Dead Europe (5 page)

I insisted on a balcony.

—She checked on her terminal and began to shake her head. I'm sorry, sir. All our balcony rooms are taken. There was barely a hint of Greece in her accent. The
disappointment on my face must have been clear because she checked her computer again, and then, slyly winking at me, she asked me to return in a few hours.

—We will have a room then. She quoted me the price and it was so outlandish I had to ask her to repeat it. This was indeed a foolish extravagance I was indulging in, but after the grime and squalor of the room I had been in for the last few nights, I wanted to experience nothing but pleasure. I wanted to retire in a plush bed, to soak in a deep bath, to stand on a balcony in a foreign city with a cigarette in one hand, a drink in the other, and to survey a beautiful avenue, to look across to the lit monastery of Lykavitos Hill. To believe myself favoured in this city.

I left behind my bag and my credit card imprint and I ventured out again. The bus took me through the heart of the city and as it twisted through the congested roads, and the Acropolis stretched up above us, I pressed the button and I got off.

It was not yet noon and instead of half-naked boys and chain-smoking transvestites, the park was full of over-dressed tourists wielding every imaginable type of camera. I walked in the shade, whistling to myself. As I walked I became aware that though it was day, there were still men idling, searching among the trees. I felt a pulse at my crotch and I slowed my pace. A man in his forties, handsome and greying, sweat marks on his shirt, his tie loosely hanging from his neck, began to fall in step behind me. I stopped, lit a cigarette and he overtook me. He turned around and though there was no smile or warmth in his face, his eyes were fervent.

The path he took me on wound up towards the Acropolis. We climbed steadily through bush and over rock and soon I was sweating. He approached a secluded grove of trees—tall sinewy limbs and a dense canopy of emerald-green leaves. As I followed him into shadow, the temperature
cooled and I felt sweet relief. He had turned around, his hand already at his zip, when behind us we heard a burst of noise, then short, sharp yelps of pain. The man shot past me, fear on his face. I stood still and waited in the shade. There was more noise, thuds, the unmistakable sound of slapping. It was followed by what sounded like crying. Fear and lust made me curious and reckless; I moved deeper into the grove.

Two youths, both in black t-shirts and ill-fitting jeans, were standing above a small figure curled in the dirt. It was this figure who was crying. One of the youths was holding a knife and he turned to look at me. His face was clear of any aggression or fear; instead he gazed at me calmly and confidently. His companion, younger, was angry on seeing me standing there. I felt—of course of course of course—terror. But I was unable to move. If the knife had approached me, had cut me, had slashed me, I would have still just stood there. Trembling, but incapable of motion.

Then the older boy turned back to his prey and kicked the now motionless body while the other boy stamped his foot on the victim's hand. There was one more pathetic yelp and then silence. The youths laughed and brushed past me insolently, the younger almost nudging me off my feet. Then they ran down the path, speaking in a language I did not recognise.

As soon as they were gone, the first thing I did was turn my back to the figure in the dust, unzip, and piss long and hard into the ground. Only seconds before, I had feared that both my bowel and bladder would fail me.

The figure on the ground was a child. I knelt beside him and lightly touched his shoulder. He whimpered, his body tensed, but I asked him if he could walk, and on hearing my voice he lifted his head and looked at me.

He was very young and grimy, and looked thin and weak. His fair hair stood up in a shocking wave.

—Would you like me to take you to hospital? I spoke in Greek.

On hearing this, the boy shook his head violently. This caused him pain and he grimaced. There was blood on his face, his cheeks were grazed and his left eye was swollen and would soon blacken. His frailty and his youth touched me, and I felt fury at his attackers. Scum. I had cursed out loud and in English.

