It's All Greek to Me!

by John Mole

  ‘Take the bandage off tomorrow. The bad will go with the good,’ she said and pinched the children’s cheeks.

  Ajax wished me a speedy recovery and offered Doctor Solomos a lift back. Solomos looked awkward and embarrassed as he closed his bag.

  ‘Doctor, if it’s no better tomorrow, I promise I’ll take the needle,’ I said, with my fingers crossed.

  The pain kept me awake most of the night. In the morning it was no better. I pretended to be asleep until the children came in, anxious to see the result of Elpida’s magic.

  ‘How is the fat toad this morning?’ asked Arfa, with a smug little smile.

  ‘Let’s see, shall we?’ I said.

  With a struggle I could just about get my legs over the edge of the bed. The pain shot down to my toes. It was as bad as yesterday.

  ‘Ooh, that’s much better,’ I said. ‘Could somebody untie the bandage?’

  Arfa untied the knot and unwound the cummerbund. The egg had turned pitch black.

  ‘Look,’ said Kate, ‘all the badness has come out of Daddy.’

  ‘There’s plenty more where that came from,’ said Arfa.

  ‘I’m cured,’ I said, flinging my arms out wide and standing up like the picture of Lazarus in the Children’s Bible. ‘See, Elpida did the trick.’

  Walking up straight, I strode over to the sink and put the kettle on. ‘What’s for breakfast?’ The five of them were goggle-eyed, open-mouthed.

  ‘It couldn’t have been very serious,’ was Arfa’s explanation.

  ‘Elpida’s a witch,’ was Jack’s.

  ‘Does she eat girls?’ said Jim, for his sister’s benefit.

  For the rest of the morning I was almost my normal self. I said it was prudent to take things easy and avoid white-washing and other manual labour. Arfa accepted my recovery with bad grace. I caught her unawares inspecting the blackened bandage. She tossed it guiltily on the bed and pretended that she was clearing up. Young Doctor Solomos came up at noon and prodded and poked, diagnosed some swelling and inflammation and rabbited on about combining the old medicine and the new.

  In fact, I have never before or since been in such agony. It was made worse by the effort of will to conceal it. I took double doses of aspirin. Every half an hour when no one was looking I took a large slug of ouzo straight from the bottle. I would have preferred whisky, but they would have smelt it on my breath. From my head to my fingers to my toes I was being dissected bone from bone with a hot, blunt knife.

  Why did I do this? Dread of the needle? To pay back the mockery of my family? To rub in the innocent incompetence of Doctor Solomos? I prefer to think that it was for my friend Elpida, so she would not be made a fool of.

  After lunch I collapsed on the bed face down to hide tears of pain in the pillow. I fell asleep with my head reeling with heat and exhaustion and ouzo and pain and promising myself to stay in bed until it was better.

  When I woke up at five, I had a headache and a hangover but the pain in my back was truly gone. The twinges when I bent down were no worse than usual. It was a miracle.

  ‘Rise from your beds and walk,’ I shouted to the others, ‘we’re going to the beach.’

  I swam and threw skimmers and chased beach balls with the brio of a father on his access day. On the way back we stopped in the square and I saw Elpida, sitting as usual outside her house with her crones and cronies. I walked up to her with arms outstretched and gave her hairy cheeks the most public of kisses. It was all the reward she wanted, although I bought her cakes and flowers the next time we were in Aliveri.

  So there were more questions to ask myself. Did it go by itself? Was it Elpida’s magic? Was it her manipulation of my back to spread the egg? Was it the loosening of the muscles from forcing myself to move? Was it the ouzo? Probably a bit of everything. Whatever it was, I had avoided the needle and struck a blow for the folk wisdom of centuries.

  Youthful Doctor Solomos had no hard feelings. He may have been secretly relieved that Elpida saved him from a difficult patient. He moved on soon after to a houseman’s job at Dudley Road Hospital in Birmingham. I told him that was where I was born and we struggled to find this meaningful, but it was not so much a coincidence as one of life’s so-whats.

  The fillip to Elpida’s reputation increased demand for her folk remedies. She was often to be seen on the hillsides in the early morning, bottom in the air, digging for roots and herbs with an old kitchen knife.

