Читать книгу The Journey: How an obscure Byzantine Saint became our Santa Claus - David Price Williams - Страница 94

hanging about in the background. Maybe that’s the woman you’re thinking of?”

Could that have been Calista, my father’s faithless wife, I wondered? Had she managed to escape from the shipwreck as well? How could that possibly be? For a moment I felt outraged, but then I thought of my new calling, of the message of Jesus to be generous to your enemies, to those who seek occasion against you. I tried to put it to the back of my mind.

“It’s of no importance,” I said, collecting myself. “So, if I am to make this journey for you what do we have to do next?”

“We have to go to the Temple of Isis to seal the bargain,” Apollodorus announced, putting his arm around my shoulder in a fatherly way and, making as if to leave the shop, he confided, “No time like the present, is there?”

He guided me into the street and we walked a couple of blocks to a very colourful Egyptian building decorated with palm columns topped with opening lotus flowers across the façade. The whole lintel above the door was painted with huge outspread wings with a golden sun disk in the middle from which sprang two winged cobras. I’d seen that motif before in one of the Egyptian temples back home. Feeling a little uncomfortable, I walked with him up the steps into the interior where there was a large seated female effigy with a statue of a small boy in her lap. She was wearing on her head

THE JOURNEY