Predator in Paradise (A month on an island that is not really an island) Flying Dolphin We wake up at six this morning and leave our hotel to pick up Andrea's mother Elaine, who has just arrived from the states, at Mary's where she had spent the night. We easily find a taxi and are deposited among the other hysterical travelers who are attempting to get out of Athens on the only available sea-route, since the ferries are going to be on strike at least until next Monday. It is total chaos. The orange and blue Flying Dolphins or 'flies' as the Greeks call them, are parked three and four deep. Some arriving passengers have to pass through two or three of them to get to the dock. When they announce our boat there is a mad rush of pushing and shoving as young Hellenic travelers jostle with aggressive little old ladies dressed in black, to get a good spot on a boat that is more like an airplane then anything you would find on the sea. Amarandi chooses this moment to get hysterical and Elaine loses confidence in her ability to get on the boat with a child in her arms. I have my bags plus I'm dragging Elaine's handy wheeled suitcase carrier which is broken and immobile. Andrea has the stroller. Just as we are about to join our fellow passengers on board we're told to stop as two hundred people use our dolphin as a bridge to the dock. They burst through the small opening like water rushing through a broken levee. We finally get Elaine and Amarandi on board with some help from the st ewards and make our way to the front which is the bumpiest spot on the boat and not recommended to those prone to seasickness. Amarandi slips into her boat personality and becomes instantly playful and happy and we're all able to relax. When the few Greeks who had been sitting up front feel the first pangs of nausea we have the entire compartment, each with a row of seats to ourselves. Andrea stretches out and recovers her lost sleep. Elaine sings to Amarandi and I start to get seasick. Luckily as it turns out it's only my rebellious stomach complaining about my breakfast of espresso and vitamin C. I must do something about my diet. Not on the flying dolphin. The only food available is potato chips, candy and more coffee. Hydra looks inviting in the morning light. The harbor water which was a foul-smelling gray sludge when we passed through last August is actually clean and blue, the flushing of ten thousand tourist toilets still in the future. Already some of the jet-setters are sunning away their hangovers on the rocks just outside the harbor, that fill in for the islands lack of a true beach. The home of Leonard Cohen during his creative period it has now degenerated into a euro-trash tourist haven attracting visionaries and deep thinkers like Joan Collins and Benji. My parents were going to buy a house here in 1970 for six thousand dollars but turned their back on the deal because the house was too expensive. Now you can't buy a one room ruin for less then a hundred thousand bucks. Even so, the fortress above the rocks is the best place in the world to watch the sunset. Especially with an ouzo in your hand during any month but June, July, and August. July 1st We have just moved into our house, at least I have. I can hear the girls, still bickering across the ravine in the apartment we rented for last night since this house was not ready, for whatever reason. It's a one room traditional village house with a kitchen and enough windows and doors to keep cool. Actually today is overcast and looks like it could rain at any moment. There's that North Carolina-style humidity but it doesn't really bother me. It doesn't feel so relentlessly heavy plus the cool beckening sea is a one minute walk from our front door. It seems to rain and be cloudy here much more then anywhere else in Greece. I think it's because all the clouds get hung up on the ring of mountain peaks that surrounds Kalotrelochoro on three sides, with the sea on the fourth. Whatever the reason it adds another dimension to Greece that other places lack with their sunny sameness. Arriving in Kalotrelochoro yesterday was like a homecoming. Amarandi had been having a great time on the flying dolphin, running around talking and playing with her imaginary friends. I showed her the passing mountains and ports of the Peleponisos, but she could care less. I've noticed that we can take her to the most beautiful, fun places, but she's not truly happy until she is in the hotel room. After the usual disembarkation hysteria we walked up to get the key from Yorgo who was working at his fathers store. He informed us that the house would not be ready until the following day. They put us temporarily in a little apartment behind the main house of Katina Poulakis sister. It had all the modern comforts of home...flush toilet, shower etc. Andrea took Elaine down the path to show her the house which we had rented for the month of July. When she saw it Elaine became terror stricken and began actively campaigning for us to stay in the temporary house. Maybe the out-house scared her. Or it could have been the fact that there is no hot water. Anyway Andrea suppressed her mother's attempted mutiny and regardless of how Elaine feels about it, for the next month or so, the old stone house in the riverbed is our home. Andrea remarked on the change that has come over Amarandi since we arrived. She loves it here. She runs around singing. She's less clinging and doesn't demand that we hold her when we go for walks. It feels like home for me too, much more then Sifnos and even more then Chapel Hill. It's too early to say but I am in a great mood. I am even able to stop myself from being mad at Andrea. I will get angry with her for something she says and then think to myself that its no big deal and not worth arguing about. We had lunch with Jack and Sue Marlowe. Elaine kept us all entertained by talking non-stop about the deterioration of Greece using the story of her trans-Atlantic flight as evidence, a story she would repeat at dinner for the benefit of Vasili the greengrocer from San Mateo. After that we went to the far beach for a swim leaving Amarandi with her grandmother, and baby-sitter for the next four weeks. When we got there it was full of Germans. Well, full is a relative term in Kalotrelochoro. There were about a half dozen or so stretched out along a quarter mile beach, but two of them were making love on the shore and we all exclaimed how tasteless it was as we fought over the binoculars. We lounged in the water and talked about the boom about to hit the village. Prices had skyrocketed as the villagers discovered the value of the place. Unspoiled Greek villages by the sea are a rarity these days. Kalotrelochoro could be the last. It wouldn't be long before we would be locked out of our ancestral home. Already the side of t he small mountain behind our house as been sold to a developer. We talked about the arrogance of the Germans who came to this country fifty years ago during World War two. They occupied the country and took what they wanted while the Greeks starved. Now they have returned with their powerful deutchmarks to buy up all the old houses in the very villages they had burned, driving the price of real-estate up beyond the realm of affordability for us and other returning Greek-Americans. The one room house next door with a collapsed roof is for sale. They are asking for sixty thousand dollars. They'll probably get fifty-five. We couldn't help but think about the day of our arrival two years