The first visitors were our daughter and her husband. We were particularly pleased because we didn’t see them very often. They lived in the Tuscany of Skåne, in the lovely hills around Lake Börringe. I have never in my life seen such “erotic” earth. It shone in the sun like one of Zorn’s bathers with their voluptuous thighs; it perspired. If you pushed a dry twig into that earth, you would have a tree a week later.
They stayed with us for about ten days, and it was a great success. Then our son turned up with his children. The house was full, even though the children soon disappeared all day long with the friends they had made the previous summer.
Our son gave us a pear tree as a gift, and he planted it himself to replace the previous pear, which was old and sickly. It had been the most beautiful tree in the garden once upon a time; it bore plenty of fruit and had a lush leaf canopy. I must also mention that I love pears so much that I like to refer to the forbidden fruit from the Tree of Knowledge as a pear rather than an apple. In the late summer when the pears were ripe and the dew made them shimmer like little suns, I would pick one every morning and take a big bite. The juice would run down my chin, and it felt like the taste of the world, of life.
My son dug away, bare-chested, while I sat and watched, lost in thoughts of my mother and father. They had visited this Gotland garden, my mother with her fairy-tale little slippers and my father with his golden pajamas. He tried to teach the children Greek, without much success. My mother didn’t bother. Her whole body was a language with many names and verbs.
The children left and the house was empty, but our days were not. Our social life took over. We ate and drank in various places, with plenty of drinking songs.
I have written this before, but not everyone has read my books, unfortunately, so I will write it again: Greeks sing when they drink, Swedes sing so they can drink. Over the years it has become an enjoyable habit to collect synonyms for the songs that traditionally accompany the drinking of schnapps. My two favorites are jamare and tuting.
I don’t know if there’s any other language in the world with such a rich imagination in this area.
Things were good, but the emptiness inside me was growing. The days seemed endless without my writing. But I couldn’t write. I went for long walks on my own, found my way back to places that I loved, for example the English cemetery on Fårö. It dates from the time of the Crimean War, 1854. The gravestones are illegible; the wind and rain have obliterated the inscriptions. A number of British seamen who died in a cholera epidemic are buried there in a plot marked with heavy chains, as if there was a risk it might blow away in the bitter east winds from Estonia. I also used to visit the fortress from the same period and the same war, which is still there, surrounded by rusty medieval anticavalry defense barriers. On other occasions I took the car and drove inland to see stone circles and ancient graves. These peepholes into history affect me like powerful drugs. I arrive there with one head and leave with a different one.
I went to my secret shore, where I was almost always completely alone, but my brain didn’t open up as it used to do. I was looking at the landscape, but I wasn’t seeing it. In the afternoons I sat in the recently opened café Maffen with the world’s best espresso, and my heart was heavy with a sorrow I didn’t understand.
What was it that had come between me and the words? We had been friends for so long. Not anymore.
Friends and acquaintances often asked why I hadn’t bought myself a little place in Greece. My answers varied; I would say that I didn’t want to be a tourist in my homeland, that I didn’t want to stop feeling homesick, that I didn’t want to put Greece in a pot like a flower. They were all true. As was the most important reason: I had found my Greece on Gotland.
There was the same dual light from the sea and the sky, the same darkness, the same windblown pine trees, the same sandstone and limestone. The island also had a history that was still visible. Fårösund had been the naval base for the British and French fleet during the Crimean War. The barracks were still there and had been converted into restaurants or hostels.
Sometimes we had dinner there, with the sea right in front of us. To put it briefly, I liked Fårösund very much.
The days passed and I tried to stick to my routines, because the emptiness within me was growing alarmingly. I read the newspaper as pedantically as possible. I also made certain adjustments. I switched on the radio in the mornings, which would have been unthinkable before. I also tried to change my breakfast, but that was harder than I thought. Every day seemed virtually endless. I took up more activities, went to the gym in Fårösund, pumped iron, went on the rowing machine, groaned and generally behaved in a way that was completely out of character. There were several of us, all slightly older ladies and gentlemen.
One of the ladies, who was also very easy to get on with, had read some of my books, including my crime novels. One day she opened a door that I’d never seen open before and announced, “This would be a good place to hide a dead body!”
But she knew who I was, which was the main thing to the old Greek that I am. That’s what the Greek dreams of: for everyone to know who he is. I was reminded of a minor quarrel in a taverna. My brother, who had invited me for a meal, wasn’t happy, but the waiter stood up to him. At that point my brother played his final ace.
“Do you know who you’re talking to?” he asked, eyebrows knitted together in a frown.
“Yes,” the waiter replied. “You used to be my teacher.”
We had a fine evening after that.
I had a fine day at the gym too.
When I got home that day I sat down at the computer and wrote a sentence that was buzzing around in my head like a horsefly. I’ve actually forgotten what it was, but I felt it was necessary to do something with it. It was a great relief, as if the troll that had struck me dumb had finally taken pity on me.