  One evening, smitten by nostalgia for the English countryside, we took the children to pick blackberries by the side of the cemetery road. Because it’s hot and doesn’t rain, Greek blackberries are not luscious fruits of the autumn hedgerow but little nutty things ripe in August. Elpida spotted us on the way to her graveside duties.

  ‘Who’s got a cough?’ she asked accusingly, as if she had caught us raiding the medicine cabinet.

  ‘Nobody. We don’t have anything wrong,’ Arfa said. Elpida didn’t believe her. She tutted and tried again.

  ‘Who’s got diarrhoea?’

  ‘Nobody. We just like to eat them.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘We boil them for a bit with sugar to make jam for yoghurt instead of honey.’

  ‘Eh. We Greeks don’t do it like that,’ and that was the end of the conversation.

  I’ve never been one for herbalism. The mother of a friend of ours grew medicinal plants in the garden. She had what looked like ordinary flower beds, except that the plants were labelled with the diseases they treated and not their proper names. Here was a bed of emphysema coming into bloom, there she was pricking out the angina, and doesn’t the anaemia have a lovely scent? For hypochondriacs like me it diluted the charm of the country garden.

  Arfa was more intrigued. On her next visit to Athens she bought Medicinal Plants of Greece by George Sfikas. Elpida was right about blackberries. Allegedly they are a cure for diarrhoea and not a cause, as the layman might assume. Indeed, the main function of most natural remedies seems to be the loosening or constricting of the bowels. Many are recommended for ‘general lassitude of the organism’. More specific specifics are artichokes for tonsillitis, basil for stomach ache and celery for fever and diabetes. Mistletoe berries can be popped like pills for indigestion. Arfa promised me the nettle cure if my back gave out again. The practitioner puts on gloves and whips the affected area with fresh nettle stems. This causes burning and swelling, but is alleged to be a very effective remedy and doubtless takes your mind off what’s really wrong with you. It’s enjoyable for the practitioner too.

  My favourite was the common-or-kitchen-garden onion. It was the most frequently depicted plant in the tombs of the Pharaohs and for good reason. It is a pharmacopoeia in your vegetable rack. Rub neat juice into stings and burns. Mix the juice with potassium carbonate and rub into the scalp for baldness. Eat a raw onion for lassitude, hypertension, arteriosclerosis, cirrhosis of the liver, stings and burns. Best of all, for haemorrhoids, fry an onion in pork fat and leave as long as possible in the affected place. Sfikas is silent about the size, but presumably you should take measurements. He advises letting it cool down first – you wouldn’t want to burn your fingers.

  We were intrigued not so much by the efficacy, but by how they found out. Did they try it raw first, or boiled or baked in the oven? Did they try other vegetables on a testing panel? Was it pure coincidence that someone’s piles got better the day after a fried onion suppository? If so, what were they doing sticking fried onions up their bottom in the first place? Was it a dare, a cult, a whim? And how many people, having read Sfikas, have tried it for themselves? So many unanswered questions.

  ‘Hey kids, listen to this.’

  ‘Why? We’re busy.’ They were engrossed in harassing a column of ants. I caught Arfa’s Gorgon glare over her wine glass.

  ‘Oh, nothing.’

  It was late August and the almond harvest was in full swing. The hillside echoed with the whack whack whack of long poles on the trees and the patter of nuts and twigs on sheets
laid underneath. We collected our own almonds, peeled off the green husks and spread the nuts in their pockmarked shells on the terrace to dry.

  Genial Spiros capped his generosity with the doves by presenting us with a hen. He carried her over by the ankles, spread-eagled, or rather spread-chickened, more stupefied than frightened at her unaccustomed view of the world. He sat down on the terrace and let her go to peck under the table for breakfast droppings.

  ‘Oh lovely, our own eggs,’ said Arfa, but I could tell she’d rather be given them in a paper bag.

  ‘Bah, she’s too old for eggs. That’s why I’m giving her to you. Simmered slowly with onions and tomato is best for the old ones. Isn’t that right?’ he said to his gift, who had found rich pickings under Harry’s chair.

  The children, who had been hiding from clearing the table, emerged.

  ‘Maam, is that for us?’ said Harry.

  ‘Is it a girl chicken?’ said Kate.

