The patmos deception, p.18
The Patmos Deception, page 18
“Oh, yes. Papa said the sea would heal me from the loss of my mother. He was right.”
She nodded at the silent, watchful man in the padded chair. “Your father sounds like a remarkable man.”
“I wish you could have seen him then. The strongest man in the world. And the wisest.”
“You were the best of friends,” she said. “And he was very proud of you.”
He started to ask how she could say such words when she reached up and swiftly wiped at her eyes. The gesture of a young woman determined to hide her emotions. And her secrets.
His grandmother asked, “What are you saying to this lovely child to make her sad?”
“I do not know, Yiayia.” He swiftly translated what they had been discussing.
When he was done, his grandmother said, “Tell this one she carries her burdens with God’s grace.”
The words caused Carey’s features to crimp down tightly. “Your grandmother reminds me of the woman who raised me.”
Dimitri expected Chara to ask about her family, but instead his grandmother observed, “Beauty can be a remarkable mask, for sometimes that is all the world wants to see.”
Carey studied the old woman as Dimitri translated, then he added, “My grandmother was considered the most beautiful woman in all the Dodecanese.”
“You still are,” Carey replied. “Where it matters.”
After Dimitri translated that, Chara astonished him by saying, “Tomorrow is the Sabbath. Ask this lovely young lady if she would care to come with me to mass at the monastery.”
For some reason this caused Carey to struggle anew for control. “I would be deeply, deeply honored.”
Chara rose slowly from her chair. “Dimitri, join me in the kitchen, please.”
As they left the patio, Carey called after them, “Can Nick come too?”
Once Dimitri had translated, his grandmother turned and studied the young man intently, then asked, “Is this one a believer?”
Carey glanced over, clearly hoping Nick would reply. But the journalist remained silent. Watchful. She turned back and said reluctantly, “In his own way, I suppose . . .”
Chara had a wise woman’s ability to dismiss with the softest intake of breath. “Perhaps it would be best for us to do this alone.”
Dimitri followed his grandmother back into the house and took a moment to adjust to the shadows. His grandmother moved to the kitchen window and looked out on Carey Mathers and his father. Chara said, “You can trust this one with your life.”
“You have an hour in her company and you are this certain?”
“Mark my words.” She moved to the stove and set a fresh pot of water on it to heat. “This one has the power to change your world forever.”
Dimitri took his grandmother’s place by the window. The shadows were deep enough for him to observe the patio and remain unseen. Carey spoke softly to Nick, who seemed reluctant to respond with more than a shrug or gesture. The journalist was a strange one. Most American men that Dimitri had known were both brash and loud. Handsome ones like Nick often became uncomfortable when not the center of attention. This one, however, seemed very familiar with losing himself in shadows.
He shifted his attention to Carey. His grandmother’s words were astonishing. Chara had met a number of his women. Foreign ladies loved being invited into the home of a local. His grandmother had made dozens of such meals. Chara always showed his guests island hospitality because it was her nature. Never once had she offered any comment other than the woman was nice or attractive. And not once had his grandmother asked what happened once the young woman had departed his life. Chara had always known they were only trysts.
He asked, “You truly think this is the one for me?”
Chara wheeled about, showing genuine astonishment. “Who said anything about romance?”
“You said—”
“She can change your world. That is what I said, and that is what this one will do. If you let her.”
“Yaiyai . . . I don’t understand.”
“No. On that we most certainly agree. There is too much you have allowed to sweep past you on the tide of pleasure and easy living.” She stumped over and pointed a finger directly at his face. “This one is special. This one is a gift. You will treat her with the care she deserves. You will listen. And you will learn.”
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Dimitri made arrangements to meet Carey at the hotel before daybreak. As she and Nick were getting ready to leave, Carey surprised them all by asking, “Would it be polite to kiss your grandmother good-bye?”
All of them, Chara and his father and Dimitri himself, found the question a nice reason to smile. “It would be charming.”
After the guests departed, Dimitri helped clear up the patio, washed the dishes, walked his grandmother down to her cottage, and then helped his father get ready for bed. There was a thoughtful feel to the sunset, a sense of expectancy. Dimitri sat for hours on the patio, wondering at what his grandmother had said—a woman from a distant land who would change his life, if he let her. He felt as though his grandmother’s words had been scripted upon the night sky.
Dimitri’s alarm went off at four. His father made no complaint about getting dressed and being served breakfast in the dark. He was a fisherman by nature as well as by trade.
The family vehicle was a ratty Citroën van of uncertain vintage. Dimitri didn’t know how old it was. The original color was a mystery. Years back, his father had spray-painted the exterior a modest tan that no longer hid the rust. The interior’s fabric was frayed, and a faded cushion on the driver’s seat covered an exposed spring. The vehicle smelled of oil and age and fish.
Dimitri stopped to pick up his grandmother and then drove to the harbor. As soon as he pulled up in front of the hotel, Carey came bounding down the front steps. His grandmother said, “Like a beautiful and excited child, this one.”
Carey slipped into the back seat behind his grandmother. “Thank you again for this amazing opportunity.”
