The Nature of Work, Part 1                                          

The Maker

Sometimes when the mist cleared and Yannis stood out in the wind holding his black cylindrical hat from blowing away, his heart swelled and glowed and he thanked God (who else?) for making mountains beyond mountains as far as the horizon brought to life by the soaring and dipping shadows of racing cumulus.

He thought God was like those clouds in their level flight, and he himself their shadows hurrying over peaks and valleys to keep up. It troubled him that the Maker he served was flawed, creating hell with its torments, urging Joshua to commit genocide, but reflected that all creators are flawed.

They wrote beautiful prose but tortured rats, fine poetry but supported fascists, and employers, often flawed, issued nonsensical instructions and had tantrums.

So he allowed himself to imagine the Maker’s delight in working out the orogeny – not just here in the Meteora but in every part of the world – arranging pleats, wrinkles and horizontal bands. The Maker placed a cirque here and a tarn there, ornamenting the work with delicate silver streams, and taking time to decide where to place the treeline.

Then, once happy with that decision, enjoyed the simple repetitive task of planting pines, fully present in the moment, yet now and then anticipating, with pleasure, the completion of the pattern.

Often the Creator allowed the work to evolve without him. After providing interesting minerals and lighting earth’s internal fires, he watched with edgy but pleasant anticipation as the crude forms cooled and were sculpted, ground, polished and broken up by the wind and water he had placed in readiness.

Each time he broke off from other projects to look, the landscape would satisfy him with its richness and lack of contrivance. And all those grindings and polishings resulted in those tiny particles humans give the name dust, which blew and settled into the spaces dedicated to the Creator, which Yannis was obliged to care for.

The Dust (I)

Usually mist sealed in the mountaintops, leaving only a modest precinct in which Yannis could ambulate. But mostly, he was indoors in his world of dust.

It filmed the floors of the passageways, refectory, library, guesthouse, and cell wing – each of which Yannis named for distant regions, like Fiji or Seychelles. It dulled the intricate infolded sprays of olive and myrtle adorning the floor tiles of the Katholikon and intruded on every gilded projection of the ikonostasis In the refectory. It even coated the interiors of cupboards.

The Archimandrite

With long strides that threatened to burst his robe, and smoke from his cigar trailing as if from a steamship, Father Giorgos the Archimandrite headed for the library. Ignoring the cobwebs which decorated the vaulted ceiling and not pausing to kiss the ikons, he expected to be followed.

In the library, he found a damascened bowl which Yannis had filled with potpourri; he scraped the dried leaves aside as if to censure this indulgence. But all Father Giorgos wanted was to tap the ash from his cigar.

He leaned back in his chair and yawned. Yannis stood on the edge of the room, terrified by the possibility of being dismissed from monastic life, disrobed and returned to a lay existence with its inscrutable roads and signs and commerce. He dreaded the endless comings and goings, wars and arguments, restless heaving like a storm-troubled sea.

Giorgos asked, “Has a change in your spiritual condition occurred since your arrival here? Sit for God’s sake, Father!

“No doubt a communication to that effect would have been received by me. Which, not being the case, suggests that the status quo ante persists, even though you must be aware that had others shared your mistrust of the Creator, this monastery along with hundreds of others from Ohrid to Varna, Crete to Moscow, would not exist.

“To say nothing of all the pilgrimages which when added together would reach to the moon and back.” Giorgos stared.

Yannis had learned that one should face the worst head-on. “Am I to be dismissed, Father?”

Giorgios lifted his robe to scratch a white calf. A loose cylinder of cigar ash fell from his lap. He brushed the remainder clear with a determined movement, stubbed out the cigar in the bowl, and laughed.

“There was such talk. But hawks don’t peck out hawks’ eyes, so I demurred saying ‘Father Yannis has begun to realise that the massacres at Izmit and our own massacres of Turks — I don’t deny them, though the foreign press inflates them — in no way reflects those at Jericho, Ai, Libnah, et al, and should he fulfil the new task I set him, his realisation will be complete.’”

“New task?”

Giorgios paced slowly in the manner of those lecturers who feel movement enhances their delivery. He paused now and then to light a fresh cigar or scratch his testicles through his robe, grunting.

“Up here in the Meteora in the sixteenth century, the Ottoman Turks tolerated us Christians mainly because they taxed us. Under Selim the First, Selim the Grim, the attitude changed. Extreme hostility. Thinking Janissaries might attack the monastery and burn the books, the Archimandrite, Father Apostolis, thought one document more important than any other.”

“Document?”

“Certain of us, divines received an esoteric tradition that a startling revelation was granted to Apostolis. That he wrote it down for posterity and hid it under these very floors. Whether on parchment, engraved marble, or a carving underneath a floor plank, the tradition makes no mention.”

Yannis blinked. “What kind of revelation, Father?”

“What kind, Yannis? The kind that in these troubled times raises the profile of the Orthodox faith, the Greek faith in particular.” He smiled. “The kind that changes lives and could change yours in particular because finding it will raise your profile — yours not mine, Yannis. I’m just the messenger boy in this.”

Yannis took off his hat and replaced it after vigorously rubbing his scalp.

“But surely someone already looked for it.”

“What, in just ten years since this part of Greece was liberated? Maybe you Evviotes weren’t aware it was so recent, having been Turk-free for a century. No, Yannis, virgin territory. Any experience lifting floors?

“None.”

“Then the work will be physical as well as spiritual. Order tools through the boy and send me six monthly sealed reports through him. Until the tools arrive, your mission is still cleaning. Work is a noble sacrifice. My old preceptor used to quote the English poet Mr Herbert: ‘Make drudgery divine.’” 

