Cathedrals of the Flesh (8 page)

'Never? Not even for a school trip or some sort of coming-of-age ceremony?' I asked, incredulous.

'No. I've been meaning to go for years, but I've never gotten around to it. Maybe I'll go down to Bodrum at some point and
try the thermal hamams,' said the woman keen on Tribeca bagels.

'We should start a revival right here in Istanbul,' I suggested. 'The other day I was at a neighborhood hamam and the owner
was there. He let me take pictures and I guess he sensed my interest, though we couldn't talk because I still speak only eleven
words of Turkish. Anyway, he desperately wanted to relive the glory days of the hamam, so he disappeared for a minute and
returned in this crazy green satin costume that he used to wear during the annual hamam owner's parade. It was a very bittersweet
moment with him standing there pretending to march and wave.'

'Alexia, you should be a Turk,' Kemal said, defusing the situation so that no one had to humor me with vows of future hamam
devotion or listen to any more of my hamam sentimentality.

After everyone left, Kemal invited me to dinner.

'Let's sail to the restaurant,' he suggested. I followed him down the jetty and we boarded a tiny sloop with a makeshift mast
that was nothing more than a busted oar. With endearing effort to look effortless, Kemal managed to raise the enormous sail.
The sail billowed, reluctantly at first, until the wind got behind us and pushed us around Kemal's jetty and a neighboring
stone causeway. Once we'd rounded the modest causeway, Kemal turned the boat straight toward shore, forcing us to come about.

'What are you doing? I thought we were sailing to a restaurant.'

'We're there,' he said, smiling. I saw a seaside restaurant directly in front of us, basically Kemal's next-door neighbor.

'Couldn't we have walked?' I asked, wondering if maybe this was an island or somehow mysteriously separated from Kemal's compound
not five hundred feet away.

'Yes, but what fun would that have been?'

The boat hit the pebbly shore and we stepped out. I liked life in Turkey.

Baksim walked by the restaurant as Kemal and I were nibbling on dolmas and eggplant dip. I hoped he wouldn't join us, so delightful
was this dinner alone with Kemal. All my appreciation for Baksim's help and friendship was dwarfed by a desire to be alone
with Kemal talking about sailing in between Aegean Islands. Baksim pulled up a chair and regarded us suspiciously. After a
moment of uncomfortable silence, I cut a dolma in half and made a weak attempt at a joke.

'Did you know that Turkey has the richest kitchen in the world?' I asked, parroting a statement that Baksim had drilled into
me over the four preceding weeks. Turks never tire of reminding foreigners that Turkish cooking is the apotheosis of countless
traditions.

Baksim was not amused. 'What are you two up to?' he asked.

I had guilt written across my face, and so did Kemal, I suppose, though he always looked guilty. We weren't doing anything
wrong - well, not really - yet there was something unmistakably complicit between us. Charles was far away in New York and
would never know about this; and Kemal's on-again-off-again girlfriend, Sebnem, was studying in New York. Who knows, maybe
they were having an affair. Neither Kemal nor I was being true to our New York flames, yet we were somehow being true to ourselves.
I was exploring something I'd forgotten about — chemistry, longing, electricity. It had been too powerful to say no to, yet
it wasn't enough to stay for.

Sitting across from Kemal, defending myself against Baksim's insinuations of infidelity, I felt as if I were witnessing my
parallel Turkish life, an alternate reality in which I could be the wife of a profligate but very charming Turk. And in this
one moment I had to choose - was it going to be life in Turkey or a return to the familiar stability of New York? How, I wondered,
could I even compare Kemal to Charles? Charles was three times the person that Kemal was, yet it was Kemal who starred in
my fantasies, whose face I saw at odd moments during the day. It was clear that I could stay in Turkey. But to do what? Well,
actually there were a lot of things I could imagine doing in Istanbul. But I wasn't ready to unpack, not here, not in New
York. No, I wanted to keep the furniture covered for a little while longer.

Kemal's bath, the proximity to antiquity, fueled my desire to wander back in time to the origin of bathing culture, the ancient
world. The Greeks initiated and the Romans later perfected a cult of the bath that has never since been equaled. I at least
wanted to wander through the ruins.

