In Tearing Haste

by Patrick Leigh Fermor

  We found the cars and went on to Tsepélovo and met the kind mayor and the café-keeper, and lunched with some speleologists. Here we found a Sarakatsán muleteer, Chrístos Karvoúnis. He has four animals at 150 drachmas a day. We clinched the deal at once, set off at teatime, and trudged for two hours through the magical forest of Tsepélovo, which is mostly pines, fir and beech. There were wild strawberries everywhere, which Andrew, being slightly colour-blind, has difficulty in spotting – ‘Never mind! You’ve got the leaves!’ – till we found a narrow glen above a stream. We feasted by the fire and slept in the open. There were many fireflies after dark.

  Sunday 18 June

  We woke at four, breakfasted and loaded up. Winding brackeny ascents led us through the forest to the ridge of the mountains deep in beech, hornbeam, pine and fir trees, some of them enormous. Sunlight fell through leafy beech saplings, dappling them like showers of gold. We went up hill and down dale, then dropping into the beautiful village of Makrinón, where we found some eggs. Robin was rather stern about our stopping for ouzo. All the roofs here are tin as the village was burnt down three times by the Germans in 1943 as a hotbed of Resistance. There was talk of a ‘Captain Peter’ and a ‘Captain Charlie’, SOE officers, both wounded in a fight here. The population is delightful. A dear old man with a komboloi – a lay rosary – and a sweeping white moustache led us down to the garth of the old deserted and slab-roofed monastery of the Dormition of the B.V.M., frescoed in 1792, and beyond a thick-pillared cloister filled with hay and a sheltered spring in a field with beech trees for shade and clumps of hazel for nuts. We snoozed here and then moved off in the late afternoon with the ridges of Mitzikéli and Ajúnca Rosía looming near – they must be Vlach names – with Peristéri in the distance. After crossing a rainbow-shaped Turkish bridge, we climbed through more forest and then up frightful slopes to a half-made road running from Elatochóri to Flambourári, where we drank shandy and hobnobbed with some Vlachs, greatly to the disapproval of Chrísto the muleteer: as a Sarakatsán, he hates them. Then on to a pine-girt clearing by a stream with grazing sheep and a Vlach shepherd with his Molossian hounds. There were long talks by firelight later on, and a blaze of stars overhead and nightingales and a barn owl in the woods. All the shooting stars – they must be the Perseids falling – made it like trying to sleep in a planetarium. A sudden rush of dogs made us all zip up our sleeping bags and hope for the best. Peter said he heard wolves . . .

  Monday 19 June

  Most of the morning was an easy stroll under great trees talking with Andrew about Robert Kee’s book on Ireland. Well worth waiting for. Then up on to the rolling plateau of Polistés: tree-stumps and dark beech-forests covered the ridges. Peter taught me some amusing and highly improper Sharpshooter songs, sung by his regiment during the war. Lots of Sarakatsán flocks, a few dilapidated shelters, no huts; then along a half-made road through terrible heat across unending nondescript country and out on to the blazing tarmac of the Kalabáka–Yanina road (the great Athens–Rome link of old): very tired, sleep-walking by now, we followed a goat-path down into Metsovo.

  The awful staring red ‘French’ tiles, instead of the old dark roof slabs, the cast-iron railings and the cement, have nearly done for the town. But the Tositsas house – a fine old fortified Pindus house belonging to Evángelos Avéroff (later Minister of War) – hasn’t changed. I stayed there years ago to write. The house and Apostolos, the old kilted caretaker, were as welcoming as ever. What luxury it seemed! We found a charming note from Vangeli Avéroff waiting for us and a big bottle of whisky.

  Baths and sleep were followed by a visit to a Mr Bombas about mules for tomorrow. (Chrístos has already started back to Skamnéli.) We had drinks in a little cluster of booths where the Vlachs are still dressed in black serge kilts or jodhpurs, kalpaks and tufted brogues like plumed gondolas, and the women in old Pindus costume. Dinner in my ancient haunts gathered many old friends.

