Ammi Midstokke: The curse of Saint Kosmas

The tiny Greek village of Agios Kosmas was never much of a village to begin with, boasting a few hundred people and having derived most of its character from its inhabitants and legends of its namesake, Kosmas the Aetolian.

The Orthodox monk passed through during his years of prophecy in the 1700s and cursed the place, perhaps for the few still speaking Arvanitika rather than Greek or maybe someone didn’t add enough dill to the tzatziki. Either way, the village pretty much ignored the matter until Kosmas was given sainthood, which appears to add fresh potency to even a stale curse.

One couldn’t say their gardens did not grow well afterward or that any more calamity fell upon their village than the other villages of the region who suffered the atrocities of war, but for good measure they eventually renamed themselves after the saint and carried on as they always had. Which is to say that the population declined at a rate higher than the mortalities because villages are a dying form of community, occasionally attempting revival through paltry substitutes like HOAs and low-income housing.

The roads to the village are being eaten slowly by the sun-baked vines of berry bushes and thorns of thistles, their edges long faded into a forest that threatens to swallow them entirely at the next good downpour. The wild boars have tossed rocks of varying size onto what is left of the pavement, causing the few cars that pass to swerve or risk in the very least a hubcap. Not that there are many cars here and certainly fewer hubcaps.

Agios Kormas has about 10 year-round residents. Most of them can be found any given time at its single tavern near the town square (consisting of a tree and a swing set), owned and operated by a man named Socrates, naturally, whose face bears the deep grooves of laughter. While there is no store for miles, one can order a lamb dinner by the kilo any time, and the tsipouro does not stop flowing.

When we think of a country, it is often the few images that make postcards and tourism brochures (see: Greece = Santorini), but to understand the substance of it, we need to go to a place quiet enough to feel its pulse. It is noted in the predawn roosters and the distant bells of sheep, in the first sunrise steps wandering down the road, and the conversations taking place over stone walls.

The pulse of this village is weakening. No longer are generations raised here, only homes inherited by those who have lives elsewhere. Once, it was the children who owned them. Now it is grandchildren and cousins who appear for a week here or there but share stories of their childhood summers here, of the relatives who brought life to the place a generation, two, or three ago.

Back then, they loaded the village blankets and rugs onto the backs of donkeys and lugged them down the mountain to the mill. At the mill, a water pipe diverted from the river gushes into a round stone cauldron, causing a furious spinning of fresh water. The launderer throws the blankets into the thundering drum to clean them until they are ready to be hung on a line.

And though blankets seem an intimate and personal thing, those of friend and foe are strung up next to each other where I imagine they trade the gossip of their households.

Here, the grievances of neighbors are forgiven by slow erosion of time. Quarrels and incompatibilities are ignored at the dinner table until they are forgiven but not forgotten. As far as I can tell, nothing here is ever forgotten, only softened when a soul departs and leaves the task of oral history to those left behind. It becomes the fabric of conversations that offer an expanded demographic to an ever-shrinking population.

“Here along this stone wall,” my friend points out as we walk, “the mule and animal traders used to come and sleep with their animals on their way through. If someone needed an animal, they could come here to buy one.” For a moment, the narrow street comes alive with the memories of such sounds and smells, travelers sleeping on blankets on the ground, of the bartering worthy of the most animated Greek drama (as is any exchange of commerce here).

Now the village is permeated by the smells of encroaching nature instead of the musk of animals. The neglected yards of thistle and tall grasses offer a sweet perfume in the heat of day. Something ancient and lonely wafts from the stone walls of empty houses, as if the redolence of remembering could bring it back to life. But the memories are also overgrown with the weeds of time, and few left to better explain their vague recollection.

At night, the same people come together at tavern or table to resuscitate the weakening pulse with stories of their days as if nothing has changed. A bee hive was repaired, a garden planted, a house listed for sale. The lightning bugs are out, the boars are causing a ruckus. A field needs mowing, the shepherd has moved the sheep to a different draw, the river is flowing low and slow. And the village handyman has found good work in Santorini.

“I told you what the curse was, didn’t I?” asks my friend as we run along the crumbling road one morning. My silence answers.

“It was that there would be no new houses ever built here.”

Ammi Midstokke can be contacted at ammim@spokesman.com.