Frank Georgalis – Writer

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

“Monastery outside view”

 

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Close up view of an  island near the town

 

A view of Astakos from across the bay

By: Frank Georgalis

The place was as silent as any empty place of worship could be expected, and for a long minute or two, no words were exchanged between the two, nor any kind of suspicion arose, just the long glances. Suddenly the silence was broken by the flight of some pigeons going out of the church through their private entrance and exit in a boarded up window.

“Good morning,” said the visitor, bowing slightly.

“Good morning,” returned the old man, who started to come on his feet slowly with some noticeable effort, holding the book and the wire reamed glasses on one hand and using the back of the chair with the other to rise.

While the young visitor stood there restricting his glance on the old man, the old man was trying to secure himself in a standing position. He was a true picture of a monk, a long gray beard; with his hair tied back into a knot covered with an old monk headgear, and was dressed in a faded black robe that reached down a little above his sandals.

“I knew that I would find you here,” he said, advancing towards the old man. “You are Socrates, aren’t you?”

“Yes, I am,” replied the old man, starting towards him, without uttering a simple sound of moaning, as one might have expected from his appearance. “What do they call you, young man?”

“My name is Dimitri Georgiou, I live in America, but I was born here, in Astakos.”

“Yes, I know,” said Socrates, standing close to Dimitri now.

“How do you know?”

“I knew your father, Elias, and I can see his image in you,” said Socrates, extending his hand for a shake, and leaning on a chair with the other.

Dimitri took his hand, bowed slightly and attempted to bring it to his lips to kiss it as the tradition dictated.

“No,” said Socrates, “I am not a priest; I am not even a monk. I am just a sexton. I light the candles and fill the lamps with oil. Priests deserve that reverence,” continued the old sexton, pulling his hand away as gently as he had handed it. “I have never been any bigger than I am now. I have never been bigger than any of the other men in the room. This expression does not apply to size or cleverness but it only has reference in significance. I was actually born and destined to be a servant to somebody because of my family roots. Finding no one more clever than I, deserving my services, I decided to be my own master and servant.”

“You are servicing Prophet Elias now by caring for his monastery,” interrupted Dimitri.

“No. I don’t take care of this monastery for Prophet Elias; I take care of it for me. This is my home and his house, but we do not bother each other. Of course the worshipers and tourists come around and leave some money, which I use to support myself and my home. Like I said, one may say that Prophet Elias is my roommate, not my master,” replied Socrates, with the air of a stage actor.

From the way he carried on himself it was obvious, in spite of his age, he was still brimming over with zest and excitement. He seemed to be enthusiastic and impulsive and maintained his sense of humor to entertain himself, after all most of the time he was the sole beholder. It seemed that life to him was not just for the sake of living it, but it was celebration.

“A man who has no one to serve him or no one to serve, can very well be called a hermit; and if the hermit is old, is called an old hermit, but for reasons that I will tell you a little later, I don’t wish to be called old, I can say that I am a hermit stricken with old age. In fact, I was born the same year as your father in 1902 in the town of Dragamesto, which doesn’t exist any longer. The inhabitants descended to the flat lands and built a new town now called Karaiskaki, I am sure you know that. Your father and I were in the army together in 1922. We struggled fighting the Turks in Thrace and Macedonia. I’d say we tussled and struggled fighting the Turks and we were tormented for having very little to fight with. I am sure you know that too. In October of this past year, 2006, I became 104 years old but I don’t how much older I am going to get. I know I am on death row and confined in my little space, not because of any prison bars about me, but the lack of strength. That’s God’s way of keeping his death row inmates in line and sinless on their way to the next world. No hope of appeals, or retrials, maybe abstaining of the execution once or twice. Another words I don’t have a prayer,” concluded the old man with the loud laugh of a younger man.

“For that matter, we are all on death row.”

“No, not unless you know you have less than ten years of life left in you,” returned Socrates almost sullenly.

Since the philosophical aspect about death was too vast to be discussed, it was abandoned by allowing a brief silence to take over.

