Behind the Ivory Veil
19 Chasing a Dream
Sunday, 14 August 1955, Athens, Greece
REBECCA HART ALLEN, world traveler. She stepped off the plane to the glare of the afternoon sun, much warmer here than in Edinburgh. She shifted beneath the woolen sweater she wore over her plaid pleated skirt. Mrs. Weed had taken her shopping for tartans, a favorite souvenir of Americans who imagined they had some Scottish blood in their veins. Perhaps Rebecca did have Scottish ancestors. They had found a Hart tartan, though it was classified as Clan Urquhart. Nonetheless, Mrs. Weed sewed the skirt for Rebecca. Mid-August in Athens, however, was scarcely the place to be wearing wool.
She looked around as she descended the steps from the airplane, half expecting Wesley to be waiting for her. Or perhaps Ryan McGuire. Her visualizations on the airplane from Rome were mixed. She chanted a spell Mrs. Weed had taught her to put herself into a visualizing trance and settled in to focus on her husband. But images of Ryan kept intruding on her subconscious. The men were locked in combat, spinning on the edge of the world until both slipped and fell into an unending chasm. Spinning, falling. Spinning falling. The image repeated in her dream until she thought she would scream.
The wheels touching the pavement had jolted her awake. She was in Greece.
Rebecca tried to come to grips with the utter foreignness of Athens. It was a different world than Edinburgh. Scotland felt like home. Greece was foreign. She was isolated and alone. She had no concept of what time it was and was confused over directions. The travel agent had given her a map, but she was unable to even locate the airport on it.
Worse, she had no idea where she was going. She had told the agent that she would depend on family once she reached Greece. If only she knew where they were.
She finally found a porter who spoke English and he directed her to a taxi stand where she could find an English-speaking driver. She stepped into the cab with her walking stick, and waited while the driver put her bag in the trunk. When he got in the car and pulled away from the curb he asked, “Where to, Miss?”
Rebecca let her head fall back on the seat as she nearly sobbed, “The City of the Gods.” The driver looked at her in the mirror, ignoring traffic has he pulled onto the highway. She was intimidated by the intent gaze. He seemed to be looking at something besides her appearance or her face. He was looking deeper.
“Do you have an address?”
Rebecca snorted. Had she really said that aloud? “Please. Take me to the Hotel Athenee.” The driver looked at her again and abruptly cut across two lanes of traffic.
“As you wish,” he said. Leaving the airport behind, they wound their way into Athens. The driver continually glanced into the rearview mirror—not at traffic, which he seemed to ignore, but at Rebecca. She gradually slumped down in the seat far enough that she could not see the driver’s eyes in the mirror. The cab pulled up beside a beautiful hotel near the center of town. Rebecca had seen a glimpse of the Acropolis as they turned in.
“Here it is. Hotel Athenee. One of our finest. Views of the Acropolis and Parthenon from all rooms.” He turned to look at Rebecca who was still slumped down in the seat and was making no attempt to move. “Are you ill, Miss? This is where you wanted to come, is it not?” Rebecca sat up slowly.
“Yes. Fine. Just a bit overwhelmed. This is… too big. Is there a smaller hotel you could take me to? Perhaps a bed and breakfast?” she asked plaintively.
“Of course, Miss. There is a small pensione not far from here. A bit less expensive, as well, though that might not be a consideration for you. But there is no view. You will have to walk a bit to view the Acropolis.” He pulled away from the grand hotel and wound through the narrow streets of Athens. The hotel was so small that it was marked only by a wooden sign on the door.
“This is lovely,” she said. It reminded her of the little hotel near the airport in Rome she had stayed at… Was it just last night?
“An Italian opened it right after the war. Sadly, after the occupation, Athenians were not kindly disposed toward the Italians. The owner decided to sell out and leave for his homeland before any further damage could be done. To the building or his person.” The driver spoke with a note of pride that led Rebecca to believe he might have a vested interest in the property.
“I’m sure it will be fine,” she said.
“Not too crowded. Clean,” he said as he held the door open for her. “But a long way from the City of the Gods.”
Rebecca stumbled through the door, turning to face the driver. She fought down the fear that insisted on rising inside her and half-expected Ryan McGuire to be facing her. During her hour in the taxi, she had nearly convinced herself that her journey was hopeless. Mrs. Weed had told her to visualize and what was real in her mind would come to her. But to have the first person she met in Athens respond to her about the City of the Gods was more than a little uncanny—and frightening.
