by Brian Aldiss
The man standing beside her wore the traditional black habit of Orthodox priesthood, complete with black headgear. He was small and wizened, an orange long past its sell-by date. His mouth was almost hidden behind a thick white beard, his eyes by thick eyebrows – two snakes peering from bushes. His ears luxuriated in dusty furze.
A group of people had gathered behind the monk. They remained at a distance in Attic poses, two stalwart women, an old bent man leaning on a stick, a child holding on to a corner of its mother’s apron.
‘You are unwell? Come with me to the monastery. I will give you lemonade.’
‘Thank you. And you are?’
But the monk was already heading for the house nearest to the church. He walked with a decided limp. The choric group made way for him. The women stared with curiosity at Kathi as she followed.
The room into which they entered was as stuffed with objects as an over-furnished dolls’ house. There was scarcely room to move between a narrow bed and an old table. The table was cluttered with the remains of a meal, or perhaps of several meals. A platter was partially eclipsed by a stack of manuscripts. There were also oil paints and a half-finished painting. One wall contained a small shrine where a paraffin light glowed. Another wall was covered almost to floor level with ikons of various sizes. A third wall specialised in electronic equipment – a hi-fi, a television set, a radio, a computer and a fax machine – from among which the face of Jesus looked out, calm and a little supercilious.
The monk indicated that Kathi should sit at the table. She removed a tube of vermilion and planted herself on a rush-bottomed chair.
‘A moment!’ he said. Opening a back door into what Kathi glimpsed was a kitchen, he shouted for a woman to come in.
‘You have arrived from the sea coast?’ he asked, perching himself on the edge of the bed. She swivelled to face him before answering affirmatively.
‘You have no man?’
‘He’s not well. He returned to our boat.’
‘He’s invalid?’
‘No.’
‘You relations with him are good?’ The snakes peered out of the bushes at her.
Irritated by this line of questioning, she stood up and gazed at the ikons hanging on the wall. Venerable faces of calm, bewhiskered sainthood stared out at her. The saints were dressed in angular garments, their folds sharply emphasised. They stood before a stylised portico of a church, or else in a vacuum of gold leaf. Most of the portraits exhibited such clarity, it was as if the holy men needed no obscuring air in which to breathe.
For Kathi, the religious import of the paintings meant nothing, the style of painting everything. There was here a conviction, a formality beyond anything in Western art, which drew from her a deep and disturbed response, a mingling of respect and rejection.
She replied to him as he had done, with another question. ‘Are you the Monaché Kostas? I come with a commission from my husband.’
‘Are your relations with him good?’
‘They’re as good as can be expected. We wish you to paint an ikon for us.’
‘Excuse me. If your marriage is breaking, then I cannot paint an ikon, for who would pay me in such a case? You see my problem.’
A woman entered from the kitchen, bearing a tin tray on which were a pitcher and two glasses of minute size. She set the tray down precariously and poured lemonade into the two raki glasses.
Kathi took a glass and drained it at a gulp. ‘More, please! I’m so thirsty.’
As more was being poured, Kostas the Monk said, ‘Excuse me, when did you last have a sexual relation with your man?’
‘That’s none of your business! Shut up about it. I wish to commission an ikon. I will pay you a deposit in advance. We don’t need this personal business.’
‘But I see you are troubled in your relationship. I can give you spiritual help.’
‘I don’t want, I don’t need, your spiritual help, thank you.’ She grabbed the pitcher and poured herself another thimbleful of lemonade. The large woman, who had stood there stolidly, said something to Kostas with an air of disapproval.
‘She asks if you have a bad thing in your past,’ said the monk.
‘For God’s sake! That’s none of her business either.’
‘We must be friends if I am to paint for you, yes? Our histories are part of us.’
‘Our bank accounts are more important than our personal histories, and in this case – ’
But the monk had risen to his feet. Stretching wide his arms, he proclaimed that he knew nothing of bank accounts. Bank accounts were ungodly. History was the important thing. History was all round us. History decided what a man should be.
