LOOKING FOR THEMIS

 

“I rule in favour the plaintiff,” the judge pronounced. I barely suppressed a whoop of triumph. Being a relatively newly minted lawyer, this was the first case I had undertaken without supervision and my opponent, a compatriot, was a seasoned veteran, prone to provide such sage advice as “Never try to out-bullshit a bullshitter” (which considering the size of his ample posterior, was an eminently proportionate caution) and: “No matter what the outcome of this case, I still get to send my kids to a private school,” an aphorism whose wisdom, only decades later, with offspring of my own that demand to be educated, I have finally come to appreciate. Nonetheless, at that moment, I was eminently enamoured of myself. I had been suave, I had been debonair. I had enunciated my consonants with flair. I had established a rapport with the judge and had gently in cross-examination led the defendant down a path of logical obstacles and contradictions to his testimony. Now was my winter of discontent turned glorious summer by a combination of diligence and over-emphasis. The path of my legal career appeared before me like a wnding, twisty-turny thing….

My client a diminutive elderly man with spare white hair and a luxuriously groomed moustache drooping down from his sunken cheeks glared at the judge with his yellow flecked eyes and shrugged his shoulders.

“It means you’ve won Mr Prapalapopoulopou….. I’m I pronouncing it correctly?” the judge continued.

The old man stuck his thumbs in his blue serge suit that looked as if it had last seen use at his daughter’s wedding some twenty years ago and was emitting an acute odour of expired mothballs and said nothing.

“Aren’t you happy? You should be happy that you’ve won?” the judge asked. Turning to me, he directed: “Mr Kalimniou, perhaps you might like to explain to your client that he has won,” before dismissing us.

-Νικήσατε, I said to my client gently. Αυτό σας λέει.

-Να τον χέσω τον τζάτζη και τους νόμους του και εσείς τους δικηγόρους και τη δικαιοσύνη σας (I excrete upon the judge and his laws and upon you lawyers and your justice) he spat and stormed outside the courtroom.

Hastily I gathered the papers of my file as I set out after him, as my colleague, still ensconced in his seat at the bar table guffawed: “Ha, typical! That’s how the old shifty Greeks are my friend. They create a fuss so that they use it as a pretext not to pay you. If you want my advice, stay away from the Greeks. Gone are the days when you can make money from a Greek. And when they come to your office they smell of garlic and χωριατίλα. Its not a good image. Instead, what you need to do is find yourself some corporate clients. Solid payers, not like these pensioner γύφτοι…”

Outside, the elderly gentleman was pacing up and down, visibly irritated. Slowly, I approached him and offered to buy him a coffee. At my offer, he softened.

“You buy me a coffee, my son? I should buy you a coffee.”

We sat down and he took out his komboloi and began to flick it with his fingers, the amber beads clacking as they hit each other again and again. He slurped his coffee with a sense of urgency that can only be found in those who have been denied sustenance at some stage in their lives and fear that those times will inevitably come again.

“This is some profession you have chosen for yourself,” the old man observed as I went through some final details with him. “Like marionettes in a puppet show, each being controlled by invisible strings. Actually no, like that cricket that these Australians are so crazy about. That was not a courtroom. That was not justice. That was a game of cricket that you people played, with assigned roles. Your turn to bat, your turn to bowl, well played sir, wow you hit a six but nothing to do with people’s lives. We, are completely ignored.”

I looked at him thoughtfully.

“Listen,” he said, grasping my arm tightly. “I came to this country when I was eighteen years old. An orphan with three sisters back in Greece to look after. I came here so that I could make enough money to be able to feed them and provide for their dowries. The things I saw and experienced, you will never be able to know or understand. The injustice of being denied a place in the sun, simply because you are destitute and here in Australia, to be laughed at and considered a second-class citizen every time you open your mouth. Oh, I’ve seen things. In the cane fields in Queensland, in the farms up in the Mallee and in down here business. Do you know what it is when you don’t have enough money to buy milk for your kids and the landlord is telling you that if you don’t pay the rent he will through you and your family out onto the street? That was how I lived my life. But as hard as people were with me, I was always honest and gentle in my dealings with others. I never asked and I never took a cent more from anyone in business. If someone needed help, to the best of my ability, I helped them. And I never told a lie or gossip about anyone. That is who I am, at the core of my being.”

I had heard these stories from so many people of that generation and my countenance must have betrayed my thoughts. “This is important,” the old man increased his grip on my arm and looked me straight in the eyes. “I’m telling you thing so you can learn. I am a man of honour. I wanted the judge to know this. I wanted to look into the judge’s eyes, the way I am looking into yours now and tell him what is in my heart. I wanted him to understand who I am, where I am coming from, what kind of character I have, as a man to a man. Most of all, I wanted him to understand that I am not the type of person that takes others to court, for him to know that for me it is a terrible thing. That I had no other choice but to take my best friend’s son, my best friend who was like my brother ever since I arrived in this country so many decades ago….I had no choice. The κοροϊδία was too great. It wasn’t about the money. I needed the judge to understand this. He needed to know that I’m not a greedy person. It was about the betrayal. He was like a son to me. It was not right what he did, it was the αδικία.... He didn’t let me say anything about this. None of you allowed me to speak what needed to be spoken.”

There were tears in his eyes and I felt uncomfortable that such a proud and dignified man was weeping in my presence. “What I wanted to tell the judge that in memory of my ancestors, no one ever took anyone to court. But what could I do? If I am to remain destitute in my old age, so be it, but it wasn’t right what that boy did, I merely wanted the judge to understand it wasn’t right. I wanted him to know that I agonised over my decision, that I gave the boy so many chances to make things right and for him to make the boy understand that as well, but…. I was denied justice. The judge was not at all interested in me, or my story. He was not concerned about getting to know me or my motivation. Instead, it was all about the money. The money, the money, the money, as if there is nothing else important in this world, as if people and their relationships count for nothing. So yes, I’ve won. What exactly? Humiliation and the loss of my friend’s esteem up there in heaven. English justice.”

Carefully, he removed a painstakingly ironed, monogrammed handkerchief from his pocket and wiped one eye after another. “You know once I was told that the English word Justice comes from the Latin word Ius which means law. But the Greek word δικαιοσύνη means fairness. There is a big difference. A lot of truth is hidden in words. But of course, for the ancient Greeks, there was a goddess of Justice, Themis. Justice is part of our religion. And I also remember hearing that in the Byzantine conception of Justice, she is not blind. Instead, she sees all, for context is everything.”

He stood up and reached out his hand. As I extended mine, I felt something cold and hard pressing against my palm. “I wish you every success in your career,” he farewelled me. “But take this komboloi as a memento of our meeting, and remember an old man who tried to teach you the difference between law and justice.” That was decades ago and yet I have carried it into each of my court appearances, ever since.

DEAN KALIMNIOU

kalymnios@hotmail.com

First published in NKEE on Saturday 1 March 2025