We
were leaving Esfigmenou. In the reception area, a monk appeared and called me
with a forefinger. Terry raised his eyebrows. I followed the monk. He knew what
he was doing, if no one else did. He had a stoop and scuttled off in his black
robes like a beetle on some key, insect task. It was only a few steps, to a
tiny room with a table against the wall, nothing more, and no window. The monk
shut the door behind us.
The others waited, but they were standing
there in their walking clothes, with a traveller’s purpose, keen to go. I
wasn’t long. When I came out, I said, “He asked me for dollars.”
“We thought he was going to rape you!”
Terry chuckled. He also sounded relieved. Why did the monk choose me? Did I
seem the biggest tourist, the most likely to have dollars, or the least
significant, the least likely to object? Pick the weak off first – it’s what
lions do, and beetles in their own fashion. What the monk tried was wrong, the
black market, but it wasn’t so bad. We
thought he was going to rape you! You didn’t think too much.
Sometimes, Terry spoke up. The night
before, I’d rinsed my shirt to get the sweat out. I draped it on a chair
between Terry’s bed and mine. In the morning, there was a pool of water.
“It looks like pee!” he said, not in his chuckling
voice. For someone as gentle as Terry, it was almost shrill. He didn’t want the
blame for what I’d done. He also disliked mess. Water wasn’t pee, but it was
inappropriate, not all the time, just now, in its current position, a bit like
Terry.
On the path to Vatopedi,
we heard an odd noise. Terry was unsettled.
“What was that?”
“I thought it was my
stomach,” I said. We’d had beans for ‘breakfast.’ Terry had warned us,
half-jokingly, about flatulence. He stopped walking now and beheld me.
“You know,” he said, as
if to himself, though everyone was listening, “I think Graham’s rather
wonderful.”
A lot can happen on a country walk. We saw
a lynx on a high slope, escaping from view; an elongated cat with different
ears. The young man said, “They roam wild here.”
“Roam wild here,” echoed Terry. He turned
to me again. “Graham, would you mind carrying my bag?” He watched me take it
for a few steps, then said, “You must be as strong as an ox! So thin, too.”
Then he walked off with the young man,
animated, as if their conversation was enthralling. I glanced at Bryan. He was
hurt. Terry had forgotten us.
It was spring. That’s something beautiful.
I mentioned herbal tea. Bryan replied, “It’s an abomination!”
We rested on a patch of grass, all four of
us, and dozed off in the sun. When we woke up, I said, “I hope no one’s
been…interfered with.”
Terry chuckled as he always did when I
made that kind of comment. The young man grimaced on cue but laughed when
Terry said, “No, unfortunately.”
Terry twisted an ankle on the path. It was
his light, canvas shoes, Bryan said; they weren’t appropriate for the stony
track, for the mountain. He said it politely, though he disapproved. Terry left
early on a kind of ambulance boat. The young man left too. There was no point
in staying.
