Digging at the Crossroads of Time

by Christos Morris

  Reflecting upon the miserable state of his soul, Spargos fell into tears and begged to be forgiven. Dimitrios was not like other priests. Spargos studied his wise eyes. They were those of an educated man, dark and penetrating. For days after this encounter, Spargos asked himself why he had told the story about Demetra. What explanation, other than the priest’s, could account for his actions? He promised to himself not to tell stories concerning anyone unless they were good ones. He knew it would be a promise he would have difficulty keeping.

  During Spargos’ humiliating confession, the priest explained, “You are a good man, but you are only a man. Our nature is weak when faced with temptations. That is why there is a God. He is the perfection we try to find and try to become.”

  Spargos felt relieved and showed his pleasure. The priest concluded, “This is not a licence to do nothing. If you go on doing nothing for yourself, you deny your own God. Then it is up to Him what misfortunes fall upon you.”

  On another day, Spargos rejoined the fraternity of men and learned not the pain of holding his tongue, but the pleasure of silence. He sang their mantinades about bravery and valour, of love and love lost, but when they sang the songs of lust, he saw the priest’s eyes and kept his silence.

  These songs of lust began as songs of the sea. The words were shared only with the fraternity. They were designed to free their smothered passion, to awaken their fantasies, to return each and every one of them to the heavenly status of being irresistible. They could make love without fear of failure or rejection to whomever came to mind. Their exaltation would last as long as they could invent new stanzas. The rapacious zest with which women would reveal their soft and feverish bodies seemed endless.

  There had been centuries of secret mantinades and thousands of lustful stanzas sung. Every one of them, if only they could be remembered, could have been sung to the beautiful image of the widow, Ariadne, There was no other woman in all the Elefsis villages, maybe all of Crete, who could stir the satyr blood on the most flat-footed of men as she could. Hers were the powers of a goddess. She could enter their lonely hearts on lonely nights when they watched her pass through walls to kiss them, silently, while their wives snored.

  Ariadne’s eyes leapt out in temptation. She seemed so unafraid. Her lips spread slowly into a voluptuous smile revealing hopefulness, and not someone who is cautious in her life. She made men weak with passion. They secretly made love to her, performing great acts while they courted, tantalized, teased, tickled, licked, nibbled, and made love in the covert privacy of their minds. Privacy reprieved then, or so they thought, never imagining Ariadne, their goddess, had learned to read men’s eyes or see the pictures that lay behind them.

  Maybe Ariadne knew it was July 2, the day of Yakinthes: Cretan St Valentine’s Day. She walked down from Pano Elefsis for no other reason then to stroll the main street of Elefsis Port and sit in the platea. It was a windfall for eager eyes. As long as she was prepared to sit in the platea, or simply stroll, the fishermen’s eyes could feast until they grew fat. These eyes stored features seen once and never forgotten: her strong, black eyebrows, her narrow hips, the slender waist. She seemed taller than she was, taller than most woman – most men. The simple wedding band from her husband, Lefteros, was forever present on one pure white finger of her left hand.

  Ariadne of Mitilini, Helen of Troy. She was always destined by birth to be a rich man’s woman. All Lefteros had to offer was a fishing boat and a 300-year-old stone house clinging to the side of a hill in Pano Elefsis. It seemed beyond reason that she left the green leafy isle of Mitilini (Lesbos) for the giant rocks of Crete and for the love of a poor fisherman. Why she remained here ten years after his death was a mystery.

  Dionysos blamed his drunken self for the death of Lefteros. Unable to rise before the sun, he left his friend to sail into the jaws of the devil, alone. They found his ship but not his body. Upon the news of Lefteros’ death, Dionysos growled and shouted at the heavens and set sail in search of the demon that took his friend. He sailed into every storm as he did into every port: a man possessed. He became a red-eyed demon with a knife in his belt, ready to slit the throat of anything or anyone who stood before him.

