Tales of Sin & Fury, Part 1

by Sonia Paige

  ‘There was a pop group playing. They were Greeks but dressed like Americans with plimsolls and check shirts like overgrown high school kids. They performed American songs, but only imitating the sounds so that what they actually sang was gibberish. On the dance floor in front of the band were two half-hearted American couples and a Greek man in white dancing by himself. In those days, when I didn’t know any better, I would have called him a queer. Now I would say he was openly gay. He was very camp. He wore a transparent white lacy shirt and immaculate white jeans. Tied neatly round his neck he had a tiny silk scarf, and his feet were bare. He swung his hips and did graceful pirouettes, never quite managing to be willowy. He was plump, over forty, and his balance was not perfect.’

  Anthea paused. ‘In fact, a bit like I am now.’ She laughed.

  Ren kept a still gaze on Anthea without laughing.

  Anthea hesitated, then carried on. ‘It turned out he was called Sakis and was the manager of the place. Between numbers he made jokes to the empty tables, like “Don’t push, ladies and gentlemen, you’ll find a seat!” He introduced a young woman who was obviously local as “an American artiste, a wonderful singer who has had her television debut…” She wore a glittery dress and sang Françoise Hardy songs in a mixture of Greek and French while the wind blew her hair around in long wraiths, and pink lights danced on her. During her numbers Sakis pranced and swayed around her, and wiggled his hips at the audience. When she finished he encouraged the audience with an exaggerated mime of clapping, crying “The artiste needs applause, ladies and gentlemen. Applause is food and drink to the artiste.”

  ‘To Vassiliki’s disgust, and to the unconcealed delight of her parents, there were very few single men there – and nobody to ask her to dance. Vassiliki was of the age where she had nothing on her mind but boys, and her parents were very pleased about this practical demonstration of how unexciting night clubs could be. Vassiliki had insisted on sitting at a separate table from the grown-ups, with Andonis and me, and after an hour she was still sitting at the same table, feeling bored and disappointed. Kyria Petrakis came over and said “Having a nice time?” with a very wicked smile.

  ‘The grown-ups’ table, as it turned out, had a whale of a time. Plenty of “keffi”, that’s a Greek word meaning something like high spirits or fun; the problem is that most words don’t translate because Greek high spirits aren’t like anything you can get in England.

  ‘After a while Sakis went up on stage to introduce “My little Manolis with his bizouki, a beautiful young talent”. Manolis turned out to be not much more than a boy, small and slight with neat tight trousers and a porcelain face. There was something sweet and hesitant in his manner. When he played his bizouki he sat down and hunched himself slightly and looked up every so often with a slow, shy smile. His voice was light and barely broken, with the traditional sharpness of the bizouki singer’s voice. An edge of poignancy and complaint for the miseries of a long-suffering people through centuries of poverty and oppression. He sat there playing and singing gently while Sakis unfolded his body languorously in time with the music. In front of Manolis he swung his hips in slow circles so close they almost touched, Manolis half looked up, just gave his innocent smile, and played on.

  ‘Meanwhile the Petrakis party had drunk a fair bit of retsina and were getting expansive. They started singing along with the songs, and Sakis decided they were the only worthwhile party in the club and came over to join them; even the resentful Vassiliki agreed to come across.

  ‘“Darlings, you are the real stars of the evening,” Sakis said. “How many stars are there left in our poor country? They are in the prison camps or abroad. What are we told? Lies! What are we shown? Propaganda!”

  ‘“Colonel Pattakos’s bum,” chirped up Vassiliki, before her parents could silence her.

  ‘Sakis laughed. “Have you heard the one about Pattakos and Sophia Loren?”

  ‘Vassiliki groaned. Sakis was undeterred. “Well, two big black cars passed on the Sounion road outside Athens. Each was followed by crowds of people, and where they passed the road was lined with people waving and cheering. So when they crossed, they stopped, and the two characters in them stepped out. Out of the one car steps Pattakos, and out of the other Sophia Loren. She introduces herself,

  ‘“Hello”, she says, “I’m Sophia Loren, star of Italian movies.”

