But while her husband, Tad, who works for a multinational company that makes men’s underwear, was off selling jockey shorts to hard-nosed haberdashers in the Hejaz, Harriet did not waste her time in coffee kiatches or bridge mornings with other grass widows in Kifissia. She studied the Greek language and visited ancient sites and monuments with a keenness and dedication that would have done credit to a Victorian phil-hellene.
During her eighteen months in Greece, Harriet had managed to take in all of the more important ruins in the country, sometimes alone, sometimes on guided tours and sometimes with a reluctant Tad in tow – but always with a well-thumbed copy of Benn’s ‘Blue Guide to Greece’ under her arm.
Harriet, however, was not motivated by a thirst for culture alone. On her first arrival in Greece she had confided to Tad:
“You know, darling, there’s something about this place that looks very familiar to me. I have a vague feeling that I lived in Greece once, in another life.”
Tad had nodded understandingly and said: “Have a drink, honey, and you 11 soon get over it. It’s probably the jet lag.”
But with the passage of time, the feeling had grown stronger and stronger and had also been kept alive by a strange, recurring dream. In it, Harriet saw herself sitting under a large oak tree, with about a dozen uncouth-looking men with dirty feet, lying on the ground all around her.
She knew she was somewhere in Greece, a very long time ago, but she just couldn’t figure out where. And that was partly why she was visiting all the archaeological sites she could find, hoping she would stumble on the place she had lived in, in a previous life, and where, perhaps, she would find out more about that life.
One day Tad came back from a particularly trying trip to the Middle East with an acute attack of acid indigestion from all the spicy food he had been eating in Amman, Damascus and Beirut. Harriet, who had been out shopping, found him in the apartment, opening cupboards and looking high and low for something.
She kissed him fondly and said: “Darling, I’ve found it.”
‘«Well, thank God for that. Where is it? How did you know I was looking for the bromo seltzer, anyway?”
“Who said anything about bromo seltzer? I’ve found the place I lived in, in my previous life in Greece!”
Tad groaned. “You’re not on that kick again, are you? Where’s the bromo seltzer?”
Harriet found it and stirred a hefty dose into a glass. Several burps later, Tad became more receptive as the fires raging in his stomach died to a flicker.
“I found it in the ‘Blue Guide’, it’s all there,” Harriet announced triumphantly. “It’s a place called Dodona, twenty-two kilometers from Yannina. There was an oracle there, the most ancient in Greece. The oracle was an old oak tree and it was tended by three priestesses. People asked questions and the oak tree answered by rustling its leaves. And, what’s more, the place was guarded by the Helloi, or Selloi, who slept on the ground and never washed their feet. Don’t you see? It’s exactly like my dreams. I must have been one of the oracle’s priestesses in a previous life!”
Tad looked at his wife and sighed.
“You do say the strangest things, honey. Sometimes I think you must be going nuts,” he said.
“Nuts, schmuts, we’re off to Dodona tomorrow. I’ve booked a room at a hotel in Yannina and I’ve bought some stuff for a picnic. If we make an early start we can be at Dodona by lunchtime and we can have our picnic there,” Harriet said with finality.
Tad sighed again. He knew it was no use arguing with his wife when she had made her mind up. His only consolation was the knowledge that Harriet’s picnic lunches were invariably Cordon Bleu efforts, designed to mollify him and keep him from complaining of a surfeit of ruins.
Harriet’s reckoning that they would reach Do dona by lunchtime had been overly optimistic. They did not get there until three o’clock in the afternoon and Tad, who had eaten nothing since breakfast except for a couple of hurried souvlakia at Antirrion, was famished.
At the entrance to the ancient site, Harriet asked the guard if there were any oak trees around. He shook his head sadly and told her that the famous oak which had graced the temple of Zeus had been cut down by barbarians from Illyria in 391 B.C. and that there were none growing in the area these days.
Harriet was most disappointed to hear this.
“You hear that, darling?” she said to Tad. “No oaks in the vicinity. It says so in the guide book, but I just wanted to make sure.”
Tad clucked sympathetically and said: “Too bad, honey, when do we eat?”
“Let’s take a look at the ruins first. I want to get the feel of the place. I don’t seem to be getting the vibes I was expecting,” Harriet said.
They explored the magnificent ancient theater which was largely restored in the sixties but, apart from that, the remaining ruins were not very spectacular.
Finally, to Tad’s great relief, they walked back to the car, lugged out the huge picnic basket and settled under the shade of a nearby plane tree to have their lunch.
There was a quiche Lorraine that Ted attacked with gusto, followed by smoked trout with horseradish sauce and then cold turkey slices with Russian salad and asparagus tips. For dessert, Harriet had made a chocolate layer cake topped with whipped cream. All this was washed down by a bottle of French champagne which had been packed in ice.
At the end of the meal, Tad was a happy man. He stretched himself out on the sparse grass under the tree and took a nap.
Harriet packed the remains of the picnic back into the basket and leaned back against the trunk of the tree, looking up at the thick canopy of leaves and branches.
If she had once been a priestess in this place, there was nothing in it now to stir even the semblance of a memory in her deep unconscious.
