It's All Greek to Me!

by John Mole

  ‘Don’t tell me you got Spiros to make them. By the All Holy One you did. I recognise his work. There isn’t a right angle in the lot. How am I supposed to cut the glass?’

  Spiros came up to fit them. He scorned the spirit level and the plumb line, tapping his nose and twitching his moustache when I offered him mine. He relied on years of experience, the innate talent of a master craftsman, the natural feel of the simple man for materials and their relationship with each other. I put my level back in the tool box feeling humbled, an impoverished child of the cementolithic age. Spiros ran his hands up and down a frame, squinted with one eye then the other and it was done.

  As a result, every door and window was at least ten degrees out of true. When he had gone I did my best to put them straight, but they were fixed with massive six-inch nails hammered into the stones. The windows did not matter so much, in fact it was an advantage to have self-closing shutters swinging to under their own weight, but the angle of the door was a nuisance. Because the frame leaned into the house Spiros had trimmed the bottoms of the doors so that they opened and this left a four-inch gap when they were closed.

  ‘Mother of God, were you both drunk?’ marvelled Barba Vasilis.

  Looking back on what I have written so far, it gives a misleading impression of my mental and physical state. Apart from the odd tantrum, it reads as if I were healthy and balanced and enjoying myself. I should set the record straight.

  At any one time I had at least five of the following: sunburn, diarrhoea, a succession of colds, coughs and chills, heartburn, nausea, vomiting, stomach ache, back ache, leg ache, arm ache, head ache, blisters, cuts, scratches, splinters, a bloody eye from a wood chip and styes from cement dust, torn muscles, strained ligaments, rash in the crotch, fungus in the toes, itch in the scalp, wasp stings, bee stings, centipede bites, spider bites and flea bites. My left thumb was swollen and blue from the hammer, my fingers lacerated by slipping screwdrivers, my thigh slashed by a saw blade. I had been stabbed all over by rusty nails, brushwood thorns, last year’s razor thistles. My face was the worst. I had a peeling forehead, a permanent red lump from banging my head on the basement lintel, cracked lips, a bright red nose, three permanently infected mosquito bites and an itchy new beard.

  I regularly took aspirin, salt tablets, Alka-Seltzer and antibiotics and my tetanus immunity was working overtime. Most of the day I was dizzy from ouzo, wine, beer, whisky or the hangover therefrom, too many cigarettes, too little sleep, fatigue, sunstroke or heat exhaustion. I had chronic indigestion from the meats and fats, oils and acids of the Mediterranean diet. My mood swung from elation to despair a dozen times a day. Most of the time I was lonely, bored, frustrated and frightened of getting ill without a decent doctor. My head ached from speaking Greek and people haranguing me or ignoring me. I wanted to buy things without having to haggle and plead. I longed for the telly and a pint of Guinness. I wanted to go home.

  I went back to Athens at weekends when there was a good party or a school event we couldn’t miss. With a stifflegged walk from too much heavy lifting, peeling sunburn, cracked lips, village haircut and bruised, shredded hands ingrained with dirt and coarse with cement, I looked like Arfa’s bit of rough.

  Our smart Greek friends took advantage. When we went to dinner they spoke perfectly fluent English out of courtesy. But over the liqueurs they would deliberately switch to Greek. Someone would ask me how the house on Evia was getting on and I’d say in building-site vernacular something like ‘Werl, we’ve got the friggin roof on but them buggers sit round on their arses all day’ and the Greeks would fall about laughing. I had no idea what half the words meant. I thought I was being witty and amusing and didn’t realise that I was being set up.

  We walked home from such an occasion at one of Athens’s best tavernas. I was basking in the afterglow of what I thought had been my sparkling conversation. It was a lovely summer night. Familiar constellations were lost in the lactescence of unnamed stars and galaxies. A nightingale, lover of the absent moon, sang unfaithfully to the bright Milky Way spilling across the sky. Cicadas chirred and Athena’s owl coo-cooed. The garden breathed a cachou breath of night-scented blooms, gardenia and jasmine and japonica. Beside a fragrant loquat, Arfa broke our silence.

