Dinner with Persephone

by Patricia Storace

  Yiannis loads us with figs and pomegranates from his trees, and we drive off through shady secretive hamlets, one on the verge of restoration, with goats roaming through the foundations of the stone mountain houses, magnificent views of both sea and mountains, and a pretty marble fountain in its square. The interior villages are hidden enclaves that reveal themselves to you unexpectedly, often built on sharp slopes, and designed to be as invisible and inaccessible as possible to marauders and probably to Ottoman tax collectors as well. We stop for a minute in one where the mimosa-and-pine-scented air has a cakelike sweetness. An old lady comes down the path accompanied by five goats. She tells us that only five families live in this village in winter. In summer, the foreigners come who own many of the houses, but in winter, the goats outnumber the people. We wish her “Good winter,” and drive on through the heat to the cove at Aliki, divided as so much in Greece seems to be. On one side there is a site with the ruins of a classical temple, where a fury of waves lashes the rocks, a site for propitiation. You can see blocks of marble in the sea, possibly scheduled for transport in the seventh century, since Aliki was a center for marble export to ports all over the Mediterranean. On the other, the water smiles, smooth as a porcelain platter. The swimming is dreamlike, in a bay with the serene texture of lake water combined with the salty originality of ocean water. “It is pétillant, isn’t it,” says Kimon, surfacing from a dive, “gentle, but vital and festive like a blanc de blancs.”

  We walk afterwards along the small roads behind the cove, through what seem to be clouds of wine-scented air, and find the answer when an old woman beckons to us from a walled garden above the road. Wait there, she says, and we do, until she comes to the fence to hand us bunches of wine grapes from her harvest. They are the absolute inch away from being wine that genius is from being wisdom. “This month is called the Vintager,” says Elpida. “Have you ever noticed the profusion of the religious holidays and saints’ days during important agricultural months? I mean in September, the month of the vintage, and of the fruit harvest, there are one or two or more every week. We farm the supernatural in proportion to how much we are farming the natural.” We stop at another beach at sunset, and walk it for a while. A grandmother in black knits under a tree, while her grandchild stares meditatively at the sea. We walk past brilliant blue gallon olive oil tins planted with red geraniums, and tables in little pavilions and under trees where families eat watching the shore until it gets cold. A seagull runs clumsily away as we advance—he makes us feel untrustworthy, with his seeming idée fixe that we are determined to struggle with him over the fish he has caught. “When I walk here,” Kimon says, “I see something invisible. And astonishing. A complete reversal of fortune, an economic change so profound that the whole social structure is changing with it. As we walk past these families, who now own prime coastal property, realize that until the first waves of tourism in the sixties, this was the poorest land you could own. Rich farmland was desirable, but sand? The daughters of these families had to be either nice-looking or cunning, because they had no property of value to bring to marriage if this was what they brought. And now these undesirables are potential millionaires.” “Like the oil booms in Texas,” I say. “Yes. Just think of it,” says Kimon, “people who were once despised courted, new members of parliament, peasants suddenly the parents of jeunesse dorée.”

  When we drive back to their house, in a fishing village as compact as a quatrain, Kostas calls in high spirits over an interview he has read in the paper with a prominent classicist. Classicists appear regularly in the pages of newspapers and journals, partly because the kind and degree of teaching of ancient Greek in the schools is constantly debated here, and alters according to which party is in power. It is an issue that seems to divide fairly evenly along right- and left-wing lines, with the right wing favoring the compulsory teaching of classical Greek, and the left wing preferring that it be elective, proposing that the presence of classical Greek in modern Greek, if the language is intelligently taught, is itself an education in ancient Greek, adequate for people who are not going to be professional classicists, getting a full knowledge of the ancient language through its different dialects and periods. The right wing on the other hand seems to believe that the meaning of being Greek is held in the amber of fifth-century Attic Greek.

