George remembers :
One comes out of the metro, turns left on a wide avenue, Dionysou Areopagitou, now a pedestrian zone, with well preserved two and three-storey buildings on the left side, neo-classical, classy and obviously inordinately expensive, and on the right a steeply upward-sloping stretch of trees and wild bushes leads the eye to the rocky plateau of the Acropolis. There are few sights as gripping and soul wrenching as the heroically time-defying remains of the Parthenon which dominates the Acropolis. At night, as one strolls towards the Herodus Atticus theatre or leaves it in a hurry to catch the last metro, again, the sight of the illuminated Parthenon suspended in midair unsettles you with its beauty, its delicate, massive but well-proportioned majesty and for a moment reality fades, your acquired skepticism wilts, and you feel pride for this country. No history or society is without blemish; even the builders of the Parthenon, the politicians, philosophers and tragedians of that golden age. The architects and sculptors, the unknown soldiers who routed the Persian hordes, they cannot have been different from us, today. An inspired few created glorious history; the masses were our ancient twin brothers.
By the time I reached the theatre a crowd was already milling at the entrance, noisy and effusive. The staff of the Japanese embassy was greeting their more important guests with smiles and courteous little eastern bows. I showed my ticket at the door and moved along the marble steps into the amphitheatre. It is another of the many jewels of our country. Built in the shadow of the Acropolis in 161 AD, the “Irothio” is relatively small, able to accommodate about five thousand people and remarkably well preserved.
The marble seating rises steeply in a semi-circle, tightly and not overly comfortable despite the little pillow allotted to each spectator. But that is overlooked. The atmosphere is overwhelming.
I am not a lover of ancient Greek tragedy. I have never been taught it and perhaps I miss its finer points. It might be a matter of temperament. I tend to be cool and collected and violent emotions rarely bubble out of my possibly repressed and apathetic psyche. I would not have gone to see Oedipus Rex on any occasion despite my interest in incest because in this tragedy it is accidental and not perversely intended.
Its revelation brings forth turmoil and despair verging on the comical. Much less a play performed by Japanese actors in their language. I cannot imagine they had much success in their country. An indication of this was the fact that, in the end, as they were roundly applauded by their enthusiastic Greek audience, they kept on returning for more applause, again and again, until it became quite tiresome. Their exultant smiles told us they had experienced nothing like it in their country.
I had been offered this invitation by a friend employed in the Japanese embassy and was embarrassed both to refuse it and fail to attend. As I was climbing the steep steps to my seat I was thinking of the message I had just seen painted on the wall outside the metro station. It said “malaka Ellina, xypna. Exo oi xenoi” (you masturbating Greek idiot, wake up. Out with the foreigners). I was shocked and annoyed. Lately, I seemed to notice repeatedly traits of my compatriots that 69
disappointed me. I thought of the ancient Greek maxim “pas mi Ellin, varvaros” (whoever is not a Greek, is a barbarian). Was modern Greek xenophobia an ancient legacy after all? Perhaps. Though I surmised, the ancients developed it out of a sense of their superior culture and civilization while my contemporaries out of a sense of superiority that is superficial and false, ungenerous and timorous.
I found my seat. On my left, a swarthy Asian woman in a sari, perhaps, in her late forties, on my right, a well-known TV comedian with a group of friends. The theatre kept steadily filling up well past starting time. Greeks, both spectators and organizers, are casual about punctuality and few events start on schedule.
Above the stage, a rudimentary translation, in both Greek and English, of the grandiloquent dialogues of the tragedy was screened in a long, luminous band. It left me as indifferent as the acting, the costumes, as the configurations, movement and antics of the strangely clad chorus, as the occasional monotonous, supposedly ancient music. It left me praying for the end and the interminable applause was the last straw. I turned with a smile, concealing my annoyance, to the lady on my left who did not stop clapping. I spoke to her in English.
“So you liked it,” I half asked, half affirmed.
