The Art of Becoming Homeless

by Sara Alexi

  The phones are mounted on a wall and covered with transparent plastic hoods. Michelle cannot imagine for a minute that they will not be vandalised. She approaches the first, ready to be disappointed, and is surprised to see that not only is it intact, but a phone directory sits on the shelf below it.

  ‘Hello, I am just calling about the meeting tomorrow. Sorry, no I have not been able to pick up my emails … Oh, I see. No, no, I understand. No, sure, fine, if that suits you better. No, of course. Yes, yes, yes. OK then, next Friday. Yes, and by the way my phone has been mislaid so I will call you nearer the time to confirm. Emails, yes of course I will be available on email.’

  She exhales heavily and hopes there will be an internet café.

  Her new clothes get a brush of flaky whitewash from leaning against the wall. She needs some help in standing, if only for a moment. A reprieve, a stay of sentence. The Greek lawyers have requested a postponement until the following Friday, and they have emailed her chambers proposing the change of date, saying that they would be contacting her. She must get in touch with London, if for nothing else than to bring her some feeling of normality, assure herself that her job is still there.

  Energy returns to her limbs. The Gods seem to be smiling on her—for now, at least.

  The job is still intact, but the following Friday is the day she was planning to go to see Juliet. She should call and explain there is a chance she won’t make it now.

  She could cry. This reprieve, on top of everything else, is all a bit much. And now her planned week with Juliet is defusing into the melodrama of work. Tears threaten to fall. She still feels shaky from yesterday. Where’s Dino?

  She cannot find the strength to call Juliet to let her know of the possible cancellation. It would make it too real.

  The need to sit drags her back to the port, where she subsides into the first comfortable chair she comes across.

  She lets her head rest on the back, her hands loose in her lap, eyes closed. There is too much to process. Part of the reason for taking a break with Juliet was to discuss things that were causing her disquiet in the first place. Now a hundred other worries have been dumped on top. Where to even start!

  Juliet may be a bit wild, a bit of a knee-jerker in her reactions, but she always had the ability to cut through to the nub of situations. She would have unveiled the source of Michelle’s disquiet and revealed its underlying causes in a heartbeat.

  With Juliet, Michelle finds a place where she can shed Michelle-the-lawyer. Juliet hangs no labels on her. At most she is Juliet’s accomplice again, reverting to her teenage days and losing her sense of responsibility. Such a relief.

  Michelle opens her eyes. The three-sided dock is no less full than when she arrived. The halyards of the yachts rattle against the masts, a rhythmic slap, slap in the slight swell. Black and white cats line up on the quayside by a rough-looking vessel full of nets and occupied by men in rubber trousers, their faces sun-burnt and smiling. The sun blazes upon the scene, the sky a sheet of blue. Tourists enter and leave her field of vision, young girls in bikinis and matching sarongs; more mature ladies in cottons and linens, gold dripping from their wrists, ears, and necks; men in summer suits, with matching hats and designer sandals, next to the grinning donkey men, their work shirts rolled up at the elbows, caps pulled over their eyes and their jeans wearing out at the knee and the seat. The locals seem content, relaxed. The tourists here are wealthy. This island seems to attract a moneyed crowd.

  Michelle knows that to reach the kind of wealth these people are displaying requires hours of toil: weekends in the office, evenings spent working, day in day out, until the concept of there being anything other than work becomes alien. Is it worth it for a fortnight in the sun every year?

  There is no sign of a waiter, so she pulls herself to her feet and wanders back to the public phones.

  She fishes for change.

  ‘Yes, of course I have been in touch with them. Yes, I know it has been postponed. No, I am not quite in Athens. Nearby. Yes, I will look out for that email. OK, yes, OK, right. Will do. No, I still plan to get the same flight back, in the office on Monday. Yes. Bye.’

  Wandering back to the port, the idea of an ouzo sneaks back to her, but the necessity of finding an internet cafe comes first. She must check her emails.

  ‘Ouzo, beer, cup of tea.’ A waiter offers as she passes.