  ‘“How do you do?” he says “I’m Colonel Pattakos, star of Greek newsreels.”

  ‘They all laughed uproariously.

  ‘Then Captain Kefti volunteered, “Do you know the one about the communist and the royalist?”

  ‘“Not here,” his wife grimaced at him across the table, but he’d had too much wine to stop.

  ‘“Well, the Colonels’ gangs were about their usual work, rounding up people for the prison camps. They came to an apartment block, went up to the first floor, and hammered on it, ‘Does Kyrios Kostas lives here?’ ‘Wrong address,’ came the reply from inside. ‘This is only the home of Kostas the communist. Kostas the Royalist lives upstairs.’

  ‘Again they all laughed loudly. I had to have the joke explained to me: that the Junta was persecuting Royalists even worse than communists.

  ‘By this time, Manolis had finished his set. He came and joined us and sat singing to himself. Every so often the others joined in nostalgically. Sakis sat with his arm round Manolis, whom he called “To poolaki moo – My little bird”, and stroked his curly hair. He put his other arm round me, sighed at me theatrically, sang to me and said huskily to the others

  ‘“Pethanno… – I am dying…” and “Then tha teen tro’o… – I could eat her…”

  ‘Then Captain Kefti put his arm around me protectively from the other side and told Sakis not to get too close to his wife. They all found this hilarious and Sakis said,

  ‘“Darling, me, I’m just atmosphere here… I will pass like a cloud, san synneffo…” and he got up and drifted away, twirling and swirling.

  ‘Two days later we learnt that Sakis had been “taken.”

  ‘When he heard, Mr Petrakis said, “Ti krima – what a shame”. Then he said “Perhaps he told his Sophia Loren joke once too often. Or perhaps it was his failing” – to ellattoma too, by which he meant his being gay. Greek culture as a whole was not that progressive in its attitudes to homosexuals, and the Junta persecuted them outright. Mr Petrakis shrugged, “Ti na kanoome – what can we do?”

  ‘That was the second big shock. Sakis in his lacy shirt, Sakis who had playfully put his arm around my shoulder, Sakis of the rotating hips, wasn’t dancing any more. Wasn’t laughing any more. I had read what the prison camps were like.

  ‘Before I left England I’d only thought in general terms about the assignment I had to carry out. Now more than ever I realized the full weight of it. I couldn’t afford to mess up.

  ‘I didn’t want to incriminate the Petrakis family by association in any way, so I had planned to do it after I stayed with them. When I had completely separated from them.

  ‘What I had to do was visit the relatives of people in prison and in clandestine organizations. I had to take them money, find out the names of other people who’d recently been taken, and discover where financial help was needed to support their families. It involved going back on the train to Saloniki, staying there in a hotel and making the visits without attracting the attention of the authorities. The group in England had left it up to me how I would bring the information out of the country.

  ‘When I set off, the triumphant journey into Athens was reversed. I felt darkness closing in as the huge black steam train dawdled northwards through Greece, hissing and clunking and stopping without explanation in the middle of bleak impoverished plains. When I got to Saloniki I found a cheap hotel near the poorer area where I would be making the visits.

  ‘The Hotel Delfini was scruffy and run-down. The door of my room didn’t shut properly, and the sheets hadn’t been changed. I was lying there wondering if I dared sleep without some man
wandering in during the night, and then in the light from the landing I saw a cockroach crawling into the room from the other side. Enna katsareethee. I know they are hard to kill because they move very fast, so I thought it best to lie still and hope it didn’t find me. I don’t think I slept much. It was one of those times when however rough you feel, you’re glad to see the light of the morning. At least the night is over.

  ‘You’ve probably gathered by now that I’m a scatty person. I tend to make a mess of things. But I’d been galvanized into doing this thing properly. Very carefully. I realized I had to protect myself thoroughly if I was to get through.

  ‘Protection, I needed protection.

  ‘I had brought some dark, inconspicuous clothes and a scarf to put over my head because red hair stands out in Greece. I memorized the addresses because I did not want to be attracting attention by standing in the street consulting bits of paper. I got myself ready, and I set off.

