Also, Father Agathangelos never questioned the well-dressed man who came almost every month to give him an envelope.
There were some months when he would not come, but when he did come back, there was double to triple the amount of money inside. "Father, you are doing a perfect job of taking care of this helpless amnesiac," the man would say condescendingly.
The Father politely kept quiet. But the eye of his soul suspected something evil. The priest never kept a single drachma of the money for himself. The poor and the nuns next door benefited from whatever he received. The Father put his full trust in God. "The Lord had his way of doing things. In due time the truth will be revealed," he thought.
***
It was late on a warm afternoon when Theodoros finished cleaning the floor of the large round church. The Father closed the door and slowly descended the stone steps and crossed the courtyard. As Theodoros walked through the rows of gravestones, he stopped and looked at each and every one. Sometimes he would smile and at other times he became frightened and covered his face.
The two Egyptian caretakers in the cemetery were used to seeing him. They lived in a unit in another part of the cemetery. Every afternoon they would have sweet Turkish coffee, using a white marble grave top for a table. One was rather portly, with several front teeth missing. His white cotton tunic was filthy, and he hadn't shaved for days. Yet there was something pleasant about him, because he had a perpetual smile on his face. The other man was thin and tall. His face was wrinkled, dry, and sullen. He often walked in the middle of the night among the dead.
The two caretakers always invited Theodoros for coffee. They all enjoyed drinking together, safe and protected in the high-walled compound. However, in spite of the fourmeter-high walls, the guards could not always protect the dead from grave robbers. Many family graves were opened and the remains desecrated. Quite a few heads were hurriedly severed from the body. Fingers and wrists were also often missing, as were gold-capped teeth from the mouths of the skeletons.
Such was the life at St. George's. Theodoros cleaned the church, guarded the dead, and helped the Father with morning prayers and evening Vespers. Every day Theodoros would visit the little cave next to the cemetery, and sit there for hours, watching the pilgrims come and go, unaware of his silent presence. Church tradition has it that this was the exact spot where Joseph and the Ever Holy Virgin Mary had brought the infant Jesus to save him from Herod's slaughter of the babies. They stayed in this place for years until the angel of God told them Herod was dead and it was safe for them to return to Bethlehem.