The Broken Road

by Patrick Leigh Fermor

  This evening, all the monastery seemed to congregate in my room, sitting round on the divans, and so, to the best of our ability, we chatted away. The arhondaris, kind man, didn’t consider the refectory fare sufficient for me, and brought a plate piled high with fried potatoes. For the army of guests, raki was produced, over which we grew quite gay and noisy. They were good souls and in spite of their ascetic look, men and brothers.

  16th February, Zographos

  I slept latish this morning, as my guests didn’t leave till far into the night. The arhondaris woke me with a cup of tea, raki and a slab of rahat loukum. He really is a kind old man, and besought me to stay another day at Konstamonitou, but I felt restless and said I had better get going. He seemed really sorry. While I was dressing, along came Father Paul, and talked about miracles and mortification, and the significance of Christ’s wounds. I am sure he would show his humility by kissing lepers’ sores like St Francis. Father Seraphim, who has a wonderful carved belt-buckle representing the Trinity on his capacious paunch, introduced a gayer note, when he came in beaming over my lunch tray. I learnt that the usual way to the Bulgarian monastery of Zographos was blocked by snow, so I had to go down the valley of a long steep canyon to the fir trees on the shore, and then inland again. Quite a group of monks escorted me to the gates, pouring out last-minute instructions.

  In the gorge the snow was deep, as no sun could penetrate the woods to thaw it, but soon the path climbed up one of the slopes, through the trees, and emerged on the crest of a hill. It was splendid in the sunlight, and I lay awhile on my overcoat soaking it in. The grass slope sank to the waves in stone-buttressed olive terraces, and the sparkling Aegean was framed in the silver-grey leaves. Further downhill, a shepherd sat piping to his tinkling flock. At the sea’s edge, the square top of the arsenal of Zographos stood beside a round one like a martello tower. The breeze came fresh through the woods, heavy with the smell of bruised leaves. The scene might have come straight out of Theocritus.

  At the bottom, in the group of fishermen’s huts that always cluster round these pirate-proof little fortresses, there was a sudden clatter of hooves, as a muleteer drove his timber-laden beasts down to a waiting dinghy. Otherwise the whole village seemed asleep, so I took the obvious path, leading uphill through olive trees. Big, stratified and veined rocks reared up on the left, and as the way wound deeper up the valley, the lichen-covered roof of a mill appeared, a clacking wheel, a turmoil of white foam and, further up, its still, clear pools. The forest closed in with a jungle of olive, yew, oleander, broom, laurel, rhododendron and holly. A blackbird told of the nearness of spring, and set me thinking about home.

  Even in the distance Zographos amazed me by its size. It looked a bit like an Austrian schloss or hunting lodge of indeterminate style, huge and bare. But inside it was better, with two tall yew trees in front of the church. The porter seemed pleased with my smattering of Bulgarian, and led me as a curiosity to the arhondaris, who gave me my coffee, raki and glyco in the sunny kitchen, talking rapid Macedonian Bulgarian. I couldn’t understand much. The view from the windows is fine, with the leafy treetops of the valley rising to an answering height the other side, and lifting up a one-storeyed, rambling hermitage painted in blue and white. Beyond, rocks and hills roll away in waves, tufted with tall, twisted pines.

  The way to the hermitage lay along an avenue of tall cypress trees, hung with their little tight cones. The hermitage seemed deserted at first, except for a sandy kitten, who awoke at my approach and glared suspiciously. Hearing voices down the passage, I looked round the door and saw a tiny wire-haired monk in a cobbler’s apron, with a half-mended shoe in his lap, and a big monk sitting on the sunny windowsill, balancing a spoon on the brim of his teacup. They told me to come in, and learning my nationality they launched into warm praise of the English. They told a story about the French and Greeks trying to break into the monastery to set fire to a portrait of Czar Ferdinand,[30] but John Bull stepped in and saw fair play. They gave me a cup of tea, and asked me all about Bulgaria, on learning I had been there so recently. They seemed quite out of touch, and had no idea of the Giorgieff[31] coup d’état last May, so I told them what little I knew.

