Prospero's Cell: A Guide to the Landscape and Manners of the Island of Corfu (4 page)

BOOK: Prospero's Cell: A Guide to the Landscape and Manners of the Island of Corfu
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7.7.37

The boat rides beautifully. N. has christened her the
Van Norden.
Now in the still weather we keep her anchored close under the balcony; she is smart in her black paint with brass fittings and a white awning. Yesterday we took her out in a fresh north-easterly wind
up as far as the Forty Saints. I wanted to conquer my timidity about a following wind. But she ran before it like a knife. The wood around the lead keel however is puffed and cankered; she must come out and be painted against worms. I notice that we speak about her in the compassionate and familiar way that people speak about their pets. The young schoolmaster Niko is full of envy, and in order to show off we invited him for a sail in the evening. He handles her much more sensitively than either of us; with roughness and determination, with an unerring sense of what to ask her. She turns upwind like a dancer and falters into the still water under the house like a vessel of silk.

The Island Saint

T
HE ISLAND IS
really the Saint: and the Saint is the island. Nearly all the male children are named after him. All the island craft carry his tintype—mournful of beard and brow—nailed to their masts of unseasoned cypress wood. To use his name in an oath is to bind yourself by the most solemn of vows, for St. Spiridion is still awake in Corcyra after nearly two thousand years on earth. He is the Influence of the island.

In the chapel of the church of his name he lies, looking a trifle misanthropic but determined, as befits one who has seen most sides of life on earth, and who is on equal terms with heaven. The sarcophagus is deeply lined and comfortable; he lies in hibernating stillness in his richly wrought casket, whose outer shell of silver
is permanently clouded by the breath of the faithful who stoop to kiss it. The darkness swims with chalices and banners—all the garishness of Byzantine church decoration. A style of art which is literal rather than figurative: the saint has a real nimbus of silver let into the canvas round his haunted oval face. Eyes of black olive stare unrepenting down from every wall.

Here in the church of St. Spiridion, Venice and Turkey compete in silver and brass, in bronze and iron; and under this tortured inlay work and color the dark pagan eyes still stare with their fleshly hunger—reminding you how close the old pantheon is, locked in this narrow ritualism.

Light, dammed up by the obtuse walls, bursts fiercely through the great porches and explodes like butter over the scarves and headdresses, the beards and lips and clothes of the peasants.

The saint lies quite composed in his casket. He is a mummy, a small dried-up anatomy, whose tiny feet (clad in embroidered slippers) protrude from a vent at the bottom of his sarcophagus. If you are one of the faithful you may stoop and kiss his slippers. He will answer your prayers.

Who is Spiridion? His life is an amusing study in myth. He was born and lived as a shepherd in the mountains of Cyprus. When his wife died he buried his unhappiness between the four walls of a monastery, becoming immediately remarkable for his fineness of spirit and fidelity to God. As a bishop he took part in
the great council of Nicea, where he gave miraculous testimony of the then disputed doctrine of the Trinity by casting a brick (which he must have secreted about his person) to the ground, where it immediately gushed fire and water in one.

A long life, many good works, and not a few miracles contributed to his subsequent popularity, so that when he died, this humble Bishop of Trymithion (he was well over ninety years old) had become revered almost as a saint.

He was buried: but the restless virtue in him could not waste in the earth—and now exhalations of sweet ness from his coffin began to trouble the orthodox. A spray of red roses broke from his tomb—today still to be seen in Cyprus. These combined omens persuaded the religious to dig his body up—and no sooner was this done than Spiridion justified his resurrection by a miracle, entering, so to speak, into his posthumous life and career from the refuge of God Himself.

He had hardly a chance to settle down for when Cyprus fell to the Saracens his relics were removed to Constantinople; and when Constantinople itself was threatened by the locust hordes of the Moslem world he was once more forced to change his country of operations.

At this time the Saint was in private ownership. A Greek, recorded as having been both priest and wealthy citizen, and whose name survives as Kalocheiritis, preserved him equally against the unbelieving Moslems
and incipient decomposition. This Greek appears to have had some traffic in saints since at the same time he possessed the embalmed body of another saint—a lady of virtue—Saint Theodora Augusta.

