The Broken Road

by Patrick Leigh Fermor

  Later we adjourned to my room, and pulled our chairs up to the fire, and opened another demijohn of wine. Thus we spent a very happy evening, singing, smoking and drinking, and looking round at my comrades’ faces in the lamplight, I could not help thinking how kind and good-natured they looked, instinct with their two great qualities of sweet reasonableness and appropriate seriousness: σωϕροσύνη καὶ σπουδαιότης.[4]

  28th January, Stavronikita

  I left Iviron after an early lunch yesterday, the track running close along the shore, sometimes over the high rocks, sometimes over the pebbles and sand of the beach, and sometimes winding away inland, a little footpath between the trees. It was really a succession of Devonshire combes, but full of wildly growing evergreens, with now and then a squat stone hermitage standing on a ledge of the mountainside, surrounded by dark cypresses.

  The coast is really wild here, with jagged rocks and caves, inlets and little islands, with the sea breaking magnificently. I passed a tower built on a rock in the sea, the dwelling of a hermit; I’ve never seen a more desolate place.

  Sometimes the wooded inlets were amphitheatres of vineyards, sloping down in strata to a semicircle of sand.

  At last the monastery of Stavronikita came into view, wild, feudal and mediaeval in aspect, built on the crest of a crag overhanging the sea, its massive walls running up in lofty windowless bastions to the little windows and jutting balconies above. The rough, machicolated belfry of the chapel just showed above the walls.

  A sailing vessel lay among the rocks, and some of the fishing brothers, their habits tucked about their knees, were drawing in their nets and grounding their boats. It was a scene from the Dark Ages, and showed how time has stood still here.

  I gained the gates by a winding cobbled way that led under gloomy arches into a flagged, uneven courtyard, where the four cloistered walls of the monastery reared up like the sides of a well. A shaggy monk, who surprised me by speaking a word or two of French, led me up winding stone stairs and along flagged passages, to a small whitewashed room, at the highest point of the monastery, which looked on to a dizzy void, dropping to the foreshortened jagged rocks, and the white foam, slow and lazy with distance. The coast ran away to the north in a succession of rugged promontories and inlets, to the monastery of Pantocrator, perched on a small peninsula.

  For supper I was given some fishes which were quite raw, salted and soaked in oil; how I managed to eat them I don’t know, but I was so hungry I got through them somehow.

  The shaggy monk who seems to be in charge of me is a fine chap, but he looks like a brigand.

  It was marvellous, after the sun set, with the wind roaring round the monastery walls, and the sea beating wildly on the rocks below: a complete feeling of isolation, as if the ordinary world were something remembered from an earlier life.

  After turning down the lamp, I lay a long time in bed, listening to the wind and the waves outside.

  29th January, Pantocrator

  The road from Stavronikita to Pantocrator was just as rocky and wild, running through a thick undergrowth of broom and briar, growing so thick at times that it was difficult to make a way through. When the path turned downhill a fast stream suddenly covered it so that the only way down was to spring nimbly stone to stone, carried on by impetus, so that it was impossible to stop till one reached the bottom.

  Pantocrator is only about one and a half hours from Stavronikita, and, like it, stands fortress-like on a rocky headland reached by a winding, cobbled path, over crumbling bridges, and under wooden vine trellises.

  One of the monks, after looking at my papers, led me upstairs into a charming sunny guest room overlooking the sea, and brought in coffee, raki and some Turkish delight, instead of the usual jam. The country all around is beautiful. Since it was early, I wandered about in the forested valley under the trees, smoking and feeling very happy. Up on an inland hillside perched the Russian skete of Prophiti Ilia, with its green, pointed Muscovite domes, so different from the squat Byzantine cupolas of the Greek monasteries.

  It is a delicious valley, with a broad shallow, pebbly river scattered with boulders and overshadowed by olives and poplars. Wandering homeward in the gathering darkness, I frightened some of the belled monastery horses, who scampered away tinkling across the hillside.