His grandmother was dressed in her Sunday best, which meant a freshly washed and ironed black dress and a matching mantilla of hand-knitted lace. She passed over a folded kerchief and said, “Ask Carey if she would wear this for me.”
Dimitri watched in astonishment as Carey folded the silk scarf in her lap into a triangle, then slipped it over her hair and knotted it beneath her chin. He asked Chara, “You have given her my mother’s favorite scarf?”
“What is this, give? I loan her a covering.” She pointed out the front window. “Your job is to drive.”
Dimitri ground the gears and pressed down on the gas. They didn’t speak again until they’d left Skala behind. As they climbed through the dark into the central hills, Carey asked, “Mass is this early?”
“Yiayia likes these days to follow a certain routine. She goes to say morning prayers at the cave. She watches the sun rise. Then we go to Hora. She likes to arrive early, because too much walking is hard for her, and on Sundays the parking areas become very full.”
In the flash of passing headlights, he saw in the rearview mirror that Carey’s eyes had gone very round. “You are taking me to the Cave of the Apocalypse?”
“Yes. I said that.”
“No. You said we were attending mass at the monastery.”
“Is this a problem?”
Her voice was very low, solemn. “No, Dimitri. Everything is fine.”
The lone road through the central highlands was narrow, the curves sharp, and the incline steep. Dimitri preferred driving it in the dark. The sheer drop-offs and the absence of guardrails caused some passengers to swoon, and he was warned of oncoming traffic by their headlights. The people who lived in the island’s interior were known to be the worst drivers in all of Greece. The trip took them about twenty minutes. Dimitri parked in the convent’s forecourt and started to help his grandmother up the stairs.
This time, however, Chara reached out her free hand for Carey. The young woman slipped in close to Chara’s other side. Chara gripped her elbow and started forward. “Ask her if she knows of Patmaida.”
When Carey replied that she’d never heard the name before, he explained, “Below us at sunrise you will see a cypress grove. The buildings there are used as a theological seminary, over four hundred years old. It was founded when the Muslims still ruled us, and it was kept a secret for a hundred and fifty years. Still today it is a symbol of our island. We are the land that kept the flame of Christianity alive in a world that wanted to bury us forever.”
Carey’s voice remained low and unsteady. “Thank you for sharing with me the heart of your homeland.”
Dimitri translated her words for his grandmother. Chara’s response was to stop and say, “Give me a coin, please.”
The convent was officially closed until midday. But the gatekeeper arrived early on Sabbath dawns, there to welcome the locals and accept their token payment. “Don’t you want my help . . . ?” Dimitri stopped speaking, because his grandmother had already started up the path, arm in arm with their visitor.
For some reason, the sight of them entering the convent’s small portal left him feeling bereft. Every other time he had come up here, Dimitri had escaped to the road as soon as he settled his grandmother into place. This morning, however, he felt as if there was nothing for him to do but follow.
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Carey entered the compound feeling as though this was a gift she had waited a lifetime to receive. She had studied this place for years. The Cave of the Apocalypse and the Monastery of Saint John had formed major components of her thesis. The treasures now held in the monastery’s museum had been almost lost several times over their long and difficult history.
The Apostle John had most likely been exiled to Patmos from Ephesus in AD 95. That year had been a particularly awful one for the early church. The Emperor Domitian was dying, and the empire had entered a period of brutal repression. Christians were classified as atheists, for they refused to worship the emperor as a deity and therefore didn’t believe in anything as far as the Roman government was concerned. Laws were passed that granted regional governments the power to persecute and execute Christians.
So the disciple whom Jesus had called “beloved” was sent here, perhaps as banishment, perhaps by the Ephesus church in order to keep him safe. John would have been in his late seventies or early eighties at the time, and this cave would have served as an ideal refuge for an exile too old to build a home for himself. For the common people, such caves were viewed as places where the poorest and the outcast could find shelter. John would certainly have seen himself as one of these. He came to this place, high in the hills, most likely seeking a quiet haven where he could give up his earthly body and finally return to the company of his beloved Lord.
Only God was not yet ready to call him home.
John’s experience and his subsequent writings became a timeless gift of hope, both to the seven churches of Asia and to the centuries of faithful who would follow. John’s visions created a remarkable promise that the persecutors of God’s chosen would be destroyed, that all such experiences would be turned to eternal good. The word applied to John’s letter by its earliest readers was apocalypse, which translated as holy unveiling.
Carey and Chara fell into step with a number of other early arrivals, forming a silent procession through the small outer portal. Most pressed a small coin into the gatekeeper’s hand. Carey set a pace that was comfortable for Dimitri’s grandmother as they entered the first courtyard. She had studied the layout for so long that she could name each of the surrounding structures, even though all she could see were silhouettes carved from the night sky. The wall surrounding the entrance was adorned by a lunette, a mosaic symbolizing the moment of holy illumination. The courtyard was interspersed with a series of miniature doors, marking the cells used by women who sought to spend time in solitude and prayer. Carey knew there were almost a hundred of these women, drawn from all over the globe. Some came for a few days, others for the rest of their lives.
