Frank Georgalis – Writer

Salome: The Secret Love Story of the The Third Maria:(Book, Part I)

By :

Frank Elias Georgalis

Chapter I

Socrates, the Sexton of Prophet Elias Monastery

It was a chilly morning just before sunrise; the crests of the hilltop in the valley below looked discernible in the light of the late dawn, although the stony foundations were still plunged in darkness. A light mist, like a lost spirit, floated in the air; then ultimately it lifted and left, and the shores of a sleeping village on the blue gulf became visible. The sun rising from behind the rocky hills, called Potharia, across the water, spread a rosy flush over the sky lighting up the rocky shores and the deep green meadows that stretched out flat around the bay and the village, illuminating the distant mountains and the three small rocky islands at the mouth of the gulf, looking rugged and gray in the first rays of the sun.

The village, surrounded by deep green meadows and rocky hills, was the fishing village of Astakos, sleeping quietly on the shores of Western Greece. The ragged gray mountain Viloutsa with much grace and determination rises like a gallant giant with its feet under the village and on the edge of the sapphire waters of the gulf, giving to the beholder the distinct imression that it is hovering in the air to protect the village at his feet. and with its back resting on the base of the gray mountain Veloutsa. About fifteen nautical miles away to the south of Astakos, the historical island Ithaca, Ulysses’ home, anchored on the sea but looked as if it sat on a light blue carpet sprinkled with white spots. On a clear day one could see the olive trees covering the hills of the island, changing colors from light green to dark green, as their leaves got twisted by the caressing of the gentle breeze as it passed heading for the mainland.

The Author’s Hometown

There stood a man next to huge gray boulder. He looked that he didn’t somply gaze, but he just marveled with his eyes fixed straight ahead. This middle age man seemed as though he was concentrating on something familiar to him. He stood there for quite some time, wearing a light raincoat which was buttoned up around his body with the collar pulled up over his ears, so completely as if to obscure the lower part of his face.

.    Frowning, in the back of him, was the tall jagged mountain, Veloutsa, looking as if it were dressed in a gray robe, stained with rusty streaks starting from its bushy top and continuing down to its rocky toes and it looked as if it were holding the sky from touching the earth. A few hundred yards to his right was a small white, aging and neglected monastery, gazing from its nest in the hands of the rocky cliffs, enclosed and honored by white washed retaining walls that looked like piles of snow under the sun.

While standing there he started reminiscing, he suddenly sighed and looked away, first to his right then to his left, as if he were trying to avoid something unpleasant that his mind involuntarily touched upon. But no matter where he gazed he found traces of dreams, some of which had come true, and some came back to him frail and rusty from time past. Memories, there they stood before him, pointing upwards like the Church of St. Nicolas, with its bell steeples and the round golden dome, rising above the many red-roof houses. What he was really dwelling upon and marveling at were the surroundings of his beloved place of birth, that idling fishing village Astakos. It was the village in which he spent the first fifteen years of his life, until he was snatched away and taken to America by his parents along with a younger sister and brother. It was the place he saw his first light of the world; he learned his first alphabet, knitted in his head plans, planted his first dreams and learned to use the spoon to eat his porridge. That was the first place where he had a taste of human greed, violence, and peace. That was where he felt the agonies of falling in love, and the need to love and be loved. Remembering his first love, a gypsy girl, who lived in a tent nearby, put a vague smile on his face. He was six and she was nine; he remembered her flirting with him by fixing her big dark eyes on him and now and then would toss her long black hair back with a vigorous freedom, as if to show him that she was in control of life and herself and had no intentions of being captured. He remembered how she would smile and then giggle, as she’d turn and run into her tent.

Standing there and looking downhill at the town, he realized that memories don’t vanish; they only form themselves and harbor in the young brain no matter how troubling or brief they are and reappear now and then by a mysterious motive and a pleasant nostalgia with the touch of sadness; where did it all go? He sighed, thinking that the world then was much sweeter than he knew.

In that recalling part of his youth, he remembered how his mornings arrived. The first ray of the morning sun would fall on his six year old sister while she slept on single bed across from his. He remembered how she would open up her dark eyes. Her awakening was like the opening of a rosebud. He remembered well how his little sister smiled. Her whole face was a smile. Her eyes smiled; the dimples in her crimson cheeks smiled. There was a serene acceptance of the morning along with life in that smile.

Then there was his little brother, two years younger than she, who for lack of a bed spent the night in his wooden crib in the same room. This frail creature who did not know the difference between right and wrong yet, who couldn’t decide on his first move after his awakening, who had many masters and not one friend, being too young to know how to honor friendship, would sit in his crib, as if he were undecided whether to laugh or cry. Suddenly the sound of a spoon touching a porridge bowl in the next room would bring him to his feet and he would jump from his crib, finding it natural, would run to where the sound of the spoon scratching the bowl had come from, would take a seat on the corner of the dining room table for lack of high chair, and would immediately attack the bowl of porridge which the pretty blue eyed mother had prepared. He would begin to eat without any thoughts in his head except to fill his little empty belly. From time to time he would renounce all etiquette of civilization and would eat with his fingers.

The monitoring man, having looked long enough and having recalled some of his past experiences of his formative years, which had awakened much passion within his breast, took a deep breath, turned and headed for the aged monastery.

He kept on his course on a narrow path of winding and constricted ways between the rocks and green thick bushes, until he reached and climbed the five wide steps, which brought him in the courtyard of the monastery where he paused for a moment to look at the grieving structure of stones and lime with its steeple shooting up holding a tarnished and weather bitten church bell. It was the monastery of Prophet Elias.

Monk’s cell and the 1st  old monastery of Prophet Elias

He glanced all around him with the air of a man who had seen them too often before to think of them worthy of any more study than just a mere notice now; even the deplorable condition of the small church and its attached half a dozen clay roofed cells had no affect on him. He had visited with his father the monastery and the nearby goat corrals when he was a young boy, looking to buy animals to slaughter and to sell in their butcher store in the village of Astakos. After a brief look of normal curiosity, he slowly walked to the arched entrance, opened the door and advanced into the church. He stood a few steps beyond the door and surveyed the little Byzantine place of worship, from the paved stone floors to the old cathedral ceilings. He cast some visible attention looking on the ceiling and on the walls where many icons had been painted hundreds of years ago including the one of Prophet Elias’ familiar image, going to heaven on his flaming chariot, which took up the whole domed ceiling. The space between the Alter and the main area of the church was divided by a wall faced with icons of individual saints. There was an arched opening in the middle of the wall, with an image of Jesus in one side and Virgin Mary on the other holding the infant Christ in her arms.                            

 

The few burning candles and the glow of some oil lamps, teaming up with some day light which was admitted into the small church by making its way through the round holes at the boarded up windows, made the space more gloomy and filled it with strange shadows.

Completing his scrutinizing and satisfying his curiosity of the display of many religious objects, he fished some money out of his pants pocket, placed it on the table, picked up a long yellowish candle from the tray and holding it between his thumb and the first two fingers, he lit it and inserted it in a holder on the candle stand. He reverently walked and stood in front of Jesus’ icon and gazed at it for a long moment. He crossed himself, according to his spiritual upbringing, placed his lips lightly on the icon, kissed it lightly and stepped back of few paces with his eyes still confined on the Jesus icon.

The old Sexton                       Partial view from there

As he turned around to survey the rest of the church, was suddenly stunned, seeing an old man sitting in a dark corner under an oil burning hanging lamp above his very person with an open book on his lap, which he was evidently reading. From the expression on the visitor’s face it was something he didn’t expect to see.