"Jo Walton - The Rebirth of Pan" - читать интересную книгу автора (Walton Jo)

like a solid wall of heat and brightness. The contrast of stepping through the hanging bags and sandals
into the shadowed interior was too much for human eyes. At the same moment the newcomer would
pause, inhale the characteristic fresh leather and jasmine smell of the shop and sniff to catch it again.
Yanni sat in the back of the shop, at a little table with his set of lasts, working with leather. Whenever
anyone walked in he would glance up and watch them blink and sniff. Mostly it was someone he knew, a
regular wanting another pair of sandals or a leather bag. Often enough it was a tourist, who would gush
enchantedly over everything from the donkeys tied up outside to the quality of workmanship. Whoever it
was, Yanni would sum them up in one rapid glance. It was his only hesitation in his work, and it was very
brief. Even before his youngest sister Taxeia bustled up to the customer and tried to sell them something,
Yanni would drop his eyes to the grey iron of his last, the pale gold leather and the tools in his hands.

Just occasionally someone would come to the door and step inside without pause, blink or sniff.
That was Yanni's signal to put down his work, dismiss Taxeia with a smile, and step forward, attentive to
his holy patron. What happened after Taxeia scampered up the iron ladder to the upstairs room, what
size and style sandals the gods wore, and what coin they used, were things he never told anyone. Indeed,
he was a very close-mouthed man, even for a shoemaker.

When people asked him questions about Them he just smiled, or agreed that he was indeed a
fortunate man and tried to turn the conversation aside. When Yanni had inherited the mantle of holy
shoemaker at his grandfather's death there was some surprise and muttering among the other
shoemakers. Spiro in particular was jealous, and quarrelled bitterly with his sister, Yanni's mother Dafni.
Though as time went on Yanni's status and his discretion became known and accepted things. Everyone
became used to the state of affairs which was after all in no way remarkable.

When his neighbour, Pappa Andros, the local priest, asked him about his visitors he was careful to
refer to them always as "Agios"—"the holy", a word in common use for saints and gods alike. Pappa
Andros did not press him. He was a local man, and the gods had always had their sandals from Ithyka,
for longer than anyone could count. There was a tale that it was here that Ag. Hermes had run down Ag.
Hephaestos' runaway cow, and Hephaestos, coming up behind, had taken the hide from the creature,
dead of exhaustion. After pondering for a moment he invented both leather-working and tanning, and
taught the crafts to the ancestors of the islanders, who were crowding round, interested in this new thing.
Whether one called them gods or saints it was much the same.

The priest had grown up, as all the islanders did, hearing the stories of how Ag. Pavlos went around
Greece converting the gods. Some would bow a knee to Christ and some would not. Those who would
not Ag. Pavlos cast out to exile, and those who would became saints. Pappa Andros knew that such
stories were frowned on in the seminary in Athens, and by those bishops who complained that their
church had never had a reformation and was still riddled with pagan superstitions. He had been too slow
and too shy to speak up then and ask whether something was a superstition if it was true. That slowness
and shyness was probably why he was back in his home town dealing with its problems as well as he
could, and not in Athens or Thessaloniki at the heart of church politics and the affairs of the world.

He was well content with his life. He had joined the church to devote himself to Christ and to Ag.
Nikolaos. He knew Ag. Nikolaos had been Poseidon. When the people said that he would one day be
Poseidon again when the world was reborn he reproached them, but not with any sense that they were
really wrong. He could not take birch twigs dipped in holy water and cast out the spirits of sloth, idleness
and malice from the houses of his people if he did not believe as they did. So they trusted him and came
to him with their problems and not to Pappa Thomas in the big church of Ag. Paraskevi. This sometimes
caused bad feeling with Pappa Thomas, who was young and well educated and a great believer in logic
and progress.