Digging at the Crossroads of Time

by Christos Morris

  Demate!

  Mountain goddess of bright light and deep darkness.

  Queen of birth and death

  Whose substance is both good and evil.

  A shifting glance.

  Lip stained blood yearning for flesh.

  Your kindly face changes.

  And from the north the death boar comes

  On wings of pitch smoke

  To collect the dead of the day

  And carry them away.

  Through darkness, inward spiral,

  To a pure point in silence

  Since the beginning of all life

  All the souls of life converge into one.

  Only one. Only one. Only one.

  Demetra continued up the mountain on the white donkey. In her mind she searched for Mimis, though her thoughts were heavy with dread. She began to sing a mantinade that had been passed down for centuries:

  As much as I avoid the fire

  I am burned by its flame.

  My fate has ordered it,

  Another is not to blame.

  The fire that lightened me

  Shines no more upon me.

  A wind extinguished it and

  Now the darkness is on me.

  I will wait for you always

  Either dead or alive.

  Because the love of faith

  In the bones survives.

  Her large voice dwindled as she climbed, her face became flushed and red. When tears began to fall, she continued to sing, producing but a whimper.

  Ascending Oaxsa on her donkey, Demetra continued to sob, wiping the tears on her sleeve. “Not your time, Mimis,” she whispered. “Be strong. Be brave. This not your time.”

  The festive procession filled the air with songs and chants as Demetra and the mystes arrived at the entrance to the cave. They entered Demetra’s home that was set alight with candles. Snakes were removed from a basket and passed from one to another, hand to hand. Those unable to touch the serpent, whose fear made it impossible to receive the pulse, did not descend. If a myste was gripped with fear, the snake would sense it easily and struggle to escape, striking with toxic fangs to free itself.

  The initiates were warned of worse dangers below. Each step in their descent would fill their hearts with dreaded oblivion. The fearful could not go on, could not confront the darkness.

  Only eight mystes remained. Angalia was one of them. She was resolute to again embrace the realm of Pharmacos. The fear of death itself did not prevent her from going on.

  The twenty-five who had failed the test were farewelled outside the cave. The wind grew stronger, the sky turning crimson with dust. The donkeys brayed, fear in their eyes and in their nervous steps. They backed away from anyone trying to mount them or pull on the leather leads. Three bolted down the mountain path, running wildly together. The other animals followed.

  Demetra watched as both beast and human fled down Oaxsa. The last person to leave stopped, aware Demetra was watching from above. He pointed to the sky, then toward the sea, shaking his arms from side to side. Demetra remained still. He yelled a warning to them all. “Leave the mountain quickly. Come with us.”

  Demetra looked skyward toward the daylight moon overheard, a thin crescent wedge facing upwards. It was surrounded by a halo of orange and red. When she peered to the mountain path, there was not a soul in sight.

  Keftiu, Ancient Crete

  1628 BC

  The cold season passed, leaving behind the misery of my friends on Keftiu. The white dust that fell from the heavens turned to fresh soil with rain and sank into the earth. The soil drank quickly. The warm Keftiu sun had returned.

  The people of Akrotiri found new life on Keftiu, their homes long buried by hot red vomit from the mountain that had now turned hard and white. Nothing remained of their village. It was buried.

  Meterra’s anger had been appeased throughout the cold season. Wannaxsos took the clay writing tablets back from the people, urging them to return to their old ways. Though I have been told in secrecy that Agraphisos still scribed for the king alone.

  The new season ceremony of the bull dance neared, and with it the need for sacrifice. The seeds of every plant would be taken to Oaxsos. So, too, the finest animals of every kind. Each would be given, as is customary, to the earth, to Meterra’s womb, so life could begin again. My phrenes pricked me with questions of Sarapos. Will his father, the king, once again spare him as he has done for seventeen seasons?

  As the ceremony of the bull dance neared, I felt the weight of Sarapos upon me. Basilius did not speak of the king’s son, though I felt Sarapos in his phrenes when he was near. As the sun grew warmer, the eyes of Basilius grew cold.

