I found the same clearing as the day before, looking over and into the monastery, and beyond at the sea, and spent the morning there lying on my overcoat under a Scotch fir, reading A Shropshire Lad, and finally falling asleep. The bells of the monastery roused me later on, and running all the way back, I found Damascene in a great twitter about my lunch, which he had managed to keep warm. My moccasins caused quite a stir among the monks, who grinned and shook their heads in a knowing way (the Greeks call them τσαρούχι).[36] After packing up my rucksack, I said goodbye to Father Damascene, who told me to be sure and come next year: the janitor had made a wonderful little sketch map of the road to Esphigmenos, and filled me with directions as to the way – ‘Turn to the right when you come to the cross,’ said he, ‘and above all, don’t go down to the tower on the seashore.’ As the road had a little shrine with a cross almost every fifty yards, this proved rather difficult, but at last seeing the tower of the arsenal on the shore, I took the other path, leading along a cultivated valley where the monks were hoeing their fields, their loins girt and their long hair bound in little pigtails or buns. A Macedonian who was chopping wood showed me the road after that, which led over several stiles, through a few fields, then sloped down to where the monastery of Esphigmenos lay in its little bay. Crossing the bridge to the monastery, a voice shouted from somewhere, ‘You English fullow?’ and looking round, I saw a venerable-looking monk with a curly beard beaming at me. ‘Where you come from?’ he went on in deepest American. ‘I know America, England, Japan, China, France – oh, many countries!’
He took me along to the arhondaris, and, for the last time on the Holy Mountain, I was given my raki, coffee and glyco; meanwhile Father Velisarios, my travelled new friend, produced some cuttings from The Times sent him last year by Sir Arthur Hill, the director of Kew Gardens; choosing something representative, Sir Arthur had sent some photos of the Derby, which had so affected Father Velisarios that he had written back suggesting they should club together for a sweepstake ticket; judging by Sir Arthur’s reply, he was very surprised at receiving these proposals from a monk of the Holy Mountain, and admitted that he never betted. Father Velisarios couldn’t let the sweepstake idea go, however, and instructed me to write from England as soon as the next sweepstake came round. He admitted he had been a great gambler in his secular life, and the evil spirit seems to have been reawoken by the botanist’s pictures. Velisarios was a delightful chap however, his face full of goodwill, his eyes in their network of wrinkles a-sparkle with humour. Father Ignatios, the cook, was a great friend of his, and though an equally delightful type, completely different: more ascetic and polished, with the kindest face over a long brown beard. He and Velisarios between them took enormous pains for my well-being, giving me the best room, several storeys high, and directly above the sea, which lapped on the walls below; Ignatios kindled a bright fire in the big white-pillared stove, brought me extra bedclothes, and set fresh water in the carafe by my bedside. He was a model monk, taking a real pleasure in service, and for whom no trouble, if it was within his power, was too much. All the while, Velisarios sat with me at the table, entertaining me with amusing and racy remarks on life.
He took me down to vespers, stopping at his cell en route to don his veil and gown. For the last time, with an emotion that surprised me, I listened to the solemn liturgy, watched and anticipated each stage of the ceremonies grown so familiar, and looked at the halo-gleaming frescoes, where the Risen Christ poised above the earth in a star-studded sky, his legs crossed, as if taking the first step in a grave celestial minuet. The thurifer, censing the people, gave me my own personal two swings of incense, for which one inclines the head in thanks, and I snuffed it up as never before; the hard stall, always so irksome till now, seemed oddly comfortable: the mainspring of all these feelings being my departure, which seems harder than one would think possible.
