by Sara Alexi
He knows he has a fever. He is burning up.
'Is Andrea here?' There is a recall of Andreas and a woman with a stethoscope around her neck.
'No, he left hours ago. But you’d better heed what the doctor said and stop talking.'
'Gamoto!' Sakis hisses. This is such bad timing. He needs to get out there, take his bow, find his way to the serious musicians. He has his 'pass' of winning now; he needs to use it while it is still valid. The world is fickle.
'He said it's laryngitis, a virus, but my guess is all that partying didn't help.' Jules leans out the window to smoke a cigarette. The sun streams in around him and the heat rushes into the air-conditioned room.
'What do you think?' Sakis asks hoarsely. 'You think Andreas can keep the momentum up if I am off the scene?' But he cannot wait for the answer. His eyes must close.
There are no shadows on the ceiling when he wakes again. The room is dark except for a lamp on his desk where Jules sits typing away on a laptop whilst thumbing his way through a pile of magazines and newspapers. His face in the moment of joy when he won is all over the covers.
'Ah, you are awake. How you feel?' Jules stops typing.
'Better.' But his throat denies this. At least the throbbing in his head has gone.
A damp cloth is dabbed across his brow.
'Life shows no favours,' Jules states, getting up and going through to the tiny kitchen. He returns with a bowl of something steaming. 'Here you go. The market here is good, yes?' But it’s not a real question.
'Thanks.' Sakis takes the bowl. 'It smells good. What are you writing?' What he really wonders is what is Jules doing here. Somehow it is not a question he feels he can ask when food is being provided. In any case, Jules pre-empts him.
'My paper’s asked me to do an in-depth article on you. I told them a bit about you and they thought it would interest our readers.' He laughs as if the idea is ridiculous. 'You know: “The real musician behind the popular song,”' he adds as he goes back into the kitchen and returns with his own bowl of soup, into which he pours cream from a carton. He holds the carton out to Sakis, who pulls a face. He prefers to taste the vegetables.
'Truth is, when you got sick, Andreas made me an offer. He needed to keep milking your win. You know this expression of the English, to milk?' Sakis nods. 'There was no one to take care of you. So we made a deal. If I came back to Athens with you, then he would open doors for me when you go to America. You've heard of the American magazine Urban Unchained, right?'
Sakis looks up from dipping his spoon in his bowl. He knows Urban Unchained—who in the music world doesn't?
'I intend to be a journalist for them. So if Andreas can open some of the doors to musicians, then I will make sure I write what Urban Unchained likes to print. Meanwhile, I am capitalising on spending this time with you.' He does not drink his soup quietly.
Sakis had not expected such open honesty or steadfast ambitions from him. With his skin-and-bone frame holding up cheap, overwashed t-shirts and his not-very-recently cut hair, Sakis had sort of categorised him as—well, if he was honest, after he found he had spent the first night freeloading on his sofa, he had considered him a bit of a drifter despite working for such a solid European magazine. This new perspective makes much more sense about why they get on so well. They are as determined as each other.
'By the way, there are still reporters camped outside on the pavement waiting for you, you know?' Jules continues, almost in the same breath. 'And a line of girls with banners and slogans addressed to you. They call your name and wear t-shirts with your picture on.' This is accompanied with a gentle laugh. 'I think you disappearing from the limelight so suddenly has increased everyone’s interest.' With this, he drains his bowl, forsaking his spoon.
The phone rings. Jules offers to answer but Sakis feels bored with being ill so long, so he answers himself. It is Andreas.
'Right, Sakis, don't speak, just listen.' Sakis puts the phone onto speaker so he can put it down on the bedside table. 'I have recycled the films of you being interviewed in the Ukraine. I am going to get some of them edited to make them look like they are new clips, and I’ve dug some of your older interviews up and I am getting several press releases out there. So far, I have kept the momentum going. I mean, when you hit America, you may be there for some time, so the Greek public will have to get used to just getting snippets of your life anyway. The American deal, I have managed to push back for a weeks. If you are not recovered enough to sing, which of course you will be by then, they may be able to push it back for a further week or maybe two, but I wouldn't count on it.'