“It was a good try,” she said in a characteristic Indian lilt. “It seems you were not impressed. You are not applauding.”
“I did. I gave them their due. One must be civil but this is too much. A Kabuki might have been more interesting.”
She smiled pleasantly at me. She might have been slimmer and prettier fifteen, twenty years ago. Black hair in a neat bun at the back of her neck, she had a sweet smile and good teeth. Her nose was a slightly prominent and her eyes large and alert. Small and buxom, she was not unattractive when you bothered to examine her, which one was loath to do offhand.
“Still, if I were Greek, I would consider it an honor that the Japanese chose to play a Greek tragedy.”
“That‟s why the audience is clapping so hard. They are applauding themselves.
They are grateful to the Japanese for honoring their heritage, for caressing their self-esteem.”
She smiled again.
“I assume you, too, are Greek,” she said.
“Yes. Another of that proud race. And you?”
“I‟m from Sri Lanka.”
“Of the Tamil Tigers?”
She laughed.
“It‟s sad that the Tigers come to mind when one mentions Sri Lanka. Ceylon is a beautiful country. It has fertile plains, mountains and jungles and of course real tigers on the way to extinction. Needless to say they are less savage than the human tigers.
They only kill to eat. I‟m a Tamil, in fact, but a peaceful one. Hardly a tigress.” She looked at me with an uncertain smile as if hesitating to express her views to a difficult, opinionated person. But she went on.
“You see, I dislike politics and politicians. They don‟t allow people to coexist peacefully. They incite fanaticism and intolerance amongst different races and religions for their own selfish ends. They are indifferent to the suffering they might cause, the deaths of thousands. We have had periods of terrible violence in our country. Massacres and killing on both sides, that is, between the Sinhalese and the Tamils. Things are much, much better these days.”
70
“We have the politicians we deserve, Madam. We should not complain. They are callous, loquacious windbags most of them and their major concern is themselves, their pockets and power. We choose them and tolerate them. They are the mirror image of us; they reflect the values of our society.”
“Yes, yes. We are oversimplifying, of course, but there is much truth in what you say.”
The lights of the Irothio were finally switched on.
“Well, well,” I said. “The actors have definitively retired! Hurrah! Enough is enough.”
“Don‟t be harsh. Didn‟t you see their faces glowing with happiness? The applause of their repressed compatriots in Japan must have been dull, almost inaudible.
The acclamation they received tonight was beyond their wildest dreams.” A slow shuffle down the steep marble steps heading towards the exit started row by row from the ground floor up. I said good-bye to my neighbor. She was sweet and sociable and seemed intelligent. I would have risked asking for her telephone number but I saw a wedding ring on her right hand so I told her I enjoyed our chat and left her to enter the huddle towards the exit. On the street I headed at a rapid pace for the metro station. As rapid a pace as my portly figure would allow me. I was out of breath half way there. I must go on a diet again, I thought.
It was almost midnight. Closing time of the station was approaching and I did not want to use a taxi. The streets were unusually quiet, almost empty. The European football final was being contested in Portugal and Greece, having played exceptionally well thus far was fighting for the title. Almost the whole of Greece was stuck to the TV
screens. Thousands traveled to Lisbon for the match but many supporters did not manage to enter the stadium because of the huge crowds and had to rely on television screens set up outside the stadium.
The Acropolis metro station was almost deserted when I entered it but a trickle of people from the Irothio followed my hurried and anxious arrival. Not so the train. It took its time coming. I saw my lady neighbor of the Irothio come in and I moved further along the platform. I had grown too fat and my big belly and chubby face had demolished my confidence in my sex appeal. I could not imagine a woman being attracted to me. My wife had not slept with me in three years and had finally left me to return to her family in her native provincial town. She is very beautiful and I never managed to get over my love for her despite the humiliations she heaped on me, despite the physical aversion to my person she made no effort to conceal.
