PAT M O S | 4  p . m .

Trying Vasili
Jo-Anne Richards

It was only that one hour, between Vasili’s afternoon siesta and evening
drinks, that was hard. And it was surely worth it, wasn’t it? Or it was
until the priest came down from the mountain.
It was the last day we spent on the island. The sun was still high
in the sky, the hippies and stragglers not yet wending their way up from
the beach. But then someone caught sight of the priest, and morbid
curiosity drew them up in ragged clusters. It was not a familiar sight.
The monastery loomed over the lives of all who had settled beneath
the mountain. Yet the priest seldom left his stronghold. Villagers ascended
with their troubles and their tithes. They took that dusty path to salva-
tion, on donkey and on foot, to lay their petitions and pleadings before
him. But the priest himself almost never came down.
On that final day, however, we saw him from some distance away, a
black figure etched against blue. He was perched on his donkey, dabbing
at his beard with a handkerchief.
I stood and watched with Vasili and the rest of the dawdlers who
had gathered. The priest reached the entrance to the campsite and dis-
mounted. Vasili stepped forward to greet him and the monastery bell
began to toll. Only then did it dawn on me why he had come. And why
I had to escape …
Okay, let’s rewind a little here. Patmos was … well, how can I describe
it without clichés? Every morning, the sun rose behind the whitewashed
chapel on the rocks to our east. Beside the dusty path to the sea, tomatoes

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