by Paul Preuss
Forty days had not quite passed before Easter came. On Great Friday night, Manolis climbed up and straddled his grandmother’s courtyard wall in a place he’d cleared of broken pottery. He could see a sliver of the town square, and people moving in the shadows. All evening long the church bells had been clanging at intervals, and the sound of Kriaris’s thin singing, answered by the sweet chanting of his son, had wobbled out of the chapel into the night air. Now a ragged cheer went up as the church door opened and Christ’s coffin appeared—a lightweight coffin of pasteboard, covered with garlands of lilies and wild orchids—held aloft by two men preceded by Kriaris, who was swinging a smoking censer, and followed by an acolyte carrying the empty cross. The coffin bearers paused every few seconds to allow men and women and boys and girls to duck under the coffin for good luck, laughing and shouting happily.
The coffin came up the street toward Manolis, passing beneath the wall where he perched, but the bearers didn’t pause outside his gate or spare him an upward glance, only circled around behind the houses to the bottom of the village. Manolis could hear more people ducking under the coffin with joyful shrieks, all along the way. Before the procession had returned to the square and disappeared inside the church, Manolis had climbed down from the wall.
The next night he was perched on the wall again, listening to the clanging of the church bells and the incessant percussion of gunfire. His eyes stung with woodsmoke and gunpowder, his jaws with saliva, as the aroma of roasting lamb and kid wafted along the dark street. Come midnight his own Easter morning feast, bean soup and boiled wild greens, would be as meatless as if Lent had not ended. Kriaris had already grabbed his grandmother’s animals and joined them with his own flock.
Manolis was not a weak boy, not without talent, not without vigor, but he was paralyzed by inaction, not knowing what to do when the time came to act. He had no resources. He had no hope. He looked up at the stars wheeling overhead, emerging slowly from behind the sharp line of Dikti’s cliffs, moving toward the year’s true beginning.
Suddenly there were shouts of “Christos anesti! Alithos anesti!”—“Christ is risen! He is risen indeed!”—and people came out of the church with lit candles, passing flames to those waiting outside, one candle to the next. Boys in the square pulled on the bell ropes, and soon the bronze bell atop the squat tower was swinging, swinging, ringing loud enough for God to hear. Beneath the shouts and clangor, Manolis heard the shrill notes of old Ariakis’s panpipes—hesitant at first, then bold—and the shriek of a lyra; somewhere out of sight, Louloudakis was sawing wildly at the miniature violin poised upright on his knee, pouring out manic, skirling, half-Asian music. Even a villain could sound like an angel, if he could play the lyra.
A ruddy glow sprang up the stone walls of the houses, and a whirlwind of sparks climbed to join the stars. Judas was burning. A scarecrow of old clothes was Judas, scapegoat for all disappointments, blazing atop a brushwood pyre in the village square. On this night Judas was burning in a score of towns in Lasithi and in hundreds of towns throughout Crete—all over Lasithi and Crete and Greece, a galaxy of bonfires. There was not a soul in Ayia Kyriaki who was not gathered in the square to watch the traitor burn.
None of them had the slightest thought for Manolis. He left his barricaded courtyard and crept along the fire-reflecting cobblestones to watch like a woman from the shadows at the edge of the square.
At once he saw the xenos, a tall man with curling, straw-colored hair, a sharp face the color of bronze, a gaze that in the flickering firelight seemed supernaturally intense.
It was Easter at last, the first moments of Holy Sunday morning, the day for which the village was named, and the men were dancing to the pipes and the lyra, leaping and stamping their boot heels on the flags, swirling about with their arms raised high. Christ is risen! He is risen indeed!
The xenos danced with them. What grace and energy that man had! What prodigious leaps he made, as if he could fly straight up into the air! And what an appetite! Manolis watched in fascination as the stranger paused to devour lengths of boiled sheep gut stuffed with wild greens and the savory slices of lamb and kid that young Louloudakis pressed upon him. As the tavern keeper sawed away on his lyra the xenos raised a glass of raki to him and his son, tossed it back neat, and again charged into the dance.
