When he arrived he was greeted by enthusiastic crowds of people who became rapturous when he unexpectedly addressed them in Greek, saying he came as a friend, a partner and a student. Delighted by the first, flattered by the last, the nation was most impressed by the word ‘partner’ — it was one thing Greeks felt they had lacked for a good many years.
If the French President’s foray into Greek was gallant and charming, President Tsatsos’s into French was polished and effortless. That evening in a toast at a banquet in the Presidential Mansion, Monsieur Tsatsos transported the civilized level of dialogue (in French again, of course) to the realms of high philosophical discourse. He spoke of ‘the solitary castle of Montaigne’, ‘the groves of Epicurus’, Plato and ‘the spirit of geometry’, Aristotle and ‘Cartesian clarity’. The country had to reach for a digestif after this intellectual feast.
On the day of his departure, President Giscard once again valiantly charged into the thickets of Greek syntax. This time, however, he slipped momentarily when he said ‘Ellathos’ instead of ‘Ellados’. ‘Ellados’ means Of Greece’, of course, while ‘ lathos’ means ‘mistake’. Some believe, however, that M. le President erred on purpose in order to coin a new and useful word which might be defined as ‘a Greek mistake’.
Whatever the Greek mistake might have been, most felt that with Giscard’s visit, Greece embarked on a new and fruitful alliance and that French assistance to Greece would amount to more than ‘just a Mirage’.
Mad Hatter’s Tea Party at the Tax Office
OUR GALLANT friend, Kyria Elsie, is a sprightly, energetic lady who speaks her mind about customs or practises which are offensive or outrageous. Her visits to our offices to deliver her latest observations on the changing Athens scene, unnecessary nuisances or injustices, are a breath of fresh air in this age of indiscriminate haranguing. When she called on us not long after having returned from a holiday in England, it was a very hot day in September and she was simmering. We wondered if she were having difficulty in adjusting to the temperature in Athens, but she informed us that it had been even hotter in London and that she was simmering with indignation at what she called ‘the Alice in Wonderland quality of the civil service and its red tape’. We immediately understood. We know, of course, that it will take more than the efforts of this gallant lady to shake up our civil servants but we reproduce her story to encourage those who may be locking horns with our local bureaucrats for the first time and need to be reassured that they’re not going out of their minds:
‘Last June I went to the Tax Office to pay the Road Tax on a new car I had bought in May. I was told that the papers had not yet come through. As I was leaving Greece for six weeks at the end of July and wished to be en regle, I again went to the Tax Office on July 25 to pay the tax. Once more I was told the papers had not arrived. Anticipating difficulties with customs officials at the border, I asked for a form certifying that I had no outstanding tax, and was given one.
‘Shortly after my return, I received the Tax Request, which was dated September 4. It was a little late in reaching me as I had changed my address. On September 13 I went to pay the tax. I noticed that a sum of nineteen drachmas had been added to my account and asked for an explanation. “It is a fine because you are late in paying your tax,” replied the clerk. “How can I be late since I only received the notice a few days ago?” “It should have been paid in August.” “But the request is dated September and, as you well know, I came twice begging to be allowed to pay the tax.” “That is the rule — if you are late there is a fine.”
Ί asked to see the director. When I explained my dilemma to him he replied nonchalantly that it didn’t matter because, after all, it was only a matter of nineteen drachmas. “If it were nineteen lepta it would matter. It is the principle of the thing. Why should I pay a fine for your mistake?” “It is not our mistake — the papers didn’t come”, he replied.
‘We talked in circles for awhile until finally I gave up, feeling I was taking part in the Mad Hatter’s Tea Party.’
Blasts of Fresh Air
THE THREE concerts devoted to the music of Yannis Xenakis at the Odion of Herodes Atticus in mid-September were all received with great enthusiasm by capacity audiences. Although the composer’s mathematical theories and computerized philosophy left most people utterly baffled, not only the young (who prevailed), but the old, seemed to enjoy the results.
Xenakis’s music needs considerable cerebral concentration. Overheard, it is nerve-racking noise, but listened to attentively it conveys a curious continuity that is intellectually interesting and aesthetically satisfying. Xenakis is not without emotional ‘effects’: the tapping of the violin cases, the thumping on the cellos, the woodwinds alternately wailing and screeching, the brilliant antics called for on the part of the pianist, and the bravura generally demanded from everyone, are often intense, exciting and sometimes thrilling.
