CHAPTER 19: Lesbos.

I step out into the cold wet world skirting the aggressive cars and trucks exiting the ferry. The morning light, which seemed so bright from within the ferry, is gloomy, somber. The city of Mytilene lies a half kilometer away beneath misty wisps of fog curling down from heavy pillows of black clouds hugging the hills. Orange-tile roofs spread along the horseshoe cove and up the adjacent mountains. But the primary color of Mytilene is blue, the azure deeps of the cove merging with turquoise boats at dockside.

I lumber toward the center of town looking for a hotel but only see closed travel agencies and restaurants. The two-lane dockside street seethes with automobiles and motorbikes. This is rush hour in Mytilene, at 25,000, the largest town on the island.

Lesbos, which has a total population of 90,000, was built-up by volcanic eruptions before separating millions of years ago from the Turkish coast and is the third-largest island in the Aegean, after Crete and Euboia. It is triangular shaped, the apex tilted to the northeast. Two deep-set bays protrude inland, one in the middle of the base of the three-sided island. The other is an inland bay with a five kilometer strait for an inlet that thrusts into the island’s eastern apex.

The entrances of both bays are difficult, and the small but more-accessible bay here at Mytilene on the eastern coast next to Turkey is used by commercial traffic.

Lesbos, “the jewel of the Aegean,” is one of the most beautiful and fertile areas in Greece, noted for its wine, grain and olives. Its inhabitants raise sheep, mules and cattle. The island’s prosperity has always been favorably affected by its location in the northeast Aegean on the trade route to the Dardanelles. Historically the island’s inhabitants trace their lineage back to the Aeolians of Boiotia Nome, the land of Oedipus. Many also claim to be descendants of Agamemnon.

These ancients came here in 1050 BC during the great migration following the Trojan War. Lesbos had been a Trojan ally and was sacked many times by Achilles.  

When I reach the center of the cove, I walk away from the dock, across the gridlocked street, and stop before a white, modern building with glass doors and marble entryway, the Hotel Sappho. I quickly learn a room will cost me 5000 dr ($20.83), not within my budget. A room in the Hotel Lesbos next door is even more expensive. Rain starts again, large drops rippling puddles.

Looking for a place to hide from the rain, I enter a dark tunnel through buildings along the frontage road and exit into a world of pedestrians on a street overshadowed by balconies. I’ve found the center of town, and it’s as if I’ve come to the land of umbrellas, their taut river of domes filling the street before me. Motorbikes aggressively pick a path using the penetrating barks of their horns. A market opens its doors, and black-haired men in dark clothes emerge to stack boxes of vegetables and fruit, carrots, potatoes, onions, eggplant, apples, bananas. The bloody-aproned proprietor of a meat market shouts his specials, standing among hanging sides of beef and boxes of slick smelly fish. When a competitor shouts back, he raises his arms and elevates his tirade. Women are everywhere, old, young, middle-aged. My stomach growls at the smell of cinnamon and yeast from a bakery next door. Mytilene is a gorgeous, drenched little city.

I’m anxious to get a room. Although I want to see Mytilene, my immediate concern is getting to the northern and western parts of the island where Achilles went on a rampage. 

I fall in line with the umbrellas, looking up a side street for a pension. I stop in front of an electronics store with the proprietor standing out front. “Dwmotia;” (room) I ask. He seems concerned, as if I’ve suggested some grave undertaking. He wants me to repeat my question, then his face lights up. He motions to come with him, and after a few steps he points at a side street, holds up one finger, motions to the right. I take this to mean to go one block then turn right. “Eucaristw,” I tell him, and chug up the incline.

One block off the noisy thoroughfare, the narrow street becomes quiet and jammed with parked cars. After turning the corner, at first I see nothing, then spot a small sign in English, “PENSION.” The door is unlocked, but the entryway is dark and uninviting. I see no reception desk. I crank up my courage and take the winding stairway to the right, climbing through the dark. On the second floor, a deserted counter cloaked in darkness hides in a far corner. A lone bell sits on top.