Ignatios, Velisarios and I leant on the wooden balustrade opposite the kitchen door, watching the sun set, while the monastery and the church, with its characteristic double Byzantine stripe of red bricks in the white plaster, the bell tower, and the lemon trees with their tiny spring fruit, gradually faded into the dusk. The evening had a stillness and melancholy completely Athonite, and silently we turned indoors to the big white kitchen, where Velisarios dissolved our low spirits with a bottle of raki which he produced from a dark cupboard. The monastery kitchens are mediaeval in appearance, vaulted and massive, with vast stoves under a deep blackened arch of chimney, the walls hung with different-sized bronze casseroles for coffee and tea, and the earthenware pots and dishes are all thick and painted in bright colours. Generally an ikon or two hangs on the walls, and sometimes there are big white amphorae a yard deep, in which the water is kept deliciously cool and oil safely lidded. The kitchens are always cheerful and sunny. I have spent many pleasant times in them, over wildcat swigs of raki, talking with the monks, while the cook, his black gown laid aside, and his sleeves rolled back, busied himself at the eternal task of coffee-brewing, pushing the blackened pannikins among the glowing charcoal.
After supper, Velisarios paid me a visit in my room, sat himself down with a whirl of draperies, and seemed quite changed from his former worldly mood. He railed against the Catholics and freemasons, and then went on to sinners in general, saying that they may have a good time now, but when they are dead, ‘God’ll see to ’em, God’ll fix them fullows up OK?’ Then he launched forth on saints and miracles and peripatetic ikons, fascinating tales of which, owing to his strange English, I could not grasp the full tenor. One phrase sticks in my mind: ‘His woman, she made him three boys.’
Hearing that I was setting off for the mainland tomorrow, he drew a little sketch map of the way, and said he would talk to Ignatios about making up a lunch packet and wrote a note to an innkeeper there, explaining that I was going to the Stathatos estate,[37] and to help me as much as he could.
After he went, I wrote awhile, and then smoked the last of my tobacco, listening to the sea under my window, the waves breaking with a crash then sucking backwards with a rasp of pebbles. Looking at my jolly room, with the clean sheets and everything arranged so neatly, and at the glowing stove piled high with logs, I feel a great deal of regret at leaving this quiet and happy life. This last month will be an unbelievable memory when I’m back in England. I wonder when I shall be here again?
THE END
[1] In Greek legend the poet Arion, thrown into the sea by pirates, was saved from drowning by a dolphin.
[2] The word combines ‘important’ and ‘learned’.
[3] ‘And the grace of God and his infinite mercy be with your holinesses.’
[4] Wisdom and earnestness.
[5] Epitropes: the small group of monks who govern a monastery in place of an abbot – PLF.
[6] This stanza in Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage (II, xxvii) is the fruit of imagination. Lord Byron never went to Mount Athos.
[7] Baron Franz Nopcsa (1877–1933), Hungarian palaeontologist and an early, remarkable scholar of Albania. He was active in the country’s liberation from the Turks in 1912, and during the First World War became leader of an Albanian militia. Many of his scientific theories were brilliantly innovative. Later, deeply in debt, he sold his fossil collection to the Natural History Museum in London. He committed suicide with his lover in 1933.
[8] ‘Eyi, eyi! Thank you! Very fine, sir!’
[9] ‘Wonderful, lovely!’
[10] Glyco: traditional Greek fruit preserves.
[11] ‘Righteous sleep.’
[12] ‘Lord Byron’ . . . ‘a great lover of Greece’.
[13] The Battle of Port Arthur (1904) was the opening, inconclusive engagement of the Russo-Japanese War, when Japanese warships attacked the Russian Pacific fleet anchored in Port Arthur, Manchuria.
[14] ‘Stalin is the most devilish Satan!’
[15] Temesvár: modern Timișoara.
[16] The Young Turks were a junta of fiercely patriotic army officers who
took power in Turkey in 1908, and instituted a policy of modernization. They entered the First World War alongside Germany, and were responsible for the infamous genocide of the Armenians. Their leaders went into exile in 1918.
[17] ‘It has nothing to do with the good Lord.’
[18] ‘But that fellow’s become a mystic, and when a Russian’s like that, I assure you it’s too much for me!’
