December 20, 2010
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A Monastery Christmas
Brother Stavros had been stationed at the lower gate all that day
And worn a deep path in the snow with his pacing
He was hungry and cold and he regarded the approaching darkness with relief
For as soon as night fell he could go back inside the wall
There in his room above the stables, he would eat some stale bread, cheese and olives
Drink some freshly brewed tea to warm his frozen bones and go right to sleep
What nonsense he muttered to himself waiting in this biting cold to greet some shabby peasants
Coming to help the old abbot and his monks celebrate a holy January birth
That had lost all significance… All reverence... All meaning...
The wind heightened and he hugged his heavy shawl more closely about him
And moved to the shelter of some trees by the side of the road –
What was there to celebrate he asked himself... staring out from behind his hood
As if trying to penetrate the white mists rising from the valleys below
Down there men were slaughtering each other every day
Animals in a jungle had more respect for one another
Yes it was true what he heard down in the village the other day...
The spirit of the Child has been trampled into the dusts of rolling tanks and marching feet
The abbot and his gentle priests had no knowledge of these things...
How could they when they were shut away up here on this remote mountain
High above the sick world below secure behind their cloistered walls...
But he had seen with his own eyes the devastation and the massacres
The blood being spilled in the village streets and mountain passes...
He watched as barefoot shepherds tried to stop the Panzer tanks
With wine bottles filled with gasoline and were in turn cut down like so many hay-stalks
Falling to the scythe by the enemy machine-gunners... Yes, he’d seen it with his own eyes
Those two years leading his ragged partisans against that mechanized army of demons...
He reached into his cassock and brought out a pack of German cigarettes
The last pack from the last raid - twisting his lips into a mournful smile
Even though they were betrayed they had done a thorough job on that supply convoy
He counted the cigarettes... Just five... Only five of his seventy-odd fighters
Survived the surprise German counter-attack… He put the cigarettes back into his pocket -
He would smoke one tonight before he went to sleep...
He heard the evening bell sound behind the wall... The monks were at their meal
Suddenly he was very hungry and he wished he could go up and eat too
Someday he’d find the courage to chuck his habit at the abbot’s feet and go down the mountain
To the world of men once more - Even facing a firing squad did not bother him in moments like this
But he should not be too hard on these priests
They had taken him in without a word – when badly wounded he had climbed up here to hide
After he tracked down and finished off that Judas of a peasant
Yes, the monks had been kind... They healed his wounds and robed him in their habit
He was taught to gather the wild berries on the lower slopes and press them into a potent brandy
He learned to cultivate the green tea which grew wild on the steep mountain-sides
And prune the olive trees in the fall and gather their fruit for light and food throughout the year...
Because he was a man of exceptional strength the abbot gave him much of the heavy labor to do
He performed the various tasks without a word and though he grumbled to himself in times like this
Secretly he was content with this child’s-play-world where he had found sanctuary
So he did nothing to harm his position or upset the abbot’s faith in him
Even when the ancient priest would gently lecture him on the spiritual rewards he was missing
By not joining the order – Brother Stavros managed with great skill and diplomacy
To refuse without hurting the old man’s feelings...
From time to time, he would descend to the world below wrapped in the anonymity of his habit
He would wander the silent streets of villages he romped as a precocious child
Recalling how these once-vibrant streets sang with the banter and laughter of a happy people
Now only stares of distrust and suspicion were evident in their eyes
He would sit alone in the “kafenia” in the market-places careful not to reveal too much
Of his bearded face masked by his voluminous hood, and watch the Fascists strut
Arm-in-arm with their traitorous strumpets, and he would sense his people’s terror and hatred
As they scattered to let the enemy pass...
And, as he slowly sipped his bitter chicory coffee laced with ouzo, there began in him
A strange and disquieting awareness – For as he witnessed the misery about him, the poverty
The starving sunken faces, the stooped and beaten forms hurrying along rubble-strewn streets
He would sit and stare at them and was reminded of the frightened rabbits he kept penned as a child
And the once-fierce love for these people ebbed with each descent from his mountain hiding-place
Until all of them were reduced to nothing more than legions of shadows
Strung across the familiar architectures of the villages of his youth...
The compassion for his people, the anger toward the enemy, the loves and hatreds
They were gone now – nothing was left except for a curious and recurring emptiness in his heart...
