Sometimes people will say things to a traveler that they would never tell a friend, relative, or a countryman. While traveling outside Athens on our trip to Greece, I ran into two Greek men whose lives, fortunes and state of mind seemed to be moving in opposite directions.
1.
In the small town of Delphi near the famous temple of Apollo, it was already hot by the early afternoon near the end of May. After lunch, Cristina needed a nap and I wandered around the village taking pictures and trying to find a place that might carry live Greek music in the evenings. I noticed a small souvenir shop with the message “We specialize in chess sets!” on the outside wall, so I wandered in, almost as much to get out of the heat as to procure a chess set.
The place was crammed floor-to-ceiling with the miniature replicas of the Parthenon, the sanctuary of Apollo, and all the other sites of antiquity, booklets on these sites and paintings of Christ in the Greek orthodox style. A portable fan kept the air moving through the shop. There were no other customers, and the older man who appeared to be the proprietor greeted me in a relaxed, low-key way.
One corner of the store appeared dedicated to chess sets: metal chess sets with the pieces resembling Greek gods or goddesses. When I told him I might want a travel chess set for our flight back to the U.S., the proprietor left the register and began rummaging nearby in the shadowy spaces of the crammed store. I stared at the metal sets, still puzzled by the little figures of robed gods and goddesses on the box.
“I can’t map these gods and goddesses to the chess roles,” I muttered.
“Here, look at these,“ he said, putting several self-contained wooden sets on a table. Leaving the metal sets with their pictures of robed gods, I sidled over to to the table. Opening one of the wooden sets, he showed me how they were set up: each piece had a wooden peg at its base. Each space on the board had a matching hole where the piece could be secured.
“See? Safe on a plane.”
I soon chose a set whose wooden box was about 8 inches across. (The carved wooden pieces on the smaller sets were so tiny and stylized I was afraid I wouldn’t recognize the pieces once deployed.) Once I had signed my credit card receipt, I found myself falling into a relaxed conversation with him. He was only a few years older than me, stout with heavy brows, a prominent nose and an easy, unpretentious manner. No one else was in the store, and he seemed glad for a little company. His English was limited, but he was resourceful.
He told me his home was in a village on the gulf of Corinth a few kilometers away. There, he had an orchard with 500 olive trees, and he could take the ripe olives to a place nearby with a mechanism that sorted the olives by size and a press. If he sold the olives as picked, he could expect € 3 per kilo, much less than he earned several years ago. His shop didn’t sell much. “Look – too much,” he said, his extended arm sweeping across the crammed interior. There was furniture in the basement. “Nobody want.” Still, he wasn’t worried about money. He came into the shop when he wanted to, “like hobby,” he explained. “Come,” he said, and led me outside, back into the blazing heat.
Across the street parked in a small lot was a brown Ford Focus, reliable, but expensive to drive because of the cost of petrol and taxes that averaged E 300 a year. His adult son had graduated from a university in England and had worked as a senior manager for Ford there for over 20 years. His daughter was a doctor, also in England. “Come – I show you picture of grandchildren” and led me back inside.
He opened the register and removed the empty cash drawer. Beneath it was some paperwork, from which he extracted a photo of a smiling young man in graduation robes standing on a verdant lawn of a private home. This was his grandson. Taped to this picture was a smaller picture of his son – thin, be-speckled. Paperclipped to it was a photo of a young woman, also in graduation robes. This was his granddaughter. “Special school in England – 300 students. She graduate number one.” I, in turn, extracted the small picture of 9-year-old granddaughter I keep in my wallet, and he looked at it a moment, smiling.
Perhaps it was at this point that I came to feel we should exchange names and introduced myself. He extracted a business card: “Vasilis Kamaras” We shook hands.
He and the grandmother of these children had divorced years ago. “She go,” he said simply, making a flitting gesture with his hands in the empty air. I told him that I was sorry and prepared to change the subject, but he wouldn’t dodge.
