The Rebirth of Pan | Page 6

their sandals from Ithyka, for longer than anyone could count. There was a tale that it was here that Ag. Hermes had run down Ag. Hephaestos' runaway cow, and Hephaestos, coming up behind, had taken the hide from the creature, dead of exhaustion. After pondering for a moment he invented both leather-working and tanning, and taught the crafts to the ancestors of the islanders, who were crowding round, interested in this new thing. Whether one called them gods or saints it was much the same.
The priest had grown up, as all the islanders did, hearing the stories of how Ag. Pavlos went around Greece converting the gods. Some would bow a knee to Christ and some would not. Those who would not Ag. Pavlos cast out to exile, and those who would became saints. Pappa Andros knew that such stories were frowned on in the seminary in Athens, and by those bishops who complained that their church had never had a reformation and was still riddled with pagan superstitions. He had been too slow and too shy to speak up then and ask whether something was a superstition if it was true. That slowness and shyness was probably why he was back in his home town dealing with its problems as well as he could, and not in Athens or Thessaloniki at the heart of church politics and the affairs of the world.
He was well content with his life. He had joined the church to devote himself to Christ and to Ag. Nikolaos. He knew Ag. Nikolaos had been Poseidon. When the people said that he would one day be Poseidon again when the world was reborn he reproached them, but not with any sense that they were really wrong. He could not take birch twigs dipped in holy water and cast out the spirits of sloth, idleness and malice from the houses of his people if he did not believe as they did. So they trusted him and came to him with their problems and not to Pappa Thomas in the big church of Ag. Paraskevi. This sometimes caused bad feeling with Pappa Thomas, who was young and well educated and a great believer in logic and progress.
"Don't encourage them," Pappa Thomas would say. "It's the twenty-first century, not the fourth! We're in the European Community. This is the modern age. We have electricity. Computers. Everything is changing and going to be different. Just because we are out of the way we must not get left behind." He would frown sternly at Pappa Andros whose little house had neither electricity nor computers, and who did not find this century all that different from those which had preceded it, in the important ways.
Pappa Andros was getting old and his belly under his big priest's beard was getting big and loose, and he liked to laugh. He still loved Christ and his saint, and he loved his people. He could cope with their oddities. Choosing not to dispute with Yanni the reality of the gods or saints he shod was just one among many things that made perfect sense in his daily life. It only seemed strange when he found he could not talk about these things to Pappa Thomas or to the bishop, when he made one of his rare visits to the island. He got on well with his flock, including the taciturn Yanni. He appreciated the discount Yanni gave him when he or his wife needed a new pair of sandals. He didn't think the matter of making sandals for the gods was worth mentioning to his superiors.
So it was that when Yanni invited him to dinner at Stellio's taverna he made nothing of it and agreed cheerfully, taking it for a bit of neighbourly kindness. He enjoyed his food, and he enjoyed eating and drinking with his friends. He didn't suspect anything strange until he arrived and found every important person and every single shoemaker from the island of Ithyka waiting for him.
Stellio's taverna occupied the ground floor of a large cream-painted rectangular house near the centre of the town. Upstairs, where Stellio and his large family lived, there were many balconies jutting under a red tiled roof. Downstairs was one single large room, the taverna. One end was the kitchen, with the big open fire, little stoves, and methane-powered refrigerator. Spread throughout the rest of the room were the tables, arranged to seat as many people as possible. The kitchen was open to the guests, who would wander in and select what they wanted, often trying a mouthful from the pans first. The food in Stellio's was good. He often spit roasted a whole lamb in the large fireplace, or occasionally a pig, and on any day two or three chickens would be turning and sizzling