Dead Europe

by Christos Tsiolkas

  —I hope you are still interested in museums, my beautiful cousin.

  —I am.

  I laughed out loud, remembering.

  Andreas looked at us quizzically.

  —What is so funny?

  —It’s our secret, my cousin answered firmly, and pulled at my hand, dragging me ahead of him.

  —Take me to the Jewish History Museum.

  I had been drinking coffee with Giulia at a small table under an awning across from the Port. It was my first trip to Europe and we had danced till dawn the night before and were fortifying ourselves with caffeine, nicotine and Greek pastries. I was absolutely in love with Europe.

  —Why do you want to go there?

  —My father used to say that Thessaloniki is a city of Jews.

  —Once, she answered. A long long time ago. There are no Jews now.

  But there were. There were phantoms, and I had found them in the Jewish History Museum of Thessaloniki. The museum was a cavernous warehouse, with black partitions dividing the space into a maze. As we entered we had nodded to the middle-aged man smoking behind the front desk. Above him, a large dusty window framed the gloomy Salonikan sky. We were the only visitors and we walked slowly and reverentially past walls and walls of photographs. They had not been unfamiliar to me: the stark black and white images of destitution, of misery and death. The gaunt, desperate faces of women and children and men being herded into the death-camp trains. The tortures, the experiments, the annihilation. The history of the Holocaust.

  It had been a relief to turn a corner and face life. Old sepia photographs from the fin de siècle portrayed the Jewish world of the city that had been erased. Families smiled for the camera, dressed in their best finery, the men in suits, the women in fur coats and hats perched on their carefully arranged hair; they were walking the same city streets that I had just explored. On another wall, there was a large photograph of a group of young men and women lying on grass. They wore army coats and had rifles at their sides. They were smiling, laughing, teasing the cameraman. The caption underneath the photograph said that they were Jews of the Resistance; they had taken to the mountainous border between Greece and Yugoslavia to fight alongside their Gentile partisan comrades. I had taken the camera from around my neck, stood back from the photograph and was ready to shoot.

  —No photography. The man had risen from his desk and was walking towards us. He spoke in broken but clear English.

  —Why? My cousin asked him in Greek.

  —What do you want here? He spoke English again.

  —My cousin is from Australia. He is interested in your history.

  Every time my cousin had spoken in her own tongue, he had answered in mine. He held his right hand over my lens. Ignoring Giulia, he spoke to me again.

  —There will be no photographs.

  I could tell that Giulia was about to answer him rudely and I interrupted her.

  —My father was from Thessaloniki, I explained. He told me about the Jews who lived here. I had been about to continue, to tell him that I wanted to acknowledge the Hebrew past of this city, to make recompense—I knew it was pitiful, hopeless, that nothing I could say or do could make amends for the terrible history hanging on the walls—but he did not let me finish.

  —I am not interested in your father, he said firmly. All I ask is that you take no photographs. And with that, he had turned, sat back at his desk and lit another cigarette. He refused to meet my wounded gaze.

  —How did you feel, Colin later asked me. How did you feel when he said that to you?

  —Hurt.

  —Why?

  —Because I thought he was making no distinction between me and an anti-Semite. Jesus, I went to his museum, I wanted to learn, I wanted to ask questions, and he treated me like dirt.

  —What did you say to him?

  —Nothing.

  —Why?

  —I didn’t think it was my place.

  —What would you have liked to say to him?

  —I don’t know.

  —Come on, what did you want to say to him?

  —I wanted to say, Fuck off, you paranoid Jew, I have nothing to do with this history.

  I put down my camera and indicated to Giulia that we should leave. She’d been loudly whistling a tune and the melody had danced and bounced around the high ceilings and walls of the museum. Just before taking the stairs leading down to the street, I turned back to look at the man. He was still ignoring me. In seconds we encountered the loud traffic and human shouts of a living city.

  —What was that you were whistling?

  —A Palestinian Resistance song.

  —You shouldn’t have done that.

  She playfully grabbed my nose and tweaked it.