‘But – ’ said Kathi.
No interjection would stop Kostas’ oration. He was born many kilometres from Agios Ioannis, in a place unknown to his visitor, called Kyriotisa.
‘I do know Kyriotisa, as a matter of fact,’ his visitor said, but her contradiction was swept away on the tide of oratory.
In Kyriotisa, he continued, he lived happily with his family, who had their own small olive grove. Life was good. They had a goat and hens and a well of good water. As a boy, he fished in a lake and caught trout for their supper, for which he was much praised. Then German armies invaded Crete.
‘Oh, for God’s sake!’ cried Kathi. ‘Not the bloody war again! That was fifty years ago. It’s all over, done with, gone.’
The monk gave a savage cry. Rolling up his cassock, he planted a foot on the table. He had a plastic leg, joined at the knee to real flesh. Kathi stared in horror at the pink plastic, and the stained straps securing it in place.
‘War is not over! Is not gone! Is here still, in my leg!’
He went on to say that he was training to become a policeman when the Germans invaded. He had immediately taken up arms, and became a partisan in the hills. He spoke eloquently of the atrocities committed. Kyriotisa was burnt to the ground. The young woman to whom he was engaged had been raped by three Gestapo officers. They had cut off her breasts and bayoneted her.
This last remark was addressed, not to Kathi, but to the stout woman who stood by the table. She clutched the lemonade jug to her bosom, unmoved by a recital she had no doubt heard before.
‘What did you do in return?’ Kathi asked, coldly.
‘We would not let them get from such atrocities.’ He enumerated some of the devices of retribution, fixing Kathi with his little serpent eyes.
‘Stop it! That’s enough!’ She felt she was in a madhouse. ‘These terrible crimes – on both sides – they happened long ago. They should be forgotten by now.’
‘My leg! My affianced! How do I forget them?’ After the war, when the Germans had been driven out of Crete, law and order was re-established in the province of Canea. Kostas emerged from the hospital in Hania and returned to ruinous Kyriotisa. He was no longer able to train as a member of the police force. As he asked rhetorically, ‘Who would wish to have a policeman with one leg?’
Kyriotisa echoed with mourning. He became a lame monk and studied the Holy Scriptures. His character became more and more solitary. He admired paintings of the Byzantine period. He began to copy them. Soon, he saved up enough money to buy paints. He copied many frescoes. What he particularly admired were the frozen attitudes of the saints.
Of course. They echoed his own frozen attitude to life, thought Kathi. (As an author, I am privy to my characters’ thought processes.)
As his imitation of the rules and standards of the specialised manner of painting – ‘heraldic’, he called it – improved, his ikons were bought by a merchant, who displayed them in his little shop. They sold to tourists, who were not fussy about whether a painting was genuine or fake. So he contributed a little to the return of prosperity to Kyriotisa.
One day, the Germans returned. This time, they wore civilian clothes and drove in big cars. They threatened to take over Kyriotisa and rebuild it. They had big smiles and gifts for the populace, but still they were the same Germans. T
he same Germans! He emphasised the point, smashing a clenched right fist into his left palm.
Kathi felt bound to contradict him. ‘No. They were not the same. Nazi Germany was defeated and overthrown. I have heard this story before! This delegation from Bonn, from a democratic Germany, came to make amends for the destruction they had caused. Is that not the case?’
Spit issued from the monk’s mouth as he cried, ‘The case! The case! Madame, the people were scared from their wits! They did not hope ever to see another German. It happened that at that very moment, as the big cars drove up, I was hearing that a living became available here in the gorge, at the Church of Agia Ioannou. So I took it and left Kyriotisa forever. Here I live happily in meekness and suffering, loving everyone, hating nobody, serving the Good God in every way I can.’
‘So perhaps you did not hear that the Germans made honourable amends. They rebuilt the houses which had been destroyed. They mended the roads. They constructed a bridge over the River Kyros. They even built a war memorial, commemorating the Cretan dead, and admitting to the Nazi ferocity. Can you imagine such genuine penitence, or such generosity ever before?’ She felt her grasp on grammar faltering before the monk’s broken eloquence.
