In the Greek Garden

I did not think Marianne Ihlen would be so young. Her bobbed white blonde hair glimmers in the sunshine and the masculine white shirt she wears billows in the breeze, rolled up below her elbows. She looks ready to fetch the water from the wells with a bucket in hand before she turns in her cropped trousers she takes a cursory look at the crowd and peels her dark sunglasses down to the bridge of her nose to reveal gold patches under her eyes. They look a bit like those stick on eye patches that beauty-influencers use to ward off ageing as if it were a curse. Even then I blink back doubt watching this child-faced, small and swift Marianne move towards a group of fishermen with beards and flat caps who nod at her before going back to untangling their nets. A boy rolls a barrel which seems weightless as it bounces off the cobbles. Who am I to know what’s going on, after all I’m half witted in this withdrawal from petrol fumes. I can smell the mule poo and my own sweat now I’m on a car-free island. The braying horses and hooves have replaced the whirr of mopeds – my ears are only just recovering from the shock of Hydra, never mind my lungs, which have not inhaled such clean air for years. 

They say there is something about the air and the light here in Hydra – clear and golden, perfect for painting or conjuring words. That kind of expectation is long evident in inspiring all those marvellous creative folks to make pilgrimages here. I don’t trust myself. I’m no artist – I crave realism and all I am being offered this morning is abstraction. 

This light has been playing tricks on me from the moment I arrived yesterday, Yorgos met me from the boat and escorted me up the steep incline to the apartment, weaving through the mules and tourists. I spotted the old ‘Katsikas’ sign on a green-painted store we passed. Bah, I thought that’s been closed for decades. Once an infamous Kafenion-  bar – post office that served as gathering spot for the island’s international scene; the place writers Charmian Clift and George Johnson ran up a debt so high over the 5 or more years they lived here it wasn’t paid off until he finally sold the novel, My Brother Jack.  And anyway wasn’t Katsikas further down the harbour towards the clocktower, I thought. 

I ventured out at my first chance exploring the meandering stone streets, stopping to admire the Kala Pigadia, Good Wells which was referenced so often in Rope of Vines by Brenda Chamberlain. Once the gathering place for village women, a place to trade gossip and news. Despite its beauty and solace of the old crumbling mansions surrounding the square, the wells are sadly all locked up after being contaminated. I wandered back to the harbour, following a siren call. And there Katsikas old store was right on the harbour mocking my doubts. Doors closed, a layer of dust on the windows but as I peeked in cupping my hands over the glass it was like a window to another era. There was the long lean bar stacked with the green glass bottles, the baskets piled up and kewpies jugs waiting to be filled with water or wine.  Traditional taverna tables to the side, some scattered with squat wine glasses and old beer bottles. A pile of red and white chequered tablecloths neatly folded; aluminium buckets strung from the ceiling. It was as if someone locked up Katsikas in 1969 when Leonard Cohen left and threw away the key. Baffled – wondering how such a thing of beauty was closed, I walked away, telling myself I’d ask Yorgos later. He’d know. 

Then this morning I was up early, wandering and Marianne surprised me. Only minutes before I’d seen Leonard looking dishevelled wearing baggy trousers held up with an ill fitting belt, extra holes clumsily punched into the leather, pulling up a chair outside Katsikas. His frizzy mop of adolescent dark curls bouncing as he spoke. Others had sat down to join him, sharing the same wild eyes of wanderers in search of something yet unnamable.  The men with Leonard turned as a pair of Greek girls in headscarves walked by carrying large old-fashioned suitcases and baskets as their knee length cotton dresses bounced around their knees. An old widow in black prodded at the cabbages stacked up in boxes.  

It was only when the woman in the tracksuit marched past having a heated conversation on her mobile phone that the frenzy began. 

‘Cut. CUT…CUUUUUTTT’ 

The director shouted and the extras moved and laughed – warm smiles replacing their stiff faces. Film cameras swivelled – a rabble of women and men in combat shorts with headsets appeared, shouting instructions in English and Greek. The horse harnessed to the water tank was relieved of its duty and led into the shade.

‘Action’ 

Of course I should have known this was the biggest trick of all. I asked the handsome chap dressed as a fisherman and he beamed, ‘Yeah it’s for the Cohen series, it’ll be on Netflix.’ 

I stifle a laugh, a cringe – a little too self-referencial smile for the meta-ness of this moment unfurling on this island’s myriad trajectory of literary and musical history. 

I swear I can hear Brenda Chamberlain whispering about horror of the other foreigners who treated the port like a playground and in that throaty Welsh rasp telling the crowd, here, ‘It is possible to live a lie until it is a kind of truth, until beauty comes out of even so timid a pretence’.