  Tuesday 20 June

  A morning of shopping, and then of writing, in the delightful old Epirote room where I wrote the ‘Black Departers’, i.e. the Sarakatsán chapter of Roumeli, eleven years ago. We trooped round the Epirote museum that fills the rest of the house and all were delighted. We saw Tatiana Avéroff for a moment, she’s off to Athens; then, after lunch and a nap, new mules turned up with two Vlach muleteers: Triandaphyllo – ‘the Rose’, as we thus call him, a gruff, amusing chap – and Yanni. We loaded up, and, after farewells, our caravan moved out of Metsovo in some state; along the road south, down into a valley and up a wooded torrent-bed to Anthochóri. I talk Rumanian to the Rose and Yanni; they answer in Vlach and there is great hilarity and much teasing and banter between our fellows and the locals about the Roman Empire and the Dorian invasion, as this is a purely Greek-speaking village. We settled into a sweet-smelling Poussin-like meadow, new-mown, and striped with wind-rows of cut hay and dotted with hay-cocks against a Sèvres sky with a few white clouds – all sweeping up to a walled grove of ilexes (ilce in Vlach), like a sacred wood. For a camp-fire, our guides set fire to a whole dead tree, and the deep-noted bells of the mules and the treble notes of the flocks are sounding all round us. Excitement stops one going to sleep in this fascinating place. (Swiss Carl is from the Engadine so his first language, like Giacometti’s, [5] is Romanche, which helps him catch the drift of the old Rose’s Vlach.) A final stroll under the stars led through a twinkling mythical world. ET IN ARCADIA EGO. (We conjure up the Poussin picture.)

  Wednesday 21 June, Khalíki

  The last days were such a rush, I haven’t kept up.

  We climbed an enormous mountainside – stroúnga-stroúnga, from fold to fold – with flocks all the way and the only man we met was an old Zervas guerrilla, Grigóris Goussiónis. Then Robin, Renée and Carl headed for the peaks of Peristéri while Andrew, Peter, the mules and I made a stiff ascent on our own, barked at by alarmingly fierce dogs at every lonely fold. We smoked with three shepherd boys in the Skafídhia Pass while choughs cawed and wheeled just above our heads: the start of a whole new sequence of the Ágrapha range. *

  Then downhill, and the minor drama of losing Andrew and a stiff re-ascent to the pass: a bit of a saga. Got back to the village of Khalíki at last to find the entire party reassembled. What joy! It had been baking, noonday-devil work. An old pom-pommed Vlach was holding forth in the village plateía. Renée found some trout here, and we slept on a lovely knoll, after cooking and eating them on the spot. Flocks poured past us all night, their bells tinkling while the Acheloös River sped through the boulders below.

  Thursday 22 June

  After an easy morning along a half-made forest road and a stream that must have been full of trout, we had a long midday pause, bathing, washing, reading, eating off rocks as flat as tables, and then sleeping beside the Acheloös while the horses grazed. We climbed into the hills to the Vlach-speaking hamlet of Agía Paraskeví, then to Gardíki higher still in the pine-woods, then dipped into the valley again and camped with a big fire by the river.

  Friday 23 June

  When we had made the sweaty climb to the landslide village of Messochóra, we followed a water-channel downhill. Tin roofs everywhere and concrete; then up, up, at midday, past the handful of houses at Spítia to a little plane tree that gave us a minimum of afternoon shade. Nice shepherds. On, and over the mountains to Platanákia we came on some cherry-gatherers, a schoolmaster and his class. They gave us some, and we followed the gorge to a charming village called Moschoplýtou. A doctor at the kapheneíon gave us a wonderful dinner. We are raven-fed, lucky travellers in The Arabian Nights. We slept in front of the café under the trees.

  Saturday 24 June

  Up early as usual, we passed through the village of Balkánion, crossed a steep ridge and sank into a new stretch of the Ágrapha, then to the village of Elliniká with a fine church under a spreading ilex. Then on through the bracken to Kalí Kómi and here we drank ouzo sitting on an iron bedstead out of doors in a shady yard. A killing noon-day climb lifted
us to some plane trees where three little boys brought us a present of eggs. A hellish slog to Petrotón came next. We settled there in a wild garden. It is an eccentric, mad, inbred village. A huge bill was presented, out of the blue, and the Old Black Rose was outraged by the utter hopelessness of everyone. Insults flew, but all came right in the end.

