Report to Grego (30 page)

But a few days after we reached the Holy Mountain, a half-insane ascetic said something which muzzled me. He lived in a state of ecstatic frenzy perched in a cave overhanging the sea.

“Poor, poor man, I see you've lost your wits,” I said to tease him.

He laughed. “I gave my wits and received God in return. In other words, I gave a counterfeit farthing and purchased paradise. What do you think, my boy, did I strike a good bargain?”

After a moment's silence, he continued. “And let me tell you something else, for your information. There was once a great king
who had three hundred and sixty-five wives in his harem. He was very handsome, and loved to eat and have a good time. One day he went to a monastery, where he saw an ascetic. He looked at him compassionately. ‘What a great sacrifice you are making!' he said. Tour sacrifice is greater,' the ascetic replied. ‘How's that?' ‘Because I have renounced the ephemeral world, while you have renounced the eternal.'”

Somewhere behind the chestnut trees a nearby bell began to toll vespers. The monks' village came into sight as we rounded a bend in the road. We quickened our pace.

Grocers, vegetable dealers, cooks, peddlers, street cleaners—all of them monks! It was a sorrowful, unbearable village of males, without a woman, without a child, without laughter. Nothing but beards: black, blond, brown, gray, and snow-white, some pointed, some spread out like bell-shaped brooms, others thick, curly, and impenetrable, like healthy cauliflowers.

We went to the Protáton, the residence where the commissioners of the twenty monasteries had their seat. Enthroned in their stalls, they regarded us with sly quick-moving eyes that were full of suspicion. We said who we were—two God-fearing Christians who had the zeal of the Lord and were coming to do homage. We were still young, we said, and before commencing to taste the troubles of the world, before marrying, we had come here to the Virgin's Garden, so that Her Grace might enlighten us and show us the true road. We had come as votaries to Her Grace.

My friend, speaking with his thunderous voice and poetic elevation, became more and more ignited. The monks listened with gaping mouths, some tightly clutching their beards. The more my friend spoke, the more I myself penetrated his meaning and understood the true reason why we had come to the Holy Mountain. Doubtlessly, even my friend had not known it but had found it in the course of speaking.

Leaning over, the monks whispered in one another's ears, then rose in a single body and gave us written permission to tour all the monasteries and hermitages, doing homage at each, and to remain until the Virgin in her grace gave us a sign that our votive offering had terminated.

Our journey began. Ecstatically happy, we traveled from monastery to monastery, miracle to miracle, conversing in muted voices
like the ancient pilgrims, about God, man's destiny, and our own particular duty—the three persistent subjects of our entire trip. I kept a diary, recording the day's harvest every evening. Now, forty years later, it has grown yellow with age, but as I turn over its pages, I relive those divine, unbelievable days. Every word, even the most insignificant, brings joys and yearnings back to life inside me, and also youthful anxieties, the frantic schemes my friend and I made to save our souls—all the insolence, nobility, and naïve ingenuousness of youth.

I
viron Monastery, November 19
. In the morning, walk along the seashore. A little spring of holy water and the tiny chapel next to it, with the icon of the Virgin inside, blood running from her cheek. Two fishermen-monks drawing the nets. The fish dancing inside.

Back to the monastery. The Portaïtissa—Our Lady of the Gate—what a miracle! Huge woeful eyes, petite wavy mouth, firm chin—joy, sadness, all the delight and pain of humankind.

And at night, what a divine moment when we saw the sea, brilliantly white and sighing, with the moon monstrously huge over it. My friend said that tonight the moon was really fulfilling its vocation: it was illuminating eternity.

We talked in low voices, leaning close to each other. We said that we had to make a radical decision, had to experience eternity at every moment.

Wherever we went we were followed by a pale, silent monk, a sickly creature who coughed, spat, and scratched himself incessantly. But his face was radiant with happiness.

“He must be a lunatic,” said my friend.

“He must be a saint,” I said. “Don't you see how his face gleams? Just as though some sun were hitting it.”

Once we halted and he joined us.

“I am Father Lavréndios,” he said. “The fool. You've probably heard about me.”

“You are very fortunate,” my friend remarked, “for you have entered heaven while still alive. Your face is radiant.”