The boy pushed himself up off the ground. I tried to help him but he would have none of it. He fended me away and began to move slowly along the path. But he staggered as he walked, and then he stumbled and fell once more to the ground. Again I helped him to his feet and again he pushed me away. In this bumbling manner we descended the hill, him walking ahead, refusing to look at me—a humiliating parody of my ascent—and I followed, anxious and still a little frightened. Not of the boy—he could not have been more than eleven or twelve—but the intoxicating brush with violence had made me keenly aware of the strangeness of the world around me. I was in a city I hardly knew at all and I had foolishly allowed a greedy lust to lead me into danger. And whoever the boy limping in front of me was, it was obvious that his world included whores and pickpockets and thieves. My instinct told me to walk away. I had a flash of the man who had led me to the grove; his imposing beauty had been immediately rendered weak and prissy by his undignified flight. But what of my own immobility? My own terror? My almost wetting myself at the age of thirty-six? I followed the boy, not wishing to be thought a coward.

He was determined to escape from me, though unable to make up much distance, until we reached the dense city streets and the chaos of the traffic brought him up short. He wobbled on his feet and for the first time he turned and looked at me. His eyes were resentful but the child-like pleading on his shivering lip was unmistakable. I walked up to
him, placed an arm around his shoulder and, though he tensed and turned his face away from me, I also sensed a relief as he rested his body alongside mine. I let him guide me.

The boy headed south of the inner city and into Kalifea. We moved through narrow alleyways, the cement walls covered with tattered posters and blue and red stencils. One stencil, in thick black lines, had Jesus' face imposed over the five Olympic rings. His serene face was smiling and his raised hand held a bomb. The footpaths were narrow and I dodged the cars and motorbikes that were parked haphazardly on the streets, marvelling at the Athenians' ability to use every possible inch of space in their cluttered metropolis. It was the middle of the day and the city was empty, though there were occasional shouts and bursts of music from the balconies above us. I stumbled over the mangled body of a cat on the street and the boy made as if to run away from me, but the sudden movement made him wince and I tightened my grip around his shoulders. His breathing had slowed and was beginning to labour. I was contemplating lifting him in my arms when we stopped in front of a squat apartment building. The glass doors were blackened as if by smoke, but it could simply have been the accumulation of years of pollution. The boy pressed a buzzer and, after a pause, the door snapped open. In the doorway he stopped and turned to look at me. He waved me in.

He started up the stairs and I grabbed his arm and gestured towards the lift. He shook his head and for the first time he spoke to me.

—
Ochi, douleui ochi
. No, works not.

He was not a Greek. He placed his foot on the first step and when he lifted his body he grimaced. I could see he was in pain. I stooped and he gratefully sank into my arms. I walked up the stairs, heaving from the effort. He lived on the second floor, and when we turned into the landing a young man was waiting for us.

I stopped. I recognised him immediately. But he had no idea who I was. He did not make a move as he watched us coming towards him. The boy in my arms struggled to be free but once on his feet, he hung his head and backed into my body as if seeking my protection. Then the older youth lifted his hand and with a thundering smack he sent the boy sprawling to the ground.

The boy did not make a sound. He lifted himself unsteadily to his feet, still grimacing from the pain, and sheepishly brushing past the older youth, he turned into the open doorway. For a moment, with the light flickering from one naked globe, the hall smelling of cooking oil and shit, the youth and I looked at one another. His gaze was impenetrable. I did something that neither my upbringing nor my culture had prepared me for. I bowed. I turned and I walked down the stairs.

The lights in the hall and landing switched off and I was in the dark. I fumbled for a switch but couldn't find one. Though it was still clear open day outside, the apartment block was in shadow. From the first floor I heard the radio blaring recitations from the Qu'ran. On the ground floor the first snatch of sunlight dazzled me. I pushed open the door. My shirt and neck and face were drenched in sweat.

The street I was on wound back towards Sygrou and the turmoil of the city. On the hill above, a sea of concrete boxes was etched jaggedly against the fierce blue sky. For the first time on my journey—no, for the first time in a long time—I really wanted my camera. For the first time in a long time, I was hungry to create something.

