... and Dreams Are Dreams

by Vassilis Vassilikos

  Nowadays we say: “the blockade lasted forty-two days.” But with every day that passed, the people’s anxiety grew stronger and their desperation deeper.

  Oh, if only Greece were a great nation! If only we could put forward a Greek breast against the violence and, sword in hand, take revenge upon those who insult us! But alas! Greece is too small for that. That is why, in 1832, it was enclosed within such narrow borders. We are thertfore forced to swallow our indignation. Goddesses of justice and liberty, look over this unfortunate nation. Let Greece survive and may we all die. Let the independence of our homeland be preserved, and may we all be sent in chains to the English penal colonies . . . . ”

  The blockade lasted into the harsh winter. February is always the worst time of year. It is a month that represents a certain blocking of the economy. But to have a second blockade on one’s hands was too much. What was going to happen? The cold was becoming more intense. The people were beginning to suffer from hunger.

  “To put our faith in Europe or to wait for Russia and France to come to our defense is consoling and heartening; however, it does not diminish the imminent danger. By the time Europe speaks up, by the time Paris and Saint Petersburg exchange notifications, and by the time the matter is brought to the Council of London, our commerce will have been lost and our shipping annihilated. ”

  And even so, a forty-two-day blockade isn’t such a big deal, compared to other national catastrophes: wars, epidemics, civil strife. Compared to what had preceded and what succeeded it. However, it remains a question in need of an answer.

  “The French steamship is expected like a Messiah. Everyone’s eyes are turned to Piraeus and people keep asking: ‘Has the steamship arrived? It will tell us the wishes of France. It will tell us how the action of England was received by Europe. It will tell us whether Palmerston has agreed to the two protective powers being arbitrators.’One can easily imagine with what wildly beating hearts we are all waiting for the fire vessel from France. ”

  Because there are fire vessel dreams, and pyromaniac dreams, and self-igniting dreams, blocks of dreams and dreams of blockades, and Holocaust dreams . . .

  “It was rumored today that Palmerston will only accept the intervention of France. It is an unofficial rumor. What is certain is that Europe took a very dim view of the actions of the English fleet. An article from the French newspaper Debates, sent from Trieste, speaks acrimoniously of England. Notes were exchanged once again between the British ambassador and the Greek government concerning the islands Sapientza and Elafόdnissos. But the problem of the islets is insignificant. The important issue is to have satisfaction. The compensation of Don Pacifico is a question of honor, according to the English, and for this I fear there will be terrible consequences. As an impartial spectator, I will await, with tears in my eyes, the fate of our nation. ”

  The captain of the past is anything but impartial. It is painful for him, as a neo-Hellene of unknown descent, to accept destiny “in the Greek way.” “If it be destined for this land to be enslaved again and lose its independence, then let us prepare to suffer this ordeal ‘in the Greek way.’”

  It was precisely here that the problem was posed, thought the narrator. What did the captain mean by “the Greek way”? This adverbial phrase had acquired a particular significance concerning the man’s feelings. Would a Frenchman ever say, “we are suffering this new ordeal in the French way”? It was only concerning divorces that the phrase “Italian-style” stuck, and that was because under the Catholic Church they were forbidden. So was it forbidden for one to be a Greek in Greece? Or was Greece simply an idea and not a reality, in which case, as an idea, “in the Greek way” takes on the meaning of “in a respectable way”? But what does it mean to be Greek? If we believe Fallmerayer: “The destruction of the ancient Greek world started under the reign of Justinian, when the enormous column of nations between the Danube and the Baltic, shaken by the great historic events, dragged itself over the Greek soil like a dark cloud propelled by a raging storm, and there was not a single valley, mountain or ravine that it did not devastate. The first act of this invasion lasted three centuries. This fact finally sheds light upon why in the Greek Chronicle of the Morea, the mountain range of Taiyetos is preferably referred to as the Slavic Mountains. And the localities of Plátsa, Statsa, Loutsaina, Chloumitsa, Levetsova, Zitsova, Vádrsova, and Polonitsa attest to these invasions. In act II of the drama all the towns and villages of Greece were persecuted and stripped of their population. A new race of people settled in, into which, every now and then, there slid, like foreigners, the small remnants of the ancient masters of the country. Until, at last, the rejuvenated Byzantine Empire, strengthened by the addition of the vital barbaric power, once again subjugated a Greece that was now Slavic, and, by grafting her with the Christian faith and the modem Greek language, created a completely new Greece. ” (He meant in relation to the ancient one.) “Nowadays [1844], the Albanians, ancient neighbors of Greece, constitute the majority of inhabitants of the new kingdom. ”

