Mermaids and Ikons Read online

  We decided to make a mad dash down to the little restaurant called Marmora at the foot of the mountain and wait for the George there. The place, as it turned out, was full of British tourists — an odd group which called themselves the Wings, or the Eagles, or something like that. The members all seemed to be well over sixty, and they were soaked to the skin. It seemed obvious that they had attempted to Do Mystras, and failed.

  Their leader, who resembled James Mason, and who wore a little emblem of a Wing (or was it an Eagle?) on his blazer, was beamingly addressing the dazed group. ‘I must say; he began, ‘The weather is rather bad, don’t you think? But let’s look on the bright side of things, shall we?’

  One very old fellow who had fallen asleep with his arms on the table looked up in horror at this remark.

  ‘What I think we should do is this. Or rather, one or the other of these. That is, in fact: A: We can proceed to tackle

  Mystras regardless, thus keeping to our original plan which involves pushing on to the caves tomorrow Or — and this is B: — we can all go back and have tea in Sparta, and Do Mystras tomorrow, in which case we must forfeit the caves and push on later to Olympia. At any rate, I leave the question with you and trust you will come to a decision among yourselves.’

  He left off speaking and sat down at his special table — (all tour leaders seem to have special tables, for some reason) — with an intriguing-looking German lady who seemed to be a leader too, except that she didn’t have a group.

  ‘Caves, caves!’ cried the gentleman who kept falling asleep over the table, as the group plunged into a heated debate on the best course of action.

  ‘I say, I think we’re doing this all wrong,’ murmured an octogenarian in a bowler hat.

  Eventually the group decided on tea in Sparta and the forfeiture of the caves. Wise choice, I thought, as I downed some brandy and proceeded to become very worried about the George. Might he have had an accident in the blinding rain? I dreamed up awful possibilities of what might have befallen him, realizing that, after all, he had been a great guy, a paragon of a cab driver, a gentleman and a friend.

  — At which point, precisely, the George came strolling into the restaurant, perfectly dry and crisp, not a hair of his head out of place, and asked us where we had been.

  ‘George!’ I cried with utter relief, flailing the air with my celery stick and making threatening jabs in his direction. ‘What happened? Did you meet the great white horse?’

  The next day the snails came out of their shells. We had spent the night in Sparta and returned to Mystras early in the morning. The rain had stopped, but the ground was still chill and damp; the sky was fraught with windblown clouds and patches of a frightening kind of blue. The first snail I saw was in the doorway of the mansion of Lascaris; the thing was sitting there, protruding more than halfway out of its shell, green and bilious, possibly the most hideous thing I’d ever seen. The same green as the ghastly jungle plant with its tendrils clinging to the slope, the turgid green of too much rain and history.

  Nikos and the George began collecting snails, for it turned out that there were hundreds of them, giant ones, naked and exposed in the wet grass. They carried them in handkerchiefs and the handkerchiefs squirmed. The floors of the Lascaris mansion almost crumbled as we walked on them, and there were great holes underfoot through which we saw the cellars. A black nun was coming down the mountain leading a donkey laden with baskets; we realized that there were a few human inhabitants in Mystras — in the monastery of the Pantanassa higher up on the slopes. She greeted us with a very soft kali mera, then lowered her eyes and went on her way. The smell of wild mustard and thyme was everywhere, turning the air yellow and green.

  In the chapel of the Pantanassa there were frescoed figures of saints with their eyes hacked out. The expungement was the work of Turks who, with their Moslem fear of images, wished to rid the figures of their holy power. They didn’t realize that the eyeless faces would become, in some strange way, even more powerful and compelling than ever.

  As we were leaving the Pantanassa we saw, as an apparition, the octogenarian with the bowler hat hobbling down the road from the castle, clutching a cane and a guide-book. He must have somehow broken away from the Wings (or the Eagles) who were Doing Mystras from the bottom up, and decided to proceed from the summit down. Someone must have driven him up to the summit gate by the main road. His eyes were red and watery from trying to make a safe descent on the treacherously slippery cobblestones, and at the same time from trying to make sense of the cryptic map of Mystras which the guide-book offered.