“Praise the Lord,” answered the monk, crossing himself. “What
others call folly I call paradise. But I had a terrible time opening the door.”

“What door?”

“The door to paradise, brother. When I first entered the monastery I trembled and wept from fear. I wept at the thought of heaven, wept at the thought of hell. But one morning I got up and said to myself, Why weep? God is our Father, isn't He? We're his sons, aren't we? Well then, why be afraid? Since that day I've been called a fool.”

He took a dry crust from beneath his shirt and gave it to us.

“The bread of the angels,” he said. “Eat! Eat, your poor devils, so you too can grow wings!”

S
tavronikíta Monastery, November 21.
Amazingly high over the sea. The old doorkeeper an ancient wreck from Crete. He seized me by the hand.

“Eh, and who are you?”

“A Cretan!”

“Enter!”

In one of the cells some young novices were learning Byzantine music, picking out the first notes in loud voices. They hold tradition like a lighted candle in their dirty, childish hands.

The sea viewed from the monastery tower: how like a gigantic bow it is, a gigantic bow stretched taut!

Further along in the same monastery, the head of the twelve-year-old Christ, so precociously filled with understanding and divine seriousness. Precipitous, towering forehead, chubby white chest, eyes deep and thoughtful. Truly the Portaïtissa's son. . . . Another icon, a large Saint Nicholas of the Oysters. He had a sizable oyster embedded in his forehead, and his hands seemed to be dripping with brine.

I chatted with the Cretan doorkeeper.

“What made you become a monk?”

“My aunt read me the Gospel one day and said the world was worthless.”

Must not forget Father Philemon, who waited on us at table. Body as lithe as a sword of damask steel; like an angel, all flame. He longed to receive orders, greatly enjoyed serving and obeying. His joy was so great that he could not keep from laughing; he laughed constantly.

“When will my turn come to see God?” I asked him.

“It's easy, very easy,” he answered. “Just open your eyes and you'll see Him.”

P
antocrátoros Monastery
. Before daybreak I heard a bewitching melody from the monastery courtyard. The sweetest of sounds. Racing to my window, I saw a monk in the half-light of the dawn. He was wearing the monk's hat with its black katýmmafko flowing down his back. He carried an oblong block of wood, the portable semantron, which he struck rhythmically with a little hammer. He advanced slowly around the courtyard, going from cell to cell to summon the brothers to matins. My friend, who had awakened also, leaned out of the window at my side, and both of us listened with absorption and contentment. After the semantron stopped, we dressed ourselves and went down to the chapel. Total darkness, except for two cressets burning on the iconostasis in front of the icons of Christ and the Virgin Mother. The air was pungent with wax and rose incense.

The psalms for matins began softly, gently like the rustling of trees, the sighing of the sea. The abbot, a lighted candle in his hand, approached each stall in turn to see if all the brothers had come down; then he dipped the aspergillum in the freezing holy water and vigorously aspersed the forehead of each of the monks. As we strolled in the cloister afterwards, we commented on the life here: what divine rhythm, what a marvelously embossed shell it was, the product of untold generations—but now, inside, the oyster which had created and beautified this shell was dead. “We must reorganize Christian asceticism,” we said, taking an oath to do so. “We must blow the breath of creativity into it once more. We must. This is why we came to the Holy Mountain.”

V
atopédi Monastery.
We approached the celebrated Vatopédi on a tender morning filled with God's loving-kindness, a morning straight from heaven, as though this were the fifth day of the Creation and God still had not fashioned man to spoil His work. The east opened by degrees like a rose, and tiny rosy-cheeked clouds emerged like cherubs from behind the horizon, growing gradually larger, so that they appeared to be descending to earth. A blackbird landed in the middle of the road and looked at us, the dew still upon its wings. But as though it were not a blackbird, but
instead a kindly spirit which recognized us, it neither grew frightened nor moved out of our way. A tiny little owl perched on a rock had already grown giddy from the light; it remained peaceful and motionless, waiting for darkness to return.

We did not speak. Both of us felt that the human voice, no matter how sweet and hushed, would reverberate shrill and discordant here, and that all the magic veil which enveloped us would be torn apart. Our faces and hands sprinkled with morning dewdrops as we pushed aside the low-hanging pine branches, we proceeded on our way.