“Look at this monastery,” began the sexton, taking a seat on a straw chair, still holding onto his old book and glasses. “They say it was built almost a thousand years ago during the Byzantine era. The boarded up windows with the aged and unpainted wood are there in place of the stained glass. These icons you see on a display are new prints. There were originals ones, until the end of WWII. After that, foreigners visited Greece and the hundreds of unprotected monasteries were torn apart and robbed by those so-called tourists; once they saw the hand carved furniture and the icons went insane. They tore up the furniture, taking pieces with them and stole the icons. Think and imagine how many soldiers and conquers came through Greece in the last eight hundred years; they did every bad thing one’s mind can conceive but not one of them touched, out of respect, the icons. The modern tourists came; without fear, shame, reverence or respect lay their cursed and violent hands upon them and ripped them off the walls like vultures and took them, leaving horrible holes behind them,” continued the old man fiercely.

That old man, due to his age and lack of his original strength could be considered one of the best-tempered creatures on earth, but now he spoke with great gravity in his manner.

“Has modern man gotten away from God and nature and embraced the Gucci shoes, the Rolex watches Pier Cardin suits and the Leslie Carons divas? Are they the generation of the new pagans? Tell me!’

He stopped and looked in the eyes of Dimitri with a demanding look in his. Dimitri looked bewilderedly at Socrates.

“Oh, I know about Gucci’s and Pier Cardin suits and Rolex watches: I may live away from your present society but I keep track of it. There should be a law against extravagance, but there isn’t. Modern man has come up with an unwritten law; a law against most passions of the breast including humbleness, pride and faith. They don’t know it but they live by it. They are the new generations of slaves; slaves of what they see and touch, I would say, they call it freedom of expression. Look what so called freedom has done. It has killed logic and common sense. It has taken the melody out of music. It has taken the pride out of appearance. It has taken the romance out of love. It has taken commitment out of marriage, learning out of education; it has taken the nativity scene out of cities and it has taken God out of government and schools. That is what freedom of expression has done. But it has added marijuana and cocaine in our daily bread, teenage sex in our daily activities, abortion for the solution of a problem of free love, and of course it has replaced prayer with violence.”

“I am not sure you know that I speak English, Italian and German and I read the American and the English papers. There is a German family that lives down the hill from here and that gets the New York Times and some other newspaper and magazines of the English language and once a week the man drops them off to me. I may sound like a man who was waiting for an ear to pour out his guts; maybe. The reason that I have taken the liberty in ranting on is my frustration, starting with the thievery of our country’s treasures and winding up with the extravagance of the modern man is because I am Greek and we are famous for being outspoken and unable to keep anger inside of us. The other reason is I see that you are modest, even though you come from family tree, which flourishes with pride. By the way, your raincoat is not a London Fog, is it?”

“It’s Kmart,” interrupted Dimitri with a smile, letting the old man know that he was enjoining his speech of frustration.

“Hem! K-mart. Is it the store that caters to the poor or the thrifty?”

“To the humble,” rejoiced Dimitri.

“That’s funny,” said Socrates. “You must be different. Like I said, your family tree has not one branch of humbleness. You must be a sore of an artist. Being an artist, you see more than of what you can touch; therefore you don’t measure wealth with money.”

Socrates held a pause and looked at the young man for a long minute, as if he were waiting for a remark from him, but hearing not a word, the old man continued in a different tone.

“Don’t mind me; I can talk this way because I am like an old man now. Your father didn’t live long enough to be an old man; he died when he was only ninety.” He stopped, looked at Dimitri briefly and smiled. “Many nights,” he continued, “I go in the court yard in a clear night and I look at the sky and see a million stars pinned on the dark dome shining like small copper nail heads. Then I think, how big the world is and how small that I am. How many years I have lived without anybody taking notice of me for I am so small and did not shine. Now, I only talk to myself. When did I start talking to myself?” said Socrates, as if only spoke to himself. “I know when I started talking to myself, is when I stopped laughing. When did I stop laughing? Oh, I know when I stopped singing; when did I stop singing? I know that too. I stop singing when I stopped dreaming. My God, now I remember I stopped dreaming when I lost sight of the window through which I could see ahead. In my world now there is only one window, the rear window through which I can only see the past. That is why I only talk about the past. I have no more dreams, but I dream; I just dream of the past. I don’t mean to sound, as if I pity myself, but I can’t grasp and get used to the idea of getting old so fast. I ‘m probably feeling angry at the world for becoming different from the one I found when I entered it. It has changed so much I feel that I was never asked because I was a nobody.”