  ‘What shall we call her?’ said Harry.

  ‘How about Pecky?’ said Kate.

  ‘Pecky’s not a name,’ said Jim.

  ‘Becky is,’ said Jack.

  ‘Pecky-Becky,’ said Kate.

  ‘Can she live in my bedroom? Can she?’ said Harry.

  They chased her round the terrace while I got Spiros a whisky. When he had gone we had a family discussion.

  ‘Darlings, Spiros didn’t give us Pecky-Becky for a pet. He gave her to us for dinner,’ said Arfa.

  ‘What? Alive? Is Dad going to kill her?’ said Jim.

  ‘Why not Mum?’ I retorted.

  ‘Chickens don’t make very good pets. Especially old chickens. She’s probably got lice. You can’t cuddle a chicken.’

  ‘Yes you can, yes you can,’ squawked Harry and ran over to where she was grubbing in a geranium pot.

  Had she known what was at stake, Pecky-Becky wouldn’t have pecked his finger. Despite Harry’s thumbs down, the majority vote was to save Pecky-Becky from the pot and welcome her into the bosom of the family.

  A veteran of the free range was not to be so easily domesticated. First of all, she was not naturally endearing. She had lost an eye to a rat or a cat or a rival, she was bald under the wings and on the neck, the feathers that remained were crusted with dirt and droppings, she walked with a limp. A filthy, balding, one-eyed, limping chicken is not an ornament to the home. She refused to sit in a bed lovingly crafted out of cardboard with a dry grass mattress and a quilt of tattered blanket. Offered food, she pecked the hand that fed her. Lassoed with a piece of string and taken for walks, she either strangled herself to escape or ran full tilt at the legs of her leader. She was distasteful to cuddle. There was nothing nice to stroke. The tattered comb, like Grandpa’s earlobes, was unpleasant to fondle. It was a relief when night fell and she could be shut in the basement.

  When the children were in bed, I delicately raised the subject of what to do with her.

  ‘What are we going to do about that effing chicken?’

  ‘Don’t swear at me. I’m not responsible.’

  ‘It wasn’t my idea …’

  ‘It’s too late now …’

  Spiros took the decision out of our hands. The next morning he came over for a tot and saw Pecky-Becky gleaning the harvest under the table.

  ‘She won’t fatten up you know, she’s too old.’ I looked round. Arfa was in the kitchen fetching glasses. The children were in their olive tree.

  ‘I don’t know how to kill it. Can you do it for me?’

  ‘It’s easy,’ he said and it was. He dived for her and grabbed her by the leg. A quick flick of the wrist and he tossed her back down again, where she proved that the popular saying about a headless chicken is well grounded in fact. I can also tell you that it draws a veil over the prodigious amount of shit that is released. She scurried round with her head dangling until she ran into a wall and collapsed in a quivering heap of feathers.

  While no one would admit that her passing was a relief, she went unmourned. Arfa did not ask what had moved Spiros to do the deed, so I did not have to tell lies. My expiation was to prepare her for the pot. The worst was plunging her into hot water to make her easier to pluck. I had the dreadful henhouse stench of hot, wet feathers in my nose, on my beard, my hair, my skin, my clothes all day.

  After my initiation on the doves, I was used to the subsequent intimacies. Pecky-Becky looked up at me with her beady black eye and made little squeaks and grunts as I rummaged in her intestines. A lady of mature years, she had shrunken breasts, massive thighs and a wrinkled yellow skin. But when I chopped her up and covered her in cling film she looked like a proper chicken from Tesco’s, not the beady-eyed, strutting, limping, pecking harridan that crapped round our terrace.

  Arfa adapted her favourite recipe to the local ingredients. Her coq au retsina was tough but tasty, despite the turpentine tang.

  Exploding myths

  Arfa was reading Proust under the mulberry in the way one reads Proust; that is, not reading more than a page or so before the world outside suddenly seems so much more interesting, an ant crawling up a twig perhaps or a beetle sitting on a stone. I rescued her with a glass of Spiros’s best. For most people, if the name of the great French novelist Marcel Proust means anything at all, it is for the description of how sponge cake and lime-blossom tea transported his hero, also called Marcel, back to his childhood. For the Marcels this was a blinding revelation. To the rest of us it happens all the time. My first sip of Château Yard-Brush brought to life one of my earliest memories.

