Dead Europe (6 page)

—You stole my Australian dollars, I reminded him.

—I do not understand. There was nothing but dismissal in his eyes.

The old woman returned with coffee and with some almond biscuits soaked in syrup. I accepted the food, sat down on the armchair opposite the boys, and she sat on the arm of the sofa. She took out a packet of cigarettes from deep in the pockets of her black dress and the two boys lunged for them. I reached for mine, offered them to the boys, and we all lit up together.

Her name was Elena, the older boy was called Serge and his younger brother was Yuri. We sat in silence, the three of them looking at me sipping my coffee, the boys' attention drifting towards the blank television screen. I looked at Elena and she smiled at me. Though dressed in black, and her mouth lined with the heavy traces of cigarettes and alcohol,
she was far from old. Her hair was dyed blonde and though I had first thought her black clothing the mark of a widow, looking at her closely it seemed more likely that the simple dress best suited the suffocating heat. Our conversation proceeded terribly slowly, as we were all inadequate in Greek, our common language, but when I told them I was Australian, Yuri began to giggle. He raised his hands, made them paws and then, placing them each side of his head, he made them ears. I nodded. Yes, kangaroos.

Elena asked me many questions then. About the weather back home, about work, about space and desert and ocean. The boys asked me about snakes and sharks and crocodiles. I answered and then the conversation fell silent again. I looked at them, the grandmother, the two brothers, and again the desire to take a photograph came upon me. I wanted to capture her grim smile, to capture the way the brothers' bodies gently touched one another: loosely, affectionately. I looked at Serge's thin brown legs, the soft sparse tufts of golden hair. I remembered the taste of his skin. I put down the coffee, ashamed, and asked for directions to the toilet.

The bathroom was small and dingy, and the boys' underwear and Elena's bras hung from the shower rail. The toilet bowl was filthy with the stains of shit. Mould caked the walls and the porcelain of the basin. I took a piss and looked down at the small wastepaper basket at my feet. There was a yellow syringe hiding among the shit-stained paper. It was uncapped and it was this more than anything that unnerved me. Not the basket of soiled paper, that reminder of waste and human excretion: so confronting for a visitor such as myself whose whole life had been cushioned from exactly such evidence of human need. I washed my hands, flushed the toilet and turned to open the door.

On the back of the bathroom door someone, presumably one of the boys, had clumsily tacked three images torn from
magazines and newspapers. The arrogant sneer of Eminem. A lascivious blonde with the largest silicon tits I had ever seen was stroking her shaved cunt. A black and white portrait of the calm messianic face of Osama bin Laden. The photographs were wrinkled from the humidity in the bathroom.

When I sat down again I noticed that Elena was scratching at her thigh. I looked down at her feet. She was wearing slippers and her ankles and tops of her feet were exposed. There were red sores and faint bluish bruises on her pale skin. I could tell that she shot the heroin into her feet.

—I am a photographer. I mimed the taking of photographs. I would like to take your photographs. Elena laughed and shook her head. Serge and Yuri looked at one another.

—Yes, yes, I insisted. I am a professional photographer. Please, I have an exhibition here in Athens. The words were meaningless to them. I cursed myself for not having the camera with me. The lust to take possession of their image made me reckless. I come back, I come back, I insisted. I will take your photographs. I stood up and made for the door. Elena came after me and started kissing my hands.

—I will return, I promised her, and pulled myself away.

There were no taxis anywhere to be seen in the small street so I headed towards Sygrou, confident of finding a ride there. I heard a yell behind me. Serge had followed me. In the glaring sun, his thin torso naked and frail, he looked closer to a child than a man. He came up to me.

—You take photographs of me, and my brother, yes?

—Yes, I agreed.

—You pay much for porno photographs. It was a demand, not a question.

—Do you remember me, Serge?

He looked confused. He repeated his demand.

—No porno photograph. Real photograph. But I will pay.
Just a little, but no porno. I waved my hands in firm denial. He continued to look up at me, then shrugged, and wordlessly turned his back to me.

I found a taxi and barked instructions to the hotel. I asked the driver to wait and he did reluctantly and only after I left him with some identification. I rushed back to the front desk, rifled through the contents of the pack, unwrapped the camera and held it tight in my grip. All the way back to Kalifea I imagined the photographs I would take. The two boys sprawled on the couch, their limbs entwined. Elena's lined face. The syringe among the shit-stained paper. I kept tapping against the door of the cab, impatient to return. And I tried not to think of the other photographs I could take. Of a naked youth, of a naked boy.

