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14
Return to Asi Gonia
I went up to Asi Gonia for the last time as summer was Septembering
to a close; the days still hot, but filled with the dusty tatters thrown up
by four months of sun and crumbling earth; the nights longer and
colder.
Leaving Athens was a deliverance, from the endless sweating summer,
the nervous pettiness of overheated people, and my own life,
which was in a mess. Leaning over the ship’s rail in Piraeus 1 watched
the sun wheel its way down through flaming rings of orange and red,
and die in pale green. Scabby rinds of water melon floated in the oily
water. The sailor kissed his girl goodbye, then passed through the
ticket-barrier and talked to her through the enclosure rails. One of the
sad, trivial conversations it must have been – ‘You will write ?’, ‘Don’t
forget to feed the cat’, and so on. The great neon lights of the
capitalists began to wink; METAXAS, the genuine brandy, PAPASTRATOS
cigarettes, TYPALDOS. There was a satisfaction in being alone, leaning
on the rail and dropping dead matches into the narrow gap between
ship and quay, watching the others saying goodbye and the Athenian
night closing in. Because for me it was not a case of leaving a dear
place; rather I was leaving an encampment which held me and my
friends inexplicably, like a drug, and I was breaking the habit and
going home. Yet stirred by memories of other departures I waited idly
for someone to come down to the quayside and say goodbye, to appear
suddenly, at the last minute, behind the crowds of friends and relatives,
waving a silk square in the last of the light.
The boat pulled out.
Everyone, I think, has to some extent these ambivalent feelings
about Athens. The colony of writers, artists and teachers which it has
collected is divided between those who hate it and those who like it
but feel they should be elsewhere. There are exceptions of course. But
the trouble is that the Athens colony is not a satisfactory one for writers
– for artists I would not know – because the ingredients of life are too
few.
I mean this. The English in Athens fall into several categories. There
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