He clenched his fists together by his chest.
‘Pah, repentance! Nothing! They rebuilt the town so as to have a good plan of everything, the houses, the new hospital, the roads, so that they would know exactly where everything was the next time they invaded us. Why do you defend such villains?’
She saw it was time to keep quiet. To argue against such obsessions was useless.
‘You were clever and fortunate to be able to build yourself a new life here, after the war. I have heard that your ikons are much appreciated.’
‘No thanks to the Germans.’
‘But German tourists buy them, don’t they? These days, the Germans are entirely different. They too suffer from the Nazi past, and do their best to be good citizens of the world, you know.’
‘But you are English?’
‘I told you so. Now, Monaché Kostas, about this ikon I hope you will paint.’
She brought out photographs of the crude painting of Agia Anna that Langstreet had found in the little church amid the olive groves. Kostas knew nothing of the legend. He examined the photograph closely.
‘Is a small breast for Jesus. Not like this woman here.’ He indicated the woman who still stood by them, clutching the jug. ‘Is for politeness and religion the painter paints a small breast. Maybe was really a big happy breast.’
He let his gaze linger on Kathi’s shirt.
‘How long will the work take you? We do need it rather quickly. How much will you charge?’
He shook his head. As he stood there, apparently thinking, she thought how much she hated him and his encasing xenophobia. It was a relief that Archie was not with her. The man’s prejudices would have been more than he could bear.
‘No money to pay yet. I do much research in colours and attitudes. Then I paint and varnish. If you don’t like, then you don’t pay.’
‘How much, then? How long will it take?’
The old mouth opened in a dry laugh. ‘Always the European question, no? ‘How much?’ ‘How long?’ Madame, I need time. Just some little time. Then I speak. Is a big difference between our nations – we have the time, you have the watches.’
The aphorism checked her. ‘Say, ten thousand drachmas? Twenty? What size will you paint it?’
He clicked his tongue, protesting that as a poor monk he did not need too much money. Four thousand would be enough. He bent down and produced a piece of wood, measuring about 300 by 360 centimetres. He would paint on this block.
‘It will be like these paintings on the wall? These are your work?’
He raised his head in the Greek gesture meaning yes. ‘You see, I have the time to take care.’
She saw in his humility another aspect of the man. The man with a wound had shaped his life to become an artist. She told herself he needed respect rather than hatred.
‘I would like to give you some money now. As a token of my sincerity.’
He contradicted her mildly, saying that money was only itself, never a token of sincerity.
‘You will take a little meal with us, Madame. Then you must return to this husband of yours, to arrive before dark. What name has he?’
‘Archie.’
Suddenly, he smiled, an old broken smile with something warming in it.
‘Mm. Archway? Like a bridge between two different points.’
‘If you like.’ She turned to examine his ikons again, avoiding any more questions. The woman left the room. Kostas stood silent, gazing at the photograph of Agia Anna.
Finally, he said, almost to himself, ‘It is possible, of course. In God’s world, all is possible.’
In God’s world… She felt vividly that this little man had recreated a fragment of God’s world in his art. That it repeated slavishly the old formulae into the twentieth century lent it an extra attraction.
They ate in the shade, outside the back of the house, on two old rickety chairs. It was a dish of sliced tomato and goat’s cheese, onto which olive oil had been liberally poured, served with a hunk of bread and a glass of retsina. She recalled a similar rustic setting in the heat, long ago. She had come upon it during a holiday on a Greek island, after she had taken her degree and had become a doctor. She had travelled with another girl. Sheila. They had met up with two Italian youths, also holidaying.
She had not greatly liked Umberto. The heat and their near nudity, and Umberto’s importuning, had persuaded her to make love with him. It had not been as exciting as she had hoped for, but – she now remembered – she had been pleased afterwards to have had him do it. Such things were what one went on holiday for.