Remains of Roman baths dotted the Roman Empire from England to Jerusalem. The trick would be finding a dig and archaeological
team willing to accept an interloper into their fold and where work was currently under way. From my days as a classics student,
I still had a few connections, and a volley of e-mails directed me to dig near Korinth, once an important city in ancient
Greece and later in Roman-occupied Greece. As luck would have it, a study tour was about to arrive for three weeks on-site,
and if I didn't object to following to their rigorous twelve-hour-a-day study schedule with lots of housekeeping duties, I
was more than welcome to join in the fun.

The bath in question was in Isthmia, one of the four Olympic sites that dotted the Peloponnese. It was a large Roman bath,
called a
thermae,
built over an original, mysterious Greek bath, so I would get a taste of what Edgar Allan Poe termed 'the glory that was Greece,/
And the grandeur that was Rome.'

ancient korinth
:

the emperor's new baths

Bring quickly from the cupboard oil to anoint him and towel to rub him, and other things necessary; and then bring my guest
to the nearest baths, for I know he is weary of so long and difficult travel.

- Apuleius,
The Golden Ass

In Greece the rocks are eloquent: men may go dead but the rocks never.

— Henry Miller,
The Colossus of Maroussi

I flew into Athens on a dry, dusty day in May. This was my first trip to Greece, my belated 'semester abroad.' The plane's
descent across the ancient port of Piraeus and through the shadow of Mt Olympus felt like a magic carpet ride into a 5th-century
B.C. cityscape. I tricked my eyes into believing that one of the ships approaching the port was a homecoming Theseus with
an unconsciously murderous black sail hoisted. And there - high on a precipice - was Theseus' father, King Aegeus, hurling
himself into the sea.

My mythical fantasy was soon thwarted, however, by the apologetically ugly city of modern Athens. Archaeologists were expecting
me in the city of Ancient Korinth by early evening, but the lure of the Acropolis and the urge to indulge my classics student
curiosity was too great, so I stashed my bags at a luxury hotel near the base of the Acropolis and raced to the top of the
citadel. I tried to exchange my Turkish liras for Greek drachmas, but there isn't a bank in the country that will swap these
currencies. Two historic rivals spitting on each other's unstable money. En route, I dodged clusters of Greek, French, and
English schoolchildren and families milling about in the heat: 'Can you identify this type of column, kids?' 'No, not euphoric,
they're called Doric columns.' 'Can everyone say "Pentelic marble"?'

I had always imagined from pictures that I would be able to climb the three temple steps of the Parthenon and wander around
the
pronoas.
I wanted to press my tongue against the Parthenon's Doric columns (the surest way to make contact with an ancient building,
according to Charles). But fences separate the Parthenon from would-be tongue pressers like myself. So I retreated to the
tiny benched pavilion, the windiest spot on the Acropolis and the best place to survey Solon's gifts - the fifth-century B.C.
Athenian statesman who presided over this building spree with his master architect and sculptor, Phidias. Only the structural
shells remain of the once elaborate precinct buildings: the Parthenon, the Temple of Athena Nike, the Erechtheion, the Propylaea.
Most of the good stuff, Phidias' sculptures and relief work known notoriously as the Elgin marbles, is stashed 1,500 miles
away in London's British Museum.

Staring down on these buildings I'd seen reproduced thousands of times, I was suddenly aware that I was in the middle of the
physical embodiment of architectural innovation and the perfection of form. The very complex that still today is the international
symbol of the classical ideals of proportion. Then I looked down, through the smog, to modern Athens, a city teeming with
cabdrivers who audition you before stopping, a city blanketed by the insistent sizzle and lamb-led-to-slaughter smell of souvlaki.
Block after block of gray, concrete crumminess posed the inevitable question: 'What happened?'

It's as if the Acropolis were the epicenter of a volcanic eruption and lava drenched the city in gray detritus, leaving only
the original crater of the Acropolis unscathed. The Greeks themselves, even the Athenians, are the first to admit that Athens
is an armpit of a city. Of course, temples and museums preserve pockets of riches, but overall, in order to see 'the glory
that was Greece' one must hightail it out of Athens. Henry Miller wrote in 1942, 'I am in Athens. . . People are asking me
— have you been to Delphi, have you been to San Turini, have you been to Lesbos or Samos or Poros?' And today, too, Athenians
constantly ask you where in Greece you are planning to visit, as if to say 'Don't worry, there's more than this.'

