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furniture. Then I looked up, and there was a woman sitting opposite me. She was sitting on a wooden chair, the kind that never has four legs the same length. And uncomfortable.”
    “Exactly like these,” he put in.
    “Exactly like these. And she, she was the most beautiful woman you could ever imagine. She wasn’t young, though she had no lines in her face, not even when she smiled. Her skin was porcelain smooth, and bright with health, touched with gold, as if she had been kissed by the sun. Her hair was the blonde of a Scandinavian, all beautifully woven with flowers. And her face—her lips were full like a young girl’s, and her eyes were captivating, mesmerizing… such a beautiful, beautiful face. On her forearm, she wore a coiled bracelet, a silver snake with jeweled eyes, and she was so lovely I gazed and gazed at her. I wanted her hair, and her bracelet. I wanted to be like her. No, more than that. I wanted to
be
her.
    “And I knew she was in the wrong chair. She didn’t speak to me but I knew we should change places. I didn’t want to, not at all. I wanted to stay in my lovely chair, but I knew I must give it to her. So I got out of my soft armchair and she went and sat in it, and I sat on her uncomfortable one. Then she smiled at me and pointed towards my feet. There was a parcel there I hadn’t noticed, somekind of gift in a box, gorgeously wrapped in cellophane and ribbons, and I knew it was for me.”
    She was silent, remembering.
    Nikos said, “Did you open the parcel?”
    “No.”
    He leaned forward to press his point. “Take an old man’s advice, Irinaki. Don’t.”
    T hey sat on for a while, in silence, growing colder.
    “Dreams of Aphrodite are always dangerous,” he said. “Especially to married women.”
    “Aphrodite?”
    “Who else could she possibly be? Listen to me, Irini. I’m quite serious. You must avoid the gift of Love she brought you at all costs. It will end in heartbreak. Love your husband. He’s a good man.”
    “Yes, he’s a good man,” she agreed. But love? She looked past him, considering: was affection an adequate substitute, or just a pale form of an emotion valuable only in its deeper state?
    “Anyway,” she said, “old age is making you superstitious. There are no gods.”
    “Why so certain? Look.” He gestured towards the hill-sides, and at the open sea. “This is their terrain. They’re not far away. Some say when the people stopped believing in them, they ceased to exist. But this view’s still what it was when Jason built the
Argo
and the Minotaur was eating virgins in the labyrinth. Two thousand years, and nothing’s changed; and don’t think they’ve gone!Orthodoxy is just a façade, a veneer. If you look around,
really
look”—he pointed to the center of his forehead—“using
this
eye, then you start to see. They’re here. They’re watching. And interfering.”
    Far inside his stomach came a shot of pain, as if a spiteful finger had found and poked at the heart of its disease.
    “They play with us still,” he said. “And they still don’t play fair. Christianity demands a life of good behavior, but there’s a straightforward payoff at the end. That’s why it was so easy to persuade the ancients that they should dump Zeus and his whole rotten family in favor of the Israelite. The old gods are self-serving, and vindictive. Except on rare occasions. Sometimes, when the mischief had been bad, old Zeus would make amends. Sometimes, he’d do the right thing. He had it in him.”
    “You shouldn’t talk this way,” she interrupted. “Mama would think you’re leading me into paganism. We’re Christians now.”
    “Yes, but why?” he persisted. “Why did we change allegiance? I’ll tell you why. Reliability. You know where you are with Christ. Live a good, clean life, and buy your passage into paradise. With the old ones, virtue made them jealous. And happiness was worse. They didn’t like to see mere mortals happy. If you were too