Giulia, younger than I by a month, had sat across from me on a sofa and her penetrating dark eyes had unnerved me. She had interrogated me. Who did I vote for? Were there Greek members of Cabinet in Australia? What was my perspective on the civil war? Was I a supporter of the Velvet Revolution? Did I agree that Scorsese owed his biggest debt to Rossellini? What was my favourite Dylan, my favourite Tsitsanis? Her sharp slanted eyes had scrutinised me, and I thought I had been a disappointment to her, clumsily answering her questions and making it obvious that Australians were ignorant and naive compared to the hunger of a Europe suddenly churning through the vast ramifications of the fall of the Soviet Bloc. But she had laughed when I told her my favourite Dylan was ‘I Want You’, and had started singing it, and she clapped her hands and squeezed my knees when I defended Voyage to Italy over The Bicycle Thieves. My aunt had cooked a large dinner and then I was off to the station to take the train to Belgrade. Giulia had jumped up and offered to drive me. I had said my goodbyes, received my stilted kisses, and thrown my black backpack into her car. She was driving silently, smoking a cigarette, and I remember feeling melancholy and alone. But we never arrived at the station. Instead, she stopped outside a cold grey Balkan apartment block and told me to grab my bag.
—Where are we?
—My friend Elena has an apartment here. She is in Rhodes for the summer. I have the key. You are staying here, she announced.
I laughed.
—Giulia, I have a train to catch.
—Forget it, your travels can wait. Here’s my cousin from Australia, damned faraway Australia, and he’s not leaving until we have a chance to talk.
We entered the apartment block, took the tiny creaking lift to the third floor and entered a cramped space filled with the fragile soothing smells of women with a balcony looking over the Port of Thessaloniki. I smoked a cigarette, breathing in the sea air and the summer wind, while Giulia fixed us drinks.
—Anyway, you can’t leave yet, you’ve hardly seen anything of this city. She was standing in the doorway and sipping from a gin and tonic. Then, taking a seat beside me, looking out at the sea, she asked me very simply, Tell me, how did my uncle die?
—Where the hell are you?
—Karpenissi.
—Karpy-island, she mocked. Nissi was the Greek word for island. I was travelling to an island in the mountains.
—And what the hell are you going to do there?
—I’m going to visit Mum’s village.
—Really? Her voice was now warm, soft and warm, and caressing. I’m coming. Where shall we meet?
I looked out of the small hotel window, down into the lazy square, across the rooftops to the mountains.
—At her village?
I thought Giulia was going to choke on her laughter.
—I doubt it will be a popular meeting spot, the Wild Forest.
Agrio Dassos. The Wild Forest. Where my mother really came from.
—Hang on a minute, she said, I’ll ask Andreas. I heard rapid Greek being exchanged and then she was back on the phone.
—We’ll meet at the Megalo Horio.
—What?
—I’m serious, we’ll meet at the Megalo Horio. Andreas says that’s the easiest place for you to find. It’s only a half-hour from Karpy-Island.
—It’s actually called Megalo Horio? In English, the name translated to the Big Village. In Australia that could only be a name for a theme park. Where at the Megalo Horio?
—It’s not that megalo. At the square. I heard her call out to Andreas.
—Tomorrow night. Saturday night in the village. She cackled with laughter. Baby, she hissed in delight, choking on her laughter, her accent Brooklyn via Bucharest, We are going to make some noise.
Megalo Horio turned out to be a little like a theme park. The village itself was perched precariously in the forested chest of the mountain, and its neat cobbled streets ran vertiginously down into the lush green valley below. In France or in Germany I would have seen nothing odd in this picturesque prettiness; but in Greece where I was used to the eroded and stripped sunburnt earth of the mainland, or the salt-drenched sparseness of the islands, this handsome cool village surprised me. I wandered its alleys, going in and out of small shops selling traditional sweets and cheeses; I watched a withered old man in a black beret carve a wooden cane into the shape of an elongated horse’s head. Only the Greek language was to be heard. The tourists on the streets of the Megalo Horio were all Greek. The women’s fleshy buttocks strained against the thin fabric of their Versace trousers. The men’s arses were squeezed tight into Calvin Klein jeans, their bellies bulging obscenely over the waistbands.
