MY CHRISTOS TSIRKAS

 Twenty years ago, when I used to work in the city, I would walk to Medallion Café at lunchtime, sit myself at a footpath table, open up a book and start reading. Not five minutes would elapse before I would be approached with the question: “What are you reading?” 

“This is a book about Mao’s famine,” I replied on one occasion. “It says here that over 15 million people starved to death.” 

“Nonsense, complete twaddle,” the voice of the late Christos Tsirkas would retort. “No one died in the famine. There was no famine.” The length and breadth of the once Greek Lonsdale Street, being his domain, the bearded Karl Marx doppelganger, was more than just a person, a brand if you will, known variously in reverent tones, or those of derision as «ο Τσίρκας». No attempt to show him statistics, footnotes or references would avail. Tsirkas had decreed there was no famine and the way he would win his argument would be to talk without ceasing until such time as his interlocutor would give up, or agree with him, for the sake of getting him to stop.  

On another occasion, I was reading a passage about Aris Velouhiotis, the controversial leader of ELAS while sipping an extremely bitter Greek coffee. Snatching the book from my hands, Tsirkas intoned: “Aris was perhaps the greatest Greek of the twentieth century. A hero and a visionary. I’m sure this author agrees.”  

“Actually,” I responded. “There are some disturbing accounts here of brutality. And have you read his Lamia speech? It’s almost incoherent. I think that Aris is part of the reason why the Greek Communist Party failed to engage in the parliamentary process, ensuing that the KKE was marginalised and did not play the important role in post-war reconstruction that the French or Italian Communist parties did.” 

“No, no  no,” Tsirkas spluttered. “It is obvious that the author is in the pay of the fascists. Aris was a democrat. He fully intended to restore parliamentary democracy. It’s just that he was betrayed by his own people. He was a kind and good man.” 

This time, I questioned his judgment: “And you know this how?” 

“My father served with him,” came the response. “So of course I know all about it.” It was futile to press the point further. 

Christos Tsirkas was a fervent socialist and supporter of the Greek socialist party PASOK. A mover and a shaker, he would walk fearlessly into PASOK headquarters, barging into the offices of powerbrokers and ministers alike without a hint of trepidation. This was a man whose connections were as numerous and as intricate as the hairs on his beard and yet he would always patiently listen to my criticisms of the movement’s founder, only to launch into a lengthy refutation citing innumerable unconnected factors I had not taken into account.  

The only time I ever saw him get angry was when, knowing of his adoration of the late Fofi Gennimatas, I sought to rile him up by stating: “Gosh Fofi has put on weight since taking the reins of the Party.” «Σκάσε βρε, μη λες μαλακίες,» he snarled, and then immediately softened: “She is very unwell.” Tears were in his eyes. 

It is trite to mention that Christos Tsirkas was omnipresent at all community functions, especially those commemorating the invasion of Cyprus, for he served as a cartographer-spy on the island whilst undergoing his military service, and he loved to tell the tale. Visiting him at his V-Line office at Flinders Street Station, he would wave me inside, showing me photographs of him on the wall as a student, dressed in foustanella, playing Kolokotronis in a school play, regaling me with tales of Cyprus, of the Greek community and plying me with books that he felt would improve my general knowledge. After each of his trips to Greece, he would come and find me: “I’ve got you a book about the Agrarian Riots of Thessaly,” he would exclaim. “You really must improve your knowledge on this subject. Of course, I knew a professor who said…..” 

One Easter, my family went to a relative’s house and we were surprised to see Tsirkas in the backyard, setting up the souvla. However, once the lamb was on the spit and the fire was lit, he took his leave of us. “There are a few other families that need help with their souvla,” he dismissed our entreaties to eat with us. That day he helped set up six souvles. It did not occur to me that in offering to make Easter special for so many families, he was selflessly denying his own. Yet self-denial was the essence of Tsirkas. Even when his beloved only daughter Lambrina died, very rarely would he open up as to the intense and ongoing pain he felt at her loss. Once I asked him why. “Because it is too much for anyone to bear,” he answered, yet he bore that pain in agony for years, even gifting his daughter’s bedroom furniture to recently arrived Greeks, always subordinating his own grief in the interests of others. 