“What do you know about the City of the Gods?” she demanded. Her voice was more forceful and shrill than she intended.
He reached in his pocket and withdrew a New Testament which he handed to her. She looked at him curiously but opened the cover. Her husband’s precise handwriting filled the inside cover. “To my friend, Marcos. May God richly bless you. J. Wesley Allen”
“Wesley!” she cried.
“Are you Mrs. Allen?” a woman’s voice spoke from behind her. A lovely Greek woman wiped her hands on a towel as she approached. “Yes. You look exactly like the photo he carried.”
“You know my husband?” Rebecca asked.
“The three of them, Wesley, Doctor Heinrich and Doctor Jacobsen stayed with us before Marcos drove them to his father’s home in Thessaly,” the woman said. “Excuse my rudeness. I am Helen Pariskovopolis. You have already met my husband, Marcos.”
“You know how to get there? Can you help me? Please?”
“Of course, Mrs. Allen,” Marcos said. “Welcome to our home and our hotel. We will drive to Metéora tomorrow. I planned to go up later in the week to retrieve the campers anyway. Your husband will be quite surprised to see you waiting.”
“Pleasantly, I hope. I’m so worried about him.” Rebecca’s face fell and she looked at the husband and wife before her. Respectfully, she said, “Are you believers? I thought only a select few knew the way.”
“We are believers in the true God and his one church,” Helen said firmly. Marcos smiled at her and placed a protective arm around her. It was the first look of genuine warmth and affection that Rebecca had seen in Greece.
“I am not a believer as you have phrased the question,” Marcos said. “But great is the mystery of godliness. We will talk much this evening and in the morning, I will take you to my father’s house.”
Rebecca was led to a pleasant room where she changed from the hot woolens into her slacks and a short-sleeved shirt. Refreshed, she returned to the main floor where Helen immediately invited her to the kitchen. Seeing the woman in a modest dress, Rebecca was worried that she might offend with her choice of clothing.
“Helen, am I dressed appropriately? I have very few clothes with me and expected to be hiking, much as I do in Scotland.”
“There are differences among people. Women wearing pants is not common in Greece, but is more so in Athens than in smaller villages. We are not as cosmopolitan as large cities like Paris and New York, but there is a great move toward modernization. There is even a part of town where the beats reside.”
“Beats?”
“Ahh. Beatniks? Mostly expatriates from various places in Europe and America. Painters, poets, novelists, and wealthy young people who can live wherever they wish as their fathers pay.”
“Oh. I see.”
“You are dressed for exploring, and that is what you will be doing. I have been to the so-called City myself. Nothing but the ruins of an ancient temple. I suppose, though, that it is of interest to archaeologists. They will have you dusting shards of pottery on your hands and knees, I should think. This manner of dress is most appropriate.”
“That isn’t the description my husband has sent me.” As they worked, Helen opened up a bit.
“I was invited to join in the belief of the ancients,” Helen said. “It was as foreign to me as Greece is to you. I was raised here in Athens. We do not believe in an ancient pantheon. Marcos took me to see the ancient site before we were married, but I had already made up my mind. Perhaps if I had not, I would have seen something different. Marcos and I married and moved back here to Athens. We had a bit of a struggle during the occupation, but survived. I think, though, that deep in his heart, my husband still believes. They see something there that pursues them all their lives. Even my son is a believer and is on the mountain with the archaeologists.”
There were Wilton’s words again. Pursued all their lives. Rebecca helped put food on the table and Marcos joined the women for moussaka and a salad. The food was delicious. Rebecca gradually revealed her story and how she had dreamed that Wesley was in danger. The dream had been so compelling that she had flown to Greece.
“If I had enough petrol in the Jeep, we would leave tonight,” Marcos said as they discussed the journey north. “But I cannot buy on Sunday and there will be nothing available until after nine o’clock tomorrow but coffee. As soon as I have prepared the Jeep, we will leave.”
“I’m worried about Pol,” Helen said. “If something has given you a warning that you must search out your husband, it cannot be good for my son, either.”
“If one is in danger, all are in danger,” Marcos agreed. “Rebecca, I no longer believe there will be a deliverer for an ancient goddess. But I do believe there is a great power on the mountain. I love my son. If he is in danger, I want to be there to help in any way.”
