Early, hungrier, thirstier guests were clotting in groups between potted-out flowerbeds, downing Scotch or champers, stuffing in the caviar and chicken livers, trying out an uneasy stance on the trampoline lawns. The lady in Thai silk fell backwards into the cinerarias (‘… poor thing, she’s diabetic …’)
A large young woman from the Opera was having a go at the ‘Liebestod’ as a form of entertainment. The chorus on the lawns was forced to amplify its voice and increase its already enthusiastic intake of savouries till the litter of toothpicks might have provided material enough for a communal game of spillikins.
The guests continued pouring in: artists hopeful of patronage, dressmakers, milliners, actors and singers with futures ahead of them, telly crews, and gossip writers.
The Boy Scout was there in his Baden-Powell pyramid, his tea-rose wife deliciously smelling of Elizabeth Arden. Desperate young girls prepared to accept marriage with whichever atrophied barrister proposed.
To a clatter of hooves on marble steps, Sir Wilton’s niece the Hon. Joan Scott Tupper (‘… ex-wife of Tony, y’know, Lord Pinchbeck’s heir who crossed the floor …’) rode her dappled mare, Sieglinde, into the Comebychance garden. ‘Scottie’ looked sonsy in the extreme, in her black velvet hunting cap, lace jabot, and ruffles. Dismounting, she handed the reins to a Filipino houseboy, ill at ease with such a handful as the farting, over-stuffed mare. ‘Scottie’ too, looked over-stuffed, but managed to stuff in a handful of cheese crescents while her mare chewed on a broccoli salad.
‘Popped in for a bit to sustain me on the ride,’ ‘Scottie’ spluttered at her aunt, while automatically forcing her swag of blonde curls into the aunt’s riper than usual olive cheek.
Miriam accepted these rites with well-rehearsed humility.
Benny Glick was eyeing ‘Scottie’, who obviously did not fancy offers from that direction. As the party progressed, body cannoned off body into fresh combinations of the same game. Shrubberies invited exploration. Assisted by a dwarf bass, the stout young woman from the Opera had thrown herself into ‘Brunnhilde’s Farewell’.
Finally I got the giggles which, I gathered from sideways glances, several discreetly corseted matrons diagnosed as hiccups.
‘May I bring you something? A glass of water?’ the Boy Scout’s lady asked. ‘Or perhaps a sliver of slippery elm?’
But I knew I was beyond cure, unless through the therapy of revolutionary violence.
I grabbed Sieglinde’s bridle from the hands of the Filipino strapper. I leaped at the saddle, only briefly fumbling for the stirrups. I was again astride in all the glory of my rights as Empress and circus rider.
Sieglinde pigrooted once or twice before responding to the master touch. Back and forth I rode her, above trestles littered with the shambles of Miriam’s luncheon, ploughing the Double Bay hair-dos, the bald pates, the hair-pieces and blow-waves, then down to the plastic scum where beach meets lantana, and up again, up. I might have been leading a cohort in which Valkyries galloped neck and neck with Sisters of the Sacred Blood. We skimmed the spires of cypresses, scattering nests and fledglings of spine-bill and bulbul, till in the act of wheeling, Sieglinde stumbled on the transverse branch of a deodar. She dumped me just short of the buffet’s ruined conceits. It was a soft landing. Could have been on a heap of horse-turd, I reasoned as I closed my ears to Miriam’s screams of, ‘Get her out of here, someone – whoever she is …’
When I re-opened my eyes pandemonium must have been at its peak. I noticed I was tightly holding on to Lady Miriam’s detached pigtail. There was nothing for it but to regain unconsciousness.
When Hilda came back into the room I felt I had to apologise for the state my chinchilla must be in.
She seemed mystified. ‘Perfect condition. Though I wouldn’t wear them – on principle – I’ve got to admit furs have a glamour of their own.’
‘You didn’t notice anything – not even a smell?’
‘Only mothballs.’
‘But there must have – from my landing in the horse-shit …’
She didn’t even blink. She said she was going into the garden to turn the sprinklers on. I was glad to be left alone. I could get on with my writing without further argument.