  Therefore, concluded the narrator (and psychoanalysis can take a flying leap), could it be that the words to suffer this ordeal in the Greek way take on a much more complex meaning in the captains mind, a meaning that contains all these ordeals, invasions, insults, and deteriorations that the foreigners brought to our country? And the captain of the past cries out the ever-top-ical slogan of national accord, which is always used during the nations difficult moments: “For the sake of our nationality, let us forget for a moment the crimes of the past.”

  “And how did the story with Pacifico end, Grandfather?”

  “He was finally given a small compensation, instead of the 800,000 drachmas he had asked for. Ambassador Wise returned the 150,000 drachmas that the Greek government had given as a guarantee, and the settlement for the Portuguese letters of credit was assigned to Louis Beclar, the French charge d’affaires in Lisbon. The settlement was completed, and instead of the 665,540 drachmas he was claiming, that is to say approximately 26,000, he received as compensation 3,750 drachmas, approximately 150, in other words practically nothing. And in order to whitewash the English, Lyons wrote from Geneva to our compatriot Dragoumis: ‘I cannot easily forgive him (Lord Palmerston) his decision. For four months Europe was in an upheaval because of Pacifico and a small state was oppressed, a state created, no less, by the oppressor. I too was obliged to protect Pacifico, but I would be ashamed to incite such protection.’ As for Palmerston, he gave a speech at the Council of Communities that went on forever, invoking Cicero, who said that Rome protected any Roman who was able to say, ‘Civis Romanus Sum’ (I am a citizen of Rome). And that, Palmerston affirmed, went for all citizens of the British Empire. He received a standing ovation.”

  The captain feels stifled by that longing people have for a happy day in their lives, a decent, carefree day, as the yacht approaches the port of Piraeus and he sees, outside the port, all those ships anchored in bundles of immobilized iron, reduced to inertia, while maintaining them in the water is costing a fortune. He sees the other ships tied at the jetties: Russian, English, French, from Liverpool, from Odessa, from Marseilles, the three great powers. And while his own vessel moves slowly along, with an official air, through the still waters that take on the color of honey from the rising sun, he thinks to himself that things have indeed changed from the days of his distant ancestor. Now he has radar and a telex on board, now he keeps informed, he communicates, he signals immediately and everywhere. And yet the people are still left out of the game of power. They will only find out much later what was said during the meeting between the Soviet ambassador and the prime minister or between the United States ambassador and the president of the Republic. When the burning interest of the same day has died down, when there is no longer an immediate demand, like the one he has to respond to now: he must decide where to moor the boat, and at the same time he is watching out for the Flying Dolphin hovercraft, which usually makes a tight turn at the breakwater without worry
ing about other vessels coming into the port.

  Years from now, when today’s events are history, when the boats will be moored on dry land, much later, people will find out the why and the how: what happened with the Cyprus issue, what was said about the United States bases, what was the truth behind the smoke screen the media put up to confuse people. And of course nowadays, he thinks to himself, “there is no ‘Moussouros affair.’” But still, as they were at the time of Moussouros, our relations with Turkey are severed. Even though people no longer believe that the capital of Greece will move to Constantinople, the Greek islanders who live across Asia Minor still feel threatened. There are three great powers again, and we don’t fit in with any of them. Still we wonder: which is the best road to follow in the long run, so that the people are not betrayed once again?

