mule-drivers.
I walked along the seashore. A large staff that I found on the sand helped me over the stones, which kept shifting under my feet. The west coast proved to be steep and dry, and often fell sheer to very deep water. So I had to risk going on the wet, slippery rocks, pounded by the waves, where my stick was useful again; or else climb up into the hills, which were full of the calls of the cicadas, before getting back onto a beach after struggling for an hour. At the end of the day I had made little progress. Not a boat out at sea; a wild, uninhabited coast, difficult to negotiate. It was nearly evening. Alone with the sea and half-lost, I was ready to sleep on the sand when I saw the opening to a cave at the far end of a wide bay.
A camp seemed to have been set up in this chilly cavern. Heavy stones, which had fallen from the roof, had been used to make a hearth. Blackened by the fire, they were still hot. Next to them were a bundle of cheaplooking clothes and a tin of salt standing on the pebbles. The sole inhabitant of this sad cave could not be very far away. Re-emerging from the gloomy hideout, I walked barefoot onto the shore, carrying my boots.
A boat had just landed. A very thin man, ageless, was at the oars. He asked me who I was. I replied that I did not know, that I was dead, without water and exhausted. He passed me a two-handled jug made of rose-pink clay. When I had quenched my thirst he put it back under a seat and asked me to get into the boat. We put out to sea. Some distance from the beach, where the sea was very calm at the close of day, he gestured to me that I had to take the oars and row slowly towards a marker floating on the water. He grabbed it and gradually reeled in a long line, which he coiled round a piece of wood. Not a single fish had taken on the old hooks, which he stuck one by one into a cork. Another line, brought up further out to sea, proved as devoid of any catch as the first. The hooks were completely bare. The poor man lived by his fishing! He looked extremely weak, gentle and sad, in despair because of his loneliness and poverty. He took a bucket with a glass bottom in it and, leaning out over the water, studied the sea bed which was plainly visible through the clear water: a maze of rocks, hollowed-out into dark corridors. Lying within reach across the boat was a long pole with a barbed trident on the end. Several times I thought he was going to use it. Yes, he was moving his hand to pick it up ... Since I was hungry as well, I followed his slightest move with interest. When the boat got too far away from the maze he winked at me to get me to change my stroke with the old oars that I was dipping lightly into the warm, smooth water, peaceful and violet at this late hour. Tired of a fruitless search, he threw the bucket angrily into the boat and, sitting down in the stern with his head in his hands, seemed lost in thought.
Suddenly making up his mind, he opened the door of a small chest, a little store-cupboard full of ropes. He took out a knotted handkerchief and untied it to reveal a strange blue stone which he seemed to regard as the greatest of treasures; a rather crumbly stone, very bright blue. He gazed at it with admiration and with sadness. After much hesitation he broke off a tiny piece, which he put on the seat in front of him. The poor man put the stone back in the handkerchief and hid it in the cupboard. Meanwhile we had been drifting. Rowing noiselessly, we returned to our position above the shallows. Again he plunged the windowed bucket into the water to get a better view of the green rocks, the motionless seaweed three metres below the heavy boat, swaying on a slight swell.
He gripped the fragment of blue stone in his fingers and dropped it into the water when the place seemed to suit him. I leant over the side ... It drifted down slowly into the clear water, dissolving very quickly and leaving a long blue trail. It hit the bottom and immediately formed a small cloud, still of an intense blue.
Fish appeared from all sides. They came out of the underwater caves and gathered round the cloud. Octopus, irresistibly attracted, emerged from their lairs and crawled over the rocks. The poor fisherman picked up the trident. With his first thrust he ran through an octopus, which he brought to the surface. He pulled it from the trident and threw it in the bottom of the boat. With another lunge he brought up another octopus, together with a good-sized fish caught in the weapon’s prongs. A third octopus joined the first two; they wriggled like snakes in the dirty water that lapped at the bottom of the boat, where the fish was thrashing about violently. Then nothing. Once the cloud had dissolved, few fish or octopus stayed in reach of the trident. We remained on watch. The water was getting dark, night was coming on quickly now. The beach, which was a fair way off, was no more than a faint line of pink sand, arcing round at the foot of enormous hills that were full of the cries of insects.
