so glad you’re back with us!” exclaimed Leah, a Georgian of my age, who had lived there for almost ten years, an employee of Janis. “Thank God you are alive and well! You are very bright, even the mistress said, there is another kindness in Alice, a real one, from Heaven.”
“Thanks, Leah! Do you know the name of that icon, the Virgin Mary?” I showed it to Leah through the window.
“I don’t even remember where we got it from. I’ll tell you tomorrow!”
Janis was Dimitra’s nephew. Kiriyaki, or simply Kiri, was Dimitra’s niece. In that village, almost all were relatives, although not everyone was friendly with the others. Kiri inherited the icon shop of her father, who had retrained as an ice cream vendor two years before. The shop, like Dimitra’s, was small, but Kiri bought mostly big and expensive icons. I liked one of the icon painters who painted for her for reasonable money.
“Hello, Alice! I’m pregnant again, as you see!” she smiled.
“And a boy again?!”
“Yes,” she laughed and after some welcoming questions proceeded to review her new icons.
“Alice, it’s great to see you!” having entered the shop, Kiri’s father said, hugging and kissing me on cheeks three times. “For how long? You know, you’ll never leave! You’ll stay on Athos forever!”
“Do you happen to have St. Barbara with the cup?” I asked Kiri, pondering her father’s words.
“Not with the cup, another one. What do you need it for? It protects against sudden death, doesn’t it? Thus, you don’t want to die without communion, right?”
Kiri promised me to find out about St. Barbara, and I headed for Socrates.
Socrates was a friend of Dimitra, native Greek, but we communicated in Italian, although he spoke English as well. No one understood us in Italian, and it was useful to practice. Socrates was fond of rare icons and told me about them – emotionally! – similar to the Italian temperament.
“Oh Alice! Welcome back! Well, I’ll show you something!” he shouted from afar, and then pulled out his phone and found a photo, “They wrote an article about me in ‘National Geographic!’ Look! Do you see it? Here’s my name, the name and address of my icon shop! And those are my icons, from this wall! Imagine, some journalists came here and didn’t even say who they were and where they came from! You know, I always tell the truth about icons, and I told them everything! And they wrote it!”
“Congratulations!” I smiled and, having turned my gaze to the wall with icons, froze in my tracks.
“Coffee?” Socrates offered, not noticing my stupor.
“You knew it! I need this icon, I couldn’t find it anywhere. I’ve even supposed that it doesn’t exist!”
“Which one?”
“The Four Evangelists!”
“Ha! I always have something that supposedly doesn’t exist! You are here like a local, you know everything about everyone, who is who, who sells this and that at what price, you understand the painting techniques. Why do you need ‘the Four Evangelists’?”
“To rewrite the Future.”
Somewhere in the Mist
We took the lift to the top floor of a huge shopping center.
“Close your eyes and give me your hand!” Michael said mysteriously and led me somewhere, and then whispered, “Open!”
“Wow!” I exclaimed, since right in front of us, as if hovering in the air over the abyss, under the dome of the shopping center, there was an Island of Violets, to which a narrow bridge led.
“Don’t worry, the bridge is real, it won’t collapse! Here is an amazing cafe, where we are the only ones to have breakfast today!”
We landed on a sofa, immersed in violet thickets, the flowers surrounded us from all sides – real, large, beautiful and … sad. The waitress left us, taking our order, and Michael took out and handed me a gift box.
“Happy Valentine’s Day!”
“Thank you! Angels are always needed, one can never have too many of them,” I smiled when I saw a lovely silver Guardian Angel, and then, once again glancing at the flowers, I remembered, “Violets in Greece are a symbol of mourning! Imagine, the young Persephone, picking violets, was kidnapped by the Lord of the Kingdom of the Dead. Since then, the Greeks have been covering prematurely dead girls with violets.”
“Leave Greece apart! Better tell me why haven’t you emigrated to Italy yet? We talked with you a hundred times, there is nothing for you to do here! You know Italian. They take you for a local in Italy. You are young, smart, beautiful. So? Today we’ll register you on international dating websites. Remember the photo shoot in the fall! Lots of amazing photos! We’ll choose the best ones, and in a month, you’ll invite me to your wedding! You’ll see! What’s the point of wasting time? You are a miracle in feathers! Speaking of feathers, what are you writing now?”
“Nothing… I know what I have to. I saw it there.”
“About Another Reality?”
“Yes, perhaps the time for that book hasn’t come yet.”
“What did you see?”
I wondered how to explain to an earthly man what they had shown me in Heaven, and shifted my gaze to the flowers, but I noticed Ray on the bridge to the Violet Island.
“So what did they show you, Alice?” Michael asked, sitting with his back to Ray approaching us.
“Aggregation of atoms,” I breathed out to Michael.
“I delved into scientific books. So many discoveries in the fields of quantum have been made, and all that stuff about Another Reality, it just takes my breath away! Do you want me to bring them for you to read?”
“Alice, do you want a trick?” Ray asked as he sat down nearby.
“Okay, bring them,” I replied to Michael.
“Don’t be afraid,” Ray held out his hand to me. “Close your eyes.”
I looked at Ray with a question in my eyes, but I couldn’t disobey. We took a couple of steps away from the table, while Michael, as if nothing had happened, continued,
“Next time I’ll bring you three books at once. So, what are we going to do today?”
“Open your eyes, Alice,” Ray whispered, and I obeyed.
Ray and I were standing on the bridge. I turned my gaze to… Oh no! There, at the table, on the Violet Island! There was still me there!
39 Before/2 After. House No. I
Dark Tower
