Digging at the Crossroads of Time

by Christos Morris

  The addictive diggings persisted as he secretly escaped to the perivoli in the early morning. The holes became deeper, often uncovering strange relics of the past. There were pieces of pottery that he knew were gifts from those giant people on the other side of the world. At the time of his first discovery, he ran to the house of his uncle, panting at the door, holding the handle of a large clay pithoi, an ancient storage jar. Mimis Steffanakis was scolded for digging up the dead and made to promise he would never go beneath the surface again.

  “Let the dead rest, Mimis,” his uncle would say. “Let the dead rest.”

  Not heeding this order, on another day he returned to his aunt and uncle with a different gift from the deep. It was a golden seal stone inscribed with the mountain bird of Crete. He held it out to his aunt, who was bathing her skin in warm goat’s milk. She looked to Manolis, who coughed while trying to gulp a small glass of raki.

  Mimis would not forget the look of disappointment, his aunt shaking her head with disgust. Manolis’ eyes turned on him like a wild Turk. He lifted his bastooni of gnarled olive wood. Mimis would not forget the beating he received. It was a beating without concern for remorse. It was a beating that may have gone on until he died were it not for Manolis’ sudden bout of coughing which violently dislodged emphysematous phlegm. As Mimis bolted out the door, he heard his uncle’s voice growling like a mad dog. Always he would remember that day, the swollen eyes of an old man coming alive for the first time in memory.

  “Come back here. Come back here. I’m going to give you something you will never forget.”

  There were many holes in the perivoli. There were many holes to hide in. After the beating, Mimis returned to the house when it was dark. The blood from his right ear had dried. The bruises from his uncle’s bastooni had turned to a softened violet shine along his right arm and leg. The underside of uncle’s calloused foot could be seen from the doorway, lying limply to one side. He heard the heavy breathing, the gurgling sucking of air, which always accompanied the old man’s sleep. Manolis was dozing peacefully.

  Mimis stepped forward where he could be seen, then entered slowly. He knew his aunt would not beat him now. He knew she would only scold him in whispers; give him no more than a mock slap so as not to stir her husband’s peace. Later he would wonder whether Trepsithea’s kindness was out of love for him. Often, when thinking of that moment, he wanted to believe the best of her.

  Many months after being beaten by his uncle’s cane, Mimis heard Trepsithea’s voice cut through the air like an arrow, landing in the hole where he lay. Usually he had only moments to brush the dirt from his clothes and scamper quickly to the house with the excuse that a chicken had escaped or he had been gathering fallen lemons. There was always a short gap in time between the first call and the final volcanic explosion. But on this day Mimis pretended not to hear. In his mind, he was elsewhere. The boy pretended that he was fishing on the rocks, that he had seen an octopus close to shore and had given chase, catching it near the mooring of Egvouriki’s black dinghy. How proud his aunt and uncle would be. The story Mimis concocted continued. He imaged that the octopus had been taken by the older boys who were passing – and he was late because he had chased them.

  Trepsithea’s voice faded, carried away from his ears, seemingly swallowed by the wind. He had been rewarded once again by the giant people from the other side whose dogs were as big as fishing boats. It was a gift unlike any he had found before. In his hands, resting heavily on his small chest, was a miniature of rigid clay; the figure of a man standing, his back stiffly arched, the back of his left hand pressed hard against his forehead. Holding the tiny statue before his face, his small arms quivering, Mimis pressed the back of his hand to his forehead, saluting it. One became the mirrored image of the other. It did not belong to the dead. It belonged to life, to him, to Mimis the discoverer. It was a gift from the other side of the world. He studied the tightly pressed hand and touched it with one finger, holding it to the midday sun in offering. Staring through its eyes he saw himself, a grown boy breaking through the tunnel, through to the other side, coming out upon a patch of green grass in the land of the giants. He imagined crawling out holding up the clay figure to the giant men who were there, laughing to themselves at the sight of the skinny Cretan boy.

