It is as if I have been forgotten. It is the crocodile that attracts the novices’ attention. They exclaim over the length of its tail, its teeth frighten them. Is it really dead? Some of them are sure it opened one eye, that it moved the tip of its tail! They are asked to be quiet, and threatened with a beating; they fall silent, for ... Hippocrates has found the balm I need! With solemn movements, all ecclesiastical self-importance and dignity, rolling up his sleeves, our great doctor chooses ... a jar: this one; not another! The lid is undone, not without difficulty ... for the said jar ... seems to have been firmly closed ... since the fourth crusade! Our doctor shows round an exquisite balm, sweetly scented, very old, venerable. He gets me to smell it, declares it three times blessed, infallible. To hear him talk, my cure is assured: this jar contains all the secrets of the apothecary’s art.
“Plus ...” he adds, “and this is not the least of it ... a tear of Saint John Chrysostom!”
With the flat of his hand he rubs a smooth, honey-coloured, sweet-smelling cream on my burns. It soaks deep into the swollen flesh. The novices miss nothing of the process, suddenly all pious, tipsy with the delightful smell that comes from the pot and fills the room. They put my trousers back on. I ask this skilful man if I owe him a few drachmas. He is about to answer ... that he practises in a spirit of Christian charity ... when suddenly I pass out! They rush around, they lay me on the floor; they send for a strong gardener who carries me to my room like a bundle of logs.
My burns are healing. This balm, as old as the world, has secret properties; as does perhaps my age, for despite my present appearance I know I am very old. Is this the first time I have been given shelter, sick and wounded, in a monastery on Athos? I am sure not! I often think I see my distant past more clearly than this life. From my bed I sometimes hear the hammer-blows calling the monks to church, and the sound of the cold surf pounding the foot of the walls some two hundred metres beneath my room. What is to become of me? I am not a monk. I have no place in any monastery. I am not even a Christian; I am a traveller who wants to journey to the AWAKENING.
Monks! The advancement of your soul is the last thing these poor dolts think of! Are you a mason, a locksmith, a roofer? You are their man immediately! It matters little to them that your devotions are pure hypocrisy ... if you can repair a roof! For these people, who, like all idiots, have absolutely nothing to do, will not let up for a minute, so completely occupied are they with this, then that, whatever comes into their head. Some idiot wants a wall for his garden; another wants his bedroom ceiling painted blue; this one says his lock squeaks. Woe betide the poor traveller who can’t use a trowel. A waster like that can clear off to the woods! In the monasteries you are judged only by your workmanlike abilities. They have little saintliness; they only have fads ... This one wants a water-clock: the monk thinks about it, loses sleep over it, dreams about it, looks for a skilful workman, asks advice from the innkeeper, his best friends, his dear ones. Years go by. Apart from beautiful boys, the idiot is still toying with his beloved plan for a hydraulic clock.
The innkeeper ... has heard ... that a certain cobbler ... knows a bit about clocks. The man is sought out, for the monk insists on having his clock. Not with a pendulum, not with a weight, not with music, not with pedals. A water-clock! The innkeeper is guarded; the cobbler used to repair clocks ... water-clocks; but he can’t say for sure. The monk becomes impatient; the man is impossible to find; Athos is vast! How do you find a retired cobbler? The monk gets angry. But then he regains hope: one of his dear little favourites actually knew a brother or a cousin of the cobbler; a very skilful man, claims the adolescent, lowering his eyes so demurely. The monk listens. He can no longer contain his delight. This brother, or this cousin, is bound to have inherited a few scraps of knowledge about water-clocks from his relative the cobbler ... So it is decided to set off after this cousin, who is currently a roofer ... somewhere near Iviron. Monk and darlings wait all summer for a mule-train to pass by. Here are the animals; they climb into the saddle, delighted to be going on a trip. One fine morning they spot the said cousin: yes, it is him, down by the sea, trowel in hand, up an old roof repairing the gutters. They shout to him. Cautiously the rogue comes down his ladder. He knows nothing about clocks, but sees there are a few drachmas to be had. To hear him talk you would think he invented the hydraulic mechanism. He wants a thousand drachmas! But that’s daylight robbery! The monk refuses outright, but gives in at six hundred. This will be for next year ... when the monk ... gets ... a small sum which comes to him each year from a vineyard ... that he let out ... to one of his colleagues ... when it was necessary ... to make sensible provision for a favourite who was getting older. Finally he sets to work on the clock. An extremely antique clock, lifeless since the war of 1914, is taken to bits, then put back together again quite differently. A system of pipes ... held on by string, brings water from a barrel ... into a zinc basin ... in which a wooden ball floats. As this slowly sinks ... because of ... a little hole in the bottom of the basin, it sets gears in motion. It works when it wants to. It is hideous, it looks like nothing on earth! Word gets round that such and such a monastery owns a fine water-clock, and that people come from far away to gaze at it. Well: multiply the STORY OF THE WATER-CLOCK ad infinitum. Imagine that each monk has his own pet craze. In other words, since I am not a builder and know nothing about hydraulic mechanisms, these decent, harmless people have no need of me; just as I am not keen on their pretty mediocre company. The holy caves! To return to the Sacred Forest, to be a hermit! I must end my days alone. The sooner the better.
