The Golden Step (17 page)

This view never ceases to do the trick and bring a smile to my face, no matter how sore my fingertips from yesterday evening's laouto-playing or how many tumblers of Lambros Papoutsakis's glutinous home-made wine showed their bottoms to the moon after midnight. I drink a glass of water, fetch pen and notebook from my bedside, and stealthily ease the balcony chair to the table. Nikephoros's donkey has stowed its gab for the day, but Maria Papoutsakis is already at work below, picking tender vine leaves to make
dolmades
with soft, crisp plucking noises. There's a sputter of two-stroke across the valley as another early riser scooters along the back road through Kalogeros. While my fellow guests and carousers continue their interrupted slumbers, I sit in the soft blue light of early morning and make up some doggerel – or donkerel – in tribute to Thronos's long-lived and long-eared public alarm clock. Apart from eating a few more of the oranges I bought from the fruit-man, this – unbelievably, deliciously – is all I have to do today.

During the Second World War, Allied officers working clandestinely with the Cretan resistance nicknamed the Amari Valley ‘Lotus Land'. They came to love its abundance of the earth's good things and the open-handedness of its villagers. Nothing has changed. Amari is green, Amari is fruitful. Amari has mineral-laden streams off the mountains to water its gardens and carpets of wild flowers to clothe its roadsides. Floating in its wide cradle of mountains 2,000 feet above the noisy, nervy, tourism-orientated world of the coast cities, Amari tends its gardens, its olives and vines, its figs and walnuts. Individual sounds travel far between the echo-boards of the mountains, muted and softened by distance: the orange-seller groaning ‘
Portokali-aaaaaa!
' through his cab-mounted speaker, a radio sending a whining snake of a lyra tune out through the almond blossom, the dogs of Vistagi issuing their eternal sore-throated warnings. Everyone takes time, everyone gives you a nod and a word: Nikos the joker with the walnut tree in his yard, George the taverna laouto-player and conversationalist, Andonis the church cantor and lyrical lyra-player, and the three men named Kostas whose path I cross most days: Kostas Pervolia the green-handed gardener, Kostas Raki the village raki-maker, and Kosti Lyra the goat-eyed musician from neighbouring Kalogeros, a master of the lyra who can make those three strings scream, sing and sob as if an angel were behind them – or maybe a devil.

Now between the horns of Psiloritis the high saddle of the mountain darkens. A fingernail of silver pokes up behind the snowy ridge, turning to gold even as I squint at it. The cocks of Thronos redouble their monologue. The crescent becomes a spinning silver-golden ball, unbearably bright, appearing to dance between the bull-horns a second before lifting off to float free into the china-blue sky. Minoans must have watched this daily crowning of the great mountain from their peak sanctuaries across the valley, Dorians from the city state of Syvritos on the flat hilltop behind Thronos, Byzantines and Venetians from the square by the little frescoed church, Turkish janissaries and German soldiers on reprisal duties from the smoking ruins of Amari villages. Now it is this middle-aged
tourista
who raises his eyes from his half-finished verses to the dazzle and drama over Psiloritis.

‘Good morning, Lord Christopher,' says Maria Papoutsakis, coming into the big taverna room with her arms full of greenery.

‘Good day, Lady Maria,' I riposte, ‘and how are you today?'

‘Well, thank you, Lord Christopher. And you also?'

‘Yes, very well, thank you, Lady Maria.'

We are still at the stage, Maria and I, of addressing each other with some formality – she, because her manners are excellent; I, not to be outdone in the offering of courtesies, but also because I like the sound of this stately ‘
Kyrie Christophere
' and ‘
Kyria Maria
'. It lends a graceful gallantry to our exchanges that transcends the generally mundane subject matter:

‘Lady Maria, do you perchance have a plug for the basin in my room, if you please?'

‘Why, certainly, Lord Christopher, here is one.'

‘Thank you so very much, Lady Maria.'

‘Lord Christopher, please – the pleasure is entirely mine. Thank
you
.'

Patricia Clark, my Canadian next-room neighbour, is mightily tickled by this, and insists on addressing me at all times as ‘Lord Christopher'. Patricia is a classicist from Victoria University, Alberta, a fluent speaker of Greek, over in Crete for three months to continue her long-term study of the islanders' traditional methods of healing – by herbs, by folk remedies and by magic. She says that all three of these branches of practical medicine are alive and thriving in the Amari Valley. Last year, researching traditional use of plants in the Amari, Patricia stumbled across a handwritten book of medical recipes and treatments, spells, charms and magical rituals, compiled in 1930 by a local healer – an incomparable treasure. Now she sits with Maria Papoutsakis, sorting vine leaves into various sizes on the big taverna table. They mean to make a big pile of
dolmades
for today's memorial ceremony for an old man of Thronos who died six months ago. It is proper to remember the dead at certain intervals after their passing.

