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Sphakia – Impressions
cause for alarm. (The road to Sphakia is tortuous and rough.) And
there was something which made the journey still more hazardous –
Aleko was suffering from the same disease as I was – acute diarrhoea.
On his arrival Aleko, overjoyed at being on firm ground again after
his first experience of motoring, unwisely ate too much barley and
drank too little water. I was sitting in a cafe when Julie came running
up the path faster than any dingbat. Aleko had just collapsed by the
village watering place. He had just folded up and sunk to the ground,
rolling his eyes horribly, his legs stiff and extended.
At once we were deluged with contradictory advice; or, more simply,
with amused comment.
‘He’s had too much to drink.’
‘He’s had too little to drink.’
‘Give him an onion with salt on it,’ says the postman.
‘Try so-and-so, he knows all about donkeys. 1
The expert, a mountainous man, prescribed exercise. We took turns
hauling Aleko along the village street until his eyes lost their fixed,
complaining stare.
An itinerant preacher came to Sphakia. A Cretan, just back from the
Holy Land, with colour slides to illustrate his lecture. A white sheet
was pegged up as a screen on the terrace of a cafe some twenty yards
from the murmuring sea; and most of the town turned up to watch.
Some of the slides were colour shots of the present-day landscape–
the Mount of Olives, Bethany, Zacchaeus’s tree. As they came up on
the screen the preacher interrogated the Sphakian children, who sat in
the front row.
‘What’s that tree?’
‘It’s a tree.’
‘Yes. What tree?’
Silence.
‘It’s the tree which Zacchaeus climbed to get a good view of Our
Lord.’
Others were wishy-washy tinted pictures of biblical scenes, each one
illustrating some ‘point’:
‘Here Our Lord washes the disciples’ feet. It shows His humility.
Egoism is a great sin!*
We did not see all the slides, however, as the projector broke down.
I think this suited the preacher rather well. He was able to preach a
sermon instead, and it was one of the two most rousing sermons I have
ever heard.
‘The machine has broken down,’ he said. ‘And there is a reason for
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