Afternoons in Ithaka Read online

  In preparation for the memorial service to be held on the ninth day after Pappou’s death, we make kolliva, boiled wheat mixed with pomegranate seeds, sesame seeds, almonds, cinnamon, sugar, raisins and parsley. After we boil the wheat, my aunt lays it out to cool on a clean tablecloth in the parlour. Then we mix it with the other ingredients and place the mixture in a long tray, fashioning it into the shape of a grave. We sprinkle it with powdered sugar and decorate it with raisins in the form of a cross and Pappou’s initials. In the middle, we place a candle.

  At the mnimosino, the memorial service, the priest prays for the departed and blesses the kolliva. He offers comfort to those of us standing around the grave, reminding us of our own mortality and the brevity of this earthly life. ‘Eonia I mnimi tou’ – may his memory be eternal – he chants over the grave, swinging the censer filled with incense. Everyone in the village who is not bedridden has come to the service. The small graveyard fills with dark, weathered faces in headscarves and woollen caps. Yiayia wails, a long, primal lament – she has lived with Pappou for close to seventy years. The villagers cast looks at me every now and then, watching to see if Panayioti Tsintziras’s daughter will cry for her Pappou. I do. They look down, seemingly satisfied.

  Afterwards, we gather in the village cafeneion for coffee and liquor. The priest lights up a cigarette.

  ‘I remember your dad. I was just a kid when he left the village.’

  ‘I will tell him I saw you. He is very sorry that he couldn’t make it to the funeral.’

  ‘It’s a long way to come. It’s lucky you are here.’

  ‘Yes, it is … ’

  Everyone wants to talk to me. After expressing their condolences and asking how my parents are, they want news of their relatives in Australia. I get confused – which elderly face belongs to which family back home? In some cases, I haven’t seen their relatives since my early teens. I meet a writer who has written a history of the area and regularly contributes to the village newspaper – the tiny village seems to have a few creative sorts, including my aunty, who fills little notebooks with poetry. I wonder if the compulsion to tell stories runs in my blood. Despite the professional path I have chosen, I still feel the need to write, to record my own experiences and those of others in a bid to honour them. The writer remembers my father and speaks fondly of him. Everyone laments that Dad is so far away. My aunt is competent as always – she serves coffee, speaks to everyone and then whisks me off home. Perhaps she is worried I will be struck by the evil eye again.

  There will be another memorial on the fortieth day and another after one year. I reflect on how affirming it is to have such markers on the grieving journey, a time to reflect and to check in with other mourners. A sensible, practical ritual.

  A few weeks later, I go back to my aunt’s home. When I tell her I’d like to return to Crete, she gives me her blessing. I fly back to Heraklion and make my way to a tiny village outside of Chania to visit my goddaughter, Chrysoula. Our families connected when I was a child in Narrandera, and when I was ten her parents asked my dad and me to be her godparents. They returned to Greece when Chrysoula was a little girl; she is thirteen now.

  When I arrive, I find that she has grown into a slender, dimpled young woman with long dark hair. She and her brothers are delighted to see me and bombard me with questions about Australia. It hasn’t been easy adapting to life back in the village, they tell me. It’s a very small, conservative place, where everyone knows your business. In the tiny village square, men in tseberes, traditional black-fringed headscarves, sit around drinking coffee. It’s like a scene out of Zorba the Greek. They watch silently as the Australezi walk past. I feel trapped by their gaze.

  That night, we manage to get away with a few older cousins to a bar in town with gleaming fluorescent lights. Men swarm around my goddaughter and I squirm, knowing how her protective father and grandfather would react.

  Back at my goddaughter’s family home, I am fed until I am bursting: pickles to stimulate the appetite; onion and rabbit stew; lemony roast potatoes. Chrysoula and her brothers are keen to speak in English, having missed the Australian way. And yet their town is so picturesque, their lifestyle seemingly so easy. Their parents, after working exorbitant hours in fish and chip shops in Albury and Narrandera, can finally relax and enjoy their family. But the kids are finding it hard to settle into school. The system is so different here, the language not their own. I realise they are facing the same problems as many migrants face in Australia.

