by Jerry Cole
“Hey there,” he said. Greg lowered his shades and looked into the friendly dark eyes.
“Can I help you?” he sighed. “As far as I’m concerned, you and I have nothing further to discuss. I have the backing of your local government and I intend to do what I need to get this project completed.”
Alexander held up his hands. “Okay, okay,” he said. “Truce. I do not want to fight. I want to talk.”
“I’m not here to arrange for you to halt my work so you and your friends can start some kind of dig.”
“I want only to buy you a drink,” said Alexander. “Please?”
“Well, I’m a little thirsty,” said Greg. “And I have some time. Whatever it is you have to say, I guess you can say while I have a beer.”
“Ah, a beer,” said Alexander, his expression sheepish. “I was thinking more of a coffee. Beer is expensive in this city.”
“Then I’ll buy,” said Greg. “Your coffee is delicious but it’s far too hot for that.”
They began to walk together, Greg clutching his briefcase, looking around as though to make a mental note of where he was, in case he needed to retrace his steps later. Alexander kicked at the dusty street with his feet.
“You know,” he said, “when it is the hot part of the day, like this, coffee is actually better for you than beer.”
“How do you figure that?” Greg asked.
“Well coffee makes you sweat, which cools you down,” Alexander replied. “But beer, when it is cold, it falls into your stomach and makes your stomach cold. So your body thinks that your temperature is too low and it starts to make you feel warmer, which just makes you more uncomfortable.”
“I guess it’s a theory,” said Greg, “but not one I’ve heard before. I think my stomach can cope with a beer. You can have coffee, though.”
Alexander laughed. “Well, if you want to buy beer, I can be persuaded to drink one,” he said.
“I don’t doubt it,” said Greg wryly. “Well, you must be the expert here. I’ve been here two days and I don’t know of anywhere to go for a drink.”
“So where were you heading now?”
“I was walking until I found somewhere,” Greg replied.
“Then I will show you!” said Alexander. “I will be your tour guide, and I will take you to the best places in this beautiful city.”
“Thank you,” Greg replied, “but I don’t need a tour guide. I’m not here on vacation. I have a lot of work to do. Just a bar will be fine.”
“This way, this way.” Alexander took Greg down a narrow street and onto a larger one. He did not seem offended by the firm refusal of his invitation. He seemed to be a man who did not get upset by much at all, apart from historical artifacts being destroyed, perhaps. He walked with a bouncing, jaunty step much like the one Greg had enjoyed for all of five seconds before he saw Alexander leaning on the car outside the office.
The two men walked in silence through the streets until they came to a leafy courtyard. In the middle were iron tables and chairs, and around the sides of the square were various bars. It did not seem as though the seats belonged to any bar in particular, and Greg wondered how the waiters remembered where their customers sat.
Alexander led him away from the courtyard, and down a tiny, one-way street. At the end of the street was a table outside a cafe, a tiny table with four chairs. In one of the chairs a fat man smoking a cigar was turning the pages of a newspaper. Alexander shouted to him, “Geia sou Anestis!”
The man looked up and seemed pleasantly surprised by Alexander’s presence. Greg could not tell if that was specifically for Alexander himself, or because it meant that he finally had a customer on what looked to be a very slow Monday lunchtime. He held out his hands and took Alexander by the shoulders, kissing him first on one cheek and then the other. Then he looked at Greg and Alexander introduced him in Greek. Anestis reached out and shook his hand.
“This is my very good friend,” Alexander said, as Anestis invited the both to sit down and whistled inside the cafe, presumably for someone to come out and attend to them. “Anestis and his family have been here for five generations. This restaurant is one of the oldest in the whole of Thessaloniki.”
Anestis, the owner, did not speak a word of English, but he understood that Alexander was praising his restaurant. He nodded solemnly as Alexander held up five fingers, each one representative of a forefather who had owned the building before him. He looked at Greg, held up five fingers of his own, and nodded again, placing a hand on his chest gravely.