  As he lay in the hole, the pendulum of his uncle’s clock swung back and forth in his mind. The fractured images of his fancy kept pace with it, moving to the rhythm of the beat. He saw a huge pendulum above him in the sky, swinging lower and lower toward his body, sinking from its own weight, sinking with every precise swing. How glorious it seemed at first, this rhythmic sway. Warmed and comforted by the blanket of earth that covered him, he was at peace as the pendulum dropped to within inches of his throat, swinging to and fro, the silent arc nearly touching him. Closer it came, touching a few granules of dirt, pushing them to one side, cutting deeper.

  Mimis tried to move, but he had buried himself too deeply. He squirmed to avoid the threatening blade. In terror, the boy tried to scream, but not a sound would come out. He writhed beneath the earth to free himself. It was then he saw him: a huge man, heavily robed, reminding him of a priest. His massive fingers reached down to touch Mimis’ face, brushing the dirt gently to one side. On one finger was a ring, a real ring of silver and iron with a strange picture on it. On his wrist was a seal stone of a boat being poled by a man.

  The pendulum stopped. Mimis’ eyes were frozen in fear, watching as the man brushed away the earth . This was my rite of passage, he recalled, many years later. It was a moment of destiny, a moment when a man crawled from the hole, leaving the child behind.

  Often, during his childhood, the image of the huge man would besiege his mind. At first it would wake him in fright until, with familiarity, the disturbances became less unsettling. The words the perivoli man spoke lingered with him into adulthood. “Dig here, Mimis. Dig here. Dig deeper.” Mimis would hear these words again later in his life.

  Keftiu, Ancient Crete

  1645 BC

  The first time I saw Keftiu, I was but a wide-eyed boy, knowing nothing of these sea people or anything beyond the shores of my beloved Egypt.

  My father’s merchant vessel had been here many times in the service of our Pharaoh and God. Upon my father’s return, he spoke few words of this strange and mysterious land, or of the Keftiuians whose life was unlike any he had seen.

  Later, as a young man, I stood proudly on my father’s ship while rowers pulled us from the east to Zakros and further north along the thundering escarpments toward Eleus. Giant mountains touched the clouds and disappeared into places my eyes were not meant to see. The sea showed its ugly face. When rounding the cape, I shook with fear, believing it was I who made the sea angry.

  Our ship turned toward the steep Keftiu cliffs that cut sharp and straight beneath the waterline. So close were we, the oars of our vessel often scraped against the rock. I looked up and could not see the peak. I closed my eyes. The sea had turned calm but the water lay black as night. My father said there was no bottom to the sea around Keftiu. It was a sacred place gouged out by the Goddess of the underground, by the Mother of the Earth, Maker and Protector of Keftiu. Unlike our God, theirs was a woman, the one who gave life to man, to beasts and to all things of the soil. Mother of all and mistress of the sea. Of everything.

  My father feared nothing. He feared neither man nor gods, but he was not without respect, saying to me, “These are not familiar waters, my son. Our Gods do not live here. Silent thoughts. Safe journey.” Though he lived by these words, they did not protect my father from one day having his life coughed out of him within these black waters on a journey from Knossos to Eleus.

  My life would follow in the wake of my father, who kindly left his name to me. Minunep. The people of Keftiu saw me as my dead father returning. They greeted me like an old friend. “You come back much younger now.” How could I explain? These were strange people. They were different from me and my Egyptian ways.
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br />   The Keftiuians were many, but their actions were like a single man bound to an unwritten code of life. They had one aim, one goal of exalting the creation of all forms of life – in plants, in animals and in themselves. So alive, so vital were these people, I loved to be near them. Life! Life! Life! There was never talk of death, no fear of it, and when it came upon them, they rejoiced in dance and music. Their death was not death, but a long journey back to the soil, to the beginning, to Mother Earth – Meterra, as they called her. Dead men were trussed like unborn children, sent back to Meterra, back to her womb beneath the ground.

  The island of Akrotiri, to the north of Keftiu, is where Meterra lives within the giant cave beneath the mountain of black smoke. After death on Keftiu, a mysterious journey is made through the deep water in a crescent-shaped boat carrying the Keftiu dead back to her.