  ‘Must you go on about your bloody roof?’ she complained.

  ‘Wah?’

  ‘You’re obsessed. You’re a joke.’

  ‘Wah?’

  ‘You’re never here and when you’re here you’re not. When we go there as far as you’re concerned we’re not there and you can’t wait for us to go, not though you’d notice. When you used to go away you were here more than you are now and when you’re not there you might as well be.’

  ‘Wah?’

  ‘You leave me here to cope with everything while you go and live out your fantasies. All you ever think about is sand and cement. I’m sorry we’re in the way. I’m on the beach looking after the kids while you’re in the café drinking ouzo.’

  ‘Wah?’

  ‘And what was this tonight about living off the land? Growing olives and tomatoes and keeping goats? What’s happened to you? You don’t know the first thing. You hate digging. You grow mustard and cress and the blotting paper goes mouldy. And what will the children do? Have you ever wondered why Greeks go to Australia? What makes you think you can earn a living when the locals can’t make a go of it? We’re townies. We’ve got degrees.’

  ‘Wah?’

  ‘I know the house is lovely. Why do you think it’s so cheap to buy lovely little houses and farms all over France and Spain and Italy and Greece? Why do you think the natives leave their lovely places to live in slums? They’re not stupid. Nowhere’s lovely if you have no work and no money and no prospects. There’s never any dropping out. There’s only dropping in. Dropping out is dropping in and the out you drop in from ends up the in you want to get out to.’

  ‘Wah?’

  ‘Stop saying wah. Say something else.’

  I flopped into a canvas chair. What could I say? I was tired and pissed and looking forward to a screw and a lie-in and here I was ambushed out of the blue. This is all I could think of:

  Today I finished scraping the plaster and cement off the floor. It was hard work because it bonds with the stone. I had to use a chisel and a wire brush. It now shines like marble with streaks of quartz like diamonds. On Monday I’ll trim slates for the window ledges and cement them in. When that’s done I’ll scrape the splashes of plaster off the woodwork and the reeds. Then I can clean it all up for varnishing. I’ll do the floor first. Won’t it look beautiful when it’s mellow and shiny? And the beams. The varnish will bring up the chestnut. The lintels over the doors and windows are olive wood. I love olive wood …

  But that would have been fuel on the flames. So instead I did what loving partners do when their life’s companion is feeling isolated and aggrieved. I went on the attack.

  ‘I’m sorry I’ve put you to any inconvenience when I’ve been slaving my guts out on my own so you all can loll around on an unspoiled Greek island …’

  And so we continued through the balmy night as the universe wheeled around the pole above the peaks of Parnis. We laid out under the stars the old battle scars of marriage, the grudges and wounds, compromises and disillusionments, frustrations and disappointments that two people share when they make one life together. Relationships are built on trust and openness, self-sacrifice and kindness, but they also need envy and competition, selfishness and malice to give them spice and interest. Not forgetting lust. When the curtains billowed in the first breeze of dawn, we lay hand in hand on crumpled sheets.

  ‘How do you put up with being married to me?’ I whispered.

  ‘The secret of marriage, Toad,’ she replied, ‘is low expectations.’

  Lambs to the slaughter

  I was looking forward to an easy day hacking plaster from the inside walls. We hadn’t moved in yet, but I could make myself comfortable now that I had a proper house with a roof a
nd floor and doors and windows. I bought a double gas ring from Haralambos and salvaged a metal table from his yard. Elpida gave me a chair and a few pieces of crockery. I could make filter coffee instead of the inch of sludge that Yannis served. I took a jug of it with half a loaf of sweet bread and some fruit to the top step outside the front door that served as a veranda-for-one. It was a delicious morning, warm and fresh. In the pure Greek light the view had the unnatural detail of a Canaletto, as clear in the distance as close at hand.

  I was on my second cup and wondering what a third Cretan peach would do for my heartburn when a quaint procession made its way along the path. At the head sauntered Barba Vasilis, leading by a rope one of his yearling lambs, a fat male. Then strutted ruddy-faced Ajax the butcher, carrying a large canvas bag. At the rear plodded Spiros the carpenter, sucking his yard-brush moustache. I waited for them to say the first kalimera, which is the duty of the passer-by, and then offered them coffee. Ajax shouted that they were too busy.

