by Sara Alexi
When he arrives the man introduces himself as Vasilis, and Takis shakes his hand vigorously. He wears a suit and is very thin, and he does not look at all as Spiros imagined he would.
‘So, where is this boat?’ Vasilis speaks quickly, as if he does not have the time for conversation.
‘On the outskirts of the next village.’
‘Let’s go!’ And without waiting for a reply Vasilis turns on his heels and heads back towards his big shiny car.
‘Ah, now, here’s the thing,’ says Takis. ‘For reasons I do not wish to discuss, I shall let you go alone, and once you have seen her come back here and tell me what you think.’
Vasilis raises his eyebrows, clears his throat as if he is nervous, and Takis reassures him that the next village is only a few minutes away by car. Finally he agrees to go. He is gone less than an hour and when he returns he does not look happy.
‘It seems as if you are wasting my time,’ he says, looking at Takis.
‘Wasn’t it there?’ Takis stands with such speed he knocks a stone from the wall.
‘It was there, all right, up on a truck. How did you expect me to see inside?’
‘Can’t you value her from the outside?’
Spiros recognises Takis’s tone as the one he uses when he is trying to backtrack, when he knows he has got something wrong.
‘Think logically, man!’ Vasilis says.
Takis looks away and stuffs his hands in his front pockets. Spiros raises a hand to his eye, his fingers on his twitching muscle.
‘Well, listen, forget about the inside. What would she be worth as a shell? Let’s just say she is a shell.’
‘Does the engine work? The electrics? The pumps? How much of a shell are we talking?’
‘Let’s say nothing works.’
‘Then why would anyone buy her?’
‘Surely that would depend on the price?’
Spiros is glad to spot a lizard on the doorstep of his house. He focuses on it intently, watches its head turning sharply one way and then the other, but he cannot distract himself from Vasilis and Takis’s arguing.
‘People who buy boats tend to have money,’ Vasilis says. ‘Not many want a project of that sort.’
‘She’s yours for ten thousand,’ Takis says, and Spiros looks up and glares at his friend.
‘You are dreaming! For a shell, and a yellowing shell at that, you want ten thousand? Euros or drachmas?’
Takis doesn’t bother to answer this. He rubs his forehead, looks at the ground.
‘Okay, five thousand.’
Spiros opens his mouth but Takis silences him with a raised finger and a stern look.
‘For five, maybe, but it will take some time, is my guess. Years, probably.’ Vasilis shakes his head.
‘Okay, here’s the deal.’ Takis takes a step towards Vasilis and speaks in a low voice, serious and confidential. ‘I want her gone by the end of the day. What price would you put her at to make that happen?’
‘Now I know you’re wasting my time. Boats don’t sell in a day …’
‘Make it happen. You are a broker, you have connections, right?’
‘I can make some calls.’ Vasilis does not sound enthusiastic.
The lizard on Spiros’s door step is completely still.
‘Great, you make some calls, tell them what a great boat it is and call me by the end of the day.’
Vasilis looks puzzled. He shakes his head very slowly from side to side.
‘What does that mean?’ Takis barks.
‘I’ll tell you what. It’s a long drive back to Athens. You pay for a hotel so I can stay the night–’
‘What?’
‘Let me finish.’ Vasilis is calm. ‘You put me up in a hotel and I will spend the rest of today doing nothing but finding you a buyer. In return I will take only a small commission. You cannot say fairer than that?’ Vasilis smiles now, for the first time since he has been there.
‘Done!’ Takis thrusts out his hand to shake on the deal.
The lizard darts under the door and into Spiros’s kitchen.
It is only when Vasilis has driven away that Spiros manages to speak.
‘I cannot believe you did that!’ he says. His chin is wobbling and he clenches his fists. He is not sure whether this is to stop himself crying or out of anger.
‘It had to be done,’ Takis says casually.
‘Someone might offer a single cent.’
‘Yes, but we will explain that they have to pay the truck man and that slippery fish’s hotel bill.’ Takis does not look at him.