  —You are so polite—you Australians have that English politeness. That man was rude and so I was rude to him. You must learn, dear cousin, that politeness will not get you far in Europe. Even in England, she added.

  I broke into laughter and held up my camera.

  —It doesn’t matter. I took the photograph.

  She had kissed me then.

  —Good, maybe you are a European after all.

  The photograph hangs above my computer, on the study wall. In the left corner the man’s grey jacket is blurred, it dominates the bottom of the frame. But the smiling Resistance fighters are clearly visible, their grins sharp and joyous.

  Ghosts. Blood and land and ghosts.

  The bluestone building that Giulia and Andreas were now taking me to stood proudly alone in the middle of the town square. I was to discover that it had functioned as a school for communist guerrilla youth during the Greek Civil War. Andreas led us down a long white corridor and then we entered a gallery whose walls were covered by photographs printed on large square canvases. I dropped Giulia’s hand and began to examine the black and white panels. The images were largely of men and women in military uniforms, clutching rifles and staring defiantly at the camera. There were photos of young schoolchildren being taught the rudimentary skills of combat. Then there were images of war: headless corpses roughly bound across a donkey’s back; a man’s body riddled with bullet holes; emaciated prisoners with ropes bound tightly around their wrists. In one photograph an old man was trying to cover his humiliating nakedness. The rope had been knotted so tightly that his wrists had begun to bleed and the rope had been soaked black. I turned to share my outrage with Giulia, but I was alone.

  In a corner of the auditorium an old man was talking to a group standing around an old school desk. Andreas and Giulia were there. I walked over and stood listening at the edge of the group.

  —Come closer, the old man urged me.

  —He’s an Australian, Andreas explained, and everyone turned to look at me. I felt my flesh burning and my legs felt separated from my torso. All I wanted to do was lie on the floor, look up at the high white ceiling, and let the old man talk.

  —Does he understand Greek?

  I managed to nod. The old man proceeded with his lecture, but he remained focused on me, nodding, inviting me into the conversation. I placed a smile and an expression of interest on my face but his words were all a jumble. I was a foreigner with a stranger’s ears and I could not make out a word. But still I kept nodding. Giulia came and stood beside me and I laid my head on her shoulder. It was bliss.

  —My love, she whispered, come with me. She took my hand and we walked away from the group.

  —Did you understand any of that?

  I shook my head.

  —What did Andreas mean about this place being our sickness?

  —The civil war. For us it was like the Holocaust was for the Jews. When I was a child, Isaac, all that mattered was which side your family fought for in the war. Madness—we were schoolchildren and we were still carrying on our grandfather’s crusade.

  I balanced myself against the white wall, cooling my cheek on the brick. Above us, I could see faint etchings emerging from the scrubbed plaster.

  —What are th
ese?

  —Is our friend sick?

  Andreas had placed a hand across my shoulder and I wanted to sink my head into his flesh. The old man was still lecturing to the group.

  —What are these? I mumbled again.

  —They were murals that the Right destroyed after the end of the civil war. The museum is attempting to restore them. He lowered his voice to a whisper. They are not so important, social realism, mostly rubbish.

  I shook my head aggressively.

  —No, it’s good they are restoring them. It’s great. We don’t have anything like this in Australia. This is great. This is beautiful.

  Andreas was laughing. He marched us out of the museum and back into the square. The diners were still arriving and the night seemed alive, sharp as shattered glass. I turned back and looked at the museum. It was framed tall and inspiring against the dark purple sky.

  Andreas was looking at me.

  —Do not take what the old comrade said too seriously. His was not a complete history.

  Giulia snorted.

  —It was complete enough.

  Andreas turned to her and I could see he was angry.

  —You think the Resistance were fighting for Greece and that it was the West that betrayed us?

  Giulia nodded defiantly.

  —Half-truth. He turned to me and there was a bitter venomous sting to his words. Yes, the English, and yes, the Americans, they did betray us. But those comrades in there, on the wall, they were not fighting for fucking Greece, they were fighting for fucking Russia.

  Giulia stood firm.

