GRIGORIS

 

«Μες το μαχαλά πέφτει κουμπουριά

Οι ζεϊμπέκηδες χορεύουν στου Ντελή Θρακιά

Πίνουνε ρακί τρώνε παστουρμά
Και χτυπάνε τα ποδάρια με τα γεμενιά..»

The year is 2002 and it is Grigoris’ twenty fifth birthday. I have just made it to the Retreat Hotel two hours late, for I am a newly minted lawyer and my employer has provided me with a newly minted pointless and menial task simply in order to make the point that lawyers, by their nature, need to be seen to be working ridiculous hours. Pushing past the onslaught of smoke, I come upon Grigoris, glass of retsina in hand, glaring at me under his thick, bushy monobrow.

“You’re late,” he snarls.

Saying nothing in reply, I collapse into the chair next to him as he pours me a glass of retsina. Τhe band plays Pythagoras’ immortal song «Γιορτή Ζεϊμπέκηδων» and the crowd gives forth a whoop of enthusiasm in unison as they circle the dance floor.

“Where is everyone vre?” I ask.

“No one turned up,” Grigoris answers, his knuckles white against the retsina glass. “And she didn’t come either, even though she said she would.”

 

«Καίγεται ο ντουνιάς σπάει ο ταμπουράς

σπάει απ' το σεβντά του κι ο Ντελή Θρακιάς»

 

“What an amazing song,” Grigoris sighs after a while. “You can just imagine these pallikaria, all mates, dancing while the tambura is bursting out of love. It’s almost a scene out of a movie. Well, that was what I envisaged for tonight. But Nick is working night shift, Spiros’ mum is sick, George has commitments and Maria…she promised me, she promised,” he emits a long, drawn-out sigh and shakes his head.

 

“It wouldn’t have worked,” I muse. “The zeimbekides weren’t Greeks. They were the Turks of the Ionian hinterland who would get high on hash and come down the mountains to rob and slaughter the hapless rayiades. It would be interesting to see what Pythagoras was actually thinking about. Do these lyrics the memory of a real event or are they just a mish mash of orientalist motifs? I for one...”

 

“Way to ruin the atmosphere,” Grigoris whines. He is looking at an immensely tall and lithe vision of beauty rather intently. “Go and talk to her and figure out her story,” he commands.

 

Without question, I rise and do his bidding. She is most personable and polite and having broken the ice with an inane joke about Britney Spears and invited her to have a drink with us, I turn to my left to cue in Grigoris’ appearance and effect a hand over. Yet he is gone and this is a problem, not only because I have nothing beyond small talk to follow through with but chiefly, because Grigoris was supposed to give me a lift home.

 

I call him on the mobile and my ear is assailed by the sounds of Marinella booming: «Άνοιξε πέτρα για να μπω». “Bloody women,” George sobs. If you are not tall, dark and handsome they won’t even look in your direction. «Βρε ζωή φαρμάκια στάζεις, σε βαρέθηκα. Κι αν χρυσά παλάτια τάζεις, είναι ψεύτικα».

I consider telling him that Poly Panou, though eminently acceptable, plays merry hell with the intensity of Marinella’s rhythms but decide against it. Hanging up the phone, I notice the vision of beauty eying me with eyebrow raised in anticipation of the promised beverage. A few minutes of me providing a learned exposition on the profession of accountancy in Byzantium and she has sloped off in search of more intelligible company, and I make my way outside and hire a taxi.

 

It is 2008 and I meet Grigoris in Preveza. It is high summer and for possibly the fortieth time in his life, Grigoris is in love. He has already made elaborate plans for how he will receive his lover. As we sit at a bayside tavern, he gazes at the water while sipping copious amounts of ouzo, channelling Mitropanos: «Θάλασσες μέσα στα μάτια σου θάλασσες/ Και με ταξίδευες σαν το καράβι κι έλεγες/ Θα σ' αγαπώ με τα καλοκαίρια…»

Despite my entreaties and the puzzled looks of our fellow patrons, Grigoris, whose voice closely resembles mastodons calling to each other across the ooze of the primeval swamp while standing on cheese-graters, refuses to desist.

Apparently, when he meets his love, she will run to him, her long curly locks unfurled, singing Tania Tsanaklidou’s: «Αν μ' αγαπάς/ Θα κλέψω χρώμα της φωτιάς και λευκό πανί/ Οι δυο μαζί να ζωγραφίσουμε ξανά τη ζωή». They will daub each other with paint and then consummate their love by writing erotic poetry all over their bodies.

I ask with whether Tsanaklidou meant: «Θα κλάψω χρώμα της φωτιάς,» rather than «θα κλέψω» and he is enthused. We discuss how it is possible for one to cry in colours and he confides in me his hope that love will come soon, for the object of his affection has no idea he is infatuated with her. “The power of Greek song!” he gushes. “This is what makes us feel. This is what acts as the soundtrack to our lives.”

The endless undulation of the waves has a soporific effect on me. Slowly I prise my posterior from my seat, for I have an appointment across the border in Agioi Saranta that afternoon. Taking my leave, I recall that not far away from the position we are currently occupying, the poet Karyotakis committed suicide.

