Gemisto

It is the darkness I remember most.  It seemed the only thing that was real.  At the edge of the darkness there were walls built of great stone blocks, which dripped with water in the summer, and were rough with ice in the winter.  The only light came from a long narrow slit in the stone.  My father used to hold me up sometimes so that I could see outside.  "Look, my son," he would say; and nothing more.  He did not talk to me very much, my father.  Eventually I grew tall enough to see out for myself; though I did not do so often, because it hurt my eyes. There were rocks outside, harsh brown rocks, that fell away to dusty grey bushes below. Sometimes I would see a few goats scrambling down. The sound of their bells echoed against the stone walls.  And sometimes a man, or a boy, walking with huge steps under the sky.  I would turn away then because it made me feel tired.  Beyond the rocks when the weather was clear I could see the sea.  It was so many different colours, stern and mocking, buoyant and gentle.  But even the sea was not as real as the darkness.

The darkness had visitors though.  I think they came from inside my head. They floated before me, bumping into each other and into the grey walls. They talked - I do not know of what.  Perhaps they did not use words.  But the noises got louder and louder.  They were shouting as though they hated me.  When I put my hands over my ears, they came back inside my head. The shouting went on.  Sometimes then my father used to come to me, and sit, without saying anything, with his hand held on my brow.

There were other visitors who crept like little flames along the inside of my thighs.  They pricked my flesh awake, greeted it with laughter, till my member grew stiff and hot.  Then it seemed as though they were stripping the skin off me and a new life blazed like a fire in the darkness. After a while it grew dark again.  But I waited for the visitors to return.

I remember one special visitor. It was a night in the late fall - I was lying with my face in the straw not sleeping, not thinking. I must have been around twelve years old. I felt a cool presence pass over me. I turned over and saw a line of silver light on the wall. As I watched, it climbed slowly and I could feel my heart straining to climb with it. It was as though I somehow knew that if I could reach it it would bring clarity and peace. I stretched out my hands towards it. Then I found myself on my feet, tracing the sacred light back through the narrow cleft in the wall. The sea was a highway of silvery black, spreading ever wider to the horizon. I felt that night that I had stepped outside my stinking dungeon, treading that silver highway, bathed in that healing light. At the last I dared to raise my head; and could make out, though the window afforded little space, the moon herself in a perfect circle of silver. I gazed at her till she had gone from my sight. She did not hurt my eyes. After that she visited me often. We shared the same darkness.