Dead Europe Page 4

  —M’aresoune poli. I like them a lot.

  My hangover was cured, my eyes ablaze, I was elated.

  The afternoon was spent on lunch, and on two interviews that the gallery owners had organised with magazines. One of the owners, Mrs Antonianidis, was a heavily made-up matron in her mid-fifties who proceeded to tell me how much she had adored my art, though it quickly became obvious that she had no interest in the photographs whatsoever. Her husband was large and stern-faced and spent the whole of the lunch on his mobile phone. The first journalist who interviewed me was a suited young man barely out of his teens who did not take off his Calvin Klein sunglasses throughout lunch and spent the first five minutes complaining about the slack habits of his Albanian maid. He was disappointed in my Greek and when it came time to photograph me he took a few lazy snaps with an instamatic and wished me well. The second journalist was better prepared. She invited me for a coffee in a bar filled with Miro prints and her first question, when she snapped on the tape recorder, took me by surprise.

  —Isn’t the theme of homesickness, of exile and return, irrelevant to modern Greece?

  It was a good question and it did strike me, as we sat in the stylish bar, indolent dance music throbbing quietly in the background, that the Greece I knew in Australia was indeed largely irrelevant to these modern Europeans. I scrambled for an answer.

  —Maybe those themes are no longer relevant to you Greeks, but they are indeed relevant to Australians. In Australia we all ask ourselves where we come from.

  —Even the Aborigines?

  She was sorting through a series of black and white photocopies Anastasia had gathered of my photographs. She pointed to one of a young Aboriginal boy, a baseball cap on his head, a Tupac t-shirt on his chest. He was standing outside a Greek bomboniere store, scowling at my lens.

  —Is he asking himself where he comes from?

  —No, he’s asking me where I come from. I looked around the bar, at the Athenians elegantly sipping their drinks. What should I say to him? Am I from Greece?

  She too looked around the bar.

  —Certainly not from this Greece. This is not Greece. This is fucking marie-claire. She turned back to me. Do you speak French?

  I must have looked surprised because she laughed and told me that she did not feel confident in her English.

  —You speak it well.

  —No, I do not. My accent is terrible.

  We spoke for twenty minutes and then she shut off the tape recorder and asked me if I wanted a drink. She ordered gin and tonic for herself and a whisky for me and proceeded to tell me that she had cousins in Australia. She told me of how much she loved her cousins and how much she wished they would return to Greece. But, of course, she added, they are like you. Not Greek like we are. She then told me that her cousin Thomas had told her of the Aboriginal flying men and asked me if I had ever seen them. I shook my head. It is the desert I would like to see, she said to me. When she finished her drink she shook my hand and I kissed her cheeks and wished I could kiss her eyes. She thanked me for my time and told me that her father had a brother and sister in Australia and that at every wedding, every baptism, every funeral and every celebration her father would prepare his suit, brush his hair, take her mother by the arm and on leaving the house would mutter, I wish my brother and my sister could attend as well.

  —How many more interviews do you have to do?

  —I just had the two. You are my last.

  She shook her head.

  —We Greeks have forgotten what we owe to exile. But I will not forget what it has cost my father to lose his brother and sister.

  —People have short memories.

  —Pardon?

  —People forget. I spoke in her language.

  The last thing she said to me, as she was rising to leave, was that I should improve my Greek.

  Only a dozen people turned up for my opening and five of them were staffers from the Ministry of Culture who had paid for my ticket to Europe. I was asked to say a few words and I stumbled through as best I could. As I spoke of migration, the history of the Greeks in Australia, as I watched the happily nodding faces, I realised that nothing I said was of interest to them, that what they were seeing was some nervous young foreigner mangling their language and pretending to speak with commitment on a subject that had long ago become ossified. They were not interested in my return. I was not interested. I dribbled out in English, quoting Cavafy’s ‘Ithaka’. The applause was slight and polite.

  Later, I got drunk on the wine and sold the photograph of Stavros to Anastasia. One of the bureaucrats took us out to a tavern for a meal and for more drinks, and Anastasia and I got very drunk and she apologised for the lack of attendance at my show.

  —Australia is very far away. I understand.

  —It is not that. We Greeks are insular. We don’t believe in the rest of the world.

  —You Greeks are arrogant.

  She nodded her head in agreement.

  —You are not insulted?

  She stared at me, perplexed.

  —Was that meant to be an insult?

  We drank and we drank and I was driven to my hotel, but instead of going to my room I walked a drunken path through the crowded, carousing city and found myself at the park at Thission where I had bought the boy the night before. Many more youths were out that night; there was the potent smell of marijuana in the air. There were men who wandered in the shadows and if I had not been drunk I would have feared for my life. There were plenty of Russians, women and men, girls and boys, there were Greek whores and Albanian whores, there were Romanians and Poles, but I couldn’t find the boy. I walked back alone and I fell into bed and when sleep arrived it came quickly to rescue me from exhaustion.