That old man’s speech of passion was no sooner concluded, he composed himself once again, after wiping his eyes and condemning them for shedding tears of old age, and occurring to him that he could continue his chatting with Dimitri with better effect outside and trying to look as wise as he could, he came to his feet, preened for a moment and strutted towards the door, took up his staff that had been leaning indolently in the corner by the entrance, he walked out with Dimitri following close behind, both in silence.

Socrates the old sexton

“Living up here alone for almost eighty years, I taught myself a few things, one is making good coffee. Would you like a cup, Dimitri?” asked Socrates with a smile, as they came out of the church, who seemed to be too glad to make himself useful, too happy to see some live face around him, instead of icons and books, and too desirous to display his independence.

“I have learned to love many things in life and one of them is coffee in the morning outdoors, looking at the mountains and the sea,” replied Dimitri, “and this is the best place yet.”

“Speaking of learning, your father didn’t live long enough to be an old man, I’ll tell you why, I said that,” stated the old man, leaning on his hand made staff, “I saw your father in town right before he died, fifteen years ago.  When he asked me how I was doing I told him, for an old man, I am doing fine. Your father made clever reply when I asked him the same question, ‘I am not an old man; I may have grown old but I didn’t become an old man and I will not allow myself to be thought of or be called an old man.’ That was some type of learning to me, which stayed with me. I now think that I might have grown old for not thinking of my years of age. I am still not an old man. He made me to understand that the word ‘old man’ is another adjective linked to the unpleasant instrument of death and is not to be mentioned out of pure politeness. Ever since then, I think that of the word ‘old man’ is enough to turn a man ill, seeing his lean old carcass shivering like an ugly ghost going into a grave, and I avoid the word” said Socrates in very solemn tone of voice.

Dimitri, who was a writer, had gone there to learn something more about the monastery than he already knew found the old sexton amusing and very wise.

“I think this monastery and you, living together all these years, you must be holding on to a lot of secrets.”

“No, it cannot be, it would be too rare for somebody to make a statement such as this,” returned the old sexton now full of excitement.

Looking at him, Dimitri noticed that his face had turned pale and thin and with a transformed, agitated expression on it.

“Why did you make that statement, my boy?” asked Socrates.

“Because of something I heard that happened long ago up here and that has remained a secret” said Dimitri rather sternly.

“And you want the secrets to be exposed,” returned the old sexton. Not waiting for an answer he rushed and sat on the stonewall facing the town leaving Dimiti behind him.

Dimitri made no reply but became very perplexed by Socrates’ sudden change. He looked at him, who had suddenly fallen in deep thought and still went on thinking of what ever Dimitri had stirred in his head, it had to be so important and painful that it seemed Dimitri had caused the old man to have lost track of where he was.

“Secrets? Yes; not a lot, but some, but one in particular will make your hair stand up. Here, on this spot! It all started from where you are standing now. I can still see the blood upon these stones.” began Socrates, with a voice that quivered with bitterness, as if he were looking for the time and someone to reveal what he had held in his heart.  “I will open the doors of my heart and let out what’s been eating at me and making me so bitter; but you must promise me, at the end of my telling what has happened you must say, —I was wrong, and that I know—how wrong I was.”

“Gladly.”

“It was January of the year of 1944,” began Socrates, “there I was on a stone stoop stretched out as if I had no worry in this world. Brother Athanasios was sitting near me on a wooden bench reading the Holy Book out loud, while the rest of the monks were around tending to their daily choirs. That morning was the same as any other morning. It was a bright, fresh dewy morning. The sun had broken through the clouds that had screened it, and its rays touched upon the rocks, the boulders, the ravines and church roofs including all the little church cells which are attached to the monastery, as you can see. I had hardly put my head on the head rest, when I felt I was dropping asleep. Suddenly, distinct, deep cannon were heard booming to the right of us, hovered in the air and died away in the stillness. Neither I nor Brother Athanasius was alarmed because we knew that Germans were playing their usual war games and we were out of harm’s way. Several seconds had passed and a second and third shot were heard and they both exploded closer to the monastery, which made the little windows to rattle and sent the pigeons and other species of wings and feathers flying for cover. The whole shooting event was so frequent it was taken for granted. Suddenly Brother Athanasius stood up and with his standing I came to my feet and heard him letting out a loud worried moan.

Looking in the same direction, I saw a platoon of heavily armed German soldiers heading our way about two to three hundred meters down the ravine. With the second and the third explosion something weird came over me, resembling pure fear for my life. Standing next to Brother Athanasius I could smell the imaginary blood and powder, I could feel the horror and the dread of death to the point that I was tempted to run away and hide, but the sudden voice of brother Athanasius stopped me.

