by Sara Alexi
‘Please, please, come in, Theo. Our home is your home,’ Marinos implores, but Theo finds his feet have stuck and his tongue is tied. He has not experienced people living on this level before. There are families in the village with little money, few possessions, eating mostly what they grow in their vegetable gardens, but never to the point of living in an apothiki, carving out a life in these storage rooms. Shock runs deep and twists in his stomach, he half glances behind him, at the path to his own apartment beckoning but he can find no excuse to take it. The wife enters the building, walking slightly hunched as she travels down the corridor. The walls are a cheerful, thin, pink, and cheap rugs cover the rough concrete floor.
‘It gets higher here.’ She stands tall and extends her arm, intimating an inner room.
Marinos stands by the door smiling, hopeful, with an open countenance. Theo still cannot get his feet to move, he does not wish to know that subsisting on this level exists, it makes his own groans and grumbles about working beside his Baba seem trivial and inconsequential. His move to Athens ignominious.
‘How very kind of you, but I am afraid I have work. Please excuse me.’ Theo finds the words and looks up to his bedroom window. The dog appears, sniffs at the bottom of his trousers. He bends down and ruffles the hair on its head, and it barks happily and runs into the storage house dwelling.
‘Before you go, would you be so kind as to help me lift something? My wife, she wants to wash all the rugs. I have been telling her she is not well enough yet, but she likes to keep things clean and she hasn’t been able to do much for a while.’
Theo begins to stammer. ‘Well I, um …’
‘It won’t take a moment just to lift the bed from the rug. She is not strong enough yet,’ Marinos persists.
Theo stoops to enter the building, smells the damp; he can feel it in his lungs. Cold rises from the concrete floor, its chill soaking the air even though outside it is now warm. He cowers lower than necessary so his hair does not brush the flaky paint of the ceiling. Aikaterina greets him as he turns the corridor into a room that is two steps down, where the ceiling is just high enough for him to stand upright.
A heavy, plain wooden bed takes up most of the room, and on top of it are wooden boards. Cups and plates are neatly lined up on one board, along with a folded teacloth. A loaf of bread and two oranges sit on another. Presumably, they put the boards on the floor when they sleep but during the day, the bed doubles as a table. A piece of twine is strung across the room, over which clothes are folded, lowering the height over the sleeping area. There is a wooden chair in the corner upon which are two sweat-stained pillows and a dirty-looking quilt which is neatly folded. A single burner stove is stored under the chair, along with a pan. The air is stale, smelling of sleep, dirty clothes, damp, and ill health. The light comes from a bare bulb hanging at head-height. Theo ducks around it. Aikaterina coughs and puts a fist to the middle of her chest, one heavy breast spilling over her arm. The cough is deep and seems painful. Theo tries to breathe out more air than he is breathing in.
‘Right, then,’ he announces, hoping to take control of the situation, and goes to the far leg of the bed and prepares to lift. Marinos takes the leg by the door.
The air swirls as Aikaterina pulls the carpet out, creating a cloud of concrete dust and dead skin flakes. Theo drops the bed and hurries outside, lifting the rear end of the rug as he goes to help Marinos’ wife, in front of him, hasten her exit. The three of them emerge like rabbits from a warren.
Theo feels a little better for the deep breaths he gasps in the open air. He brushes down his shirt and trousers.
‘Thank you so much, sir,’ Aikaterina says and as she notices him brushing himself down, she adds, ‘May I help?’ and steps towards him. Theo backs away.
‘No,’ her husband answers. ‘Get Mr Theo a glass of water.’
Theo raises defensive hands. ‘No, I’m fine. I have a coffee waiting. Thank you.’ He is pleased to hear the differential term of ‘Mr’ introduced in reference to him. Something in the way he has carried himself perhaps has re-addressed the balance.
‘Well, thank you again,’ Marinos says awkwardly. Theo straightens his superior back and waves his generosity of help away. Turning to leave, he is pulled up by the sight of an old lady who is presumably Maragrita’s mama coming around the corner, her elbows out, her arms pumping as she moves. She does not look pleased.