  The special urgency of Kostas’s call, though, is because he knows I will enjoy the professor’s response to a request to find a classical equivalent for the refrain of a pop song hit of the summer, “I feel high when you’re near by.” The classicist suggests a line from section 536b of the Platonic dialogue called Ion. “And listen to the end.” Kostas reads the question, “ ‘Is ancient Greek a living language?’ And the answer comes, ‘Not exactly living, but immortal.’ I knew you’d like it. What are you going to do tomorrow?”

  What we are doing is climbing up to the theater of Dionysus, placed with especially brilliant intuition, since the ring of marble benches of the theater slopes down toward the stage, resembling the cliff beyond, which itself slopes gently toward the larger circle of the sea, so that the landscape continues the theater. “There is a theater made by men and one by nature,” I say to Kimon. The audience sitting in the theater of Dionysus, looking beyond the stage to the corresponding sea, realizes that this theater is for the drama of art, but the sea, the theater beyond, is for the drama of life.

  We buy a cold drink from an enterprising man poised on the path with an ice chest, and walk back down to a panoramic site overlooking the Aegean. A clean white chapel with a red tiled roof has been built here, shadowed by pine trees. Two ferryboats are crossing in opposite directions, one for Thasos, one for a mainland port called Keramoti. A man is line fishing from a craggy rock wrinkled like the poet W. H. Auden’s aged, drink-raddled face. The waters from here are all possible blues, milky, washed with emerald, blue black, aquamarine.

  It was recently the name day of my new baby goddaughter in New York, so I show Kimon pictures. Name days are still important here, though I notice that the bakery shop windows, in Athens at least, make a point of displaying birthday cakes. “Choosing a godparent is still a complicated business here,” says Kimon. “For a politician, it means almost a guaranteed vote in exchange for protection, still. You would want to choose the strongest person whose power connected to your interests—let’s say a shipbuilder would choose a man who owned a forest. But you would also have to calculate that your children couldn’t marry each other according to church law, so the one alliance ruled the other out. But who do you think the best godfather would be, Patricia, if you were choosing?”

  “I don’t know—the prime minister? Elias Lalaounis, your Tiffany?”

  “Maybe. But there is a famous fairy tale, a paramythi as we call them, about the search for the ideal godfather, that says that even picks like yours are unstable. Would you like to hear it?”

  “Please.” Kimon lights another of the endless cycle of cigarettes he smokes—they seem to be an alternative for many Greeks to the worry beads which are becoming too nostalgic to make use of; the sheer self-consciousness of carrying them defeats the purpose of relieving tension. I look out over the brilliant blue-green anarchy of waters, a symbol since antiquity of the unreliability of patronage, from Odysseus, whom Poseidon hated and sea nymphs unexpectedly pitied, to Onassis, whose vast fortune and dynasty was founded on water.

  “There was once a villager, a farmer who had a few acres of olive trees and a patch of vineyard, but barely eked out a living. So when his son was born, he was naturally anxious to find the most influential of all godfathers for the boy. For what a dowry is to a girl, a godfather is to a boy. ‘Ask the head of the village,’ said his father-in-law, ‘he will not refuse you, and he is not only the most powerful man here, but knows officials in Constantinople.’

  “ ‘No,’ the farmer said respectfully but decidedly, ‘I want a godfather for my boy who is both more influential, with broader connections, but is also completely reliable. You and I
know the head of the village can be bought for the right price. I want someone absolutely just, so my child will never be cheated at the moment when he needs sponsorship most. Tomorrow, I will set out on a journey to find the perfect godfather for my son. I ask you to oversee the planting while I am gone.’

  “The next morning, the farmer set out on foot, carrying on his back a bottle of the wine from his own grapes, and the cold lamb and pie of wild greens that his wife had made for him. Have you had hortopitta, Patricia? I will ask Elpida to make us one—it is a pie made of fresh-picked wild greens and sheep’s cheese, the most elegant of dishes of the cuisine of poverty. We learned our wild greens especially well during sieges. Well, anyway, you will like hortopitta. So the farmer was walking along the coast road, thinking about the godfather problem, when he overtook a royal procession, horsemen and bearers carrying a sedan chair draped with velvet curtains and jewels and hanging silver lanterns, like the sultans used for short trips. A tall old man with a massive head, pure white hair, and a long white beard stepped out onto the ground, towering over the farmer. ‘Where are you going so far from your acres?’ the old man asked the farmer. ‘Your worship, I have just had a son, and I am going in search of the perfect godfather, because I want my boy to have every advantage.’

