We kept going: one hour, two hours. We didn’t realize we were running slower and slower. We had turned the night into a long stroll where time didn’t matter. We passed through Pikermi. We left Spata, Palini, Stavros, Paraskevi behind… The clock kept up its impassive march. We didn’t realize we weren’t going to reach Athens before dawn. We were giddy, drunk on words. We didn’t care about anything but our dialogue.
After Paraskevi the road curved slowly to the left, a curve that embraced a leafy forest of very tall pines and was precisely ten kilometers from Athens. Just then Farag’s pulse meter went off.
“Tired?” I asked him, worried. I could only see the outline of his face.
He didn’t answer.
“Farag?” I insisted. The little machine kept emitting its insufferable alarm. In the silence, it sounded like a fire alarm.
“I have to tell you something…,” he murmured mysteriously.
“Well, stop that racket and tell me.”
“I can’t…”
“What do you mean, you can’t? Just push the little orange button.”
“I mean…” He was stuttering. “What I mean is…”
I grabbed his wrist and stopped the alarm. Suddenly I realized something had changed. A hushed voice inside me warned me we were treading on dangerous ground. I didn’t want to know what he was going to say. I remained mute like a dead woman.
“What I have to say…”
His pulse meter went off again. This time he turned it off himself. “I can’t tell you because there are so many hurdles, so many obstacles…” I held my breath. “Help me, Ottavia.”
His voice didn’t register. I tried to stop him, but I choked up. Now my hateful pulse meter went off. We were a symphony of beeps.
“You know what I’m trying to tell you, right?”
My lips refused to open. I unhooked the pulse meter around my wrist and took it off. Otherwise it would have never stopped going off. Farag couldn’t stop laughing as he imitated me.
“Good idea,” he said. “I… You see, Basileia, this is very hard for me. In past relationships, I never had… Things went differently. But with you… God! This is complicated! Why can’t it be simple? You know what I’m trying to tell you, Basileia! Help me!”
“I can’t, Farag,” I replied, my matter-of-factness surprising even me.
“Okay, okay…”
He didn’t say anything else, and neither did I. Silence fell over us. We ran this way until we came to Holargos, a small town whose tall, modern buildings announced the approach of Athens.
I don’t think I’ve ever lived through a more bitter, difficult moment. God’s presence kept me from accepting the declaration Farag tried to make, but my incredibly strong feelings for such a marvelous man were tearing me up inside. The worst part wasn’t admitting I loved him. The worst part was that he loved me too. It would have been so easy! But I wasn’t free.
“Ottavia! It’s five fifteen!” His shout startled me.
For a moment I didn’t understand what he was saying. 5:15? So? Suddenly a light went on in my brain. 5:15! We couldn’t reach Athens before 6:00! We were at least four kilometers away!
“My God! What’re we going to do?”
“Run!”
He took me by the hand and pulled me like a madman. I stopped after just a few meters.
“I can’t, Farag!” I moaned, flopping down on the highway. “I’m too tired.”
“Listen to me, Ottavia. Get on your feet and run!” His tone of voice was commanding, not one bit compassionate or affectionate.
“My right foot really hurts. I must have injured a muscle. I can’t go on, Farag. You go. Run. I’ll get there later.”
He bent over and got down on my level. He grabbed me by the shoulders, shook me, and looked me straight in the eye.
“If you don’t get on your feet right now and start running to Athens, I’m going to tell you what I couldn’t say before. And if I do that”— he leaned gently toward me, so his lips were just a few millimeters from mine—”I’ll tell you in such a way you’ll never be a nun again for the rest of your life. You choose. If you make it to Athens with me, I won’t persist.”
I felt a horrible desire to cry, to hide my head against his chest and blot out the scary things he’d just said. He knew I loved him, so he gave me a choice between his love and my vocation. If I ran, I would lose him forever. If I stayed there, sprawled on the blacktop highway, he would kiss me and make me forget I had given my life to God. I felt the deepest anguish, the blackest pain. I’d have given anything not to have to make this decision, and wished I’d never met Farag. I took in so deep a breath that my lungs felt as though they were about to explode. I freed my shoulders from his hands with a light jerk, and making a superhuman effort—which took everything I had, and not because of the physical fatigue or the blisters on my feet—I collected myself, straightened my clothes with a decisive look on my face, and turned to him. He was still crouched down, an infinitely sad look on his face.