  ‘Internet?’

  ‘Yes, we have free internet.’

  ‘No I mean, like an internet café, with computers.’

  ‘He is here.’ The waiter’s hand lands in the small of her back and he guides her to a better vantage point. ‘This street here. You must go to the green door, turn left, first right, under the arch. The door on the right will be open.’

  ‘Left, right, arch, door on right. Thank you.’

  It doesn’t seem so desperate now. She had overreacted as usual. Looking around her the world continues, her part in it so small. The sunshine is heavenly. A tiny shop displays a rack of sunscreen outside. A minute or two later she emerges feeling protected, smelling nice and just a little bit like a tourist.

  The street off the harbour is very narrow, the whitewashed walls on either side undulating slightly, set back here, protruding slightly a little further on, following the line of the individual houses. At one point it appears to come to a dead end, but as she nears the blank wall ahead, the lane turns sharply and opens up again, even narrower than before. The path begins to climb, with broad, shallow steps, and then there, ahead, is a green door.

  The directions amuse her, she takes a left, and the first right but this leads into someone’s back yard. Retracing her steps, she takes the next right and finds the first building spanning the path with an arch, its front door in the shade beneath. Beyond, out in the sunshine on the right, a door opens into a darkened interior.

  ‘Hello?’ Michelle knocks quietly and enters.

  It takes a moment for her eyes to adjust. There are shelves of wires and buckets and pipes. She had been expecting tables in a line, each with a monitor and keyboard. She steps back into the sunshine. This must be the wrong place.

  ‘Hello, hello,’ a cracked voice calls.

  ‘Hello, I am looking for the internet café?’

  ‘No English.’ She can make out his outline, short, bent with a stick to lean on.

  ‘In-ter-net?’ Michelle breaks the word down.

  ‘Yes. Nai, yes, come here.’ He has a tweed jacket on, which is sliding off his shoulders. He turns his back and retreats further into the gloom. He takes longer steps with his right leg than his left. Their progress is slow.

  How can a business be run like this, with no light, no sign, and at the speed of a snail? Michelle tries to imagine London made up of such places. It would grind to a halt.

  But it would be less pressured.

  ‘Nato!’ With the word and the flourish of a hand, he delivers up the computer. It’s a big grey machine with a large bulbous monitor and a grimy keyboard.

  The old man tries to rest his stick by the chair, but it slides first one way and then the other and Michelle offers to hold it.

  He then eases himself down onto one knee with a pained expression and clicks on a switch. The journey back up is even slower, and Michelle steps forwards several times to help, but he waves her aside. Once more or less upright again and back in charge of his stick, he presses another button on the computer, which produces a loud whirring. He pulls the chair out and shuffles away.

  The screen is still black, though, dimly reflecting Michelle’s face. She scrabbles around at the back of the machine and finds a cable that has come loose. This does the trick, but now there is a message asking her to enter a password.

  Michelle closes her eyes momentarily and takes a deep breath. The old man is out at the back of the shop in a tiny courtyard where he is attending to a pan balanced on a camping gas stove. There is a smell of coffee. The courtyard is littered with electrical appliances in varying states of disassembly. Th
ere are washing machines, microwave ovens, a toaster, and not a few computer screens.

  ‘I need a code?’ she asks.

  ‘Ti?’ He shakes his head.

  ‘Code, password?’

  The man frowns deeply and shakes his head again.

  ‘Son.’ He declares finally.

  It takes a minute for the meaning to become clear.

  ‘Ah, where is son?’ She knows she is shouting and she knows this won’t help, but it seems to be a natural consequence of speaking Pidgin English.

  ‘Ti?’

  ‘Where?’ That was definitely a shout. She coughs to compensate and cover her embarrassment.

  ‘Ah, ah.’ The man wags his finger; he has understood her. ‘Athena,’ he says proudly.

  Michelle raises her eyebrows, breathes in, and exhales as slowly as she can. Even if she could make herself understood, it seems pointless asking when the son is likely to return. It won’t be before the strike ends.

