In the Shade of the Monkey Puzzle Tree

by Sara Alexi

  ‘Well really,’ the woman huffs at the driver but she climbs on board.

  Theo laughs quietly through his nose, amused at the foreigners’ obsession with time.

  Bleary eyed, he looks around him, his first glimpse of the city. He has no idea where he is; his hair is flat against his head at the back.

  ‘Where are we?’ he asks the driver, running his fingers through matted frizz as he hovers on the bottom step.

  ‘That way to the Acropolis,’ is the terse reply and the doors hiss closed.

  Chapter 3

  Age 40 Years, 5 Months, 7 Days

  Theo looks around him. Athens! His sleepiness dispels in a flash and his legs itch to run, or at least skip, as he walks in the direction the bus driver has indicated. He can’t quite take everything in. The sun feels hotter and there is the hum of general noise coming from somewhere. Maybe it is market day on the next street. Or maybe it is just the buzz of life. There is a funny fluttering feeling in his chest and an unexpected chuckle escapes him. People hurry past in all directions, chatting, hurrying, busy.

  The droning noise sounds mechanical and seems to come from all directions. Cars maybe, a busier street somewhere? He stops to yawn and rub his eyes and stretch. It is hard to yawn and smile at the same time, and he feels a power in his limbs. He is ready for anything, everything. His head drops forward at the end of his stretch, his focus drawn down to his feet. The pavement is dirty with black raised spots the size of coins. His toes investigate the raised lumps, which are hard. One yields, revealing a white under surface, chewing gum, spat out and baked onto the concrete slabs by each relentless summer sun. Next to the pavement, the nearest doorstep is unwashed. These things amuse him. The contrast with home adds to the excitement.

  Lifting his chin, he looks up and up at the nearest building that appears to rise forever, grey and concrete. Four balconies he counts before he is rewarded with a strip of clear blue sky. Green catches his peripheral vision. Spindly trees have been planted in the middle of the pavement every ten yards or so, the leaves hanging, unwatered and limp, covered with a layer of dust. This edges his joy with a tinge of sadness, at this neglected thing of beauty turned into a pathway obstacle to be negotiated.

  Waking a little more, with each step he moves on, past an old one-storey house with traditional tiled roof sandwiched between two modern buildings. Behind the old house is the back of another tower block, surrounding the house on three sides, the old being taken over by the new. A smell of paint leaks from a nearby open window, a step ladder visible inside. The chemical mixes with the car fumes and Theo coughs.

  The residential buildings continue. He steps into the gutter to let a woman with a basket pass. She is dressed in black and would not look out of place in the village. But across the street, a man hurries in suit and tie. A motor bike roars up the road between them. On the next corner a gypsy begs. Theo walks past her and her whimpering baby, his hand tightening around the money in his pocket.

  After a few minutes, his legs give a little bouncy shuffle and he has to stop and look around him again. He is in Athens, the capital of Greece, the birthplace of all civilisation. Looking up, he marvels at the three and four-storey buildings, the washing hanging from balconies, lives being lived, city people inside their towers. He can hear Athenians talking inside, pans being rattled, Athenian babies crying.

  The sun is growing stronger, creeping across the sky, reaching one half of the street, dividing shadow from brilliance, the windows on one side black holes, those opposite glowing orange as if they are on fire. Theo wishes Mitsos were here to see it; it is the sort of thing that would thrill him. The street opens out to a small park with three benches each marking one edge and a kiosk on the fourth, a square of grass between them and corners of earth where city feet have taken shortcuts. The sun here reaches two of the benches. Around the perimeter, the road leads off in four directions, pushing the buildings back, opening up a larger patch of the blue sky.

  The kiosk is much like the one in the village: solid wood, painted brown, with a shelf running around just above waist-height and windows in three sides. Theo has no doubt that one side window will be where a public telephone sits and on the other side, magazines will be displayed in stacks. The oversized roof provides a little shade, and newspapers are piled on the pavement outside the kiosk. Familiarity adds to his joy and makes it seem like as good a place to start as any, and the openness after the narrow streets allows Theo to feel he can breathe a little. The tall buildings are amazing, but they do feel a little suppressive.