The dancing stranger’s bright gaze was like a lighthouse beam, flashing each time it swept over Manolis—who forgot himself, watching, and stepped forward out of the shadows. The stranger stopped short, and Manolis was startled to find the man’s glittering eye fixed upon him across the width of the square.
“You, child. What are you doing there? Hiding?”
The music faltered. Every other eye among the villagers gathered in the square turned upon Manolis. He comforted himself that without the power of the evil eye, their hatred was nothing.
“Come here, child,” the Englishman said. By his speech, which was almost but not quite perfect Greek, Manolis took him for an Englishman. Not an Italian or a Frenchman or a Russian, none of those other sorts of exotic xenoi his grandmother had told him about and his long-gone tutor had delighted in mimicking, but an Englishman. Manolis could run—what would that gain him?—or he could step forward. He walked into the square, conscious of his shabby clothes among the men in their polished boots and their black and scarlet Easter finery. He went up to the stranger and boldly stared him in the face, hoping that his terror did not show.
There was something teasing and mischievous about the man, something aggressive about the thrust of his jaw and the twist of his thick lips. Close up, the mystery of his glittering gaze was solved, for Manolis saw that his left eye was made of glass.
“You’re the one I’ve heard of, surely,” the stranger said. “From my friend Georgios Siganos in Tzermiado.”
“I don’t know a kyrio Sigano in Tzermiado,” Manolis said.
“But you know a few things, don’t you?” The Englishman switched to English. “You know how to speak English.”
“A bit,” Manolis replied in English. “Not as well as you know Greek, sir.”
The Englishman laughed, throwing back his head. “I was speaking Cretan, not Greek.” He fixed his bright smile on Manolis. “I could go to the mainland with all these oshis and Azhee Cheery-a-chees, and they wouldn’t understand me any better than an Albanian.”
Manolis bobbed his head. “As you say, sir.” But he wondered how else one would possibly pronounce the name of Ayia Kyriaki.
“My friend Georgios tells me you know the mountains. So you must know the footpaths to the south coast, over Dikti.”
“I know these mountains.”
“I could use a guide. Will you go with me tomorrow?”
“I will be pleased to go with you.”
“Good, good. Sit down, eat some lamb with us.”
Every face in the firelit square was a featureless mask, staring hollow-eyed at Manolis.
“I must leave now,” he said firmly.
The Englishman raised an eyebrow and took account of the onlookers. “Meet me here tomorrow—later today, I mean. Not before noon! I plan to be drunk until then.” He turned to Louloudakis. “Tavern keeper, fill the glasses of these good men.”
At which the men began to shout, “Impossible, you are our guest,” and while the Englishman pretended to protest and finally bobbed and grinned in defeat, Manolis hurried back up the street.
Once again he perched on the wall of his grandmother’s courtyard and studied the visible sliver of the village square, framed by houses in shadow. The music took up again; he caught a glimpse of the tall Englishman dancing the sirtaki with the other men while the pipes and the lyra whirled dizzily.
How had he picked Manolis from the shadows? Asking people in Lasithi about him—why? Manolis could hardly trust himself with the answer that pressed itself upon him. He was English. His father was English…
At midday, Manolis dressed in his walking clothes and packed as many extra socks into his sak
ouli as it would hold. He found a last rind of kaseri cheese in the house and tossed it in; from the wall niche beside the fireplace he took the amber beads and the scraps of pottery he had secreted there years ago and pushed them deep into a corner of the bulging bag.
He took up his great-grandfather’s shotgun, as familiar to him as a walking stick. Then he left his grandmother’s house, walked out of its arched rooms with their heavy wood beams, leaving the frayed red rugs that hung on the whitewashed walls, the curled and faded paper icons in the corner by the fireplace, the spavined chairs and the warped table, the blackened kitchen utensils…He went outside, past the dead grapevine, the tall jars standing empty, the iron scythes and wooden rakes and frayed panniers for winnowing grain that were stacked against the courtyard wall. He did not even glance at the phourno that had stood empty but for ashes since he had found his grandmother sitting dead in front of it. He went through the gate and left it open behind him. He would never come back. His only program and plan were to guide the Englishman over the mountain.
