Of Cats and Chrysostomos

Monday, May 4, 2009

We arose in the morning at 7:30 and departed for Thessaloniki by 8:30. As soon as Mena had dropped us off, we went to get bougatsa, our favorite spot being open this time.

As we were sitting there enjoying our breakfast, a calico cat wandered in. The young lady behind the counter came out to greet the cat, speaking very warmly to it: “How are you, sweetie? I hope you have a nice day. Yes, yes, welcome!” as the cat rubbed up against her legs, but tentatively. We noticed the woman didn’t try to pet the cat.

Demetrios made some comment, and the woman said, “She has five babies.”

“Where are they?” I asked.

“Next door, at the clothing store.”

So when we had finished eating, we went next door. The proprietor said the cat had simply walked into his shop on Holy Thursday, and he could see she was very advanced in pregnancy, so he made her up a basket with old clothes, and on Good Friday, she gave birth. Yes, certainly, he would be glad to show us the kittens. There was a gray tabby, two orange tabbies, and the most adorable little calico sweetheart. “Shall I give her to you?” asked the man. Demetrios and I agreed that if we lived here full-time, we would have said yes.

We noticed a large bowl on the floor, full of food for the cat, and another bowl for water. God bless this kind man!

Our next stop was the farmers’ market, where we bought a couple of days’ worth of fresh veggies and fruit. It’s a small market on Mondays (a larger one takes place Thursdays) and there aren’t any non-food items available.

On our way home, we found the man who lives across the street from us and owns the Antikleptika shop. (You know “klepto” of course, as in “kleptomaniac”. Well, antikleptika are anti-theft devices. This man installs them in your car or on your motorcycle.)

“Let’s stop and ask him about his cat,” Demetrios suggested. “We haven’t seen her at all since we’ve been here this time. Oh, look, there she is!”

Sure enough, that cat, who loves to follow her master everywhere, faithful as a dog, was standing right next to him – looking, however, a bit old by now. We stopped to talk with the man, and he said the cat mostly lives indoors nowadays. “She is getting old. But she still produced one kitten this time.” He pointed to a box in the rear of his shop. We tiptoed toward it, not going very near because the cat was becoming nervous, and saw a large gray tabby kitten there, about 5 weeks old. We would have adopted that one, too! It’s probably a good thing we can’t.


Tuesday, May 05, 2009

Last night, after many years, Demetrios and his dear friend, Chrysostomos, were at last reunited. I don’t know why it has taken so long, given that the first thing Chrysostomos said to me when we met was, “Demetrios is my best friend!” (Wait, that was the second thing he said, after, “My name is Chrysostomos, as a euphemism.” I started to reply, “Mine is Anastasia, also as a euphemism,” but luckily, before the words came out, I realized that a euphemism is one thing the Resurrection definitely is not!)

When he first arrived in Thessaloniki from his village, he said, as a teenager, Demetrios took him by the arm, literally, and showed him around. “And he didn’t let go of my arm until he had me enrolled in a class of religious instruction, first of all.”

“We were all like that,” said Demetrios. “We all helped one another.”

Chrysostomos shook his head. “YOU were the one who did this for me.”

He is a large man, with a large head and bone structure and coarse features – and as finely honed a mind as you’d wish to meet. He came to Thessaloniki to study medicine at the University here.

Chrysostomos, many years ago, drifted away from the rest of the group of friends when he became an Old Calendarist. I didn’t ask, but he must not be one any more, because he now attends the same church as Ioannis, the theologian. (When I add, “the theologian,” it is to distinguish this Ioannis from another friend of ours, Ioannis the lawyer.) They are cantors together there, in the village of St. Anthony.