Brother of Athanasios                          Captain Rands
” I know you Captain Rands,            You will go there before I ”
I also know you have
an appointment
with the Devil”

‘Go and ring the church bell,’ Brother Athanasius said calmly, but the look on his face was somewhat worrisome, but no traces of any fear. ‘Don’t be scared, Brother Socrates, no one can be good at anything while he fears death. Doctor Tselios’ men, (the communist party guerrillas), are not far from here. They should be all around us in minutes once they hear the church bell ringing, besides, when Germans hear the bell they will know it’s a signal and they will not attack us not knowing the number of the guerrillas.’

I rushed in a panic and grabbed the rope to ring the bell: because of bad luck or my fear and anxiety, or the demon’s work, I jerked it and the rope broke. I ran to the back of the church I looked and found a ladder. I climbed the ladder to the roof, but when I reached the bell I looked down and saw German soldiers had entered the courtyard already. I hid under the bell. I didn’t know why they had come here, they had never done this before, but I knew they did not come here to pray or to be blessed. Hiding up there,” continued the old sexton, pointing with his cane at the steeple, “I knew if I would ring the bell at that time I would be shot on the spot and all the monks would die, so I sat there hiding and praying to Prophet Elias to save us. I could only hear what was taking place, but I could just see some of them.”

Socrates was giving such a clear and precise utterance of his story it was evident it had for ever been in his mind and he talked sullenly as a man who was hurt and who had long been silent.

“I remember. Oh, how well I remember. First they set up five machineguns on the ground, facing the retaining wall; secondly they rounded up the twelve monks and an eight year old orphan boy we were taking care of.  I heard them talking and then I saw the commandant given a chocolate bar to the boy. When the boy finished eating the chocolate, moved out my view, but I heard him thanking the Captain who had given him the chocolate. About thirty seconds later I heard the commandant speaking to the monks loudly, but because of his accent and the distance and the booming of another cannon round, I couldn’t make out what he was saying. I then saw the captain coming into view, holding a pistol. He suddenly turned and fired at something out of my view. The soldiers who tended the machineguns hit the ground and took positions ready to fire. I saw the monks herding together with frightened faces, the sun hid behind the clouds and I cowed under the church bell, expecting the worse.

‘I know you, Captain Rends,’ I heard Athanasius shouting.

‘How do you know my name?’ asked the commandant loudly.

‘I don’t only know your name but I also know you have an appointment with the devil; tomorrow, the day after, in a month, the most in a year. You will have your eyes removed from their sockets and your throat cut while you are standing. Oh, yes, I know your name, Captain Rends, and I know where you are coming from. You were the commander of the company of over one hundred men, who massacre 1,590 men and young boys in Kalavrita December the thirteenth of this past year. You are the one who executed the monks in the monastery Agia Lavra two days before the Kalavrita massacre and I was one of the two survivors of the monastery you did not finish with your bayonets because I was too deep below the dead bodies. What are you doing here, animal? I know you are being hunted like an animal by the guerrillas and it’s only a matter of a short time before they get you. I know you are going to kill us all. I spit on you and your whole barbaric nation and Hitler too, and you go to your appointment! Pigene sto diavolo! (Go to hell).’

“I heard every word he spoke,” said Socrates. “Any one could see the captain’s anger in his face and the blazing fury in his eyes as he trembled. A man trembles with anger as well as fear, but his trembling was from anger. He gnashed his teeth, drew his bayonet, went close to the monk, looked into his eyes, without breathing a word or pronouncing a syllable, and stretched out the hand with the bayonet and inserted it into the monk’s stomach. He stood there gazing with a grimacing look in his face as the old monk went down with his hands pressed on his belly, as if to keep his guts from falling out.’

‘The rest of you,’ said the captain in very stern terms, in perfect Greek. ‘Do not stir a hand or a foot until I am passed the ravine. Then attend and bury your partner in crime.’

At these simple but stern words the bayonet, which glittered in his hands, was wiped off on the dead monk’s robe and was placed in its holster. The fits of such men as Captain Rends are like boiling oil; — a drop of water is enough to spread disaster.”