ago, when we came with Jack and Sue to this same spot. That day there was not a soul in sight as we walked down the beach marveling at its beauty and serenity. Just as we put down our towels, two enormous yachts sailed into the bay and stopped within thirty yards of us. A guy climbed into a speedboat towing a rope tied to the yachts stern and walked right across our little beach blankets to tie it to the jutting rock we had been using to shade our sunscreen. After securing it, he then got back into his boat and raced back to the yacht. Then they lowered into the water a pair of jet ski's and they all took turn racing around, back and forth and in circles right in front of us as the fresh air filled with exhaust fumes. A few minutes later some of them got in the speedboat and took turns water-skiing. Then it was time for lunch and the inhabitants of both yachts ate on the rear deck while being served by waiters in bow-ties. They yelled back and forth to each other about how beautiful and quiet it was. After lunch they pulled out their toys and raced around the bay some more until they grew weary and went back to take naps. The whole scenario was beyond belief. We felt like God was playing a cruel joke on us, turning our paradise into Grand Central Station before our very eyes. Perhaps it was a foreshadowing of what is in store for Kalotrelochoro. When enough people fall in love with an idealic little town, it ceases to be ideal. Mykonos was nice in the sixties. So was Manhattan at one time. With the conversation becoming redundant I donned my mask, snorkel, flippers, knife, fish-bag and speargun and went off to satisfy my primordial hunting urge by killing a few fish. I chased some big ones but settled for several perka and barbouni. When I shot one of the perka, he was completely cut in half and inside was a one-inch baby octopus that he had eaten. I immediately felt justified in my hunting by telling myself that by decreasing the perka population I might be increasing the octopodi. That also would justify my hunting of octopus since it was I who was responsible for their increased well-being. I felt like lord of the octopi. He that giveth can also taketh away. I suppose it's the same principal behind the Mafia. When we returned to our room I went down to the dock to watch the sea. The waves were starting to get choppy and the fishermen were all moving their boats to the sheltered areas on either side of the bay, not taking any chances. That evening we stood in Yanni and Esther's bar watching the Greece-Spain basketball game. The winner would go to the European Final Four and also compete next summer in the Atlanta Olympics. Everyone in the bar was yelling and cheering but soon were moaning and groaning as Greece let a 10 point lead with less the a minute to go, be whittled down to two. They still hung on to win and we all agreed it was one of the most enjoyable times we'd ever had watching a basketball game. Even Andrea's mother was excited and couldn't stop talking about how she had been a star forward in high school. Andrea had no interest and was proud of it. She wandered off, but returned just as the game ended. The girls and I went to Thea Katinas for dinner while Jack and Sue went to celebrate his fifty-seventh birthday in quiet romantic fashion at the restaurant on the hill owned by the woman they call Bony-Marony. They ended up sitting next to a big table of Athenians who were all talking to each other on cellular phones. At Katina's after greeting everyone in the place, we took a table outside. Before we knew it, it was covered with food. Kontosouvli, horta, a salad and of course the fried potatoes which Katina is most famous for. They also gave us the best wine of the summer. It was a pale kokinelli that was so dry you could drink it like water, which we did. Even Andrea who was horrified at the amount of food we had ordered loosened up within minutes and began to needle her mother in good-natured humor rather then the usual irritation and aggravation. Elaine was wearing out and kept her stories to a maximum of several long run-on sentences. I realized that she was afraid to drink. She says that it gives her a headache. I think she is terrified of letting go. I took Amarandi up to use the bathroom and to have her first experience with Turkish squat toilets. We discovered that the normal toilets were more practical for her. It's funny that after the invasion of Cyprus, the Greeks changed the name of everything that had been called Turkish. The harbor of Turkolimino became Microlimino (Small Harbor). Turkish Coffee became Greek Coffee. But Turkish Toilets were allowed to retain their heritage, their name being the last remnant of a five-hundred year occupation. I look at the Turkish toilets and I wonder what it was they replaced. Did the Ottoman invaders gradually purge the country of what they believed were inferior Greek toilets? I know the Turks consider squatting a much healthier way to shit. The western style of sitting with magazine is considered decadent and bad for the intestines. But the Minoans had the worlds first flush toilet, its ruins found in the palace of Knossos. Is it not possible that they went on to improve on this design for the next four thousa nd years, only to have all traces of it wiped out? The toilet in our house is interesting. First of all, it's in an outhouse across the street. Its not much of a street but its the only access that the two houses beyond ours have to the village. Luckily one of them is collapsed and uninhabited but there is still the possibility of being run down one night on the way to the bathroom by our neighbor Monemos, the village contractor, in his truck, or by one of the two Albanians who take care of his horse and tend his sheep. I think I would rather be trampled by a flock of sheep then run over by a horse or a truck on my way to the bathroom. If I had a choice I'd rather it be on the way back from the bathroom. The bowl is hand-made of clay more of a Sifniot then a Minoan style of toilet pottery. The shower is also in the outhouse and consists of a hose and two water bottles that were rigged up by two French people who spent a few months here. We haven't been able to figure out how they work and we will probably be perfectly happy just to squirt ourselves with the hose. The French have the reputation of taking only one shower a week (according to my prejudice English friends), so it's funny that they would put so much effort into creating a device that would simulate something that they don't like to do very often. My English friend Dave says that the average Frenchman goes through two bars of soap a year whereas the average Englishman will go through two a month. That doesn't nessessarily prove to me that the French don't like to wash. It could mean that the British get dirtier. And what about places like Newcastle? I bet the coal miners push the national average way up. And who keeps these statistics? Is it llke a gallop poll where they interrupt you during dinner and ask how many bars of soap you use a year? Even if you knew how could you answer them seriously? Maybe in Germany where they keep receipts and records of every purchase and can tell you precisely with a couple clicks of a computer keyboard exactly how many bars of soap they bought last year. But I maintain that the average French or Englishman doesn't really know and I would challenge these numbers. To believe the French are unclean I would need more proof then an English poll and the