The Golden Step Read online

  That was not quite the end of the road, as it happened. The people of Crete did not only want freedom from the oppressive rule of the Ottoman Empire. They also craved enosis, or political union with mainland Greece; and the Great Powers were opposed to the idea, for fear it would provoke the Young Turks at that time revitalising the Ottoman Empire, and perhaps set all the Balkans aflame. Eleftherias Venizelos convened a Revolutionary Assembly in 1905 as a ginger group to push for enosis. Five years later he was elected Prime Minister of Greece; and three years after that, on 1 December 1913, the Greek flag was again raised in Chania, above the Firkas fort on the harbour. This time it remained proudly flying from its pole, a symbol of enosis achieved.

  On the morning after St George’s Day I got up early and did my daily washing in a cold and slippery stew of blue suds. This mundane operation, generally carried out at the end of each day’s march, had been an essential part of the routine since my decision on Day One to sacrifice half the contents of the pack to the god of lightness. My total clothing commissariat now consisted of: 2 walking shirts, cotton, long-sleeved, with breast pockets to hold sunglasses and specs; 1 set of thermal underwear; 3 pairs of light socks and 2 of heavy walking socks (these now full of astivitha prickles inextricably interwoven with the wool); 2 pairs of trousers, washable, one torn at the knee and crudely stitched; 1 light sweater; 1 handkerchief; 1 anorak; 1 fleece; 1 pair of shoes, light, canvas; 2 pairs of underpants, post-pristine. A simple piece of hard-learned advice to anyone thinking of following in my footsteps – take dark-coloured underpants if you wish to avoid hotel balcony drying-line mortification.

  My friend the Psalmist had his own, not dissimilar concerns today. ‘My wounds stink and are corrupt because of my foolishness. My loins are filled with a loathsome disease: and there is no soundness in my flesh. I am feeble and sore broken: I have roared by reason of the disquietness of my heart … I am ready to halt, and my sorrow is continually before me.’

  Hmmm, yes. What else at this stage, roughly a third of the way into the walk? A plague of boils on my back, probably the result of sweating all day, every day into a shirt impregnated with the previous day’s salt sweat, the previous night’s unconditioned soap suds. Feet a bit of a mess, and stinking like a Psalmist’s wounds, but negotiable with Compeed and cold water douches. Spirits fine. I wish, I wish, but it’s all in vain; I wish I was a maid again … or at least that I had prepared a bit better. Slopes, stones, screes – all were finding me out. On the plus side was the gradual acquisition of a tongue and the courage to use it. In the bank at Kastelli the girls had gathered round, smiling and astonished to hear the tourista speak Greek – not so much at its quantity or quality (I was still at the stage of recycling words or phrases picked up as I went along), as at the strange phenomenon of an Englishman making an effort.

  Archanes offered two fine archaeological outings, the perfect excuse for a day off to let the sun get at my salt-stiffened clothes. I climbed the little hill just north of the town and steered for the ancient burial ground of Phourni, which looks out to the twin-peaked bulk of Mount Iouchtas. This is one of the most remarkable cemetery sites anywhere round the Aegean. So often it is luck as much as good judgement that drives our archaeological understanding. The Cornish fisherman shoots his net a couple of feet this way or that, and the corner slides across the golden cup from famed Atlantis. Manolis, feeling the need for a cigarette, climbs out of the ditch he has been digging and crushes with his boot a tablet of clay stamped with hieroglyphics that match those on the as-yet-undecipherable Phaistos Disc. So many accidents and happenstances to break the spinal cord of history; so many gaps to be filled in with educated guesswork. But at Phourni one sees a complete picture, an unbroken succession of Minoan burials, a millennium and a half that stretches from the early era, around 2,500 BC, down to the end of the Minoan age and the rule of the Myceneans after the destruction of the great palaces. All sorts of grave-goods have been found here: large clay larnakes or coffin-chests painted with vivid scenes of burial, bronze vessels, imported treasures including an Egyptian scarab, gold and silver jewellery, remains of a horse sacrifice, the skull of a bull, and a Minoan ossuary packed thickly with human skulls and bones. Several tholoi or circular tombs with vaulted ceilings stand on the site, those from earlier Minoan times containing multiple burials, later ones with single occupants.

