Girl Gone Greek (5 page)

“Just wait here, I won’t be long.” School had finished and we were on our way home. Manos gestured for me to stay sitting in his car as he stopped at a little roadside place at the edge of a cotton field, conversed with the owner for a few minutes and purchased something in a brown paper bag.
Is this some sort of inner Greek town mafia-style drug deal?
No, it’s my imagination running riot again. It was merely a spinach pie. For some reason, I felt a little let down.

“Get that down you,” Manos said in his slight Australian twang, tossing the paper bag onto my lap as he climbed back into the car. “It’s the best around here.”

He was right—I savoured the softness of the cheese, the slightly bitter tang of the spinach and what tasted like spring onions and yes, I certainly
did
get it down me: mostly the front of my shirt as the filo pastry crumbled everywhere.

Later, in bed, I rolled over and eyed the clock—midnight. I’d been home for two hours and made the mistake of making my first Greek coffee about an hour ago. Kaliopi’s comments made me feel that I needed to prove her wrong, that I was ready for Greek coffee. Judging by the slight tremors in my hands, I didn’t think it was a sign that I was going crazy (yet), nor that the
spanakopita
contained some sort of drug—rather that Greek coffee shouldn’t be drunk so late at night.

Lying flat on my back with one arm bent over my eyes, I stared up at the ceiling and contemplated my day; delicious food and interesting characters. Bring it on.

I’d finished work around seven that evening. “I’ll take the bus tonight,” Manos wasn’t due to finish until nine.

“Have fun,” he’d responded, grinning as he looked up from his marking. I gave him a questioning look, but he wouldn’t elaborate further…I soon understood.

The small village where the school was located had the main highway to Athens cutting through the middle of it. I say ‘highway’—this consisted of only two lanes. Outside a
periptero
—a small yellow kiosk found everywhere in Greece selling newspapers, magazines, cigarettes and sweets, the newsagent’s equivalent—was a small shelter, a sign with a crudely drawn bus attached to it. This, I assumed correctly, was the bus stop.

Once on board, I saw most people were sitting on the aisle seat with their belongings stacked next to them, occupying the otherwise empty window seat.
Surely they’ll just see me and move their things to make room
, I reasoned, but no, it seemed that Greek bus logic was different. I began to feel uncomfortable after standing beside a middle aged lady for half a minute, and the bus was on its way already. She showed no signs of moving or even acknowledging my existence, so I cleared my throat, pointed to the window seat beside her, and smiled. She slowly tilted her head in my direction, placed her sunglasses on top of her head and making direct eye contact, she snorted and indicated the row behind with a jab of her thumb. I glanced at the alternative suggestion, but the aisle seat next to the empty window seat was occupied by an Orthodox priest.
Is it taboo for a female to sit next to a priest?
I knew it wasn’t allowed in Sri Lanka, so I once again pointed to the spare seat next to the woman. She responded by crossing her arms, closing her eyes, and pretending to fall asleep.

It was time to get down and dirty. I was fed up by this point, so grabbing the woman’s belongings, I placed them in the overhead rack and squeezed myself into the seat next to her. I contemplated treading on her foot, but didn’t, yet braced myself for some sort of retaliation, given my brazenness. I was surprised when she shuffled slightly to allow me to manoeuvre past—albeit with lots of tutting and muttering, but nothing worse. Clearly she didn’t begrudge me doing any of her work and so, having won that particular round, I mentally licked my index finger and drew a ‘one’ in the air, smiling as the bus trundled through the growing dusk to the village.
Mastered the art of dealing with the locals on buses; don’t take any rubbish from them.

After a 15 minute ride, the bus pulled up outside a taverna in my village—this was our bus stop. Here I found Kaliopi standing in jogging pants and running shoes. I grinned at my new friend, who was bouncing up and down on the spot. She grabbed my hand, “Come. I’ve done another six kilo run and need a coffee and baklava…you’re joining me.”

“Kilometre Kaliopi, it’s Kilometre” I decided her English education would start now.

“Yes, you and your bendy/flexible/kilo/kilometre…whatever. ‘You say tom-
ah
-to, I say tom-
ay
-to’ blah blah…let’s just go get coffee.”

“Go
and
get coffee…” I started, but stopped yet again with an internal shrug of my shoulders. Plenty of time to correct my bombastic friend.

Settling into our riverside spot with the refreshments, Kaliopi shook out a crumpled cigarette of some indeterminate local make, lit it with a disposable Bic and held it between her manicured fingers, attempting to blow a smoke ring, frowning as she failed to.

“A cigarette...after jogging?”

She patted my knee and blew smoke from the side of her mouth, “My dear, you haven’t been in Greece long enough to know that everything about this country, including its people, is contradictory. Give it time; you’ll see. Now, how was your second full day at school?”

I mentally rehashed my day:

“
Kyria
Rachel, thank you for saying not a thing to
Kyria
Stella, she likes to pull the ear” Konstantinos had said that afternoon. I hadn’t had time to ponder if this was an exaggeration, a mis-use of the phrase ‘pull my leg’ (highly doubtful as I wouldn’t have put Mrs Stella down as one to joke with her students—actually, not anyone come to that) or if it was possibly true—and I wouldn’t put it past her. I didn’t get time, however, to investigate if this was indeed the case because a few minutes later I’d had to separate Konstantinos and Dimitra—she’d been about to start throwing punches. Apparently Konstantinos had made an inappropriate comment about her mother.