  After one month he returned and offered to work for Ariadne. The poor fragile thing, he thought. She is all alone. He called her Bobbi, after a forlorn pelican from Molivous, Ariadne’s village in Mitilini. He had seen the real Bobbi himself, walking the wharf of Molivous in search of her mate who had died swallowing a fisherman’s hook. Bobbi never left Molivous again, walking the wharf like an old vagrant, depending on handouts from fishermen. The pelican endured the ridicule of tourists and the indignities of children grabbing and squeezing her long neck. She allowed them their cruelties until one day she simply died of old age, or maybe a broken heart.

  Dionysos’ temper smouldered when he saw the lecherous eyes of the men following Ariadne, their thoughts sneaking up her dress when she was still lost in her grief. He called them hyenas, arriving like a pack of dogs at the door in Pano Elefsis; lingering, waiting until dawn perchance she might invite them, one or all, to share her bed.

  The big man grabbed one of the hyenas and hoisted him from the back of his trousers high in the air, then hooked him on a branch of a carob tree, shouting, “If I ever see your rat-face again, I will cut off your head with this knife and feed it to my dog. Now go tell all the other rats.”

  Rumours of Dionysos’ anger spread with the speed of light. The loitering near Ariadne’s home ceased, but the lustful dreams did not.

  This day Ariadne sat alone in the platea for all the fat eyes to watch. There was no Dionysos. He had gone to sea one night in a drunken rage and had not yet returned. There wasn’t any priest to deflect their glances. The men were free to dream. She seemed so happy sitting there, enjoying life’s small pleasures. While her child-like hands lay defenceless in her lap, the dreams of desire were dissolved and replaced by a more powerful feeling of her loneliness. Ten years had passed since her husband had died. Ten years alone, up there, locked away with what remained of his memory. Maybe she deserved more than their throbbing dreams of her. Maybe she deserved to love and be loved in return. Maybe Dionysos, unwittingly, did not serve her well by putting the fear of death into all potential suitors. She looked so happy watching the strollers in the platea, listening to the mantinades. How could any man feel lust at this moment?

  Nani Pandazizis sat in the platea with his tavli board and dice, waiting for his brother-in-law, Mihilis, to arrive. He shook the dice in practice, throwing hard, and then clapped at his success. He caught a glimpse of Paki Pilofakis, the local artist, and beckoned for his company. Pilofakis never walked empty-handed. If there was not a painting or a book, there were always ruffled papers or folders. His wild, frizzy hair sat on an oversized head and his body waddled as though his thighs were stuck together.

  “Paki, sit down! I’ll play you one game.”

  “I’m too busy. Don’t you know I am the director of the Freedom Day play?”

  “Of course. We all know you stopped painting those pictures of the sea to become a big director.”

  “I paint more than the sea.”

  “Hah, you only paint the sea, and the same way every time. The only things you change are the rocks. Why don’t you take a photo and be done with it?”

  “Why should I listen to a fool who only plays tavli? I am an artist and I paint what my eyes see.”

  “But you see the same thing every day. Almost everyone in Elefsis has one of your paintings and they all look the same. Why should we look at your paintings when we can walk outside and see the real thing – and it looks better? God is the real artist. Look! Out there! How can you make something better than that?”

  “Why do I take this from you? I’m already taking enough ridicule for the play I have chosen for the festival. Everyone wants a play about the Greeks rising up throwing all the Turks into the sea.”

  “So, that’s what Freedom Day is. Why change it?”r />
  “Because it’s …” he shrugged, “… a silly thing to do every year. We never threw the Turks into the sea. We just kissed their asses for four hundred years. I want to do something serious by Euripides. I want to do his play, Iphigenia.”

  “Euripides for Freedom Day? What does that have to do with the Turks?”

  Pilofakis flicked his five fingers toward Pandazizis, dismissing the conversation. He pushed his glasses up his nose with one finger and looked away, mumbling quietly, “It’s about the freedom of the spirit and the imprisoned soul, you idiot.”

  Nani Pandazizis shrugged and turned to the fisherman who was spreading his nets on the platea beside them. He shouted, “Well, Kolikos, are you going to see the Freedom Day play by Mr Pilofakis?”

  “See it? I’m in it,” came the reply.

  Pilofakis nodded smugly. “He will be perfect as Calchas, the soothsayer. He will predict doom to Agamemnon and his followers unless his daughter is served up as a sacrifice to the Earth Goddess.”

  “Him?”