I can already drag myself as far as the church. Standing in one of the stalls, I lean against an arm-rest to ease the pain a little. The sight of the gold calms my fever. The singing, the scent of the incense in the middle of the afternoon, help my soul free itself from the weight of its past. The happy time of my carefree existence is over. I am now no more than a wounded man, a burns victim. I am called to the marble doorway, a heavy hanging is pulled aside: in the blazing sunshine, mule-drivers are having a discussion with the monks. A mule-train has just arrived; it is a chance for me to go to Kariés, to get closer to the region of the holy caves; it is a chance for them to get rid of a patient whose presence will eventually be a nuisance. They ask me to leave: I am not able to get on a mule, especially as they are very big, and seem bad-tempered and likely to kick. Never mind, they will haul up me into the saddle. The price? Three hundred drachmas to take me to Kariés. I suggest two hundred. We come to an agreement: okay, but there will not be a ‘man’ to guide me. They will put me on a mule and, since the honest beast knows the tracks perfectly, she will take me of her own accord to Kariés where she has her stable. As the saying goes, don’t spare the horses! Well, why not? Once the decision is made, the monks drift away. Shaking their black robes, they head back to their dark retreats. The mule-drivers go for a raki in a cool kitchen, out of the terrible sun. The courtyard is empty. An old servant helps me get up on an animal, leads it by the bridle to the gate of the monastery, gives me the reins, strokes the mule, whispers a few words in its ear, and taps it on the backside, pushing it outside.
Ducking my head, I go under a cold, sad archway. Without a goodbye, like a pauper, I leave Pantocrator with a subdued sound of hoofs on the flagstones.
Here is the motionless sea. Here are slopes cobbled with round pebbles, dropping steeply to walled kitchen gardens where young peas climb vigorously up long sticks. My mount, its head down, stumbles with every step, threatening to throw me. I seat myself more securely on the wooden saddle and hang on to the girth. Once over a bridge, the mule straightway climbs into the countryside at a good pace, and does actually seem to know the way back to its stable.
I was expecting the worst: a fall, appalling pain. But by some magic all goes well. The stirrup supports my injured leg. The mid-afternoon heat would be unbearable if I was on foot and had to climb the steep slopes, covered with bushes and wild olive trees which, to the sound of the cicadas, stand
up straight in sight of the shimmering sea. Thank God my mule carries me cheerfully! I turn round in the saddle. The battlemented tower of Pantocrator is now no more than a light patch against the distant water. Crippled by my burns, I was like a prisoner in that ancient monastery. But here I am, travelling again, off to become a hermit! Could I ask for anything more cheerful, more likely to appeal to me, a luckier twist of fate? I have money in my saddlebags: after many wanderings, all of them symbolic, I am heading for Wisdom. I am on the way to the AWAKENING.
VI
THE ALCHEMICAL RETREAT
D id I live on Athos for many years, or just a few months? I can still remember an incredibly vast time, what seems like an entire life; a time at once immense and very short, whose uncertain duration remains a puzzle to me.
No one was waiting for me in the Sacred Forest ... or rather, destiny was waiting for me, and soon proved to be utterly tragic. I found neither Joshua nor the monk. They had disappeared! The door of their skete was closed. I call in vain. I break open the door. Everything in their poor house smells of abandonment. They have gone for good! No one lives in these woods any more. That is because wandering is a compulsion on Athos: you come, you go; you are invited somewhere, you hide your keys under the brambles; you come back in six months, you don’t come back at all ... At the time I was delighted by this departure, which satisfied my taste for pillage. But I did not realise that when my solitude became agonising I would soon be disillusioned. A saucepan and a lamp would do nicely; I carried them off to my cave. Very quickly I felt at home; I no longer left the banks of the stream. The song of the cicadas and the screech of the night birds kept me company, but in the end they would frighten me.
One cave proved to be habitable, and even had a big deep fireplace. As soon as night fell I lit a fire in it, cooking myself scanty meals, ever more modest out of economy and from disgust with food. Solitude shrunk my stomach. I would forget to eat for two or three days, without suffering too much from this dangerous abstinence. I even found it gave me a sensation of slight, and by no means unpleasant intoxication, which however gave way to an appalling sadness as evening came. If the truth be known, I was more an alchemist than tempted by some form of saintliness; I was waiting for ‘something’, a transformation of my deepest being. This solitude and fasting was heading towards suicide; I would have been aware of this fact if I had not been constantly occupied. But I had got it into my head to write the story of my adventures on the Holy Mountain. I wrote on the rocks, beside the water, and then in bed by the glow of my paraffin lamp, later and later into the night, putting into my account a joy of living that was already deserting me. I enjoyed seeing my youth again, my carefree wanderings, my happy loves, while at the same time the years were already weighing heavily on me. For I was getting older from day to day, with a speed that was out of proportion with the few months that had passed since I came to live in the Sacred Forest. Autumn was nearly over. I had lived here for three months, no more: and I had aged a hundred years! As far as I could make out in a little mirror ... growing a beard had hidden the face of a man who was already getting old. But in the depths of my being, an insurmountable tiredness made me feel that the adolescent I had been for a very long time was becoming an old man.