The street had begun to fill with life again. Traders had reopened their doors and old men were playing cards outside a cafe. A weary Chinese woman was sweeping the steps of her apartment block. I pushed the buzzer to the apartment and waited. There was no answer and I kept pushing, madly, desperate. After a few minutes a bearded face appeared over the balcony. His features were dark and he wore a skullcap on his head.

—Who do you want?

—Elena.

—Elena left. Long ago.

I thought I had misunderstood his Greek.

—When will she return?

—Elena go! He had raised his voice. Beside him appeared a young woman draped in a plum-red shawl with a small child in her arms.

—I am a friend, I lied, from far away.

The woman said something to her husband. He disappeared and the woman looked down at me, her face impenetrable. The door clicked open and the man appeared on the street next to me.

—Elena is dead, he told me. He placed a hand on my shoulder.

I pulled away.

—No, I said. She's inside, she's inside her apartment.

—Elena die. Many months, she die.
Pefane
. He kept muttering the Greek word, as if its repetition would force me to believe him.

The camera hung limply from my shoulder. The man turned to walk back into the block of flats.

—And Serge, and Yuri?

He turned around, lifted his shoulders and shook his head. I not know. I followed after him, grabbing his shirt. Tell me what happened, I ordered. He shook himself off me. I pleaded with the now furious Arab man to tell me where Elena and the boys were. His eyes were cold and his mouth vicious. He didn't trust me. I let go of his tunic and he slammed the door in my face. I turned. From across the street the Chinese woman had stopped sweeping and was looking at me, resting on her broom. Her eyes too were cold and distrustful.

I took a bus back to the hotel. It was crowded with passengers and I stood next to a tall young woman in a strapless red top. Her midriff was bare and she was listening to a walkman. As the bus weaved across the congested city, we passed an old Byzantine church. The young woman took off her earphones, made the sign of the Cross and then placed the phones back on her ears. Watching her, I realised that I was nothing but a tourist. I had lost Serge. I had turned down the wrong street, crossed the wrong alley, entered the wrong building. I was a stranger in this city.

 

In the plush hotel room I ran a bath. I soaked myself in the cool water, washed away the pollution and the day. In the middle of the bed I lay naked and gave myself over to depraved fantasies. I was in the apartment again but Elena was not to be seen. Serge led me into a bedroom where his
young brother stripped for me and stood naked for my camera. I took my photographs.

I came imagining capturing his pubescent naked image.

Afterwards, exhausted and guilty, I rang Colin and left a message on our machine. That I loved him very much, that I missed him. Then I rang the bus interchange and found the times for the buses leaving for Karpenissi. I closed my eyes and I willed sleep.

IT WAS SAID of the musician Mulan that the first steps he took as a toddler were to climb down from his mother's knees, crawl across the cold stone floor and topple towards his father who was playing the clarino on the kitchen steps. Absorbed in the music he was making as he looked at the cloud-filled valley spread below, the man did not hear his son approach.

—Look, look at your son, urged the mother, and on turning the man saw the boy's small hand reach for the instrument.

—What do you want, my little man? Mulan's father laughed, but he handed the clarino to the boy. The small child had difficulty at first in finding a firm grasp, but he steadied the instrument on stone, placed his mouth to the reed and began to blow. A sweet, captivating note emerged. At that very moment it was as if the world had stopped and only the note was alive. Mulan's mother and father fell silent and the note danced out of the door and flew across the valley till it reached the village on the other side. It wrapped itself around the women at the well and they put down their vessels and began to sing. On the mountainside the goats stopped grazing and the shepherds sat down beside their animals and closed their eyes to the sun that had suddenly pierced through the clouds. In the village tavern the men placed their cards on the tables and all began to cry. In the mosque, the old cleric dropped his broom, lay down on the hard cement floor and, looking up at the mosaics and tiles, listened to the voice of God. The note swept through the village, into the valley and
across the mountain peak, perching above the old Byzantine monastery as the monks bowed their heads, clasped their hands together and listened as their Saviour spoke.

When Mulan stopped blowing, the note slowly died and the wind carried it to Heaven. A thousand birds began to trill, the clouds vanished, and the valley, the mountains, the very world, were filled with the warmth of the sun's golden light.

There were tears in the proud father's eyes.

—Look, Mother, look. Our child is blessed. He speaks in the voice of angels.

Now Mulan was an old man. Grey flecks studded his beard and deep wrinkles webbed his cheeks. He rested his instrument on the dais and listened to the gypsy Rosa sing. His mind drifted and he willed away the music and singing, the smoke, the shouts and the laughter. He answered his father from long ago.

—Blessed I might have been born, but in a damned place am I cursed to live.