I also wanted to make this sentence public in some way, so I opened a Twitter account and let it fly out into space.
Five minutes later I had ten alerts. By the evening there were a hundred people “following” me. Appetite comes when you eat, as they say in Greece. It was an immediate form of communication, there was no need for an editor or a publisher, there was no censorship apart from my own. I could say whatever I wanted, and it would reach an audience.
I have to admit that until then I hadn’t been very positively inclined toward these new fashions, so-called social media. I changed my mind. Of course there were plenty of indifferent messages, but there were also those that meant something, that taught me something.
If Jesus were alive today, he would be on social media, I thought. “Love one another as I have loved you.” Is there a better tweet?
I had found a homeopathic model. I wrote on Twitter because I couldn’t write as I used to do.
And so the summer passed almost as usual, while Fårösund continued to change. When we first went there, there were 1,060 inhabitants. I was the only foreigner. The population had been declining steadily ever since, and in the summer of 2015, the figure was 856, but I was no longer the only foreigner.
First came the Romanian Roma. One morning we saw a young Roma woman sitting outside the ICA store. All of a sudden. It was impossible to keep the poor away. Then nine unaccompanied boys were placed in the community. I often saw them at the gym, where they reverted to being children for a little while. They teased one another, compared their muscles, laughed. But when they wandered aimlessly through the streets, they were no longer children. They were foreigners, they stuck close together as if to protect themselves.
I remembered that feeling from my early years in Sweden. I stuck close to the buildings, kept my head down.
Who knows what these boys will write one day? I thought.
Then came more refugees. The people of Fårösund turned out to possess great kindness and generosity. The world was changing. Everything was changing, a
part from the bad luck that had joined me for the summer. Mice chewed through the wiring and packing in my car, my computer gave up the ghost, taking with it five years of manuscripts, addresses, photographs, letters, documents, and so on. I had copies, of course, but it took two painful weeks to restore my files. Worst of all, I nearly burned down my house. I forgot about a pan on the stove. Fortunately, I had also forgotten to lock the door behind me, so when my neighbor saw the smoke, he was able to go in and put out the fire.
What was happening to me?
Which god had I angered?
One afternoon toward the end of the summer, when the birds began to fly south, I saw one traveling all alone. It had lost its flock, yet still it continued its journey across the empty sky. The direction was imprinted on its little brain.
* * *
What about me? Was there a direction imprinted within me?
Without being conscious of it, I was thinking more and more frequently about Greece. Maybe that was the problem. With each passing day I lost a bit more of my homeland. I had seen the same thing in others in my situation. They shrank in an alien environment, apparently with no real reason. They were successful, they had their own summer residence back home, they went there as often as they could. But it wasn’t enough, and in the end they went home for good.
“Come back, we still have many fine walks to take.” That was what my dear friend Maria had said. Maybe that was what was missing from my life. Those walks in Athens, the ones I hadn’t yet taken.
My mother’s apartment happened to be empty at that particular time. The financial crisis had forced the tenants to move out. When would such an opportunity arise again? My brother Stelios, who took care of the place, promised to keep it available for me.
I spoke to Gunilla, and she liked the idea.
III
We landed in Athens ten days later, in the middle of September. It was ten o’clock at night. There was no sign of my suitcase. The luggage carousel stopped. I was about to go and look for an attendant when it started moving again. Gunilla and I held our breath. After a minute or so my suitcase appeared all by itself, as if it were teasing me. For the first time in my life I hated a suitcase.
“You’re in luck,” Gunilla informed me.
What can you say?
One of the best things about Athens airport is that there’s always a cab. We quickly found one, loaded our bags in the trunk, and got in. Gunilla asked me what I’d done with my case. I’d left it on the sidewalk. Fortunately, it was still there.
“Gyzi Square,” I said to the driver.
I hadn’t given that address for several years, not since my mother died, in fact. That was where she lived. That was where she died. That was where Gunilla and I were going now. In the car we talked about my parents, about my father and his golden pajamas, and about my mother’s cookies.
The fog inside me lifted slightly.
And still I dropped my wallet on the street without noticing. The driver picked it up and gave it back to me.
“You’re lucky it was me,” he said.
Gunilla flared up. “One of these days you’ll forget all about me too! Are you in love?” she snapped.
It would be wonderful if I was, but I wasn’t. “You don’t fall in love at my age,” I declared with a certain pride in my wisdom.
Stelios was waiting in the apartment to give us the keys and various instructions about the hot water and so on. He had also bought some food for breakfast the following morning. Then he hurried off home, because he wasn’t feeling too well.
We were left alone. I looked around. The kitchen table, my mother’s double bed. What had I expected from these two rooms after all these years? I felt nothing. We quickly unpacked and went down to the square. All the shops were open. We took a short stroll to stretch our legs, then sat down for something to eat. We had both been longing for the same things: cooked dandelion greens, feta cheese, and fried herring. They didn’t have the fish. Or any retsina. My wife shook her head.
