by Sara Alexi
Theo thinks for a second. It would be easy to imagine the wind blowing the sand into a big dune that would cover him and his newspaper, but that will not get him the job.
‘You contradict yourself. You just said I look younger. I could have lied and told you I was thirty; you would have believed me. People think that is my age anyway. But I didn’t. I was honest. I imagine you will want honest bar staff?’
The man lowers his newspaper and looks at Theo. Closing the tabloid, he folds it and throws it onto the unfinished bar counter.
‘Take a seat.’ He turns to the empty bar stool next to him. Theo trots to the island, shakes the sand off his shoes, and wriggles onto the bar stool.
Chapter 8
40 years, 5 months, 15 days.
‘Tell me your experience?’
‘I have run a kafeneio since I left school.’ Theo sits tall. A smile comes with the familiarity of the mental images, the smoke-filled ceiling, the tables out on the square, the usual banter between the usual farmers. Inside, his chest suddenly feels rather hollow. He yearns to smell the coffee when he first opens a tin, along with the sulphur of the match to ignite the stove. He bites his lower lip and banishes the images.
‘With your baba, I imagine?’
‘Yes.’ Theo composes himself. ‘But it was only serving his generation, no one new came in till I changed things around a bit.’ He rubs his hand across the back of his neck, his fingers catching in his hair, separating it out. The sea sparkles under the blue sky.
‘Like what?’ the man asks, pulling his cuffs out from under his jacket. Gold cufflinks.
‘I started making coffee that you could drink, for a start. I also introduced proper meze with the beer, bought new tavli sets, introduced shot glasses and whiskey chasers and took the tables and chairs across into the square in the summer.’
‘And, no doubt, people more your age started coming into your kafeneio?’
‘Yes, exactly.’ Theo’s chest fills out. One day, he will have gold cuff links, and Tasia to put them in for him every morning.
‘Which is what I am saying. People want to be served by people their own age.’ The man looks towards his newspaper.
‘And younger people came,’ Theo quickly adds before reflecting, ‘but how young are the people who go to kafeneios? It was not my age that stopped the young coming in, it was the building, our tradition, what people believe kafeneios are.’
‘True, to a degree, but you could have made it a bar. Then the old men stay from habit and the young men come from curiosity, and they would stay, as there is so little to do in these provincial villages.’ Does the man sneer these last two words?
Theo bristles. The people of his village work all hours; there is too much to do. Well, okay, Damianos found growing oranges boring, but he did not tend the earth under them so his yield was not as good as it could have been. But, for himself, the hours were full, any time off, he spent tidying up the storeroom above the cafe, watching the world go by through those lofty windows, unseen by those in the square and beyond. But time off was a luxury. Running the kafeneio whilst allowing his baba to believe that he was still be in charge was all time-consuming. This man clearly does not understand the difficulties Theo has overcome.
‘But I ran it with my baba, which required diplomacy.’ Theo is impressed by his choice of words. He settles back into his chair and says no more.
‘Hm. Yes, I understand what you are saying.’ The man fiddles with his cufflinks and looks at him through narrow eyes.
‘I did the accounting, kept track of the stock, ordered more stuff when we needed it.’ Theo cringes at his choice of words and thinks hard. ‘I managed it.’ There, that’s better.
‘Have you served in a bar?’
‘No.’ Theo answers.
‘Do you have flair?’
Theo looks down at his trouser bottoms, but he is not sure that is what the man is talking about.
‘Can you spin a bottle?’ The man rephrases.
‘What?’ Theo feels lost.
‘Okay, here’s what to do. Go get a job serving in any old bar, learn a little flair, learn to spin a bottle, and come back. I like your honesty and I think the chicks are going to dig your hair.’ The man picks up his newspaper.
‘If I get a job somewhere else, why would I come back?’ Theo can feel his briki of rage go on simmer at the man’s dismissal of himself and his village.
