A Journey to Mount Athos

by FranCois Augieras

  In the warm night full of stars, on that deserted beach, he asked if I wanted to return to the world of men. I replied that I had come too close to the AWAKENING to wish to see mortals again. Even if I wanted to it was now too late. I had reached a point of no return, beyond which I could only head towards the light. Such was my destiny, which I gladly accepted; my voice was now no more than an incantation, half-sung beneath the bright stars of the Holy Mountain: soon I would to die to myself and to my own dreams ... and I knew it.

  In the darkness, his hand found mine and squeezed it very tight, as you hold the hand of a wounded man who you know is going to die. So who had I been in my many lives? And where had I met this brother spirit? Did he remember me, my last incarnation? He remembered me ... and did not want to tell me anything, as you avoid tiring a dying man. The pressure of his hand on mine just got stronger, more friendly, in memory of our adventures in the world of men. Since this very old friend knew me like a brother ... had I been a noble and courageous spirit, despite all my faults? On the warm sand the pressure of his hand got even stronger—out of a sort of respect and affection for me—and seemed to answer my final question passionately, and with a yes.

  Our embers had long since gone out, leaving us in peaceful darkness. I had thought I was rushing to a soul in distress, but in fact it did not need any help; on the contrary, it was me, lost in solitude, who it had come to comfort. Suddenly I was sure: he was soon going to return to the world of men and leave me on these deserted shores, because it was actually desirable that I should die all alone. His hand was still holding mine; he squeezed it gently one last time, then went and lay down in a large hollow in the sand.

  He pulled a piece of cloth over his face and fell asleep.

  I walked about. Our stone tables shone under the summer stars. Our campsite was barely visible except for the white sheet which fluttered in the gentle night breeze. I also lay down on a big bed of sand; I looked at the stars, the beautiful universe I loved, the boundless work of God, my Creator and my Judge. In the warm, peaceful darkness, disturbed only by the wind on the sheet, my soul trembled joyously at the idea of returning to its God. An indescribable joy took hold of my heart. What did I really have to fear? Had I not been helped many times, protected on the paths that lead to the AWAKENING? And, as a fit ending, this friend had come and held my hand very tightly before leaving me on the threshold of the Most Holy Eternity!

  Already up, he was getting ready to leave. We talked quietly in the divine calm of the end of the night. One by one, bright stars were going out in the clear heavens. A sweet smell of lavender and cedar, unique to Athos, mingled with the scents that came from the water, which at this hour was smooth and green.

  The after-life frightened him; petty reasons drew him to the mortal side. He was hoping a boat would come past and take him back to the world of men. He could have stayed on the Holy Mountain, happy, without a care. Paradise had not been denied him: it was him who did not want it! Most simple souls soon return to the world, unable to live far from human affairs: family and children call to them. Never adults, they come back quickly to the soft bellies of women, having tasted only for an instant the delights of a life that is free from the shackles of the present century.

  A boat had seen his signals. It was not without shame that he abandoned me on the deserted beach. He left me the provisions: our bread, our cans of oil. He gave me money, like a pious layman who prefers to demonstrate his generosity rather than become a hermit. The boat touched the shore. My annoyance with him suddenly came out: let him go then, without remorse, and leave me to my strange fate!

  His eyes full of tears, he took me in his arms. Then he kissed my hands and my face.

  “In another life, I will come for ever ... ” he whispered in my ear.

  “Till another life, till another life,” I called to him as he went away across the sea.

  “Till another death, till another death ...” replied the echoes of the Land of the Spirits.

  V

  THE BURNS

  I spent the day in the shade of our tree, waiting for what must happen to me. Late in the afternoon I cook my solitary supper. I put some fish to fry in a pan. The oil catches fire! The frying pan, precariously balanced, falls on my right leg, setting fire to my clothes! I give a loud cry and roll on the sand. The flames go out quite quickly. Howling with pain and fear, I wait for the pain to ease. The red-hot oil has burnt me from ankle to waist, the charred material has worked itself into the flesh, which is covered in blisters. Could I get to my feet? For more than an hour I have been stretched out on this shore where nobody ever comes. I am tormented by thirst and my flask is almost empty. I must get to the spring, and at least die near water.