fact that they rigged up a shower using string, plastic water bottles and a hose that is so complex we can't even figure out how to use it, seems to be evidence of a superior bathing culture. I stayed on at Katina's after the girls left to talk with Vasili the Greengrocer from San Mateo. He has always been my most prized source of Kalotrelochoro information due to his fluency in English and Greek. He told me there is land available in Metropolis and houses still available in the upper village of Vrissi, but it is going fast. I can just see this place in ten years with multi-family traditional Greek dwellings available for time shares. It's time to buy or say good-bye. So here we are in the house that we have waited all year for. It's been raining all day long. Sometime its a drizzle and occasionally a downpour, but it's at a time of year when even clouds are rare so it feels special. A giant centipede looking for a dry spot came through a crack under one of the windows. I had to kill him quite brutally as a lesson to others. Centipedes get big here and the last thing I want is to wake up with one in bed with me. I woke up once in the middle of the night sharing my bed with one that seemed to my frightned teenage mind to be about a foot long. I feel I have learned whatever lesson that was supposed to teach me and I would rather not repeat it. I still have not recovered even though it was twenty years ago. I'm sorry that this poor wet centipede had to die for the centipede sins of the past but the rules of the house have to be layed down early for all creatures, human and insect. Kalotrelochoro is actually made up of three villages. We live in Paralia which means beach. This is where my grandmother was from. She was born in the ruins of a house in the center of the village that has become a point of conflict between me and my family. I have wanted to fix it. Other's in my family say to let the past die and have allowed the house to deteriorate. It's a long painful ever-continuing saga. On the other side of the long stretch of stony beach is the village of Metropolis. It sits on a hill and there are two restaurants across the street from each other. The restaurant known as Lulu's which Jack calls Bony Maroni's, faces the east overlooking the soccer field, basketball court, a fine view of the sea and Paralia. Tiri's restaurant, or as Jack calls it "Double Limpy's" has an enclosed courtyard overlooking nothing but is still very beautiful. The upper village is called Vrissi. It's a half-hour uphill walk. There is a spring that comes from a crack in the mountains and runs through the village. Everyone has lush colorful gardens of which they are very proud. It's a sore spot between the villages because the people of Paralia and Metropolis want to develop. They want to build hotels and cafes and attract hordes of tourists. To do this they need drinking water. The Vrissiotis claim that since the water runs through their village first, it belongs to them. They are not about to give up their gardens for a cut of the tourist trade since their share would be minimal because they are so far from the sea. It's been an ongoing battle. The irony is that there is water everywhere. The little stream that they are fighting over is the only place it runs above the ground, but beneath the green fields there are rushing rivers. The sea around Kalotrelochoro is a mixture of salt and ice-cold fresh water. In some places the tide pools are totally drinkable. In others, the spring-water pouring from cracks in the stone cliffs just below the surface, make the sea so cold you need a wet suit. Still they fight over the stream. That's OK. As long as they can't come to an agreement there is hope for Kalotrelochoro. July 2nd The Jerome women have decided the house is too expensive. They want to meet with our landlord Yannis Zaferis to tell him so and if he won't come down in the price we'll move out. They go around asking everybody if they agree we are being ripped off. Some do and some don't. The ones who agree increase Elaine and Andrea's anger. The ones who say it's a fair price are ignored or labeled co-conspiritors. I tell them to forget about it. Even if Yannis were to raise the rent an extra thousand a day I would stay and since it's my money and I don't care, why should they? Yesterday it was the most wonderful house in Greece and they wanted to pawn everything we own to buy it. Today they point to all these flaws and shortcomings: the attack of the giant centipede, not enough coffee cups, ripped screens and a bed that Andrea calls 'the black hole of Calcutta'. (They haven't even seen the dead lizard in the kitchen that the ants are slowly dismembering.) So Andrea wants to send her mother as our representative. I tell her no. If she feels so strongly that we are being ripped off then she should speak to Yannis herself and not send her mother. Elaine, offended that I doubt her power of diplomacy and persuasion, corners me to tell me the story of her success as a tele-marketer for McCarter Theatre in Princeton, complete with climactic moral lesson on the wisdom of age. In the nick of time Amarandi returns from shopping with her brand new potty saving her father from a more lengthy version of the lecture. It's a double blessing. Twenty times a day she says she has to go to the toilet and one of us has to escort her and protect her from the perils of our outhouse. More often then not it's a false alarm or what she calls a "gas-poop". Now she can go by herself anytime in her mobile toilet that her butt fits perfectly on if not a little tightly. When she does her first little turd it's a moment of great celebration and she proudly displays it to all of us as we respond with cheers and applause. Being a parent has its moments. I jus t hope we didn't overdo it with the rejoicing and send her the wrong message turning her into a compulsive pooper the same way my sister's German Shepard was about chasing sticks. I start the dreaded trek up to Vrissi to present Jack with his birthday present. I don't have to walk very far because Kosta Monemos, the contractor gives me a ride up. I see the horrible cinder block house that had been erected next door to Jack and Sue by their neighbor who had become bitter after they had refused to buy the tiny piece of property for an outrageous price. The house cuts off their view and as a further insult has windows that look directly down on their patio, destroying any sense of privacy they had. I tell them if they would put up half the money, we will put up the other half and then they would be assured of having good neighbors. For a little extra we might consider eliminating the offensive window. Of course I was only joking since Andrea would never consent to buying a cinder block house, even if it were for half-price and located in heaven. Jack is one of my oldest friends. He was my English teacher in highschool at the American Community school in Athens and he's about fifteen years older then I am. He had come from San Francisco in 1969 and was by far the hippest and most radical teacher in the school. He liked rock music. He looked like John Lennon. He grew a beard and his hair and he let each of his students individuallly decide what they wanted to get out of junior and senior English class. We had to write out goals for ourselves and if we attained all of them we could give ourselves the grade we thought we deserved. Very revolutionary for it's time and with some students it actually worked. My goal was simple. Peter