  “Of course, me. I am Kolikos, the Predictor. I know many things before they ever happen. Many things I shouldn’t know. I knew Manolis Theepsos would lose his boat to the sea before it happened. I predicted the eclipse of the moon last year. These things I see in my big melon. My wife sometimes hits my head in the night, thinking there are bad demons in there to cause trouble for her.”

  Pilofakis smiled. “There! He will make a good Calchas. Giorgos, the grocer, will be the priest. He is the one anointed to sacrifice Iphigenia so the wind will blow again and Agamemnon and his armies can finally escape this place to ransack Troy.”

  “Who plays the young Iphigenia or her mother, Clytemnestra?”

  “I don’t know yet, though I have asked Mr. Steffanakis to be Agamemnon. He has not given his reply. If he accepts, then his beautiful wife would be the perfect Queen Clytemnestra.”

  “He’ll never do it and she’s never here,” piped Pandazizis. “She lives in Athens.” He pretended to spit on the ground. “She’s another archaeologist. They both dig up the dead.” He paused momentarily. “Oh well, I can see her as a queen. She is strong and wears her nose high, like a queen does. What do you think, Kolikos?”

  The soothsayer nodded. “I saw her once. She has eyes that light up from inside her skull.” He shimmered one hand in the air. “White face. Black eyes. Those black eyes look right inside you. No man can stare in peace at her. It is better she lives in Athens.”

  Pilofakis grinned, raising one clever eyebrow. “And just maybe Ariadne will play the part of Iphigenia. Would that impress you more?”

  Pandazizis cocked his head and winked at the fisherman. “If this is true, I will come two hours early for a front-row seat – and I will even stay to the end.”

  “And Kolikos?”

  “Me? I predict I will wear vassaliko in both ears and wear clean underwear.”

  “You don’t own underwear,” laughed Pandazizis. “You told me it was bad luck for catching fish.”

  “It is. This is true. But I have one good pair I saved for just this sort of thing. Special underwear with the scent of lemon thyme.”

  Pilofakis grew tired of these men, of their silliness. He moved his chair so he could be alone with his folder of papers. He scratched his frizzy hair furiously, thumbed through his papers, then looked to the sky.

  Pandazizis closed his tavli board, clipping the box shut for the day. Kolikos looked out to the horizon with melancholy eyes, having had his fill of raki.

  The afternoon sun was sinking. It pulled on an invisible arched wire with the daylight moon attached, dragging it up from the east. Paki looked toward the moon and drew the image on paper. It was a new moon in the shape of a croissant, silvery white against a rich blue sky. He knew that in ancient times the new moon was a symbol of many things: the consecrated horns of a bull, the turned up lip of a double axe, the shape of the boat used for the dead passing across the sea. Like the Christian cross, the bullhorns, the double axe and the crescent moon were all sacred.

  “Photon,” barked Kolikos loudly, “Xarlomena to phengari … orthios o kapitanos.” He pointed to the moon.

  “Don’t ruin my moon for me,” yelled Pilofakis. “You and your bad omens.”

  “It’s a bad sign. Very bad. Tomorrow I will stay in bed. The devil can play with the fishes by himself.”

  Pandazizis shrugged. “What’s wrong with the moon?”

  “It tells the future,” said Kolikos, pouring the last remaining drop of raki from the carafe.

  “When the new moon lies like that, looking up, the captain must stand to the helm. Travel is dangerous. If the moon is the other way, looking down, the captain can lie down without worry.”

  “You’re crazy. You will be the only one not fishing in the morning,” said Pandazizis.

  “Not the only one. Look up there, the high cloud. Anemos blows hard and fast. The devil’s breath. An old sailor knows the air and her signs. Only the sailors who are blind don’t see … or the ones who sleep with the devil don’t care.”

  Pandazizis pointed with his head toward the wharf as the two figures of Demetra and Mimis Steffanakis climbed abroad Demetra’s vessel. “The devil and the sorcerer go out to sea, aye, Kolikos?”

  “Aye! Look how the water now goes from blue to black. Demetra may visit God on Sunday, but she sails with the devil the rest of the week. I have passed her many times and I always look away. Her evil eye burns my vest like lightning. There is the smell of burning skin. I have the scars.”

