Free Mnemonic by Theresa Kishkan Page B

I realized that all the men, young and old, were wearing beads on their wrists and the clicking I heard, along with the bells, was the sound of them as we rounded corners, passing sheer drop-offs without any abutments to prevent the bus going over the cliffs. Tiny churches appeared here and there on the high slopes, and every time we passed one, the beads clicked as people crossed themselves in the Orthodox fashion. A man riding sideways on a donkey stopped as the bus hurtled by and that was my first sight of the old Crete — baggy black trousers tucked into high boots, an elaborate head wrapping, long moustaches drooping from the mouth. And there were mountains everywhere, rocky and pierced with caves. In one of them, I knew, Zeus had been born — which didn’t surprise me. It was an island of beginnings, somehow. I hoped for one myself — a new beginning.

    Tell what you saw as the bus raced towards Agia Galini. Mountains. Tiny villages, white with churches, perched so high that you couldn’t imagine a reason for a village to be there until you remembered the history of Turks, Venetians, Germans; and yet a road lurched up the mountainside, sheep and goats grazed on the stony slope, a few donkeys carried their riders uphill, laden with sticks and sacks.
    Steep rises covered in dittany, juniper, plane trees in the squares of the towns we passed through, shady and green. Holm oak and kermes oak. Rocks covered in low-growing thyme — by now you’d eaten your γιαούρτι με μέλι and knew that the bees had worked the thyme flowers to create this ambrosia, the first honey for which you’d been able to detect its origins.
    Groves of olives, and long rows of grapes on the fertile plains. Through the open windows you smelled dust and unfamiliar wind.
    Signs in Greek, which you yearned to be able to read. (You had your grammar and were trying to master the alphabet.)
    You passed houses almost smothered in vines, the window frames and doors painted blue. Rusty oil cans held geraniums and lush basil tomato plants climbed the whitewashed walls. Old women shrouded in black sat on chairs and held up a hand to the driver of the bus.
    Outside a church in a small town, you saw an Orthodox priest eating an apple.

    Thirty-three years later, I am thinking about that girl on the bus, heading to the unknown. I am thinking about her innocence and her hope. I am in the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts when I find myself stopped in my tracks by a small terracotta sculpture.
    It’s not much more than thirty centimetres tall. The label tells me it’s from the first half of the second century BC, possibly from Taranta, Italy. The label says it’s a young woman with Eros on her shoulder from an ephedrismos group. I have no idea what an ephedrismos group is, but I note down the information into my notebook and move along to the rest of the Mediterranean archaeology exhibit.
    And yet she stays with me, the young woman. Eros holds out both hands, as though in benediction and she looks up at him over her right shoulder. Her right breast is exposed, the draperies of her chiton show that she is using the muscles of her thighs to support the weight of the god.
    I try to find out something about ephedrismos . It turns out it was a game played by children in ancient Greece. Julius Pollux tells us: “They put down a stone and throw at it from a distance with balls or pebbles. The one who fails to overturn the stone carries the other, having his eyes blindfolded by the rider, until, if he does not go astray, he reaches the stone, which is called a dioros . . .” 3
    There are other examples of ephedrismos figures as well as depictions of players on vessels, even the special jars used to hold oil for funerary purposes. Several are of girls partnering each other, and one fascinating rendering, from a fifth-century BC funerary flask, shows a satyr with a maenad on his back. These are