and I would put together a magazine called Blues Scene. It wold have interviews, reviews, biographies, reviews, ads and editorials about us and our small circle of friends and our nearly fictitous band called C.C. Blues King, which was more hype then band. We had to put out two issues. If we succeeded we would each get an A+. B oth issues came out the same day which happened to be the day of the deadline. We sold them all over campus for 45 drachma until we were called down to the office because not only was some of the material not fit for high-school reading but we also poked fun at the OSI, a branch of the US embassy that stood for Overseas Special Investigations and was in charge of keeping the drug problem within the American community under control. We had even exposed an informant in a funny cartoon of an OSI tank with swastikas running over stick figure students that looked like ants under the direction of the aformentioned informant. From the tape emenated a word baloon which said in big letters FUCK THE ANTS. Jack wanted us to change it to Death to the Ants and it became an editorial issue that we argued about for some time. In the end we won out over censorship and the word became a major issue when we were told that we had to collect all the magazines we had sold and destroy them. We were told that if this magazine were to fall into the hands of the enemy, meaning the US Embassy or American Military authorities, it would be curtains for all of us including Jack. We hurriedly collected all the magazines and returned the money. Then turned around and resold them at a higher price and made all buyers take an oath of secrecy. We got our A pluses too. But Jack was under close scrutiny. The board of education which was controlled by the Embassy and the military did not like him. As far as they were concerned he was a hippy, teaching American kids how to be hippies and take drugs and rebel against their parents. Though Jack was slightly radical he was not as dangerous or wild as they thought. He lived in San Francisco but he he didn't even like the Grateful Dead. he introduced us to Elton John. He never mentioned drugs. When we would sit around my room smoking hash we would wonder "Do you think he smokes?" We were never sure. He was an adult. How cool could he be having been brought up in the straight fifties when everything was in black and white. "Maybe Mister Marlowe's a narc', someone said. It was an outrageous thought but we couldn't dismiss anything. We could only test his limits and see how far we could push him to know if he was truly one of us. I pushed too far. The next year he kicked me out of his class mid year. Since English was required to grad uate I was told that I must go into Miss Priles class, who had a more traditional approach, which is the understatement of the century. I know just by looking at Miss Priles that I would not last a week. If Jack wouldn't take me back then I would drop out of school and run away to India. Jack refused to take me back and I refused to back down. In the end the waived my requirements and I spent the rest of my highschool career taking art classes. It got worse for Jack. Everytime we got in trouble it reflected on him. Finally one of the other teachers cornered us on a Plaka street one Saturday night. "Your friend Mr. Marlowe is in trouble. Unless you guys get under control he's gone." Peter and I had just read Jerry Rubin's "DO IT!" and REVOLUTION FOR THE HELL OF IT" by Abbie Hoffman and were experimenting with some of their ideas. We had decided one day to start a revolution and close down the school and were surprised at how easy it was. We had made up a list of demands in about five minutes. Nothing too outrageous. Non-mandatory class attendence, free use of all copy machines and smoking on campus. We didn't plan anything. We just sat down in front of the school and said we were protesting the unfairness of the campus elections (we didn't even know who was running) and refused to go to class. Within half an hour there was a crowd and people were giving speeches accusing the school of tyranny, injustice and even racism. By the end of the day class wa s canceled and the entire school was brought into the gymnasiam to hear us out. It amazed me how many students were against our demands. "If we have non-mandatory class attendance nobody will go to class" shouted a young girl with tears in her eyes. Here we were offering our fellow students freedom and they didn't want it. Disillusioned I left the assembley. All the teachers were so interested in our social experiment that I was free to climb the tree at the far end of campus and smoke cigarettes for the rest of the afternoon while Peter and our circle of revolutionaries stood on stage being shouted down by a student body that had no interest in revolution, freedom or smoking on campus. But it was all ill-timed. There happened to be a meeting of the school board and with Peter at the forfront they assumed Jack Marlowe was behind it. It didn't win him any friends but when we agreed to call off the dogs to save his job it appeared he had weathered the storm until he did the unpardonable. He showed up at the school board party not wearing a tie. Jack was finished at ACS. No more Mr. Marlowe. Just citizen Jack. The Military Industrial complex had won. But since we were all graduating anyway we didn't care. But I always had a softy spot in my heart for Mr. Marlowe and when he contacted me because he wanted to know a nice unspoiled place in Greece where he could go to write I told him about my grandmother's village of Kalotrelochoro, never suspecting that he would buy a house there and end up being one of my best friends. Panayotis, the young blonde cruise ship officer whose mother has a house in Vrissi picks me up. I was spared the long walk downhill. Though not wanting to believe that I am lazy to walk down the mountain, but wanting to make connections with people and be friends, I accept his ride and am rewarded when he invites me for a beer at the cafe on the dock. He tells me some of his stories about working on cruise ships, here and in the Caribbean. His last ship burned at it's mooring in Pireaus two weeks ago, the day before he was to begin his duties as safety officer. His company has lost five ships in the last two years, several sinking and the rest to fires, all total losses. They are now having trouble getting insured and will either go out of business or allow themselves to be bought up by a larger company like Carnival. After sharing this with me he pauses and appears to be deep in thought. Then he looks at the sea and the sky and says "I think it's a good time to catch a kefalo". He goes to the trunk of his new Japanese car where he has bags of stale bread and smelly kefalotiri(literally headcheese) and a drop-line with lots of hooks. He wraps the line of hooks around a piece of bread smeared with cheese and throws it out as far as he can. Usually you can see the bread bob up and down as the fish attack it and one or two become ensnared on the sharp little hooks. This time, while Panayiotis is not paying attention, a seagull swoops down and picks up the bread with the barbed hooks and flies off with it. The first thing we both think is that the bird will become hopelessly hooked which will be a disaster of unimaginable proportions. It's hard enough getting a hook out of a small fish, but a screeching flailing seagull is another story. Luckily the bird figures out that something is amiss with