Digging at the Crossroads of Time

by Christos Morris

  “Of course you are, but I will give you a little more to share with another. Maybe a king or a priest.”

  Mimis opened the jar eagerly, pausing as if he could see the vapours rising. He took a pinch of the yellow powder and sprinkled it in the teapot.

  “Perfect,” he said. “There is someone I will share it with tonight.” Mimis thought of the unopened package of Omega. He would open it alone and see the ancient face for the first time. It should be seen with a clear mind, a critical eye, and not in the presence of another.

  “Epoptis,” Demetra shouted. “I see light behind your darkness.” She slapped the table in excitement and pulled the chair closer. “Maybe you have to let go a little bit. Huh, Mimis? A little bit? Maybe save some tea to drink with your friend, the dead man.”

  Mimis smiled warmly, but grew cold on the inside, thinking, She teases me. I am the man I am. Unlike her, I cannot sing or dance my way to ecstasy. I am not a shaman. I am not a poet! My profession is firmly of this world. I just simply cannot do the things she asks. There is no way. I conceal what I cannot prove. If I lose because of it … well, that must be my fate.

  As though she heard his thoughts, Demetra slapped the edge of the table again. “Don’t put to sleep what you cannot prove, Mimis. Grab it like the snake: feel the pulse of it.” She moved her hand left and then right like the movement of a serpent. “He will lead the way deep down. You should follow.” She sat upright, stiff and defiant. “You want truth? You want too much truth! You write too many words. To think like a Minoan, you must be like them. Not inside your brains, but inside your soul. There lives the eyes of truth, Mimis.”

  He knew what she meant. When fire ignited in a man’s soul, it was a sin to douse it with logic so it could be studied, verified.

  Three days earlier, Mimis had received a magazine sent to him by Dr Keffolakis. With it came a simple note: I think you should read this. The note was inserted in the appropriate page of a magazine from a few months before. It was a poem entitled, “Looking Northward, Aegean-ward”. It was part of a much longer poem entitled, Rumour Verified. Lines 18 to 30 were underlined in pencil. Mimis read them:

  … lost in the dimness of aeons,

  like suds in a washing machine, land heaved, and sky

  At noon darkened, and darkness, not like any metaphor, fell,

  And in that black fog gulls screamed and the feathers of gull-wing

  From white flash to flame burst. That was the hour

  When roof tree of keystone palaces fell,and

  Priest’s grip drew backward curls of the King’s son until

  Throat-softness was tightened, and the last cry

  Was lost in the gargle of blood on bronze blade. The King,

  In the mantle, had buried his face. But even

  That last sacrifice availed nought. Ashes,

  Would bury all. Cities beneath sea sank.

  Mimis reread the words. King’s son … throat … softness … bronze blade … sacrifice … cities beneath sea sank. The poem, by Robert Penn Warren, was far beyond the bounds of coincidence. Mimis was certain it was about the temple. Nothing in written history was similar. But how could he have known?

  Demetra repeated her words. “There lives the eyes of truth, Mimis.”

  The poet and Demetra had much in common. The thought excited him.

  “Do you have a moment?” Mimis asked. “There is something I want to show you.”

  A curious Demetra followed him to his office in the storeroom. On his desk was the detailed bust of the sacrificial boy. Next to it the unopened box. Demetra walked closer to inspect, without touching it. She looked at the archaeologist, who closed the door.

  “Amazing,” she said. “The face is true?”

  Mimis nodded. He studied every nuance of Demetra’s reaction.

  “Can they be certain that this is his true face just from looking at his skull?”

  “Ninety per cent certain. Maybe higher.”

  She smiled with pride at his accomplishment. “But what of the priest? Why is he still in the box?”

  “Open it.”

  “I can’t,” she said, astonished he had even offered. “You must be the one, not me.”

  “Go ahead. I want you to open it. I want to see your reaction when you meet him face to face.”

  Demetra looked at the archaeologist with disbelief, knowing the importance of the priest or priest-king during his own time, his importance to the excavation; but more, his meaning to Mimis Steffanakis and the bond she sensed between them. “You make me too nervous. What if I drop him?”

