ON THE DEEP BLACK RIDGE OF HYDRA

18.06.04


Is it hot or am I suffering from the heat? What else could I want today instead of holidays on pretty beaches and all the rest? Unfortunately, I can’t go yet. This is the reason why I recall my recent holidays on the island of Hydra. My friend Christina had invited us there to celebrate her birthday.I got the dolphin (speedboat) and became a dolphin myself. The rest of the gang had arrived way before I did. They left in the morning with an old boat – an old tub, with crazy pirates for sailors, and so on. They found it very romantic to wake up at the crack of dawn and travel for five hours, just to be together. I am not in the mood for stuff like that. ‘I’ll meet you later’ is what I told them. I wore my summer clothes and ran to the sea. My father helped me board.

He is very funny when he is doing things for me. He wants to be protective but he doesn’t even know how to do that. Some times, he gives me a look somewhat suspicious and smiles. He waits for commands: ‘Bring me this, go there, not like that! Aren’t you listening to me talking to you?’. I feel like I am accompanied by a big baby. There are moments that this freaks me out. I usually enjoy it. It’s hilarious to see a grown person at the mercy of everything. Daddy can be entrapped but he has humour.

If I can be kind of funny, I definitely owe it to my father. My mother has always been far too serious. She can always make a mountain out of a molehill. Instead of that, my father swallows the mountain and the molehill together, especially when you manage to persuade him that it’s for his own sake. The water of the sea is not something to swallow but to gargle or play with You can do so with a little spoon, an armband, a flipper or a propeller. Our dolphin flows through the water in order to bring us finally to the island. You feel that you are enjoying an unparalleled sense of freedom when you travel alone, far away from your parents, and know that your friends are expecting you somewhere when you finally reach your destination. I fought hard to win my parents’ confidence. I dried out my throat by saying that I’m not a baby any more, and also because I wanted to persuade them that they won’t find me almost dead or almost sunk at some beach. They have changed now. They have even changed so much that I am the one to worry instead of them.

I wasn’t worried at all during the trip. Christina had assured me that she would come and get me with a sea carrier in order to reach the house right from the bay. This was the only way for me to skip the stairs that would lead me to the main entrance of the house. Arriving at my destination, I am told that the sea carriers’ people are on strike. Only one, mr. Vangelis, continues to work. He is known as a strikebreaker. This is enough to mean that, when the others are on strike, he covers miles and miles of routes; in fact, so many that he can’t help us at all. With a little persistence, we persuade the dockers to take us to the rocks close to the house. Our adventure is about to begin.

The first night, we sit at the elevated terrace of the house. What a great house. The writers’ paradise. Imagine sitting barefoot where the waves break. In the sea, yet elevated. A little under the sky and a little beyond the deep blue sea. Thinking of nothing. Being caressed by the sun. Looking at your papers and thinking of tearing them all. Of erasing everything you’ve written or saved for a lifetime. Of getting out for a walk, starting from ground zero. And then starting again. With new images in front of your eyes. This reason is enough to make you live, either alone or in a crowd. Who will guarantee you this kind of luxury when you are not born a millionaire or when you tear the lottery tickets before you even get to know whether you won or not? I would really long for a rest at such a place throughout the months of summer. In theory, I will never have the pleasure of obtaining a house like that for me. Who is going to tell me what I can have and what I can’t?

Some times, I ‘ride’ a long reed and I am ethereally happy in my world. I am thinking of dedicating myself to writing for a while, writing a quite good novel, selling a few thousands of copies and finally getting to buy a house on an island. Money is not an incentive to write but they can be the way to guarantee oneself the lifetime ability to be dedicated to writing and reading without forcing one to undertake a bunch of other tasks that make life horrible to one’s eyes whereas it could be fabulous. That’s what I think and then I wake up.

A friend of mine told me that the Hollywood productions are to blame for having hit me on the head, thus creating pointless persistence. Nonetheless, when we finally found mr. Vangelis the other night, we went downtown to the bars and the cafés of Hydra and we met Papakaliatis. The girls found him. Gaping idly at nowhere, I was chewing the straw of my cocktail. Suddenly, we heard some voices. It had just started raining cats and dogs and the owner of the place called us all in. He was in a hurry to pick up the tent and he didn’t even see us. Without even helping me sit quickly on my wheelchair and although he saw that Christina was trying to lift me up quickly so as not to get wet, he folded the tent exactly while we were under it. We were soaked to the skin; not by the rain but by the dirty water over the tent.

I still remember my curses. I even swore at a guy who came to help. Everybody remembers you a day after the fair. He was sitting there doing nothing, until he remembered that he could be of use to us. What can one say here? Very angry and in a very bad mood, we decided to go home. Without mr. Vangelis. He had switched off his mobile since early. He had vanished into thin air. We asked the dockers again to take us but they refused. There was no other way than go back on foot. As if. The others would walk. I would roll. I was supposed to roll. Do you know how difficult it is to roll a wheelchair on a road covered in stones? Let alone talking about hills.Confused in the dark and the strange smells, we prayed for a safe return. I was surprised with the patience of the girls who pushed my wheelchair without making a single complaint. ‘Who else would do that with such willingness?’, I wondered. At some point, the girls started shouting: ‘Christoforos, Christoforos!’. So I turned to see Christoforos and instead of him I saw a donkey staring at me in the dark.

It took us around 40 minutes to walk the distance to the house. Balls of ice cream were expecting us on the table of our terrace (we were supposed to help ourselves alone). We got stuck in the bowls right then and there. The next day we were supposed to return to Athens. We had to return full of everything. If everything goes well, we’ll go to that island this year too. I just hope that the sea carriers won’t be again on strike.