The House on Paradise Street (8 page)

As instructed, I turned off onto a short slip road, recognisable by a shrine shaped like a dolls’ house-sized island church, complete with whitewashed walls and blue domes. Apparently Nikitas was not the only person who had died near here, as these “little churches” are usually placed by grieving relatives to mark the spot. This one looked fairly recent and a flame flickered from its oil lamp, nestling by a bottle of Jif. A postal van was parked close-by, its radio playing bouzouki hits at full volume. The driver sipped coffee from a polystyrene cup, and blew cigarette smoke out of the window as he gazed at the mauve silhouette of coastline leading down to Sounion.

Tig and I walked over to the edge, where a precipitous incline of rocks and undergrowth led down to a bay that had not been visible from the road. Flat, pale rocks sloped into a sea of glittering peacock blue and gulls squawked overhead. There was a steep footpath and we made our way down gingerly, trying not to slip. The recent rains had produced the flash of autumnal growth that is almost like a miniature version of spring, without the melodramatic excesses of the real thing. Fresh grass and white spears of sea squill emerged from soil still baked solid from the summer and fuchsia-pink cyclamen sprouted from rocks. Butterflies and dragonflies flitted around as though it was May not November. The policeman had said to look for a large pine tree and we found it about 150 metres down. Its trunk had a new cut in it and looking back up, we could see skid marks and disturbed ground leading from the slip road down the hill. This was obviously the place. Some partridges the same colour as the earth swept up into the air, trilling like skidding bikes. Tig sat down, picking at some grass and not catching my eye.

“Maybe this tree was the last thing he saw.”

I hadn’t told her that her father was apparently still alive after the crash. I hoped he had not been conscious; it would be a lonely place at night.

We sat without talking, warmed by the sun, inhaling the tang of sage and pine sap. The place reminded me of trips Nikitas and I used to make in the early years. He’d take the day off and we’d drive out somewhere down the coast with a picnic or end up eating a plate of fried anchovies in a beach taverna after a long swim. The water was his element.

“Shall we go for a swim?” I felt almost as surprised at my suggestion as Tig looked, but she followed me down until we reached the smooth expanses of grey marble that gave straight onto deep, clear water. The area was hidden from the road and I took off my clothes and dived in. The shock of the cold water was matched by incongruous elation as I felt the sun on my wet face and salt on my lips. I felt something close to liberation, even joy, in spite of all that had happened; contradictory opposites existing together, as they do even more frequently in Greece than elsewhere. I turned to see Tig jumping in, dressed in black pants and bra. She shrieked, twisting like a dolphin, diving deep, streaking back to the surface, thrashing out a few strokes of butterfly, then floating, eyes closed and hair spread on the surface.

* * *

The next day I went to Nikitas’ office. I needed to decide what to do with his stuff and whether to go on paying the rent there. But I also wanted to see his private place. I walked down Paradise Street, avoiding the bitter-orange trees that are planted in the middle of the pavements and whose branches and fruit are liable to slap you or scratch your face if you don’t take care. The road was wet from the rain that had fallen early in the morning but bolts of sunshine now penetrated the clouds, gilding the puddles. There was a pungent odour like semen in the air, something that had disconcerted me the first time I came across it in Athens, but which now made me smile, remembering Nikitas’ explanation.

“It’s the carob trees,” he said. “They flower in the autumn and give off this stink of sex. You can’t deny that Athens is an erotic city when the whole place smells of sperm.” Now this strangely human scent emanating from the trees’ tiny flowers is a familiar olfactory accompaniment to autumnal decay, wet leaves, the end of the year. Sex and death, as usual.

As I waited to find a taxi, I looked across at the Acropolis. I was able to judge my mood by whether I was pleased by the sight or whether it annoyed me as a wearisome cliché. That day I felt happy to see the Parthenon, standing alone, creamy blonde and almost floating. Every Athenian has their own private Acropolis – a view from a bathroom window or a personal angle on that most public of places. Temple, church, mosque, weapons store room, provider of museum pieces, over-used tourist destination, and above all symbol, it is nothing if not adaptable to our fantasies. I like the way it’s not perfect: the gashing hole caused by one of the many battles that have raged around it, and the familiar beige cranes used for restoration that protrude awkwardly like surgical forceps holding diseased bones in place. On a good day, this glimpse of the Acropolis after I walk Tig to school or as I wait for a bus, can be a reminder of my attachment to Greece’s bare, salty landscape of rocks and ruins. Other times, the columns look like the bars on a window.

