NOELLE AND CATHERINE
Athens: 1946
21
Early the following morning Larry went down to the village. He asked Catherine to join
him, but she demurred, telling him that she was going to sleep late. The moment he left,
Catherine got out of bed, hurriedly dressed and went over to the hotel gymnasium which
she had investigated the day before. The instructress, a Greek Amazon, told her to strip,
then examined her body critically.
“You have been lazy, lazy,” she scolded Catherine. “That was a good body. If you are
willing to work hard, Theou thellondos—God willing—it can be good again.”
“I’m willing,” said Catherine. “Let’s see how God shapes up.”
Under the tutelage of the Amazon Catherine worked out every day, going through the
agonies of body-contouring massage, a Spartan diet and grueling exercises. She kept all
this from Larry, but by the end of the fourth day the change in her was noticeable enough
for him to comment on it.
“This place really agrees with you,” he said. “You look like a different girl.”
“I am a different girl,” Catherine replied, suddenly shy.
On Sunday morning Catherine went to church. She had never seen a Greek Orthodox
mass. In a village as small as Ioannina she had expected to find a little country church, but
to her surprise she walked into a large, richly decorated church with beautiful elaborate
carvings on the walls and ceiling and a marble floor. In front of the altar were a dozen
enormous silver candelabras, and around the room were frescoes of Biblical paintings.
The priest was thin and swarthy with a black beard. He wore an elaborate gold and red
robe and a tall black hat, and he stood on what looked to Catherine like a sedan chair on a
raised platform.
Along the wall were individual wooden benches and next to them a row of wooden
chairs. The men sat in the front of the church and the women in the rear. I guess the men
get to Heaven first, Catherine thought.
A chanting began in Greek, and the priest stepped down from the platform and
moved to the altar. A red curtain parted and behind it was a lavishly robed, white-bearded
patriarch. On a table in front of him stood a symbolical jeweled hat and a gold cross. The
old man lit three candles tied together, representing, Catherine supposed, the Holy Trinity,
and handed them to the priest.
The mass lasted for one hour, and Catherine sat there savoring the sights and sounds
and thinking about how lucky she was and she bowed her head and gave a prayer of