My tour of Athens was truncated by a pressing need to reach Korinth before sunset. It felt strange to have places to go and
people to see in a foreign country, not to be just a tourist with time to dillydally and sip iced Nescafe frappes, a vile
concoction and the revered Greek summer beverage. After retrieving my roller suitcase from the left luggage area of the Acropolis
Palace hotel (bellhops, as a rule, can't distinguish legitimate guests from storage freeloaders), I stood waiting for a bus
that I only hoped would take me to the main bus terminal.

Right away I learned that Greek Adonises do exist. Alexandros swaggered over as I was asking a uniformed man to direct me
to Korinth, which is like asking a random person on the streets of Manhattan to direct you to Rhode Island. In halting English,
Alexandros explained that he too was en route to Korinth. I thanked the gods. Alexandros was what you might call strapping,
and his appearance brought to mind a half-remembered fragment of Ca-vafy: 'Hair as though stolen from Greek statues, / always
lovely, even uncombed, / and falling slightly over pale foreheads.' We transferred buses three times to reach the main station,
and with each transfer I was more grateful for Alexandros's presence. He wheeled my suitcase, then translated for me while
I bought my ticket, and we raced to the final bus just as it was boarding. Two bus drivers argued over who would take this
route. Alexandros explained that last minute haggling over routes was standard bus driver protocol. 'He try to crade him Korinth
for Mycenae.'

The driver who ended up with Korinth acted like the winner. He took his seat grinning, and as I sat back in mine, I hoped
all my travel karma would be this good. Alexandros sat next to me on the bus, and I admired the gap between his two perfectly
straight front teeth. His English was good enough to explain that he was in the army and wanted to be a veterinarian. When
he found out I was twenty-seven (he was nineteen), he became deferential and asked me if I had children. I had been demoted
from Aphrodite to Hera. I tried to smile and asked him how to make tzatziki, thick yogurt with garlic, cucumber, and lemon.
The trick is to strain the yogurt three times.

After thirty minutes, when we'd made it beyond the industrial factories on Athens's periphery and the bus chugged along stony
beachfront highways, Alexandros asked, 'Why you go to Korinthos?'

'I want to learn about the baths.'

'Bath. What is bath?'

'You know,
thermae, gymnasium.
An ancient bath.'

'Oh, gymnasium. Yes, yes. I know. They are all gone. That was ancient Greece, not Greece now.'

'Yes, I know. I will visit ancient gymnasium.'

'Ahhh, you archaeologist?'

'Not exactly. I'm a student,' I said to simplify matters.

Now he understood, but seemed to think I was a rather old student. Fine. It was clear Alexandros and I had no future after
this bus ride. I was an old student looking for baths that no longer exist.

I got off the bus at the Isthmus of Korinth stop, which sounded more like a movie Kirk Douglas might have made after
Spartacus
than a bus stop. The Isthmus is a narrow, seven-kilometer-long sliver separating mainland Greece from the southern Peloponnese.
All north-south traffic in Greece once had to pass through the Isthmus, making Korinth, within ten miles of the Isthmus, the
second most important Greek city after Athens during the classical period. Pausanias, the ancient travel writer, referred
to this part of the Peloponnese as 'well-watered Korinth' and home to one thousand sacred prostitutes on a hilltop. Yet I
was completely alone on a long stretch of silent, dusty highway. I needed another Alexandros to swoop down and guide me to
the Rooms Marinos.

'The Rooms Marinos, Ancient Korinth,' was all I had scrawled in my notebook, and I cursed my idiotic optimism that I would
stumble onto the place. Several hundred yards away stood a highway truck stop where leather-skinned men sat outside on plastic
patio furniture, drinking beer. The gruff proprietor called me a cab. Five hours into my stay in Greece and I was already
noticing something that would be confirmed again and again: Greeks, in general, aren't nearly as friendly or hospitable as
Turks. (The Turks make better baklava, too). A silver Mercedes showed up to collect me (most Greek cabs are in fact Mercedeses,
but I didn't know that at the time and worried that I would be seen as uppity for arriving in what I assumed was a higher-priced
cab).

