The Long Fall

by Crouch, Julia

  Or is it scared, rather than scary? It’s impossible to tell.

  And so this is what happened tonight . . .

  We were sitting outside Manos’s Bar on Kidathineon. It’s a backpacker pub, one of those places that the Greeks and the straights don’t go near. Manos is a grey-skinned, greasy old man in a stained T-shirt who sits at his bar, flicking his worry beads over his wrist, looking at us all as if we’re animals in some kind of zoo. But he’s happy to keep serving us beer after beer after beer whenever we put our hands up in the air, bringing the bottles over on a dirty tray (no glasses), waiting over us until we pay his over-the-odds prices. It’s only when people fall asleep – or pass out – that he turfs them out, and that’s simply because they’re no longer in a position to pay him for any more beer. The poor drunk kid then either slumps in the dust or picks himself up and staggers off in search of his filthy hostel bunk.

  It’s not dignified. But it’s a load of fun and it goes without saying that we love Manos’s. You can be as loud and as outrageous as you want. And even though we bitch about the price, the beer’s still cheap compared to back home and he’s open all day from ten in the morning until the last person leaves the following morning. He plays nothing but The Police’s Reggatta de Blanc over and over again. But I don’t think I could listen to ‘Bring on the Night’ enough in my life. Secretly, I’ve made it mine and Jake’s song. Because one day our night will come, I’m sure of it. When I get over what The French Shit did to me, when Beattie’s gone her way. After all, she’s got to get back to college, whereas Jake’s finished, and I’ve not started yet, so I’m not fully committed. Who knows where our lives will go in the next couple of months? Call me a fantasist, but . . .

  Lots of bars here don’t really want young travellers because of how we get. From what I’ve seen, Greeks rarely just sit and drink beer like us. For them, alcohol goes with a four-hour meal, which they don’t start until eleven at night, whereas we see food as a necessary evil that has to be taken from time to time to soak up the alcohol. Until tonight I hadn’t actually eaten since my lamb chop dinner. How many nights ago was that? One? Two? They’re all melting into each other here.

  Feels like I’ve been here forever. I can only just about vaguely remember Ripon (thank God).

  Anyway, we sat at the same table at Manos’s today for going on eight hours, drinking beer after beer, smoking, finishing off the pills and enjoying the goings on at the table next to ours, where two bearded German longhairs in cut-off denims were listening to a tiny shaven-headed Australian drunkenly slur on about how his mate had abandoned him.

  ‘He just took off, man,’ the Australian says. ‘We’re out drinking, get stoked, and then bam! I score with this chick, take her out to this park for a blow job – and man, that chick could really blow, if you know what I mean –’

  That’s how he really spoke. I ask you. It cracked us all up.

  ‘– And when I get back to the club he ain’t there no more. Reckon the cunt’s got jealous, you know what I mean? But it’s been three days now and we’re supposed to be flying back tomorrow, you know?’

  ‘That kind of shit happens so much here,’ Jake says quietly to us, so the Australian can’t hear him. ‘People just get pissed with their friends and slope off some other place.’

  ‘I don’t blame that jerk’s friend for leaving him,’ Beattie says.

  ‘Yeah. Tosser,’ I say.

  At one point, Beattie gets up and fetches us three souvlaki from the kiosk next door – soft, doughy flatbread stuffed with shaved-off spit-roast lamb, chips and tzatziki. She and Jake fall on theirs like hungry wolves, but I just pick out a couple of bits of lamb from mine. It’s pretty greasy.

  ‘You don’t eat much, do you?’ Beattie says, eyeing me above her napkin-wrapped handful of bread and meat.

  ‘It’s the heat,’ I say. ‘I just don’t feel all that hungry. Plus, I’m so full of beer, I slosh if I jump.’

  I get up to demonstrate, putting my belly up against her ear. But I stumble and lurch into the Australian’s table. He’s now telling the story of a fight he had with a thief in India.

  ‘I socked the eye sockets out of him!’ he announces, as if it were the punch line to the world’s biggest joke.