  I managed to drag myself to the spring, using a stick to lean on. My right leg can barely move. Kneeling in the mud, drawing water in my hands is long and painful. Gently I pull away the material; an angry wound is weeping, with terrible shooting pains, and the suffering returns suddenly and agonisingly. It is now almost dark: a summer evening, very warm, very blue. The spring is at the bottom of a steep rocky slope. To my left, a track climbs into the hills and heads towards a square tower whose dark mass looms over me, less frightening than brotherly, helpful. Beside the tower there are orange trees and yews, always the sign of a skete. This one is probably abandoned. Not a single light. A sort of instinct tells me to get away from the shore, which is already very dark, and to get closer to this orchard that I can see twenty metres above me. My leg is now paralysed; soon I will not be able to walk. My fever is turning to delirium. Now, straight away, I must try and reach this skete where I might find help.

  Painfully I climb the steep track. With every step the top of my leather boot cuts into the swollen flesh, slices open the blisters, rubs against the burning, sensitive, fiery skin. Taking off my boot would be impossible, so swollen is the ankle, and the idea of having to put a bare, burnt foot on the sharp stones of the track horrifies me. Besides, the skete is not much further; I can already see its roof of flat stones.

  A wooden gate: I lift its metal hoop at the entrance to an ancient garden. Here there are irrigation streams where clear water flows, orange trees, fragrant lemon trees, olives, yew, their every leaf lit softly by the moon. All is still in the depths of the night, a sort of peaceful savagery. I see whitewashed walls made of dried earth and wooden laths. A staircase leads to the closed door of a sort of farm. No light shines behind the broken panes of several small windows; on the window sills are pieces of fruit, melons and dirty jackets that have almost rotted away. Emerging from the shadows, about to collapse, myself a shadow, I climb the stairs. My fingers grope over the rough wood to find a key, a latch. The door is not locked, I push it open.

  I walk into this miserable farmhouse with its walls of daub, and its collapsing floor. The heat of the July evening is stifling. No one. I call out. No Voice answers. Moving away from the patch of light thrown by the half-open door, I move on blindly into a narrow corridor and several dark rooms without finding a single piece of furniture, so poor and abandoned does the house seem to be. The corridor leads to a balcony. Right there in the moonlight ... on the floor of the half-ruined balcony, an old man is lying on a rotten old mat. Completely naked, terribly thin, he is dying. His breathing is short, weak. He is alone by the sea, which shimmers in the distance between dark reefs. Can he see them? His eyes are empty! Within his reach there is a jug of water, some dry bread, a rosary. He has heard me, and my presence puzzles him. He is so weak he is unable to say a word or move his head; but one fleshless, white arm lifts up and seeks me out. But who am I to him? A stranger, the angel you await at the moment of death? A traveller, for he has certainly noticed that my step is not that of a monk? A presence: a hand that gently takes his; lips that respectfully kiss his old fingers? A quiet voice that asks if he is thirsty? An already divine presence? If someone wanted to go over to the side of the Spirits, and behave like a spirit helping a dying man by bringing him a final consolati
on, then that was indeed me, that hot summer night in that lonely house on the side of the Holy Mountain, so white beneath the stars.

  Has he lost consciousness? He is no longer moving. I have the impression that he has been alone for several days, that he is dying slowly, without suffering, sometimes returning to life: it is the way you end your life on Athos ... alone, naked on a wooden balcony, with water, bread, a rosary by your hand! As for me, I forgot my pain while I was helping the old man. The pain comes back, agonising. I can no longer stand; my useless right leg is on fire and refuses to bear my weight. I look for a bed in this house which smells violently of incense, rancid oil, charcoal, grime and spice ... still groping my way, for I have to lean against the wall, as you can see as much in here as you would inside an oven. Not finding a single bed, I lay down on the dusty floor, behind the half-open door through which some air comes.

  Did I fall asleep? Later on this hot summer night, I am woken by the door, which someone is trying to open wide, and which bangs against my prone, painful body. They persist, force a way in; one by one two heavy boots, stinking of sweat and leather, step over my head. I hear footsteps in the corridor, the rasp of a match, I see the growing glimmer of a paraffin lamp. A monk, not as old as the one who is dying on the balcony, an overnight bag still over his shoulder, questions me harshly. He seems absolutely furious to find someone lying on his floor after midnight! Then he sees my charred clothes, my burnt leg ... He opens a little door, puts the lamp on a shelf, comes back, drags me into a low, narrow room that I had not noticed before, helps me to climb onto a rotten old pallet, shaking, with my boots still on my feet. He brings me water in a tin can, leaves me the lamp, and goes off to busy himself with the other dying man.

