Neil Olson - The Icon

Half a day later, an unsettled feeling still enveloped him. He wandered through the great church of Saint Demetrios like a ghost, cut off from the other souls around him, mourning the Mother while they mourned the Son and looked forward to his resurrection. Huge chandeliers illuminated the place. The gold base painting of the rear wall and domed ceiling of the sanctuary, richly spotted with saints and angels, dazzled the eye, contrasting with the cool gray-white stone and marble of the interior colon-nades. Matthew visited Ephthimious’ chapel, with its red-haloed saints and ghostly, hooded figures. Time had not been kind to the frescoes, but their washed-out quality lent an air of mystery that appealed to him at the moment. He lingered, the cold leaching out sleepiness, forcing his blood and muscle to motion, his mind to consciousness. He had an hour or so before Fotis was to meet him, but he intended to be on watch before that. Who knew what surprises the old man had in mind tonight?

A service-the latest in an endless procession this Holy Week-had begun in the main body of the church, so Matthew took the side aisles around to the saint’s tomb, a tomb only in name. The body was supposed to have been stolen by the Crusaders. Something had been returned from Italy twenty years before and now resided in a silver reliquary in the nave. The so-called tomb was merely an empty marble coffin with an icon placed on top. He didn’t know why he always came here, except that the room was peaceful and contemplative. The fact that it was older than the earliest Christian construction, part of the Roman baths, and that the saint’s remains had rested here for 900 years gave the chamber a gravity missing from the rest of the church, reconstructed in the 1920s after a great fire. Matthew didn’t think that Demetrios would like his new digs; surely he would prefer to be back in this quiet place.

He crouched down next to the marble box, unwilling to place his knees on the cold floor, to assume the position of supplication. Prayer, for him, could never be so intentional or so self-surrendering. He closed his eyes and remembered the basilica from a child’s perspective, remembered the seeming vastness of it, and the grand old man, his Papou, tall as a god, showing him everything. The tale of each saint was recounted with a skeptical smile. Andreas had no use for religion, but he wanted Matthew to understand the culture from which he sprang, and his admiration for and explanation of the extraordinary, painstaking work of inserting thousands of tesserae to create a mosaic, of how certain pigments in the frescoes were achieved, even of the warped perspective necessary to make a curved dome painting look natural, was mesmerizing for a child. It would take years for Matthew to understand half of what he’d been told, but the seed was planted in early youth, and he had never escaped the intense fascination of this art.

Yet it was not the same. His memory of standing before these images twenty years earlier carried more emotional power than actually standing before them now. Something had changed within him. Why, and when? It could have been his father’s illness; so much had gone astray since then, his interest in his work, his relationship with Robin, his faith in the old men who had taught him so much. But blaming the illness seemed a poor excuse, and not even convincing, because two strong passions had come upon him in the meantime: Ana, and the damn icon. Crouching in the cold, Matthew felt it more likely that those new passions had blotted out the old, had become everything to him, and this sickness of the soul came from being separated from both. He did not know where the icon was; he could not go back to Ana without finding it. Yet the odds of that were very remote. Opening his eyes to make sure he was alone, Matthew began to quietly recite some words of Greek, a prayer perhaps, to the saint, the Son, the Mother, whoever was on duty at the moment. Let the icon be found. Let it be returned to its rightful place, wherever that was. Let troubled spirits, including his own, be at rest. The Greek served him as he imagined Latin did others, giving the words mystery and power, and creating a sense of ritual that removed the individual from the process. Using such words, one stepped into the ever-running river of the holy, and was submerged.

After some minutes he rose, went up the worn marble steps through heavy red draperies to the narthex and out into the cool dusk. The church’s facade stood in shadow, but sunset touched the square tower with orange light, bringing out the red of the roof tiles and making the tall cross glow. The chanting of the priest and psáltees within was audible. The congregants were few in number so far, exhausted no doubt from the emotional exertions of the last two nights. On Thursday, the plaster Christ nailed to the cross. On Friday, taken down, draped in cloth, and carried about the church three times under a hail of carnations and the weeping of the old women. Tonight, they would stagger in by twos and threes until midnight, when a vast horde would be gathered on the broad plaza before the church. Come, receive the light, and candles would ignite in every hand. Christos Anesti, the priest would call, Christ is risen, and the crowd would echo it back. Stirring stuff. The mass hysteria of the Easter service was not Matthew’s preferred time of worship, but when participating it was easy to get sucked in, to feel one with the blind, passionate spiritual community. Reason was chased off for a few hours; faith and brotherhood ruled.

Of course, the congregants then rushed home or to some restaurant to gorge themselves. But that was natural enough as well: celebrating after grief; food and drink as physical symbols of rebirth. Back in New York, he rarely partook of the whole ritual, but tonight Matthew wished he could feel part of it, wished that some table of food and candlelight and friends awaited him, wanted it in a way that only one certain of his alienation from the human tribe could want such a thing. He jammed his hands into his jacket pockets and patrolled the church doors like a sentry, ready to bring down a curse on his whole clan, damning their treachery and arrogance, their rationalism and cold, analytical worldview. Damning himself for being a product of his lineage and not his own man, not the engaged, spontaneous, alive creature he wished to be. The curse died on his tongue. Actions, not words, were required. He needed to remember why he was here.

The figure in the long coat with the quick, confident stride did not fit naturally with this crowd, Matthew noticed, well before the man reached him. Graying hair, a square, strong face, and a smile of the kind normally reserved for an old friend.

“Matthew. You are Matthew, yes?”

“Who are you?”

“Your godfather sent me.” The man held out his hand. “You can call me Risto.”

“Sent you to do what?”

He did not take the offered hand, and Risto withdrew it slowly, his smile wavering.

“To take you back to his house. He is too ill for the ceremony, but he very much wants your company tonight.”

“Why didn’t he call me?”

“He had hoped until the last moment to attend, but it has proved too much. You cannot be surprised at that if you have seen him recently.”

“What’s your connection?”

“Just a friend.”

“I see. Why don’t we call Fotis and discuss this?”

“He may not be well enough to do so.”

“He’s too ill to speak on the telephone?”

“We can try, of course.” Risto turned and looked out across the plaza with some consternation, and Matthew followed his gaze. Then the man’s strong arm was around Matthew’s shoulder and something dug hard into his ribs. “No trouble, please. The car is just this way.”

“What the fuck,” Matthew spat in English.