Dead Europe

by Christos Tsiolkas

  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, w
hat 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.

  —Are you alright?

  —Yeah. I’m in Karpenissi.

  —What’s it like?

  —I’ve just got here. I’ll tell you next time I ring.

  —When are you planning on coming back? I could hear the hope in his voice.

  —Not sure. Another month?

  He went silent.

  —Three weeks, then.

  —Don’t promise me anything. You never fucking keep them anyway.

  —I love you.

  —Then just come back quickly.

  —I better get going.

  He asked me to wait and he put down the phone. The young woman in the kiosk was looking at me. She lit up a cigarette and yawned.

  —Your cousin Giulia rang me.

  —Bullshit.

  —Nah. She rang me up last night. She’s in Athens and wants to get in contact with you. You got a pen?

  I motioned to the young woman for a pen and she sullenly handed me one. I took down the number, wrote it on the inside flap of my cigarette packet.

  —I love you, I told him again.

  His voice softened.

  —Come back soon, baby. I miss you so much. This is too hard.

  I walked the town that day. This place, this small town high in the mountains, was where I came from. It was to this town that my mother had come down from the village for celebration and for dances; this is where she had first tasted ice-cream and bananas and oranges. They were so rare, she once told me. I was a child, lying next to her in bed, and she was in a silky heroin daze. I was wearing blue and white checked pyjamas and I was asking her about Greece. On drugs, she would answer. Fruit was so rare. But I remember my father took me to Karpenissi one morning, we had walked since dawn, and I saw an old man with a stick of bananas over his shoulder. I didn’t ask for one, I knew they were expensive, but my Dad saw my hunger and he bought me one. He let me eat it all myself, did not even take a bite. Recalling her father, her face had become sad and old. She kissed me goodnight, grumbled that I did not know how lucky I was to be in a place where everyone ate bananas and peaches, apricots and oranges.

  I held my camera tight in my hands and willed myself to see Greece, her home, through her eyes.

  I took photographs of shopfronts, bakeries and butcher shops. I took photos of the old wooden walls of the town, of the new concrete apartments. I took photographs of the surrounding peaks and of young children playing soccer in side streets. I took photographs of a drunk old man, his teeth all gone, his eyes bruised. I took as many photographs as I could, switching film after film, so when I returned home I could ask my mother, Do you remember this? Does it still look the same?

  Even as I pressed my finger on the shutter I was aware that the places I was framing through my viewfinder had changed unceasingly since my mother was born. I knew as I heard the click of the camera that my mother’s hazy memories of this place she left when she was still a girl could not compete with the crisp colours and matt tones of the photographs I was now taking. I didn’t care. I wanted her to have something more solid of memory than words. I took photograph after photograph. As this was a foreign light, as I did not know this intense but delicate Mediterranean light, so different from the harsh and boundless sun of my own country, I took shot after shot of the same scene, altering the exposure to ensure th
at the film would capture the houses, the fields, the narrow lanes, the faces, as I wished to preserve them. I altered the aperture and attempted to capture the soul of the town.

  The old men of Karpenissi stared suspiciously at my camera. The old women I did not see, they kept indoors. I took seven rolls of film and I was exhausted by the time I walked back to the bus station. The chain-smoking man behind the counter was rude and unsympathetic to my requests. It seemed that buses to my mother’s village only left on Wednesdays and Mondays and when I persisted in my pathetic Greek to discover an alternate route, he told me that the village was a clump of Devil’s earth and why the fuck did I want to go there when Karpenissi had everything I needed as a tourist. I realised, when he made a disparaging aside to a bus driver, that he thought of me as a complete stranger, that my accent and manner had obscured all evidence of Greekness. I gave up my efforts and decided to hitch. I paid my bill at the hotel and I rang Giulia in Athens.

  —Gamouto, epitelos. About fucking time.

  It had been twelve years since I had heard her voice but I recognised it immediately, recognised the accent of her stilted English. It sounded like the way Slavic women in Australia tried to fix their lips around the hard Australian accent. Twelve years ago, my father’s family had not been kind to me. They had taken me in, they had shown me the tourist sights of Thessaloniki, they had politely paid for my meals and my drinks, but they had not protested when I declared my intentions to travel on my own and they had been relieved to close the door after me. It had been an uncomfortable two nights I’d spent with my uncles and my aunts, my cousins—they doing their duty, I doing mine—sitting on sofas, listening to them gossip and laugh about people I did not know. It was uncomfortable because we could not talk about the one thing we had in common: my dead junkie father. Even his presence had been erased from their houses. His youthful image did not stare down from any of the old photographs that adorned their immaculate bourgeois homes and apartments.