The Road to Oxiana Read Online Free PDF

of the Norman kingdom; and among them all, as background of the essential commonplace, the occasional lounge suit, the cretonne frock, the camera-strapped tourist.
    Yet Jerusalem is more than picturesque, more than shoddy in the style of so many Oriental towns. There may be filth, but there is no brick or plaster, no crumbling and discolourment. The buildings are wholly of stone, a whitish cheese-like stone, candid and luminous, which the sun turns to all tones of ruddy gold. Charm and romance have no place. All is open and harmonious. The associations of history and belief, deep-rooted in the first memories of childhood, dissolve before the actual apparition. The outpourings of faith, the lamentations of Jew and Christian, the devotion of Islam to the holy Rock, have enshrouded the
genius loci
with no mystery. That spirit is an imperious emanation, evoking superstitious homage, sustained thereby perhaps, but existing independently of it. Its sympathy is with the centurions rather than the priests. And the centurions are here again. They wear shorts and topees, and answer, when addressed, with a Yorkshire accent.
    Set in this radiant environment, the Church of the Holy Sepulchre appears the meanest of churches. Its darkness seems darker than it is, its architecture worse, its cult more degraded. The visitor is in conflict with himself. To pretend to detachment is supercilious; to pretend to reverence, hypocritical. The choice lies between them. Yet for me that choice has been averted.I met a friend in the doorway, and it was he who showed me how to cope with the Holy Places.
    My friend was a black-robed monk, wearing short beard, long hair, and a tall cylindrical hat.
    â€œHail,” said I in Greek. “You come from Mount Athos?”
    â€œI do,” he replied, “from the monastery of Docheiariou. My name is Gabriel.”
    â€œYou are the brother of Aristarchus?”
    â€œI am.”
    â€œAnd Aristarchus is dead?”
    â€œHe is. But who could have told you?”
    I have described Aristarchus in another book. He was a monk at Vatopedi, the richest of the Athonite monasteries, whither we arrived, after five weeks on the Holy Mountain, tired and underfed. Aristarchus looked after us. He had once been a servant on an English yacht, and he called us every morning with the question: “What time would you like lunch today, sir?” He was young, efficient, and material, entirely unsuited to the monastic vocation and determined, if he could, to save enough money to take him to America. He hated the older monks, who humiliated him.
    One day, a year or two after our visit, he acquired a revolver and shot a couple of these venerable bullies. So the story goes. What is certain is that he then committed suicide. A saner man, externally, than Aristarchus never existed, and the Athonite community was filled with shame and reticence at the tragedy.
    â€œAristarchus was cracked in the head”, said Gabriel, tapping his own. Gabriel, I knew—for Aristarchus had told me—was happy in his vocation and could see in his brother’s violence only an aberration. “Is this your first visit to Jerusalem?” he continued, changing the subject.
    â€œWe arrived this morning.”
    â€œI’ll show you round. Yesterday I was in the Tombitself. Tomorrow I go in again at eleven. This way.”
    We were now in a broad circular chamber as high as a cathedral, whose shallow dome was supported on a ring of massive piers. In the middle of the empty floor stood the shrine, a miniature church resembling an old-fashioned railway engine.
    â€œWhen were you last on Mount Athos?” asked Gabriel.
    â€œIn 1927.”
    â€œI remember. You came to Docheiariou.”
    â€œYes. And how is my friend Synesios?”
    â€œVery well. But he’s too young yet to be an Elder. Come in here.”
    I found myself in a small marble chamber, carved in the Turkish baroque style. The way to the inner