April 2012
20 Charis Gantzoudis ________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
My name is Alice. I’d rather not say my last name. Home
for me has been for a few years now, this blanket that covers
me, those few square meters of pavement my body takes up. I
decided to fil up these blank pages with my story, so they
know who I am, when the end is near and the smell of my
rotting body draws the attention of somebody near me.
I was born fifty years ago in a smal vil age in the mountains.
The name doesn’t matter. The cause of my abandonment, was
my relationship with a “gentleman” a few years older than me.
I was fourteen when my father threw me out of the warmth of
my family. My secret relationship was uncovered by my aunt
Aspasia, my father’s sister, who happened to see me with the
“gentleman” in the smal coppice at the outskirts of the
vil age.
“I don’t want whores in my house” were the last words I heard
from my father. Since then I haven’t seen them. Friends,
familiars and relatives left me on the street.
I met the “gentleman” a few hours later, at the train station.
He put some money in my pocket and said goodbye with the
promise to find me in Athens. It was the last time I saw him.
Later I incidental y found out that he got married and was
expecting his first child. Let him be well. .
When I arrived in Athens, I didn’t know anyone. From time to
time I felt I was drowning in this city. The first few days I
stayed in a smal city centre hotel. But I soon run out of
money. My body started weakening from hunger. I started
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walking around the streets, begging for a job. Nobody seemed
wil ing to help. Only him. .
It was a February evening. I had run out of money. I was sitting
on a bench at Victoria Square. The cold was piercing my body.
A young man approached me. Well dressed with fine features.
He asked for my name. I was afraid and didn’t answer.
“Are you playing it hard to get?” he asked with irony in his
voice. I got up to leave, but he caught my hand and started
sweet talking to me. He apologized and offered me a cigarette.
I told him I didn’t smoke.
“So, wil you tell me what is going on with you?”. As time went
by, I felt nice with him. I told him my story without hesitating.
He was the first person who showed some interest in me. He
told me not to be afraid. That now I had him.
He led me into a smal room with little furniture. He told me
that this would be my home from now on. I felt awkward, but
thanked God in silence for my luck. Afterwards, he left. I was
alone in my little room. I was so tired and weary that I
immediately fell asleep.
Early the next morning he came back. He entered the room
holding two bags. In the first, the smal er one, there was food.
“I thought you might be hungry” he said. When I asked him
about the content of the other bag he answered that I was in a
hassle. He asked me to talk to him al the time. At one point, he
approached me and kissed me. I stepped back.
“Listen to me, if you want to survive, you have to do what I’m
telling you. You only have me now” he said in a strict tone. He
approached me again. Started ripping my clothes. I begged
22 Charis Gantzoudis ________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
him to stop but he wouldn’t listen. He stormed over me in
madness. My resistance got on his nerves and he started
hitting and screaming at me. I got so scared that I gave in.
After he was done and ready to leave, he said:
“At noon a girl wil come over. She wil tell you what you have
to do. Listen to her, if you want us to get along. And don’t even
think about leaving because if you do, you are screwed.
He slammed the door and left. I was stil in bed, naked and
crying. I couldn’t understand what was going on.
At noon, there was a sound at the door. I opened. It was the
girl I had been waiting for. Her face had a lot of make-up and I
could tel from her clothes what she was. She looked like one
of the girls working at Victoria Square at nights. I kept looking
at them those days I spent on the street. Everything cleared up
in my head.
The girl sat at the end of the bed. She said we didn’t
have much time. I started crying.
“Don’t do that now. In time you’l get used to it. Stratos told
me he brought you a bag with things for work. Where is it?”
She was talking about the big bag. I had forgotten about it.
Without wasting time, she started doing my make-up. My face
was covered with many layers of a white powder and my lips
with red lipstick. My body was dressed in provocative clothing.
“At around eleven we wil go out for work. If you see a car you
wil go to the passenger’s window. He wil rol down the
window and ask you the price. You wil stand provocatively
and talk with confidence to turn him on. Then you wil get into
the car and leave the rest to him.”
This is what “my teacher” said. When I attempted to ask some
things, she stopped me.
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“Those things don’t matter. You have to learn the job if you
want to save your skin.” Was her answer and she continued
“Stratos isn’t joking. He is capable of doing anything.”