No longer surprised by the magic of the Land of the Spirits, I accepted my new state with a sort of curiosity.
I put down the speed of this transformation to the special properties of time on this side of life, which seemed capable of passing very quickly, then very slowly, of breaking up, of rejecting life, only to reappear according to mysterious laws that I could still not grasp.
My health is no longer what it was. Since the autumn I have had a suffocating sensation in my chest which comes on whenever I make the least effort; so much so that I am unable to go and cut wood in the forest because of this peculiar pain which racks me whenever I use the axe or bend down to pick up firewood. Instead I make do with taking what I need to keep the fire going from an old supply of beams and logs. I light it at dawn and poke it until evening, sitting on my cooking pot, which is my only seat since I burnt my chair. I write all day long, crouched over a plank laid across my knees, dipping my pen in an inkwell I have set up on a firedog, simmering insipid broth in my poor saucepans, and watching with horror as my small supply of tea and sugar dwindles.
When the sky is clear I go into the forest, not venturing too far for fear that when I get back the fire will have gone out; not so much because I am short of matches, but because the fire is the only companion I have left in my appalling loneliness. The winter promises to be harsh; an old overcoat and my Luftwaffe boots keep me fairly warm. I return before nightfall, eager to see my fire again, my cooking pot, my saucepans, eager to get back to my bed where I feel safe, going to bed early, fully dressed, writing until about three o’clock in the morning, delighted to have my notebooks, my ink-well, my pen-holder and my lamp around me. Then, forgetting my distress, I quickly write down the story of my wanderings in the time of my youth. A time that seems very far off. Curiously, I have no memory of the middle of my life; I passed suddenly from youth to old age, jumping over maturity. Anyone would think the beginning and the end of a destiny were the only parts that mattered to me. For I love only the dawn and the evening. My true self is that of a child, of an old man. “The old man and the child”: that phrase sometimes sings in my head, without conjuring up anything in particular; but it belongs to me in some way, it comes to me from another life. Which one? I have no idea. The Voyage of the Dead, The Sorcerer’s Apprentice, ‘that’ concerns me too, without my knowing why. I am now no more than a spirit, which having renounced the pleasures that were awaiting it in the after-life, is filled with dread as it feels the increasing weight of loneliness and sorrow, which it deserved to feel, made worse by this chest pain which takes away the joy of living and only eases in bed. My bed: a platform cut high up in the rock, at the very back of my cave. Where I cannot climb except by standing on a stone. It is less a bed than an encampment where I have my blankets, my short metal sword, my lamp and my bowl of tea. What time is it? Past midnight ... someone is walking in the stream; dragging their feet very noticeably.
The cliffs are haunted, I know that. Presences emerge from the woods, approach my entrance. One night, by the glow of my dying embers, I saw Joshua sitting on the corner of the hearth. More often they are souls from nature, dead animals, trees that want to be reborn, ancient rocks that dream or monks who used to live in this cave. Being a great medium, I attract them. I am not afraid of the ghosts, but of my own destiny, which in the after-life is called the consequences of past actions. I put down my pen on the blanket, covered with blotches of ink: here ends the story of my first wanderings on the Holy Mountain; more than twenty notebooks. A great dream is completed. Here I am, coming back to my present state. I blow out the lamp. The last flames of the fire light up my cave. The lack of food makes me extremely weak, without any defence against the final echoes of my basest instincts. The feminine part of my nature comes back to the surface and takes the place of a wife. I carved a piece of wood in the shape of a penis, I sodomized myself; then, furious with this stupidity, I threw the foul-smelling bit of wood into the ashes, wondering nonetheless whether such perversity is not part of some arcane art of AWAKENING, so old that it is now regarded as appalling. If this were true, my nature would be older than history; it would date back to the first nights, the first fires, when men lived in caves.
A quiet light enters my stone room. It has snowed during the night. Heavy flakes fell silently while I was writing. I light a fire. The bright red flames at the back of my fireplace make a strange contrast with the white of the snow, which, under a very blue sky, covers the frozen banks of the stream. I pull the cooking pot up to the entrance and sit down with my back against the damp rock. So why did I not die at the height of my youth, carefree and happy? What must I atone for? No doubt I have to drain the consequences of my past acts right down to the dregs. Before the AWAKENING I
must finish freeing myself from the weight of my many lives. A powerful transformation is at work within me, perhaps without my knowing. Am I at the end of my sufferings? There is justice in the after-life: I have never liked humans; as a result I am dying alone, far from men, without the help of men.
A Journey to Mount Athos Page 16