Xenakis Week was artistically what the French President’s visit was politically to Greece. There was much happening on the extra-musical side as well. There were the accounts of Xenakis’s career in all the newspapers.’ Condemned to a long imprisonment during the Civil War, he fled the country and lived as a political refugee abroad for over twenty-five years. In the last ten years he has made a great name for himself both in Europe and America. One Athenian record shop which had not sold a Xenakis disc in five years found it had sold out of them two days after the announcement of the concerts. Xenakis Week gave the country a sense that it had arrived back in European civilization after a seven-year ostracism. The concerts at the Athens Festival were marked by a surfeit of nineteenth-century concert music but Xenakis’s avant-garde music dramatically proved that the Athenian audience is ready for and demanding much more imaginative and varied musical programming.
Summer Survival in Athens
NOW THAT the last of our summer visitors have departed, we in Athens may allow ourselves a little candour: we love our friends and relatives — and their friends and relatives— but the steady stream of holidaymakers brings most of us to our knees by late August. The hardest hit in this Era of the Mobile Youth are households which include young people home from schools and colleges and, for a while last summer, one of the most pathetic casualties of the onslaught was our friend, the Proud Pater Familias from the Peloponnisos.
In the past our friend exuded confidence and authority as he ex-pounded enthusiastically on his chil-dren’s accomplishments, their successes in gaining admission to the best schools in the country (a breathtaking list that included Athens College, Pierce College and Moraitis), and in scoring straight aristason exams—all the happy consequences of his commanding and receiving the sort of unquestioning obedience which he believed to be his birthright. Alas, his children have grown up now and when we met him at a cocktail party in July our queries met with a stoney stare and he headed towards the bar.
We tracked down his wife, the Patient Pamela, a staunch American lady who has presented him over the years with five strapping ‘children’, as. the saying goes in Greek, and one daughter —a remarkable accomplishment in a country where the statistical family averages a fraction of a child. She looked exhausted and explained that her house had become a way station second only to Ellis Island in its day and that she had been up all night trying to reason with her husband who was in several states of shock. The first shock had come one night in late June when he had gone to his oldest son’s room to tuck him in and discovered him asleep on the floor. On his bed was another body which, because of the length and colour of the hair on its head, he assumed to be that of his second son. As he stood there deeply moved by this touching scene of brotherly love (the last time he had seen them together they had been locked in a stranglehold and threatening to murder each other), the head on the pillow turned to reveal the face of a young woman. At this point we mumbled expressions of shock but Pamela waved this aside explaining that although her husband went through the necessary motions of rage at this discovery, the real problem had arisen when she explained that it was all perfectly innocent and that their son and the young lady were ‘only friends’. With considerable effort she had tried to persuade him that things had changed since he was a young man in Tripoli and that there was nothing ‘wrong’ with his son and heir.
Reeling under this blow to his manhood, our Pater Familias abdicated until one morning he called his home and a strange voice answered. He identified himself with whatever vestiges of authority were left and the voice on the end of the line replied, ‘Who?’ At
that he fought back. He stormed home, called his family together and seizing at whatever logical arguments he could think of, announced they had run out of beds and that no more guests were welcome. He was greeted by looks of incredulity. His children explained condescendingly that no one slept on beds if they could help it, but in sleeping bags and, what was more, their guests had all run out of money and could not decently be expected to leave until the departure dates on their charter flights. He was rendered speechless by these arguments. With one frantic eye on his shrinking bank account and another on his tattered self-image now reduced to that of ‘scab’, he thereafter resignedly queued up for his coffee in the morning behind the milling hordes. At this point in Pamela’s account our once Proud Pater Familias could be seen making his way towards us, a pale shadow of his former self. Ί guess it’s time I took matters into my own hands,’ sighed his wife.
A few days later the Patient Pamela corraled all her children and packed them into the family’s station wagon along with the dog and the cat. Her husband sat next to her on the front seat too stricken to comment even on her driving and passively holding on his lap a cage containing a hamster which had been left to board with his youngest son for the summer. Their daughter’s Best Friend (whom she had met that morning in Monastiraki) and their oldest son’s Great Love (whom he had met the day before on the ferry from Spetses when he had saved her from a Passionate Peasant who had misunderstood her semi-nudity) followed by thumb as they made their way towards Tripoli.
Our Pater Familias was greeted upon arrival at his village with the homage to which he was up until then accustomed and after a few days of his mother’s ministrations his ego was restored to its former glory and he was ready once more to take command. He carefully assessed the contingents from around the world who had found their way to his family domain by following the instructions distributed by his children to hitchhikers along the route from Athens, decided he had a quorum, and convened a special session of the United Nations. With our Pater Familias at the helm, they agreed to banish Turkey from the Organization. The last we heard from our old friend, he was busy rushing around to all the ‘Drach Sales’ listed in Ta Nea and buying up every cot and sleeping bag he could lay his hands on in anticipation of next year’s deluge.