  Sunday 25 June

  An appalling morning. They said we would have to cross the river fourteen times. We crossed it at least fifty, up to our thighs in the water, and slipping and squelching about with our heavy climbing boots dragging like buckets. Robin took a wrong shortcut overland but we all reassembled later on, totally exhausted, so we had a rest under the trees of Kostí monastery. Up the right bank of the river, we halted at a ramshackle kapheneíon, past the little village of Koubourianá, and met an old Zervas guerrilla friend of Monty Woodhouse. [6] Then, down to the bed of the Petridianá River again, crossing it on bridges hanging as flimsily as cobwebs; we finally took another wrong and premature turning to Foundotó. This is a hopeless, tiny and de-populated hamlet among desolate crags but with kind villagers; several girls were planning to migrate to Toronto. Hopeless. All shale and slag and vegetation, every blade of it so precious there was nowhere for the mules to graze. We slept under the church porch.

  Monday 26 June, Trídendron

  We got up at four and took a high road inland from the Petriá River to Rósoi, which is opposite Petríla, then climbed down to a ruined mill and up again to a hamlet inhabited by kind hags. There is a queerly painted church there. We continued along a serpentine path through woods of pine and fir that were being wrecked by an inchoate new road like a gash of slag. Renée was loathing it. We crossed the watershed and laboured down a heartless mountainside to a clump of cherry trees. An old shepherd and two nippers shinned up into the branches at once, broke off armfuls of laden twigs and showered them down. Then the boys filled up their bucket for us from a far-off spring and we gave them pocket-knives with pictures of the Houses of Parliament on them. We went on to the delightful village of Trídendron, in a small shower of rain, and shopped and drank in the little magazí, where some Sarakatsáns gave us enormous wedges of feta cheese, refusing all payment. A switchback path took us along the Ágrapha River. It was all forest and pine needles and towards dusk we dropped down to a fold beside another watermill where the friendly miller, called Theodore Parthénios, said our mules could graze to their hearts’ content; one got lost, but we caught it again. Supping and talking round the bright logs, we built up preposterous fantasies about our destination tomorrow at Ágrapha village. We imagined it – or pretended to imagine it – as a town with a fine but over-restored castle, ‘La Favorita’, surrounded by baroque cathedrals, small palaces, picture-galleries, equestrian statues, kiosks with London papers on sale, cocktail bars, night-clubs, obelisks, roundabouts, dodgems, a museum, a zoo and a racecourse.

  Meanwhile, there were nightingales, fireflies and heavy dew.

  Tuesday 27 June

  Next morning, our track pursued the western bank of the boulder-strewn riverbed. We had drinks at a little magazí. The mules went astray for an hour – or rather, we took the wrong path and they the right one – but it was a stroke of luck, for a landscape of the utmost beauty was suddenly all round us, the tremendous gorge with a river roaring or sighing below then a tributary full of trout flowing eastward through Salvador Rosa ilex-woods slanting with broken sunbeams, and wooded mountains towering like a theatrical backdrop. Headlands of ilex, plane and beech dovetailed along a second and ravishing canyon. Le sublime, indeed. A flimsy gossamer bridge was looped between plane trees and some tumbled and beetling rocks. Another of those Turkish rainbow bridges arched among clouds of leaves and we longed for this to go on for ever. A final zigzag led to the scattered and shady village of Ágrapha, which was delightful but quite unlike our fictional inventions last night.

  One of the gendarmes here turned out to be a relative of my Cretan god-brother * Grigóris Khnarákis de Thrapsanó, one of our comrades in the capture of General Kreipe, so we had a great welcome. There is no grazing, so we bought bales of provender for the animals, and slept under the ilexes in the churchyard. When we woke, village boys pointed out the place on the mountainside of a famous single-handed fight between Katsantónis and Velighékas, two heroic figures from Greek klephtic folklore, and there was talk of the great Karaïskákis. * It is Klephtouriá – the free world of the old patriotic outlaws, a Robin Hood scene transported. After our shady siesta, we trudged down to a water meadow where a spring rushed into the Ágrapha River. Water murmured under the leaves, and we built a big fire and cooked some lentils and slept. Lots of odd dreams, as usual. Woke up under the Great Bear, Pegasus and Cassiopeia. Bells, leaves, water, fireflies and the little owl – ghióni – sitting on a barn roof next to the stream.

