LITMIR.BIZ

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But while the Bulgars and other marauding Slavs never succeeded in establishing a toe-hold within the city, later waves of invaders—Franks, Venetians and Turks—displayed a curious immunity to the saintly proscription.

      The Slavs’ failure to capture Salonica came to haunt them, and sowed the seeds of Great Bulgarian and Great Serbian designs on the city. But hypersensitivity to their presence still rules Greek historiography, and occupies the conceptual core of the country’s reaction to the existence of a Slav-speaking Macedonian national minority within the country’s boundaries, and to the creation of a state called Macedonia on its northern border.

      BY THE FOLLOWING DAY Salonica’s defender has vanished, retreated into the gilded unidimensionality of his icon, no longer the horseman who appears on the ramparts to rally the troops, repulse the barbarian Slavs and save the city in its hour of need. A more contemporary warrior deity—national security—which brooks no uncertainty, no theological disputation, has usurped his place as the Greek armed forces stage their annual march-past of military preparedness to mark another, more recent anniversary: the rejection of fascist Italy’s 1940 ultimatum by the equally fascist Greek government of the day. The ensuing war, brief and bitter, was the country’s last victorious encounter on the battlefield against an external foe. When Hitler dispatched Panzer divisions and SS units in overwhelming strength to rescue his hapless Italian ally, the Greek forces, their morale sapped by pro-Nazi commanders, were forced to surrender.

      After a late and raucous night with writers Yorgos Skabardonis and Christos Zafiris, men whose passionate avocation is the micro-history of their home town, I was in no mind for an early wake-up call. But a roar shook me from sleep and to my feet at the crack of dawn. Dashing to my front window, the one which overlooks the White Tower, I saw phalanxes of tanks and armored personnel carriers careening full bore down the corniche in the pre-dawn mist. “Doesn’t bother us a bit, as long as they only come out on national holidays,” a friend joked later. “But if you hear that sound on a normal work day, it just might be a coup d’État.” A reminder that Greece, for all its democratic patina, has spent much of its brief national life as a succession of military dictatorships, the last of which collapsed ignominiously in 1974.

      Several hours later the same fire-snorting dragons come roaring back along the same broad boulevard—slower this time, but with the same bellychurning roar—escorting folklore groups in regional costume, ranks of school children, the Salonica police and fire brigade, and detachments of military cadets, soldiers, sailors and commandos, while Mirages and F-16s scream overhead at low altitude. Then come the same brass bands which had performed in the Saint Demetrius’ day parade, this time belting out jaunty military marches. The musicians are true to counter-type: plump flutists, thin men stooped under fat tubas, and a French horn player with artsy flowing auburn hair.

      After the parade, the citizens in their tens of thousands stroll homeward along the corniche in brilliant late-October sunlight, past an impromptu seafront bazaar staffed by men and women of dark complexion shouting the quintessentially Balkanic “ande ande” (“hurry hurry,” or “step right up”) as they hawk bargain glassware; cheap socks and underwear; peanuts, pistachios, roasted chickpeas and sunflower seeds; souvlaki and ice-cream; miracle spot removing fluids and soda pop which may well be the same stuff in different bottles.

      On the eve of the long holiday weekend it was unlikely that many Salonicians had Saint Demetrius on their minds as they rose at dusk from their late-afternoon siesta, sipped a long, lingering coffee, then fanned out toward the tavernas that line the seashore or dot the walled precincts of the upper town, and thence to the city’s throbbing, smoky night-clubs, discotheques and strip joints. Everyone knows danger is remote. The display of military might which had rumbled past the reviewing stand earlier in the day has been, after all, enough to give pause to Greece’s Balkan opponents. More than enough to dissuade any cheap regional reincarnation of Saddam Hussein. Tirana and Skopje and Ankara, watch yourselves, was the parade’s underlying message, a judicious admixture of barely sublimated aggressivity and confidence. Perhaps overconfidence.

