Vasileos

The same road of a few straights and innumerable curves, the same light darkening between the rock walls, even the same rain. Today it all seemed different, though. You are in a different frame of mind if you know what is happening to you and the tank is full. Twenty years ago, on the other hand, I had almost run out of petrol, lost my map who knows where and the endless forests between Greece and Albania, in the dark, no longer seemed so moving. The odometer numbers paraded in procession without anything around me changing, and so I had stopped watching them. The fuel gauge, with its little red eyes, seemed to be watching me, staring, malevolent, mocking. She had her reasons. A few hours earlier, instead of staying and prudently waiting for the next day, I had set off again and got lost. Before admitting it I had waited too long, when the night was full and I was far from what I knew. Forced too long into the depths of my heart, anxiety broke its bonds and grew lush.
Curves, trees, mountains … The dense blackness that enveloped them all. The road that seemed built and then left there, like the home of those who did not return because of a decision made by fate. And suddenly the lights, unexpected, liberating. Lights that made hope blossom because one could have been anything but those I saw were more than one, close to each other and therefore houses, people, knowing where I was. Perhaps to sleep, even.
At the umpteenth bend the road widened to form a tiny square. Three parked cars and only one vacant space left. The settlement I could distinguish in the dark was no more than I had imagined. I soon realised that hoping for a hotel was hoping too much. After all, I admitted to myself, only the extreme need for relief could have made me think of finding one in such a small agglomeration, far from the tourist routes.
On one side of the small square stood a small Orthodox church; on the opposite side, steps led up to the covered veranda of a psistaria. The front door was lit by a lamp of disproportionate power compared to the apparent need to give light to the veranda. Perhaps it also served somewhat as a street lamp. The swing of the windscreen wiper helped calm me down, my heartbeats returned to more normal intervals. I finally turned off the engine. In the space of an instant the rain drew dancing rivulets on the windscreen. The waterproof jacket was rolled up in the boot. I was going to get wet anyway, so I got out of the car and ran to the veranda and finally to the door of the psistaria. The simple gesture of lowering the handle was enough to make me feel safe.
The interior of the place was modest. White walls with a few black-and-white photos hanging, wooden tables, paper tablecloths, the light from the bulbs an unnatural yellow that falsified the colour of everything. On a corner table, at the far right, a radio played the strained sounds of traditional music. Customers could sit at four tables in a row on the right and then at a fifth, larger than the others, placed sideways along the back wall. On the left, where the restaurant partly widened, another table and a counter offered to the eye the signs of time and a few stains. Behind the counter, a passageway closed by blue and white plastic strips hinted at a kitchen, perhaps even a living quarters. Electrical wires ran along the walls covered only by a thick layer of white paint. A socket protruded obscenely from the wall.
An hour or so to midnight but, I was surprised, still people at the tables. Three men were conversing over the few remnants of dinner. At the back of the room sat some old men. Two of them had moved their chairs a little so that they could hold the cane in front of them and enjoy, even while seated, its support. The table in front of the bar was occupied by two men of very different ages: the younger one was about thirty years old, maybe half that of the older one. On their table were only two small liquor glasses filled with a liquid more transparent than the glass that contained it. The three in front of the remains of the dinner were the only ones who interrupted their conversation to look at me; the old men merely looked up and turned around just enough to recognise a stranger in me. The two seated at the table opposite the counter, on the other hand, had been watching me more attentively than the others when I had appeared dripping. I asked them with a nod to confirm that it was to them that I should turn for food and some information. The eldest got up and came to me. I ventured English but got more the fingers of one hand gathered in bunches and brought twice towards my mouth, a probably universal gesture to indicate hunger. An open hand pointed me to an empty seat at the nearest table.
The details of the dinner were worked out with the stumbling blocks that had become habitual on my trip. It was the second time I had spent my holidays in Greece and I would return many more times but, even today, I know no more than twenty words of that language and of those twenty, at least half are called food: horiatiki is the Greek salad, tzatziki the cream of yoghurt with garlic and cucumbers, souvlaki the pork skewers and then moussaka, pastitsio, psarosoupa … In the innermost parts of that Epirus I was passing through, in a psistaria one can eat mostly meat. A few words and a few nods of the head to say yes or no generated the promise of tzatziki, fried potatoes and wine to accompany one of those little sausages that go by the name of loukanika. My interlocutor’s tone and gestures made me realise that he almost apologised for the fact that he could not offer me much else at that hour. I reassured him as best I could: as far as I was concerned, that dinner was a gift from destiny.