After a couple of rings, I hear a commotion behind a door, and a man staggers out in a T-shirt and no shoes, his hair mussed and fly unzipped. We wrangle through the language barrier, and he disappears into his room, comes back with shoes on and a key. We mount two more flights of stairs and exit to a balcony overlooking the street. He opens a sliding door to the room. It’s dark, run-down and smells of mildew but has all the requisites, a bed, a private bath. We go back downstairs, and I pay for one night.

When I return to the room, I discover it has no lights, no heat, no hot water. I complain to the proprietor, but he looks defeated, says the whole building is like that. “Oci fwV,” (no light) he says. I’m not sure if he means temporarily or permanently. The place does have light switches and light bulbs, so I have some hope. As I unpack, I hear the soft throated warbling of pigeons on the windowsill, the only window, small and opaque, high up on the wall of my tiny dark room.

I’m still rocking and rolling from the ferry ride to Chios. Seems like a week ago, but I still feel the cyclic pressure of waves tossing me about, the surge, release, surge, release. Two hours sleep isn’t much, but I’ve no time to waste. I grab a cinnamon roll and a donut at the bakery and look for a motorbike rental agency, leaving a trail of sugar granules in my wake. The rain has stopped for now, and I’m taking a chance on getting caught in a downpour, but I may not have long on this island before I have to catch a ferry back to Athens.

I head west up into the green hills out of Mytilene on a motorbike which has more pep than I would like. The first time I gun it, it almost jumps out from under me. The wet asphalt road hisses beneath me, and I use one arm to raise the zipper on my jacket to keep out the cold. The hills are rocky and covered with brown grass, their tops capped with deep-green trees. Even the silver-leaved olives come closer to true green. As I crest the hill, I pull to the side of the road to take in the view of Yeras (Prize) Bay spread out below, a large emerald lake with its small Aegean entrance obscured from here. The motorbike put-puts like a high-powered lawnmower. Puffs of clouds stand around me, and the mist has covered my glasses. I put them in my shirt pocket.

I descend to the small village of Kentro at the edge of the bay and follow the road around the end of the hotel-lined waterfront, then start up into the rocky hills again. Just as I crest the ridge and can see the huge expanse of Kalloni (Beautiful) Bay, I run into a squall of large rain drops and pull to the side of the road where I shut off the motorbike and frantically scramble through my daypack for my black umbrella. While listening to the patter of rain over my head, I take in the expanse of water before me. Kalloni Bay is eight kilometers wide and seventeen long and lined with small orange and white villages. The lake’s surface shudders in the rain as a bright streak of sunlight falls across it.

Following the decimation of the population during the flood of Deucalion,[1] the local race on Lesbos was re-founded by the ancient king Makaras, who had five daughters: Mytilene, Issa, Antissa, Arisvi and Methymna.[2] He founded and named a city for each. Methymna married a man from Aeolia named Lesbos, who through his marriage became king and named the island for himself. During the Trojan War, the Greeks reeked havoc on the island, Achilles plundering its cities one by one, but when he came to Methymna, even the greatest warrior of all time came up short.

Methymna is on the northern tip of the island, where I’m now headed. When the squall stops, I kick the starter a couple of times, and the motorbike roars to life. At the head of the bay, I turn north through the crossroads town of Kalloni where I’m enveloped by a dense fog that gives the buildings a ghostly presence. Here’s where the road leads on west to the birthplace of the poetess Sappho that I will visit this afternoon, weather permitting. But for now, I’m on my way north. As I exit the town, I meet a man on a donkey carrying a heavy load of goat fodder. Just before noon, I enter the outskirts of Methymna, my first destination.

I’m struck by the imposing castle sitting on a mountain overlooking the bay and square buildings which are different from any I’ve seen in Greece. The buildings are not made of white stucco but of gray stone. The motorbike shakes like a jackhammer over the steep cobblestone streets as I descend to the coast.

