Tom Foran Clark

Lowen said he'd pay Emery well for services rendered, if he'd go to Crete and pick up the pieces -- try to figure out what in hell had happened to MacLaren, and to the figurines.

Emery had to tell him he couldn't do it. He told Lowen he had to head north to Scandinavia to go find the girl of his dreams.

"The girl of your dreams," Lowen thought on it. "Maybe her name is Frida?"

Emery shuddered. "How do you know that?"

"It wasn't long after you left here to go off with that guy to ride a bike in Italy," Lowen remembered, pulling thoughtfully on his goatee. "This shining girl came in, alone -- startlingly beautiful -- blonde, luminous, glowing, grining cheek to cheek, green eyes sparkling, wearing diaphonous white cloth and gold earrings and a gold necklace. She -- Frida -- asked about you. She asked if I remembered you. She told me she'd met you in Italy and you had mentioned me. She was herself going home again, to Stockholm. Then, some time later, months later, she was back in here again. Not too long ago. She'd been in Stockholm, and she'd been in Copenhagen, too. She asked me if I'd heard anything from you lately, and of course I hadn't. She said that if I did hear from you, I should tell you that she was going to Crete. That was amazing to me, of course. Crete! I mentioned this guy McLaren, suggesting she might look into his whereabouts once she got to Crete -- if he was on Crete. I said he'd been up her way, in Scandinavia -- in Copenhagen-- had got a room, had fled when the Danish police had showed up, had shouted on the phone, 'Hmmmph, hrrerra! Fevery bare goo!' and so on. Now Frida stared at me with disbelief. 'Frederik Bergoo?' she asked. She was obviously completely stunned."

Lowen now explained how Frida had told him how she'd recently met this "interesting older man" -- a "large and hairy madman," Frida had described him -- "an aging artist hailing from the Faeroe Islands, one Frederik Bergoo -- the very 'feathery bear glue' Dennis McLaren had shouted out about on the phone."

"Fettrich Berkoo? He was her lover?"

"An acquaintance. Bergoo," Lowen corrected. "Frederik Bergoo."

Lowen laid it on the table. Frida's acquaintance Frederik Bergoo had fallen on hard times. Frida had cheered up the old guy. Bergoo was married, she'd said -- but his wife did not understand him. Frida said Frederik Bergoo had decided he would not be returning to the Faroe islands any time soon -- would not be returning to his wife any time soon. He had decided he would be going to Crete with Frida instead. And apparently my man Maclaren had talked to this Bergoo before the cops had got to him.

Lowen had figured out that McLaren had made his way back to Crete to pick up where he'd left off -- excavating, rummaging, foraging, forging figurines -- doing whatever it was he'd been doing there. Lowen had e-mailed a staffer at the J. Paul Getty Center in California, who'd told him McLaren had quit working there. He was told MacLaren had gone "freelance" -- was doing private consulting. He'd severed the connection, and had ceased communicating with them, too. Lowen assumed he'd be hearing from macLaren again eventually.

"You can now yourself go seek out Frida, Bergoo, and McLaren on Crete," Lowen said. He said he knew some people on the island. He had helped Frida and Bergoo get cheap rooms at a commune in the western part of Crete, in the south. "Here, I have their phone number. Call them when you get there. And call me or e-mail me when you arrive -- keep me posted."

Old Lowen got Emery a flight out of Paris on a 1-300 B4 plane seating 315 people. The plane was soon twelve meters up, flying 870 kilometers an hour, passing over the snow covered Austrian Alps, next flying over Yugoslavia, then Albania, and on to Athens where luminous, delicious oranges were being sold on bleak, ashen streets. The grim city was surrounded on three sides by rough mountains -- Mount Parnitha, Mount Penteli, and Mount Hymettos. At the core of the congested city was "Plaka." In Plaka there were cheap flop houses with communal bedding for half a dollar, where local wines cost seven cents a glass.

In the morning, Emery took a bus to Piraeus on the Saronic Gulf, hidden by clouds. He enjoyed early morning coffee at a harborfront cafe. Black-haired, brown-eyed sailors in green uniforms stood idly about. Emery had evening tickets for Heraklion, and so had time to kill. He'd be on the ferry traveling overnight to Heraklion. He walked to the town center. He ate bread and Feta cheese. It was very cloudy, very chilly. Back at the docks in the evening, he boarded the ferry, the "Knossos."

