In a little while he came across a man in blue trousers goading a small laden hill-donkey along with sharp objurgations. He was able to ask the question that lay uppermost in his mind after the usual exchange of civilities. “Up at the monastery — is the Abbot John still there?” The peasant had a broad but starting forehead with a widow’s peak of hair. He spat with unction. “They are always there,” he said. “Thieves, blackmailers, priests.” Baird smiled. “Greece”, said the man, “carries the priest in her skin like a dog fleas.”
“Greece could do with more patriots as fine as her priests,” said Baird shortly, thinking of the marvellous actions of the old Abbot, his joyousness and insouciance; craziness and humour, childishness and resolution; that kaleidoscope of emotions which is forever turning in the Greek’s brain, defying logic. The man looked at him with a grudging pleasure. He had simply wanted a grumble — the natural conversational form of Greeks. “Well,” he said, “the Abbot John is a swindler.”
This Baird did not doubt for a second. He turned the subject towards a more congenial exchange of information. The man had two children. He was a fisherman (which was synonymous with pirate in Baird’s vocabulary). He was from the village of Nesboli — two hours away. Baird could not resist telling him that he had been there when the Germans had burnt down the village. “The Abbot John saved your kinsfolk then,” he said. “What has he done to make you speak like this of him?”
It was clear from the conversation that followed that the man was in the habit of unloading caiques at the coast and bringing up loads on his donkeys to the monastery. Baird did not ask him what the caiques were filled with. Instead he professed indifference and at the next corner of the road they parted.
He was almost down to the sea-line again as he skirted the cliff-path above St. George. Below him, perched on the irregular hill-side he could see the red belfry and the white wall of the monastery glowing in the light of the afternoon sun. It had been built at a point where a shallow stream made an issue through the rock to reach the sea. Thus, in all that wild landscape it seemed to be an oasis of greenery, for the fresh water had thrown up cherry and walnut trees to cluster about it. Seen from above, the little building seemed to float upon this dense green sheet of foliage. A narrow shaded path led to the great oak door over cobbles; Baird fingered the familiar burns in the wood, remembering the occasion when Germans had conducted reprisals here on captive guerillas. Then he caught the massive knocker in both hands and knocked twice.
There was no answer. The door yielded slightly to his shoulder and opened, admitting him; he was standing once more in the little white courtyard paved with coloured sea-pebbles. The sunlight was white and lucid on the rock. Flowers were growing in pots along the sea-wall and he noticed that in some of them grew sweet basil, the Abbot’s favourite plant. He stood quite still and looked about him. Somewhere from the back of the building came a noise as of a pot being scoured with sand. The door of the little chapel was open. Inside the gloom was intense as that of a cave. Baird stepped inside, crossed himself, and waited for his eyes to begin printing the remembered picture. Gradually they emerged like a developing photo — the savage ikons with their tinsel haloes, the swinging lamps, the garish ironwork and plate. Presently, too, St. Demetrius swam out of the gloom — his eyes great boring points of blackness. Baird saw a bottle of olive oil on the ledge and, taking it according to custom, he tipped a little into each lamp to replenish it.
Now he crossed the dazzling courtyard and looked over the sea-wall. Withes of brown fishing-net lay spread upon a rock to dry. A small coracle of wood and straw was drawn up under the stairs leading down to the water. Several brown gourd-like lobster-pots lay beside it. Not a breath stirred the sea as it stretched clear from that white wall to the coasts of Africa. He watched it quietly swelling and subsiding, replete in its trance of royal blue. Once it gulped and swelled a few inches to carry back with it the limpet-shells left behind by some rock-fisherman.
Baird skirted the main building, struck by a sudden idea. The sea-wall ended in a small white balcony and a pergola of grapevine. Here lay the Abbot fast asleep in an old deck-chair, his noble beard lying upon his chest, his brown wrinkled hands with their short nails lying folded in his lap. His stovepipe hat stood beside him on the ground, and his feet were stretched out, one on either side of it, clad in heavy hob-nailed boots. Baird came up quietly and sat down upon the white seawall, facing him, looking eagerly at that venerable and innocent old face. Here he sat, waiting for the Abbot to wake, and feeling himself sinking insensibly into a doze, little by little; sinking through the floors of thought and action to that level in which one becomes suddenly one with the passive, accepting sea and air. It was as if all the contradictions and questions which had been filling his mind had suddenly been spilled into this broad and gracious quietness. He felt his eyes closing and his head falling upon his breast.
Once or twice the Abbot stirred in his sleep and seemed to be on the point of waking, but each time he settled himself deeper into the honey-gold quietness of the afternoon, into his own contented slumber. At last, when Baird was almost asleep himself, the old man spoke, without opening his eyes. “Well, my dear Baird,” he said; and now he looked up. “We all knew you would come back. It was simply a question of when.”
He rose groaning from his chair and they embraced tenderly. Then he sat down again and closed his eyes for a moment, before taking a packet of cheap cigarettes from the folds of his stained gown and lighting up. He yawned prodigiously and said: “I was aware that someone was sitting silently before me. I thought perhaps I was being covered by a revolver. You see? We haven’t shaken off our old habits yet. I just had a peep through my lashes to see what was what. Have you noticed that it is quite impossible for one to murder a sleeping man?”
“I knew you’d seen me,” said Baird.
“And so, my dear fellow,” said the Abbot, his face wrinkled shrewdly into a smile, “you have come back at last to revisit the scene of so many adventures.” He got up and put his arms round Baird, giving him a great bear-hug. Then he brushed the ash out of his beard and stretched again, yawning. “I cannot think of anything better,” he said.
“And what’s going on in the great world?” he asked, with that typical Greek passion for news from abroad.
“It is all exactly as you prophesied.”
“The nations are quarrelling?”
“Yes.”
“I knew it. About possessions?”
“Pipe-lines, spheres of influence, trade.…”
“Did you expect anything different?”
Baird saw once more the shrewd hawk-like cut of the Abbot’s features, the curly rings of his beard around his wry mouth, and remembered those endless conversations with which they whiled away their inaction and solitude on the White Mountains. “I did,” he admitted at last. “I thought everything would be different once the basic revolution in property had been accomplished. I was wrong.”
“False premises, false conclusions,” said the Abbot John, and passed his hand slowly through his great beard, brushing away the cigarette ash which had a habit of clinging to it. “But console yourself. You are not the only person who is wrong. Wait until I introduce you to Brother Mark. Brother Mark is one of us — probably the most diligent. He believes that it is we who are building the new world — the new heaven and earth; here in this monastery. He believes that the invisible propaganda of our lives here is somewhere registered to our credit — to the credit of all humanity. Now surely that is just as bad as any business man? It proves that Brother Mark has not learned his own business yet. Virtue, and the practice of it, is its own end.”