  I spent the next two days walking around Athens, drinking the thick black coffee. I rang Colin and when he asked me how the show went I began to cry. I was ashamed of my vanity, ashamed that the poor attendance had humiliated me. Across the world, across time, Colin quietly told me that he loved me. How he desired my return. He told me how he missed my flesh, my smile, my eyes and my arse, my cock and my balls. I stopped crying.

  My mother, when I rang her next, was not as sympathetic.

  —Why haven’t you visited your dad’s family yet?

  —I’ve been busy. I’ve had the show. I’m heading out of Athens tomorrow.

  —Well, they’ve rung. Her voice was terse. She distrusted my father’s relatives.

  —Did you tell them about the exhibition?

  —No. We were both silent. I understood. I was sure we were thinking of the same three photographs. Tassia and Vivian, silver gelatin print, 1999. Two women, naked, mouth to mouth, cunt to cunt. Untitled 15, c-type print, 1996. A withered Mediterranean man, Karposi’s Sarcoma all over his face, dying in a hospital ward in Sydney’s south. Self-Portrait, c-type print, 1999. Me, naked, with an erection. At the last moment I had decided against taking the self-portrait with me to Greece. I had paranoid visions of disgusted customs officials in Singapore or Dubai. Or Melbourne. But my mother didn’t know this.

  —You should have invited them.

  —You think so?

  Fat fucking chance.

  I was thirteen when my mother overdosed on heroin. When I was much older I was to discover that it had not been the first time. Luckily my father was between jobs at the time, and my sister and I were at home on summer holidays. Dad had whacked up as well but he was bigger, stronger than Mum. I remember him screaming, attempting to wake her, shouting at me to call the fucking ambulance. I was terrified but I did as I was ordered and when I came back into their bedroom I saw my big strong father crying and praying, shaking my mother’s pale listless body. I remember the syringe on the pillow, the spoon on the floor. And then I don’t remember much at all except that one of the men in the ambulance was very tall and very blond. My mother survived, obviously, and soon after she gave up smack. My father never did. He died one night, alone, after he’d finished the night s
hift at the factory. He went into the work toilet and had a hit, a present to himself after a gruelling eight-hour shift in blistering heat. Maybe it was the heat that did it. Maybe it had weakened him. They didn’t find the body till morning.

  This is why his family hates my mother. We didn’t tell anyone in Greece, of course, how their son had died. But word did get out. Word always gets out, words even travel across the bloody ocean. The ocean sent back the word that my father’s family blamed my mother for their son’s death.

  —I love you, Mum.

  —Tell it to Colin. He’s missing you.

  —I know.

  I wandered, aimless and homesick, into the early evening and into the night. I walked a large circle from the hotel to the base of Lycavitos, walked through the sweltering concrete maze of Kipseli, turned back to the city, wandered through the green patches of Zographou, ate a hurried plate of tomato and egg at a tavern, and then kept walking. I found myself exhausted at midnight, in Exharheia Square, where I sat across from a boisterous group of young Greeks who were arguing and laughing. I ordered a whisky and soda from an attractive waiter in tight black jeans, and I lay back in my chair and smiled from ear to ear. I was in Europe. Across the road from the square three young men in ragged clothes, their eyebrows and mouths and noses pierced, set up their instruments. Two of them had bongos and one of them carried an acoustic guitar. One of the Greeks yelled out a good-natured insult and the tallest of the buskers thanked him sarcastically, donned an English bowler hat and began to strum the opening chords to Hendrix’s ‘The Wind Cries Mary’. There were whoops of satisfaction from the tables around the square. I listened half-heartedly to the music, the argument. I watched the endless circuit of cars and bikes and scooters zooming around the square. One of the men across from me leaned over and offered me a cigarette with a dazzling smile. I grinned back at him. I was in Europe. I could do as I pleased. Home was thousands and thousands of miles away.

  The next morning, the man at reception did not bother looking at me as I fixed my bill. I paid for the phone calls I had made but I told him, in English, in commanding complex English, in an officious arrogant accent, that the Ministry of Culture was paying for my room. He pretended to not understand me. He demanded money.

  I refused.

  He said he’d call the police.

  I gestured at my crotch. And you can suck my dick.

  He threw the receipt after me as I went through the dirty lobby. I was whistling as I sauntered through the doors and hit the thickening Athenian spring heat.

  I had nowhere to go except that I knew I had not liked my hotel room. All my belongings fitted snugly in my backpack and I walked away from Syntagma towards the noise and traffic of Ommonia Square. I passed the grand nineteenth-century façades of the embassies and walked into the first hotel I saw that dazzled me with its elegance. The porter waved me through into the cool lobby. At reception a young woman was smoking a cigarette, but she smiled and put it out as I approached. I asked for a room with a balcony and a bath.

  —All our rooms have baths, sir.

  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 wa
lk 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.