Crete

Taverna Portes. A stew of chestnuts and onions and tomatoes steaming in an earthen bowl. Fried minnows schooling on a ceramic platter. The smooth burn of raki shot down the throat, the faint smell of grapes from the alcohol vapor. The oak barrels of Cretan wine, the gleaming copper carafe on my oak table. The grains of Greek coffee that collect as sediment at the bottom of my mug or warmly bitter my tongue. The white cream cheese topped with grapes in sugar syrup that sweetens back my mouth.

The stone oven heated by olive tree embers, the coals pushed to the corners to make way for the iron flat of wild rabbit. The father who wears overalls and gloves and frowns soot-faced in the smoke as he browns bread on an long-handled screen. The tender heart of the hare that was chased from the olive grove and shot by the son. The olives baked into the bread made from the flour that was wind-milled by a stone wheel. The wind that feathers the fire and cools the sun. The taste of heart.

The son that tells field-stories, the weasel that was caught in the rat trap but escaped, the rats that leapt in vain for the cheese hanging from olive wood pegs in the stone wall of the shed. The eagles that caught the lambs and tore out their tongues that they wouldn't scream. The wolves that ate only the hearts of the sheep. The hare that was flushed from its warren, the kept bees that died of disease, the man who drowned in the reservoir he built for his goats.

My uncle who climbs the hillside where he was a grandson, picking his way through the thorns and rocks and rusted wire. The stone house where he was born whose wood roof has collapsed and bleached gray and blown away. The resilient stone arch that cathedrals the ancient room. The field-story of the dogs brought to flush the hares yet the dawn which brought a miracle of songbirds flooding the valley. The hunt abandoned, the valley kept. My uncle who squints in the sun and grins sad-eyed in the wind which tussles his hair as his grandfather might have.

The nephew, me, introduced to Methodius the caver who sends me to Taverna Portes to talk with Manolis the cook who is married to Irena the climber, who climbs with Dmitri at the cliff where I meet Alki who knows Emily who taught English to Helias, who runs the Cafe Peripou downtown where I meet Vicky who climbs in Athens with Dmitri the second who knows the first, who knows my Uncle's brother Fotis, who introduces me to Stathis who shows me the raki still and sends me to Manolis to learn to cure the olives that I picked from the yard of Fotis, whose house is next to the house of my Uncle and lives near the cliff where I climbed with Dmitri the first.

Stathis who makes the raki with his family that is gathered at a long table by the still. The smell of grapes and alcohol. The cauldron that squats black over a stone-corraled wood fire and bubbles purple with fermented grapes. The grape soup now covered with a domed lid that collects the evaporating alcohol and funnels it through a pipe which descends through a barrel of cold water then opens dripping to a bucket. The shot collected for me to sip as I eat the dried bread softened with the wet pulp of crushed tomatoes from the garden that is fed from the compost of the grapes after the alcohol has been drawn out.

The church in the mouth of the cave. Methodios discovering a mythical chamber behind the church. The slick-mud slot slithered through, the great halls of limestone formations. The skeleton slowly decaying in the wet grime, the German soldier who did not live to see today's Germans gently invading Crete for the abundant sun. The unseen canyons explored only by goats who have strayed from the bells of their leaders, or by wayward nephews searching for the unsearched. The remote cliffs waiting on the high hills above the plains of Lisithi where the women work wool on the looms for the tourists to whom they smile-beckon. The sheep that stream over the hills bleating.

The people of the stories. The stories of the land. The land.

Dec 3, 2005

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