I take a cup of coffee and sit out on the steps barefoot in the early sunshine. Since crossing Psiloritis yesterday and descending into Lotus Land I have scarcely given my feet a thought. Now I make a damage inspection, the first in the hundred miles since Kritsa. Left foot, existing damage: little toenail now turned from blue to grey, and hanging loose (it falls off as I touch it, and another, pink and perfect, is revealed in its place). Blister inside front heel still there; blister on ball of foot now flattened. The whole ball and heel a rather disgusting, rubbery yellow hide, pitted with black holes – none of this, strangely, to be seen on the other foot. Blister on outside of big toe still there, and has been joined by a little friend. New stuff: big burst blister on 4th toe, rubbing against and partly underneath 3rd toe. Large and bloody abrasion blister on outside of ball of big toe. Curious blemish like a double wart on top of root of big toe. Hmmm. Right foot, rather better. Existing damage: Achilles abrasion almost healed, rub marks ditto, blisters now burst and healing nicely. New stuff: small blister on outside of big toe. And something very new and sensitive to the touch coming up on the outside. Watch this space. As for olfactory forensics: Stinkerismo Grandissimo would about cover it. Memo: why do feet smell of goat? Why not of bread, or dog, or roses? I hobble back upstairs. I intend to spend at least a week here in the Amari, maybe more, to give the snow that now covers the White Mountains the maximum possible chance to melt away and leave me clear passage. In the meantime, bed calls, and those oranges. Maybe another poem, too.

Towards evening I sit on my balcony and stare out at Psiloritis. There is no escaping the dominance of the horned mountain, rearing like a breaking wave over Amari. A saddle of snow lies between the peaks. High over Vistagi the snow has part-melted into a curious figure like that of a football-headed man with no arms, a long torso ending in two straddling white legs. It reminds me of Karen Raeck's
Andartis
flattened in midstride to the Nida plain, or of one of those giant figures cut into the chalk downs of southern England. With bees buzzing murmurously among the hillside herbs below and the sun striking warm through the valley, I contemplate the mountain and my own fears and falterings.

In the evening Patricia returns from the old man's memorial with a dish of
koliva
. It's the traditional titbit at such ceremonies – sugary, fragrant, seeded with little silvery sweeties. Greeks have been making it since long before the birth of Christ. Patricia tells us how it's done, from what she has herself been told by the village women. Boil wheat with the leaves of an orange tree. Sieve it. Spread it out and roll it on lemon leaves. Add to the broth: orange leaves, sesame, cinnamon, chickpea flour, sugar, salt, walnuts, raisins, pomegranate seeds, nuts, parsley. Incense it well with a church censer. Take a tray of it in procession to church, covered with sugar and decorations, along with raki, oil and a lit candle. Thus one eases the path of the soul.

We eat with Maria Papoutsakis, dolmades, salad and damp new cheese. Maria's husband Lambros, owner of the Taverna Aravanes and my friend from past visits, will be back tomorrow night from Rethymnon, she says. George the laouto-player joins us, and the wine goes round. George speaks no English, but he drops a slice of apple in his wine ‘to sweeten the talk'. Soon the laouto case is brought out and the big round-backed instrument is lifted from its red velvet nest. ‘Play us a tune,' gestures George to me. As the senior, in truth the only proper musician present, he's offering the stranger a pleasant courtesy. I can't spurn his civility, but neither can I really play. George hands over a thin strip of plastic, doubled to form a narrow and flexible vee. It's the
pena
or laouto pick. I've never handled one before – Dimitri's laouto in the Taverna o Pitopoulis back in Prina had come complete with a familiar plastic guitar plectrum. The pena used always to be a vulture feather, George remarks. When he started out playing laouto, a vulture pena would cost 50 drachmas and last one session in the hands of a good vigorous musician. Now, if you can by chance and good luck get hold of one, it costs 5,000 drachmas and lasts a hundred sessions. Why? ‘Because vultures are getting harder to kill!'

Everyone in the place laughs, then falls silent and looks on expectantly. I grasp the awkward shape of the laouto to my chest and try to remember a mandola tune – any tune. In the end I strike up an old Incredible String Band number, Schaeffer's Jig, a tune I can be absolutely certain no-one here will know, and one I can doubly guarantee will never have been forced from this or any other laouto. Four bars in, George's fingers gently imprison my pena hand. No, Christophere. Like this. He repositions the business end of the pena between my thumb and the tips of my index and middle fingers, with the two loose ends of the vee trailing out along the back of my hand. It feels bloody odd, but I soldier on as drops of pure sweat of embarrassment plop down on the fretboard. Two times round the circuit and I fall silent. D minus for execution. Yet applause is forthcoming, and smiles of genuine pleasure. With a nicotine-rich laugh, George refills my glass. A for effort, it seems. The stranger has put his handful of potatoes, however small and green they may be, into the communal pot, and is entitled to share the stew.

Now George begins a series of mantinades, sung with great force and emotion, aimed at appropriate targets among the company. Maria Papoutsakis sits nearby, joining in the verses. These traditional expressions of love, aphorism or pithy commentary may be well known to those present, but here they are sung as if freshly minted and passionately felt. With the laouto in his hands George is transported beyond intensity. His eyes glitter and burn as they flick between the fretboard and the face of his victim, his nostrils dilate, his voice shakes as if in the hands of some vindictive god. It's as if he has reached a state of electrical charge. If Kostas Raki, sitting alongside, were to reach out and touch him as he sings, it would be no surprise to see blue flashes arcing between the two of them.