Ayia Kyriaki was asleep, everyone exhausted by the night’s festivities and taking a long nap before rousing themselves to more celebration. The sunlit square was empty, except for the Englishman.
“There you are, boffin,” he said cheerily. He was sitting by himself in front of Louloudakis’s place, wearing a white wool sweater with a V-collar and baggy shorts and low-cut heavy shoes. An olive-wood walking stick carved with a hook leaned against the chair beside him. On the chair rested a sakouli in red and gray wool, more intricately woven than Manolis’s own. “You’re rather late. I did say noon.”
“Nai, mesimeri.” Manolis’s reply was edgy.
“Oh yes, mesimeri. It slipped my mind.” He meant that noon and midday are the same word in Greek. Not knowing what he meant, Manolis had no reply. “Name’s Pendlebury,” said the Englishman, thrusting out his hand. “And you are Androulakis.”
Looking at the outstretched hand, Manolis assumed the man wanted to hold his. They shook, and Manolis held fast. “Nai, kyrie Pendabri.”
Pendlebury hesitated a moment before using his left to detach himself from Manolis’s grip. “Right. What’s all this you’ve brought with you? That bloody great gun! We’re only taking a walk over the mountain.”
Manolis glanced at the shotgun and his stuffed sakouli and again found himself speechless.
“Fine with me, naturally, if you want to carry it all. Shall we be going?” Pendlebury didn’t wait for an answer. He expertly hooked the strings of his own sakouli over his shoulders, settling it like a backpack, and went off up the street toward the top of the village. Manolis hurried to catch up. They went past the house that had been Manolis’s home until a few minutes ago—
—and kept on going almost at a run for the next quarter hour, straight up the gorge toward the rock slide that was the shortest route over Dikti. Despite his slender legs, the Englishman’s vigor was astonishing; he was as strong as any mountain man Manolis knew. Were all Englishmen like this?
They climbed side by side, attacking the mountain. Pendlebury seemed much younger than any of the men in the village, but maybe all foreigners were like this. Maybe none of them looked their age. Of course Manolis, who was young, was swifter and stronger yet. But as he kept up with Pendlebury, both of them slashing their way up the slope, he sensed that the Englishman was irritated not to have outrun him.
“What happened to your eye?” Manolis shouted over his breath.
“What do you mean by that?” Pendlebury shouted back.
“Your glass eye.”
“You are not supposed to notice it,” Pendlebury said. He put on a burst of speed, but Manolis kept up with him.
Climbing beside him at a pace now furious, Manolis demanded, “Why did you want a guide, kyrie Pendabri? You know the mountain very well.”
“Well, I do not know it. I’ve only been here once before.”
“If you should have any questions, don’t forget that I’m with you,” said the boy.
Pendlebury glanced at Manolis with his skewed, bright glance, and kept on climbing.
They reached the ridge. In front of them, clouds swept up from the Libyan Sea like steam from a kettle, curling over the ridge and dissolving in blue midair, alternately obscuring and unveiling the wide view of the length of the island spread out to the east and west. Dikti’s highest peak lay up the snow-covered spine to their left, eastward, and farther east, a little lower, was the peak of Lazaros. To the west, Aphendis Christos rose almost as high as Dikti, across a stony chasm.
“The three peaks of Dikti,” Pendlebury said. “Do you think a man could do them in one day?”
“Why would he want to do that?”
“The challenge, paidi mou.”
“If he had no other reason”—no good reason, Manolis meant, such as chasing sheep—“I suppose he could.”
“Well, it is a challenge.” Pendlebury seemed restless. “Are you hungry?”
“I’m not hungry. It’s windy on this ridge.”
“Let’s get on down then. To Vianos. You lead the way.”
“Oshi, kyrie, you don’t need me to lead you.”
“You’re my guide.”
“If you go wrong, I’ll tell you.”
Pendlebury regarded the tall boy, whose hair was ruffled by the wind and whose dark eyes looked back at him expectantly. Then he shrugged and stepped off briskly across the rocky slope.
