Of Pythia and Ecstasy

Of Pythia and ecstasy

Morna Hinton

A rare tidal phenomenon. Heading to Delphi over Attic plains. Flat
green fields scarred by dark earth.

'Oedipus killed his father and married his mother. A very fertile area.
Crops grown here are potatoes, tomatoes, corn, cotton, melon and
grapes. The unknown soldier ran from the battle of Marathon to Athens
and dropped dead after announcing victory. (Another) very fertile area.
Crops grown here are potatoes, tomatoes, corn, cotton, melon and grapes
(again).'

Efigenia is all cream trousers, camel coat and gold-tinted sunglasses.
Hair similarly tinted, and bouffant. She is determined not to let
anything escape us. Her commentary bursts through the p.a. system every
time I doze off. I wish she would shut up. I am not in the mood for
this. I'm feeling sorry for myself. I slept badly. It's pissing down
with rain. I am alone. The trip is not going well. Yesterday the
Acropolis was crawling with couples in a picture postcard under cobalt
sky. It all looked too much exactly as it should. I tried to make
myself engage by ticking off the motifs: egg and dart, acanthus,
palmette, beading. Nothing. They just looked like they look on every
neo-classical executive home. It felt like I wasn't there in any
physical sense. A college lecturer took photographs of his squealing
students. A neat row of cameras, one after the other. They all wanted
the same group shot. I idly started following a single man with desert
boots and a large portfolio. I thought about striking up a conversation
with him:
'Nice weather for sketching - what are you drawing? Have you seen the
Erechtheion yet? Would you like to walk hand in hand with me over
ancient stones? Do you want to fuck?'
No.

'In the antiquity there were many oracles but the most important was
the oracle Delphi. Maybe we will stop and look at the Levadia oracle
anyway.' Efigenia gestures up to a dark, wooded hill-side. We don't.
Instead we go to an enormous tourist caf? and gift shop, trickling
uncertainly out of the bus into the chilly and cavernous
interior.

We are the only customers. Just in front of me in the queue an American
woman, whose paunch is barely contained by the drawstring of her
trousers, orders two pastries. A large and business-like camera is
slung over her shoulder. By the time she has carried the pastries and
the camera to a table she is out of breath.

I buy a coffee and go and sit by a large fireplace. The coffee is so
strong that milk only just lifts the colour to dark brown. It is what I
need. By the fire the prime seat has been taken by a man old enough to
be the grandfather of the beautiful peachy-skinned boy with him. He has
a bony old man's arse but a full head of speckled blond hair. The boy
has the same tawny hair. They talk quietly together.

On the other side of the fire are two women. A robust Austrian - the
only one who asks something after one of Efigenia's perfunctory 'any
questions?' - and an elderly American. They discuss the eastern
seaboard, New Hampshire, Boston in winter.

The coffee coats my throat. Vicious. Bitter-sweet. I don't want to talk
to anyone.

Efigenia is chain-smoking with the coach driver over at the other side
of the bar. They compare mobiles animatedly. He is at least twenty
years younger than her and handsome, but losing his hair. At the start
of the tour she told us how lucky we were to have such an excellent
driver.

After half an hour we leave. Back on the coach the silent Japanese
couple who had been sitting in front of me are no longer sitting next
to each other. He has moved across the aisle from her. They turn their
faces away towards the windows.

We pass a miniature Byzantine church on top of a bollard. Efigenia
explains the differences between the Eastern and Western churches: 'The
Greek Orthodox priest can be married. He wears a black dress every day.
When he does services he wears different coloured dresses. He does
services in the churches and the cemeteries. Greek Orthodox can get
divorced twice so can marry three times.' That's about it.

As we climb the slopes of Parnassus, Efigenia tells us more about the
oracle. She is at pains that we understand the ambiguity of the Delphic
priestess Pythia. It all comes down to punctuation:
'You will come back, not die. You will come back not, die.'

'Here is a very beautiful view.' Efigenia pauses. We are completely
surrounded by low cloud. 'Well, it is very beautiful. It is a shame
that you cannot see it.' She does not sound particularly sorry. The
next part of her commentary concerns the manufacture of flotaki woollen
rugs, which she discusses at length. Shortly afterwards, the coach
stops in a freezing mountain village, leaving us no choice but to
peruse assorted flotaki and other textile and leather crafts. We must
buy offerings to take to the oracle. In the shop, we are told that the
prices have a special 20\% discount just for us. They accept any
possible currency. Travellers' cheques, cash or cards.

We are there for a long time. As we wait for the coach to pick us up, I
alternate between the haggling warmth of the shop and the thick cold
air outside. It starts to brighten. The descent on the other side of
Parnassus is sunny with almond blossom.

We soon arrive at Delphi and are ushered brusquely through a crowd of
visitors and ticket collectors at the bottom of the hill. Efigenia
stands at the side of the path and starts to re-cap on Pythia and
ecstasy. She has barely begun when an earnest young woman asks to be
excused because she wants to examine the friezes in the museum. An
American art historian with no taste in clothes - trainers, brown suit
trousers and a grey flannel jacket with green velvet Tyrolean trim.
Efigenia shrugs. Most of the museum is closed, but the art historian is
undeterred.

