I hope you got the postcard I sent you from Athens and the other one from that island where we stayed over the Greek Easter. They call it Mytilini but that nice hall porter at the hotel told Sam it was known as Lesbos in ancient times. He said it was the home of Sappho, a famous poetess. He also said she was a Lesbian but I didn’t quite understand if he meant she was a you-know-what Lesbian or just someone from Lesbos. Sam tried to get it straight but the man just smiled and said everyone from Mytilini, including himself, was a Lesbian. Sam was most intrigued. You know what a dirty old man he is deep down and he kept staring at the women with more than his usual interest but I must admit they all looked pretty normal to me.
It was the Greek Good Friday. The hall porter told us there would be a procession from all the churches in the evening and he urged us to go to the main church and see the Epitafios. He explained what it was but all Sam and I could gather was that it was the body of Christ. All the way to the church I kept telling Sam it just couldn’t be the body of Christ because He went up to Heaven and left nothing behind but Sam insisted there must be Something there and we should see It.
Just as we were about to enter the church a dear little old priest with a white beard barred my way and said something in Greek, agitatedly pointing at my Bonwit Teller pants suit all the while. Sam pulled his wallet out and said, ‘How much?’ but the priest kept pointing at my pants and shaking his finger at me. Finally, a cute young Boy Scout came out from inside and explained to us in very good English that women wearing pants were not allowed in the church. I was crestfallen. I couldn’t go all the way back to the hotel to change into a skirt and I said to Sam: ‘You go in, dear, and then tell me what you saw’. ‘Not on your life’, Sam said. Then he turned to the cute Boy Scout and said, ‘If she takes her pants off and just goes into the church with her coat on, is that okay?’ The boy shrugged and said he thought that would be all right. You won’t believe this Betty Lou, but Sam just grabbed my arm and pulled me behind a large plane tree in the church courtyard.
‘Put your coat on’, he said,’and take your pants off!’
‘But my coat reaches just above my knees’, I protested.
‘Never mind, do as I say’, Sam insisted.
So I did as he said and went back into the church, looking like one of those awful women you see loitering in the Rue Madeleine in Paris, pretty certain the priest would drive me out like one of the money – changers in the Temple. To my surprise, he didn’t turn a hair and I went in with Sam and saw the Epitafios. It was a cupola – like affair, looking something like a baby’s four -poster bed with a gold – embroidered cloth under the canopy, strewn with flower – petals. There was a Boy Scout standing at each corner of it and the one who spoke English told us the procession would start from the church at seven o’clock in the evening.
Sam was looking intently inside the cupola and he said to the boy: ‘Where’s Christ’s body?’ The boy pointed to the embroidered cloth. ‘It is symbolic’, he explained, ‘and the procession is really the funeral procession of our Lord who died on the cross on Good Friday.’ We thanked him kindly and Sam gave him his card and told him to come and visit us in Savannah, Georgia, if he was ever in the States.
Well, we missed the start of the procession because Sam likes eating early but we caught it just as it passed in front of our hotel. The dear old priest who didn’t like my pants was there, looking magnificent in golden robes and with a gold mitre on his head, together with three more priests, leading the way, followed by the Boy Scouts carrying the cupola and then all the townspeople, each with a lighted taper in his hand. The priests were chanting and Sam tried to get their voices on his portable cassette recorder but he was too late and all we have on the tape is the sound of shuffling feet and a woman screaming to her child to stop running back and forth under the cupola.
On the Saturday night we went to the resurrection service at the church and there were so many people there that the priests had built a dais in the courtyard and were standing on it, conducting the service and chanting in the open air into a battery of microphones. There were loudspeakers strung up everywhere around and this time Sam got it all on his tape recorder. We’ll play it for you, Betty Lou, next time you come to visit and I’m sure you’ll love it.
And then, you won’t believe this Betty Lou, we got to talking to a middle-aged man and his wife who were standing next to us and it turned out he was a sea captain who had visited Savannah often on his voyages. When one of the priests held up a bronze candelabra with three lighted candles in it the captain explained to us that it symbolised the Holy Trinity and that the priest was inviting all and sundry to come and receive the Light. In next to no time everybody in the crowd had lit his wax taper from the priest’s candles.
On the stroke of midnight Sam noticed someone had dripped hot wax all over his two – hundred dollar mohair sports jacket from Simpson’s of Piccadilly and just as he began swearing the way you know Sam does on such occasions, the church bells started ringing and everybody started wishing each other Happy Easter.
The captain’s wife was most concerned about Sam’s jacket and although she did not speak English, her husband said she was offering to clean it for him if we would go home with them and also share their Easter eve supper.
This is a thick, creamy soup with lots of stuff floating in it and I think it must be a recipe by someone called Maggie Ritsa, because that’s what the soup is called. It was absolutely delicious and we were really enjoying it until Sam asked the captain what it was made of. When the captain said: ‘The guts of the lamb’, Sam blanched.
‘You mean the intestines and all?’ he asked in horror as the captain beamed and said: ‘Yes, everything. Have some more’.
Sam went green, pushed the plate away and excused himself as he staggered to the bathroom. I was so embarrassed I just didn’t know what to say. But fortunately our hosts hadn’t noticed anything was amiss and I changed the subject by admiring a number of tea sets, proudly displayed in a glass armoire, that the captain had brought home from Japan.
We were leaving early the next morning so we had to decline their kind invitation to have Easter lunch with them. I’m willing to try everything of course but I reckon Sam just wouldn’t have been able to face another delicacy the captain described to us called ‘kokoretsi’ which consists of the sweet-breads of lamb, wrapped around tightly on a spit with the lamb’s intestines and barbecued to a crisp. So we bid them adieu, invited them to visit us in Savannah, Georgia and sailed back to Athens the next day.
I must close now, Betty Lou, as Sam has just started playing the resurrection service for the third time on his stereo set and I have one the most awful splitting headaches you ever did see.
Lots of love from both of us, Mary-Jane