I have done this little drawing of the island in the margin. The sea in which it lies suggests a sheet of glass, when in fact the seas which surround Nisos are almost always troubled. The island is elongated, damp and melancholy, smelling of pine trees, extinguished candles, stale incense and cooking oil stagnating round left-over food.
Often in the night I hear a gunshot, for there are suicides on Nisos. Murders too, by Turks, pirates, guerrillas, lovers. Or is the shot I hear from the murder I committed in killing Hilary’s spaniel, Danny? Hilary’s own death was silent. I suppose one would call it suicide, technically anyway, only a half-murder. Nor does it belong to Nisos, rather the island on which we lived, live still, beside the Park.
I call out through my sleep to this body gradually forming beside me in the bed. It is not Hilary but Onouphrios, who answers, or more precisely grunts his way into my dream like the gross human pig that he is. A heavy boar. (I shan’t be tempted by the obvious pun which offers itself.) A man can be disarming. But a male, never, thrashing around, bristles sprouting, prickling, cutting, as he thrusts in the direction his desire is leading him.
Smooth and civilised, Hilary was misguided in another way. In the early days of our marriage he liked to refer to desire as love. I did too, for that matter. We did not believe we were being deceitful. We weren’t either. Were we? We couldn’t have been. The children were living proof of our bona fides. We were sincere. We believed in our vocation as parents.
Even though we are unconscious of it, we are all born to search for a vocation. Hilda and Hal? Probably in their own perverted way.
Like Onouphrios the monk. Otherwise would he rise from the bed in the middle of the night, disentangle himself from the sweaty sheet, which has practically strangled us, and stagger into the chapel to uphold his Orthodox faith? Even I, in my shabby habit, am moved to tears by the sublime mumblings as Onouphrios performs the office under the Pantocrator’s eye. Myself always in the shadows. I was nothing. I am nothing. Cassianí the nun, who sweeps the mouse droppings, the fallen nests, the broken tiles, out of the chapel of Ayia Ekaterini at Nisos, for the resumption of its spiritual life, to the glory of the Pantocrator, the Panayia, and their Saints.
It was some time before the Abbot dropped to what had happened. Panaretos, I could see, was a cynic. That thin smile. On coming down from the Monastery he held out a hand for me to kiss. It smelled of rose-water sprinkled over sweating lard. I kissed the hand, the ring. In contrast with the flabby flesh, the ring was brutally direct. It bruised my lip.
After the Abbot’s inspection, and apparent approval, Onouphrios and I became the servants of Ayia Ekaterini, one of whose eyes had been gouged out by vandals. I did not see Panaretos again. But his smile lingered, enjoying the situation he had created by allowing this nun to set up house with his representative Onouphrios.
From time to time the monk went up to the Monastery. Whether he indulged in the Abbot’s unnatural pleasures of which the more sophisticated townspeople spoke, I had no proof. I suspect Panaretos despised the rough, stinking peasant turned monk. For his part, the monk may have pandered to his superior by encouraging his vice and taking part in his sexual orgies. Onouphrios valued his independence, and the services Cassianí provided.
The church of Ayia Ekaterini became a favourite sight for foreign tourists on their way up to the Monastery, probably less for its inferior, damaged architecture than the mystery of its custodians. While Onouphrios was pointing out architrave and fresco, the visitors’ eyes showed greater interest in the nun sweeping the tessellated floor, or bent above the vegetables she tended at a stone’s throw from the church.
I was proud of my purple eggplant and emerald peppers, less of the worm-eaten cabbages. It did not bother me that my nails were black with ho
nest dirt. When the visitors had satisfied their curiosity as far as possible they would cast a last long look at the nun weeding her plot. They could not undress me. My neglected face, made sallower by its frame of dark kerchief, gave them their only glimpse of flesh, possibly deepening the mystery of the monk and nun in charge of this dilapidated church. The tourists sometimes left sums of money for its upkeep. Those who made substantial contributions Onouphrios entertained with little cups of coffee which he had me serve on an iron table covered with plastic in the space between the church and our quarters. Some of our guests, grimacing as they reached the bitter dregs at the bottom of the cup, would try to draw out the silent nun, with phrases in clumsy Greek. But Cassianí was either too discreet, or more probably too stupid, to let them engage her in conversation. She might titter slightly to appease them, while veiling unexpectedly blue eyes behind dark lids.
