With Alkinos Bounias at Meteora, Greece. (Author’s Collection)
Celebrating with Alkinos in Athens. (Author’s Collection)
We shared ideas about how it would end, and then the question of salary came up. Again we were shocked. “That is insulting,” Alkinos responded. He explained my popularity in Greece and the fact that my appeal was international. He played it well, and I actually laughed out of embarrassment because in the U.S., deals were made without the actor present. She explained her predicament with the budget, but still Alkinos passed.
He told her, “We have great interest from Mega Channel. On Saturday they invited us out to dinner.” This piqued her interest, but Alkinos was reluctant to go into details.
Once again another opportunity to work in Greece fell through because of an unacceptably low offer. I thanked her and wished her well on the film, but her expression revealed suppressed anger. I smiled and we parted. “Next meeting,” I told Alkinos, “issues on salary are not to be discussed in front of me—it makes me uncomfortable, and it’s unprofessional.” He agreed.
It was early Friday morning, and I wanted to shift the dynamics by visiting what I loved most, an ancient historic place that spoke back to me. I had adventured into Troy and read many books on the subject, so I wanted to see the city of Mycenae, where the archaeologist Heinrich Schliemann discovered the Royal Shaft Tombs of Greek kings and warriors of the Trojan War. It all began there, and it took the Greeks ten years and many lives to destroy their Trojan enemy. He first discovered Troy in the 1870s because of his unshakable belief in the words of Homer, whose poems were a map to finding Troy. He did it in the same way when he uncovered the Citadel of Mycenae and Tiryns, completing the circle of all those involved in the Great War, and by doing so opened up a new world of archaeology. The world was paying attention. He found spectacular treasures, including golden death masks, weaponry and even the preserved remains of kings that disintegrated before his eyes. It’s a great history, and I was grateful that I had read Homer’s The Iliad and The Odyssey before coming here. Now I was prepared to witness it for myself, just as I did in Troy.
Early the next morning I hired a driver to pick me up and take me to the northeast part of the Peloponnese in Argolis, two hours outside of Athens. It was a beautiful ride through pine forests on rocky landscapes passing through the amazing Corinthian canal, which separates mainland Greece with the Peloponnese and is called the Isthmus. It was an idea and dream that started over 2,000 years ago and was completed in the 19th century. This narrow canal was created so that ships saved several days of sailing around the Peloponnesian landscape. It was a marvel of construction. Now we continued on to Mycenae and into the world of Homer’s myths.
Mycenae was the center of power in the Late Bronze Age (1600–1100 BC). I could see this as I walked along the path of ruins, with the Lion’s Gate standing in front of me as it had for thousands of years. Two lions sculpted into ancient stone stood on top of its entrance. The monolithic stone walls dominated the setting. What phenomenal memories of history must have been absorbed in those walls! Its culture was the source of epics and legends, the labors of Hercules, the Trojan War, and Agamemnon’s tragic life and death. Now it all appeared calm. As I entered through the gate I could see the excavated ruins that Schliemann and his Greek wife Sophia had discovered on top of the rocky hill protected by these Cyclopean walls.
I explored the hill and landed in one of the Bronze Age burial sites. I laid down where Agamemnon may have been buried in a great ritual, filled with treasures fit for the great warrior and king. When Schliemann discovered this as the Tomb of Agamemnon with his golden mask and weapons of great artistry, he proclaimed this as the Greek king himself, who led Greece with a thousand ships to Troy.
After Schliemann’s death it was discovered it belonged to another age, five hundred years earlier. At one point the bodies uncovered kept disintegrating into dust. Learning from this, Schliemann had brought some lacquer and sprayed the last body with it. Miraculously it held together. Upon hearing about this, the villagers carried the royal soldier through the town in respect of who he was in their long history.
I thought it an interesting story, so when I went back to the archaeological museum in Athens, I asked the officials, “What happened to the body?”
They had no idea what I was talking about. I loved Schliemann’s story even though in his day they called him a dreamer, a man who improvised on history, a liar, a fraud and brilliant. Whatever he was, he did make a difference.
Since the Greek officials denied him a wing in the museum acknowledging his finds, he swept out the Trojan treasure and donated it to Germany, his country of birth. During the Second World War, the treasure disappeared. But fifty years later it was turned up in the basement of the Pushkin Museum in Russia by two curators—Akinsha and Koslov. They brought it to the world’s attention along with millions of other pieces of art, regarded as war booty.
The Russians had no choice but to put it on display in 1994, while Greece, Turkey and Germany demanded the treasure back. The Russians ignored their demands, and why not? The treasure’s worth is about one billion dollars today, whereas the Mycenaean haul has remained in Athens. Those haunting golden masks are so alive and so beautifully executed during the zenith of the Mycenaean culture.
I walked around in the hot sun, searching for some overlooked treasure waiting for me to find. I didn’t have to claim anything as my own; for me the discovery alone was the prize. Searching among the ruins I found many pieces of pottery, felt them, talked to them and left them where they landed. What Schliemann must have felt uncovering all these jewels that had waited for him to discover. One can only dream.
