Seiobo There Below (15 page)

at least the Acropolis
, he said to himself, and he thought of those very first murky pictures which he had preserved in his memory since childhood, and he felt joy that they had not been able to seduce him, although there was some murkiness
in everything
, even in this seduction, as even that was also murky if he thought about it, how those ancient pictures of the Acropolis never really had any contours, how they never even had any clarity, especially in regard to the proportions, that is he could never picture to himself how large the Acropolis actually was and how big its buildings were — how big, for instance, was the Propylaea, and how big was the Parthenon — one could not, that is, on the basis of descriptions or drawings or photographs, be sure of the dimensions, if one tried to judge the size of this temenos, as the Athenians called the district of their sacred buildings; it was impossible, and this was somehow a great problem, that one could not be sure of the proportions, it made the construction of the entire Acropolis in one’s mind nearly impossible; somehow everything depended upon the proportions, he always felt this, and he thought so now as well, as he went along the street; he bought a sandwich for an exorbitant sum, he drank a can of more or less chilled cola for an even more shameless price, but it didn’t matter, as the only thing that mattered was that he was getting ever closer to the Acropolis in the scorching heat, and that he was going to see the Temple of Nike, and he was going to see the Erechtheion, and of course, crowning it all, the unsurpassable Parthenon — and most of all he would be up on the summit of the Acropolis, for he had always wished for this, he wished for it now as well, as a farewell, he wanted to see it very much, as the Greeks had seen it, let’s say, 2439 years ago.

He went along the Voulis into the district of Plaka, and in reality only a few hundred tourists were wandering toward him, beside him, or leaving him behind, so he could have even described himself as lucky; then he progressed for a while along Flessa, at one point he got lost, and he was confused, and he had no idea if it was right to continue along the Odos Erechtheus; in any event he continued along that street and after the narrow alleyways of Stratonos and Thrasyllou he suddenly came upon a wide street with busy traffic called Dionysiou Areopagitou, from where he could already see the temenos high above, true, it had suddenly been visible at one point or another previously, when in the narrow alleyways now and then a gap opened up for a fleeting moment, but now on this Dionysiou Areopagitou he saw it for the first time in its entirety, and that also meant for the first time in his life — and from this point on, for a good while, nothing concerned him, he judged that he was close to his goal, that he was at the foot of the Acropolis; even to think that thought was beautiful, the sun was scorching dreadfully, the traffic was horrendous, it could have been around ten or eleven o’clock, he didn’t know exactly, his watch had stopped on the plane coming here as he had forgotten to have the battery changed, and now this already . . . what, he thought to himself, it’s not enough just to be here?! — and he trudged along in the scorching heat, but there were suspiciously few tourists headed this way, indeed, he was seeing ever fewer and fewer tourists, no matter, he was not dissuaded, for here at his right was the Acropolis, at one point he would arrive at the way up, and if he had to go around the entire thing, he would go around it, and that was that, who cares, he reassured himself happily, but he went along this street for really quite a long time, the air had a dreadful stench which he had to suck in, and the noise from the traffic was practically unbearable; and he had just decided to ask directions from the very next passerby, when suddenly he came upon a serpentine path, reinforced with limestone, zigzagging upward, and he saw up there, at the summit of the long upward-rising path, a kind of booth; he climbed up the path with difficulty and the booth was a ticket counter, but the sign on it did not say tamio; but upon it was written AKROPOLIS, which he saw as laughable, for it was as if they had written on the path leading up here, dromos, which was a path, as everyone knew, and here is the Acropolis, so what was the point, probably for the entrance fee, he thought, and that surely was the reason, for an entrance fee was collected, a particularly high entrance fee at that, at first it was twelve euros, then when he protested, gesticulating, it was six euros, at last he had his ticket, he could go in, and he set off, glancing upward to see that here was the Acropolis, but he couldn’t bear the light, he had to look down; but it wasn’t even such a simple matter as that, for he looked down to rest his eyes in some patch of darker shade down below along the path, and he couldn’t do it, as the path simply