I found a room above a shop that sold sweetmeats and I bought myself a flagon of cheap retsina and drank myself sick. This was not the Greece I had thought I would find. When I had first travelled here, I had seen the cities and I had toured the islands, playing the tourist. Back then I had found another country. The streets of Athens were dusty, the walls were covered with slogans, and it was I who was the materialist interloper. Now, outside in the square of the Megalo Horio, it was all Prada, Gucci and Versace, and everyone sat drinking, eating, and speaking loudly and ostentatiously on their mobile phones. I drank, I got blotto, and I stripped myself nude. I took photo after photo, of my shins, my hands, the washbasin, the peeling ochre paint on the wall, my cock, my belly, the hairs on my thigh, the single bed, the quilt on the bed. When I came to the next morning, the camera was by my side, I had vomited all over my chest, and the room was filled with the toxic stench of tobacco, of wine, of stale regurgitated food.
It had been twelve years since I had seen Giulia but as soon as we saw each other, as soon as her arms were tight around my shoulders and her kisses were on my mouth and cheeks, it was as if those twelve years had disappeared, and I was back on the balcony, getting drunk on whisky and stoned on grass, and watching the dawn over the Port of Thessaloniki. Before her arrival I had stilled my hangover with a meal of chips and meat stewed in rich tomato sauce, and I had walked across the valley to the town of Gavros where I had drunk coffee and written letters home. The sun was setting when I found her, smoking a cigarette, standing arm-in-arm with a tall man in a lavender jacket, who smiled at me, winked, and greeted me in perfectly accented English.
Giulia introduced us.
—Andreas Kalifakis. A smart man, but not as smart as he thinks.
He shook my hand and raised an eyebrow.
—Our friend here is mad at me because I refuse to go with her to London. She is unused to not getting her way.
I turned to Giulia, who was shaking her head and flinging the cigarette butt across the valley.
—What are you going to do in London?
—Silly things. You know I work for television, now? I shook my head. At twenty-three, it had been theatre that had been her great passion. She smiled at me and touched my hand. I am working on a documentary about Cypriots in London. Are you proud of me? She hugged me, and Andreas led us to a small table at the edge of the square, where we looked down at the fading forest light, and he ordered wine, bread and fish.
Giulia had changed. Gone were the baggy denim jackets and jeans of a Communist Party cadre, replaced now by a thin silk shirt that revealed her cleavage. Her hair had been cut short and thick gold hoop earrings helped accentuate the angularity of her cheekbones and jaw. She was truly a beautiful woman but age was beginning to creep in: wrinkles, shadows and lines beneath her eyes. But her conversation with Andreas was furious and sophisticated, and reminded me a little of my previous shame all those years ago to be the naive traveller from the bottom of the earth. Andreas too worked for television, a journalist who nonchalantly mentioned his time in Sarajevo, Belgrade and Istanbul, which, in the Greek manner, he insisted on calling Constantinopoli. Giulia too had covered the earthquakes in that city and I listened fascinated to their stories. Andreas asked me questions about my profession and I found myself bullshitting, pretending that my photographic career w
as far more successful than it was, not mentioning the weekend job in the video shop I still had to make ends meet. Giulia looked on proudly.
—Of course, she insisted to Andreas, my cousin is a success. We are a noble family. She squeezed my fingers tightly and kissed my brow. Then taking my hand she opened it and deposited a gift. A small joint and a coarse yellow tablet lay in my palm. Her loud laughter rang through the square like church bells.
—The E’s direct from Amsterdam, we have Andreas to thank for that.
Andreas bowed his head and smiled at me.