‘I would give a single cent.’ Spiros finds he cannot hold back the tears. His eyes are leaking despite his best efforts to control them, but at least his eye is no longer twitching.
‘Then you would spend all your half of the money and then some on doing her up, and for what? To run a business at a loss like George!’
Spiros remembers George’s notebook, in which he describes picking up tourists from Stella’s hotel on the jetty in the village. There were many such charters, if his account is to be believed, and the money he made this way was not declared. He opens his mouth to try to explain this to Takis but then wonders why he should bother. The deed is done; the boat will be gone before he is in bed.
Worried about encountering the truck driver, Takis rings Stella’s eatery at lunchtime and orders chicken, chips and lemon sauce to be delivered. Twenty minutes later, her husband Mitsos appears at the end of the lane with the parcel.
‘You hurt yourselves, boys?’ he asks, looking them both over as they sit on the wall.
‘We are hiding,’ Spiros says miserably and then, ‘Ow!’ as Takis elbows him in the ribs.
‘Hiding?’ Mitsos laughs, then frowns, and asks no more.
Spiros loves Stella’s food but his appetite is gone. He holds out pieces of chicken to Grigoris’s dog, which has appeared, presumably having smelt the food. The dog works many hours a day guarding Grigoris’s sheep but is given the free run of the village when its work is done.
‘Here you go, boy,’ Spiros encourages it, and the dog approaches nervously. It is confident with sheep, but people are a different matter. The dog inches closer, takes the morsel delicately and swallows it in one. Spiros holds out another.
‘It you are going to feed your whole lunch to that dog then you’d better pay me your half,’ Takis comments.
Spiros takes some coins from his pocket, unsure how much to offer. He makes a guess and hands over a few coins. Takis rolls them in his palm.
‘You have no idea, do you? What would you do without me?’ He picks up his chicken leg and gnaws on it with less delicacy than the canine.
During the afternoon and evening, Takis uses his new mobile phone several times, speaking angrily into it on each occasion. Finally, just before Spiros feels he might go to bed, Takis makes another call.
‘What do you mean you’re going back to Athens in the morning?’ he bellows into the phone. ‘Your job is to sell the boat!’
He listens to the reply and then says, ‘You might not be getting a commission but you are having a nice stay in the hotel at my expense!’
The voice on the other end of the phone is louder this time but Spiros still cannot make out what is being said.
‘I paid your petrol!’ The look on Takis’s face is slightly frightening but Spiros also has a strange and rather dangerous desire to laugh. It sounds like the boat has not been sold after all.
‘Malaka!’ is Takis’s last word before he rings off and shoves his phone deep into his pocket. He breathes heavily for a few minutes, his eyes darting here and there as he slowly recovers his calm.
‘That, as you probably guessed,’ he says finally, ‘was Vasilis. And as you have probably guessed, he has not sold the boat. Nor is he going to. He says he is going back to Athens this morning and he considers this has been a wasted journey. A wasted journey, eh? When he has had a night in a hotel at my expense, and no doubt dinner on someone else’s tab. This damne
d boat is costing more and more. Damn George.’
This final pronouncement is more than Spiros can take, and without a word he goes into his house and slams his front door behind him. He draws the bolt, too, as noisily as he can, to make it clear that Takis is not to follow him.
‘Sorry, George,’ he whispers, looking up at his ceiling. His fingers curl around the tube in his pocket. ‘I will make it right, I promise you.’
And an idea comes to him. It takes a while to find a stub of a pencil; he rarely has a need for them. For paper he tears off the outer layer of the coffee pack, and then he sits at the table and, for the first time since his mama once tried to show him how it was done, he attempts some sums. He makes a list of all the costs so far, those that he can remember, and tries to add them up. But it is too hard.
Then another thought occurs to him and he is on his feet and through to his bedroom for a chair, which he stands on to reach into the patari and round behind the water tank.
