The 34th Degree

22

A phrodite Vasilis was swimming in the mouth of the Chalikiopoulos Lagoon on the Greek island of Corfu while two of Baron von Berg’s SS bodyguards watched nervously from shore. High above them, overlooking the lagoon from its lofty hill, was the Villa Achillion, the Baron’s estate. No doubt more SS were watching her from the terrace. She knew that if she should so much as take in a mouthful of water and choke for but a moment, the Baron would have their heads when he returned to the island.

“You look so hot and uncomfortable, boys,” she called out in Greek, splashing some water, teasing them as she often did. “Don’t you want to come in?”

Hans looked like he very much wanted to join her, but Peter spoke sharply to him in German and offered him a cigarette instead. How anybody could smoke outside in the heat of the day Aphrodite could never understand, but it was an addiction her father the tobacco merchant had always encouraged.

She sighed and let her eyes drift across the sparkling water toward Pondikonissi, or Mouse Island, the farther of two islets that floated offshore. Legend said that the islet was Odysseus’s ship, the one Poseidon turned to stone. Seen from a distance, the dark mound did indeed resemble a vessel enshrouded in somber cypress trees. It was crowned at the top by a tiny whitewashed monastery from the eleventh century, the Church of the Pantokrator, an inviting refuge.

“Suit yourselves,” she called, and broke away toward the islet. They started calling out after her in angry, fearful tones, but she ignored them and made her way to the islet.

Upon reaching it, she rose from the water, wrung her long black hair, and let the beads of water roll off her bronzed body. At the foot of the whitewashed steps, she found her robe hanging on a peg along with some slippers. One look back toward shore showed Hans watching her through his Zeiss field glasses, to make sure she was all right, and Peter radioing the others on the villa’s terrace. She slipped on the robe, tied the belt, and ascended the steps that spiraled up to the treetops.

At the top of the hill, she emerged onto a cobbled terrace and entered the tiny monastery. It was to this hiding place that she often came, to shed her pretentious ways with the Baron, to light a candle for Chris, and to confess her life of sin to the Orthodox priest, whose wizened old face now nodded gravely as she began to cry once more in the dark.

“The Baron returns today, Father John,” she said. “Please grant me God’s forgiveness.”

Father John raised an eyebrow. “For what you have done, child, or what you are going to do?”

Aphrodite felt embarrassed to discuss such things with a priest who had sworn off the temptations of the flesh. Still, the old man smiled in a way that hinted that before making his vows, he had not passed through life without knowing its pleasures.

“What’s done is done,” she confessed, and told him once again-for her own justification rather than for his understanding-how she had met Baron Ludwig von Berg that summer day in ’42 when he was wheeled into her Red Cross hospital in Athens with a gunshot wound to the head.