As Achilles fought outside the city walls of Methymna, a young woman named Peisidice watched his unsuccessful siege from the cities walls.  

Peisidice beheld Achilles,
Fighting in the foremost ranks,
Exultant in his killing joy:
And Aphrodite, Goddess of the bloom,
Made mad her agitated heart for him.
She raised her hands into the yielding air
In supplication for his love.[3]

Peisidice was the daughter of the king of Methymna. She sent word to Achilles by her governess that if he would marry her, she would open the gates to the city. Recognizing a good deal when he saw one, Achilles readily agreed.  

She welcomed then the army of the Greeks,
Within her fatherland,
Levering apart the city’s gates.
Dared to behold with her own eyes
Her parents slain by sword and women dragged
In slaves’ chains at his command to ships ...[4]

But Achilles found Peisidice’s act of betrayal repugnant and never intended to fulfill his promise. He had his men stone her.

A daughter betraying her homeland is a common theme in Greek legend. Ariadne helped Theseus when he came to Knossos to kill her brother, the Minotaur. And Briseis, Achilles’ concubine over whom he and Agamemnon argued at Troy and who had watched Achilles kill her father and three brothers, loved Achilles and was consoled by the promise of being married to him. The vision of the hero in action is irresistible to some women, and comes with the promise of a new life in a new land.

But Lesbos’ women were known for their beauty, not betrayal. Although Briseis, Achilles’ concubine, was not from Lesbos, the girl who temporarily took her place when Agamemnon took Briseis from him was. That night as Achilles slept, the girl from Lesbos slept on one side of him with his male companion on the other:  

Achilles slept in the corner of his well-built hut, and beside him lay a woman he had brought from Lesbos, Phorbas’s daughter, beautiful Diomede. Patroklos lay down on the opposite side. He too had a woman ...[5]

This was a cozy little foursome when you realize the relationship between Patroklos and Achilles was sexual.

When Agamemnon finally relented and gave Briseis back, he included:  

...seven women skilled in excellent handcraft, women from Lesbos: when he [Achilles] himself captured well-founded Lesbos I [Agamemnon] chose them out for their beauty surpassing all the company of women.[6]

The boxy buildings of Methymna are multistory structures of gray stones topped by pyramid-shaped orange-tile roofs. The square windows on the flat surfaces stare out expectantly. My motorbike blasts the silence as I let off the accelerator and coast down the path to the beach.

Methymna is also the site of an event that occurred even farther back in the mists of time, one concerning the death Orpheus, the ancient minstrel who lived in Thrace. Orpheus was the son of Apollo and the muse Kalliope and was the first named among Jason’s shipmates on the Argo. Apollo taught him to play the lyre, and he was wonderful at it:  

Men say that he by the music of his songs charmed the stubborn rocks upon the mountains and the course of rivers. And the wild oak-trees to this day, tokens of that magic strain, that grow at Zone of the Thracian shore, stand in ordered ranks close together, the same which under the charm of his lyre he led down from Pieria.[7]

Orpheus married Eurydice, a Thracian nymph of a lake. But on their wedding day, as she fled from a rapist, she was bitten by a snake and died in the Vale of Tempe, the land of the healing centaur, Chairon. Orpheus was so grieved over Eurydice’s death, he went into the Underworld to retrieve her. Singing while strumming a lyre, he charmed Persephone and Hades:

                        And with his words, the music
Made the pale phantoms weep: Ixion’s wheel
Was still, Tityos’ vultures left the liver,
Tantalus tried no more to reach for the water,
And Belus’ daughters rested from their urns,
And Sisyphus climbed on his rock to listen.
That was the first time ever in all the world
The Furies wept. Neither the king nor consort
Had harshness to refuse him, and they called her,
Euridice.[8]

Hermes was sent to retrieve Euridice, and as the three of them ascended from the Underworld, Hermes instructed Orpheus to lead the way and not look back or she would stay in Hades. Orpheus obeyed the command, but as they drew near the entrance, he could no longer hear Eurydice’s footsteps and grew suspicious of Hermes. Desperate to verify she was still following, he looked back at the last second and, to his everlasting grief, saw she had indeed been right behind him but was already turned to descended into the Underworld once again.