  The touch of the filthy blankets and the horsehair mattress against my raw leg is unbearable. I turn over onto my left side, drink some water and, shaking, put the tin of water under the bed. I am dying of fever. I am suffocating. My leg is burnt raw; if I put my hand on it a sort of icy shudder runs through me, so sensitive is the skin. The pain echoes the wild beating of my heart; they are dull blows, surges of pain, which die down and then start again. My lungs need air. I am dying. The dry earth walls are oozing heat; the half-darkness, the narrowness of the room are oppressive. The honey-coloured light of the cheap paraffin lamp lights up a rusty nail on which hangs a tiny poor icon whose brownish gold glimmers in the darkened room. I am thirsty. The fever is burning me, my face runs with sweat. You would think I was in a sauna. The pain is terrible but bearable, perhaps because the fever is drugging me. I am burning, I feel I am surrounded by invisible flames. But I have not given up hope; it is only a transmutation; I am passing through fire: I am a soul saved for ever, I know it! I am thirsty; I dare not call out, ask for water; the slightly cold edge of the tin, which I suck at greedily, soothes my parched lips for a moment. So what do I have to atone for, to destroy before the AWAKENING? I see the whole of my destiny over several centuries, not in images but in colours in my mind: the colours of one life, of another. The colours of my eternal soul, gold, orange, blue, the red of live embers! My brain, overheated by fever and fuelled with blood poisoned by the burns, is working at an incredible speed, in a dimension unknown to me, outside time, deep within a universe of colours, of lights and flames. I have not lost consciousness; unexpectedly I remain very lucid: I am at the heart of a swirling inferno whose gigantic flames explode as far as the distant stars. Then, reluctantly, I come back to this pallet in this stifling little room with daub walls where pain is waiting for me. It gnaws at my knee, my thigh, and rises to the groin, before being let loose in my head. With dread I await each surge of pain; my eyes are fixed on the little icon. The gold calms me. A barely visible, filthy, scaly person, burnt by candle flames, stands out on the old gold. Is it Christ, the Virgin or some saint impossible to identify? A shadow, a dark shape offering to help—but no more than an image on the divine gold. My moans, the moans of a burns victim ... my sufferings, eased by the sight of a holy shape standing out against a sacred, unchanging gold ... this gold that attracts me, and into which I want to dissolve for ever, so I won’t suffer any more ... I ask myself, am I now crossing a Christian area of the after-life? In this solitary house, could I by chance have stumbled across Purgatory, and the Paradise of the Christians, which is only that of the burnt, the scourged, the martyrs?

  The monk—the able-bodied one—has heard my cries, my moans; for I cry out constantly. My head tosses about on the flea-ridden jacket that he has slipped behind my neck; and this poverty, this grimy saint: this is also Christianity! He gives me some water, refills the rusty tin which serves as a cup, helps me drink by lifting my shoulders with simple kindness, as well as that complete indifference so typical of monks who, all their lives, have been waiting for death as a deliverance: their own, and that of others. He examines my burns, which are quite an ugly sight; I would like some oil on my sores ... oil, gentle oil, quickly! He says he has none. I am sure he has, but he is keeping it for himself; for the toothless old man who perhaps no longer eats anything but bread soaked in rancid oil. He can do nothing for me. He turns up the wick of the lamp, which immediately lights the icon more clearly. It is better for me to look at God than to ask for oil! God, the sole judge of what I must suffer before going to Him! When the monk has left me, a sort of dialogue begins between the icon and me. No, I am lucid enough to reject this pious illusion! The God of the Christians exists only in the minds of Christians. It is up to me to AWAKEN MYSELF! My sufferings are only a nightmare brought on by the destruction of my being. My sole judge, my sole torturer, is me! Let me go over to the realm of the eternal light and I shall not suffer any more! The compassion for my torments that seems to come from the icon is just an illusion: I love myself, I love others ... this gentle side of my nature helps me cross the last thresholds without too much suffering. To call this inclination for charity and forgiveness Jesus Christ is only an illusion; it is to attribute to an idol qualities that belong to me! Suddenly, my soul detaches itself from my burnt body. All suffering disappears; my soul soars above my chest, which has stopped beating; I am filled with inexpressible peace; I climb towards a clear blue sky, boundless, golden, sufficient unto itself, eternal, nameless.