  ‘Kein’ Zeit, danke, viel’ Arbeit.’

  I poured myself another cup. Barba Vasilis led the way to the old olive tree beside the little church and halted with the lamb. It stood patiently, its large, dark eyes worldly wise. Spiros tethered the donkey. Ajax dropped his bag on the ground and opened it. He took something shiny out of the bag and nodded to Vasilis. With practised skill they scooped the legs from under the lamb. A bleat turned into a gurgle as Ajax slipped the knife into its neck and sawed briefly. They stooped over the animal, holding its kicking legs at arm’s length so that blood would not spurt over their clean shoes while Spiros pulled on the rope around its crimson neck. The donkey was indifferent and carried on grazing as if nothing had happened.

  I froze, the coffee cup halfway to my lips. I closed my eyes and opened them again, but it was not a hallucination. I waited for revulsion or nausea or shock to strike – instead all I felt was boiling resentment that they had done it in the middle of my breakfast. I focused my anger on the red-handed butcher. Didn’t he have a yard down the hill where he could do this sort of thing in private? Why did they have to do it in front of our house? Our church? Outrage turned to squeamishness. I wanted to run away and hide although the deed was done, but my legs were trembling and I forced myself to sit there to watch what they did next.

  Ajax went back to his canvas bag, while Spiros untied the bloody end of the rope from the neck of the animal and used it to lash the hind legs together at the hoof. He slung the other end over the strongest branch of the olive tree and with Vasilis’s help hauled the lamb up until its nose was a foot off the ground. It dripped dark blood into the spreading pool on the grass, food for ants and worms and other underground things. Ajax made a small cut in a hind leg next to the rope and pushed the rubber tube of a foot pump into the incision. There was a fat little Michelin man on the pedal and I loathed him for smiling. Ajax pumped and the carcase swelled. Air filled the scrotum to the size of two beach balls. During the killing the men had been solemn. Now the tension was gone they talked and joked.

  ‘Hey, Johnny, don’t you wish you had a pair like that?’ shouted Ajax.

  The pumping became more difficult. With popping and tearing sounds, the skin came away from the flesh underneath. When the carcase was the size of a bullock, Ajax stopped pumping and with his knife split the belly from scrotum to breastbone. The air rushed out with a sigh that echoed over the hillside and announced that the lamb was truly dead. There was no terror any more. It was just meat.

  I put down my coffee and joined them to watch what Ajax did next. The intestines were greenish white and the liver and lungs a delicate, luminous purple. There was little blood, even from the heart. It had all soaked into the ground. There was a raw, metallic smell, vaguely familiar. I tried to ignore the slurp as the knife did its work and listened instead to the breeze in the olive trees and the scrunch of the donkey grazing. Ajax cut the large intestine at both ends, tugged it out and threw it on the grass. Spiros snapped a twig from the branch above him and wound the gut around it from the stomach end, forcing out the contents, first in black nuggets and then in green slime. At home a woman would do the job again more carefully, squeezing the tube between her fingers and washing it in plenty of water. It would be made into soup or wound tightly on a spit around other pieces of offal to make tasty kokoretsi.

  Ajax carefully cut out the liver and kidneys and sweetbreads and heart and testicles and other delicacies and put them in a black garbage bag. He tossed the stomach on the grass. His bare arms were bloody to the elbows, but his white shirt, blue jeans and shiny black shoes remained immaculate. As he worked he whistled softly to himself. He took a small knife with a wide blade and cut through the skin at the hooves and joints. Starting at the hindquarters, he peeled it off like a glove. Loosened by the pump, it came off easily. The membrane underneath was creamy white. When he got to the head Ajax hacked off the twisted horns with a cleaver and with a final yank pulled the skin off the nose. Black, bulbous eyes stared down at the ground from the narrow head. Blood dripped from the nostrils.