  Mimis shrugged. “Then we will never know.”

  Demetra closed her eyes, asking Mimis to open the door. He obliged. She made the sign of the cross on her chest: Father, Son and Holy Ghost. What followed came totally unexpected to Mimis. She stood as if offering a salute, her back arched while pressing the back of one hand, in the shape of a fist, to her forehead. She was duplicating the stance of a familiar votive miniature uncovered from Minoan funerary sites. That she knew of the pose was not a mystery. That she was using it at this moment startled him.

  Outside, in the stillness of a starlit night, the crescent moon was lying back at rest. Without any warning a sudden single gust of wind blew through the open door. They heard a sudden crash as a chair upended. Mimis felt the force, but more frightening was that the wind ceased in an instant. The gust passed, then nothing more. The stillness returned.

  Mimis held the door wide open, looking out. He walked into the courtyard and placed the fallen chair on its legs beside the table. The air was still but his racing heart was not. Was this coincidence or something more? If the gust had appeared in the morning, during the light of day, he would have dismissed it, saying, “The wind. Only the wind.” Her words returned. “Mimis, do not bury what you don’t understand.” The wind. The rigid salute. The opened door. What did she know? What power did she harvest? Would she ever explain it to him?

  He knew this woman well. He loved her as an old friend, but the questions he posed drove a wedge between them now, as did the arched gesture and the wind. If she had caused the wind to blow, it did not attract him to her. It drew him away. It was not simply the mystery of how it could be done; it was something more. That she had the power of vision, he knew. That she had the power over the fish was alien, though acceptable, but here, at this moment, she had the power over him and his domain of Minoan archaeology. This event, should she be the cause, affected him deeply; a razor’s slash across his scientific eye. She could, with a flick of a mental switch, understand the Minoan by becoming one – maybe just as she could become a fish. So disturbing was this thought that for the first time in their many years of friendship, he feared her. He walked back into his office trembling. It was not for fear of the arrival of the wind or the ancient priest entering his domain, but out of fear of Demetra’s awesome power. He entered and shut the door behind him. “Are we alone?” he asked.

  Demetra, still holding the box, laughed out loud. “Only if you want to be. But if you ask, then maybe we are not.”

  “Then what a perfect time to open the box.”

  Demetra prized the lid with care, removing the shredded packing filler, then reached inside and lifted the clay bust while Mimis cleared a place on the desk.

  “Put it here,” he shouted. “Under the light.”

  He was anxious. The clay head of the ancient priest ascended from the crate. His first glimpse of the face remained locked in his mind while neurons collided in search of recognition. The sculptured face was complex in every detail. He was handsome and, like the boy, had finer features than expected: slender lips and nose, a well-proportioned straight face. He had already known from the bones that the head belonged to a man that was very large for his time. It was the perfection only Dr Keffolakis could have achieved. From one ancient skull came the exact face of a man who lived 1628 years before Christ.

  He looked to Demetra whose eyes seemed to speak: It’s not you, Mimis. Not yo
ur face.

  The attraction he felt for this man, the bond acquired over the last year may have effused a connection, a linkage somehow. He had wondered if their faces would be similar. It was foolish, but he felt Demetra had thought the same. Her face told him so.

  His heart sank in quietude, sensing he had succumbed to a trait he loathed in modern man and many archaeologists. It was a self-serving sin of internalizing events, projecting ones self as part of it all. It was a form of egoism which had many ugly heads, all of which he despised. The process of seeing himself within his own discovery of sacrifice and catastrophe, of directing the events to include himself beyond the excavator, suddenly came to a smashing halt. Though his thoughts had been kept silent, exposed only to the absorbing mind of Demetra, he saw a stain of conceit that repulsed him. He was disappointed in himself.

  Mimis touched the ancient face gently with his fingers. A tear began to form in the corner of one eye. He turned away from the clay bust and walked out the door, walked past the table and across the courtyard to the edge of the perivoli. Demetra followed, at a distance. He stood at the top of the steps in the glow of the moonlight, peering out. Demetra moved closer. The perivoli was bathed in shades of grey, the olive and almond trees silhouetted against the dome of the universe.

