Dead Europe (7 page)

—You must take care, she admonished the youth, the smoke will suffocate you.

The boy smiled.

—God protects me. He pointed to the damp clay ceiling above. Don't concern yourself with my wellbeing, the smoke escapes. It always escapes and God ensures that fresh air finds its way even into this prison. Everything is God's will.

—It is the Devil that protects you.

She held out the food and he snatched it from her hands.

His hair, knotted and thick, had grown to his shoulders and his face was now bearded. The bristles, however, were soft, almost a down, and they were fair, not black.

He had not bitten into the morsels immediately, but
instead held them in his hands and chanted over them in a language she could not understand.

—Is that how Satan speaks?

—And God as well.

She sat on her haunches and watched him. He ate the bread ravenously, but hesitated over the meat. He forced it into his mouth and seemed to swallow it without chewing. She feared he would choke.

—Careful, she warned.

He ignored her and swallowed the last mouthfuls of the meal. They sat in silence.

His clothes had become rags and she could see the white skin of his torso through the rips in his shirt. His arms were like twigs. His legs appeared abominably long and slender. It seemed a miracle they could support him. The skin on his face was stretched tight across his hideous skull. You don't know hunger, Lucia, this is what death looks like, this is what hunger truly is. She reached out a hand to caress him.

He recoiled from her as if he was a frightened dog. She smiled to herself. She rarely ventured into the cave—it was Michaelis who usually brought food to the youth—but the few times she had entered, he always avoided her touch. But she was also aware every time of the fierce longing in his eyes. She slowly moved closer to him. He watched her warily.

Nausea overcame her. She smelt the filth on him, she smelt death on him. She fought back her bile and rose to her feet. She moved along the wall and examined the thick lines and hieroglyphics the boy had carved onto its face.

—They are the words of God, he said quietly but emphatically. I have to believe that even in here God is with me.

The surge of tenderness that rushed through her almost made her faint. She turned from him and bit into the flesh of her hand so he would not see her tears. She went to him
and again he moved away. As he did so, he clumsily kicked over a small clay pot in which they brought water for him and as the pot tumbled, the spindly, charred remains of a rat fell onto the dirt floor. The boy hid his head in his hands. Lucia rose and, taking the clay pot, pulled herself up through the cellar opening into the church and ran into the world outside. She nearly swooned as she breathed in the sweet, cool air of night.

She did not dare ask herself why she felt such pity for the filthy Hebrew. It was as if her emotions and her very body were no longer her own to will: some spirit was compelling her. Was that spirit evil, or from God? She did not care. She made her way into the forest and listened for the gurgle of the rushing creek. She made her way to the spring, and at its edge she sat and ripped the bottom of her skirt until she had four thin strips of hessian. She dragged them through the freezing water and then, after lightly wringing them, she stuffed them into her skirt pocket. She filled the pot with water to take back to the Hebrew. Her shoes and her skirt now drenched, she made her way back to the cave.

The youth was facing away from her. He was rocking backwards and forwards and she understood he was in prayer.

—Come here.

He fell silent but did not move.

She walked up behind him and grabbed him by the shoulder. He squirmed from her touch but it was as if the spirit that was guiding her was stronger than the boy, that she was made powerful by it. She raised the youth to his feet and turned him to face her. She began by washing his face, his neck, his hands, his terribly thin arms. Throughout he had his eyes closed. She wrung out the first cloth and began with another. She pulled the ragged shirt off his shoulders and let it fall to the dirt floor. She washed his chest, under his arms: each rib was clearly visible. She wiped his pale belly. He
shivered at her touch. She wrung out the cloth and pulled another one out of her pocket. She pulled at his belt, heard him groan, and his trousers fell to his feet.

He was erect. The lush clump of hair on his groin shocked her and she moved away from him. The youth's cock was thick and full and alive. She found herself whimpering as the boy took the cloth from her hand. She watched, her breaths short and deep, as he washed his sex. When he was finished he squeezed the cloth over the fire and it sizzled harshly. He dropped the wet cloth into the fire. The flames disappeared and the cave was full of darkness and acrid smoke. She felt his hands on her, then felt him lifting her skirts, pulling her pantaloons to her knees, felt his soft beard on her face as they fell to the floor. As he entered her, their tears were joined. On the dirt floor of the cave, with the sounds of the rats above them scampering on the church floor, they rutted like dogs: quick, ferocious. When he was done he immediately threw himself off her.

