The Taste of Translation

by Anne Gambling

  Indeed, as the widow had informed me, this year would be prosperous by all accounts. Rains had fallen when they should, seed sown in the waxing crescent of the moon had flourished in warm earth, and an early spring free of later frosts had the orchards groaning with fast-ripening fruit. I put away my ledgers well-pleased and after joining Father Lazarus at his midday meal, called for a mount to take me to our recluse.

  I stopped the donkey in the lee of the ridge and tied him to a tree near the top of the grove where he took to cropping grass while I continued on foot. Atop the swaying beast I would surely have been bruised and battered by heavy-laden branches, and so reached the clearing in which his hut stood without injury, yet sweating heavily.

  All was quiet about. The door stood ajar.

  I proceeded to knock and squint within its sliver of gloom. No response, but that did not disturb my afternoon’s plans. I washed my face and the prickly back of my neck with cool spring water collected in a trough by the door, then sat on a bench against the whitewashed wall.

  The warmth of the day eased by a light breeze through the trees, I looked down through the grove to the sea and its clear sight westward to where the sun set behind a seamless blue-rimmed horizon, each eve without fail. The sound of the waves reached up to me – swash thrown onto the beach followed by the percolating clammer of its return through ten thousand smooth-faced stones.

  Altogether a situation most agreeable and one which must have shapeshifted into sleep, for I became suddenly aware of the thwack of wood against wood. Opening one bleary eye after the other, I spied my quarry climbing a ladder into a nearby tree where he set to trimming away small branches overstocked with leaves so the lemons could collect more sun.

  Greetings, I called.

  Hello Father, his response.

  He had long ceased calling me Master, his footing in the universe finally found and acknowledged, knowing now his master lay within, instructing in a visionary tongue.

  I rose and went over to him.

  I had thought you would be ensconced in your cave, busy working the image of your mind’s eye onto a cypress panel. But here you are, a farmer become?

  He smiled as he came down from the ladder. At times I would use other muscles than hand and brain, he said. Fresh air and sunshine is welcome respite from a smoky candle and paint-daubed fingers.

  He confessed that he reserved the night hours for his reveries with Her, so-describing his work of visitation, and had established a routine of days in the outer world attending earthly labour, nights in the company of his soul in the space of divine contemplation. Well-suited to the life of a solitary, his face was tanned, a smile readily parted his lips, his arms strong and his back able to bear great weight. Shaggy waves of sun- and sea-bleached hair crowned his whiskered face, and again I remarked the startling clarity of his eyes, his blue a full blue, shone through with peace.

  As I listened to him describe his life, I was reminded of the teachings of St John of Sinai, his words of wisdom for a Hesychast’s practice:

  Take up your seat on a high place and watch. When the watchman grows weary, he stands and prays. And then sits down again, courageously takes up his former task, meditating on the Uncreated Light.

  It seems this is what you do, brother, I said. You combine outer labour with inner work, a watchman in view of a limitless ocean.

  I told him of my mission as he heated a jar of water for tea.

  I am certain you would enjoy the experience of working with frescoes, I coaxed. You could create on a larger scale, and with more variety.

  He sat circumspect, stirring mint leaves into the steaming vessel.

  Is it close to here?

  Quite. Only an hour or so’s walk south-east.

  He nodded, put down the spoon, took up his pipe, stared out to sea.

  Some minutes of pause, of silence, before I prompted: Brother?

  He turned, smiled. I am sorry. Reverie can catch me unawares, and this time I was knee-deep in memory.

  He looked back to the sea, sighed his contentment.

  I was thinking of a place where young wheat moved by the voice of the wind ripples like waves on the face of the water, he said. Vega. We called it the Vega. I can be there all day with only the image from a humble seaside mirador before me.

  He clapped me on the back, broke the spell. A madinat of memory, nought more, he laughed, overlooking Elysian Fields. And returned to his tea, and a past beyond my sight.