  It was just time for vespers when I got back, so I went in and listened to the singing, which is practically the same as the Greek, except that in the latter there are hardly ever more than two voices singing at the same time; here the whole community kept up a droning monody on a low note. The monk who took the service was a fine type with strong hard features, deep-set black eyes, high cheekbones, a firm mouth and a bristling iron-grey beard. His voice was deep and powerful. Most of the monks were Macedonians: that melancholy, warlike people. I spent most of my time, head flung back, gazing at the frescoes, which though not old, were amazingly graphic. One of the best was a group of martyrs, their eyes lifted to heaven in a forest of tilted haloes, on the top of a tower, round whose base scarlet and crimson flames were licking, stoked by a dastardly Pope in cope and tiara. In another a heathen king was consigning the faithful to torture. A white-robed youth stood before his throne and reasoned with him, but in the background waited the wheel, the gibbet, and a smoking cauldron of boiling oil. One of the youth’s comrades was already being hauled up the gallows, a halter round his neck, and an infidel was making a feint at a second with his scimitar. Two were already despatched, their still haloed heads lying some feet away from their gushing trunks, the hands remonstrating in ghastly rigor mortis.

  The most macabre frescoes are usually those on the outside walls under the arcade, showing the afterlife of the damned, with an intricate network of ladders and chutes from the hall of judgement to the bottomless pit, where swarms of little black and red demons await them, with forked tongues, and pigs’ and wolves’ heads, serpent tails and eagle claws; they pile the wicked among the flames with tridents and pokers, or fling them to lions and bears and dogs, a scene in which the beasts go ravening round a dismembered corpse, with legs, hands and heads in their teeth, or halfway down their throats. The delight and cunning in the demons’ faces show they have their hearts in their vocation, thrusting firebrands into the navels of the fallen, or, crowning indignity, defecating upon them from above. Over the sulphurous cloudbank sits Christ the All-Powerful enthroned and robed, his face expressionless, the hand raised in formal blessing, while round his feet cluster the army of the saved, smug in gleaming new robes and haloes. I scan these scenes of beatification or damnation with a zest that can’t be altogether healthy.

  As we left the church, a monk with whom I’d previously exchanged a few words asked me if I spoke French or German, and on my admitting I did, took me to a venerable-looking monk, whose bright eyes and full white beard somehow lacked the monastic stamp. He spoke to me in French, later shifting to German, as being more at home. He spoke it perfectly, and, on my inviting him to my quarters for tea, unfolded a queer tale. He had owned a large cloth factory in Gabrovo, and with growing age and wealth, travelled all over Europe becoming as familiar with all its Western capitals as with Sofia. At Monte Carlo, bathing, a couple of years ago, he had so narrowly escaped drowning that he attributed his life to God’s intervention, and his wife being dead, and his children provided for, decided to embrace the monastic life for his remaining years. He had had the utmost difficulty in joining the community at Zographos, owing to the Greek reluctance to admit foreigners on the Holy Mountain (the same story as the Russians) but had finally managed it. Since then he had lived perfectly contentedly as a monk. He showed me a picture of himself a few years ago, very worldly and ceremonial, in evening dress, his breast a mass of medals and orders, and one strung round his neck on a ribbon, which King Boris had given him on quitting Sofia. He had served the state in several diplomatic capacities, and had been German consul in Gabrovo. He had a prosperous look, despite his garb, but seemed perfectly contented with his lot. He wore underneath his black gown a wonderful embroidered jerkin, patterned with crosses and, lower down, a skull and crossbones
. He was charming company, and although nearly eighty, full of life and talk. We both waxed garrulous in reminiscences of Bulgaria, and he led me to the big reception salon of the monastery where the pictures of Czar Boris and Queen Joanna, familiar from every café and pub in Bulgaria, hung on the walls. There, too, was the picture of Ferdinand which the French had wished to destroy, regal in his imperial beard and plumed kalpack. Father Viniamin (his worldly name was Karaghioseff) told me of the few-days-old changes in the cabinet in Bulgaria, when Giorgieff had been dismissed in favour of General Pentcho Zlatoff, the former war minister. The presence of two active generals and one colonel in the cabinet displayed the growing strength of the military dictatorship.

  Before I had supper, he brought me several back numbers of la Bulgarie, and also (this with a great air of mystery) some butter, the first I have seen on Athos, and some Bulgarian kashkaval, so vastly superior to the oily white cheese of the monks. He left me repeating how friendly the English always had been to Bulgaria, citing the examples of James Bourchier and Lord Buxton – he pronounced it ‘Bookston!’ He is a delightful old chap, and extraordinarily kind.