“I sleep with American woman – very sexy, but after short time, maybe three weeks, not good, you know?” His eyes met mine inquiringly, asking for something of me for the first time in our conversation. I met his gaze and nodded. “I understand,” I said. Yes, I thought, I could imagine the temptation, the subsequent regret. While I hadn’t made that particular mistake in my own marriage, I’d hurt my wife in other ways.
He had re-married, and things were better now. His new wife worked, bringing in money of her own. “I have too much money,” he complained, inexplicably.
“I could help you with that problem,” I offered, grinning, and he flashed a smile just long enough to tell me he got the joke. “I win the lottery – 1.4 million Euros” and he showed me an official-looking letter from a government agency with a single sentence in Greek and followed by that sum. It certainly looked like the real thing.
“I not tell friend who runs hotel across the street, friend works in restaurant, this friend, that friend.” Then, he pointed again to the letter, to another sum a little lower on the page.
“Government say I pay € 235,000 taxes.” I shrugged, my sympathy running thin.
The sun had retreated down closer to the ridge; the white awning above the outdoor taberna was orange in the late afternoon light. Cristina might be up from her nap by now, so I thanked Vasilis for the pleasure of his company.
“OK, my friend, I see you later.” And he was a friend, a friend I will likely never see again. Perhaps, that knowledge was what made him so voluble and intimate. And because he shared so much, the name I’ve given him is not the one he gave me.
2.
On the drive back to Athens, my wife and I hankered for a “freddo cappuccino” and began to look for some kind of roadside place. There were no towns indicated on Google maps for some time, so when we saw a faded “Taberna” sign, I told Cristina to pull over. There were several boarded up buildings, but ahead I could see a smaller building with its front doors clearly propped open. There were a few rusty outdoor tables and chairs under a kind of tin portico, no customers in sight. The day was starting to heat up and it looked cool and shady.
As soon as we pulled up, a mournful-looking man emerged from the open doorway and stood in the doorway watching us park. I waved to him, and he waved back, his eyes meeting mine with what looked to me like a kind of anxious hope. He appeared to be in his early 50s with a narrow face. He wore a dark, heavy lined jacket soiled with a mysterious gray residue over a sweater. Through the open door, I could make out a few empty metal shelves, an area with coffee or expresso machines and a single glass display case. The apparent proprietor continued to stand beside the door as we parked, waving once more to me when I happened to glance his way.
After picking the least dusty table we could find, we ordered our iced cappuccino and he hurried inside to prepare them. We chatted in subdued tones and watched a small cat glide back and forth between the empty tables. It was definitely going to be hot again today. Inside, I could see him moving urgently around the beverage machines.
After a while, he emerged with a tray and served us two watery cappuccinos. He stood by as we sipped, and since I didn’t feel comfortable reacting to our fare in his presence, I opted to find out about him, starting with his clothes.
“Why do you wear such heavy clothes in this hot weather?”
“The weather this time of year, it changes… Just last week it was chilly in the morning.” I nodded vigorously, as if this made perfect sense. After a few moments, Cristina re-started the conversation, explaining that we were from the U.S. and offering how much we had enjoyed Greece. He seemed to brighten when he learned we were from the U.S., as if discovering that a new acquaintance was able to do him an important favor.
“Can you please end war, make peace in Ukraine? Cost of petrol is now very high. Also, the price of bread very high because of Ukraine situation.” We kept nodding and making the sympathetic noises required: Yes, the war must make things very tough. When the conversation flagged, he continued to stand by.
Finally, another customer approached, and he darted away to serve him. I saw him lift a six-pack of coke from a cooler and hand the man a can. Cristina, by far the better observer, later told me that she had noticed the proprietor open his arms to the other man in the “give-me-a-hug” gesture. However well he might have known this customer, he did not get a hug.
When summoned him to pay our bill, he asked, a little plaintively if we didn’t want to try some souvlaki. I paid our bill, leaving him a generous tip, as if hoping that a few extra Euros would somehow help this unwell man. I can still see him, smiling his mournful smile and waving as we pulled away.
Of course, I have no idea what has become of this man or his establishment. Perhaps, someone has come to convince him to change and wash his clothes. Perhaps, someone has hugged him.