  ‘This was a different Greece. It wasn’t the white houses, blue sea and sky of the islands but labyrinthine side streets where the heat was unforgiving, the tenements were crumbling, and the people’s joie de vivre was crushed. I made sure I was not being followed. Difficult because normally in Greece I used to find at least one man following me at any time, usually saying “Hello? Hello? English? Deutsch? Want a room?” or other more blatant propositions. But nobody followed me that day.

  ‘The first address was a woman whose husband had been taken. I showed my credentials and she invited me in to the one small room she shared with her small son and her elderly mother. She used to be a teacher on a good salary, but because of their politics she’d been sacked. Now she was earning a little money doing clerical work for a friend who ran a local building firm. He was prepared to take the risk of employing her, and paid her off the books. Her mother helped with childcare when she went to work. She was glad to get the money I brought, but I was aware it was a drop in the ocean. She had some news of where prisoners had been moved. She was desperately worried about her husband and I got a sense of somebody whose life had simply stopped, and who was now hemmed in without hope or possibilities. “The worst thing,” she said to me, “is the feeling of isolation, like being on a desert island and having no communication with the outside world. A feeling of mistrust for even your closest friends and relatives. Of selecting carefully every word you’ll say…”

  ‘At the next address there was an elderly couple whose son was in prison. They wept when they told me about him. They were glad to have the money. They gave me names of some other people who’d been taken, and where they were probably being held. Other comrades in the struggle. They told me about clandestine work they were doing to combat the Junta. I was filled with admiration for their courage.’

  Anthea stopped and looked out of the window at the Hackney rooftops.

  ‘Brave people,’ said Ren.

  ‘Yes, but… After a while the mother went downstairs to get coffee and I was left alone with the father. He promptly grabbed me and tried to kiss me, and I barely managed to fight him off before she reappeared at the doorway.’ Anthea looked at Ren.

  Ren raised where her eyebrows would have been and asked, ‘How did you feel about that?’

  ‘I was a bit shocked.’

  ‘Understandably.’

  ‘Mind you,’ said Anthea, ‘it was the 1970s. That’s what it was like then. A lot of grabbing went on, in England too.’

  ‘And that made it easier to come to terms with?’

  Anthea screwed her face up and paused, then said, ‘I took it as a learning experience. That nothing’s simple black and white… that even heroes are fallible when it comes to making passes at foreign girls.’

  Ren smiled, ‘That’s one way of taking it.’

  ‘I guess so.’ Anthea looked out of the window again. ‘After the coffee, his wife gave me some beautiful crotcheted mats for glasses, which she must have spent hours creating, and we made our farewells. I still have the mats.

  ‘I carried on with my task. At each address the situation was different, but everywhere I saw the human cost of the dictatorship. And every time I memorized the address, kept my scarf on, walked carefully and made sure I wasn’t followed. By the end of the day I was so exhausted that I didn’t care how many cockroaches walked around my room in the night. But I stashed the information carefully and kept it together. The next day I saw more families, then went back to the hotel room, closed the door as best I could, and prepared to get the information home.

  ‘I wrote a letter to one of the people in the organization that had sent me there. I sent it to her private address. In the letter I buried all the information, camouflaged in long descriptions in English of countryside and literature and tourism. I knew there was censorship of letters as well as of films and newspapers, but I hoped that if they did open this missive, they would give up out of boredom and frustration at my English.

  ‘Then I wrote the same information on very small pieces of paper, rolled them up and sewed them inside the seams of my bra. I packed up, paid the hotel, and posted the letter on the way to the railway station. As we pulled out of Saloniki, the train journey filled me with foreboding. Evening fell as we travelled north and every time officials came on to check documents and search luggage I was afraid. Afraid that one of the addresses I visited might have been watched, afraid of the cruelty that can be inflicted by people with power and no responsibility. That visit was the first time I was aware of a sense of danger in the Greece I loved so much. And I’m feeling that kind of fear again now. Every time I think about this fieldwork I’m meant to be doing in February, I’m filled with foreboding.’

  Ren asked, ‘The fear you felt at that time was created by the political situation?’

