Jeffrey Siger - Sons of Sparta

Mangas caught Kouros staring and before Kouros could look away he waved for him to come over. It took a second for Kouros to realize what his cousin wanted. The church service had ended and he’d just been chosen as a pallbearer.

***

The pallbearers huddled around the coffin, gripped it, and lifted together. It was not as heavy as Kouros thought it would be. Then again, there were six bulls sharing the load. They turned the coffin so that Uncle’s body left the church feet first, opposite to how it had entered. The priest led them out through a small, west-facing door and along a stone path toward the village’s main entrance, taking care not to retrace the steps the coffin had followed into the church. Behind the coffin walked the family, led by Calliope, followed by a far larger crowd of mourners than had squeezed into the small church for the service.

They slid the coffin into the rear of a black Mercedes hearse. Behind it stood two shiny black pickup trucks filled with flowers. The motorcade slowly pulled away in the direction of Cape Tenaro.

Mourners hurried to their vehicles to join the line driving up the hill to the south. At the crest of the hill the road began a gradual, winding, three-mile cliffside descent to the sea at the area of Marmari, where the Mani’s rugged coastline pinched in to form but a mile-wide waist and its mountains dropped to rises. Past Marmari the land spread out and rose up again for a final three-mile, leveling run down to the sea at mainland Europe’s southern terminus at Cape Tenaro.

A mile down the hill toward Marmari the hearse pulled off to the side of the road and stopped. The line of vehicles peeled off to park.

Kouros met up with the other pallbearers at the top of a scruffy, brush-covered switchback path. A quarter-mile away, on a rocky clifftop plateau, five shed-like stone structures topped in plain white crosses stood side by side facing west and overlooking the Ionian Sea.

Six men marching in cadence, trailed by a long line of black, carried the coffin across a shadowless, putty color landscape. They trudged in silence toward the largest of the structures, the tafos of Uncle’s family and final resting place for his earthly remains. Graves could not be dug in this area of the Mani’s rocky soil and his coffin would stay within this tomb for at least seven years, perhaps as long as ten, until only his bones remained. They would then be washed with water, followed by vinegar, allowed to dry in the sun, placed in a small wooden box, and put to rest for eternity in a drawer within the walls of this same tomb.

The pallbearers placed the coffin in front of the tafos . Wailing came in waves as they removed the lid, subsiding only long enough to hear the priestly blessing and prayer for Uncle’s soul. His blessed journey continued as the priest took Uncle’s arms crossed snuggly across his chest, drew them apart, and placed them to rest peacefully alongside his body, palms open and facing heaven. Only one tradition from this part of the Mani remained before Uncle’s coffin would be sealed and placed within the tomb. The priest picked up a full bottle of red wine and poured its contents over Uncle’s body.

Kouros’ mother stood among the crowd of women huddled close by the coffin, shrieking and crying as pallbearers sealed and lifted Uncle’s remains into the tomb. Such soulful, once-widespread traditions were rarely practiced in Greece these days, even in the Mani, but today all of them were observed, for Calliope had insisted it be so.

Kouros watched Calliope staring at the tomb. She seemed lost in thought. They hadn’t spoken today. Nor had she been active among the screaming mourners. But what surprised him most was when he’d heard she’d not participated in last night’s mirologia . Whatever her thoughts she seemed determined to keep them tightly locked inside. He hoped she was okay.

As if reading his thoughts Calliope looked up, let her eyes run wild across the crowd of mourners, raised her hands above her head, and screamed, “ It is time .” All eyes turned to her and she began to chant.

It made no sense. This was not the proper time or place for mirologia. But no one dared stop her. She tearfully welcomed and thanked all who’d come to honor her father, taking special care to mention each dignitary by name. Her weeping grew into wailing, a sign to other women mourners to join her. They looked at each other, unsure of what to do. Kouros’ mother stepped forward and began chanting alongside Calliope. Others joined her, and soon one emotional outburst fed another as wailing women pulled at their hair, scratched their faces, and shouted blessings for the departed.

The brothers looked down at their feet, as if embarrassed by the scene at their father’s grave. But there was nothing they could do. This was their sister’s time.

Calliope drew one hand down from pulling at her hair and began pounding on her chest in keeping with the slow rhythmic beat of her mirologia to her father:

Kouros couldn’t believe he’d just heard Calliope stand at her father’s gravesite and in front of the entire community call out her brothers to seek vengeance for his death.

Looks like I’ve been worried about the wrong cousin starting a war.

Orestes had promised to give Andreas a list of persons to investigate. What he actually sent him seemed more like a compilation of the world’s largest Fortune 100 companies having anything to do with the exploration, extraction, processing, or delivery of natural gas. It looked like something Orestes’ secretary had pulled off the Internet by punching in “world’s largest natural gas” in front of each step in the natural gas chain. Not a single individual mentioned by name, just companies and only a few with even an address in Greece.