  Ah yes, I agreed. Sometimes in quiet moments I too see the place of my youth, the monastery I first entered as a novice.

  From where do you hail?

  Oh far, I chuckled, very far. On the mainland, deep in the north, past the mountains that hug Ragusa’s harbour.

  He shook his head. We sailed past on the way here but did not stop. The sailors called her a jewel, the white city.

  Again I chuckled. Indeed, the greater jewel was my home in its fertile valley.

  I closed my eyes and entered my own memory made of life upon a high cliff rising to heaven’s garden.

  We each carry home within our heart, he said. It is what keeps us steady in the face of whatever comes.

  Ah, to hear him speak thus! Yet only after the vision of our Lady had opened his heart to what he had hidden from himself could he speak as he did. Only after she had steadied his hand and urged him to write out of this place he called home.

  So, what about my request? I said, pulling both of us back to now.

  He smiled at my return to business, the wrench from there to here no longer painful across time’s invisible borders. And agreed to call at the monastery next morning to accompany me to the site of his proposed commission.

  Eleven

  She would sit long in the chapel while he worked to tend to his needs – bring food and drink or pass a dusty rag into an outstretched hand if that were his wordless request. He had awakened in her a desire to serve, to invest her own labours in this creation of beauty.

  I had not expected it to be played out thus. We had visited the place, a small vaulted basilica with a single aisle, its walls pierced by slim-slit windows which allowed in little light.

  His lips had pursed in the gloom of the nave but his interest had been piqued for, on returning to the cloister late in the afternoon, he retired to the library and sat immersed in several illuminated manuscripts before settling to sketch his ideas.

  As ever, many of the expected scenes from the life of the Virgin eluded him. If the widow Theodora agreed to his suggestions, it would be a commission like no other. But he thought to include the scene of the Nativity which he said was drawn from the memory of a fresco seen once long ago, and I found this sketch truly wonderful – a grand vision of angels in flight and Heaven’s light suspended, while the Virgin herself floated, fully shrouded, penetrating the viewer with her gaze.

  Yet the cycle which intrigued me most was one he also drew from memory – six swift sketches showing the song of a monk who had gone to pray by a fountain and found a bird atop a tree which sang to him. Transfixed by the bird, he remained cupped in a song which knew no time. When at last he returned to the monastery, he knew none of the brothers. It seems he had spent some three hundred years in meditation.

  Georgios said the song was one he had learned as a youth, the bird an incarnation of the Blessed Virgin: He who serves the Virgin well will go to Paradise. And he hummed some bars of melody.

  Who was I to question an alternate expression of our Lord’s teachings? There are many traditions in this world, but they all guide to the same holy font.

  Indeed I had not expected it to be played out thus, but it was. The widow agreed to the sketches he proposed and, intrigued by the thought of an iconographer who dwelt in a shepherd’s hut, returned to her family estate from her villa in town for the remainder of the summer, and beyond.

  Standing before the chapel door, the keeper of the key, she watched for his arrival each morn, not long past dawn, leading the patie
nt donkey which carried his workaday implements. And sat long upon a bench in the nave while he toiled, simply there if he needed assistance.

  She told me it brought her peace when I heard her confession on a day I called by to inspect his work.

  Is it wrong, Father, to feel something for this man? Is it wrong to be in his presence, to rest in the gentle silence of his work?

  Is it love, what you feel?

  A type of love, yes – I think.

  She hesitated. What she offered was sincere. Her lovely face frowned as she tried to describe what it was which specifically melted her heart.

  It is not the surge of a sea’s passion as when a husband takes you into his bed, smothers your protests with kisses and fondling hands.

  My cough was polite, I hoped.

  It’s more as if we have breathed the same air all our lives. In all truth, nothing more than being in his presence is enough to fuel my heart’s ease.

  But what would it mean if he returned your consideration?

  But he would not, she said and seemed surprised at my ignorance. Do you not see? It would be impossible. He sees none but the Lady. It is She who fills his heart to overflowing.