  —So why didn’t you say that to the old guy in there, why were you nodding along with everything he said?

  The anger disappeared from Andreas’ face.

  —Because he is old, Giulia, and he has seen and been through enough. He turned to me. You understood he had been away from Greece for decades?

  I shook my head. I understood nothing, I told him.

  —He had been living in Budapest since the end of the civil war. He was only thirteen when he joined the Resistance. He has only returned to Greece since the fall of communism. The Hungarians don’t want him anymore.

  He turned back to my cousin and resumed the argument in Greek.

  —What should I have said to him? That it was worth nothing, all those deaths, all those years in exile? He began laughing and I realised that for him, laughing was not joy but it was rancour and confusion. He laughed as the truck driver Takis in Agrinion had laughed when I had attempted to describe another world to him. It was the same laugh.

  —Come, continued Andreas, it’s all in the fucking past, isn’t it? There’s no exile any more, no civil war, no blood feuds, no more prisons and even the State builds a monument to the Resistance. We are all democrats, now, aren’t we? We followed his laughter to the car.

  Near the end of his life, Dad had started going a little mad. He would come home after work, have his hit, and stretch out on the couch watching endless television. He was obsessed by the collapse of history, the disintegration of Soviet Russia. I found him asleep one night, coming back from a friend’s house, asleep on the couch, an American morning news program flickering away on the screen. Mum and my sister were in bed. On the coffee table there was a full ashtray and a small plastic envelope. I picked it up, looked at it, at the dull film of powdery residue coating it, and he opened his eyes. There was a small smile on his face. He indicated the screen.

  —Turn it off, son. Turn off that propaganda.

  —You shouldn’t watch it, Dad, it just upsets you.

  He offered me his hand.

  —Help me up, Isaac, I’ve got to go to bed.

  I pulled him off the couch and he took the empty packet from my hand. He waved it in front of my face.

  —Rich man’s powder, Isaac, to keep us numb, to keep us under control, do you understand?

  —I know, Dad, I know, let’s get you to bed.

  —Jew powder, Isaac, he whispered, do you understand?

  I was stunned. This wasn’t Dad, this wasn’t my father speaking.

  —Dad, where the fuck is that coming from?

  Anger fought through his drug haze. He sprayed spittle across my face.

  —Fucking Jews, fucking traitors, they betrayed us. After all we did for them, after all the Party did for them. Fucking traitorous cunts, that’s what they are. He waved his pouch of heroin in the air. Jew powder, Isaac, don’t forget.

  I said nothing, stood still and silent, did not dare move until he had closed the bedroom door behind him.

  We drove back towards the Megalo Horio but turned off before the village and descended a small dirt road. Car after car was parked by the side of the road and everywhere there were people walking, talking, licking at ice-creams and eating bread and biscuits. Andreas edged his car between a small black convertible Saab and a flashy red Peugeot, and we got out and joined the crowd. Folk music was playing in the chaos, and I held tight to Giulia’s arm. A small Mack truck was parked assertively in the middle of the road and two young gypsy men were passing white plastic chairs to the milling crowd.

  —Quick, urged Andreas, grab us three seats. I walked over to the truck but every time I thought I had one of the gypsies’ attention, someone would elbow my side and grab a chair. Giulia, laughing, came up beside me.

  —You’re in Greece now, my sweet, she said to me, and with a ferocious lunge she threw herself at the front of the mob.

  —Siga, kopela mou, shouted a red-faced man, pari seira. Take it slow, girlie, wait in line.

  —Fuck you, retorted my cousin, and winked at the youngest gypsy. She put up three fingers and the young man on the truck passed three plastic chairs above the heads of the shoving crowd. I took the chairs and made my way back out into the open. Giulia had a conceited smirk on her face.

  —Did you see that? He only charged me one euro for all three chairs. I turned back to look at the young gypsy but his attention was on the crowd around him; the sweat on his brow and arms was shining in the moonlight.

  —He’s very sexy, I replied.

  —You think so, retorted Giulia? They’re like our fucking fathers. Their attitudes to women are awful.

