Everything that was being built around the little church was ugly. The blocks of flats that had overrun the Upper City were ugly. The cars that buzzed unnecessarily around the old castle were ugly. But the little old woman had saved the day. She had communicated the shiver of faith. The history of the monastery became linked to her own distant past, which had also been lost, mummified somewhere in the lost homelands of Asia Minor. Just as Don Pacifico, once he had seen Mr. Molkhos, found the strength to continue to live in this city, which, during the eighteenth century had been the birthplace and home of the last prophet of his race, so did Doña Rosita, by virtue of the thread handed to her by the old woman, find herself reconnected, in the shell of the church, with her own past — that of a Byzantine empress — and fortified by the power of faith, that unknown power that will keep us from burning should we fall into the fire. The eyes of the little old woman burned brightly as she spoke, and Jesus Christ, Son of God, our Savior, was the ichthus, the fish she would have for lunch. After all, He had been the first to give her that right: “Take, eat; this is my body….”
The second scene, following on the heels of the first, took place in Nafplion. As soon as they arrived, before they even checked in to the hotel, in the dusky light just before nightfall, Don Pacifico took her for a walk along the path that starts after the port, twisting around the mountain above the sea, where, in the distance, they could see a ship slowly approaching, cutting silently through the water’s satin surface, measuring time at its own pace, that of the daylight draining from the sky. They took a vegetation-choked offshoot of the path, and found themselves at a chapel that was above the main path and offered a better view of the open sea and the waters of the gulf. There was no one in the chapel; its icons were unguarded. They each lit a candle, Don Pacifico more in order to accompany her. There, too, appeared a woman, a sacristan, to collect the candles and lock the door for the night. They didn’t speak. The icons that had been stolen by lowlife tourists and antique smugglers had been replaced by cheap paper replicas.
Doña Rosita prayed to the Holy Virgin and then they went out to the courtyard, where an upper gallery over the white stone terrace looked out onto the sea.
The sun had long since disappeared behind the mountains of Arcadia, leaving the clouds to keep alive its memory; they too would soon become ashes. The slow-moving boat was gradually entering the gulf. It was the kind of moment that brings on ecstasy. And, as she breathed in deeply the sea air, Doña Rosita felt a wave of happiness swelling inside her: the location was beautiful, the hour belonged to her. This hour when the day burned out like a firework and when everything invited her to return to her deepest nature, which was intensely romantic.
She remembered that it was there, in that idyllic place, that she had thought that all she was missing to make the dream perfect was a white rose. The face of the Holy Virgin of the chapel, exactly like that of the sacristan, appeared to Doña Rosita like a slide projected on the firmament, and, as she saw the Virgin looking down, full of compassion and beautiful sadness, she took the hand of Don Pacifico who had been smoking next to her, and its warmth made her shiver, the same way the breeze sent a ripple over the honey-colored sea, forming pirouettes and arabesques.
And then, as if by a miracle, in front of her and a little to the left, next to the ledge of the terrace, there where the dry pine needles formed a brown cover over the white stone, there where the white had started turning darker as evening fell, a white rose appeared before her, on a delicate stem with its leaves spread out. Had it been there before and she just hadn’t noticed it? Had it been born of her strong desire? In this honey-sweet hour of the evening, with the ship as the only moving object in an otherwise immobile tableau, everything was possible. Everything.
Shaking from a happiness she had never before felt, that penetrated and tingled inside her body, she bent down and smelled the rose. It smelled as strong as one hundred concentrated roses, as if the saltiness of the sea air had tormented it, causing it to smell even stronger. Letting out a small, inarticulate cry, the cry of a happy bird, she picked the rose with trembling hands.
As if she had discovered a treasure, she brought it to Don Pacifico’s face and offered it to him.
The ship was getting closer and closer to the axis of her gaze, as unhurried as if it were being pushed by the invisible hand of the boy Jesus playing with his little boat. Finally, it dropped anchor. The noise, echoing in the empty shell of the landscape, at the same moment when the lights came on on the islet of Bourdzi and in the Acropolis of Árgos on the mountain facing them, brought her back to reality and she started telling Don Pacifico, who hadn’t been aware of what she had experienced, that she was happy because her deepest desire, to have a white rose, had been realized by the will of the Holy Virgin.
For Doña Rosita, such moments constituted
happiness. That’s what she lived for, and now, as she lay stretched out on the pavement, the strength this memory gave her made her sit up and remain deaf to the cries of her alienated would-be murderers.
The third episode that completed the first two took place in Póros, during that desperate effort Don Pacifico had made to show her, in only a few days, the hidden beauties of Greece. It was again in the evening.
They arrived via hovercraft, and after dropping off their few bags at the hotel, before night fell they took a taxi up to the monastery. It was windy. They went through the gate and up the wide concrete steps.
Something was being built here too, resembling a church, but outside the enclosure of the monastery. As they reached the top, they saw the door was closed. At their feet, over the stretch of sea between the island and Galatás, the dusky light of evening was slowly fading away, planting passionate kisses on the full lips of the land that demarcated the narrow stretch of water.
The mountain facing them projected its mass onto the water below, like a Visigoth warrior standing at ease.
Doña Rosita was enchanted by the view and the light. Soon, she overcame disappointment that the monastery was closed. Its inner wall protected them from the harsh wind. The cypress trees descended like exclamation marks to the sea; the slope rustled in the northwest wind. To the right, the pine forest shivered like the skin of an animal fearing the onset of treacherous night. Once again, Doña Rosita felt intoxicated with the beauty of the day ceding its place to the darkness; she had trouble keeping her scarf wrapped around her neck, as the wind kept snatching it away.
Then Don Pacifico, having pushed open a door, found himself in a courtyard and saw, beyond its fence, lemon trees heavy with fruit. He put his hand through an opening to pick a lemon for her. But as soon as he reached his yellow target, he heard a gentle voice coming from one of the monastery windows:
“Why are you stealing?” He turned and looked up. The face of a young man was framed by the dormer window, his hand on the shutter.
“We are not stealing,” he replied. “We are only picking a lemon. We wanted to come into the monastery to say a prayer, but unfortunately it’s closed.” The young monk didn’t see Doña Rosita leaning against the wall, her scarf standing on end, under the light that kept being swept away by the wind. Nothing else was heard. But soon, a young monk with Byzantine eyes, dressed in blue jeans, appeared at the door and held it open for them to enter. “The miracle is happening again,” thought Doña Rosita, impressed by the young man whose liquid eyes, under this metaphysical light, excited her, as she later confessed to her friend when he kept asking her, insistently, whether she would have slept with the young monk.