My happiness was choking me. Turning to my friend, I was about to open my mouth to exclaim, What joy this is! But I did not dare. I knew that as soon as I spoke, the sorcery would be dispelled. I remember seeing a fox late one afternoon on Taygetus, above Sparta; it was advancing gingerly with craned neck, its bushy tail held stiffly erect, so that it cast a long purple shadow on the stones. I held my breath lest the animal catch scent of me and run off, but I was not quick enough in restraining my exultation; in spite of myself a tiny, tiny cry excaped me. This the fox heard, and before I even had a chance to see which direction it took, it had vanished. . . . Happiness in man's life, I felt, is always exactly the same.

Suddenly we heard talking and laughter; we had finally reached the monastery. Two well-nourished monks were sitting on a stone bench in front of the outer door, joking with the doorkeeper.

As though we had seen a snake, we halted abruptly. My friend looked at me. “It was a dream,” he said, shaking his head. “For an instant we believed that people did not exist.”

“What a shame,” I answered. “That was the true paradise, far, far superior to the other. Instead of man and wife strolling beneath God's trees, there were two friends. And now, look, we've been expelled—not by an angel who came running with a scimitar, but by a human being armed with a voice.”

The two monks had been shouting loudly and bursting into irrepressible laughter as they teased the doorkeeper. But they fell silent the moment they saw us. Clasping their bellies, they rose and held out their hands for us to kiss.

“Welcome,” they said. “God be with you.”

“You seem to be doing pretty well, holy Fathers,” replied my
friend, glancing at their paunches and red cheeks. He still could not forgive them for expelling us from paradise.

“We have renounced the false world and its pleasures,” said the first, the one with the blond beard.

We kept mum. But the other, the black-bearded monk, snapped, “Why look at us with such surprise? Prayer is more nourishing than meat.”

They had come close to us; their breath reeked unbearably of garlic.

“Let's go inside to do obeisance,” we said, anxious to escape these two garlic-monks.

Along came the guestmaster, an immaculate blue-eyed monk with a silken white beard and rosy skin, obviously thriving quite nicely. After bidding us welcome, he led the way and we followed. It was a rich monastery, an entire city, with guest rooms, freshly painted doors and windows, electric lights, and orchards overlooking the sea. The monks had left the refectory already and were seated outside their cells digesting their food in the sun. Entering the church, we did obeisance to the renowned icons of the Virgin: the Paramythía, the Ktetórissa, the Bematárissa, the Antiphonétria, the Esphagméne, and the Elaiobrótida. A precious reliquary was opened for us and we kissed the Virgin's Holy Girdle. I remembered the two monks who had brought it to Crete when I was a child. The populace raced to Saint Minas's to do obeisance, filling the monks' little sack with silver metzities and golden liras, earrings, and wedding bands. I had nothing to give to Her Grace, so I dug in my pocket, found a pencil, and tossed that into the sack.

We went out to the courtyard and climbed to the guest room. A sumptuous meal had been prepared for us, replete with all God's riches.

“We're not doing badly here,” said my friend, who loved good food. “Not badly at all—you'd think we were Vatopédi monks!”

“Let's drink the health of poor pauper-Prodromos,” I suggested, “poor famished Prodromos. O how jealous he was when he thought of the abbots eating their meals in the monasteries, how his mouth watered! And what a complaint he made to his emperor! Do you remember the lines?”

“Of course I remember:

severe, taciturn, black-bearded; above him a fierce Christ with knotted brows, done in black and green paint. In a small elevated pulpit, the lector, a pale monk of tender age, declaims from the lives of the saints in a monotonous, chanting voice. Everyone bends over his plate, no one talks. The abbot scarcely touches his bread and food; then suddenly he takes a small bell standing at his right side and rings it three times. All the monks spring to their feet, still chewing their half-finished meals. The one who is waiting on table runs, prostrates himself before the abbot, and receives his blessing. Then the lector does the same and begs to be forgiven if he read poorly. In comes the Host on a tiny tray, a piece of bread from which each monk pinches off a small bit which he nibbles as holy antídoro.