  Spiros finished rolling the guts and put them in the garbage bag. Vasilis picked up the stomach and threw it over the stone wall into the next field where it burst, spilling out yellow grass. Ajax untied the rope and lowered the carcase onto the ground. He chopped off the hooves with a cleaver. He wiped his knives and his hands on a clean patch of grass, finishing off with a rag from the bag. His hairy forearms were still flecked with dried blood and under his fingernails was dark red. I imagined those arms around Eleni, those hands exploring her. I also considered his proficiency at cutting throats with knives.

  ‘Hard work,’ I said, surprised at my own equanimity. ‘Now come and have some coffee.’

  ‘Dank’ schön. Zu viel’ Arbeit.’

  Ajax went off to fetch his pick-up, parked down the track.

  ‘Spiros is marrying his daughter on Saturday,’ said Vasilis, ‘he needs a lot of meat. Ajax is best man. Spiros, did you give Johnny an invitation?’

  Spiros looked blank. He had not given me an invitation, nor had it apparently crossed his mind. I was too embarrassed to ask whom she was marrying. He wiped warm blood and fat and excrement off his hands and untied the donkey, leading it away so that Ajax could reverse the Datsun closer to the carcase. There was an aluminium box on the back, which Spiros opened. It already contained two carcases and lumpy black garbage bags. They heaved the third inside, head flopping, and slammed the door. The Datsun lurched down the path, followed by Spiros on his donkey. With a wave of his stick Vasilis went to find the rest of his flock.

  Under the olive tree flies swarmed where blood glistened on the grass. The stomach in the next field writhed with them. I picked up the dainty little feet and threw them over the wall. I jammed the twisted horns into a crack in the olive trunk so that it looked as if they grew there.

  I had never seen a life taken before. Less than half an hour ago this had been a living, breathing, sentient being. I waited to feel more than a mild distaste for what had happened, but nothing came. It was in the order of things. The animal was a passive participant in something incomprehensible to it. It deserved its fate simply because it was there. Anger against the men who did it drained away with the blood on the ground. They too were passive participants, although they wielded the knives and ropes. What troubled me most is that although I was an unwilling observer, I felt guilty for myself as if something in what I witnessed touched a shameful and repressed desire. And I hated Ajax for whistling.

  Back at Barba Mitsos’s that evening, a large envelope was waiting for me. Inside was a printed invitation to the wedding on the following Saturday of Spiros’s daughter Antigone to Haralambos, the builder’s merchant.

  ‘Haralambos. She’s marrying Haralambos.’

  ‘So?’ asked Elpida as she dolloped fresh cheese onto a square of muslin.

  ‘But Antigone’s so young.’

  ‘He did well. She might be a virgin even if she’s got those things in her ears all day.
She’s got the hips for children. Spiros is a fool, but he’s respectable enough. He’s given her a good dowry, a field of fifteen olives and the chicken house in the old village and an apartment in Athens. It’s rented to Lebanese. Good money.’ She tied the corners of the muslin into a knot and gently squeezed the pulpy mass into the sink.

  ‘And Antigone? What does she think?’

  ‘Eh. She made a good match. He’s a good man. He had the only Mercedes in the village until Ajax came back. He’s been abroad. He knows things. Whatever he got up to on his travels, there’s never been any scandal about him in the village. He’s been married. He’ll know how to handle her.’

  ‘But she’s only eighteen and he’s older than I am. There must be twenty-five years between them.’

  ‘So much the better. She’ll still be in her prime when he gets old. By the time she loses her looks he’ll be too old to chase other women.’

  ‘I hope he likes rock and roll.’

  ‘He’ll soon knock that contraption off her head.’

  ‘She wanted to live in Athens.’

  ‘He’ll knock that silliness out of her too. Look what Ajax did for Eleni.’

  Then something else occurred to me. ‘Ajax is their koumbaros.’

  The koumbaros is much more than best man. For a start, he pays for the wedding. For the rest of their lives he and the koumbara, in this case Eleni, are family, like godfathers to the couple, as close relatives as brother and sister.

  ‘They are repugnant.’ I meant to say ‘rivals’ but Elpida caught the sense, no doubt pleased to have collected another bon mot from the foreigner.