  “ ‘I offer myself as your new son’s godfather,’ said the old man.

  “ ‘But I am looking for a godfather who is perfectly just, and who will have my boy’s welfare at heart.’

  “ ‘I am the man you are searching for,’ said the magnificent old aristocrat.

  “ ‘What is your name, sir?’ the farmer asked.

  “ ‘I am God,’ said the old man.

  “ ‘Then, with respect, you are not the person I would choose for my son’s godfather.’

  “ ‘Why not?’ the old man asked. ‘Isn’t the name God the synonym for justice?’

  “ ‘No, my Lord. You give riches and pleasures to the evil, and hardship and pain to the good. You accept bribes. Just look at your velvet and your silver lamps. You are unpredictable. And you have influence only in certain circles. You are not the right godfather for my little son.’ And the peasant went on his way, leaving God standing with His retinue on the coastal road. He ate some of the lamb and drank some of the wine from home, and spent the night in a field under the open sky. The next day, he continued his journey, and his path crossed the path of a tall, athletic man wearing a coarse homespun tunic. ‘Where are you going, countryman?’ asked the man in the tunic. ‘I am going to seek a godfather for my newborn son, a godfather who is perfectly just and will not fail him.’

  “ ‘Then you have found that man in me,’ said the traveler in the tunic. ‘Take me to your house and I will sponsor your son.’

  “ ‘What is your name?’ asked the peasant.

  “ ‘I am Saint Peter,’ said the man in the tunic.

  “ ‘Then I cannot accept your kind offer,’ said the farmer. ‘Everyone knows you guard the gates of Paradise, and everyone knows you play favorites. You love sinners more than you love the good. The drunkards, the avaricious, the evil-hearted are the ones you sponsor, but the struggling decent folk you abandon. If a murderer builds you a church, the gates to Paradise are open. But if a good man can’t afford to light you a candle, to hell he goes. You are not the right godfather for my child.’ The farmer walked on, leaving Saint Peter speechless in the road; that night he found a cave and slept in it. When morning came, and he emerged, he saw three beautiful women with baskets on their arms filling them with wild greens. ‘Where are you going, Christian?’ asked the most beautiful one. ‘I am going to look for a godparent for my child, someone perfectly just to give my son protection.’

  “ ‘I will be the godparent and protectress,’ said the lady.

  “ ‘And your name, sister?’ asked the farmer.

  “ ‘I am the Virgin Mary,’ she replied.

  “ ‘Then I must respectfully refuse,’ said the farmer. ‘You consented to give your child up to a dreadful death, as if his life was yours to give, without knowing whether this fate came from God or the Devil. You did not protect your child, sister, and besides, you are known to demand buildings and candles and jewelry. Your icon in my church is hung with gold and diamonds, sister, while people’s children go barefoot. I will look elsewhere for a godparent.’

  “The farmer continued on his road, while salty breezes blew from the distant sea. He saw coming toward him another farmer, who had been doing the hard work of harvesting, since he was sweating and carrying a sickle. ‘Where are you going?’ the sweating farmer asked. ‘I have been traveling for three days now, looking for a godfather for my child. But I have not found him yet, because I am looking for a man of supreme justice.’

  “ ‘It is lucky that you have met me, then,’ said the thresher. ‘I am a supremely just man, and I am willing to stand godfather to your child.’

  “ ‘On the road so far,’ said the farmer, ‘I have met and refused God, Saint Peter, and the Virgin Mary. You call yourself more just than they are?’

  “ ‘I am more just than God, more just than the rock on which He built His church, more just than the Queen of Heaven, who yields to persuasion.’

  “ ‘And who are you?’ the farmer asked.