I had nearly not taken my camera with me. It was Colin who slammed it into my chest, who told me that I was being a fool. In the end I grudgingly took it along. Colin's fury had decided the matter. I was guilty that I was leaving him back home while I was heading off overseas, I was guilty that I was looking forward to the pleasure of time alone. I was guilty
that I was travelling, adventuring, when the last six months it had been his money paying the bills. I swear that I attempted to work. I would take the camera, I would walk streets, enter billiard rooms and train carriages, walk the city and its alleys, along the beach, along fucking freeways and disused hospital sites. I'd attempt to shoot an isolated figure in a platform alcove, the fall of shadows on a smoking woman's face. Portraits and still lives and bloody landscapes. Colour, and black and white. I would walk into the darkroom that Colin had built for me. I would emerge stinking of chemicals, exhausted and empty. And that was the problem with the photographs that would emerge. They were lifeless.

Dead photographs. I was never a technological pedant. Death in a photograph is not merely a matter of focus or of composition. It is not only the light. It is not the subject. There are photographs that are blurred or ugly or too dark or over-exposed, they can be banal or boring or incompetent. But that does not necessarily make them dead. Death is, of course, simply the absence of life, of the heart and the blood and the soul. The absence of fluid and flesh. The eyes that stared back at me from my photos were dead. The trees and asphalt streets, dead. All my subjects were muted and still. Not calm, but inert. The absence of motion. I would emerge from the darkroom every time, and the smell of chemicals was death on my skin, on my hands.

As fortune would have it, just as I stopped my work, stopped believing in myself, the email arrived from Athens.

The Greek Ministry of Culture invites you to participate in a week of activities celebrating the artistic achievements of the Greek diaspora.
They would pay for my trip to Athens. I organised my past into a folio, emailed a return acceptance, and I put down my camera.

—Take it, you fucking selfish idiot. Colin thrust the camera against my chest. I put it away, folded it in my favourite dark blue linen jacket, buried it deep in my backpack. I had not
unpacked it. But now I wanted the camera in my hand, I wanted to capture, to make concrete an image. I turned back and looked up at the building I had been in. I wanted to frame the older youth, the boy I had paid for nights before, I wanted him shirtless, his golden face against a bare white wall. I wanted him not smiling, not giving anything away. I wanted him resentful and suspicious, I wanted to capture that moment when he looked silently at me, rejecting me, his gaze demanding me to leave. It was that stare I wanted to capture. I wanted to make my memory of him tangible—so solid I would never forget the boy's brutal tenderness.

And as I turned and looked up at the concrete slab of his home, exactly at that moment, I became conscious that there was singing all around me and the words of Mohammed were being flung into the blue sky from a dozen balconies. The sun was high above and bathing me in white. As I made my wish, an old woman emerged on a balcony. She cupped her hands together and called for me. She beckoned me to her. I looked around the street again. It was empty; the Athenians were taking their siesta. The woman gestured to me to come inside.

The apartment smelt of fried vegetables and sweat; its walls were dark and bare except for a corner of the tiny living area that was filled from floor to ceiling with icons representing the Trinity and the saints. The two boys were lying flat on the couch, their legs entwined, watching the television and ignoring me. Soccer was on. The old woman ushered me in and angrily turned off the television. I protested, but she would not hear of it. In rapid Russian she berated the boys and they reluctantly sat upright and looked at me. The old woman finished her harangue, turned to me, and waited.

—She wish to say thank you. For you help my brother.

—My pleasure.

The boy translated for the old woman.

—My grandmother wishes for you to stay and eat.

On the couch the young boy who I had assisted sat stony-faced, ignoring me completely.

—And you, are you alright? I spoke in Greek but I think any language I would have chosen would have startled him. He looked at me hard, a moment of fury, but I winked at him and he suddenly grinned.

—Strong. He offered the one English word as a defence and as a justification.

The old woman had left us. I looked around the room. The weary, ancient saints looked down on me. A badly aligned poster of some soccer player added colour to the walls. The older boy followed my gaze.

—He is a god.

I nodded in agreement.

—Do you remember me from the other night? The question confused him. I repeated it, again in English, this time slowly. He tensed in his seat and then looked me up and down.