Cretan Teat

by Brian Aldiss

  ‘It’s an ikon, is it?’

  ‘No. An ikon would most likely have been stolen long ago. It’s a wall painting or a fresco.’

  She said slowly, ‘An ikon would have been better. You could have used it, couldn’t you? I mean, against bloody Nentelstam.’

  Archie Langstreet and his wife were taking a vacation while his lawyers in Geneva sought to amass the final sheaf of documents in a legal battle of long-standing. As a senior official in the WHO, Langstreet had been assigned to see the case through. His official title was Director of ACDW (Against Commercialisation of the Developing World). The case was due to come to court in November, after three years’ work. Nentelstam had done everything in its power to delay and muddle the issue. Langstreet was dedicated to concluding the case, and winning it, before his retirement.

  Nentelstam was well known for selling its formula powdered milk to mothers in the Third World. That breast-feeding obviated the danger of many diseases and the risks of becoming pregnant again was considered by the powerful international company to be none of their business. If Langstreet hated anyone, it was the faceless Nentelstam corporation, with its ruthless drive to open up more markets.

  New scientific evidence had recently come to light, fortifying his case against the corporation.

  He told his wife now that no ikon was going to make Nentelstam change its mind or its policies.

  ‘But an ikon of Jesus being breast-fed,’ Kathi urged.

  ‘There’s no ikon, my dear.’

  ‘So you said. But wouldn’t it be a powerful persuader for your cause? “Breast-feeding could turn your son into a Saviour…” ’ She sketched the sentence in the evening sky with a finger. ‘Don’t you see, Archie? If there were an ikon, it could be reproduced all over the world.’

  ‘It’s a good idea, Kathi. Brilliant, now I come to think of it. But – if there were an ikon… Only there’s not.’

  ‘If there were an ikon – ’

  ‘If there were an ikon?’ He regarded her grimly, not smiling.

  She stood up. ‘We’ll go shopping in the morning.’

  Cliff was up early next day. The sound of his singing in the shower woke Kathi. She slept naked. Drawing a silk robe about her, she went on deck to survey the scene. Distantly, two fishing boats had drawn in, and there were men working at the nets. The boats were painted light blue, with eyes under the raised prows. Otherwise, the harbour was deserted. The sky was overcast with light mackerel cloud. A breeze toyed with her light brown hair. She inhaled deeply before going below to brew coffee and wake her husband.

  After breakfast, Cliff went off to find his new love. Langstreet and his wife went ashore to find a priest. Of the people they saw, the tourists wandered as if lost, whereas the locals were more purposeful, though unhurried. Gaining the main street, they asked a waiter in the nearest coffee shop where a priest might be found. The waiter obligingly walked with them for a hundred metres before pointing up a side street and giving them directions.

  They walked up a street lined by mutilated trees. Taking a turn to the right, they entered among ranks of smaller houses, most of them decked with flowers. The last house in the line, standing in a small garden in which honeysuckle flowered, was the one described by the waiter as the priest’s house. It was in no way distinguishable from its neighbour. Kathi rang the doorbell.

  They waited.

  ‘Shall I ring again?’

  ‘He may be out.’

  ‘Doing good?!’

  ‘Doing no harm, we hope.’

  The door opened. The priest emerged, to stand there blinking benevolently at them, turning a blue-streaked rag over in his hands. He wore the customary black robes of the orthodox priest, and the customary round black hat. His face was wrinkled, its rich brown colouration setting off his white beard. He pursed his lips and raised his dark eyebrows in mute question.

  ‘We need your advice, sir,’ said Langstreet. ‘Do you speak English?’

  ‘What nationality have you?’ enquired the holy man, narrowing his eyes to scrutinise Langstreet. ‘English? German?’

  ‘We’re English,’ Kathi told him. ‘We have a religious question to ask you, if we may.’

  He gestured largely, and began to walk slowly towards the garden at the side of the house. As they followed, he said, ‘You see, I decorate my house. I have some paint. Therefore I cannot ask you inside it. We shall sit in my garden. There you can speak.’

