The Art of Becoming Homeless

by Sara Alexi

  ‘Is it worth it?’ His eyes darken, piercing. He really wants to know.

  The heat swaddles her, stealing her breath away in its all-encompassing embrace. In the moment, words elude her. She reaches out and puts a hand gently on his shoulder. His opposite hand raises and comes to rest on her hand, an expression of gratitude for her kindness. He nods as he lets his arm drop again.

  In this setting, surrounded by sky and sea, nothing in the world seems more ridiculous than sitting in an office bent over paperwork day in, day out.

  ‘What choice do we have?’ she says as gently as she can.

  ‘Oh, I have choice, only it is like the English saying—a hard place and a rock,’ he smiles sadly.

  ‘Meaning?’ Michelle asks.

  ‘I can return to Greece.’

  ‘And face an angry father.’

  ‘More. And face the army.’

  ‘Oh, yes, of course, they still have national service here, don’t they? How long?’

  ‘Two years.’ He loses his animation and suddenly looks very young.

  ‘That’s not so bad. You’ll be out in no time.’ Michelle tries to cheer him, then remembers her coffee and picks it up from behind the leg of the bench. Dino does the same with his.

  ‘It’s bad, I hear,’ he says as he puts his cup down. ‘One friend, he goes. The sergeant hates him. “Break the gun,” the sergeant says. My friend, he says “no”. The sergeant says it is an order, smash the gun against the rock. So my friend, he feels he must do it. The gun is broken. The sergeant has him arrested for breaking army property. You cannot win.’ Dino runs a hand across his hair, smoothing his fringe out of his eyes, wipes his mouth nervously.

  ‘But that’s not right. He should have reported him.’

  ‘For the army to believe my friend over a sergeant?’ He blinks several times

  ‘I can see your fears, but not all the sergeants will be the same.’

  ‘I have another friend who will not go,’ Dino says in hushed tones.

  ‘What will happen to him?’

  ‘He will not be able to get a job. They always ask for your release papers. He will not be able to leave the country, what can he do?’

  ‘But your time in the army is not so long. Let’s say you did it. What afterwards?’ she encourages, wondering if this is anything like being a mother, helping to make such decisions, encouraging the right paths to be chosen. She doesn’t feel qualified. Is there a ‘right’ path?

  He shrugs. He locks her gaze. The deep blue sky silhouettes the dark brown of his hair, but his eyes have her fixed.

  One minute he was a child with a mother, a family, the next everything changed. One minute he lived on the island and always had, the next he was living in the village where he knew no one. One minute at school, the next on a plane to England to go to university. These days will be the same, one day he will be full of life, the next an old man. He is aware of his youth and it seems so precious. Life makes promises and then snatches them away.

  Promises. His mother’s eyes when she was happy. The way she threw her head back when she walked. Her arms wrapped around him, her hand snaked so it could hold his head against her shoulder. No words in those moments. He did not need to tell her things, she did not need to ask, she knew everything that was in his head and heart. One minute there for life, the next gone—for life.

  And now they ask for him to give up these precious years to the army or some grey office.

  ‘But now? Now you go to the island you were born on to see a friend. The strike has saved you meeting your dad, I presume? Without that, you would be going straight to the village, yes?’ Dino nods. ‘How long are you staying on the island, or are you just doing the overnight stop?’ She hastily changes the conversation, trying to give it energy, to break the spell Dino seems to have fallen into.

  He looks at the floor, but when he raises his head his countenance is lighter. He smiles, his eyebrows lift.

  ‘Who knows? Can you really tell what life will throw at you next?’

  Chapter 3

  The ship’s course curves to line up with a streak of grey-blue that smudges the horizon and slowly gains definition, becomes solid, and announces that it is land.

  ‘Nato,’ Dino points.

  ‘Sorry?’ Michelle follows his finger.

  ‘There it is,’ he repeats.

  Michelle scours the shape with her eyes but can see no evidence of life. It is barren, with no houses apparent.

  ‘Where are the people?’ she asks.

  ‘All in the town, together.’ Dino smiles.