The tiny village of Ancient Korinth, only five minutes away, centered around a cluster of creatively named restaurants - Nikos's
Place, Themis's Place, Panagiotis's Place - that served identical menus and guarded the entrance to the fenced-off archaeological
site. Hidden behind the barbed wire were small, privately owned neighborhood baths called
balnea,
but we were to study a larger, grander, imperially owned bath called a
thermae
at the neighboring Isthmian site. Tourist buses were parked along the small street leading to the site, and it was clear that
Korinth was a brief afternoon stop during a three-day Peloponnesian tour. The Rooms Marinos, the campus compound for anyone
attached to Dr Greg Christopher's retinue, was farther up the gentle slope of Ancient Korinth, removed from the fray of the
archaeological site.

I unloaded my things from the taxi and walked into the gated concrete courtyard of the Rooms Marinos. The sun was setting
over the pines, and the hooting of owls replaced the cooing of doves to welcome the oncoming darkness. Fuchsia bougainvillea
climbed the walls of the main house. Two dried-out fountains crowned with white plaster statues of boy gods decorated the
concrete esplanade. Someone with bad taste had lavished a lot of love on this place. One hundred yards away, near some temporary
goalposts, I spotted a group of doughy college students and two middle-aged men milling about. The two men regarded me curiously.
I experienced a moment of buyer's remorse, and I had yet to learn that they were all Southern Baptists.

The more dominant of the two older men was thick-limbed and heavyset, his thinning black hair combed forward in a Caesar.
He looked the part of a patrician and possessed an air of irritability that seemed to have nothing to do with the very pleasant
circumstances —warm May evening, pines swaying gently in the breeze, the faint smell of rosemary and lamb being prepared for
dinner. He took an impatient swig from a water bottle that was holstered around his waist. His nose was fried to a crisp and
looked as though it might fall from his face at any moment, thereby morphing him into one of those dime-a-dozen noseless busts,
the kind that litter third-rate museums. I knew immediately that this must be Dr Christopher. The other had a gentler affect
— a kind, soft-contoured face with a gap between his front teeth. I'd found my grown-up Alexandros. He wore rimless glasses
and had salt-and-pepper hair that made it hard to age him — anywhere from thirty-five to fifty-five. This must be the southern
professor, Dr Garrett Greene, the one Dr Christopher had palmed me off on when I'd inquired the week before about digging
opportunities.

It was too late to turn back. Now was the moment of awkward introductions. I barreled ahead, reminding myself that I was a
confident New Yorker who'd dealt with much worse than morose professors. My arrival was welcomed with as much effusion as
grisly academics muster for anyone who doesn't make tenure decisions. More accurately, Dr Christopher seemed to tolerate my
presence, whereas, by comparison, Garrett Greene seemed warm and inquisitive. I was shown to my room and introduced to my
roommate (I hadn't been expecting that). She was a heavyset girl named Janet who'd brought a thick stack of Nora Roberts novels
and enough anti-everything medication to run a MASH unit for a month. Our shared room with two cots and a barely functioning
bathroom was the size of Kemal's smaller deck. The library tour and modern Greek lesson were in an hour, followed by a family-style
dinner. I was a freshman again.

That night at dinner, Dr Greene, who insisted I call him Garrett, and I drank red wine, while the students sipped water and
regarded the tzatziki and spanikopita (spinach pastry) suspiciously. On the page, Garrett was someone whose curriculum vitae
would have intimidated me, but in person he was open, accommodating, and thoroughly unpretentious. Garrett had as much enthusiasm
for tae kwon do (he was a red belt) as for the New Testament — his area was Paul the Apostle - and he had a knack for saying
and doing the right thing at the right time. Throughout dinner he continuously refilled my glass, a profound gesture of understanding.

Dr Christopher was another story entirely, a man less given to banter and the normal lubricant of social discourse than anyone
I've ever met before or since. I tried to dismiss his temperament as an occupational hazard, remembering a description of
an archaeologist written by Francis Henry Taylor: '[He bore] all the complexities and difficulties inherent in the true archaeologist
- jealousy, infallibility coupled with a sense of persecution and a madness for his own subject . . . the very essence of
the archaeological character and temper.'