Manolis followed closely but hung back a little, not quite keeping pace, because he wanted to see where the man would go without prompting. They followed the worn path at first, as would anyone crossing the ridge. But when the main track veered to the right and started descending switchbacks, Pendlebury went left along the fainter trace. It was not the way to Vianos, but Manolis said nothing. He only smiled to himself.
Before long they arrived at the shepherd’s hut where Manolis had been born and where he had lived more than half his life. Pendlebury squatted in front of it and gestured for Manolis to sit beside him. “We have to eat, else you won’t be much good to me. Is this mandra enough out of the wind for you?”
Manolis dropped to the ground beside him. “Yes, this is a good place. Let’s eat.” He fished in his sakouli and brought out the chunk of kaseri.
Meanwhile Pendlebury brought soft bread and oranges and a bottle of yellow Lasithi wine from his own sakouli. For a few minutes they busied themselves cutting up the bread and cheese and peeling the oranges with their knives. Like Manolis’s knife, Pendlebury’s was a Cretan knife with a mantinada engraved on its blade, but Manolis suspected that the verse on Pendlebury’s blade was the more bloodthirsty, for the Englishman seemed the sort who had to excel in everything—the sort of man who would command the instant admiration of any villager on Crete.
Pendlebury passed Manolis the bottle of wine. He took a swig and passed it back. They munched and chewed in silence, watching the clouds mob the pine forest below the cliff where they perched.
“So you know this place.” Manolis jerked his head toward the tumbled hut.
Pendlebury looked around. “Why do you think so? I’ve never been here.”
“Let me show you something.” Manolis reached into the corner of his sakouli and pulled out his potsherds.
Pendlebury took them and peered at them with interest. “Middle Minoan One, I’d say. This pattern’s rather like some spouted jugs I’ve seen from Palaikastro.”
“They are Minoan? Like what o kyrios Evans found at Knossos?”
“Alike in that they are Minoan.” Pendlebury seemed unsurprised that Manolis would know of Evans and the Minoans. “Styles differ. Depending on age, of course, and where they are found. These are characteristic of East Crete, but I’ve recently seen similar pieces in Lasithi.”
“How do you know all this?”
“Because I am an archaeologist. Should I have mentioned that earlier?” Pendlebury smiled. “Until recently I worked at Knossos, for the British School—more accurately, for Professor
Evans himself—and some of what I did there was sorting through broken pots, thousands of them dug up over the years. Whole mounds of them. So this sort of thing”—he jostled the sherds in the palm of his hand—“is my business. Where did you get them?”
“Here.”
“Near this mandra? On the surface?”
“No, inside the cave,” Manolis said.
“There is a cave nearby?”
“Why did you come this way, kyrie Pendabri? You know this is not the path to Vianos.”
Pendlebury studied the boy, intrigued. “I didn’t know that. I took this path because it seemed interesting to me. Why didn’t you warn me, as you said you would?”
“Because I thought you were bringing me here on purpose. I thought you knew this hut. I was born here. My mother died here.”
“I’ve never been here, child.”
“And I thought you also knew the cave where I found those gastria, those pieces of pot.”
Pendlebury thought a moment but declined to ask why Manolis assumed all these things. “Were you also hoping these scraps of pottery are valuable? Are you hoping to sell them?”
“I would never sell them,” Manolis said passionately.
“Good, because that would be illegal,” Pendlebury said. “We are crossing these mountains on this fine Easter Sunday, my child, so that I can look for just such things as these gastria, as you call them. A nice word, peculiar to this region.” He held out the sherds, and Manolis reached out to let them drop into his hand. “Frankly I did not expect to find anything this interesting until we were much lower down. It may be that you have led me to a Minoan sanctuary.”
After lunch Manolis led Pendlebury to the crevice where the spring had once run copiously into his great-grandfather’s stone trough. The archaeologist stuck his head inside but was unwilling to squeeze past the fallen roof block that made further exploration difficult and messy. “Certainly worth a closer look,” he said as he crawled back out, rubbing his hands vigorously on the seat of his shorts, “given a bit of leisure.”