Sakis grunts in response.
'Now, the doctor said to get you out of the pollution, so I have booked you and Jules a couple of hotel rooms out of Athens, away from it all. She seemed to think the air quality was an important factor. I found a hotel down near that village where I think you said your yiayia used to live?'
'Near Saros?' Sakis asks, the surprise evident in his voice. It has been a long time since he was there. The last time was, well when was it? He must have been about eleven. No, he went back later. But he did not like the way people responded to him, what they called him. He was a nobody down there in the shadows of his baba.
'Yes, that’s the one,' Andreas answers him. 'The hotel is between Saros and the village, a bit nearer the village, I think. It should be alright. They have hire cars; it's by the beach. Anyway, if you feel well enough to travel, I can send the car tomorrow. It's an hour and a half drive. What do you think? Can you manage that?'
Sakis would like to refuse to go. He would like to bound out of his flat and just enjoy his win, make the most of it. The longer time passes, the more he will be forgotten. But his rasping throat, aching limbs, and overall weakness give him no option.
'I guess.' Well, what else can he say?
'Can you put Jules on?'
'I am here,' Jules says.
'Oh, okay, Jules. Keep spooning that soup down his throat. I appreciate all you are doing. Keep me informed.' And the line clicks to a purr.
The Hotel
The beach seems to stretch endlessly in one direction and curves around the bay towards Saros the other way. The water is so blue, so alive, that if he wasn't standing there in person, he would think someone had tinted the whole scene. The sand is almost white and the occasional grain reflects the sun like a mirror, shimmering in the heat. There is a small beach bar covered with crispy brown palm leaves and a man in its shade is wiping glasses, slowly, as if there is never a need to rush. The pace of life in the half hour since they arrived has kicked back to a lazy amble. It seems a natural pace for Jules. As for Sakis, well he is still struggling with the virus. He has no energy at all.
'You want a drink?' Jules asks as Sakis lowers himself onto a sunbed and looks around. There is a pink-skinned family who has pulled four sunbeds together further along, and there is a very brown-backed sunbather who has not opened the square umbrella over his lounger nearer the bar. After the mayhem of Kharkiv, which was the last time Sakis was out in public, the place feels deserted.
'Yeah, something cool, with ice.' Sakis rubs his throat.
Jules returns with two tall drinks.
'Bartender told me that they are on him. He recognised you.'
Sakis looks over and the bartender raises the glass he is wiping in salute.
'Interesting bloke,' Jules continues. 'Quit a steady job in a bakery and took up this bar job to give himself time.'
'Time for what?' Sakis leans back. The heat of the sun kissing him all over, massaging his throat, works through the knots in his aching limbs.
'He's taken up the clarinet. He said something about each village tries to put on the best panigyri. What's a panigyri?'
'Like a party, a festival. Each village has a saint and each year, they celebrate the saint’s day with music and lots of food. My yiayia's,' Jules frowns, 'grandmother's village has always been in competition to put on a better panigyri than Saros town, even though
it is so much smaller.' Sakis hasn't thought about this for years. The village usually only conjures images of his baba. His big, larger than life baba. The man who eclipsed him no matter what he did. This memory is suggesting the village has also had a different influence. He always thought his musical inspiration had come from Pireaus.
'Ah, so an influence, then?' Jules asks.
'Never thought of it.' Sakis closes his eyes. 'My baba took me out of the village when it was time for me to start school. Said I needed a man’s upbringing. Whatever that means. It was probably a joke and didn't mean anything, knowing him.'
'So you went to school in Pireaus. Was the school musical?'
'Baba stuck around for a few years but when I was ten, he decided I was old enough to cope by myself. He would go off for two and three months at a time with work. Said if I wanted anything, I should go to his best friend’s wife. They lived in the same block. She liked to cook. I didn't complain. But on the weekends, I was in heaven. “Ah, we can't leave the little doll here by himself. We will take him,” Antonis would say. “He's a child. He is too young,” Antigone would answer. “Take him for the music,” Roula would say and it was decided because Antigone could not be bothered to argue.'