  The ceremony of the bull dance brought forth a great feast of al of Eleus, a feast of the sacrifice where both the living and the dead filled their bellies. This was a time of joy, a time when all life would be renewed again.

  All the creatures to be given to Meterra were chosen and gathered near the palace for inspection by Wannaxsos and Mendaphi. I, too, was there to witness the selection of honour.

  I had not seen the beautiful Mendaphi since the harvest, thought at times I saw her face cross my eyes and then disappear. I pushed her away, always remembering my father’s words: silent thoughts, safe journey.

  She wore a headdress made of golden braided hair that glistened in the sun. Her dress was flounced, hanging from the waist to the ground. Her breasts lay full and bare. Never had I seen such beauty on earth. I turned my head for fear my eyes would burn with lust. I refused to look up until she had gone.

  That night I could not stop her from swimming in my phrenes and I bedded early in hopes a peaceful sleep might deny her access to my thoughts. This would not be. Mendaphi came to me in my sleep. Though my door was held shut by heavy stones, she passed through the crack like the wind, holding out her pure white arms to me. I cried.

  I wanted her to leave, but she would not. Mandaphi stood beside my bed, smiling, her soft round breasts dipping down as she reached for my face, touching it gently. I felt her sweet breath against mine, her warm breasts against my chest, and I struggled and pleaded for her to leave my phrenes in peace. Surely, as our breath became entangled, danger and disaster would penetrate us. Mendaphi was so warm against my skin. Her body was so beautiful. My God stood aside to watch me, a weak man, collapsing into passion and then into deep sleep.

  By morning I was aroused by trembling, feeling my body shake from side to side. I clutched my bedcloth, thinking I still lay in sleep, but I did not. The whole room shook, bringing down a beam across my door, blocking my escape. Jumping from my bed, I struggled to move it, to escape before the roof of my house fell down on the weight of my offences, my abuse of honour. As quickly as the tremor began, it ceased. All was quiet again.

  Wannaxsos was a wise and knowing man. Like my Pharaoh, there were few secrets on Eleus he could not see. No shameful vice was concealed. I had been disgraced by my thoughts of the night, and much worse, I was convinced they had caused the earth to tremble.

  Basilius invited me to the palace that day for a special audience with Wannaxsos, the king. My life stood in jeopardy, for I must pay the price of my transgressions, sacrificing my blood to Meterra in appeasement.

  I entered the king’s chamber to find Basilius, Mendaphi and Wannaxsos greeting me as a friend and not the corrupted man that I am. I fell to the floor, asking forgiveness.

  Basilius, a giant of a man, pulled me up from the gypsum floor with one hand and set me on my feet before the king.

  The eyes of Mendaphi touched me, but not in guilt as I expected. Nor were these the eyes of the woman who shared my night. The look on their faces was serious and grim. The king, Wannaxsos, spoke and I absorbed his words with awe and deep confusion.

  He said I had been denied the land of my beginning, my God and Pharaoh, my wife and child. I had become a man of Keftiu. They told me the voice of Meterra had spoken upon the wings of the wind, bringing back my crew with full life.
I could make a safe journey home. My ship was loaded with wondrous gifts for my return to Egypt. With the coming of the sun, on the day of great sacrifice, I would leave this island of the Great Green Sea, my home for many years.

  His words filled me with so much joy, yet I was empty of words of gratitude. I could not speak from the sorrow I felt within. Wetness fell from my eyes as I stood before him.

  That my crew had returned was a miracle, though they were not the same as I remembered them. My thumos was anxious for departure, but I was not.

  The black smoke of Akrotiri ascended from the north. It was a frightening omen of the day to come. My phrenes was still racked with guilt. I wondered if I was being sent away for my betrayal. This thought pained me deeply. Did they know of a calamity to come? Would my breath leave me in Keftiu waters? They knew if I perished here, Meterra would press her hand upon the passage to the underworld sea, preventing my entrance. Surely then I would rot, a lost man, forever. These thoughts troubled me.

  From the wharf I heard laughter and music from Eleus. Though Meterra coughed smoke from Akrotiri, the Keftiu people were joyful. The new season had arrived and the sacred ceremonies would soon exalt them all.