Kalocheiritis packed his two saints (very much as a pedlar packs his apparatus) in two shapeless sacks. He slung them, one on each side of his mule, and telling the curious that they contained animal fodder, crossed one fine spring morning into the enchanted landscapes of Greece.

The long conversations held between Augusta and Spiridion as they jolted over the bare mountain tied in sacks, are not recorded by the hagiographers—and indeed have aroused the curiosity of none besides myself. I cannot believe, however, that such a long journey can have been passed without some exchange of theological pleasantries—though I do not claim the least gallantly or any such immodesty for Spiridion; but they could not have gone on together, day by day, roped like carrion in their stifling sacks, without feeling the necessity for speech. They must have smelt together the bruised rawness of the sage even above the clinical richness of the embalming fluids. The air must have sharpened as they reached the pine-belted slopes of the Epirus mountains; the incessant halts must have been intolerable to the dead man and woman, who had need of neither food nor sleep, but jolted on in darkness rich only in a knowledge of God.

Paramythia in Epirus gave them refuge until 1456 when they were brought across the blue waters of the gulf to Corcyra, and laid in the chapel of Michael the Archangel.

Here, it appears they decided to stay, the two saints. Perhaps the fecundity and beauty of the island appealed to them as much as the merry laziness of the natives. At all events here they have both withstood fire, siege and famine for several hundred years. When the Turks appeared with their menacing hordes it was the Saint who dispersed them disguised as a southwesterly squall; when epilepsy struck down the Armenian quarter it was Theodora who expelled it; and when the great plague of Naples selected Corcyra as a theatre of operations Spiridion is said to have sent it off to Naples with one contemptuous invocation, in the shape of a frightened black cat.

Owing to the rights of possession the Saint has passed through many hands. The three sons of Kalocheiritis, for example, inherited nothing beyond the two embalmed figures of their father. The two eldest were given a half share each in Spiridion, while the youngest was forced by law to accept Theodora entire. He was obviously not content with this arrangement since he very soon relinquished the lady to the community. Spiridion, however, was a source of revenue as well as awe. By 1489 his two half shares were united in the possession of Philip the grandson—who made an attempt to carry off the relic to Venice, obviously to increase his turnover. This
suggestion threw the island into a ferment, and he was forced to allow the tears and entreaties of the Corcyreans to prevail. Spiridion stayed but it was not till 1598 that he got his own church.

With the next generation the Saint became a dowry—for Philips daughter Asimeni had little beyond her beauty, and marriages were as much forms of financial arrangement then as they are today.

The Saint was, so to speak, married into the Boulgaris family, and in their possession he has remained until today, universally loved and respected throughout the Ionian.

To the little figure in its casket the faithful bring posies of flowers and trinkets—but chiefly candles to back up their prayers. In the shady marketplace outside the church there is a stall brimming with candles of all sizes, and here those who wish may buy anything from the smallest dip to a huge Chandler’s Masterpiece, as long and thick as a man’s arm. These candles give a strange impression, reminding one of stumps of human limbs smoldering in the dimness before the altar.

I must not forget to add that among the decorative motifs of the church is a wealth of Douanier-like paintings of shipwrecks, left as testimonials by thankful sailors whom the Saint helped into harbor in bad weather; there are also several pairs of unsolicited but accepted crutches. But the Saint is chiefly the patron of sailors, though his dominion can be extended in cases of need. Little children find him often in their dreams,
a grim little figure of a man (not unlike General Montgomery) who knows exactly how to deal with croup, diphtheria, or lice.

Four times a year is the Saint’s casket borne on a triumphal procession round the town; while on Christmas Eve and at Easter he is placed on a throne in the church and accessible to all comers. But the processions are something more than empty form. From early morning the streets are crowded with the gay scarves and headchiefs of peasants from outlying districts who have come in to attend the service; every square is alive with hucksters’ stalls selling nuts, ginger beer, ribbons, sweetmeats, carpet strips, buttons, lemonade, penholders, bootlaces, toothpicks, lucky charms, ikons, wood carvings, candles, soap and religious objects. You will see the piled coiffures of Gastouri under their raving headcloths of rose, yellow and blue; you will see the staid blue and white of the northern womenfolk, so like magpies; kilted Albanians in embroidered boleros, and woollen cross-gartered stockings—their womenfolk jingling in bracelets of coins; you will see the verminous Abbots of Fano and points north, and you will see the woollen-vested sailors of the opposite coast with their goathide belts and knives, and their moustache ends drawn back round their ears.

