The Golden Step Read Online Free

‘In Ziros ring this friend of mine, Mr Kharkiolakis – he’ll give you a room. In Papagianades you will sleep at the school for police officers – ask for skolí tis astinomías . Orino, that’s a rich village, three tavernas, you will have no problem. At Kritsa you will ask at the kafenion of the Aphordakos family …’ and so on and on, all the way across my maps, abolishing distance, time and difficulties with equal insouciance. It gave me confidence – greatly exaggerated, as things turned out, but a welcome boost at a time of low ebb.

    Now here I was in the bucketing old bus, grinding slowly east from Iraklion, feeling queasy, trying to ignore yet another attack of cold feet. It was a relief when we finally got to Sitia and I disembarked to find the whole town revved up for the holiday. No time for thinking or worrying now; best just to take a deep breath and plunge in.
    All Good Friday the amplified voices of priest and cantors, tremendously tinny and lugubrious, poured forth into every crevice of the town. In the late evening I followed the crowds up the hill to the Church of Ayia Aikaterini. The interior was a blaze of candlelight, out of which the deep, doleful chanting of the priests floated to mingle with the funereal donging of the church bell. Young girls and old men went along the line of icons in the porch, reverently touching their lips to each one.
    Soon a squad of boys in blue uniforms and berets appeared in the doorway, carrying the epitaphios – a model bier shaped like a miniature domed church, covered in a thick mantle of white flowers. They swayed it along the streets in procession, convoyed by lanterns on poles and a candle-bedecked cross, a brass band adding a background thump and blare. I joined the flow of the crowd that shuffled slowly after the funeral party, many thousands strong, a thin brown candle flickering in every hand. Answering twinkles came from the balconies of apartments along the road, where families leaned over to sprinkle us with rose-scented water or waft incense smoke across our heads from tiny brass braziers. The caged finches and linnets that spend all day singing their little jailbird hearts out so poignantly on the balconies had woken up, confused by the lights and noise, and the sweet trickling notes of their false dawn chorus rose momentarily here and there before sinking back under the bumpity-bump of the marching band.
    Our circuit of Sitia ended back in the square of Ayia Aikaterini, where the flower-decked epitaphios was positioned on its four legs in front of the door. The crowd jostled quietly in the outer dark as individuals waited their turn to stoop down and pass below the bier into the church. At this moment the left lens of my one and only pair of spectacles popped out of its frame and fell among the close-packed feet. I fully expected it to be shattered under someone’s boots, or kicked away and lost forever among the dark stones. But when I knelt and put out my hand it closed immediately on the hard little shell of plastic. With a thank-you to St Jude and St Mathurin, I bent down in my turn and passed in among the lights and singing.
    Later, down at the Ouzeri Mixos with a thimbleful of raki, I made friends with Andonis the pony-tailed owner and his chum Pericles. ‘Come and have Easter lunch with us,’ Andonis urged, sliding a pile of chopped apple onto the table between our glasses. ‘We are having a lamb roasted on a spit.’ I explained that I was on my way through to Zakros. ‘Ah, well,’ he said, ‘they won’t have a lamb like my lamb.’ When I tried to pay for the drinks, Andonis made to give me a slap. ‘No – from me. Kali anastasi; happy resurrection.’
    On Easter Saturday I took a taxi down to Ano Zakros, the upland ‘big brother’ village of Kato Zakros which lay a couple of miles off by the sea. There were plenty of stares for me in the bar of the