Rodhópou and Diktynna By now Marlena and I had settled into an amiable relationship of mental affection and verbal fun that did not include an affair. I halfway agreed with her when the subject sighed into the glances between us: 'Marriage is hell, affairs are fun but quickly get mouldy, one-night-stands are a half-finished drink, and friendships last longer than all of them. Take your pick, Douglas.' It turned out idyllic that way. Every week we tried a new restaurant. Every week we waddled our way home. This week it was the Fortezza. From the tourist brochures I knew it to be an old fortification-cum-customs station strategically located in the middle of the long seawall that protects Χανιά harbour. It now was a restaurant. 'Skip lunch,' she advised me. 'That good, uh?' 'Or that bad. Only one way to find out.' We went out on the Fortezza’s little shuttle boat from near the Maritime Museum. 'Tips graciously accepted,' stated a little sign above a tin cup. Around us, Χανιά’s modest contingent of crab potters phutt-phutted their way to sea. Above us a pinwheel of stars bridged us to the farthest reach of the universe. The sun was just above the horizon over the Rodhopou ridge. Marlena’s eyes followed my gaze there. 'In June the sun used to set through the portals of Diktynna’s temple,' she said. 'It is a sacred time for Kriti women, a symbol that the hero on the blazing chariot must in the end come home to us.' ‘I've read that the name Diktynna came from a goddess even remoter than the Minoan gods, and Minoan times were a thousand years before Odyssean times. For the Greek sailors before Homer,
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