  The island is long and they begin to travel down its length, sailing closer until Michelle can almost make out bushes and rocks. Then a house, white, tall, majestic, not as Michelle imagines Greek houses should be. This one is surrounded by olive trees and a high stone wall that extends all the way down to the sea.

  There is another similar house farther along, and one above it, higher up the hill. They are all grand and within walled gardens.

  The island is still some way off, and all is misty with the heat. Michelle goes to buy a bottle of water. Even if she has no sunscreen, she should at least keep hydrated.

  Dino is standing when she returns. He juts his chin toward the island.

  There is nothing to see, just land rising almost straight from the water, no beach, just rock and scrub. Then, without warning, what seemed to be no more than a slight fissure in the rock opens as they draw level with it and reveals itself to be a deep inlet.

  As one, the tourists on board, including Michelle and the Finnish girls, gasp as the town comes into sight, a perfect half-bowl scooped out of the hillside. The land, steep on either side, encloses the port. They are close enough to distinguish individual houses that make up the cascade of dazzling whitewashed walls and orange tiled roofs down to the port from the pine trees on the ridge. The town appears small, contained, as ancient as Greece itself. The houses back from the harbour’s edge stand four and five storeys high, of solid square-cut stone, majestic, reminiscent of an Italian riviera.

  Dino points to the left of the port’s entrance at a line of old cannons standing sentinel high on the rocks, their noses pointing out to sea, a testament to the island’s turbulent history.

  ‘Once many shipping captains lived here,’ Dino says.

  Michelle, not wanting to take her eyes off the island, scrabbles blindly in her bag for the guide to the island. The book is more of a travelogue by a journalist than a tourist guide. Michelle prefers the personal approach to the commercial guidebooks, the romance between the words, the extra history. ‘The island was the home to wealthy shipping magnates at one time, displaying their wealth in grand houses, three-, sometimes four-floors high, standing to attention around the harbour.’ She reads with one eye on the majestic view.

  ‘“Between these solid mansions are nestled one- and two-storey dwellings. The houses behind, packed in tightly, mount the slope like stepping stones, almost to the ridge. Pine trees encompass the town.”‘

  ‘In old times,’ Dino leans into Michelle and talks into her ear, his lips against her hair, his shoulder against her back, ‘the people of the island, they put a chain across the harbour entrance, from cannon to cannon.’ He points to the right of the harbour, where the rocks bristle with more cannons, long ago rusted and now painted a shiny black. ‘The chain, she was heavy and she went beneath the waves, invisible.’ Michelle senses he is very close, but her attention is still riveted by the island.

  ‘So the pirate boats, they come and the underneath is caught on the chain. The pirates, they cannot go forward. The islanders now have time to shoot the cannons.’ She pulls her ear away from his mouth to face him. He is smiling, the corners of his eyes creased ever so slightly.

  As the little tourist ship passes the entrance unhindered, Michelle leans over the rail and peers into the depths, picturing in her mind’s eye the bones of hapless pirates now consigned to the seabed below. From inside the air-conditioned saloon a grou
p of Japanese tourists floods the lower decks. The women are dressed in clean, neat, light-coloured clothing, with white gloves and parasols. The men have cameras out, with lenses trained on the island. A broadside, Michelle muses. The engine’s rumble lessens, the speed drops to a calming ‘put, put, put’. The wallowing slows to a bob.

  The harbour is much busier than when Dino was last here. It seems like mayhem, filled with shouts of people both on and off the boats, the white hulls of their floating worlds moored tightly, side-by-side, along the harbour wall. Tangles of mooring chains knot groups of vessels together. The local fishing boats, wooden, double-ended, brightly painted, are pushed into a corner. An arch through the high pier gives them access to the sea, allowing them to bypass the hordes of pleasure boats. This keeps them safe from the multi-million-dollar yachts and sleek, private, gin palaces that bounce off each other’s mooring buoys. The charter yachts dominate, one merging into another in their white and stripes. The harbour is heaving. There are so many boats they are obliged to tie up two or three deep. Those moored up against the pier are in stern-first. The second layer nuzzling in between, bows-in, ties onto the first. Captains and crew of the outlying boats must clamber across their neighbours’ decks from their watery holiday-homes to reach dry land.