  After supper I read the news of Bulgaria’s governmental changes. They are an energetic little folk, and, with Hungary, have suffered more than any as a result of the war.

  17th February, Chilandari

  Today is a prazdnik – a feast day – and the monks sat up all last night for the agrypnia vigil; after breakfast, I went down for the tail-end of the Mass, and when we came out my friend Father Viniamin suggested that I should have lunch in the refectory, as it was a fine one, and the ceremony interesting. We went to the abbot’s table (his name was Alexander and I kissed his hand on introduction). Viniamin sat next to him, then came me. I felt very honoured, as it was a semicircular table, only seating the abbot, in the middle, and the eight superior monks – the starets, or ‘old men’. The rest sat down the refectory along three rows of trestle tables. The hall was a fine lofty one, its whitewashed vaults arching high above. The procession entered from the church with a jangling of censers, headed by a monk bearing an ikon and flanked by two novices holding candles, shielded in coloured lanterns from the wind, and the thurifer brought up the rear. After grace, the monk with the fine voice who officiated last night climbed into the high pulpit, and read from the eagle lectern while we ate. After he had kissed the abbot’s hand and received his crust, all stood up in rows by the tables, and then a monk brought round a platter of white bread, and we all took a morsel. Another followed with a hand-thurible, and each monk held his crumb a moment in the sanctified smoke, then swallowed it. (This last rite is absolutely mysterious to me.) Then we processed silently out, the abbot leading, holding his black staff.

  I set out soon after, led to the gates by Father Viniamin, who parted with the following words: ‘Gute Reise, und gehen Sie mit Gott. Wenn sie Zeit haben, wäre ich Ihnen sehr dankbar für eine Briefkarte manchmal. Kommen Sie bald wieder zurück, und wir werden noch einmal von Bulgarien redden. Alles gute!’[32]

  As I set off, I couldn’t help feeling depressed at the lot of the minority foreign monasteries here. Zographos has been especially impoverished by the confiscation of once-Bulgarian lands in Macedonia. Formerly it had many more monks, and a flourishing hospital, all of which Father Viniamin showed me. It seems the Greeks have been very hard in all their dealings with foreign monasteries on the Holy Mountain. Zographos is luckier, however, than Russiko, in that it has a country which still grants it enough to get along on. King Boris is extraordinarily kind in these things, and takes a great personal interest in the monastery, sending frequent gifts. Next to our own, I think he is probably the most loved monarch alive.

  The land changed a lot between Zographos and Chilandari. The evergreen valleys have been left behind and replaced by heather-clad highlands, shaded by fir and oak woods, and the rock underfoot has turned to sand and gravel. The whole scene reminded me of Scotland. The day was wonderful, not a cloud in the sky, and the birdsong was filled with optimism and the promise of spring. A bright-winged jay screeched at my approach, and a whirring cloud of woodpigeons burst from a giant ilex. High overhead a hawk hovered, casting his wavering shadow on a stretch of bare sand.

  The pathway nearly always followed a water-course, and sometimes the going was torment, as the recent gales and snow have mangled or uprooted innumerable bushes and saplings. This meant crawling underneath on all fours, or clambering over mountains of shrubbery, no easy task when each twig is festooned with a mesh of spined brambles and creepers as strong as wire. That hallowed neighbourhood soon re-echoed to savage blasphemies. Perspiring and aching, I climbed at last to a higher point, commanding the surrounding country, and there below, basking in the noonday sun, lay the Serbian monastery of Chilandari, the faded tiles of the lichen-coated roofs appearing above feathery treetops; in one wall a tall battlemented tower overlooked the courtyard, with the four leaded Byzantine domes of the church and three cypresses, almost as high as the tower itself. Fold on wooded fold descended into the valley, like a wide staircase, and not so far away the blue sea glittered. A dilapidated tower was just visible among the trees by the water’s edge. A few yards out the sea creased lazily round a tiny island of white rock. Haze obscured the horizon and hid the lower slopes of the snowy island of Thasos, which hung in the sky like something from another world.