When he had seen enough, he would mount his elderly mule and climb into the safety of the hills
Making his way slowly along obscure mountain trails back to the safe haven of the monastery
Always after each of these journeys he would tell himself that it would be the last
That he must not go again for it was far too dangerous – Yet when the mechanical routine of life
Behind the walls became too much to bear, he would descend the mountain once more to watch
And to reflect inwardly upon this strange dispassionate attitude which had come to possess him...
Suddenly, he was shaken from his reverie as the tinkle of a donkey-bell
Struck like a note from a heavenly harp in the crisp quiet of the mountain eve
He peered into the darkness but could see nothing and began to think he imagined it
But then he heard it again, this time much closer...
“Who is it?” he bellowed into the night, his voice shattering the stillness...
There was no answer but in the cut below, he made out the forms of the floundering burrow
With a woman swaying on its back and as he hurried down to them he called out...
“Are you alone?... Are the others not coming for the mass?... It is almost time to begin”
He had reached them now and grasped the burrow’s rope and the exhausted animal nuzzled him
Grateful for the chance to pause – He patted its head and looked up at the woman...
She was very young and heavy with child – Her face was small and round – puffed and pained
By the ordeal of the climb and her eyes watered as the wind bristling through the ravine
Whipped through her inadequate clothing – Her breath, uneven, came quickly
Labored vaporous puffs in misted whiteness round her face so that her features seemed to float
In the thin diaphanous air as if woven of the subtle formlessness of dreams...
He whipped the great shawl from his shoulders and reached up
And wrapped it round the trembling girl and lifting her gently from the animal’s back
He shooed the burrow before him and carried her up through the drifts past the gate
To his room above the stable and eased her onto his straw pallet and covered her with sheep-skins...
Brother Stavros watched the tiny beads of sweat form on the girl’s face as she lay asleep
In the warm comfort of the manger - He fed the large peat stove below with solid blocks
And filled his large tea-kettle with melted snow till it overflowed
Boiling now in preparation for the birth which he knew would be very soon
He knelt anxiously beside her in the hay for she was in the final stage of her delivery
She strained while still half-asleep to bring forth her child and as he watched her
He marveled at this incredible thing that was birth – In pain he said to himself
We are all conceived... In pain some of us live and die... Why should this be? – It was as if God
Had conspired against the whole of the creatures that inhabit his earth - For here in this very manger
Here was a child coming into a world filled with the sounds of gunfire in the valleys below
And the bodies of dead hostages sprawled in the dusts of the compounds
No doubt this child would die of hunger in infancy yet should it survive, it would pass its mortal days
In anguish and uncertainty – Never to know a peaceful moment – Always struggling to maintain
Even the smallest measure of dignity- a dignity that should be its birth-right from the start
Ah, he whispered to the soon-to-be mother... what a price to pay for that first foolish breath of life...
As he cooled the girl’s flushed face with snow-water, he recalled a night such as this years before
He remembered the quiet woman he loved so dearly and that snow-filled night
When he helped bring their child into the world – Yet a year later they were both taken as hostages
To compel him to surrender himself and his ragged army of partisans
And with this loss there had come to him a violent hatred for those who murdered his family
He fought the enemy with a vengeance that made his name a rallying cry in the hills
And brought a price on his head – He led his “patriotes” in one successful raid after another
Causing the enemy to side-track great numbers of men and machines in attempts to hunt them down
In this backwash of the war - Until one terrible night when he led most of his men into imprisonment
And death at the hands of an informer, once his childhood friend, barely escaping the trap himself
And wounded he waited in the fields outside the German command post and jumped the traitor
Strangling the life out of the man’s lungs...
It was at that precise moment when he heard the sound of that last bit of breath
Escaping from the man he’d slain, that moment when the night wind absorbed that last hiss
That it also carried with it the comfort and guidance and ability to pray to a God
He no longer believed in... To serve nothing... To serve no one... To escape... To protect himself...
This was all that mattered now..
He was roused by the faint sound of the girl’s voice…
“It is time” she whispered to him through her pain...