—Go, he whispered, crying, leave me.

He was crouching in the far shadows of the cave. She could barely make out his demonic shape in the shadows.

 

Lucia did not return to the carnival. She ran all the way to her barren cottage, stripped off her skirts and climbed into bed, biting into the corner of her blanket. She wanted to scream. To laugh and cry and scream. She knew that it would be hours before Michaelis returned, and that when he did he would be drunk and would want to mate with her. She wanted to be asleep when he came home—all she could think of was sleep but she was terrified of asking for this from God. Could she ask God for anything ever again? She rocked herself in her bed, wishing for sleep, but all she could hear was the wail of the gypsy's clarino.

 

Mulan was seized by great joy as he played on the dais. The rest of the musicians laid down their instruments and listened. The crowd cheered him. It was as if his instrument had never before made such a sweet sound. As long as those notes played, everyone's hunger could be forgotten. It was as if they had never known hunger at all. The note that Mulan blew danced through the square and up along the mountains, through the trees, and soared as high as the moon. It was a sound full of ecstasy and promise and eternity. Even deep in his pit, alone in the dark and the stink, even there the boy heard the music. He closed his eyes, wiped the tears from his face and fell asleep smiling.

THE BUS THAT took me away from the sea and deep into the mountains was decorated with the faces of the Virgin and her Son, the saints of Orthodox Europe, and the football heroes of Olympiakos. As the driver pulled out of the terminal and began the slow, convoluted journey out of Athens, he looked at the saints and crossed himself, his lips moving in a silent prayer. Around me the passengers too began to cross themselves. My still hands betrayed me as a stranger.

The rusting blue vehicle looked as if it belonged in a black and white film from the 1950s. These buses were built to transport Greeks, not tourists, and they were in need of a paint job and repanelling, and spewed out a constant stream of black carbon. The roads we took were skinny and mean, and as we ascended into the hilltops, the bus teetered from side to side, as if eager to leave behind its asphalt routine and dive into the craggy ravines below. The driver sped cheerfully along the precarious terrain, singing to the radio. I spent my time looking outside at the yellowing, dry world. Goats and fields of olives, gypsy encampments and the roadside dotted with memorials to the dead. The bus driver pushed hard on his horn and the automobiles screamed back; but always the bus found a way to navigate the tight lanes and streets, and continued its way up the mountains.

In Agrinion, I was to change to another bus for Karpenissi. Agrinion was flat, dusty, full of identical concrete apartments. The weather was unbearably hot and everything seemed ugly. But I was determined to take a look at it.
Agrinion was where, if you asked her, my mother said she was from. It was a shorthand: her parents' village lay two hours further up the mountains, but the town was the centre for the cluster of mountain communities spread around it. It was also far away enough from her village that the Agrinionites in Melbourne had never heard its name. They always asked her, suspiciously,
But where from in Agrinion?
I had an hour and a half before the next bus left, so I dumped my bag with a surly attendant who told me it might still be there when I returned, slung my camera over my shoulder, and walked out into the heat.

Agrinion is not the Greece of the tourist brochures. There were no ancient ruins and no quaint houses painted blue and white. The city was an endless jumble of ugly yellowing cement apartments. The low mountains that ringed the town were barren and dry. A wind was blowing through the streets and gusted dust into my eyes. No one stirred, but the afternoon shadows were beginning to lengthen and I judged that it would not be long before the townspeople began to wake from their siesta. I walked past the concrete apartment blocks, past car yards and warehouses with peeling paint, and found myself in a small square. One of the coffee shops was open and I walked inside, thankful to be out of the unrelenting heat. An old man was reading a newspaper behind the small laminex counter and he greeted me with a suspicious curt nod. I asked for a coffee, Turkish and strong, and took a table near the dusty window looking out onto the drab and empty square. He brought me my coffee, without looking at me, without saying a word.

Greeks are a distrustful people. It was Colin who told me that. He had travelled through this country, avoiding the big cities and the islands, had travelled into the mainland, through the mountains and over the border to Yugoslavia, and he said everywhere he was greeted with suspicious glances and by little children who wanted only to touch and
feel his curly red hair. My short hair was black and my skin was starting to tan after only a few days in this climate, but I too was a stranger to the old man. He had turned on a small radio and the commercial Greek music, synthesisers bleating below the Eastern melodies, blared loudly in the coffee shop. A truck pulled up noisily beside the square, shuddered to a stop, and a young man jumped out of the caboose and walked into our cool shade.