—I prefer my Ecstasy from Holland, he explained. People swear by London and Barcelona but in my experience that is not the case at all. I think it is Amsterdam for LSD and for Ecstasy.
—And for hashish?
Andreas smiled wickedly at Giulia’s question.
—Ah, hashish is best when it is directly received from the hands of a young Pakistani peasant boy.
I placed the tablet and joint in my pocket and pretended a worldliness I did not feel. They were confusing me. They obviously had money, obviously were doing well, but their conversation was bitter and cynical. Giulia’s mobile phone went off during our meal and she spoke rapidly and impatiently. I looked around the square and it hit me that from table to table, dinners, dates, conversations were being interrupted by the persistent clamour of the ringing phones. Giulia switched off her phone and turned to Andreas.
—Now you will suffer, that was Antoni. He has a room for me in High Street, Kensington. Serves you right.
Andreas again arched those long slim eyebrows.
—My Giuliana, how many times must I tell you? I detest London. It is a cold, foolish city.
—Bah! Noticing that I was distracted, Giulia turned to me and again took my hand. I am sorry, my little one, we are boring you with our terrible bourgeois conversation, all about work and silly things like that. I want to hear about you. She was searching my face, looking straight at my eyes. How is Colin? Why is he not here with you?
I tried to explain how Colin was a man uncomfortable with formality and artifice, who wanted a holiday to be time spent lounging on beaches or walking through rainforests, who detested the thought of openings, of exhibitions. My jumbled Greek sounded silly. I turned to Andreas and stated simply, in English, My boyfriend hates artists.
—A wise man.
Giulia crossed her arms in exasperation.
—He wouldn’t have had to hang around fucking artists, I would have taken him places. Tell him, tell him that I very much want to meet Colin, the man who has stolen my cousin’s heart.
I grinned and nodded.
—Maybe I will visit you both in Australia? Maybe I will come and live there? Yes, she insisted, I will come and live in the desert. I will take an Aboriginal man for a husband. I am bored with Europeans.
Andreas laughed at this.
—You would suffocate if you left Europe. You need this oxygen to survive. Leave the poor Australian men alone, marry a Greek, as your mother insists.
—I don’t want to marry an Australian, exclaimed Giulia disdainfully. I said I will marry an old wise Aboriginal man.
—The only true Australians, I interceded.
Giulia’s eyes flashed approvingly. Good, she answered, so you have finally realised you are a Greek?
I laughed and shook my head.
Giulia pointed at me and sneered.
—He keeps insisting he is not Greek, he is Australian.
Andreas looked at me and then laughed.
—That’s preposterous. You are indeed a Greek. Not only physically but in your soul.
I protested that I did not grow up here, that I could not pretend to be anything but antipodean. They both looked at me strangely, then Giulia shrugged her shoulders and picked up her handbag. I fingered the tablet in my shirt pocket, eager for the heightening that drugs would bring to this singular summer night. Giulia smiled at me.
—We have a surprise for you.
—What is it?
She glanced at her watch.
—Time we had our sweets. Giulia slid the yellow pill onto her tongue, winked at me, and leaned over and kissed me. Andreas asked for the bill, and when it arrived he slapped my hand away and placed one hundred euros on the table. You are my guest tonight, he told me, interrupting my protests. I am paying for the Australian.
—Your father is from here?
We were driving in Andreas’ white BMW. And though we were slicing through forest, the night air was full of the music of voices, laughter and the clinking of glass.
—My mother, I answered. I looked back at Giulia, who was smoking in the back seat. My father and Giulia’s father were brothers.
—Andrea is from Thessaloniki as well. Giulia leaned over from the back seat and tweaked my nose. I stilled my impulse to tell her to put on her seatbelt. I had never forgotten her reaction all those years ago when I had first jumped into her car and strapped the belt across my torso. What are you, she had screamed at me, a slave? Only a slave binds himself.
Andreas was looking at my cousin in his rear-view mirror.
