Neil Olson - The Icon

“Andreou.” Fotis’ voice became pleading. “Cancer is a terrible death. And I have had these dreams. I am afraid to do what I should. You must help me.”

Nothing Andreas had just learned surprised him, yet it struck deeply. He had not wanted it to be true, had buried it in his heart, fastened upon the hunt for Müller as a means of leading himself away from the truth. His connection with Fotis could not survive this news. He had lost his friend already. And he could imagine no worse judgment than that which nature had already decreed. There was nothing for him to do.

“My punishment for Mikalis,” he said, gripping his old friend’s shoulder for the last time as he pulled himself to his feet,

“is to let you live.”

Andreas wandered over toward the younger people, hesitant to invade their intimacy, yet needing to speak to them. Sirens could be heard now, still far distant. A fragment from his dream, or memory, or whatever it had been, came back to the old man suddenly. Something he had not thought of in more than fifty years. He saw the icon there by the table near Kosta, the space between the two panels dug at with some tool. And then, after he had shot the boy, he noticed little scraps upon the table, paper-thin bits of beige cloth. And it had occurred to him that it was one of these which Kosta had placed upon his tongue to swallow with his wine. That last sacrament. He must tell Matthew, sometime. Or perhaps, in fact, he would not.

There was another rushing boom, and part of the roof collapsed, sending gouts of red sparks high into the air. Andreas watched intently. Nothing could have survived in there, and yet he would sift the ashes until he found Müller’s bones. The icon would be only dust. There would be no evidence of its destruction. They would have to trust to logic. They would have to take it on faith.

SUMMER 2000

EPIROS, GREECE

T he church of Katarini had been built over the ruins of its burned predecessor, and if he looked carefully, Matthew could see the places where the old stone met the new. He had been to this village and this church before, but not for years, and never with his grandfather’s unearthed memories, or the image of the lost Holy Mother, so clearly in his mind. According to the priest, the new construction followed the destroyed original closely, and Matthew tried hard to imagine the past still present in this place that was both at once. Was this the window that the andarte captain Elias had looked through for signs of his brother? Was this the same stone floor that had bruised the knees of his pious great-grandmother while she prayed, and her mother before, and so on for generations? Was this the patch of wall behind the altar where the Holy Mother was hidden for three years? Then abducted, rescued from fire, only to perish in fire in the end. Was fire its fate all along? Matthew was not a strong believer in fate, but he was withholding judgment on a number of such matters at present.

The church was large for the village it dominated, but smaller than his imagination had made it, and sufficiently cluttered with the usual assortment of modern improvements to impede his experiment in conjuring up history. The priest flicked a switch behind him and the bright chandeliers, ubiquitous in any Greek church now, cleared every shadow of ghosts. The images in the iconostasis-John, wild and lean; Mary, gentle and sad; Christ dressed in the white robes and miter of a bishop-were expertly rendered, but without any age or mystery behind them. The nave was crowded with unadorned pews, where once there would have been only a few, for the old, while the rest of the congregation stood, for hours sometimes, swaying half asleep on their feet, drugged by incense and the priests’ chanting. There was a big clock on the church tower, donated by an American businessman-village time eradicated, forced into hiding in the hills and caves, or down in the crypt.

The priest beckoned. Matthew followed him through the opening in the icon screen and around the altar to where a narrow passage ran back to the priest’s chambers. There was an almost invisible door in the wall of the passage.

“You want to go down?” Father Isidoros asked.

Matthew placed a palm on the wooden door. “Yes, I do.”

He turned and looked to where his father stood by the altar. Alex’s hair had come back gray, still surprising Matthew every time he caught sight of it. Yet the leanness had vanished, and the older man carried himself with the upright posture and determined stride that had been his signature before the illness. He was trying to take an interest in the church for Matthew’s sake, but he kept looking at his watch, as if he had an appointment somewhere else.

“Dad, we’re going into the crypt. Are you coming?”

Alex shook his head.

“No. I was down there once, years ago, that was enough. Enjoy yourself. I’d better find your mother.”

“She can’t get lost in a village this size.”

“Don’t underestimate her.”

The priest unlatched the door, switched on an electric lantern hanging from a peg within, and started down the narrow steps. A cool draft struck Matthew’s face, a high, earthy smell, like a garden shed. He took a deep breath and started down.

They had buried Fotis in a cemetery outside Ioannina. The old man had made the arrangements years before, so the logistics were not difficult for his executor, Matthew Spear. At one point it had seemed that only Matthew, his mother, and the priest would be at the graveside, but Alex had agreed to accompany them at the last moment, and Andreas had come up from Athens. He would not follow them on to the village, though. He had not been back to Katarini in decades and did not intend to see the place again. He was an Athenian now, and would die there.

Ana had wanted to come with Matthew. Or she had offered, in any case-a significant gesture. The fire, the killings, the whole business of the icon had traumatized her deeply, and she’d needed a few weeks to be away from everything having to do with it, including him. Even once they had started to see each other again, del Carros, Benny Ezraki, and the Holy Mother of Katarini were off-limits for discussion. Fotis’ death had opened something in Matthew, had freed him of some burden. Responding either to that or to her own heavy therapy, Ana seemed to be coming out the other side of her grief as well. In spite of this, Matthew had been slow to take up her offer. Perhaps intuiting that he needed to do this alone, she made plans to go to Rome with her friend Edith instead. Now he felt the separation keenly, and wondered if he had not made a mistake.

The bottom steps were deeply worn and polished by the passage of thousands. This was the old church. Father Isidoros moved slowly, holding the lantern up here and there. Matthew could feel the tightness of the chamber, the low ceiling, the narrow passages. So much history forced into this little space. There were fewer bones visible than he expected. The compartments mostly hid them, or maybe some had been moved elsewhere. Did they even use the ossuary anymore? In a far corner of the chamber, the priest stopped and looked back at Matthew.

“Here, this place here, is your family.”

The younger man glanced at the shelves, but there were almost no bones to see, and those there looked no different from any others. The conformity of death. Yet those yellow shards were his ancestors, maybe souls his grandfather had known in life, not so long ago.

“There,” Isidoros continued, pointing to the ground, “is where your great-uncle Mikalis died.”

Matthew knelt then and put his hand on the dusty floor, feeling around a bit, as if there might still be a warm spot where the body had lain. Nothing. If he sensed a presence here below, it was not to be found in any one place but was everywhere at once, in the very air. Nevertheless, he knelt upon that sad spot for many minutes, and finally the priest moved away and left him to his meditation. Prayer was no more available to him now than it had ever been, and seemed less necessary. He had nothing to ask, only a last task to perform.