  He paused a moment with his cane uplifted, pointing in the general direction of the Pantanassa. Then he checked the map. ‘Ahhh-ha!’ he said, with a deep sigh of satisfaction, and hobbled vaguely towards his goal. ‘Nevertheless,’ we heard him mutter as he turned a steep corner in the road. ‘I somehow feel I’ve done this all wrong.’

  How he had ever made it alone down from the castle is something we shall never know. We only got as high as the palace, from which point the castle stronghold could be seen perched on the dizzying summit far above us.

  And still no sign of the great white horse.

  At a bend in the road leading to the palace, I felt invisible archers watching us from behind the walls — and as it turned out, there was a narrow vertical slit in one part of the fortifications which must have served as a bowman’s lookout. Anyone approaching the palace could have easily been picked off by the sentry who had full visual command of that part of the road. And we — the new invaders — might have been shot by an arrow of mist from the bow of some ghostly archer who’d held his post for five hundred years.

  If ever the great white horse would appear, it must be here, I thought, as we entered the gates of the palace. Here on the windy heights in the skeleton of Constantine’s royal house — a long lonely bunch of arches and walls without roofs. Here with the wild changing sky above, with crazy-horse clouds charging over the Spartan plain against a background of vivid blue. Here where the eternal snails, ugly predators, smirked in the slippery grass. Constantine may have eaten escargots, safe within the walls of his palace while outside the wars raged on and the bowmen shot everybody who came up the royal road and failed to give the password. I imagined him sitting at a hewn wood table in mid-winter with a great fire going, his plate heaped with dozens of the beastly things all done up in tomato sauce and onions, like the ones I had once in Athens, or perhaps stuffed with spices and butter, European style. The zing of arrows down below, and lower still the poor people praying in the chapel of Saint Demetrius or huddling in doorways in the rain.

  But this is all wrong; Constantine wasn’t sitting and eating within the palace walls in wartime. He was out fighting the invaders — the invaders who wear the same faces, always, regardless of who they are.

  The George was tired of carrying his handkerchief of snails around, so he dropped the whole thing onto the ground and left the beasts to fend for themselves. We lost him again as he went behind the palace to hunt for herbs or something. When he emerged, immaculate as ever, we made our way back down the maze of roads, and he spoke for the first time in hours. ‘History is wonderful! Panagea mou, history is really wonderful ! Imagine — they all lived here, and worked and ate and died, just as we live and work and eat and die. They were like us. It breaks the mind just thinking of it!’

  We stopped then, realizing we had taken a wrong turn somewhere in the maze and had ‘done the whole thing all wrong’; we had to wind our way back to what looked like a main road, which took a full ten minutes, because we had somehow gotten over to the other side of the mountain.

  Panagea mou, I thought (which translates as ‘my all-holy one’, meaning the Blessed Virgin Mary. Some Greeks pepper their speech with this epithet, as we do ours with ‘Oh God’, to express the whole range of emotions.) Where is the great white horse, and why hasn’t he appeared to us pilgrims who have com
e so far to find him?

  ‘George,’ I asked, ‘What do you think about the great white horse?’

  ‘The villagers will know,’ he said.

  ‘Will the guard at the gate know?’ I asked.

  ‘The guard at the gate knows nothing,’ said the George with venom. ‘He is a fool, one of the great mistakes of God, a fool and a fiend. We won’t ask him.’

  I made no comment. The streets had dried out by now and the stone had been restored to its original colours — pink and beige. Someone had flung an empty pack of Players into the courtyard of Saint Demetrius and my eyes went red with indignation. I remembered a poignant comment a little girl I knew had made about the basic difference between her life in Canada and her life in Greece. ‘In Canada I used to get mad,’ she said. ‘But here — I get really mad!’