[19] Mark Ogilvie-Grant (1906–69), botanist and aesthete, one of the ‘bright young things’ of 1920s London. He later settled in Greece for many years.
[20] Robert Byron (1904–41), prodigious travel writer and art historian, author of The Station and The Road to Oxiana. He died at sea in the Second World War.
[21] David Talbot Rice (1903–72), eminent Byzantine art historian, author of several standard works and of the ambitious The Birth of Western Painting with Robert Byron in 1930.
[22] Of Colin Davidson, PLF writes: ‘A delightful, civilized man I got to know years later. I’d met Robert Byron a year and a half before in a deafening, smoke-filled, nearly pitch-dark night-club – the Nest? The Nuthouse? Smokey Jo’s? – where everyone was pretty tight.’
[23] Russiko: the popular name for St Panteleimon monastery.
[24] PLF writes in a footnote: ‘I had set out on this journey with a rucksack he had given me – the year before last now – the very one he himself had carried when accompanying Byron and David Talbot Rice in the great Athos journey The Station describes. It was stolen in a Jugendherberge’ (in Munich, in January 1934).
[25] ‘How I wasted money, he-he!’
[26] ‘Kiss his hand, kiss his hand!’
[27] The monasteries of Meteora (‘the monasteries in the air’) in Thessaly are built on natural pinnacles of rock, and date from the fourteenth century. The important Byzantine churches of Osias Loukas and Daphni are famous for their eleventh-century mosaics, Daphni above all for its great Christ Pantocrator in the cupola.
[28] ‘A peaceful night.’
[29] ‘Get out! Get out!’
[30] Czar Ferdinand (1861–1948), founder of Bulgaria’s revived but short-lived royal dynasty. After the defeat of Bulgaria in the First World War – more than sixteen years before PLF’s journey – he abdicated in favour of his son, Boris III.
[31] Kimon Giorgieff (1882–1969), leader of a right-wing military faction, effected a bloodless coup against Bulgaria’s coalition government in May 1934. He was removed in a counter-coup by Czar Boris eight months later.
[32] ‘Have a good journey, and God be with you. If you have time I’d be grateful for a postcard sometimes. Come back soon, and we’ll talk about Bulgaria again. All the best!’
[33] Peter I Karageorgevitch of Serbia, the popular soldier-monarch, was proclaimed King of the Serbs, Croats and Slovenes (the future Yugoslavia) in 1918. Of the recently widowed Queen Marie’s three sons, the eldest became Peter II, last king of Yugoslavia.
[34] Prince Milosh Obrenovitch (1780–1860) is widely considered the founder of the modern Serbian state, and was its liberator from the Ottoman Turks.
[35] The Battle of Kosovo (1389) between a Serbian alliance and the Ottoman Turks virtually wiped out both armies, and remains an event of dark heroism in Serbian folklore. It opened the way for Ottoman domination of the Balkans.
[36] An outdoor leather slipper with a pompom on the toe, still worn by the ceremonial Evzone guards.
[37] Peter Stathatos had invited PLF to stay at his estate at Modi, near Lake Volvi.
Acknowledgements
It was Patrick Leigh Fermor’s friend Olivia Stewart who reignited his interest in what he always called ‘Vol III’, and our first, heartfelt thanks go to her. Not only did she have the first draft of the book typed up and put into digital format; she also encouraged Paddy to take up the project he had abandoned for so long.
We are especially grateful to Dr David McClay of the John Murray Archive, and the Trustees of the National Library of Scotland for all their assistance, including permission to reproduce the Mount Athos section of the Green Diary; and to John and Virginia Murray for warm hospitality.
Rudi Fischer reviewed the Rumanian passages, as did William Blacker. Professor Peter Mackridge’s help was invaluable with the Greek, as was Thomas Kielinger’s on the German and Sophie-Caroline de Margerie’s on the French. Our thanks also go to Edvard Gurvich and to the Bulgarian Cultural Institute; and to Howard Davies for his sensitive copy-editing.
The Broken Road Page 36