  ‘Hi, a local newspaper please.’ Theo smiles at the man entrapped in the booth.

  ‘To your left, second shelf down. Cigarettes?’ There is no smile in return.

  ‘No thank you.’ Theo backs away. He learnt this early in the kafeneio: a man in a mood needs no interference, just space.

  Sitting on the bench that faces the sun, Theo wonders if he should look for somewhere to live or find a job. With the warmth directly on his face, he smiles to himself and runs a hand through his hair, shifts his weight slightly, as one of the slats on the bench is split and pinches him.

  Athens. He still cannot quite believe it.

  He straightens the paper, deciding not be choosy. He will take any job and any place to live to get him started, find his feet, learn the city’s ways. He chuckles. All around him are apartments. He only needs one, just a room will do, how hard can that be to find?

  ‘Right,’ he says to himself under his breath. ‘Let’s look at jobs. Here, “Person wanted for general duties around the house, would suit young man”. That will do as a start.’ Theo is amazed how quickly he has found something suitable. Life in Athens might be a lot easier than he imagined.

  Folding the paper to keep the advert on top, he returns to the kiosk and uses the public phone, hoping the position is still available. The thick, chipped, light brown paint of the kiosk shelf feels familiar and gives him confidence. This city world is not so different.

  ‘Hello, I am ringing about the job. Is it still available? It is, good. Oh, yes one minute.’ Theo taps on the glass window above the phone’s shelf and the man inside slides it open. Theo smiles and mimes writing. The man passes him a biro.

  Following the directions he has written on the edge of the newspaper, his legs are glad to be moving. He has energy to expend. The roads seem to wind round and back on themselves. Many times, he is distracted, looking up at the height of the buildings, inspecting new models of cars that drive by so quickly and admiring smartly dressed women as they pass. He allows himself these distractions. After all, that is why he is here, to live a little!

  Each street is similar to the last, lined with parked cars, stunted trees planted in the middle of the narrow, cracked pavements and the buildings so high, the sun’s rays do not reach the road. Theo misses the expanses of blue sky already. The buildings are grey, the road is grey, and the pavement is grey.

  The road turns again, a hill visible at the end, and high above, with a background of blue sky, is the Acropolis. He freezes in motion. It seems unbelievable to see in real life the building he drew pictures of, as a boy, in school. At school, he learnt about its construction, how the columns are subtly barrel-shaped to give the illusion of perfect straightness and how the floor is gently domed, raised in the centre to give the illusion of being perfectly flat. It made no sense at the time, nor does it now, but the monument itself is stunning. He has seen posters of it in Saros, and it regularly appears in national newspapers and on the television news. But there it is, in real life, glowing in the sun, a dazzling white, mounted on an outcrop of rock, atop a hill. Cypress trees planted all around point up to its magnificence. The Acropolis.

  It seems smaller than he imagined.

  Lifting his newspaper to shade the sun’s glare in his eyes, Theo looks at the street signs and then his directions scribbled on the newspaper, and then at the hill to the ancient ruin. It would only take half an hour, a quick climb, a close-up look, start
living life right now and then back down. Tucking the paper under his arm, he hurries directly towards it, his hair bouncing wildly with his excited steps. The apartment blocks soon give way to double-storey houses and then old single-storey dwellings of whitewashed stone as he approaches. Goats wander the hillside above these, in a setting that is oddly rural. Theo blinks at the sight of them, their clonking bells drowning out the distant traffic. He shrugs; they have to graze somewhere. He thinks of Mitsos who has a herd he takes past the kafeneio every day. Breathing deeply with the exertion, he moves even faster.