I flagged down a taxi that already contained two passengers. They were disagreeing with the driver about his support of LAOS, the extreme right-wing party.

“Greece is for the Greeks. I’ve nothing against foreigners, but they should go back to their own homes.” The driver was enjoying his easy prejudices and I didn’t have the heart to get into an argument as I usually did, asking whether or not his own parents or grandparents had not done a spell as immigrants in Germany, America or Australia (they usually had). I just thought: “Fair Greece! Sad relic…” and was relieved when he dropped me off on the corner of Sophocles Street. As I walked my spirits lifted a little. Nikitas had loved this area, where old Athens meets new; the town hall and the central fish and meat market, Pakistani cafés, Chinese clothes emporia, old men wheeling barrows piled high with cheap socks, bankers and businessmen striding along barking into mobile phones, East and West, forgetting and remembering. The streets are named after the ancients: Sophocles, Socrates, Euripides, Sappho, though they are now filled with groups of immigrants, cheap prostitutes and home-grown junkies. You don’t really want to walk there at night any more, Nikitas advised.

Nikitas’ office was in a modest version of the many arcades that snake under and between buildings in this part of town, each with a different character. The shops in this one looked too modest to stay in business, yet had remained there for years: the sign-engraver, with its dusty selection of bronze name plates and stick-on symbols for public toilet doors; the translation and photocopy office; the coin and stamp collectors’ shop; the tiny key-cutting business, with its basil pot outside the door. I moved slowly, remembering how often I had come over here in the early years of our marriage. I usually met Nikitas down the road at
Diporto
, his favourite taverna – a smoky hole down some steep steps, with whitewashed walls, bare light bulbs hanging from the ceiling and a row of massive wooden barrels filled with
pine-scented
retsina. Fellow diners were mostly market workers who were offered a few simple dishes cooked in the corner – chickpea soup, salads with cracked olives and small fried fish; there was no menu. Nikitas talked to me about the significance of the classic Athenian basement taverna and how it represents the subconscious, the Dionysian celebrations of wine, food, music and open conversation, far from the constraints of work, family and logic.

“So long as the women are back home doing the real work,” I’d snipe amiably.

“Maybe, but it’s like Dostoevsky’s
Notes from the Underground,
a dark place where emotions replace reason, where outsiders are welcome, where the normal rules are let go. It’s where a simple, working man can feel moved to dance and is transformed into a god during that time. Nobody can stop him. To a people who have so often lost everything, this is important.”

After lunch we would wander back to the arcade (a cool retreat from the baking afternoon streets), up the stairs and along to the end of the first floor walkway that overlooked the internal courtyard. Nikitas’ office was dark and peaceful, despite its uncompromising mess of newspapers, ashtrays and unwashed coffee cups. He would draw the ugly orange curtains, inherited from the previous occupant, and undress me. We lay on the wooden-framed daybed, with its rough, village blanket. Nobody would disturb us.

I hesitated after fitting the key into the lock. I had never been inside alone before and even though Nikitas was gone, I did not want to spy. I often caught glimpses of his former life when I went there: the lengthy Before-Me era as opposed to the shorter With-Me one, was how I thought of it. Whatever our marriage was, I never doubted that I was loved. Nikitas retained an almost old-fashioned gallantry with me, complimenting me on my appearance, helping me negotiate the day-to-day problems of Athenian existence, buying me little presents from the stores selling hardware or herbs on Athenas Street. I was never ignored, but neither did I feel that these attentions were exclusive to me. He was interested in so many people and there had been so much experience before he met me. The two former wives revealed their presence in photographs, letters and small objects whose history I would never know. Sometimes I referred to myself as “Number Three”, hoping to make Nikitas laugh. But it also made me realise how I was just one among all the other people who came and went through his life, leaving deposits, like water dropping silt along a river bank. It was all welcome to him. The more people you knew, the richer your life would be. But the longer we were together, the more I was aware of how little I knew of Nikitas’ origins – the lake or spring at the source.

