I meet up with a friend who works in the same business and lives in London, and we go for a drink. He's surprised when I tell him I'm still just settling in to my new life. Apparently he expected me to say I've had a year of living on a Greek island and have got it out of my system, and am looking for a job in the city. I try to explain the joys of my life: walking to beaches, watching eagles above my house. There's a pause, and he asks politely, 'And you like that?' Clearly, it wouldn't be paradise for everyone. Thank goodness.
At the end of the week, I find a great little camping shop and buy a cheap sleeping bag and tent that fit in my rucksack. Then I take a quick, budget flight to the south of France and make my way to a town by the sea to meet a friend to hike for a couple of days. Long-distance footpaths are one of life's good things. To think, someone has created this and we can use it for free. The path takes us away from the town and up to a picturesque village, then higher still to a ridge that looks out over hills covered with forest. Along the way we catch up, talk freely about our lives, not having to think very much. The sky is blue and the sun shines, glinting on the silver and gold-flecked stones of the path. Tired at the end of the day, we descend a steep, scree-covered track and plod, exhausted, until at last we find the perfect campsite, looking down towards the sea. We have the place to ourselves since it's out of season, and sit drinking red wine outside until sleep calls, waking up in our respective tents in the fresh air. After the troubles of the past few months, this is a gift to myself.
When I arrive back in Rhodes, I'm waiting for the bus when a tall, skinny cab driver approaches the bus stop and offers to take me and a couple of Swedish backpackers into town for two-thirds of the normal fare. He's fed up with waiting for business at the back of the queue, he says. 'Better for me to keep working.' He chats to us on the way into town and when the Swedes ask where to eat, he advises them at length.
The subject of the crisis comes up and the Swedish guy makes a gauche comment about how 'the Greeks will now have to work'. There's a pause while the driver wonders if he's joking, then he shrugs and says, quietly, that he personally works 12 hours a day, though takings are down 50 per cent.
As for the vote ahead, he says: 'It's crazy we have elections in the summer, the tourist season. And who can we vote for? This one steals, the other steals more. Anyway, I think is better to go back to the drachma. Sure it will be hard for years, but not as bad. People will go back to the villages – life is easier in the villages – and make things again.' Maybe in some ways it would be good for people to move back – to keep village businesses going during the winter.
When I return to Tilos, the restaurants already have customers from northern Europe. But will Greeks be able to afford the trip to Eristos beach this summer? The island waits to see what the summer will bring. No one is more curious to know than the new owners of the kantina.
Chapter 18
Red Tape and Red Mullet
Stelios signed the contract for the kantina and is preparing to open. It sounds like it should be easy: a temporary snack bar on a free-camping beach on a remote Greek island. Not so.
What he bought was the physical trailer along with fixtures and fittings – fridge, water tank, sandwich toaster, etc. I lent him half the money, but buying the kantina was the easy part – maybe even the cheap part. I cannot believe how much needs to be done, how much paperwork there is in order to be nomimos, legal.
He had to apply to the municipality for the grant to use the piece of land on the beach, get a licence to sell food, and insurance. He needed a tax number and cash register and accountant – all very expensive in Greece. Who knew that the cash register alone would cost hundreds of euros and that he would need to keep calling the accountant to get him to complete the papers in time? He's spent months procuring elusive pieces of paper, having tests for a health certificate, and doing other stressful and timeconsuming things. There are also rules about what he can sell. There are three nearby tavernas, and he can't offer food similar to theirs. Nothing can be served on a plate with cutlery or in a real glass.
But none of that would put Stelios off. He's wanted to run the kantina for years. Now all the efforts are close to completion.
He asks me to pick up some things he needs for the kantina while I'm in Rhodes yet again for a follow-up appointment at the hospital with my doctor. I understand what he wants, but as I'm in a rush I don't write the actual Greek words down and can't remember them. This leaves me with only one option in the hardware shop. Grinning, I prepare to perform a party game where you have to make a person say a word without saying the word yourself, a cross between Articulate and charades, using my limited Greek and exaggerated mime.
'It's something you use to paint with…' No, not paint, but pinello, paintbrush.
'Something that you use to close something with a key…' Klitharia, lock.
'It's two plugs in one plug.' It's called a 'taf' – the Greek word for the letter T.
Someone sorts me out with all I need and even makes me a frappé coffee. How civilised. I take it outside with me when my phone rings. When I come back inside, a few men standing around the front desk are chatting about something.
'What do you think?' they ask.
'Sorry, I didn't hear…'
'We were just saying that in other countries, if you do something wrong, the police actually come after you.' They seem to be saying it's an unusual concept but a fine principle, if the police are fair.
I smile and shrug. 'I suppose so.'
