The 34th Degree

59

M any of the same Athenians who had attended Baron von Berg’s party the night before now packed the cathedral for the Saturday-morning memorial service. It marked the anniversary of General Nicholas Andros’s death, two years since he had fallen defending Crete from the invading Germans. To pay their respects to the war hero was to prove their patriotism.

Chris Andros watched the spectacle in smoldering silence while altar boys swung their censers to the chants of the towering figure of Archbishop Damaskinos. A few pews ahead, seated with her parents, was an uncomfortable-looking Aphrodite, dressed in fashionable black.

Andros had never felt lower in his life. Last night’s nightmare with Aphrodite had been bad enough. But to wake up to his father’s memorial service and the harsh light of his own failures seemed unusually cruel. It was worse than death.

Since he knew no man could escape death, death never scared Andros. How a man died, on the other hand, was paramount, the ultimate epitaph on one’s life. To die like his father, in battle, defending country, family, and friends, was the ultimate honor. It was just as good to live a long life like his grandfather, raise a large family, and die surrounded by people with whom one had left a positive legacy. Neither fate looked likely for him.

Life seemed so unfair in regard to his measure as a man, Andros thought. He would never be as revered as General Nicholas Andros, and yet he would never escape the sins of his father either. Furthermore, he had hoped to return to Greece a conquering hero, having proved his valor with the U.S. Army. But here he was, in the middle of the war, having proved nothing to anybody. Not to his uncle Mitchell, not to Aphrodite, and not to the Allies or himself. He had failed.

After last night’s disaster, Andros felt more helpless than ever in his bid to save Aphrodite. Indeed, she seemed to have been managing for herself as well as one could expect before he showed up with an accusing finger. For him to inform her that she was no longer a pure, untainted virgin seemed cruel to him now, and he was sorry he had ever held that expectation over her head. He was also sorry he’d ever let an issue as frivolous as the role of a Danish king in Greece get between him and his father.

“Truly, all things are vanity, and life is but a shadow and a dream,” boomed the archbishop. “For in vain doth everyone born of earth disquiet himself, as saith the Scripture. When we have acquired the world, then do we take up our dwelling in the grave, where kings and beggars are the same. Wherefore, O Christ our God, give rest to Thy servant departed this life, forasmuch as Thou lovest mankind.”

Andros never understood the practice of praying for the dead. If man was appointed to die once and then the Judgment, then Andros failed to see how his prayers could alter the departed’s eternal destiny if it had been determined. Moreover, how could this expression of love and remembrance after his father’s death make up for what Chris had failed to express to him during his life?

He looked up at the domed ceiling, at Christ the Almighty gazing down from heaven. The Son of God seemed so distant up there in the celestial bodies, Andros thought, while here on earth, mortal men killed one another. Where was God now that the world was at war, now that lovers like him and Aphrodite stood so close to each other and yet so far apart, now that he was about to stare at the grave of a father whose side he had abandoned at the most crucial hour? Could God return what now seemed lost forever?