  “ ‘I am Death,’ said the thresher.

  “ ‘Then you are telling the truth. You favor neither the rich nor the poor, the ugly or the beautiful, the man or the woman. You take the child sucking the nipple and the blind woman limping with a cane. You are supremely just. Will you stand godfather to my son?’

  “ ‘I will,’ said Death, and accompanied the farmer back to his home. Kharos himself held the infant over the font and smoothed the wriggling baby with the holy oil. Death himself handed sugared almonds to the guests, lifted his wineglass to the company at the baptismal feast, and led them in the Greek songs he knew so well, since himself is present in so many of them. At the end of the day, he thanked his host, and said, ‘It is not often I am invited to a feast, and have the chance to sing and dance with the living. It is an honor to be nonos to your boy, and I would like to honor you in return. I would like my godson to benefit from his nonos, so if you like, I will put you on the road to riches and a great reputation. From now on you will be a doctor, and you will become the most eminent doctor in the world.’

  “ ‘How can that be, your excellency?’ asked the peasant nervously. ‘I am agrammatos, unlettered, I can barely read the initials of Christ on the holy bread in church.’

  “Death shrugged. ‘The rich bey in the town is sick, but I know he will not die yet. Go to him, prescribe something, no matter what, and tell him he will recover. You will instantly become famous for your medical wisdom. And when you are called to diagnose other patients, look for me. If I am standing at the patient’s feet, prescribe whatever herb that comes to mind, the patient will survive. If I am standing at the patient’s head, you will say the case is hopeless, and you will never be wrong.’

  “So the farmer went to the bey and cured him, and became famous throughout the country for the perfect accuracy of his diagnoses. He became one of the richest men in the country, doctor to the government officials, the diplomats, the judges, the shipowners, the sultan himself, and his son was brought up in luxury and sent to fine schools. Every day, the former peasant blessed Death, his koumbaros, for his largesse. He prospered and grew old. One day he was smoking his narghile under a leafy plane tree in his garden, and he saw a stranger coming toward him.

  “ ‘Who are you?’ he asked.

  “ ‘Don’t you recognize me?’ said the stranger.

  “ ‘My eyesight is not what it used to be,’ the doctor said apologetically.

  “ ‘But you can still recognize me when we are at a sickbed,’ said the visitor.

  “ ‘Oh, my apologies, koumbare,’ said the doctor. ‘I feel so lightheaded this afternoon, and everything looks hazy. What can I do for you?’

  “ ‘You can come with me to die,’ said Kharos. ‘It is you
r time, now.’

  “The doctor trembled and threw himself at the feet of Death. ‘Have mercy, koumbare, give me a little time more for the sake of your godson. I beg you to let me stay until he is married, until I see his own son born.’

  “ ‘I cannot wait for you, kinsman,’ Death answered. ‘We have lakes and seas and mountains and plains to cross, and you must come with me.’ So they traveled together, over islands and mountains and water, over Greece, through Greece, under Greece, until they came to a great palace hidden in a cave, a palace as huge as the sky, with as many windows as there are stars in all the galaxies. Some of the windows were brilliantly lit, some softly lit, some altogether dark. ‘We have come to the end of our journey,’ said Death. Kharos led the way into one of the lighted rooms, where many banks of candles were burning, some strongly, some weakly, and one an inch away from going out. Death stood the doctor in front of that candle and told him, ‘This is the candle of your life. Do you see how the flame is going out?’

  “ ‘But here is a whole supply of fresh candles, burning strongly,’ said the doctor. ‘Let me replace mine with one of these.’

  “ ‘They are the lives of your kin,’ said Death.

  “ ‘What about this one, it has a steady flame,’ the doctor pointed to a tall candle.

  “ ‘It is the life of your son, my godson,’ said Death.

  “ ‘What does that matter?’ said the desperate doctor.

  “ ‘I am the just godfather,’ said Death, and blew out the flickering flame of the doctor’s candle. The doctor fell dead at the feet of Kharos, who is at the center of the most intricate network of relationships, but who cannot be influenced.”