Nine hours pass. We are stopped in the middle of
the night by a fierce armed official, who grunts at my British
passport and returns it, but keeps Eileen's American passport
and orders her to stand on the platform for what was a terrifying
hour. For her. I slept soundly. She has never fully forgiven me.
When our train stopped, after we have
rode past military bases, after a fellow passenger had his camera and
film confiscated by more fierce armed officials after he had
photographed a particularly large tank, we struggled to leave our
train and get on the one to Greece. We agree Eileen should run on
first and secure two seats while I push on with the bags. This scheme
collapses when I see my friend waving from a window, jammed against
it. I manage to get the bags on the train and finally Eileen is
able to push back towards me, so we journey wedged between bags and
people, looking through the open doors at the Yugoslavian countryside
chugging by. I see signs referring to the recently late dictator,
General Tito. My waves of nausea are interspersed with waves of
hunger. We eat salami, cheese, cherries, bread and drink bottled
water. The countryside is so green, so full of hills and stones. We
watch the day merge into the afternoon, into the twilight and the
night.
We stop frequently to offload
passengers – when the afternoon shadows lengthen my friend and I
have a compartment almost to ourselves.
A young woman sits down
between us and her young dark handsome husband in a Yugoslavian army uniform hands her their baby
son, loads the luggage on the rack above, kisses her goodbye and gets
off the train. As soon as the train has moved beyond the station an
older man appears and sits opposite the young woman, taking her hand
and kissing it.
I move so that they have a seat all to themselves.
She chatters to her companion in Australian English, she is tells me
she is Greek-Australian and she met her husband when he was visiting
Australia and now she leads a gray life in a gray village in
Communist Yugoslavia. Maybe she will not go back, this time. She will
stay in Greece with the members of her family who had not moved to
Australia for a better life. Her companion winks at her.
We reach Thessalonika at three in the
morning, drop our bags on the concrete floor of the railway station
and are immediately fast asleep. We are awoken by guards at five, so
we drag ourselves and our luggage to the station café. Eileen writes
cheerful notes on maybe fifty postcards, while I watch traffic. I see
two cars arriving at the intersection at t he same time, smash into
each other, and explode.into flames. Through the oleander bushes I
see ambulances and police cars arriving rapidly, loudly, then
quietly, slowly driving away.
We leave the station after a second cup
of tea. We drag our luggage to the bus station, passing young men
just about everywhere. They all stop to stare at my friend’s long
yellow hair. The young men are on motor-bikes, some walk purposely,
some walk languidly, some are selling corncobs, flowers, jewelry.
Gold crosses flash from their chests, exposed by the unbuttoned
shirts. Gold crosses dominate windows of jewelers’ shops. I tell my
friend I want to buy one to keep myself and my unborn child from
incineration.
We travel by bus to a beach outside
Thessalonika. The sea and the sun wash away the dirt of our journey.
We are much refreshed by our sojourn in the city of Alexander the
Great and are ready to travel to Athens two days later.
Our hotel in Athens is very basic,
probably not even clean, hot water only between 8:30 and 9:30 a.m.,
no guests in the room – but, up on the hill, through the window,
the Acropolis!
We walk up and down Athens – up to
the Acropolis, through museums, down hills. We watch the Spanish
Ballet perform in the amphitheater at the foot of the Acropolis. We
eat moussaka and souvlaki and sleep in the afternoon when the heat
and my nausea peak.
Before too long we need to change money
and Eileen leads me to the American Express office which changes our
money and offers a few shelves of new books to buy. I pick out “The
Magus.”
John Fowles has rewritten his masterpiece, I want to read
the new version, written after it became a best-seller and after a movie was made. The novel was set in Greece – I
buy the book, tuck it into my bag, and request a phone to call the
United States. I call my boyfriend to tell him I am pregnant, his
reaction is fifty dollars worth of unprintable expletives.
In the morning my friend packs her bags
to fly back to the laboratory in Philadelphia while I pack to travel
towards England via the Pellopenesus.
The following week is very relaxed and
meditative. I see Olympia, the home of the Olympic Games, during the
same week that it is held in Moscow. We, the Americans, have decided
not to participate in the Games because the Russians have invaded
Afghanistan. We, the Australians, also protest. I decide that unless
they are held in Olympia, the Games really don’t count.