Sakis pauses to recreate the scene in his head and take a sip of his drink. It is a while since he has thought of all this in detail.
'So they would be all dressed up, him in pointed shoes, slicked hair, his jacket only over one shoulder, and she would be in her tight red dress with its lace-trimmed skirt and they would swagger their way through the back streets, turning heads. When we reached the tiny bar, they walked like royalty to their table.' The images reappear in his mind so easily. The bars were little more than narrow rooms that opened onto the street with cobbled floors and unpainted walls. There would be five rough wooden tables at most, and a makeshift bar, the musicians crammed into a corner. If the sun was shining, the doors were folded back so the bar spilled onto the street, and in winter, they were pulled tight and the cavern filled with cigarette smoke and the heat of bodies. The other men, also in pointed shoes, long moustaches, and striped suits, acknowledged Antigone and Antoni’s entrance with a lift of a cigar, a raise of a glass, and he would feel so important simply by association.
'We would eat all together. The music would play. Then after an ouzo or two, if the music took his fancy, Antigone would stand, and like a, how you say, a Spanish fighter…'
'A matador,' Jules offers.
'Yes, this, like a matador, his spine so straight it almost curved backward, he would reach out his hand to his wife. She would stand slowly, refusing his hand and circle him, each foot kicking out as she stepped and then they would dance.'
'You Greeks, you like to dance.'
The sun has moved and Sakis’ face is no longer in the shade of the umbrella, but the direct heat on his throat feels good, so he keeps his eyes closed and does not move.
'Yes, we like to dance. But this was not like the dancing that is taught in schools, passed down from parents to children. This was improvised and had a menace to it, often a fight between the man and woman, for dominance.'
The first time he saw such dancing, he was afraid. Its raw sexuality, the woman standing up to every move made by the man, scared him. In traditional Greek dancing, the onlookers often drop to one knee and clap in time to encourage the display. But with this dancing, the bar was silent except for the sound of the music and the pointed shoes and heeled slippers against the cobbles. They commanded the room. No one got up, no one entered. No drinks were served until they had finished. And all this time he sat, not daring to move, on a small, hard chair by the bouzouki player. As the player’s fingers moved and strummed, he would wink at Sakis and nod at his baba's friends, presuming they were his parents.
The excitement he felt as a boy is in his veins again. Maybe he will return to his room and play his own bouzouki for an hour or two. But first, he must complete his story for Jules.
'When they finished, they would be bought many drinks, but, the most exciting part for me, the musician would pull my stool in front of him, put the bouzouki in my lap, and reach his arms around me to guide my fingers. I would play, or thought I was playing, to cries of bravo and comments such as, “The boy’s a boy, but he's also manga,” and I felt I belonged.'
Sakis turns to Jules to see if he understands what he is saying, the importance of the excitement. Jules is smiling and scribbling furiously in his notebook.
'Are you making notes on this?' Sakis asks.
'Sure,' Jules say languidly and puts his pencil down to rest. Neither of them say anything for a while. Sakis’ desire to go and practice subsides as a stillness takes him over.
'Nice spot, this,' Jules remarks and as Sakis looks over to him, he sees his eyes are closed.
Sleep plays its usual trick and when Sakis opens his eyes again, the family of four has been replaced by a couple, and the man with the brown back is now three very pale girls with blond hair. A young woman is sitting at the beach bar and the bartender has hold of her hand and is leaning as far over the counter as he can to steal the occasional kiss. Sakis’ face pulses hot. He has caught the sun.
'How you feeling?' the ever-vigilant Jules asks.
'Not aching so much, but my throat is still raw.'
'You want another drink?'
'In a while. I just dreamt we were in a bar without air conditioning in Paris. Are you from Paris?'
'They say I was born in a place called Etaut, up in the hills near Spain.'
