The Greek Islands (21 page)

Although the site of the Aesculapion is really the thing most worth seeing, the three-terraced sanatorium lies in a beautiful position, tucked into a limestone fold of the hill. It has been in part reconstructed and perhaps retouched by the Italians, but not too fancifully I think. The original has disappeared, but we know that the Hellenistic version, on which the Italian
archaeologists
worked, covered the ancient site – which was revived and remodelled by a physician called Xenophon, who is said to have
poisoned the poor Emperor Claudius. (History is full of
surprises
, and one wonders whether a man capable of reviving such a hallowed site would also be capable of dispatching his emperor.) Talking of poison reminds me that the grave and noble formulations of the healing code – the Oath of the Hippocratic doctor – do not appear in even the most detailed guide books. It is worth quoting here, since even in translation some of the magical quality of his idealism and humanity comes through and it is relevant to the spirit of Cos:

The three restored terraces well justify their existence, for it would be difficult without them to visualize how the whole area must have looked – the lowest terrace appears to have been the hospital, and the highest one the temple area. But even at its very oldest period, the site was several times enlarged before the Romans came on to the scene, so that as usual all the
inscriptions
are confused and tentative. There is a strange antique architrave just south of the main Aesculapion area, in which there was a spring named Bourinna by the private physician of Nero, a certain Andromachos of Crete. It is horrible to think
that somewhere inside this sacred area there once stood statues of Nero, who so obligingly incarnated not only Aesculapius himself but also Hygeia and Epioni for the sculptor's chisel. There is nothing like being a god. But let us leave these strange fragments of information and conjecture, so laboriously
gathered
together in the guide books. Whatever happens, do not miss the splendid views from the first long terrace; you can see as far as Bodrun (ancient Halicarnassus) on the Turkish coast and in fair weather even catch a glimpse of rugged Samos.

There are several atmospheric villages worth a visit in the island, and some have medieval monuments or icons to show, but there is nothing you really should not miss. Pretty
Kardamena
will not disappoint, and if you climb to Asfendiou, you will at once consider the pleasures of buying a village house and spending a few years helping flowers to push up in some sheltered courtyard tiled with black-and-white sea-pebble.

But it has got something, Cos, and can already claim a
number
of distinguished addicts; I know several people who come back for holidays year after year. A small story clings to the outskirts of my memory – about dreams. I have always longed to know more about Aesculapian healing and, in particular, about the function of dreams in the ancient medical system. In Epidaurus long ago, I came across a museum curator who told me that if you slept in the healing part of the Aesculapion you had confused and frightening dreams and nightmares. I wanted to experiment by camping in this spot alone for a month in summer in order to record dreams; but the war broke out and we were chased ignominiously into Egypt. What with the
post-war
difficulty of finding jobs in the Aegean, I never managed to secure for myself a Greek posting, and so Epidaurus had to wait. However, once when I was in Cos and visiting the Aesculapion on a sunny day in winter, I found a couple of soldiers camping in a bell tent among the ruins. I stopped for a
brew-up and the traditional blow and harsh word. In the course of their chatter, they said that they had started camping inside the ruins but had slept so badly that they had moved their tent higher up and into the open where there was more wind. I asked if they had any special kind of dream – but no, it was just something about the place that had made them feel uneasy.

The ladies of Cos were famous once for their beauty, and there are still handsome antelopes about today to keep the reputation of the Coan girls high in the esteem of the world.

Before leaving the island you should visit, and indeed spend an afternoon drowsing under, the so-called plane tree of Hippocrates which, like some old boa constrictor, has
completely
entwined a whole square in its toils. It has sprouted arms and legs in all directions, and the kindly worshippers have propped up one limb after another, with stone columns, to prevent them breaking off. The tree spreads a deep shade when in leaf, and covers an extraordinary amount of ground. It must be extremely old, though perhaps not actually old enough to have existed in Hippocrates' time. It shades a minute mosque of great charm, and indeed the enclosed place is one of the
pleasantest
and prettiest corners of this smiling island. I slept under the tree for two nights hoping that the spirit of the old
god-physician
might confer some of his healing powers upon me, but it was winter and all I achieved was a touch of rheumatism.