It was a great day navigating the beehive-shaped tombs and all the citadels overlooking the Mycenaean landscape. While taking a sandwich break, I thought about how archaeologists had worked on these puzzles, putting all of the pieces together. To the average visitor the walls remained silent, and what an eerie silence it was. It is left to one’s imagination the tragedies that unfolded here, where in the heart of the palace Agamemnon was murdered by his wife Clytemnestra and her lover after he returned victorious from the Trojan War. What’s left are just the grey ruins scarred for ages by the weather.
It was a wonderful respite, exploring the richness of the history firsthand. But back to business at hand: I received a nice surprise when I met a Greek actress who was one of the most beautiful people I had ever seen.
Mimi Denisi had her own theatre and school where she provided training for the country’s youth. We went out for dinner and exchanged histories and laughed at the triumphs and tribulations that lived in our profession. She had enjoyed great success on the London stage and was a superstar of Greece. She told me there would be no press around, so we could quietly get to know each other. But after an hour, fourteen journalists and photographers barged in with lights flashing. Mimi played the innocent card, but after all, any story that lands on the front page was worth lying about. I loved our times together.
It was time to go back to Athens and have an early night, to be rested for the next evening’s Mega Channel dinner. Before work or taking meetings, I always made it a point to fill my mind and spirit with great history. That always fed my passion to excel.
Dinner with beautiful Greek actress Mimi Denisi. (Author’s Collection)
Alkinos and I met with our group of professionals at a wonderful new restaurant in Athens. There were ten of us, with me sitting at the head of the table and Mega Channel bigwig George Andreas directly opposite. In his finely tailored suit, Andreas was an imposing man—bald, rich and in his mid-60s. On my left was an ordinary but highly intelligent man wearing heavy glasses whose character I was to portray in The Red Stamp. He was fascinating, a lawyer challenging European democracies with a strong pen, exposing their clandestine cover-ups whilst he lived the life of a spy. He loved Mission: Impossible, and he was thrilled I would portray him in the series, mostly because we spoke the same
language. He thought of us as old friends. The rest were publicity people, their wives and a couple of producers. Alkinos sat next to the bigwig so he could draw out as much information from him about the impending deal and when the series would be shot.
In the middle of dinner Mr. Andreas blurted out, “How much money are we looking at?”
A little surprised after my mandate to Alkonis to not address such things in my presence when the previous meetings had gone south during financial talks, I replied, “I don’t discuss money over the dinner table.”
“Well, just give me a clue,” he said.
“No,” I retorted.
The table was silent for the first time. We just stared at each other. Breaking the tension, I said, “You remind me of my uncle.”
“Did you love your uncle?” he asked.
“No,” I said. Not everyone was laughing.
At that moment Liana Patera, the producer we had previously met, crashed the dinner party. She came straight up to me with a beautifully wrapped gift and kissed me on both cheeks.
Hmm, I thought, Greeks bearing gifts. What was she up to?
She greeted everyone at the table and kissed Mr. Andreas on both cheeks as well, whispered something in his ear and disappeared like a fleeing ghost. Alkinos looked at me and then suspiciously looked Patera’s way. Perturbed, George Andreas stared at me for a moment and said, “I thought you were making your debut in Greece with us? Patera just told me she got you first and got you cheap.”
I was shocked and insulted, but I held back my anger. For the first time I finally understood the meaning of “beware of Greeks bearing gifts.” Its origin took place during the Trojan War, when the famous wooden horse filled with Greek warriors, created by the crafty Ulysses, was presented to the enemy as a parting gift. By accepting and bringing it into its sacred grounds, Troy was destroyed by fire, and Greece had its glory.
Alkinos quickly jumped in, proclaiming it was a lie, and then looked to me, wondering if I had made a secret deal with Patera behind his back.
I stared the big honcho right in the eye and said, “Alkinos is correct. But let me be truthful here, the past few days I have experienced how you do business here. I’m not impressed and I don’t come cheap. Doing this series will not change my career. I wanted to do something Greek for my parents. I want to thank you and everyone for dinner, but it’s time for me to go.”
I shook hands and departed. They all objected in vain. Two hours later, Alkinos was screaming on the phone, accusing me of betraying him after all he had done. I never forgot that experience and that gift, which was a beautiful gold clock. It has remained in my closet to always remind me how untrustworthy people can be—with kisses and an empty smile.
That night I didn’t sleep well, but I had a dream in the early morning that changed my life. I woke up in a sweat, feeling that something was wrong with my family, specifically my mother. In my dream she was climbing a stairway where her mother who had passed years earlier was reaching out for her. I called Australia right away and discovered that her cancer had returned, and she was given only months to live.
I sobbed for hours. I didn’t answer the phone even though it kept ringing; I was not interested in playing those games anymore. My trip home to Greece turned out to be hardly Homeric. Something more important was calling, and I had to get back before my mother made her transition. I packed and left on the next plane to Sydney. With the exception of Alkinos, my path never crossed with those Greeks again even though they kept calling, trying to seduce me with new ideas. The bad taste that was left lasted a long time, and it took many years for me to return.