  A noise brings me back to myself. Someone is shaking me by the shoulder. It is my host, who is worried about my burns. I have been without any treatment for hours, and having a filthy mattress rubbing against my wounds can’t be doing a lot of good, he says, inasmuch as I can hear his voice, which is hardly at all; for I am sinking into a kind of lethargy, complete exhaustion, sleep. The lamp has nearly run out of paraffin, and now throws only a faint trembling light on the dried earth wall.

  “Tomorrow Pantocrator,” he says.

  I understand that he wants to take me to the nearby monastery of Pantocrator, where perhaps they will look after me. It is his duty; what he really means is that he has no desire for me to die in his house. So why did I not die tonight! The hardest part was over! Is it better for me to die later? But after what ordeals! To die older, more lucid, having atoned for everything and learnt everything! If I first tasted the delights of Athos, I am quite certain that I am now going to experience its torments and its sorrows.

  He did not even help me on the track that leads to Pantocrator. He set off ahead of me, leaving me to limp along behind. My leg is not as painful this morning, but it is only a respite. Once through the postern gate he as good as abandoned me in the church, where I fell, almost fainting. Meanwhile he was already striding off back home. The monks of Pantocrator have settled me in a fairly clean room. My burn is no better. I am suffering less, but the wound is becoming infected. They have washed it in lukewarm water; I would not go so far as to say that it was boiled. Today, thank God, they bring me news of the most timely arrival ... of a great doctor, who is passing through the monastery.

  The hoofs of his mule echoed in the courtyard: here is our skilful man.

  On Athos you can expect anything; where does he c
ome from? He is dressed more or less like a monk, and no doubt he is a monk, very old, frail, no bigger than a child. A peculiar kind of headgear adorns his birdlike head: lots of pieces of leather roughly sewn together, embellished with badges; a sort of pointed hat in the style of the fifteenth century, with earpieces lifted up at the sides. A cardboard peak held in place by string throws a shadow onto his steel-rimmed glasses and his very pointed nose. Our Hippocrates walks in slowly, not losing an inch of his meagre height, has the shutters half-opened, puts a leather mallet on the table, examines the patient, looks at the urine samples, watched admiringly by seven or eight monks and novices for whom my illness is the big event of the year. Not wanting to miss anything of the show, they have come in procession to my dark room. Stroking his little goatee, our man takes a lancet and probes around mercilessly in the wounds. It makes me moan with pain! He takes no notice. Like a connoisseur, he smells a few drops of pus; the lancet is passed round the room, everyone sniffs the bad smell that comes from it... shakes his head, grimaces, gives me three days to live. Hippocrates, one finger pointing at the sky, calls the novices to be his witness: the eye is yellow, the wounds are festering, the urine cloudy; now we are going to perform a miracle ... this poor man here owes the good fortune of finding ... a doctor like me ... to the intercession of some very great saint.

  One finger still pointing at the ceiling, Hippocrates orders that the patient is to be taken to the ‘Medicinal Room’. The first outcome of this is that the children are overjoyed. I am dragged from corridor to corridor, all decorated with Apocalypses and Jacob’s Ladders, long vaulted passages dimly lit by narrow arrow-slits looking out over the green waves of the Aegean, supremely beautiful under the hot sun of the Greek summer. Dazzled by glimpses of the sea, I let myself be carried, pulled, led almost like a blind man. At the end of a dark corridor we stop at a little scarlet door. Our man takes a bunch of keys from his pocket, opens a hefty padlock, and we enter his consulting room, the most amazing place you could wish to see. They sit me down on a chair. For the novices ... to enter the Medicinal Room ... is a rare event; for our skilled practitioner goes from monastery to monastery at the gentle pace of his mule; a vast tour of duty which seldom brings him to Pantocrator. He alone has the key to the room of marvels, which is always locked in his absence. Some of the novices, who are among the youngest, appear never to have even seen it, and are wide-eyed. A stuffed crocodile, the worse for wear, losing its horsehair stuffing, hangs from the ceiling by an intricate system of ribbons. A window looking onto the sea throws sunlight onto a writing case, a desk, some cats’ skulls, preserved vipers, flasks of wine of mandrake, a collection of elixirs of youth, lots of shelves full of faience and earthenware pots, their old labels covered with an elegant Byzantine writing fading with the years. An icon gives a pious note to this cubby-hole of extravagances. Our man is at home here, acts important, pulls down my trousers and feels my knee, consults texts ten times older than he is; while on my chair, half-naked, I await the help of his art.