He spreads the money out on the table and stacks the notes in piles, but this is confusing too, and finally he admits defeat and puts the money away again.
Back in his bedroom he curls up on his bed, hoping sleep will take him to a place where his heart is not so heavy and George is still alive. But neither sleep nor dreams will come. He is thinking of George, and how George must have felt about Takis when he wrote the entry describing him as a bully. The whirl of his mama’s air-conditioning unit gives him comfort but he feels George would be very unhappy with how things are going.
After a sleepless night, he is up long before the first cockerel crows. The village is silent. In the square, Vasso’s kiosk seems to hover in semi-darkness. Theo’s kafenio is in darkness and the houses that face the square all have their shutters closed.
Spiros sits on the bench under the palm tree next to the kiosk in the centre of the square and listens to the first few sounds of morning. The first dog barks, the first cockerel crows, the first shutter bangs open. A bleary-eyed Vasso makes her way down the lane from her house and gives him a nod. She is still too full of sleep to talk. Half an hour or so later Theo rounds the corner and exchanges a few words with a farmer who is waiting for his first coffee of the day. Spiros feels rooted to the bench, the heaviness of his heart acting like an anchor, with nowhere to go and nothing to do. But he must do something. The boat has not sold, there is still a chance, but he is not sure what it is a chance for.
‘Hey!’ The voice sounds sharp in the still morning. ‘You owe me three days’ money.’
It is the truck driver in his car. He pulls over and leans out of the window.
‘I need that truck today, and you need to decide where you want your boat and I need to be paid.’ He holds his hand out.
‘I, er …’
It is almost a reflex to look about for Takis, who would normally deal with such a situation. But he is alone.
‘Okay,’ Spiros says. ‘You will get your money – wait.’
He stands with the intention of going home to get it but then reconsiders. ‘I mean, can you wait?’
The truck driver’s engine is still running. ‘I’ll not wait for you two any longer. I have to go to Saros now, but when I come back I expect to know where you want that boat and I expect to be paid. Be in the kafenio at ten.’
There isn’t even time to acknowledge what he has said before he drives away. The confrontation has energised Spiros into action, but what to do, where to turn? The only other person connected with the boat apart from Takis is Aleko the mechanic, and his feet start almost of their own accord towards Aleko’s place.
The mechanic is already at work.
‘You’re up early,’ he says cheerfully, leaning against the bench under the tree where they thumbed through air-conditioning catalogues.
‘I have a problem.’
‘Tell me.’ His voice is still cheerful.
‘I have to put the boat somewhere, and the truck man is getting cross.’ He is not sure what else to say.
‘What have you decided to do with her?’
‘Takis is trying to sell her, but I want to fix her.’
‘Fixing her will cost a great deal.’
‘I have money but I’m not sure it is enough.’
‘Sums are tricky things, would you like to try together?’ Aleko is still smiling.
Chapter 4
‘So if we include what you’ve already spent, and add to that the cost of a new engine, and an estimate of what it will cost to put the electrics right, I’d say you’re looking at the best part of eleven thousand.’
Aleko raises his eyebrows and runs his pencil down the column of numbers he has jotted down on the back of one of his catalogues, rechecking his sums. It is still early, but it already promises to be a hot day, despite the shade of the lemon tree.
‘And how much would it cost to do her out on the inside?’ Spiros asks.
The mechanic straightens up, rubbing the small of his back. ‘Well, I didn’t look properly, my mind was on the engine. But the truth is, how long is a piece of string? It depends on how much you want to do, but I think you can rest assured it will be somewhere between five and ten thousand. It’s one of those things that can just go on and on once you start.’
‘So, eleven and five …’ Spiros spreads out his fingers, furrows his brow.
‘Sixteen,’ says Aleko in an offhand way, and Spiros is grateful to him for his tact. ‘How much did you and Takis inherit?’
‘Sixteen.’
‘So there you go, you could just about do it.’
‘Except Takis does not want to do it.’