“That’s incredible,” Greg said, and he meant it. Five generations would mean as many as perhaps two hundred years. He couldn’t think of much in the U.S. that was two hundred years old.
From inside the restaurant came a heavyset woman with curly red hair and an unfortunate thick, dark mustache on her upper lip. She placed a white paper tablecloth and two glasses down on the table. She also set down a basket of bread. She grunted at Alexander, which Greg imagined was a way to ask him what he would like to drink.
“Are you hungry?” Alexander asked, and Greg nodded.
“Yes,” he said. “I’m starving. This morning I only had coffee.”
“Well, that’s good,” said Alexander, “because Flora here is the best cook in the whole of Thessaloniki. Isn’t that right, Flora?”
The woman stared blankly at Alexander until he translated the words into Greek, at which point she blushed and shrugged, but Greg could see how pleased she was at the compliment. Alexander rattled off a few things to the cook and she and her husband disappeared, only to come out again a few seconds later with two tall bottles of cold, sweating beer and a jug of water with ice. Anestis yanked the tops off the bottles and drips of beer spilled onto the table. Then he went back inside and Alexander poured the beer from the bottles into their glasses.
“Geia mas,” he said, clinking Greg’s glass. “Your health.”
“What did you say?” Greg asked.
“Geia mas,” Alexander repeated. “It means the same as ‘cheers’.”
“Ah,” said Greg. “Geia mas.”
“Excellent,” said Alexander. “By the time you leave here you will have mastered the Greek language.”
“I doubt it,” said Greg, and he sipped the beer, which may have only served to make him warmer, as Alexander had said, but at that moment, slid down his throat with such joyful ease that it felt nothing but wonderful.
“Your English is amazing, Mr. Petrou,” he said, and Alex spurted out a mouthful of beer, before coughing and spluttering. He laughed so much his eyes were watering.
“Mr. Petrou!” he gasped. “I have not been called that since I was in England. Please, call me Alex. It’s the only name I answer to.”
“Alex,” said Greg. “Okay. You can call me Greg.”
“Greg?”
“Yes.”
“Do you have Greek family?”
“Ah, not that I know of. Why? Is it a Greek name?”
“Of course!” Alex exclaimed. “Grigoris! That is your name!”
“Ah, it’s Gregory, actually,” Greg corrected him. “My mom was Italian, but my name comes from Ireland, where my dad’s family lived for years before they eventually came to America.”
“And where do you think the Irish got the name?” Alexander continued. He reached over to the basket and took a piece of bread, which he broke up and began to chew. “Gregory is from Saint Grigoris. Would you believe, Saint Grigoris actually lived here in Thessaloniki? You see, it is fate!”
“I didn’t know that,” Greg admitted, and watching Alex munch on the bread was making him hungry, too, so he reached for a piece. It had no butter or oil but was still soft and sweet, as though it had come out of the oven only moments before their arrival.
“Yes, yes,” continued Alex. “The 25th of January is your name day.”
“My what?”
“Your name day. You have two special days in the year. One is your birthday, which is the same in every calenda
r, and the other is your name day, which is very, very important to the Greek calendar.”
“Why would my name day be important?” asked Greg. “I can’t help the name my parents gave me.”
“No,” conceded Alex. “But you also cannot help the day you were born, either. And yet you celebrate that.”
Greg could only concede that he was right. His own birthday was September 9th, and he thought about having a second special day on January 25th. That would be great, growing up as a kid and having two birthdays a year.
“When is your name day?” he asked Alex.
“Ah, sadly, my name day is the same as my birthday,” he said. “August 30th. It means I have only one party in the year. I was never happy with my parents for doing that to me.”
Greg laughed. “It’s like being born on Christmas Day,” he said. “Like my cousin, Matthew. He used to hate that he would only get one present for both.”
“We do not open our presents on Christmas Day,” said Alex. “So, your cousin would have been able to have his birthday all to himself.”
