Konrad and Alexandra (PDF) - Rolf Gross

Alexandra went purple with embarrassment.The woman left with a cackle.Konrad laughed. "What did this old witch say? She is much too old for such pleasures."Alexandra searched for words. "I don’t know how to translate her words. She used a very bawdy street-Georgian, which Idid not understand well, either she spoke a dialect or her words were outdated. You saw her gesture? She was sayingthat this was the night of resurrection and urged us to copulate in the bushes and make a baby, and all the time she wasplaying on an old word for erection. But the strangest thing was that her words rhymed! Where did she get that kind ofpoetry from?"Konrad shook his head. "Prepare yourself, this is going to be a rough night for you. I can always pretend not tounderstand Georgian! But do at least try to translate as much as you can for me. You say she speaks in rhymed verses?I have a hunch that this crone is even older than you think."Shortly before midnight, the wizened woman appeared in the door to the church. A hush went through the crowd, and theold crone delivered a lengthy piece of poetry. Now Konrad could hear that she spoke in rhymed couplets. When she hadfinished, laughter, a few taunts, and shouts of "Yakkhos, Yakkhos" rose from the crowd. Everybody pushed towards thedoor of the church."You know who she is?" said Konrad. "I do not even need to understand her words, this old woman comes straight fromthe Greek tragedies. Very exciting, her role must have survived as part of the oral tradition, two thousand years,incredible!""Her verses had to do with resurrection and the birth of a child," said Alexandra, "interspersed again with bawdy linesabout a rape and an abduction into the underworld. It makes me shudder, but I do not understand the meaning of any ofthis. What does this have to do with Easter?"They were carried through the door by the stream of people. The nave was jammed. People stood head to head, smallchildren riding on their fathers’ shoulders. Konrad chose a place along the rear wall.Candles stuck to the darkened walls of the choir illuminated a strange scene: A woman, her long skirt spread, sat on thephallic post. She wore a crown with a halo of gilded rays. Next to her stood a woman with a white veil over her head, anda man wearing a horse’s head and skin. The old crone with her stick stood next to this trinity.The crone knocked the ground several times with her stick to quiet the crowd and then began, again in rhymed couplets,to give a long explanation pointing one after the other at the three masked characters.Alexandra whispered that the woman was naming them. "The woman with the crown is a queen and priestess calledDimitra, the veiled woman is simply called Maiden, and the horse, Yakkhos."As the old woman pointed at the horse the crowd rhythmically shouted, "Yakkhos, Yakkhos." Yakkhos in response let outa lusty neigh and pawed the ground. A man from the crowd shouted something Alexandra once again would nottranslate, but Konrad remembered that he had heard the expression on his wanderings in the bazaar: "Fuck her!"After a while the church became very quiet, only a child was heard crying. Someone made a noise to hush up the infant.Dimitra, the royal priestess, raised her hands in a gesture of blessing and recited a brief prayer. The Maiden lowered herhead in mourning or in resignation. Restlessly Dimitra began to move back and forth and up and down on the phallicpost.Enthusiastic cheers from the crowd fired her on. The crone cackled some untranslatable verses, and a Hierophant, ayoung man in a long black robe appeared who extinguished one candle after the other, until the sanctuary lay incomplete darkness.Ashen-faced, Alexandra grabbed Konrad’s arm and whispered alarmed, "The Priestess is my mother and the Maiden isPersephone!"Konrad had come to the same conclusion and sucking in his breath, he whispered hoarsely, "Mein Gott, you are right!"As soon as darkness descended a wild noise started. The horse pawed the ground and neighed frenetically. Above themad bustle the rhymed verses of the old crone could be heard. A deep drum began to pound inciting the crowd torhythmical shouts: "Yakkhos!—Yakkhos!—Yakkhos!" Slowly the rhythm of the pounding drum and the pawing andneighing of the horse increased until the fracas reached a fortissimo.Abruptly the fray stopped and complete silence set in. From far away in the underworld, the orgiastic scream of a womanwas heard.A deep sigh went through the crowd.Alexandra, trembling, dug her face into Konrad’s arm. She was sobbing.Carrying a torch, the Hierophant emerged from a door illuminating the dark choir. In the uncertain light the priestesscould be seen to rise from her seat and reveal a blood-soaked cloth that had covered the phallus. Triumphantly sheshouted:"Brimo has risen!""She has given birth to a boy!"His name is Brimus."Under the ecstatic cries of the crowd shouting: "Brimus! Brimus!" Persephone walked into the light. Her veil replaced by a39