‘Ah.’ Aleko sighs and folds his arms across his chest. He nods his head slowly, a pensive look on his face, as if he is trying to work something out.
Finally, he says, ‘But logic says you have to put the engine in, right? Otherwise you can’t move the boat, and so Takis must agree to do at least that …’
Spiros understands what Aleko is saying, and it seems to make perfect sense. But he also knows from experience that something can seem perfectly reasonable and yet Takis can somehow view it in quite the opposite way. He hesitates, not sure what to say.
‘I heard of two brothers who inherited a boat,’ Aleko continues. ‘They lived in America, and it was a similar situation to yours. The boat wasn’t worth much, and of course they were on the other side of the world, but it had some value, and they had to do something with it …’
Spiros tries to work out where Aleko is going with this tale, but it’s not clear. It sounds like a story, though, and he likes those.
‘Anyway,’ the mechanic says, ‘they started the process of getting the paperwork organised, and it took almost a year. And then, when probate was nearly complete, it seems that one of the brothers realised that the boat came with responsibilities. Owning it would mean he would have to file a tax return in Greece, and pay harbour fees, get it inspected each year, all that sort of thing. This brother didn’t want to get involved with the Greek tax system, and so he had his share transferred into the other’s name.’
Aleko smiles and nods to emphasise the last sentence, as if he has just told Spiros a great secret.
Spiros stares at the mechanic, wondering if his story is complete. ‘Um … I’m sorry but I don’t understand,’ he says.
‘Well, the point is that the second brother saw the boat as a problem, a responsibility, and by transferring it into his brother’s name, he was offloading the problem, as he saw it. But of course a boat can be a source of income, too, and therefore an opportunity, rather than a problem. It’s all about perception.’
‘But how do I get Takis to agree to sign it over to me?’
‘No, you missed my point.’ Aleko tightens his mouth, thinking for a moment. ‘Okay,’ he says finally, ‘but this is just between you and me, and I didn’t say it, if anyone asks – agreed?’
Spiros nods.
‘So, you tell Takis that you are going to sign the boat over to him. Tell him you don’t want to s
pend your money on it, and that all future problems are his and that he will have to deal with it and all the bills on his own. With his money. You’ve already said that he doesn’t want to spend any more money on the boat, so you’ve just handed him a big problem, right?’
‘I think I understand,’ Spiros says cautiously, but the full picture that Aleko is describing feels like it is just at the edge of his vision, just out of sight, and after a few moments he adds, ‘No, I don’t understand.’
‘Well, if Takis thinks all future problems are his, maybe he will be more interested in fixing the boat up now, because that way you will share the cost, whereas if he leaves the jobs till the boat is in his name, he will have to pay out of his own pocket.’
‘Ah, I see!’ Spiros grins, but the grin soon fades as a new thought occurs. ‘But I don’t want to sign the boat over to him.’
‘You don’t actually have to sign the boat over to him, just say that you are going to. Maybe even tell a little white lie and say that you have instructed the lawyers to hand it over to him as soon as probate is done. Then, with your joint money, he will do as much work as is necessary to get it into a state where he can sell it before that day.’
Aleko is trying hard, and Spiros is grateful for his efforts in explaining things. He thinks he understands but then the details slip away again.
Aleko continues, ‘The truth is, an engine needs to be put in whatever happens, so it is just an extra nudge. Anyway, it’s just an idea, and don’t say it was my idea. Think about it.’
‘Is it honest?’ Spiros screws up his eyes and grimaces slightly.
Aleko shrugs. ‘I would say it’s fair,’ he muses.
‘What time is it?’ Spiros asks suddenly.
‘Nine-thirty – do you need to be somewhere?’
‘The truck man said I have to meet him at ten and decide what to do with the yacht. We still don’t have anywhere to put it.’
‘Well, if you want me to put an engine in and do the electrics, then you can bring her here.’ He tilts his chin to indicate the adjoining plot, on the other side of the wall. It is a rough plot that fronts onto the road, with a few cars parked on it.