did not have any darker shades
, the paving below his feet blinded him just as much as that from which he had quickly averted his gaze; the paving below was of white marble, that is to say, the same material from which the steps were made, and no blade of grass or weed whatsoever sprouted up, upward he went and he only knew that he was beside the Propylaea, in the new entranceway to the Acropolis, which had been built by Mnesicles, and he groped his way upward knowing that there on the left rose the so-called Pinacotheca of the Propylaea, and on the right was the garrison building, then high above it the Temple of Athena Nike, with its four wondrous columns; but he only knew this, he couldn’t see anything, he just went upward, squinting, for so he had resolved: fine, so here I am blinded, well then, after the steps I’ll find a spot underneath a tree or I’ll take cover in a building and have a rest, and then I’ll come back here, and I will examine the Propylaea more thoroughly, and so he stumbled on, but the path leading through the Propylaea not only did not improve things, but actually made them worse, for instead of soil, limestone covered everything; the entire temenos was built on a colossal snow-white limestone cliff, and so the path into it ran along a blinding limestone surface among cunning little pieces of limestone; the Acropolis, he stated to himself, his eyes dazzled, was therefore completely, in its entirety, set out on a mass of pure limestone on this bare mountain; this Acropolis, he thought, stupefied, but for a while he still did not dare to completely think about what it meant that the mountain was
completely
bare, that there was nothing, but nothing apart from the limestone cliff, and the famous temples on the limestone cliff, built from varying materials, but partially from Pentelikon white marble, he did not dare to think about it, because he could not really believe it, so that he just went on, he tried to keep his eyelids lowered so that he wouldn’t fall flat on his face, but so as to also not let in the dreadful scorching fire of the sun, because the sunlight truly proved to be merciless, although it didn’t bother him that his skull, his back, his arms, his legs, everything was burning, he somehow withstood this, but what completely astounded him, the grave import of which he was not at all aware, was the effect of the sunlight on the limestone, he was not prepared for this intense, ghastly brilliance, nor could he have been, and why, what kind of guidebook, what kind of art-historical treatise relates such information as watch out, the sunlight on the Acropolis is so strong that in particular, travelers with weak eyes should definitely take advance precautions, so that he, who consequently belonged to this group of travelers with weak eyes, had not taken any sort of advance precautions at all, with the result that now he could not take any preventive measures, how could he do so — he had nothing with him, just a suitcase, that’s it, it flashed through him suddenly, and arriving in front of the shrine of Artemis Brauronia, he decided that the suitcase here in his hand would save him, what luck that he had brought it with him — from which it already was clear just how much he did not, due to the fatigue, heat, and blindness, have his wits about him, as it only occurred to him that the suitcase was certainly not in his hand, but had remained down below in the city with the boy, Maniopulos, when he withdrew to the wall of the shrine to open it and take out a piece of clothing; the sun at this moment was right above his head; no kind of soothing corner, niche, roof, or recess could be seen anywhere, not right here, not further on, the light crashed down on him without obstruction, arrow-straight, vertically, so that there was no shade at all in the entire Acropolis, although he didn’t even know that at this point, and therefore he took out, as he had nothing else, a used paper napkin from his jeans pocket, folded it in several places and put it before his eyes, but to his misfortune even the white of the napkin was irritating, so that he pressed the palms of his hands onto his eyes and went forward like that, trusting that, well, sooner or later he would get somewhere, to some resting place, or anyplace where he could retreat and rest his eyes; and he went forward, he went further up on the Acropolis, that place that he had longed, since his childhood, to see the most, and where, as it soon became clear, there was now only him and a German couple in the distance, by the Parthenon, unlike himself, he thought, they of course had come totally prepared, both of them had tropical helmet-like sun visors, they wore wide, dark sunglasses, they had backpacks from which, just as he happened to glance over at them, they pulled out liter bottles of mineral water, as a result of which he felt a torturous thirst, but he could do nothing to quench it, for here — in contrast to his every hope — there was no refreshment stand, as usually was the case in tourist spots, or someone selling drinks or anything like that,