“The captain,” continued Socrates, “turned and faced his men, still trembling visibly, and as if trying to mingle his hatred with his conscious to look composed, he said something in German and hastily descended from the court yard. He was followed by all his men, except the five gunners and their assistants who remained behind with their machineguns in place. The gunners and their assistants came to a sitting position and clicked their machines as if they were about to disassemble them and pick them up and follow their leader, and I breathed with relief. No sooner that was done, I, still thinking the worse was over, heard the machine guns opened fire on the monks. I, the coward of the mountain, hearing the gunfire and seeing parts of the monks flying everywhere, covered my head with my hands and stayed in that position,” said the sexton, with such pathos and sorrow in his speaking that Dimitri had not heard before.

Some of the monks and the little boy that killed by the Germans

 

T

They finished the job.      Not burring them

killing them

“That whole happening lived in my head for many years. The tempest was there in its entire wrath and all its grandeur. I remember what happened and what followed after the Germans had gone. The sounds and visions are still in my head, lingering like an unhealing sore. I heard the fearful screams coming from those monks, during that tempest; then the sound of the firing machineguns stopped, the soldiers’ foot steps faded away and the screams changing to moans continued for a little longer. The dead were silent and the dying moaned and then they too died down and everything became quiet, still as if the world lost its way and forgot its chore. I remember well the piteous, helpless groans of dying men came from where I am sitting now. I was here and witnessed the whole tragedy, I failed to execute my mission to ring the bell and you are the only one that I am telling this,” continued Socrates, turning his face to Dimitri, who had gone near him already.

“I jumped down from the steeple onto the courtyard and the first thing I saw was our little boy, the orphan lying on the courtyard slab, dipped in blood, unmoved and muted. I realized then the captain had shot the boy in the head, after the boy thanked him for the chocolate. His black curly hair was sprinkled with blood and brains. I remember five minutes before then, how the boy had come to me with tobacco to fill my pipe. His cheeks were rosy and his mouth was smiling. Now I looked at him and it looked pale and white. His eyes were still open and his face looked as if it wore a smile, a joyful smile. The little boy was evidently hit by the captain’s bullet so suddenly, he thought it was a game and died playing the game. His glittering eyes, staring in childish terror and excitement, rested on me with no change of expression on his face as long as I stood there and stared back for a long time.”

“I got down on my knees, shoved my trembling hands under the lifeless body, picked it up and held it tightly for a long time with a thousand drops of sweat covering my face and rivers of tears flooding my eyes. I was still hearing some moaning, and the cries of the dying monks accompanied with three thousand incoherencies. They were neither harsh nor cruel. There was the smell of the gunpowder. There was huge gray sky laden with deep dark clouds as far as they could see. There was the monastery standing sullen and silent. There was the bell steeple covered with dust and smoke. There was the open head of the eight-year old orphan rested upon my shoulder and his blood soaked arms hung down loosely. I stood up and walked away with the little boy’s body that stayed immovable and glued on me. It remained immovable as I advanced around the monastery. It remained immovable and close to me when I reached my destination under the almond tree in the back of the church. I carefully placed the body on the ground and immediately began to dig a grave.

“As I finished digging the grave, I realized that I could not still recover my presence of mind, which deserted me in the first overpowering shock of seeing death taking so many lives from under me. I was able though to place the boy in his grave. Refusing to read any eulogy from the holy book, for being angry, so angry with God and Prophet Elias, I hastily covered it with the soil. I came to my feet and looked up and shouted curses at God and Prophet Elias for not forewarn us of was about to happen.”

“Eventually, after the burial, I gathered enough strength and courage and strolled to where the monks rested dead and silent with some of their limps torn away from them by the rain of bullets. The sun suddenly came out from behind the clouds and brightened up the day, and everything around was so quiet and happy as if nothing had happened, but the monks could care no more and could know less. Although everything was quiet and happy, my mind was in a stormy whirl and felt more and  more the ground on which I stood was slipping away under my  feet. All those dead people were like brothers to me. They were people that I had known in daily life, as I said they were dead, gone and finished, but I was still there feeling the non-stop torment. I then realized that disaster has no end. I turned and gazed at the monastery and let out a roar of anger again; it echoed around the mountain as if it were looking to find a place to enter.”

“You, Prophet Elias, could have sent us a hint of what was about to happen, I shouted. You selfish beast of the universe, I remember yelling. I shall burn you out of here and send you back to hell where you belong.”