  The Resistance Museum turned out not to be the surprise they had in store for me. A ceremony, a traditional peasant marriage, was to be performed by a troupe of travelling actors. This was the surprise. Around the perimeter of a field, the white chairs formed a circle. In the middle of the field were two long trestle tables piled with cutlery, and jugs of wine. We placed our chairs under a tall pine tree, lit our cigarettes and allowed the music to lead us to euphoria. At our left a small cluster of musicians was playing sweet melodic folk songs. Behind them were two small thatched huts. A group of women in traditional peasant dress was standing before the hut closest to us. A group of men, of identical number, sat in a circle outside the other hut.

  —The groom’s and the bride’s houses, I believe. Andreas had leaned across Giulia to speak to me and I felt his breath, hot and moist, on my cheek.

  —This is how our grandmothers would have got married, said Giulia. The poor devils.

  I watched the wedding: the laying out of the bride’s dowry on the long wooden tables, embroidered mats and blankets, a copper jug; the groom’s father accepting the dowry; the groom being shaved and washed by his groomsmen; the bride arriving draped in flowers on a white horse; the blessings, the exchanging of the wedding crowns; the feast and the toasts. The traditional thick red skirts of the women and the long-sleeved white shirts and black vests of the men, the whiplash frenzy of the band, the furious circle of men dancing, the women clapping their hands and stomping their feet: the ceremony unfolded like a movie and I was dazzled by the sounds, by the smells of charred meat and roasting vegetables, and the music that sang with both plaintiveness and joy. And around us the audience, sitting on their hard plastic chairs, in their Athenian summer clothes, were clapping and nodding, enjoying the performance, singing along to the old folk songs, che
ering, yes, that’s right, that’s right, that’s how it was. And the Ecstasy was churning in my stomach and in my brain, and there was a broad grin on my face as I watched the show. Then Andreas took my arm, was leading us away, back to the car and I was turning back, always looking back, at the beauty of the young groom, not quite yet a man, his face soft and his body lean and hard. I looked for the bride, and saw that she had removed her veil and was smoking a cigarette at the side of the hut. She was an actress at the end of a gig.

  —Welcome to Peasantland, Andreas mocked in a pompous English accent. Did you enjoy seeing us playing at being serfs?

  —I enjoyed it, I managed to get out, my voice thick, still looking backwards to catch a glimpse of the handsome groom. Andreas followed my stare.

  —My grandmother wasn’t that lucky, he said quietly. She got married to a man thirty years older than her and she died in childbirth after delivering him his eighth child.

  I could not look at him. My cousin had taken my hand.

  —They performed a fairytale for us tonight, Andreas, forget the politics. It was just a fairytale for my cousin. She spoke soothingly. The bride was lovely, the groom handsome. What more could we want?

  —Andreas turned on the ignition, pressed a button, and a blast of deep booming house music drowned out the sounds of the clarino and the bouzouki.

  Much later, late in the morning, I lay naked next to Andreas, touching the wiry hairs on his belly and chest. Giulia had got filthy drunk after the wedding performance. Back in the Megalo Horio she had switched from wine to ouzo and as she recalled the show that we had just seen, the pristine red folk dresses, the groomed wedding horse, the full banquet, she became loud in her anger. The more she analysed the performance as a fairytale the more incensed she became. She could not forget politics. That was bullshit, she roared, and the Greeks sitting at the tables around us were pointing at her and laughing. She turned to the nearest table, a group of four young men, and proceeded to shout at them in Greek. Did you go to the traditional wedding, she asked, and not waiting for an answer she proceeded to lecture the young men. Our mothers’ clothes were not new and clean, she insisted, there were no full tables of food after the war, what we saw was full of lies. They kept laughing at her, and Andreas and I had to carry her back to the car before she hit one of them. Europe is all lies, Europe is all lies, she kept repeating in the back seat. When we put her to sleep in my bed she kissed my mouth, my face, my eyes. All lies, she said softly, her breath full of bile and alcohol. Then she promptly fell asleep.