My classroom looked out onto the back garden of the school, still filled with summer flowers, a little overgrown but with a delightful lemon tree in the centre, I’d taken them by their wrists into the area and demanded, “OK, fight it out like proper adults then. Come on! What are you waiting for?” The other students all looked out of the window, eagerly awaiting the result. And was that a few Euro notes being swapped between a couple of people? Maybe they were placing bets. My ploy had worked though; I’d realised the situation could have gone either way—they would either simmer down, or fight, albeit verbally. Fortunately they chose the former. Looking at me as if I was slightly mad, (they’d still not recovered from the cow incident), Konstantinos and Dimitra had slunk back into the room, the rest back to their chairs (Euros exchanged back) and settled into an uneasy silence. I’d figured that the best thing was to beat my students at their own game. When working in a mental asylum, best to behave as if you’re madder than the inmates, right?

Having (at least for the moment) defused the tension, and in the light of the near fracas that’d occurred, I’d proceeded to change the lesson plan. The class would discuss what attracts men and women to each other and then as a homework assignment, prepare a Personal Advertisement in English.

“I think two of my teenage students, who appear to detest each other, will end up getting married and having kids,” I now told Kaliopi, “and I think that my boss doesn’t like me.” This was based on Mrs Stella’s general demeanour.

“Ah,” she said, dragging heavily on her cigarette and closing her eyes in bliss as she inhaled, “you are too sensitive. You have yet to toughen yourself to the Greek way of being. When we have something to say, we say it…unlike you British, who take an hour to come out with what they really want to say. Look at our language structure by comparison. Let’s suppose you want to know the time.”

“Ok then, ask me like I’m a stranger” I was intrigued.

“We’d simply ask you what the time is. You Brits use so much language! For example, ‘Excuse me, but would you happen to have the time, please?’ If you said that to a Greek, he’d probably reply, ‘Yes, I do,’ and then you would have to ask a follow up question, asking him to tell you what the time actually was. You people are so caught up with being polite and false and fake and nice to each other that you never get down to the point at hand. Your boss, it’s that Mrs Stella woman right? Yes, she’s known around these parts as being cold-hearted…I hear things at work…but she’s also probably just being her normal self. I mean, she doesn’t
dis
like you, how can she? She doesn’t know you well enough yet to have formed an opinion. And if she doesn’t like you, at least she’s being honest to your face about it.” Kaliopi said all of this without pausing for breath.

The barb about being too sensitive had stung—rather proving the point at hand. I grimaced slightly, but Kaliopi hadn’t finished.

“Yes,” she continued, “we here in Greece, we fight—how you say, like cat and mouse? —but at least we get it over and finished with. We scream. I tried to scratch my sister Stavroula’s eyes out once,” she reflected rather flippantly, her own eyes clouding at the memory. “We throw things, but then it is finished. You people? You let things build inside of you for months on end. You hold—how you say, grudges—you know these grudge things that are unhealthy and ultimately lead to cancer?”

I desperately wanted to point out that the little white tube Kaliopi was dragging on as if her life depended on it was more likely to cause cancer, but I was starting to get a feel for my friend’s character now—passionate about any topic she spoke about—and I didn’t want to interrupt her flow. I also didn’t have the energy at that moment to correct her English and tell her the expression was to ‘fight like cat and dog.’ Besides, I wondered if Kaliopi had a point: Do we hold onto things for too long? I had to admit that in my short time here, I’d certainly observed people blowing up at each other one minute, only to be friends the next—Konstantinos and Dimitra were a perfect example, as were the two men I’d observed that first morning from my hotel balcony in Piraeus.

We finished up our coffee (tea for me) and baklava, and then I meandered through the darkening streets of the village, back up the steep, steep hill to my little flat. Although it was growing dark, I didn’t feel in any way threatened. People of all ages were still sitting outside cafés at tables on the pavement laughing, smoking, playing
tavli
. Kids as young as nine or ten years were running around.
This is nice. Young and old seem to mix all together. And I don’t see many people ordering alcoholic drinks either.
Unlocking my front door I let out a gasp as I realised something; I’d been so caught up in the adventure of arriving and starting school, I’d neglected to call Dad and let him know how I was.

“Yes, Dad, my boss is fine. A bit cool, perhaps, but I’m beginning to get the hang of her.” Restraining any comments about Stamatis, his pervert friend, I assured Dad that my arrival in Athens had gone without a hitch. “Yes, he collected me and took me to the hotel,” was all I said.

“Your boss probably has very strong political views,” replied Dad. “They all do in Greece.”

I rolled my eyes and thanked God this was a voice and not video chat. Dad had always loved politics, and the phone conversation spared me a lecture about the history of Greece and how it shaped its present generation, which would no doubt have taken place if this were a face-to-face discussion. Quite how Mrs Stella’s coolness transmuted in my father’s mind to a strong interest in politics was beyond me, but anyway…

My mind wandered back to the conversation. He was reminiscing about his experiences with the Greeks and their culture. Occasionally I had to bite my tongue: they weren’t ‘real’ everyday Greeks…these were Greeks in the shipping world—the very rich who had a worldview quite different from that of the everyday citizen. I’d have loved Dad to meet the old man with his tea and honey down the street.

“Rachel love? What do you think?”

“I think I might like it here long term, Dad. I’ve met an interesting woman who I go for coffee with; she’s helping to educate me in all things Greek.”

“I thought you might,” he observed. “Keep in touch sweetheart, and don’t let the students get to you too much.”