Cafes On Samos
‘I’m going up the country, baby do you want to go?
If you can’t make it, your sister Lucille won’t go.’Traditional Blues.
Sitting in a café is an art. It’s not an occupation for the faint hearted.. The mind has a few dark corners, and there’s no telling where you’ll get to if you wander aimlessly for a while. Better to finger the souvenirs, or you might take to scribb1ing. The first thing you need is time. Obvious perhaps but hard enough to find. Less obvious is that to get your hands on any you’ll have to change your life completely. The second thing you need is a kind of relaxed alertness. It takes a bit of time to develop. Then you need an interest in what usually happens. I’m the ideal candidate because I have an insatiable curiosity and a tota1 inability to concentrate. This is the ideal spot because it’s so hot you even have to think slowly.
We didn’t see the Byzantine museum. In the vestibule set a young Orthadox monk, bare headed, with his long dark hair pulled back into a bun.. He leaned forward like a black question mark, his features creased by some crisis of faith or some domestic catastrophe. A senior monk, his hat and vocation in place, glided about talking to some more important visitors.. It was definitely closed. We slunk away. The Archeological Museum is closed on Tuesdays too.
We decided against the monasteries near town. That left the bookshop and the cafés. I slid into a seat beneath the awning with a book of Modern Greek Poetry. Cavafy says it’s no use running from town to town. You can’t lose your shadow. Fair enough, I’ll just sit here then in this battered old square, with its cracked lion shadow, watching the shadows move round the day. The buildings remind me of early de Chirico paintings, old, but no definite period. The shadows have that same quality of exquisite menace. Life slows down as the sun climbs. I read the Cavafy out to the others, to a little chorus of ‘How depressing!’ so I shut up again.
On the other hand, who said it was any use? It’s just the pleasure of the space, however temporary, between one definition and the next. Like finishing one book and wondering what to read now. Some, of course, you don’t finish like this anthology. Only Cavafy is any good really, the rest are still chewing on all that indigestible mythology. Or maybe it’s the translation. Some you go back to; books and journeys.
Fortunately Samos lacks the touristy row of seafront cafés at Pyhtagorion. No gaudy reds, blues and yellows here. No ice cream sundaes, stuck with sparklers and sweet cocktails with unlikely names served by sour faced reluctant waiters. This café is probably open in the winter too. I smile at the waiter. He doesn’t.
In Pythagorion we did see the museum. A few nice old chunks of stone. A head of Claudius, crowned with laurel, desperately trying to look the part of a statesman, a bullet-headed Augustus. A bust of Trajan. Who was Trajan?
The sun throws black striped shadows through the bamboo awning on to the faded green tablecloth..
A large damp lady wearing only a copious Donald Duck t-shirt claws her way out of a taxi. Other t-shirts amble back and forth; Coke, beer, cigarettes, Disney, rock groups, charities, radio stations, designers, more exotic resorts, you name it; a kind of commodity fetishists’ convention.
On the front at Samos you can buy postcards and bigger photos of the islands. Despite the fact they’re all by different photographers though, they all look the same; depressingly picturescue.. Everything’s been freshly whitewashed. The only people ore selected elderly Greeks in sort of traditional dress, although the only people you actually see here are tourists in t-shirts. The ordinary Greeks look well., ordinary. Not content with re-writing the pasts ~ re-writing the present.
Ice cubes clink in a glass. The waitress sidles by.
If you sit here for long enough in a café, starting with your morning coffee, through the lunchtime rush until the afternoon pause, you’ll find the waitress starts to smile at you; but it’s time to move on.
By the dock, there’s a strange little café, run by three crones. One has a face like a lizard, darting eyes behind a black scarf. One dozes behind a dusty pile of cardboard boxes in a corner. The real Greece at last. We nave a nice cold soda, listen to the creaking of the ancient ceiling fan, and settle down to wait for the boat. Suddenly, out of nowhere, a row blazes up and the three dear ladies start energetically trading insults. We retreat to a weatherbeaten table outside clutching our soda. Lizard face hobbles off muttering curses. It’s five o’clock; nearly time. A scrawny sailor in a blue t-shirt is swigging ouzo with a mate.. He chuckles his, way through a story, showing stumpy teeth. Opposite us the Samos Tourist Agency - ‘a problem here, life is too short’ - offers more than philosophy. Two armless terracotta ladies cast a benign gaze over the waiting travellers. Inside this scruffy palace with its crummy ochre paint, hand written signs suggest you can leave your luggage, book boat trips, get informed or learn Greek. For all I know you could also purchase one of the assorted daughters. At the moment the slick proprietor is exerting himself by exhuding the illusion of efficiency. He needs to save his energy for tending his quiff. We collect our bags.
Five thirty and reluctantly it’s time to join the little band of hopefuls with their clutter of bags and rucksacks, waiting on the dock. Like us, of course, they’re real travellers, not just tourists. Along with one dirty white car and one gleaming black motorcycle we board the little boat to Turkey.
Page(s) 15-16
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