Mining the Diaries 81: Greece 2011
Anniska Apartments, Kardamyli, 10th May 2011
Patras, the manager, told us that the Priest had agreed to open the church of Agios Nikolaos in Proastio this morning. Recently restored (thanks in part to EU money), it’s usually kept locked. We arrived to the jingling of bells as the priest swung a thurible from side to side sending clouds of incense into shafts of sunlight. An imposing, heavily built six foot two, he watched us warily and warned visitors not to go through the iconostasis into the sanctuary. In the narrow doorway his frame cast the interior into gloom. The walls and ceilings were covered in frescoes of biblical and saintly stories, Christian messages for the barely literate. But a remoter past was recalled: a band around the lower edge of the domed ceiling was decorated with signs of the zodiac; outside, the sun and stars were carved into the west end. We lit candles and sat down; the priest intoned a prayer.
As we were about to leave, he asked by signs and words where we were staying. We said, ‘Anniska, Kardamyli.’ He replied, ‘Come, other church’, and led us off through the centre of the village along winding streets and lanes to Agios Trinada (Holy Trinity). At the gate he said, ‘Key’, made a turning motion with his right hand, pointed to the door and marched off. We followed the path through a garden of oranges, rosemary and olives to what looked like an unexceptional Orthodox church. Unexceptional outside, but inside was another wonderful gallery of frescoes, a religious cartoon strip, including the rescue of the boy about to be drowned, covering every surface. Outside the garden hummed with insects and swifts skimmed overhead.
Proastio, a village of churches and swifts. We strolled the streets, peering through gates and over walls, nodding a shy ‘Kalimera’ to passersby and people sitting in the sun at their doors. Along the main street, a woman drew green stuff gathered in the fields from a sack and dropped it down to a family of goats and a sheep in a yard below. A cock crowed and hens scratched around among the litter. A nanny with full, pendulous udders kicked out at a kid trying to suckle.
From Proastio we took the road heading towards Neochori – Kastania, past the cemetery, the quarry and twin churches of Agiori Vasileios & Spiridon. We parked and walked through fields and olive groves painted with pinks, yellows, reds, blues, whites, purples – campions, marigolds, poppies, harebells, nettles and clovers – to the 13th century Monastery of Agioi Theodoroi, once home to over 100 monks. Nearby, a little, older, cruciform church had been restored with sympathetic care – more EU money. It should be a place of calm, the silence broken only the hum of bees, the twitter of swallows and the soft murmur of the breeze through grass and leaves. But sounds of saw, hammer and generator sounded angrily across the fields.