this not so innocent piece of bread and drops it about fifty yards out to sea, much further then either of us could have thrown it. "If only the seagull would help us everyday" says a pokerfaced Panayiotis. We have a dinner party for Jack at Katina's. I sit across from my cousin Takis who I have never met and didn't even know existed. He moved to New Zealand where he lived for thirty years before moving back to Athens two years ago. He knew my grandparents. My grandmother had stayed with his family in Athens in 1955, before she became ill and returned to America. He told me about how my grandfather couldn't stand Kalotrelochoro. After forty years in the USA it was too uncivilized and backwards. It was my grandmother's village and he kept on putting it down, but after returning from a trip to his village of Zarafona, my grandmother was overheard saying to him, "There. Now I don't want to hear another word about how terrible Kalotrelochoro is". Apparently Zarafona had its faults too. Takis told me a story about how my Uncle Panayiotis built the first toilet here because my grandfather was coming for a return visit. On his previous trip he had said to Panayiotis, "I have to go to the bathroom". Panayiotis didn't un derst and w hat he meant. Did he want to take a bath at such an odd time? He ignored him, assuming he had misunderstood some Zarafonian idiom. Finally my Grandfather shouted "I have to use the toilet". Panayiotis led him by the hand to the dry riverbed that passes by the house where we now stay. "Here is your toilet. It's also my toilet and everybody in the village's toilet. Choose your spot." Takis tells us about my Uncle Panayiotis. He didn't like to work much. He survived by selling off the family property a little bit at a time. If he hadn't we would be the wealthiest landholders in Kalotrelochoro. He had a fishing boat but he didn't fish much either. One day he was playing cards in the cafeneon by the dock when the sea began to get rough. The other fishermen took their boats to the shelter of Agios Nicolaos but he kept playing because he was winning. The other men in the cafeneon kept telling him to move his boat but he kept saying "Yes, yes in a moment, I'm having a lucky streak". Suddenly a huge wave picked up his boat and smashed it to pieces on the rocks. When they told him he dropped his cards and ran out the door. "Now that it's too late, you hurry?" they called after him. Panayiotis had a daughter named Maria who took care of him as he got older. They lived together in the house my Grandmother was born in. They left Kalotrelochoro and moved to Argos where they bought a house. When my parents heard that Panayiotis was ill they drove down to see him. They arranged to pick up Maria in the town square so she could take them to the house since the directions were difficult. They came to a fork in the road. There was a sign that pointed to one fork that said 'TO THE DUMP'. My father instinctively started to take the other road but Maria said "No, no it's this way". Sure enough, the house was in the middle of the dump. "It was unbelievable", my mother told me afterwards. "Everything was covered with flies including Uncle Panayiotis on his death bed". He died soon after and Maria was institutionalized. My grandmother's house has been empty ever since. Cousin Takis and Vassili the Greengrocer begin talking about a murder in the cafeneon that took place in the mid-forties. The government soldiers who were stationed here set up an ambush for two communist andartes who came to the village. They set up two machine guns in the building across from the cafeneon and when their suspects walked in they open fire, even though the place was full of villagers. Five people were shot, two killed, one of them a suspect. I asked how this could happen. Why Didn't anyone appeal to the authorities? They laughed. "The killers were the authorities". Dinner is fantastic. Plenty of roast chicken and potatoes and the delicious wine that we are now addicted to after one day. As we are leaving I talk to my cousin who tells me he is an environmental engineer. We plan to get together where he lives in the Athens district of Moschaton which Jack says is full of Tavernas and Ouzeries and is quite beautiful. The idea of discovering a new neighborhood in Athens has a great appeal to me. The next morning after a topsy turvy night of Andrea, Amarandi and I switching beds and sleeping partners, we wake up late. I had actually gotten up around seven with Amarandi and we entertained each other until Yaya woke up and took over for me. After coffee I walk next door to Monemos house. On the outside it looks like a traditional Kalotrelochoro farm house. Inside it's a modern bachelor pad with slate and wood floors, built-in stone couches, a great stereo system and a loft. He has a library of Greek books including translations of Casteneda and other visionary works. I decline his offer of coffee, having just finished two cups of Andrea's industrial strength and tottering on the brink of insanity but I accept some lemonade and we sit and talk about life, work, family and particularly women. Then my women arrive and the conversation turns once again to how we are being ripped off for the rent of our house and similar matters. Luckily we hear the sound of the flying dolphin approaching and since Monemo is expe cting his sister and I am expecting my brother we hurry down to meet it. For the second day in a row I watch every head emerge from the hydrofoil and not one of them is James or Joan. I had told him that if he wanted to see Jack and Sue before they left for America he should change his itinerary and come to Kalotrelochoro first. But as Andrea so gingerly put it, "He's just like your father, a stubborn mule." I don't disagree but maybe there are mitigating circumstances beyond his control. Maybe his luggage hasn't arrived. Maybe there were no tickets. Maybe he hates me. Most likely he resents me gently attempting to guide him around the pitfalls and barricades of Greece because he sees it as manipulation and egoistic power-playing. When I suggest something he wonders "What's Matt tryng to do here?" Rather then trust my experience and the fact that I am his older brother he will go his own way, perhaps following the itinerary he made up in the states or on the plane which doesn't take into account the fact that ther e is a ferry boat strike, Jack's premature return to America or half of Athen's five million people also trying to leave the city at the same time as he and Joan. So instead of having to help my brother find a room I go snorkeling with Andrea along the coast south of the village. The sea is rough and a little scary but I catch lots of fish. We come upon a school of large gopas and with my first shot I spear one and knock another senseless. I'm able to grab him with some difficulty as he flops around and I put them both in my bag. It's a shot that nobody will believe so I'm glad to have a witness, even though Andrea can barely see underwater without her glasses and I have to tell her what I had done. I also shoot several large kefalo, a small rofos(grouper) and a couple other good-sized fish that I had never shot before but turn out to be delicious. I also locate the homes of a couple very big fish that I can go after when I feel brave. Andrea goes back home after half an hour and I continue for a couple hours more. When I return and finish cleaning the fish we take them to Thea Katina's and her husband Panayiotis fries them up for