  “I know him, Demetra.” Mimis spoke in near whispers. “I met him once before, a very long time ago.” In the orchard he found a patch of light and pointed to it. “There. Look there! As a boy, I remember lying there where the light of the moon now shines. I was covered in dirt, and the pendulum of my uncle’s clock swayed back and forth in a silent arc. In my mind, I felt that I could see the pendulum above me. It dropped lower, coming closer … closer to my throat. It seemed like a blade. I squirmed to wriggle free but I was frozen in my dreams. It was then I saw him, the huge hands reaching down to me, reaching down to wipe the dirt from my face. I saw the ring of silver and iron inches from my face. I saw on his wrist the seal stone of a man poling the boat of the dead. I saw him, his face. The bust of the ancient priest and the face of my dream as a boy – they are one. It is the same face, Demetra. How could it possibly be? You are the seer. How can that be the same man?”

  She did not reply and he looked to her, his pleading eyes welling with tears. His voice broke, filled with the strain of memories and confusion.

  “How can they be – the same?

  Demetra closed her eyes and whispered, “I don’t know. But I think, maybe, you do.”

  Mimis’ face crinkled with a question.

  “All those years have passed and you refuse to dig here, dig into the past beneath this place. Was it because of the beautiful home? No! More than that. You knew one day you would find him. You knew, inside here,” she said, thumping her chest. “Not in your brain.”

  “Demetra, you talk in circles. Everything links to my brain.”

  Demetra shrugged. “I can’t explain. I don’t have the words. I only know what I know. Don’t expect me to explain why all the time.” She wiggled two fingers toward his face. “Your eyes see many things – but not all. Your eyes did not see this man when you were a boy. You saw him in here,” she said, thumping her chest once more. “Maybe you should become a boy again. Let yourself go!” As though embarrassed by her own temper, she smiled and spread her hands out to him. “Mimis, I am just an old fisherwoman with bad eyes and not so many brains. What do I know?”

  “What do you know?” Mimis said with a wry grin. “Let me ask you: was this just a coincidence? Him, I mean. That I saw him as a child and found him again now. Or is there more?”

  “Is there something more? Of course. At least I think there is. You will find him again, Mimis, or maybe he will find you. What it means? Well, that is something you may discover. You will only do that if you are brave.”

  In the Cave on Oaxsos

  1635 BC

  In the waters of the Great Green Sea, I never saw an island as large as Keftiu. Mountains grew into the sky and white ice fell upon the peaks. They could be seen one full day out to sea. They were symbols of greatness and strength.

  The island was rich with trees and fertile land. As far as the eye could see were forests of tall needle trees. From their long straight timbers, Keftiu ships were built. There were so many vessels, my eyes could never count them. In the land of my Pharaoh, this sight of endless forests would mean the gods gave special favours. Never could we build a fleet the size of Keftiu’s and command the Great Green Sea as they did. Even in our northern ports of Egypt there were more Keftiu ships than our own. They were merchants to the world and without equal. No nation dare aggrieve them.

  Though the mountains of Keftiu were coarse with jagged rock, the thumos of the people were soft. Meterra’s pneuma rose into the air for all to breathe. The breath of God entered the breath of man and there was peace.

  On land or at sea, I had yet to meet a wayward brute among the Keftiu people. I yearned to know their way, the secret of their nature. Keftiu was born of mysteries out of the pneuma of Meterra. Though Keftiuians were many, they breathed as one. For me, a lost merchant of the sea, I dared not breathe heavily. In respect, I sipped the air. Basilius thought of me as strange.

  It was the belief in foreign lands that Keftiuians were fearless. They could drink the breath of Meterra wherever they might be. Their ships were welcomed in every port to the east. In the land of my God and Pharaoh, people came to greet them, hearing stories of brave men who rowed beyond the earth’s edge, beyond the stars, and returned in life.