Brother Stavros stood at the window and looked out
It began to snow again and the spires of the monastery were lost beyond the swirling banks of flakes
The wind drove the snow round the courtyard into dark corners
Drifting soft graceful forms against stone walls
Somewhere down the mountain, the muffled roar of an avalanche sifted back to him
Signs of an early January thaw he thought
He heard the animals below shift uneasily in their stalls
He glanced over to where the exhausted girl slept peacefully on his pallet
He had cleaned his gnarled hands with some brandy
And washed the after-birth from the infant with warm water and cut and knotted the cord
Then he wrapped the little boy as tightly as he could in one of his clean shirts and laid him next to her
And her arm had encircled it, pressed to her side, her face close by its own
He went down and milked one of the goats and carried the pan upstairs
He took one of his unused applewood pipes and filled the bowl with the warm milk
He carefully placed the stem in the baby’s mouth and was pleased when it sucked a bit of it down
The girl watched him all the while and when he was finished she closed her eyes and slept...
Suddenly he was very tired and he realized that he hadn’t eaten since morning
But he could not bring himself to prepare a meal
He closed the shutter and lay next to her on the hay-strewn floor
The familiar odor of animals and hay combined to lull his senses and relax his aching body
He turned on his side so that he could see her...
She slept a soft rhythmical sleep, her whole body consumed
By the rising and falling of her breathing
In the soft glow of the oil lamp he had hung from a rafter
Her face had lost some of its pallor and faint points of color had begun to tint her cheeks
How delicate yet strong the hand that pressed her child to her...
He wondered where she had come from and by what miracle had she found her way up the mountain
When the trails had been drifted over by mid-winter snows?
Where was her husband?... Perhaps a lover?... A German soldier?...
No matter, it was her affair... He would not ask...
He turned on his back to stare up at the great beams which supported the rough red-tiled roof
Below, an animal snorted... Another moved stamping its hoofs against the base of its stall
He closed his eyes...
How small the child cupped in his hands... Its pinched red face... The smell of just-born
The cord soft to his fingers as he cut and knotted it... How limp the girl’s body went
As he placed the swathed infant by her side after he fed it... The infinite gratitude in her eyes...
He placed a stalk of the dried grass between his teeth and sucked it... and the faint scent of fields
Browned under late summer sun flitted back to him... He heard once more
The fragmentary music of the lark above the pearl-mist of cloud-fills... He saw again the slanting flight
Of blue deer just below the snowline...The cutting angled flight of crows above the brilliant fields...
The mazarine sky... The aimlessness of their swinging darting flight... The solitary child
Lying upon the solid earth under the twisted branches of the wild apple tree
Centered within the barren womb of this caravansary of mountains...
Would it drink too the cool sweet water of the rock?... The warm milk of the goat?... Would it hear
The passing-bell pealing in the village and wonder who had died?... Would it pray?...
And when it is older, would it thrill to the crystalled laughter of a woman and know her love
Deep in the silent passages of night?... Lose her and their child?...
Within the million-colored tapestry of life, how deep would lie its disenchantment?...
Where are the angels of his childhood?...
How could he have forgotten the venerable prayers taught him by his mother... Prayers recited
In the semi-darkness of their white-washed kitchen lighted only by the holy oil of the “kandili”
Hung from the ceiling before the icons... He recalls the illumined faces of saints staring down on him
From their shelf as his gentle mother whispered of passionate battles fought in the service of the Lord,
The violence of their persecutions and the eternal rewards of their fruitful victories... And secretly
He fights once more imaginary demons in the lush viridian fields above the village, lancing them
With spears fashioned from the branches of the lemon tree... And as he grows old enough
To spell his father in the wild pasturelands high in the hills, he sits again among the grazing sheep
And prays silently for hours to the invisible hosts beyond the drifting clouds...
Life is warm and full and he wishes all this beauty would return... He wishes with such passion
That tears come to his eyes... The vivaciousness of his mother... The quiet strength of his father
The warm haven of that shining white house perched on the hillside above the village of his youth...
The wash and counter-wash of dreams... The brilliance of memories...
Just before he fell asleep, Brother Stavros heard the child sneeze and then his mother’s tender kiss...
Outside, as suddenly as it began, the snow had stopped and high on the hill
The monks led by the old abbot filed slowly out of the chapel, each carrying a lighted candle...
They chanted softly, the Gregorian “Genesis Sou Christe” and the delicate music soaring
Into the infinite majesty of night, lost itself to the acute loneliness of far immutable stars...
Comments (2)
A lovely Christmas story against the back drop of war and death... Each man can make a difference turning toward or away from the light.
Remarkable. Lovely
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