  On the flagged uneven space before the deep monastery gates, above the jagged rocks and not fifty yards from the breaking waves, stands a small tiled shelter, a sort of lychgate, with deep wooden seats, looking seaward. Several of the monks were sitting here, silently, or fingering their beads. I joined them, watching the red streaks of sunset over the blue Aegean, the foam breaking along the rocky coast, the turreted walls of Stavronikita away to the south, and in the distance the islands of Thasos and Imbros, and further still Samothrace. To landward rolled the coastal ranges of Macedonia. A wonderful peace seemed to possess everything, and we sat there in complete silence till the janitor called to us that it was time to lock the gates, as they are finally shut for the day at sunset, not to be opened till dawn.

  In the little courtyard a pair of orange trees reached to the second tier of arches that frame the cloisters of the passages which run round the courtyard in all monasteries, sometimes five layers high.

  I sat awhile in the room of one of the epitropes[5] with several other monks, drinking coffee, and chatting with the one who spoke some limited French. I retired to my room later on, where the fire and lamp had been lit, and after supper spent a happy evening before the fire with Byron. Browsing through Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage I came across a stanza which just captured the feeling when I was standing before the monastery gate at sunset, as he must have done a hundred years ago.

  More blest the life of godly eremite,

  Such as on lonely Athos may be seen,

  Watching at eve upon the giant height,

  That looks o’er waves so blue, skies so serene,

  That he who there at such an hour hath been,

  Will wistful linger on that hallowed spot;

  Then slowly tear him from the witching scene,

  Sigh forth one wish that such had been his lot,

  Then turn to hate a world he had almost forgot.[6]

  31st January, Vatopedi

  What a day yesterday – one of those ones when everything goes wrong. When I had packed my kit, and said goodbye to the monks of Pantocrator, a depressing drizzle was falling and the monks cried worryingly ‘Avrio, avrio!’ ‘Tomorrow, tomorrow!’, but I idiotically paid no heed and started off on the uphill road overlooking the sea. It soon degenerated into a narrow footpath, the going made difficult by the density of bushes and the overhang of branches.

  The way followed a water-course up the wooded slope for a while and after a little level going began to go rapidly downhill, so fast that it was difficult to keep one’s balance, and one had to catch hold of the shrubs to break the impetus. This got worse and worse, till I was all but sliding on my backside down a muddy serpentine track, which eventually ended up in a landslide of boulders and pebbles on to the beach. Scrambling down this, I started jumping from rock to rock, with the incoming tide lapping round them, sometimes clambering along the cliff’s face with hands and feet. I realized that I must have taken a wrong turning somewhere, but carried despondently on, hoping to find another cliff-way up. This rock-climbing went on for quite a while, till suddenly turning a corner, I saw it was quite hopeless. A sheer bank of overhanging rock rose, enormously high, with the water beating round it. So I had to turn back. Then I saw a piece of the black cliff sloping a little less steeply up, so tried to climb, slipping on the rain-soaked rocks and hanging on to tufts of grass and shrub. This also had to be given up, however, as the cliff rose perpendicular, without a cranny or crack or foothold anywhere, which I hadn’t been able to see from below. Just near the bottom I slipped on a bit of wet rock and skidded down the last twenty yards or so, getting bumped and bruised and battered, my wrist deeply cut, and finally ending u
p in a foot of water, where the tide had come in, soaking one leg to the waist.

  I tied up my bleeding wrist, and aching in every limb, retraced my path over the rocks, and then, misery of miseries, clambering up the cliff path again, with the strap of my rucksack broken, and sweating like a pig. At last I found where I thought I’d gone wrong, and started off on the right track, feeling more optimistic; this went happily on for a mile or two, then I came to a clearing full of white piles of chopped wood. The only path out of this led downhill for a while, more and more steep and winding, sometimes blocked for several yards by overgrown bushes, and the tendrils of creepers, no thicker than a bootlace but strong as wire. After following a downward path some distance I had a horrible feeling I’d missed my way again, as the path was so overgrown that it could not have been used for many years.