On top of everything, I had health problems, which left her completely uninvolved, completely indifferent. Sometimes I had the feeling she would be quite happy if I died. The sooner the better. She would inherit my property which though not very great is, nevertheless, not insignificant. That is why she did not ask for a divorce.
And then, I suppose, another reason was that she did not meet another man willing to marry her. At her age, any love affairs she may have had were probably ephemeral, probably with married men. A divorce from me would have left her financially insecure. She had been through that once before. That‟s what threw her in my life, in my arms, in my grateful embrace. When she left me she asked me to vacate the flat we lived in, which belonged to her. I rented another in Kifisia.
The train finally arrived and I was thinking that it was touch and go whether I would manage to get on the last connection to Kifisia. I got off at the Attiki station for the change to the Kifisia line. The station was once again deserted and hardly any noise came from the street. I sat on a bench to wait. I figured the last train would be coming soon otherwise they would have announced that the station was closing down. The Sri 71
Lankan lady lingered further down the platform. A quaint, exotic presence in her sari and colorful scarf. She turned and saw me and slowly ambled towards me.
“May I sit next to you?” she asked.
“Of course. Please do.”
She sat on the bench next to me with a friendly smile. There was an awkward silence for a moment. I felt she wanted to chat. She looked to the left and to the right in mock amazement and with a sweeping gesture indicated the platform.
“It is quite eerie, isn‟t it?” she remarked.
“You mean the quiet, the emptiness? It‟s because of the football match.”
“I know.” she said with her sweet smile. “The world is becoming civilized,”
“Civilized?”
“Sure. Football is the modern world‟s sublimation for war. Of course there are still armed conflicts festering here and there but they are frowned upon by the so-called civilized nations. If you study world history as a whole, in summary, and not in specific periods of time where details interfere with the overall picture, you will be stunned by the fact that the history of mankind has been an incessant murderous and merciless aggression and domination of one country, one race, one tribe by another, to plunder and steal each other‟s wealth and displace them from their land. This has been going on till our very days. No need to cite examples for they are only too obvious. In my own country, the original inhabitants were a people called the Vedda. At around 500 BC, the Sinhalese moving from the north of India to the more fertile south drove the Vedda to the jungles and later the Tamils, from the south of India overflowed into Ceylon. They were, of course, unwelcome and even though a minority, the conflict between the Sinhalese and Tamils has been going on ever since.”
“Hence the Tamil Tigers.”
“Indeed!”
“I think one solution to the problem is to teach them football.”
“You‟re making fun of me.”
“No, no. It was just a silly joke. What you imply is very interesting. If I understand correctly what you are saying is that since wars of domination between countries are now unthinkable, football has become the new mode of combat that pits one country against another.”
“Don‟t you think I‟m correct? Why else the game‟s almost universal appeal?
The irrational fanaticism; the senseless violence in the sports arenas; the decadence of the sportsman to a high priced gladiator; the spectator, the sports lover to a hooligan?”
“Yes. You are probably right to an extent. It might, furthermore, function as a safety valve, a letting off steam for the considerable stresses of our contemporary daily existence.”
“Such as waiting for a train that may or may not come,” she said and smiled.
“Or having endured three hours of insipid Japanese moaning.” She laughed.
“Come on! It wasn‟t that bad.”
“Where are you going?”
“To the Kifisia terminal. From there I shall take a taxi to Nea Erythrea where I live.”
“I‟m going to Kifisia as well.”
“Might we share a cab?”
At that moment a sparsely occupied train rolled in the station and with relief we boarded it and sat together at an empty double seat. As the train entered the Kato Patissia station we heard triumphant cheers and yelling. One could not mistake their 72
message. Our fellow passengers, equally quick on the uptake, jumped up. “We won, we won,” they cried. In a matter of minutes the stations on the way started flooding with distraught, hysterical humanity vociferously expressing their elation. Greece was the European champion. The unexpected, the unbelievable, the miracle had happened. I had never seen nor imagined the possibility of such an outburst of emotion and enthusiasm.