Sometimes I used to escape, not along the path which linked our humble church with the Monastery, but by a less defined track which forked from the well-worn pathway just beyond our precinct, and wound around the shoulder of the mountain in a southerly direction. On most of these occasions Onouphrios would stand calling after me to return. If I looked back I could see the scowl that had formed on the yellow cheeks above the great black beard. He was afraid I might defect. Usually I ignored him, but sometimes I called back, knowing that the wind would convert my reply into nonsense.
I was what is known as ‘free’, stooped scuttling against the wind, over the stones, almost horizontal with the droughty earth and thistles. My feet in their peasant sandals seemed scarcely to touch the ground. The south of Nisos, compared with other quarters of this moist and seductive island, was turned into a desert place by the hot winds blowing out of Africa, out of Egypt directly to the south. I re-lived a former life on this barren hillside smelling of dust. I bit the tails of my hair escaped from under the kerchief. I stumbled readily and fell. I rolled over, grinding my back into the stones, face to face at last with the sky – dare I say Heaven, as opposed to the damp and mouldy simulacrum in our church, closer than I could hope to come to the saint’s ecstasy on this hump-backed mountain, not always as barren as it seems, when in spring the earth breaks out in cyclamen and cistus, and the glowing spires of asphodel which draw one back to the world of reason with their stench of bed-bugs.
This evening I can feel the little bubbles of laughter coming in the gaps between my teeth. Laughter too can sanctify.
All kinds of herbs and bitter weeds grow on the mountain. I would dig up plantain and dandelions and stuff them into the prickly goat-hair tagari I always carry with me on these sorties. Goats often appear around me in a scampering of hard pellets. This evening a little doe in kid, scarcely more than a kid herself, butts my ribs before curvetting away into the wind.
I wander as far as the ruins of Hera’s temple fenced with barbed wire against intruders. Only official guides have the key to the gate, which they unlock when they come with their mobs of tourists. I have no difficulty crawling through a goat-made hole in the wire – and come across the torso of the kouros. The portable archaeological finds have been moved to the museum in Athens. Why they overlooked the kouros torso is a mystery, unless he was left for my coming. Or is he in fact lying here, his ropes of hair and flattened nose, amongst the thistles? Has my psyche, perhaps, conjured him out of an existence we shared in Alexandria, Luxor, or Abu Simbel? Shivering with recognition, I run a finger over the square nipples.
On returning to the outside world, leaving on the barbed fence tufts of wind-blown hair, I find the little doe, my familiar, waiting for me on the slope. On all fours, I face her, eye to eye, forehead butting forehead, the tassels at her throat trembling, her belly stirring with the unborn kid. I caress the little teats, the udder already preparing milk. As I make for the church of Ayia Ekaterini, the goat trots beside me. I wonder how Onouphrios will receive her.
He is in the worst temper, expecting the meal I should have cooked him. My familiar has wisely removed herself. At times I heard pellets pattering on the tessellations in the nave of the church. On going to the kitchen door, I knew from the movement, the rustling in a clump of elders that she must be browsing there. Once I heard her tear a strip from the plastic cover on the iron table at which Onouphrios entertained his more generous guests. It made me happy to know she was occupied.
I go back to my own occupation, stewing a mess of eggplant and peppers for my master in some of the votive oil brought him by Kyria Vaso, widow of a tavernkeeper at the skala.
Vaso is devoted to Onouphrios, believing his hands responsible (with divine assistance of course) for the remission of arthritic pains in one of her legs. Ayia Ekaterini is famous for miraculous cures, witness the votive limbs, breasts, heads, in silver (or tin) suspended round the appropriate altar. In my half-sleep I often hear the whispered prayers of the sufferers reach out towards the bed in which I lie.
Tonight we are more down to earth. Onouphrios sits scoffing the mess of vegetables stewed in Vaso’s rancid oil. Wasn’t I eating? I tell him I will boil some of the horta I dug up on my walk, they would be more to my taste.
‘Wind-makers!’
‘They purify the blood.’
‘If that’s what you need.’ His superiority over the weeds and herbs of the mountain did not prevent him letting out a belch.