  As the ship manoeuvres with care into a dedicated space, the sounds of the weekend sailors are overlaid by the excited chatter from the harbour-side cafés.

  The mooring lines fly through the air onto the pier where hands are ready to secure them to iron bollards set into the stones, and a set of steps is rolled, clanking, up to the side of the ship. The horn is sounded twice. They have arrived.

  A wave of people jostles forward to disembark, and Michelle is carried through the ship and onto the harbour with the throng.

  All about her is bustle, an unfamiliar excitement. The people sitting in the pavement cafés are smiling, laughing. The waiters sliding through and between them, as if on ice, seem relaxed and in control. Contented cats sprawl and lick their paws in the shade, or prowl the tables for scraps.

  She has seen a similar contentment in the wine bar next to chambers at six-thirty on a Friday night. It lasts half an hour, by which time they have all downed double whiskys and the smiles are replaced by grey faces of exhaustion.

  But here, joy seems to be a permanent state.

  Without the cooling influence of the ship’s motion and the sea breeze it created, the heat bounces off the cobbles and the stone buildings, stifling and dry.

  ‘Can I offer you a cool drink to thank you for the pleasure of your company on the ship?’ she asks. Dino seems preoccupied and Michelle reminds herself that he is here to see his friends, not to keep her company. She wonders if she should repeat herself or let him go. But Dino makes his way through the outer tables of one the harbour cafés and pulls out a seat, beckoning her over to sit.

  The ship hoots again.

  Michelle looks around to find out what has caused a sudden stir. The waiter is being called by several raised hands. People stand, throwing coins onto tables. From under the tables, suitcases are wheeled out, people kiss goodbye. The ship’s engine stirs back into life. Something hits her leg. Michelle turns to see a box of what looks like water bottles filled with olive oil being pushed, scraping along the floor, by an old lady in black. She pulls her chair in, apologising, but the woman does not look up as she hastens to the ferry.

  ‘The only boat, because of the strike,’ Dino explains.

  The mixture of excitement and chaos reaches a crescendo and then diminishes to leave a pleasant calm in which Michelle feels she can draw breath again. She sits. Dino orders for them both with a gesture of his hand and one word in Greek to a waiter who is some yards away.

  The harbour is roughly square, with a stone pier on the outer, seaward side, and a wide stone pavement edging the other three sides, covered with tables and umbrellas. The pavement narrows and leads into paths which head along the coast east and west at the corners of the square. Shops and cafés, banks and houses sit behind the harbour front. Between the buildings are narrow, cobbled lanes that lead into the town up the hill. ‘Ginnels’ they used to call them in Bradford, ‘snickets’ sometimes. Michelle is not sure there is a southern word for these narrow walkways. If there is, she has never had to use it.

  ‘Excuse me.’ Dino stands, manoeuvres his way deftly between the chairs and tables and hurries over to a man, about his age.

  He grins from ear to ear.

  ‘Hey, you, villager, where have you been?’ Adonis laughs.

  ‘Cut your throat, you peasant,’ Dino sneers.

  Adonis embraces him, kisses him on both cheeks, shakes his hand vigorously, and pats him heartily on the back.

  ‘So you didn’t let me know you are coming? Why are you here? They sack you? Your Baba will be pleased to see you.’ Adonis does not release Dino’s hand from the greeting.

  ‘Ach, that’s because he doesn’t know yet.’

  ‘Know? Know what, my friend? Have they promoted you to company director already?’

  ‘Ha, then it would be me cutting my own throat. You wouldn’t believe what it is like.’

  ‘Hey Dino.’ A serious-faced young man in an open-necked striped shirt approaches, arms outstretched.

  ‘Fanis!’ Dino opens his arms.

  ‘So you escape, eh? The English, they threw you out, did they?’ Embraces and kisses, and slaps on the back and shoulders are exchanged again. Fanis’ shirt is cool to the touch, betraying the luxury of his air-conditioned office.