He looked up to find Rosa's fierce face glaring at him. Quickly he brought the reed to his lips and began to play. And as always the chattering and laughter and shouting died away and the crowd turned their faces towards the platform and listened. Tears and smiles appeared. Mulan drew breath from deep within his chest, and it was as if the very soul and blood of the tree that had given birth to the instrument had been renewed, was alive again, and screamed its happiness to be once more among the living. A group of young women rose and formed a circle, slowly swaying into the melody. Their bodies caressed the note as, table after table, in a chain from the old men to the young girls, the village began to clap their hands. At first quietly, so as not to disturb the precious
music of the clarino, the rest of the band began to play. The bouzouki, the tambourine, and then, at first hushed, then louder and more confident, Rosa renewed her song. Mulan blew strongly into the reed, encouraging the circle of dancers into increasingly fevered motion. Women had thrown back their heads and were laughing into the moon. Men were dancing and gesticulating wildly. Children were fighting and grabbing each other. Rosa howled her song. The band thrashed their music. The old man Mulan closed his eyes and played. The whole of God's earth seemed to be dancing to his delirious, mad tune.

Madness was indeed being celebrated in the swirling frenzy of the dance. There was also hunger, raw, piercing hunger that was only muted by the sweet bliss of alcohol. Even the children were going up to the barrels, filling flagons with the sour red liquid and swilling it down. There was madness in the screeching old women, wrapped in thick swathes of black, who were singing the songs as if they were young and free again. But always the hunger. The Germans had gone from house to house, field to field, piling their trucks with livestock, wood and trinkets. There had been madness there as well. The war had entered its third year and now, certain that loss and humiliation awaited them, the actions of the German boys were growing ever more savage. The week before, four youths had been executed in front of Baba Yiannikas' coffee shop and the whole village had been forced to watch. With the men's blood not yet dry, the villagers danced on the stone and concrete, believing that the spirits of the youths were taking solace from their frenzy.

—Play, you dirty gypsies, urged Baba Yiannikas, his skin hanging in loose spongy folds, his once-bulging belly having disappeared, his ribs visible again for the first time in forty years.

And the band played. Mulan blew a note of such piercing anguish that the very tables seemed to lift off the ground and begin their own dance. He knew he was not singing in God's
voice—he was singing with the Devil. The Devil had proved a more faithful companion than God, and Mulan consented to the demons celebrating on this night. As the music became even more furious, the whole village descended into the madness of the dance, more and more circles formed, the men leading with hollering and strangled cries, the women clapping their hands and shrieking with laughter, the children weaving amongst the adults. Mulan blew hate into his reed. The world sickened him. And the world swirling before him danced the hate right back to him. It seemed a thousand stomping feet, a thousand screeching voices, a thousand clapping hands were singing hate and madness and above all hunger, always hunger, right back to him.

Lucia was not dancing. She was sitting alone at her table watching the village abandon itself to the music. Her husband was leading the main circle, drunk, but still nimble on his feet. Her brother Fotis was holding Michaelis' hand, encouraging him to further spins and leaps. She looked across the swirling bodies and spied her sister, Fotini, sitting alone at their father's table. The young woman was with child and she sat, demure and still, with her hands clasped around her rounding belly. Raising her eyes, Fotini spied Lucia. She smiled at her and Lucia smiled back.

Damn you, Lucia whispered to herself, may God grant you a girl, may God grant you an imbecilic girl. May all your pregnancy and labour be in vain. May you die delivering the animal inside you.

Abruptly she rose from her seat. She could find no solace, no pleasure in the music and in the dance. Michaelis forbade her alcohol, so she was unable to drown her torment. Her sister-in-law Irini had just delivered a son. Fotis' wife, Olga, was pregnant with their third child. Even with sickness and war and hunger, it seemed that new life was everywhere. Only she was condemned to the excruciating shame of being barren. Damn you all.

She grabbed a scrap of bread from her table and walked over to where her Uncle Pericles was stoking the fires of the spit.

Baba Pericles had managed to hide three adult pigs from the Germans by concealing them in the desolate caves on top of the mountain's highest peak. He boasted that his pigs understood him and that he had instructed them to keep quiet at the sound of any approaching footsteps. The Germans had indeed climbed the peak but the pigs had remained silent, obeying their master. It was these three pigs that the village had feasted on that night. The crowd had fallen on the roast flesh; all that remained were the charred bones.

The old man was happily drunk. All through the night, when the musicians rested their instruments and taken refreshments, his grateful neighbours toasted him.

As Lucia approached, Baba Pericles stumbled onto his feet and attempted to lead her into a dance. She pushed him gently aside.

