He no longer lived where Dad and I met him four years earlier. He had returned to his old monastery, Aghiou Pavlou (St. Paul's), farther down the western coast of the peninsula. Getting there would require taking the early morning bus to Karyes and onward to Dafni on the coast. There I would meet the daily southbound caïque coming from Ouranoupolis. The caïque would deliver me to St. Paul's.
But first, a good-bye to the guest-master, Brother Kosmas. Was his embrace oddly prolonged, his brotherly kiss unusually fervent? Or was it just my imagination?
* * *
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| Dafni |
With only two cafés, two souvenir shops, and nothing of the remotest historical interest anywhere within walking distance, it promised to be a long 3½-hour wait. I opted for one of the cafés, where I could at least read and write.
But reading and writing proved difficult. At other tables, clutches of monks, priests, and lay brothers smoked, drank coffee, and talked. And talked, and talked, and talked in a non-stop bombast.
Were they elucidating the procession of the Holy Spirit? Were they debating the true nature of the Holy Trinity?
Sadly, no. The topics of these loud, animated exchanges were painfully mundane. One particularly energetic row was over the relative merits of the paths between one monastery and another. Details of each path were dissected and compared with anatomical precision. One path was extolled over another for its time-saving blessings. Another particularly heated exchange was about whether it was here or there on the path where Brother So-and-So had been overtaken last month. One old priest went at it non-stop for over an hour -- standing the whole time!
Such were the fruits of a lifetime of prayer.
* * *
The large caïque from Ouranoupolis arrived packed. Among its passengers were the young priest from the prior evening and his friends Manolis and Takis. While I was making my way to Dafni by bus, they had walked from Iviron to Xeropotamou and from there to Roussikon, where they had caught the boat from Ouranoupolis.
I had been under the mis-impression that the large Ouranoupolis caïque serviced the entire western coast of the peninsula and would therefore continue southward from Dafni. But Dafni proved to be its terminus. Passengers who needed to proceed farther south transferred to the smaller caïque, which was no larger than Ammouliani of four years earlier. But unlike Ammouliani it was burdened with forty-five squirming passengers, their baggage, and additional southbound cargo.
* * *
Before St. Paul's there were intervening stops at the monasteries of Simonopetra, Grigoriou, and Dionysiou.
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| Simonopetra |
But everything changed as the boat approached a landing. The first decrease in engine revs was the signal to start the ritual of commotion that punctuated each stop.
First came impatient stirrings by the passengers. As the boat slowed even more, the stirrings became anxious (and pointless) strivings to get off.
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| Grigoriou |
In the final few yards before the boat touched the bulkhead, volleys of shouts erupted like cannonades between ship and shore: "Where's so-and-so?" "Grab there!" "Did you load such-and-such?" "Hold off!"
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| Dionysiou |
They immediately subsided, however, when the boat pulled away for its next destination. Silence, diesel chugging, and bow-wave plashing reigned supreme again until the ritual was repeated at the next stop.
* * *
We reached St. Paul's in forty-five minutes.
The monastery is built against a crease in the foothills of Mt. Athos. From the landing, its crenellated wall and tower gave it the appearance of a castle.
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St. Paul's from the landing
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It was a Serbian kellion before acquiring the status of a monastery and taking its place in the Athonite hierarchy by the late 14th century. Benefactors have included Byzantine emperors, Russian tsars, Serbian princes, and the rulers of the lower Danubian kingdoms. Its holy relics include the Gifts of the Magi and a fragment of the True Cross.
The monastery's fortunes have risen and fallen over the centuries. The 17th century saw two hundred monks in residence. But during the Greek struggle for independence (1821-1830), St. Paul's was nearly deserted. The monastery was re-established by Patriarch Gregorios VI in 1840.
The main structures looked older than they actually were. The relatively unadorned but solid-marble katholikon was finished in 1844. It of course replaced a much older one, but its 19th century construction made it a relative newcomer on the Holy Mountain. At the beginning of the 20th century, a disastrous fire (1902) and floods (1911) required much rebuilding. St. Paul's is also said to be the first monastery on the peninsula to be associated with a road, a pre-1963 construction that facilitated the delivery of timber from the mountain above to the landing below.
At the time of my visit, St. Paul's was cenobitic and had about ninety monks. Thirty-five lived in the monastery proper, the rest in various dependencies.
* * *
A funeral was underway in the nave, which had been closed off from the crossing by a curtain stretching from pillar to pillar. The deceased lay a few inches above the floor on a simple wooden pallet. His feet pointed to the altar; an icon rested on his chest.
I feared the funeral was for Father Andreas. He had been sick, I was told. I couldn't be sure, however, because the deceased monk's face wasn't in view. His body was wrapped in a black garment (perhaps his daily vestment) and was covered with a colorful cloth (perhaps an aer, a liturgical veil interpreted as the shroud of Christ).
Monks shuffled back and forth as they read through the service. At the final prayers, each monk approached the body and, facing the altar, took a position to one side or the other of the deceased's head. One by one, each monk crossed himself three times, each time touching the floor with both hands on the bottom stroke. Each monk then removed his headgear and bent to kiss the icon on the deceased's chest and then the dead monk's forehead. With headgear re-secured, the floor-touch crossings were repeated three times.
Burial followed immediately. The body was carried out of the katholikon to the tolling of a single bell and the striking of a horseshoe-shaped gong (an iron semandron) in a peculiar three-beat rhythm. Everyone followed.
The procession passed out of the main gate, down a short vine-covered path, and into the cemetery through a small gate. Past the small ossuary (where three monks remained to say prayers), the group assembled in a corner of the cemetery where a narrow grave had already been dug. More prayers. Then the colored covering was removed from the body. Two younger monks took hold of the feet and shoulders. With a grunted "Opa!" they lifted the corpse off the pallet and swung it into the grave.
The body was not stiff. I saw it bend at the waist. I later learned that the flexibility of monks' corpses at burial is said to be a phenomenon unique to Mt. Athos.
After a few more prayers, a couple of monks quickly filled the grave with dirt using garden hoes and forceful strokes. They seemed to want to be done with the matter quickly. With the grave filled, all faced Mt. Athos (or something else in that direction) while one monk intoned one hundred times "Your servant is at rest," keeping count by fingering his koumboskene. As this went on, all the other monks crossed themselves continuously.
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| My fifty-knot koumboskene |
* * *
Passing the ossuary on the way out of the cemetery, it was impossible to ignore the sun-bleached skulls resting atop piles of bones gathered in used olive oil tins. These were the remains of earlier-deceased monks who had been exhumed and now awaited permanent lodgings in the ossuary.
Bending closely over one of the skulls, a lay brother asked "Who's this?" A grave marker resting next to the tin clearly identified the remains, but the lay brother evidently couldn't read it. The monk next to him answered joshingly: "Don't you recognize him? It's Dimitri."
On re-entering the monastery I was much relieved to learn that it wasn't Father Andreas whom we'd just buried. It was Brother Kalistratos, who had died almost exactly twenty-four hours earlier.
* * *
Finally, we were brought into the visitor's room. As at Iviron, it was decorated with portrait photos of Greek kings, Greek Prime Minister Metaxas (dead since 1941), and various patriarchs and archbishops. The customary Greek coffee, tsipouro, and a spoon-sweet were offered.
In the guest book I wrote: "Today a funeral, but no tears."
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