The tour is brief. Efigenia only makes it about a quarter of the way up
the rocky path in her high heels, and abandons us at the treasure house
of the Athenians.

I head up the hill to the temple of Apollo and the theatre. My
guidebook informs me that it is here that Apollo's priestess Pythia
received the oracle.
'She was inspired by the sulphurous vapours, which issued from a
subterranean cavity within the temple, over which she sat naked on a
three-legged stool. In the stool was an aperture through which the
vapour was inhaled. At the divine inspiration her eyes sparked, her
hair stood on end and spasms ran through her body. In this convulsive
state she spoke the oracle with loud howlings and cries.'

A couple of South Africans are standing nearby. I overhear one telling
the other that when a person came to consult the oracle they were wined
and dined for about a week beforehand - 'well, heck they'd paid enough
in offerings?' - by which time enough was known about their lives for
any pronouncement to be pretty accurate.

I continue to the stadium at the top of the hill and go the far end
where I sit down to look at the view. Funny hairy sacs hang from the
branches of pine trees. The mountains of the Peloponnese shimmer in the
distance. Cool-warm air washes over me. I feel light.

Suddenly, a whistle blows sharply. A female guard jumps out of a small
grey hut. She whistles again, then screams, gesturing down. A teenager
has strayed on to the ancient stone benches that must no longer be sat
on, having lasted millennia. The guard screams solidly for about thirty
seconds then goes back into her hut. The whistle-blowing and screaming
is repeated ten minutes later when a group of boys start taking it in
turns to pose in a stone sentry box, swinging from the door-jamb. It is
inconvenient for the guard that she is right at the other end of the
stadium. She is finally forced to walk the length of it, whistling the
whole time, when two blond-haired girls stray into the woods above,
which are inexplicably out of bounds.

I head back down to the museum where we are to meet Efigenia. A wave of
roaring children floods down the hair-pin bends of the hill, sweeping
me before them. I am diverted on to a perilous short-cut. It is so
steep I have no choice but to run down it. I feel young. 'Hello!' says
a youth to me. Not that young.

In the museum the single open gallery holds the famous statue of the
Delphi charioteer. He stands alone in the centre, delicate bronze reins
attached to thin air. There are no friezes on display. Efigenia is
doing a commentary in French for the benefit of a couple in matching
anoraks. Her French sounds more fluent than her English.

The rest of my group are standing or sitting around the edges of the
room, waiting. The art historian looks fed up.

We get back on to the coach and drive to the modern village of Delphi.
Efigenia dismisses it as 'tourist place'. We are tourists. We are going
to have lunch there.

The restaurant is in an out of season hotel with dazzling views over
the Gulf of Corinth. I am dragging behind and end up on the last table
with the woman from Boston and the Japanese couple. There is confusion
about whether we have booked to have lunch or not. The Japanese haven't
and they silently get up and leave.

There is no choice for me now but to converse. The Bostonian turns out
to be a quietly spoken speech pathologist. I have exciting visions of
her tracking down murderers through analysis of badly recorded phone
messages.

The waiters throw down the food. Bread. Cheese pastry. Chicken and
rice. Salad. Chocolate ice-cream. Efigenia is laughing and smoking with
the driver and the hotel receptionist (who has no guests to
receive).

The Bostonian explains that a speech pathologist in America is actually
a speech therapist. Her special interest is problems encountered with
pronunciation by non-native-English-speakers. I tell her I am learning
Arabic, which leads to heavy sighs about impending war with Iraq. She
is a liberal of the old school. 'We are all in this world together',
she keeps saying. Pink-blue eyes watering.

After lunch I go out on to the terrace and sit on a plastic chair. The
sun is really hot now and the light is blinding, sucking me towards the
sea in the distance, burning my retina. I tilt my head back and close
my eyes. The heat seeps through me. Pores open. Veins pulse. I am
fragmenting. Dissolving into my constituent parts: heart, spleen,
fibula and elastic. When I stand up I feel dizzy. I stumble forwards
against the railing. Blackness rises up through my feet. Hot buzzing
settles heavily around my ears. Sound cuts in and out. My hands slide
down metal as I fall.

I come to at the firm touch of a thumb behind my knee and in the crook
of my arm. It is the Japanese couple. They look down at me with concern
and continue to attack my pressure points. It is quite painful and I
want to tell them to stop but find myself unable to speak. They tell me
I have been out for a couple of minutes. My face went yellow then blue.
I see Efigenia's pointed boots approaching rapidly across the paving
stones. 'What is your hotel?' she asks. I still cannot speak. 'Quickly,
we must take her to the coach. We have to leave'. She bends down and I
am reflected in the gold of her glasses. 'You will be fine. It is just
the heat. Come.' The Japanese man lifts me in his arms and his
girlfriend strokes my head, which I find intensely comforting.

On the coach I lie down on the back seat and fall asleep immediately.
When I wake up we are already at Piraeus and I feel more relaxed than I
have ever done in my entire life. I watch buildings glide past sideways
until we reach the bustle of Omonia Square and the various hotels,
where we are separately dispatched. I go straight to bed and sleep
solidly for twelve hours.

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