Sunday, 14 August 1955, City of the Gods
Morning dawned bright and clear with no trace of the fog that seemed to surround them in the mornings. The four proceeded to the supply drop-off point and distributed the load for the hike back up the mountain. Doc and Wesley split the burden of carrying the lockbox with them up to the main camp. “Better to be protected than to be exposed,” Doc had said. And they had no more supply runs coming. Locking the henhouse after the fox, Wesley thought as they struggled up the mountain with the box slung between them.
After supplies were safely back at the base camp and they had eaten lunch, Doc and Margaret decided to take a walk and enjoy nature. Wesley noticed the direction that they chose for their nature walk, which was uphill, and rightly supposed they would look for some clue to the access of the City of the Gods. Pol also went out exploring, planning to see what was on the opposite shore of the stream. Acting responsibly, Wesley asked the boy to stay within earshot in case the previous day’s visitor was still about. Pol smiled and said there was not much chance of that, but he would stay close.
Wesley sat in the shade of the old tree and played some relaxing melodies on his guitar, gliding from gospel to classical to flamenco. He intended to read his New Testament and meditate. His eyes fell on the scripture but he could not really focus on any of the words. His mind was filled with as many lines from Greek mythology as from the scripture and they seemed to weave in and out of each other. He thought about the empathic goddess locked behind the ivory veil and considered the parallels with gifts of healing spoken of in Paul’s epistles.
Wesley was losing his grip on the reality of his faith. He fought to regain the truth as he knew it.
Why? Why must the truth be limited to what I know? Those who know, know not. Was that scripture or just another myth? Again, the image of the goddess sprang to mind. No one has lifted my veil. Another veil came to mind, torn from top to bottom. There must be a way to penetrate the veil and uncloud the mysteries that plagued his spirituality.
As he sat beneath the tree, Wesley sank deeper into his meditative trance. The guitar took on a life of its own beneath his fingers and his voice hummed and popped along with it. Music, words, images. The trance spread until he was no longer conscious of his fingers moving on the frets. He was a thousand years away and removed from the mountainside where only his body remained in touch with the world he knew.
In that other consciousness, Wesley pursued the conflicts of his faith. His mind was full of images of heresy and persecution. Daniel in the fiery furnace. The four horses of Revelation. Christians sent to the Coliseum to be eaten by lions. In every instance, spiritual conflict led to martyrdom. It was apocalyptic. Why is this so different? There is no enemy to slash at with a sword; only this burning image of a goddess behind the ivory veil.
His playing morphed into a new chord and cadence, throwing him back to the images of the rostrum admonishing him to beware the night. Yet, in spite of the warning, there was also a challenge to persevere and to conquer. Not only to beware the night, but to dare the night. Come before me cleansed and clean. Was that not what his own baptism had been about? To make him clean enough to face God?
God or Goddess? The goddess behind the ivory veil was all that he should love and treasure; not the idol that Ryan McGuire sought, but equally to be sought, to be found. She excited a passion in him that stoked his memories of his wedding night. He could not ‘mortify the flesh’ in the face of this passion.
She—was it the goddess on the mountain, or the goddess in the flesh of his wife?—was the reason for his being. He could once again be baptized in her.
He was dreaming, he realized as he awoke in the afternoon heat. He was sweating out his fantasy beneath the open skies on a mountainside in Greece, a thousand years away from the goddess and a thousand miles from his wife, yet at the very gate of her private realm.
The sudden rush of water over his face and body tingled and sent a quick awakening into his mind. He swam, as much as one could swim in the rushing shallow water that paused to pool beside the ancient olive tree. No one was around. The water felt better than he ever imagined. So clear and refreshing. Why had no one else—other than Pol—thought of splashing in the stream before this? They had each taken private moments out of sight of the others to wash by the edge of the stream, but none had dared plunge into it.
Wesley was determined to avail himself of the fresh cold water daily from this point forward. He lowered himself below the surface. Once. Twice. Three times. Cleansed by the tide. Baptized in the rushing water. He was one with the lord—all the lords that had ever been.
He crawled onto the bank and lay exhausted in the sun. No one had returned from their various nature hikes. He laughed in embarrassed relief as he realized he was lying naked on the bank, drying in the air. He moved to re-dress and to decide if he should call out to the others. Olly olly oxen free! He giggled. He felt so refreshed it was like entering childhood again. He would simply lie on his bedroll and wait for his companions to return. While refreshing, the impromptu swim had also left him tired and perhaps a bit lethargic. He would rest a bit and if they hadn’t returned in a few minutes, he would start the evening fire and begin dinner preparations. His bedroll was far more comfortable than it had been on any other night. He relaxed. He would just close his eyes a moment.