Orpheus’ sorrow over Eurydice didn’t subside, and he never again sought the companionship of women. He met his death on a Thracian mountaintop in northern Greece at the hands of the maenads, the female votives of Dionysus. His indifference to women had enraged them. Just as some Christian saints, like St. Francis of Assisi in 1224 AD, received the stigmata of Jesus, so Orpheus suffered the fate of his patron deity, Dionysus. During an orgiastic rite, the maenads dismembered Orpheus’ body, as Dionysus had been by the Titans, gathering the pieces and burned them, all but the head, which they threw into a river along with the lyre:  

... [the] Hebrus River took the head and lyre
And as they floated down the gentle current
The lyre made mournful sounds, and the tongue murmured
In mournful harmony, and the banks echoed
The strains of mourning. On the sea, beyond
Their native stream, they came at last to Lesbos
And grounded near the city of Methymna.[9]

Orpheus’ head was still singing and the sea waves gently stroked the lyre when it ran aground here on the beach. The locals buried the head, but it still wouldn’t shut up and became famous as an oracle. This offended Apollo, who stood over the site and pronounced, “Cease from the things that are mine, for I have borne enough with thy singing.”[10] Thus the minstrel and prophet was finally silenced.

Orpheus was more than just a minstrel. He was a gentle man who lured sheep and wild beasts to lie down together, definitely not a hero in the traditional Greek mold. A religious cult grew up around him following his death.[11] His hymns were sung during Demeter’s Mysteries. Orphism, with its emphasis on music, had a strong influence on Pythagorean philosophy of the 6th century BC. Pythagoras’ experiments with music, and the subsequent discovery of the octave and numerical ratios led directly to the discovery of mathematics. Thus music, through the influence of Orpheus, came to occupy a mysterious place in Pythagoreanism.[12] In turn, the virtues of self-sacrifice and moderation from both Orphism and Pythagoreanism reappeared later in Christianity.

At the edge of the sea, I stop the motorbike, shut off the motor and descend to the water’s edge. The deserted beach is rocky, the large gray stones making walking difficult. The larger rocks have been collected and stacked back from the beach creating pebbled areas for the summertime sunbathers. I’m alone on the beach today, listening to waves swish at the shore. I turn to look up the mountain at the gray-faced buildings and the castle towering over the coast.

My time is short, and I grab a bite to eat at a store in the town square, bread and cheese, and set out again on the road south, back to the crossroads at Kalloni, where I take the road west through a small fertile valley with a patchwork of vineyards. The mountain road winds on forever, the rocky hillsides becoming more bleak. The grass is brown with only a tinge of new green. A few kilometers from the southwestern coast I enter the mountain town of Eressos, the birthplace of Sappho in 630 BC.[13] She wrote poetry in the form of long lyrics. She must have caught the voice of Orpheus. Perhaps she had his lyre.

While Homer’s epic poetry is filled with war and murder, Sappho’s poetry is of a strikingly different spirit. Her poetry has been discredited and destroyed through the ages because many consider her a “lesbian” poet, even though she was married and had a child called Cleis who was named for Sappho’s mother.[14] Christians have been particularly hostile to her sexual lyricism. The following is the only complete Sappho poem in existence:  

                A Prayer to Aphrodite

 

Immortal Aphrodite on your richly decorated throne, 

beguiling daughter of Zeus, I beg you, honored goddess, 

do not crush my heart with pain and anguish;

But come [now to me] here, 

if ever in the past hearing my cries of love from afar, 

you left your father’s golden house and came,

Your chariot yoked. With the flutter of their many wings, 

beautiful, swift sparrows brought you from the sky through the mid-air to the black earth, and swiftly did they reach me. 