us. It's a feast. When we finish we go back to the house to recover from it. It's a sultry evening. Andrea doesn't understand how it can be so hot and breezeless and yet the waves are so big. I don't really know the answer but maybe it has something to do with gravity. Whatever the reason, the waves made me hopeful that within the next day or so we'll have a sea perfect for bodysurfing. Last year the waves slowly grew in size until it was too rough to ride them. It was exciting watching a ten foot wall of water break over you, but after getting churned around and having the wind knocked out of me one time too many I moved on to less strenuous sports like drinking ouzo and eating octopus. Amarandi and I stop in at Katina's to watch the end of the Greece-Croatia game on our way to Metropolis to meet Andrea and her mom. Thea Katina tells me that my mother had called and I should call her at three. My mother does not call me in Greece to chat, or to ask how I am doing. If my mother had called it was because something terrible has happened. My father had died. My house had burned down. I had been audited by the IRS. All the possibilities race through my head as my eyes sightlessly watch the TV screen. Should I call right now and find out what's wrong or should I wait and enjoy the last four minutes of the game. Maybe the news would be so tragic that these might be the last carefree minutes of my life. If my father has died should I cut short my vacation and return to pay my respects and begin the process of coming to terms with our stormy relationship? Should I bring Andrea and Amarandi back with me to America to help me through my suffering or should I face this period alone. Then I ask Katina, "Did you say my mother called?" "No," she told me. "Your sister-in-law." Oh. That's different. By the time I walk down the beach road to Metropolis, Amarandi is fast asleep and Andrea is angry with me for taking so long and causing her "severe anxiety" as she puts it. I ask her, "Do you mean like the anxiety when I am standing by myself with all our luggage watching the last passengers get on the ferry because you ran off to do some last minute shopping two minutes before it arrived?" She downgrades it to "normal anxiety". I wonder what there was to be anxious about. What could possibly happen to me between Parilea and Metropolis? Trampled by a flock of sheep? Run over by a car racing down the tiny street at 15mph? Drift off course and be eaten by a beached whale? There's just not that many dangers lurking between the two villages. I think she was anxious because she felt uncomfortable spending so much time with her mother. I know one thing: They sure drank a lot of wine before I got there. It was excellent wine too and I must drink hurridly to catch up. All the worry made Andrea's stomach upset and she becomes slightly more critical and intolerant than usual. She alternates jabbing at her mother and me until she feels so ill that she just wants to go home to the room and read. On the way back I can't resist stopping at Trocedero for an ice-cream. Gikas's daughter from Montreal is working there, looking older and more beautiful then when I last lusted after her several years ago. To my surprise she remembers my name, as does the woman who owns the place whose name I don't. I talk to Gikas about Montreal and the Kalotrelochorootis who live there, and then continue on to the dock where I sit watching the waves break and wondering how they could be so big when the air was is still. July 3rd The alarm rings this morning like a voice from the distant past and Andrea goes off to her watercolor painting lesson with James Crispy, the famous English painter from Cornwall who has taken up residence in Kalotrelochoro. I go down to the sea to catch lunch. It's calm, compared to last night and in my hurry to get started I forget my knife that I usually keep strapped to my leg like Lloyd Bridges. With my first missed shot, the spear plunges into some kind of simple form of sea life, one of those that straddles the dimension between animal and plant. It's impossible to remove without my knife so I have to swim back to the beach. When I get back out to the ruins of the old police station and extricate my speargun, I see an octopus being harassed by some perka. He looks too small to shoot. Almost big enough. Perhaps a teenager, a few months away from his first tattoo and body piercing, but I take a shot at the most obnoxious of the perka instead. I miss and the spear continues into infinity. It has become unt ied, th e spear-fisherman's worst nightmare. Who knows to what depths an errant spear may fall? I could spend days, hours or weeks trying to retrieve it, perhaps without success, my spear entombed forever in the icy deep. Perhaps the years would dull the pain, but that spot would forever be known as the place where I lost my spear, just as near the rocks at the church of Saint George is the hole where I lost the little round metal thing that keeps the spear from flying away, which was last year's catastrophe and effectively ended the spearfishing season for me. But this time I'm lucky. The string is still attached to the spear and dangles behind and all I have to do is reach out and retrieve it. Tying it back on is another thing. The ends keep separating and it's like trying to thread a sewing needle with yarn underwater. I keep cutting it, but it falls apart after the first attempt. Adding to the humiliation, the fish have realized I am no longer a threat and have gathered around to watch as the octopus climbs onto my spear. He begins to eat the little bits of fish that are stuck to the barbs and to amuse his fish friends with his routine of underwater gymnastics on the shaft. By the time I re-rig my weapon they are all gone, probably to some sea cave where they continue to laugh at my expense. I swim down the coast until I hit a pocket of fresh water that makes the sea so cold that I can't go any further. When I return to the bay the flying dolphin is just arriving. Normally I would have been there to meet it but I just watch the people get off from where I'm swimming. Still no James. Maybe he wants to do his Greek trip on his own terms with no interference from me. I think the memory of our last trip together is so bitter that he will avoid spending any time with us until the last possible moment, even if it means sacrificing some fun-filled nights with Jack and Sue. I'm in the water for three and a half hours and catch a dozen fish, all of good eating size. We have lunch at Katina's and Andrea returns from her lesson in time to join us. She spends the first half-hour cleaning fish for Amarandi who keeps saying "More fish everybody", every time she finishes a piece. We set up our stereo, though the speakers are running on walk-man power and don't sound that great, but it's almost as loud as the cicadas. Ben Folds Five has calmed down Amarandi who a few moments before we put it on was hysterical. It's funny hearing this music from home. It almost makes me romanticize Chapel Hill as much as I do Greece when I'm there. We have a frenzied dance marathon while Andrea works on her watercolor homework. Jack picks us up around 8:30 and brings us to his house in Vrissi. By the time we arrive, Amarandi is asleep so we just load her into her stroller and sit her in the courtyard while we drink ouzo, eat local olives, and tell Greece stories. Each of has a story about Samson, the circus strongman who used to travel all over Greece breaking out of chains