  He moors the boat next to the other yachts. At last, he has found an empty space! He throws the ropes ashore. The guests begin to disembark. It is Monday morning. Their businesses will be opening soon. Plasterboard will go back to his factory and the doctor to his white mice; Persephone, Thalia, Irini to the slimming institute; Aristotle the sociologist to his research center. The architect will return to her tracing paper, the American and Madam “tag-along” to no one, Niko the importer of cold cuts back to his knockwurst and salami. They thank their host Elias and the crew for a lovely three-day weekend. One by one they walk along the gangplank, carrying their gear. The last to leave the vessel is the grandfather-captain with his grandson-captain. But even after them, like a ghost, last of the last, the narrator slips out of the story.

  * Crew member of fire ships used against the Turkish fleet. Trans.

  * Aeschylus, Fragments. Trans.

  * Resistance front during the German occupation. Trans.

  stories of taxi drivers

  Everything’s fine. Everything’s wonderful. Monday

  morning and the world is open, a meeting of sunshine and

  strength. The city is bursting with health and life. And I

  am bursting inside like the city.

  This summer, having lost my car, which was registered abroad (unable to afford to clear it through customs, I was forced to sell it for a song to the state), I got around quite a bit by taxi, which, in Greece, is hardly a luxury—in fact, I would say fares are still scandalously cheap, compared to other countries in Western Europe—and so came to know that amiable class of people, taxi drivers, who believe, and rightly so, that they are performing a service by substituting for a deficient public transport system. The capital has no metro, and traffic limitations, combined with bus and trolley strikes, have made moving around “within the city walls” problematic.

  Taxi drivers, I was to find out, are a class unto themselves. They are often talkative and they form, for the most part, public opinion, as if they constituted a newspaper, which (like certain laws) is not printed and yet is heard, and which yet has a circulation, in Athens alone, of 600,000 copies a day.

  I am a man, I must say, who generally likes to chat. I am literally fascinated by other peoples stories. My own story bores me. This is why I have a knack for making other people talk to me: I lose myself in their words and forget my own problems. Taxi drivers are, by definition, talkative. Those who, like me, were once immigrants are also dreamers.

  -1-

  Stelios and His Lost Tomatoes

  For Stelios, the tomatoes in his garden were a consolation. He owned a small plot next to his house, in the suburb of Pefki, where he grew his tomatoes, some zucchini, a little clover, radishes, and a few sweet potatoes. But his tomatoes were his great love. He would see them every morning growing red, like the cheeks of young girls.

  It was summer. The deep of summer. July. His wife and daughters were away on vacation, if one could call it that, in Oropos, visiting with an aunt and doing some swimming. Stelios was left on his own. He worked in his taxi and enjoyed his work. He came in contact with people. But his consolation, amidst the smog and traffic jams, was his garden, a substitute for his village, perhaps, which he had left while still a child in order to emigrate first to Belgium and then, a few years ago, to Athens.

  He hadn’t regretted coming back to his country. There were the children to consider. He was afraid Belgian society, with its drugs, would corrupt his girls. With the money he had saved up all those years he worked in Spa, he built his little house in Pefki and got his own taxi.

  Next to the house (built without a license) was his little garden. He had bought the land with his wife’s cousin, since he couldn’t afford to buy it on his own, and the cousin had built a house next to his. They were separated by the garden.

  But the garden belonged to him. That had been determined from the start. Since then, two years had gone by. He didn’t have much to do with the cousin, who had turned out to be a man of bad faith. Misunderstandings over a few meters of land, while they were both illegally building their homes, caused a rift between them. But he was Stelios’s wife’s cousin, not a stranger. Stelios swallowed his anger. Which is why he started having stomach trouble.

  “We don’t always get along very well with the neighbors,” he would explain.

  But it gave his wife a sense of security to have a relative nearby. His wife, sweet Merope, had worn herself out in Spa all those years, working at the mineral water bottling plant. It was hard work for her and for Stelios too, who had worked at a factory that made car parts.