And you, Blessed One, Smiling with your immortal face, 

asked what again had happened to me, 

why again I was begging you [to come here],

And what was the greatest wish of my mad heart; ‘

Who is it that now you wish Persuasion to lead back 

to your friendship? who wrongs you, Sappho?

‘For if she avoids you [now], soon will she pursue you; 

and if she does not accept gifts, [soon] will she offer them; 

and if she does not love you, soon will she love you, 

even against her will.’ Come to me, even now, 

and free me from my crushing cares; 

fulfill all that my heart desires; 

you yourself be my ally.[15]

Sappho’s poetry was so popular in ancient Greece, she was considered the tenth muse. Much of her poetry was sung at weddings.

The buildings of Eressos have the stucco walls and orange-tile roofs I’m used to seeing here on Lesbos. The view of the countryside from Eressos is spectacular, a ravine off to the west and to the south, rolling hills with orchards and farms.

My daughter used to send her poetry to me so I could print it out on my computer. Following her disappearance, one poem took on a new depth and reveals her state of mind at the time. Like Sappho’s, my daughter’s poetry was meant to be accompanied by music. In 1982 prior to my departure for San Diego, she wrote a poem about the two of us. It’s entitled To Stay. Here’s the last verse. I imagine her strumming her guitar and singing:  

I saw him smile again today
His face so young in the dying day
And I remembered how we used to play
Him tickling me ‘til I got away
And bothering me ‘til I screamed for him to get away
And I wonder “Will he ever go away?”
No, he’s forever here ...
     forever here with me to stay.

The following year, I left her in Phoenix and moved to San Diego.

After a few minutes of sightseeing, I travel on south to the coast, to the beach at Skala Eressos. This is touted as the most beautiful and cleanest beach in the Aegean. It’s much different than that at Methymna, covered with fine sand and stretching along the southern coast for one and a half kilometers. The eastern portion of the beach is reserved for nude sunbathing, but I have no compulsion to remove my clothes. My lone companion on the beach today is a fisherman casting far out into the sea.

I stop my motorbike three blocks from the beach at the chapel of Agios Andreas, St. Andrew. I remember back when I was on my way to Ithaca, I saw the casket containing Andrew’s head in the church at Patras. This church is smaller and older, built in 1886 over the ruins of the original one which was from the 5th century AD. St. Andrew could very well have stopped here on his way to Patras. He spent some time along the Black Sea spreading the word of Jesus among the pagans. The church is closed today.

I wonder about all these heads roaming about Greece. First back in Thebes, Pentheus’s head came home on his mother’s thrysus, then St. Andrews head that was in exile in Rome for 400 years, and now Orpheus’ head floating from Thrace to Methymna, singing all the while.

I’m in a daze from lack of sleep, and after a short time walking the cobblestone streets, I’m back on my motorbike traveling the ninety kilometers of winding road back to Mytilene.

It’s evening when I reenter my room, delighted to find that the light switch works. I also have hot water.

I go for a volta just a half block from the pension down Ermou Street. Outside, it’s motorbike city, Greek testosterone flowing through the streets in gushing streams. The cyclists perform wheelies and verify their masculinity by blasting through crowds of women and kids. I see stars and watch a full moon rise in the east through white clouds. It’s been a full month since I saw the Halloween moon from the cliffs of Santorini. In one of the shops, I hear a few bars of “Little Drummer Boy.” Christmas is upon me. One week from today at 4:45 in the afternoon I’ll board the plane in Athens for the flight to London where I’ll have a fourteen hour layover before my flight to Denver. After I get back to Boulder on the 9th of December I’ll be home for a week, then fly to California to spend Christmas with my family.

I wake in the middle of the night dreaming of my daughter when she was a baby. She’s sick and has one eye closed by infection, a gummy substance festering across it. My wife and I are negligent in not taking her to the doctor because we’re too busy with our jobs. My heart fills with guilt over my negligence and sympathy for my baby girl. How I could have neglected the well-being of one of her beautiful brown eyes? I hold her to me with a desperate sorrow. I drift off again wondering if this dream has been triggered by my recent focus on my daughter’s disappearance.