  So, wearily and miserably, I decided I’d have to turn back to Pantocrator, as the light was beginning to fail. After about a hundred yards backwards I came to a dead-end, so thought I must have taken a false turning again. I turned about, looking through the bushes for the pathway, but found absolutely none. Downhill it led to the brink of an overhanging cliff above a leaden, angry sea, and uphill into an impenetrable thicket. Then the cuts, the bruises, the tiredness and bafflement all seemed to concentrate in demoralizing me, so that, putting down my sodden rucksack, I started running up and down the path, looking for a way out, all hope practically gone, and the rain and twilight filling me with a horrible despair, allied to an awful hunger, as I hadn’t been able to eat much of the monastery lunch. The misery of being lost in a thick forest in the rain and the half darkness is unimaginable. Drawing my dagger, luckily razor-sharp, I started to try and hack a way uphill through the undergrowth in hope of coming to a path, but after a few yards it became so impenetrable, and my face and hands torn and bleeding, that I had to go back to where my rucksack was. I slashed a tree at each possible exit, so as to avoid trying the same place twice, the gash showing up white in the dusk. The gradient to right and left of the path was about one in one. Hell!

  Then my guts seemed to drain right out of me, and a fit of panic came, thoughts of passing the night there, without food in the rain. Up till then, I had preserved a dimmish spark of humour, telling myself how I’d laugh about it later, and that though we read about such things in the papers, they didn’t happen to one. Then hunger and fatigue-born panic seized me, and I sank on to my rucksack, and began to yell for help – a long ‘hallo’ at six-second intervals. It was echoed back by the mountains, the only other sound being the driving rain, and the sea below.

  Then I gave up, thinking that nobody came that way in a year, and just sat awhile, dead beat, and as a last resort said a short but sincere prayer, feeling every kind of swine, because such times, real trouble, are the only times I do. But it was God’s mountain, so I felt he had some sort of responsibility.

  There was one thicket I hadn’t tried, as it looked nearly hopeless, but I decided to try it; this involved crawling on my belly under some fallen yew trees, slashing at the creepers with my knife; it took about half a minute to get through. When I stood up on the other side I started to walk, and finding no opposing trees and brambles, struck a match, and holding up its sputtering, hand-sheltered flame in the darkness, saw (the thrill of relief was scarcely bearable) the pathway winding uphill in front of me. Getting my rucksack, I started running uphill, shouting and singing at the top of my voice, anything, as an outlet. If I’d had my revolver with me I’d have emptied the magazine into the air as a feu de joie; so I stabbed savagely at the bushes and trees, sinking my dagger into them with wild shouts. A stranger meeting me then would have thought I was a dangerous lunatic.

  I passed through the clearing with the woodpiles again, and so along the road; until the blessed lights of the monastery glittered below, on its peak of rock.

  Running downhill I found the gates were locked, and after hammering and shouting for a few minutes, gave up the attempt as the walls are several yards thick, and the wind, rain and waves were making such a din that it was hopeless.

  There was a hut a little down the hill with some lights in the windows, so I walked down and tapped at the door. It was opened by a little black-bearded woodman, who hearing my trouble, invited me in, gave me a stool by the fire, produced a glass of raki and a cup of Turkish coffee, and, with his three companions, helped me strip off my trailing puttees, and squelching boots and stockings, rubbing my feet in front of the fire. They were so stiff and cold I could hardly move them. But all my wet things were hung up and, warm and dry, I was soon sitting in front of the blazing log fire eating a meal which the woodman made me, and drinking some splendid hot tea. They really were Greeks at their best!

  One of them sat on a block of wood, honing the blade of his axe, the other smoking while the bearded one brewed eternal cups of tea or coffee in a little brown can which he parked amid the glowing cinders, piling the ashes outside almost up to the brim, stirring, sweetening and tasting like a witch over a cauldron. The fourth, a tall man with a long moustache, got down a Turkish bağlama from the wall and started to play. This is a sort of lute, with a very small, deep bowl, but with a very long shaft to it, and three or four wire strings, sometimes painted, and with a tassel or two dangling from the end. Although it is not played with a bow, it is not unlike a Bulgarian gadulka or gûzla, with a deeper bowl and very much longer shaft. The tunes played on it are the oriental ones, with a scale of about five notes, melancholy, monotonous and insistent but not without charm. It is to these that the kütchek is danced.