I watch the scene replay again; Leonard standing up and walking to the bar, the old lady poking at the cabbage, the horse parading past in its island finery, I can imagine Charmian Clift at the table listening in and writing in her note pad while a child clings to her dress. In Peel Me A Lotus, Clift describes her feelings about Hydra’s change when Hollywood came to the island to film Boy on Dolphin in 1956 with Sofia Loren. She captures a conversation overheard on the film set: 

“Oh, it makes me sick, Al!’ cries the ferocious young woman. 

‘Ruin, ruin, ruin! God when I see a sweet little place like this, and think what will happen to it after we’ve gone!’ 

And later as the summer crowds depart, Clift foretells them leaving the island. 

“I have a feeling this might be the last winter for idylls. You wait and see what next summer brings!” It will bring’..says George, ‘all the futility boys like homing bloody swallows. It will bring an enhanced tourist trade, in three dimensions, in full radient colour, and on the wide screen.” 

How right they were. Even 60+ years later those words ring true and each year, more and more ‘futilty boys’ come to worship at the alter of Cohen.  So too come the day-trippers, the fleets of yachts, the five-star pleasure seekers festooned on their private beaches. All looking for their slice of the Hydra light and air.

Tonight I’m contemplating heading to Loulou’s or Douskos for dinner – both old-time places tucked away. Places that those infamous 60s set used to hang out, my only worry is that on this island I might be walking right into a film set.

Winter keeps score. It serves as a kind of truth telling; a way of washing away the last embers – a time for revision, remaking, reminding. If an island Summer is all bluster and body – a non-stop pirouette of colour and noise, then it’s gift when Autumn arrives to fold away that brightness with a mellow kind of laughter – a gathering of fruits under lengthening shadows as the days shorten. But I’ve noticed that what happens often here is that Autumn ends up being the star of the show – an encore of mild weather that lasts almost to Christmas; encouraging green growth with scattered showers and glorious blue days. Tonight I listen to the wind howl and the hailstones scatter on the roof, snow is forecast. But will it reach us on Syros?

Here we are in the first-kind-of-normal-post-lockdown winter since Covid. Everything open and events on across the island; from bands to theatre, to cinema to art shows and book readings. The sort-of-quiet December brought a twinkle of shopping displays and the syrupy charm of cinnamon, then January laid a muted calm over the island; we’ve had clear blue days where the sun felt warm enough to shed clothes and dive into the chilly sea. Glorious afternoons of empty hillside walks. For many that live here, Winter is when people seem to have more time. So night classes start up again, and often when I walk down the hill all manner of music and singing pours out into the quiet streets. A lone flute player rehearses at the music school and each time I hear it it brightens up an otherwise dark street. Each week I return to Greek lessons and attempt to get my head round ways of being heard in a language that evades my understanding. Slowly, Slowly – they say and I try out conversations with neighbours. Explaining who I am, asking questions. It’s like a half-pantomime filling in the blanks of my vocabulary. But it’s enough, enough that I don’t do too much damage with my clumsy words and it means that the kind Kyria fills my pockets with homemade pies ‘for the journey’. 

Last year I started Greek dancing lessons – joining a class with all Greek speakers , bravely being introduced to it by a friend. At first I found it overwhelming – just being in a crowded room where everyone else had such a better understanding of not just the instructions, but the music, the steps – all part of Greek traditions they’d all grown up with. Here I am Xeno, the outsider, trying to join in. But I persisted, despite the gulf in my Greek and my gratitude for all the kindness of translations and explanations. I enjoy it not just because the music is beautiful, always unexpected, but the way each dance is introduced by the teacher Anna with a little tale about where it is from. Each week we practice new dances and slowly the steps become familiar and known. Sometimes it’s just the small and understated steps, the way we all stand shoulder to shoulder and move as one, the way we change from right foot to left, the little hop steps and turns, small and fragile. Back straight, head up and together all holding hands or shoulders and mostly always in a circle. It has been so surprising to learn to dance like this in a way that looks so easy as an outsider watching. But the reality is so difficult and so different from the ones I have often seen being performed at festivals. Some from the mainland, like the kalamatianos (from Kalamata)- performed at weddings and parties, to the Syrto style in a circle to the wild but tricky Ikariatiko (from Ikaria). Each week it’s like a little glimpse into a place and its dance traditions. Sometimes it’s a dance for the mother-in-law, sometimes a dance for Carnival with a song with rude lyrics that are totally lost on me. Others with sweet little details of rituals and waving of scarves, leg slapping tricks.  Its a diverse group all ages – even a few men, who I have to say sometimes the men get to have special moves; stepping away and twirling. All that bravado. The class for me is like a peek into mystical moments of a world that is both enthralling and steeped in tradition, that doesn’t exist in my own culture. For what its worth, I’m not quite there with the steps, like they, say art is long and life is short. Slowly slowly. 