An Airplane rumbles overhead on its way to the Lesbos airport just a few kilometers southeast of here, the first passenger plane I’ve heard since I left Athens two months ago. The sounds of going home.

Another of my daughter’s poems was written in 1983 after I moved to San Diego:  

And again I am a horse
With no limits - only freedom
And a sense of tranquility
 
For days on end I ride the wind
Having no one to answer to
And no place to be
Just one alone and free

The poem was written the year after I left her in Phoenix and moved to San Diego. She was sixteen. Her love of horses is here coupled with her strong yearning for freedom, a normal teenage feeling, but one she respond to in a radical way, an affliction she may have caught from her mother and me.   

After the day of futility searching for my daughter in Phoenix and learning she had probably run away with several other girls, I returned to San Diego, anxious to see if she was waiting on my doorstep. I held an image of her sitting on the welcome mat with her back braced against my front door. That image evaporated as soon as I reached my apartment late that night and saw she wasn’t there. I slept anxiously hoping the phone would ring and bring word of her, but it too was silent.

The next morning I went to the local mall and returned with my first phone answering machine. It was Saturday, but I went to work anyway. We didn’t let a weekend get in the way of trying to get our Shuttle payload back on schedule. I spent just long enough at work to have our company quality inspector, who was overseeing the subcontract at Grumman on Long Island, New York, fired. He had been causing no end of trouble and accused one of our young engineers of sabotaging our hardware.

Sunday I spent at home sitting by the telephone. Late that evening I called my ex-wife in Phoenix to see if she had heard anything. When I told her I believed Cynthia had run off with four other girls, she was surprised. So I told her about Bear and how grown up everyone said Bear was. My ex-wife scoffed. “Cynthia is Bear,” she said. “It’s been her nickname for the past year.”

Not only did I have renewed concern for Cynthia’s safety, but I was also forced to face how far apart she and I had drifted.

Her mother also told me Mary was probably Vicki, the girl who had tried to burn her parent’s home to the ground. “Vicki must be back in town,” she stated emphatically. “Cynthia’s with her. They may still be here in Phoenix, unless they’ve gone to Florida.” That proposition sent a new wave of fear through me. “Florida?” The possibility she could have gone that far away set a chill through me.

“Sure. Vicki and Danielle went to Florida when they ran away together a year ago. Danielle returned a few months later, but Vicki’s been on the run ever since. I just know she came back for Cynthia. I can feel her in the air.”

“So three girls are missing instead of five,” I said.

“No. Just two. One of Cynthia’s friends saw Danielle in downtown Phoenix this afternoon. But if I’m wrong and Vicki’s not with her, Cynthia’s alone.”

The next morning I went to work with my suitcase packed. That afternoon, I made the trek across the Mojave desert to Phoenix again, this time by car. I was determined to stay until I found her.

1 Dec, Wednesday

A lightening flash through my tiny opaque window momentarily lights my dark room followed nine seconds later by a sharp clap of thunder, Zeus at work on Lesbos three kilometers from here. I lie in bed in the dark listening to the light patter of rain on the rooftop progressing to a torrent. I rise late but unusually tired, still feel a little of the rocking motion from my ferry ride two nights ago.

I walk to the travel agency to see when I can get a ferry to Peiraias. The agent I talk to is arrogant and unresponsive, takes offense when I ask if he speaks English, tells me tonight’s ferry is the only one today and refuses to speculate when the next might arrive. I’ve got a choice. I can stay here and take my chances or be on the one to Peiraias at six this evening. “You buying a ticket, or what?” he asks. He pushes his chair away from his desk, exposing a withered left leg, a brace and heel support. He sneers then snorts a joke about me to the man next to him.

I walk off to think about what to do, go out the door and around the dock, trying to resolve whether I want to go on to Peiraias tonight or spend another day here. The weather is a factor.

I would like to go north along the eastern coast of Lesbos to the town of Thermi and the ruins of a Bronze Age settlement, but I’m tired of being out in the cold.