  The side garden was untidily bright with pink and blue flowers, among which courgettes and peppers grew. In the garden, sheltered by vines, stood a ramshackle table and chairs. The faded blue cushions on the seats of the chairs had once borne a pattern, now all but obliterated by wear and weather. The priest gestured to them to sit down. He seated himself after they had done so. A small bell hung from a chain by his right hand. This he shook once or twice. It gave off musical notes. A small bird in a wooden cage nearby echoed the sound.

  The priest asked courteously how he could assist them.

  ‘In the hills above Kyriotisa, I came across a painting in an old chapel which interests me greatly. It portrays the infant Christ being suckled by his aunt Anna,’ Langstreet began.

  The priest raised his hand immediately. ‘Pardon. Agia Anna is not the aunt of Jesus Christ. She is his grannie.’

  Kathi snorted with concealed laughter. ‘His grannie? On which side of the family?’

  The priest, without relaxing his good-humoured expression, said, ‘Is not that rather a silly question, madam?’

  Langstreet interposed hurriedly, saying that a monk had told him Anna was the aunt of Jesus.

  ‘The monks are poor men. They are good but they are countrymen, you understand. They have not much learning. Only a few scriptures by heart. They sometimes lack even Biblical knowledge.’

  Langstreet remarked that he did not recall the legend of Anna giving the infant Jesus suck in the Bible.

  ‘You must look in the Protovangelium of James, in the second century. There it is clear. Grannie, no aunt. Saint Anna. Mother of the Blessed Virgin Mary. Her relics are preserved in a chapel in Rome, as I recall.’

  ‘Well, that makes that clear,’ said Kathi, regarding her husband with merriment in her eyes. Langstreet evaded her glance.

  A sturdy old lady, with an apron over her black, ankle-length dress, appeared around the rear corner of the house, carrying a tray. She smiled graciously at her husband’s guests and set down the tray before them. Her brief journey had disturbed the arrangement of some biscuits on a patterned plate. She set them into a star pattern, smiling absently as she did so. With gestures of invitation, she then retreated.

  Cups of coffee and small cakes lay before them, beside the biscuits in their neat pattern. The priest, whispering a word of grace, invited them to help themselves.

  ‘So this grannie still had breast milk when her daughter had run dry?’ Kathi said.

  ‘Such is the report of James,’ the holy man said. He then looked enquiringly at Langstreet, who asked why this legend was not better known.

  ‘Is no a legend, but history. Wait, I have it in a history book, which I will fetch. Please enjoy your coffee.’ He rose and disappeared around the corner of the house. Kathi chose a small cake, while Langstreet selected a biscuit.

  ‘Jesus’ grannie!’ Kathi exclaimed in a whisper. ‘Ask him if there’s an ikon. There must be!’

  The priest returned, leafing industriously through a heavy volume bound in black leather. He had put on a pair of rickety spectacles and, having seated himself again, he stared at the pages through which he leafed, muttering to himself.

  Finally, raising a finger, he looked up.

  ‘Here we have the details. This is an English History of Byzantium. I bought it during my stay at Oxford, some period of time before. It has been written by Doctor George Layton. Listen!’

  He proceeded to read.

  ‘Mmm… “Two centuries and a half had almost passed away. The Byzantine Empire had been destroyed by the C
rusaders – ” that is the Fourth Crusade, of course’ – and the Asiatic Greeks were endeavouring to expel the piratical Genoese from Crete. The Emperor Michael Paleologos was besieging Constantinople without success. Some Greek officers, wandering through the ruins of the church and monastery of the Sacred Family, admired the magnificence of the edifice, despite its ruinous condition. They could but lament that so splendid a monument to Byzantine piety should have been converted into a stable under the ruinous administration of the Ottoman conquerors.

  ‘ “In a corner of the building, a remarkable tomb which had recently been desecrated arrested their attention. Within the sarcophagus lay a well-preserved body of a woman, richly dressed. An inscription upon the broken lid of the tomb proclaimed these to be the mortal remains of Saint Anna, mother of the Blessed Virgin.

  ‘ “Later, the Emperor Michael VI visited the spot. He ordered that the body be preserved and removed to the Monastery of Our Saviour, since when it has been lost to human cognisance.” ’

  ‘No ikons were made of Saint Anna?’ Langstreet asked.

  ‘Justinian erected a church in her honour.’