  Pilofakis put down his painting. “She catches more fish than all of you fishermen together. So now she is the scapegoat for everyone.” He softened his voice in contemplation. “And here on land we will soon do the same to Steffanakis.”

  “With good reason,” snapped Kolikos. “I tell you I see big trouble for each of them alone, but together there is a disaster approaching. I can see it in my head. I predicted someone would die up there on Oaxsa by falling off that temple. I was right.”

  “He didn’t fall,” shouted the artist. “He jumped. They found a white nylon sheet attached to his wrists and to his legs. They discovered yesterday he was from Vrouhas. He was a poet named Cephalau.”

  “Suicide?” asked Kolikos.

  Paki shook his head. “No, not at all. He wanted to fly. He wanted to fly like a bird in the winds and fly from Oaxsa to the sun. I knew him. I mean, I met him once or twice. He wrote a lot about flying with the gods.”

  “So, did he make it?” asked Kolikos.

  Pilofakis shrugged. “I guess we’ll never know.”

  The three men watched Pharmacos run from his mother’s taverna, speeding past them on the platea. He shouted the professor’s name, holding two sea-washed pebbles above his head. Pharmacos ran to Demetra’s boat and handed Steffanakis the pebbles. The archaeologist examined them without fanfare and gave them back to him.

  Kolikos leaned awkwardly toward Pilofakis as if to tell a secret. “Psst! The boy’s father is worried to death about him climbing up there.” The fisherman glanced from side to side secretively. “Pharmacos wakes with dreams of the dead. Sometimes he dances and sings like a crazy man – you know – like those wild Africans. He tells his father he can fly with the wind on top of Oaxsa. Perdos told me these crazy things last night.”

  “Was he drunk?” asked Pilofakis.

  “Not too much,” Kolikos replied. “A little bit, but how else can a man loosen his tongue and tell his secrets?” He pointed toward the wharf. “Every day he sits with the archaeologist up there. His young brain is being poisoned.”

  Pilofakis raised one eyebrow seriously. “Epiphanes,” he said, almost to himself. He looked to Kolikos. “The early Greeks did the same. They sang and danced themselves into a frenzy. The Oracles did the same too, with the help of wine and drugs. So did the early Christians. They said it helped find the visions of heaven. Maybe Pharmacos does the same?”

  “The boy was fine until he went up there to follow Steffanakis.
Digging up the dead has poisoned him! And it will poison us too, in time. That is the prediction of Kolikos.”

  Paki Pilofakis stood to leave, stretching his arms upward to the sky. “I love this island,” he said with serene pleasure. “This place is so full of magic. It oozes from the bones of it.”

  Egyptos

  1643 BC

  The gifts from Keftiu surprised my Pharaoh, delighting him more than I imagined possible. His joy gave me pleasure. By his word and command, I remained within the palace. My voice spoke before his favourite scribe, recounting my journey upon the black water of Keftiu surrounded by the Great Green Sea. It was my duty to remember every detail of Keftiu, its people, and Meterra, the powerful Goddess. I spoke of the Earth Mother with respect, fearing Her ears to be long. To me She was like the sea; loving, warm, reaching out to the edge of our worldly life and then beyond. You could feel Meterra smiling at the sun while we sailed upon Her smooth skin without a care, but She has another face that erupts from the deep, an ugly violent hag whose breath fouls the air, intent on destroying all who sail upon her, and sucks them back into the deep.

  The two faces upon one goddess I did not understand. I dared not speak of it, ever. She was not for our eyes and I tremble with the thought that one day I might see her other side. Her womb descended through the rock of Keftiu, tunnelling beneath the sea and into the fiery pits under Akrotiri. The vicious black smoke rising to the heavens from this island to the north caused my thumos to pound in horror as I relived my journey. My escape.

  It was the strangeness of the Keftiuians that touched my Pharaoh. He wanted to know more. The request that my ship sail upon the shores of Akrotiri embraced me with a mixture of dread and elation. I had come to know of Meterra’s place beneath the sea. Her powers of darkness. I knew of the silent line my ship would cross, the invisible gate of fate beyond which Meterra ruled and my Eyptian God could not protect me.