—Come on, child, let me dance with the most beautiful woman here.

—I'm too tired, Uncle.

—Are you finally with child?

How she wished she could nod and have him spread his arms around her, have him lift her into the starry night and twirl her around the square. She could watch the envy in every woman's face. She could laugh, she could sing, she could dance. She could dance all night till her feet bled.

—With God's grace it will not be much longer, Uncle.

His face screwed up into sad, intoxicated pity. She stretched out her hand and ripped a remaining meagre piece of flesh from a pig's carcass.

—It's good to taste meat again, isn't it child?

She didn't answer her uncle.

—It's God's will, he called out to her retreating back.

She did not return to her father-in-law's table, but she stepped into the darkness and walked past the churchyard. Inside, she could hear the priest maintaining his solitary lament for the four assassinated men. You're a fool, she muttered to herself. What good are your prayers to anyone? The men are dead and your stomach will be empty in the morning. Even their families dance and eat, even your wife has had her fill. But she made the sign of the Cross on passing.

Lucia walked up the hill to her home. It was a new moon and there was barely any light. She did not cross the yard into her own cottage, but instead maintained her steady climb.

The smell of pine was sharp in her nostrils as she entered the dark forest; almost immediately a chill descended around her. The forest was never warm: even in high summer, the dense canopy formed a shield against the sun. An owl hooted and she started and willed herself to keep walking. She made her way through the black night by listening for the murmur of the rivulet flowing down the mountain. She prayed as she walked, warding off the demons and the wolves. Her greatest fear was that the wolves would take her. If her blood were to join with theirs, she was condemned to Hell for eternity.

She gave a bitter laugh, loud in the still forest. With a clamorous flapping of its wings, the owl soared into the night. Aren't we in Hell already, dear God? The rare feast had hardly satisfied her hunger. It was as if she had been hungry all her life, and she could now not remember what it was to feel satisfaction after a meal, could not imagine living without the gnawing pain in her belly. She stopped and raised the bread she was carrying to her mouth. But she recalled the desperate eyes of the youth on her last visit and did not take a bite.

I am in Hell, she thought. I am in Hell and I am feeding the demons.

She was breathless when she reached the peak and, even in the cold wind, her face was wet with sweat. She stood at the cliff's edge and looked towards the shrouded villages across the valley. The music from the carnival had died away as soon as she had entered the forest, but now, at the top of the world, she could hear the sweet lament of the gypsy's clarino. Damn them all, she whispered into the night. Damn them all and the devils they are breeding in their wombs. She stood at the edge of the cliff and she jumped.

Falling on her fours like a cat, she straightened herself immediately so as not to tumble into the void before her. Turning, she faced the abandoned church. The Germans had removed the weathered timber doors. They had taken everything; they had razed the church as well as the village.

When she had seen the blue doors loaded onto the grey military truck, she had stopped breathing for a moment. Her heart had faltered. She had known immediately what she would do. She would deny all knowledge of the Christ Killer, she would throw herself at the feet of the enemy and she would betray her husband. Let that bastard son of the imbecile, that son of the Albanian bitch, that impotent eunuch Michaelis that God had sent to punish her, let him take the blame. But the occupiers had asked no questions and the hidden youth had not been discovered.

Lucia crossed herself as she bowed under the low archway and entered the church. The stench of ratshit was overpowering and she clapped her scarf to her mouth. She could hear vermin scurrying in the dark. She was glad for the lack of moonlight. The severe, judging faces of the saints painted on the walls terrified her. Their censure seemed even more intense now that the rain seeped down the walls and stained and deformed their portraits.

Slowly, edging her foot along the dirt floor, she made her way to the old altar. She knelt, scraped away dirt and dung
and felt for the groove of the cellar door. With a grunt she pulled at the wooden frame and held her breath as dust and dirt flew around her. She could hear the boy scrabbling in the darkness below, and his frightened whimpering.

—Don't piss yourself. It's only me.

—Have you brought food?

His voice had deepened. It was almost a growl.

—Aren't the rats enough?

—Have you brought food?

Lucia sat on the edge of the opening to the cellar and then dropped herself onto the earth below.

 

She watched silently as the youth lit a fire. The dry wood crackled, then caught alight and the cave was filled with a warm glow. She thought she would gag: all she was aware of was the putrid stench of excrement. In the first year of his exile, the Hebrew had used the immediate world outside the church as a toilet, but with the coming of the enemy, none of them could afford that risk. Michaelis had ordered the youth to relieve himself in a hole at the end of the cavern. But as the fire began its roar, and smoke slowly filled her nostrils, she found that her stomach had stilled.