Drink to Me Only with Thine Eyes
He returned often to the pile of stones behind the bushes to look at the Faiyum portrait – the hope, barely acknowledged, was that this icon might prove a window ... that something of the spirit of the hospitable monk might smile on him. His relationship to the images of Mani had been rocky of late, especially before his fall from grace. He regretted defacing the Christ icon in the church above, but life mediated by images had become hard to bear: he was losing the memory of what a real face looked like. He judged it unfair that his first human contact in ages was with the hirsute holy man, a (presumably) living image cloistered behind locks of dirty black hair.
Why was this portrait different? He was honestly stirred by the act of devotion showed by the pirate, but the image itself was moving too. He wished he could talk to this face, wished he could unburden himself to the priest in the picture, not really because he had so much to confess (though he really did), but because he shyly imagined that repentance was the cost of entry with such a one as this.
Arpaxos thought about the time that was left to him. There were many things that one might do before The End ... most were unavailable to him, but a single act of service remained that he might perform. He would take a cue from his predecessor and prepare the sanctuary for the next wave of pilgrims, who would never come, at least not in the flesh.
He began to order and clean the chapel. He swept the floor, burned empty boxes and wrappers, and buried the unburnables. With that done, Arpaxos took up the duties of prior acolytes, and arranged the altar for a last service: he trimmed the lamps and prepared the incense for burning. But there was no coal for lighting under the resin, and every other piece of fuel had just been burned as trash. Frustrated, he began to search ... under the fringes of the carpet, along the edges of the cell, behind the icons. He looked at the small box of books and was a little ashamed to consider burning one of them for fuel. He ran his fingers along the bindings, and, out of curiosity, took up one of the leather-bound books. It had no title, and a quick flip through the pages revealed that It was largely blank ... except for the sketches that filled the front third of the book. Behind it, wrapped in newsprint, a stash of charcoal.
With a shock of recognition, he understood that he was holding the pirate’s portfolio. The drawings were in the same style as the one that topped the monk’s grave, and – now he could see it – of the icon at the center of the altar.
The discovery meant that he now had something that could be burned for worship: he lit a small pile of the artist’s charcoal in the censer and placed a few pebbles of sacred sap over the embers. As incense filled the room, he lit a candle, and opened the book of images to the beginning. The dedication page had several inscriptions: the printed words για τον μπαμπά ... for daddy, next to a rough drawing of a stick figure holding a pencil aloft like a great sword. There was a name, A. Λογοθέτης, and an address in Mezapos. And also this – a pirate’s song for the dead from Deep Mani, written without the skill of the miroloyistrias, but with all the reverence of a witness:
O Cyprus Tree of deepest root, O flow of holy water! Thy ruined church (with quaking dome) yet bore a beaming welcome to thy warm and humble hutch; to host a prideful sinner, to cleanse of direst soot.
Arpaxos held the book tenderly, like an ancient manuscript, and with gentle reverence began to turn the pages. On each were icons of the sublime, or the mundane; every picture sacred. An urban square filled with couples dressed for spring. A small metal table on three legs overburdened with delicacies for an afternoon meal. A chapel in the shade of an impossibly great flower. A cemetery shaded and framed by a plane tree. Saints and Angels .... In each drawing he found himself before a familiar face. All the characters from his life and from his journey into exile were represented here. For so long, he’d been so focused on Evie: he understood that he had stopped seeing, stopped acknowledging those around him, and that he had really stopped seeing her as well. It was only when she was gone that he began to realize he really had no memory of her. Arpa could imagine her face, but now even hers became the face of a girl looking for something she would never find in him, because what she wanted was to be seen, truly, as a person, not as a priceless treasure to be locked away.
With an aching heart, Arpaxos turned through this series of images, each resonant with qualities he had become blind to. Each portrait was a window into a reality that he’d ignored, or rejected, for too long. He found Eva in a sketch of a young girl; her look of sad understanding, her face become the face of the Virgin. He could see now that when she looked out from the page, it was with a heart pierced to know that her loved ones were all doomed to die, and that she would have to carry on alone in some secret upper room to bear inside of her the story of humanity in hope of a new Pentecost, some future day when words would have meaning again.
Also there, a widow in black, cast in the role of Wisdom: long-suffering, creative, sheltering. She was as old and unchangeable as the hills, but also quick-witted, serious, and able to shape or move the hills when necessary, with a word. Next, the adolescent boy from behind the church who’d watched Arpaxos steal a can of fruit. He’d insisted at the time (to himself) that the boy had no cause to complain. But now he was forced to admit that this face – of an angel, one of the holy ones – would not be denied. Today, this image was a window letting in a righteous complaint from the world outside his cell. Was it a rebuke? A call to repentance? A challenge to forswear robbing his fellow refugees, coveting their perceived abundance, or murdering with hatred those who dared reveal weakness? He was chained in the dock, could not escape. The presence of the boy was growing now, his face becoming the face of Christ seen in the stranger, the beggar, the broken one. Now plaintiff, now judge.