‘Oh, hello.’ She, too, is pulled up by the sight of him. ‘You must be Theo.’ She extends a clean, ring-encrusted hand and introduces herself with a colluding smile. Theo shakes, wondering in what he is meant to be colluding but wishes her a good day. Her eyes are on Marinos, which gives him the opportunity to take his leave. His head is swimming with new concepts and feelings evoked by the exposure to a new level of living and by the blatant snobbery of Margarita’s mother.
It is time to practice bottle tossing. He will begin on the bed, so if they fall, there’s no harm done. Stepping into his bedroom, he is conscious that this room, too, smells of sleep, so he opens the window. To his embarrassment, this lets in the sound of arguing voices. Margarita’s mother’s is dominant, Marinos’ ingratiating, against the backdrop of the broom working vigorously.
She is accusing Marinos of eating the leftover chicken that she gave to him to feed the dog, and she is unhappy that he has not yet clipped the bushes down the side of the garden. Surely it is a week ago that she asked? Marinos says he thought the chicken was for his sick wife, and besides, he had already fed the dog pasta and the dog was happy. He is sorry about the meat, but he felt his wife needed it to grow strong again. Theo goes to close the windows to block out this unhappy affair, but he does not wish to draw attention to himself and there is no way of closing the glass without being seen. He elects to leave it open. If he concentrates on what he is doing, he will not hear them.
Kneeling on the bed, he tries tossing one beer bottle.
‘Is it too much to ask that you do the jobs I want doing when I ask them to be done? You are given everything, and you respond with a bad attitude. There are others who will take your place, you know.’ Margarita’s mama has a high-pitched penetrating voice that grates on Theo’s ears. The bottle spins high.
‘It is not as if Athens does not have lots of village people to take your place. I suggest you get your priorities right.’ The woman continues in her screeching, shrill voice.
‘But we need money to eat,’ Marinos says quietly.
‘That’s your problem,’ she replies. ‘It does not give you the right to take food from my dog’s mouth or go work somewhere else for a day without consulting me first. I needed you.’
‘Then I tell you now: I need my days free to go and get a job.’
‘Those are not the terms we agreed you would live here on. You must work for your roof over your head, like everybody else. You think Mr Theo does not work for the roof over his head? If he works, why should you not?’
Theo cringes at the sound of his name. He stops throwing bottles; he does not wish to be used as ammunition in this argument.
‘But if you keep me all day, I cannot go out to earn so we can eat.’
‘You agreed the terms, you figure it out. Meanwhile, please trim the bushes down the side of the garden today.’ Theo breathes a sigh of relief as he hears the woman stomping off. He picks up his bottle and is about to resume his practice when he hears her footsteps return.
‘And you owe me for the chicken,’ she screeches and stomps off again. Theo waits to see if she will return, but after two minutes’ silence, he continues his practice. Under his bedroom, he can hear murmurs, the same murmurs as he heard in the night. No wonder the place is so cheap. The argument did not sound like a new one; it must be hard for Margarita to keep tenants with all that going on.
With Maragita’s mama arguing with the people in the cellar, Gypsies next door, and barking dogs, Margarita is lucky to rent the place at all. The bottle slips from his fingers, bounces off the edge of the bed and smashe
s on the floor. The murmuring below stops.
Theo ignores the mess and continues with the second bottle. He might as well sweep up two smashed bottles as well as one. When the second bottle smashes a few minutes later, he slides off the bed and then recalls he has not yet bought a broom.
The jagged shards have spread evenly all across the floor. Some glint in the sunlight while others remain invisible. If he does not sweep up the bits, the invisible slices will cut into his feet at bedtime, when he comes home sleepy. He uses the rag by the sink in the kitchen to wipe the floor over and gather the pieces in one corner.
As he works his way across the floor on hands and knees, he can hear the woman downstairs crying, the man trying to comfort her. The sounds are the murmurs he heard before, when he first thought it was a cat that was trapped. She must cry a lot. Looking at his fingers, he rubs his palms together to take off the black that has lodged there from wiping the floor. He looks at them again. The same hands that just refused to shake the crying woman’s hands downstairs. Not because hers were dirty, but because she is from a poor village in the far north of the country. He shakes his head with disbelief at his actions and continues to work.
