by Gary Cleaver
Nikos, aside from his one marketable talent, was an ordinary man from a good family, he had a normal happy childhood, which was almost uneventful, aside from one unhappy incident which occurred when he was fifteen. He and his elder brother Pavlos had never enjoyed a particularly good relationship and much of it was rooted in their physical similarity, people said they were like two pieces of fruit picked from the same branch, this would make Pavlos angry and he always knew exactly where to lay the blame, friends of his kid brother called Nikos’ name to him in the street by mistake, this made Pavlos furious. Once while mopping a bloody nose which he had acquired courtesy of his big brother, their mother, ever the peacemaker had told him,
“You must understand, it is hard for him. After all when he looks at you it must be just like looking in a mirror”.
On a night in summer the normal peace of their family home had been shattered by a dreadful, violent argument. Woken by it, Nikos had padded from his bed to listen at the living room door. Pavlos had come in late and he and their father were yelling at one another, it had to do with Pavlos’ new girlfriend Dimitra, her father and theirs did not get on. Nikos’ scant understanding of the situation was that it had something to do with a business deal that had gone wrong a few years before, each had blamed the other and had been no resolution or reconciliation. Pavlos claimed that this had nothing to do with his feelings for Dimitra and that his father should mind his own affairs, the argument quickly escalated into a shouting match which culminated in Pavlos receiving a slap across the face. Even with the door between him and them Nikos had jumped backward at the sound, he was shocked and terrified that things had gotten so serious, the next sound had been the slamming of the front door as Pavlos stormed off into the night. As he crept back to bed he heard his father say that the boy would soon cool off, then he would come back and apologise. But Pavlos never came back. Their enquiries and searches came to nothing, the police had said that it was not so many years since the end of military rule and that their missing person’s lists were long, there was not a lot they could do. In the years that had passed since that night Nikos’ parents, now in their seventies and retired, had never spoken of Pavlos, nor did his younger sister Maria, now married with children and living in Athens. Sometimes Nikos looked in the mirror and wondered what his brother would look like now.
His abilities as an artist had been apparent even at the age of fifteen, it was a talent that the whole family shared to a greater or lesser degree, but with him it was obviously a real gift. He had an almost uncanny knack of being able to take a mental snapshot of anything he saw, store it and reproduce it faithfully at will, but as with all creative disciplines, talent, even matched by hard work, did not guarantee fame and fortune. His work was good but it was hard to make a living, the tourists liked his pictures, some of them enough to buy, but they only came for three months of the year and he spent the rest of his time doing odd jobs for cash or picking olives and oranges for a little money.
He got up from the easel and stretched, a heavy and none too pleasant crack from his spine told him had spent a little too much time bent forward at his work, he walked away without bothering to check the outline he had made on the canvas, he trusted it would be good enough, after lunch he would return with brushes, palette and oils to continue. Before going up the steps to the house he picked up a yellow plastic watering can and filled it from the standpipe in the corner, he watered the magnolias and the soft pink bougainvillea that grew around the concrete columns supporting the house. He thought to himself that if one wished to live in a perfect climate you could do worse than chose a place where the bougainvillea grows, for it is a fussy plant requiring a careful balance of sunshine and water for its health and wellbeing. When he had finished he climbed the steps to the kitchen and made for himself a simple lunch of bread, salad and cheese which he washed down with a large glass of cheap red wine which came in a big bottle from the supermarket for one Euro and eighty five cents, a fact for which he was always grateful.
An hour later he descended once more to the basement laden with the necessary equipment to resume work on the picture, he sat back down in the chair and began to mix the first colour he would need, a rich turquoise for the sea in the foreground, he used a small wooden knife to gently stroke the blue and green together, as he did so he looked back for the first time at the pencil outline he had made earlier, as he stared the knife the knife stopped moving and slowly settled into the paint. The outline made no sense, the sea, the hills and mountains were as they always were, but the village itself was completely wrong, instead of being to the north the church was in the centre, the harbour was too small and all of the other buildings…. He sat upright, put down the knife and placed his hands on his head, this was a good rough sketch perhaps one of his best, but it wasn’t Katsimila.
Nikos was irritated with himself, he had spent a good portion of his morning on this and it was all for nothing, he would now have to erase the lines and start again. He picked up his pencil and flipped it over to use the eraser on the other end, but as he placed it against the canvas something made him stop, he looked at the sketch for a long time and then decided he would finish the work. Whatever had made him draw this strange place, somewhere he was sure he had never seen or visited should, he thought, not be denied, perhaps it was meant to be and it would be an exciting exercise if nothing else. He picked up his pallet and a fine brush, soon he was working as if pulled along by another’s hand, the picture seemed to paint itself, in less than three hours it was finished, he stood up, took two paces back and surveyed the completed scene. It wasn’t Katsimila and it certainly wasn’t a representation of his best work in spite of the very good pencil outline, but he supposed that someone would buy it. He made up his mind that this painting needed a new title; these pictures were always called simply “Katsimila” this one he thought should be just “A view from the sea”.