‘Because I will pay you double what you will be paid anywhere else.’ The man does not lower his newspaper. ‘Try the Diamond Rock Cafe over the main road, up the side street there. They go through bartenders as quickly as glasses; they always want workers.’ He turns back to his newspaper, shakes it flat and becomes engrossed without another word.
Theo’s first school teacher, glasses on nose, hair in a tight, greying bun, marches up to the man, snatches the paper from his hands and takes a firm grip on his ear. ‘Manners cost nothing. Now be polite,’ she says firmly.
‘Thanks,’ Theo mutters, more to the apparition than to the man. The gas under his briki turns down and he wades through sand to the gate, where he takes off his shoes and pours out the contents before continuing across the main road. He never even found out the man’s name. Back in the village, whose name does he not know? He knows every man woman and child, and their relation to each other. Okay, he does call Cosmo’s baba, well, ‘Cosmo’s Baba,’ but he knows his name, which he uses when he talks to him directly, but other than him? And here he is, in Athens a whole week, and he has met so many people and found out so few names. The passing and crossing of lives seems impersonal, with people coming and going as fast as the cars. Nothing seems to have any permanence. It feels unkind and inhuman, as if no one matters to anyone. Theo wraps his arms across his chest and runs them up to his shoulders and briefly pushes his cheek to the back of his hand.
The Diamond Rock Cafe, even in the bright sunshine, looks dead. The windows have crude wooden shutters lowered over them, hinged at the top. Wooden cable drums lined on the pavement pose as tables. There are no chairs. On either side are other bars which don’t look any more inviting.
A man walks past.
‘Don’t open till the night-time,’ he says without breaking his stride.
‘Thank you.’ Theo’s arms drop as he watches him go. The man leaves behind the smells of fresh bread and cooked tomatoes. It evokes memories of the kitchen, his mama chopping vegetables. Theo, too small to see what she is doing, tipping a chair and dragging it across the flags, the legs bumping over the uneven stones, the vinyl floor not laid for another twenty years. How tall the chair seemed then as he climbed to stand on the seat, and how big he felt standing there, the same height as his mama. She would smile and incline her head until their hair touched before she resumed her work. The smells of herbs and onions that she stuffed into the tomatoes with rice ready for the oven would permeate the house.
The aroma the passer-by left behind begins to dissipate. Theo walks in the direction the man was going until he catches the smell again and follows it until he is outside a bakery. His stomach grumbles. He can live without coffee, but he must eat.
The bell above the door tinkles as he enters.
‘Hello. Decided not to wait for it to open?’ the man who Theo just passed in the street asks from behind the counter, rolling up his sleeves.
Theo chuckles. ‘It would be a bit of a wait.’
‘Just buy a mini bottle of ouzo. Cheaper as well,’ the man replies.
‘No, I am hoping to get a job there.’ Theo smiles. The man does not have an Athenian accent. He is from the country, but Theo cannot tell where. One of the islands, maybe.
‘Oh, a man like you?’ He looks Theo up and down. ‘You will get a job there in a heartbeat. Count on it.’
‘Really?’ Theo fidgets with enthusiasm.
A woman with her hair in a net comes through from the back.
‘Eleni, don’t you think this young man will get a job at the Diamonds in a heartbeat? It cou
ld do with a better type of person in there.’
‘Oh, for sure.’ She smiles. She, too, is not from Athens. ‘What can we get you?’ She looks down at her counter of wares.
‘Somewhere to live if the job is assured,’ Theo jokes and begins to look at the shelves of breads and pastries.
‘Didn’t think you were from here with that accent. Where are you from?’ the man asks.
‘A little village near Saros.’ Theo’s mouth waters at the sight of the tiropitas—cheese pies—he fancies some cheese, although the spanokopitas look good, too, and the spinach will do him good.
‘Really? Well, well, do you know Margarita?’ the lady asks.
‘Er, I know a Margarita, but there must be many.’ Theo smiles his answer. Talking to them is almost like being back in the village.
‘True, true, but she is from over that way. But more to the point, she has a flat she is letting just round the corner.’ The woman unloads bread from a large flat baking tray, the loaves steaming as she puts them on the latted wooden shelves behind the counter.