Grigoris, incensed that I have shattered his romantic stage-directions, throws his glass of ouzo in my direction and vows never to speak to me again. When we meet up again in Athens a few weeks later for a road trip to his village near Monemvasia, he sings Poulopoulos’ «Έκλαψα χτες σαν μέτρησα/τις πίκρες της ψυχής μου/ Κι εσύ δεν ήσουν πλάι μου/ αστέρι της ζωής μου». I think it prudent not to ask for details, for he appears to be enmeshed in the throes of ecstasy, which is a problem, since he is driving. As we approach Mani, he confides in me that this trip has created an unbreakable bond between us which we shall carry out entire lives. I decide that I am allergic to the Peloponnese.

 

It is 2011 and Grigoris and I are sitting on the sand at Port Melbourne beach. It is August and bitterly cold. As the waves impose their might against the shore, a bitter wind is whipped up, flagellating our cheeks. As the damp from the sand seeps into our trousers, we watch the lights from the Spirit of Tasmania drift away from the pier and linger, like hungover stars before vanishing in the darkness. On his iphone, Grigoris is playing Sotiria Bellou and he joins in with his rasping, dissonant voice:

«Ένα καράβι απ' τον Περαία

ἐχει σαλπάρει για μακριά.

Μα κάποιος ναύτης που είναι μέσα

τον νου του πάντα τον έχει στη στεριά».

“Imagine,” he says. “The scene is set. The ship leaves the docks and the sailor is on board but his mind is still back on the shore..”

“Hello sailor,” I exclaim with as campy a voice as possible.

“Stop being facetious,” he scolds me. “It’s a love song. He pines for a dark, tanned girl and they tell him: «Καθένας έχει και τον καημό του/ έτσι είμαστ' όλοι εμείς οι ναυτικοί». This is heart-wrenching. A brotherhood of shared pain and suffering. People who understand when your heart is bleeding. People who are with you in your solitude. Who feel you when you are past all endurance..” He struggles to complete his sentence and his entire body is racked with sobs. It is not enough that she has left him. She has written him a note to tell him that for all his encyclopaedic knowledge of amorous songs, for all his depth of feeling, his inability to hammer a nail in a wall or to flick a switch effectively, renders him unmasculine in her eyes. The note contains the most appalling spelling I have ever seen.

Grigoris weeps, and I also start channelling Bellou:  «Μην απελπίζεσαι και δε θ’ αργήσει/κοντά σου θα 'ρθει μια χαραυγή/καινούργια αγάπη να σου ζητήσει/κάνε λιγάκι υπομονή». Immediately, his face lights up and he dries his eyes. “Of course!” he exclaims. “Of course! Only you understand me. It’s a whole wide world out there and we are the pearls of its oysters!” I have been plagued with pangs of guilt ever since.

 

The last time I saw Grigoris was in 2016, at his parent’s house, for he had just sold his unit and was moving to Greece the net day. Though his parents had catered for at least forty people, there were only a few of his aged uncles and aunts sipping their coffee desultorily in the living room. Responding to my question as to what he was going to do in the motherland considering that his qualifications would not be recognised and he lacked a support network, he exclaimed: “There is no life here. We are dead. Completely bereft of feeling. Devoid of any sort of emotion. Look at those songs we have listened to together. That should have been us, revelling, falling in love, feeling joy. We had none of that. We haven’t lived. Not like our parents have lived. We have had no experiences. No heart-break, no great romances. We’ve spent our lives wrapped in glad-wrap, insulated from the world, in inane spiritual hibernation among people who have an orgasm just thinking about going to shopping centres, who consider that the apogee of achievement is to buy a car or to get a bargain at Bunnings. There are no people here, just plastic automatons and I can’t take it anymore. I am going to find real people who feel real things and lead real lives. I am going to the place where songs have meaning.” Breaking into song, he chanted triumphantly: «Θα σου φύγω, στο 'χα πει θα σου φύγω και γέλαγες εσύ πριν μ' αφήσεις σημάδια και τα όνειρα άδεια. /Θα σου φύγω, στο 'χα πει».

 

They found Grigoris’  drug addled body in Athinas Street on a cold winter’s day in 2021. He had no form of identification upon his person and it caused the authorities a good deal of inconvenience and annoyance to house his corpse in the morgue until they were able to ascertain who he was, let alone contact his family. After all, why all the fuss about yet another prezoni. And on the anniversary of that terrible day, I make my way sombrely to the beach at Port Melbourne. The wind whips at my face, the damp seeps into my trousers and I watch the lights of the Spirit of Tasmania allow themselves to be consumed by nocturnal oblivion. A car speeds down the Esplanade, its engine backfiring sharp guttural maledictions, filling the night air with harsh malodorous fumes. People walk past hurriedly with their dogs, stopping for a moment as they hear an incomprehensible misremembered lament emanating from my stooped knee-hugging figure upon the sand, stolen by the wind and buried deep within the sea: "Στα λιμάνια, τα ντουμάνια οι ριπές/ ανάψανε φωτιές/ αχ μην κλαις». They walk on.

 

DEAN KALIMNIOU

kalymnios@hotmail.com

First published in NKEE on Saturday 8 July 2023