from Songlines for Dionysos,
a novel in progress
Chapter 22.
Kalymnos
Arriving in the main port of Kalymnos on the 2.00 a.m. ferry from Ermoupolis, city named for Hermes, and former capital of the Aegean, felt almost like a homecoming. Though why the inter-island ferries mostly docked at ungodly hours of the morning, irrespective of destination, was an unnaccountable phenomenon I could never quite get used to. Prior to leaving the city of Hermes I had contacted my old landlady on Kalymnos from a couple of summers before, Kyria Themis, whose details I still had in my address book. When the ferry hooted its arrival, there she was in the port, placard in hand [CLEAN ROOMS] in case there were any other prospective tenants among the disembarking passengers. She hugged me warmly: Kalos orisate, paidi mou! Kairos einai! Yiati? Pos eisai? Adineses! Po-po! (Welcome, my child! It's been ages! Why? How are you? You've got thin! Tut tut!)
I almost wept with relief. At least here on Kalymnos I was not utterly without friends, or at least familiar faces. Perhaps here I'd be less tormented by thoughts of Seva's ambiguity and my own ambivalence. Those thoughts were a source of torment simply because they did not lead anywhere. Lacking vital pieces of information, I could not find closure for all the seemingly unaccountable developments of recent weeks, or rather, months, since the increasing loss of control over my own circumstances - my disempowerment - had apparently been set in train by meeting Seva. He had turned out to be some kind of catalyst for change, and the catalyst had intensified to assume seismic propensities.
Kalymnos was just what I needed. Here I could take time out to recover, and pick up the threads of a project I had commenced two summers ago: a lyrical-dramatic poetry sequence based on the lives of the Kalymnian sponge-diving community, remnants of which still survived. Their values and traditions imbued the island and its port with a special quality I had encountered nowhere else in my travels - a deep, close symbiosis with their world, a kind of faith springing from rock and sea, augmented by ancient and Orthodox cosmologies, that empowered the Kalymnians individually and collectively, shaping their sense of themselves, their identity.
Many outsiders had sought to romanticise the Kalymnians, who saw nothing romantic about the terms of their survival, but were nonetheless fiercely proud that this had not come easily. Of all the islanders in the Aegean archipelagoes, they had often had the least in the way of material goods and security, yet they were generous people. Walking with Kyria Themis through the port, where the occasional ouzeri was still open for business, as is the way with ports, I had already begun to feel better.
'Ego katharisa to domatio sou,' (I've cleaned your room) said Kyria Themis, giving my arm a squeeze. I sighed with pleasure. My old room, the only one in the pension with a private bathroom, overlooked the amphitheatre of the port, ringed on the landward side by a semicircle of tiers which were terraces for small, multicoloured cubes and lozenges of island houses. Lying in bed, I could also see St Savva's monastery on the heights to the left of the port. St Savva's bells clanged peremptorily and sonorously at an ascetically early hour, summoning the monks to matins and admonishing all sleepy sinners, making no concessions to those who alighted from ferries at 2.00 a.m.
Rising to the occasion on the first day, I rushed out to renew my acquaintance with the early-morning port. My feet felt winged, my heart also. 'O Kalymnos, pos s'agapo!' I sang to myself. I would take a bus, I decided, to the other tiny hamlets punctuating the coast, just for the pleasure of seeing and smelling the island again. Aegean islanders could recognise their islands from the aromas drifting out to sea, even in darkness, and before land was visible. Each island had its unique olfactory signature, inscribed in air and carried to the returning sponge-divers and seafarers. I wondered how much the olfactory signature of Kalymnos had changed in the three and more millennia since Kalymnos sent ships to Troy. Then, there had been forests, for the ships were built with local timber, whereas now there was denuded limestone, pitted with caves that enticed speleologists from near and far. Three millennia ago, the scent would have been laced with resin, and there would have been accents of oak and cedar, chestnut and cypress, in place of the astringent aromatics that were all the island's musculature of rock could now support: oregano, thyme, purslane and rosemary, and, only at Vathi, a sheltered tongue-shaped valley, citrus groves.
Some visitors found Kalymnos shockingly devoid of green, but perhaps they had never discovered its oases - the walled monasteries and cloisters tucked away in secret pockets, sequestered in the armpits, ribs and groins of earth's anatomy, where wells provided sweet water for travellers and shade trees. I would revisit some of those places as well, St Panteleimon's and St Catherine's, where the sisters would welcome me as Kyria Themis had done, and invite me into their fragrant silence, where after vespers the only sounds were the sea fretting perpetually at the cliffs, and the cries of little island owls.