  The family humours my desire to walk the Samari Gorge, a sixteen-kilometre hike across the island, from the village of Omalos all the way down to Agia Roumeli on the shores of the Libyan Sea. Not deterred by my lack of suitable footwear, I buy some cheap sand shoes from a shop that trades in sun hats, inflatable toys and flippers.

  We set off soon after sunrise the next day. The rocks beneath our feet are round and slippery. The kids run on ahead, but I quickly realise that I have made a serious mistake in skimping on shoes. Once in, there is no way out of the gorge except by retracing your steps, or finishing. Pride does not allow me to back out. I persevere, all the while marvelling at the towering stones on either side of the thin path. By the midway mark, my toes are in excruciating pain and I join the queue at the medical station to get them bandaged. I limp along, finally making it to Agia Roumelli as the sun begins to set. The twinkle of blue water around the final corner is like a mirage. I take a quick dip in the sea. The immersion is akin to a baptism, a cleansing of the body and soul, but I can’t revel in it – we practically have to run the next three kilometres to catch the boat across to Hora Sfakion, so that we can make the last bus back to Chania.

  A few days later, my blackened toes and I bid my goddaughter and her family goodbye. We promise to meet again, either here or in Australia. I feel sure they will somehow find their way in this magical little paradise. For me, it’s time, once again, to return home.

  Asimina’s sfakiano (Cretan rabbit stew)

  Serves 6

  This stew is deliciously rich and tender. It marries well with a side of rice or pasta, with homemade bread to wipe up the sauces. My koumbara Asimina notes that it’s also best accompanied by her husband Andrea’s homemade wine.

  Ingredients

  1 whole rabbit, skinned, cleaned and cut into pieces

  4 bay leaves

  ½ cup olive oil

  6 whole cloves

  6 black peppercorns

  6 allspice berries or ½ teaspoon ground allspice

  1½ cups red wine

  Salt to taste

  8 large onions, peeled and cut into quarters

  500 grams ripe tomatoes, peeled and grated (or 1 can diced tomatoes)

  ½ teaspoon each of paprika, dried oregano and cumin

  5 whole cloves garlic

  1/3 cup white vinegar

  Method

  Put the rabbit, bay leaves and salt into a heavy-based pan and lightly brown. When the rabbit pieces have taken on a light smoky aroma, add the oil, cloves, peppercorns and allspice berries (or ground allspice). Cook until browned. Add half a cup of wine. Simmer for about half an hour, or until the liquid has reduced. Remove the rabbit from the pot.

  Add the onions to the pot and cook on a low heat until translucent. Remove half of the onions. Return the rabbit portions to the pot, arranging them on top of the onions, then cover the rabbit with the remaining onions. Add the grated tomatoes, paprika, oregano, cumin, garlic, the remaining wine and the vinegar. Put the lid on and simmer on low heat until the sauce is thick and rich and the rabbit pieces are tender. If it requires more liquid, add additional wine (not water). Serve with rice or wedges of crusty bread.

  The road trip

  The stone that rolls never gets mouldy

  Greek proverb

  Backlit by the setting sun, the ‘Welcome to Coober Pedy’ sign finally appears. We are relieved to see its rusting, bullet-holed surface. We get out our cameras. Another sign warns ‘Beware of mine shafts’, wi
th a picture of someone falling into a hole while taking photos. We put our cameras away.

  Adelaide, which we left early this morning, feels like a distant memory. As we made our way north from the city outskirts, the landscape fast became a mass of burnt-orange earth. Soon we were passing rusting petrol bowsers at isolated truck stops, swerving to miss dead kangaroos and disturbing eagles feasting on road kill. My new friend Katerina had never driven a manual car before, but felt confident enough to drive after a quick lesson at a roadhouse on the way – so long as she didn’t have to make any right-hand turns. Thankfully, there haven’t been many of those. The car shakes every time a lorry passes us, and we can almost feel our parents breathing over our shoulder: Be careful.

  The 800-kilometre journey has been a chance for us to get to know each other better. One thing we knew at the outset was that we both love eating. In the three days since we left Melbourne, we have already shared several memorable meals. In Kingston on the Great Australian Bight, home to the Big Lobster, we ate roast beef that fell off the fork, rich and flavoursome. When we asked the waitress how it had been cooked, she drawled laconically, ‘There’s no fancy formula. It’s just aged beef from a local farm. The cook hangs it out to cure. Then he seasons it with salt and pepper and cooks it to buggery.’ I’m sure she was thinking, Stupid city tourists, with their la-di-dah questions. It’s just food.