  ‘We forgot to see the Aphendiko; I said, stopping in my tracks and remembering an excerpt from the guide-book. ‘The place where they have the pictures of the miracles of Christ. The Good Samaritan, The Wedding at Cana, The Healing of The Man With Dropsy, The Healing of The Blind Man, and The Healing of Peter’s Mother-In-Law.’

  ‘Nobody could heal Peter’s mother-in-law,’ said the George grimly. ‘I know’

  As we left through the main gate, he flung the guard a foul look. I learned later that the previous day’s episode in the rain had left them with an enduring hatred for one another. The George swore in the name of everything holy that he had left a message with the fellow to inform us of where he would be waiting. The guard, on the other hand, swore in the name of everything holy that he knew nothing of it.

  We got into the freezing cab and made our way down to the serene village of Mystras at the foot of the mountain. As we turned a bend in the road, I looked back once and saw the crazy city clinging to the slopes. There was a small grey-white donkey in the distance.

  ‘Ha!’ I cried, becoming literary again. ‘Another wild jest of God! We search for the great white horse and all we get is a donkey. I ask you!’

  I fell back into the seat and lit a cigarette, sadder than I’d been for a long time, because Mystras was a miracle, and they’re hard to come by these days, and I knew I might never go back, horse or no horse.

  It was late afternoon in the village; no one was out of doors except a very slight old fellow who had just emerged from the café-neon.

  ‘Hello — you there!’ cried the George, rolling down the window and beckoning for the man to come over. ‘We’ve come a long way to Mystras and we have heard of a legend of a great white horse — the ghost of the emperor Constantine.’

  ‘Yes, we have heard that his spirit still hovers over the city and has been known to appear in that form, I said. ‘Please tell us — do you know of such a legend?’

  The old fellow leaned in the window and shook his head slowly. ‘I’ve lived here all my life,’ he said wearily. ‘And I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

  ‘Please don’t go !’ I cried. ‘Maybe it’s a secret, maybe you don’t like talking about it. But you can tell us ! Was Constantine ever seen on the mountainside in the shape of a great white horse? Is it true, is it?’

  The man gave a dry cough, excused himself, and turned away. We heard him mutter a moment later: ‘You xeni! You outsiders — you think of everything…’

  Olympia

  THE RUNNERS

  I leaned against the gate which led into the house of Phidias. Several glasses of the local wine, together with the local sun, had made me somewhat drowsy. I slid to the ground and rested, my back against the gate, in a fairly comfortable sitting position. The air was on fire. There were pine trees everywhere.

  Nikos and I had come up that morning on a funny little slow train from Pyrgos. We’d passed the time watching the farmer in the front of the coach who was trying to keep track of his countless chickens and to haggle with the train conductor over the price of the ticket at the same time. Before he got off at his destination and disappeared in a cloud of feathers, he gave us several fresh eggs and an invaluable lesson on how to deal with train conductors. My vocabulary of Greek curses and insults was also vastly enriched from having listened to him.

  About halfway to Olympia, I turned around and saw that two Gypsy women had settled themselves in the seats behind ours.

  ‘Give me a cigarette; one of them said, reaching out her hand. The Gypsies do not make a big thing of the word please; somehow, I like that.

  ‘Give us another; said the other.

  The idea that it was their right simply to ask for what they desired was strangely refreshing. You needn’t beg or plead; you merely state your case. Either you get the cigarette or you don’t. You laugh, you cry, today is today.

  Just as we were approaching Olympia, I turned around to have a word with them, and they were gone. I didn’t recall the train having stopped since the time I gave them the cigarettes. I smiled to myself. I loved and envied those two perfume-laden, black-haired, wild-eyed ladies. I wished that I could move with their ease through a world of pure sunlight, a world as golden and seductive as the earrings they wore.

  And disappear from a train that does not even stop.

  Suddenly everything was green, and there were pine needles all over the place. The shops in the town were full of plates and egg-cups made from a pine wood so fragrant that you wouldn’t dare eat from them. Blankets so gorgeous you wouldn’t dare sleep with them. Shawls you wouldn’t dare wear.