  The widow’s expression implored me to understand.

  Do you feel envy then?

  No. She shook her head. That is the thing which makes me think it is not love. For love makes you want to possess the other, makes you want to keep their attentions centred squarely on you, away from all others – with coquetry and pretty clothes and wanting them to desire you.

  But I did not know, so I simply nodded as was my task.

  Still she tried to describe this feeling she had never felt before.

  It is as if all I want is to be in his presence, to revel in the joy of his creation and help ease his labours where I can. He need not speak, he need not in the least acknowledge me. I simply want to be. There. Bathing in a warm and gentle sea, no huge surges, no thunderous waves. Just being and – she hesitated – loving?

  Finally she looked up from hands locked in prayer to fix me with puzzled eyes.

  I frowned, I thought and, after a little while, said:

  I think what you describe is love as our Lord commands. Unconditional, pure. Compassion. As St Paul said: Love that never fails. Love that knows even as when it is known.

  I thought more and offered:

  Perhaps it is not our artist who brings this feeling to well up in you at all. Perhaps it is our Lady Kiria. The love he expresses in bringing Her into existence is embodied in his creation in this consecrated space, no? From where it overspills, catching you in her love, her divinity.

  Saint Basil said that veneration of a divine image makes it incarnate, I said. Perhaps that is what you feel as you sit in the chapel as he creates, the Lady brought to life within your walls? Or possibly he has become, for you, the very manifestation of the Lady’s loving presence, himself touched in bringing her to life?

  She shook her sweet head in wonderment.

  It was all speculation, we both knew. She had offered her confession, that she loved. But a love neither of earth nor flesh, a love unlike any she had known. As if he himself had become the icon, the one she wished to worship. As if the border between the writer and the written had dissolved, uniting the two into one in her warm and gentle sea.

  I joined her in chapel after our conversation, sat on a bench, looked to what he had made.

  The bright gold ground of the iconostasis caught the dim candlelight of the nave, caught and held it there to shimmer Kiria in and out of view.

  The scale of his wall paintings had lost none of her nobility of expression, beauty or grace, while the full cycle of his song of the monk appeared on the eastern wall, each scene separated by a thick red border.

  He had conceived the monk’s singing bird as a dove, the tree by the fountain a laurel, altogether recreating my cloister yard in Candia and the gentle creature which had brought me comfort while he suffered in retreat all those years past.

  I smiled and turned to find the widow also smiling, lost in her own contemplation of a sacred space in the making.

  And indeed it was as if we both floated in a warm and gentle sea.

  Twelve

  The widow Theodora of the house of Constantine did not want the commission to end, did not want her life returned to the ravages of time from the space of eternal peace. Yet every wall had been filled with colour and story, the vaulted ceiling turned into a paradisial night of leafy tendrils, pomegranates and lilies entwined in a bed of heavenly stars through which a host of angels soared.

  All that remained was the portrait of the donor in the narthex. She stood tentative, shy, trembled, resolve shaken by proximity. She asked for my presence for the duration of the sitting, worried she may falter if he saw the need to smooth her veil or to look too intently at the contours of her face.

  And so I watched as he brought her portrait to life with warm colour, freely swirling paint into the charcoal outlines of flesh and form. The folds of veil and tunic were a frothy mix of red and orange, while deep greens and greys, light blues and whites, cast shadows and highlights by turn.

  He completed her face last. Now there was no boldness to his art, no great sweeping strokes of colour. All quiet, considered, finely wrought. He studied her features from atop the ladder or came down to wordlessly tilt her chin toward the light, leaving a mark of his care upon her jaw, a small patch of blue which most recently had hugged his thumb.

  An impressive fresco, it filled the length of the wall. Outstretched on the widow’s palm lay a model of the church, and in her other hand a bowl of figs from the sweeping tree, luxuriant in full leaf, that he had created beside her.