The air was musty, like coffee dregs growing mould. I went over to the daybed, gripping the worn wooden end, keeping steady, noticing the dent in the cushion that must have been left by Nikitas’ head the last time he lay there. I sat for a moment, taking in the manly smells of wood and books, then opened the curtains, turned on the overhead light and went to the desk. It was swamped with papers that already looked old, as though the place had been abandoned long ago. The laptop was closed and dusty. Standing on top of it was a glass and an almost empty bottle of Cutty Sark whisky. There were several Greek books about the Civil War – thick paperbacks with grainy photographs of men with untamed beards and weapons slung across their backs. The dense texts were littered with acronyms like codes that might give answers: EAM, ELAS, KKE, EDES, EPON, OPLA, SOE, X…

Nikitas had been researching for a book about the relationship between the British and the Greeks through history, with a particular focus on the Civil War and its aftermath. He had been gathering material for ages, and had taken on an assistant who worked at the paper. I hadn’t met her, but I knew that someone called Danae was helping stoke his anger about the contradictions that lay behind the famous British philhellenism and the country’s involvement in Greece. He didn’t have a title yet, but my nickname for his book was
Perfidious Albion
. He was annoyed that the British remained so ignorant about the Greek Civil War that they helped provoke.

“Even English school children know about the bombardment of Guernica and the horrors of the Spanish Civil War,” he complained. “But nobody in England learns about the massacres of civilians in Greece a decade later. Sadly, we didn’t get Picasso painting the English aerial attacks in Athens, or Orwell and Hemingway telling our story.”

“Philhellenism, my arse,” Nikitas liked to say. “In reality, the English have been just as much anti-Hellenes or mis-Hellenes. Even Shelley’s old favourite, ‘We are all Greeks’, was a way of saying the English are better at being Greek than us. The English used Greece for their own fantasies and adventures, but trampled all over it when it suited. All Greeks know about Byron, the hero-poet who supported the Greek revolution. And maybe he did, but if it hadn’t been in their interests, the English would never have backed us against the Turks in 1821. And then they spent the next 100 years trying to foist atrocious foreign kings on us. Oh, and don’t forget the Ionian Isles were little English colonies for quite a time – they still play fucking cricket on Corfu.” I could almost hear Nikitas’ voice as I tried to bring some order to the surface of the desk and heaped all the books together on a shelf, and made piles out of different papers. I find this occupation as soothing as other people find needlepoint or knitting, and it is fitting that I have managed to place archives at the heart of my work. It was something my grandfather Desmond had taught me from a young age, when he got me to help organise his study. We would spend hours arranging the books alphabetically, sorting through index cards, tidying files and cleaning out drawers. Later, I brought this system to my own work, aware of how it made the world look better, bringing order to the chaos, just as it had given boundaries to my childhood, which so often seemed treacherously unstable.

One pile of folders was spread across a table and I found them filled with photocopies and pages of notes in unfamiliar handwriting I presumed was Danae’s. There was a small, black lipstick lying close by. I opened it, twisting up the plum-coloured, pointed tip and examining the unwelcomely intimate object. It made me aware of how much I didn’t know of Nikitas’ life, of how I may have been loved, but I was also shut out. There was so much he chose to share with other people rather than me. I remembered overhearing Nikitas speaking with Danae on the phone not long before, and he was whipping himself up into a satisfying rant about his bête noir.

“The thing about the English,” (Nikitas, like most Greeks, didn’t say “the British”) “is that what they like about themselves is all that crap about fair play, cricket, decency, moderation, and yet their whole history has been about oppressing other people with slavery, colonialism, and war. We are supposed to be taken in by their upright, perfect manners and their cups of tea, and we are all meant to love them as if they really were
tzéntlmen
and
milórdi.
But in fact they’re the number one drunken hooligans – they invented football violence. And if you look at problem tourists in Greece, it’s always them. Who else would create pub-crawls and open-air blow-job competitions in Greek tourist resorts? Not to mention their huge success with serial murderers back home. Have you ever wondered why we never had a Greek Jack the Ripper?”