It must be strange to grow up in a culture where you don't trust the system, but that is how it's been in Greece for a while; there's a sense that it's always better to look out for yourself than to follow the rules. It's what feeds tax evasion, when people don't trust the government to do the right thing with their hard-earned money. The Greek respect for cunning and outwitting one another is written into the oldest literature, in the heroic character of Homer's Odysseus – and the tendency to dodge authority is often attributed to the four centuries under Ottoman rule, when Greeks used their wits to dodge the tax-collecting overlords of the country. But corruption is still part of the system today. I've been reliably informed about doctors asking for a fakellaki or small envelope (of cash) to give treatment.
And while Stelios is going to great lengths to set up the kantina legally, the system of red tape seems somewhat onerous for what should be a simple enterprise. It's enough to make young people less enterprising. I've begun to learn that sometimes in order to get by, people have to break the rules, be a little bit 'unlegal' or paranomos. The free camping itself that provides the kantina with business is technically unlegal, after all; Tasos, the old mayor, encouraged it even though it's against Greek law and few islands allow it.
When I was first asked to help the island's children with their English, I discovered that actual lessons would not be legal without a licence and certification, so we had to find a way to do informal sessions – otherwise the children couldn't progress. In a similar way, legally people are not allowed to slaughter their animals without the presence of a vet, even though they've been slaughtering their animals for generations and farmers can't send their animals away on a boat every time they need to slaughter one. How sad it would be if the law killed the island's farming culture just because there's no vet on the island. Life has to work a bit differently on small islands – otherwise people couldn't live here and the islands would be abandoned more and more.
Sipping the last of my coffee, I walk back to town with my errands done, looking for the bus to the hospital. I find it awaiting its departure time beside the harbour. I've met crazy, funny bus drivers before in Rhodes, and this one is no exception: for him, the Number 3 seems to be merely a venue for his daily performance. I'm sure it's against the rules but he isn't sitting in the driver's seat when I get on – he's in the back with the passengers instead, and has a joke for everyone, explaining to one foreign woman in English, 'I am sorry, but I am original, I am Greek.' She offers him s
ome chocolate. He is cheering up everyone's day, even on an otherwise mundane bus journey.
Eventually, the packed and sweltering bus sets off, reaches the outskirts of town and breaks down. As we wait, I ask the old man standing next to me if he knows what's happening. I explain to him I have an appointment at the hospital and may have to find a taxi. A replacement bus arrives and it's about to take us back to town, but the old man shouts to the driver that I'm in a hurry and they must take me where I need to get to. So – presumably breaking the rules – they do. Isn't life so much richer when things are not done completely by the book?
The doctor tells me my body has recovered well from the miscarriage but that I should wait another month to get back to full strength. The appointment brings back a lot of emotion: an excuse for shopping therapy. Anna is pleased to get a message from me and jokes I have another 'prescribed' month of excessive exercise and drinking before I have to start doing all the right things again, so I'd better make the most of it and she'll be on hand to assist. We'll go out for dinner at our favourite spot next week.
The kantina's allocated place under the trees, where it's been for years, some 20 metres back from the shoreline, gets lashed by storms in the winter and waves wash pebbles high on to the sand. These pebbles must all now be cleared so that holidaying folks can relax in soft, sandy comfort as they sip their drinks. Stelios is anxious about how long it will take to move the stones, and fusses around saying he has to borrow a rake from somewhere; I estimate it will take an hour or two and we can do it with just our hands. But several hours later, our backs aching and hands chafed, I see what he means and we decide to come back and finish the job the next day. Thousands of pebbles, buried many layers deep, must be scooped up into crate after crate and carted away.
He also needs to find someone to help him bring the drinks fridge and the ice cream freezer and the wooden tables and chairs from the field where they overwinter, not to mention the kantina van itself. Then he's got to see if he can teach me to make a decent Greek coffee for customers who show up while he's out fishing in the morning. He can't afford to give up fishing until summer brings enough business.
He's so worried that he's thinking about taking up smoking again. 'I was much less stressed when I smoked,' he says. 'And the doctor says I've got to be careful about my stress.' The two sets of komboloi or worry beads he bought in Athens don't seem to be helping.
It seems it's not possible to make an arrangement in advance to get help to move fridges and furniture. Maybe Stelios knows that such an arrangement would be unreliable, so he grasps an opportunity and when he sees his friend Yorgos from En Plo with not much to do, enlists him immediately. So all of a sudden we are at the beach, amid a frenetic chaos reinforced by shouting and cursing as the two of them heft massive pieces of metal and wood off a flatbed truck and on to wooden pallets in the sand. Somehow, in an hour, it is all done and they curse one another again good-humouredly as Yorgos drives off in a cloud of dust.
After we've cleared the rest of the pebbles, or at least agreed that we've done the best we can, I am bedraggled but oddly happy, washing out the insides and shelves of two rather dusty fridges on the beach, when someone I know walks by.
'What are you doing?' he asks dramatically, swinging a lily-white towel over his lightly bronzed shoulder. He has a beautifully restored house at the top of the village, which he visits for a few weeks a year in breaks from his busy job in his sophisticated urban life. 'You're not some sort of Greek wife, you know.'
