Afternoons in Ithaka Read online

  I start with the year twelve English reading list, on which is George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four. I work diligently through his Animal Farm, and then through the books that led him to these seminal ones, tracing his journey backwards. His writing leads me to Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World. From there I peek into Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own and Simone de Beauvoir’s The Second Sex. I want very much to understand de Beauvoir and her fellow existentialist Camus, but their language is beyond me as I sit on the carpet, reading passages during my lunch hour. George Johnston’s My Brother Jack, another prescribed text, leads me to its sequels, Clean Straw for Nothing and A Cartload of Clay. Our English teacher, Michael, tells us that the character Cressida Morley is based on Johnston’s real-life partner Charmian Clift. I seek out her exquisite stories, in which she describes eking out a living on the Greek island of Kalymnos with Johnston and their young children. Clift writes of trying to balance her writing career with her family, and of their longing to escape their ‘civilisation-sick’ existence in Australia and England. In Mermaid Singing, published in 1958, the irony is not lost on Clift when she describes an islander addressing her husband:

  Well you see Mister George, it seems funny to these fellers here, all these fellers who don’t want nothin’ but to get away from Kalymnos. They all want to go to Australia. They don’t want to have to go on diving for sponges. Ain’t nothin’ here but sponges, Mister George.

  Clift whets my appetite for other expatriate writers who have lived in Greece: Gillian Bouras, Gerald Durrell. These writers have made the inverse of my parents’ journey, leaving affluent city lives for poor, rural ones.

  My very favourite author, however, is supremely civilised. I read Oscar Wilde’s plays, his stories, his biography. The Picture of Dorian Gray becomes a kind of manifesto: the duality of Dorian’s character seems like a strange metaphor for my own life. ‘Live! Live the wonderful life that is in you! Let nothing be lost upon you. Be always searching for new sensations. Be afraid of nothing.’ I am torn – am I a dutiful Greek daughter, or a … what? What is the alternative? Will my true self always be hidden away like Dorian’s portrait?

  Perhaps the answer to my dilemma lies in laughter. Our Modern Greek class goes to see Wogs Out of Work, a show about ‘New Australians’ sending themselves up. Suddenly being a Greek-Australian doesn’t seem so bad. The strict fathers, the factory-working mothers: I’ve never seen them as funny before. There’s a skit about a Greek girl who has a sharp tongue and big hair – ‘I’ll have to tell Dad I’m going out with people from the office,’ she says as she dons red high heels to go out with her boyfriend. She is a stereotype, I know, but she is larger than life, endearing, out there.

  After the show, we stop for coffee in Brunswick Street’s Black Cat Café. I have my first real cappuccino; I watch the coffee ooze from the machine, the barista flamboyantly frothing the milk. There are Formica tables with retro chairs like the ones my parents threw out only a few years ago. The waiters have long hair and ripped jeans. Mum would never let me wear ripped jeans. We’re not that poor that you have to wear torn pants, I can hear her saying.

  There’s a camaraderie in the group, a sense of being grown up. Our teachers talk a little more than usual about their lives, about their young kids. About their divorces. I realise for the first time that they are in their early thirties, not really that much older than us. And that they too have problems.

  When I get home, Dad is waiting anxiously at the door. As soon as Stella drives off, he closes the door and starts yelling: ‘What time is this? I was so worried. I don’t trust that Stella. What sort of teacher is she anyway to bring you home so late? I thought you would be home hours ago. You’ll never go out at night again!’

  Mum stands behind him, imploring him to calm down. He walks off in a huff, ranting, and she ushers me to my room.

  ‘Why were you so late? You know how much he worries. Something could have happened to you out there on the streets.’

  ‘But Mama, we just went out for coffee …’

  ‘Go to bed now. I’ll calm him down …’

  I cry myself to sleep.

  The next morning, I talk to Stella and burst into tears.

  ‘Why must it be like this? What have I done wrong? I had such a good time.’

  She’s concerned, perhaps feels a bit guilty. She organises for me to see a psychologist, a woman with a Greek background who will come and see me at school. Finally, someone is going to solve my problems.