'How do you mean “they say”?'
'Raised in an orphanage. Toulouse. Ran away and lived in Montauban, Limoges, Orleans, and finally Paris.'
'How old were you when you ran away?'
'Don't know. Don't know how old I am now.'
'What made you run?'
'I met a group of traveling musicians from Germany. They were colourful and free. I became one of them, but I am not for playing music. My skill, they decided, was cooking and later, I decided, it was writing. I wrote a piece about them and sold it to a Paris paper. They were furious, but they drank the wine I bought with the money.' Jules clips his words. He is taking no joy from the memory. 'What was your papa like?'
'Baba? He was bigger than life. So big that I felt I had to do something great to live up to him. I have felt this all my life. A pressure. He was a manga. A true working class manga from Pireaus, with the pointed shoes, the striped suit, the long mustachio, a wide sash belt to hide the knife he carried there. He would wear his jackets on one shoulder, leaving the other arm dangling like a cape or a shawl.'
The only way to really explain his baba would be to tell Jules one of his exploits. But if he does, he risks over-shadowing all he, Sakis, has achieved, reducing himself to nothing more than his baba's son again. But maybe not. Maybe Jules has more insight, maybe he himself has outgrown all that now. Maybe this is a chance prove all that is behind him. After all, he has won! He is known worldwide now. Besides, there is also something very comforting in talking about his baba.
'He was a big man, physically. His chest was so big, he had to get shirts made specially. He grew up diving for sponges. He could hold his breath the longest of any of the boys, so he got the bigger sponges and became known locally. By the time I was a boy, he was already diving on oil rigs, underwater welding.' There is not even a glimmer of awe from Jules, and this gives Sakis the courage to continue. 'The work he did paid well and the boy from a poor family became a man with money, but he never forgot his roots. He had no desire to spend his time with the wealthy. Like I said, his apartment was in a run-down area of Pireaus.'
'It sounds like you admired him.' Jules turns onto his stomach to tan his back.
'I did. But also… Let me tell you one tale.'
'Okay,' Jules mumbles.
'He was working on a rig off the coast of Africa and a group of them had shore leave. As it was too far to come back to Greece, he and his friends took a room in a coastal town. A town where a major riv
er met the sea and inland was a network of marshes and tree-covered waterways. Tropical.' Sakis sits up to suck up the last of his drink and then he too lies on his front. The sun is so high, the umbrella is casting little shade.
'So my baba decides it would be fun to rent a boat and explore the waterways. They took beer and food and the five of them got in a boat, Baba steering the, er, what is it called, oh yes, the outboard motor.'
Jules has his head turned towards him, one eye open, listening.
'They set up one waterway and it narrows to nothing, so they retreat and try another. After a while, one of the men declares that they are lost but my baba says he knows where they are. After another hour, the man who thinks they are lost is beginning to panic and he talks some of the other men into believing that they are lost, too. So Baba stops the boat to talk to them, calm everyone down. As he is speaking, the man who was panicking opens his eyes wide and he points, with his mouth hanging open but with no sound coming out.
'Baba turns to see what he is pointing at and, swimming towards the boat, just visible above the thick water, are the spines of the back of a crocodile. The man who was pointing finds his voice and lets out a scream. One of the other men throws himself over the far side of the boat as the crocodile rears out of the soup and with an open mouth goes for the men. The animal lands half in the boat, snapping and trying to find its feet. Everyone is screaming. Another man has flung himself overboard and is swimming for the shore…'
Sakis waits for the customary gasp, but Jules is silent, just the one open eye watching him as he speaks.
'The man under the animal has frozen rigid but my baba, from his cloth belt around his waist, draws out his dagger and throws himself on top of the crocodile. He gets his arm around its neck and throws himself onto his back, pulling the creature over so it is belly up. Then he slits the beast’s neck from jaw line to jaw line.'
Sakis props himself up on one elbow and mimes the slitting of his own throat with his free hand, with an appropriate noise. Once his second ear is reached, he flops back down on the sun bed.
