along the harbour’s edge. On my right the sea paled towards sunset, and across the opal shimmer of the bay came a fishing-boat, turquoise and white, with her prow raked in a proud pure curve above its liquid image. Under a sail of that same scarlet had the worshippers come into harbour when the god was still at Delphi.
I left the sea’s edge and walked rapidly across the street. I wanted to get behind the ugly row of houses, back into the old olive woods, where I could look straight up towards the Pleistus valley with nothing but immemorial rock and tree and sky between me and the shrine.
Behind the main street were a few sorry alleys of concrete, with houses, as usual, scattered seemingly at random in the dust-patches between the trees. I passed the last house, skirted a building that looked like a ruined warehouse, and followed a cracked stretch ofconcrete which appeared to lead straight into the outskirts of the forest of olives. The concrete was crisscrossed with cracks, like crazy paving, and thistles grew in the fissures. I startled a browsing donkey, and it plunged off under the olives in a smother of dust, to be lost in the shadows. Soon the concrete came to an end, and I found myself walking through soft earth in the deeper twilight of the trees. The breeze had strengthened with the approach of evening, and overhead the olives had resumed their liquid rippling.
I hurried on towards a space ahead where stronger light promised a clearing. I was lucky. There was a slight rise in the ground, and to the north of it the great olives thinned. From the top of the little ridge, across the ruffling crests of the trees, I could see the old Pilgrim’s Way, unscarred by my own century. I stood for a few minutes, gazing up towards the shrine in the now rapidly fading light.
The temple columns were invisible behind the curve of the Chrissa bluff, but there was the black cleft of Castalia, and above it the great cliffs whose names are Flamboyant and Roseate, the Shining Ones … The dying sun ran up the Flamboyant cliff like fire.
This was, I thought, the way to come to Delphi … not straight up into the ruins in the wake of a guide, but to land from a small boat in a bay of pearl, and see it as they would have seen it, flaming in the distance like a beacon, the journey’s end.
Something like a fleck of darkness went by my cheek. A bat. It was deep twilight now, the swift-falling Aegean dusk. I turned to see lights pricking out inthe houses behind me. I could just see the street lamps, faint and far between, along the sea-front. They looked a long way away. Where I stood the shadow of a huge olive brooded like a cloud. I turned to go back to the village.
Instead of returning the way I had come, I took what I judged to be the direction of the car, and, plunging down from the ridge into the depths of the olive-wood, I set off quickly through the twisted and shadowy trunks.
I had gone perhaps a hundred yards before the trees began to thin. Some way off to my left I saw the lights of the first house, an outpost of the village, and was hurrying towards it through the soft dust when a sudden flash of light quite near me, and to my right, brought me up short, startled. It was the flash of an electric torch, deep in the trees. Perhaps my adventures of the day had worked on my imagination rather too well, or perhaps it was the ancient mystery that I had been attempting to call up, but the fact remains that I felt suddenly frightened, and stood very still, with the trunk of an enormous olive between me and the torchlight.
Then I realised what it was. There was a house set by itself deep in the grove, the usual two-windowed box of a place with its woodpile and its lean-to shed and its scrawny chickens gone to roost in the vine. The flash I had seen showed me a man bending over a motor vehicle of some sort which was parked close to the side of the house. It looked like a jeep. As I watched he jerked the bonnet open, shone the
I left the sea’s edge and walked rapidly across the street. I wanted to get behind the ugly row of houses, back into the old olive woods, where I could look straight up towards the Pleistus valley with nothing but immemorial rock and tree and sky between me and the shrine.
Behind the main street were a few sorry alleys of concrete, with houses, as usual, scattered seemingly at random in the dust-patches between the trees. I passed the last house, skirted a building that looked like a ruined warehouse, and followed a cracked stretch ofconcrete which appeared to lead straight into the outskirts of the forest of olives. The concrete was crisscrossed with cracks, like crazy paving, and thistles grew in the fissures. I startled a browsing donkey, and it plunged off under the olives in a smother of dust, to be lost in the shadows. Soon the concrete came to an end, and I found myself walking through soft earth in the deeper twilight of the trees. The breeze had strengthened with the approach of evening, and overhead the olives had resumed their liquid rippling.
I hurried on towards a space ahead where stronger light promised a clearing. I was lucky. There was a slight rise in the ground, and to the north of it the great olives thinned. From the top of the little ridge, across the ruffling crests of the trees, I could see the old Pilgrim’s Way, unscarred by my own century. I stood for a few minutes, gazing up towards the shrine in the now rapidly fading light.
The temple columns were invisible behind the curve of the Chrissa bluff, but there was the black cleft of Castalia, and above it the great cliffs whose names are Flamboyant and Roseate, the Shining Ones … The dying sun ran up the Flamboyant cliff like fire.
This was, I thought, the way to come to Delphi … not straight up into the ruins in the wake of a guide, but to land from a small boat in a bay of pearl, and see it as they would have seen it, flaming in the distance like a beacon, the journey’s end.
Something like a fleck of darkness went by my cheek. A bat. It was deep twilight now, the swift-falling Aegean dusk. I turned to see lights pricking out inthe houses behind me. I could just see the street lamps, faint and far between, along the sea-front. They looked a long way away. Where I stood the shadow of a huge olive brooded like a cloud. I turned to go back to the village.
Instead of returning the way I had come, I took what I judged to be the direction of the car, and, plunging down from the ridge into the depths of the olive-wood, I set off quickly through the twisted and shadowy trunks.
I had gone perhaps a hundred yards before the trees began to thin. Some way off to my left I saw the lights of the first house, an outpost of the village, and was hurrying towards it through the soft dust when a sudden flash of light quite near me, and to my right, brought me up short, startled. It was the flash of an electric torch, deep in the trees. Perhaps my adventures of the day had worked on my imagination rather too well, or perhaps it was the ancient mystery that I had been attempting to call up, but the fact remains that I felt suddenly frightened, and stood very still, with the trunk of an enormous olive between me and the torchlight.
Then I realised what it was. There was a house set by itself deep in the grove, the usual two-windowed box of a place with its woodpile and its lean-to shed and its scrawny chickens gone to roost in the vine. The flash I had seen showed me a man bending over a motor vehicle of some sort which was parked close to the side of the house. It looked like a jeep. As I watched he jerked the bonnet open, shone the
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