Arpa couldn’t defend himself. Nor did he want to: he felt the same painful longing as at the priest’s grave – to meet the living face behind the portrait. His heart was thumping, and he felt an air of invitation in the space. With a freedom he hadn’t known in ages, he began to speak.
Tenderly, to the page in front of him, he asked, ‘What’s your name?’
He felt his attention drawn to the painted icon nearby, where Christ from his nimbus replied, ‘Ὁ ὬΝ’. The One Who Is. ... I am; I exist.
Arpaxos was set reeling by this, not only because of his concern that yet another icon was coming to life to provoke him, but because now he felt that windows were being thrown open all over the room. The boy was alive, and he could feel that this was no simple, spiritual affirmation – somehow he knew that in the world, today, the boy existed, and that he still waited .... That Evie was also out there, and many still lived that he had secretly sped on their way to the grave with his indifference. He felt the air warm and close in the room, but in his stomach he felt cold. He felt all were waiting, holding their breath.
Quietly, with an unpracticed reverence, he continued the conversation in the only way he could: acknowledging the presence behind the portrait, he asked in a rough whisper, ‘Where are you?’ The question was addressed to the boy, whose image was still laid open in his lap.
‘I am with you’, came the gentle response.
More quietly, almost wincing as he worked out the words ... ‘How?’
‘I am’
He shook his head, ‘You are ...?’
‘With you’
‘How??’
‘As I am’
Though this conversation was bound to the portrait of the boy, he knew that it belonged as much to the Christ icon, and there hung a holy confusion in the air. As if he was being carefully but forcefully rebuked in his desire that God would tear the top off the churches or the mountains, and come to him on a thundercloud, when such as this young boy still existed in the world, unmet. ... I am with you as I am.
Slowly he regained awareness of his surroundings. He was willing to receive the reproof that came by means of the image, because of the irresistible presence he felt, and the grace revealed in the eyes of the youth, in whose presence he sat for some time. He began to feel profound sadness at so many lost opportunities. At the same time he felt some gratitude to know the charges against himself, and he resolved, if need be, to accept death cut off from all others and from the true image of God, at least until the end. For now, he would turn his face to the open windows.
He moved to the altar, took up the prayer book, and completed the liturgy of Agia Eleóusa for the last time.
Arpaxos imagined he ought to approach death with a measure of nobility, though he really had no idea how to pull that off. He decided that a good start would be to work his way to the bottom of a bottle of tsipouro. He saw no reason to put off the inevitable, and spent hours drinking, and eating through the last of the supplies. Tomorrow? Maybe he would throw himself off the ledge to die in the graveyard of broken ladders. Smiling, he thought, no more need for climbing or descending – ‘We’re all dying where we stand, now. Who we are is who we are.’ But, no, he still couldn’t stomach the thought of harming himself (and, truthfully, he wasn’t entirely confident in the state of his soul, here at the end).
What he would do is tidy up one last time, and celebrate his life with a last meal before it was spent. Then, when the time came, he would lie down between the old priest and the cliff wall, and trust the winter rainstorms to bury him under red Mani earth, washed down from the cliffs above.
So he danced, unsteadily, and sang, and allowed himself to feel gratitude ... for Evie, for the boy behind the chapel, and even for the widows and their simple and (now he was able to admit) honest philosophies. He loved them all from a distance, repenting of his lack of generosity, wishing them well, and letting his heart open to them all. He came with the boy into the divine presence and, because he still could not pray, merely wept as he and all his burdens were laid out, finally bare before the face of God, no longer hidden. In this meeting space, he encouraged the boy ... ‘Go ahead and add to the pile of indictments; you must tell all that I have done!’
Arpa swayed at the edge of his platform, halfway down the cliff, teetering. He thought, wisely, that he should take a step back. He swayed again, and nearly fell, dropping the empty bottle, which rolled over the side. Foolishly, he lunged, but could not stop it. More foolishly, he cried out and felt shame to litter this holy place, kept so clean by its caretakers. With a drunken breathlessness, he scrambled to look over the side in hope that the lost bottle was within reach. He saw it, five feet below. And, just above it, protected by the rock overhang that he was now leaning over, he saw a rope, fixed to the stone by a great, rusty, iron eye. It was coiled and hanging off the anchor, waiting to be deployed with its now-decayed basket. He looked at his salvation through watery eyes for minutes, barely believing it was true that there was a way down.