The sun shines brightly and the air sparkles with the Albanian snowcaps opposite; wild duck curve and scatter outside the gulf, and sails of madder, rose, bitumen, violet, are all trimmed in the direction of the old
fort whose guns belch a salute in honor of the Saint.

The procession is led by the religious novices clad in blue cassocks and carrying gilt Venetian lanterns on long poles; they are followed by banners, heavy and tasseled, and rows of candles crowned with gold and trailing streamers. These huge pieces of wax are carried in a leather baldric—slung, as it were, at the hip. After them comes the town band—or rather the two municipal bands, bellowing and blasting, with brave brass helmets of a fire brigade pattern, glittering with white plumes. Now troops in open order follow, backed by the first rows of priests in their stove pipe hats, each wearing a robe of unique color and design—brocade of roses, maize, corn, grass green, kingcup yellow. It is like a flower bed moving.

At last the archbishop appears in all his pomp, and since he is the signal for the Saint to appear, all hands begin to make the sign of the cross and all lips to move in prayer.

The Saint is borne by six sailors under an old canopy of crimson and gold, supported by six silver poles and flanked by six priests. He is carried in a sort of sedan-chair, and through the screen his face appears to be more than ever remote, determined, and misanthropic. At the sight of him, however, warmth and happiness comes to every face. Radiantly happy the peasants turn from the procession to spend the long day dawdling over coffee or lemonade; or bargaining over olives and livestock to take back with them on the island boats
at nightfall. His brief appearance has qualified once more the terrors and ardors of living, and reminded them that he is there, still indefatigably on the job.

For the curious, St. Spiridion’s Legendary will afford details of his adventures against the forces of heaven and earth—and his triumphs against them. For the contemporary sceptic there is a little booklet (sold for three drachmae at the steps of the church) in which one may read of more recent miracles. A policeman cured of epilepsy; the evil eye averted; an old man cured of the distressing gift of tongues.

Theodora Augusta, however, is now a barely distinguishable figure in the romance of Corfiot Saints; and to a large extent her powers have been taken over by a female saint—no less than St. Corcyra herself—with which modern hagiographers will have to deal. She is infinitely less interesting than Spiridion; and devotes most of her energies to causing dreams about buried treasure.

Spiridion is a formalist in his line; it is nearly always catastrophes to the community at large that he averts; yet he does not scorn the personal petition. Sit in the darkness of his church at midday and watch his petitioners; the deep shadow of the oak pews will hide you as you watch the reverence done and the waxen dip placed in the great brass quiver in which other candles are already burning.

Prayer is a form of bargaining; you will see at once that the psychological attitude to the Saint is one of
rough familiarity. The tone of voice (that is to say the internal tone of voice—for the prayer is silent though the lips move) is the tone that one would adopt to a recalcitrant child. There is no question of humble pleading, and a foregone acceptance of refusal; the petitioner, whatever his request, assumes that it is most likely to be granted, and that it is consonant with the most elementary logic. It is what one could call “a winning style,” and it demands an equally resilient psychological attitude on the part of the Saint. Often such petitions are not only not granted—but other burdens as well are suddenly placed on the head of the unlucky petitioner. Thus Karamanos, the ugly boatbuilder of Nisaki, tried to obtain a cure for his epilepsy by prolonged prayer and the offering of numerous candles. Not only did his epilepsy get worse, but he contracted meningitis also and nearly died. His wife explained this by saying that the Saint had seen through him—and detected in him a loose-liver and foul-mouthed man. As he was the most moderate, faithful, just and hardworking character in the village one can only conclude that the Saint saw deeper than the rest of us—or else had confused him with his brother Basil who answered faithfully enough to this description.

BOOK: Prospero's Cell: A Guide to the Landscape and Manners of the Island of Corfu
10.61Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
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