  Without bitter enemies, the cities of Keftiu, their palaces and villages, were free of walls or barricades. They were not burdened with the fear of invaders from within or beyond. With Meterra’s might so near, who would dare: yet history told stories of failed attacks.

  Stories of invaders reached Egypt, telling of angry tribes arriving near Keftiu from the large land to the north. Armed with swords and spears, they came with a hundred ships. From many islands and many mountain peaks, beacons of fire were lit to signal that an enemy was near. A relay of fires warned Keftiuians of the treachery approaching and a thousand ships rowed out to meet them. Not one invading ship remained afloat. Every man aboard these vessels had his thumos, noos and phrenes torn out and thrown into the sea. It was the death of deaths. With no afterworld, their souls would never be redeemed. Keftiu and Meterra were one. Only a fool would enter her waters or walk upon this land without humility. For this they were invincible.

  My father’s words – silent thoughts, safe journey – were born of this story and I knew the secret thoughts of any man could never be disguised. The Goddess Meterra could see the thoughts of man. This power had entered Basilius and, to some degree, the rest of Keftiu. Travellers who approached them with the dark eyes of deception could hold no secrets here. I prayed to my God to spare my wayward thoughts for fear the sea would swallow me. Fear was always near me on Keftiu. The darkness of it was always mixed with the brilliant light of awe I felt for these strange people. They could see things my eyes could not. They could travel to the place of their ancestors without leaving my sight. This I knew, for they would tell me of their journey beyond the horizon. They could see my emptiness. For this they thought me weak of strength, and shook their heads in pity.

  How could I explain to my Pharaoh that a Keftiuian had these gifts from the gods within them? My lips trembled at the thought of telling him. This truth was filled with consequences.

  Our nations grew as brothers in respect. Never in my time, nor in the time of my father, had jealousies come between us. I believed, if I spoke about the secrets of Keftiu, I would drive a wedge between our nations. How could I dare speak of it at all?

  Basilius took pity on my emptiness and walked me through the forests of Oaxsos where the tapered trees of needles grew tall, explaining how the columns of every building on Keftiu were made from them, allowing many levels to be made upon another, allowing wells of light to enter far below.

  We climbed higher where the trees of many needle
s could not grow. I was cautious as I walked the sacrificial path to the sacred temple and was relieved when we stopped and turned another way.

  He took me to a cave where we entered through its circular opening. With a lamp burning oil, the priest led me deep inside. I gave my trust to him as I stumbled down the steep tunnel. Basilius sang a sacred song that calmed the beating in my thumos.

  A gentle breeze arrived from far below carrying a perfumed smell of sweetness. The scent grew strong and entered our phrenes. As we walked further through the pneumos of the ladytos, the odour became heavy. The breath from the deep gave gifts to my dead senses and I began to see a wondrous sight. My father appeared before me, raising his arms, reaching out, and I reached out to him. I pulled him tight, felt his thin body and absorbed his smell that I had forgotten long ago. I heard his voice begin to whisper in my ear.

  The perfumed breeze receded from me, back into the darkness of the ladytos. My father’s embrace fell away. My love for him gave chase. My search was in vain. He was gone, yet my thumos swelled within. I was filled with joy as we left the cave, walking from darkness into a circle of bright light.

  From that day my love for Basilius grew stronger. He had chosen to help a man as weak as I in the cave of sweet fumes. For one moment, he gave me new eyes. For the first time, I saw my dead father return to me in life. For the first time, I could see through Keftiu eyes.

  That evening, very much alone, I called for my father. I called him many times. I heard only the gentle sea. No vision touched my phrenes. His voice was still. His world was too far away. I thought of his whispering voice and the words he spoke to me.

  “Listen, not with your ears. Look for me, but not with your eyes. I will return.”

  Through the night the weariness of failure made me sleep. I awoke to a morning of grey clouds. In my thumos, I feared my father was beyond me, beyond the Great Green Sea, beyond any place imaginable. The perfumed Keftiu magic wind had returned within Meterra. I was once again Minunep, the lost merchant of the sea.