As I walk home after dancing, my face warm and pink hitting the cold air of the evening. My shadow is swift past the the shuttered up houses, hearing only the soft footsteps of other people like me walking, going out to a warm bar or returning home. The buzz of mopeds dashing across slick streets. As I climb the marble steps I notice how they’ve grown green with weeds and the sound of water rushes in channels and drips down walls, rendering the thought of summer drought and parched earth unimaginable. Like the lights shining from the harbour, the island holds on for the coming storm tonight and what it might bring.  

When the storms come the leaves fall and the prettiest birds fly away. Those who stay they get the honour of really knowing this place in winter – when it’s showing some elemental truth underneath the surface of summer. The same way we really only know ourselves and our friends when they are not on top form, when life gets messy and stripped back, uncertain and challenging. The darkness of just being. That is what it takes to know a place.

And learning the words, the steps….and persisting.

Days cling to the calendar. Unsung notes from an instrument we are yet to hear. Quick on my heels, shadows of winter are locked away. I scarper up the hill, running against the heat, the mopeds, the Gods mocking in metallic and gasoline prayer. I become steel and bone shattered. The blood-red moon keeps me awake with her whispers. I wake in a sweat and believe even the sad days of the week mock me with hours unformed. Dead bells ring out – stopped before the clanging reaches any further down the hill. 

Time is gossamer thin. Hours and days fall uninterrupted by any single billowing idea. I wash and scrub and paint, letting thoughts flicker as softly as moth wings. Fragile. Ready to break or carry me away. Birds sing and fall silent. Protecting themselves from becoming as tired as the bells – regular on the hour, on dawn and dusk. Those frequent bells have yet to show me their language, a way of reading the day. The first few nights in the house are filled with deep slumber, the kind that is exhaustion and satisfaction rolled into long hours of dreamless sleep.  On waking, I wander from room to room, surveying a small kingdom – a fiefdom of sorts. Up high invisible as pirates, hidden just like the lessons from history, of the people who lived here first and last. I still talk to them, asking what they think – of the things we saved, the things we changed. If they could speak, I’d listen. But the house only ever rings with silence. 

After Easter, the summer heat came early, reducing the scant garden patches to dry bracken and gravel. Outdoors are scrappy paint pots drying out, crumbling wood and dust. The flowers that danced bright yellow have died down to a quiet song leaving bare stalks and stumps, brown edged leaves becoming mulch for another season. There is something wrong with the olive tree. The woodlice prowl at night, taking over – only the day’s heat drives them back underground. Even the caper bush died. (I say traumatised by concrete and tile, it gave up on us) Part ruin, part rescue – we live with what is left and it is a joy.

I chase the dust around from room to room. Only to find a new layer of it settles overnight. Only the silence of the house is a saviour. We open windows and the morning light honey’s its way across the ceiling. We have no curtains so I dash from the bathroom with a towel grasped to my body. The daylight changes and the sunset makes the walls blossom in apricot. We sit outside on wobbly chairs and laugh after a day’s work, feeling as empty as a drum, all washed out and muscles sore, and hearts swollen with well wishes. It is done. We live here. Raw and empty and saying thanks with mumbled lips to a million things that went right and wrong in life that brought us here – to this moment, I say and drain the glass of warming wine.

The night settles long after the sun has set on the other coast and only then the sky turns violet and star-pocked with tiny lights. The buzz of cars and bbrrr zzzip of mopeds in Ermoupoli is far below. A woman’s voice echoes the alleyway with laughter.  Life is happening all around – every doorway once closed up is now open and voices musically drift out.  

‘We live here’ I say it again to help myself believe it. 

Sundays are a cacophony of bells dragging us from the edge of sleep – known and unknown, ringing out with uncertainty – overlaying each other in a chorus. Spoon small, sweet sounds. I make coffee downstairs and go upstairs to the balcony to sit – forgetting things, going back down – wandering, getting distracted – moving some trinket or other. The battle for space – between the old residents and new, it seems takes time. I talk to them, is this okay? Moving the old lamp into a new space. Better right, when it lights up the dark corner now? 

Silence. 

I hope they like what we’ve done. Brightening it up. Windows that no longer rattle and shutters that close, water that runs clean and a door that locks. A bathroom you don’t have to enter through the yard.  Upgrades – modern touches – nothing drastic. I pack up some more things; books, papers, cards – a picture of St Francis and a postcard of the Pope from 1973. A man’s photo stuck underneath a framed Virgin Mary icon, stamped 1956. I hide them like treasures under beds. This little archive of mystery collected by people I may never know. They live on and are part of the house, this neighbourhood – it’s life. The story it tells – just as we are and whatever future it holds. 

Nothing lasts forever. To savour the now in all it’s newness is enough. Just as paper crumbles and paint fades, dust will still swirl across the floor of the house long after we, it’s temporary guardians, are gone.