  Flares flapping as he continues to climb, he can feel sweat trickling down his back. The ancient temple grows in stature the nearer he gets. The last part of the climb is steep, his breath coming in gasps. Then he is atop the hill and the Parthenon stands before him, bigger than he could ever have imagined. The individual white stones are enormous, the scale making everything he has seen so far in Athens dwindle in comparison. His hands clench and unclench, his fingers fan out, and he can feel his heart beating in his chest. Walking up the worn steps, he can visualise his robed ancestors doing the same. He tilts his head back, his back straightening, his chin lifting. It is more majestic than he ever would have imagined. If his baba could see him now.

  The mark he would like to make in society, the tiny dot he wishes to call his life, is infinitesimal compared to this noble building that is the remaining testament to so many stone masons and architects from all those years ago. Such a tiny dot must be easy to achieve, maybe, seeing as men, not so different to him, built the Acropolis. Chattering interrupts his thoughts.

  In the middle of the open area between the pillars is a tourist group. The American twang draws his attention, reminds him of Damianos, the two of them half a world away from each other, both setting out on their own. He looks over to the group.

  They are young, students perhaps. Most of them are wearing flares, but two of the girls have skin-tight shiny trousers on. One is wearing an all-in-one outfit—blouse and trousers of the same shiny material, with the trousers flared so much Theo at first thinks it is a skirt. The colours are so bright and daring, you would never see a Greek girl dressed in such a way. Or perhaps you would, in Athens? A man in a brown suit, with a clipboard, is trying to get the girls’ attention. It is another world.

  Theo knows that in the scheme of things, this display of fashion is just a passing phase and that the ancient building is the wonder he should be staring at, but the likes of these girls he has never seen before, not even in pictures. Their shiny blonde hair curled back from their faces, eyes rimmed in blues, lips of pink. He shuts his mouth and looks away.

  First he must find a job and a place to live, then must come the wife. He must do things in order, like making coffee, take it slowly, each stage preparing for the next.

  With a last look at the girls, who notice him and giggle, he returns to the track and scuttles back down, determined now to get the job, to become part of the modern world, a world of shiny trousers, instant coffee, and women intermingling with men. Perhaps instant coffee is taking things too far, but at least he is back on the right road.

  After a brief determined search and asking three people for directions, he arrives at the address he wrote down. The building is six floors high, the balconies lifeless and uncared for, some used as storage areas, the windows with eyelids of nylon lace. The apartment block is a grubby grey, and its textured surface has trapped a thick layer of dust. Theo clears his throat, hand to mouth, lingering fingers extending, rubbing his cheeks.

  By the door, there are two long vertical lines of buttons set in a brass plaque, with corresponding-lozenge shaped windows down either side, one for each resident. A ring of grime surrounds each button. His fingers release his chin and, instead, trail down the names behind the glass, until he finds the right one and presses long and hard. The unpolished door buzzes open.

  Inside, the white marble floor is dusty and grey, streaks of a long-gone mop giving variation. Slightly shocked at the lack of care, Theo presses the red button by the metal concertina door by the lift, but it shows no life. He begins to have doubts. He looks around and is startled by a mirror on the wall which dully reflects his halo of hair and his rather worried expression. But the thought of the girl in the blue, skin-tight, shiny trousers brings a smile, and he mounts the dirty marble stairs with determination. The handrail feels grimy, and he wipes his hand on his trousers and pumps his arms to gain momentum. There are no windows in the stairwell, and on each landing is a push-button light switch. Theo depresses each as hard as he can and climbs the next flight of stairs quickly, but never quickly enough, as the light clicks off each time before he has reached the next level, and always on the curve of the stair that is the darkest, it seems. He decides he will not keep this job long, that it will do until he finds something in a nicer building with more light.

  On the sixth floor, he stops to regain his breath and pushes the light switch to reveal a corridor with doors leading off, like every other floor. He finds the doorbell at the end with the man’s name behind a cracked, brass-edged window. He presses it and wipes the toes of each shoe down the back of the opposite leg and runs his hands through his shock of hair, which springs back immediately. This will be the first time he has applied for a job, and he has no idea what to expect. Hopefully, whoever turns up first and looks fit enough to do the work will get the job, like at orange-picking time back home, when the workers—immigrants, mostly—wait in the square before dawn.