“No presents on Christmas?” asked Greg. “That must be terrible!”
“Oh, not at all,” Alex grinned. “We open our presents on New Year’s Day, instead. So, you still get the benefit, just one week later.”
As he spoke with such enthusiasm, Greg could not help but smile. As he sat back in his chair and sipped his beer as he waited for whatever food had been ordered to arrive, he could not help but forget for a moment that he was having lunch with his enemy.
Chapter Eleven
Within minutes, Flora had returned with four plates which she placed onto the table. There was a selection of all kinds of different foods, some of which Greg had never seen before. There was a plate of tiny fish, whole, and lightly battered. Then a plate of octopus, in large purple pieces. There were fries, but not like fries Greg had ever seen; instead they were round, like sliced potato chips, only thicker and golden. Finally, there was a large plate of one huge fish, which was surrounded by vegetables.
“Looks amazing,” Greg said, his mouth watering. “I can’t believe all of this has come out of that tiny kitchen.”
“Flora is an incredible cook, like I said,” Alex replied. He made a request to the owner’s wife and she toddled back inside, returning with a tiny jug of a clear liquid and two shot glasses.
“Is that vodka?” asked Greg, and Alex shook his head.
“No, this is a very special spirit,” he replied. “It’s brewed in the area and it’s made from the stems of the grapes. So when the farmers take the grapes they need for the wine, the stems that come with them are taken off and made into this.”
He poured a small amount into the glass and from the jug of water he fished out a single ice cube, which he plopped into the spirit. Immediately it began to cloud, until it became a creamy, pearly white. Alex held up the glass and handed it to Greg. “Taste it,” he said. “It’s beautiful.”
Greg sipped at the drink. It was fiery and hot, and tasted strongly of aniseed. After the heat came a sweetness which lingered on his tongue. “Is this ouzo?” he asked, already familiar with the famous Greek drink.
“No, this is a thousand times better than ouzo,” replied Alex. “Ouzo is full of terrible chemicals and I don’t know a single Greek person who drinks it. No, this is tsipouro.”
“It’s delicious,” Greg said. “Although I can’t imagine I could drink too much of it. It’s very sweet.”
“It goes so very well with this fish,” said Alex, indicating the plates that were waiting for them. “Tsipouro must be enjoyed with good food and good company. Otherwise, you may find that it very quickly becomes sour.”
Greg laughed. “Good company?” he asked. “I thought you and I were on separate teams, here.”
“All things can be forgotten over a good lunch,” said Alex, “although I would like to get to know you a little better. I would like to know what it is about your job that means you can do what you do with little regard for the things that you destroy.”
Alex’s tone was so matter-of-fact, without a hint of malice or mean-spiritedness that no matter how hard he tried, Greg could not be offended. Alex smiled benignly at the gray-haired stranger and handed him the plate of tiny fish.
“Gavros,” he said. “I think you call them whitebait. You eat the whole thing.”
“What, the head as well?” Greg asked, horrified.
“Of course!” laughed Alex, and he popped one into his mouth, and chewed, grinning. Greg was less concerned about being the butt of a joke as he too reached for one. It was hot, having just come from a frying pan, and he placed it into his mouth. He soon forgot that he was eating whole fish, the head intact, when the delicious flavors hit his tongue.
“Damn, that’s incredible!” he exclaimed, and Alex pointed to the shot glass.
“Now, some tsipouro,” he said, and Greg obeyed, tossing back the cloudy liquid. Together with the fish it created a taste so fresh and beautiful that Greg could not help but close his eyes in appreciation.
“God, that’s so good,” he said, and he repeated the action again. First he took a tiny fish, began to eat and washed it down with a sip of the fiery liquor.
“Steady on,” laughed Alex. “I don’t want to have to take you back to your hotel on my shoulders.”
Greg sampled the other plates of food and they were just as delicious. Alex took out the bones from the large fish and placed the white flesh on top of the golden slices of potato. Within five minutes the two men had devoured every last morsel and Greg could easily have eaten more.