Over much commotion of boats came a splendid lavendar sunset. Stars emerged. About sixty percent of those aboard the ferry were Greeks; the rest were tourists -- cfouples, families. Old women in black held their hands in their laps; old men in black sipped black coffee, smoked cigarettes, sat at card tables. At the railing, Emery silently regarded the quiet lapping waters.

The boat departed the port of Piraeus at 6:00 p.m. Emery laid out a sleeping bag on the deck. Emery was awake at sunrise, and could see the coming land. The boat arrived at the shores of Crete at 6:00 a.m. -- Kriti, the Greeks call it, the centre of the ancient Minoan civilisation that flourished more than 4000 years before, until Santorini’s volcano exploded in 1628 BC, engulfing the ancient kingdom in ash and tidal waves.

A guidebook had illuminated to him Crete's location at the Southern Aegean Sea and at the crossroads of three continents -- Europe, Asia and Africa. Covering an area of 8,336 square kilometers, Crete had 1.046 kilometers (650 miles) of coastline. The island was 260 kilometers (160 miles) long and 60 kilometers (37 miles) at the widest point between the capes of Dion and Lithinon while Isthmus of Ierapetra was merely 12 kilometers (7.5 miles) wide. A high mountain range crossed the island from West to East, formed by three different groups of mountains. To the West the White Mountains (2.452 meters), in the middle the mountain of Idi (Psiloritis-2.456 meters) and to the East the mountains of Dikti (2.148 meters). The runoff from these mountains gave the island fertile plateaus like Lasithi, Omalos and Nidha, caves like Diktaion and Idaion cave, and enormous cliffs and deep clefts like the famous Gorge of Samaria.

Emery now noticed that his shoes were gone. Then he remembered he'd stashed them deep in his rucksack the night before. Now another fellow was rummaging around, looking for his shoes, saying he'd been robbed of them. Emery gave him his extra pair of shoes -- light brushed leather hush-puppies -- and put on his waffle-stomper hiking boots. He went ahore, then ventured forth afoot toward Iraklion -- Heraklion -- Crete’s capital and the fifth-largest city in Greece.

Outside tables were set around everywhere. It was cool out. Though cloudy, Emery could see Crete's peaks, capped with snow. In the middle of the city was the marketplace, busy on Saturday -- the open-air market near Venizelou Square -- a bustling scene: fruits in wooden cartons, slaughtered pigs, and sheep hung up on hooks.

In Heraklion, Emery made the call to Frida. Bergoo answered. He said he'd meet him at the Dionysus Cafe on so and so street at such and such a time. Emery wandered idly, finally sitting down on a park bench where he sat and perused printouts of the twin figurines Walter Lowen had purchased from Dennis MacLaren. A haggard elderly woman sat down by him, and leaned over to see what he was so intently studying. "Ide and Adrasteia," she said in English. "The daughters of Melisseus."

In fact, according to Walter Lowen, the two were the daughters of the Cretan King Melisseus.

"They suckled and protected Zeus, the son of Cronus and Rhea, in his infancy," the woman said. She spoke of how, in order to prevent his ever being overthown by any child of his, Zeus' father, Cronus, had taken to eating his children upon their birth. With Zeus swelling in her belly, Rhea had sought out the help of Uranus and Gaia -- Mother Earth -- to usher her safely to Crete. There, in a cave at Mount Dikta, with the help of Adrasteia and Ide, Rhea had given birth to Zeus. Outside the cave, Cretan youths -- Curetes, or "Corybantes" -- stood guard, clashing their spears against their shields, dancing and chanting so loudly that the infant Zeus' cries would be drowned out, so that Cronus could not hear him.Inside the cave, the infant was breast-fed by not only by the nymphs Adrastia and Ide, but also by the visiting nymphs Aex, Alcinoe, Amalthea, Cynosura, Eupheme, Glauce, Hagno, Helice, Ithome, Neda, Oenoe, Phrixa, Theisoa, and Vritomartis.

In some versions of the story of Zeus in the cave at Dikta, the female Amalthea was not a human, but a goat. Emery learned the female Cretan twins Ide and Adrasteia were -- perhaps -- along with the male Greek twins Castor and Pollux -- mythological forerunners of Romulus and Remus, the twin male founders of Rome who'd been suckled by a she-wolf. As for Castor and Pollux (Poludeukeis), "Castor" was Greek for "beaver"; "Poludeukeis" meant "very sweet."

