Dead Europe Read online

  Christos Tsiolkas’ novel, Loaded, (turned into the feature film Head On, directed by Ana Kokkinos) was published in 1994 by Random House. He is the author of the novel The Jesus Man (Random House, 1999) and of the dialogue Jump Cuts (Random House, 1996), co-written with Sasha Soldatow. He has also published a monograph essay on the Fred Schepisi film The Devil’s Playground for the Australian Screen Classics Series (Currency Press, 2002). Since 1998, Christos has also worked as a playwright, including co-writing the award-winning Who’s Afraid of the Working Class? and Fever (with Andrew Bovell, Patricia Cornelius, Melissa Reeves and Irini Vela), and written the plays Elektra AD, Dead Caucasians and Viewing Blue Poles. His latest play, Non Parlo di Salo (2005), co-written with Spiro Economopoulos, is based on the censoring of director-poet Pier Paolo Pasolini’s last film. Christos has also directed and written short films, and collaborated with photographer Zoe Ali on a series of exhibitions dealing with refuge and exile (Destination Unknown 1, 2 & 3). Christos currently works part-time as a vet nurse, tries to write full-time and lives with his partner, Wayne van der Stelt, in Melbourne. Dead Europe is his third novel.

  Praise for Loaded:

  ‘Evocative, passionate, blistering … crackles with stark yet evocative descriptions that ravish the senses … Tsiolkas manages to transform from pain to joy the otherwise depressing subject matter without losing sight of its seriousness.’

  Antipodes

  ‘There’s something about Loaded that is really special. And something about Tsiolkas that is really special. His writing is coarse and unrelenting … is a brilliant voice, shouting to be heard. Should be heard.’

  Revolution

  ‘For its raw energy, sensuality and passionate, articulate, in-your-face poetry, one of the most impressive of this crop of first novels is Loaded … brilliantly contemporary exploration of identity in terms of ethnicity and gender.’

  Katherine England, Adelaide Advertiser

  ‘Passionate and angry, Loaded is one of the finest new Australian novels I have read in some time … the reader into a face-to-face confrontation with the tensions that underlie Australian culture.’

  James Bradley, Oyster

  Praise for The Jesus Man:

  ‘Tsiolkas manages to be both coolly astute and blinded by rage, a remarkable combination that makes for riveting reading. It is a shock and a relief to have one’s disillusionment and fear so grimly fulfilled in fiction. Christos Tsiolkas is not writing for an audience whose idea of literature is fixed, who expect a certain passivity, a kind of artistic restraint from their authors. He blasts his way past the terminally slack and the politically temperate. His is a stridently modern voice … Tsiolkas is a writer whose sensitivity, whose honesty and whose understanding of his own era make it impossible to disregard his work … The Jesus Man is a mighty book, anarchic in form as well as content. It is one of the very few books of which you can say, it must be read.’

  Tegan Bennett, Sydney Morning Herald

  ‘… [Tsiolkas] writes with such great honesty, and even greater energy … sheer intensity and gut-wrenching sincerity it is a memorable statement.’

  Chris Bartlett, Sunday Mail

  ‘It is remorseless and it will take over your life: it is urgent and explicit, horrific and yet strangely seductive and finally uplifting. I wouldn’t walk past it in a bookstore.’

  Edwina Mason, 9TO5

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted by any person or entity, including internet search engines or retailers, in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including printing, photocopying (except under the statutory exceptions provisions of the Australian Copyright Act 1968), recording, scanning or by any information storage and retrieval system without the prior written permission of Random House Australia. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

  Dead Europe

  ePub ISBN 9781742743905

  Kindle ISBN 9781742743912

  A Vintage Book

  Published by Random House Australia Pty Ltd

  Level 3, 100 Pacific Hwy, North Sydney NSW 2060

  http://www.randomhouse.com.au

  Sydney New York Toronto

  London Auckland Johannesburg

  Copyright © Christos Tsiolkas 2005

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

  National Library of Australia

  Cataloguing-in-Publication Entry

  Tsiolkas, Christos, 1965–.

  Dead Europe.

  ISBN 978 1 74051 194 0.

  I. Title.

  A823.3

  Extract from ‘A Poem for the End of the Century’ from Provinces by Czeslaw Milosz. Copyright © 1991 by Czeslaw Milosz Royalties, Inc.

  Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers Inc.