“You are full?” Alex asked, and Greg, not wanting to seem rude, nodded.
“Yes,” he said. “That was delicious.”
“I hope you are not full,” Alex said, his face crestfallen. “Because this was just the start. We have a main course to come yet.”
As if on cue, Flora arrived with a silver platter which she placed onto the table. It was full of more fish, this time cooked in a rich tomato sauce. As she proudly stood back and watched their reactions, she was rewarded as Greg’s shocked face and wide eyes gave her all the affirmation she needed.
“Oh my God,” Greg exclaimed, and Alex pointed to the empty plate of potatoes as he requested another serving. Flora scurried away and Alex grinned.
“That face is the face a Greek mother lives for,” he said. “It is the face of a boy who wants to be fed. For a Greek mother, there is no other purpose on the face of this earth.”
“I don’t know whether I can eat all this,” Greg whispered, though Flora couldn’t have understood him had she heard him. “There’s so much food here.”
“In Greece, we say that fish is fruit,” Alex replied, whispering back conspiratorially. “It will not be heavy in your stomach. You will love it. Would you like some more tsipouro?”
“Yes,” said Greg. “I shouldn’t, but it’s so good.”
Alex beamed as he topped up Greg’s glass, dropping in another ice cube which, like a catalyst, transformed the liquid from clear to white.
As they began to make their way through the huge fish stew, Greg once again asked Alex how it was that his English was so good.
“I studied in the UK,” Alex replied. “I obtained a degree in history here from the University of Athens, but I was not happy with the level of education. So, I came to the University of Thessaloniki, and I gained another degree, this time in Greek history. But still it was not enough. So in the end I moved to London and studied Archaeology at UCL. I lived there for five years and began to teach ancient history to students all over the UK. I lived in Manchester, in York, and for a little while back down in London, but soon there was nothing for me there.”
“Nothing?” asked Greg. “I’ve visited the UK. London especially. It’s an amazing city. Full of history. I would’ve thought you’d have been pretty settled there, especially when you speak English so well.”
“Ah, Grigoris,” said Alex, looking off into space dreamily. “There
is nothing more beautiful to a Greek person than their home. And for me, no matter how much I liked living in the UK and teaching wonderful subjects to excellent students, my home was calling me, and the calls became so loud I could no longer ignore them.”
“There’s no doubt you live in a beautiful city,” said Greg. “I’ve been here two days and already I’ve seen and tasted some incredible things.”
Alex was serious for a moment, for possibly the first time all day. “Greg, let me tell you something,” he said, leaning forward. “There is so much hidden beauty in this city that you can live a lifetime and never see it all.”
“I don’t doubt it.”
“We have seen a lot of pain, a lot of trouble,” Alex continued. “We have been occupied by the Romans, and by the Turks, and we have never lost our identity. Every day in this city we are finding new and incredible parts of our history that we thought had been lost forever.”
“I understand,” said Greg. “I understand that you want to preserve the historical artifacts-”
“They are more than artifacts, Grigoris,” Alex interrupted, and he slapped his hand on the table, making Greg jump a little. The glasses shook. “They are the building blocks of the city, and of the people who have lived here for thousands of years. There is history in every single layer of the city.”
“Alex, I’m not here to make things worse for the people of Thessaloniki,” Greg said softly. “I’m here to try and make things easier for them. I’ve seen with my own eyes that you have a huge traffic problem in this city. I’ve seen cars parked three vehicles deep on narrow streets just so people can get to work.”
“It has been like that for many years,” said Alex. “You will never change that.”
“I think an underground metro would certainly change that,” Greg challenged. “Look at what they have in London. You must have gotten to know the Tube pretty well when you were there.”
“The Tube, yes,” Alex said, thinking back to the famous London transport system. “The tube is vital for London. But there are nearly nine million people living in that city. Here, we are only two million.”