  When I meet with the psychologist, I talk non-stop. About my over-protective father. About feeling so damned responsible for my parents. About worrying about their feelings all the time, about feeling trapped. I lay my problems out on the little brown school desk in front of us. I want desperately for her to make sense of them, to give me some answers. She listens patiently. She nods. She sympathises. I get the feeling she has been through it too.

  After three sessions, she says, ‘Spiri, you sound like a 25-year-old. You feel you have to shoulder everything. You are a very responsible, sensible young woman.’

  Yes, this I already know.

  ‘I can’t keep seeing you. It’s too far to come. But I feel you’ll be okay. You’ll work through it.’

  I am gutted. So much for solving my problems. And yet I can’t blame her. Deep down, I always knew I would have to work them out for myself.

  MARY COUSTAS, AKA ‘EFFIE’, ON MULLETS AND MOUSSAKA

  The stage production Wogs Out of Work opened at Melbourne’s Athenaeum Theatre in 1987, with a planned running season of two weeks. In the end, the show ran for over three years, reaching an audience of more than 750,000 people across Australia.

  Wogs Out of Work launched the acting career of Mary Coustas, aka Effie Stephanides. Mary went on to play Effie in Acropolis Now (1989–92), Effie: Just Quietly (2001), and Greeks on the Roof (2003). She talks here about why Wogs Out of Work was a hit, what was good about growing up in Collingwood, and why hair was so big in the ’80s.

  Everything was large in the ’80s – the economy, the fashion, the possibilities. It was an era of flamboyancy, a loud and proud era. The big shoulder pads, the loud colours, the mullets, the root perms. In Wogs Out of Work, we ran with those feelings. By chance, we gave birth to a phenomenon.

  The character of Effie was essentially a love letter to my childhood. I grew up in Collingwood. Back then, you weren’t made to feel like an outsider there, as the suburb was so diverse. I continue to do Effie because I feel she has found a place in the Australian psyche, and in mine, which I cannot overlook.

  In one of my favourite scenes from Wogs Out of Work, Nick Giannopoulos plays a wannabe surfie called Spiro – complete with wetsuit, fluorescent zinc cream and blond wig. It’s his way of picking up blonde chicks at the beach. Spiro is not the brightest of bulbs.

  One day he comes home to discover half the street gathered in his lounge room, with their heads bowed like somebody has died. What he doesn’t know is that this gathering is over his bad Higher School Certificate results. A Greek female neighbour says to him, ‘Tst tst tst. No good, Spiro. No good for you mother, no good for you father. No good for the whole street.’ I loved that line because it perfectly captured the big role community plays for the Greeks. It’s absurd and true at the same time.

  In another scene, Nick and Simon Palomares play their mothers, working on an assembly line. Petroula, Nick’s mother, says, ‘I was cleaning in my daughter’s bedroom, and between her T-shirts I find drungs!’

  Simon’s character replies, ‘Oh no, signora!’

  Petroula continues, ‘Drungs, signora, drungs! And she takes them every day, because on the packeto it says Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday … every day, every day!’

  The snooping, the misinterpretation and the melodrama of that moment got the biggest response from the audience every single night.

  My personal philosophy is that no matter what it is we want to do, there comes a point when we have to step outside our comfort zone, t
ake a risk and prove something major to ourselves. The impetus has to come from within. I’ve grown to realise that difficulty can push us forward to a place that buys us more individuality and strength.

  Mary’s moussaka

  Serves 6 to 8

  I am mad about a great moussaka, especially one with a Middle Eastern twist – I love it when the cinnamon, nutmeg and chilli tastes rise above all the other ingredients.

  Ingredients

  3 or 4 eggplants, sliced lengthwise into ½-inch pieces

  6 potatoes, peeled

  1½ kilogram ground beef

  2 large onions, finely diced

  1 teaspoon ground cinnamon

  ¼ teaspoon chilli flakes

  1 teaspoon nutmeg

  2 tablespoons tomato paste

  1 cup crushed tomatoes or tomato puree

  1 teaspoon sugar

  Salt and pepper to taste

  1 cup grated kefalotyri cheese (available at most Greek delicatessens) or parmesan

  Béchamel sauce

  1 cup salted butter

  1 cup plain flour

  4 cups milk, warmed

  8 egg yolks, lightly beaten

  A pinch of ground nutmeg

  Method

  Place the slices of eggplant in a colander and salt them liberally. Cover them with an inverted plate, weigh this down with a heavy can or jar, and place the colander in the sink so that excess moisture can run off. They will need to sit for at least 15 minutes, preferably for an hour.