He has four daughters, of whom three are nuns and one is a doctor, and two sons, one of whom is a monk, the other a teacher. He also, at one point, adopted a five-year-old girl. Well, he never did formally, legally, adopt her. She was in the hospital suffering from pneumonia, which is where Chrysostomos’ daughter, the doctor, found her. The girls’ mother was schizophrenic, her father was a criminal in prison, and she was living, in horrible conditions, with her grandfather. She didn’t want to go back to him. So Chrysostomos brought her home, and she lived with his family for seven years. Then she began running away. There were two out-of-wedlock pregnancies, and then, eventually, the girl disappeared for good. Chrysostomos doesn’t know where she is now.

Chrysostomos drove us to a taverna he knows, overlooking the sea. We sat there for several hours, eating appetizers at around 6:00 and supper a couple of hours later, and enjoying a wide-ranging conversation. First, it was politics. Chrysostom talked like someone who had quite a bit of inside information, and he dropped a hint or two as to where it came from, but he wouldn’t tell us outright.

“Is America a democracy?” he asked me.

“It looks like one,” I replied. “Yet a democracy does not have places like Guantanamo and a democracy does not use torture, and in a democracy, the people decide not only the answers to the issues, but what the issues are. The people set the agenda.” (I said all this in Greek, but with a lot of help from Demetrios!)

“Ah, bravo, Anastasia!”

After politics, the conversation shifted to religion. “Do you see a big difference between Protestantism and Orthodoxy?” he asked me.

“Oh, yes, a huge one. Protestants (and Catholics, too, by and large) believe Christ died to bear the punishment of God the Father in our stead.”

His eyebrows shot up. His jaw dropped. He didn’t know what to say. Finally, when he recovered himself, he said, “Orthodoxy is about love, love, love, and love!”

I was nodding vigorously. He continued, “The most important thing is for two human beings to become one. Nothing to do with losing freedom or individuality, just you share a single life, Christ’s life.”

More nods from me.

I asked him if he had known Father Paisios. Of course he had. Everybody we know knew Fr. Paisios; everybody except us knew him. So then he told us stories about the holy father.

Once, he said, some hoodlums threw gasoline on a policeman and set him afire. He was hospitalized in critical condition with third-degree burns over large parts of his body, and with damage to his lungs.

Now this policeman was a friend both of Chrysostomos and of Fr. Paisios, so as soon as Chrysostomos heard what had happened, he hastened to seek out Fr. Paisios, to tell him the news and ask for his prayers.

As Chrysostomos approached, Fr. Paisios was standing outside his cell. “Leave!” he called out, before Chrysostomos had even arrived. “Go on home! The policeman will be well. He will have no permanent damage, either from the burns or from his lungs.”

And so it was. The man recovered perfect health.

Another time, a colleague of Chrysostomos was feeling sorely disappointed at the way the hospital functioned, where he worked. He took the notion to go to America, where surely things would be better. (Demetrios could have disabused him of that idea, but that isn’t part of this story.) He phoned Chrysostomos, agonizing over the decision. “Why don’t we go see Fr. Paisios together and I’ll ask his advice?” he said.

But Chrysostomos declined; he didn’t say why.

The friend, after several days, decided to go by himself to see Fr. Paisios. “And as soon as I arrived,” he told Chrysostomos later, “Fr. Paisios invited me in and said, “Why didn’t Chrysostomos come with you?”

He counseled the doctor not to go to America; very sage advice!

Another time, there was a brigadier general who used to go frequently to talk with Fr. Paisios, but never made a confession. “You need to have confession,” the holy monk would tell him, “and communion.” But the man always refused.

Then during one of his visits, Fr. Paisios asked him, “Why were the grenades exploding and the canon firing?” referring to a battle incident that had deeply affected this soldier. He left weeping, to seek out a priest (for Fr. Paisios was a monk but not an ordained one, not a priest).

The general found a priest nearby and said, “I want to talk to you.”

“No,” said the priest. “You want to have confession.”

So the man did, and that is how Fr. Paisios brought one man to repentance.

We were very sorry when the wonderful evening ended and it was time to go home.