In the small plateia next to the dock stands a tall statue of Sappho, a lyre resting on her left arm, majestically looking out to sea as if to welcome incoming sailors.

What we know of Sappho seems to cast a different impression of her physical presence from that depicted by the statue. According to a late 2nd or early 3rd century AD papyrus, “In appearance she seems to have been contemptible and quite ugly, being dark in complexion and of very small stature.”[16] This mean-spirited description seems to have been overly influenced by a darkness in the perceiver’s heart.

Though Sappho was born in Eressos, she lived most of her life here in Mytilene. She was exiled to Sicily for a while, and one story tells of her death as a suicide, Sappho jumping from the Leucadian Rock on the southern tip of the island of Lefkadia just north of Ithaca over her unrequited love for a man named Phaon.

While considering my traveling dilemma, I visit the 16th century Byzantine church of St. Therapon not far from my pension. The church sits on the ruins of the ancient School of Sappho. Here she taught Lesbian and Ionian nobility, and was said to have pupils from Colophon, Manto’s town just northwest of Ephesus. Perhaps Sappho was influenced by Manto’s verses as was Homer.

The church is a couple of blocks off the main street, an imposing sight, its three silver domes dominating the city’s landscape. The front of the church is tan with huge recessed double doors. I push them open, walk into the quiet entryway that opens into a  cavernous, echoing interior. I allow my eyes to adjust to the dark. I feel so out of place with my hiking jacket and boots. A gigantic chandelier hangs from the domed ceiling. The church is almost deserted, only one old woman sitting in a seat to the right of the isle. When my camera shutter clicks, she turns to stare at me like I’ve committed an abomination.

I leave the church and walk the coastline north to a Byzantine castle sitting on top of the ruins of a Bronze Age settlement. In ancient times, this was the center of the city. Mytilene was a tiny island then but is now connected to the mainland by a causeway with harbors on each side.

The sky is overcast with occasional sprinkles as I walk the castle wall with two “wild” overly-friendly dogs and over the objections of several others who want to eat me.

These wild dogs seem to come in two varieties. Those desperate to befriend you, and those who'd rather get their jaws about your throat.

My walk takes me by a statue, a Lesbian (island) version of the Statue of Liberty. She not a big as that given to America by the French, but stands them in good stead here on the coast of the beautiful island.

The sun breaks through the heavy clouds turning the Aegean turquoise blue, the sea and sky reflections of each other. The small psychedelic boats docked in the harbor sparkle in a brilliant wetness. The city of Mytilene has become insufferably beautiful, the orange-tile roofs glowing like a kiln’s hot coals. Off in the distance I see a ferry at dock.

I walk to the end of the dock where a ferry is moored with gigantic docking ropes. It floats quietly snuggled against the cement dock, a huge anchor chain emerges from a hole in the prow to fall vertically and disappear into the dark water.

The docking area is fenced but the gate is open, and I walk alongside the ferry, its white surface towering above me. The dock is strangely silent and deserted. I see no hands on deck. This must be the ferry to Peiraias that leaves tonight. The name on the side is the “Sappho,” a beautiful white beast with a passenger compartment the size of a large hotel. Atop the cabin, a lone mast with a single cross member, much like Christ’s cross, proudly faces forward.

I walk further away from the center of town where the fishing boats dock. I like these makeshift structures in outlying areas where ordinary Greeks dock their little boats. The rain returns as a downpour, and I make my decision. I could stay until tomorrow and go north along the coast to some of the most interesting ruins on Lesbos, but I really feel an urgency to try to get to Aulis.

I go back to the travel agency and buy a ticket to Peiraias. We’ll leave at six and sail all night, reaching Peiraias a six in the morning. I'm taking the opportunity to do something I’ve not done before on my journey. I’m going first class and will have a cabin and bed.

Now that I’ve made my decision, the sun comes out again. I walk the city some more seeing a beautiful whitewashed church with walkway to match and an archaeological dig.