• 

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After glutton days of carnival, Clean Monday arrives like a shiny diamond cutting through months of cloud.  Some went kite flying as tradition dictates out at the coast or on the green hills – some kids idly ran through the plateia just fast enough to make the kite lift a metre or two from the ground. A rare windless day. Washing hung out on rooftops and houses swept clean as the air sang with the promise of Spring. In the market the glistening tentacles of the octopus ready stretched next to bulbous fish. Taverna tables suddenly set outdoors for lunch marking the Lenten fast of sinless pleasure before the feasting of Easter. No meat, no dairy – nothing with a spine.

The weather held out for a day or two. Bright sunlight on winter tired eyes, relishing the feel of shedding seasons. Moving towards the light of longer and warmer days. Then the wind changed direction and the cold came back – the darkness too. The winter is never ending and in recent months the island was hit by not one snowstorm but two.  

What is positive is the greenness of the hillsides visibly quenched from all the delicious rain we’ve had. 303.0 mm in less than 3 months of 2022 the last time I looked – compare this with 181.6 mm for the whole of 2021. It’s a wet, cold and damp and windy and icy and cold and dark year so far. 

Some days start off light. I am sprung wide awake before 7am and shyly opening the door to scare nervous cats who’ve been watching the birds flit around the ragged stumps of cut back bougainvillea.  The birds sing loudly, willing on springtime, nest building and flying back and forth fetching twigs with a prurient optimism. Weaving a home so when the warmer weather finally comes they will be ready. I admire their work ethic – feeling my patience drain with the waiting. 

The hills are lush with green vegetation, dancing yellow follows seem neon in the gloom.  There are days when hiking is possible and on one of these we found a carving on a rock. A lonely hillside memorial or a declaration perhaps. It’s on a path, not a well used one though – but must have taken a while to carve.

We asked around. No-one seems sure.  Perhaps it’s to a soldier in the Greek civil war. Syros has more famous carvings at Grammata (letters) beach in the North. A place where ancient sailors marked thanks or prayers or declarations on the rocks.  The names of those who sheltered there or those who never made it home are scattered along the wide bay. Older than the island’s long-tail of memory.  Perhaps one could map the other markings; the names made by hands of those long gone – edged out of stone with knives or tools, like saxifrage that splits the rock. Proof that they were here once.  That would be something to know the why’s and who’s. 

My mind wanders, doom-scrolling  – opening tabs, closing them, starting thoughts, shutting them down again as fearful as hope in the darkness. I stop seeing. Not just the view, but the very things in front of me. The tea cup, the streak of sunlight showing up the dust, the way footsteps in the alley sound like drums.  Reading again the new words that sit heavy and fat on my tongue. Unable to remember them right at the moment I need them – I read and practise the letters – but my brain has a sieve-like approach to the lessons I take. Repeating, using and discarding them like crumbs. I learn. I unlearn. I learn again. 

This week the school bands are practising for Greek Independence Day on 25th of March. Given their dedication of a daily hour long practice and the sound as it rises up the town, the parade with all its pomp and military grandeur will be back on. Just like normal. A word we use now with such frequency. I forget I don’t know how it was before and find myself nodding along, smiling. Feeling blank and turned around, my back against the dark clouds.

By afternoon all hope of sunshine has been lost. I come back again to the path on a walk to clear my mind from the doom-scrolling fog. Counting stones underfoot, the springyness of grass and leaf, tumble of tangled root and unfurling tendril. The yellow and white flowers grasp upwards for sunshine – bobbing in the breeze. Even the pines are shimmering green and proud branches stretched outwards. They almost look like Christmas trees. Last August they stood like skeletons – stringy and bare after the droughts and extreme heat that persisted all summer. But now they shine. Sticky scent rising as I pass. 

The chickens have scampered up onto the wall again close to Sa Mikalis Church, where they peck and pose. I often see a man come past who shoos them back in the garden they belong to by shaking a bag at them. After they scatter he hops over the wall to collect their eggs. 

I walk on and the sun is about to go over the hill at Alithini, I climb to the top of the village, finding a spot to shelter away from the worst ravages of wind. I find more words carved into the rock. And more. I wonder if I am suddenly looking for them. Or is it that the words can only be seen in light, when the sky opens and the shadows are cast upon the rocks. 

I make promises to myself. To the wind, to the sun, to the clouds. I meditate on my lowliness, my thanklessness, remembering the skull and claw of time itself. Always seasons. Always light. Always dark. 

“One discovers the light in the darkness, that is what darkness is for; but everything in our lives depends on how we bear the light. It is necessary, while in darkness, to know that there is a light somewhere, to know that in oneself, waiting to be found, there is a light. What the light reveals is danger, and what it demands is faith.” James Baldwin