Why think of that occasion now? It meant nothing. Oh, but Umberto had sung to her while they swam together. She had enjoyed that. Archie never sang. Perhaps she had heatstroke. Yes, she had Ermuedung. The goat’s cheese was good. Why should Kostas have offered her spiritual help?
After the meal, she thanked Kostas and started back down the trail through the gorge.
I will spare everyone, including myself, an account of Kathi’s return journey down the gorge. These days, anyone can imagine what it’s like to walk down a gorge. You can read about such things in the travel pages of your Sunday paper, or see people doing it on television.
I have never been down a gorge myself, though I did once see the mouth of the Mesovrahi from a cruise boat. No, that’s untrue. A lie here is a real lie, whereas anything that happens in my story is neither true nor untrue in the same sense, since everyone understands it to be a fiction. Not that I intend a lie in the fiction; indeed, I make it as truthful as possible, within its own fictive realm. Though I recall Iris Murdoch telling me that in fiction one approaches truth through an ambush of lies.
Or perhaps, more poetically, she said ‘an ambush of loves’.
To say that I suffered from diarrhoea in Greece is a statement of a different kind to saying that Archie Langstreet suffered from diarrhoea in the same place. You may choose to believe or not to believe in my attack (though I could take you to the actual toilet in the hotel in Piraeus where much of the attack occurred); but it would be idle to discuss whether or not Archie suffered from the same undignified upset. Rather like arguing about how many children had Lady Macbeth: how many craps did Archie Langstreet have?
Of course, some people are particularly interested in such things. One lady friend of mine noted that people pee a lot in my novels. Was this, she was implying, an obsession or an attempt at realism? Or was it my own bladder speaking?
Anyhow, there I was on the terrace of this hotel in Piraeus, surrounded by roses swarming up trellises, reading The Victor Hugo Club, and a bit bored, when I fell into conversation with Rosemary. This was after that disgraceful but delectable occasion with Lucia, mentioned earlier. I could see that Rosemary had a rather superior air about her. In fact,
I found later that she was Lady Rosemary de Vere. She was contemplating divorcing her husband on grounds of cruelty.
So she told me, after we had downed a vodka or two, followed by a glass of retsina, while pecking at mezedes. Right there on the terrace. Contrary to what you may read in novels, it’s pretty rare, at least in my experience, to be able to pick up a woman in a hotel – which you might consider to be a kind of social Exchange & Mart – however actively one remains alert to the possibility. It’s a little discussed fact of life that most people travel in pairs, or are about to meet the other half of their pair, or else are trying to pick someone up themselves, or aren’t worth picking up. But Rosie – it was Rosie by the time we ordered a light lunch together – Rosie and I were getting on well, and laughing a lot. Two delightful dimples, east and west of her lips, appeared when she giggled.
Then, over the deep-fried kalamari, came a terrible stabbing pain in my stomach. I was being polite, striving to give the appearance of a cultivated man, while she was telling me at length how amusing were the novels of Surtees, particularly Mr Sponge’s Sporting Tour.
I sat there, pretending nonchalance, until my stomach growled audibly. With an excuse that it was time for my literary agent to phone me, I hastened upstairs to my room and the toilet.
It must have been the crab. I had eaten crab the previous evening at an outdoor taverna, having just returned from the islands. Why did I eat that crab? I had been uneasy about it, even while eating. Was it not sufficient for a brainy chap like me, that by merely removing the ‘bee’ and substituting one of those ‘pees’ this erstwhile lady friend of mine had believed formed a leitmotif in my work, I might have seen through the word ‘crab’ to what it really was?
As I crouched there, my stomach releasing itself downwards, I saw the notes I had left on the toilet floor during my last visit. Unlike my malady, the notes had some claim to being of intellectual moment.
‘Is it conceivable that by careful arrangement of the twenty-six letters of the alphabet on paper I am able to account for my life, however passionately or dully lived? And that those letters can be reduced further to something on a silicon chip, expressed as noughts and ones? Am I merely an arrangement of such insignificant symbols?’