Straight ahead was the oldest part of the complex, a church whose foundations were set in place in the decades following John’s passage to heaven. A larger structure had been erected in the twelfth century. Carey and Chara passed through the chapel of Saint Anne, lit by hundreds of flickering candles, moving slowly past icons and crosses dating back fifteen centuries. Carey could have named almost all of them.
A soft murmur rippled along the procession, one voice whispering to the next, like the rustle of cedars being touched by a fresh wind. Chara smiled and spoke to the woman ahead of them, who turned to Carey and said, “Your friend wishes you to know that today we have special treat.”
“What is it?”
The procession moved even slower now. A step, a pause, another step. The woman replied in a reverent tone, “The bishop of Patmos is here. He will offer a benediction, and then together we will say the Lord’s Prayer.”
They were the last ones to find space within the cave itself. The cramped area was filled with penitents, many of them old women. But there were some young people too, including a child with fresh flowers woven into her dark tresses instead of a scarf. Each managed to find a place to either kneel or sit.
The bishop was a dark-robed figure seated at the very front. Carey noted that he was sitting on the ledge where John had slept. The man was in his late sixties or early seventies and had a gray beard that spilled over his chest. His eyes were closed, his seamed features calm. A younger woman slipped from the ledge where John’s feet would have rested so that Chara could sit down.
Carey knelt on the stone by Chara’s feet. A long moment ensued, so silent she could hear the candles hiss and sputter. A man coughed from behind her, and the sound echoed through the cave and the chapel. Carey took a slow look around. The wall over the ledge was adorned by a brilliant iconostasis, painted over six hundred years ago by a Cretan artist depicting John receiving the Revelation. Beside that were fragments of a much earlier painting that had once covered the entire wall and depicted John relating God’s message to his scribe. The design was partly obscured by written prayers, some dating back to the third or fourth century. Two silver frames marked the niche where John laid his head. To her right was the ledge where John’s amanuensis, or scribe, whose name was Prochoros, rested the parchment on which he wrote down John’s words.
The bishop began chanting. Carey bowed her head and allowed the words to wash over her. The man’s deep voice carried a powerful sense of prayerful reverence. The group responded with a soft amen, took a long breath, and began the recitation in response. Carey joined in, perhaps the only one there who didn’t speak the Lord’s Prayer in Greek.
As she said the words she’d repeated all her life long, she felt joined not merely to the gathering but to twenty centuries of believers. Abruptly she had a sense of rising beyond herself. It wasn’t a bodily experience, but rather a brief glimpse of her life as a flowing river with power and purpose. She recalled the tearful hours she had spent on her knees after breaking up with the one she thought she loved. The decision to throw herself into her graduate studies. The grim determination to shape her own course, to create a new direction in art studies: forensic archeology. The arguments with the faculty and deans, the research, the quest, anything to fill those forlorn hours with purpose and hope for a better tomorrow. All of it coming together with divine intent, a higher calling she could see only now. On her knees, in the Cave of Revelation.
Her long pilgrimage had come to an end.
Carey started sobbing so hard she could scarcely draw breath, much less rise when the prayer ended and the people began departing. At last she lifted her head and wiped her eyes. Only then did she realize Chara and the bishop were watching her, and smiling.
Dimitri’s bench was situated between the long line of hermit cells and the main church, shaded by the wall and a pair of lemon trees. The morning had just begun to strengthen as the congregants poured out, their voices a soft punctuation to the new day. His time alone here had been excruciating. He felt pressed down from all sides, as though the prayers of those unseen hermits, all locked away in their tight little cells, actually carried the force to compress him physically. Only there was nothing inside him to be released.
Before the economic crisis struck Greece, if anyone had asked Dimitri to describe his life, he would have responded instantly with, “No regrets.” It was a trademark response from the young men called pedarosi. The good-time lads who took pride in never growing up. Their world was defined by gamaki, flirting with girls, endless coffees and cigarettes with their mates, nights filled with dancing and laughter and music, competing good-naturedly with one another for the next gomenos—the next beautiful woman to hunt and woo and leave behind.
He was wrong to come here. He had avoided these places all his life, with their guilt and their blankets of black cloth draped over any hint of a good time. He had scorned the priests and their silly robes . . . but silently, because they were the trademark of Patmos, and the island was his home. But now, as he sat on the stone bench and breathed air perfumed by the lemon blossoms, he saw the other side of his world. The emptiness that he ran from so successfully, the tears he had caused, the absence of meaning or a future or any lasting purpose.
He watched in numb silence as Carey and Chara emerged from the chapel. They were accompanied by the Bishop Galatas, leader of the Patmos church. Chara spoke with the bishop in the casual manner of an old friend. Carey, on the other hand, looked as undone as Dimitri himself felt. Her face was puffy with tears, and it seemed as though his grandmother worked to support her down the stairs rather than the other way around.
He walked over and asked in English, “Are you all right?”
“It’s nothing,” Carey replied quietly. “I’m fine.”
“Can I get you anything?”