  CONTENTS

  Cover

  About the Author

  Praise for Loaded

  Praise for The Jesus Man

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Imprint Page

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  ANTE-GENESIS

  APOCRYPHA

  THE MOST BEAUTIFUL WOMAN IN THE WORLD

  WHITE SKIN

  CARNIVALE

  THE SOLID EARTH BENEATH MY FEET

  YOM KIPPUR

  MISTER OLD TALK

  THE THIEF

  THE BROTHEL OF PRAGUE

  THE SPARROW’S SONG, THE SERPENT’S COURSE

  WAR CRIMES

  IN THE GARDEN OF CLOUDS

  THE NIETZSCHEAN HOTEL PORTER

  THE BOOK OF LILITH

  PURGATORY

  ATONEMENT

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  For ‘Mitsos’ Litras and

  Dimitris Tsolkas, in gratitude

  To a saintly man

  —So goes an Arab tale—

  God said somewhat maliciously:

  ‘Had I revealed to people

  How great a sinner you are,

  They could not praise you.’

  ‘And I,’ answered the pious one,

  ‘Had I unveiled to them

  How merciful you are,

  They would not care for you.’

  Czeslaw Milosz

  THE FIRST THING I was ever told about the Jews was that every Christmas they would take a Christian toddler, put it screaming in a barrel, run knives between the slats, and drain the child of its blood. While Christians celebrated the birth of Jesus, Jews had a mock ceremony at midnight in their synagogues, before images of their horned God, where they drank the blood of the sacrificed child.

  —Is that really true, Mum? I demanded. I could not have been more than five years of age. My mother had been reading to us from an illustrated book of mythology. Her hair in those days was long and raven black; it cascaded down across her shoulders and her breasts. I would weave my fingers through it as I lay between her and my sister as she read to us. Mum had been reading to us about the gods of antiquity and I had demanded to know what had happened to them when Christ was born.

  —They all went up in smoke and only God remained.

  —And where did God come from?

  —He was the Jewish God, she explained, but the Jews refused to accept his Son as their Saviour and for that they turned against him and followed Satan instead. They killed Christ and for that God will never forgive them.

  —Is that really true, Mum? I asked again.

  She suddenly burst out laughing. I knew then th
at it was make-believe.

  —That is what my father told me and what his mother had told him. Maybe it is true and maybe it isn’t. Ask your Papa. He knows about Jews.

  —What do you want to ask your Papa?

  The three of us looked up as my father entered the bedroom. In all of my childhood memories, my father is a giant, strong and lean and handsome, towering above me. He had just finished showering, and came out buckling the belt on his jeans. His skin gleamed like that of the gods in the plates of the mythology book.

  I breathlessly recited what my mother had just told us about the Jews. He frowned and spoke harshly to her in Greek. Her face had crumpled. My hand instinctively reached out to her. My father sat on the bed and patted his thigh and I crawled across my mother and jumped onto his lap. I could smell the poppy-seed oil in his wet hair.

  —What’s this?

  It was a regular test of my knowledge of the Greek language and I was anxious to do well. He was pointing to the centre of his face.

  —Nose, I answered in Greek.

  —And this?

  —Mouth.

  —And this?

  —Eyes.

  —And this?

  —Hair.

  —And this?

  I was confused. I had forgotten the word for ‘chin’. He whispered the word and I repeated it to him. He then made a slicing motion across his throat.

  —And if I do this, what would you see? What would come out?

  I was silent. I had no idea how to answer.

  —Blood, my sister yelled out eagerly in Greek.

  —That’s right, he said, now speaking in English. Jews have my eyes and my nose and my hair and my chin and we may all even share some of the same blood. I grew up with Jews, I studied with Jews and Jews were my friends. He looked across at my mother.

  —Your mother is a peasant. Scared of everything she doesn’t know. And she knows nothing about Jews.

  Sophie and I were quiet. We knew that for my father the word ‘peasant’ was one of the worst insults. The word conjured up images of dark, cowed faces, of evil old crones and decrepit, toothless old men.

  —I’m sorry. My mother’s voice was low, chastened.

  My father ignored her. He opened a bureau drawer, pulled out some money and folded the notes into his pocket.

  —Where are you going?

  —Out.

  —When are you coming back?

  —When I’m ready.

  I understood that he was still angry. He kissed my sister and me and, without looking at my mother, he left the house.

  I picked up the mythology book and started flicking through the pages.

  —No more, my mother said, shutting the book, I’m tired.

  I must have pleaded for one more story. She turned her fury on me and shouted at us both to leave her alone. Scrambling across the bed, my sister and I fled the room, slamming the door behind us. We must have put on the television. The set was new, the black and white images as crisp and sharp as the white shirts my father wore, the black shoes that he shone diligently every morning. We must have watched television till my mother had done what she needed to do to calm herself and then she would have emerged from their room, she would have kissed our brows, and then begun to make us breakfast.