      Greece’s tug-of-war with Europe—with the world at large—over the name and symbols of the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia has revealed a deep-seated emotional sub-stratum which, once activated, is creating a dynamic all its own. The universe, in the southern Balkans, is not unfolding as it should, and although the smoke and blood and misery of Bosnia are well over the horizon, the re-emergence of powerful national and religious currents is now a fact throughout the region. Greek youth—who this very evening will be thronging the night clubs and the pinball parlors—have grown plump and indolent, addicted to motorcycles and a diet of cigarettes, fast-food and late nights spiced with random hooliganism. They would make a poor match for the tough, wiry, hungry mountaineers or shanty-town dwellers of Albania or Turkey, should push ever come to shove. Once again the Salonicians may have to summon Saint Demetrius to defend the city.

      ANOTHER FINE NOVEMBER DAY I SET OUT on a whirlwind tour of Salonica’s Byzantine and post-Byzantine churches, attaching myself to a group of freshfaced and earnest Princeton University graduate students. Their professor, Slobodan Curcic, a Serbian Byzantinologist has graciously permitted me to tag along. Distances are short and the walking is easy as we hasten from one impromptu lecture hall to the next through the city’s compact central core where the remains of its Roman, Byzantine and Ottoman past are concealed. There is not a moment to spare for wandering down a winding lane, for turning right when we should turn left: time is of the essence. Professor Curcic has drawn up a militarily precise schedule of on-the-spot lessons to be given by local art historians and archeologists, each designed to tease a deeply concealed meaning from these historic relics, like garlic snails to be extracted from their shells with a combination of sharp forks and strong wrists.

      Our first stop is Panaghia Halkeon—Our Lady of the Brass Founders—named for the craftsmen whose workshops have been located in the area for more than two millennia. The tiny church lies below street level just off the Via Egnatia, Salonica’s historic main thoroughfare. Founded in the eleventh century, the church is built entirely of fired brick and mortar, materials of extraordinary plasticity and endurance. But beneath the building, we learn, lies a vaulted sub-structure: perhaps catacombs dating from the Roman period, perhaps even a Cabirian shrine from post-Alexandrian days when the cult, dear to metal workers, thrived here. The void below ground has caused the church to settle, explain the specialists. Even as we speak ultra-sound mapping techniques, they claim proudly, are being used to chart these spaces. Technology is expected to shed new light on the subterranean mysteries and allow the church to be stabilized.

      Previous attempts to clean the exquisite frescoes that coat the inside surfaces of the dome and walls have, however, a rather more cautionary tale to tell. Experts of a previous generation used an abrasive powder to cut through the grime of centuries, scouring the delicate paintings and forever altering their intense colors. Will the perspicacity of today’s experts, technically competent men and women who seem quite unmoved by the holy precincts in which they wield their disincarnate technique, prove to be substantially greater? Their exemplary discipline may have blinded them to the dimension of faith without which these monuments are little more than predictable compositions, the mere sum of their physical components. Sophisticated though soulless constructs of brick, mortar, wood, mosaic and pigment. Don’t, whispers an inner voice. Do not attempt to open the vaults, do not listen to the seductive ping-pinging of the ultra-sound sensors. Leave the concave inner spaces to the sacred mysteries which may inhabit them still, but which will surely flee if exposed to the cruel light of scientific inquiry, to the polluted air of the late twentieth century. For though we may have abandoned the gods—the Cabiri and the saints—they may not have irrevocably abandoned us.

      Time to move on, says professor Curcic, glancing at his watch. The group rushes off breathlessly, notebook pages flapping, toward Aghioi Apostoli—The Church of the Holy Apostles—all that remains of the late Byzantine monastic complex abutting the city’s western ramparts. Ranks of brooding, peeling apartment blocks, their balconies hung with laundry, leer down at the church, whose once ample courtyard now opens only onto the weed-grown remnants of the cyclopean walls. That such a space has endured is nothing short of miraculous. What little of the Byzantine city survived the great fire of 1917 was all but obliterated by the construction

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