free download here - Michael Llewellyn-Smith

Return to Asi Gonia
carrying within me ruins that could not be expelled for long even by the
calm and balanced life of the sixth continent.
But for a time.
On the way up to Asi Gonia I met the grocer Daskalomarkakis and
an old white-haired man whose name I could not remember.
‘You were here last year with Ruth and Katerina.’
These were the two girls from Cambridge with whom we had visited
Asi Gonia three years before. Everyone in the village except Psychoundakis
had forgotten how long ago it was; some said two years, most one.
But there is a refreshing vagueness about expressions of time; procthes,
for instance, ‘the day before yesterday’, can cover anything up to three
or four months back.
‘How are they ?’ they asked. ‘What are they doing ?
‘They are very well, Ruth is in Israel. Katerina is married.’
‘Po po po.! Married! We thought you were going to marry her.’
‘No,’ I said. ‘I was never going to marry her. Anyway, it was Ruth I
was going around with. But that was after we got back to England.’
‘Who did Katerina marry then? Do you know him? Was it Brian?’
‘No. I haven’t met her husband. She got married while I was here
in Greece.’
‘Well well,’ he said. ‘We all thought you two boys were going to
marry them.’
He turned to his friend, the old white-haired man, and explained the
whole affair again; his folklorist curiosity was aroused. ‘D’you hear
that?’ he said. ‘They were living up there by the spring with the two
girls and they weren’t even engaged.’ They both laughed.
‘We only met them in Athens three weeks before,’ I said.
They laughed again. ‘We thought you’d known them all your lives.’
The affair became more and more curious.
‘No. But that’s the way it goes in England. Different customs.’
They whispered together for a few seconds.
‘And then Katerina married someone else?’
‘Yes,’ I said patiently.
More whispering.
‘Excuse me, but tell me – it’s pure curiosity, just interest you understand
– did you sleep together?’
‘No.’
Po po po !’ They talked to each other rapidly. I distinguished the
words ‘No, he’s not lying,’ uttered by Daskalomarkakis; but the old
man appeared to be doubtful about this.
‘I’m not lying,’ I said, and explained pompously, ‘There’s no reason
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