  The night before my ship set sail, the moon appeared like the smile of a man. The horns of the moon and the horns of the bull were the same, turned upwards. The gay spirit of the night air eased my aching thumos, allowing it to sing. I remained awake, listening while their lyre and double pipes sang to the horns of the moon and the dawn of a new day.

  From the Moon to Eleus

  October 1980

  T

  he path Mimis took up Oaxsa was the same he had always taken. It was a path well worn by shepherds and their goats for three thousand years, and before them, the ancient Minoans. His thoughts were far from Demetra’s procession below or the distressing image of doom on the sea that had touched her.

  He walked slowly, stopping from time to time when a shrub or rock enticed fond memories. He wondered how many times he had walked besides Omega on this same path. He wondered if the journey with the ancient priest was ending or had only begun. The ascent seemed slightly soured with an odour of destiny. He had a strange feeling that he might never walk this path again. Reaching the ancient temple of consecration, Mimis entered and sat upon the remains of the sacrificial slab of stone. Above him was the daylight moon, a crescent-shaped sliver of white, pointing upward, encircled by a halo of orange and red dust.

  Xarlomena to phengari,

  Orthios o kapitanos.

  These words came to his mind ahead of an image of a boat in a stormy sea. If the moon faces upwards, the captain must stay awake at the helm. This is the warning of such a moon. It is not a day to sail, to travel, to climb. As quickly as the thought arrived, Mimis dismissed it.

  He recalled Demetra’s words: If you want to really see yourself well, or anything beyond you, then stand on the moon. Look back!

  He lay backwards on the sacrificial stone, holding his walking stick with both hands. He aimed it towards the moon like a telescope. Right eye closed. Left eye open. One travels to the moon with half a mind, he thought. The other half, duty bound, waits behind.

  A silent shot, a single thought blasted out through the air. It flashed through the centre of the halo ring, through the thin orange and red clouds. Then he looked back to earth. Through the opening in the clouds, he saw the shape of someone lying in the temple. Himself? Someone else? The distance was too far. From the sacrificial stone on which he lay, Mimis felt someone’s eyes upon him. Could they be from another time?

  The circular opening appears within my mind, my phrenes, within my vaulted tomb. A light shines and survives and we are joined as one, within a single eye.

  Looking to the north, the smoke of Akrotiri rises again. The smell of it sours the sea. It sours these shores. Meterra, the twin-headed goddess, raises one head of death and revenge as black clouds reach to Keftiu. Her other face of great beauty turns away. We are left with the avenger. She blows her breath from Akrotiri, exhaling poisons. She kills crops and fills Keftiu’s wells with dust. The fish lie on the surface of the water, their bodies wash to shore. The putrid smell of death washes at our feet.

  Since the year the child was born, Meterra turned her deathly face to Keftiu. She gave warning: Surrender Sarapos! Release him to me. For seventeen seasons she has been offered the blood of another in his place.

  Basilius has now become part of me. I see him, hear his thoughts. It brings fear into my phrenes. The voice of Meterra screams within him. There is no mistaking what she says.

  I fear that King Wannaxsos no longer hears her voice. It has dimmed within his phrenes. He hears not a sound. He believes Her silence has set him free. Vanity swells in his noos. He no longer walks upon Meterra’s earth. He walks upon his own.

  So, for seventeen seasons, darkness has slowly fallen on Keftiu. On instructions from his king, Basilius is bound by decree to conspire and deceive Meterra, offering a special beast or a child in place of Sarapos.

  The priest presses blame on the words his king now inscribes in clay. His written words speak of his thoughts alone. No other. Such tablets he preserves as truth, and truth now lives within himself, the king.

  Basilius has refused to rest his eyes upon these words for fear they might enter his thumos, infect him as they have Wannaxsos and Mendaphi. Though he utters not one complaint to me, I see it in his eyes. A curse has fallen upon his loving king and it has blackened Keftiu skies.