When he cuts his fingers, he does not stop. He considers it is karma, that he deserves the pain. Her crying continues, and it is reaching parts of his emotions that haven’t been touched since leaving the village. What did his Baba’s friend say in the kafeneio? That Athens changes people. It turns their heads. Is he a victim already? The way he treated Aikaterina, but eager to shake Margarita’s mama’s ring-encrusted hand? No one in his village wears more than a wedding ring.
Still on hands and knees, he hangs his head and shakes it gently from side to side, closing his eyes to block out the world. But this does nothing to lesson his shame. The man in the cellar is from a village, just as he is. Who is he to withhold his hand and behave with the same snobbery as Margarita’s mama?
He stands and retreats to the kitchen. Water, sugar, coffee, patience. He becomes lost in making the perfect cup of coffee and his condemnatory thoughts quiet. He watches the bubbles form and pop, judging the time to take it from the heat, releasing him from all thoughts. Once finished, he takes his coffee out to the balcony and flops on the sofa. He stares at the crazy puzzle made by the branches of trees against the blue sky. The caffeine, the blue sky, and the sound of birds wash him clean.
A light tread on metal steps causes him to sit upright. The Gypsy appears on the roof next door, a basket of washing in her hands, her children around her skirts. Today, the two small children are helping a sibling, no more than a baby, to walk, each holding a hand, pulling. The Gypsy queen frowns at them, spits a harsh word to stop them dragging the baby by the arms, to be more gentle.
‘Good morning,’ Theo says enthusiastically, keen to show no prejudice.
The children look up, startled. She smiles but does not return his greeting.
‘I think we got off on a rather bad footing yesterday. I just wanted to let you know I am here for you.’ He grins, but she frowns. ‘And your children,’ he adds, smiling at them. Her frown deepens; she looks almost angry. ‘Oh, and your husband, as a neighbour,’ he qualifies, but it is clear he has said something wrong.
‘If you need anything…’ He trails off. He wonders what his blunder is this time, runs over the words he has spoken in his mind. ‘Not that I think you need help, you know, your husband. I am sure your husband is a very capable man and I am sure you need no help with your children. I just thought that, with us being, living so close that…’ His words trail off again. He is not sure where this sentence is going. Her frown lifts and she is smiling, almost laughing, and the children resume teaching the little one to walk.
The washing now hung, she leaves the basket on the ground and herds the three children down the staircase. She has not said even one word today. The brightly coloured clothes flap slightly in the warm breeze, the colours gay, lifting Theo’s heart. At least she smiled.
The breeze picks up, taking the washing from the line and gathering it into coloured streamers which float across the garden, swirling and spiralling until garments part to reveal a group of people assembled on the lawn. The Gypsy queen in a long satin dress of blue, Aikaterina in a gown of green, her hair washed, her eyebrows shaped, arm in arm with Marinos, whose suit now fits him well. Theo is on the lawn, too, and he shakes their hands heartily. A bar is set up in the shade of the monkey puzzle tree. Theo takes orders from the man in the overcoat—Phaedon—from work and Stathis from the village. Tasia arrives in a gown of gold, her hair threaded with diamonds. Theo flicks and spins the bottles in the air, round behind his back, turns to catch them, balances them on the ends of his fingers, and with a sudden flip and catch, he pours cocktails with great panache. Tasia says nothing, but her smile is broad and her fingers linger on his as he passes her a glass. Some of the drink spills over her fingers. She licks them slowly and then trails the remaining moisture down his cheek.
‘Oh, what? Off. Get off.’ Theo pushes the Bob the dog’s wet tongue from his face. The dog bolts and runs out of Theo’s front door. He must have left it open. He crawls to his knees and levers himself back onto the sofa. With these late nights, he is going to have to wake up later to get enough sleep. He feels exhausted.
Chapter 13
May - November, Theo turns 41.