  In the courtyard of Chilandari everything seemed asleep, the wind-mellowed walls bathed in the sunlight. Only a cat stepped secretly across the grassgrown cobbles. Time seemed to have come to a halt in that soundless courtyard, and I sat down on a wooden bench and closed my eyes against the sun, letting the sky filter through the joined lashes in a nimbus of prismatic colours. A tap on the shoulder roused me, and the little Serbian guest-master, Father Damascene, presented himself. Almost a dwarf, with oddly growing beard and moustache, his face was filled with hospitality and goodwill; he picked up my bag and stick and preceded me up two broad flights of stairs into a sunny room, with a large bay window overlooking the courtyard. While he was away preparing my coffee, I looked round the portraits and photographs on the wall – Peter of Serbia,[33] the four-months dead Alexander, Queen Marie and her three sons, prints of former Obrenovitches and Karageorgevitches, Prince Milosh[34] with high collar and cravat à la Wellington, and most interesting of all, endless engravings of famous comitadjis and voivodes, in their little pillbox hats, embroidered waistcoats, and sashes stuck full of brass-bound pistols and yataghans; yet their faces looked mild enough, with deep thoughtful eyes and drooping moustaches. There was a picture too of Montenegrins doing the sword dance, to the time of clapping haiduks, and one of the bloodthirsty battle of Kosovo,[35] with the infidels, their turbans smitten to the ground, rolling in their gore, the victorious Slavs on horseback prancing gaily above. No one would have thought they had lost the battle.

  It is amusing to think that Count Hunyadi, the nephew by marriage of the last Obrenovitch king, lives in Transylvania within a few miles of Xenia Czernovits, the cousin of the present Karageorgevitch, on perfect terms of good neighbourhood. It only occurred to me now, and what a coincidence it is my knowing them both.

  I spent the rest of the afternoon wandering about the buildings, putting in an appearance towards the end of vespers, and after that, going for a walk among the woods above the monastery. Coming to a clearing among the pines, above the steep hillside, among a tangle of saplings and undergrowth, I got a wonderful view over the monastery, the powerful upward sweep of its buttressed walls, the irregular lines of its balconies and roofs, and, beyond the church, the cobbles of the courtyard. The evening was delicious, and I wandered long among the trees, till I felt it was time to return, when I sauntered back along the dried-up bed of a brook; the janitor was waiting for me, and admonished me with wagging finger and twinkling eyes.

  The tower is one of the highest on the peninsula, and not used, as in the other monasteries, as a library or treasury. The threshold has only rusted hinges to show where the do
or had once swung. Its interior is dark and mysterious, with rickety wooden steps leading up into its highest recesses, where a bat flew squeaking out of the window on my arrival. The top of the tower is roofed over with tiles, and finding a trapdoor jutting from there, I sat looking out for a while at the courtyard where the monks had come out like rabbits in a warren to catch the evening sun. The long shadows of the cypresses sprawled across the flags, and the walls took on a beautiful golden hue. The glow was fading fast from the stretch of sea just visible over the treetops from my crow’s nest, and the sparkling crest of Thasos grew every moment dimmer. As evening set in, I wandered sadly down, contemplating my impending departure from the Holy Mountain with gloom.

  Father Damascene cooked a splendid supper of fried fish and potatoes, and some good soup too, which he dished up with great aplomb, watching me eat it with great pleasure; just as he was bringing my coffee, a noise came like a dog scratching on his door, then the window began to rattle. Father Damascene and I looked at each other in bewilderment as the floor beneath us began to tremble and heave with a noise of subdued thunder; somewhere some china broke, and as it was subsiding we realized that there had been an earthquake. Damascene winked archly and knowingly, as he put my coffee down, and grinned at me with a chuckle, as if it was a little joke arranged by him to give me a turn. It’s the second earthquake I have experienced within two months, the last time being when I was having tea with Miss Kent in Constantinople.

  I reread parts of Don Juan all the evening by the stove, still finding it wonderful.

  18th February, Esphigmenos

  I got up rather earlier than usual today, soon after my morning tea, of which Father Damascene gave me two cups, and putting on my soft Bulgarian moccasins, as it was a glorious, sunny day, prepared to spend the morning up on the hillside. Delving in the bottom of my rucksack for the A Shropshire Lad my mother gave me last birthday, I found an envelope full of Capstan Navy Cut. This was a real find, and getting out my best pipe (unsmoked for nearly a month) I stuffed it full and set it alight. I’m sure the good God never breathed incense with more delight than I felt then. Pipe tobacco, after a month’s cigarette smoking, is an ecstasy too deep for words.