That night I had my first customer. I approached his car and
from the window he told me to jump in. He saw that I was
hesitant and, to attract me, he doubled my payment. A while
later, I found myself naked in a hotel room. When the act was
over, I felt dirty not only on the outside, but on the inside too.
I was clearly a prostitute now. In one night, my whole life had
changed.
In this filth I was living and in the dark streets, I found
love. His name: Paul, a street musician. Thirty years old, tal
with dark hear and honest eyes. He treated me kindly. He was
meeting with me in the first hours because he couldn’t stand
the smell of someone else on my body. Yes, I fell in love with
him, but I never told him. What would have happened? Who
would want for a partner, wife, mother of his children, a
woman from the streets? I often though, that if I’d met him
sooner, my life would be different. I wouldn’t have to sell my
body to survive, I wouldn’t drag myself around the streets
searching for a quiet place to wait for another day to pass.
For the next five years, I was one of Stratos’ hookers. One day,
after he came to get the money I made the night before, I
gathered some clothes in a suitcase and disappeared. I left the
neighbourhood and never saw him again.
I kept on working on the streets for twenty more years. But
time went by and I got old. The make-up didn’t work anymore.
Even though they say the older the better.
In those twenty years, I was working alone. I never had a pimp
again. For a while, I was living a good life. I rented a two room
apartment and decorated it. Money didn’t matter. I spent it on
24 Charis Gantzoudis ________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
expensive furniture, carpets and curtains. I managed to create
the il usion of a normal life. But, as I said before, the last few
years, work didn’t go well. Men preferred younger foreign girls
over me, to satisfy the lust in their loins, and, as if that wasn’t
enough, my health problems started.
It’s already been five years since the doctor diagnosed lung
cancer. I stopped smoking and did some chemotherapies. My
body got rounder and my long black hair started fal ing out
onto the pil ow. I started having financial problems. I couldn’t
keep the apartment any longer. I sold everything to cover my
expenses. I survived cancer, but I was on the streets once
again.
During the day I go from church to church and cadge. I ask for
a little money that wil help me survive one more day.
Al my years I was on the streets. Streets with no lights. On
these streets I sold my body to survive, on these streets I saw
young people dead on the pavements with syringes on their
arms. I stil walk these streets today, but now they are fil ed
with the light of the day and this makes me see my misery
with every step.
I am Alice, and this is my story in short. Now that I feel the end
drawing near, I felt the need to write everything down. I could
write many pages but it doesn’t matter. It is enough that the
one who wil find me, when the smell of my rotting corpse wil
draw him here, wil find out my name and I won’t be a
stranger in somebody’s memory.
I am Alice, Alice of the streets. And this is how I want you to
remember me, you who wil bend with sadness over me one
day or one night.
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26 Charis Gantzoudis ________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
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Did I wake you?
May 2012
28 Charis Gantzoudis ________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
“How would my life be if I hadn’t met him? Where
would I be right now? And if I tell him to break up, how wil he
react? But no, I won’t do him any favours”.
This is what she was thinking about and her eyes wouldn’t
close. Every time he came home late from the office, she woke
up with dark circles under her eyes. She peeked at him,
wondering how he was able to sleep next to her, when, a few
hours earlier, he was touching someone else..
“Work at the office you say? Poor guy, you didn’t have time to
inform your secretary and she told me everything. . I have to
do something or I wil go crazy. What if I kil him?”
Her eyes sparkled in the dark and a smile of satisfaction
flashed across her lips. She wanted revenge for his betrayal.
Hate started taking over her mind. With languid moves she
grabbed the pil ow, blocking every life entrance. A cry, that
almost escaped his lips, made her use more force, chocking
him in the four wal s of the room. As his body was shaking on
the mattress, like a fish on land, she felt a feeling of
vindication fil ing every cell of her body.
When his body dried out of life, she took the pil ow from his
face. The colour seemed washed out and his stil open eyes,
were painted by surprise. Alexandra remained on the end of
the bed looking at him. His expression caused a loud laugh. For
the first time she saw him in fear.
She lit a cigarette. Ostentatiously, she threw the ashes on his
lifeless body. “I’l tell his family he left me for his girlfriend.
Everyone knew his flings. I was the last one to find out.” She
whispered, while walking across the room, trying to find an
excuse for Takis disappearance.
