Full Spectrum 3 - [Anthology]

by Ed By Lou Aronica et. el.

  “Ask your uncle!” He nodded in my direction. “He can tell you a true story about it.”

  You old fool, I thought. Of course, he knew all about it, everyone knew: “Apostoles, the young son of the hotel owner, actually slept with the Germinada, the Frau Doktor, who directed the excavations at Nekyomanteion…” I hated the toothless smile of the old man. His lustfulness and pride in Greek manhood were accompanied by the excited clicking and snapping of his worry beads. “He showed her.” Oh God, I showed Irini… But should I have refused her? Could I have?

  “Maybe they did find machines,” Alexandros said. “But certainly not American machines—some kind of primitive junk!”

  At the pier, the motor of a cutter started up. I sniffed with pleasure, inhaling the smell of burnt diesel oil. You didn’t often smell it anymore. Someone called something, but I couldn’t make out what he was trying to say… The noise of the motor increased. The boat stopped at the entrance to the harbor where the concrete breakwater stuck out into the glistening ocean like a large rusty ruler. The waves left in the boat’s wake swept along the quay, setting the plastic jellyfish into motion.

  Eurydice grabbed the tentacles of the octopus and let one slide over her small hand. “Can it be brought back to life, too?”

  Spiros picked up the creature and looked at it. “My God, Eurydice, I’m glad the beast is dead.” He laughed. “But who knows, perhaps they could also bring it back to life.”

  “Only if they’d made a recording first,” Alexandros said. “Only then can a copy be made.”

  Lost in thought, Spiros looked at the boy. “It would be a good thing to have such a recording. Then I could bring an octopus back to life every day. There are hardly any left out there.” He pointed with a nod of his head in the direction of the sea. “I used to be able to catch a dozen or more in one night.” He emptied the plastic bucket and threw the octopus into it.

  Alexandros strolled up to my table. “What does he mean by that?” he asked, wrinkling his brow. “Bringing dead people back to life in Nekyomanteion is really something new, isn’t it? How could they have brought people back to life more than two thousand years ago?” He had the somewhat plump figure and round face of Leandros, his father, but the relentless curiosity of my brother Nikos. Be thankful, I thought, that you don’t have his eyes, that pitiless glance of an inquisitorial schoolmaster.

  “How is Uncle Nikos getting here?” I asked.

  “He’s coming by car with Uncle Dimitrios.” The wrinkles on his brow deepened. “What does Spiros mean when he says that the dead were brought back to life two thousand years ago?”

  “That was all just a big fake.”

  As a youth, I had helped with the excavations of the old Nekyomanteion. A German woman supervised the work, and occasionally a Professor came from Athens. He always stayed at my parents’ hotel. And the Germinada, the Frau Doktor, sometimes came for a meal and told us stories of ancient times.

  Irini, do you remember how bright it was all around us? My God, where has time flown? Life? She was then perhaps in her mid-forties. She must be over seventy now. An old woman? No, I remember you much younger than you really were then, Irini.

  Time is so cruel!

  “How could they fake something like that? Either the dead can be brought back to life or they can’t,” Alexandros said.

  “I’ll tell you about it some other time.”

  “But I want to know about it now!”

  I looked up at the ugly, modern, concrete hotel at the other end of the bay, covered with large scarlet spots from some kind of highly poisonous pesticide they had used to try and control the lichens growing in the concrete walls. In those days of my youth, there used to be an old windmill on that site. In summer, guests could buy tickets for the excursion boats to Paxos and Kerkira. When the windmill was freshly painted, it had seemed so white and light, so weightless in spite of its bulky form—as if it just needed a slight wind to send it flying away with the clouds.

  * * * *

  “It was a clever, lucrative swindle that flourished for years on end. They promised to lead people to the entrance of Hades where they could then meet their dead relatives and friends.”

  Irini sat with her elbows holding the paper tablecloth that the wind was trying to blow from under the rubber band that secured it. “Acheron, the end of the world of the living, the river between this life and life hereafter, where the threshold to the realm of the dead was thought to be. What a perfect place to commercialize a myth! A few charlatans, actors and workers got together and built a meeting place for the living and the dead up there on the hill. Even Homer mentioned it.”