  In the cafés, the inevitable countless cats waited under the tables for bits of salata or souvlakia or anything edible. Then we spotted a familiar-looking red polka-dotted kerchief; we tried to duck out of sight. Too late; they’d seen us. It was the insanely enthusiastic American couple we’d met the night before in Pyrgos. They had brought their car from New York and were Doing Greece, only they were having trouble finding it. The night before, they had completely lost Olympia, and when we had them they were less than an hour away from the place, they had almost died. Now here they were again, waving madly from the café for us to join them.

  We cheerfully waved back, made like we were in a mad hurry, and continued on our way.

  I had to see the Hermes of Praxiteles before I could even breathe, so we plunged into the museum and frantically wended our way to the special room where the Hermes is kept. I’d seen many photographs of the statue before, and read a number of descriptions of it — but nothing had prepared me for the total shock which I experienced in the inner room.

  My previous conceptions of the male body went up in flame, smoke, or whatever. I saw the purest form of a man rejoicing in itself, totally at one with itself, almost sickeningly pleased with itself. The big toes drove me mad, until I got to the ankles, at which point I was on the verge of an epileptic fit. I proceeded to the calves, telling myself that I must take one day at a time. Wisely, I overlooked the knees, because I realized that I must save my strength for the thighs. Encountering the thighs, I gasped at the delicate veins insinuating their way through the marble flesh.

  I walked slowly round and round, carefully avoiding the torso and its components. (The components are left to the reader, as they should be. Suffice it to say that they componed.) I proceeded to the ribs, then tried to ignore the shoulder-blades, which were exquisite wings.

  His face is rather like the face of your younger brother, if you have one, or maybe your younger sister. Or maybe somebody you will meet tomorrow at a grape festival or a poetry reading.

  I marvelled at the back of his knees — a part of the anatomy much overlooked by people and artists. They were the most interesting and sexy back-of-the-knees imaginable. There should be a special word for those two very private places in the body; maybe in some languages there is. A sculptor friend of mine has made up a word that sounds right: knove. Anyway, knoves are not present in the paintings on ancient Greek amphoras, where there is generally a baffling lack of communication between upper and lowe
r arms, thighs and calves, almost as though the ancient figures move in a dimension where knees and elbows do not exist.

  But how many ‘dimensions’ has the Hermes? Following the lines from the top down, I came to the conclusion that whereas the head bone is connected to the neck bone, and the neck bone to the shoulder bone, and the shoulder bone to the chest bone, and so on…the astoundingly beautiful muscles and sinews and subtle veins beneath the skin defy description. The statue seems to exist in another, nameless dimension of reality — perhaps in the ‘space/time warp’ or whatever we want to call it, where art reaches out to greet the Infinite. Where beauty exists on its own terms, and is intended to strike the beholder dead, or to force him to re-think what reality is all about, or at the very least — to make him weep.

  It was time to leave, and do the arena. We took pictures of each other in front of the pedestal which has been used to light the Olympic flame since the time of the ancient games. Then we charged down the length of the arena, and invisible spectators must have cheered us on to victory, because we both won. We settled down on the grassy slope and amused ourselves by watching the two German tourists who were stripping down to shorts and T-shirts in preparation for their own race. One of their companions sounded the get-set-go, and the two young men bolted away from the starting line. I wondered where they were going. To the other end and back, of course — said my conscious, logical mind. From here to eternity — said another informing intelligence located farther back in my head. They are racing back through time…

  ‘Here we are,’ I said, leaning back against the cool grass, ‘In the Year of Our Lord 1971, watching some Olympic games right here in Olympia!’

  ‘After this, we should go to the temple of Zeus,’ said Nikos.

  ‘But we passed it, didn’t we? All those fallen columns that look like gigantic slices of salami. All those French tourists peering into the dust with magnifying glasses. And what if we bump into those two American dingbats who drove across the Atlantic and got lost less than an hour from Olympia? I’ll tell you what — let’s go to the house of Phidias, the sculptor who created the giant Zeus, one of the wonders of the ancient world! It was so wonderful that it got stolen, and nobody knows where it ended up…’