“Shall we go?”
He looked at me for a few seconds, without moving, without changing the look on his face. Then he stood up, a thin smile on his lips, and started to run.
“Let’s go.”
I don’t remember much of the towns we passed, except their names (Halandri and Papagou). I do know I kept an eye on my watch, trying not to feel the pain in my legs and the pain in my heart. Somewhere along the way, the cold dawn froze the tears that were streaming down my face. We entered Athens on Kifissias Road, at 5:50. If we kept running at that pace, we’d never finish the test. But that didn’t stop us, and neither did the sharp pain in my side which cut short my breath. I was drenched in sweat, and I thought I’d faint. It felt like I had knives jabbing my feet, but I kept running. If I didn’t, I’d have to face something I couldn’t deal with. More than running, I was fleeing—fleeing Farag. I’m sure he knew it. He stayed next to me when he could have run far ahead of me. But he never abandoned me. True to my habit of feeling guilty about everything, I felt responsible for his failure. That beautiful, unforgettable night was ending in nightmare.
I don’t know how long Vassilis Sofias Avenue is, exactly, but it seemed like an eternity. Cars were driving along as we ran in desperation, dodging telephone poles, streetlights, trashcans, trees, bulletin boards, and iron benches. The beautiful capital of the ancient world awoke to a new day that signaled the beginning of the end for us. Vassilis Sofias just wouldn’t end. My watch read 6:00 a.m. It was too late. I looked right and left, but I couldn’t see the sun anywhere. It was still as dark as an hour before. What was going on?
The blue line that had guided our steps all night was lost on Vassilis Konstantinou, the cross street that split off from Sofias and continued directly to the Olympic stadium. We ran down the avenue that ended at Plateia Syntagmatos, the enormous esplanade of the Greek Parliament, on the same corner as our hotel. We flew by it without stopping. Kapnikarea was located in the middle of Ermou Street. It was 6:03.
My lungs and heart exploded; the pain in my side was killing me. All that kept me going was my following the faithful nocturnal darkness in the sky, that black covering that wasn’t lit up by a single ray of sunshine. There was still hope. But just as I entered the crosswalk on Ermou Street, the muscles in my right leg decided for themselves that my running was over and I had to stop. A sharp jab stopped me cold. I put my hand on the painful spot and moaned. Farag whipped around. Without uttering a single word, he understood what was happening. He came back, put his left arm under my shoulders, and helped me up. With our next ragged breath, we started running again, this time together. I took a step with my good leg, then leaned all my weight on him when I had to use the bad one. We swung from side to side like a ship in a storm, but we didn’t stop. My watch read 6:05. Just three hundred meters to go. At the end of Ermou, a small Byzantine church, half buried in the ground, appeared like a strange, unimaginable apparition, out of the center of a narrow traffic circle.
Two hundred meters. I could hear Farag’s labored breathing. My good leg started to resent our last-ditch effort. One hundred fifty meters. 6:07. We moved slower and slower. We were spent. A hundred and twenty meters. With a rough push, Farag hoisted me up again and grabbed me tighter, holding steady my hand draped around his neck. One hundred meters. 6:08.
“Ottavia, you have to put up with the pain,” he jabbered, out of air. Seas of sweat ran down his face and neck. “Please keep going.”
Kapnikarea offered us a view of its left-side stone walls. We were so close! We could see the small cupolas covered with red tiles, crowned by small crosses. I couldn’t breathe or run. It was torture.
“Ottavia, the sun!”