Thankfully, I noted that the crowds were massing on the opposite platform, leading to the city centre. Very few people entered our train.
“Congratulations,” the Sri Lankan lady told me with a smile.
“Thank you,” I replied. “I had very little to do with it.” She looked uneasy at my snappish reply.
“I meant to congratulate you as a Greek. You surely must be glad.”
“I am certainly gratified but these excesses of rapture for a game of football are beyond me.”
“And yet, one must not scorn the game even if it leaves him indifferent. A friend of mine and obviously a lover of football described the football pitch as a huge chess board, by which he meant that there are, beyond the obvious physical attributes needed, a great deal of mental calculation, talent, art, skill and vocation.”
“I do not scorn the game, dear lady.”
“Please call me Andchana. I prefer if to, dear lady.”
“Okay. Mine is George. Not as beautiful a name as yours but I did not have a say at my christening.”
A smile.
“Names are not important. It is the person that counts.”
“Yes, of course. As I was telling you, Andchana, I do not scorn the game. You can see from my shape, I am not much of a sportsman. Apart from short walks now and then and a little swimming in summer I have never done any sports. I am in terrible shape, overweight, flat footed, and uric acid makes walking painful much of the time. It is, perhaps, understandable that I should lack the enthusiasm of a healthy person. But above all else I strongly disapprove of something you yourself pointed out: the fanaticism that has come to be identified with the game. The bad manners and the hooliganism. Somehow it brings out the worst in people.”
“Yes, it has stopped being a game for the playing fields of Eton, isn‟t it? The creeping civilization, the softening and refinement of mankind has made it a substitute for war and war is a nasty affair. But I think, perhaps, we are being too harsh. Let‟s just say, it has its good and bad points.”
“Like most things in life. In any case, it is rather naïve to generalize.”
“Oh, we are only chatting idly. We are not expounding principles.”
“No. But looking at this revelry I truly think your opinions are quite apt.”
“Another interesting point is that it is exclusively a man‟s game. Unlike tennis, swimming, skating and athletics, women do not participate and are totally indifferent to it.”
“Which means?”
“Well, women hardly ever take part in wars and though, in history, they were rarely in a position to initiate warfare, I think that even had they been in such a position, they would have never done so. Any substitute for it does not interest them either. They laugh and scorn at their ridiculous men folk who yell and gesticulate at their TV sets, get elated and depressed according to the game‟s result.”
“I must have an excess of female genes in my genome.”
“Good for you,” she said.
73
As the train was approaching Iraklio, an announcement came through the intercom saying that this was the last train and it would go as far as Irini, which was the station after Iraklio.
“Oh God! This is the last straw. First, an insipid Japanese Oedipus Rex and now this.”
“What‟s the matter?” asked Andchana.
I explained the situation and suggested we get out at Iraklio to try and find a taxi because the station at Irini is in the middle of nowhere. It is at the rear of the Olympic stadium, utterly isolated, with no possibility of finding a cab. We got off at Iraklio into a swirling mob of exuberant, festive, cheering people of all ages and of both sexes. I pushed my way to the exit of the station, into the street. Crowds were converging towards the station. The streets were packed and no cars were circulating, let alone taxi cabs. Andchana followed me and when the jam was too thick held my arm so as not to lose me, which was not so unlikely a proposition. There was a twinkle in her eye. She seemed to be amused by this hullabaloo, as if it confirmed her theory of football being the civilized substitute for war.
I smiled at her when I felt her grip on my arm and she smiled back.
“War is always hard on the non-combatants,” I said.
“Do you think we shall survive, George?” she asked mischievously.
“Hopefully, but perhaps not intact.”
“Oh dear. Might we lose an arm or a leg?”
“Not quite. More likely a good night‟s sleep and our good humor. It is already quarter to one.”