  Then there was the laksa in Adelaide: thick noodles, tender pieces of chicken and crunchy vegetables in a creamy, aromatic curry. Perfect comfort food – but twelve hours later, it is still wreaking havoc on my bowels. I’ve let off a few in the car.

  ‘This is a whole new level of intimacy,’ I say after another. ‘I guess now that I can fart in front of you, we’re officially friends?’

  Katerina laughs. ‘Yes, definitely.’

  We laugh a lot, sing at the tops of our voices and talk about anything that floats into our heads. We discuss the frustrations of living back home after extended trips overseas, of the pressure to get married. We are both living with our parents and longing to escape.

  The idea to come to Coober Pedy was born a few weeks back. It was the first time I’d been out with Katerina, although we had crossed paths occasionally at uni and sometimes run into each other at the Retreat Hotel in Brunswick, where we danced to Greek blues music and shared cigarettes. And then there we were in a little bar off Lonsdale Street, raising our voices over the music to plan an adventure.

  ‘We should go on a road trip. Go somewhere warmer.’

  ‘Let’s go to Sydney for the weekend. We could drive up, stay the night and come back the next day,’ I posed.

  Katerina hesitated. ‘Sydney’s not that much warmer. I’ve always wanted to go to the desert. What about Coober Pedy? My friend Maria knows someone there. We could drive up and head back through the Grampians.’

  The idea excited me. I imagined Coober Pedy as a kind of Aussie Wild West, a place where people go to escape and make their fortunes. Tellis, the son of the priest in my dad’s village and now a close family friend in Melbourne, once lived there. He has tattoos running up his arm, salacious portraits of his wife. It is whispered that he ‘stole’ her at gunpoint from her first husband. He has great stories to tell about his time mining in the desert. I must admit, I like the idea of hanging it on the patriarchs in my family, two women on an adventure.

  We nutted out the logistics on the way home from the bar in my Valiant. We entertained driving to Coober Pedy in the Valiant, but only briefly. That would be suicide. By the time I dropped Katerina off, we had a starting date and a time limit: ten days to get there and back, before I have to go back to work. We’ll sort the rest out as we go.

  A few weeks later, we joined a three-day backpacker bus tour that took us the long way to Adelaide. We stayed overnight at a sheep station, ate homemade scones for afternoon tea, raced up massive sand dunes and visited Aboriginal rock art. And now, the Thelma and Louise of the Greek-speaking community have finally arrived in Cooper Pedy in a boxy blue hire car, the Priscilla soundtrack playing on repeat all the way. Our vehicle is hardly the outrageous bus of the movie, but it got us here.

  ‘Shall we try to find Maria’s friend, and then book into the hostel?’ Katerina says.

  ‘Yes, but first, do you mind if we get some supplies? I think I’ve had enough of pies and chips, Coke and instant coffee. I need something fresh.’

  ‘Good idea. We can ask about “G” at the shops.’

  We are in a strange town in the middle of nowhere. We have no accommodation booked. We have one contact in town, a friend of a friend, but we don’t even know his real name. We are hungry. I try to smile reassuringly. Everything will seem better once we’ve got some real food into us.

  We make our way down the main street and call into the supermarket. The pickings are slim when it comes to fresh produce: a handful of browning apples, a few shrivelled oranges and some green-skinned potatoes. We’re told there hasn’t been a delivery of fruit and vegetables for days. My shoulders slump. I browse the shelves while Katerina asks where we might find the mysterious ‘G’. I am surprised to find jars of Kalamata olives on a dusty shelf, as well as the fat Volos variety from central Greece and stuffed green ones from Spain. There’s sleek sheep’s-milk yoghurt and creamy feta in the fridge, and packets of slippery sauerkraut and dry kabana on the counter – a little bit of Europe in the Australian desert. It strikes me as funny that people in this dusty town of forty-five nationalities can make do without fresh fruit and vegetables, but can’t forego the pantry staples of their homelands.