  Irini took the brown, felt-tipped pen that she carried around her neck on a thin leather string and drew a series of rectangles on the tablecloth. “They built a labyrinth of small rooms without windows. They had to be dark inside in order to increase the powers of concentration and cleanse the soul. This was accompanied by a special diet to which some drug was added, probably ergot. And the pilgrims were expected to prepare themselves for the great moment when they would meet their dead. The need to see their relatives once again was enormous—perhaps out of affection for their loved ones—but more than likely for other reasons. Often the deceased had taken a secret to the grave, and the pilgrims used this method to try and entice it from him. Secrets such as where he had hidden his money or whether he had left valuables behind somewhere.”

  My father cast a very dubious glance at the rectangles. “Bring the Frau Doktor another glass of wine!” he said to Nikos; he did not like the way the boy worshipped Irini, absorbing every word she said. He didn’t think much of science.

  “The priests filled their bellies with the meat of the animals used in the sacrificial ritual. The occupants of the rooms went hungry.” Irini tapped her felt-tipped pen on the labyrinth. “Professor Dakaris, who was the first to excavate the grounds forty years ago, had tons of decomposed blood carted away. The earth around it must have been literally soaked in blood.

  “It is said that the customers took three weeks before they achieved the necessary degree of cleanliness to be guided one after the other through the labyrinth. If darkness, fasting and drugs didn’t work, they used cold water, ritual stonings and the ashes from cremated bones. They were even more resourceful with the acoustics, using—as a back-up effect—mysterious noises in the darkness, whispering voices and bloodcurdling screams.”

  Irini drew a large rectangle. “After all that, the candidate was led into a vast, completely dark hall in the cellar. The room must have given the impression of great breadth and space after the small chambers of the labyrinth. This was the anteroom to Hades. At the other end of the vault, a form, lit up with the aid of mirrors and covered in white, was lowered by means of a stage elevator—parts of the machinery have actually been found. The figure stood at the entrance to the underworld and waited to be questioned by the pilgrim. Whether the dead ever answered is not known.

  “The customer, nevertheless, in the meantime completely disoriented and on the verge of madness, was prepared to recognize in the strange form anyone or anything and was satisfied with any cryptic answer in order to escape this purgatory and catch a glimpse of sunlight once again.”

  “It all seems very dubious to me,” said my father, “the mysterious goings-on attributed to a few old stones.” He stuck his chin out aggressively. “Acheron, the end of the world of the living, you think, eh? Greeks have always lived north of Acheron. I know the families in the mountains, good Greek families, who lived there before this Homer. Who was he, anyway? Was he from Athens?”

  “I don’t know,” Irini said and absently stroked her bracelet—a basilisk with emerald eyes, which seemed to be devouring its own tail, “perhaps from Asia Minor.”

  “A Turk!” Father snorted and ruffled his mustache, which looked as if a fly had been glued under his nose. “What does he know about our country?” He brushed Homer from the table like a dried-out olive pit. The end of the world o
f the living was always much farther north, he assured them, not at Acheron but farther north in Albania. And the whole story sounded to him like a typical scoundrel’s tale. “However,” he said and patted her conciliatingly on the shoulder, “it’s your profession to excavate old stones and make up stories about them.” I stared through the widely cut sleeve of her light blue linen dress and contemplated with fascination one of her firm, small, tanned breasts. She looked so young with her slender figure, her white-blond hair cut short—younger than a young girl. The wrinkles around her mouth and eyes indicated that she was older, but when she laughed, they were forgotten.