  The door opens a crack and a smell of fried food seeps into the hall. A bulbous nose protrudes.

  ‘Hello, I’m here about the job?’ Theo states, hoping no one has got here before him. Perhaps since he made the call, someone else has come. It might have been a mistake to waste time climbing up to the Acropolis. The door is opened wider by a man in a thigh-length, dirty white dressing gown which is loosely tied with a sash around his ample waist. There is no sign of any pyjamas underneath.

  ‘Oh, I am sorry. Do I have the right door?’ Theo looks for the nameplate, but the corridor light has clicked off and the dull glow from inside the apartment does not help much in the hall.

  ‘Yes.’ The man holds the door open wider.

  ‘Did you not expect me? Should I come back later?’ Theo rocks from his front leg to his back leg, not sure whether to come or go, his hair bouncing to the movement.

  ‘Come in.’ The hand not holding the door open slides up the man’s body and through the V of his dressing gown, fondling the hairs on his chest. Theo estimates the man must have a good ten years on him and will be fifty, maybe older. His lank hair is unwashed and combed straight back to gather in greasy curls around the back of his neck. He is short, his calves are thick, and his feet are bare.

  Stepping past the man, Theo is immediately in the living area; there is no hall. The curtains are drawn. A black and white television is on in the corner with the sound turned down. It is not tuned in properly and the picture flickers, sending eerie light back into the room. The sofa is a mess of newspapers and dirty plates. Somewhat masked by the aroma of fried food, there is a smell of unwashed clothes.

  ‘So …’ Theo stands tall. ‘The job?’ he asks directly.

  ‘Ah yes, the job,’ the man says as if he has forgotten. ‘I need a cleaner.’

  Theo looks around him. Maybe a good half day of hard scrubbing would get the place clean. A miserable, dark, dirty, smelly day’s work at most, but after that, it would need no more than an hour or two a week, which will not be enough to keep him. Besides, he is not sure he could take orders from someone with such little personal pride. He looks back at the man and tries to keep his revulsion from showing.

  ‘Let me show you around. This is the living room.’ The man waves his hand, indicating his squalid living area. ‘And here--’ He steps across the room, kicking a yoghurt pot out of the way, and holds another door open. With hope, Theo steps past him, the man leaving little room for him to pass. ‘Is the kitchen.’ Theo is dis
tinctly uncomfortable being crammed into this tiny space with this man who smells like he needs a good wash. The sink is piled with washing up. Theo wonders if he must revise his notion of what constitutes work. Washing a few pots is not really work, just part of life, whether at home or in the kafeneio. To be employed specifically to pick up after a man too lazy to do it himself, can that be called work? He feels his mouth pulling down at the corners and his lips tightening. But he needs a job and he consciously tries to erase any expression. His nostrils flare and twitch with the various smells coming, presumably, from a dustbin overflowing in the corner.

  ‘I see.’ Theo retraces his steps, glad to be in the sitting room again. The man’s sash has come undone and his robe begins to open. Theo averts his gaze, but the man takes his time in covering himself up. ‘So is this a one-day job, or a daily job, how do you see it?’ But all Theo can think of is the sunshine that is struggling through the gaps at the tops of the curtains. His desire to be outside is becoming overwhelming.

  ‘I thought perhaps you could come every day, for a couple of hours, tidy up, make a little to eat, make some conversation.’ He has slithered across the room. ‘And this …’ He opens another door. Theo is tentative; the man has left no room to pass him unless they are to touch. ‘Is the bedroom.’ He wets his lower lip with his tongue. Theo does not even look in the room.

  ‘Ah right, no. Sorry. The hours would not suit.’ Theo steps towards the front door.

  ‘I am sure we can come to some arrangement that you would like.’ The man smooths his hair back. Theo is out in the hall and heading for the unlit stairwell.

  ‘No thank you.’ Theo turns to look at the man out of politeness to deliver these final words but the man, standing back-lit in his doorway, has his gown open and is already lost in his own world of pleasure.