I should add that another of his admirers, a peasant ambelourgikós, keeps him supplied with a rough red, the effects of which reverberate through the night.
On finishing his meal he went outside to make water. ‘What’s this?’ I hear him shout.
I knew without prolonged investigation he had caught sight of the little parti-coloured doe slipping through the shadows cast by pine and elder.
‘Could be a ghost. It’s a night for ghosts.’
Suggestions of this kind, which he had not originated, tended to infuriate Onouphrios. ‘What do you think you are?’
‘I shan’t say a nun – unless a failed one. A woman – as you ought to know.’
He was racked with laughter and Costa’s rasping wine.
‘I ought and do!’ he coughed. Then quietened, ‘You know what they say you are?’
‘Who?’
‘All the Christians from hereabouts.’
I knew what was coming. It would be just as they tell you in another world, ‘You can only be mad. If you weren’t, you couldn’t say or do the things no normal woman says or does.’
I wait for Onouphrios to come out with his Greek version. ‘You are a foreign devil. You have evil powers. No one in these parts has a blue eye.’
Having said his piece, he goes inside and falls on the bed.
I could not bring myself to follow. I walked round the solid, to some extent re-assuring mass of the church, and presently heard a crying from what I took to be the doe. She had lain down in the elder grove on a bed of pine-needles and had begun her labour. I soothed her straining sides. I helped deliver the kid, while the mother nibbled at my sleeve. I parted the bloodstained caul for the doe to infuse her offspring with life, which she did by licking, snuffling, bleating encouragement. The kid twitched and breathed. I bowed my head beneath the starry night for what I was vain enough to see as my own contribution to the continuity of being – though impostor-nun, sorceress, failed wife-mother, mere woman, in my various allotted lives.
Because I had nowhere else to go, I was drawn back to my mentor-lover. I lay down beside the monk and awaited what might be expected of me. I felt heavier than my actual body, my stone head and plaited locks weighing down the straw-filled pillow, my torso, and my rigid arms and thighs up to where they had been broken off, catching on the coarse sheet. Onouphrios rolled over against me and away, his breath hissing as his fingers touched square nipples carved out of stone.
‘Lord in Heaven!’ His high-pitched scream must have reached the ears of his superior at the Monastery.
Returned to my human form, I thought I heard the monk’s scream echoed back as an inhuman
wail.
The hour had come for us to present ourselves to the Pantocrator, but this morning Onouphrios conducted a slobbered, indistinct version of the office.
With indifference I awaited daylight and the inevitable accusations. To pass the time I visited Meera, the secret name I had given my little doe. As I came near the place where she was hidden, the sounds I heard were calmly domestic in tone. The kid stood rocking on his pins, while the mother nuzzled and coaxed him to enjoy her teats. Our work was done.
Light as soft as feathers had begun drifting amongst the leaves. The age of peace could be dawning on earth. Then my pulses, my blood began to throb with the return of evil, nothing super-natural, but a viciousness projected by the human voice when accusing any individual suspected of possessing the evil eye, or some poor victim for whom it is decided the straitjacket is justified.
From the direction of the skala there were sounds of movement, a thrumming of voices broken by an occasional shout. I looked for Onouphrios, but could not find him, not that he was likely to defend a woman he despised. Had he left for the Monastery perhaps, hoping the Abbot might dismiss terrors the night had generated in him?
Seized with a rage against the hopelessness and the hypocrisies of humankind, I armed myself with my goat-hair tagari and started snatching the votive offerings from where they hung above the Saint’s altar. I stuffed the metal tokens into the tagari and rushed from the church towards the mountain, now rapidly forming in the morning light. As I ran, one arm squeezing the tagari to my side, the votive plaques gave out a twittering, a sighing, like a bagpipe’s dying breath.
Some way up the mountain, I must have fallen, either from exhaustion or in a kind of fit. The light was fairly solid by the time I came to my senses and began to gather up my bruises, scratches and downright wounds from falling amongst the stones and thistles.
Steadying myself on all fours, I realised I was not alone. A goat army was rallying round me, horned and shaggy, their hard hooves drumming the harder earth. Their grave yellow eyes accepted those of a human being rejected by the ‘Christians’ of Nisos.
Memoirs of Many in One Page 7