“The fish I can understand, but not being able to get a glass of retsina in Greece? Greece without retsina is like love without kisses.”
I thought kisses without love would be worse, but I said something else. I said that I didn’t feel anything at all. Gunilla wondered what I’d expected to feel.
“I don’t know. Something. I expected something to open up inside me. A thought or a memory, but there’s nothing.”
She wasn’t particularly concerned.
“It will come when it comes. I’m happy anyway. Tomorrow we will drink coffee on the balcony. You’ll just have to be patient.”
The traffic around the square was beginning to thin out. It was well after midnight. The bakery pulled down its iron grille. The waiter brought our bill.
“How’s business?” I asked.
“What business?” he responded.
There were more stray cats than customers. Emaciated, restless, nervous, they cautiously edged closer, waiting for something to eat. Gunilla gave the first one a tidbit, and more appeared.
It was very late, but not for the Athenians. They stayed where they were, including the young couples who were in love, kissing and cuddling on the benches in the square, speaking different languages. I picked out Russian, Albanian, Greek, Arabic, but there were more.
I couldn’t help remembering my teenage years beneath the trees in this square. And yet it all felt so far away, as if those years had never happened. I thought about what Philip Roth had said—that you can’t write when the memories disappear.
It’s easily understandable, and that was my problem. I remembered, but the memories were no longer relevant. They had no life. They were turning into photographs. I was turning into a photograph of myself.
I looked at my wife, perhaps seeking help. She was finishing the last drops of her wine, her head tipped back. Her throat was shiny with sweat, and a flash went off in my head. She had just given birth to our first child. She was drenched in sweat, but she looked so incredibly happy as she held that little person in her arms.
“I shall do this again,” she said.
I had never forgotten that, and I never will. We’ve lived together since the fall of 1968, and I was grateful for that night in the square.
At my age it’s sensible to keep your woman by your side.
“Aren’t you going to smoke your cigarette?” I asked.
She has smoked one cigarette a day for several years now, always in the evening after dinner. Just one. My father drank one glass of red wine for as long as I could recall. Just one. Never two. I admire people like that, but I also fear them a little. What tenacity must a person have to keep a promise that he or she could easily break without anyone uttering a word of reproach?
“I am—on Mama’s balcony.”
My mother’s balcony had acquired a life of its own for my wife too. We had spent so many hours there, drunk so many cups of coffee, my mother had read our fortunes in the coffee grounds. I thought about it over and over again in the hope that something would be brought to life inside me, but nothing happened. I had turned to stone.
In the past I could always feel it as soon as I landed at Athens airport. My lungs expanded, I breathed in my homeland along with the aviation fuel. But this time, nothing happened.
I was haunted by a sense of being in the wrong place all the time; this was clearly a result of my inability to write. I was like a ship that had lost its buoyancy.
The same thing had occurred in Sweden too. I withdrew without being aware of it. Suddenly, in the middle of a conversation with people I liked and valued, I fled. If you entered a room crowded with a hundred people and saw a skinny man standing alone in a corner, that was me.
Maybe that’s the price of living in a foreign country. It’s not just that you live a different life from the one you’ve left behind, it’s the fact that the alienati
on makes you an alien.
Who or what would lift this curse from my shoulders so that I could once again become what I wanted to be: a human being among other human beings?
* * *
A few months earlier I had received an email from my village, Molai. It came from the principal of the local high school, Olympia Lampoussi. I had heard that surname before. A forester called Lampoussi had created the beautiful avenue of aromatic eucalyptus trees outside the village. Olympia’s question was very specific and completely unexpected.
She and her colleagues wanted to name the school after me. Did I have anything against the proposal? She couldn’t imagine that I would, but one of her colleagues had said that I must be asked first. “It’s possible that he might not like the idea,” he had said.
It was theoretically possible, but I did like the idea—very much. I hadn’t expected such a gesture. My village had already honored me by giving a street my name. I hadn’t seen it, however, except in photographs.
I immediately thought of my father, who had been a teacher in that same village. The news wouldn’t reach him, but I knew he would have been happy and proud. “We never give up,” he used to say. His death didn’t prevent me from experiencing his happiness and pride. To hell with death!
I wanted to see my street. And my school, even more so! My friend Maria, who was no longer alive, had once said to me, “You, my friend, would run to your own execution if they promised to put up a sign about it on that very spot.”
She wasn’t wrong. I have nothing against formal honors. Quite the reverse. That was why I wrote. To have my name on a street in my village, to have a school named after me, to carry on existing. I’m sure that authors and artists felt the same way before we and the rest of society were browbeaten by the market. Eternity was no longer fashionable.
Greece and the Greeks were once more struggling to avoid defeat, as so many times in the past. The German Occupation during the Second World War, the civil war that followed, the mass emigration—these were the experiences that had shaped my generation. Virtually all of us had deaths to mourn, injustices that embittered us, abandoned dreams rotting in our souls. But none of this could be compared with the spiritual impoverishment we had experienced recently.
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