  * * * *

  The archaeologists and their crew worked until one o’clock, had a break and then resumed work at four o’clock. It didn’t take me long to realize that Irini drove down to the beach on her motor scooter during the midday break when the weather was good. Once I followed her on my bike. I crawled through the underbrush and reeds. She was lying no more than five or six meters away. She was naked except for a broad-brimmed straw hat to shade the book she was reading, and her small buttocks were as brown as her legs and back. I was terribly excited and had my bathing trunks halfway down. The only sound to be heard was the dry rustling of the reeds. The suffocating heat made it difficult for me to breathe. For a moment I toyed with the mad idea of just appearing before her naked. A donkey snorted nearby. I turned around in shock. It was tethered to a pomegranate tree in full bloom. It shook its head, trying to get rid of its halter, and looked at me indifferently.

  “That’s not the way to go about it, young man,” she said, standing before me and smiling. In her nakedness, with her face shaded by the straw hat, she looked even more like a young girl. “Either you pull up your trunks and get out of here, or you take them off altogether.”

  She was a patient teacher. The first time was terrible. I was in such a hurry that it seemed as though a pack of panting dogs, foaming at the jaws, would come out of the rushes to attack me at any moment. Smiling, she wiped the grains of sand from my cheeks, while I lay beside her completely out of breath, overcome at my own daring and her unexpected favors.

  We often met down at the beach. I stole away almost every day at noon when there were not many guests. I brought bread and cheese and fruit. I watched her eat, but seldom ate with her.

  “Why don’t you eat anything?” she asked.

  “I’ve already eaten,” I lied. Why? Was it the excitement that choked me so that I couldn’t eat? Perhaps I was subconsciously making a kind of sacrificial offering—a few pieces of goat’s cheese spread out on paper spotted with oil, a few olives, grapes and bread in order to appease the gods and keep the miracle going. She ate with great relish. We made love, swam in the ocean, lay in the sun and made love again.

  Sometime or other, Nikos must have noticed something and secretly followed me.

  “I’ve been watching you and the Frau Doktor,” he whispered, his face as white as a ghost’s and his lips trembling. I punched him in the chest so that he fell to the ground. “You fucked her,” he hissed, filled with hate. “I’m going to tell Father.”

  I knew that he was open to bribery. He always needed money for some accessory or other for his home computer. I offered him one thousand drachmas, he demanded two thousand. I gave the money to him without hesitation, as I knew what punishment to expect from my father’s firm hand. Nevertheless, when my father finally did hear about it, he broke out into loud laughter, and when Mother complained about Irini, referring to her as “that horrible person, that Germinada,” he laughed even louder.

  “Did she seduce you… ?” Nikos asked and stared at me.

  I held my fist under his nose and said, “Get lost!” The whole village got to know about it somehow or other. All of them had a good laugh, the men that is, especially the older men. I hated my brother because of it, although—who knows?—he might not have told anyone. Perhaps others spied on me. But I hated him most of all because he shared a secret that belonged to me and Irini.

  * * * *

  The miracle didn’t last. In the fall, the archaeologists returned to Athens. I never saw Irini again. I wrote more than a dozen passionate love letters, but never sent them. I still have them today. The next year, a postcard arrived. Irini was at some excavations on Cyprus. “Dear Katsuranis Family,” she wrote. My name was not on the card. Father tacked the card to the wall behind the bar like a trophy. Sometime later, the card disappeared. Mother probably tore it down. At times she looked at me as if I had done something outrageous. However, when I lowered my eyes in shame, she smiled.

  Sometimes I drove down to the beach and found it terribly empty or desecrated by strangers.

  * * * *

  “Has the old Nekyomanteion absolutely nothing in common with the new one?” Alexandros asked.

  I shook my head.

  “Have Dimitrios and Nikos still not arrived?” Helena called from the hotel.

  “No!” I called up to her. “I think they’ve closed the bridge down there in Stratos—it’s in danger of collapsing! They’ll probably have to take the road via Astakos, Prebeza.”

  “Everything is ruined. Everything! Everything!” Helena cried in reply. “The whole world is ruined.”

  “A few ugly concrete blocks are not the world. That’s the poetic justice of nature.”

  “Lichens are eating the concrete,” Alexandros said.

  “Yes, a mutated lichen. They call it the ‘Klondike Strain’ because it appeared for the first time in Alaska.”

