Pt2 - 14 INTERLUDE:

IN THE SILVER SILENCE

Delphi, 1977: At the youth hostel Ilene and I team up with four fellow travellers from England. We spend the night together eating, drinking and swapping travel stories at a small taverna perched on the side of the mountain. A full moon glows silver in the clear vaulted sky. It’s cool out on the deck but we barely notice, warmed as we are by the wine and good company. At some point late in the evening the others retire to the youth hostel while Ilene and I settle on a stroll around the village. I don’t know how we end up at the deserted archaeological site a few ks out of town but here we are at the low fence beside the entrance gate. Then in a crazy wordless minute we’re on the inside threading our way up to the stadium. Sitting in the royal seats we whisper to each other in the silver silence as though speech might rouse the spirits. Here in this place of myth and legend we are creating our own personal mythology, a moment only we two will ever share. To seal the secret we strip, take our marks in the ancient stone starting stalls and launch ourselves on a lap of the long elliptical track. Ilene wins comfortably and, laughing, we dress again quickly against the cool night air.

It’s past midnight and downright cold when we return to the hostel to find ourselves locked out. I try knocking but there’s no response. Our room is on the top floor at the rear of the building. There’s nothing for it but to shinny up a drainpipe and shuffle around a narrow ledge to the dorm window. One of our English friends lets us in. We climb into bed and drift off to sleep in each other’s arms.

Delphi, 1997: I’m too pissed to walk to the site so I take the Corsa. I park in a layby a few hundred metres from the entrance and scope it out for ten minutes. There are lights at the new museum but no sign of life. Security hasn’t improved in the last twenty years. I sidle up to where Ilene and I scaled the fence and wait in the shadows a few more minutes. Satisfied the coast is clear I struggle up and over the wire, snagging my jeans in the process. I manage to avoid falling in a heap and slink off up the Sacred Way towards the Temple of Apollo, pausing regularly to catch my breath. At the temple I stop to collect myself, to get my head right. This was never going to be the same experience as all those years ago, can’t by any measure be the same experience, and I’m only doing that sacred memory a disservice by imagining it will be, especially in my current state. This is an opportunity not even afforded Ilene to privately commemorate a unique moment in our personal history, so don’t fuck it up you idiot.

I arrive at the stadium calm, relaxed and ready. I take the same seat in the royal box where I sat with Ilene and close my eyes. In the silver silence I hear her whispering, feel her warm breath in my ear. After a while I walk across to the elaborately sculpted starting stalls where we began our naked race, turn to face the track and kneel to take my mark. I’m past running now, especially naked, but I see Ilene’s white butt receding in the moonlight and smile. And that is enough, the moment is honoured.

On the way back down a dog barks. Men laughing near the museum. It’s 12:45am…nightwatchmen? I wait the five minutes it takes for the deep quiet to form a scar over the slash of sound. I’m down the last few meters, over the fence and back at the car in a single movement.

No drainpipes to shinny, no ledges to shuffle, it’s 1:15 when I slide into bed beside Tess.

*

The road to Meteora was fast and featureless until it rose up on to the high, central northern plains after Lamia. Here were vast tracts of fertile farmland, the fields occasionally giving way to explosions of vivid yellow so dense it hurt the eye to see. Then, as though sprayed upon this yellow canvas by a cosmic graffiti artist, profusions of dazzling red poppies bled across the landscape away into the distance.

The imposing rock spires of Meteora loomed out of the flat expanse as we approached Karditsa still sixty-six kilometres to the south. An hour later we checked into room above a little family taverna in Kastraki, right at the foot of one of these spires with windows that gave out on the sheer smooth walls rising behind us. I was less interested in the religious aspects of Meteora than the compelling geology but, since we’d arrived with plenty of time up our sleeve, we took the snaking five kilometre road in to the monastery of Great Meteoron. What I hadn’t expected to see were the literally dozens of rock climbers dangling precariously from ropes on almost every exposed face like mad marionettes.

Although only a few of the monasteries are open to the public, and even then only strictly controlled sections of those monasteries, the museums hold some of the oldest texts I’ve ever seen, including illuminated 12^th century manuscripts and pages of some of the earliest Byzantine music ever notated. The Great Meteoron has a creepy ossuary where you peek through a hole on a heavy wooden door to see shelves of neatly stacked skulls and bundles of dusty bones arranged with ritual precision, morbid but different. The nunnery of Varlaam lacked the ossuary, but made up for it with more ancient books, embroidery and silverwork.

We dined royally at the Kosmik Kafe and retired early, for tomorrow we return to Athens.

*

By 11 we’re on the fast track to the capital, foot to the floor, no horses spared. The little Corsa fairly hauls along, the fifth gear perfect for the open Greek road. I’ve not been looking forward to Athens traffic but being Sunday it’s pleasantly light and manageable. By 4:30 we’re holed up in room 711 at the Hotel of the Exploding Boiler – the Astor. I returned the Corsa, which brought to an official close our Grand Prix Tour of the mainland. It’s been a full-on 1,358 kilometers in 4 days, on top of the 28 odd hours from that morning on Naxos to picking up the car on Nikis...Santorini seems like months ago. The frantic pace has been worth it logistically; we’ve banked a shitload of time for Italy and brought ourselves some breathing space before we pick the car up in Nice on the 2^nd of June.

*

My personal last 12 hours in Greece went like this:

·       What’s that quote from the bible: Pass not beneath the golden arches of mammon lest thou endeth up shitting through the eye of a needle?  It would never occur to us to darken the doorway of a Macca’s back home and, although we lapsed once in Cairo, it can only be due to a fatigue-induced loss of reason that we visited the one on Syntagma a couple of times…and I’m paying the price! Yesterday evening is the last time I’ll eat at that pestilent place – EVER – because since then I’ve had the McRuns, big time. I’ve taken a couple of Lomatil to try and stem the flow…as it were.

·        The wake-up call came at 5:15am. Blearily we went about our road routine, by now automatic. At 5:50 we were in the cab for the airport and were checked in and through immigration before I’d even woken up properly. We blew our last drax on duty-free booze and fags and a styrofoam cup of coffee each.

·        Gripped by a Mac attack I raced for the airport loos. Some lazy slob had pissed all over the seat in the first cubicle, the second was clogged with paper and the third was out of order. The fourth offered some light comic relief; I pushed open the unlocked door to confront a hairy arse pointed in my direction. Its owner, daks down around his knees, evidently thought he was bending over forwards to please. I let the door close and tried number 5…success at last!

·         Right on time, 7:35, Thai airways TG940 lifted off for the 90 minute flight to Rome.

Next week: The most pregnant syllable...