I didn’t even look up. The soft blue tinting of the dark sky said it all. Those three words were the spur I needed to find a granule of strength. A chill went through me, and at the same time, I felt such hatred for the sun for failing me. I breathed deep and hurled myself toward the church. Sometimes in life, blind stubbornness, cussedness, or pride takes over and forces us to throw ourselves unchecked toward that single goal that overshadows everything else. That imprudent response must have a lot to do with survival instinct, because we acted as if our life depended on it.
Sure, I was in pain and my body was like a limp rag. But the thought of the rising sun was stuck in my mind, and I simply couldn’t act prudently. More important than my physical problems was my duty to cross Kapnikarea’s threshold.
So, I threw myself into running as I hadn’t run all that night. Farag was right next to me. We ran down the stairs to the church and came to the charming portico that sheltered the door. Above it an impressive Byzantine mosaic of the Virgin and Child twinkled in the dim light from the grounded streetlights. Overhead a heaven of golden mosaics outlined a Constantine chrismon.
“Shall we knock?” I asked weakly, putting my hands on my waist and bending over so I could breathe.
“What do you think?” Farag exclaimed. I heard the first of his furious seven blows against the weathered wood. With the last of his blows, the hinges creaked softly and the door opened.
A young Orthodox clergyman, with a long, shaggy black beard, appeared. His brow furrowed, a stern look on his face, he said something in modern Greek that we didn’t understand. Seeing our baffled faces, he repeated it in English.
“The church doesn’t open until eight.”
“We know, Father, but we need to enter. We must purify our souls bending down before God as humble supplicants.”
I gave Farag an admiring look. How did he remember to use the words from the prayer in Jerusalem? The young clergyman examined us from head to toe. Our bedraggled condition seemed to move him.
“In that case, come in. Kapnikarea is all yours.”
I wasn’t fooled. That young man in the soutane was a Staurofilax. Farag read my thoughts.
“By chance, Father…,” I asked wiping the sweat off my face with my sleeve, “have you seen our friend around here, a runner like us, very tall, with blond hair?”
The curate seemed to think it over. He was such a good actor you wouldn’t know he was a Staurofilax. But he didn’t fool me.
“No,” he answered after thinking it over a while. “I don’t recall anyone matching that description. But come in please. Don’t stand there in the street.”
From that moment, we were at his mercy.
The church was charming, one of those rare wonders which both time and civilization respect. Hundreds of thin, yellow tapers burned at the back and to the right of the church, allowing light to glimmer onto the iconostasis.
“I’ll leave you alone to pray,” he said, distractedly, as he turned to throw the latch and seal the door. We were prisoners. “Please call if you need anything.”
What could we possibly need? He barely finished speaking those kind words when a hard blow to the back of my head made me stagger and collapse on the floor. That’s all I remember. I was just sorry I didn’t get to see Kapnikarea better.
I opened my eyes under the glacial glare of several white neon tubes and tried to move my head. I sensed someone at my side. An excruciating pain stopped me. A woman’s voice mumbled some incomprehensible words, and I lost consciousness again. Some time later I awoke again, and several people dressed in white were leaning over my bed, examining me meticulously, raising my limp eyelids, taking my pulse, and gently moving my neck. In the fog, I realized a very thin tube ran from my arm to a plastic bag filled with a transparent liquid, hanging from a metal pole. I fell back to sleep. After several more hours, I regained consciousness and had a better grasp of reality. My dosage of drugs must have been high, because I felt no pain, although I did feel nauseous.
Seated on some green plastic chairs pushed back to the wall, two strangers observed me, mortified. When they saw my eyelids flutter, they jumped to their feet and approached the head of my bed.
“Sister Salina?” one of them asked in Italian. When I fixed my gaze on him, I saw he was dressed in a soutane and wore a cleric’s collar. “I’m Father Cardini, Ferrucci Cardini, from the Vatican embassy. My companion is His Eminence from the archimandrite, secretary of the Permanent Synod of the Church of Greece. How do you feel?”
“Like someone hit me on the head with a mallet, Father. How are my friends, Professor Boswell and Captain Glauser-Röist?”
“Don’t worry, they’re fine. They’re in the next rooms. We just saw them, and they too are regaining consciousness.”