Calymnos and Leros are almost Siamese twins, but there could not be two more contrasting places. Calymnos is big, blowsy and razor-shaven, yet open to the sea and sky and all their humours; Leros is a gloomy shut-in sort of place, with deep fjords full of lustreless water, black as obsidian, and as cold as a polar bear's kiss. Leros means dirty or grubby in Greek, and the inhabitants of the island are regarded as something out-
of-the
-ordinary by the other little Dodecanese islands. They are supposed to be surly, secretive, and double-dealing, and in my
limited experience I found this to be so. But it may be that uncomfortable winter journeys across the channel that
separates
them from their neighbours (it is a mile at its widest) result in their giving this impression, unfairly.

Hop the strait to Calymnos, and the whole atmosphere changes; even the sky seems bluer. You are in the island of sponges now, and it is on this hazardous trade that the
reputation
of Calymnos depends today; throughout Greece, even in the main squares of Athens, you will find her sponges being marketed by old sailors or the widowed mothers of mariners lost at sea during the sponge seasons. Ovid saw Calymnos as ‘shaded with trees and rich in honey'. No longer; the hills are shaven as smooth as a turtle's back, and the bare rock with its fur of hill
garrigue
has the slightly bluish terracotta tinge of volcanic rock. There is really nothing much to see except the fine harbour – where you will at once run into the island's obsession with sponges, which will be lying out in quantities on the quays to dry, while squatting men darn their nets against the next foray. But since the turn of the century, they have had to go further and further away for their sponges, for the Aegean beds are no longer as rich as they were.

Until the turn of the century, the traditional hunting ground for sponges was in and around these islands, particularly near Astypalea, though the men who embarked on this hazardous trade came from a number of different islands. Always the business itself seemed to be centered in Calymnos, possibly because of its excellent anchorage facilities and the storage space offered along its broad quays. Calymnos has remained the centre, even though now, with the diminishing sponge beds (not to mention the competition brought about by the
invention
of artificial sponges), hunters have to go much further afield and work at profounder levels. The dangers of
sponge-hunting
have been vastly increased by the need to dive deeper,
for the old skin-diving technique has had to be replaced by costume-diving – and there is little money to spend on
expensive
, highly-sophisticated gear. Until recently, ancient
diving-suits
, long since condemned as unsafe by the British and French navies, were not uncommon, there were special diving-boats with air-pumps, and a glance at the ancient equipment still in use was enough to make the blood run cold. Perhaps now there exists some insurance against the hazards of this poetic trade; and the aqualung has made things easier. I hope so. Accidents are not infrequent, and you have to be a brave and hardy young man to adopt sponge-diving as a profession. Diving at
increasing
depth can also be responsible for the dreadful occupational disease of nitrogen bubble-poisoning of the blood, known as ‘the bends'. Calymnos town has a number of such martyrs, bent and twisted little men, old at forty, and thrown on the scrapheap of the labour market.

It is hard to believe, when it reaches the bathroom, that the sponge is really an animal – a filter-feeding animal which
propels
water through the network of channels which go to make up its structure, feeding on the minute organisms which find their way into its toils. Some five thousand species exist, of every colour under the sun, but the richest and commonest variety is harvested in the eastern Mediterranean, with the Calymniot fleet playing a great part in the harvesting. About two hundred feet is average for sponge depths, although in the rich, old days there were beds sufficiently shallow to be plucked from a rowboat, with the help of a boathook or a grapnel. Nowadays it is a long burning journey to the coasts of Cyprus or Libya for a whole season, with a somewhat risky return to home base when the weather breaks. The ex-votos in the little local shrines and churches tell graphic and picturesque stories through crude little paintings of the dangers encountered and escaped – with the help of the patron saint, of course.