  I wasn’t to hear about the Jews again until I was eleven and my father started making plans to move us all back to Greece. For a whole summer all he talked about was Europe. He told us about Paris and Berlin, real cities, he explained, cities in which there were people in the streets day and night. He spoke about his own home, Thessaloniki, how it was the most beautiful city in Greece. His words painted pictures for me: I could see the crowded, dirty port with the ruined castle looking down onto it; I could imagine the tiny alleys and the sloping-roofed stalls of the old Hebrew markets; the crammed terraces of the old city. He said how he would take me on a walk under the Alexandrian Arch that was over two thousand years old. Imagine that, he kept repeating, two thousand years. What does this country have to offer that is that old? Nothing. Fucking nothing. We are going back to real history. Greece is free again.

  I knew that my mother did not share his excitement about returning, even to a Greece that had just booted out the Colonels. She had lived most of her life in Australia, and she countered his excitement with concerns about money, about how we children were to cope with learning the language. He brushed her worries aside. He ridiculed her fear of flying.

  —There’s nothing to fear, he smiled. Aeroplanes are safer than cars.

  —They terrify me.

  —Peasant, he chided, but there was a smile on his face and he kissed her on her lips. I’ll hold your hand the whole time, he promised. He lowered his voice to a whisper. You are so beautiful, I’ll have to hold on tight to you in Greece. They’re real men there, they’ll want you.

  I was blushing.

  —Shut up, Dad.

  My father winked at me as my mother laughed and pulled away from his grip.

  —What if we get hijacked?

  That summer the news was full of images of military-fatigued Arab men holding hostages to ransom. I found their camouflaged faces, with only their steely black eyes visible, both terrifying and alluring.

  —There’s nothing to fear from the hijackers, he counselled her. Just remember, if the plane gets hijacked don’t say a word in English. Just speak in Greek. They won’t harm us then, they’ll let us off immediately. They know we Greeks are their friends. Their comrades, he added.

  —Why do they hijack planes? I asked him. What do they want?

  —What the fuck do they teach you at school? He softened his tone. They want their land back. They’re fighting to get their land back. The Jews have stolen their land.

  Blood and land. Thus far, this is what I knew about the Jews. Jews were blood and land.

  But with the coming of autumn, all talk of Europe ceased and I soon realised that we were not going. It may have been that Dad had lost another job. I can’t remember and I didn’t mind. The idea of travel had excited me but I did not want to leave either my friends or my home. Mum and Dad took us for a camping holiday to the prehistoric forests of the Grampians; climbing the abrupt ferocious mountains that jutted out of the desert landscape, I forgot all thoughts of Europe, of crowded, never-sleeping cities.

  My father died before I reached Europe. We buried him in a civil ceremony; he was adamant he would not be buried as a Christian. My mother pleaded with Sophie and me to agree to an Orthodox funeral but we stood our ground. When I had been just a boy, around the time my mother had told me the heinous lies about the Jews, I remembered a morning when the house seemed to shake from the screams my parents were hurling at one another. Sophie and I peeked into the kitchen to see that, instead of their work uniforms, my father had on a shirt and tie and my mother was wearing her best dress. Dad was drunk, almost paralytic: he was slurring and stumbling. My sister and I clung to each other, terrified. We listened to the argument. Someone had died. The man who had died did not want to be buried by the Church, did not want anything to do with the priests. My father was adamant he would not betray his friend’s last wish. He threatened to upset the funeral, to insult the family, the priests, everyone. My mother did not want him to shame her in front of the congregation. You have to have respect, husband, she was crying, you have to show respect. My father was also in tears: They’re all fucking hypocrites. Maybe, my mother had answered simply, but your friend is dead, it’s the living that now matter. My mother got her way. Dad passed out on a kitchen chair and Mum took us off to school. But I never forgot the force of my father’s fury, nor the conviction in his voice when he called them hypocrites.

  Sophie and I would not be shaken from our determination to bury my father as he wanted. Please, my mother beseeched us, do it for me. What does it matter? Your father is dead. She was on her knees, she was banging the floor with her fists, she was tearing out her hair. I could tell that Sophie was wavering. I remembered that my mother was a peasan
t.

  —His soul would never forgive you.

  We got our way. My father is buried on unconsecrated ground.

  For his headstone we ordered a small rectangular stone inscribed with his name and the dates of his birth and death. Underneath, in Greek, we had the words: husband, father, worker. We asked the cheery Croatian stonemason to carve the hammer and sickle into the stone but the burly old man refused. On the day of the burial my sister and I painted the symbol crudely on the stone in her scarlet Max Factor nail polish. Like blood, it washed away in the first rain.

  On the third anniversary of my father’s death, I took my lover to his gravesite. I crouched and pulled out the weeds around the headstone. I had not long returned from Europe. On my last night in Thessaloniki, my cousin Giulia, the daughter of my father’s brother, had placed a small red pin in my hand. It was my father’s Greek Communist Party membership badge, she told me. He never wore it. He didn’t dare. It had been hidden behind a portrait of my grandfather and grandmother. My aunt discovered it and was going to throw it away but my cousin saved it. For you, she told me, I saved it for you.