  ‘Dino was telling me how he was loving the English weather. Look how pale his skin is.’ Adonis draws a finger down Dino’s face as if wiping off dirt. Dino ducks back and blocks Adonis’ hand. They laugh.

  ‘So you are loving it, eh Dino?’ Fanis asks, frowning.

  ‘Yeah, like being kicked by a donkey: it is great when it stops.’

  ‘But the money’s good?’ Adonis asks.

  ‘What comes in is great, but what they give with one hand they rob with the other.’ He tells them how much he pays in rent and Adonis grins as if it is a joke.

  ‘But it is a house with a garden to yourself at that price, right?’ Fanis says.

  ‘Yeah, good one! It is one room, with just enough space to walk around the bed, a shared kitchen that no-one cleans and a toilet with no light and a window that won’t open.’

  Adonis is still laughing. Dino gently shoves him back; Adonis bends with the push. ‘But you are kidding?’ he asks seriously, wrapping his arms around himself.

  ‘No.’ All humour drains from Dino’s face. ‘It is hell. There is no sun, no sea, no one I know, no one smiles. I go to work on the tube and everyone’s face is like this.’ He drags his hand down his face, pulling the corners of his mouth down. ‘You speak to them and they grunt or look at you as if you are crazy.’

  ‘No, you are teasing us,’ Fanis says.

  ‘I am not. Let me tell you about the office. It is a big room.’ He opens his arms to encompass the entire port. ‘The carpet is grey and it stretches from wall to wall. My desk is in the centre; it is so far from the windows I see no daylight. The people near the windows, they draw the blinds so they do not have to look out on the car park or the backs of other buildings. There is fluorescent lighting on all day long in the office. I have never seen it switched off.’

  Fanis and Adonis await his next sentence. No one moves.

  ‘So there we are, all working together, hundreds of us. But you know what they do to make this worse? They have built stalls around us like we are animals, each one of us in a different pen so when we sit at our computers, we can see no one, talk to no one, caged.’

  ‘No, this is not true. In China, maybe, but not in England,’ Fanis exclaims. ‘In England they have wood-lined offices, big wooden desks with green reading lamps, tall windows with heavy curtains, and pretty secretaries. Or shiny chrome offices with floor to ceiling glass walls.’

  Adonis nudges Dino in the ribs. ‘You have a pretty
secretary, my friend?’ he leers.

  ‘I wish.’ Dino leans against one of the metal poles which support the canvas awnings that shade all the harbour-side cafés.

  ‘So come back and open an office or a shop here,’ Fanis says, raising his hand to shield his eyes from the sun.

  ‘Did you never meet his Baba, Fanis?’ Adonis asks.

  ‘But you are a man now, Dino. You must do as you please.’

  ‘I wish it was so easy. My Baba, he tells me of the mountains of oranges he has sold to send me to English university, the frugal life he has lived so I can have this opportunity. How I will be grateful for the security that a job in England will offer me when I am married with my own children. He will go on and on and ….’

  ‘Bully you, like he did when you were a kid!’ Adonis says. ‘Ha! Do you remember that time he went crazy at us? He told you to get his spanner from the work shed. Remember, he was fixing the water pump? So we both went and we looked and looked but couldn’t find a spanner and all the time he was shouting for us to hurry. I remember you shaking and I thought you were being silly, acting. But when we told your father we couldn’t find his spanner, it was like a volcano erupting. We were only small then, eh? I was scared, I hid behind an olive tree, but you stood there and he bellowed at you and you didn’t move. I thought you were so brave.’

  ‘Yeah, brave, huh. I didn’t know where you had gone but then I saw you creep from round the tree behind him and reach out to him. My heart was in my mouth. I had no idea what you were doing. The look on his face. He turned on you like someone possessed, and there you were with his spanner in your hand, which was in his back pocket all the time. I had to run before I exploded with laughter.’

  ‘I didn’t catch up to you until you stopped at the church,’ Adonis answers. They are both laughing.

  Fanis smiles. ‘Yes, but now he is not such a big man. Age has shrunk him, as it does all men, and we are twenty-four. You must make your own life.’