  “Why don’t they just eradicate it?”

  “My dear young man, that would cost more than the whole world can afford. And besides, I couldn’t care less if that ugly building disappeared.” I pointed to the hotel up on the hill. “With such enormous quantities of concrete to feed on, this organism can reproduce itself at an alarming rate. It can’t be stopped.”

  “But all those bridges, the tunnels, the skyscrapers… ?”

  I shrugged my shoulders. “We don’t need them in order to survive. And if we build anything, we’ll use bricks or stones. Buildings made of rocks and stones are far more beautiful.”

  Alexandros stared at me in amazement. The spirit of my brother Nikos. Many were secretly glad that inland waterways were falling into disuse, long stretches of highways and ambitious bridge constructions were crumbling, and that the ugly concrete buildings of the rich were being condemned by lichens—all of which made expensive repairs necessary. People in this part of the world, however, still clung naively to the belief that technical progress at all costs must be desirable. The lichens were yet another obstacle to the course of progress. Do you really believe, Apostoles, that we could do without progress? No, but I don’t want it to be controlled by people who are only interested in what is technologically feasible, and whose only other characteristic is bad taste.

  “They’re coming,” Eurydice called as she came running to us, out of breath. She turned around and ran to the parking lot.

  A dark red Mazda Electric rolled up. Dimitrios and Nikos got out. The children surrounded them. I got up. Leandros and Helena appeared in the doorway.

  “Come on up to the terrace! It’s warm today,” Helena called. “Why don’t you park the car in the shade, Dimitrios?”

  “There won’t be any shade there in an hour, Helena. It’ll be there, where the car is now,” Dimitrios said and kissed her on the cheek.

  “How do you men always know when and where there’ll be shade?” she asked and pushed a lock of hair back behind her ear. She wore her hair in an old-fashioned way—plaited and pinned up on the back of her head in a bun. “You men always have time to watch the course of the sun, while we women have to work every day, the whole year from dawn to dusk— Saturdays, Sundays, until we drop dead. I’ll drop dead working, that’s for sure!” Oh Sister, I thought, if only you had a little bit of Mother’s pride, of her understanding. But Helena belonged to those who always complain about their hard lot and yet have no other interests in life.


  Leandros, her husband, stood nearby looking guilty, holding his spadelike hands over his stomach.

  “Sit down! Sit down!” she called. “I haven’t finished yet. Apostoles, bring some ouzo, fetch some wine! Are you hungry?” Without waiting for an answer, she bustled back into the house.

  An octopus lay in the glass cooler, its plasticlike flesh spotted with age. The suckers looked like tiny, violet-colored disks stuck to the skin, their edges finely honed. It had lived its eight lives. The ends of its tentacles, limp in death, hung through the wire shelf of the cooler. Life reduced to a lump of protein.

  Can it be brought back to life?

  The bottle of wine was cold and slippery, and I almost dropped it. I rinsed out some glasses.

  * * * *

  Obstacles—nothing but obstacles! How full of hope the world was in those days! It must have been shortly after the turn of the century. Multimanna! A project of biblical dimensions! A project to surpass all projects! The miraculous creation of bread. The feeding of ten thousand… no, ten million, one hundred million, the starving billions of the world. An electronic victory over hunger. Protein recorded on a magnetic disk, then reproduced using inanimate material, from carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, sulphur and God knows what atoms—using a computer matrix and mixing them all together in the turbulence chamber. Unlimited cans of food, the packaging integrated into the program. Multimanna. The ultimate victory over hunger! Bread for the world in the form of electronically synthesized chicken—food for the Indians as well as the Sudanese, Mexicans, Pakistanis and the Hottentots—no ridiculous religious tabu to prevent real mass production; MIDAS was expensive, very expensive, and only worthwhile on a large scale. Naturally, the new technology also produced something for the palates of the rich—exquisite menus by the best cooks in the world, composed in the studio. The fresh aroma and touch of creative genius stored forever on disks. Recorded haute cuisine. The cost, of course, exorbitant—the technical equipment alone would cost a fortune.