“Where am I?”
“The nosokomio George Gennimatas.”
“The what?”
“The Athens general hospital, Sister. Some sailors found you and your companions late yesterday afternoon on a pier at the port and took you to the nearest hospital. When the emergency room personnel saw your Vatican diplomatic credentials, they contacted us.”
A tall, dark-haired doctor with a huge Turkish moustache ripped back the plastic curtain and approached my bed. As he took my pulse and examined my eyes and tongue, he directed his questions to His Eminence from the archimandrite, Theologos Apostolidis, who then spoke to me in English.
“Dr. Kalogeropoulous wishes to know how you’re feeling.”
“Fine. I’m fine,” I answered, trying to get up. I no longer had the drip bag hooked to my arm.
The Greek doctor said something else. Then Father Cardini and the archimandrite Apostolidis turned their faces to the wall. The doctor pulled back the blanket that covered me. All that clothed me was a horrible, short, light salmon-colored gown that left my legs exposed. I wasn’t surprised to see my feet bandaged, but I was surprised to find bandages on my thighs.
“What happened?” I asked. Father Cardini repeated my question in Greek. The doctor gave a long-winded answer.
“Dr. Kalogeropoulos says you and your companions have some very strange wounds. He says they were packed with an herbal chlorophyll substance they can’t identify. He asks if you know how you got the wounds. They discovered some other older wounds like them on your arms.”
“Tell him I don’t know anything. I’d like to see them, Father.”
At my request, the doctor very carefully pulled back the bandages. Then, with the two chastised priests turned to the wall and me in an untied hospital gown, he left the room. The situation was so tense I didn’t dare say a word. Fortunately Dr. Kalogeropoulos returned with a mirror. By flexing my legs, I could see the tattoos. There they were: a decussate cross on the upper part of my right thigh and a Greek cross on my left thigh. Jerusalem and Athens engraved on my body forever. I should have felt proud; but, my curiosity satisfied, all I wanted was to see Farag. When I saw my face in the mirror, I was astonished. Not only did I have sunken eyes and pale skin; wrapped around my head was a voluminous amount of bandage resembled a Muslim turban. Seeing my surprise, Dr. Kalogeropoulos fired off another string of words.
“The doctor says,” Father Cardini related, “that your friends were also hit with a blunt object and have significant contusions on the
ir skulls. Tests show you also consumed alkaloids. He wants to know what substances you ingested.”
“Does this doctor think we’re drug addicts or something?”
Father Cardini wasn’t joking.
“Tell the doctor we didn’t take anything and we don’t know anything, Father. He can ask all he likes, but we can’t say anything more. Now, if you don’t mind, I’d like to see my companions.”
That said, I sat on the edge of the bed and lowered my legs to the floor. The bandages on my feet made lovely slippers. When he saw me get out of bed, the doctor tried to restrain me, but I resisted with all my might. I needed to see my friends.
“Father Cardini, please, will you be so kind as to tell the doctor that I want my clothes and inform him that I’m going to take this bandage off my head?”
The Catholic priest translated my words, which was then followed by some rapid, agitated dialogue.
“That’s not possible, Sister. Dr. Kalogeropoulos says you have not recovered yet. You could suffer a relapse.”
“Tell Dr. Kalogeropoulos that I am perfectly fine. Father, do you know how important our work is?”
“I have an idea, Sister.”
“Then tell him to give me my clothes. Now!”
That produced another exchange of irritated words. The doctor stormed out of my room. Soon a young nurse entered the room and left a plastic bag at the foot of my bed, without saying a word. Then she came over and started to free my head from the gauze turban. I felt a huge relief when she took it off, as if those strips of gauze had been holding my head prisoner. I ran my fingers through my hair to aerate it and felt a large bump on the top of my head.
I hadn’t finished getting dressed when I heard some knocks on the metal door frame. I hurried to change, and pulled back the curtain when I was ready. Farag and the captain, decked out in matching short blue robes that covered their short hospital gowns, looked at me in surprise from under their own respective turbans.
The Last Cato Page 34