  The other woodmen joined in that strange, wailing chant, clapping their hands together, and tossing their heads about like dogs baying the full moon.

  So we spent a jolly evening, drinking alternate draughts of Greek red wine, Turkish coffee and sweet tea, till we were all tired out, our eyes blinking in front of the blazing logs. In spite of a spirited remonstrance on my part, one of the woodmen, the bearded one, insisted on giving up his bed to me, and covered me up with blankets on the padded bench, himself lying on the floor by the fire. A cricket chirped in the chimney all night.

  1st February

  After breaking our fast simply this morning with bread and tea, I put on my warm, dry kit, and saw that it had been snowing all night, and the mountainside was deep white. One of the woodmen had told the monks of my mishap the night before, testified to by the state of my face and hands, and they had sent along a horse with a padded wooden saddle: a docile, patient beast.

  The bearded woodcutter accompanied me some way up the hill to set me on the right track. I thanked him sincerely on parting, and knowing that it would be an insult to offer him money, as hospitality in the Balkans is a very real tradition, I gave him my Bulgarian dagger, which he admired so much. He was delighted with it, though loath to deprive me of so beautiful a weapon.

  I clip-clopped up the cobbled road which continued far inland, and I saw by what miles I had gone wrong yesterday, a lost battle from the start. The snow covered my horse’s fetlocks, and I realized how hopeless it would have been to stay in the forest overnight. A thought to shudder at.

  It was a dreadful job thrashing through the branches, all weighed down with snow, and I got snow down my neck, up my sleeves and in every possible gap. Higher up, the snow got so deep that I dismounted and plodded along beside the horse. After what seemed ages – the snow had begun to fall again by this time, so that everything was muffled in a swirling white haze – I came to a crossroads, where two men were attending to a horse. I addressed them in Greek, but soon got out of my depth, so tried Bulgarian, which was much better as they told me they were Macedonians from Demir Hisar. On enquiring the way to Vatopedi, I discovered I’d passed it about five kilometres back; I’d seen the turning, blocked up with snow and bushes, and had thought it would lead downhill to the sea, like my two blind alleys yesterday. As there are no signboards anywhere, one has just got to know the way, or else get lost.

  They told me they were o
ff to Vatopedi too, and that if I waited for ten minutes they would be back with another horse. After waiting in the falling snow, walking round in circles, for nearer twenty minutes, I decided it wasn’t good enough, so wrote deep in the snow with my stick: СТУДЕНО ТУКА. ОТИВАМ ЗА ВАТОПЕД! (Cold here, off to Vatopedi!) I began to retrace my steps. After about half an hour I found the track, unwinding endlessly downhill. At last the snow stopped and the sun managed to break through, showing a wide blue bay, the sea breaking white along the rocks. Round a corner, Vatopedi, with its high walls, its jutting balconies and many domes and towers, soared into sight, looming among the green fig trees and ilexes. Up the hill was the cloistered ruin of some former monastery.

  Vatopedi is a village in itself and the flagged courtyards resound continually with the clip-clop of horses, mules and donkeys, and from my window as I write I can hear the cries of the fishermen drawing in their nets, and the woodsman’s axe falling. One cloistered courtyard leads to another at different levels, with many pillars, arches, staircases and jutting storeys, creating the impression of a little monastic town.

  A small, busy grey-bearded monk in the rosary-hung room under the entrance porch took charge of my papers, and appeared very impressed with the Patriarch’s letter, and with a personal introduction to the epitrope Adrian. First he led me to a little refectory, and coffee, raki and rahat loukoum – Turkish delight – were brought, then I was given an extraordinarily good luncheon, with the first meat I have eaten on Mount Athos. It is the richest monastery and makes a point of entertaining guests as well as possible. You find the same spirit in all the monasteries, but here they have better means to indulge it.

  I learnt that the busy little monk was an Albanian, which interested me. Albania, for me, is a land fraught with romance, especially since hearing about Baron Nopcsa.[7] After I had got out of my wet and snowy kit, and the cook (who is rather a character) had hung it up to dry, the little monk told me he had taken my letter to Adrian the epitrope, and asked me to follow him.