  I wandered among grey chambers of massive squared stones where burials in larnakes and pithoi (the classic large earthenware jar) had been discovered stacked up to 18 deep. Most of these chambers were close-packed to form the familiar Minoan nest or labyrinth of buildings, their compartments interconnected with doors, tunnels, passages, openings, other secret little rooms. Off to one side, near a big stone beehive-shaped tholos where the remains of a high-ranking priestess had been excavated, seven neat rectangular Mycenean graves lay cut out of the solid rock, three of them still bearing an erect slab like a tombstone. Out at the southern end of the site I sat in the shadow of another ring-shaped tholos, picturing the moment when its excavators uncovered the body of a Minoan lady, maybe a princess, with her jewels around her and her mirror of polished bronze placed so that she could contemplate her own beauty for ever more. On this cool, cloudy hilltop with its grey rocks and grey stones, the Minoans seemed only a breath away.

  Back in Archanes I dug out the philakas or guardian of the Anemospilia and got him and his key into a taxi. I wanted to have a look at the ‘Cave of the Winds’ up on Mount Iouchtas from close-to. ‘Don’t miss,’ I’d been urged in the taverna last night by Zpiderman, who’d taken the trouble to lay out the story for me in his effortful English. The cave lay a 15-minute car ride off, not far below the Minoan sanctuary at the northern peak of the mountain, commanding a stunning view – east to the Dhikti Mountains, west to snow-backed Psiloritis, north across the lowland olive groves and vineyards and on over Iraklion to Dia Island lying out in the Cretan Sea. Inside the fence the site was small – three simple stone rooms side by side, each opening onto a short corridor that ran east and west. The tale, however, was both complicated and, when unravelled, marvellously intriguing – a triumph of educated guesswork.

  When the Cave of the Winds was excavated in 1979, the archaeologists found the remains of three humans in the most westerly of the three chambers. One was that of a man in his thirties, the ring of iron and silver and the agate seal he wore suggesting an elevated social position, perhaps that of a priest. With him was a slightly younger woman. On top of a stone altar nearby lay the skeleton of a youth of perhaps 18, curled up in the foetal position, with a 16-inch-long bronze knife on top of him. Forensic examination suggested that he had bled to death just before being burned in a fierce fire. Outside in the corridor lay the crushed skeleton of a fourth person, a man, along with the remains of a ritual vessel.

  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 th
e 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.

  The Cave of the Winds

  They brought him up at dawn over the rocks,

  a crag-faced priest, a woman with snakes, an acolyte

  brawny and dumb. Was he a prize of war,

  crying out strange prayers, trembling, tugged

  on like a calf; or did he stride oiled,

  prepared, a cloak of dew pearling his skin?

  Earth groaned a warning. The priest muttered,

  quickened step. Ruin in the temple,

  leaning jambs, burst doors. The idol

  lurched on cracked feet, sign of the end of things;

  the greedy idol. The boy glanced in, saw

  rusty stains round wooden lips. The Shaker

  stretched, slabs fell. In the lamp-lit room,

  curled on the altar, he heard snakes hiss.

  The dumb one grinned, holding the dish low.

  Bronze slipped in, out. The boy sighed,

  relaxed. Out of the hill the Shaker came,

  claiming heaven and earth. The god would feed.

  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)

  ‘Walk about Zion, and go round about her: tell the towers thereof. Mark ye well her bulwarks, consider her palaces … Beautiful for situation, the joy of the whole earth, is Mount Zion…’

  Psalm 48

  ‘Ligo volta, pende lepta – a little wander, five minutes,’ decreed Manoli Piperakis, slamming me into the passenger seat of his pickup at dawn. We shot round the blind corners of the village at lip-biting velocity. ‘Christ …!’ I heard myself muttering as I clutched the doorframe, barely awake and still in the grip of the home-made wine with which Manoli had refilled my glass so enthusiastically and so frequently last night. Cretan hospitality is a tiger, and you ride it at your peril.

  ‘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 mornin
g. 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.