  ‘But no ikons?’

  The priest shook his head. ‘Why are you on this quest, sir? What happens to be your interest?’

  ‘I am a connoisseur of ikons, and am keen to acquire one of St Anna.’

  ‘I cannot help you there. Maybe there is no such ikon.’ His strong white teeth bit into one of the cakes.

  ‘Thank you for your help, sir.’ Langstreet extracted his business card from his wallet and handed it ceremoniously to the priest.

  The quiet town of Paleohora exhibited signs of life when tourists, returning from the beaches, sought a midday meal. Still Langstreet’s hired yacht lay moored on the quayside of the main harbour. Along the eastern beach, where shops and tavernas grew more modest, stood a shop selling ethnic wares, including a number of ikons. Langstreet and his wife entered the crowded little room, to be greeted by numerous representations of the good and bearded.

  A corpulent woman of middle age emerged from behind a counter at the rear and asked them if they would like to buy some local silverware. She clasped her hands before her, over a worn brown dress.

  Langstreet was inspecting the ikons. All were modern reproductions, and garishly coloured.

  He asked the woman where her ikons came from. She told him they were manufactured in Athens, at a workshop in the Plaka, a centre for tourist activities.

  ‘But a real ikon painter? Are there any in Crete?’

  ‘Not a real painter, no.’ She nodded her head, before adding, ‘But is old monk who does such things. He lives in the gorge.’

  ‘What gorge is that?’ Kathi asked. ‘The Samaria Gorge?’

  ‘No, no. I show you.’ She retreated to the rear of the shop, and they followed meekly behind her broad back.

  The woman fished up a biro and a paper bag from under her counter. On the bag she drew a rough line to indicate the south coast of the island. Marking the position of Paleohora with a cross, she drew a ragged line to the east of it, from the coast inland.

  ‘Here is Gorge Mesovrahi.’ As she drew another cross halfway up the gorge, she said, ‘Here is Church of Agios Ioannis. Here you will find the Monaché Kostas. He will show his ikons. Is very old.’ She handed the bag to Kathi.

  ‘Can we get there by road?’

  ‘Is no road. Only by sea you get there.’

  Langstreet and his wife exchanged glances. He asked the woman, ‘Are you sure this Kostas is still alive? There’s a village, is there?’

  ‘No village. Is church. Kostas is still living. I know it. He is my relation. His name is now Christodoulas – “He who serves Christ”.’

  Thanking the woman, clutching the paper bag, they left the shop. It meant sailing back the way they had come, and so probably returning the Southern Warrior late to the rental firm in Piraeus.

  ‘Why not? It sounds amusing,’ said Langstreet. The remark was an uncharacteristic one, as her glance at him indicated.

  ‘And maybe something more than that.’

  They sat in a taverna with Cliff, drinking frappé and consulting a nautical map. The mouth of the Mesovrahi Gorge was only some nine nautical miles from Paleohora, an easy sail. Cliff said he did not wish to come.

  ‘Oh, come on, darling, it’ll be a bit of an adventure.’

  He smiled at her. ‘I’m having my adventure here, Kathi. If you’re away overnight, I can stay with Vibe… Yes, in her hotel room… Oh, don’t look so old-fashioned, father! The hotel won’t care. You can pick me up when you come back.’

  ‘Do come with us, Cliff,’ his father said. ‘You should not sleep with a woman so easily. Besides which, it’s safer if we’re together.’

  ‘Safer?’ He shook his head with affected weariness. ‘What danger is there here?’

  Langstreet shrugged. ‘You never know.’

  So far so good. I get the impression that Archie Langstreet is a decent, serious man. Quite a different character from me. Perhaps there is an echo of my son in Cliff. On second thoughts, no, not really.

  I have said very little about Boris. I call him my son, but he is not a blood relation. At one time I was living with a decent woman called Polly Pointer. My life was then sane and orderly.

  Polly was superintendent of a home for unwanted children, and that was where she picked up Boris. His parents had beaten and abandoned him. She brought him home one day, a small sad mite of a boy who said nothing for two or three weeks. Tell me I have no sense of responsibility, but Boris was not popular with me.

  Polly and I quarrelled over the boy. I said she should have consulted me before bringing him home. The bad feeling between us was not improved by the child’s filthy habits, which were slow to improve.

