Pascali's Island

If only I could picture existence without the world. I must try to sleep for an hour, or at least rest my eyes. Then it will be time to keep my rendezvous with Mrs Marchant.

Excellency, a most extraordinary thing happened in the church tonight, which I must relate to you in all its ugliness and absurdity, while it is still fresh in my mind. Our Saint Alexei fell down, collapsed, disintegrated in full gaze of the congregation; owing to the ineptitude of the decrepit priest, or so I suppose. And I was blamed for it!

I met Mrs Marchant as arranged outside the café Lykis, and we went together to the church. Well, in fact we went into the café first, because Mrs Marchant suggested it and I could think of no pretext for avoiding it. Not that I minded the time with her, on the contrary, but it was unfortunate, because gallantry impelled me to pay, thus further depleting my resources – Mrs Marchant, in addition to coffee, had a slice of chocolate gateau.

I learned that her husband had been dead for two years and she was now fulfilling a lifetime's ambition to travel. She seems genuine enough, and of course American ladies are freer and more independent than their European counterparts. She was wearing a grey silk dress with a lace neck and carrying a white handbag which I surmised was full of money.

We talked mainly about Mrs Marchant's enthusiasm for the ancient Greek world, and how on this island she saw all around her evidence of an unbroken link with the past. 'That sound I heard just now,' she said, 'on my way here – it was an octopus being beaten against a rock, the man was just whipping the rock with it, over and over again. Why do they do that, by the way?'

'To make the meat tender,' I said.

'Oh yes, they eat them, don't they? Well, that sound is the self-same sound they must have been hearing on this island for literally centuries. Don't you think that's wonderful?'

I answered this as best I could. Then I told her something about the ceremony we were about to see. Saint Alexei, I told her, was a man of very holy life and gifted with miraculous powers. He was in his youth dissolute and of loose morals, but underwent conversion near a village well in the interior, and thereafter spent his life in fasting and prayer, living apart from others in a cave not far from the place of his conversion. One day he vanished from there, and was never seen again by mortal eye. Or so it is said. It is believed that he was taken up to heaven. The well, though now dry, is still regarded as a holy place by the people of the island, and it is visited at certain times of the year, and votive offerings left there. In fact most of the stories about the saint relate to his powers of divining water, and his name is often invoked when there is danger of drought. Every year on this day his Assumption is enacted in the church of Aghios Giorgos on the outskirts of the town, a walk of about half a mile from where we were sitting.

Mrs Marchant listened. She expressed herself eager to see it all. The light was fading when we left the café. We walked through the streets together and Mrs Marchant remarked on the quantity of flat unleavened loaves in some of the shops. I explained that it was the custom, among Moslems, to eat such bread at the time of the Sacrifice Bayram. I also pointed out to her the number of little stalls, offering knives and cleavers for sale. She was struck by the great variety of these as to size and shape. I told her that they were for the cutting of the sheep's throats. Knife-makers do a great trade during this Bayram because the Turks, though possessing knives already, feel impelled to buy some new cutting weapon at this time of the year. Rather in the same way, I said, as you might buy a new dress for a party.

'I see, yes,' Mrs Marchant said. However, her interest in local customs, hitherto so determined, seemed to falter a little at this point. 'Perhaps,' she said, after a pause, and without much conviction, 'a new knife gives them a specially reverent sacrificial feeling?'

I agreed that this might be so. As you can imagine, Excellency, I did not feel very comfortable during this conversation. My own voice began to sound in my ears like a sacrificial bleat. In order to change the subject I pointed out to her the long crest of Mt Laris, which the Turks call Alti Dag, that fluid line which God made with his finger in a moment of joy, the Greeks say. The rose-gold suffusions of sunset were ebbing from the crest, warmth and colour fading from moment to moment, as from the rim of a long crucible – the alchemical process reversed, gold into baser metal.

The church is built on a rocky eminence, behind the town and somewhat above it. A good number of people were going in the same direction as we were, the women in black, the men with clean shirts buttoned up to the neck. There were some sidelong glances, but nobody appeared to take much notice of us-rather surprisingly, I thought. Lamps had been hung along the way, and lamplight fell on the thick, pale blades of cactus that grew beside the steps. Above us, the church bells had started ringing. We stopped once, halfway up, to look back at the town. The white walls of the houses had on them the bloom of dying light, a kind of incandescence. Beyond them the sea lay glimmering and still. Far out in the bay a cluster of pale red lights – the lanterns of fishing boats working their circular entrapment.

We went on to the top of the steps. The bells stopped abruptly and we heard chanting. The church was already full, but people stood aside for the foreign woman, and so we were able to get near the front. Here, in this public place, surrounded by Greeks, exposed and vulnerable, I felt a return of that exhilaration I had experienced with Dranas, Excellency. I had an urge to stand before them, declare myself. Fortunately for the rest of this report I did not do so. (Indeed, as you will see, I gave way to craven fear not long after.)

The litter stood at the top of the nave, just below the chancel, with the effigy of the saint lying on it, dressed still in his gold vestments. The lamps burning at the four corners threw light on to his sharp chin, and the holes of his nostrils. I recognised these features as I would those of an old acquaintance – after all, I have seen him thus often before. In his composure he looks corpse-like indeed. The priests are intoning, one on either side of him and one beyond.

'It is very life-like, isn't it?' Mrs Marchant whispered to me. She means death-like I think, really. She seems troubled. Disturbed perhaps in her reticent Protestantism, that so much more abstract religion. It is rather strong stuff for her, the incessant deep incantation, the wavering light of the candles playing on the gilt of the bier, the saint's waxen immobility, which expresses nothing of martyrdom, no hint of violence or wounds: nothing but death.

The crowd maintains an unbroken silence. Their faces are heavy and sad, their hands thick, clumsy-looking. They seem to be waiting for something other than the apotheosis of Alexei. The priests' chanting grows louder. Their vestments, faces and hands are devotional and powerful in the gloom. Four men from the congretation move forward, all men I know. They take up the bier and move with it up the steps, into the chancel. They deposit it there and file down again, into the body of the congregation. The priests go slowly up the steps, still chanting. They pass into the chancel, drawing behind them a white curtain, which shuts them off from the view of the people. The chanting ceases. All eyes are fixed on the curtain, behind which the priests are busy stripping the saint of his panoply, dressing the attenuated form in its Assumption robe, getting it to its feet. For some moments more there is silence, deep, expectant. Then a quick, ru