Читать книгу The Journey: How an obscure Byzantine Saint became our Santa Claus - David Price Williams - Страница 26

through the glaucous pellets, cleaning off any dust or flies that had got stuck to their surface until well after dark. It did not sell for a huge price down in the market. It was a much cheaper option than, say, frankincense. But he sold enough of it that slowly he began to make a substantial living. The advantage was that it didn’t need processing, like the oils and unguents the perfume makers produced. He just needed a lot of it, which took all the spare time and effort he could put into it.

The day came when he felt he could go it alone, so he said farewell to the perfume business and set out on his own. Everyone wanted incense. They burnt it in braziers around the house to ward off evil spirits (and to disguise the household smells that hung around the rooms!) It was used in a prayerful way in the smaller temples, ‘to ascend to the gods,’ to placate their senses. And most importantly it was burned at every funeral, to enable the person’s spirit to lift with it to the heavens, or so everyone believed. My father didn’t care one way or the other, so long as people went on buying his little bags of dried resin. And the smell it exuded while it was smouldering was quite pleasant, I suppose. I was brought up with it so I can’t really say I liked or loathed it. But it put food on the table and I didn’t think anything about it.

Gradually, with hard work and long hours my father amassed quite a sizable amount. I never saw any of it when I was growing up. He always retained that village cunning with which he had

THE JOURNEY