The Golden Step (13 page)

The other two rooms contained very fine pottery – 150 vessels, in which the researchers discovered traces of fruit, grain, honey and wine. In the central chamber, on a bench opposite the door, stood a pair of feet of clay, probably the base of a wooden idol that had burned away to nothing.

The whole structure had evidently collapsed and burned around 1700
BC
, the time when the first great palaces of the Minoans were all felled in a catastrophic series of earthquakes. Bearing this in mind, the runes of the Anemospilia were read as follows. The building under the peak of Iouchtas was some kind of temple in which various offerings were habitually made to the gods, including one personified by a wooden figure with clay feet, as in the dream of King Nebuchadnezzar. Crete was being shaken by a succession of fierce earthquakes that were destroying everything safe and secure. The jewelled man and his female companion, a priest and priestess, were engaged in a desperate ritual to placate the god who was so angrily bringing the world to ruin. Human sacrifice is not at all associated with the Minoan culture; nevertheless, that is what they were up to. They had tied up the young man on the altar, and had stabbed him by lamplight with the long bronze knife. Their acolyte, having caught the victim's blood in a ceremonial vessel, was in the act of carrying it along the corridor to place it in front of the idol in the next room when the whole building was flattened by a big tremor. This poignant stage and its actors, fixed forever in a tableau of desperation, were to lie under the earth for the next 3,700 years.

Now there was only one goal ahead, one target on which to fix the eyes and mind – the long hump of Psiloritis, dipping occasionally out of view to reappear at the next swell of the land, always closer, a white whaleback rising over 8,000 feet into the blue. Psiloritis was preying a little on my mind. After my humbling experiences with Pantelis in the Dhikti Mountains, was I really going to be able to take on that great lump of a mountain in the snow with my wooden stick and my leaden pack, my wonky knees, my bootsoles already losing what tread they had when I started out a fortnight ago?

In two days I crossed the shoulders of the Iraklion hinterland, and passed from the first to the second of my two 1:100,000 maps – a cause for celebration, even if the map did not seem sure, within the compass of a surprising number of miles, where it or I had actually got to. I paused only to take in a wedding feast in the big agricultural village of Profitis Ilias. It would have been hard not to; the oncoming wedding was all anyone in Profitis Ilias was thinking about, and half the village seemed to be squeezed into the taverna kitchen, the men carving hunks of lamb off the bones, the women dredging steaming white mountains of rice out of the boiler. I stopped to rest at a table outside, and had hardly sat down before I was dished out a plate of red-hot sweet rice and tearings of lamb. No sooner was it cleared than a plate of oily potatoes and more chunks of lamb took its place, along with a tumbler of the groom's father's cloudy wine. A solid ring of teenaged girls formed to watch me eat and to practise their schoolroom English. You have some children? Four? Very good! How old is your son? 23! Is he married? ‘No,' I said, ‘he's just waiting for some nice Cretan girl.' Everyone sighed, then burst out giggling.

One cheeky lad of about ten was hanging out with the girls. His knowing little face was an irresistible blend of sweet innocence and bursting devilry, a mixture designed both to captivate and break plenty of hearts before too long. The girls were teaching me the names of common objects and writing them down in my notebook. Piato, plate. Arni, lamb. Makheri, knife. Kofteros, sharp. Young Hopeful seized the notebook and pen, wrote down a vile word and shoved it under my nose. ‘Say this! Say!' he squeaked. I was not quite green enough for that. When his mother came up to see what all the shrieking was about he made a grab for the page, ripped it out, then ostentatiously swallowed it. The girls fell about. Yes – big trouble for their little sisters, I'd say, in the not too distant future.

While in Profitis Ilias I took a little walk up to the peak to have a look at the ruins of the Castle of Temenos. The stronghold was built on the mountain by Nikephoros Phokas, scourge of the Saracens in Crete, shortly after he recaptured the island for Byzantium in
AD
961. He'd hoped to found a new capital city up there, safe from pirate raids. But no-one wanted to leave the fat lowlands by the sea, however insecure, for a rocky crag inland. Phokas soon left Crete for Constantinople to take on the rôle of Byzantine Emperor, and the Castle of Temenos was left on the peak as the sole monument to the fierce general's ambition.

Late on the second afternoon I came into the upland village of Ano Asites, with a great bar of cloud lying low in the valley and Psiloritis standing tall beyond, the snowy head now hidden and the eastern flanks rising formidably, filling the entire background with a rearing tsunami of pale speckled rock. You could almost hear it roaring and see it tumble forward as you looked. Down in the village under the cloud it was as calm as could be. I sat on the little terrace by the village church, took off my boots and sighed with pure pleasure. Pantelis and I were not due to meet here for another three days. Three days of inaction. I wouldn't even put foot to ground if I could help it. In three days I'd be ready to face the mountain, but not just yet. In a little while I'd go and find Manolis Piperakis, President of this local area, Mayor of Asites and – of course – a great friend of Charis Kakoulakis. ‘Mr Piperakis will find you somewhere to stay, I guarantee,' Charis had said with a backward swipe of the hand as if batting troubles to the furthest boundary. ‘He is a very nice man, knows everything, knows everyone, you will have no problems at all.'