Theo looks up from the food although his stomach grumbles loudly. ‘I would really have to know if I have got the job first. I don’t have a deposit.’ He is about to launch into the tale of the wicked old lady and her flat scam but decides that would put him in the role of the victim. It will not start well on that footing, so he keeps his mouth closed.
The old man goes into the back. The woman looks after him before returning her attention to Theo. She has a housecoat on with big yellow flowers merging into big pink flowers, the same pink as her hair net.
There is a trader who comes to the village with his horse and cart who sells such clothes. Presumably, horse-and-cart men all over Greece sell them, but the simple recollection makes him yearn for the village square, Vasso calling hello, Marina’s little girl asking to feel his hair for the hundredth time.
‘Can I have a tiropita, please.’ It comes out almost like a sigh.
Before the woman can respond, her husband returns from the back. ‘I just called Margarita. She says the flat is still available,’ he reports.
‘But I have no deposit,’ Theo says.
‘She’ll either trust you or she won’t. Isn’t that right, Eleni?’
‘Yes indeed.’ There is a pinging noise from the back room. ‘Oh it’s done. I use the bread oven to cook on weekdays,’ she explains to Theo. ‘So many people come with a roast for oven space at the weekend. Shall we eat? Come on, young man, nice to have a bit of company. What’s your name?’
They sit back with full stomachs. Timotheos, Eleni’s husband, has just been recounting his days back at his village, the thrill of hunting rabbits before dawn, the rabbit stew at night. The leg of lamb they have just eaten is surely the best Theo has ever had. What wonders Eleni could create with a rabbit! The three of them lean back in their chairs around the table with their hands over their bulging stomachs.
Theo smells her cheap perfume before he sees her.
‘Look at you lot, like pregnant goats.’ A shrill voice comes from the back door behind Theo. He turns. A big woman blocks the light and he can make out nothing beyond her lumpy outline.
‘Ah, Margarita. This is Theo.’ Eleni introduces them.
It turns out that Margarita’s village is nowhere near Saros, but she doesn’t care. She declares that she likes Theo and pats his hand. Hers is sweaty. She explains that her mother lives on the bottom floor of the building at the front and his will be the flat above. She gives kisses and hugs to Eleni and Timotheos and takes Theo to see the apartment.
The sun’s brightness is a shock after the room behind the bakery but, almost unbelievably, the temperature is cooler. Two ovens were on the go while they were eating, making the place stifling. For a second, Theo tips his head back to let the sun wash his face and holds his arms from his body to allow the relative cool full access before they set off.
As they walk, he tries to explain he has no deposit, but the woman will not stop talking. Apparently, someone picked up her handbag this morning by accident in a shop and made no apology. Also, they are thinking of building a new road down by the marina which will just ruin the neighbourhood. There has been a new mayor elected and he really doesn’t know his … She uses some expression that Theo doesn’t understand fully, but by the time he has worked out the gist, she is talking about a trip she is planning to America and how happy she will be to know there is a nice young man like him above her mother. Theo is amused that everybody keeps calling him a young man. This woman, for example, cannot be more than ten years older than him.
‘Are you listening?’ she asks.
Theo tries to recall the last thing he heard. ‘Sorry. I missed that?’
‘I said there is just the one rule—no subletting.’
‘Oh, absolutely not,’ Theo assures her.
‘And it’s fine for friends to stay, if you know what I mean.’ She gives him a side-on look. Her tongue darts across her fleshy lips as she pulls her jacket straight over her ample bust. ‘But if you have a woman move in, I want to know about it. This is my mother we are talking about.’ She stops walking and pushes open a gate. A short path bisects a handkerchief lawn, leading to a two-storey building. The lower floor has a window on either side of the front door. The second floor has a balcony the full width of the building. The front garden is dominated by a tall straight tree that towers the height of the house and casts dappled shade, the sunlight filtering through its spiky branches. It’s a monkey puzzle tree and Theo has seen one before, a small one in a pot in a garden in the village, but nothing as majestic as this.