  Grandad was in bed with his kidneys. They had moved him into the front room of the prefab. He kept the curtains shut so that nobody could see in. The room was gloomy, full of shadows lit only by his feeble bedside light. I played on the red floral carpet with a little gypsy caravan and he looked down at me with a smile on his puffy yellow face. I pushed the caravan too hard and it went under his bed. I crawled after it. The chamber pot was in the way. I put my little hand on the rim, jerked it towards me and the contents lapped up against my fingers. It was thick and yellow and spicy and foul and acid. I sipped Spiros’s wine again and heard the bedsprings creak as Grandad rolled over to see what I was up to.

  Greeks took the word for wine from the Phoenicians, passed it onto the rest of the world as oinos, or winum in Latin, and then abandoned it in favour of krasi, pronounced krasee. With the accent on the a it means temperament or constitution. Many’s the time I have asked for half a kilo of temperament with my dinner. Krasi is a different drink from the beverage that the rest of us call vinum, vin, vino, vinho, Wein. The word comes from the Ancient Greek for mixture. Ancient Greeks liked their wine thick, sweet, oxidised and mixed with sea water, honey and spices, like punch or liqueur. These days you mix your krasi with soda water or cola or lemonade; old Barba Lekos cuts his with Heineken. Most Greeks still prefer their white wine dark and tangy and their red wine thick and sweet. In our village the only red wine you could buy until recently was Mavrodaphne, which is like alcoholic Ribena. Some of the islands produce western-style wines, but these are relics from the Franks and Latins who colonised them.

  Krasi is not really drink. It is food. You don’t buy it by the litre but by the kilo. Giving a Greek a glass of wine on its own is like giving someone a glass of gravy. A glass is inseparable from a fork. Only foreign drinks like whisky or beer are drunk without food. Krasi isn’t even drunk like wine. You don’t pick a glass up by the base and swill the wine around the bowl and sip it and let it trickle over your tongue. Only in the posh suburbs of Athens do you find wine glasses with stems. A proper Greek wine glass is between a tumbler and a shot glass. You pick it up by the rim, clink it against everyone else’s, slug it down, slam it back down on the table and reach for a fork.

  There is a kind of cultural materialism that tries to explain away the odd things that foreigners do in terms of home economics. For example, they dig up the dead because village land is scarce or they eat male lambs at Easter because the new grass is better saved fo
r milk-producing females. It is said that retsina originated from the use of resin to seal the amphora it was made in, a large clay pitcher with a narrow neck and pointed bottom. The resin produced a thin film on the surface of the wine, which reduced oxidisation and masked any faults found in the wine.

  This assumes that Ancient Greeks really wanted to drink our kind of wine and that the retsina was an accident. Or that, even if they liked the taste, it was an afterthought, an additive, a preservative, something thrown in afterwards to make the wine last longer. If this were the case, you would mix it in after the fermentation. But you put it in right at the beginning, as soon as the first fermentation starts. It has its own sugars and oils and is as much an essential ingredient of the drink as grapes. It’s pine wine as much as grape wine. The wine god Dionysos is often pictured with a staff tipped with a pine cone. Chances are that ancient Greeks and Romans would think the same about the thin, bland, grapey brew we call wine as Europeans think about pissy American beer.

  ‘Such a shame about Proust,’ I said as I refilled Arfa’s glass. ‘He shut himself away in a room lined with cork for over ten years because of asthma and nervous debility. He only discovered on his deathbed that it was cork he was allergic to.’

  ‘Toad,’ she said, ‘you don’t half talk rubbish.’

  In September tell-tale signs appear that the grapes are ripening: plastic barrels outside every other shop and handmade advertisements for oenologists. Albanians, gypsies and village women invade the vineyards with sharp, curved knives. They load skips and trailers and pick-ups that queue up in the sun outside the shiny steel tanks of the winery. Wasps are first to get pissed on the harvest. They swarm and crawl and fall down and lie on their backs wriggling their legs, out of their little skulls with the alcohol that already ferments under the sticky skins of the fruit. Very soon they will be closer to the fermentation than nature intended, along with the flies and bugs and bird shit that enrich the juice.