The preparation of the captured sponges is sometimes done aboard, more often in greater comfort along the hospitable quays of the harbour. The technique is to rot away the soft tissues and gradually press them out, rinsing repeatedly in
seawater
and then letting them air-dry. It is an exacting, somewhat boring operation, and quite smelly too.

It is also somewhat startling to realize that sexual
reproduction
is the order of the day in all – or nearly all – species; and the sponge has almost as long and eventful a history as the Mediterranean itself. Even within the time-span of our own civilization, this useful little animal was a commonplace household adjunct in Greece and Rome. The servants in the
Odyssey
swabbed tables with it, while it was in great demand with artisans, who used it to apply paint, and with soldiers who had no drinking vessels to hand. In the Middle Ages, burned sponge was reputed to cure various illnesses. Together with olive oil it has been used from time immemorial as a contraceptive pessary by the oldest professionals – who, oblivious of the fact that they figure in the pages of Athenaeos, still flourish in the Athens
Plaka
today – using roughly the same sort of slang, in which the word ‘sponge' finds many a picturesque use. Another out-of-the-way use for it was as a pad worn inside classical armour – one can see why.

Venice secured such a firm monopoly over the sponge trade during the period of her ascendancy that the little object became known as a ‘Venetia'. According to Ernle Bradford, the two main marketable types today are called respectively the honeycomb and the cup – which refer to their shape. Artisans still find a use for real sponges as opposed to artificial ones, and in surgery they also have a function. But the trade is, if not declining, at least becoming a tougher and tougher problem for the Calymnos sailors. They must go further afield in their small
boats, which have hardly changed in styling and size since the days of the
Odyssey
.

I once saw the fleet setting out for Libya, and the sight was unforgettable, worthy of some great classical painter. We had come bumping and ballocking into harbour in the early
afternoon
to find everyone assembled on the quays – the wives and children all in their Sunday best. The boats had been waiting for the weather to break – there had been squalls and rain all day. The taverns were open and here and there sprouted a man with a glass in his hand, but the tension in the air, the pain of
leave-taking
, the heavy weight of the absence to be borne, the uncertainties and dangers to be encountered … everything was marked on the dark faces of the silent women. They were as still and undemonstrative as leaves, and the children holding their skirts looked up anxiously into their faces from time to time, as if to try to ascertain what their emotions might be, so that they could model their own behaviour on that of the grown-ups. A deep, instinctive sadness and concern reigned, a few jests and raucous exchanges by the men could not dispel the deep charm of sorrow which lay over the town. A church bell bonged and was silent. Oppressed by a feeling of poetic fatality – so ancient Greek in its vividness – we came ashore silently and sat on rickety chairs against the tavern wall to watch the departure. For already the signs of a lift in weather were apparent, and the dispositions of the fishing boats were such as to remind one of runners ‘on their marks' waiting for the pistol. The
tavern-keeper
, a veteran whose diver's palsy had driven him to retire at the age of thirty, served some cold octopus with red sauce and a fiery
ouzo
. But there was none of the usual chaffing and gossip. Some last-minute touches were being put to the nearest
caique
, and I saw their heavy wooden breadbin fully stocked with the dry biscuit, hard as rock, that is called
paximadi
. (Cyprus
proverb
: ‘The hardest biscuit always falls to the sailor with the fewest
teeth.') They would suck and gnaw these things all through the voyage, occasionally varying this stony diet with whatever they found in the ports where they touched – vegetables or lamb. Apart from
paximadi
, the basic shipboard food was chunks of pig fat, which were laid up in the lockers for use. A sinister taste this food has, too. But it must do the trick, for later in
Yugoslavia
my driver, who had been a local field peasant, produced what he said was a typical field worker's midday meal: it
consisted
of a huge chunk of pork fat, a tilt of fiery
slivovic
and a brown crust of bread. In the snow it was excellent for stamina, but down in the Aegean? They live on nothing, the sponge fleets; one old man spoke of them with a rhetorical flourish as ‘men who suck their living from sponges as the sponges suck theirs from the tide'.