—Make us a coffee, Baba Kosta, roared the truck driver, make it strong and sweet.

The old man grunted, displeased, but started preparing the brew. The young man glanced at me, took a cigarette from his shirt pocket and sat down at the counter.

The truck driver was balding, his skin had blackened in the sun, and his khaki t-shirt was wet with perspiration. He was tall, his belly thickening, and his hard dark face was both ugly and beautiful. A thick pink scar ran down the side of his left cheek. He glanced at me and I found myself blushing. I sipped from my coffee and went back to watching the world outside. Across from us, on the pitted wall opposite, someone had scrawled, in large strokes of blue, the number 666 and a thick cross through it. The Devil's number unnerved me, but then so did the brutish young man, and I had nowhere to look except down at my coffee cup.

—Have you read this, Baba Kosta? The young man threw his newspaper onto the counter. I attempted to follow the men's conversation. A ship had gone down in a storm while crossing into the Mediterranean. Seventy-five illegal immigrants, mostly Kurds and Afghanis, had drowned, locked deep in the ship's bowels.

Across the street a woman was lifting the shutters to her kiosk. Cars, trucks, the voice of a city began to be heard.

—They can all go to Hell.

The young man had raised his voice and I glanced over to him. He was stroking his unshaven chin and smiling at me.

—Do you agree, friend?

I pretended not to understand him.

The old man lit a cigarette, coughed and touched the truck driver on the shoulder.

—He's not a Greek.

—I am, I said, but from Australia.

The young man laughed.

—Ah, one of the lucky ones.

I'm not rich, I wanted to say. I'm not a success story. Instead I smiled and raised my glass to the stranger. He came over, sat down next to me and offered me his hand.

—Takis.

I introduced myself and he ordered both of us another coffee, offered me a cigarette, and stretched his legs wide apart. He pointed to the world outside.

—A shithole, isn't it?

The English obscenity was offered with a Cockney accent and I couldn't help laughing.

—But it is, don't you think? He was grinning but his dark, hooded eyes were gazing intently into my own. I could smell his workman's sweat, taking it in over the taste of coffee and tobacco. I also smelt the faint whiff of marijuana.

—I've been here half an hour. It looks okay to me, I lied. I knew enough about Greeks to not dare an insult to their hometown.

—Are your people from here?

I hesitated. I remembered my mother's fierce determination to chop away at her roots.

—I'm just travelling.

He turned to the counter, laughing.

—Did you hear, Baba Kosta, the poor fool is taking his holiday in Agrinion. Who'd guess? Forget Santorini and Rhodes, we'll be first for tourists soon. His voice was bitter and cold.

The old man snorted and coughed again. He came over
and took a seat beside me. Their attention made me uncomfortable. They in turn were distrustful of me. Takis looked at my camera.

—You take photographs?

—I am a photographer.

—Will you take a photograph of me?

His eyes, his long-lashed hooded eyes, were snake eyes.

—If you want.

—And the old man here?

—If he wants.

—Where are you from?

My mother was not here, she was not asserting herself in the face of two bitter men who were determined to remind me that I was not from here. I made the decision, on the spot, in the moment, to speak.

—My mother is from around here. Not Agrinion. Out there, up in the mountains.

The old man sagged into his seat; he was now relaxed with me.

—Has she ever come back?

I shook my head.

—Never.

The young man pounced on my reply and turned gleefully to the old man.

—Do you see, Baba Kosta, they've forgotten us?

—Bullshit! In my anger I had spoken the obscenity in English. I calmed my voice. It is you who have forgotten
us.

Takis went to reply but the old man patted my shoulders.

—The child speaks the truth. You have forgotten, Taki. He turned to me his old scarred face, and I saw that his teeth were missing, that cigarettes had slowly chiselled away at his lips.

—We have forgotten, son, but not me. I had my sister in Australia. My only sister. A cry began to escape him, but he choked it back, lifted himself slowly up from the table and walked back to the counter. He turned from us and he
busied himself rearranging the tins of coffee, washing the cups and the saucers. When Takis spoke again, his voice, his eyes, had softened.

—His sister died last year. Takis lit another cigarette and watched the smoke curl into the air. Imagine this, friend, old Kosta here had never once travelled further than Athens. He's not seen an island, has rarely seen the bloody sea. His sister dies and he decides to fly to Australia. Imagine? I can't. They tell me it takes one day and one night in an aeroplane. You've got to be joking. I don't even want an hour in one of those damned things.