  My father’s body lay beneath Keftiu water and thus was bound by the laws of their Goddess. His return to them as a younger man, through my body, was destined to be. I did not understand, but never questioned.

  Life on Keftiu was orderly. Each man held his position while being a servant to the voice that spoke inside him. The god-voice gave direction and spoke from some place deep inside the psychros. The people of Keftiu listened to the music of the wind. It was Meterra’s breath and voice. It was a silent rhythm they could hear, but I could not. The silence in my phrenes was proof to me I was but a worthless sailor of the sea. I had no strange voice of my own.

  I asked their high priest Basilius, to take pity on me. The only voice I could recognize was my own. I had no other. His reply to me I pondered through the years: “Then how can you be certain?”

  It was as though their minds were not their own, but of Meterra. They exalted life in dance, in art, in death, in ways I never could. They created life afresh with every passing sun as though they had only one day in which to live. Even in death they created life again. Sometimes they frightened me.

  How strange for me to know that they are gone now, sent to their mystery ships, all of them, by the very Goddess they loved and cherished. I loved them as a gentle people. So much I loved them, in ways my thumos feels but my words cannot express.

  I will never understand the poison dust that covered Keftiu, how the earth shook and split the white mountain of Akrotiri in two. I will never understand the angry sea from the north that grew and grew, high into the sky like a mountain, before falling on Keftiu’s northern shores, crushing all. I cannot accept their destruction as they might have. I will miss them.

  My years upon Keftiu saw no tyranny or repression, nor the need for it. There were no walls about the palace, no written laws, and no fear of one man disadvantaging another. A written language was used sparingly for accounting and trade. With their god-voice, they needed nothing more.

  Basilius, the chief priest and direct servant of King Wannaxsos, was familiar with the written words of my people and was not pleased with them. “These words,” he said, “are not from the voice of Meterra. They speak only of the thoughts of men and their achievements. In time they will divide us all. Man from man. Man from the voice of God.”

  I did not understand. Nor was it my place to question, remembering my father’s words, “Silent thoughts, safe journey.”

  I brought gifts from my Pharaoh and Guardian. I carried a cargo of ivory, talents of gold, perfumes, chariots and sometimes monkeys. Wannaxsos, the Keftiu king, gave graciously in return. Great pithoi filled with olive oil, saffron, wine and most treasured of all, Keftiu art.

  Oh, how my thumos surged when I saw the joyous art of Gournia, Zakros and Eleus. How bright and alive it was. How could any man be sad from the sight of it? Their art made me happy and pleased my Pharaoh so splendidly that he gave one entire storeroom of gold and his finest chariots in exchange for one Keftiu fresco. Wannaxsos sent his finest in return. The love between our nations flourished till the end.

  Wannaxsos was more like a man than a God. He treated me kindly and as an equal. To this I was not accustomed. His queen wife, Mendaphi, was a priestess and a woman of deep beauty. Her face adorned numerous frescos. Fulfilling her duty of bearing the king a son took many years and many sacrifices to the Mother of the Earth.

  Once, on my journey to Eleus, I saw the heavy smoke of Akrotiri rising from the island in the north. Varka, a Keftiu fisherman and my friend, came alongside my ship, telling me to leave quickly. I knew of the island Akrotiri, the smoking mountain, the home of Meterra. I had heard about the angry spirits that lay beneath it but I had never seen this sight before. Everyone, but I, knew what it meant.

  I did not heed the words of Varka. I went ashore. Basilius was waiting for me, a handsome bull of a man, larger than any I had seen in Keftiu. He held his head in both hands and said his phrenes was unhappy. He asked me about the gifts my Pharaoh had sent. I began to tell him of my cargo.

  “And the animal? Have you the large black cat?”

  How could he have known? His powers of wisdom always gave me much fear. Never had he, or anyone of Keftiu, seen this animal my Pharaoh had sent them. It was a large black panther.

  When I removed the cover skins from the cage, he pointed, “Yes, this is the one. It must be given in exchange.” I did not know what was meant by exchange, but I would never question. Always in my mind were my father’s words, “Silent thoughts, safe journey.”