  ‘Yes, the people I visited… the wrecked lives… And Sakis, the lovely Sakis, he was vulnerable, and careless, and as a result he was lost. The fear even in the Petrakis family and their friends, covered up by the jokes. But it wasn’t just that. There’s something else too, something in the taste left by that visit. It’s confused in my memory. It’s the image of the young woman in the blue dress who walked past our table at the café. The fear I felt during that visit has come back – and with it the picture of that young woman. My sense that she had lost everything too. Uncared for by others and by herself. She slid past as if she was invisible, an omen of disaster. She’s come back to haunt me…

  ‘You’re looking at the clock. Have I run out of time?’

  ‘I’m afraid so. Can we come back to this? Is there anything you need to help give some closure on this story?’

  ‘Just that… just that… During those visits, and bringing the information out, I was aware of danger but I protected myself. I did it right and I got home safely.

  ‘But, you know, you can learn things and then forget them. Good things can get lost just like progressive civilizations can bite the dust and disappear into history: we’re not always getting better all the time. There are no promises. Somehow I forgot the lesson from that experience. I’ve taken a step backwards. This time I haven’t protected myself. I feel I’ve made a mistake, done something wrong that I’ll have to pay for. I’m not sure what it was. Maybe an accident. But I keep imagining that I’m in danger again, and this time I’m like that young woman. I am raw and I have no protection.’

  Thursday 20th December 2 am

  The room’s been quiet for several hours when Mandy starts screaming. A series of short, intense bursts of sound. At first nobody stirs. On the third shout I hear Debs sitting up, and her voice: ‘Cool it, babe.’ I groan and I turn over in bed, and my pillow falls on the floor. Beverly’s voice comes from the corner, ‘Turn the sound down, woman, some of us is sleeping.’

  Mandy stops screaming abruptly. Debs reaches the door and switches the light on. On the next door bed I see Mandy lift her head off the pillow and look around her, wide-eyed. Then she drops her head again. ‘Sorry, folks, just a dream.’

  ‘For fuck’s sake,’ says D
ebs, ‘I’d only just got off.’

  ‘You all right now?’ Beverley asks.

  ‘No worse than usual,’ says Mandy.

  Debs switches the light off again and I can make out her shape as she feels her way back to bed by the courtyard light outside the window, muttering ‘You didn’t half give me a fright. I thought it was a raid.’

  Thursday 20th December 7.45 am

  ‘Was it the cramps?’ Debs asks in the morning. She’s choosing a clean T-shirt from a package her sister has sent. The cell door rattles and there’s a slurping sound outside – someone must be mopping the floor in the corridor.

  ‘No,’ says Mandy, who’s still sitting in bed, staring straight ahead of her. ‘Just a dream.’

  ‘Was it to do with that poem?’ I ask.

  ‘No. Forget that. This was just a dream. About Dave. It was stupid. About the car. He was telling me there was a problem with the car. Said it was too hot. Then a woman came running down the street yelling. The next thing I know is, I’m yelling too, and then you lot are awake and the light’s on and you’re all making a song and dance about nothing.’

  Beverly yawns. ‘I’m gonna aks the nurse for some ear plugs tonight. I got enough problems sleeping without other folks turning on the heat.’

  ‘Ear plugs? They’ll tell you to get lost.’ Mandy snaps. ‘Why don’t you all just get off my back?’ She gets up, walks round my bed and picks up the blue felt-tip pen off the floor. She looks at it then tosses it at me. ‘You wanna be a writer. Write it yourself: Day Five. Four shopping days to bloody Christmas.’ She looks with disgust at my webs all over the wall. ‘Caught anything yet?’

  The hatch slides across and I hear the voice of one of the older screws: ‘Breakfast! Come and get it!’

  Thursday 20th December 9.25 am

  In the Ballspond Road the owner of the second hand furniture shop shivered as he opened up. He wheeled a faded sofa out onto the pavement and looked at the heavy sky to see if it was likely to rain soon. The snow underfoot had mostly melted. A red 38 bus had just crossed the High Street from Dalston Junction, and he watched it go past.