He started up the stairs and I grabbed his arm and gestured towards the lift. He shook his head and for the first time he spoke to me.
—Ochi, douleui ochi. No, works not.
He was not a Greek. He placed his foot on the first step and when he lifted his body he grimaced. I could see he was in pain. I stooped and he gratefully sank into my arms. I walked up the stairs, heaving from the effort. He lived on the second floor, and when we turned into the landing a young man was waiting for us.
I stopped. I recognised him immediately. But he had no idea who I was. He did not make a move as he watched us coming towards him. The boy in my arms struggled to be free but once on his feet, he hung his head and backed into my body as if seeking my protection. Then the older youth lifted his hand and with a thundering smack he sent the boy sprawling to the ground.
The boy did not make a sound. He lifted himself unsteadily to his feet, still grimacing from the pain, and sheepishly brushing past the older youth, he turned into the open doorway. For a moment, with the light flickering from one naked globe, the hall smelling of cooking oil and shit, the youth and I looked at one another. His gaze was impenetrable. I did something that neither my upbringing nor my culture had prepared me for. I bowed. I turned and I walked down the stairs.
The lights in the hall and landing switched off and I was in the dark. I fumbled for a switch but couldn’t find one. Though it was still clear open day outside, the apartment block was in shadow. From the first floor I heard the radio blaring recitations from the Qu’ran. On the ground floor the first snatch of sunlight dazzled me. I pushed open the door. My shirt and neck and face were drenched in sweat.
The street I was on wound back towards Sygrou and the turmoil of the city. On the hill above, a sea of concrete boxes was etched jaggedly against the fierce blue sky. For the first time on my journey—no, for the first time in a long time—I really wanted my camera. For the first time in a long time, I was hungry to create something.
I had nearly not taken my camera with me. It was Colin who slammed it into my chest, who told me that I was being a fool. In the end I grudgingly took it along. Colin’s fury had decided the matter. I was guilty that I was leaving him back home while I was heading off overseas, I was guilty that I was looking forward to the pleasure of time alone. I was guilty that I was travelling, adventuring, when the last six months it had been his money paying the bills. I swear that I attempted to work. I would take the camera, I would walk streets, enter billiard rooms and train carriages, walk the city and its alleys, along the beach, along fucking freeways and disused hospital sites. I’d attempt to shoot an isolated figure in a platform alcove, the fall of shadows on a smoking woman’s face. Portraits and still lives and bloody landscapes. Colour, and black and white. I would walk into the darkroom that Colin had built for me. I would emerge stinking of chemicals, exhausted and empty. And that was the problem with the photographs that would emerge. They were lifeless.
Dead photographs. I was never a technological pedant. Death in a photograph is not merely a matter of focus or of composition. It is not only the light. It is not the subject. There are photographs that are blurred or ugly or too dark or over-exposed, they can be banal or boring or incompetent. But that does not necessarily make them dead. Death is, of course, simply the absence of life, of the heart and the blood and the soul. The absence of fluid and flesh. The eyes that stared back at me from my photos were dead. The trees and asphalt streets, dead. All my subjects were muted and still. Not calm, but inert. The absence of motion. I would emerge from the darkroom every time, and the smell of chemicals was death on my skin, on my hands.
As fortune would have it, just as I stopped my work, stopped believing in myself, the email arrived from Athens.
The Greek Ministry of Culture invites you to participate in a week of activities celebrating the artistic achievements of the Greek diaspora. They would pay for my trip to Athens. I organised my past into a folio, emailed a return acceptance, and I put down my camera.
—Take it, you fucking selfish idiot. Colin thrust the camera against my chest. I put it away, folded it in my favourite dark blue linen jacket, buried it deep in my backpack. I had not unpacked it. But now I wanted the camera in my hand, I wanted to capture, to make concrete an image. I turned back and looked up at the building I had been in. I wanted to frame the older youth, the boy I had paid for nights before, I wanted him shirtless, his golden face against a bare white wall. I wanted him not smiling, not giving anything away. I wanted him resentful and suspicious, I wanted to capture that moment when he looked silently at me, rejecting me, his gaze demanding me to leave. It was that stare I wanted to capture. I wanted to make my memory of him tangible—so solid I would never forget the boy’s brutal tenderness.
And as I turned and looked up at the concrete slab of his home, exactly at that moment, I became conscious that there was singing all around me and the words of Mohammed were being flung into the blue sky from a dozen balconies. The sun was high above and bathing me in white. As I made my wish, an old woman emerged on a balcony. She cupped her hands together and called for me. She beckoned me to her. I looked around the street again. It was empty; the Athenians were taking their siesta. The woman gestured to me to come inside.
The apartment smelt of fried vegetables and sweat; its walls were dark and bare except for a corner of the tiny living area that was filled from floor to ceiling with icons representing the Trinity and the saints. The two boys were lying flat on the couch, their legs entwined, watching the television and ignoring me. Soccer was on. The old woman ushered me in and angrily turned off the television. I protested, but she would not hear of it. In rapid Russian she berated the boys and they reluctantly sat upright and looked at me. The old woman finished her harangue, turned to me, and waited.
—She wish to say thank you. For you help my brother.
—My pleasure.
The boy translated for the old woman.
—My grandmother wishes for you to stay and eat.
On the couch the young boy who I had assisted sat stony-faced, ignoring me completely.
—And you, are you alright? I spoke in Greek but I think any language I would have chosen would have startled him. He looked at me hard, a moment of fury, but I winked at him and he suddenly grinned.
—Strong. He offered the one English word as a defence and as a justification.
The old woman had left us. I looked around the room. The weary, ancient saints looked down on me. A badly aligned poster of some soccer player added colour to the walls. The older boy followed my gaze.
—He is a god.
I nodded in agreement.
—Do you remember me from the other night? The question confused him. I repeated it, again in English, this time slowly. He tensed in his seat and then looked me up and down.
—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 b
egan 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.