‘Mother’s there.’ She jabs her fingers at the main door as she leads the way up the enclosed steps up the right side of the building.
‘This is you,’ she says and opens the door to a large living room with a fireplace at the far end and, at right angles to it, a small sofa that has seen better days. But Theo’s eyes are drawn to the window, which takes up the whole of the front wall and looks out onto a balcony and the treetops in the garden. A monkey puzzle tree takes centre stage, creating a canopy over the lawn. Down either side of the garden is magnificent greenery. There are no trees this big in the village or in Saros; there is just not enough water that far south. Theo stares, admiring the view ‘… kitchen there.’ Margarita finishes something she was saying. ‘You like it?’
‘Oh yes,’ Theo says and pulls his attention to her. He must make her understand he has no deposit. She is standing quite close, so that he can see the fine hairs on her cheeks have a dusting of skin-coloured powder.
‘So rent at the end of the month,’ she says quietly, ‘I’ll be round to get it and we can have a cup of coffee and a chat.’ Her eyes linger on him just too long for comfort.
‘How much?’ Theo asks. She leans towards him. Theo checks himself; his instincts govern him to back away, but he is sure this would be unwise if he wants the place. ‘For you…’ She leans closer. Theo smells acrid perfume. She whispers a sum. Theo wonders if flecks of spit remain in his hair as she backs away. But as the sum she has said registers, he turns and looks at her face on. Is there a catch? Maybe, but she has not asked for any rent in advance, so what can he lose?
Margarita smiles. ‘I knew you would be pleased.’ She laughs shrilly and points to the key as she leaves, which is still in the door.
Theo looks around the enormous room. He snorts, amused that he went for a job and ended up with a flat. And this time, he even knows his landlady’s name—and the name of her friends. He has shared their table and drunk their wine—he has parea, companionship, if he wants it. He snorts again, and it expands into a chuckle. Maybe this is more like Athens really is. Maybe his encounters with the other landlady and the man in the dressing gown, the illegal postcard sellers, the leaflet distributors were just beginner’s bad luck, eccentrics, one-offs. He hopes so because life at the moment is suddenly looking pretty good.
He is torn between going onto the balcony and going through the arched
door to explore the rest of the flat. The balcony wins. His footsteps echo as he passes through the big room. Looking down at the lawn, he takes his time to notice the roses bordering the path, yellow and pink, like the woman in the bakery’s housecoat. To the left is a low wall and beyond that, the windowless side of another house. To the right is a high, old stone wall which forms the side of the building next door—a single storey house with a concrete slab for its roof. The concrete, which has cracks in it as wide as a coin, is on a level with his balcony. If he climbed over the railings, he could jump onto it. Perhaps that’s one reason why the rent is cheap: it’s an easy target for burglars. He wonders how much of that sort of crime there is in Athens. Of course, he has heard the stories but in reality, is this a safe area?
It would be better if the owner of the derelict building next door either re-built or just got it levelled. Theo presumes that the owner has not the money to do anything with it. Or perhaps it has been inherited by brothers and sisters who cannot decide its fate. He sighs. It will be left, forgotten, to fall down in the course of time. At least in the village, such a place would be used for animals until the roof collapsed.
Over the road, hidden by more trees, is a modern house with shiny railings around its wide balcony, the lines sleek, the garden paved over.
Theo wanders back inside to discover the rest of his own flat. Through the arch, the ceiling remains the same height but the floor lowers by five steps; off to the right is a bedroom and, beyond that, a kitchen. Straight ahead is the bathroom. The rooms appear bigger than they really are because of the high ceilings. From the back door off the kitchen, a metal staircase leads down to a small, grubby courtyard. Weeds grow around the edges, the flagstones are discoloured, and leaves are piled in a corner. It is not inviting.
He closes the back door and locks it. The kitchen is also uninviting, with the doors to the cabinets hanging off at odd angles. But there is a stove, a sink, and cupboards. It will do once it has had a good clean. At least the vinyl on the floor is flat and solid.