Over time, with the help of the Curetes, or Corybantes, Zeus came to preside over the secret rites of the Cretan "paideia," the illuminating process that steered men clear of "idiotic superfluities" toward reality -- "authenticity" -- genuine human nature. Paideia, combined with ethos, habits, prepared a man not only for citizenship, but also kingship. A man's education was not about learning a mere mechanical trade, but was about liberty, freedom, nobility, and the love of beauty.

Emery thanked the old lady for all this insightful information, and nervously excused himself. He made his way to the cafe where Frida's friend, Bergoo, had said he'd meet him. Emery knew the madman at a glance. Though his long blonde hair and glistening blue eyes suggested a young man of considerable vigor, his age was betrayed by deep-etched crow's feet wrinkles by his eyes, and skin that looked like the surface of a granite boulder or plank of weathered ashen oak.

"Dick?" he asked.

"My friends call me Emery," Emery said.

This weatherpounded leatherskinned Bergoo shook Emery's hand vigorously. He gestured for him to sit down and, when a waiter appeared, ordered four beers. Emery plied Bergoo with questions about Frida, but Bergoo was reluctant to respond. "She's fine," was all he'd say. "You'll see."

Bergoo asked Emery all about his flight, about the old man at the bookshop in France, and about Emery's varied travels. Then Bergoo dove into sudden discourse on sex and human relationships -- how, if you lived to be a million, still you could not figure out where humans came from, or what for, or where it could all be leading. Emery spoke of his feelings toward women -- that they were both human and yet somehow divine. "Maybe," Bergoo spoke enigmatically, wincing. He felt strongly that the visible world was only emblematic of the greater, actual world -- "the whole of nature" being, as RalphWaldo Emerson had said, "a metaphor." Bergoo said the ancient peoples had provided posterity with signs -- guideposts, keys with which to help decipher the emblems -- via their myths, but no final answers.

What he did know, Bergoo insisted, was that ancient Crete was very like the modern Polynesian island of Mangaia, where no man's education was complete until he could bring true sexual satisfaction to women. In Minoan Crete, as at contemporary Mangaia, sex was treated like any other subject requiring mentoring and practice. At thirteen or fourteen a boy began his sexual education with an older, experienced woman's teaching him to treat the entire female body as an erogenous zone. He was taught the techniques of foreplay, especially cunnilingus, arousing his partner to several orgasms before having his own orgasm. It was said that any man who could not give such esctatic satisfaction to any woman was a failure on the island.

Bergoo told Emery of the Sicilian historian Diodorus Siculus, whose " Library of History" traced the complete history of the world from creation up until Diodorus' own time (Diodorus claimed), closing with Caesar in 60 B.C. Diodorus had told of Cretans in Sikelia -- Sicily -- who'd built temples honoring the twins, Adrasteia and Ide. "Without the knowledge of his father Cronos," Diodorus Siculus had written, "the sisters had nurtured Zeus in fragrant Dykta for a year. The renown of the goddesses advanced to such a degree that the inhabitants of the region, taking no account of the expense, still honor them with offerings of gold and silver. Up to this day," Diodorus had said in his time, "the twins receive enormous revenues.” Bergoo felt he'd stumbled onto "the key to finding" the storehouse of such "enormous revenues" on Crete -- a treasure far exceeding what Diodorus claimed had been piled up in Sicily.

Bergoo led Emery to the city museum. He showed him the ceramics, pottery, jewelry, figurines -- the snake goddesses. Goldsmithery; metalwork; stoneware. Marble and stone vases from the Kamares caves. Clay tablets. Double-sided axes. Burial steles. Sarcophagi. Around town -- bookshops -- tourist shops. Chess pieces -- snake goddesses. Satyrs. Priapus.

Then the two took a bus to the Minoan Palace of Knossos. At a bus-stop, they just missed a bus. The info that had been given them had been confusing. Bergoo had asked a taxi driver for the scoop about which bus was right to catch. The driver tried to talk him into going to Knosses in the cab ("No more buses today. Is only somewhat more expensive. For you -- twenty-seven drachma") Then another bus , marked "Knossos," pulled up. The bus fare was just fourteen drachma..

Here was Knossos -- the legendary ruins -- "excavated with much imagination." The best thing -- the corners, nooks, and crannies. Clouds shifted. Sunshine. Palace, brook, goats, fir trees. The legendary excavator of Knossos, Sir Arthur Evans, had romanticized the prehistoric society, Bergoo explained. Evans had workers -- artisans -- obligingly supply artifacts -- fakes. These creations had led to further deceptions. Evans had "discovered" a building mazelike storerooms, stairways, light wells, and frescoes. He'd "discovered" clay tablets he was unable to decipher. He'd "uncovered" an early civilization to rival the Egyptian and other Oriental cultures. Evans hailed Minoan culture as the starting point and the earliest stage in the highway of European civilization. He placed King Minos's society of bull leapers and snake handlers on the same plane as ancient Egypt, Anatolia, and Mesopotamia.

