of the Universe
“Angel, will I have anything good in my life?”
“You’ll have me, isn’t that good?” The Guardian hugged me with his wing, “Life on Earth is short but interesting. You’ll be back before you understand that. Souls descend to serve the world. Happiness in the earthly sense is transient and conditional. At true hard times, remember that there is always someone who is even harder.”
The book opened at the page with the story “Farewell to Childhood”.
“Time doesn’t exist. It’s conditional and relative. You will learn to manage Time when you realize that it doesn’t matter how old you are on Earth. The main thing is who you feel you are.”
Joice the Ghost
Ouranoupoli
Without even having breakfast, I left the house and headed for to the Tower. Unlike many, Ray had never deceived me or said anything for nothing. However, Dimitra, whose icon shop was directly opposite the Tower, couldn’t help but know whether it was open or not.
You could get to the Tower through the central and sea streets, every cat on both of them knew me. I flew along the sea street, praying that no one would call me out, and the prayer worked well. The gate to the courtyard, as well as the door to the Tower, appeared to be open! Two women were talking outside the office on the right.
“Good morning! May I come in? Is it free of charge or not?” I asked, but they continued their conversation, as if nothing had happened and retreated to the room on the left.
“So it’s free,” I decided, and delved inside.
The door in the far left corner led to rooms displaying the finds from excavations on the territory of Athos, including the Zygou Monastery. I froze at the exhibits, studying their description. There were burial vessels dating back to 1100 BC, ritual accessories, copper helmets from the bottom of the sea dated to the 6th century BC, and women’s jewelry in the showcases. I liked especially the ring with a five-pointed star and a bird with open wings, and clay tablets covered with formulas up and down. After examining the exposition of the ground floor, I climbed the wooden stairs and went out to the balcony, with a beautiful view of Mount Athos, the sea and Dimitra’s shop.
Suddenly someone put a hand on my shoulder, I shuddered, “Not free of charge?!” and turned around.
“I’m always glad to welcome guests,” a ghost-woman said smiling.
“Good morning,” I whispered back in confusion.
“I am Joice Mary NanKivell Loch. Call me Joice. I continue to live here, in the Tower, although I left my earthly body in 1982, a little short of my 96th birthday. I’m buried in the local cemetery in Ouranoupoli, and you?”
“I am Alice. I live in Moscow. I’ve come here for summer.”
My answer seemed to surprise Joice. She took my hand.
“Let’s go inside, I’ll tell you about my Tower!”
We entered a tiny room, where there were several narrow and barred windows overlooking the sea, two wooden chairs, a fireplace in the center, a couple of shelves with books, a woven carpet on the wall and a table with … a typewriter!
“Yes, I wrote novels, essays and poems. Here are the survivors.”
I glanced over the old bookshelf, and the title with St. Peter caught my eye.
“Were you born in this Tower?”
“No, in Australia. I loved nature and the country life. However, I wanted to travel. After marriage with Sidney, he was a journalist and also a bit writer, we joined humanitarian missions and in various countries helped people affected by the First World War. In 1923, when the Greek-Turkish War ended, we came here to settle Greek refugees from Turkey. The territory of Ouranoupoli then belonged to the monastery of Vatopedi, the border of Athos was in Trypiti. By agreement with the state, the border was moved to the Zygou monastery, and Vatopedi provided land and buildings, including the Tower, to the refugees. At first, we lived on the island of Ammouliani opposite, and then moved to the Tower. I loved and still love it very much. We are where our heart is, and after death we are drawn to what or to whom we are attached on Earth.”
“Are all souls drawn or only the light ones?”
“Almost every soul has something dark in it. One local resident was tormented by his unfinished business, he lamented and wept, coming to me for consolation. Someone is drawn to the already committed shameful act in order to rewrite the Past, but it’s firmly fixed and unchangeable in the Chronicle of the World. I had a helper called Martha, her son after his death promised to make amends for his fault by helping those still living on Earth.”
“What happened to you after your death?”
“I didn’t realize immediately that I had gone. I continued to ‘eat’ and ‘sleep’, ‘dress me up’ and consider myself a woman. The strongest habit of all ghosts is to visualize belonging to their earthly sex. Having lost the body, you cease to be a woman or a man, you are a soul. Chaotically and unconsciously, I returned to various fragments of the Past, experiencing them again as if ‘here and now’. I saw what hurt me and the people I had helped, the light of their memory warmed the soul. Sometimes I think that we, as earthly individuals, exist as long as we are remembered on Earth. The walls of this Tower keep me in their memory, and some of those who know me personally are still alive in Ouranoupoli.”
“Is Dimitra one of them?”
“Yes, she is, as well as her mother and grandmother. Do you see the outside small building? There was a medical center and medicines were stored there. Once Dimitra, while still a little girl, fell, hurt her knee and ran to me. I washed the wound, bandaged her leg, telling a fairy tale about a sheep, and treated her with sweets.”
“Have you seen the Stairs?”
“Of course, Alice,” Joice smiled. “It’s inside one’s soul. You are moving up or down it even during life. The posthumous state is the soul’s wandering within its Past, crying and grieving over wrong things, getting joy from the Good and Light that it has brought into the world, and as a result, its self-determination based on its attraction to this or that. Everyone has their own Stairway to Heaven. On Athos, the deceased monk resurrected at his own funeral to tell the brothers how the devils nearly had taken him to Hell for his addiction to wine drinking, but good deeds stood up for him and outweighed the cup. Someone is present at the Judgment, someone is not, perhaps being unaware of what is happening.”
“And when the memory of the deceased disappears, then …?”
“It disappears on Earth, not in Heaven. The soul will gradually calm down, freed from memories, both others’ and its own, and …”
A tourist came into the room with a five-year-old daughter. I got frightened that they would see me sitting on an exhibit chair and talking with a ghost, so I abruptly stood up and took a step towards the window, with peripheral vision I noticed the girl approaching Joice and looking at her and at me in surprise.
“Kids