  Not that bad feelings got in the way of our fascination for each other. Here was a woman who accepted responsibility, who cared for a number of people with horrible habits. And Polly did care – in a calm, deep way. What did she see in me? I was an independent spirit; I did not have to answer to a board, as she did. Also, at that time I was immensely popular and successful. I appeared frequently on TV chat shows. I was on the Literature Panel of the Arts Council, dishing out money to those less fortunate than myself (you notice that the money has run out, just when I’m broke). My novel, Whom the Gods Hate, was short-listed for the Booker Prize. All this success faded when Polly died.

  There was more truth than I had bargained for in my epigram, adopted from the Greek, ‘Whom the gods hate, they first make famous’.

  It seems as if, looking back, I was earning enough money to iron out our differences and live and love in some style.

  As circumstances eased, Boris improved. Polly was applying to have him officially adopted. Then the home where she worked rang one day to say that Polly was injured. I left the lad with a neighbour and drove to the hospital in Bournemouth where she lay.

  She had been run over in the driveway of the home. A client making an angry retreat had hit her as she ran to pick up a child who had fallen over. She died two days later, without regaining consciousness.

  After the funeral, I was stunned by grief. Only then did I fully realise what a good woman she was, and how much I loved her. And how I had often quarrelled with her unnecessarily.

  Poor dear Polly! I had taken her for granted. What do you expect? That’s life, as they say. She had been so joyous; without that joy, I was one of the walking dead.

  For Polly’s sake I did not get rid of Boris. He was by now a lonely and still oddly behaved little boy. I tried to talk to him about Polly.

  ‘She didn’t love me,’ he said. He was merely responding to the pattern of his life.

  ‘Yes she did, she loved you very much. Polly chose you of all the children in the home.’

  ‘She didn’t love me, or else why did she die?’

  How often I cried over that very question; it was one I could not help asking myself. How self-centred I was, crying more for myself than fo
r her.

  Now I think of it, I remember ringing my literary agent at that time, about something or other, and telling him that only women were capable of real joy. Not men. Men hid their incapacity in obsessions, such as writing. Real joy was granted only to women.

  ‘And how do you make that out?’ he had asked.

  ‘It’s a fact, Will. Something everyone knows. Like the fact that if you live in London you’re never more than a yard from a rat. Men should be humble before women, and serve them.’

  ‘Jesus,’ he said, and put the phone down. I then recalled what a big woman his wife was.

  Anyhow, to cheer up this narrative a bit, I must relate that I bought Boris some livestock to keep him happy. I was such an inadequate father. Firstly, I bought him a pair of ring-doves. Boris would be quiet in the garden, sitting on a log, to watch those pretty birds for hours, as they were cooing and flitting from tree to ground, strutting, flirting, seemingly everything to each other, the most contented of creatures.

  For his indoor companion, I bought him an iguana. We went together to a pet shop and chose a small common iguana, young but wise-looking. Years later, Fred, as we called him, had grown to be five feet long and became rather a problem; but Boris and I loved him from the start.

  We got two goats, which were rather a nuisance. But why am I telling you all this? So that you will know something of this rather silent lad, now almost a man, who still lives with me, who came on holiday with me to Paleohora, and remains a mystery to me, as I to him. He is studying to be a naturalist. His affections are directed, not to women or men, as far as I can see, but to the world of birds and animals.

  Much of my present trouble springs from my flying Boris to Tuscany to celebrate his sixteenth birthday. Our intention was to take a party of four friends, two adults and a girl and a boy, with us; but one of them fell ill at the last moment. Boris and I went alone, to a large, sparsely-furnished house in the wilds. I had a book to write. Boris cycled about the countryside, watching for wildlife.

  One evening, as I sat on the balcony with a glass of wine by my elbow, I saw Boris coming along the valley road, pushing his bike. With him was a young woman, walking in a confident manner. A woman, or girl, I should say, he had met in a village trattoria. This was Lucia, a pretty dark-haired girl, whose breasts were noticeable under her T-shirt. She wore shorts and mountain boots. They were excited, since Boris had captured a rare butterfly in a specimen jar, so introductions were perfunctory.