Evans had begun digging up Knossos in 1900. He'd labeled the Bronze Age civilization he diescovered "Minoan," after a mythical Cretan king. Evans and his restorers covered the ruins of the palace walls with their own murals. Basically, Evans and his crew had built their own version of a Minoan palace on the foundations, decorating the place with Art Nouveau murals. He'd collected ivory and gold statuettes he dubbed bull leapers, as well as faience -- earthenware decorated with opaque colored glazes. A Swiss painter hired by Evans helped restore the Palace of Minos, recreating entire compositions. The Swiss artist and his son turned to selling copies of the stone vessels and statuettes. The fabricators carved chryselephantine figurines, then placed them in acid to eat away at the soft bits of the ivory.

"Minos" represented a dynasty reigning between 1700 and 1400 B.C. King Minos of Knossos, according to Herodotus, died 90 years before the Trojan War. Diodorus distinguished between Minos and his grandson Minos II. The name 'Minos' which had been given to colonial commercial centers of Laconia, Megaris, Sicily, Syria and perhaps even Arabia, as well as the term 'Minoan islands,' bear witness to Cretan imperialism in the Mediterranean. Minoa dominated the seas. Thucydides said King Minos, with his fleet, held sway over the Aegean, captured and colonized the Cyclades, drove out the Carians, and rid the seas of pirates.

Minoa was at the crossroads of three continents -- Asia, Africa, and Europe. Scholars agreed the Minoan people, of medium height with black curly hair and brown eyes, probably had come to Crete from Asia Minor. Minoan trade with Egyptians was documented in Egyptian drawings. They referred to the Minoans as "Men of Keftiu." Homer, referring to the island in his poems, called the island where Minos ruled "hospitable, handsome, and fertile." He emphasized how densely populated this "hospitable, handsome, and fertile" island was -- having ninety cities (he mentioned Knossos, Phaestos, Gortys, Lyttos, Kydonia, and Rhytion).

The people of Crete were divided into tribes. Families were organized in "genos" -- clans. Homer referred to Cretans of many races -- Eteocretans, Pelasgians, Ahaeans, Dorians, and Kydonians. Apparently, each spoke its own language. While the Eteocretans (True Cretans) were of Minoan descent, all the others were Greek tribes that inhabited various parts of the island at the time of Homer. Kydonians lived on the west side of the island and even today the name of the province around Chania is Kydonia. (Kydon was the son of Minos’s wife Pasiphae, and Hermes. The name means "glorious" -- and" proud.") The government of Minos was continually threatened by strife arising in the palace -- between Minos and his brothers Sarpedon and Rhadamanthys -- and strife across the island -- between the Lycians in the east, the Eteocretans ("the true Cretans") of the south, and the Pelasgians and Kydonians in the west.

From Knossos, Bergoo and Emery took a bus going to Rethymnon. They went along a road through the mountains, by tiny villages -- beautiful little mountain towns. The bus stopped in every village -- almost at every house. Here were ancient houses -- some white; some unpainted -- small wood-beams held all together. A man in an old Greek outfit went by -- hard dark brown lined face. Donkey by his side. Olive trees. Brilliant green grass, and little yellow flowers.

The city of Rethymnon was a mixture of high-end tourist resorts and a traditional inner harbor with Venetian buildings offering a view to the towering peaks of Mount Ida, said to be the birthplace of Zeus. Emery and Bergoo stayed aboard the bus and traveled down to an array of beachfront hotels, among which they found a tiny, cheap bed-and-breakfast room for the night. At a nearby taberna they ate breaded red mullet fish, Tzatziki and Choriatiki salads, souflaki, patatas, and drank red wine -- Naoussa -- not the pine pitch resin-based Demestica white Retsina. Late into the night they sipped fiery raki, a drink like Ouzo -- licorice-based -- heady stuff.

Overhead, a sliver of moon shone like a silver ladle. Emery again plied Bergoo with inquiries about Frida. "You will see," is all Bergoo would answer, while minstrels with lutes, violins, clarinets, bouzoukis, guitars, kondylias, and yerakoludunas sang their lively Mantinades -- Venetian Matinadas -- songs of love. "She's fine," Bergoo insisted. "You'll see."