  Boil the potatoes until they are just tender. Drain, cool and slice them into ¼-inch pieces. Set aside.

  Preheat the oven to 200°C. Rinse the eggplant and potato slices and dry them with paper towels. Place them on a greased baking tray and grill until golden brown. Take them out and put them aside to cool. Reduce the heat to 180°C.

  In a large, heavy-based pan, brown the ground beef. Add the onion and sauté until it is translucent, about 5 minutes. Add the cinnamon, chilli, nutmeg, tomato paste, crushed tomatoes and sugar. Simmer uncovered for approximately 30 minutes so that excess liquid can evaporate. Season to taste with salt and pepper.

  To make the béchamel sauce, melt the butter over a low heat. Add the flour to the melted butter, whisking continuously to make a smooth paste. Allow the flour to cook for a minute but do not let it brown. Add the warm milk in a steady stream, whisking continuously. Simmer over low heat until it thickens but does not boil. Remove from the heat and stir in the egg yolks and a pinch of nutmeg. Return to the heat and stir until the sauce thickens.

  Lightly grease a large, deep baking pan. Place a layer of potatoes on the bottom. Top with a layer of eggplant slices. Add the meat sauce and sprinkle it with ¼ of the grated cheese. Top with another layer of potato, then another layer of eggplant, and sprinkle it with another ¼ of the cheese. Pour the béchamel sauce over the top, making sure that the sauce fills the sides and corners of the pan. Smooth the top with a spatula and sprinkle with the remaining grated cheese.

  Bake for 45 minutes or until the béchamel sauce is a nice golden-brown colour. Allow to cool for 15 to 20 minutes, then slice and serve with a fresh green salad.

  The rebellious vegetarian

  Nothing in excess

  Greek proverb

  ‘You’ll die,’ my mother states matter-of-factly when I tell her I am giving up meat. She crosses her arms against her chest, daring me to challenge the evident truth of her statement.

  I scoff. With all my sixteen-year-old self-righteousness, I point out that in her village, and in those of other Greeks of her generation, meat was a luxury, and she didn’t die.

  ‘Yes, but that was in Greece, and we were always hungry. Here it’s different,’ my mother counters. ‘We can afford to eat well.’ She is now waving her arms about.

  Mum and Dad regularly buy half a lamb and have our butcher cut it into pieces to store in our jumbo-sized freezer. Endless roast dinners and stews follow. Every weekend, barbecues sizzle away in the back yards of our relatives, the smells competing with those emanating from the yards of the neighbours. ‘Eat meat, it’s good for you,’ my Uncle John says whenever we eat at his house. He won’t rest until my cousins and I have eaten at least three chops apiece.

  A couple of times a year, the extended family treks out to parks in Sorrento or Rye, where we play loud Greek music and fry up Esky-loads of cutlets, sausages and meat patties. Sometimes there is a lamb on the spit, but now I turn even that down. I am more evolved than my meat-eating elders. I am different.

  When the weeks of my meatless folly turn into months, Mum realises this is not a passing phase. And of course it is personal. I am slighting her efforts to feed me, to sustain me. It is a slap in the face. For me, it is a way of saying, ‘I’m not a child any more. I can decide what to feed myself.’ Despite (or perhaps because of) her daily protests, I stubbornly persevere. I cook my own sauces to put over her pasta. I self-importantly add wedges of tofu to one untainted corner of the barbecue. I offend my uncles by turning down their cutlets.

  Finally, when Mum can stand it no longer, she resorts to guerrilla tactics. She adds ladlefuls of strained liquid from her beef stew to my vegetarian sauce when I’m not looking. She pours juices from a lamb roast over my baked vegetables. When I discover small bits of flesh in my food, we fight.

  ‘You’ve put meat in here, Mum! How could you?’

  ‘I didn’t,’ she counters, eyes twinkling.

  When she is caught, she restrains herself for a few days. Then she starts scheming again.