I spend the rest of the day visiting the archeological museum which has Mycenaean artifacts from around the island. I’ve wanted to see an ancient theatre north of Mytilene, but I’m simply too tired to make the walk. A consuming tiredness and undeniable urge to sleep has enveloped me, as if the energy I’ve consumed on my entire journey has suddenly come due.

I go back to the travel agency and sit on the sofa in the waiting area, listening through the open door to traffic whiz by on the wet street out front, trying to ignore a heated argument going on behind the counter. I sit on a couch in a large room filled with working employees. A short fence separates me from them at their desks. What the argument is about, I haven’t a clue. Greeks really know how to argue. Shortly the argument ends, and one of the men, the loudest, leaves with two women. Greeks argue and shout at each other, then walk off with no hard feelings.

If I heard an argument that loud in the States, I would get the hell out of here for fear the man would return with an automatic weapon.

I sit on my bed in my first-class cabin aboard the good ferryboat Sappho writing in my journal. My cabin is at the end of a long narrow hallway, and walking down here I felt a tinge of claustrophobia at being so far from an exit. The room is small with orange walls, mustard floor and white ceiling. The door to the antiquated, but adequate bathroom is on the left wall, just past the head of my bed. The door is latched open to keep it from banging about. It latches fine in the open position but would not stay closed when I used the toilet. I’m in bed “G” (C), against the wall which also makes into a sofa. Two bunk beds are against the opposite wall. The beds are small and made up in white sheets, white pillow cases and with a folded brown blanket at the foot.

St. Paul spent a short while here in Mytilene in 52 AD.[17] I’ve completed a swipe of the islands visited by Paul on his third missionary journey; Rhodes, Samos, Chios, Lesbos. I’ve visited them in the reverse order he visited them.

Another man just joined me. He’s Greek, a jolly little fellow with liquor on his breath. He wears a blue sports coat and has a black leather bag he throws on his bed. Years ago, he was with the Greek commercial fleet and has been to Norfolk, Virginia and Corpus Christi, Texas. He’s a smallish man with glasses and a large nose, balding and a little overweight. Speaks a bit of English. He goes out again, trusting me not to go through his leather bag. It has many compartments and weighs, I’m guessing now, about six pounds. A very interesting bag with lots of zippers and a shoulder strap. Soft black leather. Hermes whispers over my shoulder that it would be most interesting to see what’s inside.

Helen and Menelaus were also here in Lesbos. They were conversing with the aged Nestor following the Trojan War, trying to decide the best way home. Nestor, prince of charioteers, tells of the meeting:  

     Menelaos, the red-haired captain,
caught up to us at Lesbos
while we mulled over the long sea route, unsure
whether to lay our course northward of Khios [Chios],
keeping the Isle of Psyria off to port,
or inside Khios, coasting by windy Mimas.
We asked for a sign from heaven, and the sign came
to cut across the open sea to Euboia
and lose no time putting our ills behind us.[18]  

Tonight we’ll follow that same course sailed by Helen and Menelaus 3200 years ago. As for war, Sappho had her say about it and Helen’s motive for running off with Paris in the first place:  

       The Most Lovely Thing

 

Some say that the most beautiful thing on the black earth is an army of horsemen, others an army of foot-sholdiers, others a fleet of ships; but I say it is the person you love.

Very easy it is to make this clear to all; for she who far surpassed all human beings in beauty, Helen,

Deserted her most noble husband and sailed to Troy, and did not think at all of her child or her dear parents; the Cyprian goddess [Aphrodite] led her astray in love.

... [Which] now puts me in mind of Anactoria, far away;

Her lovely way of walking, and the bright radiance of her face, I would rather see than the Lydian chariots and fully armed infantry.[19]  

I step out on deck to bid farewell to rain-soaked Lesbos. It’s dark out now, the city lights beautiful along the waterfront and where they climb into the hills. The weather is cool but we’ve had no rain since I bought my ticket this afternoon. “The vessel is ready to sail,” the Greek woman says in three different languages over the loud speaker.

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