and pulling automobiles with his teeth. Jack and Sue saw him at a Panagiri for crippled people in Methona. This was in the early seventies and he was getting on in age. They were with a woman named Lily, from Hydra, when they came upon him doing his routine in the town square. For the grand finale, his female assistant was to drop a sword on his chest from a stepladder. Her aim was flawed and the sword hit him in the ribs and made a deep gash. He appeared to be OK, but as the show ended, their friend Lily ran weeping from the square. "Why is Lily so upset?" they asked a friend who had traveled with them. "She used to be his lover." came the reply. Andrea was the last to see him, in 1989. By then he was in his sixties and still doing the same tricks. My story was the least interesting I had taken his photo from a book of Greece published in the fifties, when he was a young man, and made it into a T-shirt that I sold at my shows. We were drinking at a steady rate and by the time we had heard the last of the many yarns that evening, Andrea was drunk and rowdy, dancing around the living room to Ben Folds while Jack and I scrutinize the lyrics and Elaine wonders what has happened to the shy little girl she had so carefully brought up. We finally make it out of the house and walk two doors up the hill to the Taverna of Lefteris where the insanity continues as Andrea, Elaine and I put on a show that borders on domestic violence, but seems to entertain the Marlowes, at least until the final act when Amarandi wakes crying and I buy her an ice-cream to appease her. Both Andrea and her mother start yelling like a couple old ladies confronting a crooked butcher. That is enough for Sue and she rushes us out and says goodnight while Jack drives us home. I don't feel like a continuation of the scene at the taverna so Amarandi and I go to the bar on the dock where we talk to James Crispy until two-thirty in the morning, about Andrea's potential as a water-colorist, and what it's like to be gay in a traditional Greek fishing village. The Fourth of July So what. Big deal. Who cares? Unless you are in a small Greek village in the Peleponisos and anything is an excuse for a celebration. Actually it's just the continuation of an on-going celebration that begins at sundown with the evening's first ouzo. Tonight is special. We explain the significance of this date to Katina and she is making roast chicken, kontosouvli, and potato salad. Then, as expected, James and Joan get off the flying dolphin. I don't go to meet it because I am fishing in a new area and doing quite well. I catch fourteen fish and we all have a delicious lunch. Martha, the girlfriend of our old friend Arthur from high school, also arrives with her entourage of four Americans. Two of them are her teenage daughters. So in one day we have doubled the number of Americans here, and it is only fitting that today is Independence day.

It is also incredibly hot. I had been in the water for hours, so it took that long for my body to warm up to the point where the air-temperature bothers me, but now I am ready to spend the rest of the day swimming. James and Joan had been stuck in Athens trying to locate their lost luggage. The problem was that nobody would admit they didn't know where it was. Joan told us, "They would just make something up to send us to the next place and get rid of us." They had to go to both airports and when they finally found their bags, they were locked together with some other lost luggage and nobody had any idea who had the key. When they finally retrieved their belongings and tried to get out of Athens they were hit head-on by the ferry strike. No boats anywhere. Hordes of angry travelers lined up in Pireaus with nowhere to go but their island holiday destination, and no way to get there. Not to forget the thousands of tourists stranded on the islands who had missed their return flights. And they wonder why tourists have stopped coming. The only ones who come are the ones who are so hopelessly nostalgic that they put up with all the crap, or have learned to maneuver their way around it, like us. Or the people who have never been here and romanticize the place, expecting to find the descendants of Homer. Good luck to them. So James and Joan decided to take our initial advice and go to Andros. The only problem was they couldn't find out if the flying dolphins were running because it was a different company then the flying dolphins that come here. They were not sure if flying dolphins are considered ferryboats and would be on strike. They should be. Ferry means 'to carry' in Greek. There's no mention of cars. They went to twenty different travel agents and nobody could help them. Finally, one nice guy spent half an hour on the phone and got them the information they needed. The flying dolphins from Rafina were on strike. They took a bus to Naphlion and then came here when the strike ended. I didn't have the heart to tell them that the dolphins have been coming here everyday. Andrea's mom keeps sneaking away for a smoke. It's hard to believe that her daughter hasn't caught on yet. Twice I have surprised her, hiding with her cigarettes. The first time she tells me "Matthew, if you love Andrea and if you love me, you won't tell her." The second time I happen to be the first one to turn the corner and see her jump up from her table at the bar and run behind the building to hide her ashtray. The third time is total slackness on her part. I am in Yannis store when she walks in and purchases a pack, not even noticing me, probably suffering from the beginning phases of nicotine withdrawal. "How many packs is she buying a day?" I ask Yorgo. Elaine is shocked to see me standing right next to her and tries to filibust me. She needn't worry. I won't tell. It would be a shame to lose such a good baby-sitter. We meet Jack, Sue, James and Joan at the Trocedero and have ouzo and a meze so beautiful we want to photograph it before we take the first bite. It's a big plate of tarama, sadziki, skordaya, olives, dolmadas, feta, potatoes, and strangely enough, little hot-dogs wrapped in bacon. Amarandi is unhappy so I don't get to spend much time with the older people. We adjourn and go to Katina's where she has set a long table for the Americans and the chicken and kountosouvli are turning on the spit. We are joined by Martha, her two daughters and her friend Christine. James Crispy, being British and perhaps fearing ridicule, never shows up, to all our disappointment and we joke about going up to his house dressed as Indians and dumping his tea down the toilet. Jack tells us a wonderful story about his cat named Muffy. He was living in San Francisco and one morning while walking to his car on the way to work he saw Muffy standing on the sidewalk. "Shit", he thought. "I accidentally let the cat out." He called it's name and walked over to it but the cat takes off running. Jack is concerned because the cat has never really spent much time out of doors so he runs after it. He corners her by a fence but when he grabs her she scratches him and jumps into someone's backyard. Jack scales the fence and rips his pants, chases the cat through a garden and over another fence. The cat jumps on to a roof and Jack climbs after him. He chases the cat all over the neighborhood until he finally corners her. He grabs the cat which puts up a terrific fight, scratching and clawing and continuing to struggle all the way back to the house. When he gets home Sue is just leaving for work. She