  Back out in the narrow lane Michelle’s shoulders slump. How, how, how, how! How can a country operate with businesses like that? How can anyone on the island get anything done? Everything must take forever. Do they still rely on snail mail? It is absolute madness.

  A cat turns onto the path in front of her and meows. It winds around her ankles as she nears, begging to be petted. Its coat is soft, as if a hundred hands have smoothed the way before her, every hand on the island taking the time to flatten the fur. The island lost in time. No kidding!

  But with no internet and no boats, that’s that. There is no rush. She can take the time to stroke the cat, smile at the old lady, walk casually back to the port, stop and look at the bougainvillea, the geraniums in pots on either side of someone’s front door.

  The port seems lazier than when she left. The locals happier, the tourists more out of place. The flagged walkway must have been there for hundreds of years, trodden smooth by countless feet. The grand mansions tower solid and immoveable, witnesses to history. The man with the donkeys, the men with the nets may all be descendants of the builders of these fine houses. They must have been to school with everyone else of their age on the island, and their fathers before them, and their fathers before that. They must know every stone and every alley, every house and every face.

  No single house is their home, but rather the whole island is.

  So lucky.

  Chapter 7

  But right now she still needs to get online, check her e-mails, and buy a new phone. Tomorrow she will take the boat back to Athens, catch up with correspondence, and get this whole thing back on course. It had been a bad idea to take a day off to sightsee.

  As she considers this, her attention is still held by the scenes unfolding all around her. Everyday life for the locals, but foreign to her eyes. A cargo ship has come in, its heavy steel bow door hinged down flat on the pier, the metal grinding against stone as the hull slides to and fro on a gentle swell. Coloured lines where the paint shears off the hull have become embedded on the quayside next to the indentations left from previous visits. Men with handcarts busy themselves around the boat, stacking and pulling, the deck crew unloading and shouting, cats waiting, donkeys, laden and heehawing, swishing at flies with their tails.

  ‘Lady, hey lady?’

  Michelle almost collides with a tray of Greek salads.

  ‘Oh sorry, I didn’t see you.’

  ‘Lady, sit down. Here is not a good place to stand … here.’ Balancing the tray on one hand, he pulls back a chair and invites her to sit before winding his way between the tables to deliver his tray of food.

  It’s tempting—a coffee and some breakfast. Michelle realises that she hasn’t really had anything to eat yet today. The food in the hospital had been sparse. The nurse explained that with the island being so small, anyone staying overnight would have food brought in by their families, and consequently a kitchen had never been considered. She hadn’t been tempted by the bitter Greek coffee and half packet of biscuits on offer.

  On her last stay with Juliet, Michelle had been introduced to both spanakopita, spinach pie, and bougatsa, a cream-filled pastry eaten at breakfast.

  Her stomach rumbles. A donkey clicks its hooves on the flags, a cargo-man shouts, something falls, accompanied by laughter.

  The waiter returns, his tray now empty. He scrutinises her face and pulls the chair out farther.

  ‘Are you OK?’ he asks, putting the tray down and wiping his hands on his apron.

  ‘Yes, why, what?’ She breaks her stare. The men on the cargo ship are fishing a bundle of mineral-water bottles out of the sea, using a pole with a hook on the end. It’s clearly not the first time it has happened and appears to be a big joke.

  ‘Ah, you seem to be … I don’t know, worried, perhaps. Pressured.’

  ‘I am. Actually, I need to get online.’ She glances at him.

  He tips his head, his greying hair is white at the temples. ‘You are here on this beautiful island for how much time? A day, two days, a week? Come off line for a while. These days everyone is online all the time. Does it make them happy? I don’t think so. Look!’ A pair of tourists, Americans perhaps, sit huddled over their laptops, excluding the world and each other. ‘The tourists sit and look at their computers, lost in an online world, instead of the reality of the sea, the sky, the boats.’

  ‘It’s work; I just need to get online and check my emails.’ Michelle’s voice is more shrill than she expected. She feels her face flush hot. He looks at her oddly.

  ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to be rude,’ she says. Her stance relaxes a little.

  ‘Ach, don’t worry, people are rude to me all day long. But seriously, you need a coffee and to sit down. After all, I have the best coffee on the island, freshly ground, and each cup comes with a biscuit my wife made this morning. Come.’ He pats the back of the chair, smiling, and maintaining eye contact.

  ‘You aren’t going to tell me where I can find the internet unless I buy coffee, are you?’ The muscles around her mouth twitch, a smile forming, his relaxed attitude infectious. Liquid brown eyes, their intensity a contrast to his soft grey hair.

  ‘Aha! I had not thought of that, I will use that in the future. But also beautiful ladies should not be running around burying themselves in emails. They should be sipping the best coffee on the island and being entertained by attentive, handsome Greek men.’

  Michelle would like to say, ‘cut the crap’ in a really cool, worldly way. It would fit, and maybe he would laugh.

  ‘You are talking nonsense.’ The words come out with a giggle, partly at him and partly at herself. ‘OK, I will have a coffee, on condition that you will then tell me where I can get online.’

  He pushes her chair in as she sits and walks away. He nods to a passing man crossing his route, smiles at a lady with a shopping bag and two children, and stops to stroke the cat that sits by the café door.

  Until she gets to Athens, it is going to be like wading upstream to get anything done here. She should have brought her laptop instead of leaving it at the hotel. The hotel that she has paid for but probably won’t be sleeping in tonight. Thinking of which, where is she going to sleep? That’s yet another thing to do—organise accommodation. But for now, she sighs. The weight is off her feet, and the sun is bathing her in its gentle caress. There is much to watch: the cargo men; the donkey men; the group of German tourists two tables away, who are clearly in disagreement about something; the little old man, bread tucked under his arm, coming out of the bakery, his trousers held up with string, and odd shoes on his feet. She closes her eyes and drifts, soaking in the sounds of the island, the buzz of the port life, children laughing somewhere behind her, in between the houses, a bell ringing up high on the hill.

  ‘Here you are.’ The waiter has returned with his tray and two coffees.

  ‘Oh no, I am alone.’

  ‘Which I will remedy if I may?’

  He pulls out the chair next to her so he too can survey the port’s activities. His ta
ll and lanky frame seems to become boneless as he sits.

  ‘So tell me, have you not heard the tale of the hare and the tortoise? The two little creatures who decide to race?’

  ‘I don’t really have time for fables.’ Michelle says this casually, having never much cared for them. The coffee really is pretty good, though.

  ‘Exactly my point. You see, you are the hare. No time to stop and listen to a tale, no time to take a breath, rushing, rushing. And is it really achieving the perfect life? Or is the perfect life that of the tortoise? Look at that old man over there.’

  The man in question, his face weather-beaten, craggy and dark brown, stands in his fishing boat, his shirt thin, his trousers old, slowly pulling little fish from his net. The cats are lined up on the dock waiting patiently. When he comes across a fish of the wrong kind or too small to sell, he throws it to a cat. Michelle watches as each cat is fed in turn. As he feeds them, he talks to them and laughs at what he says.

  ‘He is the tortoise, but a more contented man than Constantinos I have never met.’

  ‘Well he’s a lucky man then, but I don’t fish for a living, and you don’t do the work I do, so you would not understand.’ There is a biscuit on the saucer, which reminds her of her hunger. She nibbles at it to make it last.

  The waiter laughs.

  ‘Tell me, what do you see when you look at me?’ Michelle turns to face him and opens her mouth to speak. He puts up a hand. ‘No, wait, I will tell you what you see: you see a waiter. A waiter in his white shirt and black trousers and short apron with a pocket for change. Not even a young waiter, who may break away and do something with his life, but a mature waiter, life’s decisions made, the dice cannot be recast.’ Michelle opens her mouth to object, but he raises his fingers and shakes his head. ‘I know what you see. A man who has grown up on an island, probably ill-educated, with no money, in a dead-end job: an island boy. Maybe you are right, maybe not. You see that hotel over there?’