When enough time had passed for him to sober up sufficiently, he considered the implications of his find. If he could get down to the water, he could at least swim out and look for a path up the hill. He knew that if his strength held out, he would be able to find a way.
The next day, just before the sun transited the cliff top, he stood thigh-deep in the water with a great grin, looking out over the small cove, and thinking about how best to survive the sea. He stretched his arms and checked the knots in his plastic bags one final time. Inside those bags were the remainders of the crackers and one small tin of sardella. The last half-bottle of booze (and a couple empties he’d filled with spring water) were lashed between the bags on a makeshift raft created from a couple of the dry planks found in the cove, and this assembly he set adrift secured to a length of rope he tied to his waist. None of it should slow him down too much, he hoped. With a final nod of satisfaction that he was able to leave the cave in good order, he waded into the sea.
Within an hour, he had landed on a narrow beach from which a path ascended up a wash to the flat plain that made up the southwestern hip of his peninsula, this plateau bare but for some low ruins, and exposed. He stood for a while reacquainting himself with the expansive reach of the open sky, chose gratitude once more, muttered a ‘Thank you’ with a shallow breath, and began to walk. His steps slowly became more confident.
He walked for a while along a dirt track hemmed in by purple wildflowers and heavy with the smell of anise and lavender in the midday sun. He saw another pedestrian, walking in the same direction but more than a mile distant. He recognized the black-robed and sandaled figure to be the priest. He cried out with a dry yell. Nothing. He began to walk faster, then ran, unsteadily, calling out in between gasps for breath. It took almost half an hour for him to gain enough ground, mostly walking for fear he might collapse, before his call could reach the man, who halted, and turned. As Arpaxos closed the final distance the priest stood, facing him, a monolith of inscrutability. Finally, the pilgrim, almost collapsing, came to a stop opposite the figure. He looked him full in the face. The other, alarmed at the bruised and broken image of the revenant, shakily raised his hand; was he defending himself? ... or trying to pay off a pauper with an empty blessing that said, again, ‘You see I have nothing to give you!’?
Arpa lifted his own hand as well, mirroring the gesture. And stepping forward, he took the raised hand gently into his own. Then with increasing resolve, he allowed his other hand to take hold as well, as if to prevent an escape. Three hands in a knot bound and brought together to rest against his own chest. Warm stinging tears flowed as he looked into this face, gaunt with hunger and darkened by encounters with death; yet to see past the shadow and into his eyes and to smell the pungent sweat through the curtain of black wool, and to know the truth. Finally, here was another human being.
He could find no words, and the priest seemed to have nothing to offer. Arpaxos slowly released the imprisoned hand, and gently lowered his bags to the ground. He took out the liquor and the last handfuls of food, carefully spread out a meal on an empty sack, and opened the bottle. A beggar’s communion shared by Abram and Melchizedek in the wilderness between wars, two wandering kings in battered crowns, reunited. But who would be the one to bless the other? Arpaxos provided the food, but who could spare a benediction?
Earlier in the day, the thought had occurred to him to cross the distance to his little church one more time, though he suspected that if he went there, he might find it difficult to leave. And now, at this moment, the priest, merely by being present and alive, rebuked him for his impulse to complete some business at the church with its frozen images. (His Tía joined the imaginary chorus, with a shake of her head: Είναι ντροπή να σκοντάψετε δύο φορές στην ίδια πέτρα ... It is a disgrace to stumble twice against the same stone). Besides, he hadn’t forgotten that in the breakup that preceded his fall he’d left his icon without eyes, and indeed the living face of the priest seemed to communicate (likely without that one’s knowledge or consent) ‘here is what you seek: look on me!’
A new world was opening up to him, as if the old planet was a giant buffet: a feast, not of foods, but of folks; all the good people left in the world. With a growing urgency, he recognized the quickly fading abundance of true human goodness and felt he shouldn’t let one morsel go untasted. He was starving. As epiphanies go, this one seemed to be the epitome of bad timing.
Though Arpaxos read much in the face of the priest, he wondered that the man had nothing to say. He knew that he could speak, had heard his voice from within the church during their prior encounter. So, Arpa chose to make the offering: he began to pray, knowing that the old liturgies are repeated for times like this. There would be more to say on other days; other liturgies for other congregations. But this was a moment for prayer.
He wasn’t sure he’d be able to remember all the words. It didn’t matter. The voice of the priest could be heard, softly, but growing in strength, and the pilgrim was no longer praying alone.