He gestured at me to head back to shore. The crickets’ song got closer, deafening in the warm, calm night. There must have been thousands of them in the bushes and the branches of the wild olive trees, scratching away beneath the stars. The boat bumped onto the sand and we got out, wading in the lukewarm surf. With only the night sky for light, laden with still-live octopus which were winding their tentacles round our wrists, with our jar of water and fish carried by the gills, we arrived at the cave. I heard him snap a few small branches, I saw the quick flash of a lighter. With a lively crackling sound, pretty flames lit up the cave. There were some dead trees there, strangely whitened by being in the sea for a long time. He threw one onto the stones that served as his hearth. For a few minutes the fire seemed to be almost smothered by the weight of wood. The cave got dark again; then, a huge flame drove away the shadows. The scrawny silhouette of the fisherman stood out against the brightness of the fire. Still with the infinite sadness that characterised his every gesture, he prepared the octopus, striking them against the stones, the supple, gleaming tentacles slapping like bunches of leather thongs. Having emptied them of ink, he carried them to the sea, along with our one fish. I followed him silently on the warm sand, not wanting to be on my own in that unhappy cave, and because the black water attracted me, fascinated me, so powerful and calm under the starry sky.
The silent fisherman walked into the surf, trousers rolled up his thin calves. He gutted the fish, threw the entrails into the water, cleaned off the scales with a knife, then washed the flesh. Back in the cave he laid the octopus and the fish on the burning hot coals, while, kneeling on the shingle, I opened my bag. A gleam of envy flashed in his eyes at the sight of my provisions. It was a starving man, deprived of everything, who watched me fill a little saucepan with fresh water, bring it to the hot coals, and pour in coffee and sugar. Using a stick, he turned over the octopuses, which were hissing on the fire. Soon our supper was ready. He put out the fire, which plunged us back into the semi-darkness of the fine summer night.
We ate our meal outside the cave, stretched out on the warm sand, in sight of the sea that was as black as the ink from our octopus meat. Propped up on my elbows beside him, I held out my saucepan, filled with very strong coffee, which he drank greedily to the last drop. I questioned him. He seemed slightly mad, lost in loneliness. Seized with pity I gave him my cigarettes, more than twenty packets. He thanked me, almost in tears. He talked: he was dead and knew it. A fisherman by trade, he had lived on Athos for a long time, alone in this cave. There were not many fish in the sea, and his equipment was out of date. He suffered constantly from hunger. In the chest on the boat he had found the blue stone that attracted the fish
and the octopuses. He only used it in dire circumstances, when fishing was fruitless, when the hunger got too dreadful. Although he only broke off a tiny piece each time, the stone was being used up. He saw the time coming when there would be none left. And the wick of his lighter was getting shorter as well. Soon, no more fire, no more fish! What crime was he atoning for? He would have liked to return to the world of men. He missed his wife and his children; he had a son of my age. Hunger, hunger, he repeated, touching my bare shoulders. He came closer and sank his teeth into the nape of my neck. I could feel the poor fisherman weeping. He was hungry for me. Taking him in my arms on the warm sand, between the murmuring sea and the call of the crickets, that night I was for him both food, and his wife and son.
The stars were going out one by one in a sky that was already green. A pale gold heralded the coming dawn. Everything seemed to be suspended, scarcely born, delightful in the hands of God. A great silence had woken me. The insects had fallen silent. The sea, calm as a lake, was sleeping peacefully. Resting on my elbows on the shore, I looked at the poor fisherman, stretched out on his stomach, head in his arms. Dead, this simple man carried on his humble trade as a fisherman every day as though in a dream, not wanting to venture any further in the Land of Souls. As for me, in the clear dawn a lucky premonition was urging me to leave. Again I heard a call from the forests of the Holy Mountain. Many spells had delayed me. Could I hope for other magic, this time more favourable? In a hurry to go to my master, I left the fisherman to his deep sleep. I walked away across the damp sand, which the sea, waking with the rising sun, was caressing with its first cool waves.
A Journey to Mount Athos Page 9