Wesley slept deeply through the night.
Monday, 15 August 1955, Kastraki, Greece
Rebecca rode most of the journey clutching her injured hand close to herself in silence. At last the peaks of Metéora arose from the plain ahead. In a few minutes, they rumbled across the cobblestones of a small village Main Street and pulled up in front of a small cluster of houses sharing a common courtyard. It was late in the day as they had not managed to leave Athens before noon. She was hot and tired and unprepared for the family’s welcome. Sophia ran to meet them, trailed by children. She gave Marcos a hug and then turned to Rebecca.
“Marcos! We didn’t expect you for another week.”
“Sophia, this is Rebecca Allen, Wesley’s wife. Rebecca, my sister Sophia,” Marcos introduced them.
“You look hot and travel-weary,” Sophia said. “Tomas! Draw water for our guest.” A boy of about ten rushed to the well. “Later we can heat water so you can bathe, but please refresh yourself with water. Just a splash on your face will do wonders for you.”
Rebecca was happy to refresh herself from the bucket of cool well-water and surreptitiously used the wet cloth provided to push inside her shirt and wipe her armpits. Marcos entered one of the houses so it was only the two women at the well. Sophia held Rebecca’s hair back while the young woman washed her neck. With a sudden thought of warmth and affection, she thought of Mrs. Weed and how like her Marcos’s sister was.
As the water dripped from her face, she was caught in a memory of Wesley singing something akin to a hymn in his rich tenor. She swayed as Sophia poured a cup of water over her head, matting Rebecca’s auburn hair. The Greek woman then proceeded to towel dry the hair as Rebecca unwrapped her hand and plunged it into the cold water. It was a shock to her senses that soon settled into relief.
Rebecca was caught up in the cooling sensation of dipping her injured hand in the water when a gentle voice behind her startled.
“You have hurt your hand,” said the old man.
“Papa, this is Wesley’s wife, Rebecca,” Sophia said. “Rebecca, my father, Andrew.”
“I’m pleased to meet you, sir. Wesley has written to me about your kindness and hospitality. I apologize for my unannounced visit.”
“It is nothing,” Andrew said. “You are welcome here to our home and to our family. May I see your hand?” Rebecca tentatively reached out her hand, still blistered red.
“I burned it,” she explained.
“Yes,” the old man said. He held her hand gently in one hand while he passed his fingertips over it with the other. Rebecca could feel the featherlight brush, but her eyes told her that his fingers had not touched at all.
“A very hot fire,” he said at last. “I believe that we may have a salve that would soothe you. Sophia, paidi mou, will you ask Mama for the special salve I keep in my medicine box?”
“Yes, Papa.” Rebecca’s new friend departed quickly.
“May I ask how this happened?” he asked.
Rebecca faltered for a moment. This old man whose eyes were so much like those of Marcos would be impossible to lie to. Yet she could hardly tell the truth. Finally, she averted her eyes.
“There was a fire. I grabbed a hot… handle.”
The old man looked at her silently until Rebecca raised her eyes to meet his. Then he spoke.
“We are a small village and unusual things are quickly known by all. A few days ago another came to our area, pretending to be a tourist and visiting the monasteries. He, too, carried one hand wrapped in gauze.”
Rebecca moaned and lifted her face to the bright Mediterranean sky. He was here. She must get to Wesley before Ryan did.
“A private matter, I see. Are you worried about your husband?”
“Yes,” answered Rebecca. “Do you know if everything is all right on their dig?”
“Brother El delivered supplies to their drop point just two days ago for their final week on the mountain. He reported nothing out of the ordinary. Why have you come? What brought you here?”
Rebecca soon found herself telling him the entire story of finding Wilton’s last notes, how the haunting image of Wesley had come to her in dreams, and of Ryan’s determination to recover the lost goddess. The old man occasionally prodded her with questions as he gently applied the salve Sophia brought, but Rebecca told about her fears freely.
When she was finished and there seemed to be no more to tell, they sat quietly for a few moments.
“Papa, dinner is ready. Will you bring our guest?” Sophia called.
“Come. Let us eat. You need food and rest. We will deal with strange things and you will tell me more,” he said.
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