  I was not to know Mendaphi had at last given birth that day to a son, Sarapos. Later I would discover the joy and the terrible burden it would cause. I would learn of the painful voice that spoke to Wannaxsos saying his son must be given to the earth, his tiny thumos removed and the warm blood allowed to kiss the soil. Only then would life proceed as planned. Only with his death would winter pods open in the spring, bear wholesome food for harvest. In return for the holy blood of young Sarapos, would be assured of a long going harvest of children. Meterra had spoken. The sacrifice was of the highest order, an exchange for the life of all.

  Wannaxsos, the king, had waited years for this son. For the first time, he questioned the authority of the god-voice. He sought the counsel of Basilius and pleaded for another solution. There was none.

  To be certain, Wannaxsos and Basilius went to the temple of Oaxsos together and spoke with Meterra, Mother of the Earth, face to face. I shuddered at the thought of this directness. To me a god was not like a man. To speak directly to a god pained my phrenes and I feared for my eyes as I climbed the palace steps the following day. I closed them tight and stumbled blindly, trembling, holding fast to the firm arm of Basilius. How could I look into the eyes of the king who questioned his God? Would the darkness of his eyes darken my sight forever? As we walked, Basilius told me of his grave concerns. He confirmed the smoke of Akrotiri blew in anger, for never had one man or king questioned his god-voice before. Sarapos would remain in life.

  Wannaxsos came from his chamber and eagerly asked to see the panther sent by my Pharaoh. My crew had delivered the beast to the palace. Basilius motioned for me to remove the cover from the cage. This I did. Wannaxsos seemed startled by what he saw, but smiled at me, saying my Pharaoh was indeed a man of wisdom. “I shall repay this debt to him a hundred fold.”

  I was pleased by his love of my Master and my thumos calmed.

  My ship was soon loaded with great gifts. Wannaxsos felt a bond with my Pharaoh and offered more than food, prized carnelians and metals – he also offered treasures of the spirit no man in Egypt could imagine. They were the secret gifts of Keftiu meant for no eyes other than a man of great spirit. Their safe keeping across the treacherous waters placed a weight upon my thumos and I would not sleep one moment throughout my anxious journey home.

  As my ship was being loaded, I could see many priests in their long robes climbing along the winding path, leading the most prized bulls and goats and sheep to the temple on Oaxsos. A deep sadness entered my thumos as I watched them climb. The cage of the black panther seemed to be amidst them. My eyes failed to see the detail or the child, Sarapos, being carried to t
he Temple of Consecration.

  My phrenes ached. A life of someone or something was to be given to the God Mother. An exchange. I turned, for it was not my position to witness what was so alien to me. I looked to the north instead. The black clouds of Akrotiri had come closer, hovering directly overhead, blocking out the sun. I knew it was the spirit of Meterra, which had come to watch, and my thumos throbbed, urging me to leave this place.

  My life dwells each second in the house of Our Lord, Jesus Christ. In my life, He is my purpose. Even in my sleep, we are together. I did not marry before I was ordained, though I had, once, a chance. It was my choice and I am without regret. How could I service my children and my God without sacrificing one of them? Which one would be denied? So I married God and my Church of St Constantino and Eleni. I come armed with my love of God and his love for me so I may captain God’s children, steer them through the black waters of sin and toward his golden embrace. This is my mission.

  The fulfilment of God’s task is not an easy one to procure. Our faith is cluttered with customs, superstitions and pagan devices fearfully cherished for many thousands of years. Demons not only hide in the depths of darkness, but behind the eyes of every enquiring mind, upon the tongue of every well- meaning, self-serving soul. The weight of Christ’s yoke is dense with two thousand years of contradictions.

  (Excerpt from the confirmation of Father Dimitrios Vassilio, Ordained Priest of St Constantino and Eleni.)

  Elefsis, Crete

  June 1980

  T

  he smell of cool stale vapours rushed out of the church door as it opened. Within a few steps of entering, the familiar scent of church air seemed to cleanse the body of impurity. Aristides strode inside and paused at the icon of the Virgin Mary, his eyes scanning for the priest. He stood proudly, as if waiting to be acknowledged.