I tried to concentrate in the swirling mob, to size up the situation. Taxis were definitely out. It, obviously, was not a life and death situation, it was not a cause for panic, simply concern for the extreme discomfort and loss of time we would be subjected to, inadvertently, unluckily, for we were not celebrating. That Greece was the European champion in football meant so little when untold, pitiful defects and shortcomings plagued the country and its citizens‟ moral values. I thought the most logical option would be to return to the city center where finding a taxi seemed a less remote prospect. I told this to Andchana and we hurried back to the metro station and pushed our way inside. Miracle of miracles, an empty train, against all logic at that late hour, rolled in the station. In typically Greek style I grabbed Andchana‟s arm and charged like a bull to an empty seat. We sat hurriedly while an avalanche of people surged through the door as if propelled in under extreme pressure. The compartment filled to the point of suffocation. Andchana patted my leg.
“That was extremely adroit of you,” she said laughing. “A little rough but I don‟t think you injured anyone.”
“Yes, now and then I resort to practices I ordinarily abhor.”
“It‟s hardly the time to be a gentleman.”
“Especially since I am accompanying a lady.”
The noise around us was deafening. The shouting, the laughter, the happiness.
They were literally jumping for joy. Up and down, up and down. I wondered if the coach could withstand the strain. Excess jubilation was turning to mass hysteria. Groups of friends yelling at other groups of friends. They were all one, for once. The wise old saying that if you put five Greeks together you had five different opinions, five different political parties did not hold this evening. And the Greek vulgarity ever present. Never a trait to tarry when Greeks get together. One group shouted, “What did we do to them?” and the reply, universal and deafening, “We fucked them.” Andchana looked at me and smiled.
74
“Despite my meager Greek, I understood that. But what is that other chant? It goes on and on.”
“Varia, varia, t‟arkhithia tou tsolia?”
“Yes.”
“I‟d rather not say.”
“Come on George, I‟m fifty-two. I can take it.”
“I‟m fifty-two as well and it shocks me, nevertheless.”
“Please.”
“Well, varia means heavy. Arkhithia are a man‟s testicles and tsolias is the traditional Greek evzone. You know, soldiers wearing the traditional white kilts, sleeveless colored jackets, red caps and red leather tsaroukhia, shoes with an upturned tip and a round tuft. If you pass by Syntaghma you‟ll see them guarding the tomb of the Unknown Soldier.”
“So what does that mean?”
“Oh Andchana, use your imagination. The Portuguese ninnies could not resist the Greek tsolias and his heavy testicles.”
“I would have thought the heavy testicles would hinder the players‟ movement.”
“How? Make them lose their balance? Really, Andchana! Big testicles mean virility, aggression, a surfeit of sperm. How else could we have fucked them? The pretension of those little hooligans is sickening. This thoughtless and naïve chauvinism drives me mad. Let alone their manners. I hate to think these young people shall be tomorrow‟s citizens, businessmen and politicians.”
Andchana was silent. I thought, perhaps, she was reluctant to express an opinion which might have been offensive. She was being polite.
To break the silence, I asked, “Are your compatriots as crazy about football?”
“Our national game is volley ball but by far the most popular sport in Sri Lanka is cricket, a legacy from our late English masters.”
“A gentleman‟s game. I never quite understood it. A game where a match can stretch for several days is beyond me. I suppose a gentleman‟s game requires gentlemen‟s manners.”
“Oh, they are quite fanatic about it but I believe nothing like this has ever taken place.”
The train continued its journey slowly. It seemed to be creaking with the overload. At every station on the way more people tried to squeeze in and the automatic doors would not close except after many, repeated, exasperating trials. The station loudspeakers urged the people to let the train depart. Another would be following behind. We were very lucky to be seated. We could barely carry on a conversation. One or two sentences exchanged and then the absorption at the unbelievable happening.
“There are girls in their midst hollering with the best of them. How do you explain that?” I asked Andchana.