  No, she did not want the commission to end. But brought to end it was, and he walked up the path through the olive grove, on and over the hill. She did not move, did not breathe, did not blink an eye till he was out of sight, lost in the dusk of mist risen on a chill-drenched autumn eve.

  It is our fate to change, to suffer. And like her earlier ordeals, Theodora bore her suffering well. Finding no solace in the city, in conversation with like women, or on visits to market, or at music recitals hosted by Venetian lords eager to win her hand and lands, she retreated from society. And dwelt mainly at her estate in the south, only returning to the city when it could not be avoided, an icon of our Lady Kiria ever-present in her luggage.

  The following spring I dedicated the chapel, a Bible of the Poor like no other. Theodora had hoped he would attend the service and asked me to put her request to him but I knew her suit was taken in vain. The ceremony was to be next day.

  I arrived at his hut by way of Agios Georgios in the late afternoon. We sat out, took in the sea and setting sun, talked long.

  It was certainly an interesting experience to paint on such scale but not one I wish to repeat, he said, tapping his pipe against the edge of the bench and using a paint-smeared finger to clear out the remnants of old tobacco before filling the bowl afresh. It disturbs my peace of mind to be indoors so long when I could be watching the waves on the Vega and preparing for my nights with Her instead.

  He shook his head. I will not leave my sanctuary again.

  Yes, we talked long and he invited me to share his evening meal.

  Stay the night, Father, he said. It is too late to return to the monastery.

  Oh, I scoffed. It is not too far to a warm bed! The moon is full and the donkey knows his way.

  He laughed, the laugh of one who has dwelt long in the bosom of nature.

  Then what shall you do when the donkey shies at a boar? he said. The mothers have their young just out of the nest. You had better beware. More combative mothers have I not yet seen!

  No, he shook his head seriously. You shall take my warm bed this night, and he went out to secure the donkey’s tether more firmly to the nearest tree.

  But where shall you sleep? I called after him.

  Sleep? He laughed anew. On this beauteo
us night? Father, this is a night to sing poetry to our Lady Kiria!

  He returned to the oak table in the corner of the room, cleared away the remnants of our meal and brought out a prepared board and a box of implements to lay in their stead. The entire time he hummed and while he cracked an egg, separating white from yolk, I left the room to perform last ablutions before retiring.

  When I returned, I found him hunched over the table, a single candle guiding his hand. I crept over to his bed to lay in the gloom. His first charcoal sketch floated above my head, tacked to the wall with a blob of hide glue, as good an image as any to guide my evening prayers.

  The moon skated the sky and I turned on my side to watch him work. The straw grumbled in its sack, unwilling to mould to a new body shape. But when all was quiet, all was still, I was at peace to watch him work the full night through.

  That night I saw the Holy Spirit move through him, mix the colours, sketch the outline, fill the form with delicate strokes. Work silently written. As conceived, so delivered. As received from a space beyond thought, beyond language, so translated into gold leaf and egg tempera. No need of word, no need of thought. From the beyond to the beyond by way of a single hand, a pure heart, he wrote with full attention to his task, returning the Lord’s gift unto Himself, gifting it on, out into the world, this gift of love divine.

  While he wrote, something shimmered, hovered at his elbow. At first I was unsure, I thought my eyes failed me. The night was long, perhaps my sight was blurred by weariness. But it did not shift, this shimmer, no matter how I squinted. So after a time, I accepted it as I saw it, as I see it still in my mind’s eye.

  At his elbow was a misted presence of golden light. Either connecting with his body from without, or seeping from the very core of his self within, I could see no sharp edge or outline to his form. All a-shimmer, aglow, at his right side, melting, merging with the deft strokes of his hand.

  Perhaps it was only the fluidity of movement which I smudged into unknowing by my witness. My eyes were not a youth’s, after all. But perhaps, just perhaps, my vision was clear, and I saw straight through from the heart’s inner eye – that an angel had entered the room.