  Still, even she acknowledges that there are perks. I start cooking a lot more, branching out from packet-mix cakes and toffee apples. Mum has always encouraged me to cook, letting me handle knives and ovens from a very early age. She lets me make my own mistakes and overlooks the messes. How else am I going to learn?

  I begin making more extravagant meals. From my first cookbook, the Women’s Weekly Italian Cooking Class, I make vegetarian risotto, spaghetti puttanesca and minestrone. When I have mastered ricotta cannoli and profiteroles, I start experimenting with Chinese food – spring rolls and vegetarian wontons, chow mein and stir-fried mushrooms.

  My family tries these new foods, quietly pleased that I am becoming so adept in the kitchen. My father, a notoriously fussy eater, approves my flavoursome sauces with a small smile. But he always makes comical gestures, as if he is chewing rocks, when he tastes my al dente pasta; Greeks are notorious for cooking their pasta until it is soft and bloated. My mother starts to appreciate the joys of tofu and Asian flavours. She never comments on the undercooked vegetables.

  It is during my Chinese period that I invite a group of friends over for a meal. I go shopping at the exotic grocers in Richmond for spring-roll wrappers, Chinese broccoli, fresh ginger, oyster sauce and tofu. I spend the better part of a day preparing what is for me an ambitious menu: vegetarian spring rolls, a tofu and vegetable hotpot, stir-fried Chinese broccoli and fragrant rice. When my friends arrive, I spend most of my time in the kitchen, frying and stirring so that each dish arrives at the table hot. Just as I finally sit down to enjoy my guests, my mother appears with a bowl of meatballs, hot from the pan and smelling tantalisingly of garlic and parsley. Before I have time to protest (‘This is a vegetarian meal’; ‘The theme is Chinese’; ‘These are my friends’), my friend Chris has tucked into the meatballs as if he hasn’t eaten for a month. He realises his folly when he looks up at me. I am nearly in tears.

  ‘You need meat,’ my mother insists as he swallows the offending meatball.

  I realise then that I can’t possibly compete with my mother. Her meatballs will always trump my tofu. She will always win in the kitchen.

  Chrysoula’s keftedes (fried meatballs)

  1 kilogram mince meat

  3 eggs

  ½ cup breadcrumbs

  1 tablespoon self-raising flour

  2 medium onions, grated

  6 cloves garlic, finely sliced

  3 sprigs mint, finely chopped


  1 teaspoon dried oregano

  1 cup red or white wine

  ½ cup lukewarm water

  Salt and pepper to taste

  1 cup vegetable oil, for frying

  Method

  Mix all of the ingredients (except the oil) together and refrigerate for 1 to 2 hours. Then roll the mixture into oval, golf-ball-sized balls.

  Heat the oil in a large frying pan until it is just smoking, then add the meatballs one at a time. Do not overfill the pan. When they are browned on one side, turn them over. Fry them up in batches until all are cooked; when they are done, remove them with a slotted spoon and place them on a paper towel to drain.

  These meatballs can be served in tomato salsa, added to lunch boxes or eaten as a main with salad and chips (see here). Both cooked and uncooked meatballs freeze well.

  Rembetika for the soul

  When the cat is absent, the mice dance

  Greek proverb

  Dad parks the Valiant in front of the Mechanics Institute Hall in Brunswick and insists on chaperoning me to the door. The musicians are still getting their instruments out and they look up at us when we come in. Not only am I unfashionably early, but my father is standing anxiously by my side. My face burns hot.

  ‘I’ll pick you up at eleven, no later,’ Dad says loudly and casts a doubtful look at the male musicians, as if they might steal my virtue in the short time I am here. If only I should be so lucky.

  I slink to a chair in the corner, and only dare look up again when Dad has left. The musician with the honey-brown eyes who told me about the concert is tuning his bouzouki. He looks nervous and pays me no attention. I met him in the university caff a few weeks ago, where he was confident, charming. He is one of a group of recently arrived students from Greece who hang around the Redmond Barry building on campus. For months, I have admired them from afar, envying their ironic cool, their laid-back intellectualism. Now I have been invited to their inner sanctum … along with hundreds of other people.