I waited. The old man had sat down again, behind the counter. He was not looking at us.

—Imagine, the poor old fool makes the journey, goes to bury his sister, meets his brother-in-law, his nieces and nephews for the first time, and then within a fortnight he's back. I said to him, Baba Kosta, what the hell are you doing back? He replied, What could I do, my son, Tasia was dead, who was going to run the
kafenio
, what was I going to do in Australia? Takis clapped his hands together and shook his head. So he comes back.

I looked over at old man Kosta. He was back to reading the newspaper, oblivious now to us. Takis leaned towards me.

—I asked him about Australia, he whispered, do you know what he said?

—What?

—Big houses, my son, they have big houses there and they have very fat cows.

Takis' laughter was long and strong.

—Is it true, friend, he asked me, are your houses big and are your cows well fed?

 

Colin told me that, when he was fifteen, one of his teachers, new to his vocation, enthusiastic and well-meaning, had tried to gain Colin's trust by asking him where most in the world
he would like to visit. Colin had replied that he wanted most to see the Nile. Since he was a young child, he had been fascinated by the monuments of ancient Egypt and wanted to see for himself the desert landscape filled with the ruins of empires. The student teacher, encouraging the youth, had asked him to imagine what steps would be needed in order to make his dream possible.

On a late autumn evening, the sun having gone down and the afternoon abruptly cold from an icy southern wind, Colin told me that all he remembered was feeling overwhelmingly trapped by the teacher's question, that he could not ever see himself travelling, flying, walking through strange places, taking photos as mementos. He told me this as an adult, wrapped in an ill-fitting brown cardigan to protect himself from the wind, looking out onto a garden which his hands had sown and nurtured. He told me that he could remember neither the punch nor any of the violence that followed—that all he did remember was the young student teacher's bleeding face and his own foot sore from the savagery of his kicking. They called the police and as his mother was not home, they kept him in a police cell until late in the night when she arrived, breathless and drunk, and slapped him once, twice around the head. When they arrived home, the man who his mother was seeing at the time, an old bastard called Nick, had packed all of Colin's clothes into a bag. Colin's mother had started screaming but Nick hit her and told her to choose. Nick or Colin. Colin made the choice for his mother. He left, and that night walked into the city where he slept on a bench outside the old Wesley Church in Lonsdale Street. Nick didn't stay around for much longer and Colin eventually moved back home. But he never returned to school. His mother wanted him to stay on: he was smart, he could read anything, he was fucking smart. Stay at school, Col. But he found an apprenticeship and started paying his way. Steve
Ringo had also taught him this. You've got to pay your way.

Colin shivered in the evening chill. I have been paying my way ever since. As he told me this story, I looked at the line of tall beanstalks he had planted. When the night got too cold, I asked him to pick some of the beans and he came into the kitchen with a small wooden bowl filled to the brim with the deep purple beans. I cooked him beans in vinegar and olive oil, I had cheese and bread ready. I cooked him a meal my mother had taught me.

 

—It's true, I laughed along with Takis, the cows are well fed in Australia.

It was evening when I reached Karpenissi. The yellow moon hung low over the town and people were drinking and laughing in the square. Young men on motor scooters circled around and there was music blaring from all the taverns lining the square. Techno competed with popular Greek tunes and I walked through this cacophony searching for a room. I found a small hotel with a view of the mountains and paid for a night. I laid my head on the pillow intending to rest only for a moment, and then go back into the night and explore the town. But I fell immediately asleep and fell into dreams: dreams of motor scooters and pretty boys smoking cigarettes; dreams of old men and old women, looking at me as if I was dead, looking through me.

In the morning, the first thing I did after splashing my face with water was to walk down to the nearest kiosk and put a call through to Colin. The answering machine kicked in but Colin picked up halfway through my message.

He told me he had been working in the garden. I could see him, weeding, digging, creating.

—Not working today?

—I'm working all weekend. Harry's got lots of jobs on.

I fell silent. I was thinking about my credit card bill from Athens. I vowed to myself I would find a fulltime job when
I returned to Melbourne. It was not fair his supporting the both of us, supporting my photography while I got paid a shit wage to push videos and DVDs across a counter two or three shifts a week. I had to get a real job, put my fair share in; I would do it over any of Colin's protesting. You've got to pay your way.