there was simply nothing on the Acropolis, only the Acropolis
, but by now he was suffering very much, he came to the place where Athena’s statue had stood and the path continued toward the Erechtheion, but like a blind man, he felt the path before him with his foot, as it was utterly impossible to look up by now, just as it was even to glance upward, tears rolled down from both of his eyes, they weren’t hurting yet then, they only really began to hurt when his tears had dried up; he had cried out, so to speak, everything, as he reached the caryatids of the Erechtheion, where he of course could not go in — particularly from here, from the southern side — or even touch the maidens of Karyai with his glance, as the balustrade was high, and thus the caryatids were unreachable, he looked around despairingly, pain stung his eyes, here and there on the rocky surface enormous pieces of cut stone lay, most likely the Dörpfeld Temple, or the remains of the altarpiece of Athena, who knew where they came from, he was in any event able to take in this much in a moment, and then he dared to open his eyes again, and it was as if some god high above took mercy on him for a short time, for he was led to the southwestern façade of the Erechtheion, behind the caryatids, and there he glimpsed a tree, a tree, my God; the blinded worshipper of the Acropolis hurried over there; just that when he got there, he threw his back against the trunk, and attempted to open his eyes; nothing had changed, for he could not bear to open his eyes even here; the tree was a small fig-tree, an almost completely dessicated tiny dwarf of a tree, its stalk-thin trunk with its branches above were so thin, holding up a flimsy crown like it was butterfly wings, through which the light could pass with no obstruction, and when he gazed at the ground at his feet — in disbelief, he didn’t even see the shadow of these tiny branches — he then understood that what he had come here for would remain forever unseen by him: not only, he thought bitterly, not only would he never know the scale of the dimensions of the Acropolis, but he was never even going to see the Acropolis, even though he was here at the Acropolis — the gods had not designated the little tree as a place of relief for him, but rather the northern façade of the Erechtheion, there, that is, to the extent that the sun had shifted up there in the heavens, so that the foreground lay in shadow, he ran over there, crazed; the German couple were there already, they were cheerful, the husband was just changing the film in his camera, the lady was eating a huge gyro, they were fat, their complexions almost bursting with health, the gods truly favored them, he noted to himself, growing sadder — sadder and ungrateful, for finally he had reached a spot where he could rest his eyes, tortured by the pain, and generally speaking, when he did open his eyes, it was true, apart from the lower column-stumps of the old Parthenon, he could see nothing at all of the so-called Acropolis that he had longed to see his entire life, because his back was turned to it; well, this is absurd after all, he thought, after he had pulled himself together, and he did not wish in any way to reconcile himself, the Germans set off toward the Parthenon to take pictures, he, however, stayed, for he knew what would happen if he stepped out of the relief-granting prostatis of the Erechtheion, maybe he should try to sleep, he thought, to wait while the sun completed its momentous journey high above, and down here the proportion of sun and shadow would be altered, yet immediately he knew it was a bad idea, for he would not be able to hold out without any water, it was this, precisely this, that he had not foreseen, he should have brought water here — he leaned back against the wall, and he thought of Callicrates and of Ictinos, who had built it, then of Pheidias, who with his enormous gilded ivory statue of Athena had given it meaning, and leaning back against the wall, he pictured himself stepping closer to the Parthenon, indeed, directly, standing there by the wondrous columns of the Parthenon, by the exquisite Doric and Ionic orders of the columns, and he thought about the spaces of the pronaos, the naos and the opistodomos, and he thought about how when all this was built, the temple was still the place of faith, it was the backdrop and the goal of the Panathenaea, and he exerted his throbbing brain to take it all in, to see it all at once, and thus to be able to preserve for himself, as a way of bidding farewell, the most beautiful architectural creation of the western world — and still then, he thought that actually he should weep, because he was here, and yet not here at all, he should weep, because he had attained what he had dreamed of, and yet had not attained it at all.