  I see Basilius so clearly and our eyes touch, our thoughts exchange without a word being spoken. On this troubled day, I see Basilius close his eyes and look into the sky as though somewhere he hears music. A rhythm beats on the wind and out into the heavens. Trees begin to sway in every land. The eyes of the dead snap open, enlivened by the beat. The spirits of the unborn and the dead arrive from a place beyond our time and are swept upon the wind. They come to him, to the rhythm of his phrenes.

  Behind his closed eyes I feel his thoughts. The rhythmic music of time in the future is being swept down from the heavens to gather up the beating memory of the past. Together they are entwined within a spiral that performs before our simple smiles and wondering eyes.

  Through his ears I hear a voice. “Come! Dance into the heavens and beyond the Great green Sea. Join the rhythm of the past to the songs of those yet to be born into the endless journey.”

  My eyes are inside Basilius. We watch in awe together. His thumos begs to leave him, pleading to be coughed out, set free into the rhythm of the wind. I fear that he might leap into the spiral. Leap into the abyss. I fear for my soul. I knew if he climbed first, I must follow into the circular opening through the centre of the earth’s eye and inward toward the other side where we, together, would touch the stars.

  Through his ears I hear an earthly rumbling out to sea, the trauma of the splitting rock, the hot gases boiling in the air. I listen while Basilius awaits the treachery to come.

  Darkness had fallen on Elefsis. The sun had sunk into a horizon of angry clouds. The clouds, backlit, grew blacker. On the narrow isthmus, in a grand display of light and music, the Freedom Day play had begun, brought to life by the angelic chorus of singing voices. It was a spectacle the likes of which no one of the region could recall.

  The road from Elefsis Port to Eleus had unnaturally come to light with standard kerosene torches placed on either side. The lights wandered through the narrow streets of the town, out onto the open Venetian salt flats, over the tiny canal bridge made of stone to where the Minoan city of Eleus once stood.

  Visitors had come from many villages. They followed the torchlit way, carrying cupped candles that were sold along the theatrical procession. To Paki Pilofakis it seemed like a single stream of light, a gentle lava flow flickering, meandering toward Eleus. His chest had filled with ether and he thought his head might pop or his body explode with pride. How fitting it would be, his great achievement, to burst outward to the stars where a constellation would be formed
in his name. The long parade of people could sense they were the prelude of the play. Pilofakis wondered if Euripides might return from the dead this evening, would he brim with pride or choke with envy at this sight? Might he consider rewriting the opening of Iphegenia to include an audience arriving along the illuminated way? For Pilofakis, it was his moment of moments, a Pilofakis – Euripides collaboration. He was drunk from the vapours of the night. The play had begun.

  He could almost see the thousand ships harboured in stillness, trapped by the gods at Aulis. He could see the general, Agamemnon, staring out to sea. Dwarfed beside Agamemnon, whispering in his ear, was the soothsayer, Calchas.

  A windless sea trapped Agamemnon, his brother, Menelaus, and their armies. They were unable to exact revenge on troy and the Trojan prince, Paris, for escaping with the wife of Menelaus, the beautiful Helen. Helen had fled her home and brutish husband to be with the prince she loved.

  According to Calchas, the voices of the gods had entered him with a warning. They cursed the journey. They warned that the Greeks would never see the wind again, never see the open sea or fight boldly with revenge. They would never achieve their destiny.

  Thus, Agamemnon, in vain glory, accepted that his daughter, Iphigenia, should be sacrificed to appease the gods. With her poor white neck slashed open by a sword, the blood of Iphegenia would flow freely into the earth, satisfying the thirst of the gods. This would unleash the winds. Agamemnon, Menelaus and their armies would be set free. So Agamemnon sent an inscribed clay tablet to his wife, Clytemnestra. Deceitfully, under the guise of marriage to Achilles, the prince, he asked his wife to bring him their daughter. When their daughter came forth, the murderous deed would be done.

  The audience watched in awe at the entrance of Agamemnon. A fearless handsome giant of a man entered, covered in glistening war attire. The chorus sang, thickening the air with haunting songs of remorse and guilt.

  The sound of a rocket exploded into the sky, provoking a gasp of fear from the crowd.