  So I’m partly unsurprised when, as a response to a surprise jolt from behind (i.e. me bashing into him), the Australian jumps up and, without checking who his ‘attacker’ is, or why it’s happened, he turns and whacks me in the face, knocking me back against our own table and sending the twelve empty Amstel bottles we’ve built up spinning and flying to the pavement, where they smash with a racket like some sort of experimental Pink Floyd track.

  The strike takes the wind right out of me. As I struggle to find my bearings, my hand clasped over the eye that caught the punch, I hear Jake’s chair clatter to the ground. He jumps to his feet, eyes blazing like police lights, and his fist is on its way across the air in front of my nose to meet the Australian’s sunburned jaw.

  ‘You don’t hit a girl, man,’ he yells, as he makes contact. Perhaps it’s the drugs, or perhaps everything really does slow right down, because I’m sure I see the Australian’s face vibrate three or four times with the impact of the blow. The final quiver of his head trails a thread of snot and blood behind it as the rest of his body follows its trajectory into the air and across the table. He almost lands in the laps of the startled Germans, who jump up as if afraid to get the casualty’s weaselly bodily fluids onto their immaculate kurtas and minuscule shorts.

  ‘You do not hit a girl!’ Jake cries again as he launches himself on top of the Australian. He takes the neck of the guy’s frayed T-shirt in one hand, and shapes the other into a fist, ready to bring it down again on his head.

  ‘He’s nussing to do viz us,’ the Germans say, backing off into the shadows with their shoulder bags. Then they turn on their heels and run away.

  Beattie, who by this point is down on the pavement with a protective arm around me, starts yelling, ‘Stop it, Jake!’ and – I almost laugh at the cliché – ‘He ain’t worth it!’

  But Jake goes right on ahead, slamming his fist down into the Australian’s face, centrally on his nose this time.

  Most of the other drinkers at the bar are standing now, keeping clear of the immediate area around Jake and the Australian. Passers-by stop to gawp, bottlenecking the pedestrianised street.

  Jake hits the Australian again.

  ‘Stop him,’ one woman shouts to no one in particular.

  ‘He’ll kill him,’ another says.

  But no one makes a move to stop him. He’s too fucking scary.

  As Jake goes in to hit the Australian a fourth time, Beattie jumps to her feet and launches herself at him, tugging at his shirt, trying to drag him off his victim.

  Again, I want to laugh at the sight of tiny Beattie trying to pull six-foot-four Jake away from the mini-Australian, who’s only a bit taller than me and Beattie. It doesn’t seem like a fair fight in any way at all, but then the Australian recovers from his initial shock, comes to, and proves to be a wirily vicious fighter, jabbing and striking to try to get away from Jake’s lengthy but scrawny body.

  Then Manos, the bar owner, weighs in and somehow pulls Beattie and the Australian away from Jake, while all the time letting fly a stream of Greek: Malacca this and Malacca that. He flings the Australian onto the pavement and spits on him.

  ‘Police will come,’ he snarls. ‘Close me down and arrest you. Pusti Malacca.’

  ‘Take it easy, man,’ the Australian whines, scrambling to his feet. ‘He’s a fucking maniac,’ he shouts, pointing at Jake, who lurches towards him. ‘Fucking maniac.’

  ‘You’re the fucking maniac,’ Jake slurs, stumbling over another chair that got tipped over.

  Before Jake can reach him, the Australian scurries away into the shadows of an alleyway opposite the bar.

  Manos lets go of Beattie and starts to wave his arms in the air, still cursing after the Australian.

&nb
sp; The whine of a siren and strobing blue lights on the white-painted buildings at the end of the road warn us a police car’s on its way. A wedge of stoned/drunk tourists block the disco-beating street, so it’s making slow progress. Alarmed by this – the police have the power to close down disreputable bars – Manos runs about the tables in an oddly nimble way that verges on the dainty, picking up empty bottles, sweeping away the broken glass, shooing away drunkards.

  Beattie’s panic at what’s just happened, and, no doubt, at what could potentially unfold if the police are to ever reach the bar, galvanises her into action.

  ‘OK, we split,’ she says, grabbing Jake by the hand and dragging him away from the bar’s tables and chairs. ‘I’ll look after this idiot asshole. You pick up our gear,’ she says to me. She slips into the crowd with him. Not wanting to lose sight of them, I quickly scoop up all our bags and dive into the throng, which, the floor show over, is beginning to move along.