With my parents at their house in Sydney. (Author’s Collection)
I arrived in Sydney where my brother picked me up and drove me straight to the hospital. My mother had lost a great deal of weight, and my father, who was not known as an affectionate man, was beside himself. He belonged to that Victorian-era mindset where men remained reserved and emotions were held tight. My sisters, Connie and Pauline, arrived and we stayed close to each other for strength. The whole family loved her dearly. Mother always had a sense of humor, but the life she had lived with my father was difficult, as Greek men didn’t always respond to their partner’s needs.
My mother often brushed my father aside for her kids, especially me since I was her oldest son. I always believed he resented me for that. She always worried about me being away from her in America, while my father in his temperamental tantrums blamed her cancer on my long absence.
But now we gathered together to attend to her needs. I sat massaging her feet and hands and told her of my experiences in Greece. She took all her energy to laugh, calling them “a bunch of crooks.” I held her as long as I could until the doctor came in to check her condition. She wasn’t responding to the new drugs and her lungs were filling up with fluid. The relatives were sitting in the waiting room, all looking sad.
The next day I went to a furniture store and bought her a new bedroom suite. I told my siblings that when she was released from the hospital she should have something to look forward to, and they all loved the idea. We gave the old furniture to Goodwill, and when the new furniture arrived my father became emotional. That was a rare experience. I saw he had a heart after all. I went back to see my mother as I wanted some time alone with her in case she passed. My relatives’ despondent faces revealed they could see the end coming. I wanted to lift up her spirits and have her feel that death was not a closed door, that she had things to look forward to. Like seeing America and Greece again.
She always smiled when she saw me, especially when I brought her papayas, healthy salads and soup. The chemotherapy was cutting down her appetite and her cancer was spreading. After I told her about her new bedroom suite, she glowed. I described it in detail knowing her spirits would stay elevated.
When I spoke of my latest journey to the Middle East, she always would have the same response: “Aren’t you ever afraid?” I would always laugh. She loved hearing about the spiritual places, because her “God beliefs” gave her strength. When I told her about lighting candles in her name in sacred places where the Holy Family passed through or in Jerusalem at the spot where the Christ was born, her eyes would light up and tear. Faith had its connection there, and through me she found a link.
After a long afternoon, the doctor took me aside and kindly told me they had done all they could.
“What does that mean?” I asked.
“Well, I think she would be more comfortable in a hospice now,” he replied.
When he left I thought, Isn’t that a place where people go to die?
Concerned and still in denial, I said goodbye to Mother as there were some relatives waiting to see her. As I was leaving, my cell phone rang. It was my older sister, Connie, telling me that my father had had a heart attack and he was in another hospital in the eastern suburbs. I caught a cab and rushed to see him. My family was already there. “What is happening to us?” was written on their worried faces. As I approached the room I could hear my father telling the nurses about me. I entered the room slowly, and from his bed he pointed at me with pride, “That’s my son.” How time heals. He was glowing at the nurses, and they smiled back at him with joy.
My father’s parents and sisters. (Author’s Collection)
My brother George and sister Connie visit me in Los Angeles. Monk painting by Enrique Senis-Oliver. (Author’s Collection)
I was told he had had a mild heart attack and would have to remain in the hospital for just a few more days for observation. Of course my father asked about mother, and the thought of her leaving began to wear on him. After sixty years of marriage perseverance had prevailed and so had love. We enjoyed a heartfelt exchange, and he thanked me for sending them overseas so many times. He said that my work had enriched both of their lives.
I thought, Let the past go—after twenty years of spiritual counseling about mental and physical abuse, it is forgiveness that lets all that baggage go.
; We embraced and he assured me he would be fine, but not to tell my mother as she had too much on her plate. I told him that I was leaving in a couple of days because of work but that I would return as soon as I could. As I was leaving, he asked, “How did you know your mother was ill?”
“I saw her in a dream with Grandma, waiting for her,” I replied.
“God must be talking to you. That’s good, maybe it’s a blessing,” he responded.
I looked at him carefully and I smiled. The look of regret was on his face. Without doubt, he allowed himself to really see me for the first time.
I noticed that my female relatives waiting in the hall all looked defeated, as if the paths chosen for them didn’t quite parallel the journeys they came to fulfill. Male dominance and the quiet power of mothers didn’t allow them to finish their education, because in our culture a woman’s purpose was to marry and help raise their children. By the looks on their faces, love was not permeating through their lives, as if they asked themselves the question “This is it?” And sometimes I caught them looking in my direction with a critical eye, wondering how I got away and did it on my own. I suppose I was an enigma to them; I was the first Greek male in his youth who left his family in Australia and succeeded without them, against their judgments and dismissals.
“He left a failure, he’ll come back a failure,” one once said.
My immediate family had to deal with it until I proved all of them wrong. The wait was long as my pursuit was not an overnight success.
I returned to my mother, knowing that none of us had any intention of letting her know about Father’s condition. An ambulance was to pick her up and take her to the hospice.
Places: The Journey of My Days, My Lives Page 9