Manoli and Maria Piperakis met me at their door. Once more I plunged into a linguistic hotpot of German, Greek and English smatterings, with a good helping of gesticulation. Manoli, a stonemason who had built his own living room arch and carved his own fireplace, welcomed me with great warmth. Certainly you must sleep here. It's important to get away by dawn tomorrow at the latest, and we'll give you a good breakfast before you go. What? Yes, by dawn tomorrow, of course. Yes, to start over Psiloritis. What, hasn't your friend told you? Oh, well, he phoned earlier. He's sorry, but he can't get away next weekend, so it's now or never, he says. He'll be here at six in the morning, and off you go! Feet a bit sore? Put them in this hot basin with these herbs, they'll be great in an hour. Then let's have a look at my sixteen-year-old wine, eh? Got to prepare the man for the mountain, you know!

Across the Roof of Crete

(Asites to Thronos)

‘My mother and my father,' Manoli murmured, indicating the village cemetery as we roared past. I glanced over and saw tears glistening in the grooves of his face. He skidded the pickup to a stop beside a little chapel, under trees near the head of a gorge. There was something urgent in his manner, something special he wanted me to see or do.

In the silence of the chapel I could just make out a quiet bubbling of water. Manoli pushed aside the iconostasis curtain and we looked through into the apse. Water pulsed and dimpled in a little stone-lined well. ‘Mothers bring children who have a problem. Children make bath in this water, mother prays in the church. Problem go away.' Manoli looked at me. ‘This is good water. Good to make like this before you go to Psiloritis.' He crossed himself, index and middle fingertips wet with water and joined to the tip of the thumb in the Trinity symbol of the Greek Orthodox worshipper.

I followed suit, then lit a thin brown candle. In spite of Manoli's reverence and the conducive sunrise-calm of the chapel, prayer would not come this morning. One image wiped all others from the back of my lids as soon as I closed my eyes: Psiloritis rising, the glittering snowfields, the breaking wave of pale speckled rock above its surf of low cloud.

The relationship between walkers and mountains is an ambiguous one, salted with paradox. A big mountain is a subtle beast. You live with it long before you meet it, picturing it ahead, lying in ambush. Yet you are aware at the same time that the mountain is actively stalking you, breathing on your neck until the hairs stand up. The temptation is to try to master it before you have even set eyes on it, to get it under control by pegging it down in a net of certainties: heights, distances, routes, gear, timings. You might as well try and net quicksilver.

Mountains are slippery. They change shape according to how you look at them, or think of them. If you are not careful, the shadow of a big mountain can swell and eat away at your confidence like a cancer. Quite as compelling as the desire to get its measure before tackling it is the need to scuff your boots across its slopes, to get to a place of hard scratchy reality where sweat washes away apprehension and sheer physical effort pulls you close to the bones and spirit of the mountain.

Psiloritis had taken root in my mind, and had grown there. I had read of its herby phrigana scrub, of the cores and crusts that formed it, its ledges and gorges. Friends in Crete had talked of their love for the mountain, of their fear and awe in the face of it. I heard about its stormy moods, and grew aware of the human dramas played out in peace and war in its caves and down among its skirting villages. Demons and gods stalked its hinterlands. This was Mount Ida of Cretan mythology, the place where the infant Zeus was raised in a cave by the goat goddess Amaltheia while his cannibalistic father Kronos searched the hills to find and eat the young godling. Psiloritis sheltered freedom fighters against both Venetian and Turk. At Arkadi monastery on the northern slopes, 2,000 Turkish besiegers and Cretan defenders died in November 1866 when Abbot Gabriel ordered the powder magazine to be fired. From cave mouths high on Psiloritis, British radio operators and Cretan andartes watched the Germans of Hitler's occupying forces burning the villages below the mountain. Psiloritis stood drenched in blood and history, grounded in defiance: the apex of the island, a potent symbol, its cold white head held dauntingly high against the clouds.

Back at the Piperakis house we found Pantelis Kampaxis, contorting himself aerobically on the veranda according to his early morning routine. As usual, the sight of those hawser-like muscles writhing to his scientific bends and stretches put me in deep shame of my own pale and flabby body. We sat round the table and ate a hero's breakfast: iron-hard rusks called
paximadia
, softened with a drizzle of Manoli's own olive oil and honey. Piperakis bent his arm in the strong-man sign, a clenched-fist salute to the mountaineers. ‘This is food for palikares,' he grinned. ‘You will be strong all day.'

Half an hour up the mountainside I put my hands on my knees and bent double, head hanging, retching as the leafy taste of Manoli's mountain tea washed back into my throat. I felt bloody. My heart was pounding halfway out of my chest. Breath gasped in flattened lungs. Sweat and suncream trickled blindingly into my eyes. Strings of saliva and snot, the result of an unsuccessful attempt to blow my nose Cretan-style straight on to the ground, hung humiliatingly from nostrils and beard as from a beaten bull in the bullring. Balanced on a rock beside me with eyes tactfully averted, Pantelis in his spandex suit of lights breathed elegantly in and out, hands on hips, not a hair out of place. ‘Please to clean your nose, Christopher,' was his polite request. ‘We will rest five minutes.'

The bout of distress was a wholly self-inflicted wound, easily diagnosed: too much roast lamb and red wine last night, too much breakfast this morning, and too much fast climbing while the body was still not properly awake. Nearly half the journey behind me, and still I had not yet learned these basic rules of moderation. Or more accurately: I had thoroughly learned them through uncomfortable experiences, but still lacked the self-discipline to apply them. The singing and music making round the Piperakis table, the exhibitionistic pleasure of playing my harmonica, the hum of talk and laughter had blended all too smoothly with Manoli's rich old wine, brought from its sweet smelling wooden barrel and poured with open pleasure by its author. I hadn't even tried keeping a check on the filling and refilling of my tumbler. Who in their right minds would? And this morning, who could have resisted Maria Piperakis as she spread herb-baked
paximadia
with oil and honey like some Homeric hostess?