The joyful bell sound from the church two blocks away, as
Saint Nicholas Day dawned, interrupted her thoughts “I need
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to hurry” she thought. After covering the body in a blanket,
she dragged it to the elevator and from there to her car.
She drove for some time and ended up, without realising it, at
a deserted location. She dragged the body to the edge of a
sharp cliff and threw it down without any hesitation, without a
single goodbye. She wanted to get it over with. .
It was almost noon. The sound coming from her living room
drove her to stand up. She was surprised, but her quandary
was nothing in front of the one drawn on her face when she
went to the living room and faced Takis asking her “Did I wake
you?”
30 Charis Gantzoudis ________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
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Τhe journey
May 2012
Deity.gr
32 Charis Gantzoudis ________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Philip’s birthday was here. Eleni decided to leave the
accounting office to, her former fellow student and current
col eague, Sofia’s capable hands, so she could dedicate the day
to her partner. They met eight months ago and this was the
first birthday they spent together. She went shopping early to
find the perfect gift and buy that light blue dress she had seen
some days ago at a boutique at Kolonaki and which Sofia was
bugging her to buy since, because she thought that it
highlighted her well-shaped body and blue eyes. Afterwards,
the plan was groceries shopping so she could buy al the
necessities for a dinner-surprise for her beloved, when he
would come home unsuspectingly late in the evening from
work - the advertising company he was working at, was setting
up a big campaign and the manager had inflicted exhausting
working hours to his employees.
Eleni went up to the fifth floor and unlocked the door to the
apartment with her keys. The laughs coming from the
bedroom confirmed that she wasn’t alone. She approached the
door and opened it quickly. Her eyes opened wide when she
saw Natasa, her childhood friend since elementary school and
the only person Eleni would confess everything to, in Philip’s
arms. For a few seconds she couldn’t move. She felt the blood
freeze in her veins, making it impossible to react. With the
little strength she could gather, she said with a voice barely
audible: “I don’t want to see you ever again” and turned her
back to leave before she col apses. The cheating couple, that
had also remained frozen the whole time, awaiting her
reaction, didn’t say anything. Only Philip ran after her when
she stormed out of the bedroom, shouting her name. But her
look, ful of anger, stopped every excuse that was about to get
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over his lips. The closing sound of the door broke the silence
and Eleni didn’t know how fast she got out in the street.
She walked for hours without stopping, chasing away every
thought from her mind. She refused to realize what had
happened, she didn’t want to admit to herself, that at age
thirty two, she was alone again, that someone betrayed her
and from two sides this time.
Spring was almost over and the sun made Athens look like a
boiling cradle. Her long brown hair wiped of the sweat from
her neck, while the big, dark glasses she was wearing, were
hiding the despair in her look. People were walking by,
touching her, but she wasn’t feeling a thing, she wasn’t even
hearing the sounds of the horns from the cars stuck in traffic.
She was just walking without knowing where she was going.
Her steps drove her to Piraeus. She placed her body on a bench
by the pier and started observing the sea and the anchored
ships. Anytime she felt like drowning, she sat there. The
feeling of being able to embark on a ship, get lost in the
endless blue and find herself away from her problems, gave
her a relaxed feeling. She always dreamt of traveling. She had
that habit probably because of her father, who, when younger,
before meeting her mother, had worked as a sailor for a while.
He used to take her to the sea and tell her stories of his few
travels. She doted on him and the heart attack that took his
life when she was eleven, left her in endless loneliness because
her mother didn’t have time for walks, or any time for her at
al .
The memories started coming back and she couldn’t evade
them. Her eyes fil ed up with tears and as much as she tried to
prevent them, she couldn’t. She burst into tears. She looked
like a little girl in fault.
34 Charis Gantzoudis ________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Alex came to her mind. Her first love. It was the senior year in
high school. With his height, blond hair and toned body, he
was the secret desire of every school girl. She was tucked away
in her books, and taken by surprise when he asked her to
prom. She remembered Natasa telling her that she was jealous
of her luck. She had fun with him, until, two years later she
found out that he was cheating on her and no matter how
much she vowed crying in the arms of Natasa, to never trust a
man again in her life, she couldn’t resist Niko’s charm.
She met him in her second year at university. They had fun
together and made plans about the future. Alex was nothing
but a memory. Eleni was crazy in love with him and so did he
seem to be, so it was a big surprise, when, a while later, he
asked her for some t