The next morning he took the painting with him when he set off for the seafront, between the harbour and the beach there was a small paved area, it measured six metres by ten and one end was Nikos’ pitch. Here he set up fifteen small easels and set a picture on each one, mostly landscapes, but there were other subjects, one was a charcoal line drawing of an olive tree seen from the bottom up, as if the viewer was lying on the ground looking up into the branches, another showed a small fishing boat tied to the harbour wall, with a large seagull standing on the gunwale, and there were also two versions of his favourite bougainvillea. He placed the new work in the centre of the front line, it might be a mystery but it deserved the best chance he thought. It turned out to be a good day, in the early evening he sold a picture of the church to a German lady and another tourist had promised to come back another day and look again at the olive tree sketch. Late that evening he watched as Dimitri Lambakis closed up the barbers shop and walked down in his direction. Instead of heading off to one of the bars along the front for a small beer before heading home, Lambakis came over.
“Good evening Nikos, how’s business?”
“Oh so, so Dimitri, I sell enough to keep me from starving to death, no more.”
The big man was standing in the middle of the front row, he looked down.
“What is this? This is something new, where is it?”
“I wish I knew” Nikos answered truthfully. He told Lambakis the story of the picture.
Dimitri smiled, “You must have been dreaming Nikos, perhaps you should dream more, this is good, what am I saying, they’re all good, but this … this is ... I think I have seen this place, but I can’t recall it right now.”
Nikos shrugged “Then there is no hope Dimitri, you are the best travelled man in this town, if you don’t know it, it probably doesn’t exist.” Lambakis went on his way. Over the next few weeks he sold half a dozen more and made nearly a thousand Euros, enough to pay his bills and afford the odd luxury, such as the materials needed to create more work, but the strange painting stayed stubbornly on its easel. Many people lo
oked and most commented positively, but no one bought.
Nikos sold mostly to weekend visitors from Athens and Corinth, he also got good trade from the many small white motor homes that came in numbers throughout the summer months, these coming from as far afield as Denmark and Holland. He had learned not to take too seriously the attentions of the boating tourists; these people mostly chartered their yachts from one of the marinas along the Attica coast and were not interested in anything they couldn’t fly home in their suitcases. That’s why, on an evening in late August, he did not bother to get out of his chair when a young Canadian woman stepped from a large yacht, walked over and began studying the lines of pictures. He watched her nonetheless, she was pretty, tall with curly red hair and pale skin which had suffered a little in the sun. He winced at the sight of her bright red forearms although she didn’t seem to be in any pain. She stopped in front of “A view from the sea”, she looked for some time, Nikos got up and joined her, she pointed at the painting.
“This is beautiful,” she said. “I wish I could get it home, I told my husband I wanted a picture of this place when we were there last Monday.”
He was thunderstruck, “You visited this place?”
“Yes, but of course you would know it well, to have recreated it so faithfully.”
He thought quickly. “Er no, this was actually painted by a colleague of mine, a student, I have never been to….” He left a pause hoping she would respond.
She did, “Kirios” she said “In the Cyclades islands, a tiny place but so pretty.”
When she had left he hurried over to Anna Cristidis’ gift shop beside the harbour, he looked through the racks of guide books until he found a glossy brochure for the Cyclades, there was no picture of Kirios and only a couple of paragraphs describing it; it was indeed a tiny place, the island was home to less than a thousand people.
That night he could not sleep, how could he have painted something he had never seen? A place he had never heard of? At three am he gave up and went to the kitchen, he made coffee and rummaged through a drawer eventually finding an old map of Greece, he studied the area until he found a tiny dot. Kirios it seemed was roughly halfway between the islands of Siros and Paros, both of which looked huge by comparison, but there would surely be a ferry. He made up his mind to pay little Kirios a visit, it was nearly the end of the season anyway and there was probably not much money to be made in Katsimila, if he could get there and back in two days it would not make a significant difference especially if he went during the week. Over the next two days he made enquiries, for a two day trip he would need to get to the ferry port of Pireaus, near Athens, for seven thirty in the morning. A fast ferry would take him to Siros and then a smaller boat, which had only one sailing a day went on to Kirios; he could then stay the night on the island and return the next day.
The first part of the journey turned out to be the easiest to arrange and manage, Thassos Contos drove his Scania truck between Katsimila and Athens three times a week and agreed to leave an hour earlier than usual to drop him off in Pireaus on the way; the price was three packs of cigarettes, which Nikos thought was more than fair. On the following morning Monday at five he climbed up into the cab and they set off, the local artist and the local truck driver had little in common and there was a great deal of silence on the two hour trip north. Thassos did however ask him where he was headed and why, the first part of the question was easy enough to answer, but he stalled at the second part, eventually he said
“I suppose I just need to satisfy my curiosity.”
Thassos nodded wisely and thought quietly to himself that “Arty” people were just weird and that was an end to it. Just after seven they arrived in the ferry port, they said their farewells and Nikos climbed out into the chaos and confusion that was Pireaus in the early morning.