Tsirkas’ understanding of the geography of Melbourne was based on his knowledge of who was in need and in which suburb. Alone he would visit the isolated elderly to give them their medication or procure their groceries. While driving him around Melbourne he would point to houses where people were in need of assistance and relate their life stories. On other occasions he would point to other edifices and describe the important community events that took place there in times gone. Always ready to pursue the interests of his fellow Greeks, a multitude of our tribe owe their careers, their welfare payments or even their relationships to him, yet he never asked anything in return. Not a week would go by that he wouldn’t send someone to my door for legal assistance: “I’m sending so and so to you. Help him and don’t charge him,” he would order. “This person is one of us.” Indeed, in his generous vision, all Greeks were. 

He was fierce as an activist and in community politics but kind and generous to all, standing above ideology, something I experienced in my student days. Attending a function in the old Greek Community building, I was accosted by a gentleman, who, referring to my membership of the Panepirotic Federation, which ought to draw attention to the terrible legacy of the Hoxha regime, remarked snidely: “What is a fascist like you doing in this building?” “He is one of us,” came Tsirkas’ low roar, out of nowhere. “Now walk away and I’ll deal with you later.”   A fierce opponent of the new GOCMV administration, the Greek Centre and the Bullen project, I expected a falling out with him when I revealed to him that I gave them my support. “Just tell me why,” he muttered more in resignation than anger. “Because they are the future,” I responded, to which he uttered the immortal oracular words: “You will find that the future is never as current as the past.” His disappointment notwithstanding, we continued on in friendship as before, studying Trotsky’s History of the Revolution together. “I’ve never rated Trotsky highly. He was only in it for himself,” he commented. “In terms of Bolsheviks, who do you rate highly?” I asked him. “I think Lenin was misunderstood, and this made him angry,” he replied. 

Part of the majesty of Tsirkas was always willing to engage in discourse with persons of diverse backgrounds and opinions. I have two memories that compete as favourites in this regard, both of which took place on his beloved Lonsdale Street. The first is of him being accosted on Lonsdale Street by a roving Japanese film crew, filming a tourist documentary. “You are Japanese?” Tsirkas asked. Immediately, before their dumbfounded countenances he began a lengthy diatribe to the camera about Japanese atrocities in World War II, switching seamlessly into a harangue about the dangers that modern China supposedly poses to Japan, ending with him pointing to me and saying: “See this man here? He knows how to sing “The East is Red” in Chinese.” I’d like to believe that the entire speech made the cut. 

The second time was him chancing upon me showing around a visiting cleric from Greece. He shouted him a coffee and treated him to a lengthy exposition as to all that was wrong with the Orthodox Church, while simultaneously expressing absolute admiration for the late Archbishop Stylianos. He concluded his remarks by opining that religion is a fine thing but its bureaucracy had to be eliminated. The priest could not but agree, remarking to me later: “That man would have made a fine bishop.” Relaying the remark to Tsirkas sometime later, I saw his face flush with pleasure. The man was as multifaceted as he was irrepressible. 

Committed to a community that looked after its own and embraced all of its members, it was a heart-breaking experience to witness his beautiful, indomitable mind decline. Slowly, he ceased his weekly appearances on 3ZZZ Radio and when, visiting him in hospital, he confused my daughter with my mother, I began to cry. “Don’t let them see you cry,” he whispered. “If they do, the fascists will keep you in here, like they are keeping me.” Fascists was code of course for hospital staff and indeed for any form of power, as for Tsirkas, even in his final years when dementia robbed us of his golden tongue, ultimate sovereignty was vested in the masses. 

Now that Christos Tsirkas  has left us, some will write of his contribution to the Labor Party and the Union Movement. Others will write of just how instrumental he was in the struggle to give our community a voice in the mainstream and representation in parliament, or of his efforts to establish Greek institutions such as 3ZZZ, and save the Greek community. All I can write about however, is how I still marvel that such a mass of contradictions could co-exist and reconcile themselves within such a generous, caring and indefatigable human being, one who over the years, became a mentor, a guide and a friend, one of the few prominent members of the community who always treated the youth as equals. A man of principle and character, the palladium of the progressive community, I doubt we will ever see his like again. 

DEAN KALIMNIOU 

kalymnios@hotmail.com

First published in NKEE on 14 January 2023