'Well, I sort of am, actually.' I laugh, thinking how much fun I'm having doing some physical work for a change – not for money but being part of a new venture, another way of getting to know the community. This is exactly what I want to be doing.
My contract with my old employer has gone down to three days a week, which was a bit of a blow and not what I expected; I'd been working so hard, trying to show I could contribute in ways that are different from my old job. I will have to grow my freelance business; a new business is always tough and it will be especially challenging from here, but I can only do my best and see what happens.
When I arrive for my kantina lesson the next day, Stelios and his cousin are sitting around smoking and drinking beer. Things don't look promising. But gradually they load up the big fridge with beer and soft drinks. The first customer comes by – a friendly English chap who wants a Greek coffee for himself and a lemonade for his wife. He shows me photos he's taken of an owl on the way down to Skafi, and even leaves a tip. Someone else stops by in a truck and asks if the beers are cold yet. Another friend of Stelios, who works at the nursery school, comes for a coffee and a sandwich and leaves €10 – a particularly magnanimous gesture given that her salary has been reduced by so much ('We don't talk about that!' she says). By mid-afternoon we leave with things sort of in place, and Stelios has a few euros in his pocket.
At dusk, Stelios out fishing, I water my vegetable patch and the roses. There's been no rain since April and we're unlikely to see any before October. I've noticed the dandelion-like radikia, which provides an abundant supply of leafy greens, has blue flowers that open in the morning and disappear in the evening. I put up more bamboo canes and fishing nets over the tomatoes, and sit on the terrace in the warm evening air. In the distance, in the deep-blue sea, a big cruise ship crosses the horizon. A bat flits by.
Maria shouts 'Jennifer!' and when I look up she is at the end of the path, arms laden with two types of cucumbers, green peppers and courgettes, straight from the earth. I make a huge salad with the cucumbers and peppers along with onions, rocket and boiled potatoes from our own garden, and the first of the tomatoes from the farm on the road to Eristos. Red mullet are in season; Stelios brings home a handful of them that can't be sold because they're not perfect: they've had small bites taken out of them by other sea creatures. It makes them tastier, he says, because they then absorb a little salt from the sea. Red mullet are the dolphins' favourite food, he says, and I think they might be mine, too; sweet, dusted with flour and fried in olive oil (most people don't fry with olive oil, but Stelios does). I'm so hungry I eat them standing by the stove as soon as they are cool enough.
The temperature's been well over 30ºC for weeks now; the upstairs of the house is very hot and there's barely any breeze through the windows, even here where we usually get a breeze all summer, so I set up my little tent in the garden. We do now have an air conditioner, but the noise and flashing lights when you turn it on are a bit distracting. I prefer to sleep with a view of the stars through the netting of my tent.
At six in the morning, a cockerel crows and bees buzz around the flowers. I walk up the stone steps to the roof terrace, and sit on the raised ledge. Pink-orange light hits the craggy tops of the limestone hills and the castle, slowly revealing the remains of walls from earlier centuries and terraces of old farms. From the fields, there's a smell of damp herbs and grasses. Wisps of cloud cling to the hilltops, birds sing, crows flap overhead. Looking down the Eristos valley, I see the sea still pale and misty in the early morning.
I go back downstairs and sweep out the house – a mix of sand, garden-earth, dried seagrass and most likely a few ants. They've been exploring my computer and kettle, the muesli and bread now both must be kept in the fridge, and I've become accustomed to carrying the occasional very small pet on my arm or leg.
Then, taking a bag of ice cubes from the freezer, I drive down to Eristos, making a quick stop at the farm to buy tomatoes, peppers and onions. Stelios has to see the accountant, so I must open up the kantina for him.
Chapter 19
Endless Afternoons at the Beach
When I arrive at the kantina, the vast sandy beach is empty, pale-blue sea lapping calmly at the shore, the mountain to the south still pale grey and mist lingering in the tops of the trees, leaving a gentle haze over everything. The sun picks out silver drops of dew in the trees.
It's early in the season but we decided it would make sense to learn the routine before it gets
busy. I unlock the fridges, clean things we might need, organise the food, put ice in the bucket… and finally make a practice frappé and sit at one of the wooden tables, looking out over beautiful Eristos beach. Birds are twittering in the trees, and cicadas start to rev up. I can't imagine a nicer place to sit. Who cares if no customers come?
Just after nine, while I'm at the wooden table with my feet in the warm sand, a big bear of a man with a gruff voice and elaborate tattoos arrives with his pretty young daughter. Stephanos has a house on a lonely part of the hill nearby. He buys a beer for himself and an ice cream for Irinna. Then he asks for a skini.
I'm confused. A skini is a tent. We're on a beach. There are tents around, but… I try to look as if I'd like to help but am not sure…
'For the hammock,' he adds, as if that clarifies things. A tent for the hammock…? 'There's usually one,' he says.
I'm baffled.
Stephanos walks around the back of the kantina. 'Na to!' Found it. A coil of rope. Ah!
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