sees Jack, clothes torn, hands bleeding, holding the cat by the scruff of the neck as it yowls and cries, trying to get away from him. "What are you doing?" She asks him. "I accidentally let Muffy out when I was leaving." He tells her apologetically. "But, Muffy's in the house." Says Sue. July 5th "This is Hemmingway weather" says Elaine on her way back from the outhouse where she was sneaking a cigarette. I don't know what that means except that it is a hundred degrees and the only thing to do is try to find a cool shady spot in the house and wait until the sun disappears behind the mountains. When we enter the period of relief I sit on the steps of the old cistern listening to the cicadas. "Skyi Tzidikas" is the Greek expression for days like today. It means exploding cicadas. In other words it's so hot the cicadas are bursting into flames. But now there is a cool breeze coming from the sea and the fire department can rest for another fourteen hours. Andrea and I snorkeled down the coast getting to the last beach before turning back. In all we were in the water about three hours and I caught thirteen fish that we are saving for dinner. The water is so cold in places that I thought we might remain cool for the rest of the afternoon but by the time we finished lunch I was boiling again and went back to spend another hour spearfishing down the south coast. I discovered a new way of hunting by hiding behind rocks and shooting at big fish when they passed, rather then chasing them around trying to catch them. I shot one big kefalo but I didn't have the patience to wait there for the next one. Then I got the hiccups so loudly I had to get out of the water because they sounded amplified through my snorkel and I was embarrassed in front of the fish. After four hours under water I feel like I am still swimming and my eyesight is wavy and blurred. We all go to dinner at the restaurant in Metropolis owned by the man Jack calls "Double Limpy", because he uses two canes. The wine is good, the food OK, but it isn't Katina's and it is more expensive. Amarandi finds a stroller belonging to another baby and that keeps her amused for most of the evening. Jack tells us how much he dislikes living in Cairo and admits that he wants to go back to live in San Francisco, at least half the year. Martha says she thinks that Cairo must be very exotic. Jack agrees it is but not in a pleasant way. It's chaotic, dirty, crowded and the food is lousy. He's been there two years and going for a third so how bad can it be? But I do find an appreciative audience for my lyrics. James Crispy is sitting with his friend Eleni who spent ten years in San Francisco but lives here year round. When I tell her I was a performer she asks me to recite one of my songs. I don't know if she really understood everything I say but she seems enthusiastic and has me recite several more before we leave Lulu's restaurant where they are sitting, and go to the bar at the port. My brother is there with Joan and two of the other girls and I join them until one by one, tired or bored they leave for bed. I rejoin James Crispy and Eleni and things are going fine until I bring up Prince Charles' visit to Kalotrelochoro last August on Latsis' yacht. James, who hates royalty, or anyone besides him talking about them becomes moody and asks Eleni if they can please leave. Suddenly I am alone. Prince Charles did actually come here last summer. So did George Bush. Both the guest of a billionaire named Latsis who is trying to gain favor with both governments for some projects he has in mind. But while Bush endeared himself to the mostly republican Greek-Americans by jogging through the olive groves one morning, the royal entourage kept to themselves in a tight little group on the beach. Surrounded by idle motorboats, water-skis, wind-surfers and jet-skis they huddled together, afraid to go in the water or to ask the ships crew who were there to attend to their every need, to teach them to use any of the expensive beach toys they had with them. Finally they were all ferried back to the mother ship, bigger then any ferry on the Aegean, for a nice English lunch, leaving the toys behind for anyone who wanted to play after they had eaten. An hour later the launch returned with one old English gentleman who walked down the beach twenty yards in either direction before returning to the royal towels. There h e waited until another motorboat appeared, this one carrying a small sailboat like one you might find on the Thames and as the old man watched, they unloaded it, then helped him to get in. He sat in his sailboat for ten minutes, but something was wrong. There was no wind and drifting along a few feet from the shore was certainly not exciting enough for someone of blue blood. So the crewmen tied his small sailboat to one of the speedboats and pulled him slowly around the bay like a child's sailboat at a park pond. After this display I found it difficult to hate royalty or even rich people. It feels much more natural to pity them. I have to hand it to Latsis. His obscenely large yacht sailed into the bay and dropped anchor at 8:00 AM. At exactly 8:30 his helicopter took off and headed in the direction of Athens. It promptly returned at 6:00. Even a visit from the Royal family could not keep Latsis from putting in a full day at the office. July 6th While Andrea is at her art class I play with Amarandi for awhile before taking her to Katina's for a breakfast omelet with her grandmother. I continue down the road where I run into Jack in his car on his way home from dropping off my brother and Joan who had gone up to visit them that morning when it was still cool enough to move. He asks me if I need a lift and after reflecting for a moment I decide to take advantage of his offer and go to the far harbor by Agios Nikolaos. Panayotis, Katina's husband, had told me that was the best place to fish. Jack drops me off and I leave my clothes and bag with him. It will be easier to swim the one mile back to town then to walk the windy, two mile round-about dirt road. There are several fishing boats tied up and there a few fishermen cleaning their nets, tossing damaged and rotten fish into the sea. Underneath the fishing boats is a mass of fish, mostly kefalo and melanouri, but the kefalo are small and I can't get close to the large melanouri. I swim around for awhile. I shoot a big perka but as I'm pulling him off my spear I became tangled in the string and accidentally let him go. I wait for him to reappear but finally give up. As I'm starting to leave I see a giant moray eel, slithering through the rocks, eating the discarded fish. Then I see two more all about three feet long and moving with a grace that transfixes me. My other spearfishing friends covet these creatures. Their meat is delicious and catching them is a challenge because if you miss, or you don't hit him in the head, he can bite your finger off quite easily. I concider going after one but to be honest, floating above them in a state of terrified wonder as they seem to greet one another and do erotic dance s makes me feel that shooting one would be an obscenity. Even the fishermen are watching them from the boat above. I continue watching them for about ten minutes and then begin the long trip back to town. I catch a few fish on the way and also find someone's lost mask and a big shell. As I approach the town I am met underwater by a topless bathing beauty. It's Andrea who has come out to meet me. We enjoy a great lunch at Thea Katinas.