  We are told that we will find ‘G’ in the Ampol diner we passed on the road into town. Inside the diner, there’s Greek music blaring and a Harley parked in the middle of the floor. An Aboriginal man is smoking at one of the tables and exchanging banter with the man behind the counter, a stocky bloke in his early thirties. This is ‘G’, George, the owner of the roadhouse. We introduce ourselves as friends of Maria and tell him we have just driven up from Adelaide in a day.

  ‘We do that trip all the time,’ he says, unimpressed. Still, he looks at us with interest – two young women who have strayed into the desert, dusty, tired and probably hungry. I expect him to say, ‘Come into my lion’s den.’

  He does.

  ‘It’s nearly closing time. I have a few friends dropping in for pizza. Join us …’

  Like most locals, George lives in a dugout. The caves are like cool cocoons in the unforgiving heat. George’s dugout is sparsely furnished, with an industrial brick ‘bachelor’ bar in the living room. He tells us about the sizeable Greek-speaking community in Coober Pedy, and the many busloads of Greek-Australians who came from Adelaide and Sydney for the recent Glendi Greek Festival. He is charming and sexist in equal measure. Katerina and I sneak glances at each other – we are not quite sure what to make of him. I suspect he is hamming it up for us, but I could be wrong. I am tired and I don’t trust my usual instincts.

  A Ukrainian man, his Romanian wife and their son soon arrive, along with a miner from Croatia and her Finnish husband. A ferret sits on the Finn’s shoulder and a bird squawks from a cage in the corner. Soon a guitar materialises and the Ukrainian man starts to sing in Hebrew, then Greek, then Russian. Gypsy songs, quirky jigs and sad laments echo off the red earthen walls. We eat pizza from George’s shop and drink homemade port that someone has brought in a gallon jar. We feel as if we’ve stepped onto the set of a strange movie. We drink glass after glass of the sweet port. It gets late.

  When we try to take our leave, George tells us that the reception area at the hostel will be closed at this hour. At any rate, the owner has been caught perving on young women in the showers through a hole he drilled into the wall; we wouldn’t want to stay there. George offers us his spare room. The alternative is to sleep in the car. We stay.

  Katerina and I lie cramped together on the double bed, whispering. Katerina is uneasy about sleeping at George’s house – she feels we are vulnerable. I am too uninhibited by
the alcohol to worry much. I wonder whether I would have allowed myself to be charmed into George’s bed had I been alone, a natural progression of the night. The thought both mortifies and amuses me. George is exactly the sort of macho male I generally avoid. At any rate, I am here with Katerina. Sisterhood trumps stupidity any day.

  The next morning, we wake with throbbing headaches. George has left for work already. We call in to the roadhouse to thank him for his hospitality. He insists he will see us for dinner back at his place, and suggests we drive out to see the Breakaways, the bizarre moon-like landscape in Mad Max III.

  Once there, like children, we slide down a hill into a barren valley, taking photos that will do no justice to the majesty of the place. Later, we drive down a dirt track along the dog fence that stretches 5,300 kilometres across three Australian states, to see the sun set over the hills. We finish off the olives, feta and bread we bought the day before: a Greek feast in the Australian desert.

  Back at the roadhouse, George apologises that he is unable to join us for dinner at the dugout after all; he has to work. Instead, he cooks us an oversized chicken schnitzel and chips at the diner. We listen to Greek blues and share a bottle of tsipouro, a strong, grappa-like spirit. We stay at George’s place again. By now, we feel like old friends.

  The next day, George puts us on to his friend Yiannis, who shows us around his reproduction opal mine, a shrine of sorts. He serves us Turkish coffee and invites us back to his dugout for dinner. More lions, more dens. Except this lion is lankier, expensively dressed, with a thin gold chain around his neck and a wedding ring on his finger.

  When we arrive at Yiannis’ place, I take off my dusty travelling boots. His dugout is opulently furnished, the carpets pristine. This is clearly a family home, although he tells us his wife and daughters live in Adelaide. Coober Pedy is not the sort of place you want to raise a family, he says. George joins us and we drink yet more tsipouro, this time in elegant glasses. They regale us with wild stories from the recent past, tales of fights in bars and shootings in the street, drunken parties and violent feuds. They lament that there are now more tourists in the town than outlaws. But still, they manage to have fun. I’m still wondering what the intentions of these two men are, their expectations for the night, but we get back to our bed safely, waking without anything more than a hangover.