Here in this little Greek village there is a café/bar in the
main square. It has been there some years, and has become the place where the
more discriminating, one might almost say the more intellectual, go for their
morning coffee and their evening nightcap. One can see people playing chess, or
working on poetry translations on their laptops, or having deep conversations
about the prettiness of this year’s tourist girls.
In early summer this year, ‘someone’ complained to the
council that this café’s chairs and tables were blocking the way through the
public square. They weren’t of course: the proprietors, whose family have lived
on the square for generations, have the taste and intelligence to place the
seating in the shade of the several trees, out of everybody’s way. Nobody’s
passage had ever been obstructed: even mules carrying refrigerators teetering
on their pack-saddles had no trouble crossing the square.
Nevertheless, the mayor (who, oddly, was not available for
comment, having left the island on urgent business) sent council employees up
with a plan, and a tape-measure, and a pot of paint: ‘Paths’ were marked out
across the square. Paths of which no-one had ever heard before. One of them
passed right across the front of the café/bar. Others just happened to pass
right under each of the trees in the square. Tables and chairs were not to be
placed on these paths. They must be crowded together in the remaining little
triangles of space, with no shade. The mayor, when he was eventually found,
said the café/bar must put up umbrellas; they could not use the shade of the
trees any more.
Of course, when bemused customers came next day for their
morning coffee and found their accustomed tables in obviously silly places,
they dragged them back under the trees. Whereupon ‘someone’ telephoned the
police, who came up and said that they were obliged to act on any complaint,
however silly, and would the proprietor please return the tables to the
newly-assigned places.
This happened again and again: customers arranged their
tables where they liked them (and where they were not in anyone’s way), and a
little later the police arrived because ‘someone’ had called them.
Things carried on like this and then one day, as happens
early in the summer every year, a couple of gypsies arrived with bundles of
rushes to repair those of the rush-bottomed chairs that had worn out. They
settled on the ground under a tree and set to work, to the delight of the
camera-bearing tourists. Suddenly the police arrived and berated the café
proprietor for ‘letting’ the gypsies sit in the ‘road’. ‘Someone’ had rung the
police to complain. The gypsies of course downed tools, packed up and left.
Meanwhile just off the square, an enterprising — some would
say quixotic — lady had opened a little café/bookshop. The usual prophets of
doom and gloom said it could never work — there were enough cafés in the
village already, and no-one ever read a book here. I suggested that that was
perhaps because until now there had been nowhere to buy one. It was slow to
take off, but once the season got under way the place did start to do business.
Mostly on the café side, but some books were sold. In fact, things went so well
that when the Athens publisher ‘Aiora’ brought out a new Greek/English
selection of Cavafy’s poetry — the English translator is David Connolly, who is
the best — the café proprietor organized a Cavafy evening at the shop. The
publisher came and gave a talk about Cavafy, I gave a short talk about how I
had got to know Cavafy’s work and incidentally his flat in Alexandria, and some
of the poems were read, in both languages, by three young Greek women. It was a
great success; a large audience gathered (see the picture below) and some of
them even bought the book.
A few days later the police came to the shop. ‘Someone’ had
rung them to say the bookshop proprietor didn’t have all the necessary permissions
and licenses for her business. Well of course she didn’t. No-one has, at least
not in the first year or so of business: the Greek system is that you find out
what is required, make sure you comply with all the rules, and apply for the
necessary papers, and wait. And wait. Sometimes for years. Greek bureaucracy.
Meanwhile you start business of course. That’s what everyone has always done.
The policeman agreed but said he had to act on any complaint. Never mind that
all around there were plainly visible much more blatant contraventions of the
rules, this was the one he had to investigate. The scene was reminiscent of the
opening of the first Inspector Clouzeau film, where Peter Sellers as a French
policeman is giving a blind organ-grinder a hard time about a ‘Lee-sonce’ for
his ‘Minkee’, while behind his back a bank robbery is in full swing.
Now the bookshop lady is a brave and strong woman. She will
carry on defiantly, though theoretically she is supposed to shut up shop at
once. No doubt ‘Someone’ is proud of what he has done, or rather failed to do.
Congratulations, ‘Someone’.
These ‘someones’ exist in every village in the world, and
every language has a name, or several names, for them. They are not the most
loved members of society; even the police regard these little creeps with
contempt. They don’t of course advertise their identity, but people always know
who they are.
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