—You are wrong, my Giuliana, my family is not from Thessaloniki; they’re from Kozani.
—I’ve been there, I said quietly. Last time I came.
Andreas turned and looked at me. He turned back to the road.
—My family were peasants. Unlike yours, he said.
Giulia groaned. She leaned over and butted out her cigarette angrily.
—Look, Andreas, it’s not as if our family were aristocracy. Our grandfather was a successful merchant, that’s how he managed to educate his sons. But he himself was a dirt-poor refugee from Anatolia.
—From Trebizon, I finished, remembering Dad’s stories. I looked over at my cousin. She smiled at me and nodded.
Andreas offered me his cigarettes and as I took one I touched his fingers. He wrapped one of his fingers tight around one of mine, then quickly glancing in the rear-view mirror at Giulia, he let go.
—Why did your father leave Greece?
I looked out into the darkness. When I was six, my father had given me a map of the world and asked me to find Thessaloniki. He had told me nothing about where it lay on the planet. I had taken the map into my room—it covered the length of my single bed—and I had pored over mountains and oceans, desert and sea, until I found the magic word. I was excited when I took it back to Dad. You see, he told me, it’s not hard to find where you come from.
Giulia answered for me. Her voice was sad.
—My uncle was furious when Lambrakis was assassinated. He was involved in the Party, at university, and our grandfather feared for him. Our grandfather sent his son to bloody Australia. And probably a good thing. Her voice was faint. He would have not have survived well under the Colonels.
Andreas had his eyes fixed on the road ahead. His next words surprised me.
—And why did he give you a Jewish name?
Isaac, my father would bellow at me when I had made him angry, interrupted his reading, when I was full of boisterous energy. Isaac, I will sacrifice you to bloody God!
—My father liked the name. He just liked the name.
Giulia turned to me.
—Andreas hates the Jews. She tapped him on the shoulder. Be careful, Andrea, my cousin is a friend of the Jews.
—I don’t hate them, he protested to me, I simply distrust them.
I was feeling the drug begin to surge through my body. My belly was fluttering and my voice, when it emerged, was low and soft. I turned to Andreas.
—Why are you anti-Semitic?
He did not respond, he was searching the road. Gamouto, he muttered, I think I’ve missed the turn-off.
—Why are you anti-Semitic? I repeated.
—I told you, he replied, I do not hate Jews, I simply distrust them. For their wealth, their power. That they dropped the bombs on Belgrade, that they are forcing my country to be something it is not. That they want to enslave us.
—I think
you are mistaking the Americans for the Jews.
—They are the same thing.
Giulia touched my hand in warning. Andreas, she said carefully, is a fine man in many ways but he is a filthy racist.
—I simply dislike their obsession with the past, their moral righteousness. I was sure he was aiming his words at me, not Giulia. I dislike their masochism.
Giulia laughed.
—Of course, she said, their obsession with the Holocaust is a sickness. I agree. But perfectly understandable.
—Have you read the Protocols of the Elders of Zion? he responded.
I laughed out loud.
—That was Nazi propaganda.
—The Protocols predate the Nazis, he replied.
—Alright, then it was early fascist propaganda! The fact is that they are not true; the Protocols are fiction.
I was amazed that this educated man was using the Protocols to defend his hatreds. But the insidious chemical was playing in my blood and I could not muster any outrage. I was warm and happy.
—You are both ignorant fools, shouted Giulia from the back seat. It was the Russian czar who published that racist slime. I win, she added, in English.
We were approaching a town floodlit with electric light. The taverns and bars were full of people eating and drinking. The music surged through my body and as Andreas parked the car his hand slid across mine. He squeezed it, then he opened the door for Giulia. I was weak as I slid out of the car. Giulia took my hand and we followed Andreas through the crowds, into the music.
—Come, he said, turning to us and smiling, let me take you to a museum that celebrates our sickness.
Giulia squeezed my hand.