She listened to the rustling of the leaves as a faint breeze stirred among them, but if they were saying anything, their conversation was strictly private.
Finally she began to feel drowsy. She settled down beside Tad and promptly went to sleep.
About a half hour later she was wakened by strange sounds coming from Tad at her side. She turned to look at him and her eyes widened in alarm. He was twisting and turning on the ground, uttering loud groans and sweating profusely in his sleep.
Harriet shook him violently.
“Tad, Tad, wake up!” she cried.
Tad opened his eyes and stopped groaning. He looked around him in a daze and said: “Where am I?”
“Here, in Dodona. What happened? Did you have a nightmare?”
Tad sat forward, rubbed his eyes and looked at his wife.
“Boy, oh boy. I hope I never have a dream like that again,” he said.
“Whew, I really thought I was going to die!”
“What was it? Do tell me, darling. What did you dream about?”
Tad put his hand to his brow, trying to recollect the details of his dream. Then he said:
“I dreamed I was in a dark tunnel and that I was dropping through it, very fast. When I came out of it, I was here, in Dodona, somewhere far back in time. I was dressed in a rough tunic and my feet were absolutely filthy. But I felt it was all right because it was part of the religion of a sect I belonged to that worshipped Zeus, who lived in the roots of a large and sacred oak tree. We slept in nearby huts, on the bare floors, and in times gone by, Zeus had spoken to us in our dreams and we were greatly respected for the powers of divination this had given us. But at this particular time, we had lost these powers. They had been given to three priestesses who lived in a beautiful temple by the oak tree. The tree spoke to them through the rustling of its leaves and, in time, the oracle of Dodona became famous throughout the length and breadth of the ancient world. People came from far and wide to consult the oracle and lavished rich gifts on the temple. Our job was to guard the temple and tend to the wants of the priestesses.
“All this I became aware of as I emerged from the tunnel in my dream. Then, I was eating a large meal provided by a wealthy merchant from Thessaly, who had just been told by the oracle that the price of sheepskins would go up by ten points within the next two months, which would enable him to make a killing on the sheepskin futures market. He laid on a lavish spread for us and we all ate like pigs. That night, I had such a bad case of acute indigestion that I couldn’t sleep. I also had a raging thirst and my water-skin was empty. The stream we got our water from was about a half mile away and I didn’t relish the prospect of walking all that way in the middle of the night. There was water in the temple, and although we weren’t allowed in it under any circumstances, because the priestesses slept there, I decided I’d risk it and get some water from the cistern in the temple courtyard.
“I crept into the courtyard, filled my waterskin at the cistern and, as I was coming out again, I saw one of the priestesses standing in front of me. There was a bit of a moon and I could make out her face. She was a new girl who had arrived only a couple of weeks before. She was tall and fair, with lovely blue eyes and a perfect figure. Normally, she would have caused quite a sensation among us. But, because she was a holy person and sacred to Zeus, it never entered our minds that she could also be a woman.”
Harriet had been listening to all this with rapt attention.
When Tad stopped to lick his lips, she said: “Go on, go on, what happened next?”
“Gimme something to drink, I’m thirsty,” Tad complained.
She quickly fished a Thermos flask out of the picnic basket and gave him a drink of iced water.
“That’s better,” he said.
“Okay, so she asked me sternly what I was doing there and didn’t I know we weren’t allowed in the temple? I told her about my indigestion and she took pity on me. She told me to wait there, outside the temple gate. A few minutes later she came out with a cup in her hand and told me to drink from it.
‘What is it?’ I asked her.
‘It’ll do you good, drink it,’ she ordered me. I drank it and, in no time at all, my stomach felt right as rain.
I thanked her profusely but then, as I turned to go, she laid her hand on my arm and said: ‘Don’t go yet, sit here a while and talk to me.’
I felt a little uncomfortable, she being holy and sacred and all that, but she was such a nice person that I soon got over my misgivings and, before you knew it, we were getting along like a house on fire.
“Well, to cut a long story short, in the days that followed, our moonlight meeting turned into a full blown romance. I fell deeply in love with the girl and she felt the same about me. We had to meet secretly, of course, and we felt terribly guilty about the whole thing, she because of her vow of chastity and her high office and me because I was sure Zeus would be striking me down with a thunderbolt fairly soon.
“But it wasn’t Zeus who was to be my nemesis. It was my fellow Helloi or Selloi. They caught us together one night and dragged me away from her. They hurled insults at me and cursed me for profaning the sanctity of the oracle and finally they condemned me to death. They took me to the foot of the sacred oak and while four of them held me down, a fifth man lifted a heavy club and was about to bring it down on my head when you woke me up.”
“Gosh,” Harriet breathed. “What a terrible experience. But Tad, don’t you see? This must really have happened once. It ties in with everything. My recurring dream was a true one after all. Only, it wasn’t me whose past memories were stirred by this place, but you. We must have been together in that past life. Oh, Tad. I feel so excited* about the whole thing. What a lovely story.”
Tad looked puzzled. “Where do you come into this?” he asked.
“The priestess, Tad. The girl you fell in love with. Didn’t she look like me?” Harriet exclaimed.
Tad thought for a while. Then he said: “No, not at all. She looked more like Candice Bergen.”