  In any case, things weren’t too bad. But today there had been a disaster. And the taxi driver vented his anger on his unknown customer. Namely, me.

  “I got home in the afternoon. I had been working all morning. All morning I had been dreaming of the salad I was going to make myself, since the old lady and the girls are away at Oro-pos, with the tomatoes from my garden. They had ripened to perfection. I was going to fry myself a couple of eggs and have a snack. So I go home, and I find they’ve been picked. It made me mad. It still does.”

  “Was it burglars?” I asked.

  “Burglars? Since when do burglars steal tomatoes?”

  “Then who stole them?”

  “Who? Even if I told you, what would it mean to you? But it makes me mad. And it makes me even madder because I can’t tell him. I know who it was. It was him that did it. My wife’s cousin. My neighbor. Only he could get into my garden.”

  That was when I learned about the house, about their not getting along, and all the rest of it.

  “And why don’t you just go straight to him and tell him?”

  “And what good would that do, my dear man? It’s done. The tomatoes are gone. But I tell you, it made me mad. I couldn’t wait to get home to go into the garden and pick them, they were so red and plump, like little watermelons, organically grown, and I didn’t find a single one. He had picked the exact four that I was going to pick. The others are still green.”

  As he drove me to the offices of my newspaper (The Almanac of Dreams), I could see that the man at the wheel was truly suffering. I was filled with pity for this “pavement ship owner” (as they mockingly refer nowadays to taxi drivers because of their meager earnings), and I wanted to show him my compassion.

  “Listen,” I said. “To keep it all inside is no good. It doesn’t set you free. You have to let it out. You’re only human, you need to get things off your chest. You told me about it, but I’m a stranger. Soon I’ll be gone, you may tell it again to someone else. I don’t want it to stop there: I want you to do something about it.”

  From what I gathered, if he were to mention the tomatoes to his cousin, the discussion wouldn’t end there. It would spread over into other things: their old feud over the land they had bought together, the disputed two meters of land (“which is exactly how deep they’ll bury us both,” the taxi driver had remarked wisely). And it might even have gone further—who knows—to the village, to the family affairs of his wife, to the fields that her relatives looked after while she was away in Belgium (perhaps the famous cousin was among them), and to her not having been ab
le to claim her share and feeling wronged over it. The tomatoes were the hand grenades that would explode, and their seeds would destroy the good relations of the neighborhood once and for all. Also, Stelios did not want, as he told me frankly, to pick a fight when his wife was away, that she should come home all tanned and renewed, only to find the house turned upside-down.

  I began to picture the innocent tomatoes that knew nothing, poor things, of the problem they had caused; that had surrendered themselves without protest to the hand that had stolen them; and that could even have become the cause of a murder. How can one blame a tomato, grown in a garden with affection, turning red with shame like a young girl (in Stelios’s case, his own daughters, who grew more and more embarrassed in front of their father as their breasts swelled), and then along comes a vengeful hand and steals them away from the one who raised them with his own sweat and tears?

  The street was full of cars. We were moving along with difficulty. It was terribly hot. Like all taxis, this one didn’t have air-conditioning. There was ventilation with, supposedly, fresh air, but that too was burning, like the air in the street.

  Stelios, lean faced, was smoking at the wheel. I sat in the back seat; we communicated with our eyes through the rear view mirror. I pictured the scene: he comes home to Pefki dripping with perspiration around 3:30 in the afternoon, after earning a hard day’s wages, living with the dream of his tomatoes, to have a bite and then lie down, closing the shutters and leaving the windows open to let in fresh air. And then, as he enters his garden, the vegetable garden of his dreams, which he would water and weed in order to relax after a hard day’s work at the wheel, among drivers who knew nothing of driving, who were daring, inexperienced, and impudent, waging a battle every day just to avoid being crashed into, he finds among its branches, instead of the red orbs he expects, freshly cut stems.