The spring warmth turns into the thick heat of summer, the arrival of which is accompanied by the cicadas rasping their incessant love song day and night. Theo’s limbs respond reluctantly as he walks to work with the setting sun. He needs new clothes for the change of season, he must at least buy a new shirt sometime soon. The cool relief that comes with the evening is negated by the number of people in the bar each night, and the next two weeks pass seamlessly from heat-filled day to heat-filled night.
The first weekend he is too tired from the late nights at the bar to even think about paying a visit to see Tasia, instead he spends the day on the sofa sleeping in the shade of the trees on the balcony. Somewhere into the second week his life starts to take on a routine and the dark of the bar seems to impregnate his core, the stench of stale smoke hovering around him like an aura, the dirt of the place imbedding itself into his hair. No matter how often he showers he never feels clean and he finds he cannot face Tasia. Instead be promises himself he will buy new clothes and scented soap and go the following weekend.
At work Dimitri sheds his long coat and looks like a waiter in his clean white shirt and suit trousers. His pudgy face and lifeless eyes are in stark contrast with the business nature his clothes imply. Makis remains in his music booth, and Jimmy is less friendly as the days pass. Theo tries to manoeuvre working alongside Jimmy on the main bar when new models are brought in to attract attention, as this means there is little trade at the small side bar. Jimmy tries to discourage him, which is not surprising as he has discovered that the girls who come and go so quickly are usually sacked by Jimmy for, allegedly, pocketing money. This is Jimmy’s insurance policy if Dimitri thinks the till is down, but it is a scam he cannot pull on Theo, and although Jimmy hired him, he does not have the authority to sack him.
With Theo alongside him, the amount Jimmy can cream off is vastly reduced.
‘Have we got a new model coming in tonight?’ Theo asks Jimmy, who is filling bottles behind the curtain.
‘No, don’t think so,’ Jimmy calls, coming out with three full bottles, crunching them on invisible dirt on the streaky glass shelves. Scooping up a tumbler, he says, ‘Want one?’
‘No thanks,’ Theo replies and picks up a beer bottle. ‘Watch this.’ He throws it and it twists and turns in mid-air, and he catches it behind his back.
‘You’re getting quite handy. You going for a job down by the beach, or are you after my job?’ His eyes grow wide and anxious as he waits for the answer, his fist clenching.
‘Just messing about,’ Theo says.
‘I like it. Do it again.’ Neither of them heard Dimitri come in.
&nb
sp; ‘Oh, okay.’ Theo picks up another bottle and tries the two-bottle pass he almost got the hang of this morning over his bed. He catches them both, his frizzy mop bouncing to the bottles’ rhythm.
‘Good one, man.’ Jimmy tries to sound enthusiastic as he sips his whiskey.
‘Been practising a bit,’ Theo says, putting the bottles down to go to the small bar. Better keep an eye on Jimmy before he gets stabbed in the back by him.
‘You know what.’ Dimitri thumps a retaining hand on Theo’s chest. ‘Why don’t you stay here on this bar, throw a few bottles. Jimmy can handle the little bar. Can’t you, Jimmy?’ The look on Jimmy’s face turns from surprise to thunder.
‘But it’s Friday night. Busy night to let Theo try his skills,’ Jimmy defends, taking another drink. His brow drops and his eyes narrow.
‘Oh, I’ll be alright,’ Theo hears himself say. He coughs and rubs his hand across his mouth, briefly glancing at Jimmy before returning his gaze to the floor.
‘Yeah, he’ll be fine.’ Dimitri looks at Jimmy who, throwing his tea-towel over his shoulder with disgust, saunters from behind the bar and reluctantly takes himself across the floor to the small bar, his boot heels scuffing the rough wood as he goes.
Dimitri talks to Theo in the manner he usually does each evening to Jimmy, about his day, who he lunched with, the important people he met. He tells Theo he has a degree in Human Psychology, which makes Theo look twice. He just does not see enough intelligence in the man’s face to believe him. After this, he mentions the mafia in an offhand way, and Theo tunes out until the bar starts filling. He tosses a few bottles for a pretty girl, and this gains him a lot of attention. He can see Jimmy through the throng, his upper lip curling as he watches from afar. Dimitri looks smug and nods contentedly before leaving the bar.