  At the end of the street I almost stumble into the police car. Two fat, sweating policemen are inside, leaning their elbows on the open windows, the driver lazily pushing the horn while the siren whoops intermittently above them. If anything they look bored, not at all in a hurry to reach the scene of the crime. Perhaps they know Manos, and are giving him time to sort himself out before their arrival. In any case, they’re not at all interested in me – I’m just one more grubby young tourist. I get right past them, drunken, stumbling gait, three bags and all.

  But I can’t find Beattie and Jake anywhere. I walk up and down Kidathineon a couple of times, but they’re nowhere. It’s as if the street’s swallowed them up. I suppose they’re thinking the same about me. There are loads of people and the alleyways around are a kind of maze.

  As I search for them, the full impact of what has physically happened to me begins to dawn. Once again, I have been attacked. My eye hurts like hell and I’m cold and shaky, even through the heat of the night. Out on the street, alone again, the fear comes back. Not only do I have the memory of The French Shit haunting me, but there’s also the very real possibility of bumping into The Australian Shit and having him recognise me. I hug our bags to my chest and run, stumbling on the cobbled streets, back in what I think is the direction of the Peta Inn.

  Eventually, more by chance than design, I found my way back here. Ignoring the couple of other people sitting around chatting, I’ve climbed up onto my bunk bed and now I’m burrowed into my sleeping bag, writing this.

  I’m back home.

  It’s two hours since I got here, and there’s still no sign of Beattie and Jake. I hope they’re OK. But I can’t stay awake any more. Perhaps they’ve gone on partying. Like I said, I’m a lightweight. At least, from the way he reacts to her, I don’t have to worry about Jake fancying Beattie!

  The world has gone all spinny and I have to sleep.

  Goodnight, Emma.

  7

  4 August 1980, 2 p.m. Athens. Peta Inn roof.

  So when I woke up this morning, it wasn’t to Jake’s face in the next-door bed, but Beattie’s. I peered over my mattress: Jake was sleeping underneath. It was a little disappointing, but what the hell, at least they were there. At least they had come back to me, not done an Ena.

  Shortly after I’m awake, Beattie opens an eye and looks at me.

  ‘Shit, man,’ she says. ‘That’s one fuck of a shiner.’

  As we climb out of our bunks, I ask where they got to and she says Jake had popped more slimming pills than he should have, so it took her hours to bring him down. She’d put him on the bottom bed so he’d have a bit of shade.

  ‘He’ll sleep for hours now,’ she says as we leave him snoring with a note at his side telling him we’ll be back later.

  We staggered up a steeply winding street in the Plaka, with desiccating hangovers. The morning heat was already blistering and my black baggy dress was soaked with sweat. I’ve worn it day and night for over a week now. Really must wash it soon, although everyone stinks here, it’s inescapable.

  There’s not a single mirror in the Peta Inn. I quite like this: it’s a sort of escape from the ever-present tyrant of my own reflection. But when, like this morning, I catch sight of myself in a shop window, it can be quite terrifying. I’d forgotten what I’d done to my hair, and I looked too thin even for my own exacting standards. I was quite a shock to myself. And I saw how alarming my right eye is: it’s puffed almost shut, with a deep black stain going down into my cheek, blending through purple to an almost fluorescent yellow outline.

  I look barely human.

  I’m feeling so disjointed, what with the shock of realising what has been done to my face, an achy neck from some kind of whiplash from the punch, an appalling hangover that’s putting everything into a sort of time-lapse and the perspective-flattening effect of viewing the world through just one eye. It’s like I’m not quite living in my own head right now.

  ‘Jake was out of order last night,’ Beattie says, leading me on, up the hill.

  ‘But that Australian Shit was a total jerk,’ I say.

  ‘He sure made a mess of your face,’ Beattie says. ‘But Jake, like, just lost it, didn’t he? It was like nothing else I’ve ever seen. He’s very protective of you, isn’t he?’

  ‘Yeah, I suppose.’

  ‘Something going on there?’

  ‘No!’ I blush, but it’s probably hidden by the bruise and the fact I’m beetroot red with the heat anyway.

  Beattie looks at me, one eyebrow raised.

