I put on some white sandals and a long shift I had bought in Athens, slit up the side and embroidered around the neck. I told myself that I was paying honor to Saint Irene, or whoever it was. But of course that wasn’t the real reason for the finery. If our workers were taking a holiday, so were the men on the other dig.

I was absurdly excited as I walked along the weed-grown path toward the road that would take me to the village. Imagine being thrilled at the prospect of a visit to a metropolis of a few hundred! But I hadn’t seen that many people for almost a week. I hadn’t seen a shop or a café or a magazine or a radio-or even a tomato. After a week of canned food, the thought of a tomato made my mouth water. If I accomplished nothing else, I could buy some fresh food for supper.

As I marched on toward the center of the village, I began to meet people. They all nodded and smiled at me. The main plaza was paved with black lava stone. There was a fig tree in the center. On one side a flight of steps led up to the church, a small, squat building with a blue dome. The shops were closed for the afternoon rest period, but of course the hotel was open; it had a terrace out in front, with a grape arbor and a few tables and chairs. I could read a little Greek by now, and I spelled out the lettering on the faded sign: Hotel Poseidon.

I walked around the village for a while. The whole place was only a few blocks square-but it wasn’t square, the streets went up and down the hill and sometimes ended in culs-de-sac, so that I had to retrace my steps. Most of the houses were shuttered and quiet, but some people were out, mostly children, who giggled and ran when I spoke to them. Two old grandmas, wrapped up in dusty black dresses and shawls, were sitting outside the doors of their houses. One had a spindle and a ball of thread, and she was weaving or spinning; the process was unfamiliar to me, but the result looked like coarse lace. Her withered old hands moved with amazing dexterity. I stopped to admire her work and we had a nice talk. Neither of us could understand a word the other said, but we smiled a lot.

The harbor area was the busiest-looking part of Zoa. I gathered most of the traffic came by sea, instead of over the rough roads of the interior. It was also the ugliest part of the village, with the usual man-made mess-oil stains and spills, rusty chunks of metal, garish posters advertising various products.

When I got back to the plaza, people were beginning to come out of their houses. Pretty soon the church bells started to ring, and the crowd eddied toward the church. I followed. I was a little shy about going in, but nobody seemed to mind, in fact some of the worshipers beckoned to me as I paused on the threshold.

The inside of the church was dark. At first I couldn’t see anything, after the sunlit plaza, except candles twinkling like far-off stars. Somebody was chanting in a high, inflected sing-song voice. There was a strong smell of sweetish incense and a fainter, underlying odor of goat, or maybe unwashed human.

Gradually my eyes adjusted, but I still couldn’t see much. The place was windowless and lowceilinged, and the candlelight was obscured by the press of bodies. It was rather like being in a cave. The walls seemed to be painted, or maybe hung with pictures, but this wasn’t one of the fancy mainland churches, like the famous old ones I had seen in Athens. There were no mosaics, no glimmer of gilded arches; the paintings, what I could see of them, were modern and rather crude. I had chosen a modest place at the very back, so I couldn’t see the altar or the priest. I could hear his voice, though, rising and falling in that semi-Oriental chant. People kept wandering in and out and nobody seemed to be paying much attention to the service, except for some older women to my right, who were swaying back and forth and muttering.

Gradually more people began to sway and mutter. Gray clouds of incense billowed out, hanging like fog under the low ceiling. The smell was so strong I felt a little dizzy. A few of the women were keening and wringing their hands, like old Irish ladies at a wake. One woman, near me, was crying; I could see the shiny streaks on her cheeks. More and more people crowded into the small room. I was pressed back against the wall, enclosed by human bodies. Nobody was paying any attention to me, but I began to feel uneasy. I don’t like crowds, or mass emotion. People in a mob lose their identity and become part of a great mindless animal. I wanted to leave, but I couldn’t see how to manage it. I didn’t want to offend anyone, and besides, the space between me and the door was packed full. The incense began to get to me. I could feel myself beginning to sway in rhythm with the bodies all around. In another minute I would have started keening.

Somebody touched my shoulder. I recognized the hand before I looked up into Jim’s face. He was smiling.

“Let’s get out of this,” he said. I think he was speaking in a normal conversational voice, but I could hardly hear him.

“How?” I asked helplessly.

He took my arm and turned. I don’t know how he did it, but people sort of scrunched back and made a path. I followed. Even the steps were crowded; apparently everybody in town had come to the service. The air outside made me feel drunk, it was so clean and fresh. I was surprised to see that the sun was far down in the west.

Not everybody had gone to church after all. The shops were open now, and clusters of tables and chairs had sprouted around the perimeter of the plaza. The occupants were all men, except for a few obvious tourist types.

Jim found us a table.

“Wine or ouzo?” he asked.

We had wine. It was heavily resinated, but I didn’t mind the taste; it had a healthy medicinal flavor. At first we talked rather stiltedly about the saint’s day and the church.

“Religion in this area is a funny mixture,” Jim said. “You find the same thing in all the Mediterranean countries, in small peasant communities-a superficial coating of Christianity over the old pagan beliefs. Local saints are the old gods thinly disguised. The festivals of the church celebrate dates that have been sacred for millennia-the spring equinox, harvest, the winter solstice. And maybe one reason why the Virgin Mary is so popular is because a mother goddess was once the most important deity in these parts.”

I decided maybe he liked the intellectual type.

“Ah, yes,” I said. “The earth goddess, mistress of animals, whose sacred creature, the serpent, betokened her role as a goddess of the Underworld. One is struck by her seemingly contradictory nature-the maiden and the mother, ruler of the dead and of rebirth…”

Jim’s jaw dropped. Then he started to laugh. After a few seconds I joined him. I hadn’t intended to do a conscious imitation, but my voice had sounded just like that of my high school history teacher, Miss Pomeroy.

“You must have had a professor who was the twin sister of mine,” he said. “There is an underlying logic beneath the seeming contradiction, of course. The mother was once a virgin, and death must precede resurrection. It startled me, at first, to see how readily the tenets of Christianity could be adapted. But then Christianity was an Oriental religion originally, and the concept of divine sacrifice comes from Egypt and Syria. The god must die in order to ensure the rebirth of vegetation in spring, and the resurrection of the body-”

He stopped abruptly. His funny peaky eyebrows rose even higher.

“Why are we talking like this?” he asked.

“I was trying to impress you,” I said candidly.

“You did. But… I guess the trouble is I’m trying to work up to an apology.”

“What for?”

In a casual, absentminded way he took my hand.

“The other day. I was rude.”

“So was Frederick.”

“Sure, but that didn’t justify my being rude to you. Quite the contrary.” He was still holding my hand. His fingers were long and hard.