And once again without crossing himself or kissing the ikons, Giorgios left in a cloud of smoke.

The Dust (II)

One morning, after days of inaction, Yannis lingered over breakfast, planning in detail the work he was about to do, even though it was obvious. Then he found himself rising from the breakfast table and taking hold of a long brush someone had thoughtfully left beside the big walnut dresser. 

He made exploratory sweeps in that corner, intending to leave off in order to wash his bowl and plate, but found the rhythm of bristles on oak flooring and the movement of his limbs and trunk hypnotic.

This was not the actual work he had planned, but the relief in starting it was tremendous. Mid-morning, when he stopped to make coffee, he had progressed without pause across about one-sixth of the floor, striving to make a consistent straight leading edge in order to relish the satisfaction of a perfect rectangle of swept planking.

The work was not entirely perfect, however, because the draught along the floor returned some of the dust to its former resting place. So, instead of dealing with a well-formed linear dune, Yannis was forced to lift small sections with a dustpan which he carried to the door of the inner courtyard.

Heaving open the door with one hand, he went out and let the breeze distribute the sweepings. His irritation grew, augmented by the fact that the leading edge of the dune was now impinging on the supporting framework of the long massive table which he would either have to move, risking a hernia, or work around in an awkward unsatisfactory pattern.

He abandoned the problem for the moment, thinking, It’s not my problem. It’s the problem’s problem. Let it sort it out. He went outside to the phiale in the centre of the inner courtyard and sat on its rim looking down at his reflection in the water.

There he saw, as if through other eyes, a man who had spent years of dedication and effort in pursuit of theology and science, whose troubled view of his Maker had unfortunately led to his present humiliation, his intelligence wasted on the logistics of moving dust.

There is humility and humility, he thought, but was soothed a little by the sound of the trickling water and the sight of its flickering reflections of sunlight burning through the tonsure-like opening in the surrounding mist.

The Plan

Trying to plan the work on a large sheet of paper to give space for his thoughts, Yannis paused, frozen by the realisation that he had no idea what tools he would need. He remembered when as a novice, he had been sent to scrub pans and dishes, and how being given a crisp new dishwashing brush had raised his morale. So the tools had to be new and, if possible, shiny.

He closed his eyes and asked for guidance. An image of Jesus appeared in his imagination, as a carpenter, not Pantokrator. He knew about wood! Yannis tried to visualise him planing an oak plank — or would it be cedar? — to replace a damaged floorboard, and suddenly seemed to hear, “Hammer, bolster, crowbar. With this trinity go forth.”

Later, Yannis remembered watching his father demolish a timber barn with just those implements.

On Thursday when the boy, Spiridon, would appear, Yannis would send his request. Meanwhile he had cleaned enough to satisfy his conscience. He yawned and stretched, feeling the luxury of free time, but then opened his eyes to see the expanse of dusty floor all round him.

The sight caused a sudden tightening and flickering below his diaphragm. Thinking about cleaning is like thinking about God — an endless task. He looked up at the dark beams of the ceiling as if looking to the hills for aid. So interesting he found them that he could study them for hours, unable to move from his armchair.

He abandoned any thought of moving and paid attention to his breath. A minute later, as if thrust by invisible hands, he found himself striding towards the kitchen, which was sunlit. The battered armchair in which he had been sitting, in the broad corridor outside the narthex of the Katholikon, had been in gloom.

Coffee, orange juice, rolls, butter, paper, and a plan of campaign. Yannis caught sight of himself in a mirror – a slim figure dark-robed from chin to ankles, dark-bearded, face and hands, and one bare ankle very white by contrast, even though his skin was olive. He looked like a cat about to pounce. He allowed himself a feline-like wiggle and smiled. 

He listed floors. Katholikon: glazed encaustic tiles, not wood, thank heaven.

Kitchen, refectory, gatehouse, library: oak planks of various widths 20 to 30 centimetres, unknown depth, cut neatly around projections from walls but continuing under cabinets, etc. Polished by years of scrubbing and the traffic of devoted sandals.

Guesthouse and cell wing: the same, well scrubbed but less polished, having suffered only the traffic of bare (if horny) feet.

He thought he should impose some kind of order on the work. The area of floor seemed limitless as did the time to deal with it, and there were two ways to break both down:

Method I: Work along a whole run of plank wall to wall, with the dates on which to lift successive sections of board, thus:
________________________________

Day 1   Day 2   Day 3   Day 4 and so on.

________________________________

Giving a sense of completion in length. Or:

Method II: Lift the end runs of several adjacent planks, thus:

________________________

Day 1

________________________

Day 2

________________________

Day 3

________________________

Day 4

________________________

And so on, giving a sense of completion in width.

He took a cup of coffee into the courtyard and circumambulated the phiale debating this. What if Methods III and IV existed? His sandal caught on uneven paving and jolted him. Abstraction! His training was limited to dealing in abstractions. He had yet to face the rigour of the physical world.

He sighed. A flight of geese passed over, rhythmical in their freedom.

Read Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, & Part 5

---

Need more great reads while you wait for instalment number two? Check these out!

• The Girl in the Sand – an Allegory
• Memories on a Rainy Evening – An Emotive Short Story
• Hail to the Chief – Fiction
• Murderer’s Creek – Dark Fiction
• Faith and Dandelion Seeds – Heavy Fiction
• The Spirit of Ratnapur – Part 1 & Part 2 – Haunting Fiction