“They‟re out for the fun of it, aping their puerile boyfriends.”
“They‟re not fanatics?”
“Never. The female sex is down to earth. Sensible. Practical.” We reached Omonia station in this slow, tedious pace. The racket, the slogans and furious movement did not abate throughout the journey. At Omonia we let the hordes pour out of the coach and when the pressure eased, followed them to the exit with the stragglers. We emerged on the square by the escalators to find it almost packed and noisy with people continuously pouring in from all the streets leading to it. No cars were circulating in the vicinity and one or two celebratory bonfires were lit. The high spirits and cheering, the loud jeering and taunts for the defeated arch enemy continued 75
as if instructions had been given by a Greek High Priest of Jingoism. The union of hearts and minds was total. I looked at Andchana, a friendly face in this wild, aggressive exhilaration all around us. She kept close to me and held my arm now and then. She was as lost as I was but more vulnerable.
“Do you see any taxis?” I asked her.
She laughed.
“Don‟t blame me. I did not suggest we come here.”
“In any case, perhaps it was worth coming after all. We are witnessing an unusual phenomenon. Mass paranoia. That‟s what Kristallnacht in Nazi Germany must have been like.”
She laughed again.
“Oh hardly,” she said. “It is certainly not as sinister. It is not a product of hate and is not sanctioned by the government.”
“No, not hate. But what is the psychological motivation?”
“A sense of insecurity? Of inferiority? The fact that Greece has accomplished something they never imagined possible? The trouncing of all those superior Europeans who are way above Greece socially, politically and above all economically?”
“The funny thing is that we Greeks have a very high sense of self-esteem. We really believe we are the finest, most intelligent race on earth.”
“Don‟t be too critical on this. It is the common pretension of all races and countries.”
“You mean to tell me that Sri Lankans are better than Greeks?”
“Without the slightest doubt. We are the best.”
I laughed.
“So perhaps you can tell me how we can get out of our predicament.”
“You got us into this; you get us out of it.”
“Well, no sense in hanging around here. Let‟s walk towards Alexandra Avenue,” I suggested, “We might find cars and taxis circulating there.”
“My shoes are starting to pinch. They are new and not yet broken in.”
“My legs are starting to ache, too. They are old and considerably overloaded, don‟t you think?”
“Next time, before you go to a Greek tragedy go on a diet.”
“And you‟d better wear a comfortable pair of shoes.” We started on a slow trudge down Patission Street moving against an incoming tide of people on their way to Omonia. It seemed like a setting of a science fiction movie where the landing of a spaceship brought thousands of people out in the streets. I had seen it once before after a major earthquake in Athens, which immobilized public transport and brought car circulation to a standstill. People flooded the streets walking aimlessly, anxiously, wondering how to get home. This time it was a celebration for a football match victory and the masses were happy. Families with children moved with smiling, shining faces towards Omonia to participate in a national delirium of triumph.
Next day was a working day but that did not seem to concern anyone. I was worried, Andchana was worried, but we were a minority of two.
We walked silently for a while dodging people who eventually thinned out as we drew further away from Omonia and finally reached Alexandra Avenue where we had not yet sighted a single vehicle. Andchana told me she was getting tired and her feet were hurting. I said that further down there was a bus stop and we could sit and rest on the bench that was there. When we reached it we sat with the infinite relief of a way worn traveler. I looked at my watch.
“One thirty,” I told Andchana.
76
“The night is still young,” she said and smiled.
She seemed to be taking the experience in her stride. The spring weather was mild and in her silk sari she seemed not uncomfortable. I complemented her on the color scheme of her sari, her earrings, her red necklace and she smiled. She smiled a lot in any case and her swarthy face indicated a patient, pleasant disposition. She was as attractive as the wear and tear of her age and emerging wrinkles allowed. Usually one can tell that a woman must have been beautiful in her youth.
“Is anyone waiting for you at home?” I asked.
“No. I live alone. And you?”