  ‘What was he like last night after you lost me?’ I ask, to change the subject.

  Beattie frowns and bites her lip. ‘He was set on searching out that Australian. Going on about how only freaks hit women, and how he was going to make him pay.’

  ‘You didn’t find him?’ I ask, alarmed at the thought.

  ‘Nah, thank God. We ended up in some bar further up in the Plaka, some scuzzy little disco dive upstairs with stupid coloured lights and one idiot Dutch girl running the music, serving the drinks and dancing like a maniac in between. I think she thought she was giving some sort of floor show.’

  ‘Oh.’ I feel a spike of jealousy. I didn’t think they’d actually have gone into a bar together.

  ‘I mean, we looked for you and all, but I just reckoned you’d go back to Peta Inn. And Jake needed calming down. He was totally wired, in no fit state to be wandering around the streets alone.’

  ‘But I had your bags with your money and shit.’

  ‘Aha! But I found this,’ Beattie stops, rummages in her bag and pulls out a tooled leather wallet. ‘Five thousand drachs in it. About a hundred and twenty dollars.’

  I gawp at her.

  ‘Aw, don’t look at me like that, Ems. There was no ID in it. So no chance of handing it in anywhere. Whoever I gave it to would just have taken the cash out themselves. Might as well put it to good use.’

  I nod, biting my lip.

  ‘We can put it toward our escape fund. Get outta this place.’

  She put the wallet back in her bag and led me off again, as if walking would somehow make me agree that there was absolutely nothing wrong with what she had done.

  But worse was to come.

  The sun was really too much for us by then. We slipped into the shelter of a gift shop. It looked tiny on the outside, but inside it was cool and cavernous, smelling of the leather sandals and belts that crowded the walls.

  The shopkeeper, a boy about my age, eyes us briefly. Then, I suppose not finding anything interesting to ogle in two unwashed, punk-cropped backpackers – one with a humdinger of a black eye – returns to reading his book.

  ‘Let’s play the Dangerous Game,’ Beattie says under her breath.

  ‘Eh?’

  ‘Steal me something.’

  ‘What?’ I shoot back at her.

  Not being the kind of girl who hung out in the gangs that ransacked Woolworth’s after school, I’d never stolen anything in my life.

  ‘Go on. Just something tiny, just for me,’ sh
e says, exercising her glottal stops. While I’ve been taking up a few Americanisms, she’s trying out my Ripon accent with its flat a’s and elongated vowels. She says the habit of collecting accents has been beaten into her at drama school.

  She moves over to a stand nearer the boy shopkeeper and bends forward to examine some postcards on the bottom of a spinning stand, positioning herself so that he can see right down her baggy vest front to her breasts.

  Although my mother would say she needed to, Beattie doesn’t wear a bra, so the boy is treated to, as my mother would also say, ‘a right eyeful’.

  I know she’s giving me my moment and, although I know it’s wrong, I don’t want to let her know what kind of wimp I actually am. Also, the hungry look in the boy’s face as he ogles Beattie wins him no favours with me.

  So I reach out and pick up a tooled leather hair clasp, one of those curved things with a wooden prong that holds a ponytail. It has Hellas burnt into it in Greek letters. My cheeks burning, I palm it into my bag. Then, too casually, I carry on browsing, rifling through ceramic thimbles with the Parthenon painted on them, pens with a Greek-flagged ship sailing up and down them in a bubble of liquid, key rings with a satyr’s phallus attached. Then I come to a basket full of blue glass eye things with long blue tassels attached.

  ‘I’ll take one of those,’ I say, picking one out and giving it to the boy.

  Beattie looks at me like I’m crazy.

  ‘It’s OK,’ I say, flicking my eyes to my bag.

  ‘You have weakness and evil?’ the boy says as he takes my fifty drachs.

  ‘What?’ I flush.

  ‘Mataki.’ He points to the glass eye, which he’s wrapping carefully in paper striped blue like the Greek flag. ‘Evil eye. It guards against.’

  ‘Ah. But Emma,’ Beattie says, still pretending to be from Yorkshire rather than Manhattan, ‘you should have haggled.’

  ‘Oops,’ I say, batting my eyes at the boy. Playing the game.