  Wednesday 28 June

  The remoteness, the seclusion of these mountains! Huge watersheds, deep valleys, rushing rivers, nearly deserted villages, forest on forest, all terra incognita! No foreigners ever, no visitors – nothing to buy in the shops, never a tourist, bobota – maize bread – but utterly unpolluted by communications. No plastic, no petrol pumps, no Coca Cola or juke box, nothing but kindness and simplicity; it’s Greece as I first knew it. The Old Vlach Rose and Yanni abominated it all, of course. Sophisticated Metsovites, they are as boastful and sanguine about progress as Kinglake’s Eothen with the Pasha of Belgrade carrying on about the Industrial Revolution. The Rose says ‘Why doesn’t that cuckold, the President, bomb the lot of them? Curses on them! Why don’t the wolves come and eat up the inhabitants? Anathema!’

  We climbed sleepily all morning, though we are all resiliently run-in, now that our journey is ending, into a beautiful conifer forest past the shacks of some detribalised Sarakatsáns (Ah! Thank God I saw Sarakatsáns when they still were Sarakatsáns!) – where we asked after yoghurt, but were unlucky. A nice woman asked us to stop for coffee, but we pressed on. High, high up a circular threshing floor gleamed, hinting that all the vestigial half-collapsed terraces round about, though scarcely visible now, once grew rye or some other rough crop. Great conifers surrounded us and the bald watersheds, when we reached them, commanded range on range of mountains, resembling troops of colossal fossilized wild animals, bare and ghostly. The forests themselves suggest Red Indians; a Fenimore Cooper world. Huge trees, many of them fallen and rotting, blocked the obliterated mule-tracks, but between their trunks, faraway vistas loomed, while the other side, down the impenetrable and wood-choked slopes, we were up to our armpits in bracken.

  New ranges unfolded, then ankle-snapping landslides of shale and scree, and, far below us, a pyramid of mountain lifted the village of Márathos into the air, with its white church and its roof of dark slabs. We dropped down into deep brackeny woods where the trees had grown to great height and girth. One of them had been struck by lightning and all were covered in soft green moss. Sheep scuttled away through the fronds as we settled among this gathering of giants. Ominously, a bulldozer grinds away at the slope opposite and chain-saws are at work. It is the spearhead of the modern world invading Klephtouriá. Dynamite explodes and flying rocks echo down chasms and ravines.

  Sudden clouds heralded a downpour and the Vlachs were immediately hooded like monks in their roomy homespun capes while we cowered for shelter as the thunder and lightning took over from the explosions. Then, in the beautiful aftermath of the storm, we climbed to the pyramid village and shopped and drank in the plateía of Márathos, emptied of its folk, like the village in the Grecian Urn. [7] There is a fine frescoed 14th-century church of the Archangels Gabriel and Michael, basilican, like most of them hereabouts, except for semi-circular apse-like transepts as non-functional as penguins’ wings. The villages – the one or two souls still lingering – told us the frescoes were much damaged by ELAS camping and lighting fires inside. We are in Áris Velouhiótis country now and there are terrible tales in these villages of guerrilla conflicts and outrages. Our last night’s camp was
overshadowed by a rock, where, they told us, fifty nationalists had their throats cut by their political rivals and were then thrown in the ravine.

  We returned to our camp. Black-and-white and silver-grey goats came stampeding downhill, halting in astonishment on the tips of rocks and then coming into our midst, nosing close and inquisitive. A little boy called Chrísto came running from the village to join us. Carl heaped up a blaze and there were fire-lit trunks and branches covered with moss all round. We stretch ourselves out on last year’s leaves and go to sleep with the moon coming down on us through millions of this year’s replacements.

  We caught a truck to Karpenísi next day, spent the night there, then motored to Athens and feasted under the Acropolis. The Feddens, Peter and Carl flew to London, and Andrew and I motored to the Mani. It had been a marvellous mountain journey and it had lasted twenty days.

  Please forgive this scrawl.

  Tons of love from

  Paddy

  [1] Director of Cartier in London and a keen skier and mountaineer.

  [2] A friend of Robin Fedden; a passionate climber and veteran of the Sharpshooter Regiment, who worked in the City.

  [3] The Special Operations Executive (SOE) was a secret outfit established by the British Government to carry out clandestine sabotage and to support local resistance movements behind enemy lines. PLF was a major in SOE during the war.

  [4] Bernadette Devlin McAliskey (1947–). Firebrand political activist and Socialist MP for the Mid-Ulster constituency 1969–74.