He found himself standing beside the road opposite the railway station and as far as he could tell, he and the railway station were the only things not on the move. From every direction it seemed came cars, trucks, buses, trams, taxis, hundreds of motorcycles and thousands of people, it was of no help to him that they all appeared to know exactly where they were going or that they were in a great hurry to get there. Behind him was the dock, but this did nothing to dampen the sensory overload he was experiencing, there were so many ships of sizes and colours they only added to his confusion. He looked for some kind of sign to direct him and with great relief he found, almost immediately a large board which read, GATE 9, CYCLADES ISLANDS. He practically sprinted through the gate and after narrowly avoiding being mown down by a truck, fetched up in front of a low building that proclaimed itself to be a ticket office, again relief, he had spent so much of his life in sleepy Katsimila and this introduction to the big city was proving too much. He went to the window and announced to the tired and bored looking young girl that he wished to travel to Siros, without ceremony she tore a ticket from her pad and asked for forty Euros, he handed over the money and then found himself at a loss, he dipped his head back to the window.
“Which boat?” he said, the girl raised her eyes heavenward and pointed directly over his shoulder, Nikos turned, looked left and then right and then up, and up.
His entire field of vision was taken up by a huge red wall on which three metre high white letters shouted a single word, VODAFONE, on top of the wall a stripe of white with square windows stretched away in either direction, it looked as if an airliner had made an unscheduled landing on top of an advertising hoarding. He looked up and down, but it was impossible to tell which end was which, the thing seemed to be a perfect rectangle, he guessed that the end tethered to the dock wall was the stern and walked towards it. Arriving at the stern he found three ramps, through the big centre one cars were disappearing fast, the two smaller openings on either side were swallowing foot passengers at a similar rate, he joined the line closest to him. As he stood on the ramp a man in a crisp white uniform, with matching peaked cap, suddenly blew a whistle long and loud, Nikos jumped back not knowing how he had transgressed. Then he noticed that a small red car had got itself sideways across the bottom of the ramp and had brought the smooth loading operation to a halt, the driver and the man in white exchanged insults while they sorted the mess out. The car drove off and Nikos, still shaking, walked to the top of the ramp, showed his ticket and disappeared into the rear end of the beast, wishing for the first time that day, but not, as it turned out, the last, that he had never left home.
He wandered into the vast passenger lounge at the top of the ferry and goggled, as far as he could see toward the bow were lines of big comfortable looking seats in banks of three, some set around large plastic tables. A speaker clicked on above his head and a pleasant voice welcomed him aboard “High speed five” for this mornings voyage to Siros, passengers should take their seats as the boat would be departing in five minutes. Nikos checked the seat number on his ticket and, after a bit of a search, found his place. The seat was indeed very comfortable and directly beside a large, square window; he sat and looked out, the chaos below looked much better from up here and he began to feel a little more calm. At seven thirty five, the exact time shown on his ticket, a thing that was guaranteed to make any resident of Katsimila uneasy, the great vessel started to move. Five minutes later they cleared the outer wall of Pireaus harbour and turned south east toward the Cyclades, the ferry began to accelerate, Nikos gripped his seat and held on, he had seen the small hydrofoils entering and leaving the harbour at home many times and their speed always impressed him, but nothing had prepared him for something a hundred times bigger that travelled at such speeds. Soon they were cruising across the dark blue sea at sixty kilometres per hour, a small boy peered over from the row of seats in front and noticed the look on Nikos’ face, the boy enquired what he thought “high speed” meant. Nikos poked out his tongue at the child, and then read every word of the safety pamphlet.
Nikos had just begun to relax when his first brush with modern mass transit came to an end, after
two hours the note of the great engines deepened and the ferry slowed on its approach to the main town of Siros, Ermoupoulos. The harbour was very large, it was easy to see that this had once been the principal haven for shipping in all of Greece. Behind it the town spread over two hillsides, one topped with a magnificent cathedral featuring a blue and gold dome, to the south it was mostly industrial and ugly, the harbour here was dominated by two vast floating dry docks one of which was empty, the other contained a squat and unattractive Russian liquid gas tanker. As far as he could tell its name was NO SMOKING as the words were emblazoned in bright red letters on the front of the bridge, beyond this on shore was a big, diesel fuelled power station, which belched brown smoke into the air, he surveyed all of this from his seat, he was glad he would not be staying long.
Once on shore he quickly found the office where he could buy a ticket for the boat to Kirios, another ticket office, another young lady behind the counter who seemed to find her job and everyone she dealt with unutterably tedious. She told him, as if she were speaking to a three year old, that owing to technical difficulties there would be no sailing to Kirios and he would have to wait until tomorrow. Nikos went back out into the sunshine and sat on a nearby bench, he stared across the harbour, so that was that, his great odyssey was at an end. He checked his meagre reserves of cash, as well as the trip to Kirios there was enough for a ferry back to Pireaus or for a night in a local hotel, but not enough for both. He got up and walked over to a shabby looking ouzery, ordered coffee and a sandwich and brooded over them for an hour. He decided on a walk around the perimeter of the harbour to clear his head, then he would catch the next boat back to Pireaus and to hell with it, he reached the conclusion that he had already wasted too much time and money on what was, at best, a joy ride with no real purpose, and come to that, very little joy.
